The White House is becoming increasingly concerned about Pootie-Poot. He actually said point-blank to one of Bush’s key advisors: “Mr. Bush is in no position to criticize me on my actions towards the Russian press - look at how he fired Dan Rather.”

Today (5/220, Fitch Ratings has downgraded Japan two notches to A+ -- just above Spain and Italy -- citing a surge in public debt since the Lehman crisis and the lack of any plan to restore fiscal probity.

Key indicators are deteriorating on almost every front, raising concerns that the world's third largest economy is running aground after two "Lost Decades".

Japan's debt has jumped by 61 percentage points of GDP since 2008, compared to eight points for the AAA bloc. Public debt is expected to reach 239% of GDP this year, uncharted levels for a major economy in peace-time. `Net debt' - subtracting Japan's vast holdings of foreign bonds - is nearer 137% but this is rising at an even steeper trajectory.

"Japan's addiction to public sector spending is way beyond the boundaries or remedial `austerity'," said Dylan Grice from Societe Generale. "Political pressure on the Bank of Japan to crank the printing presses into top gear will become irresistible. We see no alternative."

The next GOP presidential candidate debate is four days from now, Tuesday, October 18, in Vegas on CNN.  It will focus primarily albeit not exclusively on foreign policy.

I've been asked by friends of a particular candidate to provide him with a private briefing on the most critical foreign policy issues America faces.  What follows is not the usual HFR but a condensed summary of that briefing, which contains much of my Map of the Future talk at Rendezvous XI last weekend.

Russia.  Putin is an ersatz macho-man, all hat and no karovi.  Russia's navy is made of rust.  Russia's ill-trained army of drunkards couldn't conquer Romania.  Russian male life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh.  Russia is a mafiacracy with a doomed economy dependent on oil & gas exports that fracking in Europe & the US will make uncompetitive.  Do svidanya.

China.  No wives, no water, no banks - and a hyper-dangerous military.  Much of China is uninhabited - deserts, mountains, and wastelands.  Habitable China is about the size of the US east of the Mississippi, with over a billion people squeezed into it. Northern China is turning into a waterless dust bowl.  Scores of millions of Chinese men will never get married due to the Chicom's idiotic one-child policy and resultant mass female infanticide.

Would you think it is smart to create regulations that make it all but impossible for Americans living abroad to get a bank account in the country where they live?

Do you think it makes sense to impose regulations and costs on U.S. financial institutions that would drive needed foreign investment out of the United States for the sole purpose of helping foreign governments collect taxes from their own citizens?

Last week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Treasury held a hearing on a proposed regulation that is so dumb and destructive that people had assumed it was buried for good a decade ago, when it originally was proposed. The Treasury/IRS is embarked on a program that can only be called national economic suicide.

If they did not put our troops, our citizens and our country at risk, the Left's fantastic lies about terror and terrorists would be hilarious. 

The problem, of course, is that many of our national leaders have been brainwashed with the same slogans.  The Left has mastered another technique dictators forged long ago: Repeat a lie often enough and it will be taken as truth.    And, of course, our media play along.

So let's give the slogan-hucksters a brief time-out and dissect just seven of their favorite lines:

One:  Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.  Nope.  Killing terrorists turns them into dead terrorists. 

So we're down to three this week.  Christie out to no one's dismay - except for his die-hard fans known as "girthers" - and so is Palin to the serious dismay of many.  It's too late for late entries - say goodnight Donald and Rudy - while the other candidates are there just for stubbornness or ego.  Rick, Mitt, or Herman, those are the only choices now.

The next debate is this coming Tuesday, 10/11.  It could be make or break for Perry.  The Forum's resident Perryista, Ella - she's a Texas gal - assures us that, while he wasn't prepared for the first three debates due to his laser focus on raising $17 million in 49 days, he's primed and pumped for this one.  Let's hope so.  I for one am rootin' for Rick to come out with guns blazing.  It's show time.

Will it be show time for Cain?  Will one of his competitors ask him about the fatal flaw in his 9-9-9 tax reform plan?

Financial fraud is one or more intentional acts designed to deceive other people and cause them financial loss. Who is the world's greatest financial fraudster? Bernie Madoff? Not even close.

The unemployment rate just went up again to 9 percent, and the proportion of the adult population at work continues to fall. These dismal numbers are a result of slow economic growth, which is caused mainly by the world's biggest financial fraudster, who robs businesses and individuals of what is rightfully theirs.

The world's biggest financial fraudster is not one person; it is a group composed of those politicians and government bureaucrats who, on a daily basis, ignore the consequences of their actions as they misuse hard-earned taxpayer funds to further their own political or personal agendas. We will call this fraudster the TPHP (for Thoughtless Power-Hungry Politicos).