Almost Embarrassing

In trying to chase a story about a talk given in Pueblo West, about 45 miles from here, I had to follow it literally around the world from blog to blog. One of the blogs that I stopped by was called Blowing Our Tax Dollars on Wind Farms. Now, that is a title one could grow to love. I digress.

It is my view that if people start paying attention to the real facts about global warming, they will be less willing to be piped by our local pied pipers, Mark Udall and Bill Ritter, into a bitter ocean, a bitter future of an intentionally depressed economy.

I finally found the original article, printed of course in the Pueblo Chieftain.

The hype surrounding the issue of global warming is a bunch of hot air, a retired physics professor told members of Rotary Club 43 on Monday.

"Global warming is not a problem," Howard C. Hayden said. "Go find something useful to do."

Hayden is an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Connecticut and now resides in Pueblo West.

and...

"Yes, the polar ice caps are shrinking . . . on Mars," he said, "On Mars, the ice caps are melting and small hills are disappearing."

Hayden added that there is warming occurring on Jupiter, Saturn and Triton.

Of course the Big Blue Lie Machine that is Colorado Media Matters put its nose into the article:

However, the Chieftain did not note the scientific consensus that rising global temperatures are not part of a natural cycle and that climate change is being caused primarily by human activity...

The article did not note that former Vice President Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." It also failed to point out that organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the IPCC share the consensus view that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming" of the planet.

The word consensus is being misused by the left to stampede the public into actions that are not in its interest for the purpose of taking political power. The word "consensus" is defined as "general agreement." There is far too much disagreement to use that word.

Professor Hayden put it eloquently when he told the likes of Media Matters, Mark Udall, and Bill Ritter that they should "go find something useful to do."

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?

Another Udall Staffer Tells a Fib

According to the Longmont Times-Call:

Speaker after speaker at a Tuesday night Boulder County Republican dinner emphasized the importance of electing GOP candidate Bob Schaffer to the U.S. Senate.

In the interest of balance, the Times-Call got a quote from a Mark Udall spokesman:

Udall campaign spokeswoman Taylor West dismissed “that whole Boulder-liberal thing” during an interview later Tuesday night.

This a very curious quote as on October 6, 2007, the Times-Call found Mark Udall at a similar Boulder gathering and reported:

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.”

We're not Colorado Media Matters and we are not trying to emulate that ethics challenged site, but it is fair to ask why the Times-Call didn't match these two quotes up as we just did. Mark Udall wasn't running from his Boulder liberal roots then. Indeed, he was embracing them.

Denver Post Article on Bob Schaffer

There is a very solid article on Bob Schaffer in the Denver Post today. Mark Udall's spokesman called Schaffer an extremist, which he has to do because Udall has not run away from his own labels-see the scoreboard at the right.

Note the third comment on that article. There isn't much point in repeating what we said here.

The article is sufficiently fair that we predict that Media Matters will be all over it, demonstrating again how mean spirited they are. They live in their own sad little world.

Media Matters Flakes Out Again

I am a retired Army Officer. I spent three years teaching ROTC. I taught college sophomores. I am outraged at a Media Matters article castigating Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman for not recognizing "Jared Polis College ROTC service." They were commenting on this Daily Camera story.

In my day, the ROTC classes at the freshman and sophmore level were just that, classes. There was no military obligation. Students weren't issued uniforms. Other than an awards ceremony that recognized academic achievement, freshmen and sophomore students didn't stand in formation. No one considers a student who attends these classes to have "served" their country.

In the early 1980's, when I taught, Military Science instructors were under pressure not to flunk students who signed up for the course and didn't show up for classes. I gave a student an A who never showed her face in class. I found myself having to provide the instruction to her privately when she discovered that I would be flunking her.

To have anyone equate this lax environment with real military service as Media Matters has done is offensive. If it is allowed to stand, ROTC detachments will be overrun with future politicians who cynically want to have a military service box checked without any fear of being put in harms way.

This isn't intended to be a slap at Jared Polis. It is unlikely that he thought about being a politician at the time he was taking ROTC. Life's circumstances change in unforseen ways, and they have changed in good ways for him. We don't want to accuse him of being a cynic at 18.

At the same time, we who have served would dishonor ourselves to allow Media Matters to make their comments without challenge.

Jared Polis isn't helped by this kind of mindless carping. Silverman and Caplis aren't damaged, either. The same cannot be said for Media Matters.

The first three notes just happen to be: do re mi

The Mark Udall is not a moderate scoreboard:
extremist 2
reliably left wing 4
liberal 19
moderate 0
conservative (not in this lifetime)

It was incremented today when the Grand Junction Sentinel made the following comment:

It’s curious that Udall, a certified liberal who is seeking statewide office in a state that does not always vote in a certifiably liberal fashion, has bought into a phony attack on Limbaugh propagated by Media Matters, the liberal Internet group. Even after reading the transcript of Limbaugh’s Sept. 26 show posted on Media Matters’ Web site, it takes a considerable stretch to conclude Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” comment referred to military personnel who merely favor a speedy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

We started this scoreboard when we noticed that liberal blogs and the msm was 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.

And yes, we know that we linked to the same article on two sequential posts, but each post had a different purpose.

Wisdom from Grand Junction

Wisdom from Grand Junction:

Although one might presume that they would know better, that hasn’t kept two Democrats [ Mark Udall and Ken Salazar ] who represent Colorado from joining the braying pack led by the hard-left loonies at MediaMatters.org alleging that Limbaugh has impugned the character of American servicemen with his reference last week to “phony soldiers.”

So, Who Does Hillary Represent?

If Mark Udall represents Moveon.org as Eric Sondermann suggested yesterday, What does Hillary represent?

Newsbusters has the answer and an audio tape:

We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.

So, from now on, it will be Senator Hillary Clinton, (D) Media Matters.

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.

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.

Numbers Don't Lie: Bob Schaffer Far More Independent than Mark Udall

Tying together two posts from yesterday ... First, we highlighted GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's observation that his apparent opponent, Boulder liberal Democrat Mark Udall, is no "independent outsider." Later, we highlighted Schaffer's strong political independence based on his relatively high number of votes against his party while serving three terms in the U.S. House.

Since Schaffer touted his opponent's strong affinity to the national Democrats' liberal agenda, and the Left-wing "watchdog" group Media Matters made such a big deal that Schaffer cast "more than 80 percent" of his Congressional votes with the Republican party line, it seemed appropriate to extend the comparison. The source is the Washington Post's Congress votes database.

During his three terms in the House, Schaffer cast 534 of his 3,246 (or about 1 in 6) votes against the majority Republican party.

During his four-plus terms in the House, Udall has cast only 424 of his 5,372 (or about 2 in 25) votes against the Democratic party. And most of that time, the Democrats were in the minority.

Why is that important? As the statistics bear out, the majority party has a higher ratio of vote solidarity among its members because it carries the agenda. So, despite the fact that Schaffer spent his entire tenure in the majority and most of Udall's tenure has been spent in the minority, the Boulder liberal has toed the party line much more than his Republican counterpart ever did. Moreover, despite the fact that Schaffer cast more than 2,000 fewer votes during his service, he cast 100 more votes in dissension from his own party than Udall has yet to do.

If the Democrats are in charge, Udall follows the party line much more than Schaffer would with his Republicans in charge (unfortunately, a far less likely scenario in 2009): In the current session with the Democrats in charge, Udall has voted along with Nancy Pelosi and the party agenda 95.3 percent of the time!

Conclusion? Schaffer was right to observe that there is no "independent outsider" running on the Democratic ticket in this race. And Media Matters looks very silly for having made an issue out of the percentage of votes Schaffer cast in line with his own party.

Based on the objective measure of their respective Congressional voting records, Bob Schaffer will be a far more independent Senator for Colorado than Mark Udall would.

Schaffer's Integrity and Independence Highlight Media Matters' Foolishness

Following up on the subject matter of an earlier posting here today, the overpaid, underworked staff of Media Matters has outdone itself once again. Dissecting and parsing words to find any angle of criticism of media and political figures on the right half of the political spectrum, Media Matters often makes itself look all the more foolish. While they link to their sources, they don't really care if their readers follow those links.

In another grand twist of irony, here's one of Media Matters claims that Schaffer's statements were misleading:

According to Cillizza's post, Schaffer also "rejected the perception -- fostered by Democrats -- that he is too conservative to win statewide" and quoted Schaffer's claim that he voted against his party "a lot" while serving in Congress from 1997 to 2003. However, according to The Washington Post's "The U.S. Congress Votes Database," Schaffer voted with the Republican Party more than 80 percent of the time during his three terms in Congress.

Sounds convincing to the uninitiated, but quickly following the links puts Media Matters' "gotcha" into context. Remember that there is a lot of pressure to cast votes with your party when you are in the majority. And newer members of Congress especially are tempted to go along to vie for important posts such as committee chairmanships. So, in that light, here goes.

In his first term as a new Congressman, Schaffer voted with the majority GOP 86.8 percent of the time - less than the average member of the House caucus.

In his second term, Schaffer voted with the majority GOP 82.0 percent of the time - only 11 House Republicans stuck to the party line less.

In his third and final term, honored by a self-imposed term limits pledge, Schaffer voted with the majority GOP 81.3 percent of the time - only Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul had a lower rate among House members of his party.

Of the 3,246 votes Bob Schaffer cast in his three terms of Congress, 534 of them (or about one in six) were against his own party. Using Schaffer's own terminology, 534 is a "lot of" votes, and as demonstrated by doing some very simple research, a lot higher ratio than most members of either party (while in the majority) can tout.

Attacking Schaffer for his integrity and his independence is very foolish, but considering the overpaid, underworked operatives that populate the Media Matters office, completely unsurprising.

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.

"Boulder Has Its Own Foreign Policy"

Today, I found an old article from Colorado Confidential and also a new one from Media Matters.

The CoCo article observed that Mark Udall was trying to dodge the "Boulder Liberal" label. The "joke" he tells to avoid criticism is telling in ways he might not have intended:

"I’ve had some fun saying that Colorado Springs and Boulder are exactly alike. They both have world class mountain backdrops, Olympic athletes in-residence, nonprofit communities like no other, a high tech presence important to the economies and beautiful downtowns.

"The only difference is that Boulder has its own foreign policy."

Colorado Media Matters reported yesterday that Udall has said:

"So, when Congress reconvenes after the Memorial Day recess I will introduce legislation making the Iraq Study Group's recommendations our national policy."

Ken Salizar has now done that. It would be very useful if our Congressmen, Senators, and would be Senators were required to take an introductory course in the functions of the various branches of government.

Boulder's "foreign policy initiative" simply isn't supported by the Constitution, foreign policy being the prerogative of the executive. It will be very hard for Udall to shake the Boulder Liberal label if he insists on pushing its foreign policy.