Gentle Ramblings

 Proverbs 22:2 "The rich and the poor have this in common: The Lord is the maker of them all."    You read such a passage and wonder would God really not judge the poor in the same light as the wealthy? If you gave credence to the Joel Osteen inspired "Prosperity Gospel" you'd learn that not being a financial success is more or less a sin. The Prosperity Gospel is defined as: A religious belief among some Protestant Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God.    Historian Randall Collins surmised it was the church more than any other agency that put into place the preconditions of Capitalism. In fact, during the Middle Ages the Catholic Church was the main locus of the ascendency of early Capitalism (acton.org).     The Prosperity Gospel originated as a subsidiary of Pentecostalism in post-World War II America. Although, it began within local congregations the movement attained a larger following due to the use of telev

   We hear so many reports of genocide and war crimes from the iron tentacles of the Mainstream Media you'd think Mariupol is comparable to Riga, Latvia circa 1941. And folks it's certainly far from that.   I've seen the footage from Bucha, whom do we believe when anyone with a camera and youtube account these days are deemed journalists?  The reports from "professional" news source, Reuters are at least 403 bodies of dead Ukrainian civilians have been discovered since the first week of April. Sounds believable, only until you realise the only source of this information is the Mayor of the town! If you've heard my podcast or read any of my prior editorials you'd definitely be well aware I'm never going to defend some wayward autocrat like Vladimir Putin. But the more I dig in the dirt of this Ukrainian catastrophe the more I'm learning about the ugly truth of modern warfare, and more importantly, modern propaganda.   In 2022 the truth is unerringly

  If you're not quite sure what the Petrodollar is, it's pretty uncomplicated. Back in the 1970's, at the height of the oil crisis, United States President Richard Nixon conceived an economic master plan. He offered to help defend Saudi Arabia from their burgeoning Middle East rivals. In exchange for that promise, the Saudi kingdom assured all of its oil production be traded in USD( energyandcapital.com).    This strategic stroke of genius helped cement the US dollar as the foremost reserve currency in the world.  And while this isn't the lone reason nations hold onto and trade in American money, it may very well be the most pertinent.  More recently, though, the agreement that created the Petrodollar has become increasingly strained. The Saudi and US alliance is no longer as close as it was under previous administrations. Political and diplomatic differences on issues ranging from human rights and the ongoing catastrophe in Yemen has caused the once tight relationship

 The American Dream can be summed up currently by the jobs report in November of 2021. According to the New York Times, 4.5 million Americans willfully quit their jobs. What could possibly compel such record numbers of people walking out of their place of employment and into an immediate state of uncertainty? Is it reasonable to believe the human race has become so incredibly lazy and indifferent that gainful employment is no longer of much importance? Well, I'd like to think that's simply absurd, but when you delve deeper into the current state of the National economy, as well as, the general distrust, many citizens are showing towards the US government, perhaps that indifference is more palpable than originally thought.     The Pew Research Center has done studies on the populations trust of the US government since 1958. As of May 2021, numbers reached historic lows, only one quarter of Americans can say they trust the US government to do what's right, 2% (all of the time

     The date was December 19, 2019, the location, an institute of virology in Wuhan, China, where the most significant and deadly pandemic in more than a century was released upon an unsuspecting, unprepared planet (dates courtesy of brittannica.com). The source of the virus is still very much a mystery. Did it really originate and spread from a meat market in the center of the city of the Wuhan, China?  Perhaps the "gain of function" experiments and testing that was, more likely than not, taking place at the aforementioned virology institute really was where the dreaded covid 19 virus was born. No one has and probably ever will be able to gather enough indisputable evidence to truly announce to the public, with any conviction, where the pandemic has its origins. What we do know is the Covid 19 nightmare quickly spread across oceans, mountain ranges and six continents by the early months of 2020. By October of 2021, Covid 19 deaths reached 5 million worldwide. Italy, Spain a

  This summer Hurricane Ida pounded the American states of Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Alabama and Pennsylvania to the  tune of 1.4 billion dollars of damage, according to insurance company Allstate. 33 deaths were also caused by the massive storm. The total fiscal damage from the 2021 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was estimated to be 69.13 billion dollars, the fourth costliest tropical season on record. There has been a total of seven hurricanes, four of which were category 3 or higher ( disasterphilanthropy.org). What does this all mean? For one thing, according to NOAA weather service, due to the increasing amounts and severity of these natural disasters the National Hurricane Center (NHC) have extending the tropical season from May 15 to November 1st. These deadly, destructive storms are beginning a month sooner and finishing 2 weeks later than in 1981 when the National Weather Service began naming these storms (weather.com).     Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was the 5th costliest