Marseille, France.  Why does it appear France is bouncing back more quickly from the recession than the United States?

France has long been known for having an economy that suffered from too much government interference, too-high taxes and destructive union activity. Yet it grew 1.4 percent in the second quarter of 2009, while the U.S. economy continued to decline.

The United States and Britain have had the largest "stimulus" programs of the major economies (as measured by increases in government spending and deficits relative to gross domestic product) and yet they are not moving toward recovery as rapidly as France and most other countries that had far smaller stimulus programs or none.

There's so much cool stuff to talk about this week - but first I've got to clear up a confusion.   We normally have two Rendezvous a year, winter and summer.  This year, we're adding a third, the San Diego Spring Rendezvous, May 14-16.

A number of folks are hesitating about this as they think there'll still be another in the summer.  Obviously, I should have explained this earlier:  There will not be a Summer Rendezvous this year.  I will be traveling - South America, Asia, and Europe - August through October.  The next Rendezvous after San Diego in May will be The Victory Celebration Rendezvous in Washington DC, November 5-7.

That's the weekend after the November 2 elections, and we should have a lot to celebrate.  But there's a long meantime between now and then - even longer if you consider the total gap between the San Antonio Rendezvous last January and next November. 

So - the only way to see your fellow TTPers, and get a deep grasp of what's happening to our country and in the world, without waiting all the way to late next fall, is to join us in sunny San Diego in May.  Capiche?

OK, here we go.  There's no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is:

Stockhom, Sweden.  Do you think America would be better off with a Swedish-type welfare state?

This question tends to evoke strong reactions from both the left and right, yet few understand Sweden's economic history and the revisions it has been making to its welfare-state model in recent years.

Those who wish to chase the Swedish model need first to decide which model they seek: The high-growth, pre-1960 model; the low-growth model of the 1970s and 1980s; or the reformist, welfare-state model of recent years.

The irony is that the current Democrat Congress and administration are rapidly emulating the parts of the Swedish model that proved disastrous and rejecting those parts that are proving to be successful.

Making the rounds on YouTube these days is a film of a group of manly looking women preparing for and conducting a "flash dance" in a Philadelphia food store.  [Warning - the video is 5 minutes and 44 seconds of boring, obnoxious, and unattractive women - JW]

The crew of ladies, dressed in tight black clothes and sequined accessories, arrives at The Fresh Grocer supermarket, breaks into a preplanned chant ordering shoppers not to buy Sabra and Tribe hummus, to oppose Israeli "apartheid" and support "Palestine."

From their attire and attitude, it is fairly clear that the participants in the video would congratulate themselves on their commitment to the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth suffering under the jackboot of the powerful. They would likely all also describe themselves as feminists.

But if being a human rights activist means attacking the only country in the Middle East that defends human rights, then that means that at the very basic level, the term "human rights activist" is at best an empty term.

And if being a feminist means attacking the only country in the Middle East where women enjoy freedom and equal rights, then feminism too, has become at best, a meaningless term. Indeed, if these anti-Israel female protesters are feminists, then feminism is dead.

Isn't it supposed to be just about springtime now?  In Florida last week, I heard no end to grousing about how it's been the coldest winter in memory.  Back in Washington where there are still piles of snow left over from last month's Snowmageddon, everyone is looking forward to three inches of cold rain and flooding this weekend.

Enough already.  Enough of crazy cold weather - and enough of crazy Democrat politics.  The political climate on Capitol Hill is so bad now that certain GOP Senators and Congressmen are privately (although not publicly) expressing a genuine worry about the sanity of the President of the United States.

Zero's obsession with "health care reform" is being likened to the deranged Captain Ahab's obsession with harpooning the White Whale in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.  That didn't turn out so well for Ahab.

To compound their concern, Zero began yet again this week (3/10) demanding "climate change legislation" that would "cap greenhouse gas emissions" - acting as if the unending exposure of ClimateGate frauds never happened.

The common image the Capitol Hill GOP invokes is to joke about the Democrats' "circular firing squad."  Yet there is real concern behind the jokes.  "Neither Obama nor Reid nor Pelosi is playing with a full deck anymore," one Senator tells me.

We are likely to have a double-dip recession, and this is why. Your Uncle Sam has been having a hard time because he spends more than he makes. He engages in much unproductive behavior and wastes a lot of money on things that he doesn't really need.

He is easily influenced by his irresponsible children, Nancy and Harry, whose mantra is: "Spend, Sam, spend." Sam is also sloppy with his finances. His record keeping is poor, and he is frequently ripped off by people who claim to be his friends.

Recently, Sam experienced a big drop in his income, because his employer (the American taxpayer) had been taking financial hits.  So Sam did what he's best at -- he borrowed and spent more, more than ever before.  Then things began to turn a bit sour.

It is a sad and potentially fatal fact that most Americans know virtually nothing about the U.S. military. That astounding reality is all the more incredible given that our survival ultimately depends on the men and women in uniform who defend this country.

Such ignorance is, ironically, a testament to the success of what is known as the all-volunteer force. It is also a national defect, one that soon may be the undoing of a system based on the willingness of a few to protect the rest of us at great risk to themselves.

President Obama is hoping to capitalize on our ignorance of these folks and the reality of their lives in uniform - notably, the phenomenon known as "forced intimacy" that is inherent in communal bunk rooms, showers, latrines, shipboard sleeping compartments and foxholes.

It is this ignorance that allows him to insist that the U.S. Senate accede during the post-Thanksgiving lame-duck session to his demand for the repeal of a 1993 law - widely referred to as DADT or Don't Ask Don't Tell - prohibiting homosexuals from openly serving in the armed forces.

Every American who finds himself or herself bridling at the invasion of privacy by TSA should think long and hard about forcing our all-too-often unsung and unrecognized heroes to submit to far worse.

Naples, Florida.  I had to skedaddle back from the Persian Gulf to speak to a conservative organization meeting here today.  I'll be on the podium soon, so let's get started.

Richard Rahn this week discusses the economics of raising cigarette taxes in New York, and parenthetically mentions New York's "enormous cigarette smuggling problem."

One thing I learned while in the Middle East is that our military intel guys there believe that much of the cigarette smuggling operation on the US East Coast is run by Moslems working for Al Qaeda. 

Someone needs to tell New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg his cigarette taxes are resulting in scores of millions of dollars funding Al Qaeda terrorism.  Someone needs to tell the DHS lady, Janet Napolitano, to do something about this.  You wonder why nobody has. Or maybe they just don't care to listen.

If Congress, under a revised "cash for clunkers," suddenly required every car and truck in America (all 250 million of them) to be immediately destroyed and replaced with new cars and trucks that got better gas mileage, would the country be worse off or better off?

Congressional Fantasycrats would say "better!" - so let's apply their logic to housing.

Why not knock down all houses built in America before 2000 and replace them with new and more energy-efficient houses? Wait -- we already evidenced the results of that experiment -- it happened in New Orleans. Rather than the government directly knocking down the houses, Hurricane Katrina did it for us.

Many in Congress argue that the reason New Orleans is still a mess - after hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars - is because of federal, state and local government mismanagement and corruption. Yes, but now don't they want the government to run the health care system? And these folks are telling us that their new medical system will cover more people, will cost less, give us better care and not add to the budget deficit -- hmmm. Fantasyland!

South Africa is a country of paradoxes. On the one hand, it is exhilarating to see the blacks now in charge after their long struggle. On the other, the ruling African National Congress' record of governance is at best a mixed bag.

This has been a great year for South Africa. Throngs of tourists visited during the World Cup soccer championship, and the international press coverage was fantastic. Unfortunately, the relative safety enjoyed by World Cup tourists was a striking deviation from the norm. The ANC has failed to provide personal security for South Africans. According to the UN, South Africa has the second highest per capita murder rate in the world. South African sources place the annual murder rate at 23,000.

South Africa is the rape capital of the world. In a 1998-2000 UN survey, one in three women said they had been raped in the past year. One in four men admitted that he was a rapist. Nearly 20 percent of South Africans are infected with the HIV virus.

On top of this, the ANC regime is one of the most anti-Israel governments in the world today. Although the physical beauty of South Africa is arresting, and the material standard of living that South African Jews enjoy is impressive, it is clear that Jewish life in South Africa will only get worse.

I better be careful here, as there's so much to talk about this week the HFR could be the length of a small novel. 

Before we begin - an important announcement.  So many TTPers can't wait six months for another Rendezvous that we've decided to have an extra Spring Rendezvous in San Diego, California May 14-16.  Details next week, but mark your calendar now.

***
So - let's start with the HFR International Hero of the Week, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia.  Then I'll tell you a extradinary story about General Alexander Haig's heroism that no one has ever heard-- then why we should look upon Republicans in Congress as heroes.  And yes, that still includes Scott Brown.