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April 15, 2010 05:37 AM UTC

Photoshopstroturfing, Anyone?

  • 137 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE #2: The Hill now has a story up, titled “Bennet challenger photoshopped black woman into banner.” This does not appear to be going over very well, folks.

THURSDAY UPDATE: The Denver Post’s Susan Greene, not amused:

Andrew Romanoff’s campaign is not only doctoring pictures but also accusing “every other political campaign” of doing so too…

The most obvious manipulation is the insertion of a woman who appears prominently in the center of the picture just between the words “Andrew Romanoff United States Senate” and the image of the candidate. She is African-American. Another man whose likeness was digitally added, prominently, to the picture appears to be Latino. Several more supporters inserted in the scene are smiling admiringly toward the candidate.

The effect is to make Romanoff’s crowd of boosters look bigger, more adoring and more racially diverse than in the original snapshot taken in Denver’s Washington Park in September.

“It’s simply repositioning them,” Roy Teicher, the campaign’s latest spokesman, says of the photograph he describes as a “collage” and “montage” of supporters who attended the event.

“Those minority folks were absolutely at the rally,” he adds. “We were just simply moving around random people for aesthetic reasons. It’s absolutely an accepted technique. Every campaign does it.” [Pols emphasis]…

Romanoff has struggled more than just photographically with authenticity.

Less easy to digitally manipulate is the record of the former state House speaker, who’s portraying himself as the progressive in the Senate race. Romanoff was co-chair of the Democratic Leadership Council – a kabal of the very kind of Bill Clinton-Ken Salazar-Bill Ritter-style centrists that real progressives are sick of.

It looks like Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff is trying on Marc Holtzman’s platform shoes (and his newest spokesman isn’t winning any points with his “those minority folks” comment). We’ll let the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels explain:

A photo montage on Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff’s website was manipulated to make it appear as though an African-American supporter was standing directly at his side in the shot…

[Andrea] Mosby said Wednesday she has no problem with what happened, and Romanoff’s campaign said it did nothing wrong in putting together a series of photos that appear to be one.

“We’re not putting in someone who wasn’t at the rally. We do nothing that suggests the rally is bigger than it was,” [Pols emphasis] said campaign spokesman Roy Teicher.

“The practice of using Photoshop is absolutely accepted under these circumstances.”

We’ll leave it to you to answer questions of impropriety about the use of Ms. Mosby’s image in particular, though if you look closely you can see the crude Photoshop cut just to her right–misrepresentation or not, that’s just bad form.

But we will take issue with the suggestion that these multiple crowd shots were not spliced together for the express purpose of suggesting “the rally is bigger than it was.” For what other purpose would you splice multiple crowd shots together? To claim otherwise is, well, silly. It wouldn’t even be worth mentioning if Sacrificial Spokeslamb #4 hadn’t denied it, everybody would have just taken the fact that it’s a giant Photoshopped crowd as a given.

Almost forgot, Holtzman:

The last time doctored photos were an issue in a campaign was in 2006 when Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman sent out a brochure with pictures of him and presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The photos had been altered to make Holtzman appear taller.

His campaign said at the time that unaltered photos were sent to the design company, and must have been changed by the staff there.

Holtzman, reached in London, laughed when he heard the issue of a doctored campaign photo had come up again…

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137 thoughts on “Photoshopstroturfing, Anyone?”

      1. Considering the diary at the bottom of the front page right now was posted Sat Apr 10, 2010 at 09:29:58 AM MDT, or about four and a half days ago.

      1. Just chill out, Wade and the AR supporter crew.

        Jacking this thread has not been kosher.This whole thread was a bunch of lighthearted jokes until you, JTB and the crew came in to conduct some character assassination.

        In the course of this story about a stupid Photoshop mistake you guys have said a lot. You have said that Bennet is supporting Dodd’s FinReg bill because he would “get rich” off of it. You said he was hiring canvassers as part of his staff to make it appear in house. You accused his comm director of using Rovian tactics. You derided his supporters, by name. You derided his staff, by name. You accused Bennet of defunding an urban school district intentionally for….. what exactly?

        Who is using the Rovian tactics here?

        1. this whole thread was a bunch of lighthearted jokes until you, JTB and the crew came in to conduct some character assassination.

          lighthearted as this?


          we will take issue with the suggestion that these multiple crowd shots were not spliced together for the express purpose of suggesting “the rally is bigger than it was.” For what other purpose would you splice multiple crowd shots together? To claim otherwise is, well, silly

          as you all can witness here –

          Colorado pols and friends in full spin  

          2. “It wouldn’t even be worth mentioning if Sacrificial Spokeslamb #4 hadn’t denied it”

            Sums it up pretty well, which is of course why you stopped quoting where you did.

    2. Why is Colorado Pols spending all of its clout on a photoshop ‘story’ when there is plenty of information implicating Chris Romer, Bennet and Boasberg in manipulating public departments (such as the Teacher’s pension) to invest in risky derivative swaps?

      If I weighed the scales of justice, this photoshop story would be light as a feather, while Bennet’s implication in the swaps weighed as heavy as a brick.

      1. Wade, the DeadGovs have been told by Lyn Bartels that this is a real story and told by the other hack gossip columnist there Susan Greene that the DPS Swaps are a non-issue – never mind the piece in EdNews that says there might actually be problems or the recent Rolling Stone spread about what Lyn & Susie say isn’t really a problem – http://www.rollingstone.com/po… AND Democracy Now on the issue of swaps http://www.democracynow.org/20…

        Let’s be clear about how reporting by Bartels and Greene works: Bennet or Kincaid say it, they type it  Pretty nice arrangement if you can get it.

        1. is the new age of the pamphleteers.

          I am one of them.

          http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…


          Senate appointee Michael Bennet was formerly at the head of Denver Public Schools. He was at the helm when the decision was made to invest the teachers’ pension fund into a derivative ‘swap’ deal. Now, two years later, Denver Public Schools is paying about 3 million per month in losses on this swap.

             DPS (Denver Public Schools) entered into negotiations with JP Morgan and CitiGroup, agreeing to issue fixed-rate bonds secured by DPS school buildings and other properties. DPS then began discussion to enter into an interest-rate swap agreement with JP Morgan, Bank of America and the Royal Bank of Canada. We believe that following ensued: DPS entered into a swap transaction, believing that interest rates would stay high. As recent financial news tells us, interest rates fell. We are concerned that this may have translated to a loss of taxpayer dollars.



          I wonder if the local SEIU chapter will stand by its endorsement of the newly appointed Senator Michael Bennet, who has close ties these Wall street banks and was responsible for this ‘swap’ when SEIU international is now calling for a sweeping investigation of these ‘swaps’.

          In the face of the worst economy since the depression, we don’t need gambling on derivatives with taxpayer money at the expense of teacher’s pension.

          As for your comments about Bartels and co. I have had my suspicions about the veracity of the editors of this website who are known supporters of Bennet.

          Should this scandal continue to grow, as I believe it will, when will the editors here disassociate themselves from the Senator?

          1. Pols doesn’t put massive, bolded blockquoted text unrelated to the subject your diary is about in the comment sections of your diaries, maybe you should extend them the same courtesy.

                1. but will you answer the original question?

                  or how about this question –

                  why has this site frontpaged a piece like this, but has not asked any serious questions about a scandal like the DPS swap that Bennet brokered?

                  1. If you can prove to me that what Bennet did was anything other than a bad business deal without relying solely on hot-button key words that sound scary and complicated, I’ll be reading that diary along with everyone else.

                    And I will “jump ship” on Bennet the same day you will grab your grassroots live preserver and jump off the ole USS Romanoff–on August 11th. Whatever happens up until then is primary politics, but I can safely say I have no problem whatsoever voting for either of these men in the general election. Can you make that same pledge with that same level of certainty?

                    Your objective has already been fulfilled by threadjacking this diary, but please do everyone a favor and write a diary next time. Otherwise, you just end up coming off like Libertad.

                  3. But it seems awful familiar to me to have some one take a fact and then turn it into an accusation and then proceed as if the accusation was true.  Oh wait I remember.  That’s the standard Republican playbook.  I didn’t know that Romanoff supporters are now doing opposition research for the Republicans.

                    Is this the kind of PUMA/Republican hysteria we are going to see until August for the candidate who is championed as the first truly ethical candidate ever to run for office in Colorado?  It seems kind of run of the mill dirty politics to me.  If your candidate is truly the white knight who is conducting the first truly ethical campaign in the history of Colorado then why are you trying so hard to drum up hatred for Bennet?  Why not just champion your champions good points and let the voters decide if he is good enough?  Getting down in the gutter with tenuous accusations isn’t exactly white knight stuff.

            1. then these swaps might become profitable, but that is because the bill regulates all future derivatives

              http://www.courant.com/news/op…

              – thus making them an attractive investment – but even that will not guarantee the return on this crappy deal.

              Either way, you can’t excuse Bennet’s initial implication in fast selling a swap to a taxpayer supported group like the DPS  pension fund.

          3. If you think that DPS or other public entities should never use them- make the case.

            You won’t because to do so you would first have to understand them.  Then you would have to acknowlegdge there is a time and place.

            But make your case.

          4. My word, do all of the AR supporters get up in the morning angry? ;*)

            So, let’s see, two years ago, there was a decision to make an investment in something that the BANKS were responsible for portraying and being clear about its risks. Recent books and articles have shown the BANKS hid the information from pension funds and other investors, and when the mess crashed, the investors took the hit, and the banks got rescued because they had been allowed under Bush (and Clinton as well) to get “too big to fail”. And the fallout continues today for those lied to and fooled  by the banks.

            So, if I follow your logic, when the education folks relied on the bank for its advice, with no indication yet that the education folks you vilify knew of the illegal or dubious claims about the derivatives, and the investments went up in smoke, you blame the INVESTORS, and not the  banks?

            That is like blaming all the investors in the Maddoff Ponzi scheme for being too stupid and getting duped. As I recall, even Warren Buffet lost money in that scandal, and the man is no fool.

            Once, again, AR supporters seek to defend by attacking. I think it is worthy of noting any kind of media manipulation, especially photoshopping, to imply a bigger crowd, or worse, racial diversity, which I find particularly distasteful. But, is it earth shattering in its implications? No. Just a bad decision by some media person in the campaign.

            Again, unless the AR folks have PROOF that the education folks and the banks were in on the investment decision to scam the fund somehow, this, once again, is character assassination by innuendo. At first blush, it appears as if the education folks are guilty of being naive enough to believe the bank’s advice. As such, they join millions of others who were duped deliberately. I saw recently an interview with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, well respected book on the whole financial investment mess and how we got there. In any case, when asked, he replied he doubted there were 10 people inside the financial community that really knew what the repackaged derivatives were, and how risky they were.  

              1. I just read the HP post. Hardly a neutral, fact finding piece, and the author is a educational consultant with an agenda, and I suspect from the tone, a personal dislike for Senator Bennet. So be it, he is entitled to his opinions. But again, it is short on proof of intent to mislead or commit fraud in this decision.

                As for accepting money, yeah, banks and Wall Street are deservedly looked at as black sheep these days, fat cats…whatever term you would like to have for helping to cause this mess Obama is slowly digging us out of–we badly need to re-establish regulatory control of the investment firms, and banks and I wish Congress would stop digging in their heels on this. But, until I see proof that Senator Bennet has voted or not voted a particular way because of a meeting with bank or Wall Street lobbyists, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I am hoping that some of the efforts in the current Congress to impose transparency on who gives what to which candidate goes through. I have my doubts, however. BOTH parties are reluctant to step forth into the light for fear of cutting off money. Which brings full circle back to a main issue in political campaigns.

                How in the hell do we get money out of being the number one priority in any race? I know from personal talks with several politicians that they HATE the fund raising; wish they didn’t have to do it. A House Rep. has to literally fund raise from the moment his or her two year term starts, and it leaves little time for substantive work. How about we amend the Constitution to make it a four year term, and limit it to three consecutive terms? Same for the Senate..I think 18 years is more than enough and folks should move on.

                Couple that with some First Amendment revision to address this corporate free speech/money issue, and we may get our democracy back.

                I also see from the campaign’s latest release there is much more emphasis and response from grass roots giving of small amounts of money here in Colorado. Give the campaign credit for listening to criticism and making an effort to respond to it.  

          5. I will tell you why photogate is gaining more traction than bennet’s derivative disaster.

            1) Photogate – easy to understand – photos doctored…bad.

            2) Derivative disaster – complicated overall issue – agreement, negotiations, interest rate swap…I have a headache.

            1)Photogate – there are photos! We can see them, visual = understandable and tangible.

            2)Derivative disaster – there are tons of paragraphs and pages of text! No photos. 🙁   what the hell are you talking about, intangible.

          6. The events that you keep saying need to be considered were not, well, here it is: lying.

            Photoshopping is lying.  Period.  Simple as that.  

            That you and the people on AR’s staff find nothing wrong with it speaks volumes to personal ethics.  

            Most of the Bennett supporters will easily support and vote for Romanoff if he is the senate candidate.  Most of the Bennett supporters probably acknowledge that he doesn’t have a halo.  

            BUT, you uber-Andrew supporters have gotten quite wearisome.  You spend more time tearing Bennett down that telling us why anyone should vote for Andrew (who, up to this Titanic of a campaign I’ve admired greatly.)

            If Pols appears pro-Bennett it’s because there are a lot of reasons to support him and not any, really, to not. AR, on the other hand keeps making incredibly bad decisions and still won’t tell us why anyone should vote for him instead of MB.  Like, you know, policy differences, things that matter more than “I am the disgruntled heir apparent.”  (I do agree he should have been made senator; none of this would be happening.)

            Them’s the diff’s, Wade.

      1. More important in this race? Well, we could talk about the new one dispatched out here to be Bennet’s spokesman playing straight out of Rove’s playbook – from trashing Romanoff as a Republican collaborator, having surrogates and supporters play the “Family Values” game (and an even uglier whisper campaign) or publicly saying they’re collecting petitions themselves while actively soliciting bids from outside companies to collect them OR… we could talk actual policy, like the trade policy Romanoff talked about today http://blogs.denverpost.com/th…

        Has Benent said anything about foreign trade? I mean anything that he hasn’t gotten permission from Rahm and Harry to say? I’m sure he wrote a letter to somebody claiming he was going to – I just need to find that pesky letter among his others.

        1. I need to correct/amend my post or at least the part about the petitions. Just after posting this I got a call from a reliable source that Bennet is hiring people in-house to collect petition signatures. Calls have gone out to people who worked for several firms who collect signatures but, after at least a few firms gave proposals to do the petition gathering, the campaign has so far declined those proposals and is paying circulators directly.

            1. Who runs their field operation? I heard Andy left that office to run the House Majority Priject at the CDP joining Boller, Peek-Dunstone & Waak as Bennet’s folks at 7th & Santa Fe

        2. Well-

          Romanoff did express the same “scrap it and start over” approach the R’s were advocating on healthcare. I don’t recall Kinkaid’s exact language, but I think he said pretty much that they had the same positions.

          Though I like his wife and kids, I’m happy to leave families out of it and haven’t heard any whisper campaign, so it must not be working that well or not be targeted at me.

          Bennet and foreign trade. I think he said we should suspend all foreign trade and reinstate Smoot-Hawley. Oh wait- that can’t be right. see http://bennetforcolorado.com/  

    2. Not for me.

      It wasn’t OK for the ole Rooskie’s to erase leaders fallen out of favor, right?  Why any more OK to alter images now?

      Maybe it’s a generational thing over at AR’s office, I dunno.

      Bottom line, now and forever, it’s lying.  

  6. Wow, don’t know how to react – to Bartels actually wasting space and words on a supposed “news”paper on this. That Pols front-paged this and acts like it’s a scandal isn’t particularly surprising but either a) the Post is desperate to fill pages, b) Bartels wants to make sure she gets invited to the next fancy dinner or c) they really have surrendered their column pages to Bennet so he can pretend to be above the fray (more on that below).

    That some web geek who was hired by a campaign team that hasn’t been in charge for months photoshopped a bunch of images together to make it appear that somebody who was at the kick-off talking to Romanoff was at the rally talking to Romanoff seems like about the most non-newsworthy thing I can imagine. Stupid? Yes. Nefarious or part of some grand plan? Hardly believable. Let’s remember, that website was launched at a time that Bartels, that hack of a colleague of hers Susan Greene and the good ole Dead Govs were saying Romanoff had no campaign operation but now all would have us believe that there was some devious plan involved in a blued-out header graphic? If you look at the main pic used, it wasn’t usable for a full-width photo. Sure it would have been nice if they found one that could but I’d guess that was the least of their worries. So what, should the team he eventually hired have scrutinized every photo used and conduct a forensic examination?

    But yea, this is what that waddling quack who calls herself a journalist thinks is news. This just days after there were multiple reports of Bennet surrogates playing the Rove Family Values card with speeches talking about Bennet being the candidate “who is married and has a wife and kids,” the whack-job Cronk blogging that “Well I don’t think that should be an issue, but it is…” (nice channeling of Rove there Nancy) and junior staff were overheard engaging in even uglier whisper campaigns that Strom Thurmond would be proud of.

    Bennet puts out an ad playing politics with towns (Washington County) he’s never been to other than to film, where the locals got stood-up by Bennet at two locations and turned on him at assembly by 3 to 1 but Bartels can’t be bothered with that. But a seven month old background image on a website that the Bennet campaign tells her proves Romanoff is playing race games, yea, Bartels thinks this is what is news.

    1. Er, no, it’s a blog post about a blog post about something kind of goofy. But apparently it was worth The Denver Post reaching out across the Atlantic …

      Holtzman, reached in London, laughed when he heard …

      Maybe he was laughing as much about a reporter calling him — in London! — as he was about the subject of the call.

      1. I agree. I’ve gotten a bit worked up about it but I think you hit the nail on the head. At least the Post relegated this to a gossip columnists blog. Now if they were stupid enough to actually give this ink in the print edition, that would show just what a rag they’ve become.

        I do have to note that none of the more active Bennet posters have tried to jump in and carry this story or bought into the racial undertones Bartels has tried to make out of it. Kudos to them for staying above this when Bartels just couldn’t help herself. Madco, Caroman, Peacemonger & B1cora – That’s a shout-out to you for keeping it honest and classy while the local tabloid bathes in the mud.

        2. AR’s supporters can’t take it any more guys!  You might think that silly things in the political world are appropriate fodder for an afternoon diary–but this is SERIOUS!  

          Blind to the terrible conspiracy to opine on Colorado politics in a way that might, well, suggest an opinion!  On a blog no less!  But the tireless (if somewhat tiresome) AR supporters will let no attempt at humor or political opnioneering rest!  Must expose terrible blog conspiracy…

  7. I would consider it quite acceptable to photoshop photos together to get an image that overs the space provided (in this case a banner) without duplicating the image of any particular individual. It does appear the images put together were from the same event so I do not see the issue.

    If you are photographing a large-ish rally, it is rather difficult to get the whole scope in one picture unless you are standing so far away as to not get any detail.

    I think making this an issue is really stretching.

    1. how did politicians deal with such matters before Photoshop?

      It’s lying, Dan.  I’m surprised to see your position on this matter.  

      1. Actually, before there was photoshop there was not websites so it was not really an issue.

        But for such things as letterhead etc, “photoshop” was done the old fashion way: with a pair of scissors and tape or glue.

        If he using pictures from different events tryong to create a creowd that was not there, I would cry foul. But this appears to just be an attempt to show the people that were really there without duplications.

        If this technique was not done, there would have been accusations that they were padding the crowd size by showing the same people more than one time.

  8. For the simple reason that of course this would hit the press, or at least the blogosphere. It violates the cardinal rule of “don’t do stupid shit.”

    And if photoshop is the only way to get a picture of Andrew Romanoff standing next to an African-American voter – then he’s got a much bigger problem.

    1. Stupid? I’d just call it the sloppy work of some web geek who probably isn’t even around. Do you really think Romanoff had anything to do with what background image was in the header of his website? What’s stupid is the Bennet campaign being so desperate that they shop this as a story to the Post. What’s stupid is the Post buying into it and running with it. What’s really stupid is Bennet having his surrogates play the Family Values ugliness game at assemblies and then his speed-dialed supporters posting on your HuffPo article justifying it with “Well it shouldn’t matter and doesn’t to me, but really it does and Republicans will make an issue.

      And David, your low-blow about it being the “only way to get a picture… next to an African-American voter” is just ugly itself. The woman was there. Andrew has a long history of support across all racial lines. Come on David, we know you’re a solid Bennet supporter but you’re better than that. Your HuffPo piece showed you can be and I wish we’d see more of that honesty instead of this ugliness and kool-aid rhetoric.

      1. if photoshop is the only way to get a picture of Andrew Romanoff standing next to an African-American voter

        is the only really stupid thing on this page. David is indeed better than that.

      2. It’s incredibly sloppy that something like this got pushed up. I’ve worked many times where we had to get websites up fast – both in business and on campaigns. Either they weren’t reviewing stuff, or their review process was abysmal.

        I’m not saying this as a Bennet supporter. I’m saying this as someone who has done this a lot and is appalled at such a poor job. With that said, I also agree it’s no big deal. But just like having a non-Colorado mountain in the picture, dumb unimportant things like this can have legs.

        1. I agree that the photo editing was just sloppy. If you look at it closely it was also poorly done. Romanoff’s filing last year showed payments for his website. I’d guess this was on that firm. If not on them, I don’t think there is anybody in senior or middle management on his campaign now that was involved when the website first launched so pretty hard to point the fingers at his current campaign.

              1. I got a call from a realtor one time.  They wanted to put a house in “Parade of Homes” one weekend and the landscaping wasn’t done yet.

                I had to Photoshop a lawn and some trees into the picture.

  10. Surely if the rally was densely populated as the montage shows, they could have just, oh, taken a slice of a single picture…  Or so a Romanoff critic might argue.  It detracts from the message if the authenticity of the image becomes the story.

    It was, IMHO, kinda dumb to do the montage in the first place, and IMNSHO more dumb to do a lousy job at it, and even more dumb to do so in the one area where someone might pay attention.

    I don’t think the “Photoshopping in a black person” thing has merit though – after all, it’s not like there isn’t a black guy (apparently) standing directly behind/beside Romanoff who doesn’t look like he was edited in.  Bartels is barking up the wrong tree there.

  11. Claiming to be a civil rights lawyer, when he hasn’t passed the bar, and his only claim to fame  of civil rights in the USA is an internship from 10-87 to 12-87 seems to fall into a pattern of puffing due to lack of substance.  

    1. Why would Andrew’s staff allow him to do the photo with his zipper open?

      I mean I get the zit on the forehead- whadda ya gonna do? – but a the zipper is just careless.

  13. …to buy the campaign a better version of photoshop.  Sorry this is kinda funny.  Do I have a problem that the campaign spliced together pictures from the same event to make a wide shot instead of a long one?  No — all those people were there.  It’s just a bad photoshop job.

    The funniest part of all this is that nonstories like this are what the Bennet campaign is taking their time to focus on.  Guess their new media spokesman wanted to take a break from trying to explain how petitioning onto the ballot showed strength.

    In any event, did anyone else notice that the Bennet literature that showed a crowd behind Michael and Obama was a photoshop of the fillmore rally?  They put an entire crowd behind him.  I saw it, didn’t think much of it, and moved on.  But I guess this is what passes for news today.  God I miss the Rocky.

    1. This is all rather silly (though no more silly than McInnis using a Canadian mountain on his Web site, which certainly had the sharks circling, and laughing) — but that doesn’t mean you get to make things up.

      Stitching together crowd shots from the same event is one thing, but that’s NOT the problem here. Don’t start rewriting the facts already, Czech.

      1. The original picture is also on his site.  It looks (to me, who is not a photographic or political expert) like he pulled out a few people who had their back to the camera and inserted others from the photo.  The original picture was deeper and this one is wider.

        I said before…i thought it was poorly done, but that it looked like they just spliced together parts of the crowd to make a banner.  that’s all.

          1. What they wanted to do, if I get RC’s point, is remove someone standing in front of Romanoff with their back to the camera and replace them with someone looking forward or in profile.  I don’t have a problem with this type of change – but the fact that it was such a poor job in such a prominent area was dumb.

            I’ll repeat what I said above, though: Bartels (and now others) complaining about Romanoff “adding a black person” is just plain silly.  There are plenty of black people in the rally photo, and one standing directly behind him.

  14. And Susan Greene’s column is no less silly.  And her line, “It’s one thing to digitally erase a zit from a candidate’s forehead or touch up his open zipper” just suggests to me that the entire column is like an open zipper for Greene.

    Picking at photoshopping to create a banner on a website is dopey.  Take a look at the people banner at the bottom of the Colorado Children’s Campaign website – does anyone think that is an actual untouched photo of a group of people?

    This kind of nitpicky stuff does not warrant the attention it is getting.  Here’s a nitpicky thing about Bennet that someone could have written an entire diary on:  At a recent county assembly he demonstrated to a crowd of people that he truly does not know how to pronounce the name of one of Colorado’s counties, when telling a story about a resident of that county.  He pronounced Baca County as “bocka” when anyone who travels around this state or merely informs themselves about all corners of this state knows that the locals pronounce their county name “backa.”  Should we have an entire diary about how Bennet really doesn’t know Colorado?

    Good grief people, get a grip!

    3. I say:

      bocka for Baca

      pweblo for Pueblo

      bwayna veesta for Buena Vista

      hampden for Hampden

      Breck for Breckinridge

      tellyouride for Telluride

      kolorodo for Colorado

      and on and on and on.

      I’ve already been determined to be not a a real Democrat. I suppose I’m not a real Coloradan.  

        2. The town of Breckenridge was formally created in November 1859 by General George E. Spencer. Spencer chose the name “Breckinridge” after John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, Vice President of the United States, in the hopes of flattering the government and gaining a post office. Spencer succeeded in his plan and a post office was built in Breckinridge; it was the first post office between the Continental Divide and Salt Lake City, Utah.

          However, when the Civil War broke out in 1861, the 40-year-old former vice president sided with the Confederates (as a brigadier general) and the pro-Union citizens of Breckinridge decided to change the town’s name. The first i was changed to an e, and the town’s name has been spelled Breckenridge ever since.

    4. Anyone who says “backa” for Baca is wrong. I don’t care where he or she is from.  In any event, I know plenty of native Coloradans who say “bocka”.

  16. I was taking a closer look at his site and, horror of horrors;

    They photoshopped me and my son into it!!!

    What nefarious intent can we assume from this?

  17. It’s amazing sometimes what resonates with people. I still think a large part of it was that the whole thing is amateur hour – a high school kid could have done better.

    Anyways I’ll agree with the Romanoff supporters here, this has been blown way out of proportion.

  18. …until now.

    To summarize this whole thread, I lie for a living. Right now, I’m using Adobe After Effects to take a HD greenscreen clip of one of our talent and drop him into a fake scene of the Byron White courthouse. He’s pretending to be there for the launch of our YouTube channel.

    Later, I’ll color correct and use a filter to remove some wrinkles on a Judge for use in another production.

    In short, EVERYONE DOES THIS. There is no natural photos, scenes are digitally enhanced, and don’t even get me started on women’s fashion magazines and their manipulations.

    This initial subject, and the hooting contained herein is total useless bullshit. If AR used a shot of the mountains and Denver on his website, Photoshop will be used to make a composite of all the necessary images.

    For the purpose of determining his worth to be the next Senator of Colorado, this discussion has zero value.  

    1. Are you saying that PAris HIlton doesn’t really look like that?

      Next thing, you’ll tell me Sandra Bullock is actually old and Carrie Underwood looks like a man.

      1. I didn’t know you did all that!

        Here is a chance for a free plug for all the people on this site.

        What company do you work for and what are your rates?

        1. I’m the Senior Video Editor/Art Director for the US Courts. I left my fair Colorado to work in the wretched hive of scum and villany of DC.

          When we re-launch our website and the new YouTube Channel, CoPols folks will be the first to know!

            1. but the Tea Party organizers I know are. They’re pumped!

              And no, Buck’s report wouldn’t reflect anything that happened this week, since it only covers through two weeks ago, as you know.

  20. I have just one thing to add.  AR fans ought to  appreciate ColPols declining to include the column’s heading: “Some pols’ photos full of crop” even though it was clever, funny and probably hard to pass up.  One thing I’ve noticed about the AR fans here?  No sense of humor.  

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