The price of gas has fallen in the US, and so quickly!
Now it’s just $.95 a gallon more than it was when Trump took office in 2025.
Follow me here. That means that if I buy ten gallons a week every week, I’m only spending $9.50 a week more, or just $494 a year more. Peanuts, really!
I’m doing even better with my electricity. Used to cost me $159 a month back in January 2025. Now I’m only paying $183 a month!
I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
Grocery prices, too, are really falling, and fast! Used to cost me $235 a week for groceries, and now it’s just $243 a week. Hahahaha. I’m only paying $9 a week more, just $468 more a year! My gosh, isn’t this great?
Add it all up, and I’m only spending $1,250 a year more than eighteen months ago, and it’s all coming down so quickly!
And don’t get me started on my healthcare insurance. Really, don’t. Please. There’s no comparison to be made because I can no longer buy insurance. That’s cool, though, that’s cool. I’m kind of young. Kind of healthy. Just a little overweight and diabetic, with a little stiffness, although I don’t sleep well and I feel tired all the time.
But man, things are going so great now that ICE is rounding up all those people. Yep, it’s all so great.
Thursday, August 6, 2026. Ashland, southern Oregon.
Another hot one in store for us. Funny in an odd way but many sources show yesterday’s high for our town as 91 F. But my car registered 104. My home registered 101.5. Other friends had the same experience with their cars, phones, and homes.
Whatever yesterday’s true high was, today expects to clip 100. Smoke is streaking the blue sky, coloring it with gray.
The news from Trumpland continues along fantasy lines. Trump thinks everything is going great. He wants battleships built! And ice-breakers! The latter seems like a sweetheart deal for some other corrupt cohort. Wonder how much Trump will get as a kickback?
With Democrats winning, Trump is wringing his hands and worrying again about stolen elections. Never offers evidence, just claims.
“MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN” Trump claims.
But that is the Trumpster. Is he fantasizing or does he live in a fantasy world? Perhaps he’s just trying to appease his tired, broken ego. Maybe — maybe — others are feeding him this to buoy his spirits. Based on Trump’s track record of making stupid statements and acting like an idiot, he may actually be dumb enough to believe that he’s very popular.
It’s also possible that Trump is making these claims as part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!
His Iran war is not going well. The US — largest military in the world — needs to resupply itself because Trump and Hegseth have wasted so much. The Trump economy isn’t doing well, either, with growth down and prices up.
As election results rolled in from Michigan, there came a distinct response from Trump that shouted, oh no! Because he immediately began spinning tales from the election theft crypt.
Then there are also more FAFO stories like this one, with MAGAts who proudly voted for Trump now whining about what he’s doing.
The Neurons think that “Hey You” by Pink Floyd is right for this day. I assume that’s why they put it into the morning mental music stream. They specifically channeled these lines:
That’s pretty Trump, getting trapped in his own fantasies while something eats his brain. Our challenge it to keep his fantasy from doing more damage and then rebuilding to recover from it.
May your day progress on solid truth, moving you and yours toward a better place, where we will no longer deal with the madness of Trump.
I wasn’t in the military. Young again, I discovered that I’d volunteered to do something. Many others had volunteered. We were waiting for the results.
While doing that, we went into a chowhall. The place seemed chaotically organized. I decided to fix a burrito. I managed to get a plate, tortilla, beans, rice, but then could find nothing else. I was watching people select other foods but none of those foods were familiar. I eventually found some corn chips. Crunching them up, I added them to my burrito and ate it. It was not very satisfying.
An announcement was then made. I, along with others, had been chosen for a special project. We were being told that it was a great honor and we would do a wonderful job. I have no idea what that was about, although I seemed to understand it in the dream.
We were told that we had new quarters we’d be sharing. Find someplace and stake a claim.
I knew no one else there; in fact, that seemed common: no one knew anyone else. So I’d be bunking with strangers.
I entered what was indicated as available quarters. What I encountered wasn’t what I expected. The walls were painted in bright white. Furnished, it was strangely arranged and organized. Wide, tall, the floor sloped like a meadow. Different rooms were indicated via arched halls. Whole thing reminded me of a hobbit’s place.
I encountered one of the others. A tall, white guy, bald, he was in Air Force dress blues. I gawked at his medals and ribbons; they were a collection unlike any I’d ever seen.
I told him so. Abashed, he replied, “Oh, yes, they rewarded me for being part of some special projects, but they weren’t really anything.” He then explained two of them but I don’t recall those details. One was a huge, blue and white ribbon with a large gold B on it.
Needing to use a restroom, I spotted one ‘down the living room slope’. The bathroom was a small, well lit cave with a rounded entry and door. The bathroom itself was gold and pink. Strings of bright white and gold lights were attached to the arched door frame.
I went in and sat on the commode, then tried to close the door. It would not stay close. We have to fix this, I thought.
A tall, muscular black woman in green shorts and a green top pushed the door in. I told her the room was in use. Never saying anything, she left.
The door remained open. Going out, she called out to the man in the dress uniform, “I can give you three four eight for seven. That should get you there.”
Leaving the room, I did up my clothes and asked in general, “What’s that mean?”
I was in the living room, doing light exercises and watching the television.
It was 10 PM. The temperature had hit 101.5 F at our house. Now it had dropped to 80. I’d gone around, opening the windows to cool us off.
Strong skunk smells began coming in with the cool air. Cursing, I went around closing the windows I’d opened about ten minutes before.
As I was doing this, my wife came in. “I heard something knock over a garbage can.”
“Our garbage can?” I asked. It’s behind a fence so –
“I don’t know where it was. I think it was on the street.”
Confirming that Papi was safely inside, my wife went to the front door. Picking up a flashlight, I joined her, turning on the porch light and unlocking the door. She did a little start. As I went out, she took hold of my shirt and followed.
I shined the flashlight along the dark street. Sirens were rising. Emergency vehicles raced along the main road about a hundred feet below us.
“See any trashcans?” my wife asked.
“Just that one.” I shone the light on a bulky shape across the street.
“That trashcan has eyes,” my wife said.
“It does,” I agree.
At that point, we knew it was a bear. Black bears are common in our area. Down on all fours, the bear looked about four feet tall at its shoulders. It casually turned and took a few steps toward us.
My wife took a few steps backwards.
I laughed.
The bear disappeared behind some bushes lining the street. “Let’s go in the house,” I suggested.
“Okay.” As we went in, my wife said, “I was ready to give you a quick push and then shuffle backwards into the house.”
I chuckled. “I wasn’t worried. I know I’m faster than you.”
She laughed.
I looked back with the flashlight. The beer loped up the street.
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.
It’s cool now but heat and fire weather warnings are up. Our present temp is 68 F but we’re bracing for a 96 F high as the heat dome comes our way. Will the jet stream save us? If it doesn’t they warn us, brace yourself for temperatures over 100 with a heat index that pushes it much higher.
My wife and I had the case of the missing mangos this morning. “Hey, didn’t we buy mangos?” she asked, looking around.
Yes, I agreed, also looked around. We began a search. Not in the frig, on the counter anywhere. Didn’t ‘somehow’ get left in the car. At last: the last place we looked: with the potatoes.
My wife said. “I was tired when we were putting the food away.”
Case solved.
This is unlike the case of the missing senator.“He’s alive,” the GOP proclaims, but Mitch McConnell still hasn’t been seen in public for almost two months. It’s starting to be a lot like Trump’s war.
Trump’s war with Iran is also in a limbo states. Back in March, Trump and Hegseth claimed the war was over, with Trump declaring it was an “unmitigated success”.
That was six months ago.
Then Trump has gone on and off the record about what’s happening, swatting away any attempt to being held accountable to We the People. “I’m gonna bomb them,” he texts, then reverses himself. Oil prices rise and drop. Oil companies are making record profits. The rest of us scramble to deal with rising prices. That’s standard under GOP guidance: the rich get richer, the poor are told to suck rocks.
The Iran war is just one of many incomplete Trump mysteries. Other is, what happened to releasing the Epstein files? Trump promised he would release the files. A law was passed that they must be released. After months of distraction, Trumpnions are still holding them back on behalf of the bossman.
Thanks to Pirro’s terrible legal skills in leading the DoJ, the case about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is much stronger. Let the records show that it’s just as we thought, that Trump’s contractor botched the job and Trump scrambled to save face by screaming, “Vandals! Plots! Democrats!” Just as he does every time he screws up.
Yes, it’s been the summer of Trump failures. Building toward a year.
Except for grifting; as always, he’s taking care of himself, making a ton of money by making the Oval Office into a crime boss’s golden lair. Between his ruthless need to be honored and his insane hunger to appear rich and powerful, he’s become a Bond villain caricature, which is something, since they’re often caricatures to begin.
Except, also, for the tournament he won at one of his golf courses. He won that. Everyone outside of his grift circle immediately questioned whether he cheated. This is because he’s Donald Trump, a known liar, adulterer, and cheater. Just pick a topic. Look what he promised and claimed. If you’re a MAGAt or Republican, you’re fine because the ends justify the means for you. So, Trump Double Standards are employed.
But they’ll reach that final FAFO moment when they’ve burned it all down. Given their recent history, they’ll pivot: create conspiracies. Blame others about what went wrong.
Just like their leader, Donald J. Trump.
Your Trump Quote(s) of the Day:
Trump on Jeffrey Epstein:
Trump on Affordability:
And the only truth Trump has ever uttered:
Today’s occupant in the morning mental music stream is “Power Failure” by Procol Harum. Released in 1971, it’s an old favorite of mine from a distant era. The song is about bands and the struggles they face. But I think it translates well to politics.
Lyrics (h/t to AZLyrics.com)
Climbing out of open windows Crashing down from broken stairs Keeping watch on smoking cinders Falling over burning chairs Tossed and crossed and screwed in transit Broken , splintered, bruised and thrown Badly shattered, gale force frighty Rrushed across and shown alone Speech reduced by poor relations Strung from weeks of self abuse Chopped up, churned out weeks of greazy Spark plugs burned up, power’s fused
That imagery spells Trump failure and GOP collapse.
Hope your Monday — or whatever day — sparkles with magic that invigorates and moves you on to new heights and familiar joys.
