It was a sobering dinner party last night (6/16).  Hosted by a London billionaire in his exquisite home - a Boccaccio hung on the wall behind me - the wine flowed liberally, but the conversation between the ten of us was stone-cold serious.

There were lighter moments, as when I proposed a toast to "a great hero of Europe - Geert Wilders."  Every one raised their glass in a smile, but the biggest smile was that of a spectacularly gorgeous super-model (you've seen her in many a high-fashion ad).  She was from Holland.

Then a well-known Hollywood producer raised his glass to toast his hero - Ronald Reagan.  "We need him again," he commented.  I guarantee you've watched one of his TV shows.

But when a self-made billionaire with an 11-figure private equity fund and a clear grasp of Austrian economics starts to talk about America's prospects, you listen.  So we all listened.

Folks, I just can't adequately express what a wonderful time we had at the To The Point Summer Rendezvous last weekend in Colorado Springs. 

The friendship, with everyone so obviously enjoying each other's company, was such a marvelous experience.  We ate well - the buffalo steak was fabulous - drank good wine, had endless scintillating conversations, hiked in the Garden of the Gods, and all of us can hardly wait to get together again.

I owe a lot of thanks - to Miko Reyes, TTP General Manager, who put everything together while I was on the other side of the world.  To Joan Johnson, John Nehring, and Bill Gregory, without whose help Miko tells me he couldn't have succeeded.

To Joel Wade, Jack Kelly, and Dagny D'Anconia, who so copiously shared their insights with us.

And to all TTPers who attended, for the more I got to know them, the more interesting and fascinating they became.  Their skills, intelligence, values, patriotism, and just plain likeability were really overwhelming.

Of all the myriad of questions during the weekend, the one most asked was:  When do we get to do this again - when and where's the next Rendezvous?

It'll be mid-January, and as we've had two now in the West (Vegas and Colorado), it should be in the East.  But warm - forget winter in, say, Boston or DC.  Also historic, memorable, and fun.  So we're thinking Charleston, maybe Savannah.  Let me know what you think.

So thanks to all for a great Rendezvous.  Don't miss the next one.  I can hardly wait for it myself.

President Obama has adopted the unsustainable position that he will not negotiate with Congress over spending and the debt ceiling. He is betting he can get Republicans to fold without having to give up anything he wants.

That's why we're hearing ridiculous claims from him like the one he made speaking to the Business Roundtable this week:

"You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt."

This is nonsense, of course. Moreover, the implication that Obamacare has "nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt" is simply dishonest. The law accounts for a large part of the budget and we now know that it will cost twice as much in the next ten years as President Obama promised before it was passed.

The truth is the President may soon be forced to negotiate.  Here's why.

Time to stop the hand-wringing about Russia's re-igniting the Cold War by invading Georgia.  Time to start thinking of what a golden opportunity this presents.

First the reality.  Russia, before, during, and after the Soviet Union was and remains a brutal imperialist dictatorship.  The Soviet Union was simply the same old Czarist Russian imperialism with Marxism-Leninism as an ideological rationale.  The fall of the USSR only meant the fall of the rationale.

So Russia is back to where it has always been, with the Russian compulsion for brute force bullying as its way of dealing with the world.  It is no accident, comrades, that  Russians were the Soviets, and it is no surprise whatever that they are behaving like Soviets in Georgia today.

Thus the fundamental reality of how to conduct foreign policy with Russia, however distasteful it may be to the squishes at the State Department chronically afflicted with terminal testicular atrophy:

The only thing Russians in the Kremlin understand and respect is superior force and the willingness to use it against them.  If you don't give them a punch in the mouth and a bloody nose the moment they start to bully you, they will keep bullying you until you start fighting back hard - or you capitulate and obey their orders.

It's either-or, win-lose.  Those are their rules.  The golden opportunity Putin is giving us by invading Georgia is that it gives us the perfect excuse to play by his rules.