A New albeit Temporary Neighbor

We have a new neighbor -- for the next few months anyway. Barack Obama's campaign moved in and opened an office just a couple blocks from me today. I learned of it from my good friend, the pastor (and an active Democratic party member) of the Presbyterian church that's in our neighborhood. He called a few of us to see if anyone had room to house workers from Obama's national team. Actress Alfre Woodard spoke at the opening this afternoon when most people were working.

His team chose an ideal location as our neighborhood is a cross section of America. In a one-mile radius you can find people of every color, creed and income level. And the people who live nearby are the sort of people that Obama's campaign appears to be trying to reach -- we are mostly workers and many of us struggle to keep our heads above water as so much of our industry has gone overseas.

This town ran on big steel and its many collateral industries as did so many towns like ours in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and the last couple decades have been tough as incomes have dropped and, despite political promises to the contrary, good jobs have not been available. With the death of the steel industry, a lot of other businesses died, too. Impoverished former steel workers no longer could afford a night out the missus, a new car, or clothes, toys or a movie for the kids. Older steel workers discovered that the pensions they had counted on for retirement were gone.

These are the people who Obama needs on his side here and he'd better make it sound real. We're tired of rhetoric and empty promises. Disillusionment runs rampant and many don't even bother to vote anymore.

I'm one of the many who are undecided (and disillusioned) and I might just stop by the office and say hello and see what they have to say.

On the humorous side, according to the talking heads you would think that ol' Billy Boy Clinton embarassed his wife here on Sunday and I wish I could tell you I was there to see it. I turned the invitation to attend down. A local columnist who is one of the funniest, brightest women I've met got it right when she wrote,

Leave it to the cable-TV shouting heads to turn a three-minute nose-to-nose at a pep rally into a three-act opera starring everyone's favorite Democratic diva, Bill Clinton. Literally within hours since the former president visited Canton on Sunday, his close encounter with a mouthy Obama supporter had erupted — for no discernible reason — into a national story.

To paraphrase my hero, Molly Ivins: "Good thing we've still got politics in Ohio -- finest form of free entertainment ever invented."

And with all our industry dying, free entertainment is about all we ordinary folks in Ohio can afford.

Happy Blogging!!!!!!!!!!!

Kay