The presidential candidates are catching flack for the cost of their proposed social programs.

But …

What would we have to show for the $5,900,000,000,000 we spent on the Global War on Terror if we had spent it on infrastructure and social programs instead of killing people and blowing holes in the dirt?

There are four times the number of militant Sunnis ("terrorists") in the world today than on 9/11/2001, clustered in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (60k -> 230k).

Afghanistan is selling record amounts of opium (9,000 metric tons annually) and the Taliban have reclaimed 50% of Afghanistan and 70% of their pre-war territory.

Biotech has been telling us for years that GMO are safe; apparently they have never checked their work.

The FDA has discovered foreign DNA in the genome of hornless Holstein's; a consequence of the gene editing process – DNA that just happens to convey antibiotic resistance.

The snake oil salesmen never went away; they just found investors.

It has long been known in some circles that the CIA appropriated the term Conspiracy Theory (if it did not, in fact, invent it) to disparage and marginalize the critics of the Warren Commission Report.

The document 'educated' CIA employees on the 'correct' responses to criticisms of the Warren Commission Report and was an unabashed attempt to manipulate public opinion via the press (the CIA doesn't hold 'pressers', thus their information channels are usually through front companies and anonymous sources).

Regardless of the veracity of the Warren Commission Report, the document is emblematic of the culture of presumed superiority present in the government and intelligence communities during that era – after all, this is the same CIA that was conducting uncontrolled experiments on unsuspecting human subjects at the same they were touting their infallibility (is there any reason to believe things have changed?) The language of the CIA Dispatch dated 1 April 1967 (FOIA Document #1035-960) is clinical and dispassionate, but that has the inverse effect of contributing to the smugness of its message.

Skepticism is a vital tenet of a republican government and the inability to question a government's actions, motives, and processes is the hallmark of monarchies and dictatorships.

As it did with Instagram, Facebook is planning to remove the number of Likes on a post. (The Like function will remain in place, but it won't count them for you).

There's an old saying in marketing, "If you take something away, you must replace it with something." Facebook doesn't seem to be doing that, so how will people get their validation and quantify their self–worth?

Some people are all aflutter (aTwitter?) because Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez called the detention centers at the southern border "concentration camps" and they automatically jumped from concentration camp to "Nazi Death Camp".

Brittanica's definition of concentration camp: "… internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order."