There hasn't been an HFR since November 4 since it's too depressing to raise a glass that's completely dry and empty.  Lately, however, so much fun stuff has been filling the HFR full liter stein that it's like the Munich Oktoberfest in December.

Let's start with the biggest silver lining of November 4:  we didn't end up with President Pain-in-the-ass McCain.  Once again, he reminded us this week of what an insufferable jerk he is.  The only reason he got the nomination is because the Stupid Party allows Democrats to vote in its primaries.  It's such a relief we never have to pay any attention to him ever again.  Jindal-Palin 2012!

Next we move to Blagogate, which is serving to bring into clear focus that corruption is the Democrat Party's middle name - and that for the next four years we'll have a Chicago White House, the operations of which will be run by Blago buddy Rahm Emmanuel...

... Now on to the substantial benefits of the US/global recession.

... We'll close this edition of the HFR by raising a glass of sacramental wine to a great American patriot and founder of the modern conservative political movement, Paul Weyrich.

Madrid, Spain. Spain has been one of the great democratic and economic success stories of the last three decades. But there is now some reason to fear for its future.

The Spaniards have moved in two generations from conservative church-going Catholics to some of the most socially liberal people on the planet (the Californians of Europe). Recent surveys have shown the Spaniards to be among the happiest people on Earth.

In sum, Spain seems to have everything going for it.  There are problems, however, big problems in paradise.

Perhaps when the history of our times is written, ours will be called The Era of Narcissistic Catechisms. To understand why this is the case it is enough to consider the fortunes of two green movements.

2,800 miles away from the one in Copenhagen, another green movement took to the streets this week. In Iran tens of thousands of anti-regime protesters from the green (the color for Islam) movement for democracy again risked their lives to demand freedom.

Unlike global warming, there is no doubt that the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran constitutes a grave threat to international peace and security. There is also no doubt that the most effective way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is to replace the current genocidal jihadist regime with a peaceful, liberal and democratic government.

As unlikely as it may seem, at the very moment that freedom in Iran has become most urgent requirement for the world as a whole, the Iranian people have taken to the streets to demand it and are willing to pay with their lives to achieve it.

In the face of this miraculous turn of events, the international community has nothing to say. Whereas the West's celebrity icons line up to get their pictures taken next to posters of polar bears, no one stands with the Iranian people.

Sofia, Bulgaria. Dr. Joel Wade couldn't write his column yesterday (10/02) because he was so nervous waiting for the Palin-Biden debate.  He's feeling a lot better this morning.  So are we all.  You betcha.

So let's lift a pint of Kamenitza beer in honor of Sarah Palin and the hope she has reignited the McCain-Palin ticket... 

...Kamenitza is my selection out of a large number of excellent Bulgarian beers because of its advertising motto:  Success in your hands (there's a picture of a hand holding a bottle), followed by the ad copy:  Because you are successful, we present to you a Bulgarian beer with character.

You would never, ever see such an ad in any country in Western Europe.  In France or Germany, young people sneer at entrepreneurial capitalism as their purpose in life is to sponge off the state...

...Thus the garish irony of our election in November.

The global financial problem, stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage mess, is a direct result of the irresponsibility and incompetence of the U.S. Congress

That Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been engaging in Ponzi scheme with taxpayer-subsidized money is obvious to anyone - even Congressmen - due to a series of major accounting and financial corruption scandals in recent years.

Politicians have used the board positions in these organizations to reward political cronies (e.g., the fired and indicted head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, was Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget director). Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been very major contributors to congressional campaigns.

But rather than clean up the mess they created by getting back to market basics, Democrats in Congress decided last week to make the mess much worse.

As the illustrious conclave of global warming true believers, led by President Barack Hussein Obama, gathers in Copenhagen for yet another exercise in environmental doom and gloom, observing the proceedings with the sly smirk of somebody who's "been there, done that" is likely to be the ghost of one Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976).

No ordinary ghost that one either, for Comrade Lysenko was Stalin's favorite scientist for decades and the driving force behind the greatest scientific fraud in history prior to "anthropogenic global warming." Indeed, to fully understand the nature, magnitude and implications of the AGW scam, it's worthwhile to revisit Academician Lysenko's exploits, which just happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to the charlatanism currently on display in Climategate.

Anthropogenic global warming has become for its supporters what Lysenko's theory of heredity was for the Stalinists. For its small international cabal of top AGW functionaries, it was about more than money, power and prestige, though, with the connivance of sycophantic Western governments and U.N. bureaucrats, there was plenty of that too. It was about ideology.

Maybe we should all be in Tibet this week.

That's where I was 21 years ago on Black Monday, October 19, 1987.  On that infamous day 21 years ago, the Dow dropped 22.6%:  from 2,247 to 1,739, or a loss of 508 points.  (An equivalent loss today would be a fall of 2,500 points, from 11,422 to 8,840.)

We were in one of the remotest spots on the planet - the Chang Thang plateau of northern Tibet - when we learned of the crash on our short wave radio tuned into the BBC.  We were so lucky to be there...

... let's focus now on more positive developments.  One would be that Charlie Rangel is finally getting what's coming to him.  Even liberal newspapers like the Miami Herald are calling for him to resign, either from his chairmanship of House Way & Means or from Congress altogether. 

Another is the release this week of John Fund's book Stealing Elections.  This is an incredibly important book.  John exposes the plans of the ultimate "community organizer" ACORN to commit massive voter fraud in cities throughout the country - and details how Obama is an ACORN operative...

...Then there is Boliva breaking apart and Pakistan about to.

Just plain nuts: That's the only possible characterization for last night's (12/02) presidential declaration of surrender in advance of a renewed campaign in Afghanistan.

President Obama will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan -- but he'll "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011." Then why send them?

If you're going to tell the Taliban to be patient because we're leaving, what's the point in upping the blood ante? For what will come down to a single year by the time the troops hit the ground?

Our president is setting up our military to fail -- but he'll be able to claim that he gave the generals what they wanted. Failure will be their fault. He's covering his strong-on-security flank, even as he plays to our white-flag wavers. His cynicism's worthy of a Saddam.

This isn't just stupid: It's immoral. No American president has ever espoused such a worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political gratification.

Knowing how consumers will respond is key in estimating how much revenue will come in from a proposed tax rate increase - if any. There are tax economists who can give pretty good estimates about the consumer response.  Unfortunately, they are not allowed to speak in the Joint Tax Committee (JTC) of the U.S. Congress, the "Secret Chamber" where the "official estimate" is made.

For decades, a cabal in Congress has had effective control of the official tax scoring committee. Thus, they overestimate the tax revenue that will come in from a rate increase and overestimate the loss in revenue from a tax rate cut, which serves the interest of those who, for ideological reasons, want to increase the size of government.

After all too many years, the Bush administration is at least trying to have its Treasury Department tax office (OTA) undertake some dynamic analysis (i.e., considering the behavioral response). However, Congress refuses to fund this modest effort (we are talking about less than a million dollars), let alone clean up JTC, which refuses to allow public scrutiny of its estimating procedures.