On the radar

If you are successful, you win false friends and real enemies. Succeed anyway. – Paradoxical Commandment #3

The why and the wherefore

If you ask me why I am a blogger, the answer is that I am concerned that my countrymen need the whole truth – as opposed to pleasant half-truths – from reliable sources so that they can make the informed choices necessary to sustain our representative republic and their own liberty.

Civic duty is something that ought to weigh heavily on every American citizen because of our responsibility to vote for our representatives and create our own government. Yet a number of influences over time have eroded this inclination. Along with prosperity the people in general have been exposed to moral degradation disguised as fun and entertainment, along with misinformation in media and leftist indoctrination in the academy. The idea of self-reliance has been replaced with reliance on third parties – life insurance, health insurance, car and home insurance, or the federal government itself.

Besides these are the frequent admonitions that politics is a dirty game and that good people never concern themselves with it on the one hand, and on the other hand assurance that those same dirty players are really here to help. “Besides,” they say, “both parties are equally bad.” Mix this toxic cocktail all together and the result is that too many of us simply do not turn up on election days – whether local school board, state or federal.

Acknowledgment

At the beginning of the Tea Party revolution in 2009 I began attending 912 meetings for a while. Later I made up my mind that the best thing I could do to contribute would be to share the trusted sources I had been using in internet research since 2004 directly in an online blog and help arm the people around me with knowledge. As the saying goes, “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as soon as I could.” Politics in the Lone Star state became a primary focus.

Thus began my efforts of blogging day in and day out. We’ve built a modest following and number of daily hits. It was a real surprise and an absolute honor to receive the Americans for Prosperity Texas “Blogger of the Year Award 2010″ at the Defending the American Dream Summit back in July. I had no idea that recognition and affirmation would come so quickly – along with something else which I should have anticipated.

Who they fear most

In a newsletter of August 12, 2010 AFP founder Tim Phillips writes:

Want to know the difference you and I are making?

President Obama, his poll numbers down in the dumps because of his big government agenda, is now making shrill, desperate attacks on Americans for Prosperity and our 1,200,000 AFP grassroots activists across the nation – folks like you.

Here’s what the President said [on Monday at a fundraiser in Austin]:

“Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s an insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.”

Click here to listen to Mark Levin’s take on the President’s malicious attack on AFP.

The President and his friends on the Left are back to accusing you and me of being a front for “foreign-controlled corporations” or for “big banks” or a “big oil company” – the President personally denigrates the integrity of over 1,200,000 Americans just because he’s angry that we’re taking an effective stand against his liberal policies.

Warning shot

Well I already knew they are noticing Americans for Prosperity even before Hope-a-Dope visited Austin on Monday because on August 5th I was contacted by a ‘fact checker’ from the New Yorker magazine who wrote this:

… we’re preparing for publication a piece about efforts to oppose the Obama administration that touches on the Texas Defending the American Dream Summit that took place in Austin in early July.  I want to alert you that there is a brief reference to you winning the Blogger of the Year award at the event and to your writing on the blog.

In the reference, it is noted that in a June 14 thread discussing the President’s psychology, you wrote of his “demonic possession,” aka “schizophrenia,” and you referred to him as “the cokehead in chief.”

With best wishes, Scott Staton

One wonders what their method of searching could have been to find the most extreme and inflammatory terminology ever to emanate from my keypad. My response:

Thanks for your message. May I suggest you use the context when quoting me? It will make your publication more substantive and useful rather than just another lib Dowdism.

The president admitted to doing coke btw in one of his famous biographical tomes. Surely you are aware of that, Scott.

With best wishes, Sibyl West, heretic

He wrote back and demonstrated that he would include more context, which the reader can find here in the comments section of an article which, in hindsight, seems to me much more controversial than anything I had written. Nonetheless it appears the angle of the story being set up by the faceless, nameless political operatives at the New Yorker might be that Americans for Prosperity is nothing but a far right wingnut fringe group. Who else would choose a lunatic blogger like me who spews such hate and insanity? Oh – and who totally represents everyone in the tea party.

Semantics

Put aside for a moment that I was responding to another commenter who used the word. Demonic is an archaic expression generally reserved for the occasional effective opponent. An accurate alternative would be ungodly. My spiritual preceptor used to say that there are really only two kinds of people in this world – godly and ungodly. The proper PC codeword for the latter is leftist.

But I ask you:

What exactly do you call someone who is not only alright with convincing a mother to abort her child by pulling it out by one leg and sticking a spike into the back of its head (as in partial birth abortion) but who will argue the case for overturning a ban on such barbarism? (If the video does not work a summary of The One’s stance is here.)

And what exactly do you call someone who lies repeatedly, publicly and unabashedly; whom we know is lying, and who knows we know he is lying but continues to do so?

I respect the Office of the President of the United States. I do not respect the man who snatched that mantle by hook and by crook. And I bow to no one but the Supreme Lord or His bonafide representative.

Welcome to 1984 where “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.” To this we can now add “Belief in lies is Patriotism.”

Don’t ask me when the New Yorker piece is coming out. It is but the first of many I’m sure. But I have to say that, even in the crosshairs, it feels good to be standing with AFP, Mark Levin and the patriots of Texas.

UPDATE *** Aug 25, 2010, 6:08 AM

The hit piece appears in the August 30 edition of The New Yorker and is online here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

Last night on Mark Levin’s show he interviewed David Limbaugh, author of the new book Crimes Against Liberty which as of this writing is at #1 on Amazon’s best seller list. Limbaugh said: “This guy [Obama] is delusional and kinda psychopathic.” It looks like I am on the same page as Limbaugh who, at #1, is hardly a fringe dweller.

Oh yeah – Pope Benedict calls social justice “demonic”. Are you listening Jane?