Channel 4 is welcoming Donald Trump to the U.K. with a special program: an unbroken catalogue of over 100 falsehoods, distortions and inaccuracies he’s come up with since taking office in January.
The U.S. President will come to London for a second state visit this month, and the British channel has vowed to put a spotlight on his “prolific oeuvre of untruths.”
On Sep. 17 from 10 a.m. local time, Channel 4 will broadcast Trump v the Truth, the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths running over several hours. The statements will be punctuated by “brief text-based fact-checks, offering viewers the truth behind the tweets, speeches and soundbites.”
Of course, watching this would require me to watch and hear him. That’d be like the tenth circle of hell, TACO’s own circle, combining the worse elements of the circles of fraud, greed, treachery, lust, gluttony, and anger.
This here is what they call one of those unsolicited testimonials.
My wife follows a vegan diet.I do not. But I try to accommodate her dietary choices, so I eat plant-based foods, etc. Well, two weeks ago, I spied some vegan cinnamon-toast-muffins made by Rubicon Bakers. I thought, they look good, so I bought them and took them home. Well, my instincts were right in this case, as my sweetie and I both found them moist and flavorful. Great with hot coffee.
Following that success, I purchased another Rubicon Bakers product, the lemon-raspberry cupcakes. We just finished off a package — one cupcake for each of us yesterday, another one each today as dessert after dinner. We’re not total pigs, you know. And these were also wonderfully tasty.
AF (Artificial Flooftelligence)(floofinition) 1. Machines or toys made to emulate or duplicate animal behavior or sounds. Origins:
In Use: “Some companies and people think that AF (Artificial Flooftelligence) is the way to go, giving people the impression that they have a fur friend with little barking and meowing mechanical critters, but true floof lovers recognize the soulessness of these mechanical devices.”
2. Attributing greater smarts to an animal than they actually have. Origins: Internet circa 2017.
In Use: “People who live with pets often claim their furry sweetie is the smartest ever, ascribing the critters with artificial flooftelligence like the animals are Stephen Hawkings in animal guise.”
My thoughts are drawn to our local political scene. Ashlandia is a small town, dependent on tourism for most of its business revenue. Ashlandia is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which puts on several plays from March to November. A local university, Southern Oregon University, supplements the employment base by hiring people for its needs. Adjacent to rivers and a ski resort helps draw more tourism for us. We also have multiple local breweries and wineries. Other than that, we’re mostly restaurants, coffee shops, a couple bookstores, head shops selling THC and CBD products, and several grocery stores.
With tourism down, we’ve been struggling as a town. Tourism was driven down over ten years ago by droughts which lasted several years ago, deepening into a serious problem which called for water rationing, followed by smoke pollution from wildfires. Plays were cancelled due to these threats. Outdoor activities were curtailed. Then the pandemic struck, with all that it delivered to the table. Finally, Trump has struck. Just as tourism was beginning to rebound, his xenophobic policies and tariffs take another axe to our numbers. Local services were also curtailed due to grant cuts and budget cuts. SOU enrollment is down…again. Tuition is up…again. SOU programs and classes were cut…again.
With all this afflicting us, the city was strapped for cash and has a budget deficit. Besides those issues, we also have a homeless problem. Trump’s cuts did us no favors on that front.
Into this cauldron of difficulties come our local government leaders. Their solutions.
Cut back on park maintenance and add service fees to local utility bills to make up the parks deficit.
Build a new park. Mind you, they’re short of funds to take care of the existing parks, but WTH.
Shut down the senior center and pool. Because they’re short of funds, they couldn’t hire the people needed to keep those open. But let’s build a new park that we don’t have the money to maintain.
Give BIG pay raises to the city management staff, especially the city manager. Because, hey, with this budget deficit, revenue down, and tourism down, we need to ensure they’re better compensated than We the People, the Ashlandia denizens.
And let’s cut essential service staff after giving those pay raises because you know, less people are better. We’ll also cut the hours to the utility and city offices because we need to cut expenses.
They even, from time to time, talk about doing away with the police department because it costs too much.
The city manager states, without evidence, that the new park will draw tourists. Ashland already has Lithia Park, Hunter Park, Garfield Park, Clay Street Park, and a half dozen more. Their facilities are being closed because of budget deficits. Sure, the water park shut off the water this summer because we lacked the funds for the water and staff to run it, and Mountain Park is mostly closed for the same reason, but let’s build another park to draw more tourists.
We begin September’s back-end slide today. It’s Twozda, September 16, 2025. Summer is ratcheting up efforts to stem autumn’s influence by hurling blue skies and sunshine at Ashlandia. 72 F now, 92 plus is expected.
Today’s headlines are familiar fodder. Trump continues to protest about how innocent right wingers are while railing against everyone else. He dismisses all others as left-wing radicals, etc. Meanwhile, he makes it all worse with perpetual lies. The one blowing us out of the water this week is his claim that drugs killed over 300,000,000, almost the entire U.S. population. Quite the whopper! He deployed that lie to defend his decision to murder more people at sea under the guise of defending the U.S., all without offering evidence or using any due process. He’s in an ‘half with their head’ mode, which doesn’t do much for We the People in places like Memphis, where he’s sending more national guard troops. “Hurrah,” MAGALand and the GOP cry, gleefully clapping. “Trump is destroying democracy, usurping the law, wrecking the education system, turning us into a theocracy expressing against our founders’ warnings, and destroying our economy and personal freedoms! Good for us!”
Trump is also suing the NYTimes for defamation for $15 billion dollars, an amount announced with an evil smirk. Trump loves suing others, especially the press when they spill the coffee about his past and the many unsavory things he’s done. Trump thinks himself a golden boy, and then worries about what the Epstein file says about him and tries to write it off as a hoax.
Donald Trump with his then girlfriend, along with Epstein and Maxwell.
Trump is also interested in doing away with quarterly earnings reports. “Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis??? Not good!!!’” Trump said.
We don’t ‘run’ companies on a quarterly basis in the U.S.; results are reported in a quarterly and annual format. I especially like the 50 to 100 year view comment. Let’s see, 100 years ago, 1925. They were probably planning for computers to emerge and the digital age, weren’t they? Planning for cars to take over the landscapes, planning to find and start mining the rare elements now used.
Or, if they were really smart, they were studying the data and trends to counter climate change, right? Looking down the barrel toward needed changes, they were focusing on more sustainable energy and ways to reduce pollution, because pollution has been found to make people sick and drive up costs while reducing productivity.
We know the truth behind Trump’s proposal. Facts and figures aren’t his friends. He likes making things up, like his weight, or how many people died from drugs, or how he’s reduced inflation by ten gazillion percent. He’d preferred that metrics which could reveal economic struggles get buried and never mentioned. Look how he fired the messenger when the BLS numbers showed a worsening labor market. Witness how he’s gutted the government to do less reporting and did away with Inspector General units and watchdogs. Note how he has scammed again and again on taxes and loan applications. No, truth is not his friend, and nor are hard numbers and facts.
We’re also heading toward a government shutdown. I’m in favor of Democrats not supporting any resolution to keep the government functioning without some heavy safeguards about appropriations and spending. It’s a reluctant position, but. Trump has shown that once the budget is set, he’ll do what he wants, usually to the detriment of We the People. This divisive man has also said he doesn’t care what Democrats want, Democrats who represent over half the nation’s population. But that is soooo Trumpy. He has repeatedly defecated on all things Constitutional and the laws and government norms and traditions. He’s ignoring courts and kicking aside the checks and balance system that worked for several hundred years. He can’t be trusted. So why would you work with someone who can’t be trusted, someone who only cares about himself? They’d be a fool to do so. And yes, shutting down the government will cause huge shockwaves. Maybe such shockwaves are needed to wake people up.
I awoke with Marcy’s Playground performing “Sex and Candy” in my morning mental music stream. The song related to a lengthy dream and fits right in. The song has a lazy dream quality for me about falling into a mental labyrinth of aimless, drifting speculation, and then suddenly coming out of that to the setting around you. “And there she was.”
Coffee has delivered its caffeine to my receptors. Hope peace and grace find you and carries your through the rest of the year. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 