This Wednesday, let's celebrate the coming end of an error. We really won't have George Bush to kick around anymore. For real! And the good folks at CREDO are kicking in to help Drinking Liberally celebrate. Swag and perhaps a pin the impeachable offense on the turkey game will also include $100 for beer sorry, they said for anything but beer, so we'll spend it on pizza. Here's an rsvp link, if you prefer.
Some of may remember CO-06 candidate Bill Winter from the 2006 election? Well, he's got a surprise for us all to announce. And, it's not what you think.
Now of course, some bloggers are organizing separate events to help the senate run-off campaign of Jim Martin in Georgia. If you're so inclined, I'm sure some folks with laptops might be around Wednesday to help anyone interested in making a contribution online.
Want to know why Coloradans should care about a Georgia senate race? Imagine if Mark Udall has more allies to help balance out the votes of John McCain or Ken Salazar for that matter. An other reason is common decency. Jim Martin is running against Saxby Chambliss. You might remember Chambliss as the low life that questioned previous senator Cleland's patriotism. Someone who left more body parts in Vietnam than John McCain. Sorry, but Chambliss really is a low life. Finally another reason to pay attention to this race is if you count Franken in MN and Begich in AK, this is the 60th democratic seat (if you count Lieberman).
I had a lot of fun meeting new people, talking to them about Drinking Liberally, our Small Donor Committee (which is now considering candidates to support), and SquareState in general. We gave out at least 50 DL buttons, but got enough in donations to buy at least as many more to continue to give them out. Whoever that guy was that gave us two five dollar bills, thank you.
As for the voting process and alternate selection process, I worry people aren't learning from mistakes in dealing with new people one could be bringing into the party, embracing and engaging, so they come back the next time.
At the DL happy hour I had great conversations getting to know CD5 candidate Hal Bidlack and HD20 candidate Jan Hejtmanek (het-Man-eck).
Now, a bit of warning. The new look to S2 won't be ready until we work out a few bugs. So, in the pics you'll see a sneak peak on the new banner, but it's going to be about week until all the bugs, I mean features, are worked out.
And that very undemocratic thing of removing Pledged and Elected Party Officials (PELO) from the delegate ballot, thanks for that! No wonder there's so much animosity between campaign folks and local parties.
Pride is a damn powerful thing. For some of us, we get behind a candidate because, well, we want them to win. For me with John Edwards, it is different. Let me tell you why I was proud to support Edwards, and how Barack Obama convinced me that he has truly taken on Edward's mantle in this campaign, leaving behind both Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the politics of parsing...
Ok, so maybe he hasn't really entered the contest, but it is only a matter of time before he starts a write-in campaign against those migratory workers.
Meanwhile, if you want to see his competition you can find them Saturday, Feb. 24th at the Wildlife Experience in Parker. Which, incidently, will also be the time and place of the annual:
A quick glance at COMaps.org reveals voter registration numbers in CD-6 vs. CD-5 are nearly identical. In CD-5 you get a 46R-21D-33I, in CD-6 you get 45R-23D-31I.
A quick glance at election returns shows that Jay Fawcett and Bill Winter received roughly the same percentage of the vote, with Lamborn winning 59%-41% and Tancredo garnering a 59%-40% victory.
Fawcett had the Netroots, the local media, the DCCC, Hefley's refused endorsement of Lamborn, the 'perfect storm'. Bill Winter had none of this.
Yet they still ended up with roughly the same percentage.
So I ask you: why didn't Fawcett do better?
Or maybe the better question: would it have been smarter to throw the Netroots and the DCCC behind Winter?
No, not the weather, of course. AccuWeather is reporting Denver will have a high temperature of 74 today, just four degrees shy of the record for this date, and the rest of the state is clear as well. Perfect for getting people to the polls. I just want to blatantly repost a great diary posted by ubikkubu this past spring. Look out Tom Tancredo!
No surprise to me...probably won't change the electoin...just as the Saddam verdict won't (though Karl thought we'd fall for one last trick:
Appearing on Sundays Chris Matthews Show conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan spoke about the sworn testimony of the Mark Foley investigation. Foley has admitted to having inappropriate relations with teenage pages, and the House Ethic Committee is investigation whether Republican House Leadership properly addressed the problem. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and former NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-NY) have both been accused of ignoring or covering up information about Foley, but today on the Sunday talk show Andrew Sullivan added a new name.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:
Sullivan: "The sworn testimony in the Mark Foley House Ethics Committee investigation is proving that Hastert, Reynolds and Rove knew full-well about Mark Foley for years."
Matthews: "Rove?"
Go to Huffington to watch the vid and see where I got the story.
I wish I could have done something more like this, but I opted for the cheaper route to put some visual campaign pizazz on my car. Anyway, it's silly for my aging 40-mpg Civic (and in general), but I've always wanted a racing stripe. Of course, I'm hoping that this, as minor as it is, still helps increase Bill's name recognition at bit.
Lit Drops, sign waving, and more. How's your GOTVing going?
Now, I haven't seen any other polling data on CD-6 lately so I am going to have to believe that these numbers are pretty accurate.
Winter 94.7%
Tancredo 5.3%
The biggest fear now is complacency.
The GOP Get out the Vote machine is legendary.
I would like to see at least a 90 point lead before I would relax in this race.
Oh, there is also a story on Angela Engel on the front page as well!
Normally I don't really pay much attention to the extreme right-wing WorldNutDaily, but I found their latest promotion of Tancredo interesting.
According to WND, they recently interviewed two terrorists (two low-level Palestinian militants who supposedly now represent all global terrorists) who said that "Americans should vote Democrat" because it will help embolden the resistance efforts in Iraq. Now WND just came out with an article quoting Tom Tancredo about this "terrorist support" for a Democratic congress.
"I guess the conclusion to which anyone could come ... maybe they recognize that both the general nature of the Democratic Party and the people who are at its head are folks that would rather cut and run than stand their ground on an issue of this nature," he said. ...
"In fact the idea that Western civilization has advantages over other civilizations, that is not a concept that most Democrats would buy into, and I think the radical Islamic groups recognize that," he said.
One-Trick Tom seems to forget that much of recent Western civilization's advantages are actually a result of the leadership and policies of Democrats (in the U.S.) and liberals world-wide. (If any of you wingnuts are reading this, I dare you to read this list of just some of the many advantages liberals have brought to America.)
President Bush and Vice-President Cheney will be in our state today and tomorrow to proclaim their success and to mock our patriotism. They will call us cowards and traitors. They will imply we shouldn't even have the right to vote. Karl Rove, on the taxpayers' dime and with our nation's resources, will be smiling with glee at the campaign message he has crafted.
Dummy Bob and Mike Rosen and Joseph Michelli and the Professional Liars' Army....
Yesterday we reported that the CEO of a Denver radio station was trying to supress an ad by Bill Winter.
The Rocky Mt. News has now questioned Tim Brown, the Republican contributor to Tancredo who wanted the ads killed.
"We have been receiving complaints from our listeners. At JACK-FM, like any other broadcaster, we listen to our listeners," Brown said. "What we suggested was: Is there a way for us to run more of your other two commercials because of the complaints we were receiving?"
You see, they aren't illegally pulling them, they are just ~suggesting~ the Winter campaign take them off... But the paper isn't buying it.
But Berrick Abramson, Winter's campaign manager, said he was called by a station representative early Wednesday and told the ads had to be pulled.
An e-mail message forwarded to the Rocky Mountain News by Abramson seems to confirm that.
"Management has given me no choice but to pull this spot. As I said, we will be happy to run your other spots, but we cannot run the South Carolina spot," the e-mail, apparently from NRC's Neil Conway, said.
Winter offers Aurora voters a moderate, common-sense approach to immigration that not only will save us from porous borders, but saves us from our own overreaction.
Winter parallels the congressional district's wishes on medical research, where an overwhelming number of voters and the likes of Nancy Reagan and Orrin Hatch, who want the government to butt out of science.
The comments seem to indicate a very conservative editorial staff (given several mentions of Republicans), which I see as a very positive sign that at least some conservatives are finally 'getting it'.
Bill Winter told a little more truth today than NRC Broadcasting CEO Tim Brown wants people to hear.
Brown, who has donated over 12 thousand dollars this year to Republicans, including Winter's opponent Tom Tancredo, is trying to pull Winter's latest adds that expose Tancredo's ties to numerous White Supremacist figures and organizations.
The Winter campaign asserts:
When campaign manager Berrick Abramson spoke with the General Sales Manager at NRC, the campaign was told that “the CEO heard the spot and wants it off the air,” according to Abramson. When Abramson was asked if there were any claims or assertions that anything in the ad was false, Abramson was told “No, the CEO just doesn’t like it,” and that “you have to admit, it’s pretty harsh on Tancredo.”
I'll say it. It is harsh on Tancredo. I will go farther. It is harsh and TRUE. Take a listen to the Dateline South Carolina spot, read some of the supporting documentation and then you decide which is more over the top, Bill calling Tancredo a racist or Tancredo's racism.
Bill Winter told a little more truth today than NRC Broadcasting CEO Tim Brown wants people to hear.
Brown, who has donated over 12 thousand dollars this year to Republicans, including Winter's opponent Tom Tancredo, is trying to pull Winter's latest adds that expose Tancredo's ties to numerous White Supremacist figures and organizations.
The Winter campaign asserts:
When campaign manager Berrick Abramson spoke with the General Sales Manager at NRC, the campaign was told that “the CEO heard the spot and wants it off the air,” according to Abramson. When Abramson was asked if there were any claims or assertions that anything in the ad was false, Abramson was told “No, the CEO just doesn’t like it,” and that “you have to admit, it’s pretty harsh on Tancredo.”
I'll say it. It is harsh on Tancredo. I will go farther. It is harsh and TRUE. Take a listen to the Dateline South Carolina spot, read some of the supporting documentation and then you decide which is more over the top, Bill calling Tancredo a racist or Tancredo's racism.
I just listened to CD6 Democratic nominee Bill Winter's new radio spot, "Dateline: South Carolina." The message is unmistakable. Members of the League of the South, the Aryan Brotherhood, the American Nazi Party and the KKK worship Tom Tancredo. These racist ties make Tancredo unfit to represent CD6.
The spot arrived backed up by a raft of paperwork that links Tancredo to lesser-known groups as well, like The Pioneer Fund and the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has referred to African-Americans as "a retrograde species of humanity."
[Winter campaign manager Berrick] Abramson concluded, "For too long, Tancredo has been publicly distancing himself from these shameful associations and claiming ignorance of their motives while privately accepting and encouraging their support. But as the depth of this network of hate becomes evident, it is no longer acceptable to dismiss it, as the Congressman's spokesman would have us believe, as 'a few bad apples.'"
Just to reemphasize what TakeBackTheHouse posted yesterday: Join DailyKos' McJoan at 10am Mountain Time today in her LiveBlogging session with Bill Winter.
Remember to mail the Bill Winter video links to all your friends, family, relatives, neighbors, and (for today only) zombies, vampires, and other Karl Rove types:
Bill Winter posted a great new diary entry on DailyKos today on how important it is for a Congressman to find opportunities that help both our country and our district. And, more specifically, how Tom Tancredo fails at his job:
I also recently received a letter from a small Colorado-based defense contractor, EOJT, which has developed innovative products that could save American lives in Iraq. Their number one product is exactly the kind of jammer described above. In other words, the U.S. House of Representatives just authorized 1.9 BILLION dollars for development of jammers to protect our troops...
...and we have a guy who already has one ready to go right here in Colorado!
Of course, this Colorado contractor couldn't even get a minute of Tom's time. Bill continues later:
One would think that a Colorado Congressman would at least TRY to get 10 million or so dollars of the 1.9 BILLION already appropriated for continued R&D for jammers to save the lives of our troops and bring jobs to his Colorado district. But he and his staff couldn't even be bothered to respond to Mr. Bell.
Tancredo is running with a slogan of "For A Secure America," but if he won't even help to secure the safety of our troops, or secure jobs for people in his district, how seriously are we supposed to take anything he says about security?
Here's a fantastic press release that was just put out by Operation Iraqi Freedom Veterans for Change, a group of American veterans from CD-6 who have all served in Iraq in the past 3+ years. I'm hoping this press release gets traction in the media. Please join these veterans this Sunday in support of Bill Winter.
As veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have become increasingly concerned that our Congressional Representative, Tom Tancredo, does not truly understand the nature of this war, ands we are appalled at his lack of action with regard to veteran’s issues.
Tom Tancredo has repeatedly disappointed us with his rhetoric. The struggle to win in Iraq, and the separate war on terror, can only be won when we empower those Muslims who choose moderation over extremism, and find political, rather than military, solutions to problems. Most of our top General’s, as well as those Generals who have retired from the military, have made this point very clear. Yet despite this, Mr. Tancredo has publicly advocated the bombing of Mecca, and further enraged otherwise moderate Muslims with his public letter to the Pope. A statesman should enable those who fight to win this war, not impair their effectiveness with useless rhetoric. His comments do not help the cause of fighting our enemies, instead they enable extremists to spread propaganda and push otherwise moderate Muslims toward extremism. These statements make our nation, and especially our deployed service members, less safe.
Representatives like Tancredo have become a rubber stamp for an administration who seems to expect the same action to produce a different result. "Stay the course,” they tell us. Yet our experience in Iraq tells us that staying the course will lead to more American deaths and thousands more life altering injuries, with little benefit to the security of our great country. It is curious to us that Mr. Tancredo had previously described the situation in Iraq as optimistically as the Bush Administration, at least according to his congressional web site as early as three weeks ago. Yet, as the American public seems to increasingly to understand that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, Tom Tancredo does not even address the issue and has taken his Iraq link off his web site.
Additionally, Tom Tancredo was given a zero-rating by the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) for his record on veterans issues. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) gave Tancredo only a “C”, for his support of the troops. As veterans of the Iraq war, we are tired of politicians saying they “Support the Troops” when their support consists only of putting a flag on their lapel, and spewing cheap rhetoric. Actions are what matter to the troops and to the veterans who come home after fighting for their country.
Shortly after we returned from our second tour in Iraq, we had the honor of standing in several funeral details for our brothers who had fallen in the second battle of Fallujah. We’ve witnessed the pain and hurt that these losses have brought to our fellow Coloradoans, so don’t tell us that this does not affect our state, and don’t tell us Iraq is not an issue worthy of attention on our Congressman’s web site.
Besides being veterans, we are also people in your communities. We care about our neighborhoods, our children, our district and our fellow service members. It does not matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, an Independent or someone undecided, we implore you to look past Tancredo’s rhetoric and instead look at his record.
On Sunday, October 29th, we will stand with Bill Winter as a sign of our support, and as a sign for political change, at his veteran’s rally at the Heather Ridge Country Club in Aurora. And in November, we will vote for a fellow Marine. We will be voting for an educator, a compassionate leader and someone who will work to put loyalty and integrity back into the representation of District 6. In November, we will be voting for Bill Winter.
Ok, so maybe he hasn't really entered 
RSS Feed
