The content for the Liberty in the Breach (http://goo.gl/AAFJ9) blog is posted directly from a Diigo.com group called "Socialism and the End of the American Dream". So yes, this groups bookmarking efforts are public.

The way this works is easy for anyone to to do, and I encourage everyone to make use of blog and RSS posts. The Diigo bookmark service enables groups of people to share tagged and categorized lists of bookmarks, but the only way to take these group collaborations truly public is through the blog and RSS posting mechanisms. There are also select sharing methods.

Each Group of bookmarks and comments can have any number of "Lists". A list is a subset of a group, but it can stand on it's own or serve many groups. The difference is that Groups have members and lists do not.

The effect of this separation is that you can publish or RSS any list to a Web Site or Reader, and not be concerned about errant group membership comments and posts. Fortunately we not encountered that problem with the End of the American Dream group.

The "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group contains two prominent "lists": Banksters and USA-Constitution. There are other lists, but over time these two became dominant.

I started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group in August of 2008 as part of my research and attempt to understand the financial collapse of 2008. What I found was quite chilling, and has nothing to do with "Socialism" or it's many forms.

I came to understand that socialism in it's many forms (liberalism, Progressivism, Marxism, Naziism, and Communism), is used the same as conservatism and corporate facism by a wealthy globalist elite to seize the instruments and resources of government for their own purposes.

So yeah, if I had the chance to rename to group, I would not have singled out socialist as "the" enemy. It's far more complex than that.

The thing socialism, neo conservatism and corporate fascism all have in common is big, powerful government at the expense of individual liberty.

The globalist elites bounce us back and forth between war and social equality, building debt, spending money - much of which ends up in their pockets or is used to keep in line and keep in office their associates.

The enemy of these globalist elites is the USA Constitution, and the fundamental concept of individual liberty as being sacrosanct and sovereign over governments and society.

I started out a very confused Reagan Conservative and am now a libertarian through and through. It's been quite the journey but you can find most it documented at "Socialism and the End of the American Dream".

Hope that helps. And thanks to all those who asked :)

~ge~

This commentary is currently making the rounds of the Bay Area Patriots circles:

ITS ALL TRUE ::
Any one of these 'coincidences' when taken singularly appear to not mean much, but when taken as a whole, a computer would blow a main circuit if you asked it to calculate the odds that they have occurred by chance alone.
Sit back, get a favorite beverage, and then read and ponder the Obama-related 'coincidences' ... then super-impose the bigger picture of most recent events i.e. Fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA revelations ... then pray for our country.

Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father

just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who

just happened to be a close friend of Obama's communist mentor
Frank Marshall Davis, who

just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who

just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama

just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who

just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which

just happened to manage public housing in Chicago,

which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which

just happened not to properly maintain the housing-which eventually just happened to require demolition.

Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and
just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson
(later Mrs.Obama),

who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn, who also just happened to work there,

and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

Bernardine Dohrn
just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she
just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, who

just happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and

Warden/al-Mansour
just happened to be a mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour

just happened to be financial adviser to a
Saudi Prince, who

just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama
just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton,

who just happened to have been the attorney for MalcolmX,

who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya,

who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.,

who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya.

Obama, Sr.
just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which

just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk,

who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who

just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan,

who just happens to live very close to Obama's Chicago mansion, which also
just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and
Bernardine Dohrn,

who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents

just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.

After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he
just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization that
just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul "the Red" Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who

just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton's thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama's $25,000 salary at IAF

just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company

just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO

just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayers

just happened to serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.

Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and
just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who

just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who

just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which

just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which

just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who

just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama's political hatchet man, David Axelrod.

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who

just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons,
which Obama

just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his "most enthusiastic," and Obama

just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and

just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.

Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama
just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations,

which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing

he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called Dreams From My Father,

which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers,
who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama

just happened never to see even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.

Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland,
which just happenedto specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and

which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar, and with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, and the law firm's Judson Miner

just happened to have been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers.

In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks(Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit
just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which

just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble,

which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the "New Party," which

just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist who just happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.

In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young,

who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama's Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and
Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church,

just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved.

In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and

just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.

In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who

just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas

just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and

just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters.
Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers

just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama

just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel "will never see a day of peace," and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children's dance whose performances

just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" and there has been "genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis," and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but

just happens to refuse to make it public.

In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull

just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod

just happened to manage to get Hull's sealed divorce records unsealed, which

just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce

just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race,
which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.

DOES ANYBODY BUT ME SEE A PATTERN HERE??

..... Obama Sr. defined himself as a Marxist-Muslim. Looks like the apple really doesn't fall all that far from the tree,

Financial expert Porter Stansberry recently posted the following commentary at The Project to Restore America. Chilling stuff. The number speak for themselves. This comes from Porter's newsletter so there isn't a URL to bookmark.
...................

Your Best Chance at Living Well in the End of America
By Porter Stansberry
Wednesday, June 26, 2013

I've spent much of the last several years warning people about the "End of America"…

I've showed my readers what is about to happen and tried to convince them to take precautions before it's too late.

But let's face it… my work is mostly for wealthy people who mainly want to continue to be wealthy. So I've focused on how to prepare for these changes from the perspective of an investor - someone whose primary goal is to earn a return on his capital. I had precious little to offer regular wage-earners.

But the real danger right now is mostly to the middle class in America.

Americans owe more money, collectively, than ever before in our history - far, far, far more. We owe at every level: $17 trillion at the federal level, $13 trillion in mortgages, another trillion in student loans, and nearly $3 trillion in state and local government debt. Put all of these numbers together and you end up with a $60 trillion pile of obligations. That's nearly four years' worth of our entire country's total production.

To make sense of the numbers, just take a bunch of the zeroes away. Put these facts into a storyline that's become all too common in America. Our economy is like a tattooed thug living in Detroit. In between burning broken-down cars and selling crack, he makes $16,000 a year working "security" at a local nightclub. Outside of busting heads, he has no real skills.

And why would he want to work hard to acquire them? Thanks to his public school education, he is convinced other people have a moral obligation to provide for him… especially rich people. They will give him health care, a clean apartment, a phone, etc. In his worldview, that's what's fair.

And if they won't? He's got no qualms about firing first and taking what he needs. After all, they owe him. For now though, he's doing great.

The Korean grocer up the street gave him a credit account. In only a few short years, he's run up a $60,000 tab. What are the chances he's going to drastically cut his expenses, work hard to get a promotion, and find a way to repay these debts? Zero. What are the chances he ends up knocking over the Korean grocer and teaching him something about life in America?

You may object to my metaphor. But believe me, it's far more accurate than most people are comfortable talking about. We live in a country that's coming apart at the seams - financially, culturally, morally, and spiritually. The reason is simple. We have collectively become addicted to living way, way beyond our means.

My favorite example about how absurd our debts have become? The state of New Jersey still owes $110 million for a football stadium (Giants Stadium) that was demolished in 2010. It won't retire this debt until 2025.

Similar debts exist on defunct or torn-down stadiums in Houston, Kansas City, Memphis, Seattle, and Pittsburgh. These stadiums are physical reminders of the absurd promises the government has made to its citizens.

On top of the debt it now owes, our federal government has promised its citizens $124 trillion of additional benefits. That's more than $1 million per citizen. That's not only more money than we could ever finance with tax revenues, but it's considerably more money than all of the privately owned assets in the United States (roughly $99 trillion).

Keeping this lie alive… the lie that we can afford our debts (or even our defunct stadiums)… has become the most important national goal. That's why everything stops when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks. Our obsession with Fed policy statements is the best proof I have that we're far more concerned with maintaining "The Great Lie" than we are at actually building a better real economy.

Have you ever told a big lie? Did you ever exaggerate something to hide a weakness or insecurity? Or maybe you lied to cover a big mistake you'd made. Did you get away with it? Or did maintaining the lie suddenly consume all of your attention and energy?

Seemingly forgotten in our obsession to maintain the fiction of our solvency are the huge costs of lying, running our country on Asian loans, and keeping the printing press churning. Nobody notices that the purchasing power of the dollar is down by almost 50% in the last 10 years… or that real wages have been falling since the early 1970s… or that almost half of the able-bodied men in our country no longer work. Nobody mentions that most of the students at most of the urban schools in our country either don't graduate or can't achieve test scores above minimum standards. Sooner or later, the consequences of our lies will fall upon us.

Your taxes are going up. The number of people you will be forced to support (those on disability, food stamps, or Medicare… retirees… people living in war-torn countries… ) is soaring. And your ability to pay for these benefits is being destroyed by global competition and the decline of the dollar. America is promising everyone more. And you're the person who will have to pay.

................... comments ..............

Under Obama, the Economic Policy Institute says the US is losing half a million jobs to China every year. http://economyincrisis.org/content/trade-deficit-china-could-cost-half-million-jobs . Less than 65% of men have jobs. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS12300001 , while 53% of all workers under Obama now make less than $30,000/yr www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2011 Meanwhile, Obama's cronies are making off like bandits. (It's all part of the drive - technically known as fascism - to join the socialist state with big corporations.) -

..........................

These stats back up what Porter says in today's update… "that real wages have been falling since the early 1970s… or that almost half of the able-bodied men in our country no longer work." I agree with Porter's major premise that the country has problems because we foster an entitlement culture instead of one of self-reliance. The best way to foster the spirit of self-reliance is to cut government spending here and now. Although it would be painful, it would force Americans to stand on their own two feet, which clearly needs to happen.

.......................

The Obama economy is killing small business - only 7% of non-farm workers are self-employed, an all-time record low. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/they-are-murdering-small-business-the-percentage-of-self-employed-americans-is-at-a-record-low . Small biz WAS the engine of our economy. -

........................................................................................

NSA Conversation with retired lawyer and Open Source legal expert, "Marbux".

..............................................
Monday, June 10th 2013: On CNN, Piers Morgan. Adm. James Wooley and Ron Paul being interviewed on the topic: "Eric Snowden, Traitor or Hero". Probably will be on again later tonight. Ron Paul is having a field day, with Morgan lobbing him softball questions that Paul hits out of the park. It turned into a debate whether Snowden or government officials should be punished. Paul's best score, something like: "Obama ran on a promise of transparency and now we're finally getting transparency. We should all be overjoyed."

Thanks Paul! Hey, great post on Liberty in the Breach. Your comments are very helpful!
http://bayareapatriots.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/liberty-06142013-p-m/



Interesting quote from Ron Paul; "It turned into a debate whether Snowden or government officials should be punished."

That debate is going to come down to whether or not you support the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Especially the 4th Amendment. It's amazing how the government is now trying to justify the Prism dragnet when we all know that, had they argued for the dragnet back when the Patriot ACT was publicly discussed and voted on, the Act would have not passed congress.


What follows is a a summary of the situation that I sent a friend in the UK:

UK: Yes, far less 'noise' in the UK, despite news that we may be taking a US feed of such data... 1984 indeed?

Marbux: Yes, but a great opportunity to throw a wrench in the works. The feds tried to get Congressional authorization for such a program a few years back, then named TIA (Total Information Awareness) and it aroused such a furor that Congress said no.

Other complicating factors for our electronic spooks:

-- The Guardian has said it has only begun to publish articles about the PRISM program, that they have plenty of more documents they got from the leaker. That makes it dicey for the Feds to come up with new excuses because they don't know what's yet to be disclosed.
.

-- The head of the NSA is in hot water for committing perjury in Congressional testimony to the Senate intelligence oversight
committee, denying that the NSA had such records.
.

-- The leaked documents hit the press only a few days before Obama's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that Obama was going to focus on Chinese electronic theft of blueprints, etc. for U.S. weapons systems. I suspect that meeting didn't go the way Obama intended because of the PRISM disclosure and because of the leaker saying just before the meeting that the U.S. had been hacking China and Hong Kong for years. ;
.
CIA Surveillance Leak: Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald says 'dozens of stories' in the works

-- The E.U. is wading in heavily, because the program violates E.U. privacy and human rights.
.

-- Similar concerns erupting from other nations, notably India and Australia.

-- The left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the program.
.

The First and Fourth Amendment claims look like a slam dunk to me; the PRISM program is way beyond what the case law permits.

-- Meanwhile, the right-leaning Tea Party is upset about it too. A few days ago one or their darlings who's already begin running for the next Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Rand Paul, promised a class action lawsuit last weekend and it was filed yesterday.
.

The suit seeks some $20 billion in damages and an injunction ending the dragnet surveillance for just about all Americans with a telephone.

-- The legality of the NSA PRISM program could land in the Supreme Court's lap in the next few weeks because of a ruling by a federal judge in Florida. See
.

If the judge orders disclosure the Feds must comply or immediately appeal. And likewise if the appellate court upholds the district court, the Feds either comply or must immediately seek review in the Supreme Court. This all has to happen in a period measured in days raher than weeks or months because it's an ongoing murder trial. The legality of the program is directly at issue. The judge seems inclined to order disclosure. And it will be hard for the Feds to argue that the metadata for the two telephones at issue is classified, since it's telephone company data that was not classified before the NSA got it.

At the same time, if the Feds disclose or the judge orders them to do so, there will be a flood of habeas corpus petitions filed by people already in prison seeking new trials with the NSA data in the record.

Easiest way out for the Feds is to drop the charges against the defendant to moot the issue. But it will be back via habeas corpus.

-- Mainstream media is keeping the story in the headlines. Perhaps payback for wiretapping 20 Associated Press journalists and naming a Fox News reporter as an unindicted co-conspirator in an Espionage Act case over an intelligence type who stepped into the whistleblower role?

-- The public opinion poll results are changing, rapidly going from a strong majority supporting the surveillance right after the first publication of the story to a majority now opposed, with "undecided rising" rapidly too. All at the expense of "support", of course.

-- The elected Senators and Congressmen have undoubtedly taken note of that trend and more and more are speaking out against the program while its defenders are quickly falling silent.

-- Even those who are still defending the program are asking Obama to declassify more about the program so they can legally discuss its supposed benefits. They were quickly debunked after claiming that two particular terrorism cases wouldn't have been discovered without PRISM. There were complete court records in both cases, and they involved only old-fashioned detective work.

-- Lots more going on, but I think this is going to result in a substantial curtailment of government dragnet surveillance powers.

{End of conversation}

Followup Comments:
The 4th Amendment issue is very strong. The PRISM defenders say that the relevant Patriot Act provisions have been upheld in the courts, but that is false.

In two cases, the district court found the Patriot unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment. On appeal, both cases were tossed out on State Secret privilege grounds, because the government refused to disclose the evidence because it is classified. So the appellate rulings were that since plaintiffs couldn't get the discovery they couldn't prove their cases; therefore, they lacked standing to sue.


Would you agree that Super Patriot Edward Snowden might provide the evidence needed in those two court cases? Seems like Edward has given us all legal standing.



In a third case, there is a 86-page ruling by the FISA court ruling that the FBI and NSA exceeded their Constitutional powers. Disclosure of that opinion is at issue right now in a Washington, D.C. Freedom of Information Act case. That case was temporarily stayed so that the plaintiffs could get a ruling from the FISA court on whether that court's rules mean that the Feds' copies of the opinion are sealed. The FISA court just ruled that they are not sealed. So it's back to the D.C. court to decide if they are lawfully classified. It's likely that the court will order disclosure of a redacted copy with only validly classified information deleted. That shouldn't cover the substance of the FISA court's legal rulings.

It's a combination of the documents Snowden released, the Feds' acknowledgement that the docs are genuine, and statements by Sen. Feinstein and later by Feds that the program exists and has been in operation since 2006. These facts are central to the ACLU case and the class action lawsuit.

The 4th Amendment has no exception for intelligence gathering. It says in essence that there must be "probable cause" for the Feds to believe that the evidence they seek pursuant to a search warrant is relevant to a particular crime they allege has been committed. It is very definitely not an authorization for government to obtain Big Data because it might later become relevant to future crimes.

Warrants must be narrowly tailored, describing the particular place to be searched and particular evidence that the Feds want to seize. And the affidavit in support of the motion for the search warrant has to detail the basis for the reasonable cause and its relationship to the particular crime.

The government's justification has to be something akin to saying that there is a particular book in a large library that is needed as evidence, therefore they want to seize all books in the library.

There's a lot of confusion out there on what's permissible under the 4th Amendment. To get a start on understanding it, you need to recognize the legally huge difference between investigating a particular crime and gathering intelligence for future use. The 4th Amendment limits collection of evidence to that for a specific crime that has been committed.

But it's the bright line between intelligence-gathering and criminal investigation that got blurred by the Patriot Act, etc. Think Fusion Centers here. The cops and the spies began to share information in the name of the War on Terror. That's verboten under the 4th Amendment.

You can see signs of this in the way the Verizon order was obtained. The order said, "turn this information over to the FBI" (a law enforcement agency). Then the FBI turns it over to the NSA, which is not a law enforcement agency. And there are four separate statutes that in essence say that all civil and criminal investigations are to be conducted only by the Dept. of Justice, unless another statute expressly confers law enforcement powers on another agency. NSA lacks that authority.

It's time for heads to roll.

~marbux~

The following eMail message is being forwarded around the Web and it does confirm my own personal experiences with then Governor Romney in 2005-2006. The issue then was the Massachusetts Open Government initiative where the Governor Romney sought to establish an efficient and open information technology infrastructure based on emerging SOA concepts - Service Oriented Architecture. This was an early Web-Cloud based platform concept where Open Standards and Open Source Systems and Applications were at the foundation of a highly integrated and interoperable stack of components. Romney had committed a Million dollars to study the existing information infrastructure, and test the emerging SOA initiatives. A 300 page report finalized the results of this year long study.

Important to this study was the problem of replacing the proprietary and application/platform bound Windows compound document formats with the OASIS Open Document format. I was one of the original members of the OASIS Open Document Technical Committee, representing the OpenOffice Community. In that capacity i came to know Sam Hiser, who started the OpenOffice.org Markting Group. Sam also participated in the Massachusetts Study, and actually wrote the 300 page report.

The lessons of Massachusetts are many, and actually account for my current work focus on the Visual Productivity Platform and the Visual Document model that drives it. But more importantly, i was privleged to see Governor Romney at work, identifying a serious problem, organizing a team, creating a plan of action, and then empowering and backing his team fully in the midst of incredible heat and controversy. It was awesome and inspiring that such a politician exists. He is the ultimate problem solver. Able to make decisions and take action. Able to create, command and fully empower high level work groups with the most capable and expert people possible.

So when i saw this story of his other heroics, i thought i should recount my own first hand experiences. Anyone doubting the political heat the Massachusetts RFi (Request for Information) and ODF plug-in for MSOffice created, should Google it. The short story of how it ended is that Romney and his IT team did not waver or fail. The problem came down to Sun Microsystems and their refusal to cooperate with the IBM and Oracle plan to save ODF in Massachusetts. Incredible story with a sad ending. But nevertheless, a tribute to Romney and his team.
.........................................................................
The facts behind a current political ad about saving the life of the missing daughter of a former Romney partner at Bain Capital.

Sometimes, this facet of Romney's personality isn't so subtle. In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action.

He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay's daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York , and asked them to help find his friend's missing daughter.
Romney's accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could - prostitutes, drug addicts - anyone.

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey , where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney's former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter's life, saying, "It was the most amazing thing, and I'll never forget this to the day I die."

So, here it is: Mitt Romney simply can't help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn't do it for self-aggrandizement, or for personal gain. He does it because that's just how he's wired. Many people are unaware of the fact that when Romney was asked by his old employer, Bill Bain, to come back to Bain & Company as CEO to rescue the firm from bankruptcy, Romney left Bain Capital to work at Bain & Company for an annual salary of one dollar. When Romney went to the rescue of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, he accepted no salary for three years, and wouldn't use an expense account. He also accepted no salary as Governor of Massachusetts.

Character counts!! Wouldn't you rather have a guy like this in the White House than what we have now? (And yes...that's worth reading again!)

The world is upside down with the USA credit rating downgrade. Gold surges over $1700 per oz. The stock market continues it's downward spiral, now in free fall. The Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel has intervened through the mass purchase of futures, trying no doubt to make it look as if investors have confidence in the USA and Obama. It's not working.

The Tea Party passed two plans to restore USA crdibility and good standing: The Ryan Balanced Budget and the Cut, Cap & Balance plan. Both plans passed the House with bipartisan support. Both plans were acceptable to the credit rating agencies, including Standard & Poor. Both plans were blocked by the Democrats in the Senate, and, threatened with a veto from Obama. The people with no plan blocked the only plans that would have saved the USA credit rating.

Rush made the point this morning that if Obama and the Democrats cared about this country, they would be insisting that both the Tea Party plans, the Ryan Balanced Budget and the Cut, Cap & Balance plans be put forward in the Senate immediately for a vote, with the full backing of Obama.

Rush pointed out that if Obama and the Democrats didn't do this, or didn't come forward with a proposal of their own that actually qualified and met the credit ratings agencies $4 Trill - stop the reckless spending criteria debt concerns, then our worst fears would be confirmed. Our worst fears being that Obama and the Democrats are worse than mere incompetent socialist ideologues. That they are in fact out to destroy the goose that laid the golden egg: Constitutional Capitalism, American exceptionalism, and our God given right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that under-girds the extraordinary story of American prosperity.

So Obama has a choice today. He either complies with the demands that the USA Government get it's finances in order by supporting the credit ratings approved Tea Party plans. Or, explain why his vision of a downgraded, prosperity bereft and indentured debt bound America is the way forward.

Time to start demanding resignations. The fish rots from the head

An article by Eric Erikson of Red State, "The GOP Should Be Mindful of August" (http://bit.ly/qgAQJi) points out that the Tea Party is the only entity providing a debt reduction plan approved by the Credit Rating Agencies, including Standard & Poor. Actually, the Tea Party had TWO plans approved: the Ryan Balanced Budget, and, Cut, Cap & Balance. Eric hammers this fact home. But is anyone listening? Other than Rush Limbaugh?

excerpt:
..............
The White House no longer has a commander in chief in charge, but a professional victim. Last week, it was the Arab Spring, those damn Europeans, Mother Nature, etc. Now it is all about those evil tea partiers.

For three years, Barack Obama has blamed George W. Bush for all his ills. Yes, it is true, Barack Obama inherited an economy sliding backward. But it is also true Barack Obama inherited a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush. Obama's policies have exacerbated a bad economy and caused us to lose our credit rating.

But still, expect a full court press to blame the GOP and Tea Party.

So I have some quick advice for the GOP.

Back when S&P said it was considering a down grade, it set out two criteria to avoid losing the downgrade: (1) at least $4 trillion in cuts and (2) bipartisan support. Only the tea party movement came up with such a plan - Cut, Cap, and Balance.

It received bipartisan support in the House, came within five votes of a majority in the Senate, and not only cut $4 trillion, but put caps on future government spending and balanced the federal budget. No other plan, including the public grand bargain and Barack Obama's own super-double-top-secret plan that no one has ever seen did that.

Were I in Republican Leadership in Washington, I would haul my butt back to D.C. right now and start fighting again for Cut, Cap, and Balance. 66% of Americans support the plan. It is the only plan that would have avoided a credit decline.

Go back and pick up the fight on the front lines for freedom. And if they just can't, they they better point out to the new Super Committee that it was, in fact, possible to cut $4 trillion without enacting job killing tax increases and encourage them to send back as its package Cut, Cap, and Balance.

Dear WSJ Moderator,

I tried to post a comment to the community forum for the article, "Currency Chaos; Where do we go from here?" My comments were rejected with the error message, "The language you used does not comply with community standards. Please re-enter."

I read through my post, as well as the community rules for posting, and i can't find anything objectionable or contrary to the rules for posting? What gives?

Would you please be so kind as to explain to me the problem with my language?

Thanks for the consideration,

~ge~

Comment:

The world is on the Gold standard. Always has been. The difference is that some people know this, and others don't. Politicians, bankers and world traders prey on those who don't know this. Signing on to a dollar denominated contractual obligation or interest rate is reckless playing the predators game. The idea of a fixed-exchange between the dollar and euro is okay. But the idea of fixing either the dollar or the euro to Gold is nonsense. Sorry Mr. Mundell, Milton was right. Fiat currencies must float against the value of Gold; just as commodities, services and goods must also float against Gold.

Gold is a way of thinking. It's also the viewpoint that changes everything, even though the opportunity for this Gold view comes to us courtesy of advancing Web technologies and the connective power of pocket devices capable of universal access and exchange. Having the Internet in your pocket is the power to think in terms of Gold instead of dollars. Or any other fiat currency for that matter.

Many will ask, "Why now?" Others will ask, "Why gold?"

Well, Gold is elemental and about as constant in value as anything mankind has ever known. Sure, a gold rush here and there can set off a frenzied bubble of effort. But when has the supply of gold ever diminished the demand? Besides, how would you measure that except through the use of other precious metals, vital commodities or volatile currencies. My guess is that the value of Gold would be stable beyond even the most advanced algorithms precisely because the alchemy of uncertainty that pervades the value of everything else exceeds that of Gold.

But why now?

The problem i think has always been that of real time information and a transparent marketplace where the value of any currency, commodity or trade exchange unit can be evaluated against Gold - in real time. I suggest that today the electronic mechanisms, networking and devices are in place to use Gold as a real-time currency, but most people choose to live in the past. Or they are in on some predatory obfuscation scam based on insider undervaluing or over valuing fiat currencies. The worst case being the skewering of unwitting contractual obligations that fail to delineate exchanges in Gold.

If we know the price of Gold at any given moment, why would anyone sign a futures contract based on dollars or the euro? Or any fiat currency for that matter? Why not sign the contract based on Gold, but agree to exchange in dollars per micro-ounce? We peg contractual interest rates to LiBOR, so why not peg to GoldPrice or Kitco? In the advanced electronic "all digital all the time" world we live in, this is easy. Any iPhone or Android could do it using a simple app that can convert a scanned or typed in fiat-amount (name the currency) to the real time fiat-exchange rate of Gold. Want to check your bank account or equity holdings? Simply convert any fiat currency to the price of Gold in that currency, and you know exactly where you stand in this world. Want to buy merchandise or contract for a service, or agree to provide a contractual service? Price it in Gold and the currencies will take care of themselves. The trick is in an easy to use app that has access to real-time Gold prices, and can express amount in easy to handle Gold denominations. For example, 1 florian = 1/100 th of an ounce of Gold. 1 tam = 1/1000 of an ounce of Gold.

Take this one step further. Imagine there are at least seven Gold-Bank and Reserves (GBR's) now operating on the Isle of Man. These "banks" hold real gold reserves to back member accounts. The reserves might be in a Canadian vault, or they might represent a future obligation and claim, but the members of the Gold Reserve are the owners of record. Let's imagine that a new member signs up for an account with $1 Million in fiat-dollars. The conversion to Gold is made for that new account @ the current "real-time" value of $1368.26 per oz. From this point on, it doesn't matter what currency is used for trades, exchanges and withdrawals. There are 1368.26 million ounces of Gold on account. Our conversion apps take care of the details.

The key here is that conversion information is in real time, the market for Gold is transparent, and the mechanism for accounting in Gold is trusted.

Take this defacto Gold standard and reserve system one step further. Hook PayPal into our seven Gold reserve banks on the Isle of Man. Provide a micro ounce language for Gold using known units like guilders, florians, lius and tams. Then turn the populace loose on the Web with iphone and android apps that speak Gold and can make real time electronic exchanges in the purchase of goods and services based on the convergence of QR scanning, PayPal exchange, and a GPS-Open ID with QR Biometric Chop identity authentication.

We're not there yet, but the gap between vision and reality is closing fast. The important thing to note is that money is trust. And nothing is more trustworthy than Gold. It's inflation proof. It's deflation proof. It's immune to currency fluctuations, but pity the fool who pegs their currency to it. It's politically untouchable. And, Gold is money if we "individually" decide to make it so. There is no need to consult with governments, nations, international banking consortia, or even those we trade and exchange with. Gold is money the moment you decide to think in terms of Gold. Fiat currency is simply how you choose to speak to others. Real time conversion/evaluation information and Gold Web apps make your Gold think practical.

Commodities, goods and services will always fluctuate. But if they are measured in Gold instead of other commodities or fiat currencies, the real value of contracts and exchanges can not be obscured, rigged or played. This only problem with Gold has been that of universal access to real time trading information, a transparent and trusted marketplace, and the lack of digital units, digital accounting mechanisms and digital-to-real reserves. Otherwise Gold is inevitable.

I wonder how much Gold the US Treasury and Federal Reserve has on hand? Today, at this very moment, it would take $1367.08 USA to purchase a 1 oz. Gold Reserve Note (100 florians) from an Isle of Man Gold-Bank. That's a bottom line i'll take into the voting booth next month.

An individual or corporation might deal with the world in dollars. But if they measure everything in terms of Gold, for sure, they won't get fooled again.

~ge~

Gold, gold-reserve, gold-currency, robert-mundell, milton-friedman