Spike,

"It makes me feel like the city cares more for the thugs than they do me, and I'm the one paying taxes," McDonald said of being barred from owning a gun in his own house. "

Being brought to Burlington by Tapp, Hinkle, Senator Courtney and the rest of the single party ruling you.

Ma Duce

Spike:

Anyone paying attention to the Republican 2nd district congressional race knows that a bomb was dropped over the weekend when Cedar Rapids businessman Rob Gettemy announced that he was joining the field with Mariannette Miller Meeks, Steve Rathje and Chris Reed. It looks to be the fat lady singing for Reed, who's been sucking wind behind the other two clearly superior candidates.

According to the Iowa Independent it looks to be an effort of a group of Linn county GOP players including Tim Palmer and Brent and Renee Schulte, state house representative in Cedar Rapids. Speculation is that David Chung is part of that group as he announced Gettemy on his blog. It looks to be an effort to put up a more viable Christian Right candidate.

All this is bad news for the Reed campaign, which has already been sputtering along with no money, little support, and a great deal of baggage from the '08 campaign. Reed has no traction despite being the self-styled 'true conservative' and constantly attacking his opponents, especially Miller Meeks, such as in a recent article in the Centerville Daily Iowegian where he claimed without proof that Miller Meeks described herself as 'Jim Leach in a skirt'.

The level of desperation is pretty evident, because despite the sniping Reed has taken to parroting Meeks' positions and phrasing out on the campaign trail, copying Mariannette's stances on immigration, abortion, and health care. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and for an intellectual lightweight like Reed, a necessity to keep appearances that he's in the same league. He also tried to grab the spotlight at a Bob Vander Plaats event recently and hijack the question-answer session that was going on, in a vain attempt to draw attention to his campaign in the social conservative circles.

Gettemy jumping in the race might be the death knell in Reed's campaign. It says a lot when the leaders of your own GOP organization have to prop up another candidate because they have no confidence in you. Unless he decides to go Independent in June as has been rumored as well as implied in some of his recent statements, stick a fork in Reed - he's done.

Publius

Iowa's 2nd Congressional District has a messiah. The church connection through current Linn County "leadership" is reportedly strong. Buy a tee shirt save a soul.

Spike

Spike,

Iowa Sucks made an excellent observation concerning local leadership. The problem is, what is the alternative?

The terror of drug pushers and the party that furnishes welfare as the base funding for that trade, do we exchange that for Theocratic terror squads? Do you want the belief police starring through your bedroom window? Missionary position and marriage license, or else?

There has been a total lack of reasonable people of both parties involved to support, or take, leadership positions. The void has been filled by those void between the ears.

Is anybody willing to help? Has the decline gone so far there are insufficient of the reasonable left to do the job?

Iowa Bites

from the Wall Street Journal -

"The Greek government on Wednesday announced a new austerity plan that will yield €4.8 billion euros ($6.5B U.S.) in savings, as Prime Minister George Papandreou called on the European Union to show its support amid the country's worst economic crisis in recent times.

The government decided at a cabinet meeting to move ahead with steep cuts in civil-service salaries and entitlements, and to raise Greece's sales tax by two percentage points.

The measures effectively include slashing more than 60% of one month's pay for public-sector workers by cutting 30% of their current Christmas, Easter and holiday bonuses, the official said. Greek civil servants get an extra salary at Christmas and another through bonuses during the Easter holiday and the month of August."