As for the attack of the day, regarding Dean's supposed lassitude in securing Vermont's one nuclear reactor, I say, "pshaa". More crap from campaigns that don't have a clue.
Have you fellow Deaniacs, and other true Dems, noted the tremendous upsurge in troll patronage of Dean web-sites? I'm sure you have, and I (sadly, but truly) now believe that corruption is as rampant in political campaigning as it is in "the war on drugs" among the parties and their media spokespeople. Who among this readership doubts that a representative of a representative of Kerry, Gephardt, or Lieberman (yes, even Clark), meets a reporter and hands him $100 or more to write such and such material? And with the promise of more to come (meaning no work for the reporter and indeed career enhancing potential),
presto!, a wire-story, an attack on Dean, destined for immediate publication. I no longer have any doubts.
What blows me away is that it's taken me 42 years to witness the evidence of this happening in the first place; or to be honest, since I'm a scientist, to assume this awful possibility as a probable fact, strongly suggested by countless examples, though of course it cannot be proven, which is the whole point). When we all started worrying about the ABD (anyone but Dean) phenomenon, I was far more sanguine. Didn't believe that political corruption was rampant in the electoral process, and certainly not in the Democratic Party. So why was I so naive? I have no clue. Guess it's part of life and growing up. But here it is--the corruption, the "echo chamber"--amongst supposedly left-leaning pundits, in all its dark splendor.
How about destroying it? Dean has inspired me unlike any politician in my lifetime. Nobody even comes close. I don't have any more money, being unemployed and having contributed close to $100 in Q3 before there was a $100 challenge to begin with. Just that glorious bat.
To criticize Dean for supposedly sacrificing his fellow Vermonters' safety in this nuclear power plant issue is nothing. Why? Because I trust him. Come on: you increase by 30% the resources of the state to protection of the facility, you secure a flight ban on the airspace surrounding it, and you station National Guard troops around it. Who can say Bush has even attempted such measures in the two years and two months since the horror of 9/11? You can believe what you will, but I don't see any evidence of it. Piecemeal measures. Uranium smuggled into LAX. Knives and box-cutters galore routinely allowed in passengers' baggage. And the checked baggage isn't even checked, let alone container shipments from abroad. Give me a friggin break. If ever there was a Democrat with integrity, it's Howard Dean. Period.