Howard Dean Rocks!

Thanks Maurice for pointing me to this:

Howard Dean Disputes Media View that 'Values' Swung Election
By Charles Geraci
Editor & Publisher

Friday 12 November 2004

Evanston, Ill. - Former presidential candidate Howard Dean wants the media to stuff its new conventional wisdom that "values" or "morals" drove the result of this month's election.

Speaking Thursday night to 500 Northwestern University students, many of them journalism majors, Dean noted there was little "statistical difference" between the percentage of voters who deemed moral values the top issue (22 %) and those who ranked as their top concern Iraq or the economy/jobs, according to exit poll data.

"How can you get to the conclusion morality was the most important issue in this campaign?" Dean asked. "It's beyond me, but that was what the media was riding. They're entitled to their opinion. It doesn't happen to be the opinion of thoughtful people who are looking."

Though Dean, a Democrat, complimented President Bush, saying he "ran a great campaign" and was "very disciplined," he compared the president to former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, at least in one regard.

"The truth is the president of the United States used the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia. When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is extraordinarily damaging to the country," Dean charged. "I know George Bush. I served with him for six years [as a fellow governor]. He's not a homophobe. He's not a racist. He's not a sexist. In some ways, what he did was worse ... because he knew better."

Dean also criticized Bush for the ballot initiatives in 11 states calling for gay marriage to be outlawed, saying this "had only one effect, which is to appeal to homophobia and fear and gay-baiting in order to win a presidential election."

And he took a shot at Rev. Jerry Falwell.: "Most Americans are decent people - not all. I mean, there are those hate-mongers. I wouldn't call Jerry Falwell a decent person."

Scolding Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for, in Dean's opinion, humiliating people from the bench, he said, "Justice Scalia ought not to be on the bench. Never pick anyone who's sarcastic and mean-spirited."

But Dean's lighter side also was apparent throughout the evening. When a student asked what, if anything, Democrats could do regarding Bush's Supreme Court nominations, Dean joked: "We can do a lot. But senators have to have some chutzpah, as they say in Yiddish, or cajones, as they say in Spanish."

The former Vermont governor also responded to an ad by the conservative Club for Growth in which two ordinary Americans said Dean should take his "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs."

He explained, "I don't drink coffee. I have three cars - all of which are American. No part of me is pierced that I'm willing to discuss publicly. And if you want to see a freak show, go look at the people who wrote that ad - you won't believe it."

Dean talked about his vision for the Democratic Party, saying, "We need to stand up for what we believe in ... so that the people who vote against their economic interests will now consider voting for Democrats."

Complimenting students for "voting in significantly higher numbers," Dean appealed for them to "run for office" quite a few times. Echoing the now infamous "Dean scream," he shouted, "You need to run for office - not just in Illinois and Ohio and South Carolina! ... You need to run for office in Mississippi, and Alabama, and Idaho, and Texas, and...."

Some Saturday Links

The new Harper's index presents some statistics of interest at

http://harpers.org/MostRecentIndex.html

Some samples:

Aid that U.S. leaflets dropped on Fallujah in July threatened to freeze if insurgent attacks continued : $102,000,000 [Coalition Press Center (Baghdad) ]

Number of insurgent attacks in Fallujah in the week before and after the leafletting, respectively : 21, 36

Ratio of the minimum number of beheadings by the Saudi government last year to those by Saudi terrorists so far this year : 50:1 [U.S. State Department/Amnesty International (N.Y.C.) ]

Date on which Turkmenistan added questions on the president’s spiritual writings to its driver’s-license test : 6/12/04 [BBC Monitoring International Newswire, August 3, 2004/Neytralnyy Turkmenistan ]

Percentage of Mississippians who have failed their written driver’s-license test since it became computerized last year : 60

And here's some more Florida Election Humor

http://334578.com/Media/Voting_Machine.wmv

And some George Bush Amusement

http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/attachments/buildabetterbush.htm

More Election stuff:


Steven Rosenfeld writes in The Perfect Election Day Crime

Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three.

The lack of voting machines was a disaster.

“I don’t think this story has been told,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender from Bridgeport, Conn., who went to Ohio as a legal observer and discovered this trend by overhearing elderly voters talk about fewer machines. “The press and election protection people weren’t looking for this. They were looking for poll challenges. But this is the perfect way to suppress the vote.”


You can read the whole piece dated 11/12/04 at http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_perfect_election_day_crime.php

Don't forget to sign the petition at:
http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

That's it for now.

-Peter