Many Iowans were perplexed last week when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General revealed that Iowa has 19 times fewer things worth blowing up than Indiana, according to the DHS’s National Asset Database.
The National Asset Database (NAD) was created by the Department of Homeland Security to “identify and organize the nation’s critical infrastructure and key resources” in order to remain vigilant in the struggle against our nation’s enemies—Islamofascists and hurricanes.
The NAD lists Indiana as the state with the highest number of critical assets, with 8,591, leading both New York and the District of Colombia, with 5,687 and 416 respectively. Iowa’s 455 places it well ahead of the nation’s capital.
So why, exactly, does Indiana have more critical assets than the seat of national government and the world’s financial capital combined? One need only take a brief look at some of the critical national assets on the list to understand. As the New York Times puts it, the database:
reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified ”Beach at End of a Street.”
The Times article details what happened when one owner was informed that his “Amish County Popcorn factory” was a critical national asset:
”I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. ”We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.” But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: ”Maybe because popcorn explodes?”
Now I don’t know what state the DHS was looking at, but if Amish popcorn factories indicate the standard by which national assets are judged to be critical, then Iowa’s meager 455 sells this gloriously imperiled state far too short.
Osama, I assure you, there’s more to blow up in Iowa that you’d think.
Why, one need only look at www.traveliowa.com to peruse the over 650 tourist attractions worth the righteous scorn of a vengeful servant of god. Need I mention that Iowa also has over 10,000 hog confinements—helping to serve pork to nearly 300 million infidels? And it’s only going to get better! If our wise state leaders have anything to say about it, soon setting fire to a corn field could be a devastating blow to the national fuel supply.
So fear not Iowans, there are reasons to fear for your life. In Iraq, we’re training the next generation of terrorists and can watch their progress with every I.E.D. Our Iran policy is failing to deter a major sponsor of terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons. Our nation’s borders aren’t secure. And the Department of Homeland Security is too busy sorting and indexing the nation’s popcorn producers to inspect the cargo entering the country through our ports.
The rumors are going around, and Vilsack is set to appear with Hillary in DC this week at a Democratic Governors Association press conference. Here’s how the Register reports it:
Some pundits as well as Democratic activists have suggested Vilsack would be a good fit on a ticket with Clinton as presidential nominee. Both are active in the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, and both have insisted they will not demand a specific date for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
A few days back, Hotline proposed some theories about the role Hillary could play in the race for the ‘08 Democratic nomination. Theory 1:
…unless she either doesn’t run or appears very vulnerable early on , one theory of the case holds that they will spend their time cozying up to her and tearing into each other. (Grover Norquist endorses that theory, too.) At least in part, they’ll try to use the primaries to audition for the general election.
To be clear: Bayh, Warner, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack — they all want to be president, not vice president. But they will almost certainly hedge their bets. They will not run a true-blue, rouse-the-base primary campaign.
Theory 2, however, simply says that Hillary is too polarizing a figure and won’t get anywhere. In that case, though, candidates might still stick to centrist rhetoric in an effort to distinguish themselves from Clinton (if the voters aren’t convinced by Hillary’s current centrist bent).
Frank Luntz’s piece today doesn’t talk much about this, but Luntz does attempt to lay out a strategy for Hillary to get elected. I’m really not sure a short, public essay could possibly prove useful to a presidential campaign, but here’s his first recommendation:
First, she must be herself. Her recent tack to the right - from equivocating on the Iraq war, to supporting a ban on flag burning - is fooling no one and is seriously agitating her liberal base. The reason Hillary became so popular in the first place was her unflinching willingness to tell it like it is. She must say what she means, and mean what she says.
Similarly, recent efforts by Clinton to inject religious references into her speeches to prove she’s a person of faith is like fingernails on a chalkboard to Democrat primary voters. Clinton must win the primary first - then worry about the general election. If Democrats really cared about religion, they’d be Republicans.
Will she? And is she really the vicious liberal that Luntz thinks she is in the first place? Perhaps, but it’s not looking like it right now.
I should also note that our coverage of 2008 contenders has been spotty of late. Our schedules haven’t permitted us to attend the candidates’ appearances across the state (which isn’t to say we don’t like getting the invitations, so thanks to the staffers who have kept us on their mailing lists…), so we’ve been reading Chris’s coverage on PoliticalForecast. We hope to get better as our schedules permit, but we still plan to spend more time analyzing the political issues facing Iowa than we’ll spend on national political celebrity watch.
And check out MyDD’s presidential straw poll, now reinstated. Chris Bowers rightly discontinued it four months ago because of how repetitive the results were, but maybe things will be different now.
We know there are many, many strong candidates for public office at all levels in Iowa, so we don’t want our humble blog to focus too much on one particular candidate. That said, here at IowaProgress we’re really big fans of Eric Palmer, the next representative from Iowa House District 75 (which contains Grinnell, Oskaloosa, and Montezuma). Rumor has it that Eric’s web site is now live, so check it out and link to it. How many other candidates for Iowa House do you think have blogs, anyways?
And you can donate to Eric, Chet Culver, and a host of other progressive Iowa candidates on our new ActBlue page, “Making Progress In Iowa.” If you’re from out of state and are looking for the places where your money will make the most difference, check out our list and start donating. And if you’re a candidate who you think we might’ve forgotten about, send us an email telling us about yourself.
We want this ActBlue list to become a project for the whole blogosphere, so if you put up a link to http://www.actblue.com/page/iowa on your blog, let us know and you’ll have input on who gets listed on the page in the future. If we collaborate enough, we’ll be able to bring in real money for good candidates in our state.
The Register editorializes today on the apparent tension between traditional Republican talking points and actual Republican performance:
This was a bizarre week in federal budget politics, as usual. Everything about the federal budget is bizarre. To wit:
President Bush bragged about “reducing” the red ink this year to “only” $296 billion. That will be the fourth largest deficit in history and only a modest improvement from last year’s $318 billion deficit. That’s hardly cause for celebration.
Locally, Republican congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti said pork-barrel spending is out of control and the federal budget process is broken.
He got that right, but it takes a large dose of chutzpah for Lamberti to cite it as a reason for people to elect him instead of Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell.
Recall that the last time the Democrats controlled Congress, they produced healthy budget surpluses that put the country on a path toward paying down the national debt.
When Republicans took control of Congress and the White House, they promptly boosted spending while cutting taxes, producing the worst fiscal mess of modern times.
When Republican challengers in Congressional races run their “we need a change” campaigns (which every challenger’s campaign will at some point say), whom do they think they’re railing against? Maybe someone needs to ask Jeff Lamberti exactly which parts of the Bush (and Nussle) budgets he’s against in specific enough terms that he actually has to answer the question. Odds are he couldn’t think of anything he’d want to mention by name.
Danny “I’m not that fond of democracy or gays” Carroll and the Repugs are at it again. Apparently someone has commissioned a push poll targeting the Democratic candidate for Danny’s seat, Eric Palmer. Since I definitely couldn’t say it any better, here’s the LTE in it’s entirety:
Last night I received a telephone “survey” regarding elections. The survey must have been commissioned by a Republican Party organization, the Danny Carroll campaign (House District 75) or the Jim Nussle campaign.
Toward the end of the survey, the caller said that she would “give [me] some information” and then asked me if that information changed my feelings about my vote in the race for House District 75. Each piece of information portrayed Democratic candidate Eric Palmer in a negative light.
One of the “negative” comments the caller made about Eric Palmer was that he has served as a criminal defense lawyer. The organization behind this survey, and everyone involved in it, should be ashamed. In our democracy, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. And in our democracy, even those who are eventually found guilty are entitled to legal representation.
Such representation exists to prevent the abuse of government power. We need only look at the world around us to see what happens when citizens are not entitled to protection within the legal systems in their countries.
Democracy is a fragile thing. “Surveys” such as this erode it. By criticizing Eric Palmer for providing criminal defense services, the sponsors of this survey demonstrate that they are willing to chip away at our precious democracy for the sake of potential political gain.
— Harriett Dickey-Chasins, Grinnell.
We’ve already seen reports of this kind of dirty politics in other races, but it’s really a shame to see it so close to home. You may remember that last election season Danny’s constituents received a mailing calling Grinnell College students “1,000 east-coast liberal kids” and implying that we don’t deserve to vote. Danny claimed not to have known about that slanderous mailing. Well, if Danny really wants to show he’s above this chicanery, he should openly denounce such tactics (and call off his henchmen). But I guess an issues-based campaign would be scary for him.
The next couple of days are particularly packed with visits from presidential hopefuls, including Bayh, Vilsack, Edwards, and Warner. Kerry is also dropping by at the end of the month. Now for a mere $50,000 (a discount) the candidates can purchase access to the VAN, the Iowa Democratic Party’s voter database. Though the Register points out that this fee comes with the added bonus of endearing oneself to the party, for $45,000 I bet I could find a password lying around somewhere.
Grinnell isn’t getting the rainforest museum. Poweshiek Iowa Development executive director Bill Menner said “We did not think we could reach the ($25 million) threshold in a timely manner, We just decided that rather than belabor things, we’d allow them to make a quick decision.” I was so looking forward to having the world’s largest indoor rainforest down the block (courtesy of Ted Townsend and a cool 50 million federal tax dollas- see Citizens Against Government Waste), but now I guess we’ll have to drive to Pella, Tiffen, or Riverside to see some monkeys. There will be monkeys, right?
