DIG LIFE DEEP!

It's a standoff between the left and right. On the left, sitting US President JOE BIDEN is facing serious allegations of influence peddling and pay for play, as more details and allegations emerge on his son HUNTER BIDEN'S business affairs. On the right, former President DONALD TRUMP faces multiple charges of wrong-doing, and conspiring to defraud the US following the results of the 202 election.

Who's right, who's wrong? That may be less important, oddly enough, than the question on the rule of law. Yes, the biggest test here is the future of American democracy. What matters is the US still stands as a beacon of hope and as a strong democracy for the world to admire, just as despots and crazed leaders outside America roam the world. Listen to our commentary on this episode.

Plus, workforce trends expert, IRA WOLFE, has some robust insights on how to preserve serendipity on the job as remote work raises the stake.

Communio, a national nonprofit organization that works with churches to strengthen families and develop stronger faith lives, has released its new Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships showing that a forty-year decline in marriage and fatherhood has fueled the public health crisis in loneliness and driven the national decline in Christian faith.

The conclusions are drawn from a nationwide survey of 19,000 Sunday church attendees conducted during worship in 112 evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic congregations.

In the wake of the US Surgeon General’s May 2 advisory on loneliness, this study found just 22 percent of church goers were considered lonely. Single church goers were more than three times more likely to be considered lonely than the married. Men and women who had never married in their 30s were more likely to be lonely than the loneliest group of widows.

The collapse of resident fatherhood through the decline in marriage is fueling the direct decline in faith. The study found 80 percent of all Sunday church attendees – single or married, young or old -- in the United States grew up in a continuously married home with both biological parents at a time where this is increasingly rare. This trend held across age groups.

Roughly 1 in 5 married churchgoers struggle (have a satisfaction gap) in their marriage. Women are 62 percent more likely to struggling than men. Cohabiting women were 76 percent more likely to struggle than married women and twice as likely to struggle than cohabiting men.

“To effectively evangelize today, we must address the declining number of marriages, poor marital health and improve the effectiveness of fathers in those marriages,” said J.P. DeGance, President of Communio. “By addressing these three issues, we can end the loneliness epidemic as well as spark a sustained revival in Christian faith and active church attendance. The link between marriage and faith is clear, yet 85 percent of all churches in the United States report spending zero dollars annually on marriage and relationship ministry.”

Communio is a nonprofit that equips to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and families.

RUSSELL CROWE stars in this year's demonic thriller, The Pope's Exorcist—a true story displaying the life of chief exorcist for the Vatican, FR. GABRIELE AMORTH and his battles against Satan and his demons. Coinciding with this release, The Pope's Exorcist: 101 Questions About Fr. GABRIELE AMORTH, was released in April. See, https://sophiainstitute.com/product/32003/

Conspiracy theories are nothing new in the United States, says Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an American University sociology professor who focuses on extremism and radicalization, but they’ve been able to spread like wildfire over the past decade due to social media, which can easily amplify and circulate misinformation. That's according to FORTESA LATIFI, writing recently in Teen Vogue.

At the height of the Covid pandemic, conditions couldn’t be more ripe for conspiracy theories to took hold. Miller-Idriss says that people tend to turn to conspiracy theories when they’ve lost a sense of control and feel afraid and anxious because these theories can offer comfort in the form of a black-and-white answer. “When people feel out of control, they’re attracted to things that offer them an action path,” Miller-Idriss tells Teen Vogue. “It’s easier to believe in some nefarious orchestration than to believe that there is an invisible virus in the air that could harm their family.”

According to Miller-Idriss, “inexplicable deaths” — whether it’s death on a mass scale, like the pandemic, or the loss of a famous person like Princess Diana — breed conspiracy theories. “When something is so horrifying, it’s easier for people to believe it can’t be true. They can become more vulnerable to conspiracy theories because maybe they can’t psychologically wrap their head around the fact that it is true,” she says. “It’s these episodic, shocking events that create vulnerability."

According to some analysts and conspiracy theorists, there's also a long historical record of the U.S. government lying to its citizens, including about medical experiments, covert surveillance and torture programs, and the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Harboring suspicions that the government isn't always telling the full story is a perfectly reasonable response to this pattern of deception, these analysts contend. But sometimes critical thinking and skepticism blossom into something more fanciful and outlandish and a willingness to believe information that matches up with our preexisting political leanings or ideological beliefs. Still, as some historians and researchers note, some though not every conspiracy theories may ultimately blossom into establishments facts. Others should simply be dismisses as fanciful. 

Source: Vogue and research

James Barlow is a highly accomplished tech and business leader and the Founder of Triumph Technology Solutions LLC, a leading AWS cloud-native services provider with over a decade of experience in the industry.

Bill Donohue was Honorably Discharged from the U.S. Air Force in 1970, and began his teaching career in 1973 working at St. Lucy's School in Spanish Harlem. In 1977, he took a position as a college professor teaching at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. In 1980, Bill was awarded his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. In 2022, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Ave Maria School of Law.

World poverty and extreme poverty worldwide are a present and dire reality and danger. According to the World Bank, about 650 million people in the world live below the extreme poverty line, defined as earning less than $2.15 per day. In the United States and other industrialized countries, living on

In this Exclusive expose, DR STEVEN PAYSON, an economist at the US Department of Labor, and professor at the University of Maryland, presents an alternative economic reality. Global poverty is undoubtedly dire, distressing and calls for appropriate policy responses and generous humanitarian aid. However, as DR PAYSON, argues in his latest volume of work, Extreme Poverty in the World: How the World Bank and United Nations Measure It (Fake Economics, Exposed: Its Pervasiveness, Harmfulness, and Prevention), a new presentation of the statistic facts are required, statistics based on purchasing power parity and not on "statistic poverty porn."

DR PAYSON argues that the prices actually paid by the poorest people on the planet can, in fact, be acquired and used by economists to derive more accurate measures of their actual level of well-being. "In this way," DR PAYSON maintains, "the world can have a better understanding of extreme poverty in its truest sense, and can direct assistance to where it is genuinely needed the most."

Order the book here, https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Poverty-United-Nations-Measure/dp/B0BRLX6H7K

Does this have echoes of the worst excesses of the French Revolution? Take a read of the Statement of Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, in the hush money cases against former President DONALD J TRUMP:

TRUMP is charged in a New York State Supreme Court indictment with 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree   

“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” said District Attorney Bragg. “Manhattan is home to the country’s most significant business market. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct. As the Statement of Facts describes, the trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic and fundamental business laws. As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.” 

This episode will offer an opinion from a non-partisan perspective, arguing that no former or sitting US President or elected leader - from any side of the aisle, should have to face trial at the whims, passions or emotions of the mob on the most flimsy of grounds. This politically charged show trial, Soviet style, could represent one of the lowest moments in American history, and it undoubtedly is one of the saddest. God Save America!