My decision to decide later crumpled against a more urgent decision to get up and eat, which led me to a pause in front of the bathroom mirror where I decided, not today, and maybe not tomorrow.
The Art of the Con
personnelente shared a post today about Trump. It’s divided into two convenient parts.
Part one reveals the GOP moves to honor Trump. The most horrible of these is a move to force the State Department to issue a Trump Peace Prize.
Part two is a recap by Daniel Dale of CNN about Trump’s Iran War lies, such as Trump’s lie that the Pope wants Iran to have nuclear weapons.
It’s a wonderful side by side comparison, revealing the GOP’s kiss-ass attitude toward Trump while showing that Trump is an absolute liar and can’t be trusted.
Check it out, please: Narcissus At The Pool, or “The Attack of the Ass-kissers”.
The Encounter
Midnight.
I turn on the master bath lights and see a large spider in one of the porcelain sinks.
Finding a tube of cosmetics, I tried to give them a lift up and out.
The spider raced around in a slipping, sliding frenzy to escape the tube. “I’m trying to help you,” I reassured it.
Withdrawing, I found a small cloth and shaped a ramp in the sink. Recognizing the opening, the spider used it to climb up and out. Then it disappeared without even a backward glance or wave.
I wonder what she’ll tell others about her encounter with a human.
Tuesday’s Theme Music – Uncertainty
Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, April 21, 2026.
Today’s weather vibe echoes with yesterday’s impressions: sunshine in the east, dark, heavy, low clouds everywhere else. A late morning squall passed through Ashland yesterday. I was driving through it; my wife said it never touched our place.
The temperature now is 50 with a high of 55 F forecasted, roughly like yesterday. Except I saw 70 at our house at 3 PM.
News headlines told me yesterday that Jacksonville, Florida had wildfires burning. The headlines were about AMTRAK stopping train service for fires. I had to dig to learn about those fires. They now affected Florida and Georgia. The causes are exceptionally dry and windy conditions, and extreme drought.
According to Drought.gov, 51% of the United States is now in drought conditions. I knew it was bad in the west, especially the Pacific Northwest, but it didn’t register that Florida was also suffering from a drought.
We’re preparing for a hot and dry summer in our area. Further east, I read today that Colorado is draining a reservoir, shifting its water to another location, to reduce loss from evaporation.
In Trump Iran war news, the original ‘cease fire’ agreement is ending on the eight week war. Nobody can say what will happen then. Trump is making threats; the US Navy seized one tanker in the Gulf of Oman and boarded another in the Indian Ocean.
Your Trump quote for today:
Heavy snow and cold is forecast for parts of parts of Alaska, California, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia.
Virginia voters go to the polls for a special election about redistricting.
I won’t go into the various shooting deaths of the last few days.
The song that found its way into my morning mental music stream is from 1993. “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots is reputed to have a couple ‘meanings’, according to STP. For me, it’s about uncertainty, waiting — and lies.
Opening Lyrics
And I feel that time’s a wasted go
So where ya going ’til tomorrow?
And I see that these are lies to come
So would you even care?
h/t to AZLyrics.com
I’m not surprised that Les Neurons brought “Plush” into my head as my thoughts swirl with the news and speculation about Mom and her future. The song came out a few years before I retired from the military. I was living in the SF – SJ bay area and heard the song frequently on the radio while driving around on errands.
Hope you experience a safe, healthy, satisfying day, and don’t get too taken down by the news.
Cheers
All These Things: Trump in decline
The way Trump has been carrying himself is creating speculation about his mind and health.
Much of this is caused by broken promises (like no new war) and things not going his way:
- Job growth is poor
- The national debt is growing fast
- Oil, gas, and associated costs and prices are rising
- His Iran war is not near an end and seems to be getting worse
- Epstein’s ghost and his files, linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes, are still out there
- Trump’s approval ratings drop more each week
Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! did not distract people the way it used to. Trump has almost emptied his quiver. He can’t retract or retreat; that’s against his brand and would lose him his base.
All that remains is that he fire people in his administration to blame them for his failures. People are wondering now, who is next to fall under Trump’s blade? Patel, Hegseth, Kennedy?
It could be a bloody week.
More columns are talking about how badly things are going for Trump.
This Is Not a Man in Control of Himself
Jaimelle Bouie noted:
“The president is struggling with the consequences of his actions, raging in protest of the fact that for all its firepower, the United States cannot bomb Iran into submission. When Trump launched his “short-term excursion,” he assumed that it would be — in the words of a Pentagon official in the last Republican administration to launch a Middle East war — a “cakewalk.”
“That, as Trump’s own intelligence agencies told him, was a mistake. Now, he is stuck. And he lacks the skill and patience to find a way out of his self-inflicted catastrophe. Unable to will a better outcome into existence — there are limits to the power of positive thinking — and frustrated by his own impotence, his response, familiar to anyone who must manage the emotions of a young child, is to throw a tantrum.
“Over the last few days, Trump has denounced “the Fake News Media” as “CRAZY, or just plain CORRUPT!” for its reporting on the war. He attacked Pope Leo XIV in a bizarre rant, calling him “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” And he posted an A.I. image of himself as Jesus, surrounded by devotees, healing an unnamed man.”
Donald Distracted
Andrew Egger observed:
“Well, here we are again: The ceasefire in Iran is once again in a state of near-total collapse. The U.S. military hasn’t yet resumed its bombing campaign of the Iranian mainland, but the danger in the Strait of Hormuz is as bad as ever.
“After claiming Friday that the strait was now open and letting a trickle of ships through, Iran abruptly reversed course Saturday, firing on at least two merchant vessels and insisting the strait would remain closed as long as America maintained its military blockade of Iran’s ports. Then, yesterday, U.S. forces fired on and seized an Iranian cargo ship that they said had tried to run their blockade—causing Iran to announce it was pulling out of the second round of Islamabad peace talks, which were scheduled to begin today. Oil prices, which on Friday had fallen by more than $10 a barrel on Iran’s claims of an open strait, rocketed back upward, now hovering back around $100.
“In one sense, we’re right back where we were last month—the strait closed, Iran intransigent, Donald Trump threatening. But that undersells the damage. A cancer patient who goes under the knife and wakes to discover they couldn’t remove the tumor isn’t likely to be comforted that at least the doctors stitched him up properly. The ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz is becoming a global economic catastrophe, and it’s clear Trump is running out of options to compel Iran to stop throttling it.”
Inside the reckoning Trump didn’t see coming | Opinion
Robert Reich pointed out:
“It’s not just that Dems are winning special elections by wide margins (and even where they’re not, they’re “overperforming” in ruby-red areas by an average of 16 points).
“Nor just that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was overwhelmingly defeated after 16 years of authoritarian rule, with almost 80 percent of eligible voters turning out. (The victor, Peter Magyar, overcame Orbán’s rigged system by focusing on Orbán’s corruption and linking it to the economic difficulties facing average Hungarians.)
“Or that Trump posted an image of himself as Jesus, revealing his God complex and causing even evangelical Christians in his MAGA base to question his religiosity and mental stability.
“Or that Trump and Vance were dumb enough to pick a fight with Pope Leo, who has used it to explain his (and, for Catholics, Jesus’s) objections to war and to tyrants everywhere.
“Or that Trump’s major ally in Europe (and the only European leader to attend his inauguration), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Malone, described Trump’s attack on the pope as “unacceptable” (Trump responded by attacking her for “lacking courage” in refusing to join his war on Iran).
“Or that Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization — prompting even Tucker Carlson to call Trump’s threat “vile on every level,” Candace Owens to demand that the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove him from office, conspiracist Alex Jones to accuse Trump of threatening “genocide,” and Megyn Kelly to concede that Trump’s coalition is “completely fractured and in smithereens.”
“Or that Trump’s war has been such an abominable failure that it’s demonstrated his dangerous ignorance and diminishing mental capacity.
“It’s all these, together.”
Yes, it’s all these things.
It’s also that Trump doesn’t know what to do. He’s run out of gimmicks and is losing support. He needs a win to bolster his fragile ego and his support.
Oddsmakers are betting that there’s a 63% chance that Trump will escalate the war in Iran.
Given his past, who would bet against that?
The Short Game
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked.
My wife whipped her head around and glared at me. “I am going to kill you. Every day you come in here and ask that. Did you look to see what we have?”
“How ’bout we order Chinese food?”
Her eyes widened. “What about your sodium?”
I shrugged. “I’m not worried. My wife is going to kill me. I’m playing the short game.”
Fascinating Dream: Aliens
It was a fascinating dream for me. When I awoke from it, I thought, I’d been watching a television show or movie. With a bit of surprise, I then realized I’d been in the dream, along with my wife and two children, which were my offspring. But I was both involved by watching as a minor character and sort of injected into some scenes.
My wife and children and I were tourists processing through some station. Aliens were there; sort of Klingon-like, in light grey blue uniforms with a jacket which has a deep red collar and a matching red shirt under it.
While traveling, all of us are stopped by these others who basically want to enslave us. It’s a troubling scene. I’m passive with my wife, not sure what will happen to us verses the others because we’re human and are supposed to have a different status. Nonetheless, we’re detained with the rest.
There’s then a scene where our captor and one of the captives go back and forth about what’s go be done in this cave where we’re being held. I realize that they’re having a disagreement over a matter of reference and perspective.
The captor keeps saying, ‘to your right’, and the other keeps saying, ‘that doesn’t make sense’. I then try to clarify that the captor is talking about the direction from the way he’s facing, while the captive is facing the opposite direction.
I end up getting up and pointing this out on a diagram they have posted on an easel.
We then ‘watch’ as captives are taken to another place to mine stuff. I don’t know what they’re mining. They make a show of it. I then suddenly realize that they’re secretly mining knowledge.
When the captive of before decides they’d learned enough, he reveals that he has a weapon. Shaped like an obelisk – really, just like a foot tall reproduction of the Washington monument, but shiny, silver-gold – the captive holds it up. Pressing a button, he sends a signal.
Suddenly, all these other dead, sleeping, and collapsed aliens awaken and rise. Each of them are equipped with a like obelisk. Using these, they overpower their captors.
As my wife and I watch, we realize that the revolution has begun.
Dream end.
Sometimes, These Things
I was running for exercise. As I did, I became aware of my body’s sounds. A novel concept emerge.
I curtailed the run and went home. Sitting down, I typed up the first twenty pages, about 2500 words, then went for water and to clean up and change clothes. While I was doing those things, I realized a potential ending and saw more scenes.
I added the book to my To Be Written document.
Just the way it goes, sometimes, you know?
The Long Dream
My wife and I were staying in a white apartment building, in a spacious ground-floor unit.
Located on flat land, seven stories tall, the building was part of a busy area, full of energetic people and planning. Part of this was about the traffic going on with the broad street in front of the house. Other changes involved landscaping.
I had a sort of control where I could receive and send information. As I passed information on, someone in charge approached and asked how I was doing that. I showed them my control, a black rectangle similar to a television remote control. I demonstrated how I pointed it at things, pressed a button, and learned from doing that. I could then point it to someone, press a button, and share that information with that person.
In response to questions, I clarified that, yes, I could do simultaneous information collection and broadcast it to multiple people at the same time. But I also showed him that the remote was old and damaged; several buttons were weak or loose. I sometimes had to hold them in longer before the desired effects took place.
I hinted that I would really appreciate a new one, and they implied they might be able to help.
In another part of my dream, I had five cats. All were cats who previously lived with me and passed away. They were just hanging around the apartment, being cats.
Then a strange cat entered the front door. Resembling a small gray lion, it came in and then paused when it saw our cats.
One of our cats ran right up and attacked it. Our cat and the lion cat wrestled for a few seconds and then our cat pulled away and stretched. “Oh, he’s only playing,” we realized.
We then watched as the other cats interacted. One of our cats attacked one of the others, throwing them down. But then all the fighting stopped and the cats just settled down and washed.
It was then time for my wife and I to leave to go somewhere. As we left our apartment, I saw that the building’s rear landscaping was torn up. All the grass and plants had been removed.
That surprised me and my wife. We talked about it and then another approached and assured us that these plans had been in place for a long time. My wife and I chatted further, admitting, we must have missed the notice.
Dream end
Michael Seidel, writer 