Reverse Midas Touch: Ohio Restaurant Plugged by Obama Last Week Goes Out of Business

As Mark Levin likes to say, everything Barack Obama touches turns to crap.

But why should that stop our blissfully out-of-touch President from citing a soon-to-be defunct restaurant as an example of why the auto industry bailouts have been such smashing successes?

A small north Toledo eatery whose origins date back to 1923 will close Sunday, just days after being feted in a speech to Chrysler workers by President Obama.

New Chet's Restaurant, in the 1000 block of East Manhattan Blvd., is closing for good, bringing to an end a nearly 90-year run at the corner of Manhattan and Cecelia Avenue, co-owner Richard Lawrence said Wednesday.

Mr. Lawrence, 82, was shot twice during a robbery outside his restaurant on May 19, 2008, while attempting to help what he thought was a man with a disabled automobile.

***

"Since I've been shot, I haven't been able to cook," Mr. Lawrence said Wednesday. "It was the economy and the smoking ban that hurt us more than anything."

Mr. Lawrence said a lack of business made the economics of paying someone to cook for his restaurant no longer sustainable. He placed the business up for sale and last week turned it over to a local real estate company. The contraction of the automotive industry didn't help either, he added.

***

Mr. Lawrence said he had 100 people packed into the restaurant then, hoping the President would stop by.

"It was busier than heck," he said. "Some people waited there for three hours. My parking lot was jammed."

Instead, President Obama ate lunch at Rudy's Hot Dog on West Sylvania Avenue, and dropped by Fred's Pro Hardware around the corner on Stickney Avenue, but mentioned Chet's during his remarks as he discussed other jobs and businesses that benefitted from the 2009 bailout of Chrysler because Toledo Chrysler workers still had jobs.

"And this plant indirectly supports hundreds of other jobs right here in Toledo," President Obama said to hundreds of workers in Chrysler's Wrangler plant. "After all, without you, who'd eat at Chet's or Inky's or Rudy's?"

Yeah, I'd be a little worried right now if I owned Inky's or Rudy's.

h/t: Mikepfs via a retweet by Connie Hair.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Cockroach) Ready to Carpetbag if Necessary

Even Republican gerrymandering doesn't faze him!

Maybe he's afraid if he's not a Congressman anymore his trophy wife will hit the high road.

"Kucinich confirms reports that other states have asked him to run, but he hasn't made any decisions."

Right, right. Other states are just clamoring for his indispensable services.



BONUS VIDEO: "How do you keep getting elected?"

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Via RealClearPolitics.

Cross-posted.

Slave Auctions Latest Fad In Goverment Schools

I would love to know who in the heck thought this was a good idea. A elementary school in Ohio thought it would be great to subject at least one of their fifth grade black students to the realities of what it feels like to be the center of attention at a slave auction.

No this isn't the deep south, which of course is where all the racist folks live. This is in the middle of America in the middle of a very blue state where unions rule and common sense left town long ago.

I can not even imagine the harm done to this kid and I can't believe anybody with a functioning brain cell would have thought this to be a good idea. The entire school district ought to be feeling a deep sense of embarrassment over this incidence. Of course no doubt the teacher is a union member with paid up dues and therefore in good standing, probably votes Democrat religiously and so is in no danger of losing his/her job or even having to make a symbolic act of hari kari to atone for their actions.

I just can not believe something like this even happened and listening to the description by the boy of what he was subjected to makes me wonder what impressions the other children were left with. Apologies ring hollow at this point.

Obama Approval Crumbles in Ohio

Might be time to bus in the ACORN thugs to crack some heads in Ohio. The state was overrun by the perpetrators of voter fraud last fall and helped Obama win the traditional swing state.

Well, it sure looks like Hopenchange has suffered a premature death there.

President Obama's job approval in Ohio has dropped significantly in the last two months, dipping under the 50% mark for the first time, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University. In the last Quinnipiac poll in Ohio taken in early May, Obama enjoyed a healthy 62% job approval rating, with only 31% disapproving. Today, Obama's job approval stands at 49%, with 44% disapproving - a twenty-five point net drop in just eight weeks.

Not surprsingly, Obama has seen a corresponding drop among voters' approval of his handling of the economy: two months ago he had a net +21 approval (57/36), today it is -2 (46/48).

A swing of 23 points in two months, all the while he lamely blames Bush for his own economic mess.

Let's hope Ohio is an indicator of crumbling approval nationwide.

Meanwhile, Obama now also is at his lowest Rasmussen approval index.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-six percent (36%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –3. Those figures reflect the highest level of strong disapproval measured to date and the lowest level recorded for the overall Approval Index.

GOP Could Win Contested House Race in Ohio; Update: Dem Wins

After picking up two seats in Louisiana Saturday, it's shaping up as a fairly decent weekend for the GOP, despite efforts by Democrats to steal another seat, thanks to the corrupt Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

The results of a tight congressional race in central Ohio were expected late Sunday as election officials finished counting thousands of provisional ballots.

Officials of the Franklin County Board of Elections began processing the 24,000 ballots Saturday in the race between Republican state Sen. Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.

Stivers leads Kilroy by 594 votes out of nearly 290,000 cast in the 15th Congressional District. About 40 percent of the 24,000 provisional ballots came from voters in the district.

The counting of the provisional ballots — issued at polls to people who believe they have been wrongly denied the right to vote — went forward after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Friday that 1,000 of the ballots in dispute must be thrown out because of voter error.

In a 4-2 decision, the court struck down a directive by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner saying the votes should be counted.

Justices said Brunner improperly instructed county officials to apply conflicting standards to election law by ruling that the votes should be counted, even though the envelopes failed to comply with legal guidelines set out before Election Day, Nov. 4.

Update: Well, that didn't turn out as hoped.

With all the ballots counted in Ohio's Fifteenth District, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has defeated Republican Steve Stivers by 2,311 votes. Kilroy's margin of victory is large enough to avoid an automatic recount.

The final result was delayed until Franklin County officials could count some 24,000 provisional ballots, about 40 percent of which were cast in the Fifteenth District. Stivers had been leading by just under 600 votes before the provisional ballots were counted.

The victory gives Democrats one final pickup of a Republican-held seat. Kilroy will be succeeding retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio).

Thanks to Ace for the link.

By the way, expect more of this magical provisional ballot nonsense in Louisiana's 4th district.

In complete but unofficial results, Fleming received 44,497 votes (48.07%) and Carmouche received 41,141 vote (47.69%). Independent Candidate Chester T. Kelley got 3,245 votes (3.51%) and Independent Candidate Gerard Bowen, Jr. got 675 votes (.73%). These are complete but unofficial results from the Louisiana Secretary of State's office.

In all, there were 92,558 early and machine votes cast in the election. Provisional ballots had not been counted and are not a part of the total.

Carmouche cited the uncounted provisional ballots as one reason he would not concede the race once the results had been announced.

"For me to concede at this point would be foolish. We've spent a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of time in this race, and there are provisional ballots that we don't believe have been counted yet because they don't usually count those (immediately after a race). Democrats usually win those by large margins so the fat lady hasn't sung yet in this thing," he said.

What The Hell is Going On In Ohio?

And when is the rest of America going to fight back against this sort of stuff? Reports now of dead people voting in Ohio, and it isn't a new occurrence.

But this isn't the first time we've uncovered dead voters. Two years ago, another 5 On Your Side investigation exposed 13,000 dead voters registered in Cuyahoga County. More than two dozen of them cast ballots.

Is it possible to just disqualify this state completely? C'mon America don't let Ohio steal this election. Fight back with your vote. Send a message.

H/T to Instapundit

More Democrat Voter Fraud You Can Believe In

In Ohio, of course.

The Columbiana County Board of Elections has canceled a meeting Saturday to discuss whether two county newcomers voted improperly. No new meeting has been set.

In a related move, David Johnson, the chairman of the elections board and chairman of the county Republican Party, on Friday called for a poll worker to resign.

Nancy Cope, the secretary of the county Republican Party, on Tuesday sent a complaint to the board about alleged improper voting.

She stated that Peter Grant Jr. of Washington state and Molly Thompson, formerly of North Carolina, moved to Ohio. The two registered to vote Sept. 30 and voted that day.

Ohio law requires that voters be permanent residents.
...
Cope said the pair gave their address as the home of Bea Delpapa, a poll worker who also is a presiding judge of a county precinct.

Johnson asked Delpapa to step down from her election work. There was no word Friday if she did so.

How convenient. These fraudsters were enabled by the presiding judge of a county precinct.

This Delpapa shouldn't be asked to step down. She should be removed. By force, if necessary and charged with aiding and abetting criminals.

Some coincidence, isn't it, that all these cases of voter fraud happen to be perpetrated by Democrats?

Hot Coeds Uncover More Voter Fraud

I saw this last night but was getting sleepy at the time, which was no surprise since I was in bed. Anyway, if it weren't for another guy who also was mesmerized by both their investigative skills and cuteness, I'd have forgotten about this completely.

Watch the video, admire the talent, and thrill at the knowledge the Democrats are going to do every damn thing to steal the vote in Ohio.

Props to Greta van Susteren, by the way. She's been very fair and is clearly not in the tank for Obama. I've gained a lot of respect for her the past few weeks. Her Greta Wire always has some interesting material.

Media Discovers Bogus Voters in Columbus

Props to the Post for reporting this, but it's already old news. And they tout it as an exclusive, no less.

Four well-heeled New York Democrats are under investigation by an Ohio prosecutor for setting up a temporary home in the swing state - where two have already cast their ballots - just so that their votes will be counted there, The Post has learned.

The targets of the probe - including the daughter and son-in-law of a New York City real-estate titan, a former New York Sun reporter and a Bank of New York Mellon executive - are connected to Vote From Home, a Manhattan-based political action committee set up to get voters to the polls in Ohio, where residents are allowed to cast ballots 29 days before Election Day, investigators said.

The New Yorkers and nine other members from across the country are accused of packing themselves into a modest three-bedroom house in Columbus, waiting 30 days - and then registering, even though the Buckeye State is not their permanent residence.

Under Ohio law, a person who comes to the state for "temporary purposes only," without the intention of making it the "permanent place of abode" is not considered a resident. New permanent residents must live in Ohio 30 days before registering.

Four group members, including two of the New Yorkers, have already cast ballots, and six others requested absentee ballots from the county elections board.

Franklin County, Ohio, prosecutor Bob O'Brien launched the investigation after student reporters at palestra.net, a Fox News affiliate, discovered the mass registration effort at the home in a working-class neighborhood on Brownlee Avenue.

"Our board of elections referred 13 suspicious registrations to us, all from people with out-of-state addresses, all of whom claim to be living in a three-bedroom house in Columbus," O'Brien said Friday.

Vote From Home is registered to the East 82nd Street brownstone of Heather Halstead, daughter of Halstead Properties founder Clark Halstead Jr. She and her husband, NYU grad Marc Gustafson, are among those under scrutiny.

The blogs have been all over this for some time, so how exactly is this an exclusive? Exclusive to the mainstream media, perhaps.

ACORN Bribing People to Register

The biggest joke? They're referred to as left-leaning.

Please.

A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.

Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot.

ACORN is under investigation in Ohio and at least eight other states - including Missouri, where the FBI said it's planning to look into potential voter fraud - for over-the-top efforts to get as many names as possible on the voter rolls regardless of whether a person is registered or eligible.

It's even under investigation in Bridgeport, Conn., for allegedly registering a 7-year-old girl to vote, according to the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered Ohio's Secretary of State to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The order was in response to a Republican lawsuit unrelated to the ACORN probe in Cuyahoga County, in which at least three people, including Johnson, have been subpoenaed.

Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it's a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay "compensation on a fee-per-registration" system when signing up someone to vote.

Johnson, who works at a cellphone kiosk in downtown Cleveland, said he was a sitting duck for the signature hunters, but was always happy to help them out in exchange for a smoke or a little scratch. Sometimes, he'd collect 10 to 20 cigarettes and anywhere from $10 to $15 a day, he said.

The Cleveland voting probe, first reported by The Post yesterday, also focused on Lateala Goins, who said she put her name on multiple voter registrations. She guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them. "You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do

I saw some Rutgers professor on Fox and Friends early this morning trying to defend this criminal outfit and she looked extremely uncomfortable, as well she should. It's painfully obvious these goons have been getting away with voter fraud for years and it's finally time to put and end to this. The irony that Democrats squeal and whine about every perceived attempt at stopping voter fraud while trying to register someone 72 times is just too rich.

Meanwhile, an Ohio judge has ruled Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking the law.

A federal judge ruled this evening that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking federal law by not giving county elections boards the chance to determine whether new voter registrations are fraudulent.

In uploading the Ohio Republican Party's request for a court order, Judge George C. Smith of the U.S. District Court in Columbus said, "It is hard to imagine a public interest more compelling than safeguarding the legitimacy of the election of the president of the United States."

Smith said that the Help America Vote Act requires states to not only verify the identity of newly registered voters with the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the federal Social Security Administration, but also to provide counties with the names of new voters whose records did not match.

Jennifer Brunner had been doing verification, but had not made the names available to county elections boards. Judge Smith gave Brunner a week to comply.

'Well, I Tell You What, It Helps in Ohio That We've Got Democrats in Charge of the Machines'

Thus spake The Messiah September 3 in Ohio. Ah, yes, it sure does help having partisan hacks at the controls, doesn't it?

For all the get out the vote efforts Democrats encourage every year, they sure go out of their way to suppress the votes of Republicans every chance they get.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.

But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.

Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."

Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.

And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain.

Two Hamilton County voters have sued, accusing her of "the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters."

The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had a line at the top next to a box: "I am a qualified elector."

Brunner sent a memo telling county election officials to reject those applications for absentee ballots if the box was not checked. "Failure to check the box leaves both the applicant and the board of elections without verification that the applicant is a 'qualified elector'," she wrote.

But that's contrary to state law and Brunner doesn't have the authority, according to the lawsuit and an opinion from Hamilton County's Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters.

H/T Dan Riehl.

Six weeks to election day and they're already playing games.

Expect zero coverage from the allegedly mainstream media on this. After all, it's not Democrats pretending they filled out a ballot wrong.

Expect this nonsense from the Democrats nationwide. But our zealous investigative media will ignore these efforts and instead will focus on some bogus outrage from some morons who probably aren't registered to vote.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

Ohio Figures Out How to Have More Voters Then Residents

In what some are classifying as an election loophole, Ohio has a law on the books which will allow people to register to vote the week of Sept 30 - Oct 6. Ohio law states that a person must only reside in the state for 30 days to meet the residency requirement and therefore be eligible to vote.
Why is this a concern for primarily Republicans? Because college will be back in session, so all those students will be able to register to vote. Conventional wisdom says the youth vote will go to Obama, even though in the past the under 25 crowd has a very low percentage of actually voting.

Ohio has created a window in the election calendar that would allow residents instant gratification - register one minute, vote the next. It's also given the campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain a chance to bank thousands of first-time voters during that Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 window.

Now what could possibly go wrong? How many Ohioans will vote early in Ohio and then say go to another another state and vote on Nov 4th? How about folks who zip across the Ohio border between now and the end of Aug to establish residency, vote and then scoot back to their home state to vote? Or maybe they will simply do like Wexler (D-?), who represents Florida in the congress but lives in Massachusetts. The sad part is most people in his district don't have a problem with that.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Ohio wants to force parents to volunteer in schools

Now isn't that the biggest oxymoron you have seen? I guess that means all those guys who were drafted during the Vietnam War can now be considered volunteers.
In stumbling across this story I couldn't discern the party of the state representative who is proposing this bill, so using the standard rule of journalistic integrity we are all too familiar with I assumed it is a Democrat.

The bill, introduce by state Rep. Sandra Williams, would require parents to volunteer for a minimum of 13 hours each year or pay the fine, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Tuesday. School districts reportedly would be responsible for telling the Ohio Department of Education which parents did not donate their time.

The fine is $100.
So I went searching in the Cleveland Plain Dealer to see if I could get more information an yup there it is in the middle of the story.

House Bill 519 was introduced by Rep. Sandra Williams, a Cleveland Democrat, and co-sponsored by six other lawmakers including Rep. Stephen Dyer, a Democrat from Green, and Rep. Barbara Boyd, a Cleveland Heights Democrat.

The comments left by the readers are priceless. It seems many of the citizens are in possession of some common sense, so I don't know what happens in the voting booth.

But along the way I came across this story also. That is the funny thing about doing research you never know what you will stumble across.

Cities, schools stung by higher election costs

The headline had me scratching my head. How could election cost sting schools?

The Board of Elections charged municipalities and school districts a total of $5.8 million for 2007 elections - about $4 million more than the last round of costs passed on to cities and school districts.

I still don't see the connection to schools.

The increased costs are the result of a new state law that directs boards to pass along labor costs for temporary help. The 2007 charges also are higher because it is the first year costs associated with electronic voting have been passed on.

Y'all keep voting Democrat, Ohio. But in the meantime quit your belly aching about your taxes and the burden government imposes on you.

Ohio Governor Panders to CAIR

NewsBusters points out something the local Ohio papers have failed to do: Reporting on the fact the governor of the state was pandering to the unindicted Hamas co-conspirators from CAIR the other night.

Governor Strickland addressed the crowd of 350 people, saying: "On behalf of all Ohioans, [my wife and I] appreciate your vision to promote justice and mutual understanding. We gather under CAIR-Ohio's theme this year, 'American Muslims: Connecting and Sharing,' to do just that, to connect and share and get to know each other better."

The story makes no mention whether Strickland is a Republican or Democrat, nor does it matter. He's an idiot, is what he is.

Does he have no knowledge of what this terror front group represents?