Buckeye RINO

Yours truly, the Buckeye RINO, has been invited to participate today, September 23rd, on “The Blog Bunker,” a Sirius satellite radio talk show on Indie Talk 110, beginning at 5 pm EDT.  On the Indie Talk Channel 110 program line-up page, the listing for “The Blog Bunker” is accompanied by this program description:

A cutting-edge roundtable featuring a selection of the over 100 million bloggers around the globe.

If you are a Sirius subscriber, you are welcome to listen in and call the program with your comments.  I don’t know how well or how poorly I will do, but, if you’ve seen my photo on my “About” page, you surely realize that, at least, I have a face for radio.

Specifically, an online video campaign that asserted Palin once belonged to a political party that favors Alaska’s secession from the United States (and tried to cast doubts on Palin’s patriotism) has been ferreted out.

These weren’t some mischievous teens or anarchist college students that hatched this video.

Michelle Malkin directed her readers to this nifty piece of research from The Jawa Report, which findings were posted shortly after midnight in the wee hours of the morning.

Michelle Malkin, in her own piece, then reported how quickly the supposedly “viral video” was scrubbed, which cries out “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”  The online video evaporated within those same wee hours of this morning.  The perpetrators apparently didn’t want the MSM to follow the same trail of evidence that The Jawa Report found, a trail that possibly leads all the way up the chain to David Axelrod, Obama’s chief media strategist.

Of course, one has to wonder why the Obama camp is so paranoid about Sarah Palin that they have to sink to such a low level.  Don’t they think they can win on the issues?  Oh, that’s right!  Apparently not, because Obama turned down the chance to appear in unscripted joint townhalls with John McCain.  Hmmm . . . I see.

I’d like to urge afficionados of Ohio political blogs to head over to the Carnival of Ohio Politics for a sampling of what the Ohio blogosphere has to say this week.  Carnival #134 marks my rookie effort as editor, but, even though it’s my first time out of the gate, I’m thick-skinned.  You can tell me if I blundered.

LOL! RINO’s are being hunted! Should I duck for cover?

The Wall Street Journal has an op/ed piece by Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth PAC titled, “In Defense of RINO Hunting.” Michelle Malkin read it, and added her two cents.

And I’m the Buckeye RINO.

If you can’t tell from reading the right-hand sidebar, I don’t think of myself as RINO. I think of myself as Republican.

I think I’m actually more conservative than many pro-business PAC’s. I think some of those pro-business PAC’s are blind to some of their own liberal tendencies.

In Ohio, one of the pro-business PAC’s is the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. They send a questionnaire each even-numbered election year to all the state legislative candidates. I never got their endorsement in my two campaigns for state rep.

Some of the positions they advocated for would have reduced accountability and transparency, and I’m not talking about reduced accountability and transparency in government, I’m talking about reduced accountability and transparency in business. Business has a double standard . . . expecting increased governmental accountability and transparency, but letting themselves off the hook. Being conservative, I want accountability and transparency in government AND business.

Another double standard is that businesses want government to cut its spending, yet they line their own businesses up like swine at the trough eager to land government contracts. They’ll even ask questions to determine whether, as a legislator, you’d support appropriating money for such-and-such. As a conservative, I want to cut government spending, and that includes cutting outsourcing to the private sector.

Yet one more double standard is that businesses plead for deregulation, saying that it’s dragging down their costs. Nevertheless, lobbyists of certain industries push for legislation that directly benefits them, creating a playing field that is not level, thus creating a marketplace that is not truly competitive. As a conservative, I don’t want to place an unnecessarily heavy regulatory burden on business, but I wouldn’t give certain businesses special treatment that favors them over competitors in the marketplace either. I despise pay-to-play legislation, which some PAC’s have resorted to for securing an advantage for themselves, but overall, has ruined the economy of the state.

I’m not suggesting that the Club for Growth PAC is as warped in their rationale as the Ohio Chamber of Commerce PAC. I’m just pointing out that there are wolves in sheep’s clothing, so be vigilant.

The RINO moniker that I have adopted is an attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, poking fun at the way the term “RINO” is bandied about so freely, often by those who have no business calling someone else a RINO.

So I’m not worried about Pat Toomey or Michelle Malkin. I’m not the real RINO they’re hunting for.

Loraine Ritchey, one of the first bloggers to join ranks with Scott Bakalar at the Lorain-centric Word of Mouth blog, enjoys digging up bits of history on a blog of her own. She has taken an active interest in the Black River Historical Society for many years now. This article is the first installment of a message Loraine wants to share about what we are losing out on in the port city called Lorain. This article is the second installment.  I’ve been working on an article concept tangential to what Loraine’s working on that I should have ready to post in a few days or so.