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Wow...I actually agree with Feinstein on this...very petty.
Quote:
San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa
Aug 20 4:54 PM US/Eastern
By BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press Writer
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.
"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.
Feinstein called it a "very petty decision."
"This isn't the San Francisco that I've known and loved and grew up in and was born in," Feinstein said.
San Francisco's maritime museum already has one military vessel _ the USS Pampanito, an attack submarine that sank six Japanese ships during World War II and has about 110,000 visitors a year.
Officials in Stockton couldn't be happier. They've offered a dock on the river, a 90,000-square-foot waterfront building and a parking area, and hope to attract at least 125,000 annual visitors.
After the Korean war, the Iowa was decommissioned and placed in reserve in a Philadelphia shipyard for three decades. In 1988, it was recalled to duty escorting oil supply ships safely in and out danger in the Persian Gulf. In 1989, 47 sailors were killed in an explosion that tore through a gun turret during a training exercise.
The warship, decommissioned by the Navy in 1990, is currently anchored with a mothballed fleet in Suisun Bay, near the mouth of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta.
San Francisco's rejection of such a storied battleship is a slap in the nation's face, said Douglass Wilhoit, head of Stockton's Chamber of Commerce.
"We're lucky our men and women have sacrificed their lives ... to protect our freedom," Wilhoit said. "Wherever you stand on the war in Iraq ... you shouldn't make a decision based on philosophy."
Rep. Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., has sponsored legislation authorizing the ship's permanent move to Stockton. Feinstein has countered with a bill to open bidding to any California city. The two versions will have to be reconciled by a House-Senate conference committee considering the Pentagon spending bill.
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Wow...I actually agree with Feinstein on this...very petty.
It's this kind of horse crap that gives legitimate protest a bad name. How absolutely, totally and completely moronic... Let's get some ball bats and break some kneecaps in San Francisco, DJ!!!
__________________
Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. ....
San Francisco Chronicle
BUSH KEEPS S.F. AT BAY
President hasn't participated in 75-year tradition of visiting city -- and he has no plans to do so
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Sunday, August 21, 2005
President Franklin Roosevelt on the Golden Gate Bridge in... President Dwight Eisenhower’s motorcade on Powell Street ... President George H.W. Bush as he greets well-wishers at S... President Bill Clinton jogs in the shadow of the Golden G... More...
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Washington -- Presidential visits to San Francisco have been a tradition since Rutherford Hayes lunched at the Cliff House in 1880.
Presidents arrived by stagecoach and jet. One was shot at. Another died. In all, 20 presidents have visited the city, including every chief executive for the past 75 years.
Except George W. Bush.
Now in the fifth year of his presidency, Bush has yet to set a foot in the city that was home to his childhood baseball idol, Willie Mays, and shows no inclination to do so. The White House is planning a California visit by the end of the month, and San Francisco is not on the itinerary.
San Francisco, with roughly three-quarters of a million residents, is the only city among the nation's 25 largest that has not been host for a Bush presidential visit. If he avoids San Francisco for the rest of his term, he will be the first president not to visit since Calvin Coolidge, and only the second in more than a century.
The reason seems plain to even casual observers of American politics.
San Francisco is as politically, culturally and geographically distant from the president as anyplace in America. Eighty-four percent of the city's voters cast ballots against Bush in 2000, and 85 percent voted against him in 2004. The city has voted Democratic in 12 consecutive presidential elections.
"He'd be crazy to come,'' observed Gladys Hansen, curator of the Museum of the City of San Francisco, which has documented many of the city's 62 presidential visits.
Yet it says something about the evolution of San Francisco or the inclinations of the current president -- perhaps both -- that shunning a city of 744,230 residents (according to a 2004 census estimate), is regarded as common sense.
White House aides and Republican operatives say they have never heard serious discussion of a San Francisco visit. In an age when presidential travel is driven by images, the predictable pictures from San Francisco would be angry protesters, not flag-waving children. Just as the White House uses trips to stage the president's "message of the day,'' opponents are adept at using the president's presence to publicize their grievances, as anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan established during her vigil in Crawford, Texas.
"The president could announce a cure for cancer, and the pictures would be some protesters from Code Pink trying to put a pie in his face,'' said Bill Whalen, who was a speechwriter for then-President George H.W. Bush's re- election campaign and is now a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
Whether it is San Francisco's intolerance, Bush's intransigence, or demographic factors that are to blame, much has changed from the last century, when San Francisco was the population center of the West.
"Once, San Francisco was such an attractive city, and everyone was welcome,'' Hansen said. "Today it's not as attractive, and basically you have to be on the 'right' side to be welcomed.''
Others point to successful visits by previous presidents and say Bush's absence reveals more about his own personality than the city's.
"One of the Achilles' heels of this president is his granite cool stubbornness,'' said state Sen. Carole Migden, a Democrat who represents San Francisco. "It would be gracious to visit now and then. Maybe he'd embolden the more conservative and monied interests of his party.''
As a matter of public record, the White House insists that politics is not a factor.
"He's one man, and it's a big country,'' said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius, disputing the notion that Bush is avoiding the city because of its political makeup. "While conspiracy theories never fail to astound me, suggesting that he is specifically avoiding one city is ridiculous.''
Bush has visited the Bay Area four times as president, although never in San Francisco. His travel schedule shows there are no cities of comparable size that he has not visited. The White House does not disclose Bush's itineraries, but CBS Radio White House correspondent Mark Knoller keeps what are regarded as the most meticulous records. Knoller's records, along with an Internet search of news stories, found that Bush has traveled to 43 of the nation's 50 largest cities.
The other largest cities Bush has skipped are Wichita, Kan., Tulsa, Okla., Virginia Beach, Va., Fort Worth, Texas, Long Beach and Oakland. None approaches San Francisco in population.
Bush's travel schedule, like most presidents', is closely matched to his political needs. During his first term, Bush made frequent trips to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states that were regarded as toss-ups for his re-election. Though Bush cannot run again, he is likely to spend much of his travel time in states and congressional districts where Republican candidates are engaged in tight races, rather than in Democratic strongholds such as San Francisco.
Still, Bush has been to places that supported him even less than San Francisco. He has spoken in Detroit, where he received just 6 percent of the vote, and in Newark, N.J., where he received 13 percent.
San Francisco has not always been so lopsidedly Democratic. After World War II, San Franciscans voted narrowly for Harry Truman, a Democrat, and then twice for Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. President Richard Nixon received 42 percent of the vote in 1972 against George McGovern, and Ronald Reagan received 38 percent of the vote in 1980. It was not until the elder Bush ran against Bill Clinton in 1992 that the GOP candidate received less than 20 percent of the vote (19.6 percent.)
Clinton visited San Francisco a record 23 times, jogging along the Embarcadero and basking in the city's adulation. Not all presidents had such pleasant stays.
Bush's father visited San Francisco five times during his presidency and was greeted by so many protesters that Migden, who at the time served on the Board of Supervisors, had City Hall send his re-election campaign a bill for $38,690 to pay for police overtime. The campaign refused to pay. President Gerald Ford was shot at by Sara Jane Moore as he left the St. Francis Hotel in September 1975. The bullet missed by a few feet.
The most historic presidential visit came in 1923, when an ailing President Warren G. Harding checked into the Palace Hotel on Market Street, where he died in an eighth-floor suite several weeks later. The official cause of death was recorded as a stroke, but there was always speculation that food poisoning, or even deliberate poisoning by the first lady, was the actual cause.
Bush last visited the Bay Area in March 2004 for a re-election fundraiser in Santa Clara. His Bay Area travel has been confined to a roughly 30-mile stretch along the Peninsula between Burlingame and San Jose, and each trip has attracted vocal protesters who were kept at a distance by the Secret Service.
The last time Bush ventured into San Francisco was to raise money at the St. Francis Hotel in June 1999, shortly after announcing his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.
Mike DeNunzio, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, said he would relish a return trip.
"We are known as a left-coast city, we are known as more liberal, but I think people would be very proud to see their president. I know I would,'' DeNunzio said.
However, Democrats seem to express more enthusiasm for a Bush visit than Republicans, eyeing the president's statewide approval rating of 34 percent in the latest Field Poll and just 22 percent in the Bay Area. California Democratic Party activist Bob Mulholland suggested Bush tour the state with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, speculating the two together would doom the governor's ballot measures, if not his re-election chances.
What Bush would do were he to come to San Francisco is a matter of pure conjecture. He turned down an invitation by Mayor Gavin Newsom to get a firsthand look at the city's same-sex marriages last year, surprising no one, and turned down another invitation to speak at the 60th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations' charter.
Whalen suggested in an op-ed piece in The Chronicle two years ago that Bush come to a Giants game to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Willie Mays' famous catch during the 1954 World Series, and present his childhood idol the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
So far, none of the suggestions appears to have been taken seriously. But the White House insists there is time.
"Just because he hasn't been there yet," spokesman Lisaius said, "doesn't mean he won't be there at some point in the future.''
Presidential visits to San Francisco
The chart lists the number of times that presidents have visited San Francisco while in office and highlights some of the more memorable occasions.
Bill Clinton: 23 visits
George H.W. Bush: 5 visits.
Inspects damage three days after Loma Prieta earthquake, Oct. 20, 1989.
Ronald Reagan: 1 visit
Jimmy Carter: 1 visit
Attends benefit for family of slain Mayor George Moscone at San Francisco Opera House.
Gerald Ford: 5 visits.
While exiting the St. Francis Hotel, Sara Jane Moore fires a shot that misses the president by a few feet.
Richard Nixon: 4 visits
Lyndon Johnson: 3 visits
John F. Kennedy: 1 visit
Dwight Eisenhower: 5 visits
Harry Truman: 4 visits
Signs the original United Nations Charter in 1945 at the War Memorial Veterans Building, now known as Herbst Theatre.
Franklin Roosevelt: 2 visits
Travels secretly to the West to inspect war facilities in 1942.
Herbert Hoover: 1 visit
Warren Harding: 1 visit
Dies in his suite at the Palace Hotel on Market Street, Aug. 2, 1923.
Woodrow Wilson: 1 visit
Speaks at the Commonwealth Club on behalf of the League of Nations.
William Howard Taft: 1 visit
Theodore Roosevelt: 1 visit
Dedicates monument to Admiral George Dewey in Union Square in 1903.
William McKinley: 1 visit
Benjamin Harrison: 1 visit
Rutherford Hayes: 1 visit
Lunches at the Cliff House.
Sources: San Francisco Almanac; Clinton Presidential Center, Chronicle staff
Now, how is the fact that Bush never travels to SF related to the fact that SF does not want the USS Iowa? I don't see the relation at all. Unless you are offering support that they are against this war and voted against the Iowa because of that which makes them look so much more petty and offensive to those who served on the Iowa.
IMO, leave it to the Peace Nuts in SF to do something as bone head as this. Can not see the forest through the trees. And some blame the right with painting with such a broad brush.
__________________
The greatest lies are told before a marriage, after a hunt and during an election - Count Bismark
Now, how is the fact that Bush never travels to SF related to the fact that SF does not want the USS Iowa? I don't see the relation at all. Unless you are offering support that they are against this war and voted against the Iowa because of that which makes them look so much more petty and offensive to those who served on the Iowa.
IMO, leave it to the Peace Nuts in SF to do something as bone head as this. Can not see the forest through the trees. And some blame the right with painting with such a broad brush.
I just meant the San Francisco connection. I read the second article and found it interesting, but not worth it's own thread. No big deal...just seems odd that the President hasn't been to one of our biggest cities in five years.
I just meant the San Francisco connection. I read the second article and found it interesting, but not worth it's own thread. No big deal...just seems odd that the President hasn't been to one of our biggest cities in five years.
__________________
The greatest lies are told before a marriage, after a hunt and during an election - Count Bismark
SAN FRANCISCO
Pro-gay approach tried on battleship skeptics
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
There's a new battle plan for bringing the battleship Iowa to San Francisco.
The battleship's supporters now hope to gain the support of city leaders by turning part of the vessel into a museum about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and the contributions of gays, lesbians, ethnic minorities and women to the military.
The Board of Supervisors rejected the ship in July, and two supervisors explained their "no" votes by saying they objected to the military's policies toward gays and lesbians, while others opposed the war in Iraq.
"I think the Iowa could be a very powerful teaching tool regarding recruitment and U.S. defense policy," said Merylin Wong, president of the Historic Ship Memorial at Pacific Square, the San Francisco organization lobbying for the ship.
"There's a tremendous amount of archives documenting the contribution of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) veterans," she said. "It's all part of naval history, and it's all fact."
The ship is moored in Suisun Bay, and if San Francisco decides to bid for the Iowa, the city will face competition from Stockton, where city leaders already support the idea.
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, wants the ship to come to Stockton, while Sen. Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, wants it in San Francisco.
A spokesman for the Navy Historical Society, which evaluates exhibits that appear on board donated ships, said an exhibit about a controversial defense policy would need approval from the highest level, the secretary of the Navy.
"That sort of thing would be judged on a case-by-case basis," said Jack Green, the historical society spokesman. "None of the (exhibits) I know of deal with social issues."
Contracts between the Navy and cities or nonprofit organizations that want to manage donated ships typically require that exhibits say nothing unflattering about the navy, government or military, Green said.
After the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 in July against a resolution that asked local congressional leaders to support bringing the ship to the city, Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Bevan Dufty cited the unequal treatment of gays and lesbians by the military.
The ship already figures prominently in the history of gays in the military. An explosion in one of its gun turrets that killed 47 sailors in 1989 initially was blamed on an alleged murder-suicide that Navy officials said was carried out by a male sailor whose romantic advances to a fellow sailor were rebuffed.
After an investigation, the Navy could not determine what caused the explosion but announced that it was "most probably" sabotage, though the evidence was circumstantial and there was no proof that the sailor or his friend -- who was married -- were gay. Both were killed in the incident. Congress ordered its own review and found the most likely cause was a ramming error in the six-story mega gun.
The Navy apologized to the family of the sailor.
"This is an opportunity for San Francisco to be first in displaying the value of acceptance for minorities and others who have sacrificed their lives for this country," said Steve Boeckels, 31. A San Francisco resident, Boeckels graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1997 but was discharged from the Army under "don't ask, don't tell" in 2000.
Boeckels and two other San Francisco gay activists who work to change military policy contacted the historical ship organization with their proposal after the Board of Supervisors voted against bringing the ship to town.
They are now seeking support from other civil rights organizations, said Jim Maloney, director of the Military Education Initiative, an Atlanta-based organization that seeks veterans' support for gays and lesbians in the military.
"If we can have a museum that tells the history of LGBT service, that might be an opportunity to educate (people) and try to change their minds regarding gays and lesbians serving openly," Maloney said.
The group is working up a new resolution for the board to consider, but support for the new plan isn't clear-cut.
Maloney, who lives in San Francisco, has met with members of the mayor's staff and Dufty, whose district includes the largely gay Castro neighborhood.
But their support may depend on the moves of other players.
"I certainly can see how powerful it would be to have a ship containing an exhibit about gays and lesbians in the military ... but part of my position is also that the city of Stockton has put up $16 million, and the city of San Francisco is not putting up any money," said Dufty, who called the support of the mayor and the port "paramount."
Mayor Gavin Newsom's spokesman said the mayor was "open-minded" about bringing the ship to the city but that support from the Board of Supervisors is essential.
Port officials said they will look closer at the proposal for the ship, which is 887 feet long -- just 34 feet more than the Transamerica building -- if the board supports bringing it to town.
Several supervisors have talked with the port's director, Monique Moyer, said Renee Dunn, the port's spokeswoman, though the board has not formally asked for any recommendation.
Wong said the cost of bringing the Iowa to San Francisco would be covered by private donors. She said it will take 400,000 visitors annually to break even, and she expects it to surpass that goal.
Maloney and the other activists hope telling the stories of gays and lesbians in the military could lead to a reversal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and public opinion already is on the side of those seeking a policy change. A survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 58 percent of Americans believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military and 32 percent oppose such a change.
Gary Gates, a researcher with the Williams Project at the UCLA School of Law, estimates that if the military lifted its ban on gays serving openly, 41,000 additional male recruits would join the armed forces. More than 14,500 men now serving in the military are gay, he said. The Williams Project is a think tank specializing in sexual orientation law and public policy. Last week, the California Legislature became the country's first legislature to ask the federal government to change its policy so gays and lesbians could serve openly.
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