Fantasies aside, like Zero having a total mental breakdown and resigning, it's not clear how this week could have been realistically better. The Gulf Oil Spill is rapidly becoming Zero's Katrina.  Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu and Democrat guru James Carville - both Louisianan - are just unloading on Zero for his insouciant incompetence.  The anger and contempt that lots of Democrats - Democrats - feel towards him now is growing.  Even Chrissie Tingle-leg Matthews is blasting him. More and more Americans are realizing that the "damn hole" that needs to be plugged is the one between Zero's nose and chin, which gushes verbal pollution far more destructive to America than any oil spill. Then there is Sestak-gate.  It is a complete win-win.  It torpedoes Sestak's chances to get elected, virtually handing Snarlin' Arlen's PA senate seat to Republican Pat Toomey.  And, as Jack Kelly points out, most people will decide it's the Chicago Boys in the White House who are lying, not a Navy Admiral turned Congressman.  Thus it adds to growing public belief that the Zero Regime doesn't tell the truth and cannot be trusted.  Adding further is Republican insistence that Attorney General Holder appoint a special prosecutor to investigate what could be an impeachable offense by Zero. Plus the economy continues to sink, the DOW is tanking, gold is rising and so is unemployment.  All of this is great news.  The worse things are, the worse things are going to be for the Dems in November.  Yep, the glass is more than half-full this week.

Somebody's lying.  It probably isn't Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.  But he's the one most likely to suffer from it.   No sooner had he won an upset victory over Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania's Democrat primary than he was caught up in a "he said, she said" with the Obama administration. In an interview Feb. 18 with Philadelphia talk show host Larry Kane, Rep. Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, said he'd been offered a job in the administration if he would drop his plans to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter. Mr. Sestak said the offer came last summer, but wouldn't say who made it, or what job he was offered.  (The scuttlebut says it was Secretary of the Navy.) I can't imagine he made up the story.  What would he possibly have to gain?  I have no use for Rep. Sestak's politics, but he seems an honest and straightforward man.  In any event, his reputation for openness and candor is considerably greater than that of the Obama administration.  That reputation for candor will suffer if Rep. Sestak doesn't provide very soon the critical details: 

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!

He was in way over his head.  But the resignation last Thursday (5/21) of Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence may have deprived the Obama administration's intelligence team of arguably its most capable member. What may have done in Admiral Blair was a scathing report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee May 19 which identified 14 "significant intelligence failings" in the case of Umar Adulmuttalab, the underwear bomber, who attempted to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day. The most serious of these failings were by the National Counterterrorism Center, which reports directly to the DNI. So why would the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, say: "Blair's resignation is the result of the Obama administration's rampant politicization of national security?" It's an election year.  But the bigger reason is who the president would rely upon for intelligence advice in lieu of Mr. Blair.

35,000 feet over the Caribbean.  Right after the Rendezvous, Rebel and I took off for Belize to attend an asset protection conference at which I was the keynote speaker. It's Friday now and I'm on my way to look at other possible escape hatches in the Caribbean - and flights and connections in this area make it difficult to get the HFR and TTP Weekly Report out on schedule - so I hope you'll cut me some slack today. You may have read on Drudge yesterday about how the Fascicrats snuck a Capital Controls Act into the Orwellian-named HIRE (Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment) HR 2847 bill that Zero has signed into law. The Offset Provisions - Subtitle A-Foreign Account Tax Compliance section of 2847 directs banks to withhold 30% of money you want to wire overseas.  It's outrageously fascist-totalitarian and it was snuck into a bill supposedly about increasing employment with no one noticing. It made Drudge because a CBS News stringer, Brian Brawdy, was at the Belize conference where it was discussed in analytical detail and wrote a story on it that got Drudge's attention. This Capital Controls Act is only one of a score of Zero's efforts detailed at the conference all of which are designed not to increase jobs and prosperity, but to increase government control over our lives and steal as much money from us as the government thinks it can get away with.  The only bright spot is...

The spin is in.  Here's how the Webzine Politico expressed the conventional wisdom  about the outcome of special election for what had been Jack Murtha's seat: "In the only House race that really mattered to both parties...Republicans failed spectacularly, losing on a level playing field where, in this favorable environment, they should have run roughshod over the opposition," wrote Jonathan Martin and Charles Mahtesian. If this is widely believed, it may turn out to be a good thing for Republicans that Democrat Mark Critz, a former Murtha aide, defeated Republican Tim Burns in PA 12. First, there'll be no more smugness among Republicans about coasting to a takeover of the House in November. Second, Democrats in swing districts may now underestimate how much trouble they could be in.

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.