Tag: target

Saturday’s Theme Music – Trump’s Failing Magic

Ashland, Oregon — Saturday, March 7, 2026.

51 F outside, curdling high white clouds clout a diluted blue sky. Today’s high might be 68. The snowbank level is at 39% of average, a worrying portends as we speed toward summer.

In some quick hits, I saw that Target’s new CEO vows to bring customers back to their stores and restore growth and profits. His idea is more fashion, failing to miss the point that Target rolled back DEI and was a quick and early supporter of Trump’s agenda and inauguration.

I don’t know about others but I’m not going to walk into their stores to shop until they restore DEI. Target said it was just a coincident that they were terminating their DEI programs, claiming that they’d already decided to end it before Trump declared his war on DEI.

Some coincidence.

Other quick hits have me musing about the economy. The news is days old that the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. January and December’s numbers were revised downward. January had net growth but lost some of that, while December, which had shown job growth, now showed a contraction of 17,000 jobs.

It doesn’t help that 2025 was the worst year for jobs growth since 2020. Trump was in the White House back in 2020, too. KIn fact, the U.S. had negative jobs ‘growth’ for the first time since 2010. Interestingly, 2025’s job growth total was well below President Biden’s economy, which added over 2,000,000 new jobs in 2024.

Prices continue high and are expected to rise more with the Trump Iran war as gas and oil prices go up. With uncertainty about Trump’s goals and how long the war will last, fears of stockpiling gas and oil might push prices up, as has happened in the past.

This is all ‘older news’ but I bring it up because it shows the continual haphazard way that Trump functions and its deleterious impacts. Many of us who aren’t drinking Trump’s magic potions and don’t agree with Project 2025’s plans and intentions aren’t surprised. We saw the effects that tariffs would have, and we understand the history of mid-east wars on gas and oil prices. We also understood what would happen when Trump broke trade agreements, and nullified or withdraw from alliances.

We also knew that when he claimed to be the peace president and that there would be no new wars, war and military action was inevitable. Trump is a liar and wanted to use the military in his first term but was restrained by seasoned individuals. With those people gone, Trump rushes to war as a salve and distraction against falling approval ratings, a terrible economy, and the Epstein files.

Note, too, that Trump crows about this showing how strong we are. However, true military experts have noted that the United States is running through its inventory of high-tech precision weapons. These are expensive and take time to make. As we’re not on a ‘war footing’, manufacturing has not ramped up to support the current demand levels. That increases our nation’s vulnerability and reduces our safety and security.

In the last quick bit, note that the growing costs of these military costs won’t do anything to help our budget deficit. It’s growing; we’re now projected to pay more in interest than we pay for defense. Staggering.

And again, many of us outside of Trump and the MAGA world saw this coming. They didn’t because they live in a make-believe existence — to our detriment.

Today’s music selection by The Neurons is “Young Lust” by Pink Floyd. Released in 1979 from The Wall album, the song is residing in my morning mental music stream because I got the words wrong when I first heard it.

The song is about Pink, the hero of the album, having sex while he’s touring. The lyrics say, “I need a dirty woman.” Somehow, I heard that as, “I need a magic woman.” So the song came up today because I was contemplating how wrong Trump’s magical thinking is and thought, “He needs a magic woman,” with a laugh. My cheeky Neurons just ran with the mondegreen.

Hope you enjoy the video. Look how young the Floyds look. *smile*

I hope your day is joyous and safe, wherever you roam and whatever you do.

Cheers

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Thirstda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Spinal Tap should be proud.

Preppers are in a tizzy.

Several CEOs met with O2. That’s the One Orange. Frequently living in Florida, he allows time off from his busy golf schedule to sign executive orders. Many of those EOs are about tariffs. That’s what has the preppers wringing their hands. The CEOs run big box stores. They’re retailers. They were warning Trump that the tariffs would soon cause empty shelves, falling sales, and failing consumer confidence so Trump needed to back off tariffs. Which, despite declaring that he never would, Trump did. Because the CEOs are wealthy O2 backers. If not for them, and other millionaires and billionaires, Trump may not have made it back into the White House to bless the world with chaos. Now, this chaos was completely predictable. Trump said he was going to tariff every jot and tittle entering the United States. So it is tres amusing that these big box stores are worried.

The preppers were worried because, doom buying. They wanted to know what is not going to be on the shelves.

The preppers should talk to the truckers and the west coast ports. Because Trump isn’t worried about it.

Stuff enters the U.S. through those ports. Port authorities, freight companies, and dock workers say the ports are gonna be ghost haunts. Nothing is expected in. As critically, little is getting shipped out from the United States. Thanks to sharp price increases caused by the tariffs, orders for U.S. goods are being cancelled. These cancelled orders and empty ships are causing a productivity slow down. People are being laid off or terminated.

Gee, that worked out swell, didn’t it, MAGA?

Sanity was the first casualty of Trump’s personal economic war.

Stability was the second.

Third are workers, soybean farmers, and truckers. All are facing layoffs, or increased costs and decreased profits, or business shutdowns. Trump did the same thing in his first term. Enjoying that experience so much, he’s turned the craziness up to eleven.

Yes, that is a Spinal Tap reference. Spinal Tap used Trump logic to explain why their music is louder.

The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary’s director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out a selection whose control knobs all have a highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10. Believing that this numbering increases the highest volume of the amp, he explains, “It’s one louder, isn’t it?” When Marty asks why not simply make the 10 setting louder, Nigel hesitates before responding: “These go to eleven.”

h/t to Wikipedia.org

Fortunately for truck drivers, the UAW, soybean farmers, Boeing, and big business in general, they supported Trump’s re-election campaign. He told them he would raise tariffs. They supported him and his positions and voted him into office. They now have what they wanted.

Right?

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

My wife and I have noticed a striking trend: shelves in various kinds of stores are emptier and emptier.

We were talking about this earlier in the week when at a Rite Aid. Many shelves were empty, but it also seemed like the store had rearranged the shelves, providing much wider aisle space but reducing their shelf space. She and I discussed whether it was an extension of unresolved supply chain issues encountered during the pandemic, Rite Aid was in trouble, or if it was just this store.

But yesterday, we headed to a larger town, Medford, and visiting the mall and several other locations. The wider aisles and paucity of goods were encountered in Kohl’s, Macy’s, Target, Ulta, and several other stores.

It used to be that when we were in these places, so many goods were being provided that moving between racks and shelves was a distinct challenge. Now the script seems flipped.

I did some research. Empty shelves in Rite Aid stores in Bakersfield, CA, was attributed to Rite Aid’s bankruptcy.

The others? I couldn’t find reasoning provided but it wasn’t a deep dive. Perhaps it’s just my perception, or a local phenomenon, or the stores have simply changed policies.

I don’t know. Like many things in life, I’m just left wondering.

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