Tuesday’s Theme Music — Runnin’ with the Devil

Ashland, southern Oregon. Tuesday, August 4, 2026.

Supposed to get hellishly hot here today. 89 F now, the temperature is expected to go over 100 F. Heat index supposed to magnify the intensity.

Smoke from the fires has floated into our area. Air quality is slowly declining.

Back east, my sister reports that the closing on Mom’s house has slid back to August 14.

Reading the news, checking the weather, I again have “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen playing in the morning mental music stream. Trump is burning down the world. GOP is going along with it. MAGAts cheer him on.

Deteriorating quality of life, weather, rising inequality, increasing costs — who cares as long as Trump is getting his, right? That’s the Republican vision for the United States: protect Trump. Laugh at his ridiculous antics. Pretend that he’s not stealing them blind. Pretend that he’s making life better.

All they need to do is not think too hard about it. Stay in their Trump shells. Blame everyone else, everything else. And when he’s gone?

Well, first, will they accept that he’s dead? Will he become a second Jesus, where they spend their days waiting for him to come back? Will they pretend that he’s alive but being hidden by the deep state.

It’s all possible. GOP and MAGAts are good at pretending. Better at pretending than they are at thinking.

Hope you stay safe and comfortable, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.

Cheers

Never Trump

Hard to stomach reading today’s news. An opinion piece cited Trump’s tariffs as his biggest policy failure.

Opinion: Trump’s tariffs are his biggest policy failure

I disagree; I think the war with Iran is Trump’s biggest policy failure. It also completely undermines Trump’s whole philosophy.

Trump came in. Removed generals and military leadership. Then he hired sycophants such as Hegseth to shape military policy and develop strategy.

Screaming, “WOKE! DEI!, Hegseth bludgeoned the established military establishment. Took people who earned promotion off the list because of the color of their skin or their sex, or their political loyalties.

Trump did all of this while scoffing at the military. He declared himself smarter than generals and has repeatedly blasted them.

Trump blasted top military generals as ‘a bunch of dopes and babies’ according to new book

Yet, here we are, mired in a war that Trump started. Trump claimed to have won. Claimed it was already over. Claims it’s not a war.

Yet it’s draining us in multiple ways and exposing Trump and his arrogance. He and his chosen staff thought war was easy. Though it was just a matter of power: who has the biggest military and the most weapons.

And the war continues without a certain end in sight.

As in many other things, Trump was exposed as ignorant and wrong.

Both policies — tariffs and the Iran War — are policy failures, though.

Both are driving increased burdens to the economy and to our citizens. The war, though, also resulted in people being killed, maimed, and injured, and has devastating consequences on the people of another nation.

When I think of things that Trump boasts of as successes and triumphs, I realize that there is nothing that this administration has done that has impressed me. He’s exactly how terrible I thought he’d be, and then some. We as a nation stagger through increasing loops of disasters.

Take our healthcare issues. Rural hospitals are closing. Measles outbreaks are increasing. Healthcare premiums are rising. AI plants are being built, which will increase energy costs and use land, further driving up healthcare costs. Yet Trump pushes to build more AI centers, more data centers. Models say that will worsen the extreme heat problem as well as the water shortage. It’s like WTAF are people thinking?

Instead of real solutions, We the People are offered more political theater as another underqualified Trump nominee moves toward confirmation for a powerful Federal position.

We’re instead subjected to Trump crowing about himself winning a golf tournament. Venting at his staff about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool fiasco.

Distracting us with AI-generated photos of himself as Elvis Presley.

While our nation is at war. While wildfires burn. While extreme heat and drought sweep the nation. While healthcare and affordability problems worsen.

That seems to be okay with MAGAts and the greater GOP, even if the rest of us are angry and disapprove of Trump. As long as Trump and his family keeps getting wealthier and speaking out for them — whatever the fuck that now means to them — they remain happy.

As far as those things falling apart and policy failures, that’s because of other people. It’s not because of Trump.

Never, in their eyes.

Never.

As for me, it will always remain, “Never Trump.”

Never.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑