Scenes From Tim Scott’s Latest Fundraiser…And why Showing Up is Fifty Percent of the Battle [Picture Dump]
[Congressman Tim Scott with my son, Jackson.]
This past Sunday afternoon, my husband Chris, my son Jackson and I attended Tim Scott’s latest fundraiser in Charleston, South Carolina. I gotta admit, it was a surreal experience.
[(R to L) Me, Congressman Scott holding my son, Jackson, and my husband, Chris.]
[Congressman Scott, Jackson and me.]
Why was it so surreal? Well, two years ago, I took the initiative and did a lot of blogging on Congressman Scott’s behalf when he began his run for congress. (I even covered his birthday party, as well as his victory party.) When I first started showing up to Tim’s events two years ago (he would tell everybody to call him “Tim”), I noticed that his events were pretty full of loyal supporters, but they weren’t jam-packed from wall to wall with bodies like his fund-raiser was this past Sunday. At Mr. Scott’s most recent event, there was even a rock band, and a long line just to shake his hand and say “Hello”–whereas two years ago, you could just walk right up to Tim and say “Hi”. Don’t get me wrong, Tim hadn’t changed at all (he was still his sweet, jovial self), but the situation had changed–he was now “Congressman Scott”.
[(R to L) Me, Carmen Schachte, Bobby Riggs and Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, Jr.]
[(R to L) Debbie Lamb, Loy Stewart, Jr., Sharon Stewart and Jimmy Lamb.]
[Debbie Lamb holding Baby Jackson.]
[Chris, Jackson and me.]
[Me with campaign aide Michael Sally.]
[Me, Chris and Jackson.]
[(R to L) Claudia Bentley holding Jackson, Jackie Novak, Michelle Bentley and me.]
Then it hit me. Tim was now “Congressman Scott” because of people just like the ones attending this fundraiser–i.e., people who got involved in the political process in some form or another (by writing blogs, giving donations, volunteering their time, becoming precinct committeemen, etc.). In other words, getting involved in the political process is power.
In the show Game of Thrones, Lord Varys is famous for the following quote:
Power resides where men believe it resides–it is a trick, a shadow on the wall. And, a very small man can cast a very large shadow.
(See the embed below.)
The MSM would like us to believe that they have all of the power–that they can decide who lives or who dies politically. They might even try to discourage conservatives by stating that Republicans are “unenthused” by Mitt Romney as their nominee, or they might even go so far as to mock conservative activists by calling them “teabaggers”. Don’t listen to them–their power is a trick, a shadow on the wall. The real power lies with the voter/activist who actually shows up and gets involved. In the past, Congressional elections have been decided by a few hundred votes–heck, the 2000 Presidential Election was decided by approximately 500 votes in the state of FL. Showing up matters. And, if you sit at home on election night stuffing your face with Cheetos and complaining about how your vote doesn’t matter, you are ceding your power to decide who speaks for you in DC.
I recently wrote a post where I listed (and explained in detail) the five rules of politics as I saw them:
1.) NEVER cede the higher ground to your opponent when you are winning on an issue.
2.) People hate the thought police.
3.) People don’t vote for people they don’t like–i.e., mean people suck.
4.) Don’t eat your own–you’re wasting valuable time and energy.
5.) Stay away from conspiracy theories.
However, after attending Congressman Scott’s recent fundraiser, I would like to amend my previous post and add a sixth rule:
6.) Showing up is fifty percent of the battle.
Don’t ever cede your power by just “staying home” and not getting involved. Everyone has a talent. Everyone has something to contribute–even if it’s just a vote. And remember, even “a very small man can cast a very large shadow”.
[Baby Jackson with his favorite toy--a stuffed elephant.]
[Baby Jackson waving the American flag.]
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Under the Fedora: Obama’s bad week

To say last week has been a bad for the Obama administration sounds a lot like Noah’s wife complaining about what the rain is doing to her herb garden.
But of all the news the campaign has seen nothing compares with the results of the PPP poll out of North Carolina where 20% of the Black community has declared they will be voting for Mitt Romney.
It can not be overstated how important this is, not so much in terms of the raw vote, but in terms of the symbolism. It’s one thing for Black America to say something like this in private (al la Barbershop) it’s quite another thing for people to say it in a public poll.
If this spreads beyond North Carolina the results for the Democrat party will be cataclysmic.
At National review Maggie Gallagher believes she knows the reason:
few Republicans have ever won that share of the black vote even when times were tough. A lot of black pastors are pretty upset with President Obama for endorsing gay marriage (see the Coalition for African American Pastors new petition), and it looks like some of their flocks are as well.
I suspect there are a lot of Black Americans who would have liked to walk away from the Democrat party and Barack Obama but did not want to risk the backlash from their community. Gay Marriage is apparently enough of a deal breaker to change the equation. And the Latest from Gallup suggests this is not isolated to North Carolina:
Obama’s support among registered voters today is 46%, five points below what it was nearly four years ago. Whites’ support is down slightly more, six points, from 44% to 38%.
Obama’s support among blacks, while still overwhelming, has also dipped four points from 91% to 87%.
If you give someone an excuse to do what they really want to they’ll take it.
One more thought on this subject, even with these numbers 4 out of 5 black voters in NC and almost 9 out of 10 nationwide are currently sticking with Barack Obama.
If four out of five white voters declared they were voting for Mitt Romney the media would be awash with stories of racism in America. Yet on a regular basis Black voters have supported black candidates by margins far beyond 80% in majority black districts with nary a peep.
I wonder why?
Via Israel Matzav & Legal Insurrection we see the President’s numbers are apparently dropping in more than just the Black community:
The poll, conducted by Siena College, finds that currently President Obama has the support of 51 percent of Jewish voters, while 43 percent are opposed to him. Five percent are undecided. That means, Obama’s lead among Jewish voters is at 8 percentage points.
Previously, in Siena’s May poll, Obama had the support 62 percent of Jewish New Yorkers, while 32 percent opposed him. That means, last month, Obama’s lead among this group of voters was at a strong 30 percentage points.
As each day passes it appears Michael Graham’s statement from September 2010 at a GOP function in plymouth was prophetic
“ The greatest maker of Republican voters since Ronald Regan is Barack Obama”
Ronald Reagan has been in the news again lately, Jeb Bush has suggested that the Reagan would not be welcome in today’s Republican party. He seems to forget that he belongs to the same faction of the Republican party that didn’t welcome Reagan when he ran in the first place as SE Cupp reminds us:
Some of Reagan’s strongest opponents were, in fact, establishment Republicans — guys like Jeb Bush’s dad, who called Reagan’s fiscal policies “voodoo economics.”
Even more interesting is the MSM jumping on Jeb Bush’s statements considering that nobody hated Ronald Reagan more than the media. It is a source of considerable embarrassment that his popularity with the public so great they are required to pay him homage in death when they would rather express the contempt that they actually feel, and gladly expressed all during his life.
A bit back I talked about Robert Caro’s 4th Book in his Lyndon Johnson series, The Passage of Power. When Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe remarked on Governor Bush’s statements and excoriated the GOP for not compromising with Democrats it reminded me of something I read in Caro’s First book in the series: The Path to Power concerning Sam Rayburn:
He would never ask a man to do anything against his own interests. “A Congressman’s first duty is to get re-elected” he would say and he would advice young Congressmen: “Always vote your district.”
Joe Scarborough is a smart guy but these freshmen GOP congressmen and women know who elected them and they aren’t about to take the advice of an MSNBC host over Sam Rayburn’s on how to function in congress, at least not if they have any sense.
——————————-
One of those Freshmen members of congress is Ann Marie Buerkle this week she has coe under attack by her old friends at the Syracuse Post Standard are after her again devoting over 40 paragraphs to play with her words concerning Obamacare.
Now any paper that had the winning candidate 11 points down 10 days before an election isn’t all that reliable, but their use of politifact to attack her brought to mind something I said back I this space last year when the left was excoriating them for their choice of the “Lie of the Year”
Politfact might be shocked to discover that only radical islam is tougher on religious apostates than Liberalism but they should not fear, as the election gets closer and the left decides they need them they will forgive just as long as they provide fodder for their blogs.
And right on cue as soon as the left needs them, they are a reliable source again, just as if nothing had ever happened.
Congresswoman Buerkle’s site if you want to help her re-election efforts in NY is here.
Ann Marie was also among the list of 80+ members of congress that signed a letter to the Attorney General concerning SWATTING. Strangely enough there is not a single Democrat on the list of names even though Brett Kimberlin now claims to have been Swatted himself and the Velvet Underground is now offering a $10k reward for information leading to the conviction of the Swatter. Lee Stranaham almost immediately debunked Kimberlin’s claim by checking with the Montgomomery County Maryland public information office but my reaction to this nonsense was more along the lines of the comedy it is advice is superior to Sam Rayburn’s
Velvet Revolution posting $10k reward for #swattings in other news OJ still looking for the real killers .@twitchyteam twitchy.com/2012/06/11/blo…
— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) June 11, 2012
Robert Stacy McCain however who is nearing his 40th story on the subject is not but asking questions:
- Why have the operators of the “Not Brett Kimberlin” site taken extraordinary steps to conceal their own identities?
- What would we discover about the operators of this site, if their identities were known?
- Most importantly, who is paying for this elaborate ongoing effort to smear and defame Britt Kimberlin’s critics?
It is the answer to the last question that is most important and is the reason why the swatter had better decide to turn State’s evidence fast, because in January when he have a different administration this is going to come out and the results won’t be pretty.
On June 9th I attended one of the 160 Stand up for Religious freedom rallies that took place all over the nation. Mine took place at a location known as Carter Park where Leominster’s Minutemen marched from.
Of the speakers the most moving was the person hardest to understand. Fr. Thien Nguyen of St. Leo’s Parish just across the street from the park
He talked about his home country of Vietnam and how religious freedom was repressed there. Any religious expression confined to the churches itself, with priests not even allowed to wear their collars in public. What really struck me was how sees the same thing happening here. It reminded me of Claira Csiong
Have you noticed that unlike people in the MSM folks who have actually lived under socialism have no problem seeing Obama as a socialist?
Finally this week is a week of events for my family and friends. My wife and I met a friend of mine that I haven’t seen for a year for a pleasant dinner. I have a son who is having his high school graduation party Sunday and after this week’s show I’ll be attending the wedding of my wife’s best friend’s daughter. There are times when we get so wrapped up with the political side of life that we forget to actually live it. All of those things we talk about are important, but never let yourself get so wrapped up into things or so angry about stuff that you forget to enjoy the small things that life has to offer. After you send out that angry letter to the editor and tweet out the link to this post, do what I did this week. Take your spouse to a little ice cream stand in the country (or something similar wherever you are) and simply sit and enjoy each other’s company. Or if you are alone find something beautiful and green like the first hint of the new grapes on the vine:

Life is short, remember to enjoy it.
China: Losing the Demographics Derby?
The Pew Research Center recently conducted a global survey whose respondents designated China as the world’s leading economic power, narrowly edging out the USA. While surveys measure opinion and not economic reality, one wonders if the impression of an irresistible juggernaut is way overdone, just as Japan’s boom was overplayed in the media a generation ago.
China is ageing. Rapidly. The percentage of seniors in its population will nearly double in the next twenty years, from 9 percent to 17 percent. As its workforce matures, the number of young, energetic and trainable employees entering the labor market will shrink, while China’s medical and pension costs will rise. This is the very predictable consequence of the “one child” policy the country’s Communist government has enforced for the past thirty years. But very few people seem to be paying attention.
This pheonomenon has powerful implications for China’s future prospects as a military and economic power.
Read more at The Japan Times.
Five Ways to Gain From a Mortgage Refinance

Fox Business -
Editor’s note: Dale Robyn Siegel is an attorney who represents clients in foreclosure matters. She is also the president of a mortgage
company in New York.
There are lots of reasons to refinance
a mortgage, and not all of them are solely about reducing your monthly payment. Here are five ways to benefit from the lowest mortgage rates
in decades.
Cut Rate and Term, but Not Payment
If you can handle the same monthly payment (or even a little more), consider reducing the term of the mortgage when you refinance. With rates so low, you might be able to get the same payment for a 20-year loan as your current 30-year mortgage. Shorter terms mean lower rates.
Chris Noke, a Manhattanite and a client of mine, traded in his 30-year fixed mortgage of $315,000 at 5.75% for a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at 3.625%. His payment went from $1,838.25 to $1,847.17 (almost the same), but he eliminated eight years of interest.
Apple iOS 6 vs. Android vs. Windows Phone (Comparison Chart)
![]()
PCWorld -
Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) kicked off today with the unveiling of iOS 6 for the iPhone and iPad. Apple is promising over 200 new features in the latest version of its mobile operating system, but only a few of them were highlighted in the keynote.
June is an exciting month for smartphone fanatics as Microsoft is expected to unveil the next generation of Windows Phone at an event next Wednesday, June 20 while Google is expected to reveal its plans for the next version of Android, codenamed “Jellybean.”




















company in New York.