Breaking news! Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary, after only five days on the job. This is notable because she lasted only half a "Scaramucci" -- the previous minimal measurement adopted for longevity in the Trump administration (after Anthony Scaramucci only lasted 11 days in the same job). "The Mooch" responded to the news by posting: "Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people's pain." From now on, one assumes, the question will be properly framed: "Do you think he/she will last a full Scaramucci, or only a single Zacharia?"

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Hillary Clinton warned us all, almost exactly ten years ago to the day. In a debate moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News (which took place on October 19, 2016), Clinton and Donald Trump had a memorable exchange that has turned out to be sadly prophetic.

In the midst of a discussion about open borders, Clinton made a pivot and started talking about Russia and Vladimir Putin. Here's what she had to say about it, from the transcript of the debate:

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With three weeks to go before Election Day, Republicans are in retreat while Democrats continue to expand their map. That's a good sign, although of course nothing is guaranteed in politics. We've now entered the debate phase of the campaign, with new debates happening again tonight in three big Senate races (Maine, Iowa, and Georgia). Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to campaign in some very red states, in some awfully small venues.

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First off, I'd like to wish everyone a happy Leif Erikson Day! (well... kind of.)

Getting back to more modern times, Donald Trump is increasingly pushing legal boundaries, in multiple directions. That's barely even news anymore, since it has been happening with such frequency throughout his second term, but some of his moves in particular of late have been drawing the ire of even his own Republicans, which does make it a little more newsworthy. Plus the fact that some folks are even calling his biggest move over the weekend treasonous, which does up the ante a little too.

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Far from making America "great" again, Donald Trump has instead made America (and himself) a worldwide laughingstock. This week, a statue was unveiled in the European Parliament building that portrayed a naked golden Trump sitting on top of the shoulders of a struggling man. The text on the base of the statue read:

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While most of the attention in this year's midterms has been on Senate and House races, there is another important contest that I'll also be watching Election Day. Alaska will be voting (for the third time in the last six years) on what sort of elections system the voters prefer. And I for one think it would be a shame if an initiative on the ballot there -- which would change the elections system back to how it was before it was reformed in 2020 -- winds up winning. I say this because I have been a big fan of the reforms they did manage to institute, so I sincerely hope Alaska voters will retain their current system.

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I return to an old advertising adage for the title of today's article. Because sometimes no matter how much money you pump into advertising a product, "If the dogs won't eat the dogfood, the ad campaign will fail in the end." Or a slightly different version: "If the dogs won't eat the dogfood, it won't sell. I don't care how many pretty pictures you put on the packaging." In other words, if the product itself is crap, it won't matter how brilliant the ad campaign is or how much money you throw at advertising, because people aren't going to buy your product, period.

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I am beginning to feel something that I haven't felt for a long time in politics: optimism. Cautious optimism, to be sure, but still hoping the future is going to turn positive rather than negative. I say this with exactly four weeks to go until the midterm congressional elections.

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War is changing. That's not too surprising, since war has always been changing. New offensive weapons appear, giving one army superiority over another. Such advances can win battles and even whole wars. New defensive weapons are developed to counter the threat, so even newer offensive weapons are then developed. The cycle never stops, really. And this has been true since the beginning of time, so it really shouldn't be surprising that it's happening in a big way once again.

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Let's begin this week with a stunner of a statement -- one that you might not have noticed in the news: Donald Trump apparently now wants to sell weapons to China.

The mainstream media has been doing a pathetically bad job of covering Trump for over a decade now, but you would think that news of this magnitude would have broken through. You'd be wrong about that, for the most part. The fact that the president of the United States is even contemplating selling weapons to China, at any other point in modern history, would have been a blockbuster of a story. All the other politicians would be weighing in on the subject (hopefully, to denounce it as a monumentally stupid idea). Pundits would be talking about it for weeks. But it was such a minor story that it appeared as a tiny blip and then sank like a stone beneath all the other idiocy emanating from the White House.

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