Route 69 to Cumming: America turns its gaze to Iowa

We’re required to remind you that all spelling errors are intentional, we think. -- The editor.

IOWA -- For a few months every four years, America lets the great state of Iowa take care of its dirty political work for them. Its a very interesting place- Iowa is filled with lots of people, many of them sane, who take there resposibility of being the first to choose our leadership very seriously. Alot of folks dont understand why its important to pay attention to Iowa- its a harmless entity that only enters the national discussion once every 4 years, but thats how people end up overlooking Eli Manning too.

I hit the road from Milwaukee to spend a few days driving through this wonderfull place, meeting its great people, learning more about its politics, and drinking its domestic beers. This was to be my Oddysey, and there are alot of paralells as to what I’m going to discuss between that old made-for-TV movie written by Homer and what this country is going through today. For example, Greece is burning,it has been nearly 10 years since the United States went to hell in a handbasket in anticipation of Barack Obamas descent into office, and there are a bunch of weird suitors camping out in the middle of nowhere for the next 4 months hoping to win our nations heart.

Iowa’s split somewhat evenly between the very liberal and the very conservative, so its what you might call a tweener state- type of place that has folks who will casually mention that theyre within their rights to shoot a trespasser who gets too close to their grow op. They also take a enormous amount of pride in their job to be the first to elect our would-be leaders, and thank God they do because if we didn’t give them this resposibility who knows what they would do with all of their civic energy. There Americas neurotic German Shepherd whose behavior problems are completely cured because we strap a vest filled with granola bars to it once every four years when we go for a hike.

They’re a very passionate people, and not afraid to speak their minds even if your not always certain which side of a issue they’re arguing for.

A fun local gag is to see how many times you can say “Caucus? But I barely even know her!” to a bartender before they kick you out. Typically its just once.

The night before my drive cross the state there had been a large number of storms making their way through the prarie, but there was still one tornado that was just about to touch down in Fort Dodge, and I had a ticket to see it up close.

I got to Fort Dodge, Iowa about 30 mins before the Trump rally was set to begin. The town is home to Iowa Central Community College whose notable alumni include Cain Velasquez, Joe Soto, and Jon “Bones” Jones; and it also containes the states largest correctional facilty. You do not want to get into a fight in Fort Dodge.

There was a line around the block to get in, and Trump knows what to do whenever you have a captive audeince- try to sell them stuff.

Trump is 100% financing his own campaign through his many succesfull luxourious businesses, which now include large huge merch booths outside his appearences. You have your selection of official buttons featuring Donald Duck, one that says “We Shall OverComb”, and Dallas Cowboys themed trump t-shirts just to name a few.

Trump was coming off a debate where he seemed like he had caught mononucleosis from making out with Ben Carson and everyone around me was on the edge of their seat hoping for a a return to the fire and brimstone Trump. And boy did he deliver. Trump took the stage to Twisted Sisters “were not gonna take it” and immedately launched in on a few comparisons to demonstrate how ass backwards America is:

“If you cross the North Korean border illegally you get 12 years hard labor… If you cross Afghanistan you get shot… In Iran you get 8 years,,,. If you cross the United States border illegally you get a job, drivers license, food stamps, place to live, child benefits, and education… You wonder why our country is going to hell.”

Crowd went abosluteley nuts. He makes alot of good points about how our countrys policies should more accurately reflect the values of our enemies in order to make us great again- theres no denying that.

Preventing illegal immigration was a very serious topic for those in attendence. Trump started in on the anchor baby phenomenon and didnt discriminate based on age either. Say what you want about the GOP stance on aborton but at least they’re consistant- anchor fetuses should have the exact same constutional protections stripped away from them as anchor babies do, and be expelled from the country. One thing libtards just dont get. A baby cant be both “pre” and “mature”, its a oxymoron. Life and criminalty both begin at conception and Trump scores major points for being consistant by advocating to charge fetuses as adults.

Then he just absoluteley destroyed all of his opponents with a barrage of saying things by not actually saying them. Dont follow? Well, its basically when you say that your not going to say something about someone and then you just literaly go ahead and say that exact thing. Example:

“Rubio is weak like a baby, like a baby... a lightweight... he’s a lightweight... But I will not call him a lightweight.”

But the fact that you said you werent saying it makes it like you snapchatted your audience with your words and its immedately gone and you’ve hypnotized the crowd into subliminally thinking that Marco Rubio is a infant. Its probably one of the best rhetorical strategys in the history of arguing. It would of had Socrates throwing up into his own butt in embarassment if Trump had ever used it on him.

Then he says hes not gong to make fun of Bush because his campaign is doing so poorly that he wont make fun of how poorly his campaign is doing. Again, genius.

Donald Trump is basicaly a pick up artist running game on voters and I support him because hes doing this, not necessarily because of all the actual policys. Put him in a room with the President of Iran and I guarentee you Trumps gong to be getting bi-weekly texts at 3 AM from Rouhani asking “you up?” That puts America in a positon of power during negotiations. Case in point was he negged the shit out of his audence arriving 40 mins late and asking “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” for supporting Ben Carson.

And then he realy laid into Carson. I mean really let him have it. At one point Trump literally almost pulled his pants off to demonstrate what a wuss youd have to be to not be able to stab through a belt. He also compared Ben Carson to a child molester because Carson claimed in his book he was “pathological.” But Trump screwed up big time. Insinuated that he dosent believe that Carson was cured by the grace of God, alluding to after Carsons alleged violent outburst as a child where “he goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours and now he’s religious.” Trump doubts that. But folks I know alot of adolescent 13 year olds who have gone into the bathroom for a couple hours and emerged with a totally new outlook. Its called JOing, and Trump is naive if he hasnt thought that through and Putin would eat his lunch on this topic if they ever discussed it.

Some other great quote’s from the Trump speech:

-“I love war.”

-“Tough guys dont talk like tough guys...they dont tell you there tough”

-“I’m a tough guy.”

He also brought up a exellent point about how the United States should take all of Iraqs oil because they deceved us and werent ready to rebuild their country properly. And hes absoluteley right, we saved them from all of Saddam Husseins WMDs and this is how they repay us? Nice try but thats not how the United States operates.

As Im leaving Fort Dodge it was about 9 o clock and I had to get to Cedar Falls by 8:00 AM becuse the C-Monster Chris Christie was going to be doing one of his patent “tell it like it is” town halls where he addresses anything except for why hes still in the race.

Thing about Iowas highway system is that at night theres no light whatsoever and it feels like your the only car there. All you can see is blinking red lights in the distance that I assume the windmills make everytime a bald eagle crashes into one and dies. I figured I only had about 5 hours to sleep that night and being the good corporate citizen I am I would just sleep in my car, a 2012 Chevy Coffin.

I’m halfway between Fort Dodge and Cedar Falls, and Google maps sent me off the highway and onto a few weird roads towards what is suppose to be a truck stop, but the town that was suppose to be there was literally just a intersection and thats it. My gas gauge has about 20 miles to empty, its midnight, its 29 degrees outside and the closest major highway is about 30 miles away. I felt like I was about to star in the most friendly remake of Deliverance ever where my car breaks down and a stranger pulls over to tell me I’ve got a pretty mouth, but then it turns out they were just being polite and trying to compliment me and they drive me to a filling station.

Couple farmers daughters scenarios were weighing heavily on my mind as well. I needed help from a higher power to guide my vessel to safety. All I needed was a sign, and boy did I ever get one:

Goes both ways. I hang the hardest left of my life and as the gas tank was on empty Im guided to safety by the sirens call of truck stop prostutes and gasoline. Spent the night literaly in the trunk of the Chevy Sonic, Jim Tomsula-style. There were a few concrete blondes walking around and as much as I was shooting for the authenic Iowa experence, I dont think SB Nation would approve another expense report for a Pilot/Flying J parking lot threesome.

I didnt get a good nights sleep for some reason maybe its because it was below 30 degrees outside, or maybe it was because I kept bumping into the trunk release lever in my sleep and waking up with the hatch completeley open, or maybe its the fact that I was just too excited to see Governor Christie at a town hall the next morning. Probably a combination of all three.

Mr. GQ right here folks. Christie has obvously done some work with a stylist. Came out doing the old “belt above the belly button trick” to make the optical illuson that hes actually quite slim. Demonstrates that he’s leading by example and taking preemptive steps to protect himself from Ben Carson stabbings.

Christie talked for like a hour at a Diner and took like 3 questions. If you had just walked in you would of assumed he was just fillibustering so he could keep his booth until he got hungry again. But he didnt call anyone a pedophile a nerd or a baby, so he looks very weak in comparson to what I had just seen with Trump.

He kind of whined a little bit when he described his campaign saying “Running for President is like having a group of people younger then you telling you what to do and where to go” and if he’s anything like me, when I show up at a random college frat party those instructons are usually “fuck yourself/hell.”

I was waiting by the door trying to ask Govenor Christie what he thought about that mornings Daily Fantasy Sports protests taking place in New York City when I got pigeonholed by a individual that started striking up a good old fashion conversation with me about there entire life and how we should arrest Obama.

We discussed the finer points of enacting voter ID laws in terms of a cost benefit approach to spending tens of millons of dollars on prosecuting like a dozen people, when she brought up a great counterpoint. “Well how about we do a cost benfit analysis on what it costs us to educate the blacks?”

Seemed kind of out of nowhere to make that leap but I mean ok I’ll give it a shot.

So here is my cost benefit on money spent educating “The Blacks” for her if shes reading:

Percentage of US Presidents born post-Brown v. Board of education who are in part African-American: 100%

Gotta say, facts arent exactly on her side on this one.

On my way to Des Moines, got off in Cumming for a quick in-and-out. Some fast facts about Cumming, IA:

-The towns motto is “Veni, veni, veni.”

-The back side of town is home to Brown Equipment

-Its usually somewhat cloudy

-Ive never taken a woman there

Do YOU have any other facts about Cumming? Leave them in the comment section so we can all educate ourselves.

In Des Moines, as in many cities in the Midwest, the biggest industry is insurance because the people of Iowa are so polite that theyre more than happy to make their entire living by betting that everybody else is going to be just fine.

Didnt see any signs of violence or fights in the town which was disappointing. In fact, the most angry person I saw was a man with a roller suitcase and a neon vest wearing a go pro on his forehead (the Cyclops) screaming at the cashier for charging him $.16 sales tax on a big bottle of Diet Coke because he claimed it was groceries and therefore shouldnt be taxed. If you’ve never heard someone go on a anti-goverment tirade while using the word the word “pop” over and over to describe diet coke, well my friend you havent lived. Only in Iowa.

Night before the debate I stopped by the “I Heart Media party” which might as well be a nickname for Democrats in general. Everyone in Des Moines in super polite including many of the press who make sure to be extremely complimentary to everyone especially themselves. But anyplace thats serving free doubles of whatever drink I happen to be making-up to sound cool to the bartender is ok in my book.

The party then went to a bar called “High Life” which is famous for serving “vintage beers” aka Miller products on tap. Its such a great bit of marketing to just relabel things that arent good as being “vintage” and then people will think that theyre actually wonderful. Its why people still buy new Rolling Stone ablums, and why its belevable that the “most interesting man in the world” from the Dos Equis ads is still banging models even though he’s 80. Get it he’s old but if your old and drink beer you can be young again.

Lots of folks were very interested to here about how I got Ben Carson to discuss aborting baby Hitler since it had been picked up by pretty much everey formerly-reputable news source by that point. Good magician never reveals his tricks. Bottom line is the free market has spoken and CNN, Fox,and Huffington Post all agree that Fetus Hitler is newsworthy so I made no apologies.

A good thing to do before a assignment is to take on a food eating challnege which I did at Jethros right off campus. I ate like 3 pounds of a 5 lb sandwich that had fried pork, friend cheese, fried chicken, brisket, and like a hundred other things on it.

Folks I started to understand why Iowans are such nice people. If you drink alot of beer and eat mixed-meat sandwhiches its pretty tough to hate anyone but yourself for at least the next several hours. Truly the Land of the Lotus eaters as long as you fried them and put both swiss and american cheese on their stems. Fortunately I came across a 30 pack of Natural ice in a Kum n Go gas station to settle my stomach down from the sandwich before the debate started. So I chilled out in the rental car slamming 5.9% abv brews for like a hour.

Security was insanely bad at this debate folks. I literally put the entire case of beer in my backpack and checked in and was immedately granted full access to everything. The Republicans had metal detectors, dogs, barricades, walls, you name it. Dems had everyone on the honor system and I was basicaly rolling into there party with Natty ISIS and no one even thought to ask me if I could toss them a cold one.

Another big difference between the parties is in there WIFI securty. Here’s what it said at the GOP debate:

And heres what it was like at the Democratic one:

So open borders open networks. Got it. Anyone could of used this internet, even a terrorist, illegal immigrant, or Don Lemon. Just negligants at its finest.

Anyways I smuggled in my 25 remaning beers and got a quick lift in at the workout room that was next door to the filing center. I had been on the road for a week and although the fact that I packed gym clothes technicaly counts as a 500 calorie defecit per day I wanted to get some reps in until they kicked me out because it was too late and also because I “wasnt suppose to be there.” Whatever.

Earlier this week Trump had accused Hillary of playing “the woman’s card” too much. And boy did she keep whipping that thing out during the debate, reminding folks that 60% of her donors are women which should come as no suprise since we all know women be shoppin. Like most Americans I care about emails more then females, but suprise suprise she spent more time reminding people shes a champion for gender equality than admitting to any criminal wrongdoing - which is exactly what she would do if she were guilty.

Her strongest point was when she reminded people that it was unfair to attack her for accepting money from Wall Street because she was a Senator when 9/11 happened. This is a move known as the “Giuliani shuffle” and it has been enormously effective in building up large leads a full calendar year before a election.

Hillary kept saying stuff about how in theory a single payer healthcare system would work but then also saying Obamacare is good, but many are saying she didnt go far enough. One plan involves people paying less money for some healthcare, next is people paying nothing for all healthcare, so logicaly If a democratic canidate could figure out a way to pay people to get injured then they’d jump to front of the polls. Reinstating the draft would technicaly be the most liberal thing they could offer.

One thing the republicans have done a much better job then Dems is on the message of gun control and by informing the American people about how the democrats stance on gun control is just to take them all away. The GOP could follow this blueprint into other policy areas as well. By this logic, they could accuse libs of promoting abstinance because there advocating condom use, and immediately get the vote of all sexually active single Americans, not to brag but they’d lock in my vote for sure.

Clinton dosent see any of this, shes only worried about alluding to the fact that shes a cool mom who dosent care if her voters smoke weed long enough to get her to the general electon before she grounds them all when the Principal catches them with a joint in their backpack.

After the last debate I said he looked like a compostie sketch of every President but this time I coudnt help but think he just looks like the coach of a 6-10 NFL team. Guy has Tennessee Titans painted all over him, try to tell me I’m lying.

I was kind of suprised to see all the O’Malley supporter’s outside Drake before the debate in much larger numbers then any other candidate. Just like those hipster college kids to pick the most obscure thing just so they can be different and claim they liked it before every one else. Coudnt help but notice they were singing singing “seven nation army” which sends the wrong message to ISIS giving them aid and comfort that they can defeat our coalition. O’Malley needs to get his supporter’s under control before they give him a McCain ‘08 moment.

After this whole PC nonesense, I dont trust groups of people supporting a cause on a college campus any more unless its a NCAA sports event. So I was weary of the O Malley mob to come at me with trigger warnings and demands that I respect their right to not let me insult them.

From my understanding the word microaggression was actually invented by people trying to make people feel bad about making them feel bad which technically is a micropassiveaggression- small distinction in the nomenclature but important nonetheless. No one stepped to me hard enough for me to drop that bit of knowledge on them but I did mention it to Drakes live bulldog mascot later and you could tell he thought it was a good line.

O’Malley is the safe boyfriend going to keep it steady. You can tell your friends he plays guitar to make him seem like he’s got that edge but he’s more of a Netflix and chill guy then a Incubus and rage guy. Hes the type canidate you bring home to your mom and dad for Thanksgiving and you find yourself sneaking away to the toilet to fire off some nudes to Lindon LaRouche.

In my opinion, O’Malley missed a big opportunty to nail down Hillary on ISIS and ask her how many more people in the Middle East we have to kill until their children stop hating us. We got to be getting close at this point and if Hillary wasnt prepared with a exact number she would of looked like a fool.

O’Malley has also been way to soft on the subject of accepting Syrian refugees. Youd think that a guy named O’Mally would know better then to accept large groups of peasants fleeing poverty and famine from a country where factions of there leadership are engaged in violent oppressive tyranny. Someone get this guy a history book.

Bernie is the king of “free stuff.” Listening to him speak in a debate is like tuning in to the Price is Right except instead of giving away jet skis and bedroom furniture hes passing out frivolous things like neonatal healthcare and bachelor degrees if you can guess the price without going over $0.

He wants the minimum wage to be $15 per hour which I dont think should happen because I never made $15 a hour when i was in my 20s and had to struggle to make ends meet and still have a wofully inadequate savings account, but I turned out fine.

He wants to make public college free for anyone. Literally telling America that your educaton is worthless. The world needs dumb people too Bernie, otherwise who are your supporters going to be able to convince to vote for you? Maybe Bernie needs to take off his Che Guevara beret and put on his thinking cap because I have a way that would fix all of our educaton issues.

Easiest way to make college free is to start at the elementary schoool level by coaching American youth to be better at football so they all earn scholarships.Instead of reducing the cost of college, lets reduce the amount of money that we’re not paying players so that everyone can afford to be on scholarship?

Not sure why no one else caught this but speaking of drugs Bernie admitted to being a human smuggler when he drove a bus full of seniors over the border into Canada to buy perscription medication. The man admits to being a coyote and were about to elect him President? Should be in jail folks.

From what I could understand, he beleves that the the federal goverment should bascially provide free food, education, healthcare, board games, and sexual relations to every citizen. Hes basicaly the grasshopper compared to Ben Carsons ant, wanteing to use physiology, safety, love, esteem, and belonging to fill our pyramids instead of storing grain in them for the winter.

Democrat spin rooms are way lamer then the Republican ones. On Tuesday in Milwauke I had bumped in to Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz walking around asnwering questions, but Martin O’Malley was the only candidate who stopped by the Democratic one. It just wasnt the same without Lincoln Chaffee going up to whatever media had a microphone and a heartbeat and offering his unsolicited opinion about everything for two hours. Like a Dead concert without Jerry Garcia.

There was one person I wanted to talk to though. The head of the DNC.

This particular debate took place at 9 o’clock on a Saturday which just goes to show you the Dems are more concern with electing a Piano man than a Schiano man. 9 PM on a weekend is also the most likely time of the week where all of the cool voters are either drunk or having sex, and probably both.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, has been criticized for scheduling these events in a manner where folks wont tune in to watch them in order to protect the presumptive candidate, Hillary Clinton, from sustaining too much friendly fire in prime time. Its like when Utah schedules Colorado school of Mimes and Humboldt County A&M and expects to be let into the BCS because there undefeated. Schultz has managed to make the DNC debates fly under the radar using scheduling tricks like having only 4 of them, putting them on holiday weekends when people arent at home, and having them listed in the TV guide as “Democratic Presidential Debates.”

This time Schultz pulled the old “I want a fall wedding but I dont want to spend that much money on it so Im gonna have it on a college football gameday and invite alot of people that I know wont want to show up” and scheduled it for a Saturday night when two Big 12 teams are playing on national television.

I saw her talking to people and made my way over while she was being grilled on the presumptive low ratings for the debate. The second Repuilcan debate drew 23 million just as a frame of reference and a reporter was insinuating that the 2nd Democratic one would draw about a third of that. She adamently denied that there was going to be a ratings problem.

Her suggeston is that if the candidates want more camera time then why dont they just go ahead and start there own debate television series? Show that entrepenurial spirit. But for what a masterfull job shes done protecting a candidate that probably doesnt ever send her lives on candy crush or anything, she messed up big time by failing to host this debate during a SEC showdown and instead put it in opposition to small market teams Oklahoma and Baylor. I wanted to ask her about this failing so I drew back and sent my dart of a queston through to my target and said, “Do you regret not scheduling this debate during a more popular college football game?”

“(Eyeroll) You’re funny. Good question. You’re funny.”

And then she stopped taking questons and left.

The debate drew 8.5 million viewers.