Just wanted to share this different, often humorous take on the primary:

Love him, hate him, you can't avoid Dean

He has what Americans call 'moxie'. It is a kind of combination of inflated self-confidence and heroic ambition. He does not mess about. Though of small physical stature, he takes to the podium like a man about to arm-wrestle a gorilla. Off comes the jacket. The shirt sleeves are rolled up. The chest is pumped out. His words spew forth, punctuated by constant finger-jabbing as if he is trying to puncture balloons.

Bam, bam, bam. He recalls the film star James Cagney playing one of his gangster roles. Dr Dean has the same short, stocky build and angry, punchy delivery. You almost expect him to start shouting: 'You dirty rat, you cut taxes for the rich! You lousy bum, you took us into the wrong war at the wrong time!'

A puzzling article in yesterday's Boston Globe:

Dean's tax claims bring skepticism

In his just-published autobiography, ''Winning Back America,'' Howard Dean underscores what has become a longstanding central theme of his campaign. He writes: ''We cut taxes by 30 percent over the lifetime of my administration.'' In Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign is airing a commercial promoting Dean as a ''fiscal conservative who cut state income taxes -- twice.''

On the campaign's website, Dean is even more specific, saying that his two cuts reduced the state's top income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 9.5 percent.

But an examination of Dean's record as Vermont's governor has found that the bigger tax cut was in fact signed into law by his Republican predecessor, Richard Snelling. In 1991, Snelling signed legislation authorizing higher tax rates that would ''sunset'' two years later. Dean, then lieutenant governor, took over after Snelling died, and the rates dropped automatically at the end of 1993.

I can't make head nor tails out of this article, but it seems highly unlikely that Dean would lie about something so easily checked.  Anybody?

Sometimes local newspapers have the best coverage:

Candidate Clark packs Delray temple
By Brian E. Crowley, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 2, 2003

DELRAY BEACH -- More than 1,000 people packed Temple Emeth Monday, giving Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark the kind of adoration that was once reserved for U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

"Give us back our country, please," said one man as Clark was mobbed by admirers following his talk.

"He's a treasure. I don't know anyone better than him," said a woman taking a picture of the former Army general with a disposable camera.

continued ...

I'm fairly new here and haven't posted much, but I have learned a lot.  Sadly, most of what I've learned hasn't given me a whole lot of hope for the Democratic party. Though I've never been an activist, I've voted the Democratic ticket for over thirty years, yet I could see 2004 being the first year ever in which I wouldn't bother to cast a ballot in the general election.

Something about Clark's candidacy has bothered me from the beginning.  For the longest time I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

True, he has no real-world political experience, but that hasn't stopped other candidates from running and, in some local races, winning. His positions differ little from those of the other candidates, he seems likeable enough, and his record ...

Well, there's his record.  Personally, who he voted for or supported in the past has little bearing on my regard for him as a candidate. His past may, however, affect his candidacy when Rove & Co cast it in a certain light, as they are wont to do.  Lord knows there's enough potential material to work with, from bombing TV stations in the Balkans to the Waco debacle.  Who knows what other dirt Rummy can dig up or who he can get to smear the former general.  And wouldn't the vast rightwing conspiracy love to use Waco and Posse Commitatus to drag Janet Reno and Clinton through the mud (again).

But that's not it.  That's tinfoil.

No, it finally struck me the other day.  Wesley Clark is the perfect candidate for those who buy into the neocon world-view.  The War on Terror. Homeland security.  The pervasive fear mentality that says the only way to fight terrorism is to attack someone.  The only real difference between George W Bush and Wesley Clark, in that case, is that Clark seems to have a better chance of winning. Or at least he would do less harm.

So, some might say, why wouldn't that work?  Well, besides the fact that it perpetuates a self-destructive delusion, it won't work because the current administration is still capable of creating an illusion of victory in the terror war.  Already they plan to start bringing troops home from Iraq by next spring.  And it's not unlikely that they could install a puppet government before next November.  (Probably not one headed by Chalabi, but the CIA still has Khazraji in the wings, I hear.)  Voila, a declaration of victory and the Pretender is cut off at the knees.

There's no guarantee that the deception would play out, of course.  Clark could still win on the Better Than Bush ticket.  But a President Clark (shades of B5!) still doesn't address the basic disconnect in America between terror and America's use of power in the international arena.