To access a clearinghouse, of sorts, of news and some blog articles about President Obama’s visit to Lorain County, Ohio, on 1/22/2010, click over to this special section commemorating the occasion provided by LorainCounty.com.
[UPDATE] Coming up this month
October 7, 2009 — buckeyerinoMark your calendars! Oct. 12, Candidates Night in Oberlin; Oct. 14, CHIP Candidates Night in Lorain; Oct. 21, Town Hall with State Rep Terry Boose in Norwalk; Oct. 22, Candidates Night in Huron; Oct 25, Chris Ritchey fundraiser to fight Hodgkins Lymphoma in Lorain; Oct. 29, Town Hall with State Rep Terry Boose in Kipton; Nov. 3, Election Day (early voting has already begun).
First Church in Oberlin, on Monday, October 12th, will host a candidates night for 13 Oberlin City Council candidates, and 4 Oberlin school board candidates on Monday, October 12. Reception begins at 6:30 pm, and the forum begins at 7 pm. First Church is located at 106 N. Main St.
Lorain’s Coalition for Hispanic Issues and Progress (CHIP) will host its 7th annual candidates night on October 14th in the Gould Auditorium within the St. Joseph’s Community Center at 20th and Broadway in Lorain. Doors open at 6 pm, with the forum commencing about a half-hour later. David Arredondo is the contact person for this event (440) 315-7812. This event provides an excellent opportunity to see and hear the candidates who will be on the local ballot in Lorain.
[UPDATE: This represents a change to the town hall schedule for Norwalk] State Rep Terry Boose (R-58) has made a concerted effort to meet voters of his Ohio House district over the past 3 months. Two town hall meetings remain on the schedule: October 21st at 7:30 pm in the Ernsthausen Performing Arts Center within Norwalk High School at 350 Shady Lane Dr. in Norwalk; and October 29th at 7 pm at the Kipton Village Hall, 299 State St. in Kipton.
At McCormick School in Huron, the Huron Public Library and Huron Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring a candidates night that begins at 7 pm on October 22nd. Eight city council candidates (Sam Artino, Joel Bickley, Russell Critelli, Richard Hardy, Brad Hartung, Marilyn Shearer, Nancy Thornhill, Phyllis Wassner and Richard Wennes) have been invited to participate.
A fundraiser to help Chris Ritchey fight Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is scheduled for October 25th from 1 pm to 5 pm at Rosewood Place, 4493 Oberlin Avenue in Lorain. A spaghetti dinner will be served. Admission is $15 per person (children under 5 years old eat free). If you can’t make it to the event, but would like to donate to help defray Mr. Ritchey’s medical expenses, a fund has been established at First Federal Savings & Loan of Lorain, 3721 Oberlin Avenue, Lorain, Ohio 44053 (make checks payable to: Friends of Chris Ritchey). Tickets for the event can be obtained in several ways. In person, tickets can be obtained at Jenkins and Bevans Insurance, 47375 Cooper Foster Park Road, Amherst 44001; or at Marsha Funk State Farm Insurance, 3004 Oberlin Ave., Lorain 44052. By phone, tickets can be requested by calling Nikki (440) 282-3195 or Rich (440) 245-8752 or (440) 989-5141. Chris Ritchey is the son of Loraine Ritchey, blog author of That Woman’s Weblog (listed in my blogroll sidebar), and, besides her numerous blog entries about Lorain history and government, she shares information about the battle Chris has waged against Hodgkins Lymphoma.
Election Day is November 3. Though it’s not hyped as much as a presidential election, please don’t sit out this election. I urge votes against Issue 3 that would amend Ohio’s Constitution to allow an out-of-state casino cartel to plunder Ohio’s economy (what there is left of the economy) while throwing free market principles out the window. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer continues to reveal Republican and Democrat insiders and entrenched politicians, who have WRECKED Ohio’s economy through their corruption and selfish pay-to-play tactics, who support Issue 3. Gambling support from crooked politicians of both political parties should warn you that Issue 3 doesn’t pass the smell test.
Twittering
September 27, 2009 — buckeyerinoTo keep up with politics and the blogosphere, I’ve decided to give Twitter a try. I once (briefly) tried Facebook, but there was too much drama on there for my taste, and it took up too much of my time to maintain my page, so I pulled the plug on it many months ago. I’m hoping that Twitter will be much easier to manage. I’ve added my Twitter feed at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar.
Mr. Williamson goes to Washington
August 13, 2009 — buckeyerinoIn my post titled “Uproar over health care: some Democrat myths need to be busted,” I wrote the following sentence:
“But if members of Congress, instead, are derelict in their duty by turning a deaf ear to the people, and letting us have no voice, I swear I’ll trek to Capitol Hill this fall and make some noise.”
I’ve decided not to hold my breath. I’ve booked a flight to Washington DC. I’m going to pay Capitol Hill a visit sometime next month.
Buckeye RINO in exile
April 30, 2009 — buckeyerinoFor those of you who’ve been wondering when I’d be posting some more content, there’ve been big changes lately in the life of yours truly, Daniel Jack Williamson.
The biggest change is that I’ve moved from Ohio to the state of Washington during this past month. What am I doing here? I am house-sitting for one of my sisters and her husband for approximately two years while they are away from home.
My sister and her husband are away from home because they’ve volunteered to be missionaries in Illinois for their church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also commonly referred to as the Mormon church. They looked frantically for someone to rent their home to during their absence, but their home is in a rural area of western Washington located about half way between the southern tip of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier, so it’s not the most convenient location for potential renters who need to commute to work.
Finding no renters, my sister and her husband appealed to family members on both sides of the family so they could have someone occupy the home while they were away. Everyone else in both families had firmly rooted themselves in place with employment and/or college studies and/or spouse and/or children. Since I’m divorced with no dependents and also since I wasn’t financially self-sustaining in Ohio, I’m the one who was available to help out my sister and her husband by house-sitting for them. I owed my sister a big favor, anyway. Back in the summer of 1992 I suffered a fracture of my right arm which left me unable to use it for 12 weeks (the break was in a bad location relative to nerves and tendons), so I wasn’t able to be employed during my rehab. Not being financially independent at that point, my sister took me in during the remainder of summer and into the fall of 1992 (so this is not my first experience living in Washington . . . 1992 was) until I was recuperated and able to return to Ohio and work (with a brief stint of living and working in West Virginia in early 1993, but, other than that, I remained in Ohio thereafter until 2005 when I departed for a year of teaching English in South Korea).
The economy appears to be stronger in Washington than it is in Ohio, so perhaps I’ll be able to improve my financial circumstances while I’m here. I’ll be slated to return to Ohio in early 2011 unless I find something permanent to latch on to here.
The move to Washington was rather abrupt, as I thought my sister was going to find renters for her home, so I didn’t anticipate a hiatus at all for my blogging at Buckeye RINO, but that’s not how things turned out.
While I become familiar with my new surroundings and endeavor to improve my financial situation, I don’t think that my blogging will be as frequent as it used to. Obviously, being located farther away, I won’t have access to as many political sources on the ground in Ohio, and I won’t be as capable of gauging the political pulse of Ohio. While I still intend to write about topics of relevance to Ohio politics, readers will notice a shift away from eyewitness accounts of political activities (though I still have to write about Lorain County GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner that I attended on March 21st) and toward more “position paper” type entries where I elaborate on and advocate for my views of the issues.
With the change in residence, am I no longer an Ohio political blogger? Should I be dropped from the membership roster of the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance (other blog members of the S.O.B. alliance appear in my left-hand sidebar)? Should I cease and desist from further editing of the Carnival of Ohio Politics? As for the blog name of Buckeye RINO, I’m still a Buckeye by virtue of my birth in Sandusky and by virtue of my degree from The Ohio State University. I’ve earned the “Buckeye” appellation, and no one can take that away from me. At any rate, I’m interested in hearing the thoughts of my readers about whether or not I can be considered an Ohio blogger. Feel free to comment here or send me an email (address shown on my “About” page) with your thoughts on the matter.
Feel free to access the blogs in my left-hand sidebar to compensate for my lack of “being there.”
Not hibernating yet–more Carnival
December 1, 2008 — buckeyerinoI’ve been offline for several days while I moved my residence. I did take some time to enjoy Thanksgiving with family members, but moving my things took a few days out of my schedule.
For those wanting to know, I’ve moved from Erie County to Seneca County. One of the nice things about Seneca County is that I liked the 2008 general election results better in Seneca Couty than I did in Erie County.
Nothing’s been posted on Buckeye RINO in awhile, but I want you to know that I’m not hibernating. I wear another hat, too, as one of the editors of Carnival of Ohio Politics, a weekly digest of blog entries about Ohio politics that have been culled from all over Ohio from many political viewpoints, not just liberal and conservative. If you’ve blogged about Ohio politics this past week, and would like your blog entries (up to 3 posts), you are welcome to submit those entries to the Carnival. Tuesday night, December 2nd, 11:15 pm is the cutoff for this week’s submissions, but we’ll have another Carnival edition next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, and so on. Feel free to check out last week’s Thanksgiving edition of the Carnival produced by editor Lisa Renee Ward, who also blogs at Glass City Jungle. Then, after reading, feel free to contribute to this week’s Carnival. The Carnival’s e-mail address is: ohiopolcarnival@gmail.com
Buckeye RINO endorsement recap
November 4, 2008 — buckeyerinoToday is the last day to get out and vote. I urge all U.S. citizens to do so.
I’ve noted that traffic to the blog has been burrowing in to old posts to dig up what Buckeye RINO has said about the various campaign races currently underway. I guess I should have made site navigation a little easier for the readers, so let me try to help out with this post and give you links to help you find what you are looking for.
U.S. President: I’m supporting John McCain. Foreign policy is almost always the decisive factor for me when it comes to choosing the president, since Congress really doesn’t have a handle on the foreign policy agenda. Congress DOES have a handle on the domestic policy agenda, which is why I give that less weight when making presidential voting decisions. McCain’s foreign policy platform is the reason why, even though I opposed the bailout bill, I wasn’t lured to one of the minor party candidates who opposed the bailout. If Joe Biden is sure that Obama will be tested by our enemies in the first 6 months if elected, you can be sure that the minor party candidates like Barr, Baldwin, and Nader would also be given that test. McCain’s already been tested, and he passed the test. I did write one entry about Obama and one of his foreign policy platform planks, but most of my writing about the McCain-Obama race was on the domestic front, much of it recorded in the 13-part HOPE ON series. Here’s the link to HOPE ON Part 13, and there you’ll find links to the other twelve installments, and you’ll find those installments riddled with links, too.
Congress: I’ve endorsed Bob Latta in the 5th District, Bradley Leavitt in the 9th District, and Dave Potter in the 13th District.
Ohio’s ballot issues: I’m in favor of issues 1, 3, and 5, but I’m against issues 2 and 6. I wrote an additional post about Issue 5, coupled with Issue 6. I’ve also written extensively against issue 6, beginning with “Deep-six Issue 6,” and spelling out the economic downside of Issue 6, along with stances against Issue 6 from the viewpoints of Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans. I’ve linked to audio and video clips against Issue 6, I’ve urged voters to keep the zombies away and to frustrate lobbyists by voting no on 6, and I’ve expressed shocked surprise and disapproval when Issue 6 backers referred to the League of Women Voters as a “firing squad.”
General Assembly: Jeff Wagner in Ohio’s 81st House District. I didn’t write about it, but in my own Ohio House District, the 80th, I voted for Ed Enderle for state rep. When Matt Barrett’s problems came to light, I pointed to Terry Boose to pick up the baton for state rep in the 58th Ohio House District. Heydinger was appointed to fill the rest of the Barrett term, but Heydinger decided to withdraw from the election because he felt the Ohio Democrat Party wanted to attach too many strings to him in exchange for financial campaign support. Voters should think long and hard about that fact. Terry Traster, a member of Amherst City Council that now is the Democrat standard-bearer, ideologically, doesn’t have a lot in common with the rest of the 58th District. He’s not a good fit. Lorain County Democrat politicians, like Traster, don’t often see eye-to-eye with the more rural and conservative voters of Huron County, southern Lorain County, and eastern Seneca County. Terry Boose should be the pick of the 58th.
Seneca County: Damon Alt for Seneca County Treasurer. Longtime incumbent Marguerite Bernard has to go.
Huron County: Larry Silcox for Huron County Commissioner. Sharon Ward is not suitable.
Erie County: Mike Printy for Erie County Commissioner.
Cuyahoga County: Annette Butler for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor.
Lorain County: Nick Brusky and Martin O’Donnell for Lorain County Commissioner. You can read more about the current state of affairs in Lorain County here, here, here, and here.
Brief hiatus
May 13, 2008 — buckeyerinoI’ll be away from home for a little over two weeks, and my access to the internet will be very limited, so I apologize to the readers of my fledgling blog that there will not be much in the way of new content during that stretch of time.
Of course, when I return, I have much more to write about, so expect a blitz.
–Daniel Jack Williamson
Creative Commons; Some Rights Reserved
Buckeye RINO by Daniel Jack Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Buckeye RINO 