Biffster’s World

In case you hadn’t noticed already, we endorse Bill Ritter for Governor. There’s many reasons why, including the fact that we really love his ‘Colorado Opportunity Pledge’:

• Taking Colorado from the bottom 10 states in terms of child immunizations to the top 10 within two years.
• Working toward health-care coverage for all by introducing a legislative reform package within a year of taking office.
• Establishing a more efficient state budgeting process and more effective management system that has saved 2% to 6% of general-fund spending in other states.
• Revamping Colorado’s transportation system and examining the transportation-funding structure so that we can solve the state’s biggest transportation-related needs, including the I-70 mountain corridor.
• Getting more children into early childhood education, injecting renewed rigor and relevance into our K-12 system, and keeping college affordable – all designed to provide Colorado companies with the best-educated workforce in the nation.
• Establishing Colorado as a national renewable-energy leader by maximizing our sustainable resources, such as sun, wind, and agricultural crops.

Ritter is a very level-headed, intelligent, articulate, personable candidate, and I think he would make a very good governor. He will undo some of the crap that Bill Owens has put the state through, while instituting new, needed policies (especially his renewable-energy plank).

Friday was a bad news day for the Bush administration. The truth is coming out, which is a bad thing for an administration that relies so much on lies and half-truths. The last thing that the Bush administration wants aired is the truth. Yet the truth has a habit of always being discovered, always being freed. It is inevitable that, eventually, someone will hear the truth, and then the truth will spread.

First up was the truth about Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Quoting the Associated Press article (via http://news.yahoo.com):

Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.

Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward” al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

The Bush administration has been trying to tie Iraq and al-Qaida together ever since they started trying to push for the Iraq war. But not only was their no connection between Saddam and al-Qaida, we now know that Hussein didn’t even like al-Qaida. Ironically enough, Saddam agreed with us when it came to al-Qaida. If we hadn’t have invaded Iraq, Saddam would’ve worked to keep al-Qaida out of Iraq. By attacking and destablizing Iraq’s government, we opened the door for al-Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq.

Not good. Definitely not good.

The second bit of news that came out over the weekend is that our intelligence agencies can’t find hide nor hair of Osama Bin Laden (via the Washington Post):

The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama
bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years.
Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world — no tips from
informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any
satellite image — has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader,
according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

“The handful of assets
we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence” that
could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who
said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has
gone “stone cold.”

Now, this would already be bad. But this is even worse news, because it turns out that we had a chance to captura Osama in Tora Bora:

This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and
on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by
the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking on a
trail toward Pakistan at the end of the battle of Tora Bora in December
2001, when U.S. forces came close but failed to capture him. [Emphasis mine]

We had the opportunity to capture the perpetrator of the most gruesome attack ever on American soil. We were able to get him on videotape. But instead of concentrating all of our forces on Tora Bora to track Osama down and bring him to justice, we instead started reassigning forces for the upcoming invasion of Iraq.

It is very good that this information is coming to light. As more and more information is released, more people will have to take notice.

The tide is turning.

This was fun and unexpected: I had to stop by the local DMV to renew my driver’s license this morning. In Colorado, you can register to vote at the DMV, so the counter person asked me if I wanted to register. I asked her if I could change my voter affiliation, and she said “yes,” but sounded kinda resigned as she did so. She asked what I wanted to change it to, and I said “Democrat.” She proceeded to pump her fist in the air and say, “Yeah!” We chatted for a little bit, both agreeing that this area is far too Republican, but that things were definitely changing.

That’s what I’m talking about!

So why do I like Bill Winter, besides the fact that he is trying to unseat the possibly-racist Tom Tancredo? Aside from being an alternative to Tom, Bill actually has some solid ideas that he is running on. One of those is support for alternative energy sources:

“We may be the only industrialized country in the world that hasn’t
fully connected the dots between energy policy (and) global warming,”
Warner rallied the crowd. “As leaders of the world, (the United States)
could end up reversing the policy (of) ‘let’s go borrow money from
China to buy oil from parts of the world that don’t like us.’ Not only
could we create thousands - if not millions - of American jobs, we
might just save the planet along the way!”

It’s amazing the difference between Winter and Tancredo. It’s like the difference between day and night. Bill Winter is actually sane, intelligent, and cares what happens to the world, and to Colorado. Tancredo just wants to round up and deport all Mexicans, whether they are in our country legally or not. Nothing else matters to him. Or at least it doesn’t appear to.

The choice is obvious, fellow citizens of Highlands Ranch: vote Bill Winter for Congress!