Tag: News

Friday’s Theme Music — September

Ashland, southern Oregon. Friday, September 11, 2026.

Today it’s 66 in Ashland with rain and a high of 83 F on the way.

It’s the anniversary of 9/11.

Yes, a quarter century has really passed since that day. We had unity in the US for a while after that. Dubya parlayed that unity to into wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. With Dick Cheney as his VP, the intel was constantly skewed to reinforce a drumbeat to war. The intel about WMD was all about stoking fears of greater attacks.

Those paying attention at the time called bullshit. But our voices were often ignored. We’ve learned in drips since that the intel was flawed. We learned that war was a costly and disastrous mistake.

Wreaths will be placed in many places in the US. A moment of silence will be held. Speeches will be made, and people will recall where they were when.

Then we will move on into the divisive era fostered by Trump and the MAGAzens, embraced by the Republicans, fostered by the Roberts Court.

Like many, many others, I will sigh, suck it up, grit my teeth, and go on.

Today’s music is “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. The song came out in 2005. Billy Joe Armstrong, Green Day lead guitarist and vocalist, wrote it about his father’s death in 1982. But the song’s sentiments of loss, suffering, and reflections work for anyone’s mourning, including those of us looking back on the 9/11 attacks.

Sample Lyrics

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

Like my father’s come to pass
Seven years has gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends

Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends

May we find peace and solace in our lifetimes.

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Thursday’s Theme Music — Stroking

Ashland, southern Oregon. Thursday, September 10, 2026.

Heat is in the air again today. Sunshine sluices down between scattered clouds. 83 degrees F as of now, we’re looking for a high that’s ten degrees more.

I’m trying to negotiate a peace between Mom and one of my sisters. I’ve written before about my younger sister, Gina. She put in a lot of work helping Mom over the years. Gina’s husband, Pat, was right beside her.

When Mom’s partner, Frank, died at 95 last October, Mom was put into a bad situation. Given her needs and medical challenges, she couldn’t live alone in her home. Gina and Pat took it upon themselves to make space for Mom in their home, and tried including Mom in their activities.

It turned out to be a six-month experiment which became progressively worse. By the time Mom was taken to a hospital in February, Mom was accusing Pat of spying on her, stealing her things, and hurting her. We knew from security cameras that none of it was true.

Mom ended up being in an assisted living facility after that. Pat’s feelings were hurt. He was upset, which upset Gina. Since that time, Gina has slowly cut off communications with Mom.

Labor used to be special for our family as we all prepared food and came together to celebrate. I wrote Mom on Labor Day. She was pretty sad and miserable, reporting that she’d not heard anything from any of her daughters. She knew a celebration was going on but nobody included her.

I passed that on to Gina. Gina replied, “If Mom apologizes to Pat for all those mean things she accused him of, I’ll welcome her back to our gatherings.”

I sent that on to Mom two days ago.

I’ve not heard anything back.

Trumpapalooza kicked off last night. As anticipated, it’s about how wonderful Trump thinks he is, the almost open acknowledgement that things aren’t going well in our nation, and Trump’s desperate attempt to win the election by bribing voters. In other words, it’s more Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!, an attempt to distract voters from what’s really happening.

Beyond all that, the event is about stroking Trump’s ego. He thinks he’s great, and all others need to bow down to him. If everyone was as great as him, we’d have a great nation is his basic message.

Yes, Trumpapalooza was short on logic, facts, and truth, depending on your point of view. If you want the national and international order disrupted, Trump is doing a great job. If you want a nation based on democratic principles and freedom and equality for all, he’s driving hard away from those principles. Either way, he’s having fun, golfing on the taxpayers’ dime, sending out ridiculous little AI-generated images and videos trying to convey himself as great, blustering at other nations and people with threats if they don’t do what he wants.

Your Trumpapalooza Quote of the Day:

After all that, I ended up with “The Stroke” by Billy Squier in my morning mental music stream.

“The Stroke” came out in 1981. The song is about the music business and the need for bands to stroke music exec egos while the execs must stroke the artists’ egos. Everyone is stroke someone to keep it all going.

Sample Lyrics

Better listen now
They said it ain’t no joke
Don’t let your conscience fail ya
Just do the stroke

Don’t ya take no chances
Keep your eye on top
Do your fancy dances
You can’t stop, you just

Stroke me, stroke me
(Stroke, stroke)
Stroke me, stroke me
(Stroke, stroke)

And that’s pretty much Trump. He does his silly dance and his fancy ‘word weave’. The rest of us know the weave as lie upon lie upon lie, but for Trump, it’s the dance.

May this day reward you with patience, happiness, and good health.

Cheers

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Here We Go Again — Your Trump Quotes of the Day

I laughed as soon as I read the headline today:

Trump pledges $5K ‘Trump dividend’ if Republicans hold onto Congress

Bribery: such a classic grifter move: I’ll pay you through the government if you vote to keep and put Republicans in office.

Gosh, has Trump ever made a promise like this before?

Trump Has Repeatedly Promised Payments That Have Yet to Materialize

I’m sure there are some voters out there nodding and saying, “Did you hear? Trump promised us money for our vote. I’m going to vote Republican.”

Meaning, they would need to pretend that Trump is going to follow through on this promise after all his other failed promises. It’s so much easier for Trump to promise more instead of fulfilling all the previous promises. Especially those promises Trump made such as, “I will not golf”, “I will deliver a new healthcare plan”, and “I will start no new wars.”

Or this classic Trump promise:

Over two years later, and we’re waiting for Trump to do what he promised.

Trump is calling this a ‘dividend’. He’s not really explaining how it’ll be paid for. It’s hard to believe that a ‘dividend’ is available when the national debt has surged past $40T, a level never seen before, and shows no signs of slowing.

In the past, Trump has cut programs and services which he didn’t like, labeling these fraud and waste. These were mostly from the regulatory side and the social safety net, like SNAP, healthcare premium subsidies, and childcare assistance. Since Trump has already cut those, what else can be cut? Defense?

I can see why people with little future and little hope, desperate just to make it to the next payday in order to buy gas and food might want to take Trump’s deal. But Trump is the one who create the 2026 affordability crisis. His DOGE cuts, tariffs, and bloated defense budget with its plan to build ‘Trump’ class battleships created this crisis. Trump’s Iran War fueled the crisis by disrupting the global supply chain and pushing gas prices to record levels.

Now, instead of addressing those things, he’s offering a bandage when surgery is needed.

I think Trump is falling back on an old favorite.

We’ll need to wait and see if Trump can buy his way out of another mess, as he tried to do when he paid off Stormy Daniels after Trump had an affair with her.

That worked out so well.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music – Rock Me

Ashland, southern Oregon. Wednesday, September 9, 2026.

Sunny warmth has reclaimed the valley. 82 F now, today’s high will crest in the low to mid 90s.

News rocks me my wife every day. Especially these things which Trump claims.

Trump’s latest claims center around what a hero he was on 9/11, down there with a large construction crew, trying to help. Witnesses and reports from that time do not show a heroic Trump anywhere near the twin towers.

The question that hits me is, does Trump believe this fantasy that he’s created about what happened a quarter century again? If so, my concern about his mental state, already very high, given his control of our weapons and his habit of putting his supporters in subordinate positions, to much higher levels.

The other piece of that puzzle is, if Trump isn’t so delusional that he actually believes his fantasy and lies, what drives him to lie like this? And that’s equally scary, because he’s now deliberately trying to twist facts, truth, and history to pretend that he’s someone else.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

To what ends does Trump make these lines? To keep control and make himself look better, it seems. And to me, a person willing to do these things to maintain control and power is extremely unpredictable.

The other news rocking me was Germany’s right-wing party gaining strength and winning elections. We’ve already fought one destructive war which resulted in millions being killed.

It’s sobering that Donald Trump eagerly embraced AfD’s election win in Germany. The memory of World War II—where the United States and allied nations fought a devastating global war to defeat the Nazi regime after the far-right seized power in Germany in 1933—remains a cornerstone of the modern international order and the U.S.–Germany alliance. To me, this points to exactly where Trump is moving the nation.

Finally, wearying me today is the chaos around Missouri’s congressional map. Various court decisions about GOP efforts to keep Democrats out of office are out there across the land, so I think we’ll be seeing more of this midterm chaos.

My wife and I discussed these stories and others this morning. She concluded, “I struggle to feel balance. It seems like every other day brings some news that rocks me.” I agreed with her.

My Neurons pounced on ‘rock me’. I immediately had “Rock Me” in my morning mental music stream. This is a bluesy 1987 hard-rock offering from Great White. Maybe you’re familiar with it.

I hope your day brings you a sense of beauty, renewal, and good health.

Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music — Clocks

Ashland, southern Oregon. Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

It’s warming here again. 54 F at my house this morning. Sunshine and the fronts, which could be the name of a rock band but isn’t, are expected to warm us into the high 80s today. While the sky is blue over our green and brown landscape, clouds varnish it with gray.

One of the things about holidays in the US are SALES! We used to be inundated with mailers and radio and television commercials about how the sales.

Well, I stream and don’t watch over the air or cable channels so I had none of those. Heard nothing on the radio about the sales this year. Nor were there flyers in the snail mail.

Never fear, they sales were shown in the mail inbox. I always have a huge collection of offers. Not the old Viagra stuff, no. This is the standard LOOK AT WHAT WE’RE SELLING AT GREAT PRICES STUFF. Lot of subscription offers. Last chances to REALLY SAVE was going to end LAST NIGHT.

The sales ended. I bought nothing. Some things don’t change. I’m sure I’ll have more chances in the future, despite their declaration that this was my LAST CHANCE. I just need to click through my mail, trashing all these GREAT OFFERS.

Meanwhile, I’m worrying about our fellow humans in Hawaii as another storm bears down on them.

Do we have a Salute Gate brewing? Trump failed to return the Marines’ salute when he left Marine One. Remember how conservatives raised a storm about President Obama saluting with a coffee cup? I’m sure this will be worse…not. Trump Double Standards are strictly enforced.

I love trackers and appreciate and respect the people that put them together for us.

I already regularly check the National Debt Clock, watching as the numbers spin and climb, showing exactly how much more debt we as a nation are in by the second.

Then there’s the IranWarClock. This displays how long the Trump Iran War — TIW for short — has been going, and how long it’s been since Trump said it would be over. Thanks to this site, I know that Trump has shifted the TIW’s timeline eight times, and that it has now been going on 192 days.

Now, Daily Kos has pointed me toward one developed by Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University: the Iran War Energy Cost Tracker. This tells us how much the TIW is costing our nation to the second. It then helpfully shows how much more each American household is paying for energy thanks to the TIW.

Then there’s the Measles Outbreaks tracker to see what’s going on with measles in the US and around the world.

GasPricesLive is good to compare how much we’re paying for gasoline per gallon.

For more fun, you can go to the Trump Timer, which shows how many days until his second term ends.

It’s all just information. Facts and figures. History.

All this thinking about clocks, trackers, and time has The Neurons busy with rock songs about time in my morning mental music stream. Among these are “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders, “Clocks” by Coldplay, and “Time” by The Alan Parsons Project.

There are other songs — Cher, The Doors, Jim Croce, BB King, Chicago, the Rolling Stones, the Guess Who…it’s a long list.

But here we go, with “Clocks” by Coldplay and “Time Won’t Let Me” by The Outsiders.

May you have the time and will to do all you need and want to do.

Cheers

2

Your Trump Quotes of the Day – Prices

Let’s set the stage. You are here:

Trump pledged to lower prices in eight areas. Have they risen or fallen?

“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.

The grocery items people actually buy

We can go one level more concrete using BLS’s average retail prices, rather than indexes:

ItemJanuary 2025July 2026Change
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.

Gas prices set a record for Labor Day. Trump’s energy secretary says they are ‘more likely to go down than go up.’

Inflation Odds Move Toward 100%

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.

Vote blue in 2026.

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Monday’s Theme Music — Moon Man

Ashland, southern Oregon. Monday, September 7, 2026.

Our valley will warm back up today. It’s 52 F now but the high is supposed to be in the upper 70s. Sunshine and blue sky are all my vantage offers. Warmer tomorrow, in the low 80s, and low 90s by Wednesday.

It’s Labor Day in the US. Happy Labor Day! Labor Day used to mark the unofficial end of the summer and the start of the autumn and school year when I was growing up. As I moved to other areas, I discovered the school year starting in August as districts frontloaded the school calendar in anticipation of school closures for snow days.

This is one of those holidays Mom enjoyed as family. It usually meant a gathering and cookout. I feel fortunate to have such memories of enjoying life, delicious food, fun company.

For today, there is no cookout. We’re going to friends later for dinner and games. I go on with my normal routines.

Trump launched another part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! last weekend. He’s been making some outrageous claims by changing the names of places, generating AI images, and doing his pathetic little kicks dance. And Trump changed his hair style to some very ugly reviews. He’s even trying to fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — again — crowing — again — how great it’ll be, which stirred a lot of mocking about him and his previous claims, and the amount of money Trump has spent trying to fix it.

With all that bad press happening, Trump went to the net and — quick. LOOK — SQUIRREL!

“THE MOON IS OURS”

Yes, that’s Donald Trump, current Oval Office occupant, highest elected position in the land, acting like a cartoon villain.

Just to prove how much of a fool he is, and keep us distracted, Trump also floated changing New Mexico’s name.

Trump Floats Renaming New Mexico as ‘New America,’ Prompting Pushback

I’m sure MAGAzens are chortling, “Look how Trump is owning the libs!” Meanwhile, they’re paying a lot more for food and gas. For example, gas prices on Labor Day 2024 were about $3.29 a gallon. Thanks to Trump, they’re at a record Labor Day high.

Fuel prices at record Labor Day high in US thanks to Iran War and refinery issues

The gas price per gallon US average is $4.14, 32 cents per gallon more than the previous record, set in 2012.

Affordability remains a crisis in the US, Trump’s war with Iran is dragging on — 191 days and counting — he hasn’t released the Epstein files…it’s a long list of failures and broken promises.

That’s the Trump legacy.

That’s the MAGA legacy.

In honor of Trump’s absurdity, my morning mental music stream is gushing with songs about the moon. So many are out there…”Dark Side of the Moon” punched in fast. But I ended up with “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M.

Sample Lyrics

Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Monopoly, twenty-one checkers, and chess
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Let’s play Twister, let’s play Risk
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
See you in Heaven if you make the list
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey baby, are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon

If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

The 1992 song was a tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman. It’s also about questioning truth, history, and reality, and losing track of these things. It’s a suitable song to reflect what we seem to be seeing from Trump and his long, very public decline.

As always, I wish the best for you and yours on this day as well as every other day.

Cheers

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Not Much Change — Except

Sundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

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.

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