The Boston Globe has an article on the sentiment of Hoosiers on the third anniversary of the Iraq War. Support for Bush appears to be eroding the heartland because of his incompetence in handling the Iraq War.  Even the folks who still support the war and Bush don’t seem that enthusiastic about it. They don’t like that the weapons of mass destruction never materialized. They don’t see an exit strategy. They’re willing to make excuses for Bush (e.g., it’s partisan politics, it’s the liberal media, he just got bad intelligence), but they don’t see how this will end well.

Hurricane Katrina didn’t help matters. Everybody saw the city of New Orleans destroyed and it is not a great mental leap to substitute a terrorist attack for the hurricane to see how ineffectual the government response would apparently be in the event of a future attack on that scale.

The article goes on to tie the Dubai Ports deal to the toll road privatization:

[T]here was nearly unanimous incredulity across Indiana at Bush’s support for a deal that would have put a Dubai company in charge of six US ports.

Many connected the Dubai ports row to a state controversy — Republican Governor Mitch Daniels’s efforts to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a foreign firm for the next 75 years. Support for Daniels, a former top aide to Bush, is just as low as it is for the president.

”People don’t think Indiana should sell its toll road to foreigners, and they don’t want someone with a turban running our ports,” said Denny Thomas, a retired trucker sitting near video poker machines at the back of a smoke-filled tobacco bar in LaPorte.

Daniels, who ran in 2004 on the slogan ”My Man Mitch,” as Bush once referred to him, has also drawn fire for ramming through a law requiring Indiana to join the rest of the country on daylight saving time. The measure is wildly unpopular in rural areas.

One partisan Republican was interviewed who said there is a difference between regular dissatisfaction and a dissent that will move an election and opined that there was that feeling in the air. The article briefly discusses Joe Donnelly’s attempts to unseat Chris Chocola as a rubber stamp for Bush before getting to this quote that I think is spot on:

John Roos, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the dissatisfaction with Bush’s record in Iraq might hand the 2006 election to Democrats by persuading disgruntled Republicans across the American heartland to stay home.

”It’s not that they have become Democrats, and it’s not that they have decided the war on Iraq and especially the war on terrorism is wrong,” Roos said. ”The people of Indiana just think [Bush] is not very good at being president.”

And, finally, the article closes strong:

All the talk lately about Bush and the problems with Iraq bemuses Susan Grimes, a waitress at the South Junction Café, a lonely outpost at the intersection of state roads 6 and 35. Grimes said listening to her customers complain has turned her off politics.

”I hear all these people come in and say: ‘That President Bush, we got to get that guy out of there.’ But you ask them who they voted for, and they hush up because they were the ones who voted him in. He’s their boy.”

In case anyone is interested, I (and Masson’s Blog) will be the subject of the “featured conversation” at The Well’s world readable forum, Inkwell.vue.

As the host put it in the “Coming Soon” topic:

From March 22 to April 5, attorney and Midwest resident Doug Masson joins us to talk about his twin passions for blogging and politics, and how they’ve converged in his own highly regarded blog on the political process of Indiana.

The “highly regarded” part is certainly open to debate, but the kind words are certainly appreciated.

Anyway, I suppose some of that requires explanation if you are not familiar with The Well. (Their own description is here.) It’s sort of an online gated community. It started as a bulletin board system back in the mid-80s and that’s still essentially what it is — mostly threaded discussions. But, the longevity of the system coupled with the small monthly fee ($15/month, I believe) lead to more consistently good discussions than you’ll find elsewhere on the Internet. The fee keeps a lot of the junk out: spam and trolls. The longevity has led to a real feeling of community so you have a sense of what the other people are about. So, the majority of the system is not viewable by non-members. The exception are the “.vue” conferences, one of which is inkwell.vue. I think the idea is to provide a window into the Well for the public so that those who might be interested in such things might be enticed to join up.

Whatever the intent may be, I’m up to be the “featured conversation” — sort of an interview, but ongoing with all and sundry invited to come ask questions and engage in the back and forth. Looking at the past guests, I’m in excellent company:

The BBC has an article on efforts to develop super-strength artificial muscles. [Researchers at the University of Texas said the muscles] said the muscles could be used in “exoskeletons” to give superhuman strength to certain professions such as firefighters, soldiers, and astronauts (not to mention cartoonish supervillains.)

The most powerful type, “shorted fuel cell muscles” convert chemical energy into heat, causing a special shape-memory metal alloy to contract.

Turning down the heat allows the muscle to relax.

Lab tests showed that these devices had a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle.

The Louisville Courier-Journal has a story entitled “Road Lease ‘potent’ Issue” in which House Minority Leader, Pat Bauer (D-South Bend) is quoted as saying the toll road privatization is a potent issue because, he says, the Democrats listened to the people. The Republicans didn’t. Polling indicated 30% support for the deal versus 60% opposition. He is right that the issue is potent, particularly up north where he lives.

However, I think he’d be well advised not to make too much of the Dubai Ports, terrorism, foreignness angle. It sounds contrived and strained to me.

[Bauer] likened the lease to the Bush administration’s plans to allow a Dubai company to operate six U.S. ports, an arrangement that was scuttled after it became clear both Republican and Democratic members of Congress had serious objections.

Bauer said there is a possible terrorism threat in Indiana from the leasing arrangement because the toll road is part of the interstate highway system.

He said it would be safer to keep the road in government hands.

The problem with this deal is and has always been the privateness of the buyer, not the foreignness as well as the fact that we’re borrowing 75 years into the future to pay for 9 or 10 years of road construction (for which additional maintenance funds will be necessary.)