...and becomes the laughing stock of Texas politics. He has nary a dime in the bank and now we find out he needs an entire tech support team to run a simple webcast. Dallas Morning News has the story. But the beginning is the best part:
There he was, trying to attract Texans' attention by holding a Webcast town hall meeting to answer voter questions about his U.S. Senate race.
Two minutes later, Democrat Rick Noriega's show turned to static. Lots of static. Then the camera tilted upside down. Then more static. The screen went to black. A few voters' questions could be heard, but Noriega's answers were often interrupted by audio and video glitches.
Priceless. But it appears that technical know how isn't the only thing lacking in the Noriega camp. It appears they're also losing their grip on reality. The Noriega camp has taken to calling their troubles "hiccups" and "growing pains", which is an understatement on par with calling Barack Obama "minimally experienced". In order for a campaign to experience "growing pains" there is a reasonable expectation that the campaign would need to be growing in the first place. I'd say the Noriega campaign is short on "growing" and heavy on the "pains".
Meanwhile, Noriega's campaign has gone through multiple staff shuffles and has shifted course at the last minute with routine events.
After Friday's botched town hall Web cast, the Noriega campaign followed up Monday with an abrupt cancellation of a Houston news conference where Noriega was to unveil his immigration proposal. Later, the campaign said it was canceled because Noriega had emergency dental surgery and was having problems speaking. The immigration plan was postponed until another day.
Just like in 2002, when Texas Dems thought they had nominated a "dream team" of statewide candidates, every last one of which lost, Noriega will fail and fail miserably.
Well, at least that's what he said in 2004 before he launched his presidential campaign. I have been looking all over for this clip and finally it was found by Michael Stubel on Race4'08. Asked after winning his Illinois senate seat if he was considering running on a national ticket in 2008, Barack Obama said he would not be comfortable doing that because he lacked experience. Don't believe me? Here it is.
Hmmmm. I think this is going to be played in a campaign ad someday, and if it isn't then it should be. Not that it would matter. He is, after all, the living God.
Even though Barack Obama has been masquerading about the country as a "man of the people" a "new politician" and catalyst of "change, hope and blah blah blah", his campaign contributors aren't exactly those "little people" that he's constantly trying to butter up. Apparently big donors are the key to Obama's success in fundraising.
In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.
But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more - a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.
Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama "bundlers," fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.
What does all of this mean? Well, it wouldn't mean anything had Obama not ran his entire campaign thus far on being something that he isn't. Which is to say, running as an honest, new, fresh and genuine change agent that will reform Washington and turn the government into a well-oiled, tax guzzling machine. (The last part he will probably do, actually).
Anyway, Just add this to the list of reasons the man is a liar and a fraud.
On Fox News Sunday, McCain's surrogate and his "closest ally in Washington", Senator Lindsey Graham, went head to head with former(!) Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to discuss the campaign and Barry's recent race baiting. Then, without warning and on live television, Lindsey Graham's balls dropped! Observe here.
You could almost hear em' come crashing down on Tom "Puff" Daschles weasle like head. First of all, let's give credit to the first zinger of the evening thrown by Mr. Graham when he points out that if McCain really doesn't have any ideas and solutions, as Obama says, then why won't he debate McCain? But the real knock out punch came later, leaving Daschle with nothing left to do but sit there and look more uncomfortable than a Parkinsons patient on a tight rope.
"Who the hell is they?!" Amen, brother Graham. Who the hell is they? For once, a McCain surrogate is willing to call Obama and his cronies what they are, liars. Enjoy the video.
In case you didn't read my original post on the matter, here's a recap. Obama so badly wants his race to be an issue in this race that he has finally stopped waiting for Republicans to do it and has begun doing it himself. Here are the comments and some video of the same:
“They know that you’re not real happy with them and so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me,” Obama continued, repeating an attack from earlier in the day. “What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’”
Then this one:
“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
But now, the Obama campaign says that Barack did not mean anything about race. Huh? According to the statement by Obama's spokesman, Tommy Vietor, Obama "in no ways believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue...". So why, then, does Barack insist on injecting race into this campaign? As one Politico reader pointed out, if he wasn't talking about race what was he talking about? Powdered wigs?
Frustrated with the total absence of racial fear-mongering from the McCain campaign and unable to accuse of him of playing "the race card", Obama himself has decided to play "the race card card".
“They know that you’re not real happy with them and so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me,” Obama continued, repeating an attack from earlier in the day. “What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’”
I defy our liberal readers to provide us with one solitary example of the McCain campaign playing the race card in anyway. Obama tried to do the same thing just weeks ago:
“It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy,” Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
The only person obsessed with Obama's blackness seems to be Obama. So, again, a challenge to our liberal commrades out there: Provide us with proof that McCain is playing the race card.
Now that the surge has proven to be indespensible and an undebatable success story, Barack Obama is being forced to eat some of the words and statements he made back when the surge was being debated. He insists he always said the surge would have a positive outcome. But as ABC's Jake Tapper notes, he unequivocally said that the surge would not just not work, but would cause more violence. Let these facts be submitted to a candid world:
Here he is again in 2006 speaking to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, again saying that the surge would not work:
For a man whose entire campaign is based on "hope and dreams" he sure talks dirty about them in this speech. Even in his own slogans, Obama tries to have his cake and eat it too. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air breaks down this small clip this way:
How wrong can Obama get in such a short segment of a speech? Let’s count the ways:
Dreams and hopes of a perfect government are always just that — dreams and hopes. We don’t have perfect government here in the US, either. However, with the renewed commitment of American military strength, Nouri al-Maliki forged closer ties to Sunnis and Shi’ites and rejected Moqtada al-Sadr, and within eighteen months of that speech had established Iraqi sovereignty throughout most of the country — the sovereignty of a freely-elected central government.
“And, while some have proposed escalating this war by adding thousands of more troops, there is little reason to believe that this will achieve these results either.” Actually, that was just part of the surge strategy. The extra troops were needed to hold areas after having them cleared, but the main part of the surge was the adoption of counterinsurgency strategies and tactics. And, it’s worth pointing out yet again, Obama wants to do in Afghanistan exactly what he rejects in this November 2006 speech.
“ [T]here is no military solution to this war.” No one ever claimed that the war had a purely military solution. What war does? The Bush administration, John McCain, and General Petraeus knew that the eventual political solution would require security and stability to implement, though, and that a retreat in the spring of 2007 — which Obama proposed in this speech — would have eliminated any hope of either security or stability. That required a stronger ground force and smarter strategy.
“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end.” This is the most absurd point of all. The Iraqis didn’t have enough trained and seasoned security forces to bring stability. Retreat would not have forced them to work together — it would have forced the factions to arm themselves and go to war to protect themselves. The central government needed more time to develop the means to “take control of their own country”, and in 2008 we have seen the results.
Simply put, Obama got it wrong when it counted, and now he's back pedaling. These are the facts that ths "new politician" hopes you all forget.
The collaboration of Katy, Tom, Laura and I began as a friendship spawned from our shared conservative values and status as political junkies. Through the years we have grown to realize how different our views are, and we have learned through our differences that the Grand Old Party truly is the "big tent party". Sometimes agreeing on an issue, but for different reasons; other times disagreeing entirely and based on competing conservative principles. Shortly after we began, we invited a few other friends on board to help express the diversity and youth of conservatism and the GOP.
In November 2007, Andrew Powaleny joined the Right Up Front team, becoming the first non-Texan on staff. Hailing from Connecticut, Andrew brings our readers something other than the Texas conservatism trumpeted by the rest of us.
The following month, Trinity University graduate and former aide to Senator Chuck Hagel, Dan Windle came aboard. A native of Nebraska, Dan is helping Right Up Front expand beyond the borders of Texas, thus furthering our mission to bring you a diverse sampling of Republican ideals.
In late February 2008, after months of intense negotiations, Right Up Front was able to secure an exclusive contract for internet political reporting with Aaron Schwitters, a long-time conservative political operative from the state of Washington.
With the addition of Aaron to our list of RUF Writers we now stretch from coast to coast, with writers in Connecticut, Texas, Ohio and Washington.
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