America

David Rothkopf is pleased by the foreign policy implications of Hillary Clinton’s drearily inevitable victory in the fall:

For these reasons, it is not unreasonable to assume that the manic, funhouse-mirror qualities that have made campaign 2016 so memorable and, at times, deeply disturbing are likely to be followed in 2017 by America returning to the most traditionalist, solid, dependable, foreign policy it has seen since the administration of George H.W. Bush and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton blames the Syrian conflict on all the wrong actors. The former Secretary of State blames president Assad, Iran and Russia for creating their own nemesis, ISIS. The takfiri terrorists have been rampaging through Iraq and Syria chopping Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Russian affiliated heads among others, with the financial, spiritual and military backing of their Gulf supporters and their western allies, including Turkey. Hillary Clinton’s appraisal of the Syrian conflict is a serious concern for all. “You cannot be serious,” as former World No.

I’m a long time member of the Strong Towns organization which advocates for financially solvent municipal governance. I’m also a member of the Congress for New Urbanism which strives to build walkable mixed-use neighborhoods of the kind our great grandparents would have taken for granted, but are rare indeed these days. I often ask myself what good a financially stable town is if most of the people living there are heavily leveraged and living pay check to pay check. So I have a particular fascination with people who embody the Strong Towns ethos within their own households.

"Intervention in foreign exchange markets in order to gain a competitive advantage is unacceptable," proclaims US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in a strongly worded statement today with regard America's position in the global economy. That we note this comment is only relevant as, despite the apparent "stability" of the Chinese Yuan against the USD, relative to the 13-currency-basket with which China primarily trades, the Yuan has collapsed to 17-month lows - with JPY and EUR appearing to bear the brunt of the pain.

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” ? Ron Paul

If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.