U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter stopped by International Paper this week to shake some hands and visit with the 100 workers there who make products from, well paper.

We are glad to see the congressman meeting with real constituents, but our liberal readers might want to take a seat on the feinting couches before we make the big reveal.

Paper comes from trees. 

That’s right! International Paper actually cuts down trees and uses it to make the products Perlmutter mentioned in this tweet.

The Golden facility of @IntlPaperCo provides packaging and services for e-commerce, food, beverage and industrial products. They currently have about 100 employees and it was a pleasure meeting with some of them this week. Thanks for letting me stop by! pic.twitter.com/7U5WrjxE2a

— Rep. Ed Perlmutter (@RepPerlmutter) August 19, 2018

And then you know what happens? They plant more trees.

That’s the great thing about paper. It comes from a renewable resource that can be planted, maintained, and harvested over and over to create products that consumers demand.

Like newspapers. Okay, that was a bad example since newspapers aren’t in demand anymore.

We’ll go with aspirin and other medications, henna dye, your beautiful wooden floors, and of course, paper products from International Paper.

So bravo, Perlmutter, for stepping outside your comfort zone and meeting with folks who work in the natural resources industry.

Hours before President Trump’s announcement his administration will begin the process of letting states regulate coal plant emissions, some Colorado Democrats boldly predicted the world will come to an end.

And then there was U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who predicted Colorado won’t be affected but we’ll all probably die anyway.

Why won’t Colorado be affected? First, because Obama’s regulation will take years to overturn and might not actually happen.

Plus, Bennet says Colorado already has tough safeguards in place to reduce emissions.

According to Colorado Public Radio:

That’s because the Centennial State began its shift away from coal nearly a decade ago, with a state law called the Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act. The law set in motion a move toward more use of renewable energy and natural gas and away from coal-fired power plants.

“In the absence of leadership from Washington, Colorado will continue to reduce our emissions, grow our clean energy economy, and fulfill our obligation to safeguard the environment for the next generation,”said Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in a statement Tuesday morning.

But when he stood with fellow Democratic senators during a press conference, Bennet said the move will cause great damage to Colorado.

LIVE: With my colleagues talking about President Trump’s efforts to gut the Clean Power Plan and the damage this will do to Colorado. Tune in: https://t.co/A8rKy36tk3

— Michael Bennet (@SenBennetCO) August 21, 2018

Bennet is such a hypocrite.

Meanwhile, DeGette says exactly 1,400 people will die prematurely due to Trump’s action.

That could prove to be an interesting autopsy.

As we all have been instructed, climate change is man-made and causes droughts and forest fires and record rain and floods — depending on the weather.

By proposing to roll back Obama’s regulation, what Trump is saying is the state’s, not the federal government, have the authority to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants.

And that states like Colorado already have some of the toughest regulations in the nation, even stricter than what the EPA mandated, and states should be left to govern in this instance.

Over the weekend, the Colorado Democratic Party Oppo Paper Times Recorder reported (with outrage) that radio hosts Chuck Boniwell and Julie Hayden called Democratic Rep. Faith Winter “overweight” and “unpleasant.”

They should apologize.

No, not because they offered opinions of her. (We don’t know if she’s overweight or not as we have not weighed her and as for her demeanor, we’ll leave that up to you.) But because they’re intellectually lazy.

There are 53 things to ding Winter on besides her weight and demeanor. Here are just a few:

1. She expects everyone, except for her, to take public transportation.
2. There were rampant inconsistencies within her accusations against slimeball and former Democratic Rep. Steve Lebsock.
3. She inexplicably keeps using the hashtag #WinterIsComing as if that’s some kind of positive?
4. She’s one of radical environmentalist and perennial loser Tom Steyer’s favorite investments.
5. She trolls public officials for trying to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Chuck and Julie can apologize to Faith Winter if they want. It would be the nice thing to do. But, more importantly, they should apologize to their listeners for being so lazy.

This “dynamic duo” proves again that they’re out to lose the battle to lose the war.

State Sen. Kerry Donovan is taking a cue from Jared Polis’s gubernatorial campaign, and counting on Denver and Boulder Democrats to get her reelected.

The problem here is, her district isn’t even on the Front Range.

As a matter of fact, Donovan is the only Democratic state senator left standing in rural western Colorado.

And in order to get reelected to her seat that covers seven Western Slope counties, she is actually courting metro Democrats to campaign for her.

“Campaigns are exhausting as many of you know, and when you have someone new sign up from Arvada or Littleton or Boulder or Denver who suddenly wants to make phone calls for you to Gunnison County, holy cow, that keeps me going for like three days!”

RevealPolitics has the video:




Apparently, this is how she won her first race, and we suspect her voters in Chaffee, Delta, Eagle, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Lake and Pitkin Counties would be very surprised to learn this is where she relies on political support.

Well, Pitkin County, maybe not so much.

Her opponent is an upstanding Republican from Paonia, Olen Lund, who served on the Delta County Commission from 2004 through 2012. He was also a Colorado water commissioner and served as chairman of the Painted Sky Resource Conservation and Development Council.

No wonder Donovan is so nervous.

Now that Western Slope voters know who their state senator has to rely on in order to run her campaign — front range Democrats — we doubt those folks will fall for this Polis-style of campaigning.

Late on Friday, a story broke that the prank to put a portrait of Russian President Putin in place of a portrait of President Trump was executed by ProgressNow’s Alan Franklin. As if anyone else would have done such a lame and childish prank. But Franklin didn’t do it alone. He enlisted a young aide to Speaker Crisanta Duran, who has subsequently lost her security access to the Capitol and was disciplined.

It’s pathetic that Franklin and ProgressNow troll-in-chief, Ian Silverii, husband of state Rep. Brittany Pettersen, would convince a young staffer to compromise her career to help them pull off their meaningless prank without regard to her future.

9News, which broke the story, said that Silverii’s status as a political commentator for the news channel was under review. Of course, Silverii is allowed to blow up his own career all he wants, but using a staffer like that is pretty low-brow.

We aren’t alone in our surprise that Democrats would so callously compromise the security of the State Capitol. Senate President Kevin Grantham also issued a statement of the stupid prank in a press release:

“Political pranks are one thing, but it crosses a line, in my opinion, when public spaces in the Capitol are misused and abused the way they were in this case. This building belongs to all the people of Colorado and I’m frankly shocked that anyone who works on staff here — and works for the top Democrat in the House, no less — would be a party to something as inappropriate and over the line as this.”

It’s bad enough to compromise security for a prank, but for one as dumb is this one is just idiotic.

Why is Polis still campaigning for Congress when he’s running for governor?

According to a Where’s Waldo-like piece written by Joey Bunch, Polis is still holding congressional town hall meetings on the public dime — four of them since the primary.

That’s really strange, considering Congress will only be in session 17 full days until the election.
After the election, Polis will serve in a lame duck capacity for another 17 and a half days.

With the millions of his own riches Polis is using to buy the election, one would think he could at least pay for his own town hall costs rather than sticking it to the taxpayers.

Apparently, Polis isn’t granting many public appearances, or at least few are publicized, Colorado Politics reports.

His Facebook calendar lists five public events since the primary, and the campaign Twitter account has two. He touts his endorsement from NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado four times and his endorsement from former President Obama six times. (Plus a poll he created asking voters if they agreed with the state law that classifies a hot dog as a sandwich.)

An unnamed Democratic political operative tried to cover Polis’s rear, reminding Bunch “that Polis is in Washington much of the week to do his work as a congressman.”

We checked the congressional calendar, and the House has been in session exactly 14 days since the primary two months ago.

And, Congress has been in summer recess since July 27.

Meanwhile, Walker Stapleton is still working full time as our state treasurer, and he’s managed to attend 17 events.

Polis might indeed be spending more time in Washington than Colorado, but it’s not congressional business that’s keeping him there.

In what is likely to be described by him as a “big f___ing deal,” former Vice President and Chief Gaffe Master Joe Biden endorsed Jason Crow in the 6th District Congressional race.

Unfortunately, Biden didn’t actually show up to embarrass endorse Crow in person.

We’re not sure Biden’s even allowed to appear in public anymore. We suspect the Democratic National Committee has him locked away in an attic.

Disappointingly, the endorsement came in written form from a Beltway flack.

In the statement, Biden acknowledged Crow went to college and was in the military. That’s about it. Oh, and the Democrat said he is proud to endorse another Democrat for office.

Completely non-eventful, but the response from Crow is what caught our attention.

“He’s a model for the kind of servant leadership I believe we need to bring back to Washington, and I’m honored to stand with him as I make my case this fall.”

Seriously dude?! This is your role model?




A politician who asks a man in a wheelchair to stand up for a round of applause? Who introduced the president as Barack America? Who likes to talk about lubrication and taking dumps?

We hoped Crow would be taking Biden out on the campaign trail with him. Biden would be a real hit with minorities when he praising them for being articulate and bright, or asks how the convenience store business is faring.

Yesterday, Colorado Politics published an op-ed by Julie Gorte in support of Xcel Energy’s Colorado Energy Plan, a proposal that would shutter two of the state’s cheapest and most reliable power plants (not to mention cleanest) and replace them with less reliable and super expensive wind and solar sources.

Using Gorte to carry its torch is a strange approach by the public utility. Gorte, senior vice president for sustainable investing at Impax Asset Management LLC and Pax World Funds, sits on the investment committee of Wallace Funds, which is one of the biggest proponents of the fossil fuel divestment campaign across America.

This begs the question: is Xcel’s Colorado Energy Plan a veiled divestment strategy? Or is Xcel hostage to an extravagant investor activism campaign by the likes of divestment activists?

What would a broader Xcel divestment look like for us little people? A disaster. The Colorado Energy Plan is likely to result in jacked-up rates for everyone who pays a monthly bill to Xcel.

Not that any of this matters to environmental extremists like Gorte. In fact, this green utopia that divestment proponents dream about is not about cost, but rather about putting big, “evil” oil and gas out of business.

Here’s the problem with doing that: Colorado’s oil and gas industry provides an economic boost of over $31 billion per year, and supports 230,000 jobs in the state. What happens when all of that money and all of those jobs disappear?

You guessed it: a massive cut in local and state tax revenues. So, for those of you who like the idea of a green future, but also, ya know, like functioning hospitals and basic public services, it’s not looking like Xcel’s Colorado Energy Plan is the plan for you.

Just don’t tell Julie Gorte and her divestment BFFs.

Former IT staffer Imran Awan who worked for U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette before he was fired after unauthorized access of congressional computer systems will be sentenced Tuesday for separate bank fraud crimes.

You’ll never believe his lawyer’s arguments for keeping Awan out of prison.

Chris Gowen says his Pakistani client shouldn’t have to go to jail because Republicans and President Trump are mean and the media conspired against his client.

The sentencing memo was obtained by the Daily Caller, who has cornered the market on the continuing saga of this scandal.

Gowen suggested that Trump, Republicans and the media were responsible for Imran losing his Capitol Hill job, despite that the former IT aide was banned from the House computer network immediately following the internal investigation and before anyone outside of a small cadre on Capitol Hill knew about it.

“The 18 months of insane media attention and false public accusations against Imran unfairly cost Imran his job (not one accusation about Imran’s work on the Hill has been sustained),” the sentencing memo read.

The lawyer also said Awan should be spared jail and fined only $4,000 because Trump engaged in “incoherent rambling” about the former Capitol Hill staffer.

We have to admit, if we were president when this mind-boggling scandal unravelled, we’d be rambling incoherently too, in expletives!

PeakNation™ will recall that Awan was trying to flee the country with bags of money he fraudulently obtained from a congressional bank when he was arrested.

DeGette has refused to comment on this frightening scandal and security leaks that are summarized here and here.

The sentencing memo may sound like a pie-in-the-sky request, but considering it comes from a lawyer who used to be an aide for Hillary Clinton, to an Obama-appointed judge, it’s not so far-fetched that Awan will be a free man next week.

We can count on one hand how many tweets we typically see from U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in a day — 17 this month.

He’s never been a big communicator with his constituents through social media or actual, in-person town halls.

So repeated tweets in a matter of hours from his office caught our eye as we scrolled through. We were moving fairly quickly and presumed it was all about fire safety and evacuation information that many western politicos have posted in recent days.

Turns out Bennet was tweeting about newspaper editorials from across the state bashing his chief nemesis, President Trump.

We posted earlier about this coordinated event with more than 300 newspaper editors across the country to run editorials in the Sunday paper bashing the president because he says mean things about them.

Looks like Colorado papers are running all theirs online Thursday, and Bennet’s office was right there trolling behind them to push that Republican-bashing message into his social media echo chamber.

They posted 10 tweets in just three hours.

“The role journalism plays in our free society is too crucial to allow this degradation to continue. We aren’t the enemy of the people. We are the people. We aren’t fake news. We are your news & we struggle night/day to get the facts right.” @DurangoHerald https://t.co/bWNcg2iFMh

— Michael Bennet (@SenBennetCO) August 16, 2018

The Colorado participating newspapers in the bashathon include:

Denver Post
Boulder Daily Camera
Aurora Sentinel
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Durango Herald
Pueblo Chieftain
Colorado Springs Gazette, wait, what?

We’ll give them all read, so you don’t have to, and we’ll pass on any gems of wisdom, if any of the editorial writers actually stumble upon one.

We seriously doubt Bennet read a single one of them. His press secretary was either sucking up to her sources, or congressional Democrats are coordinating their own effort to use all these editorials for their political advantage.