Tube City Almanac

August 17, 2004

That's Where the Tall Corn Grows

Category: default || By jt3y

The Tube City Almanac today is going to make one of its relatively rare forays into national politics, except to remind you that International Village opens this afternoon and runs through Thursday at Renzie Park.

Now, from the Almanac National Affairs Desk comes the following question: If you heard someone say the Pentagon is "evil," you'd immediately suspect them of being a rabid left-winger, right? And if a publication came out endorsing that statement, you'd assume it was one of those indy-media Web sites --- or at least something like AlterNet.

What if I told you it was the police chief of Des Moines, Iowa, and the editors of the Des Moines Register were supporting him?

Unless I miss my guess, Iowa's in the "heartland" of America. It should reasonably be expected to be full of patriotic citizens who love America, baseball, apple pie and their President, though not necessarily in that order.

In fairness, Iowa's voted for a lot of Democrats; the state narrowly went for Gore in 2000, and went for Clinton twice; but Iowans also voted for Nixon three times (1960, '68 and '72), for Reagan twice, and for Gerry Ford in 1976. The governor is a Democrat (Pittsburgh native Tom Vilsack).

Still, these should be Dubya's kind of people. Both houses of the Iowa Legislature are Republican, as is one of Iowa's U.S. senators, and four of Iowa's five members of the House. Although I wasn't able to easily get statistics on how many Iowans are churchgoers, I have a sneaky suspicion that a clear majority are; according to one survey I found at the American Religion Data Archive, 58 percent of Iowans claim to be a member of an organized religion.

Anyway, here are the details from a Register editorial (slightly edited for space and clarity):

(It) turned some heads when Des Moines Police Chief William McCarthy used the e-word to describe the U.S. military for calling a local police officer back to duty in Iraq. Rodell D. Nydam, a member of the Iowa National Guard, completed his military obligation. He's already served in Iraq and now must go back due to a "stop-loss" order that extends tours of duty beyond a soldier's commitment.


"This military is lying and manipulating its troops," said McCarthy, a Vietnam veteran. "When the military gave its word, it used to mean something." He said today's military "can't be trusted."


Stop-loss orders are a broken promise. They fly in the face of the idea of a "voluntary" military. They have prevented tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan from going home or retiring. Soldiers hold up their end of the bargain; the government doesn't. ...


The blame doesn't lie with an "evil" military, however. The Pentagon is just trying to do a job with the resources available to it. The blame lies higher up, with those who sent the military to war without adequate planning.


When the police chief of Iowa's capital city calls the Pentagon "evil," one suspects that distaste for the current administration isn't confined to a handful of rabid, foaming leftists. It's worth noting that Chief McCarthy isn't some hippie peacenik; last month, in fact, he urged the Des Moines city council not to pass a resolution condemning the PATRIOT Act.

There are still almost three months until Election Day, and the Republicans haven't held their convention yet, but it would appear that the Bush-Cheney re-election machine had better start coming up with a way to pull out of this nosedive, and fast. Otherwise, their boy Dubya is about to find himself with lots of time to clear brush on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The real question, in my mind: If people in Iowa --- not known as a bastion of liberalism --- are this dissatisfied with the President's performance, might not other socially-conservative states also be dissatisfied? Say, the southeastern U.S.? Why aren't the Dems trying harder to win back some of those "solid South" states they lost during the civil-rights era?

Texas is presumably a lost cause (in more ways than one), but what about Georgia, which now has more than twice as many urban residents as rural ones? How about North Carolina, which has added about 1.6 million new residents in urban areas since 2000, mostly around the universities in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill?

I hate to play into stereotypes, but surely all of those Yankees who've moved down to Atlanta and Raleigh to become college professors and investment bankers haven't suddenly turned into gun-totin', pickup-drivin' Charlie Daniels fans. I have to think that a lot of them are Democrats.

...

In other business, Alert Reader Arden points out that Brian Lundmark, creator of "Rockwood" (which ran on this page until the computer problems began in May), is blogging a very funny critique of NBC's Olympics coverage. Lundmark is even timing the amount of event coverage versus the "fluff" and commercials.

("Rockwood" will return to the Almanac soon; for now, you'll have to manually download new strips on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.)

Meanwhile, over at notmydesk.com, Chris Livingston has a great spoof that combines the upcoming fall TV season with those painfully-detailed football notebooks that run in the papers right before the trade deadlines. At the very least, it's a better pop culture riff than anything The Onion has done recently.






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