I don’t know what’s going to happen in the special election in Tennessee. It’s a heavily Republican district. The guy who just retired, Republican Rep. Mark Green, won his 2024 election by 21 points. The Drumpfster won that district – Tennessee’s 7th – by a similar margin. This election should be a walk for Republicans.

But the Republican, Matt Van Epps, is running on, “Ain’t Trump great?” at a time when NOBODY thinks Donny is doing great. Van Epps is promising to support Donny in every way. Like all of the other Republicans in Congress, he provides his own knee pads and has had his spine surgically removed to better serve his Precious.

Meanwhile, the Democrat, State Rep. Aftyn Behn, is running on the economy. The race is looking close enough that both team’s national committees are spending big money. Van Epps’ campaign asked Donny to come to Tennessee and Behn’s team got an appearance by Kamala, which may or may not be a good thing.

There’s a second conservative in this race, Jon Thorp, though he’s running as an independent. A normally Democrat-supporting PAC is pushing Republican voters to vote for Thorp, claiming Van Epps is a RINO. That’s a “Republican In Name Only.” There are also DINOS. Millions of dollars are suddenly being thrown at this campaign.

I don’t have high confidence the Democrats can flip a gerrymandered district that supported the Republicans by more than 20 points, but it says something that the district is seen as “in play.” If anyone can vaporize a 20+ point advantage in only ten short months, it’s Donny…

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Donny is suggesting he’ll send everyone a “tariff dividend” of $2,000. He won’t. He hasn’t made enough in tariffs to send everyone $2,000. Worse, now that his dinosaur-like brain is beginning to register the damage his tariffs have done to the economy, he’s going to lower some of them, reducing the amount of money available to send out. But he loves that $2,000 dollar number, doesn’t he?

It came up again with health care. Now, instead of the ACA supplements Americans need, he says he want’s to give each person $2,000 to cover their own health insurance. So, first question, is that the tariff dividend AND the health care cash? Is he promising to send everyone $4,000? Or is it the same $2,000, promised for two different things? Is that annually? No one knows, but it seems like it’s intended to be a one-time good deal. $2,000 to cover health care in the US – for the rest of your life. That seems like a workable plan. If you’re rich…

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Well, the great negotiator is offering his failed position on Ukraine again. The Drumpfster keeps offering up the same options: Ukraine gives Putin what he wants, and in return, Putin accepts it. That’s a hell of a plan, and for reasons no MAGA mind can fathom, Ukraine isn’t interested. When Ukraine rejects the surrender agreement, Donny just shuffles the talking points and re-issues it as a “new plan.”

The latest “new plan” being proposed is being described by many people as a Russian wish list. Some are saying it was written by Russia and translated by the US. The US denies that claim. Yeah, that’s convincing. Initially, Donny warned Ukraine they had to accept this plan by Thursday, but the regime have since walked that all the way back to “it’s just a proposal, at this point.” When all is said and done, it looks like there’s no “peace plan” at all…

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But speaking of Russians writing things, the latest revelation coming from Musk’s racist website, Brand X, indicates that many top MAGA accounts are actually foreigners manipulating Americans. X added a feature showing the country of origin on X accounts and people started using the feature to look up the origins of popular MAGA accounts. Russians are on the list. So is Chile, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Morocco, Eastern Europe, and Thailand.

Look, it’s possible there’s a MAGA living overseas for some reason who maintains a pro-MAGA account, but I’d bet the lion’s share of these accounts are actual foreigners who intend actual harm to the US – and they’re achieving their goal by feeding MAGA derangement and fear…

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Yeah, the NFL. Specifically, the Niners. More specifically, Brandon Aiyuk. He’s a wide receiver. (For the uninitiated, he catches passes.) He’s very good at it. In 2023, Aiyuk was ranked seventh in the NFL. He wanted to be paid accordingly. He actually wanted to be paid a little better. It turned into a conflict between him and the team. He ended up getting a four year, $120 million dollar contract. $30 million dollars a year to catch a ball? And $27 million for 2026 was guaranteed! Yeah, America’s priorities are right in order, aren’t they?

Anyway, Aiyuk came out for the next season and promptly got seriously hurt. Really seriously. He missed the rest of that season and hasn’t played a snap this season. All of this is standard stuff in the NFL. It’s a violent game. People get hurt, sometimes badly. The team, the player, and the fans all just wait until the player can return and we get back to it. But for some reason, as yet undisclosed, Aiyuk hasn’t been doing what he’s supposed to do.

This caused the Niners to void the guaranteed money in his contract, a notoriously difficult thing to do. Now it looks like Aiyuk will be leaving the Niners and it could well be sooner rather than later. Aiyuk was a great player before his knee got destroyed. He might never be the same. That, too, is common in the NFL. Whatever team picks Aiyuk up will almost certainly be desperate at the Wide Receiver position. So desperate, they’ll take a chance on Aiyuk. But it looks like the Niners won’t be on that hook, after all.

Aiyuk is ONLY a question mark at this point. He’ll want lots of money because he played one good season, but he’s been out two years and he really (I mean, really) damaged his knee. I’m kind of glad the Niners get to move forward without having to put up with any more of his rehab shenanigans. The team might be losing a very talented receiver. They’ll definitely be losing a big problem. That’s okay with me…