Tag: Tregonsee

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 25JUN2026 – More Commies

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Photog said

“Well, nothing new here. Republicans have been screwing up elections since I was a kid.”

Indeed there is a reason they have their sobriquet of the Stupid Party, I just wish they wouldn’t work so hard to earn it.

Is this the apocalypse? I don’t think so, yet. These victories involve ONLY the motivated party types. For example Ms. Chevalier (the most egregious of the DSA winners) won on a vote of 66k voters where the number of voters for the district is north of 750K. What She and the Maine Senate Democrat say is the Democrat party is hurting hard and is afraid to tell the DSA/Socialists to take a long walk off a short pier. The reason for this is their base is shifting. They ticked off the working folks, and many of the Hispanics with favoring other ethnicities (e.g. Sub Saharan Africans) and ideologies (Trans, Islamist, and the underemployed white bourgeoisie wannabes). The Wannabes are young enough and have been inundated with enough nonsense to think Socialism can work and their problem is Nasty billionaire/trillionaires stifling their potential success. The Islamists view the Democrats as useful idiots and a way to power. The other part of the new base loves them some graft and happily provide a cut back the Democrats and the Democrats are hurting for money after Kamala bet the house on a 20-1 shot and a really nice Hermes purse and unsurprisingly lost.

For the present, this lives in the Cities. The hipster wannabes love a city and its close environs (E.g. Cambridge and Somerville in Massachusetts), at present the grifters stay in that vicinity as grifting is harder in suburbs and exurbs where everyone is in everybody else’s business. Islamists, for the present, seem content to be near cities mostly for the conveniences like halal markets and mosques, though those seem to be spreading. As the Hipsters age out will they move to the burbs/exurbs and have kids? For a lot of them I think the answer is no. So we need to keep an eye on cities and subsidies of them. In particular when (not if) New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago Baltimore et alia come to be bailed out at the Federal level The President in charge has to respond like Gerry Ford and say, Drop Dead!!!

The people with a big problem are the Democratic Party. Their leadership Either makes Methuselah look like a spry youngster or can’t even render the dignity of a cat falling off a couch. Hakeem Jeffries is next on Mamdani’s hit list, and as more DSA types get in they’re going to start holding the reins in the Democrat party. If the Democrats had any brains they would not officially caucus with ANY DSA person, However if the DSA types put the Dems over the top for the house in the 2026 election, the Dems’ lust for power will (foolishly) overwhelm their fear of taking a shiv in the back. I think things could get ugly if we get there as DSA could control the Democrat party. The only good news is that DSA control would almost certainly result in a 2028 slate for president and representatives that would be shown the door in all but the blue cities, likely resulting in a McGovern or even Mondale class defeat.

Best plan for the present seems to effectively lie back and think of England. The Senate has stopped the clock on Iran and Trump/Vance seem unwilling to, as the video game says, finish them. Financial woes (especially high energy costs) will favor the Democrats as well as the usual advantage of the party in opposition in a mid term election. And 2028 may not be pretty, as there seems to be some Vance/Rubio disagreement around Iran, and Vance seems unwilling to let go of certain previous supporters (e.g. Tucker Carlson). The only saving grace is that at present there is no one on the Democrat side that has other than a very difficult path to 270 electoral votes (short heavy manipulation of cities in the purple zones). Maybe this will light a fire under the Senate for the Save act, but the Republicans are the stupid party…

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 16JUN2026 – An Alternative Iranian Plan

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I would love to hear the details of these plans, but so far everything I see is in the “Trust me its Good” phase. Trump is a skilled negotiator, unfortunately, the Islamic tradition holds that negotiating with those not in Islam (Dar Al Harb, the House or Abode of War, any nation NOT under Islamic rule in most interpretations of Islamic tradition) is forbidden except for brief periods and in those negotiations deception is not just acceptable but the rule. This is a culture far more dangerous than say the Japanese of the WWII era with their bushido code. That group took mass firebombing and direct destruction of 2 cities, and without the direct intervention of their Emperor (and luck having a coup fail) we would have had to fight on.

The terms need to be dictated, not negotiated, and enforced with a ruthlessness we seem no longer able to muster. At a minimum, these must include:
1) All enriched nuclear material must be handed over to the US within 30 days. Any nuclear material found in country after that period is grounds for declaring the treaty null and void potential peremptory destruction of the site.
2) There must be constant presence of US/Israeli (not IAEA the feckless boobs they are) inspection teams and they must be able to perform surprise inspections with 3 hours or less notice. Violation of this clause yields the same actions as in 1)
3) All missiles and drones of range greater the 50 Miles shall be destroyed and construction of them forbidden. The presence of the remaining limited range weapons within 100 miles of the Straits of Hormuz is forbidden. Violation of this clause results in the immediate destruction of the offending item by whatever means seems necessary and immediate termination of the treaty.
4) All tanks, IFV, Ships , and Military aircraft (fixed wing or Rotary) shall be impounded in such a fashion that they can be inspected by US National technical means. The removal of vehicles from said impounds without notification shall be cause for the destruction of the removed vehicles as well as ALL other impounded vehicles at the discretion of US/Israeli forces. Violation of this clause will indicate termination of the treaty.
5) The presence of Hospitals and places of worship shall be marked and provided to the Us/Israeli forces. The presence of any weaponry or military items in violation of the traditional codes of war for perfidy shall make attacks on such perfidious sites free of any taint of the violation of the rules of war and be a reason for termination of this treaty
6)The US/Israel may overfly Iran freely for military or national reconnaissance purposes without intervention by the Iranian government. Any resistance to this may (up to and including illuminating said vehicles with search or fire control radars) be met with destruction of said resistance by whatever means deemed appropriate. This constitutes a reason for the termination of the treaty
7) The government of Iran shall officially sign an instrument of surrender explicitly specifying these conditions within 14 days of agreeing to this treaty

Honestly, as draconian as the terms I specify are, I do not believe they would be sufficient, even if we were willing to follow through. The only safe path I see is an ugly one: reduce Iran’s technological level to the early 19th century and then let Israel target them as needed to keep them there. I really hate that, but a Germany/Japan like occupation is just not in the cards. We have neither the stomach, the experience, nor the troop levels to provide that kind of oversight. Our treaties with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War have taught us that not responding aggressively to violations is problematic against this particular culture. We need to make sure the nuclear threat to us and our Allies (and it is NOT just Israel, the missiles used to attack Diego Garcia can also reach Paris, Berlin and London) is gone, and let the locals deal with Iran as they see fit.

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.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 07MAY2026 – Things to Come

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Yeah 2026 is looking dicey to say the least. 2028 looks good for Presidential unless something goes wrong (or is made to go wrong A La 2020). The Democrat presidential slate is looking very weak in comparison to either Vance or Rubio. The 2028 Senate and House I would say LEAN republican, but it depends heavily on local status, especially the economy, and if the Dems get the House or Senate in 2026 they can play havoc with that.
2028 is critical as whoever holds the executive in 2029 on the lead-up to the census controls how that counting is done. It would help to have Congress just in case some Judge (I’m looking at YOU Boasberg ) gets feisty and throws a hissy fit (sorry, injunction) against counting methods. As it is several blue states are due to lose representation (CA, NY RI and a couple others) to several Red States (Especially FL and TX). The magnitude of those losses depends on how you count. The Constitution says (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3)

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

 

 

The Thirteenth Amendment and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 essentially reduce it to “the whole Number of free Persons”. As it is free persons, the clear interpretation is any human beings you find (sadly) not Citizens or Voting age Citizens or similar that would make better sense. Changing that would likely take a constitutional amendment. However, two issues would require at most Congressional support (and possibly are within the realm of the Executive branch).

The first is that currently, many populations are estimated, especially in large cities, and those estimates include folks who may or may not exist. The constitutional language seems clear: “The actual Enumeration” estimation is NOT by any means enumeration/counting and certainly is NOT within what the writers likely envisioned with that language. Certainly, the aspect of recording names and addresses of each person is contrary to just estimating. Throw away the estimates, and large Cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and NYC, as well as likely some Red cities like DFW, Austin, Miami and Atlanta) lose large swaths of their populations.

The second is the last half of the census sentence “and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct”. This seems to give great latitude to Congress on how the Census should/must be run. It may be that Congress long ago delegated this power to the Executive.

So control of the 2030 Census could drive control of the House delegations through 2040. It will be interesting to see if the Democrat side understands/admits this quandary. If the Democrats find some Abigail Spanberger (run from the middle until elected) type candidate, they might be able to squeak things out in 2028. The problem is their base loves the Squad/Mamdani/Platner/etc and the base is who turns out for primaries. That is going to drive the Democrat candidates hard left, and Hard Left does NOT win the presidency. On top of that a Hard Left candidate will only have “coattails” in blue or bluish states, That means getting the House in opposition to a popular Republican candidate will be a challenge (or so I dearly hope).

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 03APR2026 – Photo

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This was shot in the experimental Aircraft section of the Museum of the USAF.
Details of the shot are that it was shot on a Canon EOS Rebel using a 28 MM lens af F4 1/60th second exposure ISO 800 handheld

The view looks out from the Valkyrie Cafe. The large aircraft in the foreground is the last example of the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber. Also in the frame are the YF-12 (an interceptor variant of the SR71/A-12), two gemini capsules including the Air Force Blue Gemini prototype (never flown) 2 X-24 lifting bodies (famous from the opening sequence of 6 Million Dollar Man), and barely visible to the far right at the back is an X-15.
IMG_0062.JPG
I am a bit surprised that I got as much depth of field as I did at F4, but I was shooting in shutter priority mode as I didn’t think I could hand hold it much below 1/60th

 

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 12FEB2026 – LOR OR VOR

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There are 3 basic strategies to get to the moon. Direct is the is the first, the ship/capsule takes off from Earth goes to the moon, lands and then some part of that capsule/ship takes off from the moon and returns to earth. Because you’re carrying LOTS of weight you don’t need at various points (e.g. the reentry shield on the capsule is dead weight as you land on the moon) the whole thing is VERY heavy. The rockets to do this are immense (e.g. the early NOVA concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(NASA_rocket) later repurposed but never used for mars exploration). The other two alternatives are Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). In EOR, you go up to a waiting lunar specific lander board it and use it for the earth to moon trip land and return to your Earth/space vehicle. This is the Von Braun/2001 model. It’s one weakness is it usually requires in space refueling of your lunar transit/lander vehicle. This is kind of what I suspect the initial SpaceX model SEEMS to be headed for with a combination of Dragon Crew, Starship cargo/fuel ferry, and Lunar Starship for transit and landing. The Apollo (and current Artemis) use LOR, with Apollo sort of used a mixed model to keep the LEM as light as possible (for a great dramatiztion of this find episode 9 of From the Earth to the Moon, also good discussion of LOR vs EOR). I think SpaceX/Musk have realized lunar Starship is overkill for the task presented, thus making EOR more feasible. They also know Starship overall depends on refueling; if they can’t do that it is kind of game over for Starship for any purpose other than LEO delivery of cargo/ satellites.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10FEB2026 – The Lunar Option

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And now he should change his name to D. D. Harriman. I’ve also always felt the Moon was a better choice. Mostly because with basic chemical rockets, it’s 3-5 days away and there are LOTS of windows to reach it. Mars is 140+ days, and that window is only roughly every two years. If you have a small initial Mars colony, no matter how many ships you have and the Stuff hits the fan, you’re on your own for on average 18 months away from outside help. With Luna its 3-5 days depending on lunar phase and you may be able just to lifeboat back to earth orbit.

Looking the 140 day or so timeline is like the early Europe to American colonies distance from Europe and America had air and food and water. And yet we still had Roanoke and lost 1/2 of Plimouth Colony the first year. Luna lets you learn in a slightly harsher environment with at least some safety net. Mars really has to wait until there are constant thrust engines (be they Nuclear Thermal, Fission/fusion pulsed or straight up fusion) so we can have .01 or .1 g constant and not have to use Hohmann (minimal energy) orbits and have 14 or 4 day transits to Mars/ Nearly every thing Elon (pardon me Delos) had planned for Mars is useful on the moon and can be further refined for future Mars work.

Also, if we’re going to do this, it should be done as G*d, Von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke intended with an orbital station to fuel lunar Starship-like beasts and send them on to the moon. We need the infrastructure. Maybe not immediately but once we try to start moving large quantities back and forth. the division of labor would help.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 19JAN2026 – Star Trek Decline

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I’m an old line Star Trek fan. I remember it live on TV when I was a kid. I was young enough that when it went to Friday night at 10pm in the third season I had to get a bedtime dispensation. Luckily, it was Friday night so leniency prevailed. I then watched them repeatedly out of WPIX from NYC who ran them twice a day 5 days a week

Recently we’ve been watching Enterprise Honestly, it is pretty good (although I think they abused the T’pol character and being first officer/XO gets her compared with Spock)
Strange New World was also not half bad although it plays havoc with continuity and characters from Star Trek and Next Generation. I tried Discovery and Picard and disliked both. Lower Decks is a gem and cleverly makes many things from the original animated series, particularly the Caitian and Kzinti species canon. It always feels like the best of the humorous original Trek (e,g, A Piece of the Action) episodes. I was hoping for a Horta crew member but no such luck.

You say they spent $100 million on the Starfleet Academy series? Well they probably gotten a better return if they had taken that to Vegas and bet it on roulette or simply just burned it. Other than Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks the Modern Treks haven’t gotten much attention with occasional exceptions (Picard’s Ending). The recent movies (Kelvan time line) varied from meh to worth watching at home (and #4 apparently justifiably gone into permanent development hell).

Like Disney with Star Wars they seem to have gone out of their way to find a producer that dislikes the original material. This never works well as seen by Kathleen Kennedy wrecking the Star Wars movies and then moving on to wreck the Acolyte when the TV side had been showing her up. Honestly there are a WHOLE bunch of Scifi properties that could be acquired and developed for say 20 million each. that’s five of them and I bet 2-3 succeed at some level maybe even take off. Thats not something that this 90120 in space series is going to do. Who was the target? Young teens? Are you even going to get them to watch something based on a 60 year old premise? 20-30 something affluent women (the Karen/AWFL Demographic, I want that watching my show)?They’re busy picking on various folks Throwing it into the weird far future of Discovery which had pretty dismal numbers just baffles me. I can tell you the target demographic ISN’T me.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10DEC2025 – Ray Bradbury

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Bradbury is nearly sui generis amongst the 40’s/50’s/early 60’s SciFi Writers. His stuff often feels more like Lovecraft or Clark Aston Smith. My first “adult” scifi (not juvies like Tom Swift Jr. or young children scifi like Spaceship in the Apple Tree) were two of his collections. They were R is for Rocket and S is for Space that my 5th grade reading teacher found for me in the school library. I recently got a new audible version of his Martian Chronicles and although the technology doesn’t really make sense (maybe not even then) the stories themselves are beautiful and elegant in a fashion that the Asimov/Clark/Heinlein stories usually didn’t try for. Bradbury makes a lovely palette cleanser among other SciFi. Some moderns try at his style but honestly most of them are pale imitations like art students copying a Rembrandt or one of the pre Raphaelites.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 17NOV2025 – Handicapping a Civil War

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The thought of a civil war is VERY messy. My (limited) familiarity is that I’d say 80% of the enlisted tend to be from the poorer (bottom 3-4) deciles of the population. The upper enlisted officers tend to come from families that have been in the services for a long time. They are more from the red/purple areas than deep blue. Officer Corp is more split(again from my very limited experience), Flag officers are VERY political and Obama’s purge of the flag ranks (as well as Col. ready to promote) means there is a very blue tinge at the top. Lower rank officers likely come from families that have traditions of service and come from more traditionally conservative backgrounds as the militery calling is pooh poohed by the Left. Pretty sure neither red nor blue troops would kill civilians without severe provocation. Most would also not participate in massive disarmament of citizens. I think the latter ends up with mutinies and fragging of officers, with enlisted disappearing off into the bush. That said, the Left has its own shock troops in the armed bits and bobs of Antifa/Pantifa and other similar groups. They are far less morally bound than the members of the armed services. Would the National Guard and LEO stand back and let them go at it? Beats me, I’m not eager to find out.

As for strategic resources, the blue states have an issue. I think all the missile bases, plus Whitman AFB (B2, soon B21) are in red states). The Atlantic Boomer base is in a red state (no boomers run out of Groton CT any more), Pacific Boomer base is at Bremerton WA but would that matter? Boomers are odd they really try hard to stay at sea for long periods before switching crews. In a Red/Blue divorce, the Reds end up with most of the fixed ( Missile assets). I doubt the Red would disarm, given the Ukraine precedent.

Honestly any scenario I see tends to be rife with insurgencies. Blue in the more rural parts of Red would have massive hit and run attacks on them by light arms. Red going into citified areas will have Viet Cong like insurgents blending into the populous (with either the populous supporting them or by threatening the populous.

I just can’t create an Arisian like vision of the cosmic all on this one. If I were using the old magic 8 ball I’d be getting “Better ask again” or “Reply Hazy, try again”. The only thing I can say is I deeply doubt your model of a looser coalition, it seems very doubtful. Much of the Blue side views this as almost a theological/eschatological vision. There are as likely to live and let live as the 16th-century Spanish Inquisition. Certainly, there are parts of them that don’t believe (all) their nonsense. But those parts know that if they divert from the path, they are likely to find an ice pick in their forehead like a good menshivik.