Gentle Ramblings

      It was a quarter passed 9 am, my wife and I had just exited the PATH train from our home in downtown Jersey City, to Penn Station in Newark, NJ. Upon exiting the West end of the transit hub I bared witness to a fifty yard line of dusty blankets, shopping carts, sleeping bags, the occasional tent and lastly the wrinkled faces freezing in the January air. This was a Monday morning in a fairly large, well known city, at least in the New York metropolitan area. I've been through this section of walkway before and never seen so many cold, desperate and somewhat ghostly looking figures before. And no, these weren't some of the phony homeless you'll come across on occasions who'll ask you for a five dollar bill and they're dressed better then you are. These folks were wispy, smelling of mildew from never having the luxury of washing their clothes. As we did our best to politely give what we could fiscally, we continued only two blocks up Broad Street and to our left ...

      I've always been a realist, when it comes to science, religion and especially when it comes to stories of UFO abductions and ghost encounters. Other than your most obvious conspiracy laden assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK when variations of other tales have been brought to my attention over the years, like the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged, along with the 1969 moon landing, I've always politely listened with one ear and let the nonsense quickly exit out the other. Just to show you how far out the collective minds of some in our society have gone, let's start with the QAnon folk. Their growing popularity and the fact they got one of their own factually challenged people in the House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, goes to show that outlandish silliness is no longer just planted along the fringe of consciousness. Ms. Greene was elected to Congress in the November elections and sworn in as Representative of the 14th District of Georgia...

          It's safe to say the passing of the 1.4 trillion dollar stimulus package was a positive step for the left-wing Progressive community in the United States. Statistics show it potentially could be the most important piece of legislation designed to improve the lives of a the lower middle class since the New Deal domestic programs by Franklin Delano Roosevelt over 80 years ago. For starters the 1,400 dollar personal checks sent, which were 3 months over due, may seem like a pedestrian amount, but for many could be at least a temporary lifeline for people living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth or living in boarding houses. With the 15 dollar minimum wage the lone sacrifice, though a glaring one, the most important benefit of the American Rescue Plan that made the final cut is the 3,000$ child tax credit extension. According to CNBC.com, this provision is expected to draw over 4 million children between the ages of 6 to 17 above the poverty line, which ...

         The Islamic State reached it's territorial peak in the fall of 2014, ISIS controlled 41,000 square miles in Iraq and by the end of 2014 ISIS had taken over a third of Syria (according to wilsoncenter.org). The speed at which the outlaw organization was able to conquer such a large amount of territory was a shock to the system, of not just the Middle East, but to the entire international community. Besides ISIS, other Islamic militias began to rise up to challenge the power of Bashar Al Assad and his fading regime. The Al-Nusra Front, Ahar Al-Sham and even a group with the Westernized title as the Free Syrian Army all battled it out with Assad's forces throughout the years from 2010-2015 (syriahr.com). Aleppo, in the Idlib province eventually became the rebel stronghold, causing it to be a frequent target of air force bombings, ground force invasions and even the use of chemical weapons on at least two occasions. As we're going to discuss in more detail ...

       My reader's have spoken. I've done several polls on my favorite social media platform and it seems people want to read about Biden, his first 50 days which will be the 10th of March. These first two months of his presidency has been dominated by Biden's ambitious 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus/covid relief bill which finally passed the Senate and should be on Uncle Joe's desk by the 13th. Other domestic issues have been discussed at some length including: immigration reform, Medicare, Climate Change and even voting restrictions. Foreign policy has been more of the same from the two previous administrations: extremely close ties with Israel, confusion over how to deal with China, forcing Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal they already agreed to follow verbatim, and of course the dreaded bombing campaigns of shadow militias in Syria. No it hasn't been smooth and leaps and bounds far from perfect. The passing of the Covid relief the highpoint, despite capitulation o...

       The Syrian Civil War is going to be a decade old this month, March 15, 2011 (Brittanica.com) is the official date of the beginning of the most catastrophic conflict I've witnessed in my lifetime. The refugees, civilian casualties and amount of bombs dropped by the Assad Syrian government and numerous foreign nations is nearly impossible to put numbers on. We'll go through the many years of tragedy, cities left in rubble, chemical weapons, many proxies, foreign intervention and the rise of perhaps, the most extreme terrorist organization in the history of the world. The most unfortunate fact of this series is nothing has been done to bring this military* and politically disastrous quagmire to a completion. Bombs keep dropping, Assad's regime remains, propped up by the help of Vladimir Putin. Israel and the United States continue hunting Iranian militias with nightly missile attacks. While Kurdish rebels, as well as, the US backed Syrian Defense Force (SDF) batt...