Tag: washington

Wednesday’s Theme Music — Shadows

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

We hit 101.5 at my house yesterday. That was outside. Inside, we stayed below 80. We’ve yet to run the A/C yet this year — knock wood — as the temperatures drop enough at night to cool the house and land down.

We’ll see if that holds today. Right now, it’s 83 F, on its way to 101 again.

The thing about yesterday’s weather is that it climbed slowly. At one mid-afternoon point, I thought, well, this isn’t bad. 91 then, I thought, maybe we won’t hit one hundred. Then I entered a store, came back out said to myself, holy shit, it’s hot as hell. What happened?

Today, though — hot early, hot fast.

Although there are more fires burning across the United States, we’re still fire-free — knock wood. The smoke isn’t bad, either. We’re fortunate in our neck of the woods; Oregon has topped 2,000,000 acres burned this year. Washington has several large fires going. Portland (OR) now has the worst air in the world, due to the wildfires.

Mom and my sister, Gina, continue their quiet war. Mom turned to her granddaughter, Gina’s daughter — Amy — as the go-between. Amy is rejecting the role. Although Mom helped raise Amy, Amy doesn’t deal well with the tension of being the go-between. Plus, Amy is in college, working on a Masters, and she works. So I help fill the gap.

As 2026 wears on, we’re seeing the shadows of Trump’s thinking, lying, fantasizing, playing out in real time now. It’s all catching up.

US has used ‘virtually all’ of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources say

  • Some of these are new weapon systems
  • There’s a bottleneck on refilling them
  • They’re expensive
  • Experts estimate that it will take 1 to 4 years to replenish the supplies
  • While Trump and his staff deny it, this is likely why Trump backed off on the Iran bombing campaigns

And what has the war achieved? Death and high prices. A more unstable Middle-East. And now, a more vulnerable US.

‘Delusional’: Donald Trump flunks reality with his ‘A+’ grade claim

Trump’s golden age reality check

Trump and his administration predicted 6% growth; it’s 1.5%

Trump’s solution to abuse in ICE facilities is pricey—and evil

Jeanine Pirro faces the choice many Trump officials confront at one point or another

Which reality do you choose?

“When Trump hits a brick wall now, as president, he just fashions an alternative reality. He can talk up tough financial data or a foreign policy hiccup as though he’s bigging up a tatty property in a real estate prospectus.“

Your Trump Quote(s) of the Day:

This is the same tired claim Trump made in January of this year:

Trump has made this claim dozens of times already. But reality does not back him up. As with many matters, Trump has a basic misunderstanding of how things work. If inflation cools, prices don’t ‘come down’; inflation is a measure of how much they’ll increase.

Trump’s claims about affordability and prices coming down, and being in a ‘golden age’ is just like his Iran War rhetoric. Trump has claimed victory again (April), again (June), and again (July). Yet the war goes on, in August. He keeps trying to distract us from the truth. Not happening, because we’re paying through the nose, and we’re feeling it.

Today’s music is “Shadowplay” by Joy Division. Seems right for today. I didn’t know the song when it came out, and discovered it when The Killers covered it for a movie. I like the original’s sonic approach to the gittar playin’. Good morning mental music stream occupant for these times as Trump’s shadow grows.

Sample Lyrics:

In the shadowplay, acting out your own death
Knowing no more
As the assassins all grouped in four lines
Dancing on the floor
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies
Made a move to connect
But I could only stare in disbelief
As the crowds all left

h/t to Genius.com

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Sunday’s Theme Music — Get You

Ashland, southern Oregon. Sunday, August 2, 2026.

Our weather is cool, 62 F right now. It’ll rise to the mid 80s, basically as it did yesterday. The air is clear with an AQI that says ‘it’s good’. Clouds muddle around the sky as if they’re waiting for a door to open somewhere.

I’m suspicious of it all.

Things are going well — here. Relatively. Everything is relative. We live on spectrums of changing needs, abilities, awareness, knowledge. It all seems more acute for me as I grow older.

I don’t feel particularly old now but then I look in the mirror. Like, who stole my hair? Will they be returning it?

My face just looks different. Not like my parents or grandparents. Now I’m wondering if someone stole into the house and replaced my face.

Then, why would they have taken my average white, upper middle age (ahem) face?

Answer is, of course: they’re going to use my face to commit a crime somewhere.

So now I wait to see what crime my face shows up as part of.

Watching Mom, friends, and Trump, I don’t look forward to getting much older. Mom, 91, is cranky on most days. Filled with pain, she tells me. I see a video of her in a chair, trying to exercise. She’s listing to her right as she jerks her right arm up. She doesn’t look happy or healthy, but she’s trying.

Trump worries me even more. His language, never a strong suit, has become much worse. There are reports of him crapping his pants or delivering some nasty farts. Where there’s this much smoke, I got to wonder about the truth behind it. If he’s crapping himself or emitting enough noxious foulness that others are gagging and turning away, those aren’t signs of good heatlh.

In photos, Trump’s face has that old person, mean, angry look going. He’s glaring at the world like he’s trying to hear what they’re saying and can’t.

Worse, though, are those late night texts — from Mom and Trump.

Mom reached out at 2 AM to ask me if we’re safe from the fires. She pinged me again a few minutes later to ask, “Why don’t you answer?”

I don’t see these texts until I get up a few hours later. Then reply, sorry, missed your texts, was asleep, we’re fine. And I thank her for her concerns.

My sister later reports that Mom texted her in the middle of the night, asking what did Gina do with all the clothes Mom left behind in her house.

I worry, why is Mom up in the middle of the night texting?

Trump worries me in the same way. He spends a lot of nocturnal hours texting. Then he’s shown ready to fall asleep in his chair at meetings during the day.

Trump’s texts are worse than Mom’s texts. Mom shows a belated handle on what’s going on and often shows concern for others.

Trump texted an AI generated vision of himself as Elvis Presley. What an absolutely strange thing to do, I think as I see this. Who in their right mind pretends to be someone else like that?

Let’s pause to think about it: Trump is posting an image of himself as a popular pop culture star. One who died in 1977, almost fifty years ago. What is going on in that troubled head that he entertains these thoughts?

I then think of Trump’s MAGAts. They say that he speaks for them.

Are they out there generating AI images of themselves as others? Are some of them projecting themselves as young Johnny Cash or dead young athletes and actors?

As an aside to that, I admit that I admire the new Iran War Participation Award someone created for Trump. It has the right mix of bitter humor and deadly insights.

I received other texts and messages from people worrying about us and the fires. As the fires grow in the Pacific Northwest and more are evacuated, the news shifts toward the top of the news cycles.

We’re fine, I reply to all, knock on wood. No, it’s been a remarkably ‘cooler’ summer, with us rarely challenging 100 F. Wildfire threats have been far away. The smoke has only been mild and hasn’t lasted too long — knock on wood. Hope to hell I’m not jinxing us by mentioning it.

No, our thing remains the drought. Winter supplies are down to the low 40s. We’re conserving. Vegetation is browning, which would be nice if these were pie crusts baking in the oven instead of grassy fields and mountain meadows.

Between nature’s growing extreme trends and aging, there’s a sense that something is going to get you. Trump, acting crazy, arming ICE and mobilizing them in cities, fostering more war, using violence as a mallet to try to fix things, only makes that feel worse. Especially as his main concerns are promoting himself as a young Elvis Presley, affixing his name to buildings, and destroying our heritage and cultural norms.

No surprise then, with The Neurons’ music choice for the morning mental music stream. “One Way or Another” is a 1979 Blondie song. Deborah Harry was being stalked but wrote the song with some humor injected into it.

Sample Lyrics:

One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya

One way or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week, I’m gonna meet ya
I’m gonna meet ya, I’ll meet ya

Catchy. Easy to sing along with, good hard beat with a fast tempo made it a popular and memorable song. Makes perfect sense for today, with the threats being raised by nature and Trump.

Hope your day is threatfree, and that you enjoy carefree moments of pleasure and happiness with people you’re fond of, in places which you enjoy.

Cheers

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Sundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Trump’s Regime began 2026 by attacking Venezuela and forcibly removing President Nicolas Maduro to bring him to the United States to stand trial.

Three big concerns rise in my thinking regarding this travesty.

  1. Trump manipulated news and events to create a crisis with Venezuela by attacking boats without evidence. He killed people without due process to provide political cover for attacking another nation.
  2. Calling the use of the military ‘law enforcement’ to attack another nation and abduct their president without consulting Congress are actions which are manifestly illegal.
  3. That Trump did this to bring someone to trial for drug trafficking after pardoning someone convicted of doing the same, Juan Orlando Hernández — the former Honduran president — .

Many other concerns arise in the wake of Trump’s military action, but I’m limiting my reflections for now. What he’s done angers me. Republicans apparently support this, without evidence, dismaying me and my belief in our checks and balances system.

The GOP likes to label themselves as the ‘law-and-order’, so they support Trump’s supposed arrest of this dictator. Yet, recent history paints the GOP as anything but law and order. One prominent example is the events of January 6, 2021.

Trump and other Republicans have called referred to January 6 protestors as peaceful or patriots. During that protest, government buildings were damaged, the peaceful protestors attacked Capitol Police officers, and the protestors threatened lawmakers and disrupted the process to certify the election results, all to keep Trump in office after he’d lost the 2020 elections.

So I have a jaundiced view of the GOP’s interpretation of law or order. Trump’s attack on Venezuela further undermines the GOP’s law and order stance. Trump is attempting to justify his attack on another nation as citing stories from Colorado about gang activity. Other than those gangs being Venezuelans, his claims aren’t germane. They’re political spin to give cover for what he did. He’s trying to conflate scary ideas about gang violence with international drug trafficking. The two matters are not legally related.

Right wing blogs are also working hard to give Trump cover. First they denigrate ‘the left’s’ reactions, predicting that people who aren’t right-wing or conservatives will begin declaring the Venezuelan ‘dictator’ is a saint. It’s amusing that they declare President Maduro to be a dictator.

The rising hypocrisy appalls me. People declaring Maduro to be a dictator that needed to be remove cite that he’s blocked, weakened, or bypassed legislation. Under Maduro’s rule, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice has persecuted and imprisoned political opposition. People argue, this damages a key pillar of democracy — judicial independence.

Critics further claim, Maduro harassed and threatened the press and freedom of expression. Crackdowns with security forces were ordered against protestors. Maduro’s police force often detained demonstrators.

Finally, the checks and balances provided by the government’s structure has been diluted as power has been consolidated in the executive branch.

Let’s contrast those actions with Trump’s 2025 actions. Trump threatened to revoke networks’ licenses because they were broadcasting news unfavorable to Trump. With pressure from Trump, comedian Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his role as a late-night host because Kimmel’s comments offended Trump.

Trump sued or threatened to sue media outlets, including the BBC; New York Times; CBS, Paramount, and Sixty Minutes; the Washington Post; ABC News; and CNN. There’s been no mirror condemnation by those critics of President Maduro over Trump’s actions.

Trump deployed ICE and National Guard units against protestors in Los Angeles, Portland (OR), Chicago, and Washington D.C., among others. Protestors have been detained.

Trump also had immigrants arrested and departed by his declaration they’re illegal without judicial overview. Some early cases involving these cases found his administration caught lying to the courts and ignoring court orders. Please explain to me how this doesn’t weaken the judicial oversight needed for a strong democracy.

Finally, Trump pushed executive actions to bypass congressional or judicial oversight (e.g., unilateral actions around ICE, immigration, media lawsuits). He ordered the DOJ and federal agencies to launch investigations into James Comey and Letitia James that were clearly political. Those cases were dismissed.

If you think about the right-wing’s complaints about Maduro, it’s hard to understand why they like and support Trump.

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Sundaz Theme Music

Ah, Sunda. December 14, 2025. Was 29 F and sunny, with clouds. That was an hour ago. Now it’s 30 with dense fog. High of 50 something forecasted. We never reach those forecasted highs these days. At least, not in the last seven days. I know, it’s a small sample size.

The weather disparity reflects a greater wonder, how is what Trump has done affect our systems and abilities? How long will it take for that delta to become fully revealed. Conversely, does that delta even exist, or is this a product of my life in a news bubble? And if the bubble exists, how long will it take for us to address and fix it? Some will probably hastily explain, oh, AI can fix it all. But AI comes with its own problems and introduces more problems. So it goes, as it has since technology has begun advancing and displacing people and changing experiences and expectations.

It’s kicked off between Mom and sis again. Sis complains that Mom yells at her and complains all the time. So sis yells back. Mom complains that sis is always yelling at her. Meanwhile, my youngest sister won’t talk to Mom. Says Mom is always yelling at her and is tired of it. Oldest sister has been completely disengaged, and sister number three has, in sis’s words, checked out. All this dysfunction is deeply rooted in family history. It’s a sad culmination of a lot of ongoing anger and resentment. Of course, I checked out decades ago, after one of Mom’s husbands threatened me. Saw the future and abandoned everyone. I’m not proud of it but I was a child. I admit, it left me damaged, too. We’re all damaged.

Of course, it comes down to one of those, “What are you going to do?”, situations. We’ve seen this coming for years. Tried to plan to prevent it. Living with Frank, and with Frank helping her, Mom resisted and refused to cooperate. So we held our breath and went on. Now the worse that we feared is happening. I, of course, feel helpless. Most of my sisters seem angry. They have heavier and deeper damage from life with Mom.

Worse of all is how often this sort of situation and worse is replayed around the nation, around the world. We advance, and yet we’re stuck. We’re smart, and we’re stupid. We can see ahead but can do nothing.

All of this extends well beyond families, of course. We see the same kind of helplessness in business, education, the environment, animal and human rights, agriculture. Just adds to the tension and frustration for us that we see but can’t act.

Been reading of all the flood damage up in Washington and northwestern Oregon. The rain amounts and river levels hit historic highs. Messy and disastrous. Stories of dramatic rescues are interspersed with stories, videos and photos of mudslides, houses floating in rivers, huge waves battering the coast, bridges and roads collapsing. State of emergency declared in Washington. I’m surprised that Trump and FEMA approved requested emergency assistance. Let’s see if they deliver. Meanwhile, hope everyone affected can find safe places to endure and recover.

I wonder what fresh heaping will come with the next tomorrow. That triggers The Neurons. They play “Tomorrow Comes Today” by Gorillaz for me. I watch quite a bit of Brit and Irish TV, especially dramas, SF, and police procedurals, and believe I picked up the song from one of those. I often pursuing hearing more of a song when I hear parts of it on a television show or movie.

Coffee has come to rescue me for the moment. Hope peace and grace finds us all and gives us some respite from whatever is stymying and hurting us. Here we, into another day. Cheers

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No Kings Reminder

Another No Kings series of rallys and protests are planned for October 18, 2025. Almost 2,500 such gatherings are planned.

They’re not being organized by antifa. They are antifa in nature because the Trump Regime is Profa. If you can, participate. Here are some news pieces from different cities and areas with more information.

Saturday, October 18, Millions Across Our Nation Will Stand Up to Say “NO KINGS!”

‘No Kings II’ rallies slated for Saturday across Rogue Valley

No Kings Day Protest – October 18, 2025 Reclaiming Democracy, Rejecting Authoritarianism

Jackson joins 100 ‘No Kings’ protests happening around Michigan

‘No Kings’ protests planned across rural southwest Missouri Saturday

Phoenix ‘No Kings’ protest: When, where, what to know

No Kings rally coming to Ashland’s Corner Park on Oct. 18

Another ‘No Kings’ Protest Planned In Newark

What to know about upcoming ‘No Kings’ protests

More ‘No Kings’ anti-Trump protests planned across California. See when and where

The “No Kings” Oct. 18 Protests: Locations, How To Attend, & More Info

Why are people protesting in Binghamton on Oct. 18? What to know about ‘No Kings’ rally

Richland County among 2,500 sites nationwide taking part in Oct. 18 No Kings protest

Another ‘No Kings’ Protest Planned In Bloomfield (What To Know)

‘No Kings’ Protests Planned This Weekend Across GA: What To Know

CT towns plan ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump administration

Second ‘No Kings Rally’ scheduled for Charleston

What to know about ‘No Kings’ rallies planned around Greater Akron on Saturday

Hornell Democrats holding ‘No Kings’ rally Oct. 18. Other events in Wellsville, Livingston

Oshkosh to host second No Kings rally Oct. 18. The first one drew around 1,500 people.

Manitowoc anti-Trump No Kings rally set for Oct. 18 at Washington Park

No Kings rallies: What to know about anti-Trump protests happening in the Wilmington area

‘Small town protest capital’ Salina preps for next No Kings rally

Denver No Kings Protest: When, Where, What to Know

‘No Kings’ Rally To Return To Morristown

Sheboygan ‘No Kings’ anti-Trump protest is set for Oct. 18 at Peace Park

Millions Expected to Attend ‘No Kings’ Protest on Oct. 18.



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