Buckeye RINO

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, and Part 11.

Return of the Conservatives has the scoop on part 12.  Watch the video there or here.  In 2007, Obama was rated the most liberal member of the Senate, with a whopping 95.5 rating on the liberal 100-point scale from National Journal, who reveals their rating methodology here.  That’s just one measure.  As pointed out at Return of the Conservatives, there are other measures.  The Citizens Club for Growth rated Obama tied for last place with a zero rating in Obama’s first year in office. Also pointed out at Return of the Conservatives:

He has a 0% rating from the Americans for Tax Reform and a 13% rating from Citizens Against Government Waste. His hatred for the Second Amendment was clear with his support of the DC gun ban, and further it is no surprise that the NRA gives him a F rating, and the Gun Owners of America gives him a 0% rating.

From the Buckeye RINO perspective:

This video and the one for HOPE ON Part 4 are nearly identical in content, so you might want to pull up Part 4 for further commentary.

These liberal scores are just based upon votes.  What isn’t measured are the ideals that Obama has held very close to the vest (HOPE ON Part 6) about where he ultimately wants to lead this country.  Given the smoking gun of his 2001 radio interview, as mentioned in HOPE ON Part 8, that suggests that his liberal leanings equate with those of Bill Ayers (HOPE ON Part 7) except for the violence (Obama denounced the violence carried out and advocated for by Ayers, but never denounced the radical views of Ayers–in fact, as more of the puzzle pieces come together, the ideological portrait of Obama is resembling that of Ayers more and more), which would put Obama to the left of virtually every blogger in Ohio’s political blogosphere, to the left of every other presidential candidate, including Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, and to the left of nearly every popular liberal icon, like Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, and Bill Maher, let alone the other U.S. Senators.

When it comes to the bailout, Bob Latta gets it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Downtown Sandusky, in Erie County, Ohio, has a quaint little park named Washington Park.

Washington Street runs through it.

(Many more photos to ogle if you click to see the full story.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10.

DarkeBlog has the scoop on Part 11.  The video can be accessed there or here.  The transcript of the video is important, so I’m including it with some bold type to add my own emphasis.

—Senator McCain, history has shown us your economic plans will work.
—When Ronald Reagan took office, the economy was far worse than it is today.
—You understand that Reagan’s plan worked. Senator Obama does not.
—Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, dividend, and captial gains taxes. Senator Obama will raise them.
—Ronald Reagan cut taxes on small businesses. Senator Obama will raise them.
—Ronald Reagan cut spending and reduced the size of the federal government. Senator Obama plans to increase spending by nearly a trillion dollars. So who’s right?
—During Reagan’s eight years, the Gross Domestic Product nearly doubled. The net worth of a middle class household, again, nearly doubled, and 14 million new jobs were created.
—Senator McCain, we are hopeful.
—Because your economic policies are the policies of Ronald Reagan.
—As a nation in crisis, we’d be fools not to embrace your ideas.
—What happens when we pick the alternative? Please America. Let’s never find out.

From the Buckeye RINO Perspective:

I was too young to vote when Ronald Reagan was first elected in 1980.  But I do remember double-digit unemployment in Ohio.  I remember the oil shocks.  I remember double digit inflation.  I remember double digit mortgage rates.  Americans were being held hostage in Iran.  The U.S.S.R. had invaded Afghanistan.

Not only was the United States economy weak, but our foreign enemies also thought we were weak.  Jimmy Carter called for a boycott of the Summer Olympics in 1980.  Jimmy Carter called for a grain embargo on the Soviet Union.  American farmers had to sell their grain at prices that were too low, only to see profiteers in other nations who’d bought our low-priced grain turn around and re-sell the grain to the Soviet Union at prices that were inflated by our embargo.  Middlemen profited greatly thanks to Jimmy Carter.

One of my school teachers, who was a Democrat, had this to say when sizing up the Carter-Reagan presidential race: “I think, if the Soviet Union called up the White House on the hotline to say ‘Surrender or we launch our nuclear missiles in fifteen minutes,’ Jimmy Carter would surrender.  I think if Ronald Reagan answered the phone instead, he’d say ‘You’ll have your nuclear bombs up in fifteen minutes?  We’ll have ours up in ten!'”  I think the so-called “Reagan Democrats” were stirred by the resolve of Ronald Reagan.  I think voters across the spectrum felt he’d fight tooth-and-nail for us, while Carter would wave the white flag.

Looking back, isn’t it almost surreal that our GDP and the average family’s net worth both nearly doubled during the Reagan Administration?  The Iranians promptly returned the hostages.  The Soviet Union tried to get a little toe-hold on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and Reagan promptly invaded it. The old Cold War strategy of mutually assured destruction as a deterrent was replaced by the new strategy of outright victory. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  The wall came down.  It’s the stuff of legends and fairy tales, and yet it happened.

This video ad points out that John McCain wants to tackle our economic problems the way Ronald Reagan did:  Cut taxes and let business thrive.  On the foreign policy front, all the other candidates, including Barack Obama, remind me of Jimmy Carter.  Only John McCain is resolved to win out against our enemies.

Frankly speaking, I love Ronald Reagan.  Which presidential candidate reminds you more of Ronald Reagan?

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9.

The Boring Made Dull has the scoop on Part 10.  You can check out the video there or here.  Obama claims there will be those in the middle class who get tax breaks, but he’s never actually voted that way in the U.S. Senate.  Obama talk of federal initiatives and taxes make it sound as if the government creates wealth, but the government doesn’t.  The people create the wealth of the nation, and tax policy must reflect that, but Obama’s principles don’t even acknowledge that.

From the Buckeye RINO standpoint:

John McCain has said that he will not raise taxes because he knows that it would hurt the economy’s recovery hopes.  I have not dwelt too much the tax proposals of the presidential candidates, as I’m sure you’ve heard the talking points many times over.  I have, however, said a few things about taxes relative to ethically challenged sub-prime lenders playing shell games in order to avoid paying taxes.  I’ve also made some down-ticket endorsements based partly upon candidate platforms relating to taxes, like Nick Brusky for Lorain County Commissioner, Larry Silcox for Huron County Commissioner, Dave Potter for Congress from Ohio’s 13th, and Jeff Wagner for state rep from the Ohio House 81st District.  I’ve also noted that the Democrat machine in Lorain County uses some strong-arm tactics to intimidate residents from trying to interfere with hiking taxes.

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.

Cornell McCleary of American Experience has the scoop on Part 9.  The video link is here.  This is a reminder of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition that we not look upon each other according to the color of our skin, but that we look upon each other according to the content of our character.

From the Buckeye RINO perspective:

We Americans haven’t yet arrived at the point where we pay no more attention to the color of our skin.  The progress we’ve made in our nation’s history from the days of slavery and the days of Jim Crow has continued apace, but has not been completed.  I, personally, have spent much of my adult life living in non-white households and non-white neighborhoods.  I can share personal experiences that are illustrative of the progress that still needs to be made, but I don’t wish to stir the pot today.  Having said that, I will say this:  The other nations of the Earth have not made as much progress toward tolerance as America has.  We blaze the trail that other nations follow.  And while other nations may have enacted policies that they may point to as being more friendly to diversity and more respectful toward basic human rights than the United States of America, I remind you that those same nations still have a longer way to go in real life than they do on paper.  In real life, America leads.

As a Republican, I belong to the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.  Abolitionists formed the core of the party faithful when it was founded.  Abolitionists in early America were among those most likely to adhere to the principle that “all men are created equal,” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.  Abolitionists were found in large numbers in Ohio during the state’s early years.  The shortest routes of the Underground Railroad from the antebellum South to Canada ran through Ohio.  Ohio raised the largest contingent of soldiers to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War.  I am a descendant of early Ohio’s abolitionists.  For about a decade after the war, newly emancipated slaves identified strongly with the Republican Party until Rutherford B. Hayes screwed that up by swallowing a poison pill in order to win the presidential election of 1876 that was decided by the U.S. House of Representatives when all candidates failed to garner a majority vote of the Electoral College.  The end of Reconstruction ushered in the era of Jim Crow, and no attempt was made to crush Jim Crow for an entire century, when the Civil Rights era was ushered in.  During that century, America fought two World Wars, and a number of Americans, black and white, migrated to the industrial North from the agricultural South to find work in the factories that supplied the nation with its war hardware.  Ohio’s relatively progressive views on race were smothered beginning with the Hayes administration of 1877.  By the time that Democrats took the leadership role in the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960’s, Ohio’s population and attitudes had changed a lot.  While African-Americans found themselves enfranchised anew, and large numbers of them identified with the Democrat Party, pockets of deep racism existed among whites of both major political parties.  For my part, I have endeavored to join my voice with others in my party to urge Ohio Republicans to close the rifts that separate us by race.  Though I am not pleased by the scarcity of people of color within the Republican Party’s membership, I am pleased that we’ve been able to make progress in removing the glass ceiling for Republican candidates of color to aspire to any elected office they choose to pursue.  Regarding removal of the glass ceiling, I’d venture to say that Ohio’s Republicans have outshined Ohio’s Democrats.  Many Ohio Republicans nowadays are willing to cast votes for candidates based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  I’ve already voted for a black U.S. President twice, during the primaries of 1996 and 2000 when I was drawn to the empowering message of Alan Keyes.  The Democrat Party’s insistence that this presidential election should be a referendum on racism by electing Barack Obama has elicited responses of puzzlement by many of my fellow conservative Ohio bloggers who were so passionately outspoken in their support for Ken Blackwell just two years ago.  For many of us, elections of candidates are already about the content of a person’s character, the vision for where a person wants to lead, the articulation of where a person stands on the issues, and not the color of a person’s skin.

Nevertheless, I have spotted instances of intolerance during this election cycle, and have even written some blog entries calling attention to some of those instances.  I think it was wrong to put Reverend Wright on parade.  Obama’s message was distinctly different than Wright’s.  I felt that Barack Obama was being persecuted for his religious observances.  I even called out Mitt Romney, the candidate I voted for in the primary, when I thought he was crossing the line.  I am familiar with liberation theology, and I see the positives that come from it, so I think that the fearmongering against it is inherently racist.  I was alarmed when it was rumored that someone shouted “Kill him,” referencing Barack Obama as the target, at a McCain rally, and I urged cooperation with the Secret Service if anyone had any evidence of such conspiracies afoot.

When coverage is so heavy concerning the presidential race, some important candidates can get ignored in the shuffle.  So if you are in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and only know who incumbent Democrat Marcy Kaptur is, but have no clue who Republican challenger Bradley Leavitt is, I’m happy to report that the PBS station in Toledo, WGTE, has video footage of Mr. Leavitt on its program “Deadline NOW,” that originally aired on October 17th.  The video link is here. The host of the show, Jack Lessenberry, interviews both Bradley Leavitt and Democrat challenger George Mays, who is running for Ohio’s 5th Congressional District seat against Republican incumbent Bob Latta.

I’ve noted before that both Kaptur and Latta voted NO both times on the bailout bill, and I applaud them for those NO votes.

Kaptur (“Deadline NOW” video of her from September 5th), as Leavitt notes, hasn’t exhibited leadership to match her 26 years of seniority.  The district hasn’t benefited much from her representation.  An example of something still waiting to be done is the construction of the proposed I-73, an interstate highway that would link a number of states, but that would also provide a critical direct link between Toledo and Columbus.  What can get the project off the drawing board and into production?  I’ve had the opportunity to see both Kaptur and Leavitt in person.  I’m voting for Leavitt, as I live in the 9th District, myself.

My parents live in the 5th District, and they are supporting Latta.  Nevertheless, it’s important to know something of all the Congressional candidates, so I’m pleased that the video includes George Mays.

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

One Oar in the Water has the scoop on Part 8.  You can view the video here.  Obama has attempted to portray himself as the champion of the middle class, but the windfall profits taxes and the high-bracket income tax increases proposed by Obama will backfire in the form of rising unemployment as the government dampens earning power, not just of individuals, but of employers as well.  While Obama demagogues about disparities between classes, it should be noted that people have availed themselves of the ladder of upward mobility.  The middle class might be shrinking slightly, but the lower class has shrunk considerably as America is still a land of opportunity for those that reach for it.

Tom Blumer at Bizzy Blog added this audio clip to his coverage of Part 8.  It is a 2001 radio interview with Barack Obama expressing sentiments that the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Warren during the Civil Rights era wasn’t radical enough while lamenting that redistribution of wealth couldn’t be effectively pursued through the courts.

From the Buckeye Rino perspective:

The audio clip is the smoking gun clearly showing that Obama shares radical Marxist viewpoints with Ayers, as I surmised in Part 7.  As I noted when the bailout bill passed, welcome to the U.S.S.S.A.  The question of whether we are socialists or capitalists has apparently been answered.  This election is our last chance to step away from the madness for at least the next couple of years.

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion has the scoop on Part 7.  The accompanying video is here.  The political career of Barack Obama was launched in the home of Bill Ayers.  As noted in HOPE ON Part 6, Obama is being elusive about defining his ideology, and, as noted in HOPE ON Part 4, when we look at his votes in the U.S. Senate, he occupies the far left endpoint of the political spectrum among his colleagues in the U.S. Senate.  While Barack Obama states that Bill Ayers is just a guy in the neighborhood, and while Obama states that he doesn’t condone the violence carried out, when Obama was 8 years old, by the Weather Underground, which Ayers belonged to, the few cryptic remarks and actions of Obama that help bring a fuzzy picture of his ideology into sharper focus may very well indicate a convergence of opinion with that of Bill Ayers.  What does Ayers believe, and has Obama ever denounced such beliefs, or, instead, has Obama endorsed such beliefs?  Obama has only denounced the terrorist violence conducted by Ayers.  That’s the full scope of Obama denunciation of Ayers.  Otherwise, Obama lauds Ayers as a well-respected professor of education.  What does Ayers advocate for in the realm of education?  Well, he’s been using non-profit organizations to engage in frequent power struggles over who controls the Chicago schools.  His education reforms are not aimed at academic goals at all.  His education reforms are aimed at control over the schools, and then aimed at social engineering by way of adopting a radical agenda, which would probably reflect his political views on government overthrow, anarchy, Marxism, disdain for religion, decriminalization of drugs, gutting the juvenile justice system, breaking ties to Israel, and abandoning all strategic interests in the Middle East (but not before establishing a Palestinian state).  Ayers has a patronizing view of African-Americans.  I’m not sure if Ayers wants to be the patron saint of African-Americans, or if Ayers wants to be their honorary leader, or mentor, or what, but I think all Americans can do just fine without Ayers at the helm.  Ayers has never let go of his ambitions to topple government and seize power for his elite alliance.  Ayers ties to the Woods Foundation go back a generation to his father.  The Woods Foundation created the grant that the Developing Communities Project used to hire 24-year-old Barack Obama as a community organizer back in 1985.  The orbits of Obama and Ayers were not so remote from each other 23 years ago.  With Obama being trusted by Ayers to distribute the funds for Ayers’ radical education reforms, one must wonder whether Obama is an Ayers apprentice.

From the Buckeye RINO perspective:

John McCain is someone I trust.  He has been transparent even when he’s been wrong.  He’s followed his own inner compass of putting his country first ever since his days as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, a conflict that saw Ayers supporting a communist victory.  In all of Obama’s utterances and legislative votes about education, economics, and the criminal justice system, I hear echoes of Ayers.  That doesn’t inspire my trust.