Tag: iran war

Saturday’s Theme Music — Back in time

Ashland, southern Oregon — Saturday, May 16, 2026.

Clouds block the sunshine and dirty the blue sky. Our weather temperatures continue their slow backward slide. Today’s high will be 58 F. Fed by wind gusts, it’s currently a chilly 46 F.

Papi the ginger wonder isn’t happy. He’d like to be outside but, wind. Wind is his enemy. He sat for a bit, feet all together, tail wrapped around him, motionless except for ear flicks. That lasted three or four minutes before he was back inside, washing himself and recovering.

Our weather is better than other places in the US, where a May spring snowstorm is complicating plans.

What did Trump’s visit to China do for the nation. We won’t know for a while. Trump has made some claims about what China agreed to do. We’ll see how much of them are true, and which are just hot air. Remember, Trump has made vows and claims before that carried nothing but his air:

Trump also likes claiming he got 80,000,000 votes. He didn’t. Officially, Trump took about 77.3 million votes in 2024, beating Vice President Harris by about 2.3 million votes. Trump is confusing himself with President Joe Biden, who took over 80,000,000 votes, soundly beating Trump.

Make no mistake, Trump and his MAGA base are trying to take the United States backwards. In the latest move during the Trump Golden Age of Ignorance, Knox County, Kentucky, schools are removing the historic novel “Roots” by Alex Haley. It’s truly a WTF period for many of us.

Your Trump Quote for the Day:

With Trump’s reactionary thinking dragging us backwards and the weather losing its summer luster, The Neurons plugged “Back In Time” into the morning mental music stream. The 1985 song was performed by Huey Lewis and the News and featured in the movie, “Back to the Future”. Seems right for the day, except the time I want to go back to is before Trump ever ran for office in 2015.

I hope your weekend is progressing well and you keep moving forward in good ways.

I’m moving forward with my coffee.

Cheers

3

Thursday’s Theme Music — State of things

Ashland, southern Oregon — Thursday, May 14, 2026.

It’s blue out there, full of sunshine. Clouds are absent. 50 F with a high in the mid 70s today.

Thunderstorms looked possible yesterday but it didn’t happen. Just as in the previous days of forecasted activity. After the winter snow drought, May is at 3% of its average rainfall.

Our snowpack is at about 7%. While the reservoirs are above 80%, without snowmelt to replenish them, it’ll be a hot, dry summer. Stack the El Nino predictions, many of us are bracing ourselves for a rough year ahead.

Mom’s state is not good. She wasn’t responding to my sister’s texts. Sis called the assisted living facility, Heritage Grove, to ask about Mom. They said Mom went to bed before dinner and had not felt well all day.

On the optimistic side of the board, two neighbors are reportedly interested in buying Mom’s house.

My wife and I had new tires installed. For the record, we replaced a set that we’d bought in 2019. Got 35,000 miles out of them. Not great, not bad.

We bought them at Costco and had them installed there, shopping while we waited. As we were in the Medford area, we decided to eat out and chose the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant. My wife likes the salmon they serve there.

We couldn’t eat there. The way was blocked by ambulances and firetrucks. Wondering what’s going on, we took to our phones to learn. Nothing at the fire department, alert system, social media, or local television stations could give us that info.

This duplicated a Tuesday incident, in my mind. Driving home from writing at the coffee shop, one lane of traffic was blocked off in front of an SOU building on Siskiyou Avenue. What happened? I searched for information after I got home and couldn’t find anything. 24 hours later, the answer came: a woman had driven across the median strip, up a walkway, and into a building, breaking a gas meter along the way.

Miserable headlines fill my feed. When will there be good news? I’m not sure what I mean by good news at this point. An end to wars would be nice, along with a return to normalcy. Normalcy to me is let’s take action against polluting our air and water. Action against climate change. But the cynic in me says that PINO Trump would take credit for whatever and enough brain-dead people would slurp that down and bray about how great Dozy Donnie is that I’d regurgitate everything taken in during the last three days.

But here’s the state of things in the United States nation in one sharp observation someone else made:

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Paraphrasing, Trump lies, says this isn’t so bad, Biden! Because that worked well previously under Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

Enough people with brains are responding, screw you.

You started a war, Donald J “No new wars” Trump.

The economy is a mess, gas prices are rising, all the prices are rising, Donald J “We’ll cut prices on day 1” Trump, and the country is going in the wrong direction.

And you, DONALD J TRUMP, YOU ARE THE REASON WE’RE IN SIX MILLION MESSES WITH NO WAY OUT EXCEPT TO FIRST GET RID OF YOU AND YOUR CRONIES.

Now stop building the damn ballroom and release the damn Epstein files so we can feast on your political corpse.

The Neurons inserted “Mind Games” by John Lennon into my morning mental music stream. This actually came about from Papi’s state of mind this morning. I played with him and his favorite nemesis, the red dot. The play began abruptly. As soon as he engaged, I stopped for about a minute. He kept peeking left and right, waiting for it to reappear. Just as he started walking off, I blinked it back on. Off Papi went, chasing it across the room, then stalking it.

I hope your Thursday brings you some good news and fair winds, assuming you need winds to get somewhere. Like you drive a sail car and need to have wind to blow you along the Interstate.

Have my coffee now. Cheers

2

Dominoes

Trump’s broken promises have consequences.

The dominoes are falling over…

With Trump in the Oval Office and his policies in place:

  • Food insecurity is a rising problem under Trump’s leadership.
    • Food banks across the nation are seeing rising demand and costs. New data and analyses confirm grocery prices for American households have begun rising due to the ongoing war with Iran.
    • Further increases are projected throughout 2026, thanks to higher fuel, fertilizer, and shipping costs. Food banks and food pantries are seeing 20% to 30% increases in traffic in the Phoenix (AZ), Midwest, North Carolina, and Southwest.
    • The Oregon Food Bank reports a 51% increase in the past two years.
  • Measles are a rising threat. The states most affected by measles outbreaks in 2026 are all led by Republicans: South Carolina, Utah, Texas, Florida. The United States has seen 1,842 cases and 25 new outbreaks since the start of 2026.
  • Gas prices continue to create new records. My friends paid $6.79 per gallon for gas in California this last weekend.
  • Donnie “No new wars” Trump’s war with Iran has been going for two months and eleven days. Some estimates put the war’s financial cost for the US at $50,000,000,000 to date.
  • If you’re waiting on your Trump phone, there’s an update from Android Authority: ‘The update states that a preorder deposit “provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It also adds that a preorder deposit is “not a purchase.”’ The Trump phone was originally offered in June, 2025. It was supposed to be made in the USA.
  • The Epstein files still aren’t released.

We also have these gems:

  • The ballroom, which wasn’t going to cost US citizens anything, will cost $1,000,000,000 or more.
  • The $1.8 million dollars to ‘paint’ the Lincoln Memory Reflecting Pool cost $11,300,000.
  • More of Trump’s tariffs have been declared illegal. The problem with the tariffs and rulings is that companies pay the tariffs by passing them on to the consumer. Yet, there’s little sign that as tariffs are refunded to tariffs that consumers will receive refunds.

Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is falling short of its goals of distracting voters from Trump’s failures and our losses.

Trump’s pattern is clear now.

Unfortunately, not all voters have caught on to Trump and his scams.

The midterms are coming soon.

Trump is panicking. Disapproval is rising. Failures are stacking up.

Get ready for some audacious Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

2

The Mood in May

Time again to assess how the net feels about the state of the union under Trump.

As backdrop:

So much winning! Here we go.

8

Friday’s Theme Music — All About Him

Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, May 8, 2026.

Friday, we wear purple.

Thin white clouds marble a bright blue sky. 56 now, a high of 78 F is expected. Sunshine washes the greenery with bright, warm light. Papi says, “This is perfect weather. Don’t change it.”

The jobs report for April came out. I wasn’t surprised that more jobs than expected were added.

It wasn’t much: 115,000. Jobless claims held steady, 4.3%. The jobs growth saw a surprise increase in “messengers and couriers” of 38,000 jobs.

Healthcare added nearly 54,000 jobs. Again, not a surprise, because healthcare laid off 108k in January. Hospitals are closing in rural areas, and rebalancing is underway as the healthcare industry copes with Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance changes.

May will be an interesting month for the jobs report, and travel, hospitality, and tourism industries. Gas prices are up over 50% since Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! initiated war in Iran in February 2024. The national average is now around $4.53 per gallon.

Trump may not care but Americans who aren’t wealthy are worried. “The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to a record low of 48.2 in early May 2026, missing market expectations of 49.5 and falling below April’s 49.8.”

Sure, Trump doesn’t care. Make a promise — “No new wars” — break a promise.

That’s him. Just like Trump’s Epstein ballroom. ‘Americans won’t pay anything for it.’ Sure. Now, we’ll just pay a $1,000,000,000. Or more.

We’re feeling the economy in my region. Southern Oregon University (SOU) is in a slow collapse; Assante is in decline, taking the regional healthcare system down; the City of Ashland is mired in financial struggles.

With SOU cutting back, music programs and activities are in danger of disappearing. Parks and Rec has been forced to cut back. Meanwhile, we’re holding our breath to see what happens with tourism, OSF, wildfires, and drought — along with rising gas, energy, and insurance prices.

What’s of more interest to me at this point: is how many other regions in the US are being affected in like ways?

Today’s music is brought to you by The Kinks. The song is “He’s Evil”. I first heard it when I was in high school.

It’s in the morning mental music stream today because, Trump.

Lyrics:

He comes on smooth, cool, and kind
But he wants your body, not your mind
He’s got style, personality
But he’s the devil in reality
He’ll make you laugh, make you smile
And make you feel good for a while
Wicked smile, decadent grin
He likes school girls, nuns, and virgins

His skin is soft but his mind is hard
He’ll lead you on and then he’ll tear you apart
He’ll treat you rough and he will make you cry
And you will kiss sweet innocence goodbye
And once you’re in, there’ll be no getting out
So look out, look out, look out
Look out, look out, look out

He’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil
He’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil

Hope you have an evil-free day, full of grace and peace.

Got my coffee. Time to rock.

Cheers

0

Thursday’s Theme Music — Look! Roberts!

Ashland, southern Oregon — Thursday, May 7, 2026.

Blue, blue sky. 67 F that we now feel would’ve been the high a few days again. Now it’s a measurement as the thermometer sings toward 83 F. Higher is possible, I think.

Mom is settling into acceptance that the nursing facility will be home for a while. Although she looks and seems happy in photos and videos, she doesn’t like paying the money and doesn’t like having her independence curtailed.

I hear her. I can see myself feeling and doing the same. I wish something better was available for her.

Meanwhile, my sister is moving forward on selling Mom’s house and getting powers of attorney. Sis has been patient and persistent and gets a lot of points for that.

My sisters and I shared health texts yesterday. We older beings laughed as we compared our health issues. My younger siblings were agog with dismay. My older sister responded, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.”

Big news front that I’m seeing is Justice Roberts is upset.

Chief Justice laments perception of ‘political’ Supreme Court

I read that to my wife. She laughed. “Gosh, I wonder why.”

No kidding. The shadow docket has surged under Roberts once Trump came into power. The Brennan Center summarized exactly why we think the Roberts Court is politicized and favoring Trump:

“The Court has sided with the administration 80 percent of the time when making “emergency” rulings, often without revealing its reasoning.“

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Despite Trump’s claim, made less than three months ago, Republicans are now asking for $1,000,000,000 for the ballroom. Trump also claims the Epstein ballroom is under budget, even though they’re now asking for five times the original amount to build it.

Trump can’t be trusted. Nor can the GOP. What’s your guess for how much the Epstein ballroom will end up costing?

Between the Epstein ballroom and Trump’s Iran War, Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is becoming one of most expensive fiascos in history.

Today’s theme music is “Under My Wheels” by Alice Cooper. The song came out in 1971. It entered my morning mental music stream today after reading Jill Dennison’s blog. It featured the ELO song, “Telephone Line”. That was enough to inspire The Neurons to lift “Under My Wheels” out of my dusty folds of memory. See, the song begins, “The telephone is ringing,” and the line is repeated throughout the song.

Hope you enjoy it. Still sounds good to me, fifty years plus later. However, I don’t often play Alice Cooper these days; he’s a right-wing individual who trashes trans ‘as a fad’.

I hope this day finds you doing well in all ways that matter. May peace and grace carry you on no matter what adversity life might deliver.

On to my coffee. Cheers

3

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Ashland, southern Oregon — Wednesday, May 5, 2026.

Today’s is a picturesque spring day, Ashland edition — sunshine, clouds, 56 F. They say we’re heading to the lower eighties. We cracked 80 at my place yesterday.

I caught up on some local news last night. A rural hospital crisis is affecting the United States. Been going on for years but getting worse.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill worsened the situation. By removing healthcare subsidies, healthcare premiums shot up. Many people had no choice but to severely cut back.

It’s playing out here in southern Oregon.

Asante warns of a projected $50M shortfall leading to 300+ job cuts

Asante is already reducing many services at Asante Ashland Community Hospital in my town. Now operating in other southern Oregon cities such as Medford and Grants Pass, they note that they’ve lost money in the first six months of this fiscal year and cut personnel. Part of the reason why they’re losing money is buried in a paragraph down in the story:

“Patients covered by private insurance are at the lowest percentage in Asante’s history at just over 14% of all patients so far in 2026.”

Oregon saw average premium hikes of nearly 10% for individuals after Trump’s OBBB took effect. Asante’s CEO noted that many local businesses are being priced out of offering health insurance due to these rising costs. Medicare and Medicaid barely cover the costs they say. It’s not a sustainable model.

Yet, with this crisis going on, Trump pretends to worry about the Iranians having nukes and attacks them.

Trump worries about his own security and image, naming things after himself, wrecking part of the White House to build that ridiculous Epstein ballroom, which went from ‘costing Americans nothing’ to $1,000,000,000.

Trump screams freedom! Security! Peace! Then he has the military attack and kill more people in boats.

So much for law and order.

Waiting to see what Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! brings today.

Your Trump Quotes of the Day.

He’s so consistently inconsistent!

Today’s song was another one inspired by Papi, my ginger furbrother. I was petting him after giving him his meds. He was purring like mad. But his personality requires that he be given space. I wouldn’t let him go, keeping hold of him until he gave me an annoyed look. Meanwhile, I laughed and sang the lines from “Magic” by The Cars:

I’ve got a hold on you
I got a hold on you
Got a hold on you

I’m off for my cystoscopy to see what’s going on in my bladder. It’s being done at Asante in Medford so I better do it before they close.

I hope the best possible day of grace, peace, and joy finds you and carries you on through life on a great wave.

Cheers

1

Trump: Pretzel Logic

The war with Iran is not a war.

Trump reminded everyone we’re at war but also said he’s not going to use the word war because that would need approval. Also, the war that wasn’t a war stopped with the ceasefire in April, even though there’s shooting going on.

The really big question is, what do Dozing Donnie’s bones say about the war?

At the same time, Trump also told Axios there was “nothing left” to bomb in Iran. Trump also said, “Any time I want it to end, it will end.”

Trump later told supporters at a Kentucky rally that same day that Washington “won” in Iran and the conflict was “over.”

You follow that? We were at war, we were never at war, it’s a mini-war, the war is over, and it’ll be over whenever Trump says it’s over.

Fine, fine pretzel logic.

“We have a war right now, and we’re to what, six weeks? They said, ‘What’s taking so long!’ We were in Vietnam 19 years.” Donald Trump, April 21, 2026.

Technically, the US can’t blockade Iran because that’s an act of war and we’re not at war, although we might be in a ‘mini-war‘.

Lindsey Graham is getting into Trump’s pretzel logic: “If we can take back control of the Strait of Hormuz, it is checkmate. This thing is over.”

George Conway “Interesting. This must be a new kind of chess where you compete to put the pieces back where they were before you smacked them off the board.”

Meanwhile, smog is increasing in Utah and Arizona, but it’s not a problem. That bad air is from other places. Although it affects local citizens, Trump’s EPA ruled that the affected cities don’t need to do anything about them.

Did you hear, too, Trump says his economy is booming!

That’s what Trump told small businesses this week.

Small business bankruptcies surged 67% in the first quarter of 2026.

However, the stock market is doing well. Corporate profits are at record levels.

Not everyone is in the stock market. And even if corporations are making profits, not all employees will see much more money, except for in the C suite. People who aren’t in the stock market or a corporate exec paying $4.46 per gallon of gas in the US might not agree that the economy is booming.

Especially if that gas price goes to $7 per gallon, as some analysts suggest.

The U.S. average for regular gasoline was approximately $3.81 to $3.82 per gallon at that time.

6

Tuesday’s Theme Music –

Ashland, southern Oregon — Tuesday, Mar 5, 2026.

Thunder is talking to us outside. It’s almost a three-D reproduction of yesterday: 56 F now, moving toward upper 70s. Cloudy, thin sunshine, thunderstorms.

Two headlines grabbed my attention today. One said that Delta airlines will stop serving food and beverages on flights under some mileage. I sort of shrugged at that, considering it, 1) part of the general enshittification trend of airline travel.

The other headline was about Trump’s Epstein Ballroom. Originally seized as an idea under Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!, private donors were supposed to be paying for the ballroom. But NOTUS had this headline:

Senate Republicans Seek $1 Billion for White House Ballroom Security

Remember when the ballroom was going to cost $300 million? Ah, good times. Prices are going up so fast these days.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

Trump made these statements when he accepted the GOP nomination. It was part of his ‘law and order’ speech. Now he puts his personal agenda before the national good, leads an incompetent government, and fails We the People all the time.

I’m not surprised. That’s what I fully expected from Trump: failing upward, as he did all his life, by covering his mistakes with different personal variations of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

Today’s song is by Steely Dan. I was thinking about pretzel logic. That happens to be the name of a Steely Dan album. I started thinking about that album, and Les Neurons brought “Any Major Dude” into the morning mental music stream.

Hope you find some peace and grace in your day.

Cheers

2

Thursday’s Theme Music – Fronts

Ashland, southern Oregon — April 30, 2026.

A new weather front has moved in. It’s 54 F under layers of clouds and sprinklings of sunshine, a typical Ashlandic spring day. Highs in the upper 70s are forecast for us. Right now, with all those clouds, it feels weirdly chilly.

Good news from the home front. Mom is electing to stay in assisted living and cooperating. She’s also agreed to sell her house and furniture. While it’s welcomed, it’s also so sad for her and our family. She wanted to be there; we wanted her to be there. Yet, practically, it could not work. Personally, I will miss go home, to her house, to hugging her in her living room, chatting with her in her kitchen, helping her with her laundry. And I will miss the many wonderful dishes she used to make. Her potato salad, spaghetti with meatballs, and chili all remain the best I ever had.

I will say, though, my sisters are a little annoying with their texting. They get up early, before six, and text. My first text from them came at 2:12 AM. I have my phone set up to notify me of texts from the family, in case there’s an emergency, but these were casual, informational texts. Okay, rant over.

No, I haven’t spoken to them about it. They’re doing so much to take care of Mom and help, etc. It would be really petty of me to complain to them about the time they send their texts. I’ll just whine here instead. *smile*

I’ve not seen much surface changes on the Trump front. The voting front is rapidly changing as the Roberts Court dish out their rulings and states respond. A situation as messy as first graders fingerpainting is going to get muddy and sloppy. That mud and slop favors the GOP and Trump. That’s why they’re pressing it. Not about democracy; it’s about staying in power.

Meanwhile, it’s been quiet on the Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! front and the Epstein front.

With the war in Iran at a stalemate, more conversations about the US military’s capabilities are emerging, such as this one. And they’re right; as often happens, the military fights the last war. We’re built for vast nuclear battles in the US with technologically sophisticated but expensive systems. Iran is countering us with different tactics and inexpensive weapons.

In a sense, what we’re seeing in this war echoes wars for the US back to the American revolution. The British were fighting an old war. The colonist changed tactics and won.

Changing policies and weapons in the US will be a challenge. As President Eisenhower warned, the military-industrial complex has a firm hand on procurement. Defense companies manage Congress through projects, manufacturing, and employment. We build systems as much for our economy as much as we do for our security. Meanwhile, the public nods agreeably because, ‘patriotism’.

Trump is responding by increasing the defense budget and calling for more expensive weapons systems. He’s pushing hard on a new class of Trump battleships. As with many things Trump, the battleships he envisions are outdated and bloated relics better fit for the past.

As the war stays stall, oil prices are slowly rising. A Gasbuddy AI analysis from March of 2026 is hilarious to read:

“GasBuddy’s latest projection paints a starkly different picture from the past. The company now forecasts the 2026 U.S. gasoline price average to fall to $2.97 per gallon, marking the fourth consecutive annual decline and the lowest average since 2020. This sets up a clear seasonal pattern, with prices expected to peak in May around $3.12 per gallon before declining steadily to a low in December of $2.83 per gallon.”

Mock Paper Scissors found a saner prediction from a Gasbuddy expert:

“GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan, a widely cited gas price expert, predicts the national average price at the pump will hit $4.50 a gallon within a week (currently $4.30).”

Never to shirk from taking advantage of a bad situation, British Petroleum is making some handsome profits from the war and the world energy situation.

Oil giant BP announces huge rise in profits in first results since Iran war

Your Trump quote of the day:

“Gas prices have risen 49% since the beginning of 2026, according to prices tracked by AAA. They dropped by an average of 7 cents a gallon after a two-week ceasefire was announced last week.”

And as any driver now knows, that drop is already gone.

The Neurons observed my thoughts on fronts and responded. They put Elton John and “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1979 in my morning mental music stream. Lifted from a movie of the same name, it’s not a song that comes on the radio much. The song’s tempo’s and musical style reminds me of “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” from 1975.

I hope your front is calm and peaceful and that you progress to better and better places for you in all ways possible.

Cheers

2

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