Puke and Snot in the San Luis Valley

As an off and on visitor to the Renaissance Festival, I was saddened to learn of the untimely death of one of the members of the Puke and Snot show shortly after their last performance in Larkspur last month.

It is nice to see that Puke and Snot fans Mark Udall and Ken Salazar were doing a revival in the San Luis Valley this week although news reports didn't say who was playing Puke and who was playing Snot. We'll improvise.

Puke:

[ Mark ] Udall added, “I’ve always supported drilling — I’m opposed to destroying the environment.”

Those are code words for "I'm opposed to the use of fossil fuels in any form, so I have always opposed drilling, but I'm too much of a liar to acknowledge my record. For the next 60 days, I'll pretend to have always supported drilling and hope no one notices."

Puke again:

“Democrats aren’t against oil and gas exploration,” he [Mark Udall ] said, “but they just want it done right.”

Those are code words for "Oil companies can 'explore' all they want. We Democrats oppose 'development' and low gas prices." Nancy Pelosi said it best when she let the House adjourn without a vote on drilling (Mark Udall wasn't there, remember?): "I'm trying to save the environment."

And Snot piped up:

Asked about the use of corn in energy production and the belief that this is making food prices rise, [ Ken ] Salazar said less than half of the corn produced goes into corn-based ethanol.

He contended that the oil and gas industry is “actually demonizing green technology.”

If we remember correctly, it was the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times who first pointed out negative impact of ethanol on corn and food prices, not the oil industry. Before this author realized what a consistent liar Mark Udall was, we called him "cornfused" because he had a different story for every audience interested in ethanol. Now, he stands in silence while Ken Salazar pulls the same stunt.

Pure Vaudeville.

Superdelegate Mark Udall Taking His Time to Make the Obvious Choice

Superdelegate Mark Udall has not exactly been a profile in courageous leadership. Even as the rest of the world has figured out that Barack Obama will be the Democrats' Presidential nominee, Udall and some of his fellow Colorado Congressional Democrats are stuck on the fence:

Sen. Ken Salazar on Monday met with three other Democratic senators who are uncommitted superdelegates, but he insisted afterward that he hadn't made up his mind whether to back Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He and three other Colorado superdelegates — Congressmen John Salazar and Mark Udall and Gov. Bill Ritter — have yet to publicly back either candidate. Pressure on the uncommitted delegates is mounting as Democratic Party leaders are eager to begin trying to unify the Clinton and Obama camps.

So what's Mark Udall's reason for holding out on Barack Obama?

Rep. Udall's office could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the Udall Watch timer counts down.

To Colorado's Detriment, Mark Udall Trying to Take Both Sides on Roan Plateau

Last year, Mark Udall followed his Sierra Club buddies in outright opposition to drilling on the Roan Plateau. Then Gov. Bill Ritter came up with a compromise plan that would slowly phase in drilling leases while still leaving some of the areas of the Plateau under government protection.

Some were surprised to see Bob Schaffer join Udall in support of Ritter's Roan proposal:

Schaffer's campaign points out that Udall first supported a moratorium on drilling on the Roan before getting on board Ritter's compromise plan, which allows some drilling on the environmentally sensitive plateau but calls for phased leasing over time and expands the size of protected areas.

"Boulder liberal Udall opposed any kind of activity on the Roan Plateau and reluctantly supported the Ritter proposal when Gov. Ritter announced it," said Dick Wadhams, Schaffer's campaign manager.

That may not be exactly fair, given the fact that the year-long moratorium wasn't a plan in itself but only a call to hold off on drilling until a better plan was developed. And Ritter's idea, Udall's aides say, counts as that better plan. [emphasis added]

Now, as the Rocky Mountain News points out, Mark Udall has flip-flopped back, working to stall out the clock to prevent even Ritter's modest "better plan" from going into effect:

Like it or not, the clock may run out before energy companies gain access to the massive natural gas supplies beneath federal lands on the Roan Plateau.

Unfortunately, the proposal introduced Thursday by Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall would place new development on the Roan on hold. It would jeopardize a financial bonanza for the state that could reach $1 billion.

At this point, delaying new development may be the same as denying it. Whether the next president is Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama, domestic fossil-fuel production is likely to have a lower priority than it has under President Bush. And in the case of Clinton and Obama, probably much lower.

Regulators could impose procedural delays that make drilling financially unattractive to energy companies. Investors who have no guarantee where, whether or how soon they can drill on the Roan are likely to sink their capital in locations that are more welcoming to energy production.

In theory, the bill would enact the outline for the Roan offered by Gov. Bill Ritter in December, for which we had kind words. In fact, though, it would impose many more restrictions. It could place much of the estimated 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath federally controlled areas of the Roan out of reach.

Not only could that gas heat every home in Colorado for 20 years; leases and royalties from the wells could also secure essential funding for impacted communities and higher education. That money won't materialize if drilling isn't economically viable. [emphases added]

To echo what one of my colleagues here wrote nearly six months ago:

...[I]s Mark Udall going to continue to represent out-of-state environmental interests, or at what point is he going to try to represent Colorado's interests?

Looking back, Mark Udall's strategy must be to give the impression of willingness to make a reasonable compromise that would benefit Colorado's interests, while working feverishly behind the scenes to tack on unreasonable restrictions that cater to out-of-state environmental interests.

If Mark Udall gets his way, Colorado will see potential new jobs and economic growth, more affordable energy, and even funding for public colleges and universities all will be headed down the drain. Will Udall later act as if there is nothing he could have done to stop it, when he and fellow Democrats Ken Salazar and John Salazar were the ones busy working to pull out the plug?

You can almost picture Mark Udall's aides last month telling reporters that Ritter's compromise was a "better plan," with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Udall's super-secret "even better plan" is to follow lock-step with the Sierra Club agenda while ignoring Colorado's balanced needs.

Absurdicus makes a plea

Our friend Absurdicus is back with a comment on the Big Blue Lie Machine Post. It is too long to repeat here and keep to our short post format, so we will pick and choose:

Apparently my entire argument is lost because of my mistake of elevation. God forbid I would assume elevation above the earth was not normalized to elevation above ground level.

Go use Google Earth now. You will find it to be addictive. Your real mistake was to respond to what we wrote without even looking at what we were writing about. Had you done that you would have had to assume nothing.

Absurdicus is now the first individual that we know of to admit that the Roan Plateau is no Garden of Eden, no pristine untouched land worthy of saving because of its uniqueness:

Despite my basic math mistake, the argument that at 1000 feet a piece of land should be drilled on just because it doesn't look "pretty" is still my argument. Please address my point, that just because it looks ugly at any distance it should be drilled and drunk up like a milkshake.

Frankly, we didn't know that was your argument.

No one, not Bill Ritter, not John Salazar, not Ken Salazar, not the Sierra Club, not Trout Unlimited, not the Wilderness Society, not the Denver Post, not the Rocky Mountain News, and especially not Mark Udall nor any other individual or organization involved with pushing the environmental agenda has had the intellectual honesty to make that argument.

Instead, they use words and photographs intended to fool the public into believing that the land is something it is not. We never would have thought to look at the land using Google Earth but for the obviously deceptive video ad that we wrote about in Looking More Closely at The Udall Commercial - Part 3. We've driven through that part of Colorado many times and it is a lot of things, but it is not wet.

Absurdicus, we don't know how to respond to your argument. It is one that needs to be had in an honest way by the politicians who represent us, unencumbered by the false propaganda that is pumped out daily.

Instead, we have the politicians like Mark Udall and Bill Ritter as well as the newspaper editorial boards who should be demanding and engaging in an honest discussion unwilling to do so out of fear that they would lose in that environment. There can't be another reason.

The politicians spend their time pushing the false propaganda and taking big campaign donations from the organizations which generate it. The organizations collect big donations for supposedly "protecting the environment" when they are often doing no such thing.

There will never be a response to your argument from us or anyone else because none on your side, probably including you, will allow it to be held under conditions we could respect.

Faux Candidacy Over?

The Denver Post is reporting that Mark Benner, who was running aginst Mark Udall as a matter of form only is likely at the end of his rope as a candidate:

Mark Benner, the insurgent Democratic candidate for Colorado's open U.S. Senate seat, got just 1.2 percent of the vote in the preference poll taken during the party caucuses Feb. 5, according to results released by the party Tuesday.

Although there is a slim chance that Benner could rally delegates in county conventions, his showing in the poll virtually ends his candidacy.

We speculated that he never was serious and that this was nothing more than an attempt to make Mark Udall look more "centrist" in the same way Mike Miles made Ken Salazar look more centrist in 2004.

If the purpose is to make Mark Udall seem centrist, it has already backfired. The Denver Post, as our fellow bloggers pointed out yesterday called [ Mark ] Udall "solidly liberal" in response to the [ Mark ] Benner candidacy. Those are words it will find it difficult to take back.

An Ignorant Denver Post Editorial

The Denver Post published an amazingly ignorant editorial today that it called "With Friends Like These, The West Doesn't Need Enemies."

The bark beetle tree kill in Colorado has been historic in magnitude. With all this tinder lying around on federal land, you might think the government would be redoubling efforts to haul out dead trees, make the forests healthy and support fire management activities.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality reflected in President Bush's budget request for 2009.

His budget actually cuts funding by 11.2 percent for the region of the Forest Service that includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

To hear the Denver Post tell it, this is all President Bush's fault. It conveniently leaves out the fact that President Bush or his successor could direct the entire Federal budget toward getting rid of the dead trees and not a single tree would be removed.

Why? The Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and their congressional toadies like Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, and John Salazar have laws in place which prevent the building of forest roads necessary to do the work.

If the Denver Post did a Lexus-Nexus search, it would discover that the victims who lost their homes in last summer's Lake Tahoe fire were blaming the Sierra Club for going to court to stop the construction of forest roads. The roads were needed for the thinning that would have saved their homes and at least one life. The problem wasn't a lack of Federal funding. It was a lack of common sense by the Mark Udall's of the congress.

Mark Udall not only doesn't want new roads to be built, he wants existing roads closed. In 2007 he proposed an amendment to do just that.

Yes, the west has friends that it can do without. Ken Salazar, Mark Udall, and John Salazar along with their eco terrorist sponsors in the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society are much higher on that list than President Bush or his successor, Republican or Democrat ever can be.

Wake up, Denver Post, and put some pressure on these turkeys. Your editorial was a cheap shot that gives the real culprits a free pass. It was pure ignorance.

Udall Staffer Promoting Salazar for VP

In a curious little blurb, Politicker is claiming that there is talk of Ken Salazar running as Hillary's vice president. This began on the Sunday Chris Matthews show when one pundit claimed that Salazar would make a good VP candidate and one obscure Colorado blog picked it up.

Politicker ran down a Mark Udall spokesman for a quote:

“Mark [ Udall ] knows Ken [ Salazar ] would make an excellent choice, both as a nominee and as Vice President,” said Udall campaign spokesperson Taylor West in a statement Wednesday morning. “In addition to the judgment and experience he’d bring to the job overall, he’d also be a strong voice for the West and for rural America.”

“We’d certainly miss his work as a U.S. Senator, but having him in the executive branch would be great for Colorado and great for the country,” West concluded.

If there is one thing that might strengthen Mark Udall's chances of becoming a US Senator, it would be Ken Salazar sucking up the oxygen in Colorado as a VP candidate. While the liberal bloggers and the msm recognize that Mark Udall is well to the left of liberal Ken Salazar (as you can verify by following our scoreboard "bread crumbs"), the Colorado public probably doesn't know that yet.

They will begin to find out how liberal, even left wing Mark Udall is as the liberal circus that is the Democrat National Convention comes to town. If Salazar were on the ticket, he would be the news. Of course Taylor West and Mark Udall would like to see that happen.

Cleaning Up The Forests

Mark Udall is opposed to cleaning up the forests. It would require building forest roads. Heaven forbid!

Today, the Rocky Mountain News made a proposal to remove dead timber that will never be allowed to happen, and it admits as much:

But these productive solutions are possible on a large scale only if federal and state lawmakers act quickly to provide the economic assistance and regulatory relief needed to develop viable commercial applications of significant scope.

As unpopular as it may be with some groups, [ and politicians like Mark Udall, John Salazar, Bill Ritter, and Ken Salazar ] relaxing certain zoning and environmental restrictions is as critical as finding funds for new machinery or other start-up costs. Removing barriers to quick production is essential because of the natural timetable at work in Colorado's forests.

The Rocky didn't go far enough. Forest access roads must be built and maintained. Clear cuts must be established as fire breaks. Environmentalist terrorists like Mark Udall and his Sierra Club must be put on notice that their foot dragging won't be tolerated. Does anyone have the courage to do that? Not likely, unless it is the voters.

The Yellow Rose of Texas

Californian in Texas, subtitled "the ramblings of a liberal Californian" opines:

[ Mark ] Udall is further left than governor [ Bill ] Ritter and senator [ Ken ] Salazar, but he does have a small advantage because of the state's Democratic trend in recent elections.

Since the conventional wisdom is that both Ritter and Salazar are liberal, with Bill Ritter seen as moving farther and farther to the left daily, Californian in Texas obviously believes that Mark Udall should be classified on our scoreboard as "reliably left wing."

The Mark Udall is not a moderate scoreboard:
extremist 2
reliably left wing 9
liberal 28
moderate 0
conservative (chuckle)

We started this scoreboard when we noticed that liberal blogs and the msm were routinely calling Mark Udall a "liberal," "reliably left wing," and even "extremist." We do not count comments from conservative blogs and we didn't count a comment on a liberal show by a conservative politician. Those who would like to check our methodology can follow the bread crumbs backwards.

A Liberal Fan Club In A Close Race

The out of state folks at The Seminal are obviously fans of this blog. Well, perhaps not fans, but we are clearly a resource.

Their reporting is a heck of a lot more accurate than it was just a few days ago. They quote the Independent Thinking video at length. That is what comes from being careful to provide links.

After an abysmal first essay, which Ben panned, they put out a well balanced second essay that describes the contest as being where we think it is:

That, coupled with the recent blue streak in Colorado politics (all branches of the state's government will have a Democratic majority if a Democrat wins in '08) has made it one of Time Magazine's Top Ten Senate Races to Watch.

The outgoing Senator Allard won his 2002 reelection with only 51% of the vote, and in the 2004 Senate elections Coloradoans sent Democrat Ken Salazar to Washington, also with 51% of the vote. Though it has a conservative track record, Colorado is clearly a state that now swings both ways.

We wouldn't want our new friends to put too much stock in the legislature being in the hands of Democrats as it has been cleverly gerrymandered by agents of the State Supreme Court. Republican legislative candidates in aggregate routinely get more votes than Democrat candidates. The district this writer lives in goes 80-20 Republican while just a few miles south, the Democrat wins by a nose. That is what gerrymandering will do, and it leads to overconfidence and misleading assumptions by folks who don't live in Colorado.

We also wouldn't want them to put a lot of stock in either the win by Ken Salazar or Bill Ritter. Both ran as "moderates" and faced a divided Colorado Republican party. Bill Ritter has turned out to be so far to the left that the Denver Post, which supported him in 2006, regularly eats his lunch. That won't help Mark Udall, whose liberal blogging and msm friends (including you) regularly call him a liberal to the point that we keep a scoreboard. (We'll update the scoreboard later tonight or tomorrow as we have time.)

There is a more than even chance that having the Democrat convention in Denver will be unhelpful to Mark Udall.

This isn't the gimmie that many on the left thought it might be just six months ago. It will be a close race. We commend The Seminal for observing that Bob Schaffer:

is a formidable opponent, as demonstrated by his recent appearance on the television program Independent Thinking. There he expressed views that are bound to resonate with Colorado's conservative voters.

Strike out the word "conservative" and just leave it at "resonate with Colorado's voters."

They are correct when they say:

It's going to be a fun one out west.

So much of the liberal blogosphere in Colorado is untruthful and unethical that we are quite happy to see a well written and balanced essay from a liberal source. No Democrat blog in Colorado would have written what you wrote. They get paid (literally) to be nasty. Welcome to the arena of civil discourse.

Say Oink! for 2034

The Gazette has done it again. They have discovered that 1984, or perhaps 2034, is alive and well in California.

Those who don't believe that a major goal of the environmental extremists is to control all aspects of our lives simply aren't paying attention.

The California Energy Commission, whose policies tend to spread to other states, wants to protect the integrity of the power grid by giving state officials hands-on ability to regulate private thermostats. The commission’s proposal would require that all new heating and cooling systems include “nonremovable” FM receivers so state authorities can control them remotely. Big Brother’s virtual hand would enter the living room at will, without invitation.

Politicians like Bill Ritter and Mark Udall and their extremist supporters like the Sierra Club want to make it impossible for the grid to meet demands 100% of the time. That is the dirty little secret of renewable energy. It may be "renewable," but it isn't constant.

When renewable energy can't meet the demand for power, they will resort to turning down thermostats remotely in winter and up remotely in the summer.

Note that the legislature in California has delegated this power to a five person unelected commission, so voters who freeze in winter and broil in summer will not be able to identify, let alone vote the responsible politicians out of office:

The five-member energy commission plans to vote on the proposal Jan. 30. If passed it would become part of California’s building code by May, said Michel Shames, executive director of California’s Utility Action Network — a nonprofit charged with protecting consumers from corporate and utility abuse.

2034 is the new 1984. George Orwell missed the date because the technology didn't support his nightmare, but by 2034, it will. You can thank people like Al Gore, Bill Ritter, John Salazar, Ken Salazar and, most of all, Mark Udall for designing and implementing this Brave New World. They are the pigs on the farm this time around. Oink!

The Curse of E-85

This week, The Gazette had an E85 editorial:

To appreciate this fuel, one has to adopt compassion for wealthy beneficiaries of corporate welfare. Alternatively, one must believe all of the following: 1. We’re threatened by global warming; 2. human activity causes global warming; and 3. ethanol results in a net carbon emissions decrease that will reduce the problem.

Belief number three requires a wild imagination or wishful thinking, considering the fact American ethanol is made mostly from corn. Just to harvest this low-energy crop requires behemoth diesel-burning combines. Unlike high-energy crude — often transported through more eco-friendly pipelines — low energy corn must be shipped for processing by diesel-powered trucks or trains. In a 2005 issue of the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, University of California-Berkeley geo-engineering Prof. Tad Patzek showed that up to six times more energy is used to make ethanol than the final product contains.

The damage doesn't stop there:

The conundrum rests partly in the fact that most small-business owners live by the natural rules of a free and fair market, while others don’t have to. Jack the price of a penne pasta dish too high, and customers won’t buy it. Conversely, if an entrepreneur wants to build a multi-million dollar plant to refine ethanol that nobody needs, he can do so without fear. The federal government [ prodded by Mark Udall and Ken Salazar ] will pay him to sell a product that makes little sense, and in this case, the ripple effect inflates food costs.

How much does it inflate food costs? Mark Udall, Bill Ritter, Ken Salazar, and John Salazar don't believe that 4.5% inflation is enough. To them, it is just another excuse for more income redistribution:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in December that 2007 saw the largest increase in food prices since 1990. The agency expects prices to rise at least another 3 percent this year. Products made with wheat and soybean oil are expected to inflate so much that the cost of home cooking will increase 4.5 percent. We can logically expect the price of corn fed beef to continue soaring.

The Stakes are Really High

There is a very interesting article in the Durango Herald about oil shale in Western Colorado. The big oil companies are talking about potential recoveries of 1 million barrels of oil per acre.

Shell estimates that its method can wring 1 million barrels of oil out of a single acre of ground. That's more than $40 billion from the three 160-acre leases Shell already owns.

If its demonstration projects work and it wins federal approval to expand its leases to 27 square miles, then it takes a calculator with extra digits to show how much all that oil might be worth.

In the best case, "That's the sort of manageable prize that Shell is looking at from this potential," said Davis. But, she said, Shell has to prove its technology first. It has already produced oil from shale, but now it has to prove it can protect the environment, she said.

When one considers that oil sells for $100 a barrel, this land has the potential to produce $100 million of wealth per acre. That is $2,000 a square foot!

No one is saying what the cost of extraction is, but it almost certainly much higher than simply sinking a well in Saudia Arabia. Even so, the price of oil will only continue to rise, especially if OPEC will no longer be able to meet world demand in 20 years, as some have projected.

The environmentalist extremists are trying to mislead the public as to the stakes:

"I am still fascinated that somebody would spend that amount of money to get something that is so elusive," said Cathy Kay, an oil-shale critic from Western Colorado Congress, based in Grand Junction.

Randy Udall, a renewable-energy advocate from Carbondale, [ and Mark Udall's brother ] wrote a critique of shale's comeback. Measured in amount of energy per ton, oil shale has one-third the energy density of Cap'n Crunch cereal, Udall wrote.

Why can't the Udall brothers and cousins, Tom, Randy, and Mark ever be truthful with the public? No one is talking about mining the oil shale, so his energy density statistic has as much value as a similar claim about the energy density of the sand and rock over a conventional oil well. Randy Udall's own propaganda piece admits that Shell has produced 2,000 barrels of oil from a test plot the "size of a 3 car garage."

2000 barrels of oil is a lot of Cap'n Crunch cereal. Maybe we can get Mark Udall, Ken Salizar, or even Randy Udall to tell us how high that stack would be, spread over an area the size of a 3 car garage. Care to bet the FAA would require strobe lights on that stack of cereal?

When the Dam Breaks, Most Run for High Ground

The Rocky Mountain News is praising Bill Ritter's "moderate" decision to allow drilling on the top of the scrub land covered Roan Plateau. They did get a dig in, though:

It's a refreshing change from the officeholder who has too often sided with organized labor, environmentalists, public employee groups and other narrow special interests - to the detriment of solutions that appeal to the broad majority of Coloradans.

It is almost as though the little dutch boy pulled his finger out from the hole in that very leaky and poorly positioned dam.

While Mark Udall hasn't sought the high ground after Ritter stepped aside, Ken Salazar has:

The governor may have other opponents of the BLM plan reconsidering, however. A spokesman for Sen. Ken Salazar - who tried to delay leasing for one year - told us the senator will work with Sen. Wayne Allard on legislation to make sure that Colorado gets its fair share of revenues from future Roan leases.

Premature Celebration

We were correct that Tom Tancredo had no intention of running for the Senate in 2008. The Denver Post reports:

Speaking to The Denver Post afterward, Tancredo said he would not challenge Republican Bob Schaffer in the U.S. Senate primary race next year, but "it's a possibility, not a certainty," he said, that he will return for a race against Democratic incumbent Ken Salazar in 2010.

"You know, two years from now, that's a different story. I'm going to get my batteries charged, go to the grandkids' games and recitals" — and then decide, he said.

The celebration in the left wing blogosphere was premature.

Udall Submarined Again

Mark Udall has staked his reputation and his run for the Senate on his ability to keep drilling rigs off the Roan Plateau scrub land. He has had some help from Ken Salazar and the environmentalists.

Salazar managed to get a four month delay, supposedly so that Bill Ritter could review the BLM plan, but really in the hope that Ritter would call the plan completely unacceptable.

That didn't happen, and even the environmentalists seem to be on board with Ritter, not Udall:

Ritter and [ state Department of Natural Resources executive director Harris ] Sherman said they would push for state-of-the-art drilling technology to minimize the environmental impact.

Also, they want to lease the land in phases, which they said would maximize the economic benefits and sustain the local economy over the long haul. Incremental leasing also will allow for new advancements in drilling technology, they said.

Environmental groups praised the plan for "striking a balance" between economic benefits and environmental preservation.

"We want the appropriate balance between responsible drilling and protection of important wildlife habitats and populations," said Suzanne O'Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation.

Mark Udall seems to have a knack for taking positions that his "allies" in Congress, in the state government and even in the environmental community find too extreme to support.

Fighting the Good Fight

Mark Udall is using his position on the Armed Services Committee to try to prevent Northern Command from moving out of Cheyenne Mountain without Congressional approval. That is a good thing.

In an unusual juxtaposition, Wayne Allard is asleep while Ken Salazar and Mark Udall are protecting the national interest, and Colorado's interest. Normally, it is the other way around.

Once the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is abandoned, it will never be reoccupied. It will become a relic as system upgrades bypass it for a more vulnerable site a few miles away.

Further, once it is accepted that the site can be in a building, a new building can be built anywhere, and the function moved. Peterson AFB is so small that the next argument, and it will be a reasonable argument, will be that the building must be located to a more secure facility, not necessarily in Colorado.

History has a way of repeating itself. Schriver AFB was built on that justification. The "blue cube" satellite control facility in Sunnyvale, California was thought vulnerable because a freeway passed near it.

The Independent reports:

As the defense authorization was passed last week, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who is on the Armed Services Committee and critical of the NORAD relocation plan, said he would continue to monitor progress closely. Udall's office noted NorthCom's plan was initiated more than a year ago without Congress' approval.

Udall's trepidation was underscored by the findings of the Government Accountability Office in May. Inspectors located no documentation to support claims by NorthCom/NORAD's former commander, Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, that the transition would save millions of dollars annually.

The GAO probe also uncovered no paperwork showing how the mountain's operations would be affected. Moreover, security assessments were still ongoing — even though the move was well underway.

The defense authorization would bring the GAO back into the picture, requiring Gates to cooperate in order to obtain the $5 million.

Looking More Closely at The Udall Commercial - Part 3

In Part 1, we talked about the way the anti - Schaffer Disappearing Act ad was produced and how cheaply and easy it was to produce but:

It's impressive for anyone who doesn't understand what is going on. The hard part is getting the photography. We're a bit suspicious of the photography, but who knows?

In Part 2, we began examining the photography:

The Roan Plateau segment just didn't look right. There is so much blue water and white snowcaps in their photograph that it looks pristine, beautiful, and, well . . . wet!

Cynics that we are, we suggested readers use Google Earth to look at the Roan Plateau for themselves. There is not a lot of water there. It is scrub land.

The next photo that we want to examine is the Pinon Canyon photo that appears about 17 seconds into the video. That photo was taken right at sun up. The orange is the color given to the land as the sun's rays go through the thickest part of the atmosphere. The shadows caused by the hills make the areas in shadow look more lush than they are.

No one seems to have thought of this when the photo was used, but anyone who uses the full screen mode on YouTube will see how unproductive and barren this land is. If more land is needed for maneuver training by the Army, it is hard to justify protecting this kind of land from that use. Pandering politicians like Ken Salazar and his brother John who claim otherwise are doing themselves and their own reputation a disservice.

Of Course, Mark Udall is not just a panderer, he is a liar who would sell out the nation's security for a few votes. He told the ranchers in the pinon canyon area that future wars would be against urban based terrorists and that the Army didn't need their land. Never mind that he is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and knows better.

15 Seconds into the commercial (it moves fast) is a photo of Bob Schaffer standing beside a building with a large plaque. Curious minds that might want to know where in Colorado that building and plaque might be will be disappointed to see that a trianglur shaped haze with two embedded rectangles has been produced by the animator to make it unreadable. It is funny to see how clear and sharp the photo is to the left of Schaffer's image and how fuzzy it is where the plaque is located.

The triangle shaped haze is a simple white triangle and two rectangles made translucent by the animator and placed in front of the building image. You can see where both rectangles extend outside the hypotenuse of the triangle. This part is very sloppy and cheaply done animation.

The Washington based producers of this deceptive piece of animation couldn't be troubled to find a photo of a Colorado building and weren't honest enough to let the viewer see that. Going out on a limb, we would go so far as to suggest that this building might be located in Alexandria, Virginia, given the unusually large size of the brick and the round object at the top of the photo. In Colorado, brick buildings are relatively scarce due to the easy availability of quarried building materials. We've never seen a building built with oversized brick.

All in all, we think this commercial is so poorly thought out and executed that it will do Mark Udall much more damage than it will ever do to Bob Schaffer. We actually think Bob Schaffer's campaign should be promoting it!

Washington Politics Never Simple

The Denver Post is reporting that the Democrats are playing games in the Senate in an effort to make Mark Udall look good to the Western Slope, or at least some on the Western Slope.

The House removed the one year moratorium prohibiting drilling on the Roan Plateau for reasons that aren't obvious considering that the Democrats clearly had the votes to keep it in the bill.

Now, Ken Salazar is riding to the rescue???

The fight over the Roan now shifts to the Senate, where Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., says he will seek a one-year moratorium on Roan drilling. But his effort is unlikely to happen until after the new year.

Meanwhile, a political slugfest erupted Wednesday over questions about the 3,500-foot mesa in northwestern Colorado and the motivations for protecting it.

Sen. Wayne Allard, a Loveland Republican who supports energy development on the Roan, said House and Senate Democrats have an ulterior motive in seeking the one-year drilling moratorium.

Democratic leaders, Allard said, want to give Rep. Mark Udall of Eldorado Springs credit for protecting the state's Western Slope. Udall, who is running for the retiring Allard's seat, co-wrote with Rep. John Salazar, a Manassa Democrat, the provision on Roan drilling that passed in an earlier House bill. It was stripped this week from the compromise version. The plateau sits in Salazar's district.

"This boils down to the Senate race, frankly," Allard said. "Democratic leadership is convinced that this is going to be an important issue in the Senate race in Colorado."

What gives?

Observations

We've spent a number of hours doing what we should have done from the beginning - we are cross referencing the posts to make them more useful.

In doing so, we have been reminded of some ongoing and open themes:

1. Ken Salazar used to run interference for some of Mark Udall's wilder, more left wing schemes, and doesn't seem to be doing so as much at the current time.

2. The Denver Post went out of its way to lie to the public about Carolyn Bninski's sentence. Bninski seems to have disappeared from the news. That may be because Mark Udall has very publicly and counter intuitively moved his position on the war leftward at a time when the surge is working.

3. A few months ago, MoveOn.org was publicly threatening Mark Udall that it would cut off donations if Udall didn't move his war policy to the left. It remains to be seen if the move will result in additional money, and more importantly if the additional money it generates will be worth the cost to his chance to reposition himself on the political spectrum as a "moderate."

4. The out of state left wing blogs used to be giddy about Mark Udall's chances to take the Colorado Senate seat. Early in the summer, two days couldn't go by without some over confident comment about how Colorado was turning "Blue." That over confidence is gone.

5. No one is writing about how Hillary and the Democrat convention being in Denver will help Udall. Udall's staff never thought they would, and said so publicly.

6. The very best quote of the fall was from Mark Udall, himself:

Said [ Mark ] Udall, who lives in Eldorado Springs: “It’s wonderful to be home.” He said Boulder County is “home base for me. This is the touchstone; this is where I take my inspiration.”

The cross referencing project is only about half done, and will doubtless generate more observations.