War

Japan launches largest warship since WWII.

Navy discovers Expedia technology 17 years after it was created.

The reported terrorist threat against Middle East embassies exposes the futility of the war on terror. Al Qaeda has more terrorists today than on 9/11, and al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is still loose.

While the US claims to be fighting al Qaeda, al Qaeda groups funded and armed by the US seize airbase in Syria. They turned Libya over to al Qaeda. Now they're turning Syria over to al Qaeda.

We talk about all the damaging programs and precedents begun with the New Deal, but Lincoln initiated many terrible, lasting changes during the Civil War.

"[T]he Civil War was really the great turning point . . .  in the increase in State power, because with the Civil War you now have the total introduction of things like railroad land grants, subsidies of big business, permanent high tariffs, which the Jacksonians had been able to whittle away before the Civil War, and a total revolution in the monetary system so that the old pure gold standard was replaced first by greenback paper, and then by the National Banking Act — a controlled banking system.  And for the first time we had the imposition in the United States of an income tax and federal conscription.”  (Not to mention the precedent of waging of total war on civilian populations). "

Those are pretty terrible.