He hits hard:

Ms Yellen last Wednesday dismissed as emphatically wrong Donald Trump’s claims that she and her institution were keeping short-term interest rates low at the behest of the Obama administration. “Partisan politics play no role in our decisions,” she declared.

Mr Trump is throwing punches at a time when the US central bank is under assault from both sides of the partisan divide, and at a time when polling suggests public confidence in its leadership has declined during a subpar economic recovery.

There’s no question that the Fed is keeping interest rates low at Barack Obama’s request.  There’s also no question that the “zero” interest rate regime we’ve had for a long time has created distortions.  To characterise the Fed’s policies as “partisan,” however, is a stretch.

Why?  Barack Obama knows that, if rates start going up, it won’t be long before the twenty trillion-dollar debt (a figure kicked around last night) will become difficult if not impossible to service.  Not only will that put the feds in the hurts, the consequences to the financial system of stressing out the Federal government will be enormous.  Thus the Fed keeps interest rates in the cellar.

Barack Obama has the nerve to bully the Federal Reserve, just like he uses the power of the government to bully other institutions and people.  The serious questions are these: will either Trump or Clinton do the same when it’s their turn to cut the checks?  And how long can the Fed keep this interest rate regime up before something else blows up?

What were looking at here:

Iran’s supreme leader has told former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not to stand again in next year’s elections, state media reported on Monday, effectively eliminating a major challenger to pragmatist incumbent Hassan Rouhani.

Ahmadinejad had not announced any plans to run in the vote scheduled for May, but has made several speeches in recent months, prompting speculation of a political comeback.

A simple explanation of this is that Khamenei didn’t want Ahmadinejad to make Iran look stupid once again, as he did when he was president.  In days of isolation, it didn’t make much difference; now that the country is opening up to the world, the image-conscious Iranians–the most fashionable and sophisticated people in the Middle East, their current regime notwithstanding–don’t need the kind of publicity that Ahmadinejad brings.

The linked article also mentions this:

Ahmadinejad was first elected president in 2005. His disputed win in the 2009 election prompted the Islamic Republic’s biggest protests and a security crackdown in which several people were killed and hundreds were arrested.

He’s a polarising figure, even at home.  It’s also worth mentioning that, to put down the “Green Revolution,” the Iranian government brought in Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and Syria to help put down the uprising.  That’s because the government worried that their own troops wouldn’t shoot at their own people, and Hezbollah’s fighters didn’t care.

Jeffrey Overstreet is making the “big moral statement” here:

Christians can choose to dwell on — and invest in — movies that show us what we already like, tell us what we already know, assure us of our own salvation, and make us feel happily entertained. That isn’t wrong. But might we make better use of our time? Might we exercise courage and conscience, step outside of our comfort zones, attend to our neighbors, and learn from their experiences?

He should have been with me on that nice summer day forty years ago when I went to see The Message in London:

And “we” were quite a group. As the moviegoers filed into the theatre for the showing, that sudden realisation came over me: “I’m the only white guy in this place.” The rest of the viewers were obviously immigrants, probably mostly Pakistani. Once everything went dark and the film started, it was pretty interesting. So was the crowd; they cheered when the Muslims won a full battle or killed an infidel. I thought that they might get fired up to start “jihad” in the theatre and I would be their first victim. But they didn’t, the film ended peacefully, and the happy Muslims filed out.

I know, the film he reviewed (Timbuktu) isn’t the same as The Message, which was about the life of Mohammed.  But I’ll bet that his idea to “step outside of our comfort zones” (a phrase that gets overused in Christian parlance) didn’t include what I experienced on the Fulham Road.

We have a new “red scare” in Hollywood:

The latest salvo came in a letter from 16 members of Congress last week, which called for closer scrutiny of Chinese investment in the U.S. entertainment and media sectors. The letter cited the Dalian Wanda Group’s acquisitions of Legendary Entertainment, AMC and Carmike Cinemas, and warned of “growing concerns” of Chinese efforts to exert “propaganda controls on American media.”

I hate to break the news to my fellow Republicans, but Hollywood has done “anti-right propaganda” for a long time, and we’ve just sat there and taken it.  Ever wonder why the supposedly “irrefutable” conservative principles that should have “taken over” American politics are going nowhere?  Even our own party pitched all the movement conservatives for Donald Trump.  Much of our problem stems from the propaganda–one based on their own idea–that Hollywood has spewed out for years.

Now you’re worried about the Chinese taking over the place.  Give me a break–we’ve borrowed from them for years to pay for these imports, the dollars have to come back in one way or another.  Acquisitions are the logical way, we saw this with the Japanese thirty years ago.

From a Christian perspective, what we have is two governments–or more precisely two ruling elites–that don’t have any use for us.  The difference is that the Chinese are having second thoughts, and in the meanwhile their churches are growing.  Not electing Hillary Clinton will help, but not as much as some people are saying.  What we’re up against is a ruling élite with a very narrow life agenda and we’re in the way.

Today we have many people running around looking for the next war or enemy to keep us on top.  We need to spend more time addressing our internal weaknesses and not on fighting a group of people who might want to change Hollywood’s propaganda from one form to another.

And a fast escape is needed too:

The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life.

There are many ways I don’t meet the criteria for this designation, although I have commenters here and on Facebook who would nominate me in a heartbeat.  For them, I’ve got the trump card (sorry!):

…he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre…

I have read Ammianus Marcellinus (Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s spelling needs a little upgrade.)  It was on my “want to read” list for many years, but only got the chance earlier this year.  The timing was good: Marcellinus spent a lot of time in Rome’s war with the Persians, and I had just spent five years with some of their descendants.  That made the work all the more vivid, and coupled with my interest in Late Roman history, it was a fabulous read.

Some of my posts based on reading his work include the following:

• Happy Nowrouz to the People of the “King of Kings”
• You May End Up Building Their Coffin
• If This Country Doesn’t Make It, Will You?

I highly recommend his work; you can find it here.

Now it’s not just the “nutcases:”

A health condition initially described by Clinton’s campaign as a brief episode of overheating during the outdoor event – a situation downplayed by a stronger-looking candidate in the afternoon – was identified later as pneumonia when the campaign released a four-sentence statement from Clinton’s physician. The campaign did not disclose detailed medical records or test results, nor did it make the doctor available for questioning.

As has been the case since Bill was in the Oval Office, Hillary’s operatives have tried to paint adverse questions about her as a “conspiracy theory,” and the health questions have been no exception.  Now her own fall during the 9/11 remembrance has done what her critics on the right could not: give cred to all of this.

Questions about her health have been floating around since she was Secretary of State.  Those in the “inside” doubtless know the truth.  So the question is, with the Democrats’ legacy on the line and the job nearly finished, why did they push so hard to get her through the nomination, even with her weak support from millennials and the progressive wing of the party?

I think there are two answers to this.

The first is the power of the Clinton machine, the strongest “redneck mafia” I have seen in my lifetime.  (And I’ve seen a bunch of them.)  They had their hatchet girl, the Ugliest Woman in South Florida, manipulate the process to get her through.

The second is their weak bench, which comes from their best people seeking upward movement in the bureaucracy and the NGO’s and not the electoral process.  If the Republicans had come back with another RINO, this would have made sense.  But they came back with someone who is neither a RINO nor a movement conservative, and now things are different.

In spite of these two factors, had the Democrat establishment pulled together and faced her health issue honestly, they wouldn’t be in the pickle they’re in today.  Personally, I don’t think Hillary Clinton is Barack Obama’s first choice.  But when you have people who, through alternative strong-arm tactics and manipulation, dominate a political party’s life, stuff that doesn’t do the party much good gets done anyway.

She’s made quite a statement in the wake of the multi-billion euro judgment:

The Apple ruling is big, but it is only the latest international effort to end the deals that American multinationals have used to pay near-zero tax rates. The European Commission is investigating Luxembourg’s tax arrangements for Amazon and McDonald’s, and last year the European Court of Justice struck down tax advantages to companies and their subsidiaries selling e-books throughout Europe. Also last year, Britain enacted a new tax to target profits siphoned off by international companies — nicknamed, without much subtlety, the “Google tax.”

There are many things she says that, honestly, have merit.  Getting those done may not be the bed of roses she thinks it will be.  Harmonizing corporate taxes, for example, may require some countries to raise their rates while others lower them to “level the playing field,” and one of those who needs to lower them is us.

The big thing she’s missed, however, is that a great deal of the progressive agenda–especially on social issues–is driven these days by large tech corporations like Apple and Google.  These and others (like Facebook) have pushed a liberal social agenda while doing their shell games with the tax authorities.  (Think about the states of Indiana and North Carolina.)  Is she prepared to besmirch these organizations–and damage the agenda–in the name of economic fairness?

If she is, she’s going to find a lot of push-back, not only from the corporations themselves, but also from the progressive client groups who have benefited from these corporations’ funding and support.  In a sense, these corporations have used their social and environmental “goodness” to cover their tax avoidance methods, which should tell us something about all of this “goodness” they have.

Warren, the “faux Indian” business put aside, is really trying to follow in the Scots-Irish tradition of politicians such as Wright Patman and Carter Glass from the lofty heights of Old Ivy.  But those lofty heights include rubbing shoulders with hipsters from places like Apple and Google.  I guess we’ll find out whether she’s a good juggler or just falls into the net.

Things in China got off to a rough start:

President Barack Obama downplayed dust-ups involving the U.S. delegation and Chinese security officials during the opening hours of his trip to Hangzhou for the G-20 summit, but said Sunday the U.S. would not apologize for its efforts to expand media access in the country.

“We don’t leave our values and ideals behind when we take these trips,” Obama said after a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May, when asked about the incidents. “It can cause some friction. It’s not the first time it’s happened.”

I find it highly duplicitous that the President, whose administration is paranoid about leaks, and who has used social media aggressively to bypass his own media, should be lecturing the Chinese on this subject.  I’m not saying that the Chinese are paragons of virtue on press freedom.  But Americans–especially the neocons–spend a lot of time wondering how we’re going to respond to the “Chinese threat.”  The best way to do that is for us to get our own house in order, and be a strong, free country, and not just a toy of our elites with a large military budget.  That’s what bothers me about Hillary Clinton: she combines a neocon’s instincts for intervention with liberal’s dislike of a strong military and economy, and the result of a major “pushback” on her part would probably be a disaster.

It’s also amazing that our own media, sycophantic as they are, should be held up an example of a functioning free press.  Barack Obama has had as favourable a media as one could want, and yet he still bypasses it every chance he gets.  And they’re selective, too.  An example, Christians: last week, when a would-be jihadi tried to blow himself and a church up in Sumatra, guess where this first surfaced on my Twitter account?  CCTV!  And I have a few news sources there.  Our own media could care less if jihadis blow up churches, they’re scared that publicising it it would encourage “Islamophobia.”

Media note: I’d urge my readers to keep in front of them a variety of media, domestic and foreign.   I’ve enjoyed picking up CCTV and other Chinese outlets; it’s been informative.