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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So the Senate has left Washington, to head out on the campaign trail for the rest of this month. Before they scarpered off, Republicans tried to pass a few bills that were no more than performative -- they seemed like they were doing something to address a problem, but when you actually examined the details, they really weren't. Democrats denied the Republicans some wins that they doubtlessly would have made a big deal of back home to the voters (but that wouldn't have lived up to the hype).

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Donald Trump is being forced to face a rather brutal political reality. His popularity and approval ratings are reaching new lows, even among his fellow Republicans. This is evidenced by his first big foray into the midterm campaign season. What is pretty obvious from the announced stops on his campaign tour is that few Republicans in close races want their own president to campaign for them. This is actually a common thing to happen to a president whose approval ratings have headed south. Instead of boosting the chances of a candidate from your own party, all of a sudden a presidential appearance at a rally tends to do the opposite. Which seems to be what Trump is now having to cope with.

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Since we're now only five weeks away from the midterm congressional elections, it's time once again to take a quick look at all the competitive Senate races. The map has been expanding, as more and more states that used to be considered solidly in the Republican column have moved to being close races. This is obviously good news for Democrats, since it provides them with multiple ways to win back control of the chamber.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats to reclaim the Senate. They are playing defense in four states -- states that have been in Democratic hands up until now. They are playing offense in ten states now (although a few of them admittedly have to be considered the longest of longshots).

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