Who is in charge of stopping the oil leak and the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico - BP or the Obama administration? If you have a hard time answering the question, it probably is because the president has told us the "buck stops" with him and officials of his administration say they are "in charge."

Yet the administration also tells us that BP has the responsibility for stopping the leak and for the cleanup - but the company's every action has to be approved by the government!

One, among several, major reasons government agencies tend not to perform as well as private ones is because often there is little or no accountability.

BP stockholders are being severely punished because of the failure of BP's management to prevent this crisis - and you can bet many heads will roll at BP. Yet how many heads will roll in the U.S. government, which had the responsibility to make sure BP operated safely and that the beaches and marshes were protected?

At this writing, many details of the debt-ceiling deal wrangled out over the weekend remain fuzzy. One thing is clear, unfortunately: The national security of the United States is going to suffer greatly.

The Pentagon stands to be whacked by as much as half of the $1.5 trillion that an as-yet-undesignated congressional "supercommittee" is supposed to come up in "deficit reduction" by Thanksgiving.

The trouble is that more than $400 billion has already been cut from our national security investments over the past few years. Thus even if no further reductions are made in the spending allocated to defending our people and interests around the world, we will see ominous reductions in the capabilities needed to meet those vital responsibilities.

The warnings of what will befall our military and country as a result are beginning to accumulate.

Has it really been that long - twelve weeks since I last wrote the HFR (August 20)?  I spent those weeks on my 17^th trip around the world - to Central Asia, Chinese Turkestan, North Korea, Southeast Asia, Micronesia, the Caribbean, ending with celebrating 11/02 with TTPers at the Rendezvous.  It's good to be back home.

And it's good to be writing the HFR again.  I can't wait to get started - but first I've got to thank Jack Kelly for so staunchly holding down the HFR fort in my absence.  Thanks, Jack! 

And thanks to all of you who sent me a Happy Birthday message.  I really appreciate it.  I do have a great birthday - November 9^th - as it's also Ronald Reagan World Freedom Day, the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, named in honor of the man who won the Cold War. 

Plus it's followed by the birthday of the United States Marines - the greatest fighting force on earth - established November 10, 1775.  Semper Fi!

Then the very next day, November 11^th, is when all American patriots give thanks to our veterans for serving their country, shedding their blood and so many their lives, to protect our American birthright of freedom.

These three days, coming at the end of going around the world seeing so many other countries and cultures, formed for me such an emphatic exclamation point to the preciousness of America, to its unmatched value to peace and prosperity in the world, and to the literally critical importance as never before of defending it from enemies within our own midst who wish to destroy it.

Those enemies got knocked to the canvas last week on Nov. 2^nd - but it wasn't a knockout.  A luta continua, as the Renamo freedom fighters of Mozambique said.  The struggle continues. It always will. So here we go with this week's HFR.

Podgorica, Montenegro.  Of all the people you know, friends, family and acquaintances, who has done the most to benefit his country and/or the world?

I ask this question because here in Montenegro, there is a man who already has done much to benefit his country, and yet his real impact will not be known for many years, perhaps generations.

First, a bit about Montenegro. It is one of the world's smallest countries, with a population of 672,000 and a land area that is a little smaller than the state of Connecticut. It was the last of the former Yugoslav republics to gain independence from Serbia in 2006. Unlike the wars that resulted when other sections of Yugoslavia declared their independence, Montenegro's move toward independence was peaceful, gradual and democratic.

Perhaps nowhere else on earth is a country more blessed with so much physical beauty in such a small space. Even though the word "spectacular" is overused, there is no other way to describe the Adriatic coastline of Montenegro - where majestic mountains spring from a clear blue sea, occasionally broken by splendid deep-water bays. What a wonderful place for a true free market economy!

Black Caucus chairman Democrat Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri produced a headline-garnering sound bite following the passage in Congress of the debt ceiling compromise bill.

Even as this bill didn't by any means manage to demonstrate Congress's serious understanding of economic reality, Cleaver said that the bill amounts to "a  sugar-coated Satan sandwich" - by which he meant that it amounts to the defiance of centuries of teachings of the world's greatest religions about how one must look out for the poor and needy as one lives one's life.

Most all religions do implore us to lend those in need a hand, to help the poor and indigent. Indeed, there is no ethical system that doesn't make some room for this idea.

Yet the use to which Rep. Cleaver wants to put this idea is quite perverse. He doesn't urge us to be generous, kind, compassionate, charitable and such. No, he urges us to engage in robbery and to use the loot we obtain by this means to provide help to those the robbers believe should get some of it.

If you are an elected official, and you have to make a choice between raising taxes on your constituents or cutting the number of government employees and their salaries, what would you do?

For most of the last few decades, in most places, the politicians would just raise taxes. Now that is changing, and here is why. In recent weeks, what used to be a rare event is becoming commonplace, and that is public employees losing their jobs or having their wages and benefits cut.

Government employees are rioting in Greece (as if that does any good when the cupboard is bare) because many of them are losing their jobs. Greece, Spain, Portugal and even the Cayman Islands have announced they will be cutting public-employee wages and benefits. Many state and local governments in the United States are doing the same thing.

As most of the world's governments head toward a Greek-style meltdown, taxpayers increasingly realize that if government spending is growing faster than the economy, there is no way that tax increases can solve the problem - and most countries have about reached the limit of how much more tax revenue they are going to be able to coerce and extort from their citizens.

[Note from JW:  Skye posted this response to Disraeli's Tea on the Forum, which by TTPer acclamation was requested to be a full article.  Happy to comply. 

Also - as I have been on the road so much, Jack Kelly was to write the HFR this week but is unable to do so for health reasons.  I apologize for there being no HFR today.]

The central government has become so titanic that slowing its rate of growth would simply slightly delay the inevitable crash. The Federalies must be cut down to size, and voting NO on the debt limit increase is currently our best chance for doing so.

Vote NO on increasing the debt limit. The deficits must be stopped or America will be pushed over the economic cliff onto the ash heap of history where it will join the Soviet Union.

If the deficits are not stopped now, then when?  But if they are, you can then cut three Gordion Knots at once that have hogtied our economy.

The predictable narrative has already begun to take hold, regarding the despicable, murderous attack by a madman in Norway last Friday (7/22) .

The confessed perpetrator of a bombing of government offices in Oslo and a seek-and-destroy slaughter at a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya Island, Anders Behring Breivik, is depicted as a "Christian," "conservative" and "right-wing extremist." His attacks, we are told, were animated by a delusional ambition to save his country from an Islamic takeover.

Much remains to be learned about this evident psychopath and his precise motivations for acting in such a deranged fashion. Still, an unholy axis of Moslem Brotherhood operatives and those on the Left - groups whose spokesmen, ironically, endlessly inveigh against precipitous judgments when jihadists are the perpetrators - have been quick to find in this attack proof of their favorite meme:

That conservatives and Christians are as much a threat to domestic tranquility - if not more - than those seeking to impose the totalitarian Islamic politico-military-legal doctrine of Shariah.

Somehow, the axis overlooks Mr. Breivik's admiration for the terrorists of Al Qaeda and Iran.  In his 1,500 page "manifesto," Mr. Breivik states that he will:

"consider working with the enemies of the EU/US hegemony such as Iran,  al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab or the rest of the devout fractions of the Islamic Ummah with the intention for deployment of small nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical weapons in Western European capitals and other high priority locations."

If government spending is growing faster than gross domestic product (GDP), can the resulting deficit problem be solved by:

(A) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending,
(B) increasing tax rates,
(C) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending and increasing tax rates?

If you answered A, you have a strong brain and can go to the head of the class. If you answered B, you have a flaccid brain and will need to repeat the class. I will get back to the C students later.

People with flaccid brains have a hard time understanding the consequences of actions, and they tend to treat variables as constants (e.g., I know how to drive, so I should be able to drive drunk).  They rarely do real cost-benefit analyses or think about the long run.

An example of a flaccid brain is that which occupies the skull of Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, who, in a hysterical reaction to the Gulf oil spill, wants to shut down all offshore drilling.