NYT: Road to November: In Bellevue, Neb., ‘Mad About Everything’ (1 EC vote in play)

[Omaha Steve]

Tonight I am a very proud member of my party. I live in Bellevue, Ne..

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/road-to-november-bellevue-neb/?hp

October 7, 2008, 11:15 am
Road to November: In Bellevue, Neb., ‘Mad About Everything’
By Jennifer Steinhauer


Chris Kouba, owner of the Downtown Coffee Shop, in Bellevue, Neb. (Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times)

The Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer and Monica Almeida are traversing the country from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the George Washington Bridge in New York, chatting with voters about the presidential campaign. Follow along here. Ask questions about the trip.

BELLEVUE, Neb. – It was lunchtime at the Downtown Coffee Shop, and the only customers were a reporter and photographer from out of town. The talk turned to politics, and the coffee shop’s owner, Chris Kouba, let it rip.

“I’m mad about everything,” said Ms. Kouba, 48, who has owned the shop for nearly 25 years. “The whole bailout, the whole everything. Do you see my restaurant filled? Is anyone going to come save me? My business has decreased consistently over the last year. For 24 years I did not open on Sundays, because I want to go to church with my family. But I’m scared I’m not gonna be here, so I started doing that, because that is when people are here.”

Ms. Kouba can’t decide whom she should vote for, or if the outcome of the election will help her either way. “You grow up with everyone telling you how important your vote is,” she said, her voice tinged with disgust, “and then Washington does what it wants.”

Like Ms. Kouba, residents in this suburb of Omaha, which sits at the Iowa border, have watched gas prices climb and the continuing meltdown of the stock market with alarm. But the city is buffered in some ways by Offutt Air Force Base, which provides a steady stream of customers for area businesses from among the roughly 12,000 military and federal employees assigned to the base.


Ralph Ham, owner of Ham’s Bellevue Bar, says that he avoids political discussions in his bar. (Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times)

“That’s what this town is, a military town,” said Sabrina Schriefer, who cuts hair in a salon just yards from the entrance to the base. On a visit Sunday night to Omaha, Sarah Palin mentioned the base prominently in her remarks.

Bellevue, which began as a fur trading post, rose from obscurity in the 1890s with the opening of Fort Crook, which later became the airbase. On Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the terrorist attacks, flew to the base and held a video conference in an underground command bunker there before returning to Washington.

FULL story at link.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Interesting--not surprising though, to see a dimwitted Air Force wife

call Obama the "anti-Christ". That's why I don't spend too much time at Offutt or socializing with my husband's coworkers--I couldn't deal with that in a polite, rational way.