It Was a Great Sunday!

Lula Wins!

It was a great day yesterday! The Seattle Seahawks trounced the Kansas City Chiefs although Sam Darnold still looks like shit. What was with that interception at the end of the first half? A student-led political party ousted Serbia's so-called Progressive Party, led by Putin and Trump ally Aleksandar Vučic.  Lula pulled off a miracle in Brazil and won the national election by a whopping three points over Bolsonaro's son, ensuring Jair spends at least four more years under house arrest. Unlike Vučic, Bolsonaro didn't concede.

However, the best news of all is that House Democrats are favored to blowout the Republicans in the Midterms despite all the redistricting we saw take place this past year. CNN now gives them a 71% chance of scoring a landslide. 

There doesn't seem to be much Trump can do about it despite calling in heavy hitters like Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Floyd Mayweather at his rallies across the country. To watch clips of these rallies, you would think Donald was running for president again as these rallies are all about him and very little to do with the candidates he pushed in Republican primaries and are now trailing badly in the general elections. 

Most everyone saw this coming. The biggest mistake was ousting John Cornyn in Texas. It would have been an easy win for the four-term senator. Instead, Trump backed a corruption-riddled Ken Paxton who finds himself trailing in the polls, albeit barely. If James Talarico is able to pull off the upset, which is looking more and more likely, then the Dems are all but assured a majority in the Senate too.

One would think Republicans would protect their interests but their misplaced fealty in Trump has led them down a rabbit hole. They figured they couldn't lose no matter how bad he became. After all, he staged two miracles in 2016 and 2024. However, Republicans got blown out in 2018 and it looks like deja vu all over again, to borrow Yogi Berra's tag line. 

This is a good sign as there was a lot of worry that Bolsonaro would win in Brazil and turn South America's largest country into another Trumpistan. The White House was banking on it as there is a lot of money to be made in Brazil. Trump even had his Tech Bros cut power to Lulu's campaign on social media, notably Meta run by Mark Zuckerberg. X figures less heavily in Brazilian politics, as many Brazilians switched to Bluesky back in 2024. It shows you the reach these social media companies have today.

We've seen it before with Cambridge Analytica, which boasted of skewing elections worldwide with their ability to plant fake news and other misleading information on social media apps, directly targeting specific groups. This data group had links to Moscow, dating back to 2014, and probably played a role in the 2016 US elections that saw similar ads targeting Midwest "Blue" states and turning the election for Trump. These were states Obama had won by a substantial margin the previous election.

It shows that you can overcome this election interference by getting your base to the polling booths, which Lula did this time around, crushing the hopes of the Bolsonaro family to regain control of Brazil. Flavio was just acting as a proxy for his father Jair.

Democrats have to do the same over the next week, ensuring no last-minute heroics like we saw in 2024. Then the polls were much closer. Today, polls show Dems have a 10-point advantage nationwide. So, even if Republicans are playing a numbers game, it would be pretty hard to turn that many votes.

Once again, you can chalk it up to imperial overreach. It didn't help that the Republican "messiah" decided to invade Iran or that he made overtures to annex Canada and Greenland. What could have been dismissed as folly last year turned into unbridled greed with the invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.

It also didn't help that this president went all-in on Putin with the latest scandal being an Alaskan LNG terminal. His special envoys have been negotiating with Russian natural gas companies to give Russia yet another back door. You knew all along that Witkoff and Kushner weren't in Russia to negotiate a peace deal, anymore than they cared about a peace deal in Gaza. This was all about money. Huge gobs of it that they hoped to funnel in and out of the beleaguered country and take their cut. Both are billionaires like Don the Con.

What the Trumpists didn't count on was that MAGA sympathies lay with Ukraine, not Russia, and his diesel deal went over like a lead balloon. It failed to make a dent in fuel prices and showed that his sympathies lay with Russia. Add to that Musk pulling the plug on Starlink yet again, and you saw Trump take another huge hit in the polls. He is currently sitting with the worst approval of any president since Harry S. Truman in 1946, who saw the greatest turnover in Congress that year.

It was such a no-brainer. Support Ukraine. Seventy percent of Americans do. Not Trump. He had too many skeletons in the closet to turn his back on Putin and now he pays the price for his treachery. It would be great to see him end up under house arrest like Jair Bolsonaro in two years time.

The treachery goes far beyond selling out Ukraine. Trump has sold out virtually all our American allies, choosing to make his bed with autocratic leaders. His pulling away from Europe is unprecedented, as is his unwarranted attacks on Canada's sovereignty. He's tried to remake South America using strong arm tactics that last go back to Reagan, but Trump suffered a bruising defeat in Brazil.

Serbia may appear an outlier, but this former Yugoslavian country has long given Putin a foothold in Europe. Serbians simply had enough after 14 years of a stagnating economy. Like Ukrainians, Serbians want to be integrated in the European economy, not the Russian economy, which has been going downhill for decades.

As for the Seahawks, I was glad to see them get back on track after two narrow losses where Darnold absolutely sucked. He just sucks less now. I still keep abreast of my hometown team even if ten hours removed.

It was a great Sunday!