Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
It’s all about the danger within now. It begins with rising prices. Keeps us distracted, part of Donald Trump’s Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! The war does its part to distract us, keep us turning our heads.
Then we have the many competent and capable people Donald Trump has fired. Trump has attacked every institution, and assails and threatens freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
All in the name of greed, power, and stupidity.
Here we go, once more toward November, people.
Ashland, southern Oregon — Sunday, October 18, 2026.
It’s totes autumn today, with rich fall foliage decorating trees with red, gold, orange, and yellow leaves burying the greens. Sun is up, delivering tepid temperatures, putting us at 60 F right now. 72 F is in the future for the valley and its blue sky.
Nothing from Mom today, and I only recall one dream. It was another military-themed dream where my hair was out of reg.
Today’s music is by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. The song, “Thrift Shop”, was released in 2012. My Neurons released it into the morning mental music stream as I read political news. Donald Trump is running on nothing but fear, trying to convince everyone that absolutely everthing will be much, much worse under Democrats. Republicans are pouring money into the 2026 midterm elections. So is Elon Musk, which should tell you how worried Trump and the GOP are at this point.
Trump has already tried buying votes. Donald Trump has offered seven different dividends or financial incentives for supporting him while crowing about how great everything is. Trump claims we’re in a new golden age in the United States.
But the actual numbers for most Americans show a completely different story. Compared to when Trump took office, most ordinary expense has increased for the majority of Americans.
It’s not surprising after noticing these price increases that “Thrift Shop” is playing in my morning mental music stream. Trump crows about how great things are but most people are worrying about how much money they have. Personal bankruptcies are up. Personal savings are down.
So. Much. Winning. For Donald Trump and his wealthy cohorts, like Elon Musk. They’re much, much wealthier now than they were before Trump took office in 2025.
May money worries leave you alone to enjoy the day, no matter who you’re with or what you’re doing.
Cheers
Ashland, southern Oregon — Saturday, October 17, 2026.
It’s a cool morning, 48 F. Dogs are barking outside, and neighbors are warming up motorcycles for a fall Saturday ride.
I asked Alexa the weather. She told me it was a sunny 43 degrees. As I peered out, observing the clouds and looking for sun, she went on, “Today’s high will be 72 degrees and the low will be 45. There is no rain expected.”
My wife and I looked at each other. But, but — if today’s low is going to be 45, and it’s now 43, what does that make 43 in this report? It’s another modern puzzle.
Mom is on the warpath again. We grew up hearing that expression. Mom had several she regularly used: the poor house, insane asylum, and warpath are three prominent examples. She regularly warned us that she was on the warpath, that we were driving her to the poor house, or that she was going to end up in the insane asylum because of us.
It’s about diapers. She’s out of them and weirdly, they’re difficult to find them locally. She wants to order them online but is having trouble doing that. My sister, Gina, recommended Mom ask one of the young women who work in the assisted living home help her. Mom replied that to the effect that she’s the smartest one there. Gina said, “Well, they’re younger and are probably more familiar with the technology.” Mom refused to budge, insisting that they would be no help.
Donald Trump is on the campaign trail. He’s visiting places where he won. Yes, because that’s the sort of ‘fighter’ TACO is. Remember that he was named TACO? ‘Trump Always Chickening Out’.
Holding true to that, TACO is going to Iowa, where Republicans are struggling to win votes in a reliably red state. It’s not a puzzle why: a CNN poll found 70% of likely Iowa voters said current gas prices were a moderate-to-severe hardship, 74% said Trump administration policies had increased the cost of living, and 48% named the economy or cost of living as a top election issue.
Where this is a puzzle is that with the economy the leading issue, why are some Republicans still ready to vote for more of the same?
Do Iowa voters support Trump’s war in Iran? I read that they didn’t.
Are Iowa voters against abortion choice, or do they the absolute bans which Republicans have pursued? Again, I read that most Iowa voters are against strict and absolute bans.
And, like most US voters, those in Iowa are for limiting new AI and data center construction, a position which is 180 degrees from Trump’s position.
As I say, it’s a puzzle.
All this puzzle thought stirred The Neurons. I ended up with a Radiohead song about puzzles in my morning mental music stream. As the song streamed through memory, I couldn’t quite place it. Had to resort to looking it up. Yes, Radiohead. From 2007! Thought it was older than that. Ah, memory. It’s called “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”. Has naught to do with politics; this song is all about a wild night out.
Sample Lyrics
Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song
As your bad day disappears
No longer wound up like a spring
Before you’ve had too much
Come back in focus again
May the month find you happy with you are and sure of where you’re going.
Cheers
Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, October 16, 2026.
Another warm autumn day has climbed into the valley. Sunshine brings the trees to bright life, and a warm wind chants with confusion. 79 F now, we’re going to be in the 80 to 90 range, depending on where you are.
Mom’s partner, Frank, passed away a year ago today. I don’t like to linger on anniversaries like these. It just came to me last night. There’s sadness that he’s gone, joy that I knew him, and sympathy that he’s no longer part of Mom’s life.
Frank, though, was 95 and lived an interesting, full life. He raised a family and helped his sisters through their struggles. Widowed thirty years before, he and Mom found one another, enabling them both to enjoy another chapter.
Well, we already turned the page on Trump’s new press secretary.
My wife wondered if Fox News was going to run out of young blondes at the rate that Trump is going through them. Then what will they do?
I told her that I was sure that blonde MAGAts are out there, ready to jump into bed with Trump in whatever role he offers.
Looks like Trump may be moving on from Kristi Noem, too.
It seems like Kristi Noem has managed to become so toxic, even Trump is distancing himself from her.
Watching Trump campaigning for the 2026 midterms, declaring that people should ‘vote like he’s on the ballot’, it’s apparent that many Republican candidates are distancing themselves from him.
In our area, Republican candidates are trying to even distance themselves from the GOP. They refuse to mention their party affiliation in their ads and commercials. When they talk about party, they often lip sync that they’re trying to bring balance, common sense, and affordability to voters in Oregon. It’s hilarious how they wrap themselves up in knots to avoid Trump and the GOP, promising that they’ll make things more affordable as Trump, in D.C., bellows that affordability is a hoax.
Truly headspinning.
Trump also launched another episode of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! This one showed Donald Trump running around, laughing and playing with a tiger. You could tell it was fake because Trump doesn’t laugh or smile. He smirks and growls, trying to project a tough guy persona, using old films as his inspiration.
Trump also said — again — that the war with Iran will end when he “wants it to end”. Rather arrogant, again. Has nothing to do with foreign policy nor military objectives, or rising costs and prices for oil, gas, food, fertilizer, shipping, construction and the many other things growing more expensive. Nor does it have to do with Trump’s concern for Americans and their ability to pay their bills and enjoy food and housing security. No. Trump makes it clear — again — it’s all about him, and nothing else.
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
Gas prices remain much higher under Donald Trump than they were during most of President Biden’s term in office.
Today’s music is “Turn the Page”. Originally performed by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, The Neurons unleashed Metallica’s cover in my morning mental music stream.
May your October day begin with happiness and end with joy.
Cheers
We ask that question every day at my house. We ask even though we know he’ll be lying, whining, distracting, and doing things that test the limits of law, ethics, and taste. We ask knowing that with polls showing the GOP and Trump as losers in the upcoming elections, Trump will be triggered and will increase the scale of distractions under Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! to new heights.
Today, Trump is whining again about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It went instead to Navi Pillay. Congratulations to her!
I’m not surprised that Donald Trump didn’t win. In his worldview, killing people and destroying things mean peace. That’s not how the rest of the world tends to view peace. At 80 years old, you would think Trump would have learned by now that he has not. Trump demonstrated long ago that he lacks learning abilities — unless it’s about ways to gain and keep more money for himself.
Donald Trump has also proven to be vindictive. It wasn’t surprising that his administration immediately ordered more sanctions against the ICC after one of those former judges won the Peace Prize.
Trump thinks he’s done ‘far more blah blah Trump weave blah’ than the human rights activist, Navi Pillay, who won. Of course, Donald Trump has also rated himself as the greatest president ever earlier this year, another sign of Trump’s detachment from reality. Over in reality, historians and voters disagree with his assessment.
Polls since Trump released his assessment said that almost half Americans rank Trump as a failure. 65% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.
In other “we-don’t-really-need-this” Trump news, Donald Trump has announced that he wants to make one of his Florida golf resorts into a presidential retreat.
The letter announcing this latest move made my wife and I laugh and laugh. Summaries of the letter’s contents published in newspapers said that Trump International will pay for the improvements.
Sure.
I believe that, dont’ you? I’ll bank that right beside Trump’s promise to not golf if he won the election because he’s too busy.
That promise for Trump International to pay for the improvement carries the same weight of promise for Trump’s gold cell phones. I believe that Trump International will pay for it as much as I believe Trump’s previous claims that he would probably release the Epstein files, that private donors would pay for the new ballroom, and that that Americans would get a DOGE dividend because we’re making so much money as a nation.
I believe the assertion that Trump International will pay for it as much as I believe that Trump has lowered prices on everything since taking office, and that he lowered the price of prescription drugs by hundreds, even thousands of percent.
I believe this declaration as much as I believe that Donald Trump has fixed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, one — two — three times — no, wait, they’re still working on it.
I believe it as much as I believe that Trump’s tariffs will not raise prices. (Note: they HAVE.)
Assurances that Trump International will pay for it all carries as much water as a pail without a bottom. I believe it as much as Trump’s declaration that as part of his ‘bold agenda’, there would be no new wars.
In short, I don’t believe any of Trump’s promises, or any promises made by any organization or project with Trump’s name attached to it.
The evidence that Trump and his organization will not do what they say they will is overwhelming. Only people in cults or those who have an agenda which Trump serves will believe it.
I’m not part of either of those camps.
Just a little month than a month and a few days remain until the November midterm elections. It’s a good time to reflect on what Donald Trump promised and what Donald Trump delivered.
Back in 2024, Donald Trump promised no new wars. At the end of Feb, just seven months ago, Trump started a new war with Iran. Donald Trump has since claimed we won the war or that it’s over or that it’s almost over over 30 times.
How can anyone still believe anything Donald Trump says about the war with Iran after that?
Donald Trump’s story about his relationship with Epstein and the Epstein files shifts just as much.
From that quote, Trump drifting into telling us that he barely knew Epstein.
““Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach,” Trump said in 2019 soon after Epstein was charged. “I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan.”
When asked in 2024 while he was running for office, Donald Trump said that he would release the Epstein files if elected. Almost two years into his second term, they still haven’t been fully released, and Trump’s DOJ continues to avoid doing so, despite a law saying he would.
While campaigning in 2024, Donald Trump assured voters he would lower prices, vilifying President Biden’s economy as he did.
Now AAA national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.43. By comparison, the national average in September 2024 hovered between $3.06 and $3.24, meaning drivers are paying roughly $1.20 to $1.37 more per gallon today than they did two years ago.
Many food prices are higher this year than they were in 2024, especially beef, coffee, chicken, and fruit and vegetables.
Thanks, Donald Trump, for breaking all of these promises and assurances.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s arrogance, Americans can no longer see the White House’s East Wing. Donald Trump demolished it to build a new ballroom. Donald Trump claimed that balloom would cost Americans nothing because donors were paying for it all. Now Trump insists that the ballroom is being build for ‘national security’.
We the People will pay about $1B for a project we didn’t ask for and Congress never approved.
It’s like renting your house to someone. While they’re living there, they tear down part of it because they’re living there, so they assume they have the right to change it as they want.
These things are not even the top of the mountain, and Trump has brought a mountain of disaster to the United States and the world. Today’s headlines will help keep us focused on what a disaster Trump is in his second term of office.
That last headline leads us to your Trump Quote of the Day:
Renaming AI to something else is Donald Trump’s latest effort in the Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! playbook. As with many other things, Donald Trump, arrogant and ignorant, thinks that just because he thinks of something and says it aloud, it’s so.
Desperate to make something out of nothing because 2026 has been such a horrible year for Donald Trump, he tried to make it look like he was being praised for being great.
Instead, he stupidly confessed that he’s doing a shitty job.
Couldn’t have said it better, Donald Trump.
Couldn’t have said it better.
As the United States moves to toward the midterms elections, things are going not so good to terrible for Trump. Trump has tried distraction after distraction. Despite that, people remember that he promised no new wars and started another war.
We the People noticed, too, that Trump promised to lower prices right away but hasn’t. We the People didn’t forget that Trump said he’d release the Epstein files and has done everything possible since then to change that channel.
Trump has always gone after the press. With pressure mounting, his popularity plummeting, and criticism growing — and not going away — he’s trying desperately to keep people from telling the facts about his terrible presidency, his authoritarian methods, and horrid economic policies.
Naturally, in response Trump did the one thing he still does well: he put out a whining rant filed with lies, misinformation, and innuendoes, trying to plead, “NATIONAL SECURITY!”
It no longer works because he’s cried national security so many times, We the People are on to his scam.
I caught one of the Trump ads which We the People paid for while watching a football game last night. This BS showed Trump walking toward a camera with a sour face as one of his speeches about getting rid of commies played.
My honest reaction went from WTF to screw you asshole in .4 seconds.
What unmitigated crap. With all that he’s done to this country, Trump comes on squealing about saving us from the commies like some right-wing 1950s propaganda.
After hearing viewing that commercial, I began reading “The Premonition” by Michael Lewis. He wrote about the nation’s terrible response to the COVID-19 pandemic under Trump, then added a Bill Parcells quote which fit.
Bill Parcells was an NFL coach. Won a few championships and helmed multiple competitive teams. Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are.”
And there it is, the perfect rebuttal to Trump, the GOP, and MAGA: you are what your records says you are.
In this case, the United States has entered another foreign war which Trump needlessly started.
Measles outbreaks and bankruptcies are increasing, the national debt is climbing, climbing, climbing, farmers and ranchers are doing terribly, energy prices are going up up up, and Trump can do nothing but bully, whine, plead — or try to bribe people into ‘voting for him’.
Because as Trump said, vote like he is on the ballot.
Because Trump is on the ballot.
And the record shows just what you are Trump.
No matter how hard you whine, cry, bluster, and bully, the record shows us who.
You.
Are.
Trump.
Let’s set the stage. You are here:
“Since Trump started his second term, prices have gone up in 5 of 8 areas he pledged to cut. Inflation spiked earlier this year as the Iran war drove up prices for gas and other essentials.”
Your Trump Quote of the Day 1:
Here’s a useful table for validating Trump’s claim.
We can go one level more concrete using BLS’s average retail prices, rather than indexes:
| Item | January 2025 | July 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large eggs, dozen | $4.953 | $2.189 | −55.8% |
| Butter, stick | $4.912 | $3.922 | −20.2% |
| White bread, lb. | $1.925 | $1.820 | −5.5% |
| Whole milk, gallon | $4.025 | $4.313 | +7.2% |
| Ground beef, 100% beef, lb. | $5.545 | $6.885 | +24.2% |
| All uncooked ground beef, lb. | $5.820 | $7.116 | +22.3% |
| Regular gasoline, gallon | $3.211 | $4.094 | +27.5% |
This is based on the BLS’s information. I must point out that egg producers were later convicted of price gouging during President Biden’s term.
Headlines tell more about the worsening economic conditions we’re facing as we move toward the midterm elections in the United States.
Funny how Trump interprets these to be much better with him in the Oval Office. Back when President Biden was leading the nation, Trump kept screaming about these prices.
Your Trump Quote of the Day 2:
Your Trump Quote of the Day 3
Your Trump Quote of the Day 4:
Your Trump Quote of the Day 6
As this sequence of Trump quotes reveal, Trump will absolutely lie and promise without regard to reality. Perhaps the only quote we can really trust from Trump is this, which Trump made earlier this year.
Your Trump Quote of the Day 7:
While Trump said that last quote in May of 2026 while talking about the war he started with Iran. But even that was part of Trump’s shifting explanations and claims about what’s going on. He says one thing about the Iran war — and denies it’s a war — while claiming to be lowering prices — when the prices are going up, and the war is contributing to them — while saying the war is necessary to stop Iran from having a nuclear capability after HE has said that he has destroyed that capability — while also claiming ‘we already won’ and the war wouldn’t last for more than four or five weeks. Those specific inconsistences trouble me.
The greater point is that prices are not coming down and the war is not over.
It all adds up to a credibility problem, a legacy of lies, corruption, and broken promises for me. Keeping Trump and his power will lead to higher prices, more war, and more violence, based on what I’ve seen under Trump in this term.
Not much change from one year ago, which was Trump’s first year of his second term.
Except — Trump still hasn’t released the Epstein files.
Trump tore down the WH East Wing to begin building a new ballroom for himself, without first getting permission. At no cost to taxpayers, he claimed, which was exposed as a lie.
Still hasn’t ended the Russia-Ukraine war, which he declared he’d do before he even took his oath of office.
Didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, again.
Put in place policies which made gas, food, and healthcare prices increase, causing an affordability crisis for many Americans.
Kidnapped the sitting president of another nation and his wife.
Alienated allies.
Started a war with Iran after claiming that he wouldn’t.
Screwed up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pond, destroyed the White House south lawn, lied thousands of more times, and generated a lot more wealth for himself.
Oversaw the rise of measles in the United States to the worse level in 35 years.
Governed as the United States debt increased to historic highs, over $40T.
Ordered the US Navy to kill more people in international waters.
Created a legacy of lying, cheating, losing, greed, corruption, and destruction which will be remembered long after he is gone.
Yes, that’s what so many Americans are worried about. War with Iran, Epstein files, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, government corruption, climate change, decreasing employment, increasing national debt, more measles and spreading COVID-19, rising gas, food, and housing prices — food recalls — forgot those!
Private jets are the line in the sand.
Of course, there is more to the story…
“In late January 2026, President Donald Trump publicly threatened to “decertify” certain Canadian-made aircraft (often cited as Bombardier’s Global Express family) and to impose a 50% tariff on aircraft imported from Canada. Reporting linked the threat to Canada’s pace in certifying (validating) several US-made Gulfstream business jets for Canadian operation.”
Wait a minute!
Are you telling me that Trump’s complaint about Canada not being willing to certify the Gulfstream is a result of Trump threatening to decertify Canadian aircraft and impose a 50% tariff?
Why, Donald Trump — suddenly, I can believe that Canada has not certified the Gulfstream.
What I can’t believe — again — is how you refuse to accept the consequences of the stupid decisions you make.
And again, you try blaming others for your stupidity.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, then I’m a Republican.
