Gov. Palin's Leadership vs. Laurel and Hardy

By Sandy Stringfellow —— Bio and Archives July 19, 2011

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

On January 8th, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was the unsuspecting victim of an attempted homicide outside an Arizona supermarket; an attack in which nineteen people were shot, six of them fatally. The mainstream media reported the story, and considerably more. Their apparent role these days is not merely to "report" events, but to establish disingenuous story lines that may be used as a narrative with which to shape public opinion.

Assignments from the Progressive/Liberal media elites are communicated to these modern-thinking, intrepid j-school graduates, whereupon the well-trained, Chihuahua-like guardians of freedom spring into action, quivering with ideological sympathy as they prepare to do their masters' bidding, imbued with the rabid determination of "true believers" to not let a good crisis to to waste.

Crosshairs and Personal Responsibility

After the attempt on Ms. Giffords life, a coordinated effort was employed by the mainstream media to convince their public audience that Governor Sarah Palin had been responsible, at least indirectly, for creating an environment that encouraged the murderous behavior of Giffords' assailant. The illogicality and absurdity of this allegation is readily apparent; based exclusively upon Gov. Palin having used "crosshair" marks to designate geographical areas of special political interest on a map during the run-up to our historic elections of 2010. While Gov. Palin acknowledged the symbols indicate a "bullseye", it is interesting to note they are also one of the same topographical map symbols used by surveyors. Fundamental civics classes used to teach that people living in a civil society are responsible for their own conduct and individual behavior. This irrevocable truth is not contingent upon what symbols are seen on a political map or any other; whether an "x" or "o", crosshairs, skull and bones, or SpongeBob SquarePants.

Mainstream Media Methodology

How ironic that it's the mainstream media acting like an organized political hit squad from a third-world country. This particular ad hominem attack on Gov. Palin (one of hundreds) is a stunning example of the moral depravity that exists within the mainstream media. There is no threshold of human dignity they will not violate, no professional standard of ethical responsibility they will not ignore. Ladies and gentlemen, may I respectfully submit that we are in a fight for the very survival of our Constitutional Republic. An event of extraordinary historical significance is now taking place; a debate over whether or not to raise our "debt ceiling". Unfortunately, this debate is being hammered by yet another charade of unapologetic deception from the political class of the mainstream media. The mainstream media have been reporting in lockstep that failure to raise the debt ceiling would result in economic catastrophe. This same type of widespread, fallacious, and melodramatic indoctrination helped convince the public that Bush 43 was justified in his stupendous blunder of trusting Hank Paulson and signing the TARP bill into law. Unlike the lies and phony hysteria Hank Paulson used to work the Bush administration into a fevered pitch, resulting in a TARP bill that was ultimately used to bail out Paulson's crony-capitalist buddies, the debt ceiling crisis is quite real, and with immediate repercussions relating to the credit worthiness of the U.S. Regarding TARP, Bush said at the time, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." Guy Fawkes, writing at "UnitedLiberty.org" on December 18, 2008, asked a thoughtful and relevant question pertaining to the Bush 43 TARP bill: "How much longer will the masses buy into the government propaganda that says we must 'give up freedom to be free'?"

King Barry's Soft Tyranny

Today, our 44th President of the United States, whom I refer to with great disaffection as "King Barry", wants to raise the debt ceiling in order to consummate his presently on-going destruction of what previously could be correctly described as our market based, free enterprise, capitalist economic system, in addition to the entirety of Western civil society. It's a tall order, but King Barry and his Borg are up to the task. They have, in the collective, been stubbornly persistent and strategically clever in the manner by which they have utilized the existing groundwork laid out by their ideological Progressive Marxist mentors and built upon it. Consider Mr. Fawkes question above and ask yourself: is that not what's been happening to us in the United States over the past century? If we don't have economic freedom coupled to property ownership rights, we don't have liberty. And if we don't have liberty, we have tyranny; perhaps not the brutal tyranny of communist dictatorships as yet, but certainly we live today under the type of "soft tyranny" frequently described by Mark Levin. As history has shown repeatedly, tyranny is never static; it always seeks to consolidate its grasp on power.

Our Constitution and the Rule of Law

Is the rule of law presently being adhered to by those whom have placed their hand on the Holy Bible and sworn on oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America? Not by any stretch of the imagination. It could not be more clear to any cognizant person, based upon motive, evidence, and reason, that the soft tyranny presently influencing virtually every aspect of our lives (to one degree or another) is not so dissimilar from the dubious auspices of serfs living under a King and his Court. King Barry and his Court (Geithner, Bernanke, Reid, Czars, etc.), along with the sycophantic mainstream media, adamantly refuse to tell the truth about the debt ceiling in order to facilitate their efforts in bringing about the holy grail of Progressive Marxism: a Utopian ideological doctrine leading to One World Government. After adding approximately five trillion dollars of new debt during his two and a half years in office, King Barry would have us believe that if the debt ceiling isn't raised by August 2, 2011, it will be the end of the U.S. as we know it. At it's core, the question of whether to raise the debt ceiling is not a complex issue. The United States government doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Instead of the blatant prevarications and vague innuendos emanating from King Barry, his Court, and the mainstream media, the debt ceiling debate should center around the question of whether we can service the debt held by our foreign creditors. The U.S. Treasury has the fiscal liquidity and future projected revenues to pay the interest on outstanding Treasury Bonds. King Barry is required by law to service that debt (pay the interest due) before any other financial obligations. If these interest payments are made on time, there is no default. Our (the taxpayers') balance of remaining funds in the Treasury may then be used to satisfy other financial obligations.

Gov. Palin, the Tea Party, and Political Courage

However, there isn't enough tax revenue remaining in the Treasury after servicing our debt to satisfy all of our existing expenses. As with any budgetary process where more money is going out than coming in, this requires cuts to be made in the operating costs of our federal government, the selling of federal government assets, or both. King Barry, his minions, and the mainstream media are reporting that Standard and Poor's will downgrade the U.S. "AAA" credit rating if the debt ceiling is not raised. What Standard and Poor's actually wrote pertains to their concern over "medium and long-range budgetary challenges", i.e., they worry that we continue to increase our debt instead of cutting spending to bring our debt and deficit spending under control. Our federal government owns 30% of the land mass of our United States. Perhaps they could sell a few acres to generate additional revenue for the Treasury? That's one solution to raise revenue without raising taxes. But more importantly, in the immediate sense, is our politicians having the political will, courage, and determination to cut spending; one of the central points made by conservative voters during the November 2010 Republican landslide election victories, and driven by the Tea Party. Although the Tea Party has no official "leader", it should be made clear that no political figure of national prominence did more to bring about the 2010 election results than Gov. Sarah Palin. Her principled support of conservative candidates over many of the RINO candidates sponsored by the Republican Party didn't exactly ingratiate her with the Republican establishment, but it did give voice to those willing to make the tough choices and do what is necessary to save our Republic from irreparable harm, if given the chance to do so by our Congressional leaders: they are, after all, the ones directing the show. To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke: that wasn't an election; it was a restraining order. U.S. voters are way ahead of inside-the-beltway, business-as-usual politicians. Roughly 70% of the electorate does not want the debt ceiling raised. They understand that the U.S. is in dire financial straights; that our Federal Reserve Bank is, in essence, printing money out of thin air, and using it to buy back government bonds that represent our own debt. U.S. voters are beginning to understand that an economic recession has turned into a depression, with no recovery in sight. And an increasing number of U.S. voters are beginning to understand that it's not an accident; the product of ivory-tower Keynesian economic theory or some other misguided economic policy nonsense.

Laurel and Hardy

Lest you wonder, our Republican leadership does not escape scorn: my nom de guerres for House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are Laurel and Hardy, respectively. Why? Both Laurel and Hardy have expressed their comprehension of the Tea Party mandate to cut spending, as well as an appreciation for their opportunity to remain in office that was made possible, to a significant degree, by the Tea Party. Yet their behavior since then has more closely resembled that of two career political hacks manipulating a corrupt and broken system. Their Laurel and Hardy-like performance thus far has been an exercise in the language of veiled political-speak designed to sooth ruffled feathers and bring about compromise. Their inability to articulate even fundamental tenants of fiscal conservatism and to communicate the issues in question substantively have been alarming, to say the least. King Barry should not even have a seat at the negotiating table, yet he is continually allowed by Laurel and Hardy to dictate the terms of the debt ceiling debate. It's the House of Representatives that controls the purse strings; they are responsible for introducing legislation, which is exactly what they should have been doing all along: voting on bills written with the intent of doing what's morally right instead of doing what's politically expedient, even if the bills had no chance of passing a Senate vote or being signed into law. After two and a half years Speaker Laurel should have a "paper trail" of bills, accepted or rejected by the House, the Senate, and King Barry, defining their political positions and plotting their course, making it advantageous logistically to hold Congress and King Barry accountable in 2012. Why has Speaker Laurel waited two and a half years to bring a bill to the House floor for a vote that reverses the ban on incandescent light bulbs signed into law by Bush 43? Why did he choose to bypass the Rules Committee, knowing he didn't have a two-thirds majority required to pass a bill submitted under suspension? Why did Speaker Laurel engage in a Continuing Resolution (CR) deception over exactly how much money was cut from the federal budget in exchange for an agreement with King Barry on the CR? Why did Speaker Laurel fail to include CR policy riders passed in the House version of the CR that would have defunded King Barry-care (Nationalized Health-care), EPA climate change regulations, Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio, etc.? Why did Speaker Laurel surrender his greatest implement of political leverage by promising to forgo his position of power as Speaker to bring about a shut down of certain operations of the federal government? Senate Minority Leader Hardy began waving the white flag weeks before the August 2nd deadline imposed by King Barry. Hardy offered a "fall back" alternative plan giving King Barry new power to automatically raise the debt ceiling; in short, King Barry would have a newly-printed 2.5 trillion dollars to play with: money that we simply don't have, since we are actually quite broke if one is willing to accurately compare assets to liabilities. Look for another King Barry stimulus bill if this madness is allowed to occur.

Fighting for What's Right

Laurel and Hardy are terrified of the mainstream media. Urgent memo to Laurel and Hardy: you are never going to win that popularity contest. It's like three wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner. Why not Marshall your forces, muster your courage, and tell the truth? In other words, it's time to fight like a girl. With the odds stacked heavily against her, Gov. Palin achieved a remarkable string of political victories in Alaska by taking her case to the Alaskan voters in a factual, honest, and direct manner. She defeated the state Democrat party, establishment Republicans, corrupt political networks, and crony capitalists within the oil industry, achieving a positive approval rating of 88%. Ladies and gentlemen, we are running out of time. We need to have this fight and we need to have it now, while we still can. Washington, D.C., is in the middle of a construction boom. Public sector federal employees make twice what their private sector counterparts earn. Some of the agencies creating the greatest amount of havoc in our society didn't exist fifty-plus years ago. They are dispensable; we don't need them. The Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Federal Communications Commission, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank, and many, many, others are not essential to the functioning of our United States government; "our" government, the government that should have a limited influence in our lives according to our U.S. Constitution. The Department of Homeland Security is another absolute disaster, and is doing great harm to the psyche of our nation as well as conditioning citizens to give up their basic constitutional rights. They have nothing to do with security, or even the prevention of terrorism, or they would stop looking for bombs and begin looking for bombers by "profiling" the most likely suspects. Instead, they resort to looking inside your sweet but terminally cancer-riddled grandmother's adult diaper as she attempts to make her way home, with some sense of dignity, to her final resting place. And speaking of cancer, that is analogically how our the malignant tumor that is now our federal government has been growing. Over-regulation, geometric government expansion, and the subsidization of preferred "private" enterprise via crony capitalism and entitlements are a big part of what's killing our country. We are on a very slippery slope; one that leads to the destruction of the United States of America as Founded. If you're one of those detached-from-reality optimists that that don't know history and believes the United States will always be around, that the slope we're on can't get any more slippery, please consider Greece: you will be looking at the future of your own country.