There's a legend that says Nero played the lyre (the fiddle wouldn't be invented for another thousand years) while Rome burned in 64 AD.  What instrument does Obama play, as he cavorts indecisively about the world stage?

On three fronts - South Korean trade, Ukrainian/Russian diplomacy and Afghan war fighting - the Obama administration is being increasingly pressured by unfolding events to shed ideology and rationalizations and come quickly to a realistic analysis of world events and their consequences.

In each of these cases, in the absence of very prompt United States policy decisions and actions, we shall incur long-term irreversible economic, geopolitical or national security harm. Let's discuss the first two here, and hold the third for a future discussion by itself.

Do you think the world is getting better or worse? Despite the endless doom and gloom dished out by many in the media and political class, the objective evidence is that by almost any measure the world this past year was a better place for most of its habitants.

Yes, the rich are getting richer, but the poor are also getting a lot richer, so much so that there are fewer poor each year. And more people live in free countries than ever.

It is good to remind ourselves, as unhappy as we may be with our political leaders, that things are really getting better.   So despite the media hype and the blogs, the safer bet is things will get better for you and your family rather than worse.

However, there are three real risks to most people's future well-being: Islamic fundamentalism, irrational global environmentalism, and the U.S. Congress.

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Moslem democracy, last week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.

It isn't that Ankara's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas.

Since the Islamist "Justice & Development" AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan [pronounced air-doh-wan], the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Moslem democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the likes of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, al-Qaida and Hamas.

What made Turkey's behavior this week different from its behavior in recent months and years is that its attacks were concentrated, unequivocal and undeniable for everyone outside of Israel's scandalously imbecilic and flagellant media.

The Chicoms' prospects for their Genocide Olympics keep rolling downhill.  The latest headline indicator:  Will The Olympics Not Be Televised? 

Incredibly, the Chicoms are putting so many restrictions hampering television coverage that IOC officials fear the Beijing Games may not be broadcast to the world at all.  The whole thing is increasingly likely to be one giant MCF - Mongolian Cluster Foul-up...

...An even bigger MCF may have caused China's Sichuan earthquake last month.  It's become known that the earthquake zone was where China had its secret nuclear weapons research facilities.

What's much less well-known is that a nuclear explosion occurred at one of these secret underground facilities, either triggering or triggered by the earthquake...

... The HFR now raises its glass of rice wine to toast cumbay! to all those poor demented souls in Seoul suffering from Mad Korean Disease... Yet Mad Obambi Disease is far more dangerous to America than fear of mad cows is to Korea.  To see just how dangerous it would be to our national security, watch this 52-second anti-military rant Obambi goes on...

... Which is why the HFR hoists a mug of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to Tony Rezko in hopes he lives a long life - or at least long enough for him to turn state's evidence and rat on Obambi.

If you were a member of the U.S. Congress and you wanted to hand a victory to Fidel Castro, his buddy Hugo Chavez, and the international drug gangs, you could do so by voting to reject the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

And that is precisely what the Democrat leaders of Congress threaten to do.

After the truly heroic achievements of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in weakening drug lords and corrupt officials, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of her colleagues were downright rude to him during his trip to Washington last month, with their demands for more. Yet Mr. Uribe and his colleagues are under constant death threats for their efforts (Mr. Uribe's own father was assassinated by the left-wing terrorists).

How many of Mrs. Pelosi's tribe do you think would have taken the physical risks and have been as effective as Mr. Uribe? Regarding corruption in Mr. Uribe's own ranks, as far as I know, no Colombian member of parliament has been caught with $90,000 of someone else's money in his freezer.

The current disagreement between our intelligence agencies and those of our allies regarding Iran's nuclear program reveals the debased state of the US $75-billion- a-year intel system.

The Germans, French, Israelis and now the Brits agree that Iran has an active nuclear-weapons program, differing only as to how swiftly Tehran can field warheads.

The US intel community's holding out. It's worried about political risks. A reassessment's supposedly under way, but we're clinging to our comforting conclusion that Iran gave up on designing nuclear weapons in 2003.

Mounting evidence to the contrary hasn't made a dent. Not only is the intel community fearful of another Iraq-style weapons-of-mass-destruction mess, but the White House has made it clear that it doesn't want more bad news.  Our intel agencies have been Obama-ized.

It's pretty obvious what most needs to be celebrated this week:  that unless she manages to have Obambi rubbed out in the next few months, the nightmare of President Pantsuit has been postponed to at least 2012...

... We need to celebrate something else that crashed and burned like the Clintons this week:  the greatest piece of fascist legislation since the 16^th Amendment, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act...

... We need to follow this victory up now with a Pro-CO2 Movement, extolling the extraordinary benefits of more CO2 in our atmosphere - such as wiping out hunger.  As we discussed in Solar Warming back in September 2005...

... The best way to produce more CO2 is to produce more of what we need more of most:  oil, oil and gas, oil and gas and coal.  Thus the HFR is grateful to the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service (USGS/MMS) of the Interior Department for releasing its current assessment of our country's oil and gas resources...

... One thing the world needs a lot more of is Moslems converting to Christianity.  Which is why a shocked HFR hoists an amazed glass to the Church of England, which announced it is launching a campaign specifically targeting Moslem for conversion...

... and the HFR has lots more this week.

Assume you are an agent for a country that is hostile to the United States, and you want to undermine the American economy by attacking a couple of key industries. Which ones would you go after?

You would learn that the computer, Internet and wireless industries, coupled with the world's most productive financial engineering, have provided much of the U.S. economic growth for the last quarter-century. Given that you, as an agent of a foreign government, could not possibly literally blow up these sectors, what would you do?

Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the HFR was trying to shake a couple of drops out of its far-from-even-half-full glass?  Well, fill up the flagon, barkeep, we're going to hoist a few this week.

We have a selection of heroes to toast.  Let's start with a tankard of Pilsner Urquell for the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus...

We follow that with a chalice of Brennan 2006 Viognier with its bouquet of bluebonnets and West Texas crude to that good ol' boy from Wichita Falls, Rex Tillerson, chairman of Exxon-Mobil... 

Finally, a tumbler of Glen Morangie single-malt (no defiling it with ice or water - the Scots consider that a "mixed drink") to a spy coming in from the cold, CIA Director Michael Hayden... 

That's the last of the good stuff for now.   The HFR pours instead a cup of contempt for bimbo-airhead actress Sharon Stone... 

Here's the fun episode of the week.  The HFR guzzles a goblet of glee over Obambi's latest embarrassment, Father Michael Pfleger...

Let's close with a potpourri of good news, because if drank to each one we'd get seriously wasted...

One last item.  Your humble HFR author takes personal satisfaction in the new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull .

This past year more than one trillion dollars flowed between the U.S. and the EU. The EU now accounts for 21 percent of U.S. merchandise exports and 19 percent of U.S. merchandise imports, and about 34 percent of U.S. services exports and 37 percent of U.S. services imports.

The U.S. is not only the largest recipient of foreign direct investment, but far and away the world's largest investor elsewhere. Of the more than two trillion dollars the U.S. has invested directly abroad, a little more than half ($1.1 trillion) is invested in Europe. Europeans account for 70 percent ($1.2 trillion) of the direct investment in the U.S.

The bottom line is that the U.S. and Europe are economically joined at the hip, and any actions which damage trade and investment between these two economic giants hurt everyone. The U.S. and EU have a combined population of about 650 million people, and their combined GDP equals 57 percent of the world's total.

The U.S. has also provided...