Cara Degette Claims It's Not News

There is a strong suspicion abroad that Colorado Confidential is partially funded by Tim Gill and George Soros, directly or indirectly, so it comes as no surprise that Cara Degette would be downplaying the secret memo exposed by Lynn Bartels.

If you want to watch the big blue lie machine in full spin mode, read her editorial. It isn't a story, it is an editorial.

Then go down and read the comments. Sheep lover Wendy Norris opines as to how happy she is that some folks who disagree are racking up the visits and page counts. We found this to be a curious comment from a supposedly highly successful site, so we looked at the site meter (it's open, not password protected).

The site is designed so that each visitor must rack up at least two page hits, and the average number of page views per visitor is 1.9. Since they installed their site meter, they have averaged just under 1500 visitors and 3000 page views per day. It's not that impressive, given the hype. We'll help them with a link.

Exposed: Left-Wing Billionaires' Plans to Smear Schaffer Early

Not that this news is terribly surprising, but the Rocky Mountain News reports today that the Colorado Democrats' Left-wing billionaire power bosses are planning to spend a hefty amount attacking U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer and other Republicans:

Two years ago, two of Colorado's richest Democratic benefactors plowed more than $7 million into Democratic candidates and causes.

Now a confidential memo to one of their advisers suggests that it would take contributions of nearly $12 million to finance independent political groups trying to influence the outcome of the presidential, U.S. Senate and 4th Congressional District races.

The money - to be spent by political groups known as 527s - would help buy TV ads, radio time and mailings, according to internal documents obtained by the Rocky Mountain News.

The memo was prepared by political consultant Dominic DelPapa and sent to Al Yates, who wears many hats, including adviser to Pat Stryker, a Fort Collins heiress. Stryker and philanthropist Tim Gill, of Denver, spent $7.46 million in 2006 to try to swing elections for Democratic candidates and causes.

More specifically, on the Schaffer-Udall race:

The memo doesn't say who would contribute the money, and DelPapa wouldn't reveal any details. His memo outlines a proposed media strategy that suggests spending $5.1 million of the proposed $11.7 million budget on the Senate race alone.

Part of the Senate budget calls for a $1.9 million advertising campaign in March and April that would target Republican Bob Schaffer, who likely will face Democrat Mark Udall in the U.S. Senate race. "Define Schaffer/Foot on Throat," the campaign effort reads, according to a financial spreadsheet marked "very rough preliminary paid communications budget."

These few paragraphs sum up the attitudes of the respective sides:

"I would be careful if I were you about reading more into this than actually exists," said Yates, a former Colorado State University president active in civic affairs.

But [state Republican Party chair Dick] Wadhams said that the memo seemed clear to him.

"This is nothing short of coordinated character assassination by a handful of left-wing billionaires," he said. [Emphasis added]

Is it just me, or does that remark by Yates sound like a line from a movie script where the Mafia boss gives a little friendly advice to a potential informant? Maybe not how he intended it, but it sure sounds funny.

Some may expect that inconvenient figures like investigative journalists shouldn't get in the way of the powerful Left-wing political machine and its Boulderized agenda for Colorado, including its Boulder liberal U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall. But their job will be made more difficult by the fact the truth is out there, including the well-chronicled months of information on this site.

Most telling, it says a lot about the Left's expectations for this race that they plan to spend so much money, and to start the dirty campaign smear in the spring. Brace yourselves.

Big Blue Lie Machine Revs Up

Those prognosticators in other states who have predicted an easy Mark Udall victory rather than a close race might be right after all.

The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that there is a proposal afoot for two millionaires, Tim Gill and Pat Stryker, to spend $2 million in 527 money this March and April to "step on Bob Schaffer's throat."

They have done it before:

The memo was prepared by political consultant Dominic DelPapa and sent to Al Yates, who wears many hats, including adviser to Pat Stryker, a Fort Collins heiress. Stryker and philanthropist Tim Gill, of Denver, spent $7.46 million in 2006 to try to swing elections for Democratic candidates and causes.

Didn't these same folks try to unseat Marilyn Musgrave by creating a 527 that claimed that she wasn't Pro Life?

The big blue lie machine is going to have its furnace stoked in a big way. All of those do gooders who wanted big money taken out of politics only wanted the traceable big money taken out.

Schaffer Has Common Sense, Udall Doesn't

We had to laugh at this story on the ownership of domain names in the Rocky Mountain News. It appears that Bob Schaffer has a monopoly on "Common Sense."

There is more humor here. Last year, Tim Gill and his gang of four swamped the Colorado political scene with millions of dollars and hid behind multiple shadowy and intentionally misleading names.

The Mark Udall Democrats are now complaining about a few harmless ads being run by Patrick Davis? This isn't the pot calling the kettle black, it is a giant leaking oil storage tank calling the kettle black. The next time you folks want to clean up the environment, start with your own back yard.

We can't wait until Colorado Confidential, ColoradoPols, and PlagiarismNowAction take up the fight. We won't hold our breath as they are shadowy groups, themselves, but are sorely lacking in ethics and common sense, so, who knows?

A Day Late, A Dollar Short

Yesterday, we pointed out that the active military wasn't at all upset about Rush Limbaugh's comments.

Really? Jim ought to ask the average man or woman in uniform before he throws more fodder into the big blue lie machine. Rush Limbaugh's program plays on Armed Forces Radio. If there was any feeling among the military itself that Rush was disrespectful of the military, the military would be taking action to replace him.

It's nice to see that we have an audience that acts on our observations. Today PeakDems tried to gin up a response. There isn't a lot of point in following that link unless you need the KVOR Advertising Sales Manager's name, email, and phone number. A not so subtle threat, we would guess.

All you phony soldiers in Colorado Springs should contact KVOR about Rush

One of their "fans" wrote a response:

Gee, I didn't know that there was anyone in Colorado Springs who washed out of boot camp after 44 days, and then went around claiming to be an Army Ranger ordered to commit atrocities in order to gin up opposition to the war based on total lies.

And here, Mike, you have always bitched and whined and complained about Mr. Bush supposedly lying to get us INTO the war, now you're doing nothing but repeating total bullshit in an obviously bogus attempt to get us out. Have you no shame?

The funny thing isn't the response, though that is funny. It is that the fine folks at the El Paso Democrat Party (I hope I have that right) wouldn't think to start trying to organize a response from "soldiers" until we pointed out that there hadn't been one. They aren't a day late. They are a week late.

The reason they are a dollar short is that they threw it into the big blue lie machine and Tim Gill hasn't replaced it yet. Not to worry. He will.

Disabusing a Liberal of a Cherished Fantesy

While most, if not all liberal blogs are written by hard core liberals, not all conservative blogs are written by hard core conservatives. In fact, most aren't, at least here in Colorado. For what it is worth, there are three blogs that I think reasonable people would call far right, and none of the bloggers involved write for schaffer v udall.

Today, I saw a quote on a far left wing democratic blog that appears to be funded by someone, some say Tim Gill. It said about this blog:

The far-righties are holding on tight to BS, while writing wild-eye attacks against Udall and treating BS as their lord and savior (it's very coulterish, or cultish?). They even go as far to claim Shaffer is a "realist" while Udall is extreme. It's comedy at it's best, since they think they are doing their guy good.

That charge was so far off base in terms of my politics that I took the time to write a 2000 word rebuttal. This blog's format is too small to post entries here, so it is posted elsewhere as "Why Mark Udall Will Be In Trouble."

Udall is in trouble because people like me and my co-bloggers, who can't be dismissed as "far-righties" are so mistrustful of his instincts. He is so far out of the mainstream that he seems to lack common sense when it comes to the major issues of the day.

And to correct a point that our friend made, no one on this blog has ever called Udall "extreme." We have merely reported that either the msm or liberal blogs have called him "extreme" or "liberal," or "reliably left wing" multiple times, to the point where we keep a scoreboard.

Added: We changed "is" to "appears to be" in the second paragraph within 5 minutes after posting this, should there be a future question. We try to be accurate. Tim Gill is thought, along with George Soros, to be the funding source for several left wing blogs and the organizations behind them.

That Was Fast!

The blog, udallvschaffer, that we referred to as both the sincerest form of flattery and as our ugly and mean spirited step-sister made two posts and disappeared. The blog is gone, and the posts are gone, (but we will still count them on our scoreboard).

Both posts had called Bob Schaffer names, so it was off to an interesting start. That blog offered so much potential to poke fun at left wing blogging that we will miss it. We were waiting for "absurdicus," one of the listed contributors, to pontificate.

I had even made it a "favorite," and today I get "page not found." Oh the pain of seeing a favorite blog with so short a lifespan.

Perhaps Tim Gill decided he had better uses for his money.

The drummer plays on.

The Democrats apparently think that this blog is effective. They just started a step-sister. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but if past liberal conduct is prologue, we expect to be Cinderella to that blog's ugly and mean spirited step-sister. Is Tim Gill funding this operation, too?

The second post out of the box quoted Daily Kos as calling the Republican senatorial candidate "bat shit insane."

Independents who read this blog will note that it refrains from name calling and attempts to illuminate the issues in a thoughtful and thorough way. While the liberal bloggers work hard to create an echo chamber of innuendo and name calling, we don't source our material from conservative blogs, so you won't see much of an echo chamber effect here.

Our ugly step-sister did help us with our count project in one way. It reprinted a CQ assertion that Mark Udall is a liberal. The Daily Kos did the same thing. CQ's statement was:

Udall is generally liberal, although his record started moving toward the political center once he decided that he would run for the Senate in 2008

CQ provided no facts to back up the last half of that statement. If it is true, and we don't think it is, it says a lot about Udall. He knew he would be too liberal to be elected statewide in Colorado, so when he decided to run for Senate, he began trying to conceal his liberalism. It calls his integrity into question.

Given that this "Mark Udall is a liberal quote" was made by a msm outlet and echoed by two liberal blogs, we think that we can up our scoreboard by three.

We wanted to point out that it will be very hard to sell Udall as a centrist when the msm and Liberal blogs themselves routinely refer to him as either "extremist," or "liberal." We started keeping track and created a scoreboard that links to the sources. Recently, we started linking to our most recent scoreboard post so that readers could examine our methodology for fairness.

Scoreboard

Extremist 2
Reliably Left Wing 1
Liberal 9
Moderate 0
Conservative (That would be a laugh)

Interestingly, CQ is the first msm outlet that we know of to make the claim that Udall was "moving toward the center," and they didn't bother to source it. Since they labeled him as a liberal we will ignore their modification.

Added 24 hours later: The blog, udallvschaffer, and its two posts have been taken down. This scoreboard operates like any other, once the game is played, once the posts are written, the statistics remain. You can run but you can't hide, or if you like, you can hide, but you can't run. More... and more...

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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.