Okay, um, when Dianne Feinstein (1) is calling you petty and (2) has a point, it is time to change your thinking. it is high time to change your thinking. it is way past high time to change your thinking. just what the hell are you thinking, anyway? Jaw, meet desk:

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.

For crying out loud, people, I don’t much like the military’s stance on gays, either–but, you know, for much of the time the Iowa was in service, homosexual conduct was flat-out illegal everywhere. This kind of snippy grandstanding disregards any progress that’s been made and looks like…well, snippy grandstanding. (Now, there’s a stance that’s likely to convince the military to consider a change of policy.) Furthermore, anyone who would spurn a ship that was used to help defend American liberties through key events in the 20th century because he happens not to like what the military is doing right now is a fruitcake. Slap Korean War veterans in the face to make a point about the Iraq invasion? I’m only grateful that the article doesn’t spell out what the “other things” are. Happily, the officials from Stockton who are quoted in the article indicate that it’s going to get a proper welcome there.

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