Five million Swiss voters will decide on Sunday (11/30) whether to force the Swiss National Bank to repatriate all its gold from vaults in Britain and Canada, boost its holdings of bullion to 20% of foreign reserves and then keep the metal forever.

The "Save Our Swiss Gold" referendum is a valiant attempt by Switzerland's army of gold bugs -- and the populist Swiss People's party (SVP) - to lead the world back to the halcyon days of the international Gold Standard. It is a primordial scream against a quantitative easing and money creation a l'outrance (at all costs) by the leading central banks.

Yet there is a snag. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the biggest printer of them all in relative terms, far outstripping the Bank of Japan, let alone the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England - mere amateurs at this game.  

At one stage it was mopping up half of the entire sovereign bond issuance of the eurozone each month, a scale of action that the European Central Bank's Mario Draghi can only dream of.

You have to smile when you hear Swiss gold enthusiasts complaining that these foreign bonds - bought with electronic fiat francs created out of thin air - are now losing value as the euro slides against the dollar. But then we all suffer from cognitive dissonance.

If you were a political leader who wanted to control the population, but wanted to do it without using brute force, how would you do it?

The answer: control how individuals and businesses spend their money by controlling their bank and other financial accounts. The Obama administration has set up a program to do just that, called "Operation Choke Point."

If the government can prevent you from spending your money on legal products and information services it does not like, it soon has control over much of your life. You might be thinking this could not happen in America, but it is.

Increasingly, businesses and individuals engaged in legal activities are having their banking relationships severed because people within the Obama administration and some politicians do not like the particular activity.

The Justice Dept.'s "Operation Choke Point" should be renamed Operation Choke Freedom, for that does seem to be its very purpose.

The streets are frozen solid here in Washington, its dangerous to even walk to the Metro much less drive around, and I am having so much fun.  It's a tossup over what's more hilarious, the global warming freaks in Congress having to cancel a hearing about how we're all going to fry because of snow blizzards and freezing rain, or the talking news heads endlessly blathering about Anna Nicole.

Most fun of all though is how GW is leading Pelosi Galore right down Primrose Lane - right this way, Nancy.

First he gets her to waste enormous amounts of time in full public view trying to get an impossibly stupid "non-binding" resolution devoid of meaning that has outraged her radical left hate-America base - because they want her to spend her time on defunding the war.

Now that she's making an empty fool of herself to normal voters and infuriating her most fervent supporters at the same time, Bush gets her into a frothing tizzy over Iran.  "The President has no authority to go into Iran," she hyperventilates, thinking that GW is about to land the Marines at Bandar Abbas, seize the Iranian oil fields, bomb the nuke facilities into radioactive rubble, and plunge the world into genocidal chaos.

The lady is being played like a Stradivarius, and she doesn't even know it.  She's oblivious!  This is a thing of sheer beauty.  It can snow and freeze all it wants.  I'm enjoying the view.

What is the Republican Party's vision for America? You may have a hard time answering other than "not President Obama and his policies."

Most Republicans plan to run their fall campaigns focusing on the Obama scandals -- admittedly a target-rich area -- with scandals involving Obamacare, Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service and Veterans Affairs. All of this is not a vision of the future, though.

It is hard to build a consensus -- but smart, strong-minded individuals in the past have been able to articulate a vision that attracted not only the public but other politicians. Ronald Reagan accomplished this, and he was fortunate to have a visionary economic evangelist by his side who helped shape much of the Reagan program and became its principal salesman.

The GOP needs this man's vision and passion to end the Malaise of Obama.