Déjà Vu all over again in the Fifth

All the same candidates who sent Doug Lamborn to office due to the vanity of their (would be) glory are getting back in the race for Doug's Fifth District seat. They probably think they can do a better job than one of the most conservative and clueless members of this congress - Doug Lamborn:

Bentley Rayburn officially launched his campaign Thursday to unseat a fellow Republican, Congressman Doug Lamborn, by touting himself as “best positioned to reunite this party.”

With a 3 person primary. I didn't think there were that many colors of convservative, but go for it, guys...

He also reiterated positions from his last run, including his opposition to abortion, support for gun rights and desire for more fiscal conservatism. Rayburn spoke briefly about the need to strengthen the local economy and stop the exodus of high-paying, high tech jobs from the area.

No promise to bring Jesus to Iraq? That was one of my favorites. At least he acknowledges there are other issues to be solved. But I highly doubt as a Conservative Christian General he'll do anything to reign this in:

When conservatives subvert the rule of law … to enable torture, and when only one man gets to decide who gets detained and tortured, they are no longer conservatives. They are fascists. And they need not just to be defeated; they need to be repudiated.

Who are Bent's new best friends?

A number of new loyalists, including former supporters of 2006 candidates Lionel Rivera, Duncan Bremer and Democrat Jay Fawcett, came out for Rayburn’s kickoff.

Unfortunately, this district will continue to send a highly partisan ideologue of questionable competence to this seat. That does no one any good, including those whom this person will claim to represent.

Thanks alot, voters.........

We have a better sense of humor, too!

The Colorado Democratic Party wants you to be able to pronounce "Ahmadinejad" correctly, smoothly, and without embarrassing yourself. The CDP also wants to remind you to make your monthly contribution to keep us working for you. To learn how to do both these things, go to

http://www.coloradodems.us/events/ahmadinejad

Thank you!

Just one more example of how Republicans DO NOT support the troops

Oh, but if you criticize their Boy General you get censured:

Approximately 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently returned home after serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq. They served 22 months — “longer than any other ground combat unit” — recieved nine fatalities, and were awarded dozens of Purple Hearts.

But the Army wrote the orders for 1,162 of these soldiers for 729 days, making them ineligible for full educational benefits under the GI Bill.

Do you get it yet?

If Ken Salazar listened to Robert Byrd instead of Joe Lieberman

He wouldn't have voted for the Bush Administration and its Iranian psychosis:

On the Senate floor today, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) decried the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran that 72 of his colleagues voted for, calling it an exercise in “international verbal spitball.” Byrd warned his colleagues against “sleep-walking” into another war, saying “I hope that we can stop this war of words before it becomes a war of bombs.”

Byrd added that the Senate’s “chest-pounding” and “saber-rattling” towards Iran was “deeply troubling,” as the Iraq war has shown “all too clearly where it leads”:

It is deeply troubling to see the U.S. Senate joining the chest-pounding and saber-rattling of the Bush administration. I am no apologist for the Iranian regime, anymore than I was for Saddam Hussein, but I fear that we may become entangled in another bloody quagmire. We have been down this path before. We have seen all too clearly where it leads.

And maybe he wouldn't have supported Alberto "The Torturer" Gonzales for the nation's chief lawyer job.

Lamborn Luvs Mercenaries

Pacified at SquareState expresses the outrage. Doug Lamborn doesn't seem to mind a fellow Christian making Billions of taxpayer dollars as our troops (still) die for lack of equipment.

I do.

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

Contact: Phill Emmert
Title: Advertising Sales Manager
Email: phill.emmert@citcomm.com
Phone: (719) 593-2705
Fax: (719) 593-2727
http://www.kvor.com

I'm sure Phill will understand. And maybe Dan Mandis, too.

Republicans can't be trusted on health care - the most important domestic issue in 2008?

This applies to state and national polls. Repeat it high and wide!

Abhorrent Gonzales

I always said Ken Salazar got suckered by Karl Rove into humping the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for AG. This proves it:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship is a fool's errand. Ken would do Colorado, and our nation, a favor by realizing that simple fact.

Phony "compassionate conservative" Vetoes S-CHIP

Them damned kids should use the free market and get their own stinking insurance:

Springs City Attorney determined to punish St. Patty's Day 7 2

The urge to purge any dissent in our "democracy" flows all the way down to the City Attorney of Colorado Springs. The example has been set by the Bush Administration and it is clear: if you disagree in any way with our views you will be drummed out of government, you will be punished, you willed be called a threat and your facts will be obscured.

And that attitude is alive and well in the Colorado Springs City Attorney's office:

The St. Paddy’s Day 7 — anti-war activists arrested for disrupting the annual parade, in case anyone didn’t know — has been winnowed to just 2, after their first court appearance ended in a mistrial. But we wish the city would just drop the charges against these two, as well. That’s not because they’re innocent, but because we might snap if we have to endure much more of this. We’re all for justice being served and all that. But this isn’t a case in which obvious “good guys” and “bad guys” can be found.

The 7 evidently bent or broke parade rules in trying to turn a non-political event into an anti-war protest. The parade’s organizers and the cops probably overreacted when the protestors refused to leave. This played right into the hands of the activists, who are now stretching their 15 minutes of fame into a half hour, posing as victims of alleged police brutality and First Amendment rights violations.

If the city attorney is trying to make a point, it’s lost on us. It seems a waste of public resources and court space to prosecute charges that might mean a $500 fine and 90 days in jail for the defendants. If she’s that bored, there’s a Douglas Bruce ballot measure that needs monkey-wrenching.

I rarely agree with the Gazette, but on this issue they are correct. Patricia Kelly works for us. If you want to politely let her know what how you feel about this issue go here or call 719-385-5909.

Fighting Dem Eric Massa calls out "pompous coward" Rush

Oh man, this is why I loved the Fighting Dems in '06. Eric Massa is running again this year:

Macaca Wadhams has kept the Colorado GOP in tatters

Or, as Stygius reports at SquareState, maybe it's the good old Free Market talking:

Mirroring the financial collapse and organizational chaos of the NRCC, the ToTheRight blog grimly reflects on the Dick Wadhams era here in Colorado:

After operating more than $500,000 in the red for nearly the last year, the Colorado Republican Party tried last week to move toward the black with a fundraiser hosted by Bruce "Battery" Benson. Unfortunately for the party, even though the fundraiser was apparently successful, a previously unknown debt of more than $100,000 was discovered tucked away in a corner of the office. Worse yet, former Colorado GOP Executive Director Hans Gullickson's filing system evidently consisted of stuffing papers wherever he could, so the additional $100,000 could be just the beginning.

So, what is a party that has hovered at a half-million dollars in debt, without signs of erasing it anytime soon, to do? Well, with new Colorado GOP Chairman/Executive Director Dick Wadhams firing but not replacing the field staff and keeping - of all the idiots to work for state party - Cameron "Peekaboo" Lynch, the party doesn't have much to work with or look forward to. No grassroots network or staff to build the party. No chance of winning back the Legislature next year. No candidates to contest races in the 2nd, 3rd and 7th congressional districts. A primary in the 5th Congressional District. No exciting candidate for U.S. Senate, and no winning staff to help him. No presidential caucus or primary. No message. No agenda. No stop to the liberals laughing it up. One could be forgiven for thinking the party might as well close up shop and hope someone picks up the pieces, because nobody's going to send this party checks if it doesn't get its act together soon.

Granted, Wadhams managed to fly in Dick Cheney for a party fundraiser...a fundraiser consisting of twenty whole guests. This quickly answers the question of how many people are left in Colorado who really want to rub shoulders with Dick Cheney: not even two dozen.

The crap is flowing.....heh.

Is Iraq funding in its Last Throes?

Dems saying they're going to halt unlimited funding for The Iraq-mire:

Rep. David Obey (D-WI), who spoke today with Reps. John Murtha (D-PA) and Jim McGovern (D-MA), says he has "absolutely no intention of reporting out of Committee anytime in this session of Congress any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo." He laid our three conditions for the White House to meet:

1. Establish as a goal the end of U.S. involvement in combat operations by January of 2009.

2. Ensure that troops would have adequate time at home between deployments as outlined in the Murtha and Webb amendments.

3. Demonstrate a determination to engage in an intensive, broad scale diplomatic offensive involving other countries in the region.

Can't wait to see how Colorado's representatives come out on this.....

VoteVets pushes back against Rush "Anal Cyst" Limbaugh

Hitting back at the country's biggest fattest coward:

Listen here, phonies

Major General John Batiste on Countdown:

GENERAL JOHN BATISTE, ADVISOR, VETVOTE.ORG & U.S. ARMY, RETIRED: Good evening.

Keith OLBERMANN: How do you respond to the Limbaugh comment, and we‘re going with the original one from yesterday that service members who advocate are, quote, “phony soldiers”?

BATISTE: If a two-time combat veteran, first Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, one of the two U.S. brigade commanders in Bosnia, 12 months that began in December of 1995, 33-month commander of the 1^st Infantry Division with duty in Kosovo, Turkey, and 13 months combat operations in Iraq, West Point graduate, son of a career infantry soldier and son-in-law of a career special forces soldier, if that‘s the definition of a phony, I don‘t get it.

You know, the fact is that more than 70 percent of this nation does not agree with the current strategy in Iraq and I‘m here to tell you that our Army and Marine Corps are a reflection of the society from which they came and the same percentages exist there.

OLBERMANN: General, if Mr. Limbaugh was trying to be genuine when he claimed he had been referring to the one actual phony soldier guy, pretending to be a soldier, did he not sort of dismiss any validity to the argument when he added more actual soldiers including Congressman Murtha, the decorated Vietnam vet, to his list?

BATISTE: Absolutely. That‘s exactly what he did and Congressman John Murtha joins a whole range of great elected officials like Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. And Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina who understand that this nation right now does not have a focused regional or global strategy to defeat worldwide Islamic extremism and they understand that this nation is not mobilized in any dimension to accomplish what we have to do.

OLBERMANN: I‘m a little confused about military protocol here and perhaps you of all people, who has been on the show, could clarify this. If serving or retired personnel question any aspect of the war, they are branded as playing politics and really probably get less or more attention than they deserve being called phony soldiers. But if the president sends a serving four-star general up to the House, up to Capitol Hill as his political spokesman, really being knee deep in the political process, that‘s okay? That‘s his duty? Am I missing something here, sir?

BATISTE: You know, Keith, I have enormous respect for Dave Petraeus and he‘s in a position. Listen, this administration is using David Petraeus. They well understand that David Petraeus is focused on the military component of strategy in Iraq.

What they‘re missing is that there is no regional or global strategy to defeat worldwide Islamic extremism. And by the way, al Qaeda exists in about 60 countries in the world, not just Iraq. It‘s disingenuous. It‘s putting David Petraeus in a horrible situation.

OLBERMANN: And the results have been what we‘ve seen. It‘s solved nothing. The Petraeus part of this, not the surge—we‘re separating those two subjects out—but Petraeus‘ role as a politician all of a sudden has served no one well.

Bill Ritter: Governor, Leader......Democrat

Great report by Leslie at CoCo with a video interview with the Guv.