The conversations at the Cosmos Club this week were very subdued.  As it has been for generations, this is where the true power elite of Washington gathers.  Whether it was in the East Garden Bar, the Old Club Room, or the Members Dining Room, the savviest veterans of Capitol Hill and K Street - Democrat and Republican - had a tone of fear and seriousness you didn't hear the week before.

Something had scared them.  Scared them like an earthquake had fractured their political foundations.  The one whispered word you could overhear more than any other was "Copenhagen."

For them, President and Mrs. Zero flying off to Copenhagen to beg the International Olympics Committee for Chicago and being rejected was not a matter of humiliation.  It was scales falling off their eyes, and in an eye-blink realizing the enormity of the mistake America made last November.

And at breakfast in the Garden Dining Room this morning (10/09), there were hardly conversations at all, just shocked silence. The consequences of giving a president afflicted with pathological egomania combined with pathological amateurishness the Nobel Peace Prize were so grave they were speechless.

Those in the Obama administration blame the Bush administration for the current mess. Yet the markets have continued to fall since President Obama was nominated (S&P down 48 percent), elected (down 28 percent) and assumed office (down 15 percent).

Worse yet, the markets are down to less than half the level they were when the Democrats took over Congress two years ago. The markets are clearly registering a vote of "no confidence" in the Democrat Congress and the Obama administration.

Markets are leading indicators, and so it is only a matter of time before the general public registers its vote of no-confidence in the Obama administration.

Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is on a witch hunt to find people in government and the private sector to threaten and blame.  This is ironic in the extreme, given that Mr. Frank was, and continues to be, a major part of the problem. 

The Islamists have it wrong: Islam isn't the world's fastest-growing religion. By birth numbers and convert tallies, it's Christianity.

And Africa's at the forefront -- a fact that's going to body-slam Moslem extremists sooner or later.

The bombings that recently butchered World Cup fans in Uganda were just the latest in a long line of crazed attacks on African Christians by Islamist fanatics. In the central states of Nigeria -- Africa's most-populous country -- religious pogroms and counter-pogroms between Moslems and Christians have become routine.

In Kenya, al Shabaab terrorists from neighboring Somalia stir up trouble and make grotesque threats. And we all know what bestial acts Sudan's Islamist government has perpetrated against black Christians over the decades.

Throughout the region, patience is wearing thin. Africa's impassioned forms of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity won't turn the other cheek forever. The coming backlash could be ferocious.  Here comes the next Christian Crusade.

It's pretty obvious that the HFR Hero of the Week is the author of  Going Rogue.

With her book going to #1 on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble within hours of the mere announcement it would go on sale in seven weeks (11/17), it's also obvious by now that Sarah Palin has become a conservative phenomenon the only comparison to whom is Ronald Reagan. 

That's not the Olympian icon Reagan has become for his presidential accomplishments - but the former governor and presidential candidate who ended up obliterating an incumbent president 489 to 49 in electoral votes in 1980.

Palin is now acknowledged to be "the hottest brand name in politics."  She is the comet flashing across the sky, while Zero is a shooting star flaming out while plunging to earth.  She is everything he is not, which can be summed up in two words:  for real.

She's as genuine as he is phony, as honest as he is deceitful, as pro-freedom as he is pro-fascist, as experienced in the real world as he is ignorant, as American as he is un-. 

The left is in a hysteria of hate towards her because she is their greatest threat.  While most of the left can only indulge in childish schoolyard insults, the savviest among liberals - like Willie Brown, who ran the California legislature and city of San Francisco as his private fiefdoms - now realize that Palin is a "political genius."

Warning to tourists - it is now illegal to take a photo of a London policeman or "bobby." The time-honored tradition of tourists having their pictures taken with London cops is being dealt a silly death blow by those who control the British nanny-state. The British are not only losing their economic prosperity, but their civil liberties as well.

Will Britain again become the "sick man of Europe"? A quarter-century ago, Margaret Thatcher led Britain out of an economic wilderness and enabled it to have the fastest-growing economy among the four big countries in the European Union.

Today, however, under Gordon Brown's Labor government, Britain is rapidly rushing backward with pre-Thatcherite economic policies.  At the same time, civil libertarians on both the left and right are increasingly concerned that Britain is drifting toward becoming a police state.

Nominated last week to replace Gen. David Petraeus as the head of the US Central Command, the Marine Corps' Gen. Jim Mattis may be the finest four-star on duty in any service today.

He's certainly the humblest. And maybe the smartest -- but he'll let you figure that out for yourself.

If confirmed, Mattis will team with Petraeus on AfPak, but he'll also be responsible for the vast surrounding region. He won't micromanage Petraeus. Instead, he'll support his nominal subordinate every way he can. He'll build the frame, letting Petraeus paint the Afghan canvas.

Grunts respect Petraeus. But they love Jim Mattis. His nickname among Marines is the "Warrior Monk" -- because he's dedicated his life to the Corps. So of course, he's hated by the left-wing media.

Do you understand why well-known economists, including Nobel Prize winners, are on opposite sides of the debate about the stimulus package and what should be done about the recession?

Not only Americans, but people everywhere are confused, largely because the economists who are writing and speaking about what should be done have such fundamental disagreements.

There are two main schools of thought. One group is under the broad umbrella of the Chicago or Austrian school economists who are heavily influenced by the teachings of F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) and Milton Friedman (1912-2007).  The economists of the Reagan White House were of this school.

The members of the other group are commonly known as Keynesians, who accept many of the teachings of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and his disciples.  Mr. Obama's economists belong to this school.

Both schools offer reasonable explanations for what causes and what solves recessions.  But there is one outcome for which Keynesians have no solution:  stagflation.  It turns out that's just where we're headed.

Gen. David Petraeus has an unprecedented opportunity to seize back the momentum in Afghanistan: Neither President Obama nor Congress wants a confrontation with this general. During his honeymoon, he can write his own rules.

And he needs to. Fast.

To turn the current situation around, Petraeus has to address hundreds of what-now-boss? issues -- but a 10-item to-do list should top his priorities.

First, the big-picture stuff:

Maybe we should call this The Cornucopia Report this week.  The deluge of astonishingly good news keeps pouring down, with the moonbat left in response drowning in its own bile of rage and going off the cliff berserk-o.

Where to begin amidst this treasure trove?  Of course:  the Million Conservative March on Washington last Saturday (9/12).  With the LFM (Lunatic Fringe Media) desperately ignoring and disparaging it - reporting, e.g., that there were only "tens of thousands" when there were at least close to a million or more - this event marks a genuine turning point in American political history.

The only other event comparable was the August 28,1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which launched the modern civil rights movement and at which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

There was, however, one major lack and disappointment.  Everyone remembers (or learns about in school) that 1963 event because of King's speech.  Where was our Dr. King?  Where was the speech that the vast multitude of conservatives wanted to hear?  In other words, where the hell was Sarah Palin?

If there's a parade of history, get out in front and lead it - or the parade and history will pass you by.  Carpe diem - or your day will be gone.  Sarah had better stop hiding from the world, stop confining herself to posts on Facebook, or this Teaparty Juggernaut will quickly find other leaders.  It's not too late, Sarah, but you are burning daylight.

Do you agree with President Obama, who has just limited the pay for executives in some, but not all, of the companies receiving government bailout money to $500,000 a year?

One could argue that $500,000 is too much, given that the president only makes $400,000 a year in a job with more responsibility and a larger budget than any other job in the world. Since there were plenty of would-be takers for that job, and some were arguably even qualified, why should we pay anyone more?

Many people who rely on the taxpayers, both in the United States and elsewhere, make far more than the president of the United States.  It turns out that the highest pad pubic employees in America are football coaches at taxpayer-funded public universities.  Should their salaries be capped just like Wall Street execs?