For all that Barack Obama and his wife try to paint themselves as "just ordinary people", I think this little detail tells us a lot about him.

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

Hold on here for just a moment. Let's set aside the possible corruption angle here for a moment. Let's temporarily ignore the fact that Barack Obama was on the payroll of a campaign contributor for whom he was soliciting grant money from the state, and who made a campaign contribution once he got the grant. Let's just look at the part of the story I put in bold-faced type.

For his part-time job, Barack Obama was making $58,000 a year in taxpayer money -- and he could not not get by on that paltry amount. Never mind that he was making roughly twice the per capita income in his district (as a former Chicagoan, I'm well-aware of the area he represents and the poverty there). Never mind that the salary from his part time job put him above the average salary for teachers in the state of Illinois at that time by more than $10,000. And never mind that Michelle Obama was bringing home over $100,000 a year at the same time working in the corporate world that she now tells the little people to shun. He still needed to supplement the salary from his part-time job -- by taking cash from a political insider to use his office to get that contributor (eventually) over $320,000.

Barack Obama tries to present himself to us as the common man. He wants us all to believe that that he understands us and our struggles. This story proves that it isn't true. If you and your family can't make it on over $160,000 a year without supplementing your salary through a shady deal with a campaign contributor, you clearly aren't a man of the people -- and are instead a charlatan trying to fool the American people.

But no doubt we will hear from the Obama campaign that there is nothing wrong with Barack Obama's conduct here -- just like they continue to tell us about his financial dealings with Tony Rezko. But I think it is becoming obvious that Obama's character is a real issue from which his campaign desperately wants to distract the American people.

H/T Hot Air, Sister Toldjah

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Posted by: Greg at 07:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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