Snooze Time

Some months ago, we considered the establishment of a certain similarly named blog a complement. The authors started it up and then sputtered for lack of material. In the five months of 2007 that it existed, it had 18 posts. It had none in the first two months of 2008.

This month, they have repurposed their blog and started posting. Instead of the friendly competitor they might have been and probably intended to be, they now look upon themselves as our arch enemy, dedicated to debunking all we say. Lost in all of this is their apparent original goal of writing about the Senate race:

UdallvSchaffer is a response to the long known playbook of Colorado GOP Chair and Bob Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams in employing anonymous bloggers to attack the media on how they cover a senate race. While that may have worked for John Thune in South Dakota, it isn't going to work for Bob Schaffer in Colorado in 2008. We're here to watch the watchers, point out their inaccuracies, and show just how off base they are.

Let's examine this "mission statement." They are obviously now fixated on one blogger, this blogger. There is only one watcher, not multiple watchers. The identity of myself and el presedente are readily available as absurdicus demonstrated, so a claim that we are anonymous is a stretch. More accurate would be a statement that we choose to write under screen names.

They are also fixated on Dick Wadhams which is curious. Dick Wadhams has nothing to do with this blog and has never had anything to do with this blog, before or after he became Bob Schaffer's campaign manager. The blog existed at least a month before Dick Wadhams found out about it, and at least two months before Bob Schaffer found out about it. We don't even think Dick Wadhams reads it.

We do intend to influence the media, to keep it honest. Too often the media is dishonest when it covers major campaigns and initiatives. We are quite open that the purpose of the scoreboard is to discourage the Denver media from calling Mark Udall a moderate. They helped liberal Bill Ritter position himself as a "moderate" when they knew he was no such thing.

We wish that there had been a truth telling blog around when Ref C was being fed to the public by the media as something it was not. The media conned this author into voting for Ref C, something that won't happen again, hopefully. This dishonest coverage has been well documented by the Independence Institute. (link to be provided)

We have looked at the udallvschaffer blog and are sufficiently unconcerned about the antics of its authors that we won't be back. They claim that we are paid and that our failure to respond to their claim is proof. We answered that question before their blog existed. A simple word search on "paid" would have provided the answer in about two minutes of reading.

They have no arguments worth reading and they know it. Why else would they substitute untruths (that we are paid, that we work for and are directed by Dick Wadhams) and name calling (shills, global warming denier, McGrumpy, Grandpa McGrumpy, Big Oil Bob to name a few) for honest argument. Absurdicus has stated that a lie is merely a campaign tactic that someone else doesn't like says a lot about their journalistic ethics. Absurdicus' claim that he and his partner are not Mark Udall spokesmen and that Mark Udall will not be damaged by their words and tactics is naive, but we hope they keep on thinking that.

The "almost pathetic" article is a great example of what they are about. They demand of us standards that they refuse to meet. Their demand that we link to our sources ignores the fact that we usually do. In "almost pathetic" they demand that we link to our source's sources and attack us because we do not which is quite amazing. They link to nothing.

Their writing style is long, dreary, and tedious. It wasn't an accident that I named this post "Snooze Time."

We wish absurdicus and company well but they shouldn't expect us to be reading what they write. If they expect us to be responding to drivel and demands they are likely to be disappointed. Our eyes are on the prize, and they intend to be a distraction.