How Big is Colorado's Barack Obama and Bob Schaffer Voting Contingent?

Over at Human Events, Ross Kaminsky notes the challenges faced locally by the GOP but says that Colorado races are "still in Republican reach". Kaminsky reprints part of his recent interview with U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer, who answered the question how the campaign is doing:

Schaffer: The response we’re getting on the campaign trail is very encouraging, with large and enthusiastic crowds at our events, much like the enthusiasm we just saw for Sarah Palin’s recent events in Colorado. Our phone banking is contacting tens of thousands of voters every night. The response is extraordinarily encouraging. We even run across surprisingly large numbers of voters who identify themselves as “supporting Obama and Schaffer.” [emphasis added]

Bob Schaffer undoubtedly is going to need a large percentage of the late-breaking undecided voters to come his way, and that includes some Obama supporters, too. Yes, voting for Barack Obama AND Bob Schaffer seems like an odd combination, but plenty of independents will be shaking out their decisions in all sorts of ways that don't make sense to the political insiders.

What that means for outcomes on November 4 is anyone's guess at this point.

Rossputin Takes Up Bob Schaffer's Defense Against Lefty Lies in Rocky Mountain News

At the risk of giving Ross Kaminsky (aka Rossputin) two free links in the course of one week, we recommend you take a look at his insightful column "Schaffer not exactly 'big oil'" in today's Rocky Mountain News. Consider it your weekend reading assignment, and ask yourself why the Lefty Big Blue Lie Machine has been so intent on painting this deceptive picture of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer?

Perhaps, as Kaminsky points out, to deflect from the authentic weakness of their own candidate, Boulder liberal Mark Udall:

During his five years in the energy industry, Bob Schaffer contributed substantially to the federal coffers while working for a local company on projects to increase supply and lower the cost of energy. During that same time, Mark Udall took his salary from the American taxpayers while doing everything in his power to make energy as costly as possible, following the wishes of every liberal and environmentalist group at the expense of the average American who needs to drive to work or heat his home.

It's a point we've made before - though perhaps not quite so elegantly or concisely. But with the truth fighting to get noticed in this frenetic campaign season, it can't be repeated often enough.

Rossputin Exposes and Debunks Out-of-State Lefty Attacks on Bob Schaffer

The out-of-state, Left-wing third party attacks on U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer have picked up in recent days. The primary offender has been Campaign Money Watch, the partisan project of a George Soros-funded, Left-wing 527 group known as Public Campaign Action Fund.

The must-read piece of the day is Rossputin's essay exposing the source of the recent attacks and debunking their weak claims about Bob Schaffer. George Soros and Campaign Money Watch aren't interested in the truth or what matters to people in Colorado - they're driven by the agenda of putting liberal Democrats in charge of Washington, D.C. Take it through that filter.

And understand that the untold amounts of money pouring into Colorado at this crucial time means the race for the U.S. Senate is up for grabs.

Rossputin's Report, Part 2: The Left's Innuendos Don't Stack Up to the Truth

Yesterday we highlighted the first of Rossputin's scheduled eight-part series going in-depth to investigate the allegations made concerning Bob Schaffer's 1999 trip to the Marianas Islands.

A well-known Lefty commenter here left a cryptic comment, saying we should look at Rocky Mountain News liberal columnist Jason Salzman's blog to demonstrate that we "protest too much about telling the truth." This is what was supposed to bowl us over:

In addition to ripping off Native Americans, Abramoff made big money defending the Marianas Islands’ exploitative immigration policies, which may even have resulted in forced abortions. Abramoff spearheaded a successful lobbying campaign to block immigration reform in the Marianas. Abramoff specifically targeted the House Resources Committee, which had jurisdiction over the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, and on which Schaffer was a member. Only last month, after decades of oppositin [sic] from Abramoff and Congressmen like Schaffer, did Congress finally pass immigration reform for the Marianas.

As reported in The Post, Schaffer visited Marianas, courtesy of an organization with ties to Abramoff, and defended its immigration policies in Washington DC. Overall, Schaffer’s lobbying tactics aligned with Abramoff’s. [emphases added]

It makes a nicely packaged narrative, with a lot of innuendo and guilt by association, but its clever characterizations and omission of key facts adds up to missing the truth by a mile. When you read it carefully, what Salzman writes really doesn't say much at all, except that what Schaffer (and others) observed firsthand about CNMI doesn't match the rhetoric of Big Labor leaders.

To get a better picture, read Rossputin's second installment. First, there "may have been forced abortions," Salzman slyly writes, repeating one case of secondhand testimony. But how about the testimony of a Christian missionary who visited the island and had her eyes opened?:

And regarding “forced abortions”, Mrs. Lafferty says “I was not able to find anyone who had an abortion, whether forced or not, and nobody I met knew anybody who had had an abortion.” Lafferty went out of her way to try to ensure honest answers from the workers: “We made it abundantly clear that if anyone was being hurt, raped, or enslaved, I would see to it that the perpetrator would go to jail, and the victim would be taken care of. If anybody needed help, I would help them.” Still, with this sort of “witness protection program” offer (my characterization, not Lafferty’s), and with a Chinese missionary as a translator, none of the allegations which made Lafferty’s blood boil seemed to have any substance.

The organization that paid for the trip?:

As far as who paid for the trip that Schaffer was part of, Lafferty put it directly: “We paid for the trip and as far as I know we were not reimbursed for anything by [Abramoff lobbying firm] Preston-Gates.”

Rossputin goes on to show that the Post's sinister claims that Schaffer "met with clients of Preston-Gates" amount to nothing. He could not have conducted a thorough independent investigation otherwise.

Rossputin also debunks the Post's use of a photo to make it look like Bob Schaffer and his wife merely took a pleasure trip to the Marianas - something Lefty bloggers have seized on repeatedly to promote their distorted picture of reality:

After those several days of nearly non-stop investigation and meetings, Schaffer was scheduled to fly home the next morning when someone asked him how he had enjoyed the island, to which Schaffer responded, according to the source just mentioned, “It’s a shame it’s so beautiful and I never got a chance to see it”. That person then contacted someone he knew at the airline and arranged to get Schaffer’s return flight moved from the following morning to the following evening so that Schaffer and his wife (who had accompanied him to investigate garment factories and interview workers) could have a few hours of relaxation before flying home. Schaffer, his wife, and the staffer who accompanied them on the trip, enjoyed a few hours of recreation without hosts and without being accompanied by representatives of the government or any industry, after Schaffer’s mission on the island had been completed.

Should we expect to see anyone recant and/or apologize for perpetuating a distorted picture of reality?

Keep reading Rossputin's important investigative series.

Rossputin Begins to Dismantle Big Blue Lie Machine Slander of Bob Schaffer

A couple months ago we responded vigorously to the Denver Post's trumped up slander about former Rep. Bob Schaffer and a 1999 trip he made to the Marianas Islands. Starting today, Colorado blogger Rossputin takes the investigation even more in-depth with the first of an eight-part series, based on research and interviews, that dismantles the Big Blue Lie Machine's assertions piece by piece. An excerpt from today's edition:

According to the former [Schaffer] staffer, “We never worked with Jack Abramoff. As a matter of fact, I never met him until months after Bob retired – and I would have met him had he been involved with our office in any way since I was aware of all of Bob’s meetings. ”.

And according to Schaffer himself, “Remember, most people including me hadn’t heard of Jack Abramoff in those days. Preston Gates was just another lobbying firm.” In fact, after serving three terms in Congress, Schaffer honored his term-limit pledge and did not run for re-election in 2002, whereas the scandals surrounding Abramoff did not come to light until 2005. Schaffer added, “…my trip to the Marianas was paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition. Furthermore, I did not accept anybody else’s schedule as to where and when to go on the island during my investigation of the labor and ‘forced abortion’ claims.”

Indeed, if Preston Gates were close to Bob Schaffer, why did they never, as a firm or Abramoff as an individual, contribute to Schaffer’s campaigns or PAC, as they did for Mark Udall?

Read the whole thing, and bookmark Rossputin's site to follow the coming editions of this report.

Rossputin: Schaffer is "Better and Smarter Candidate"

Prolific Colorado-based libertarian blogger Rossputin posted on his site a letter he wrote that also ran in the Boulder Daily Camera, highlighting important differences between former Rep. Bob Schaffer and liberal Rep. Mark Udall.

The following is the opening and conclusion of his letter:

While there’s no doubt that 2008 will be a difficult year for Republicans, Bob Schaffer has a big factor in his favor: He’s the better and smarter candidate, and the more you know him the more you like him. The same can’t be said for Udall, who isn’t a bad guy but who doesn’t impress you more over time.

Schaffer’s biggest electoral problem is that many voters don’t have the true picture of him. Udall’s problem is that we do.

Check out Rossputin's site to read the whole thing. It will be interesting to see how much the issue of candidate intellect and competence becomes an issue in this Senate race, but it's hard to disagree with Rossputin that the balance there tips in favor of Schaffer.

A Nobel Prize "Co-Winner" Speaks Out

Best Destiny has an excellent essay on John R Christy, and we suggest readers who are not mind numbed by environmentalist propaganda read it. Of course, Mark Udall, who many think believes he is a high priest of environmentalism and thus is entitled to his own facts will want to skip both the Best Destiny and the Christy WSJ article, "My Nobel Moment." Christy writes:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time...

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

We recently wrote about the high relative costs of wind power, but Rossputin put our essay to shame when he published an item which illuminates the costs of ethanol. We are spending $128 Billion to avoid importing 2.3 billion in oil.

Christy notes:

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Writing One's Congressman

It turns out that Rossputin lives in Boulder and so took Mark Udall up on his suggestion that Ross write his Congressman about SCHIP. Well, almost:

Dear Congressman Udall,

On Thursday, I urge you to vote to sustain President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program bill. This veto helps protect the best, if not perfect, health care system in the world...

If even auto workers realize that socialism is doomed to failure, it's hard to imagine why anyone else should still support it.

I urge you to stand up for liberty, for quality health care, for the right of people and their doctors to make medical decisions without the interference of Big Nanny government, and vote to sustain President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion.

Thank you.

Rossputin Comments on the Race

We are wondering if anyone has noticed that the bloggers who are commenting on the Schaffer Udall race are either 1) so far left that you can only see specks on the horizon and almost to a person living out of state who favor Mark Udall; or 2) center-right bloggers with emphasis on the "center" part of that label who live here in Colorado.

There are a very few exceptions, and today, Rossputin takes one of them on.

If the race is Udall's to lose, it is because of the exceptionally bad political environment for Republicans right now, not because he is the better candidate. To the extent that the race hinges on independents (who, by definition, are open to voting for a person in any party), this is good news for Bob Schaffer. Udall's camp does not want to appear over-confident in part out of political strategy but also because there's no reason they should be highly confident.