Category: Current Events

Fame and Fortune

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So yesterday I finally got my book onto Kindle Unlimited.  Huzzah!!!

An then I waited.  And I waited.  And I waited.  A day later the page counter for KENP stood at zero.  This seemed unpromising.  So, I closed down the laptop and did something else.

I took a juvenile milk snake that I found hiding under the famous copper sheet and shot a photo shoot of his best profile.  And then we had lunch and worked on some other projects.  I put an air conditioning unit in one of the windows and I started weeding the raspberry patch and I helped clean some kind of ooze that had accumulated on the new fish pond.

And when I checked the KENP after all that, the counter was at one!  Now that’s not one book that’s one page.  So, if a book pays me forty cents what does a page earn me?  Well, you can do the math.  If the book is about two hundred and fifty-two pages long then that page is worth 0.15873 cents in cold hard cash.  If Jeff Bezos took a penny and a pair of tin snips (zinc snips?) and did some rudimentary trigonometric calculations he could probably nip off an arc from the edge of the coin that would somewhat represent this hefty sum.  So, I shut down the laptop again and began to recalibrate my plans to purchase that summer home on Martha’s Vineyard.

I began reading some more of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”  You know this PKD is a very talented writer but I don’t think he spent a lot of his life smiling.  In fact, I think WWIII was probably one of the lighter topics he thought about.  He’s got the extinction of most animal species, widespread human chromosomal damage, widespread human brain damage and bizarre religious tendencies as the window dressing of his highly depressed main characters.  After a little of this I decided to take a break.  Apparently, this wasn’t going to be Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah.  It’s going to be a lot less chirpy.  So, I got in touch with the First Selectman and arranged a special meeting to discuss my succession plan as his special assistant in charge of burying the bodies.  Unfortunately, the committee was unable to locate anyone stupid enough to agree to the position.  I came home a few hours later and checked my KENP counter.  It was seventeen pages.  That’s 2.6984 cents.  Well!  Now we’re getting somewhere.  At this rate I’ll be able to afford my favorite Dunkin Donuts donut (an old fashioned) by Fall.

And I think my addition to the Kindle Unlimited rolls has netted me my first troll.  He was pretending to be a fairly successful non-fiction author but was unaware that he wasn’t supposed to be a fiction author so his answers didn’t track with that.  I brought this to his attention and he started making incoherent sentences.  Well, what can you do?  Now that I’m on the road to fame and fortune everyone wants a piece of me.  J K Rowlings eat your heart out.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 19MAY2026 – Politics

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Hard to call for 2026. Right now the house is held by 5 republicans plus an independent who caucuses with them. with the California redistrict vs Florida and the lame one seat win in Louisiana (which could have been 2) AND Indiana going AWOL I think it’s going to be very tight, likely slightly Democrat (5-10 seats). The big question on the Senate side is Platner vs Collins. Collins is not the best candidate from a conservative view, But probably better for us than Platner most days. Platner is such a fricking mess and there’s likely far more dirt that Collins can use that the elderly and upstate folks probably will swamp Portland and Southern Maine. The thing that would be good to do is close out Iran but resolving that such that things recover before 11/3 will take some really lucky breaks that I just don’t see happening. We HAVE to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon they make North Korea look like a calm reasonable opponent.
One race to watch is the LA mayor. If LA unblues enough to elect Pratt all then things get really odd.

2028 is a totally different situation. Likely, the major issue (Iran) will be resolved at some level. That unblocks large parts of the economy. Although the last half of the Trump administration probably gets stalled due to a blue house (and tied or slightly blue senate) they really cant do much as they haven’t got a veto proof majority and are unlikely to get one. So we get 2 years of sitzkrieg unless a miracle occurs.
Problem is the Democrats have no one that can easily steal states from the electoral coalition that Trump used. Newsome is an idiot and anathema to middle America, AOC is worse. Spanberger might have been an option but her run at the gerrymandering and the gun nonsense makes it clear she is just a traditional far left Liberal cosplaying as middie of the road. Buttigieg? Please don’t make me laugh. Shapiro from PA? If they would take him he MIGHT have a chance. Except he is never getting by the primaries because of the massive antisemitism of the democrat far left base. Kamala? She couldn’t even hardly touch Trump who had massive negatives in her base. The blue Gerontacracy that was boosted by Obama backstabbing any up and coming Pols means their bench is essentially all folks politically based in deep blue one party states. They have no clue where the middle is and any attempt to go there will get you slammed in the primaries. And because these are such lame candidates they will have basically no coattails. I’d expect things in 2028 to swing back to a more 2024 like situation with likely small Republican margins. And that takes us to 2030 where the big prize is fixing the ersatz 2020 census. That census is going to be absolutely critical, not controlling it will mean you’re headed to the edges for up to 10 years. It will already slame the blue states even if the questionable practices of 2020 are not removed. If they are removed the house might lean 20+ seats red in the 2032 elections.

The one big worry is we have 2 fairly old Supreme Court members who are the bulwarks of originalist interpretation (Thomas at 77 and Alito at 76). Should we lose them and the Senate is blue or evenly divided replacing them with other than some squishball moderate gets REAL hard. Add Roberts at 71 who although not SUPER dependable tends more to the originalist side unless he is trying to curry favor or look wise.

After 2028

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So, everybody wants to know if all the redistricting for the race-based districts that is going on down south will offset the midterm disadvantage for the Republicans.  My guess is it will absorb the bulk of the blowout and the Democrats will take the House by a handful of seats.  Right now, they’re talking about the Senate being a toss-up.  If I were to guess I’ll say it’ll be a fifty-fifty Senate with Vance as the tie breaker and thus keeping the Senate for the Republicans.  So that deadlock means nothing substantive will be legislated for Trump’s last two years.  And that’s okay.  Executive orders will be the name of the game.

But what happens in 2028?  A lot of people are very pessimistic.  Personally, I’m optimistic.  Two years should be enough time for Trump to break Iran.  After the midterms I see him closing down the Straits of Hormuz for as long as it takes to bankrupt Iran and cripple China.  It won’t be pain free.  Iran will lash out and who knows how crazy they may get.  But I don’t think it will take two years to get them to give up their nuclear program permanently.  So, if he gets past Iran, I can see oil prices dropping drastically and that will have a profoundly positive effect on the economy.  Now what comes after Trump?

Let me take a pessimistic scenario.  Suppose everything goes wrong and the Democrats take the White House, Senate and House in 2028.  According to their leaders, they will nuke the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court and make all illegal aliens, citizens.  That will have the effect of providing them with a permanent majority in Washington.  That is what they say they’ll do.  But will they do it?

I think they know that if they do those things, they are effectively declaring war against the red states.  That is a very big deal.  And I think some of them are afraid that it will cause a permanent breach between the two separate constituencies that this country is composed of.  And I think they know if they’re the ones who do it, they will force the other side to give up on the normal way things are done in Washington and begin using “unconventional” tactics to prevent the federal government from destroying their states.  Now what this would exactly look like, I’m not sure.  But I suspect it will not all be “passive resistance.”  And eventually, this will bring about a permanent separation between red and blue states.

Some of this is already happening.  Businesses and high net worth individuals are leaving blue states and blue cities in droves.  The socialist mayors and governors are panicking because their budgets are in a shambles and the unchecked crime is frightening away the middle and working classes too.  So, we’re already seeing a separation begin.  If the Democrats flood the country with illegals, the red states are going to have to figure a way to prevent these invaders from harming their states.  And making that happen will cause additional friction between the feds and the red states.  And that is how it will escalate.  How will that end nobody knows but it will not look like one country anymore.  So, will they declare war against the red states?

Recreational Time Travel

photog 6 Comments Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner

So, as you get older you find that nostalgia is your favorite guilty (or guiltless) pleasure.  Movies and songs that showcase things from your younger days are among the happiest moments you spend.  Now don’t get me wrong, things happening in the present day can be fun and exciting and interesting for sure.  But more and more, you become a stranger in the strange land that is the present day.  You look around and you see that everything has changed; the culture, the people, the places, the language, the entertainment and especially the technology.  Even the things that are supposed to be things from your time have been changed until you’re not even qualified to use them.  As an example, look at the telephone.  If you had handed a smart phone to a person in 1970, they would have no idea what it was but they would definitely deny it was a telephone.

So, we are experiencing the slow eradication of the world we knew.  And if you came from a place that has been remade over the last half century it’s even more disconcerting.  Your past has been basically erased and what’s left sometimes has nothing at all left that resembles the place you grew up in.

So, this is all true.  And getting angry or depressed about it won’t change anything except make you feel worse.  But recently I realized that nostalgia is a form of time travel.  You get to use your memories and some touchstones (like people, movies, photos and music) and travel back to a magic place where you were a kid or a newlywed or a happy parent but definitely in the older world where everything was familiar and you were at the center of the universe.

So, you might be watching an old movie and suddenly a bus is moving down a street and it triggers memories when you were living there and were on an identical bus and you think of a day when you took a bus ride that was involved in an important event in your life.  Or you hear a song that you remember hearing when you were on the beach with your best girl.  Or you go to a classic car show and see a car that you owned or was owned by a friend.  And the memories come flooding back and you’re walking around in 1969 or 1987.  And your older relatives are still alive and none of your friends have moved far away and everybody you care about is a short ride away.

Sure, it’s a bit of an escape.  And it doesn’t solve any of the problems you have in the here and now.  The country is still overrun with illegal aliens and gasoline is almost $5 a gallon and your bones are really creaky but for a few minutes or an hour you’re living in the happiest place on Earth; your youth.  Now, you can’t over do it.  If you spend all day every day in the past, you’ll lose the ability to cope with the present.  And you won’t be any use to people who think of now as the center of the universe.  So, I plan to use it sparingly and save it for special occasions where I can share it with the other survivors from the golden age.  Just something I thought of.

Tom’s World – 17MAY2026 – The Blue Tribe

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

I would think that the principle and purpose behind the concept of government was an outgrowth of earlier tribal organization. A chief by whatever name, usually the strongest, surrounded by his warriors and “wise” elders or something very similar was the precursor to organized government. The purpose wasn’t necessarily the aggrandizement of individuals but to protect the tribe members from predation from within and without of the tribal structure.

In dense blue run cities it seems that the basic purpose has been inverted to center on the increase of the wealth and power of a central elite and the public can be damned.

The only valid purpose of government should to provide a framework of protection from predators physical and economic, codify limits of behaviour and enforce same so the population can thrive without fear to whatever extent possible.

Seems to me that Brandon has flatly failed at his warrant and is flailing around blaming the ramifications of his failure on whoever seems to be semi-plausable while the predators swarm and prosper. Essentially chaos.

Multiply that by a large enough factor and it is civilizational failure.

What Retail Sales Looks Like in the Jungle

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The quote is the beginning of the linked article.  It’s worth a read.

“Walgreens is shuttering a location in Chicago, upsetting residents, and stirring fury among exploitative and complicit politicians. The way some local “leaders” tell it, the drugstore chain is acting greedily, selfishly, or even criminally.

“Walgreens should be charged with first-degree corporate abandonment,” thundered a local alderman. “It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our elders. It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our families.”

This is complete nonsense, of course, but the asinine nature of his flailing is laid bare by Walgreens’ reasons for closing its store in the Windy City’s Chatham neighborhood. According to the local Fox affiliate, the corporation was losing more than $1 million annually at that location, driven by stunning levels of theft and exorbitant security costs.”

 

So, let’s sum it up:

  • 16% of their merchandise is stolen per year.
  • That equates to more than a million dollars in losses per year.
  • They spent $400,000 in security for this one store
  • Their employees were still subject to frequent physical attacks by the thieves.

And then Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson characterized Walgreen’s decision to shut the store as criminal abandonment.  Wow, that’s amazing.  If I were the mayor of the third largest city in the United States and I discovered that a vital retail provider of drugs for my citizens was pulling out because my police force had failed to keep thieves and thugs in check at this location, I would move heaven and earth to make an example of that store and surround it with cops 24/7 until the crooks gave up.  But Brandon Johnson blames the people being robbed and assaulted by the mob that represents his true constituency.

From one end of this country to the other all blue cities and states are devolving into something that more resembles third world, banana republic street chaos than the United States of America.  But I now doubt that the voters in these jurisdictions will ever kick the Democrats out.  Los Angeles is the current test case.  Spencer Pratt is lambasting Mayor Karen Bass on the abysmal record she has accumulated over her term.  Between the horror show that was the Palisades fires and the complete lack of assistance to the victims, to the enormous disgrace of the out-of-control homeless epidemic on the streets of Los Angeles, Pratt has been speaking out and posting advertisements mocking his opponent’s ineptitude.

But will it make any difference?  California is a one-party state.  It’s owned by the state-workers’ unions.  Their pensions are the only important policies they care about and the Democrats have bought their votes with these funds.  So, I expect nothing to change in California, New York and the rest of the blue states for as long as their states can fund those pensions.  When the day comes that they run out of other people’s money, there will be hell to pay.  But the devil works for them so I’m sure he’ll pony up.

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 1

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Over the course of human history, what civilization or society produced the greatest amount of happiness?  Now this is a hard thing to define.  What do I mean by “greatest amount of happiness?”  Do I mean that the highest number or proportion of inhabitants were happy?  Or would it qualify if some subset was incredibly happy while the rest of them were miserable?  And even if all of a people were happy but they achieved their happiness by immiserating some external human population such as marauding Vikings or rampaging Vandals did, would it qualify?  Could slave owning societies be happy if they treated their human chattel humanely.  And can we attribute the happiness of a people to their form of government or do we think it has more to do with the innate traits of a particular people?

So, let’s start with forms of government.  If we follow Aristotle, there are three main forms of government; monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.  Of course, every variation on these three classes have occurred over time but I think it’s fair to say that there has never been a form of government that over the very long term produced a stable happy society.  Instead, it seems that each type can have a “golden age” that eventually degenerates into a miserable failed version of itself.  So, a good king or emperor is followed by a monstrous tyrant (possibly his son).  Aristocracies can decay into greedy oligarchies that suck the wealth out of a society and turn their fellow citizens into serfs.  And of course, when democracy becomes mob rule, we have plenty of examples of mass murder from ancient Corcyra to the Terror of the French Revolution.  So, it does not seem that we have discovered a form of government that inevitably leads to happiness.

But maybe there is a condition in society that does contribute to greater happiness in a people.  Now I say this with great trepidation because this principle can be twisted into a weapon that has also caused untold human misery throughout history.  I hesitate to give it an old name.  It can be called religion, morality, law or even philosophy.  What it amounts to is a way to direct the way humans interact with each other and the universe around them.  It might even be called science or knowledge nowadays.  Because sociology tries to turn human relations into science.  It is interesting that the American Founding Fathers thought that in order for their republic to flourish the citizens would have to be religious and therefore virtuous.  And by the same token if they weren’t, then no constitution would be able to keep them well governed.

So, maybe the only way to ensure the happiness of a people is for them to believe in the same god or philosophy or code of behavior.  In some sense they would have to be one family (or tribe).  But does that mean that any empire or mega-state like the United States cannot expect a happy polity?  Well, I think this is actually the truth.  Over the course of the last hundred years the people of the United States have more and more divided along ideological lines until at this point it is more or less at the point of a cold civil war.  And soon it may be hotting up.  So maybe we are seeing an unavoidable consequence of trying to force people who believe in different things to live together.

It seems to me we will have to figure out a way to give each other space.  What occurs to me is some changes to the constitution to give the states more power and the federal government less.  This would allow the different states to diverge toward the practices they favor without the constant battle to control the behavior of the “other side.”

But how do we get there?

Gerrymander for Me but Not for Thee

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I was watching a part of the PBS News Hour on YouTube.  Books and Capon were talking about gerrymandering.  Well actually Capon was away.  So, they found some big fat hen from the New York Times to squawk in his place.  Well, the upshot was that gerrymandering would lead to the “end of our democracy.”  Now to be fair Books said that the result of California following what Texas did was equally corrosive to democracy but he blamed Texas for getting the ball rolling.  And he wasn’t sad because the Virginia Supreme court shot down their gerrymander.  So, I guess you could say he was trying to be even-handed with his criticism.  I guess.

But the hypocrisy that both of these lefties commit is ignoring the fact that there are six states in the Northeast that are slightly more than 40% Republican voting and they have exactly zero Republican Congressional House Representatives between them all.  There are 15,430,000 people living in New England.  40% of that is more than six million people who are only represented by Democrats in the House of Representatives.  So, pretending that Donald Trump is responsible for gerrymandering the opposition out of existence is a joke.  The New Englanders have been perfecting this scam for decades.  What seems to be upsetting them is that between this initiative by Trump and the Supreme Court’s overturning of the racial gerrymandering decisions from the last century there is a real danger that Democrats might have a hard time keeping control of the House of Representatives even in midterm elections when Republican Presidents are in the White House.  And if that is the case there would be serious repercussions in the governance of this country.  And with the Democrat leadership announcing that they will eliminate the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court if they get back in power, it should be clear to the Republicans that there must be great fear on the Left about the chance that redistricting will shut them out of governance in the future.  So, packing the Supreme Court and giving citizenship to millions of illegals are their answers to the problem.

Well, we truly live in interesting times.  The war in Iran is threatening to make the midterms a blue wave but at the same time the gerrymandering in the South and elsewhere could counteract this.  And honestly, I don’t think there is any way to avoid these election oscillations back and forth but I do find it hilarious that the Democrats like to virtue signal their moral superiority when it comes to gerrymandering.  All it does for me is confirm just how dishonest they all are.  And it just makes me certain that there is no reason to think that we have any common ground with the Left.  They can justify any of their crimes by claiming they are the victims of fascism of one kind or another and by the end of their narrative we end up as the criminals who must be stopped “by any means necessary.”  Imagine that!

Lessons Have Been Learned

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Indiana’s Republican establishment legislators voted against a redistricting plan (seven of them).  Well Donald Trump backed primary candidates against them.  Read what happened.

President Donald Trump exacted revenge on Indiana Republican legislators who foiled his redistricting push last year in the state, backing challengers who unseated five incumbents in Tuesday’s primaries, NBC News projects.  One other GOP state senator who faced a Trump-endorsed opponent was locked in a tight race, while another survived.  The double-digit defeats of the five incumbents, some of whom are veterans of the Indiana Legislature, underscore the influence Trump continues to wield over the Republican Party, even as his approval rating among Americans broadly sags amid rising gas prices and the Iran war.

Regardless of mid-term elections and all the various Democrat howlings going on, this one instance shows that something fundamental has changed.  Fake conservatives are being exposed and targeted for replacement all over the red states and beyond.  And make no mistake, Trump legitimized this.  He was the one highlighting who was fake.  He called them out.  And now there are the beginnings of accountability.  Just as with Cornyn in Texas, fake conservatives are being challenged in Indiana and they will be targeted elsewhere.

Now this won’t be a clean sweep anywhere.  Even red states have pockets of progressivism, mostly around the cities like Austin in Texas and Salt Lake City in Utah.  There will always be exceptions.  But it’s encouraging to see leadership in Washington that calls out the fakes.

And with just a little luck, the recent Supreme Court ruling that condemns race-based gerrymandering will net enough seats in 2026 to hold onto the House of Representatives.  But if the Dems get the House back in 2026, we’ll survive it and more.  Trump is a powerhouse of annoying policies that will keep Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer screaming and crying for the next two and a half years.  And that is a long time.

And with just a little luck we can hope for a Republican president in 2028 and good things going forward.  And even if the worst occurs and the Dems control Congress and the White House, I feel that we have learned enough about what is going on to protect ourselves from the fallout.  We no longer have to pretend that we have anything in common with the Left and we will run our lives based on what will allow us to preserve the things that are important to us.  There won’t be any nonsense about meeting anyone in the middle.  Because there no longer is a middle.  There’s us and there’s them.  The things they say amongst themselves is poisonous and evil and shows you their true intentions and they have nothing to do with coexistence.  They intend to destroy us and all we can do is protect ourselves by every available means.

And we will.  We’re getting better at running our own states and excluding them from our communities and their policies from our lives.  There will be setbacks but we’ve learned a lot and we will move forward.  This I believe.

Peak Woke

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We seemed to have passed through what can be described as “maximum wokeness.”  Sometime after 2020 all of the stupidest delusions about race and sex reached their apex.  Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, LGBTQ madness like trans-everything and radical feminism like #metoo were all reaching a high tide.  Insanity was piled on insanity and all the stupidest beliefs ran amok.  People were fired and jailed and even killed during cancellations, purges and outright rioting.

But since 2025 many of these beliefs have been shown to be absurd or even dangerous and fewer and fewer people will admit to believing in these things.  Sure, in places like California, New York and Minnesota the lunatics are too numerous and too crazy to come to their senses but in many other jurisdictions the folly of what had been going on finally woke up enough people to the madness that things have been reversed to a large extent.  And with Trump in the White House and a conservative Supreme Court many of the worst excesses are being swept away.  Even old liberal attacks on constitutional practices, like racial gerrymandering of political districts are being overruled and eliminated.

With all that said serious damage has been done to a couple of generations of young men in this country who have been deprived of the career opportunities that were instead reserved for women and foreigners.  And this damage cannot be easily repaired.  If a man doesn’t have a stable, well-paid job how is he supposed to attract a wife and afford to raise a family?  And if he can’t do that then his line ends with him.  Multiply this by the millions and you’re looking at the cancelling out of America.

Currently you hear about young men avoiding college and professional schools and instead heading into the construction and other trades like welding and mechanics.  And this may be the only alternative to allow a generation of young men to earn a living.  Now, this may be necessary but it seems like a step backward for all the families who scrimped and saved to help their kids to become doctors and lawyers and engineers.  Now their grandchildren are back in the blue-collar world that they came from.  But then again maybe it makes more sense to take the jobs that do exist and strive to start your own business and not be beholden to corporations that despise you.

Now, I’ve got grandchildren in college and even one graduating soon.  And they are going to have to navigate these same obstacles.  And it’s very difficult to know what to tell them.  But I know what’s most important.  I need to do whatever I can to support them and encourage them to strive to succeed in whatever they find available to them to earn a living and raise a family.  Because, in all honesty, those are the only things that count in this world.  All the other nonsense about status and prestige is just that; nonsense.  The people you interact with are the essence of what we call human life.  And as long as they can live a happy life with them, they are rich.