Worthwhile Viewing

On CNN Headline News tonight, Glenn Beck has a program called Exposed: The Extremist Agenda. It’s particularly focused on the Iranian regime and the vast differences between the way it portrays itself to the outside world–and the messages that it sends to its own people. The 7PM (ET) show is on now; it will rerun at 9PM ET and at midnight.

Inflation and Interest Rates

Most investors and analysts seem to have concluded that inflation is not a serious problem, and that long-term interest rates will stay low for a considerable period of time. (The 10-year Treasury rate is now at 4.696%.) Writing in Financial Times (9/21), Joachim Fels, managing director and chief global fixed income strategist at Morgan Stanley, argues that such thinking is incorrect.

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WWII Bombers on Tour

The Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour is now in progress. B-17 and B-24 bombers, joined in some locations by a B-25, are now visiting airports throughout the northeast and mid-atlantic states. You can visit the airplanes for a small donation, and for a substantially larger donation, you can actually take a ride! If the tour is coming to an airport near you, these planes are well worth seeing. Schedule here.

As a corrective to any excessive glamorization of WWII air combat, I recommend the air force poems of Randall Jarrell, a major American poet who served in the Army Air Forces during that conflict.

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Important–Please Read

Once again, I am reminded of W H Auden’s lines:

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help, and no help came

Kobra Rahmanpoor, an Iranian woman in her mid-20s, faces imminent execution by hanging. She was convicted of murdering her mother-in-law; however, she says that it was a matter of self-defense, and that she had previously been abused by both her mother-in-law and her husband.

Here is the eloquent plea of Kobra’s father:

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