Sunday, August 21, 2005

San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa
This has nothing to do with HOAs. I just think it is such a supremely disgraceful action by the San Francisco city supervisors that it deserves to be publicized and condemned. Who do these creeps think they are, to sit in their little leftist enclave and pass a petty, nasty little judgment like this on the United States military? Maybe it's time that professional organizations planning conventions started boycotting San Francisco.

The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents. Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific. Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural port town on the San Joaquin River and home of California's annual asparagus festival. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home. But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.

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