Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told about 80 canvas volunteers at the Barack Obama presidential campaign headquarters in Denver that the future of the country rested on their shoulders.

"If he wins the state of Colorado, he wins the election," said Kennedy, an environmental activist. "And it's up to you."

On his radio show recently, Kennedy claimed,“There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls," and cited Colorado as an example.

But Kennedy steered clear of the topic at the Denver event. "He's been talking about the issue nationally a lot, but he's not that familiar with conditions on the ground in Colorado," explained Jennifer Stutsman, Colorado spokeswoman for the Obama campaign.

Other organizers urged early voting, claiming that 20,000 Democrats dropped out of long lines at polling places here in 2006.

"If we lose 20,000 voters this time, we may not win Colorado," said Obama field organizer Jesus Mata.

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., gave his review of tonight's night's presidential debate, saying, "Sen. Obama sounded and acted presidential, which he is and which he has been. I think we're on the way to victory, not only here in Colorado but also all across the nation."

Salazar, who joined Obama as the only freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate in 2004, said the first foreign policy test for the next president is Iraq.

"Sen. McCain has said that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years," said Salazar after attending a presidential debate viewing party at the home of former state senator Polly Baca in downtown Denver. "We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq today. Sen. Obama has clearly said we will move forward and we'll begin a withdrawal of our troops that ultimately will result in an orderly withdrawal and a greater peace in that region and building up our military back here at home again. So that is a strong contrast."

Asked about the difference between Obama and McCain in temperament, Salazar said, "There is a sharp difference between the two of them, including how they approach issues and how they work with their colleagues. I think Sen. Obama is inclusive. He will bring people together. He will not be a divisive force. And frankly, that's been the problem with Washington, D.C. It has been a place of great division under George Bush. Sen. Obama will be a uniter not a divider."

And McCain?

"He has his own erratic moments," said Salzar. "And frankly, among many of his Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate, they will tell you that they will have a difficult time working with him."

Don Gips, an executive at Level 3 Communications in Broomfield, picked up his tickets at a VIP table set up outside today's rally for Sen. Barack Obama in Westminster.



Gips, formerly domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore, has raised money for Obama and was an early supporter of his presidential campaign.

"I've been working with him for four years," said Gips. "He's a wonderful, inspirational leader. He reminds me of my old boss, Vice President Gore, in his vision for the country." Gips said he got to know Obama by writing "him an e-mail and ended up helping him early on when he was still building his Senate office."

Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is targeting Independents in Colorado’s suburbs, Latinos in the southern part of the state, and voters in Republican-dominated areas most Democratic candidates write off, a top strategist said today.

“You can’t simply compete where Democrats have done traditionally well. You have to compete in all areas,’’ said Robert Gibbs, senior strategist for the Illinois senator’s campaign. “It’s a microcosm of a lot of different states where you have important constituencies, you have growing suburbs but you also have red areas that Democrats have traditionally neglected.

“Changing the score of those areas could also change the outcome,’’ of who wins the election,’’ Gibbs added.

Gibbs spoke about Obama’s approach to Colorado at a breakfast with reporters. He discussed a number of topics, including the economy, congressional negotiations over the economic bailout bill, and whether the first presidential debate will happen Friday.

In Colorado, Obama is talking economics to attract voters, and the campaign is registering voters.

“Changing the makeup of the electorate is key to changing the outcome of the election,’’ Gibbs said.

The campaign believes it can get voters to the polls, using people in communities to talk with other people in the same communities, he said.

Republican John McCain's political director Mike DuHaime on Wednesday said Republicans expect to win Colorado.

“There is certainly a commonality between Sen. McCain being from Arizona, understanding Western issues, the same with Gov. Palin,’’ DuHaime said. “That commonality, that understanding of those issues is one that is going to come across.”

Both campaigns are targeting the Latino populations in Colorado and the West, he said at a lunch with reporters. McCain’s campaign also is putting resources in the Denver Metro area.

Democrats have won statewide races in Colorado are moderates, DuHaime said.

“If you look at Senator Obama, his record certainly doesn’t show that,’’ and Obama hasn’t ever bucked the interests of his party, DuHaime said. “I think that will ultimately resonate over time.”

The McCain camp is ramping up voter outreach, he said, last week calling or knocking on doors of more than one million homes throughout the country. The Republican party's ability to reach voters is better than it was in 2004 or 2006, he said.

"What we've got are battle-tested volunteers who have done it before,'' DuHaime said.

At today’s breakfast, Obama strategist Gibbs said he believes Friday's debate will happen as planned.

The commission running the presidential debates “has not talked to us in any way about changing what is planned to happen Friday,’’ Gibbs said.

“We’re prepared to take questions from (moderator) Jim Lehrer without John McCain,’’ Gibbs said of the Republican presidential candidate.

He later said of McCain “I think he’s going to come to the debate.”

Gibbs tried to lower expectations for Obama’s performance, saying that debates are not his forte and that McCain has “staked his candidacy on 26 years of Washington experience on foreign policy.”

In answering questions, Obama “sometimes takes 60 seconds to clear his throat,” Gibbs said. “He tends to get a question, describe the problem, tell a story, give some solutions.”

DuHaime made a similar effort Wednesday, saying that debates aren’t McCain’s preferred format for reaching voters.

"We know that Senator Obama is a phenominal debater,'' he said. "Senator McCain does not have that same reputation as a debater. But I think is message will come across."

The lunch was held prior to McCain announcing that he was stopping his campaign to work on the economic bailout package. Asked if the effort would fail without McCain’s support, DuHaime said that “Senator McCain’s clearly a leader that folks look to, but there are 100 U.S. senators, 435 members of Congress, they’ve all got to vote the way they feel they need to vote.”

Any election that offers stuff this funny needs to go down as one for the ages.

Here is Sarah Silverman.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dafdd1aa7b

And here is David Letterman (and Homer Simpson).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVTbXcpN2s&eurl=http://104.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml&nocache=0&up_prefs_

Congressional hopeful Betsy Markey has said she followed ethics advice in 2005 and divested her interest in technology company Syscom Services when she went to work for Sen. Ken Salazar in a position that potentially put her in contact with the same federal agencies her company received contracts from. 

But in video of an interview Markey gave Wade Norris for 1510 AM in the Fort Collins area she still claims partial ownership of the firm. Morris posted the interview on his blog Sept. 6, about a week before the Syscom questions surfaced. It appeared on YouTube in February.

"Almost 16 percent of our budget at Syscom Services, which is a company my husband and I own, our budget goes to health care," Markey says. (Statement at 4:20 marker.)

The Markey campaign and Salazar's office have maintained that Markey followed all ethics rules - in this instance laid out in an October 2005 in a letter from the Senate ethics committee - every step of the way. 

Syscom received at least $1.4 million in contracts while she served as a regional director for Salazar, a post in which she acted as a liaison between constituents and the federal agencies with which they had problems. The $1.4 million doesn't include $1.5 million Syscom earned in contracts in 2007 because Markey worked for Salazar for only part of the year. 

The campaign for Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave has pointed out that if, in fact, Markey did divest her interest in Syscom to her husband Jim Kelly as she said - then Syscom should have lost its special status as a woman-owned business.

But Syscom officials sought in January 2006 the woman-owned business status at a time when Markey worked in Salazar's office, according to the company's contract with the General Services Administration.

The status allowed Syscom to be listed on the GSA Web site federal agencies use to shop for contractors among other disadvantaged businesses. 

The Markey campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Folks bashing Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave for co-sponsoring a bill to boost profits made off the sale of gold coins may not have found the treasure chest of scandal they thought.

The bill - HR2883 now in House Ways and Means - would lower the gains tax on standard gold bullion to 15 percent from the 28 percent rate it receives as a "collectible," according to Diane Piret of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets, which is supporting the bill in Congress.

On Musgrave's financial disclosures, the Republican incumbent lists among her husband Steve's assets between $50,000 and $100,000 in gold coins and precious metals. The campaign confirms he's a lifelong collector of rarities.

But not so fast with that "a ha!"

Piret says the bill will affect the standardized coins and bars issued by the U.S. Mint and other governments and not the plundered booty from a Spanish galleon or ancient Roman currency.

A plain reading of the bill's language doesn't seem to make that distinction, however, and the Democratic Betsy Markey campaign stands by its charge that Musgrave is trying to enrich her husband through the legislation.

Markey spokesman Ben Marter says the bill still raises questions. 

Musgrave spokesman Jason Theilman, who apparently was not aware of the potential discrepancy, had an answer.

"Her husband is a coin collector," Theilman said. "Marilyn Musgrave is very proud to lower taxes on precious metals. She's very proud to lower income taxes, and guess what. She has an income."

The coin conundrum follows Musgrave's allegations yesterday that Markey may have simultaneously held a Senate staff position while her company received millions in federal contracts or that her husband's company inappropriately labeled itself a woman-owned business.

The two are battling for the 4th Congressional District seat.

John Andrews says I'm falling for liberal propaganda when I quote Alaska talk radio host Dan Fagan's searing critique of Sarah Palin's actions in the "Troopergate" matter.
I'm sure that will be a surprise to Alaskans, for whom Fagan is a kind of local Rush Limbaugh.
Fagan's a winger, John, and he - like George F. Will and David Brooks and other conservatives - has found something not to like about the notion of Palin as vice president.
Now, you can throw links at me from conservative web sites, John, which are there for just this kind of politically self-reinforcing function. And I can toss links back at you, from Talking Points Memo and similar neighborhoods on the left. And neither, we probably can agree, will get us much more than the party line.
What struck me about Fagan's column is that he is an Alaskan Limbaugh going after his own party's golden gal, because he believes she is abusing her power as governor.

Unlike Rush, Fagan doesn't swoon over Palin (whom the real Rush likes to leeringly refer to as "a babe"). However, in earlier columns, Fagan has been quite critical of her former brother-in-law, the state trooper. In fact, Fagan sides with Palin in the original dispute.
It is Palin's abuse of her power as an elected official that alarms Fagan. She used the influence of her office and back door channels to continue to persecute the guy after the disciplinary system had done its job, and then dismissed a veteran Alaska public safety official (and ex-Marine) who wouldn't bend to her pressure.
Now, Alaska is a small state, population-wise, and its political community is relatively tiny. Palin may have cut in front of Fagan at the supermarket, or riled him some other way.
I've never met the guy. Maybe he's just in it for ratings. But to me, he's making sense.
Sum total, at the end of the day: Palin's human, impulsive, and a bit vindictive. We all can probably live with that. It's the oldest political trick - reward your friends and punish your enemies.
But as anyone who has been there knows, it's the cover-up that kills you in the end, not the original sin. And the governor who called for the investigation herself, is now frantically stonewalling.

With polls showing Republican Sen. John McCain gaining support among white women, Democratic women in Congress will push the issues of equal pay, health care and protecting Social Security as they campaign for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

If women look at the records of the two candidates, they will support Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver, and several other female House members said today.

“Sen. McCain misses the mark for women’s health care and for children’s health care,’’ DeGette said. “Sen. McCain wants to radically restructure our nation’s health care system, which would hit women the hardest.”

The McCain health care plan would give a tax credit to people who buy their own insurance, which DeGette said would push people out of employer-sponsored plans, putting many people’s health insurance at risk.

McCain does not support legislation that would mandate equal pay for women and men in the same jobs, the women lawmakers said, something Obama supports.

McCain’s camp yesterday issued a statement with a Seattle Post-Intelligencer news story revealing that on average women who work for McCain in his Senate office make more than those who work in Obama’s. More women in McCain’s office hold higher-ranking and higher-paying jobs than those in Obama’s, the story said, with women working as three of McCain’s five highest paid aides.

The women lawmakers did not speak directly about Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin. Her name came up only once, in a reference to the “McCain-Palin” ticket.

The women lawmakers are talking about McCain because he is the presidential nominee, DeGette said, but Palin’s positions are similar to McCain’s.

The women also rejected the idea that supporters of Democratic primary contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are shifting to McCain.

DeGette will campaign for and act as a surrogate for Obama in Colorado through the election.

"My fellow conservatives, remember how frustrating it was when Bill Clinton committed perjury and liberals looked the other way.

"As conservatives, we are no better unless we demand full disclosure from our governor when it comes to Troopergate."

 

Hmmm.

I'm inclined to give Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt until I see how she copes with the pressure of the campaign and her debate with Joe Biden.

But this column from one of Alaska's leading conservative columnists was startling.

Maybe there is more to this than we thought.