Making Mountains out of Molehills

Pardon the poor pun, but it seems much of Colorado media today has been fixated on making a mountain out of a molehill:

The Republican U.S. Senate candidate on Wednesday unveiled his first television ad, with the theme "Colorado is my life."

"I proposed to my wife, Maureen, on top of Pikes Peak," [Bob] Schaffer says in the ad, gesturing behind him as the couple's picture appears with a snow-covered mountain in the background.

The mountain pictured in the ad, though, isn't Pikes Peak; it's Mount McKinley in Alaska.

The Colorado Democratic Party and Progress-NowAction, a liberal advocacy group, were quick to jump on the mistake, sending news releases noting that apparently all mountains look alike to Ohio natives like Schaffer.

Both news releases ridiculing Schaffer misspelled Pikes Peak as "Pike's Peak."

Okay. Mistakes happen. The Democrats and the Lefty attack groups know it's not likely that candidate Schaffer himself carefully scrutinized the final ad to observe the mistake. Of course, the mistake was quickly caught and corrected. And as long as the Republican candidate can laugh it off, the other side gets a one-day story out of it at best.

Fine. But isn't it also interesting that both the Colorado Democratic Party and ProgressNowAction made the same spelling error in their press releases? Is this evidence that the two groups coordinated their political attacks? Or is this evidence that both of them simply need a remedial course in grammar for state landmarks?

We can make mountains out of molehills, too.

Will Mark Udall Renounce Big Blue Lie Machine Smear of Ethnic Minority?

The Big Blue Lie Machine is at work again. In particular, PlagiarismNowAction, a group that has done Mark Udall's dirty work in the recent past, is at it again. Their latest smear against Republican candidate Bob Schaffer is so dishonest and truth-challenged that Rocky Mountain News editor Vincent Carroll (who a couple weeks ago exposed the inaccuracies behind a PlagiarismNow-contrived label of Schaffer) has given it a thorough smackdown:

To this point, it must be said, the portrait of Schaffer is a paint-by-numbers smear, which my column disposed of two weeks ago (April 30, "Smeared with oil"). What distinguishes Huttner's latest attack and qualifies it for a Chesterton boomerang award is its claim that Schaffer "led the company's delegation in Iraq to lobby local speculators for oil contracts."

Local speculators? Savor that contemptuous description of the Kurdistan Regional Government and, by implication, the historically oppressed minority that it represents.

Aspect Energy, for which Schaffer worked, negotiated with Kurdish leaders for the right to explore for oil in the north of Iraq. The Kurdistan Regional Government is no more a "local speculator" in Iraq than Gov. Bill Ritter is a "local warlord" in the United States.

Huttner's use of "local speculators" was no accident. The term appears twice in his letter without any hint as to whom the "speculators" might be. When I e-mailed him in wonderment, he replied, "I'm OK if you prefer to use Kurdish government."

He's OK if someone else prefers the relevant fact. Just don't expect him to volunteer it.

It is true that the Baghdad central government is not happy with the Kurds for having cut a number of oil exploration deals with small- and mid-sized foreign companies; indeed, the oil minister considers them invalid. But it is equally true that the Iraqis have yet to reach agreement on a final oil and gas law, and that a draft completed last year has been slammed by both Kurds and Sunni Arabs (for different reasons). Meanwhile, the parties continue to talk.

The activists at ProgressNowAction are free to support the Arab vision of a state oil company controlling future production in Iraq - and they are equally free to suggest that such a future would best serve American interests, although it's hardly obvious that it would. But in his zeal to discredit Schaffer, Huttner simply airbrushed the Kurds out of existence - and crossed the line between aggressive opinion and outright propaganda. [emphasis added]

The Michael Huttner wing of the Big Blue Lie Machine doesn't have enough conscience to spare an oppressed ethnic minority in its deceitful attempt to politically smear Bob Schaffer and anyone that stands in its way.

The question is whether Mark Udall will renounce this vile propaganda or continue to let PlagiarismNow work on his campaign's behalf at all costs.

Our Monthly Be Nice to Mark Udall Post

We have written elsewhere that we find Mark Udall the easiest Colorado politician to criticize, and we do.

It is hard to maintain credibility as a blogger if one only provides unending criticism of a politician. That is the mistake that sites like Media Matters and PlagiarismNowAction make.

We'd like to not repeat that mistake, so here are three things that we think that Mark Udall did right recently. We apologize for not providing links and may add them later as we have time to do a Google search to find them. (Edited to fix the English. Written English is sometimes our fourth or fifth language. Edited to two hours later to add: Google Alerts picked our mangled sentence to highlight, but even bad publicity is good publicity, lol)

1. Mark Udall said something very nice about John McCain and McCain's treatment of his father, Mo Udall, who was McCain's mentor and friend in Congress. He told how McCain was one of Mo Udall's very few regular hospital visitors in Mo Udall's dying days, and how he took the time to read to him and talk about what was going on in Congress.

Mark Udall could have kept that story to himself. To his credit, he did not.

2. What comes next may or may not be to Mark Udall's credit because it is part of a Nancy Pelosi scheme to try to take the earmarks issue away from Republicans. Udall is reported to have spoken to his staff about forgoing earmarks this year. We don't know what the outcome of that conversation was, but earmarks are a congressional disgrace. They need to be addressed in some way.

We (this author at least) would hate to see earmarks go away entirely. They are a good mechanism for funding small, worthwhile projects that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day in Congress. On the other hand, too many earmarks is a lot like too much food. It isn't healthy.

If it turns out that Mark Udall is insincerely playing politics with this issue, we will be the first to hammer him over it.

3. Finally, it is good that Mark Udall and Doug Lamborn can work together to solve the Leadville mine drain problem. They have a joint bill requiring that two government agencies work together to pump out and treat the water.

Again, this is a bit of a political football as the left wing blogs and left wing newspapers are trying to claim that there isn't and never was a problem. How they would know that is beyond knowing given that they have no engineers on their staff and cite no engineering studies. They just spew mindless propaganda that would quickly change to blame every Republican in sight if there was a blowout. How convenient. How transparent.

Kudos to both Mark Udall and Doug Lamborn for trying to keep this from becoming an environmental disaster.

Wasn't that refreshing? See how we try to be different?

PlagiarismNowAction Expanding its Reach

This week, Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News promoted a new Michael Huttner web site. Michael Huttner is a lawyer with lawyer like ethics. He operates ProgressNowAction in a way that appears to be willing to plagiarize other's work, claiming it as their own product of months of research. He also apparently feels free to remove posts from liberal writers that don't fit his agenda.

His new site will doubtless be operated to the same low standards as what we have come to call PlagiarismNowAction.

The site has one YouTube video, which indicates that they will be going into the video editing business. The video is of such poor quality that one is reminded of what one might see out of a high school video class. They tried to stuff a minute's worth of ideas into 30 seconds, perhaps on the theory that their audience has a very short attention span.

We asked, in a comment to the article:

I'm more than a little curious as to why Bartels would promote the new Huttner site. It has one item, and that item is a 30 second YouTube commercial with such poor production values that it needs to be played over and over to understand what it is trying to say.

Did [ Lynn ] Bartels or her editors actually look at the Huttner site to decide if it was really newsworthy, or is Huttner such a valued source that the RMN just pumps out what he says without any quality check?

We received no answer.

PlagiarismNowAction Having Technical Problems

It seems that someone at PlagiarismNowAction accidentally deleted a post. We're just trying to help in case it happens again. (If you wonder why we would call them that, follow the PlagiarismNowAction tag)

I posted this EARLIER Today but it was deleted.

This is the second posting about Benner's challenge to Udall that has been deleted without prior notice.

I think someone at ProgressNowAction is "looking" for a reason to delete their most active blogger and activist and kill the effort to have a debate in the Senate race on the issues.

I'll try this again. Below is the deleted posting.

Subject: Mark Benner of Anton to run as a Democrat for US Senate against Udall,

To Announce tonight at Mercury Cafe event 7 pm in Denver.

Mark Benner Democrat of Anton CO tells me that I am authorized to tell you that he will announce his candidacy for Colorado's open US Senate seat as a Colorado Democrat tonight at 7 pm at the Mercury Cafe in Denver during a previously scheduled event

Make no mistake. We are not promoting Mark Benner's candidacy. When other blogs have technical problems, losing posts and such, we try to be good neighbors and help them out. It looks like we had our own problems, but that happens.

Even the Left Notices that Udall is a Liar

Mark Udall and his staff seem to complete strangers to the truth. It has happened so often that we created a label, "Udall as a Liar."

Today, PlagiarismNowAction has a post that begins:

A New Year and a message for Mark Udal, the man asking to be YOUR NEW (OLD) senator

MR UDALL

You are purposely misleading your constituents in your statements about your position on the war on Iraq - you are for "responsible redeployment"? I submit you are for redeployment ONLY if it makes YOU look good.

Note: If you wish to know why we refer to this web site by that name, follow the label "PlagiarismNowAction."

Trouble in Udall Land

Mark Udall is about as far left as we imagine it is possible for a Colorado politician, even a Boulder Liberal, can get and still expect to be reelected.

He is so far to the left that we have a scoreboard feature that tracks the number of times his liberal blogging allies and the msm refer to him as a liberal, reliably left wing, and even extremist. That scoreboard is in the upper right corner of this site.

Now, PlagiarismNowAction has a post up whose only goal is to push Mark Udall even farther left. (Those who wonder why we call PlagiarismNowAction by that name are welcome to search this blog under that term for an explanation.)

He [Mark Benner ] plans to run on the issues. Issues important to him include the environment, torture, withdrawal from Iraq, and holding Bush and Cheney accountable with investigations and impeachment if warranted.

He is being pressured by Democratic Party elites not to run. He will need your support to buck the system. Call and encourage him.

I am a 42 year Democratic supporter. I am a (L)iberal. I believe a challenger could very possibly potentially siphon enough votes from Udall to force him to move left on the issues.

Unlike left wing blogs which are engaged in a never ending attempt to promote Republican primaries, we have much more class than to try to interfere in or promote this primary. It will happen or it won't happen completely independent of what we might do or say. We are merely reporting on it.

Running from his own History

It is reported in an essay titled "In Search of True Leadership" at PlagiarismNowAction that Mark Udall "wishes" he had never lent his name to the effort by the loon in the attic to establish a Department of Peace.

We wonder what other far left schemes he "wishes" he had never lent his name to.

Permanently Forfeiting the High Ground

PlagiarismNowAction, aka ProgressNowAction is at it again. Alan Franklin, the "author" who apparently lifted three paragraphs from Wikipedia and only slightly modified a fourth and then had the gall to claim that what he wrote was the result of "months of research" has written (or maybe copied) a challenge to Bob Schaffer.

He titles it "Bob Schaffer, the hideout candidate." The election is almost 13 months away. Even if Schaffer started issuing position papers, no one would pay attention except for PlagiarismNowAction.

We, on the other hand, have some questions that deserve answers now:

Hey Alan, am I getting your name right? Do you want to explain again how the Wikipedia editor actually copied your work from an email? When I asked for the email, you couldn't, or wouldn't, provide it. Do you want to explain how it is possible to duplicate the "months of research" in 30 minutes of Google searches? Dan Haley quoted your web site as only needing to be right half the time. Does that apply to original writing too? Curious minds want to know.

I love publicly reminding you about this stuff because you have no answers that make sense. You will never again have the high ground on any subject. Posture to your heart's content.

ProgressNow Attacks to Distract Attention from Udall's Attacks

How foolish, embarrassed, obsessed, outrageous, and "phony" does Boulder liberal Rep. Mark Udall look for his time-wasting resolution against Rush Limbaugh? How bad is this self-inflicted political wound?

It's so bad, that the Rocky Mountain News reports today an effort by Udall's Left-wing surrogates at ProgressNow to rehash tired and discredited charges against Udall's Republican opponent, Bob Schaffer.

Writes the Rocky:

On Wednesday, Schaffer said the contributor was not himself a party to the case before the board. Schaffer dismissed the allegation as an attack by Democrats on his support for school choice.

[ProgressNow leader Michael] Huttner, a lawyer who teaches at the University of Denver Law School, agreed that Schaffer did not violate Colorado's campaign finance law. But Schaffer's vote is still a conflict of interest that should be illegal, he said. "It's a loophole in the law," Huttner said.

Schaffer took contributions from David Brennan for his 2004 Senate race and again this year for his 2008 run. Brennan heads White Hat Management, which runs charter schools.

Huttner said he'll present a petition this morning calling for Schaffer to return the contributions or resign.

Even ProgressNow knows there is nothing to the controversy. They're just doing the best to take the media scrutiny off Udall for his foolish, embarrassing, self-obsessed, and phony attack on Limbaugh.

What's ironic is that neither Udall's time-wasting resolution nor Huttner's media-clamoring demand is grounded in reality. But when has the truth slowed down the Left's attacks before?

Why We Are Different

One of the obligations of a blog or blogger who wants to be taken seriously is to admit mistakes without being asked. A few days ago, we had a link to the Aspen Daily News go bad. We assumed, incorrectly, it now seems, that it was done maliciously.

It turns out that the newspaper has a routine practice of moving items to its archives and assigning a new url. One of the essays on the subject was "Liberals are Dumb as Dirt, Sometimes." That title seems doubly appropriate in this internet age. What if everyone changed url's quickly after publishing them the first time? Google would either double in value or go broke, and we're not sure which.

Note that ProgressNowAction, aka PlagiarismNowAction and Colorado Media Matters would never consider publishing something like this. Does that make us better than them? Maybe not, but it makes us different.

Smell, Taste, Feel the Bile

PlagiarismNowAction wants the public to know just how much it supports both Mark Udall and the free speech editor at CSU. Probably not office safe. We're not sure who it is safe for. If these guys want to write tasteless stuff, we are more than happy to send brave souls their way so long as their candidates get full credit.

But civility is dead.

Recall, they only have to be right 50% of the time (their standard). What if almost everywhere else, civility were alive? Just a thought.

Mark Udall Can Sleep Well

Recall that we always refer to a certain left wing blog as PlagiarismNowAction because it appeared to have lifted whole paragraphs from Wikipedia without giving credit. The author (if you can call someone who appears to have copied the work of others an "author") of that piece now has a celebratory hit piece out on Bob Schaffer.

Before we quote it, recall that the editor of the editorial page of the Denver Post has been quoted as saying that PlagiarismNowAction once wrote that it only had to be right half of the time. They need to flip the coin again because this isn't one of those times when they are right.

With those standards in mind, we quote from Bob Schaffer: boldly full of crap by Alan Franklin:

Stick out your manly chest and just make the stuff up, Bob. Hell yar!

The problem, as Ben DeGrow has effectively documented, is that the folks making the stuff up are Media Matters and PlagiarismNowAction. Benjamin Disraeli observed that there are three kinds of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Media Matters knows how to abuse statistics and works hard to convince its readers that black is white and white is black.

Given his history, we want to give Alan Franklin the benefit of the doubt. We're not sure that he is bright enough to know how badly these statistics are mangled. He is likely just an unwitting, statistically challenged victim of Media Matters. Read his post and determine for yourself if it seems like the product of the brightest bulb in the room.

Mark Udall can sleep well tonight, knowing that these clowns are watching his back.

When Looking For Dirt...

The left wing echo chamber has bounced a story about a single Bob Schaffer campaign contribution for weeks now. It started at ProgressNowAction, affectionately known as PlagiarismNow to this author because last spring it appeared to have lifted, word for word, three paragraphs from a Wikipedia article and only slightly modified a fourth without attribution for the body of one of its hit pieces.

It moved to the Denver Post for two printed articles. A far left wing Denver Post blogger, David Siorta, has worked it over as has about every left wing Colorado blogger we know of. It isn't news, it is a manufactured "controversy," and thus hasn't made it into responsible outlets like the Rocky Mountain News or the Gazette. We don't know of any of the smaller papers around the state that have repeated it, which doesn't speak well of the Denver Post's judgement.

Today, the Denver Post left winger is up for some well deserved criticism by a fellow Denver Post writer David Harsanyi for defending John Edward's hedge fund machinations while going after Bob Schaffer. He observes that Sirota isn't consistent:

Now, let’s remember, only days earlier, the same progressive was hyping a concocted “scandal” over Republican Bob Schaffer, for which he admitted he had not a shred of proof and not a single reputable person said had any merit.

That’s quite a display of consistency. I guess activists have their own set of rules.

Actually, only Democrat activists have their own set of rules. They use a microscope for Republican dirt and blinders for Democrat filth. We try to be consistent here.

Anyone Notice A Difference?

Read the post immediately below this one. It is a carefully laid out comparison of the Bob Schaffer position on Education vs. the Mark Udall position. It is long and thoughtful, as are all of his pieces on his Best Destiny site.

Since he is not blowing his own horn, I'll blow it for him. If you want to understand the intricacies of CSAP, you should slide on over for an unbiased (everyone has biases, some hide them better than others) look:

CSAP Impressions Part I
CSAP Impressions Part II
CSAP Impressions Part IIB
CSAP Impressions Part III
CSAP Impressions, Part Last
CSAP Impressions, Post Script

These essays were written by a guy who draws no money from any source for his essays, either here or on his other blog. Compare the quality of his work with anything the Democrat hate machines like Colorado Media Matters, Colorado Pols, Square State, and ProgressNow put out. Most, if not all get paid by sources they won't name (thought ultimately to be Tim Gill and George Soros).

They have a candidate who is so liberal that he has never been called a moderate by any source we know of. People who are as far left as Mark Udall win in Boulder, but not in all of Colorado. Given that positioning, what are these paid media mercenaries left with? They try to trash Schaffer and sites like this one any way they can.

Over the next year to the election, you can expect quality from those who do their writing out of conviction, and name calling trash from the far left Democrat sites who get paid for propaganda. Watch and see.