Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) repeated some boilerplate hawkish nostrums on foreign policy in a recent op-ed. They concluded:

We say this delicately, as we work hard to respect the office of the presidency, but our allies everywhere are baffled. We asked one head of state, What single lesson would you like us to report back to our bosses, our constituents? The reply: “Get us a U.S. president who will know that the U.S. needs to lead. We need you. All the freedom-loving nations of the world need you.”

Historical and scientific research suggests that Jesus Christ may have been an avid marijuana user, and experts say he may have also used the plant to heal sick people.  Experts suggest that cannabis may have been a key ingredient in the “anointing oil” used by Jesus and his followers in rituals for healing.

The flu season in Japan has struck 1.64 million people who all fell ill with flu symptoms across the country, during a one-week period through February 7, the health ministry has confirmed.  5,995 schools across Japan had to close due to the outbreak in order to prevent further spread of the influenza virus. Japantoday.com reports: This year, flu season began in earnest later than the previous several years, but its outbreak is close to reaching levels seen in average years, according to the ministry. During the week before, an estimated 1.07 million people had been diagnosed with flu.

Submitted by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

• Washington should think more than twice about allowing Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its Sunni allies, militarily to engage their Shiite enemies in Syria. Allowing Sunni supremacists into a deeper sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. And it certainly will not serve America's interests.

Wouldn’t it be a strange world to live in if 50% of military spending was paid for by just 5% of the population? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Every year, the United States government spends the equivalent of $3,300 for each working citizen on its military budget. In aggregate, this grand total of $610 billion in defense spending amounts to about half of the dollars globally spent on the military.