Yes, you, too, should you dare breathe a word that you might be thinking of buying a business, or heck - who knows what else as long as you aren’t supporting The One - can have ALL of your records researched - by someone in the state government. No, I am NOT making this up - it happened. Oh, coincidentally (cough, choke), the person, Helen Jones-Kelley, from whose office a good bit of this all happened, made the maximum allowed donation to - yes, of course, Obama. But she SWEARS that is not what motivated her looking into all of Joe’s records. Get this - her “reasoning” is that when someone mentions they want to buy a business, of course it is the responsibility of the state to investigate if that person is actually CAPABLE of buying that business, or if they have back taxes, or liens, or are on welfare, or…Sounds to me like maybe they were not checking out his business but GIVING him the business because he - GASP - does not support Obama. That alone seems to be reason enough to investigate this private citizen by THE STATE. For Ms. Jones-Kelley, that is. Not for the Ohio Senate president, Bill M. Harris:

Harris called the multiple records checks “questionable” and said he awaits more answers. “It’s kind of like Big Brother is looking in your pocket,” he said.

If state employees run checks on every person listed in newspaper stories as buying a business, “it must take a lot of people a lot of time to run these checks,” he said. “Where do you draw the line?”

Where indeed??

Read the rest ->

Here’s a discussion of the situation courtesy of Bill O’Reilly (don’t start - I can’t believe it, either) and Megyn Kelly, with a little bonus ACORN coverage at the end:

Are you getting this?? The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services INVESTIGATED A PRIVATE CITIZEN BECAUSE HE MENTIONED HE MIGHT WANT TO BUY A BUSINESS in framing a question to a presidential candidate, the answer to which exposed more of the candidate than he wanted. That is their BS explanation for why they have delved into this man’s life. What a crock. We know damn well why they are delving into his background, because I can GUARANTEE you that not every person who mentions they would like to own their own business has a State office go into their economic and personal records, whether that information is released or not (and Ms. Jones-Kelley claims the confidential information was not. Uh huh.) No way in hell.

Oh, and you are going to love this additional reason into why she investigated Joe the Plumber. Because she was getting so many media requests about information that, she claims, was in Public Records, and some that was, um, confidential. Well, I may not have gone to Journalism school, but I do have a ton of education, including 5 years of graduate work. I don’t recall anyone EVER doing my research for me. If it is in PUBLIC RECORDS, that means you can look it up your own damn self!! And if it is CONFIDENTIAL, why are you LOOKING at it?? So, not only did Ms. Jones-Kelley do their jobs FOR them, but she did it on STATE TIME and on a STATE COMPUTER. She claims there was no ill intent to these checks, some into confidential records. Funny - because I’m sure illin’ that anyone in state government would stoop to these levels simply because a resident of the state ASKED A QUESTION!! I mean, really - it wasn’t even an inappropriate question, for pete’s sake!

I should add that a clerk who used the LEADS (Law Enforcement Automated Data System) to determine if Joe’s address was the correct one for - naturally - the media, actually got in a little bit of hot water, though the “punishment” for using a state computer to access a private citizen’s information which then - miraculously - made its way to the media is unclear. Yeah, okey dokie.

Here’s the bottom line: if this sort of activity is occurring NOW, when Obama is just the (illegitimate) Democratic nominee, what in the sam hill will he do if he is PRESIDENT? We all thought - okay, almost all of us (shoot, someone supported the guy) - that President Bush was the most vindictive, petty, thin-skinned politician to come down the pike. But Obama and his minions, with their attacks, from verbal, physical, destructive, and dangerous - even to the point of trying to run the McCain campaign bus OFF THE ROAD, has taken this to a whole other level, and it is disturbing on a massive scale.

Let’s recap, just in case anyone is missing the point: a private citizen, just an ordinary American citizen, had his life investigated by his STATE government, and turned upside down BECAUSE HE ASKED A QUESTION. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, well, I just don’t know what will.

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.

Thus, the public image of Obama is of a “man who never was”:

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don’t see Obama’s ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile “come on” when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels’ disciples, not Cronkite’s.

What about Obama’s 20 year relationship with terrorist William Ayers?

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama’s life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama’s two years at New York’s Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious?

And Obama’s rise in Chicago politics? Blankley notes the lack of media attention that leaves unanswered questions:

How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great — and unflattering — details on Obama’s Chicago years presented in David Freddoso’s new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso’s book a review with fair comment.

“The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis,” Blankly quotes from Stuart Taylor. Blankley observes:

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Blankley concludes that “One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street’s leaders currently are for their failings.”

I personally have my doubts that the Wall Street will be held accountable for its failings any more than the media will be for its biases, lies, and omissions about Barack Obama. Worse, while Wall Street costs are in dollars, should Obama win the cost will instead be measured in the lives of our fellow citizens and future of our country.

Correction: This post was updated to correct the name from Tom to Tony Blankley. Thanks to breeze for catching the error!

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-YoB5mnZs[/youtube]

Casting a critical glance at Michelle Obama’s abortive attempt to woo women voters at the Palmer House this week in Chicago, Marin explains why Michelle’s bankrupt entreaties will fall on deaf ears.  I quote Marin:

The Obama campaign has a woman problem. How big? How small? It’s not clear, but in a close election, small can be big.

Marin, in other words, acknowledges the schism in the Democratic Party, a schism, she correctly observes, that is a result of the disenchantment of a core constituency: women.  Refer to them as small all you want, Democrats, but small is large in a competitive general election.  And yes, size matters.

Marin continues:

You wouldn’t have known it from this mostly well-dressed, mostly well-heeled crowd. Many of the women, black and white, young and old, were early donors who gave money back when Barack Obama was a long shot, and they were gladly giving again now. A lovely lunch of organic chicken prepared by a renowned chef, Alice Waters, brought in somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 for the Obama Victory fund. 

Although visually diverse, the crowd of women attending the Women for Obama event are all wealthy; they are members of the haute bourgeoisie.  This is in stark contrast to the many female Democrats the media has relegated to the penumbra.  Marin, on the other hand, places one of these ignored women in the center of her column.  I quote:

But the women Obama needs right now are the ones who do not dine downtown. They’re the ones who can’t afford organic anything, forced to choose between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk because they can’t buy both on the same day.

Women like Sarah.

 

A few hours after leaving the “Women for Obama” luncheon, I ran into Sarah, not her real name. I’ve known her for a few years. A single mom, she free-lances, working as many jobs as she can to support two growing boys. She dreams of a permanent gig with benefits, but it’s still just a dream.

A 37-year-old Democrat, she is also a college grad and a news junkie who has watched this campaign like a hawk. She surprised me with her anger Tuesday, saying she’s voting for McCain.

To Sarah, Barack Obama is like the organic chicken at lunch. Sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool.

At last a reporter highlights what everyone else suppresses.  Obama is an elitist, Marin declares, and he must choose a different tack if he desires the support of women who have had to struggle their entire lives to receive an education and to raise their children.  These women are the survivors of sexism, and they empathize with Hillary Clinton and all the other experienced women who have been forced to wait as the polished, groomed boy of little to no accomplishment is arbitrarily catapulted to the rung above her on the social and financial ladder.  ”Too cool” is an apt characterization of Barack Obama: he is nothing more than a newfangled commodity, and the insidious glow that emanates from the burnished surface of this patriarchal blandishment does nothing more than contribute to the chilly environment too many working women have had to endure both inside and outside the sexist workplace.

Women whose dreams have been crushed continue to suffer, but Michelle and the donors with whom she cavorts nibble on organic chicken as they celebrate the destruction of Hillary Clinton.  Because Marin understands this is not a winning strategy, she offers the Obamas a bit of advice.  I quote Marin again:

They may need to try offering more macaroni and cheese.

In other words, the hopelessly aloof, indeed oblivious, Obamas must acknowledge the uncomfortable reality of their irrecoverable loss of the votes and the confidence of working women.  Perhaps Michelle should ask the WAL-MART distributor to whose Board she was appointed if they have any boxes of macaroni and cheese mix to spare the family that spends $10,000 per annum on ballet lessons and summer camp.  Perhaps it is time for the inhabitants of the Rezko mansion to learn how real Americans experience quotidian life.  Perhaps Michelle Obama would understand working women if she spent less time at fashion shows with her husband’s slum landlord patron and more time with the ordinary women Carol Marin interviews.

If only reporters were as thorough and rigorous as Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun-Times. 

The reception of Marin’s article can be reviewed at Memeorandum. 

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According to Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, who is accompanying Obama on his trip to the Middle East and Europe, Obama’s campaign sent out a “dress code” that especially targeted female reporters as to the appropriate attire while traveling in Israel and Jordan.
Obama press told to cover up, not wear green

No green. That is the color of Hamas. Also no nail polish, a limited amount of jewelry, covered shoulders and arms, closed-toed shoes, and stockings for women. (Do they make stockings anymore?) Women must also be prepared to cover their heads.

Two points:

First, Obama fails to assume that female reporters (or “Sweeties as he calls them) might just know a thing or two about the world and its cultural traditions. These women’s world travel experience likely far exceeds his own.

Second, Jordan’s culture is far more limiting for women, but a look through online photos reveals a range of female dress (e.g., short sleeves, jewelry, and no head scarves) especially among younger women. But Israel? Huh? Much of Israel is almost like being home again.

I am not against respecting people’s views and customs while visiting other lands, especially their sacred sites. But, considerable concern already exists about how Obama views women, and this autocratic paternalism seems to be playing out once again.