The Independent Daily
Published simultaneously in Kingman, Arizona, USA, and Carlow, Ireland
Every month tens-of-thousands of readers from more than 30 countries read this journal in-depth: welcome!
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
Joseph Warren, Editor/Contributing Writer
Contact via email for all: Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com
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Name, Website, All Contents copyright 2011-2026 Warren-Hill Productions
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Issue: 18 May 2026
Relic Humanity
by Joseph Warren, Editor
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
copyright 2026
“Data Centers and Artificial Intelligence are Destroying our Country… Our World”
If you don’t know this, you sense it, or you should:
Ultimately, once we advanced AI and Data Centers over the Good of Humanity, such as we have, we are done; we are finished.
But “We” is not all-inclusive. Society as it is today is being redesigned, and… You are a relic of the soon-to-be historical record of what was…
Who’s to blame?
On one side of the issue are the super-rich, men and women who just want to begin the world again, because our planet today is tired, exhausted, and very much needs to take a few centuries off to restore itself. Our world needs a substantial break from the billions of people who are trodding on her daily with inexhaustible vehemence, abusing her without respite.
This elite group realizes that shortly they won’t need you to buy their products and services to generate more wealth for them because once they reach a critical level of technological stability, including energy production through alternative systems, you, the consumer, become superfluous: you are a burden, not a blessing.
Consumerism becomes archaic. Once Resources - AI and Robotics - reach the needed plateau, Money is valueless. Any item, commodity, luxury, necessary to sustain and fully enjoy life can easily be acquired through the facility of AI and Robotics, with greater ease through reduced obstruction and congestion, far more abundant resources, and genetic editing to prolong "worthy" existing lives.
At some point in designing the architecture of this idyllic future, one or more of this cadre of elite realized that there were far too many people on the planet to allow it to function as it is. And that is a sad but inexorable truth. Other international leaders understand this certainty, as well. Those who haven’t yet will fully enlist in this proposed reconciliation with nature, and become part of the global component.
Those who will direct this world’s future are today’s Malthusian disrupter. They are tantamount to the Black Plague, Spanish Flu, Cataclysmic Flood, and every epic event that has brought humanity to its knees, but has now been made impotent by science, negating the benefits of massive population reduction. Because, in reality…
8.3 Billion is far too many people.
They have already devised, in principle, the calamity that will restructure the world’s burden. Only a few more pieces to the puzzle remain, and they are being fitted as you read this.
Population, 350 Million: The leadership of the United States of America understands what must happen: President Trump, and his family and his personal and business associates, are closely aligned with this forward looking strategy, and have contingency plans in place to deal with those who dissent. The highest-level approach to deal a fatal blow to the bulk of the world’s population has tentatively been formulated. In agreement are the leaders of other high-population, evolved societies.
Population, 1.41 Billion: People’s Republic of China (PRC) has watched as its resources have been dissipated, its reliance on resources abroad has increased to a dangerous imbalance. Food shortages resulting in malnourishment and stunted physical and mental development. Resources critical to perpetuate emerging industry are scarce and growing more so every day. Aberrant weather phenomenon are destabilizing the country, and have the distinct potential to result in societal cataclysm. China’s leadership, essentially the Politburo, are aligned with this future-vision, thus has our government and industrial leadership closed the gap that once existed, abandoning their manufactured differences, and that is the reason Xi and Trump now freely correspond.
Population 1.48 Billion: India’s top 1% of the population control 40% of its wealth. The top 10%, 65% of wealth. As many as 340 Million of its population are classified as Poor. Half the world's undernourished population live in India. Yet, Technologically, India has few peer countries and a Caste system that virtually nullifies responsibility to the country’s poor, representing the lowest stratum of society. India has always been afflicted by various disasters easily facilitated to significant population loss when appropriate. President Trump has a highly functional relationship with India’s current leader, Modi.
Those are the world’s top three populace countries.
Opposing them is every other child, woman, and man. But in our world of today, the collective voice of every other living person is only a whimper in a hurricane. Once Artificial Intelligence makes it clear that their collective voice must be silenced, they will be gone and those remaining will live in a true Utopian reality. In a very short period of time, no memory or trace of those who came before will remain.
Those who breed rapidly, such as Musk, Duffy and so many others favoring this administration do, will comprise our country’s genetic springboard and likely, two generations hence, will never learn of or be cluttered by the remnants of those who came before.
There will be no past to cloud the future.
Sean Duffy and Family Reimagine
The Grapes of Wrath
by Joseph Warren, Editor
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
copyright 2026
Happy Birthday America Tour!
And Condolences to the Rest of Us…
Steinbeck was unquestionably a genius in the art of creating memorable and poignant prose. And, while I frequently re-read Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Long Valley, The Moon is Down, and even Travels with Charley, nowadays in my older term, I avoid The Grapes of Wrath owing to its emotionally chilling content, marking the struggle of famine and desperation in our country at that time of economic collapse: not much different than many of my generation experienced at various times when the Capitalist rug was tugged out from under our feet, leaving us staggering and fearful as to what tomorrow may bring. The book has always been too close to home for me. Decades ago when I was young, we lived through tenuous times not too far off from the Joad family, and I know that many others do today, as well.
Interestingly, a few days prior I had bookmarked an article about the California Peach crop and how owing to the Del Monte Corporation bankruptcy, nearly one-half million peach trees were to be destroyed along with the fruit they bore.
Doling out peaches to children who might benefit from the plethora of vitamins peaches contain would be tantamount to Goodness, and Corporate America may never be seen in this light. Better to destroy them - peaches and American children until they are a more profitable commodity. I recall at least two similar instances of this in Grapes of Wrath.
Things never change in a quest for profitability. Those who were expendable, are expendable.
Back to Mr. Duffy who has fathered nine (9) children with his wife of many years, and apparently, like Musk, he is a man who is not cognizant of the world’s diminishing resources, including food, shelter, and, of course, fossil fuels.
As the Secretary of Transportation, Mr. Duffy understands the value of a gallon of gasoline, or should at least as well you and I, and how precious and rare a resource it is today, and will become far more so in a decade or two as we look down the barrel of World Oil Depletion. (You won’t even believe what a gallon of gasoline will likely cost less than 20 years from now!)
In passing, may I help you to understand that suspending the Gas Tax nets a reduction of 18.3 cents per gallon. If you shop at Smith’s or Safeway, among many, you can save that much at the gas pump by buying a sack of apples or potatoes or preaches. Sounds to me like a pretty flaccid gesture. But, as part of the ongoing war of diversion, it appears to be working to Trump’s benefit.
To demonstrate his concern, Duffy’s taking his wife and their great big bunch of children - a ball team’s worth, along with assorted others, including an entourage of safety and security staff, and probably domestic help, as well, on a Road Trip to commemorate our 250th Birthday on July 4, 2026, and our likely subsequent death as a country in the not-too-distant future.
I have it on very good authority that the photograph below is an actual image of President Trump’s mobile office and the Duffy family’s security service main communications center (CentComDuff) preparing to depart. Also, President Trump will be riding in a rocking chair in the bed of the truck for the duration of the trip:
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
In response to a question regarding the wisdom of a trip such as this while we as a country are lost in a world of spiraling costs and shortages Mr. Duffy was (likely) quoted as saying, “Let them eat cake… My boss likes cake. I like cake. Who doesn’t like cake?” Then, he walked away from the press conference to, presumably, eat some cake.
The Truth about Oil
by Joseph Warren, Editor
copyright 2026
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
Gasoline just seems so damned expensive! Right?
I’m not sure what’s happened to the collective memory of our country but gasoline still seems relatively cheap compared to about 20 years ago, and it is…
Our country fell into a very deep recession not more than a score of years past as a direct result of a severely weakened economy, owing to the driving panic of spiraling Oil prices and appurtenant costs, like food harvesting, production and transportation, housing, job loss, and the burden of a continuing War in the Middle East.
In 2008 the Phoenix housing market collapsed. All day we could have bought three bedroom condominiums for less than $20,000, just so taxes would be paid and HOA fees met. Real estate tanked all across America to some relative extent.
Getting to work for many of our fellow citizens became painful as they faced the daily scourge of the price of a gallon of gasoline as a derivative of a barrel of Crude oil as it hit an all-time high of $132.32 in June 2008.
War? What war?
If your memory is not quite what it used to be, allow me to help: In March 2003 our meathead president, George W. Bush, immersed us in a war that would last for many years to follow, leading to thousands of dead Americans, Allies, and to the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands of women, children and other absolutely innocent people. But today GWB is an artist in residence in Texas, so he’s forgiven for being the spawn of the Devil. That’s his legacy: his problem.
Our challenge is not to do that again. We’ll see.
So, what’s the difference between 2008 and today? Are we headed for another fiscal collapse as we saunter forward towards an ever-evolving War?
Back in 2008 that barrel of Crude appears a little high today, if you follow the commodity. In reality though, in 2026 money, that barrel of Crude...
is the equivalent of $199.68, or about sixty bucks more in 2026 money,
or
1/3 more than the same barrel of Oil today.
That’s quite a difference! And while it does little to assuage your “pain at the pump” as it is so frequently contextualized, it does help put things into perspective.
So, are we headed for a meltdown? Not likely. Most importantly, and something you must keep in mind, it will take a very long time for the retail price of gasoline to return to a somewhat normatively low state - Commodities contracts for Crude delivery are several months out, so all that expensive oil has to be processed and sold to justify investor outlays before things change.
Here, Investor means Trump family and friends who have been gambling on our money for months now, just as his predecessors had - Democrat or Republican.
But take heart! The world’s supply of Oil is likely to be exhausted in just 40 years or so. The lead-up to this drop-dead date will see prices that will make Six Bucks a Gallon a steal…
Running Up The Down Escalator:
America’s Hourly Wage Road Race
by Zhuó Wén
Contributor
copyright 2026
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
Arizona minimum wage increased from $12 in 2020 to $15.15 in 2026.
Arizona, like much of the rest of the country, periodically deliberates and denies or approves increased wage levels for those whose households are dependent, in whole or in part, on hourly wages paid to beginning, low-level, entry, service, or other minimum wage employees. (Basically, anyone willing to work for grunt wages without extraneous complaint.) They work in our Service, Food, entry-level Manufacturing, and a host of other sectors of our economy.
All they really want is just one thing: To put more money in the pockets of their landlords, grocers, and anyone else from whom they acquire those things necessary to sustain life.
Between 2020 and 2025 Food prices surged an average of 27%
Of course, they don’t see it this way. Most workers who strike for higher wages, either formally or through some semi-organized platform, see their efforts as bringing them a higher level or standard of living. And so it does for those who derive financial reward for increased prices and various government entities who fund their operations on tax collections, like those who collect taxes… ironically.
In the main it’s a syllogism that looks something like this following approval of a boost in minimum wage:
You are getting more money;
I want more money for no valid reason;
Therefore…
You will pay me more money if you need or want what I provide.
It’s all theatrics and phony economics
As a result of this legerdemain, labor unions can feel good about prevailing against the menace of Greed to squeeze out just a few pennies more for the sake of their starved members who will happily pay more dues, and who gimply drag themselves, bedraggled and forlorned to jobs of negligible extrinsic reward to provide services to the masses, on behalf of the ultimate beneficiaries: the not-small business owners and governments. Of course, in two to three years many of these jobs will be replaced by robotics, and robots never starve or complain or feign injury or ask for day off to bring their robot-child to a doctor.
Arizona average rent increased from about $1,400 in 2020 to about $2,000 in 2026
In truth, the 300 extra bucks you make a month now still leaves you $300 in the hole from where you were in rent a little more than five years ago, unless you moved into a shittier apartment for $300 less, or a tent, or a van, or your parent’s basement, having resigned yourself to a non-life, instead focusing on your TikTok career.
New Car Prices? Anyone in a minimum wage job cannot afford to buy a new throw-away car, which, buy the way, have increased from $38,000 in 2020 to more than $50,000 in 2026
Who’s to blame for this bullshit spiral of avarice?
(To be continued…)
Combover Jesus
by Joseph Warren, Editor
copyright 2026
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
Much more to worry about...
Just a quick note: You are being played, again. It’s not President Trump whose lucidity is in question, but the average American’s.
While you feign or express actual indignation, Combover Jesus continues to raid our national treasury to his and his family’s benefit. America is being robbed while you clamor about what is in reality very little.
If indignation is your cup of tea, there are many far more salient disturbing events about which you should be indignant:
Bankruptcy Filings: February 2026 (last month of data available at this writing) Up 14% from February 2025. More worrisome, Commercial filings up 21%, for the same period.
Workforce: Number of citizens in the workforce in the year 2000, 164,413,801. Number today, 162,718,647 - nearly two million fewer.
US National Debt: At the moment, Way more than 39 trillion dollars, and going up by the minute…
In the art of Magic, it’s called Legerdemain.
Iran and The USA:
Hey, Herr Trump und Herr Hegseth!
Read von Clauswitz, Will Ya?
by Joseph Warren, Editor
copyright 2026
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
It’s been more than a year of Trump - again - and it’s been fun:
But, can we get rid of these lunatics now?
Ranting, Raving, Maniacal, Crazed, Delusional, Murderous Braggadocio. Ignorantly condemning, ironically fiscally wasteful defying the first premise of America First, while purposefully and willfully deceitful, once again our president put vast sums in the pockets of those he freely embraces and to whom he has sold his soul (such as it was) and our future. But few rebuke this Ranting, Raving, Maniacal, Crazed, Delusional, Murderous maniac.
Here’s the last posted historical entry for posterity’s Iran-USA War Journal (version 2026): Nothing’s different. It’s all the same. I think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, of the thirty-minute variety for his exceptional efforts of bringing about a one-half hour lasting peace, followed by the threat of total destruction of Iran and its ancient civilization. Why? So that his colleagues and family might freely play the commodities market to their extreme financial advantage.
Von Clauswitz means nothing to Hegseth or Trump. Military theory to them consists of flatulence, sometimes oral, sometimes not. The Secretary of what is alleged to be the Department of War, is actually the Secretary of the Department of Unplanned Violence, Strategic Market Manipulation and Wastefulness, launching Trump’s Armada to loci far and wide, to no end except to run up our Deficit and lose some once-good, alas now-dead Americans.
What is happening today is not America First: I do not want to acquire ownership of Greenland. I have no interest in Iran’s oil fields, anymore than I did Iraq’s or Venezuela’s. I have no interest in making Musk the world’s first Trillionaire, although he presumes that he will reach that milestone in either money or progeny in the near term.
My America does not function in this slovenly, avaricious, intemperate, ignorant way...
I am disgusted by the many payoffs, clandestine and otherwise, to Trump and to those who support him, just as I was with Biden, Obama, GW Bush, Clinton, extending back to 1989, after which, we began our slow death spiral. My America does not function in this slovenly, avaricious, intemperate, ignorant way. We don’t need Artificial Intelligence: There’s enough of that going around as it is. We need Actual Thinking today to survive. Rather, you do… We’re Independents as has been made abundantly clear for years herein.
Honestly, though, when I think about it, at 76 years of age I can’t imagine a better president: After all, I could slip over to the Bardo at any moment, and given our current leadership and the state of our once-great, now derelict country, I will most likely have a smile on my face at that moment of Now.
A Tale of Two Cities: Las Vegas and Minneapolis
The Iceman Cometh: Tom Homan, and the vile, ignorant, and fat homosexual, Ernst Röhm
(With apologies to Eugene O’Neill)
by Joseph Warren, Editor
copyright 2026
https://TheIndependentDaily.com
“It was the worst of times; It is the worst of times.”
It is difficult to make a majority of Americans happy today. In fact, it may well be impossible, unless happiness comes from distributing (or promising to distribute) billions of dollars to offset the alleged pain speciously associated with COVID, or as a “dividend” for obeisance, such as supporting the many schemes regarding wealth distribution owing to a (or some) federal program’s reduction (DOGE) through layoff or termination. None of which has actually occurred.
But we are in a war, now, and the Epstein Files will never really be made public. While I’m thinking about it, what the hell happened to Maduro (not that I really care)? Our president pardoned who last week? Of course there’s no Global Warming: I’ve always worn only a tank top in January and no pants, and tell me again about Iran begging to negotiate a conclusion to the war? (Is Trump clandestinely communicating with a very deferential Persian Sock Puppet?) What the hell is happening...
Our elections testify to our unhappiness, serving chiefly to bring to office those who are perceived by a majority of our crippled electorate the least offensive of candidates. Something must be broken, or maybe as so many have said from the days of its first formulation in Greece, Democracy will never work as it is idealized (from a realist perspective).
“Why aren’t you registered Democrats?” a long-term associate asked us a few weeks ago, seeking to recruit us to her Arizona Leftist cause. As sentient Independents, how may one respond to such an insipid question?
Whether Left or Right, misery, to some extent, prevails in some aspect of our society. Today, the issue is Immigration - legal and illegal - at the fore of which are the actions of ICE, specifically, the ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) and for very good reasons.
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Governor Tim Walz
It’s not often that I’m stunned by a news report wherein someone who is absolutely innocent of doing any evident wrong classified traditionally as a Capital Offense, is extrajudicially executed by US authorities: such was the case in Minnesota - twice - very few weeks ago, although it seems like years past in psychotic Trump World. Yet I, like many, was shocked, appalled and ashamed, but you don’t remember the events to which I am referring, do you? Too long ago, just like Bush’s Iraq-Afghan conflict in 2003… Trump’s redux 2026.
In the past I have always tended to pass off misdirected violence as: It wasn’t me, so… or, he must have done something… or, an unfortunate series of events of no one’s fault, all of which is negated by video evidence to the contrary in both Minnesota tragedies.
Startlingly so, in the case of young Ms. Good. I confess I swooned as I watched the first released unadulterated bystander video, and at 76 years of age I’ve lived through much violence and brutality and death, first-hand and otherwise. I thought I saw it all in all possible forms of blood and treachery. But in that video clip, the ICE officer thrust himself in harm’s way at the front of her car (very quickly) as she was about to drive away, leaving no doubt he was fully intent on shooting the woman at the wheel and only needed to construct the fallacy of provocation. (Why are you not outraged?) And he did so without trepidation baiting her into a controlled-uncontrollable scenario and result.
It was his intent. He wanted to kill her. I saw all I needed to in his eyes to reach that judgement. I knew that the claim would be that she had Weaponized her car. Of course, that was the official statement.
The agent will likely remain free of any legal guilt under our administration. And that is societally cataclysmic for our country representing a shift not unlike Berlin in the 1930s. (If our President Trump hasn’t pardoned the ICE agent at this writing, I know he will.)
The “Horst Wessel (Song)”
(Horst Wessel Song: A song that glorified the death of one of Hitler’s Brownshirts)
Any high school student knows that Hitler came to power at a difficult time in Germany’s history following the first of modern epic European conflicts and after the country was severely rebuked and punished via Versailles. At that time - the early 1920s - Germany was devastated; its People were emotionally crushed; its institutions of Law were ravaged; its Industry was usurped and eliminated; and Debt of astounding proportion promised nothing but misery for decades to come.
Enter Ernst Röhm, a vile, despicable misanthropic overweight homosexual who gravitated to leadership of the Sturmabteilung (SA), better known as Stormtroopers, or commonly, Brownshirts.
The SA grew to be a vast and formidable force who operated far beyond the reach of the people and those responsible for society’s governance, very much like ICE today. They were very often a Death Squad operating in advance of, and alongside the Nazi party’s SS (Gestapo), and far more influential than the much smaller, and less enthusiastic Reichswehr under President Paul von Hindenburg.
Most importantly the SA’s recruits were, prior to their affiliation as Stormtroopers, uneducated, lower-class laborers or out-of-work tradesmen, much like ICE today, who found themselves unemployable in Germany’s mired and virtually non-existent job market. They were sometimes criminals, sexual deviants, or just plainly Thugs. Others were just angry. Very angry.
They needed to Hate and to Inflict Injury and, whenever remotely justifiable, Death. They found the perfect vehicle in Röhm’s SA.
There are certainly similarities of somewhat lessened extremes in Röhm’s counterpart in our country, Thomas Homan, our Border Czar, (not to characterize him as an ignorant, overweight, depraved, aging homosexual - I have no insight into his sexuality).
So, Mr. Homan under direction of President Trump, like Röhm under Hitler, took it upon his organization to rid Minneapolis of Illegal Aliens, much the way the Hitler regime sought to counter the growing influences and effects of the burgeoning and vocally troublesome Jewish and Communist and otherwise Disagreeable populations in Germany, redirecting a nation’s frustration at having lost the war to a handy defenseless diversionary element while viable solutions to Germany’s countless problems were obfuscated.
To preserve Hitler’s leadership, procedures and laws were promulgated governing elections, and extreme penalties aligned with achieving the desired result were introduced and enforced, at any cost. Much as we’re heading today.
Las Vegas, Nevada: Governor Joe Lombardo
Governor Lombardo said, “I know better than to draw conclusions related to law enforcement action without having all the facts at my disposal and I encourage all Americans to attempt to do the same…” Wise words uttered at a difficult time.
Nevada, particularly Las Vegas, is a state heavily dependent on workers whose efforts serve the needs of tourists, construction trades, and myriad other critical tasks, and since white people are not really motivated enough to perform this type of work with a sense of reliability and commitment, Las Vegas tends to rely on immigrant labor, who are, conversely, motivated by necessity and presumably spend far less time either smoking dope or texting or posting ignorant or useless videos.
In 2025 the number of Nevada ICE deportations totaled about one-thousand, few of which were the result of orchestrated raids by ICE. Rather, their intake occurred as a product of the existing system in-place whereby someone who commits a crime is caught, arrested, background-checked, and if he/she is illegally here in our country, he or she will likely be deported following procedural denouement because they were arrested for committing a crime, thus meeting President Trump’s originally stated objective of deporting dangerous criminals, as opposed to some guy named Enrique who maintains your yard, or washes your car, or stocks shelves in your local store, or pours your concrete patio, or… whatever, to feed his wife (who probably also works) and their children, and provide them with shelter and buy the products you make and sell, and gladly take on the household tasks you either can’t or won’t do.
No one is shot. Bystanders are not maimed. Homan’s ICE Stormtroopers are not roaming the streets with drawn loaded weapons. Instead, our Police Officers who are trained professionals, act as qualified, capable conduits through which those who meet certain criteria are dealt with in a manner consistent with an evolved society.
No more roving bands of masked marauding misfits lobbing Riot gas into crowds of those who shouldn’t be imputing themselves into volatile situations exacerbating an already tense and dubious ill-conceived gathering.
Our country must adopt the Nevada model before we implode.
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Take a break from the world and enjoy a pleasant read knowing that you’re supporting our publication:
Leading the comfortable life of the semi-retired in Savannah, the duo of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, the city’s (and, really, the world’s) most noted Black detectives, are awakened from their professional slumber by a series of most unusual murders all tied by the common thread of one particular song from many years earlier; a popular R&B number by a Black singer who died under foggy and questionable circumstances while performing to a mixed-race audience.
But the story really begins much, much earlier at Howard University during an evolutionary moment in America’s history: a time of struggle and violence and appeasement, when smoking weed was a given, and Gladys Knight was at the top of the charts and her game.
Dr. Watson begins this memoir by ... Open link here: Read more, for less! At Amazon
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