Ashland, southern Oregon — November 13, 2026.
A rainy day has followed a rainy night. Temperatures were at 58 F when I went to bed last night. I watched them drop from 54 to 50 in the day’s first few hours after dawn. Sunshine is as rare as Trump telling the truth.
We had a mild scare yesterday. When I went out to the store at about 4:30, the air was strange color and looked either foggy or smoky. It all came about very suddenly. Getting out of the car, I instantly knew that this was smoke. I consulted with the Internet. It informed me that the smoke was coming from fires east of the Cascades. The wind carried the smoke in and an inversion trapped it. All of the smoke dissipated within a few hours.
Reading the news and watching Trump and the GOP, I see that Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is likely to gain substantial use in the coming year.
Whenever news that disturbs or bothers Donald Trump, Trump responds by trying to distract us. In this week’s case, he’s trying to distract everyone from the terrible, horrible, historic ass-whipping the Republicans experienced in the 2026 midterm elections. Trump desperately wants to convince everyone that it has nothing to do with him or his policies.
Trump is going through quite the spin cycle. Acceptance; contrition; anger; accusations of fraud; lies; now he’s onto hypotheticals.
Trump says he would ‘easily’ beat ‘highly overrated’ Obama
This comparison makes total sense in the fractured world where Trump resides. Trump is extremely jealous of former President Obama’s popularity. Obama is highly and openly regarded as a statesman and speaker while Trump is ridiculed for his word salads, twisted logic, fantasies, and delusions. Polls show President Obama is much more popular with the voters than Donald Trump.
In addition to all of that, people throw other things in Trump’s face: former President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Former President Obama was never impeached and was POTUS when the US finally ‘got’ Osama bin Laden.
Former President also never lost run for the presidency, and won both the Electoral College and popular vote. Donald Trump ran three times, lost once, and never won over fifty percent of the popular vote.
Former President Obama is slender, friendly, charming, intelligent, and often smiles and jokes, traits which Donald Trump clearly lack.
All Donald Trump can do in response to those being pointed out to him is smirk, brag about being rich and a convicted felon, and appearing in the Epstein files more.
Looking ahead to the end of the year and the beginning of next year, Donald Trump is going to have many, many, many reasons for him to invoke Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! and try to distract us from the truth.
Today’s theme music is by Bruce Springsteen. “Don’t Look Back” came out in 2001. I was thinking of a friend this morning and wondering what he’s up to. Been a long time since I’ve seen or heard anything of him.
As part of my recollections about him, I remember that he was a big Bruuuuccce fan. We were in Germany together and went to two Springsteen concerts in the late 1980s. Later on, in California, we connected a bit after we’d both left the service. Visiting him in 2001, he was listening to this song a lot.
So the song ended up in my morning mental music stream alongside what I remember about my friend. The lyrics are another interesting Springsteen composition, but the idea of looking forward and looking back suits my mood today.
Hope that you’re looking back with some satisfaction and looking forward with hope. Have the best day you can.
Cheers
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