President Donald Trump has announced that he plans new missile strikes against the Syrian regime in response to an alleged chemical attack on Syrian civilians in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus.
The US has offered no evidence of the attack, since, as the Financial Times has admitted, confirmation of any such attack could take weeks. Moreover, confirming the attack took place at all is not the same thing as confirming that the Syrian regime was responsible for it.
Breaking up the United States, a view thought dangerous and toxic way back in 2015, continues to trickle out in mainstream political conversation.
The latest example comes from Jesse Kelly at The Federalist:
One of the best stories I’ve seen recently comes from Irving, New York, where a man has decided to build his own highway off ramp for his tobacco store. This story has it all, tax evasion, Indian tribal sovereignty, and an answer to the question “who will build the road?” The video is worth watching.
It’s one of those stories of the century that somehow never gets treated that way. For an astounding 25 of the past 26 years, the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion.
Tucker Carlson’s monologue last night was one of the most powerful moments in cable news history.
Prior to the 2016 election, Ryan McMaken noted that history shows the fastest way to increase government spending is to vote Republican:
[F]or decades, we’ve been told that a vote for the GOP is a vote for “smaller government.” This is repeated both by Republicans, who say it like it’s a good thing, and by Democrats who still seem to think that the GOP is committed to cutting grandma’s safety net.
Fifty years separate us, now, from 1968 and the two momentous legacies of the then soon to ending failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson: The declaring of war on America’s supposed domestic ills in the form of the “Great Society” programs, and the aggressive military intervention in a real war in Vietnam. Both of these “wars” reflected the arrogance and hubris of the social engineer who believes that he has the power and ability to remake and direct society in his own preferred image.
Bob Haber at Forbes has a short and sweet column warning about crazy conditions in the Vancouver real estate market. Prices for single-family detached homes have more than tripled just since 2002 in Canadian dollars, even with a Bank of Canada that has been far more circumspect in expanding its balance sheet than the Fed.
So I watched “Do you trust this computer?”, a film that “explores the promises and perils” of artificial intelligence. While it notes both the good and the bad, it has an obvious focus on how AI might bring about “the end of the world as we know it” (TEOTWAWKI.) That is, if it is left unregulated.
