Saturday’s Theme Music — Traitors
Ashland, southern Oregon. Saturday, September 12, 2026.
Sunny today, but also cloudy. Today’s high is expected to strike the low seventies. It’s 66 F now.
Rain is expected after five PM. That has me on a schedule. I cleaned half our gutters on Tuesday, then went for beers with friends Wednesday, blew off finishing the gutters on Thursday, and went shopping with my wife on Friday. So, I must finish dragging the ladder around today. Not difficult or challenging. I just prefer reading and writing.
I’m preparing for the next spinoff of “The Walking Dead” franchise: Mitch Returns. I’m certain there will be little action, lot of pathetic platitudes about greatness, and applause. They’ll continue to ignore the double standard that Mitch, working for We the People, took several months off work, something working Americans can rarely do.
Many believe that we saw a lot of evidence that Trump is falling apart. Trump has been a slow train wreck for the last twenty years, but those MAGAzens are wrecks themselves, falling apart. They happily follow a leader falling apart.
JD Vance has been stepping up, making more speeches, trying to stir confidence in him, positioning himself to be Trump’s successor. JD Vance might as well be a zombie, given his uninspiring demeanor and lackluster speaking skills. He’s not a thinker or orator, but he’s a damn good liar, willing to make things up as needed to gain power.
Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is “traitor”. Olivia Rodrigo wrote and sings the song, which came out in 2021. Her song is about dating a guy who insists he wasn’t cheating on her but after they broke up, he was dating the ‘other woman’ within two weeks.
Sample Lyrics
And ain’t it funny? All the twisted games
All the questions you used to avoid
And that’s what we have with Trump, the GOP, and MAGAzens, for me: “All the questions you avoid.”
They’re traitors to principles, truth, and facts. Ain’t it funny how they ignore the money that Trump is making, and how he ‘jokes’ about cheating, just like he joked about other things, which he then turned around and did.
May your day be one that finds you refreshed and satisfied when you look back.
Cheers
Trump — Narrow and Backward
Let’s begin with your Trump Quote of the Day:
This was from the Dallas 2026 midterm conventions. Trump insisted that the convention be made about him. That way, the midterm will be about Trump, because Trump thinks he’s the greatest.
And those of him applauding and pledging with him must agree. Why else put your hand up and say those things — unless they’re like Trump, willing to say anything?
Trump made many claims during his speech. A few had a basis in truth. Like, he did increase oil and gas production.
But that’s the problem. Trump’s focus is so narrow and backward. While he increased oil and gas production, that resulted in:
- Record high profits for the energy companies
- Diesel gas prices going over $6 per gallon for the first time in US history
- The highest average price per gallon for gas on Labor Day in the US — ever
- Increased costs for food and construction due to high construction costs
- A record national debt that is growing faster than our nation
- And an affordability crisis for Americans
Now for our second Trump Quote of the Day:
Trump has insisted that we’re not at war (although Trump also claimed we are at war and that’s why we can’t afford things). He always calls the war with Iran a conflict.
But here he is, verifying, yes, he thinks of it as a war. He used the word ‘war’ repeatedly this week.
Because it is a war.
“I think the war’s going to end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer,” Trump said. “They’re desperate to affect the election, so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon. All they want is their nuclear weapon, and if they have a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble.”
Which means that he has illegally taken our nation into war over six months ago. The Constitution states only Congress can declare war.
I know Trump apologists – Trumpologists – are hurriedly giving him cover. “He was just talking,” they’ll probably say. “That doesn’t mean that we’re at war.”
That’s what Trumpologists always say about Trump. Trump was just talking, whether it’s about why he ordered the attacks on Iran, when the Iran war will end, declaring he’ll balance the budget, reduce prices, start no new wars, be a unifier and a peacemaker, release the Epstein files, cheat, or lower drug prices by over 100%.
He was just talking.
Trump cannot be trusted to keep his word. And his attitude and policies are too backward and outdated for what’s needed in this century.
Instead of facing this, Trump lies, bullies, cheats, and exaggerates.
I believe we need people in our leadership positions who are willing to face the challenges and rise to them, instead of trying to drag us backwards.
Otherwise, we’ll forever be going backwards as the world goes forward.
Vote Blue in 2026. End the war, stop the lies, and restore trust.
The Net’s Take on Trump This Week
Thank you to those in Ireland who took the time to make Trump a greeting for his pending visit.
h/t to Daily Kos.
Couldn’t put it better myself.
Over in sports, they’re talking about the Trump Curse. Two of the three teams Trump he mentioned as capable of winning the Superbowl, New England and the Los Angeles Rams, lost their season’s first game. It’s a long season, though. Trump will probably deny he ever said it.
Trump is scrambling like a quarterback under a fierce pass rush, trying to buy time, searching for ways to remain in power. First was the effort to block voting by mail, now thrown out by another court — or was it Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to power? The two actions were being done in parallel.
More recently came the $5K ‘Trump Dividend’, money Trump is willing to pay out of the nation’s funds if his party stays in power.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
On to the net.
And a little satire…
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.
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
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.
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
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
Michael Seidel, writer 