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So up to now, I have avoided anything more than a yearly blog (Dave for President) in regards to any opinion I might have regarding the political and economic climate of the US, under the notion that anything more frequent would be pretentious and probably a waste of time (as if anyone is actually going to listen and take my advice). But what has one got to lose, I suppose, when things are headed in such a dire direction, in offering their two-cents to the discussion? So I created this page, titled Dave’s Daily Blog, which doesn’t necessarily mean it will contain an entry every day, just a much more current assessment of world events. Dave's Daily Blog 1/08/24,
The eternal Israel-Palestine conflict 10/09/23,
Regarding the recent attack on Israel by Hamas: In my opinion, before we get involved in this latest mess, the very first thing we should do is remove this walking turd and his entourage from power. We have no business protecting him and his cronies. We can then deal with Hamas and Palestinian extremists on a new level. Of course, it seems we have our own continuing problems with leaders who encourage wars and don’t want to leave office despite the fact that no one wants them. Read on . . . 9/05/23, Proposed political party slogans for the 2024 Election Republican slogan: “Yahoo! We are going to whip this dead horse until it tries to pull this rickety old slay once again—this slay that we have taken a sledgehammer to multiple times—and, as usual, do our best to disrupt democracy in the United States while we, of course, blame it all on the Democrats.” Democratic slogan: “Yippee! Thanks to this pretext handed to us by these common-folk liberals who think they are getting revenge on their detractors by shutting them up, and that the government must bottle-feed every adult moron who believes everything they read without bothering to do a spec of research, we are slowly but surely gaining control over truth. Now. I know the above slogans do not represent every republican and every democrat, but they might as well, when it comes down to being the only two choices to vote for. In the meantime, I’m getting nothing but positive feedback regarding my party election idea (see 2/23/23 entry). My first good idea? Never, I say . . . just happens to be the most popular. At any rate: 2024, the first party election in America? It’s not too late. I think it’s time that our political parties began with the people, and not the politicians. On a completely different note: Watch out cat owners. Despite cats being especially susceptible to a number of common household chemicals, many such items do not have warning labels that point out how dangerous they are to felines. And there are flea and tick sprays being sold for dogs that will rub off and kill a cat outright. The sprays might read “for dogs” but usually have no mention on the labels of what will become of your cat. Watch out, especially, for anything with pyrothrins, Eugenol, or peppermint oil. Lately, I have heard people getting on TV and offering advice to ward off mosquitoes by spraying oneself with deet and spraying one’s clothing with permethrin—a synthetic pyrethrin highly toxic to cats; again, failing to mention the fate of your cat (must be the same cat-hating idiots making the dog spray). Another one that many people may not know about is to avoid any dish soap containing fragrances. There are a few websites with lists of various chemicals toxic to cats, but I have not ran across any that list everything, so don’t limit yourself . . . 5/04/23, I stated in the 7/04/22 entry of this blog that I was going to suggest a few more possible solutions, in addition to the two I already posted back in 2018, for the current state of gun violence in the US. Well, I have one ready to go, anyway. For anyone interested, go here: https://www.daveconklin.net/gun_control.html and scroll to the bottom of the page to the 5/04/23 entry. 4/29/23, So Biden has decided to run again, the guy who said nothing about censorship during the 2020 presidential campaign, then tried to create government agency to oversee it. And then you have the other guy from the last election who touted free speech while asking for protesters to be shot in the legs. God help us all (you know when an agnostic is stating that, we really are in trouble). In other matters, wouldn’t it be nice if Thomas Jefferson’s line regarding life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had been worked into the US constitution as a fundamental right? . . . Would have made some later entries seem redundant, and set a precedent for Congress to decide just when those rights end for a woman and begin for a fetus. I was bit surprised when goofy Senator Lindsey Graham proposed Congress get involved, but the part about the exception for rape or incest, I simply could not understand. Does he mean, if the pregnancy endangers the mother . . . , or is it more like, well, you know God has damned all such kids, anyway, so might as well get rid of them? I mean, if you are going to decide when a kid has the right live, then the kid has a right to live—it is not the kid’s fault that his dad was an a—hole. Well, gotta run, I’m surrounded by toxic smoke clouds on all sides. 2/23/23, Wouldn’t it be nice if, even for just one minute, we had a government that wasn’t just a conglomeration of liars? Too harsh? Okay, stop laughing. Anyway, I have a proposal: I call it the “party election.” So going back to the 2000 election, everyone blamed Ralph Nader and his reform party for siphoning off votes from Al Gore and getting George Bush elected. So I get the impression that a lot of people are reluctant to vote for third parties anymore. Conclusion: two parties/candidates on the ballot make the most democratic sense, otherwise you could possibly end up with politicians elected by a minority of voters; (which often happens anyway, of course, due to our republic indirect-election process) but the problem is, we end up stuck with the same two political parties forever. My proposal: We hold a national election sometime before the primaries, but as opposed to voting for people, voters will be voting for a preferred political party for whatever public office is eventually going to be on the ballot. When the votes are counted, the two most popular political parties are the ones whose candidates will be on the primary ballots for any particular office. Now, a candidate who was once affiliated with a losing political party could always try and switch party affiliations afterward (if that political party allows it). It will be up the voters, then, to accept their spiel, or not. I know elections are expensive, but we’re just going nowhere fast. So the general idea here is to give “the people” more options to pick from in the area of political philosophies and the direction they think the country should be going in; more opportunity to voice themselves, as it were. 1/16/23, So now I am being told my gas stove is the latest form of evil. Well, perhaps it isn’t ideal to be burning anything unvented inside a house, but there is one claim that I am just not buying, and that is the whole “gas stoves are worse for climate change” claim. The claim is that gas stoves leak tiny amounts of methane, which is worse than CO2 regarding global warming—in an immediate sort of way—but what the claim fails to take into account is all the extra CO2 that will be generated by everyone switching to electric stoves. Gas stoves are 100% efficient. About 50% of the power from a generating plant is wasted in transmission. And 61% of electric power in the US is generated by fossil fuels. (The last two points are important things to remember whenever someone claims going electric is cleaner). Don’t ask me for exact figures—my head hurts just thinking about it—but that has to add up to a lot more CO2 emissions for cooking with an electric stove (if powered by a fossil-fuel burning plant). So I have to seriously question the claim that gas stoves are worse for climate change than electric. Someone is going to have to show me the math. It is really beginning to look like people are dropping like flies from those coronavirus vaccinations. But it is hard to be absolutely certain what is going on. The media appears to be ignoring the obvious “elephant in the room,” and as more people essentially drop dead, they don’t seem interested in asking questions or even bringing up the subject. In other words, they act scared to do their jobs. And I still don’t see any good diagrams that could shed some light on things (like the one I proposed). Well, looking for a positive. Here is one: nuclear fusion—sort of; still sounds as though we are decades away from any kind of cost-effective reactors, though. And cost effectiveness seems to be the problem with every solution to global warming from hydrogen to space sunshields. Here is one thing that could be done in the meantime: simply encourage people not to have kids—no draconian measures, no quotas or penalties, just words of encouragement. Of course, that goes completely against the human tradition of competition between tribes, countries, races, religions and each other. Something tells me this race has the potential to turn ugly as everyone nears the finish line. Ref: 10/01/22, Yes, it’s been a while, but I am of the philosophy that if you don’t have something relevant to say or write, keep you mouth shut and your pen in the basket. Unfortunately, I think that philosophy is an extremely rare one, which is why I steer clear of social media and “comments sections.” So what was the extraordinary event that prompted me to finally make an entry? Was it the insane idiots lobbing bombs at each over the top of nuclear reactors in Ukraine? Nope. The raid on Trump’s mansion? Nope. Was it the busload of illegal immigrants let out at Martha’s Vineyard? (Sure did get their lawyers revved up after that one didn’t they?) Nope. Senator Lindsey Graham’s abortion ban proposal? Nope. Was it the 1000-year flood event in Florida? Nope. The extraordinary event was the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act; specifically the fact that it was passed with the idea, anyway, of paying for it. After a half-century or so of running trade deficits, borrowing and spending, one tax break after another for the rich, gutting the US manufacturing base, and dumping “counterfeit” money into the US economy through every scheme imaginable from subprime loans to outright passing it around, this comes as a truly miraculous event. One thing that the bill does not provide for, to the best of my understanding, is for more oil and gas exploration. All this stuff about clean energy sounds good, but everyone knows the storage technology is just not there yet, and that is still the big problem. New natural gas wells have not been dug for some time, while power plants have been burning more. So now, household energy costs are rising in every way imaginable. So on top of that they want to tax the electrical grid even more with charging electric vehicles? And on top of that someone has blown up the Nordstream pipeline. Well, I’m sure it will work out great for everyone when the inflation reduction act actually starts curbing inflation, about when, 2033? But in regards to the immediate future, it looks like energy executives have good friends in the Whitehouse. On a related matter: I have heard of various strikes and talk of striking, some about working conditions or being overworked, while others think they will get ahead if they get yet another raise. If there is one thing that everyone should have learned by now, it’s the folly of raising the minimum wage or getting that raise. We are way, way past that. What we have now is an entrenched system of devaluing the dollar and ensuring that any gain by the working class is fleeting. You get that raise; the government and the Federal Reserve find some way to dump a bunch of funny money into the system, allowing companies to raise prices; some rich get richer (sometimes a lot richer); and you remain just as poor. The game is rigged. The solution to a lot problems, the way I see it, is tax the rich, at an exponential rate (the more income, the higher the rate) and make it much harder to become filthy rich. Eliminate corporate personhood and their tax dodging ways. Now I know what many people are going to say to that: “Well if we get rid of billionaires, then I have no chance of being a billionaire.” Well, greed drives progress, but too much greed destroys, has destroyed, and will destroy. We can keep letting the US get sucked dry: its wealth transferred to other countries and a handful of billionaires. Or we can bring the money back and put it to work, drastically lowering the cost of critical things such as health care and higher education, infrastructure etc. Unrestrained predatory capitalism verses complete socialism: It’s a balancing act, as I see it, if only the US could have stayed on the beam. Ref: https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/us-gas-producers-struggle-meet-demand-kemp 7/31/22, I made some improvements to the hypothetical COVID chart that I posted back on April 1st. Scroll down to my 4/01/22 entry to view. 7/28/22, Back on the 7th of July, I happened to catch a conversation between NBC News anchor Lester Holt and NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Part of the conversation went as such: Holt: There is a narrative from the Right that liberal, that progressive prosecutors are allowing crime to flourish. Do you agree? Mayor Adams: “Yes. There's two battles that are happening in our country and our city right now. You have the far-right, that states give everyone a gun, no matter what. You have the far-left that states everyone that uses a gun should not be held accountable. These two groups are not the majority of Americans and they have actually held our country and our city hostage. These two groups don't realize they're co-conspirators to the public safety crisis that we're facing in our city and country.” My initial thought was, wow, some straight and very insightful talk. I would take it a step farther, though: In regards to these far-right groups, politicians and institutions that Mr. Adams is referring to—one of the main arguments they have always used against any sort of gun control is that many an armed group have been persecuted or killed by their government, so anarchy must prevail. What I find so ironic is that, given the current level of gun violence in the United States, it is those groups, politicians and institutions that have become the greatest threat to US national security in terms of both lives and morale. I mean, does it make any sense at all to live in absolute fear of the government when you are a hundred times more likely to be shot by your neighbor? Where exactly is the "liberty" in that, I have to ask? 7/04/22, Since the mass shooting in Uvalde Texas, I have heard a lot of the usual, often incredibly stupid, rhetoric that follows such events regarding what should be done, but I have not heard a single politician address the issue from the standpoint of the fundamental social causes behind it. Anymore, it seems, it is only the symptoms anyone wants to discuss, rather than pondering any causes. I did discover via an Internet search that the government actually commissioned a study of the phenomenon back in late 2019. The study, carried out jointly by the CDC and the NIH could have a report out by this fall according to this web article that also explains how Congress has been blocking such a study for many years: Now the government is funding gun violence research, but it’s years behind. Great, but in the meantime, I guess its up to some unqualified guy with an Internet blog, such as myself, to try and figure out what has caused the situation. So, I did find a few web pages, including a Wikipedia page, that offer some possible causes (commonly referred to as contributing factors) for the increase in mass shootings, but most of what I have found seems over-simplified, to me. Over time, I have arrived at the opinion that it might be best to put contributing factors into three different categories: Those that have always existed, those that are more recent, and factors that have increase the severity. With that in mind, here is the list that I arrived at: Factors that have always existed 1 Loss of a parent, or being raised by a single parent. While there may be little doubt that it is a significant contributing factor with inner city violence in general by black youth, there also appears to be a connection between it and mass shootings. 2 Individuals genetically predisposed with a particular violent disposition/uncontrollable temper. 3 Mental illness or a traumatic brain injury or drug abuse or the unwitting ingestion of toxins in conjunction with a violent disposition. 4 Bullying, persecution and ostracism. More recent factors, which have increased the frequency and rate of mass shootings: 1 The shift from a rural agrarian society to an urban society, resulting in fewer responsibilities for young men. 2 Television, and with it the potential for a great number of people to be exposed on a daily basis to images of person-to-person violence, much of it involving guns, causing a skewed sense of reality in some vulnerable individuals (the most vulnerable age group being very young-to-teenage males), where such violence represents normal everyday human behavior. 3 Theoretical yet probable: The conflict between scientific knowledge, which has completely dispelled the earth-centric views of the past, and human nature or instinct; specifically the deeply seated yearning that has evolved in the human species to imagine supernatural forces or beings controlling their destiny. 4 Non-traditional forms of treatment for mental illness (anti-depressants), some of which can lead to violent outbursts, especially when the medication is stopped abruptly. 5 Mass shootings themselves, each of which only adds to the “database” of person-to-person violence, thus contributing to the monkey-see monkey-do aspect of mass shootings in the long term as well as immediately following such an incident through media coverage. 6 Theoretical yet to some degree probable: The glorification by a segment of society of weapons not just designed to kill people, but many people. 7 The expansion of multi-media and the Internet, thus increasing the potential for daily exposure to depictions of person-to-person violence, information on all past mass shootings, and interactive depictions of person-to-person violence. Factors that have increased the severity and death count of mass shootings: 1 The prevalence and ease of acquiring weapons with detachable magazines, especially assault weapons. 2 The use of such weapons to carry out mass shootings, thus inspiring would-be mass shooters to use those types of weapons. Now, as far as stopping these events is concerned, it is my opinion that only a multi-pronged approach that takes all of the above factors—no single one being more important than another—into consideration would be the most effective way to go, with these limitations in mind: All guns are not going to go away, history cannot be swept under the rug, scientific fact cannot be swept under the rug, and multimedia is not going away anytime soon either. One of these days I am going to expand on my gun control page and offer some of my own suggestions on each of the contributing factors just covered, for anyone who might be paying attention. Well, lot of stupid backwards stuff recently I could comment on—such as old fossils digging up relics from the past; old fossils blaming everyone but themselves, like three-year olds, for things they clearly had as much responsibility for as anyone; old fossils declaring personal wars on each other, never mind who gets caught in the crossfire. Watch out bin Salman, you are probably the next one in the crosshairs after they get done fighting Putin. Everyone ready for $10.00/gal gas?—but none quite as relevant, so I going to call this entry closed. Anyway, til next entry . . . 5/26/22,
Welcome to the Yosemite Sam States of America: Republicans, on the other hand have not done jack squat
over the last 60 years to improve conditions in the United States. They
have only fed
the rich and indebted everyone else many times over by, among many
other
things, furiously trying to unravel the
restrained-capitalist/limited-socialist system that evolved after the
great depression and WWII. It
truly boggles the mind why people have continued to vote for them for
so long and shoot themselves in the foot; only now, in the hell hold
that their masters have created, it is kids who are the ones
literally getting shot and killed. But before anyone starts raving about Donald Trump: Yes, there were a few things Donald Trump stood for, in principle, that I agreed with, but by and large, he was just more of the same, only worse, and still is. Filmmaker Michael Moore thinks everyone should forget about third political parties and get behind the Democrats. I reluctantly have to agree that the two-party system makes the most democratic sense. What we need, though, are candidates that, while aligning themselves with the Republican or Democratic parties, swear by the overall principles of the Reform Party, which, of course, has a platform based on common sense as the underlying theme. And obviously, the well of common sense has largely run dry in Congress and many a lower governmental body. Of course, then everyone needs to vote for those candidates, and those candidates need to practice what they preach. Back on Feb 23rd of 2018, I created a web page with a proposal to lock up all the assault weapons, as a compromise between weapons-of-mass-destruction enthusiasts and everyone else (see: A_plan_for_gun_control) To summarize: I put forth a suggestion for dealing with the mass-shooting problem in the short term—locking up all assault rifles in secure repositories/shooting ranges; and one for the long term—invest in the science of correcting genetic causes for extreme violence. Since then I have only heard one person running for any public office who has taken any of my proposals to heart. So, trust me, they are aware of the idea. All I can say to those politicians who claim to want the assault rifles off the street and full background checks is, could you be any more spineless? 5/11/22,
Major discovery, instant time travel from 2022 to 1022 is possible,
after all: While you’re at it, Mr. President, why don’t you go after the most widely disseminated misinformation in existence—organized religion. I’m sure that will go over swell, too. Congress, for God’s sake, decide when a fetus has rights--8, 10, 12 weeks . . . whatever, and settle the matter once and for all. There must be 101 more pressing matters, and now everyone is fussing over this issue yet again, and you are to blame (as far as I'm concerned). Or is that the general idea? I would ask congressional republicans to try and focus on the pragmatic and the compromise for a change rather than pandering to the parts of your base that have been brainwashed since they were children into believing they have to take their religion so seriously as to force their will on others or lightning bolts are going to be shot at them from the clouds. The armchair president (one of many) has “spoken.” 4/18/22,
Deflating inflation: No one has ever fixed inflation overnight, and the remedy will likely cause a bit of a recession, but obviously, there is no one currently at the helm with the right kind of wisdom and fortitude. So to the reader, I recommend doing what you can to get the truth out there before every dime you earn or save becomes utterly worthless. For further reading—a few URLs I would recommend: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/paul-volcker-was-the-last-fed-chairman-who-said-no-pain-no-gain-2019-12-09 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/column-paul-volckers-legacy-helped-shape-an-independent-federal-reserve https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-scared-shtless 4/01/22,
Coronavirus vaccine safety: |
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Explanation: The chart is meant to track the number of
deaths and illnesses from the start of the pandemic extending well into
the future, comparing the results of a particular month to the same
month from an earlier year—before the pandemic materialized. I chose a
monthly comparison so the chart could hopefully be updated on a
monthly basis, and also because the incidence of many illnesses change
with the seasons. I chose 2018 as the control year, as the vaping
deaths in 2019 would have slightly tainted the statistics for that
particular year. The percentage increase or decrease is to reflect the
rate of increase or decrease (based on the population of that
particular age group at the time). Frankly, I do not know with any
certainty that sufficient VAERS data currently exists to create such a
chart, but that is beside the point. | There is one item the chart
cannot account for, of course, and that is exactly when the subjects
caught the virus or were fully vaccinated, but the longer the chart is
maintained, the less relevant the “when” would probably become. 3/17/22,
Ukraine insanity: 3/08/22: Not exactly a news flash that politicians are very good at spreading manure, democrats, republicans or whatever; but, man, some of these republican candidates I have seen lately really take the cake. A while back, some guy was touting how Jimmy Carter (US Pres. 1977-1981) was responsible for rampant inflation—absolutely backwards from reality. Inflation went berserk under Nixon; and, indeed, democratic administrations have historically been much more fiscally responsible than republican, until now, anyway. At any rate, one thing Jimmy Carter did to attack gas prices caused by OPEC price increases was to slash the speed limit in the entire US. I think it is high time to take a page from his playbook and carry it out immediately—set the speed limits back to where they were ASAP. Then figure out some way to get that damn pipeline from Canada built while accommodating the native Americans, who are rightfully worried about the safety of the pipeline. US oil companies would not have any excuse, then, to gouge the American consumer. Ukraine: I hate to admit it, but I have to agree with Donald Trump on this point: While Putin may be the aggressor, here, the stupid factor definitely lies with the West and the Biden administration: If a country has no intention whatsoever of coming to the rescue and engaging an aggressor, it has no business spurring a smaller country into war with that aggressor and closing the door to any compromises. No, that does not mean that I think we should engage the Russians. It just means I have a very low opinion of the Biden administration, at this point. In regards to western media coverage of the war, I don’t think I have ever seen so much propaganda in my life. I’m beginning to think those assertions that those major US media institutions are controlled by the CIA are true. Lastly, so a trillion dollars of ship and luxury cars burns and goes to the Davy Jones. Sent there by a little defective lithium-ion battery most likely made in China where 80% of them are made. Hmm, maybe Karma really does exist. |
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