Category: Commentary/Editorial, Politics || By

It's time for one of my semi-annual political rants. Your patience is appreciated.

First, if you haven't seen it already, watch the above speech that Rich Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, made to the United Steelworkers of America back in July. It's only about eight minutes long.

(Hey, it's relevant. Trumka's a Mon Valley guy.)

Then, go read what D.J. Coffman has to say about life in his little pocket of Westmoreland County these days.

And now, begins the rant. Here's your last chance to leave: You can go look at puppies from the Fallen Timber Animal Shelter.

As for the rest of you ...

. . .

My friend Dan is convinced that there's something in the water in the Mon Valley --- possibly caused by steel mill pollution --- that has left each generation of us progressively more stupid.

I used to argue with him, but lately, I'm not so sure.

And I'll really be happy when this election is finally over, because some of the arguments I'm hearing make me wonder if we're all eating dumb flakes for breakfast.

Look, there are a lot of reasons to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama.

But if you're voting for McCain simply because Obama's skin is darker than yours, or because you think Obama is a Muslim, or because you think Obama somehow "isn't American," then I'm sorry, but you're dumber than a sack full of hammers.

. . .

A couple of points:

• Obama is unquestionably American. Here's his damned birth certificate, certified by the Department of Health in Hawaii.
  
  Seriously, do you really think the Democratic Party would have made such an obvious mistake as to nominate someone who isn't American?
  
  Yeah, Democrats are dumb, but they're not that dumb.



• Obama is as patriotic as the next guy. The photo that supposedly shows him not saying the pledge of allegiance, for instance, was actually taken during the singing of the national anthem. (By the way, how many of you remember to stand up and take your hat off when they sing the anthem at a baseball game? I see plenty of people who don't.)
  
  If you really want to see him say the pledge of allegiance, then go to this page. There are three different videos of Obama leading the pledge, dating back to 2007.
  
  Seriously, I don't remember anyone demanding to see Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton say the pledge of allegiance. This is a non-issue.



• Obama is not a Muslim. So what if he was? Not all Muslims are terrorists, just like not all Catholic priests are child molesters, and not all athletes take steroids.
  
  Anyway, he isn't a Muslim. For the record, his parents were atheists, but he's a born-again Christian.
  
  By the way, here's something I can't figure out. Some of the same people who are telling me "Obama is a Muslim" are also complaining to me about the former pastor of his Christian church.
  
  Those two things don't add up. You can spread one rumor or the other, but not both. And while we're on the subject ...



• Obama doesn't go to a radical church. His church is no more "radical" than any other evangelical Protestant church anywhere in the United States. It's part of the United Churches of Christ. We have several in the area, including Duquesne, Turtle Creek, North Huntingdon, Pitcairn and Munhall.
  
  As for his former pastor, I've heard plenty of preachers give the same kinds of sermons as Obama's former pastor. Listen to AM radio some Sunday morning --- especially the gospel stations --- and you'll hear similar sermons every week.
  
  (On the same topic: People are telling me that Obama should have quit his church. If you're a regular churchgoer, you've probably heard your pastor say things you didn't agree with. How come you didn't quit? Or weren't you paying attention?)



• Finally, some people say Obama doesn't have any experience. During the Republican convention, Sarah Palin got a lot of laughs out of saying that Obama was "a community organizer," like that's some kind of a bad thing.
  
  And John McCain today said that Obama "came out of nowhere," strongly implying that Obama has something to hide in his past.
  
  Pardon my French, but that's a crock of crap. Shame on McCain and Palin.
  
  First of all, "community organizer" was one of Obama's first jobs out of college in the early 1980s. It's not the only job he ever had. He was 24 years old. (By Palin's rationale, Mike Tomlin hasn't done anything since playing football at William and Mary.)
  
  And just to belabor one of my earlier points, he wasn't some "activist" whacko, he was director of something called the Developing Communities Project, a job-training program sponsored by eight Christian churches on the South Side of Chicago. I don't know many radical anti-American Muslim extremists who work for church-based consortiums.



• Hey Mon Valley people, do you know who Obama was "organizing"? Mainly steelworkers who had been laid off by U.S. Steel's South Works in Chicago.
  
  Laid-off steelworkers. Does that ring any bells? Gee, do you think that Obama might just understand what the Mon Valley went through in the 1980s?
  
  After that job, Obama took out college loans (like most people do these days) and went to Harvard Law School, where he was the subject of a profile in the New York Times way back in 1990. That's not someone with something to hide.
  
  Then Obama got elected to the Illinois state senate, where he served for eight years.
  
  Illinois is the fifth-largest U.S. state. It has 59 state senators to represent 12,831,970 people. If my math is correct, then each state senator represents 217,491 people.
  
  The population of Alaska, by comparison, is 670,053, and the population of Wasilla, Alaska, where Sarah Palin was the mayor, is 5,469.
  
  (Allegheny County has about twice as many residents as Alaska, and Elizabeth Township has twice as many residents as Wasilla. Go look it up.)
  
  Obama also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 12 years.

. . .

Maybe I'm biased, but it sounds to me like someone who ran a job training program, taught constitutional law, and served a quarter-million constituents for eight years in the fifth-largest U.S. state might just be qualified to run for president. But that's just me.

As far as I'm concerned, a lot of people who say they can't vote for Obama because he "isn't American" or "isn't Christian" or "isn't patriotic" are using those "reasons" as excuses.

If you don't want to vote for Obama, knock yourself out. It's OK to disagree with his foreign policy, or his health care plan, or his stand on public education.

But you don't want to vote for him because he's black (and that includes at least one relative of mine), stop spreading dumb rumors, and man up and admit it.

. . .

And when we're sitting around, wondering why the Pittsburgh area now has more people dying than being born, and why the best and brightest high school and college kids from the Mon Valley keep moving away, we might want to reconsider our racial attitudes.

Maybe it's not the weather, or the Mon-Fayette Expressway, or the Pirates that's caused our communities to decline.

To paraphrase a slogan that was popular in the 1992 elections, maybe it's the stupidity, stupid.

. . .

(Thus concludes our semi-annual political rant. Thank you for your patience.)