Humor, facts, truth, history, reminders…and Melania.
History
The Art of the Deal
Pretty bad people…
Behold, TACO’s Arch
Ah, memories…
USA…not first for Trump…
The Net’s Take: This Week with Trump
Friday’s Theme Music – The Circus
Ashland, Oregon — Friday, April 10, 2026.
56 F right now, 62 is our projected high on a day when rain clouds have moved in and await their cue.
Had a big-ass thunderstorm here yesterday. Began with a heavy rain. Not monsoon level — I’ve experienced them in Southeast Asia — but heavier, harder, more intense than we typically experience. Thunder rolled in.
I went out on the porches to check the gutters. There are two places where the water was splashing out. They’re the usual suspects and need cleaned out again.
While I was out there, I saw lightning to the north. As I thought, lightning, boom, thunder cracked through the valley, violent and loud. That storm was right on top of us. We experienced several more sharp flashes of lightning and deep thunder and then it moved on.
I checked on Papi. My poor orange boi was retired to the master closet. No windows there. It’s his standard safe haven.
Stalemate with Mom continues. Won’t sell her house and asks my sister when the house is being put up for sale. Insists that she can live alone, and rejects anyone telling her otherwise. Doesn’t have a plan except to get out of the assisted living place. Which was basically her plan when she lived with my sister. It’s so frustrating.
Melania Trump stormed onto the national stage to insist that she doesn’t have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, and put in a demand about helping the victims.
Meanwhile, inflation was up in March to the highest level in two years, 3.3%. Gasoline prices in the US climbed over 21%. It all can all be traced to Trump’s war on Iran.
Trump responded by releasing a graphic, violent, racist video on ‘Truth Social’ and blaming President Biden.
Who is surprised by any of this? This is par for Trump, creating a distraction from bad news, especially inflation and Epstein, and blaming others. Trump has turned our lives into a three-ring circus.
Today’s song is “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes. This came about when I was doing something and my dream surged back to me. I said, “Hold on,” and spent a moment collecting and assembling dream pieces.
But The Neurons, being who they are, kicked “Hold On” into the morning mental music stream. It’s a solid choice. I heard it I think the year it came out. But when I first heard it on the radio, they never told the song’s title or performer. So I listened, memorizing lines, then went back in and did a net search. Glad I did.
It’s also a song I don’t ever hear being played on the radio these days. That’s a shame.
Hope you and yours are doing well, and peace and grace carry you through whatever the circus of life brings to town.
Cheers
Friday’s Theme Music – Tariffs & Travel
Ashland, Oregon — Friday, April 3, 20226.
33 F when I got up but sunshine was clearing the mountains and trees, lighting up cloudless blue sky. Today’s high will be 71.
With no news from home about Mom, I turned to the net for updates on the world. The US economy added 178k jobs in March. It surprised economists, and it surprised me. Economists warned that the war in Iran could cause problems, because it’s driving up costs throughout the supply chain.
Higher gas prices in the US will also mean less discretionary funding, which could be especially troubling as the US heads into May and the first of the big US travel holidays. Air travel could be harder as airlines such as United cut back flights to deal with increased fuel costs.
The economic is taking another hit from a sharp rise in fertilizer prices, affecting farmers which were already struggling with tariffs, broken trade agreements, and weather issues. Those challenges could result in lower yields and higher food prices at the store.
Not satisfied with high gas, diesel, and oil prices, Donald Trump declared tariffs on prescriptions drugs. Not immediately effective, they come with an opportunity for companies to agree to build facilities in the US to avoid the tariffs.
Today’s song comes from Papi and I stepping out onto the back patio. The gingerboy was already out there, grooming and sunning. His satisfied demeanor invited me to join him. I was still thinking about my dreams at that point. As I lifted my face up to the sun, the opening lyrics of “Kashmir” entered the morning mental music stream: “Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face.”
Here’s to you and a hope that peace and grace find and carries you, today and every day.
Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music – Why
Ashland, Oregon — Wednesday, April 1, 2026.
Rainy and 46, sunshine washes our house’s eastern side. Today’s high will be in the mid 50s and the low will drop to 32-35 F.
Mom and sis had a ‘good outing’ yesterday although in retrospect, my sister suspected Mom was trying to manipulate her. After the pharmacy run and Urgent care, Mom asked sis if they could drive by the house. Gina agreed but warned that they weren’t going in. Conversation ensued about how livable the house was but Gina told Mom that she didn’t think Mom could live there alone. Mom remarked that she needed some short-sleeved summer tops. Gina brushed it off but later thought that Mom was trying to get them into the house. We’re sure that if Mom had gotten in there, she would have refused to leave.
UTI was confirmed for Mom, along with blood in her urine. No word on further tests, yet.
I read good news yesterday on Diane Ravitch’s blog. A Federal judge ordered work on the Trump ballroom stopped. The judge questioned whether Trump had the authority to make the changes he was doing. Her second piece of reported good news from last week in that post, “A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Trump’s executive order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment.”
Victories for We the People. We know that these decisions will be appealed to a higher court.
Over in the Supreme Court, we’re waiting to see if Trump’s executive order dicing up birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment is judged legal. Trump attended the proceedings for a bit but left. I’m surprised he stayed awake.
Trump is giving a speech today about the Trump Iran War and about the US leaving NATO. He continues to send my WTF meter spinning with his consistent inconsistency. I suspect this is another ruse to distract from the Epstein files. The war is unpopular, though, and Trump’s approval ratings are showing it.
I also appreciated Paul Krugman’s post about the psychology of military incompetence and Pete Hegseth. I gleefully agree with Krugman: Hegseth is in over his head. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for the safety of our nation or the lives of our people swearing to defend it.
I had a swarm of microdreams last night. When I sat and scribbled what I remembered, The Neurons played “I Got You” in the morning mental music stream. The Split Enz song was a 1980 hit. Reminds me a bit of the Cars. I’m not sure how it related to my thinking, though.
I hope the day goes well for you, no matter what you face or what the news brings.
Cheers
Trump’s Vision: Unhinged, Untethered
I read the NYTimes review of the Trump Ballroom addition to the White House, the addition where Trump tore down the Easat Wing without public approval.
The Times article cited a grand staircase that leads to no entry. Pillars that block the view from inside the ballroom. A building that is too tall and too large for its planned purpose. It was also a building put up without previous engineering and architectural reviews.
A judge ordered construction stopped so reviews could be conducted. Trump responded to a hand-picked panel that unanimously grunted, “Approved” without thinking about any of the 19,000 objections raised.
In many ways, the ballroom is perfectly symbolic of Trump’s decisions.
- Dismissing medical science, Trump appointed anti-vax people to important positions. With more people encouraged to dismiss childhood vaccinations, measles outbreaks in 2025 climbed to the highest levels seen in decades. 2026 is expected to surpass that mark.
- Ignoring economic and political history, Trump instituted ’emergency’ tariffs which drove up costs and prices, and which now must be paid back.
- He ignored common sense, Congressional approvals, and due process before attacking boats and killing their crews.
- Didn’t consult with anyone before recklessly kidnapping President Maduro of Venezuela.
- Bombed Iran’s nuclear program in June of 2025 and declared it obliterated without consulting anyone.
- Then attacked Iran in February of 2026 with a massive bombing campaign because Trump feared Iran’s nuclear missile capability.
- By attacking Iran, Trump drove up gas, oil, and diesel fuel prices. Diesel prices will drive up farming and transportation costs, prompting inflation and higher food prices, just as planting season begins.
All these are like his ballroom: with steps that go nowhere, a confused design that even now, he’s trying to change.
The problem with it all is Trump. He has a maligned vision of what peace, war, unity, and prosperity means, and it’s an unhinged, untethered vision.
The one clear thing we know about Trump from his actions is that he and Jeffrey Epstein were good friends and he’s scared of having details about his Epstein friendship revealed. To that end, he’ll do anything to hide the truth.
Hiding from the truth is what always drives Trump’s unhinged, untethered vision, whether it’s how badly he lost in 2020 or how his popularity is tanking in 2026.
Get ready for more.
Saturday’s Theme Music – No Kings!
Ashland, Oregon – Saturday, March 28, 2026.
I hope you have your protesting clothes on and are ready to step out to join the millions telling Trump and the world what we think of Trump.
It’s beautiful protesting weather here today, 46 F but expected to climb into the low to mid-seventies with sunshine and blue skies.
I read about the TACO Index today. It’s a beautiful attempt to understand and track what Trump is doing to the financial markets. Here’s an explanation from the France 24 article to explain it:
‘The “TACO” index uses four factors to measure negative impacts and evaluate the probability that Trump will change his opinion.
‘These are: one-year inflation expectations, changes in Trump’s approval ratings in the month prior, the performance of the S&P 500 stock market index (which tracks stocks from the 500 leading Wall Street companies) and the evolution of US Treasury yields (interest rates that the government pays to borrow money).
‘“These are factors that stock market analysts were already examining separately, so it makes sense to combine them into a single index to assess the level of political and economic pain that Donald Trump is likely to be able to withstand,” says Alexandre Baradez, an analyst for the broker IG France.’
It’s funny but sad. Funny, because it acknowledges Trump’s wrecking ball impact on the world. Sad that we’ve reached a stage after 250 years in existence that the United States has put such a disastrous human in charge.
It is especially sad that voters chose to do this because Trump a much more intelligent, organized, and capable person, Kamala Harris. Voters didn’t vote for her because she’s a woman, a person of color, or from California. They didn’t vote for her because they wanted ‘change’. They didn’t vote for her because IMMIGRANTS! They didn’t vote for her because they didn’t think her well-documented plans and policies were better than Trump’s promises and mocking.
Now we are at war in Iran, our allies are distancing themselves from us, and prices are on the rise. Good thinking, Trump voters.
Early figures estimated Trump’s Iran War is costing one to two billion dollars a day. It has no end in sight and our national debt is ballooning.
The Roberts Court partially rejected Trump’s tariffs. His administration has been ordered to pay refunds. That in itself is a monumental task, costing us yet more millions.
Just to ice the cake on the waste and recklessness of Trump, the United States will pay two billion dollars to stop sustainable energy projects.
Mom is pretty quiet this morning, as our my sisters. She told one sister last week that she is mean and Mom was through with her; today, Mom told that sister to have her husband pick Mom up at the assisted living facility to take her home.
Had some terrific, humorous dreams last night. Yet, I ended up with Golden Earring playing “Twilight Zone” in my morning mental music stream. The song is about consequences and results. I can only guess that The Neurons are playing this song in my head today because of the joint streams of Mom and Trump.
Here we go. Have a pleasant Saturday of peace, grace, and political engagement.
Cheers
The Trends
Interesting trends are taking over the United States.
Manufacturing and production plants are shutting down or gone. It varies by region and industry.
The United States had about 25,000 malls in the 1980s. We’re down to about 1200. Many rural malls have shut down. Stores like Aldi and Dollar General or Dollar Store have replaced them. Some are being successfully repurposed by turning stores into churches. Some areas turn to casinos to counter the loss of malls and manufacturing.
Rural movie theaters are closing, as are rural hospitals, which is creating healthcare deserts.
These are anchor industries. As plants, malls, movie theaters, and hospitals close, jobs are lost, along with local revenue streams. Income drops; spending drops. Local restaurants and service industries suffer. That ripples into the local area’s ability to maintain public buildings, schools, and infrastructure. As these effects are felt, more people move away. People lack incentives to move there. The population shrinks.
With fewer students, rural public schools close. Small community colleges and universities feel it as enrollment drops. Falling enrollments force them to cut programs and raise tuition to fill the gaps, but factors have changed, and the loop of falling tuition and less classes grow.
Railroads, which used to be a rural lifeline, have cut way back in the United States. Small-town passenger train service is mostly gone.
Meanwhile, Data and AI Centers are being built fast. They’re being built in rural areas where there used to be mining or manufacturing. While they’ll provide temporary economic stabilization and add some revenue from construction, these places don’t typically employ many people. Automation takes care of many service needs. Such centers also don’t produce products that can be taken to a store and sold.
I was thinking about all of this because those kinds of economic and service declines in rural areas were a meaningful part of the political environment that helped Donald Trump gain support. He frames his attacks on ‘narco-terrorists’ as a war on crime and drugs. The war in Iran is part of his America First agenda. They build on the same themes of strength, distrust of elites, and national priority that resonated politically in earlier elections.
All those rural trends have been causing a youth drain. Educated young citizens are moving out of rural areas. Those left behind tend to be older and less educated and are more likely to be Trump supporters. For me, then, what Trump is now doing will do little to ameliorate the polarization affecting United States politics.
Long-term rural revitalization isn’t just about economics or infrastructure. It’s deeply tied to political will, governance, and coalition-building. Without bipartisan or broadly supported political action, even the best economic initiatives struggle to take hold.
Trump’s style, though, is exactly the opposite; he goes it alone instead of building coalitions, demonizing political opponents. At the end of the term, we’re likely to see many of the same problems affecting rural areas that we now see. The polarization will remain, but there will be less voters in the rural areas to support people like Trump.
They may have won some short-term victories by putting Trump in office, but the problems remain.
A war in Iran does nothing to help.
Friday’s Theme Music — Nobody Knows
Ashland, Oregon — Friday, March 20, 2026.
Spring has officially sprung north of the equator. It’s 56 F in Ashland with high, thin white clouds coalescing in our blue sky. 72 will the high.
Just returned from a CT scan with iodine contrast. Had blood and clots in my urine last week. Urinalysis earlier this week showed cloudy urine with high levels of blood, along with particulates associated with kidney stones. Not a surprising. I passed a kidney stone on my left side in 2021. One was found in my right side, but at 15mm, it was too large to pass. That one seems to be getting cranky, agitating the kidney around it.
Texts are arrived talking about Mom moving and contacting an attorney. Details are sketchy. My app seems to have missed several texts. A new phone is being ordered. This one is now almost ten years old.
The Trump partial government continues to cause travel congestion due to long TSA lines.
Gas and oil prices continue to rise due to Trump’s war on Iran as Trump moves more troops into the middle east. Trump’s war is also producing an increase in mortgage rates, which have reached their highest level in 2026. 2025 home sales were already the weakest in three decades.
Trump’s tariffs continue to drive up food and housing prices. Have you seen the recent price of coffee?
The national debt is going up fast, thanks to Trump’s fraud and waste.
And more rural hospitals are closing, especially in Trump strongholds in the Midwest and South, accelerating a rural hospital crisis.
— Just in from Mom’s assisted living place, Mom has put in a notice to vacate by April 17th and contacted a lawyer about elder abuse.
With these topics and uncertainty inhabiting my thinking, The Neurons are assisting by playing “What Happens Now” by Duran Duran.
Hope your change of seasons bring the best to you. Whether you’re going into spring or fall, may peace and grace find you.
Cheers
Thursday’s Theme Music
Ashland, Oregon — Thursday, March 19, 2026.
80 degrees F and sunny, it’s just after 3 PM. We’ve just returned from community theater where we had brunch and watched a play called “Sherwood”.
I’ve not read much news today as my routines became overcome by events, making this a short post.
Basically, my feelings remain that the United States and its situation is worsening. Trump’s situation is also worsening. The Iran War and the middle east are worsening. All are basically going down.
Hearing that thinking, The Neurons fired up Jeff Beck from 1972 in the morning mental music stream. This is “Going Down”.
May your life and times go up to better places and a better future.
Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music — What we don’t know
Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, March 17, 2026.
It’s 39 F outside. Wisps of white clouds are spread around the blue sky like clumps of pet fur. We’re expecting to visit the upper seventies today, lower by a few degrees which was originally forecast. Still, it’s good weather, more easily endured than the snowstorm striking parts of the U.S.
Snow out here would be welcomed. We’re in a snow drought. We’re below 50% of what’s ‘average’. This unseasonable warm weather will melt the snow faster, causing us even more problems this summer because we depend on snow melting throughout the year to keep our water levels up.
My wife and I were reminded yesterday that we’re not Boomers but Joneses. Generation Jones were born between 1954 and 1965, and that covers us. My wife rejected it before and rejected again, insisting, “We’re not like the Joneses.”
I embrace it, though. I like not being a boomer and being able to tell that to others. Makes me smile and laugh.
Last night, I read Heather Cox Richardson’s March 16, 2026 newsletter. In it, she recounted some of the battles and actions associated with the American Revolutionary War which ended 250 years ago.
I found it a good reminder of the period. I reject many of Trump policies as un-American and think that he’s ignoring the Constitution and multiple laws while breaking political norms.
The colonists of the 1770s were not united, as Ms Richardson points out. But enough were fed up with being ruled by a king that they rebelled.
Trump, aided by the GOP, supported by MAGA, is ruling like he’s a king, ignoring the will of Congress and the needs of the people. Just as it was said 250 years ago, “No kings.” Not then, and not now.
Yet, we’re as much divided now as we were during the War for Independence and the American Civil War. At least some of us are. I read an article in which Kimmel called Trump a bonehead. This comment was left about it:
“Obviously the president is not going to tell a reporter what his plans are just to have them give the enemy (people on the left like Kimmel) the plan. Trump has you liberals so screwed up in the head that you convulse at every word he says. Liberal is now synonymous with weak brained fools.”
From my POV, it is the right wing and conservatives that has Trump so screwed up in the head. They idolize everything he says, including the inane, lies, and bluster.
Trump has those MAGAts so messed up that they can’t understand the need for clearly stated goals and exit strategies. This was the same failing in multiple earlier wars, which using more reductivism, explains to me that Trump has cratered right-wingers’ abilities to learn or remember history.
They forget that Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Trump said he would release the Epstein files. After he didn’t, he tried to convince them it was a hoax by the Democrats.
Trump has the MAGAs so messed up, they forget that he said he would lower food prices on day one and end the Ukraine war on day one. He’s done neither.
It’s my niece’s birthday, so happy birthday to her! She’s a wonderful adult, with three growing sons, including a teen. Nothing is planned to celebrate her birthday, per her preferences, but I wish her a wonderful life.
Today’s music is “Me and Mrs. Jones”. This is a 1972 hit performed by Billy Paul. It’s been used in movies, recorded by others, and provides a good base for parody. The Neurons raised it in the morning mental music stream because of the whole Generation Jones thing, of course. *smile*
May your day be filled with peace, love, and understanding — cuz, what’s wrong with that?
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 