Time was, leftists complained of rigged elections, the media paid attention to dirty tricks, and conservatives cared more about results than rhetoric.

Donald Trump, in characteristically haphazard fashion, said he thought the election might end up “rigged” (if he lost).  Therefore, he would not endorse the November 8 result if he found that fear confirmed — unless, of course, in Jacksonian fashion, he managed to win.

All hell broke loose, from both the Left and “principled” conservatives, that Trump’s allegations had somehow undermined the American electoral process itself.

Not likely.

“Selected, not elected” was a Democrat talking point after the 2000 Bush victory. In a speech two years after that election, a now sanctimonious Hillary Clinton echoed those “selected” charges against the Bush presidency.

Al Gore became unhinged.  For years, the former vice president could not speak publicly without screaming in vein-bulging style, and seemed to be obsessed by George W. Bush in Carthago delenda est fashion.  The Crazed Sex Poodle is angrily campaigning with Hillary now.

China's property market went mad after the authorities poured fuel on the flames. Beijing is now slamming on the brakes.

Capital outflows from China are accelerating. The hemorrhage has reached the fastest pace since the currency panic at the start of the year.

The latest cycle of credit-driven expansion has already peaked after 18 months. Beijing has had to slam on the brakes, scrambling to control property speculation that the Communist authorities themselves deliberately fomented.

The central bank (PBOC) spent roughly $50bn defending the yuan last month, but this has not stopped the exchange rate sliding to 6.77 against the dollar - the weakest in six years.

"Our view is that the RMB (yuan) will depreciate 20% against the US dollar to 8.1 by the end of 2018 as deflation of the property bubble leads to more capital outflows," says Zhiwei Zhang from Deutsche Bank. "This is deflationary for global trade."

That is an understatement. A Chinese devaluation on this scale would be an earthquake for the world's economic and financial system, unleashing a tsunami of cheap manufacturing exports into Europe and the US.  The world cannot absorb the consequences of so much excess.

Off the coast of Yemen and at the UN Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty. 

In the last ten days, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately control the Suez Canal.

Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply greenlighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.

The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the US?  Iran’s game is clear enough. It wishes to replace the US as the regional hegemon, at the US’s expense.

Since Obama entered office nearly eight years ago, Iran’s record in advancing its aims has been of uninterrupted success.  Is this an accident on Mr. Obama’s part, sheer incompetence, or is it something far far worse?

There's been a lot of concern recently about the “takeover of the Internet.”  Yesterday (10/17), news reports broke that the lawsuit of four states suing the US for the Internet turnover has been dropped.

Here’s why not to worry about it.  There’s something else to worry about instead.

The organization being handed to an “international body” is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

ICANN  runs the DNS system that allows you to type in something like mysite.com, rather than something like 237.57.364.1. The root servers that people talk about keep track of all those numbers and names.

So, could the international group play ugly games with ICANN? It's possible, of course, but unlikely.  ICANN really isn't very important anymore, save for political bragging rights. Here are some of the reasons why: