Now to be honest, I do have a head start, given I’m sitting on so much footage of her.  So I took a whirl at it, and came up with this.

Why Nikki? from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Something special for you tonight.

This film short is a compilation of material from Marco Rubio’s speeches and other media sources. I’ve tried to provide a visual expression of the strong convictions he expresses in words.

Content Warning: This film includes a scene of an execution during the Cuban Revolution. I debated including it, and finally decided that it was important to the story. Viewer discretion is advised.

I wish to acknowledge Bill Mick for his excellent interview with Marco Rubio on WMMB-AM in Melbourne, Florida. Much of the audio for this film is from that interview.

Marco’ Story from David Thompson on Vimeo.

He got up at 3AM, drove up here, did a radio interview at 8AM, a fund raiser at noon, a TV interview in the afternoon, then a speech to the BREC at 7PM before driving back to Miami.

The speech to the BREC was amazing.  Having now heard him speak 3 time in the last 10 days, I was expecting it to be somewhat repetitious at this point.   But it wasn’t, he had different examples to give, and covered different topics.  My take away is that he really does hold these convictions as core beliefs.

One telling point tonight when he was taking questions and got into a discussion about our Cuban Asylum policy.  The gentleman asking the question began to argue his personal belief and the Chairman tried to cut him off.  Marco turned around and told the Chairman that he wanted to finish the discussion “because he is raising a valid point and deserves an answer”.

Marco received several standing ovations, and I overheard many people say, “This is the guy we need.”

I’m just amazed at what a good candidate he is.  I think EPU is going to be calling me a Marcohead soon.

This means that if you want to reach conservatives and libertarians in Brevard County, Florida, Bill’s show is the one to do.

Today, Marco Rubio is in Brevard County for a fund raiser, then meeting with the GOP executive council this evening.  In Atlanta I told Marco’s communications director that Bill Mick was the guy to work with to get his message out.  Well it all worked out great.  Bill thought he was having a telephone interview with Marco today, and was surprised when Marco walked into the studio.  Bill interviewed him for the full hour between 8 and 9AM, and even squeezed in a few phone calls.

As we saw in Atlanta, Marco just hit it out of the park.  He was a great speaker, but was able to offer concrete answers to the questions, not just platitudes.  Two answers in particular stuck for me.  One was the reason that the Cuban community is so passionate about politics is that they aren’t just immigrants, they are exiles.  That distinction is a significant driver in their understanding of how important the political process is.  The second was talking about his legacy as speaker of the Florida House was not just what was passed, but also what was stopped.  He mentioned their successful efforts at blocking Charlie Crist’s attempt to impose the California environmental policies on Florida.

During the poll, Bill Mick had a web poll running for his listeners on who they would vote for in the primary, if it was held today.  Marco got 79%, Crist 2%.

I ponied up a pretty good donation for Marco today (biggest donations I’ve ever made).  I’m encouraging everyone else to find some spare change to support him also.  He makes a strong case that if he can raise enough to get his message out, then he will win the primary.  He will win, because he is the only one running that doesn’t have to convince people to have amnesia regarding his record.

You can donate here.

The Redstate Gathering from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Moe Lane from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Caleb Howe from David Thompson on Vimeo.

John Randall from David Thompson on Vimeo.

She is running for Governor of South Carolina next year. Regardless of the success of her campaign, she is clearly going to be a strong voice for conservatives in the future.

Just watch.

Nikki Haley from David Thompson on Vimeo.

A very engaging speaker, he had us spellbound throughout. His story of his father escaping Cuba is amazing to hear.

Ted Cruz from David Thompson on Vimeo.

I think you will enjoy this as much as we did in Atlanta.

Ken Cuccinelli from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Her presentation at the Redstate Gathering was wide ranging, discussing the role of Secretaries of State, the recent push by Democrats to target these offices in swing states, and the challenges Georgia has in dealing with the Voting Rights Act.

Erick was proud to announce Redstate’s endorsement of her candidacy.

Karen Handel from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Those people are wrong. Campaigns like Marco’s are vital to improving our legislators in Washington. They force establishment candidates, like Crist, to answer to their constituents and remember who they work for.

And Marco can win. Despite being behind in the polls and fundraising, he is winning straw poll after straw poll, when people hear his message. So watch and listen to the next Senator from Florida. You will be amazed.

Marco Rubio from David Thompson on Vimeo.

This story has turned out to be a tremendous metaphor for the current struggle against Statism. I personally watched Lawrence on the Glenn Beck show as they examined the political affiliations of the Simon conglomerate.

Caleb surprised us by bringing him to Atlanta and setting him up with a booth to sell his bumperstickers. He did a brisk business, and I picked up 5 of them myself. This is a short video of some of his remarks to the gathering, along with rare video of the great Caleb himself.

FreeMarketWarrior.com - Lawrence Spivak from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Michael Williams from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Liz Cheney from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Here is video of Tom Price’s remarks and Q&A at the Redstate Gathering.  Congressman Price welcomed us to Atlanta before heading to the airport for his flight to Israel as part of a congressional delegation.

Congressman Tom Price from David Thompson on Vimeo.

More video will be posted as I process it.

So this knockoff on the Dan Rather memo is funny enough. But what is truly hilarious are the leftists that don’t get the joke, and think this is a real Birther claim.

Anyone could have typed this. In fact, I did it. Can you prove me wrong?

The House of Representatives certified the election in January. The same body just reaffirmed that Obama was born in Hawaii.

This is beyond sour grapes and wading deep into frothiness on the lips.

John Mc Cain was for sure not born in the USA but in the Panama Canal Zone. No conservatives gripped about having a Panamanian born prez. Bottom Line: The average conservative is a white racist who seethes with rage about our “mullato” POTUS. Deal with it hillbillies. A latino president is next, then a woman, then a gay, then God will destroy AmeriKKKa with hell fire and your inbred kids will fall into the abyss. About damn time too.

I don’t believe this to be real or proves anything nor does it matter. If you do your research you’ll find that even if he was born in Africa that he still meets the criteria as stated in the Constitution as a “natural born citizen” because he is BORN a US citizen because of his mother as opposed to a naturalized citizen. John McCain was born in Panama but hardly anyone questioned his eligibility.

No letterhead, no date, no name, no signature, no addressee.

Worth about as much as the American Buck.

This is interesting, but with no background about who sent it, where it is from, and what these people are talking about, it is meaningless.

Is this supposed to be a memo from a hospital in Hawaii? Who are these doctors mentioned (Staudt, Hodges and Harris)? Where did this come from, and how did it manage to get faxed to you?

If you want to be believed, you need to explain things in a believable manner.

A doctor would remember what babies were born during his or her shift in 1962??

Funny how nobody found this before a random republican blog…. also funny how there are no signatures.

This whole conversation is really stupid. Obama won the election. It’s over - now deal with it.

HA,HA,HA,HA,HA!!!!! You nutjobs are sure running out of ideas! HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA!!!!
;D

I could keep going, but the level of cluelessness is really beyond measure. I think the comment thread was pretty well summed up by the following.

Rob, you have managed to create the world’s most powerful stupid magnet! We got us some weapons grade stupidity right here.

This weekend we were having dinner with my parents at Disney World. As the conversation continued, the subject of my cousin’s new marriage came up. She just got married for the 3rd time back in the spring in a lavish wedding in Las Vegas. Now I can’t really call my cousin a gold digger, since she has a degree in dentistry and a considerable nest egg from back when she was in practice. However, she does not associate with anyone without money, and certainly won’t marry someone without it.

So her new husband is a school administrator in California.

I’m sure your “spidey-sense” is tingling right now, but the story gets better.

He lives in Phoenix. Every week, he flies his private plane to California to work. He has a condo near his job, to make it convenient for him. But this weekend, my Dad told me the best part. This guy found a Mercedes SL500 AMG hardtop convertible for sale in Sarasota, Florida. He asked my Dad to go check it out for him, before he purchased it. Turns out it is in mint condition, so my new “cousin-in-law” is going to pay cash for it, and have it shipped to Phoenix. These cars retail new for over $100,000.

Now I don’t begrudge anyone making some money (besides the normal in-family jealousy). But I found it fascinating that California can afford to pay its school administrators enough money to allow them to live such a lifestyle. How was I to know that engineering was such a dead-end job?

When players are of unequal experience, this often becomes a teaching exercise. The more experienced player will declare that checkmate is imminent, but the losing player doesn’t see how that is possible. The game then continues, with the loser learning a valuable lesson about end game strategies.

Obama’s Healthcare bill in Congress reached a point yesterday where the outcome is preordained, however as an inexperienced player, he is continuing to play the game, not yet realizing that he cannot win.

As I wrote last week, Obama has a bad hand to play here (my apologies for mixing metaphors). He expended his political capital on the stimulus, but did not use it when he had it to pass healthcare. Instead he waited until the political fallout from the stimulus began to erode his public support, and has been trying to hurry through a bill before it eroded further. This has resulted in a legislative game where the quality of the bill is irrelevant, only the speed at which something must pass matters. The irony is that with a 72 seat majority in the House and a 20 seat majority in the Senate, he still can’t get a piece of legislation that will pass in Congress.

On Tuesday, the outcome was still in doubt. Both Pelosi and Reid were willing to give Obama a chance to sway public opinion in favor of the bill. They were waiting for his press conference to see if he could use his personal charm to turn public opinion in the direction of trusting him with their health. On Wednesday night, Obama turned in arguably the worst public performance of his career, even drawing criticism from usually sympathetic journalistic outlets such as the Associated Press, the New York Times and MSNBC. As Howard Fineman said:

“His prime time press conference was worse than a waste of time. He spent an hour (with the aide of a soporific White House press corps) pouring sand (one grain at a time) into the already-slowing gears of the machinery of health-care reform.”

After this debacle, Congressional leadership realized that quick passage of the legislation would be impossible without public support and announced that no vote would occur in either chamber. Today, Nancy Pelosi appears to have been pressured by the White House (Rahm Emmanuel in particular) to violate House rules and bring the bill to a House vote next week, without approval by the Energy and Commerce committee. If this does occur, it will be a pyrrhic victory, having insulted the committees in order to pass legislation that the Senate will do nothing with. It also has a strong possibility of losing, especially if public funding for abortion is not explicitly prohibited in the bill.

Regardless of what happens in the House, the Senate will go into the August recess without voting on a healthcare bill. This will send the members of congress back to their home districts, where they will meet with a firestorm of opposition. Many members of the House, especially from Republican leaning districts have been stunned by the anger they have received from constituents over the Cap & Trade vote. That is going to be minor compared to this, especially if a Blue Dog has caved and voted in the House for this bill.

Let’s look at the cratering of public support for Obama in the last year. In November, 2008 after the Presidential Election, Rasmussen’s party affiliation tracking showed identification of 41.4% Democrat, 33.8% Republican, and 24.7% Independent. The June poll reflects how that has changed since, with 38.9% Democrat, 32.2% Republican, and 28.9% Independent. This means that Independents are self identified 4% higher than in November, with a 3% loss from Democrats and 1% loss from Republicans. Yesterday’s daily Presidential tracking poll, for the first time, showed Obama support among likely voters had dropped below 50%, hitting 49%. Note that Rasmussen uses a likely voter model, where other polls use an “all adults” model, which yields a higher approval result.

It’s not just Rasmussen. If you dig into the internals of the AP/Gfk poll, which is a poll of 1007 adults, you can see an interesting shift over time. Their July poll showed a 48% Democrat vs. a 38% Republican partisan split. But if you compare it to their May poll, and dig into the internals you see that 6% moved from “Strong Democrat” to “Moderate Democrat”, and 7% went from “Independent” to “Independent-Lean Republican”. This shows a significant shift from the left toward the right.

Both of these polling firms show significant opposition to the healthcare bill. Rasmussen is showing 53% opposition to the bill. AP/Gfk (now 2 weeks old) shows a 50/43 split toward approval, but the highest category is “Strongly Disapprove” which rose from 18% to 34% in 3 months.

So what is going to happen between now and the end of the August recess? Well Obama purposely withheld the July budget report, delaying it into August. The most likely reason is that it will show the deficit growing faster than expected, with significantly reduced revenues. Additionally, we have a July and August jobs report that will hit between now and when Congress reconvenes. There is a strong possibility that unemployment is going to pass the psychological barrier of 10%, which will create a great deal of political emphasis on the economy and stimulus, making Healthcare much less important. Additionally, Obama is going to try and pressure recalcitrant Democrats to vote for his bill during the recess. Juan Williams talked to White House contacts yesterday, and found that the plan is to remind Democrats how important it is for them to support a Democrat President, and that it will affect their fund raising efforts if they continue to resist.

In other words, Obama does not plan to try and build public support for his plan. His efforts will focus solely on political pressure on other Democrats.

This is a tactic that will not work for him.

Democrat members of the House and Senate are looking at polls and their need for votes from their constituents. They see the strong recruiting efforts of the Republicans. They will need to decide which they need more, MoveOn.org’s money or votes. They are going to choose votes.

Obama also hopes to use grassroots efforts to “get them onboard”, hoping that with a strong local push, they will change their minds. But how many Acorn grassroots efforts are going to be successful in the critical districts, compared to the people that are already showing up for these townhall meetings? We haven’t even begun to mobilize tea-party efforts. The result will be a strong push against Obama’s legislative efforts within the districts due to dissatisfaction with the bill, crumbling popularity of Obama, rising economic concerns, and fear of losing reelection.

The game is over. Obama is just too inexperienced a player to realize it is time to tip his King.