He is so unserious and self-contradictory that I can barely muster any strong feelings toward him, but attention must be paid to Howard Dean. At least for the moment, until he has an aneurysm from being so darn angry all the time.
The article says Dean is “focusing his criticism squarely on Bush, whom he said was dividing Americans by race, class, religion and sexual orientation.” How’s this for inclusive rhetoric:
“This democracy and the flag of the United States do not belong to Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell, and Tom DeLay, and John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney,” Dean said as he listed prominent conservatives. “This flag and this country belong to us and we want our country back.”
Did he mean the flag doesn’t only belong to Rush et al.? Because surely the flag is just as much the property of Jerry Fallwell as it is Howard Dean or any of his sandaled followers.
Dean doesn’t think fundamentalist Christians are Americans, either:
I want my country back. We want our country back. I am tired of being divided. I don’t want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore. I want America to look like America. Where we are all included, hand in hand, walking down. We have dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together – black and white, gay and straight, man and woman.
…unless you’re one of those creepy snake-handling Christians, in which case you can go to hell.
Speaking of creepy, here is Nietzsche’s Superman advocating bad policy in the same speech:
We have made Medicaid into a middle class entitlement. If you made $52,000 a year or less in Vermont everybody under 18 in your family is entitled to Medicaid…if you are at the upper-end of that, we charge $50 a month…Now, if we can do that in a small rural state which is 26th in income in the entire country, surely the most wealthy and powerful society on the face of the earth can grant all of its citizens healthcare. I am a governor and I am a doctor and I have done it.
How magnanimous! His Excellency Governor Dean, ruling a population the size of Milwaukee, “granted” his subjects “free” healthcare. As Pete Vere said in a previous post, free healthcare ain’t free, and Dean didn’t mention that Vermont has the highest per-capita tax burden of any U.S. state.
In Vermont we have conserved hundreds of thousands of acres that will never be developed, and I might add Mr. President, they’re never going to be drilled on either.
Has there been a recent stampede to exploit the vast oil deposits of Vermont? One that was manfully resisted by Governor Dean?
For sheer head-scratching nuttiness, my favorite quotation is from two weeks ago, from a speech at the University of Maryland—
“Let’s talk about that middle class tax cut,” Dean said. “Tell me how much your tuition went up last year. Tell them how much your parents’ property taxes went up. That was money taken from the middle class and given to Ken Lay and the boys who ran Enron.”
I don’t know how they do things across the river in Maryland, but our property taxes went up because our house is worth a lot more than it was last year. The Johnsons consider that a good thing.
Literally, this is what he’s saying:
1. Last year, the Republicans figured out how to siphon off tuition money paid to the University of Maryland, and tax money sent to the Treasurer of Maryland, and stick it in a Federal account.
2. The Republicans then ordered the U.S. Treasury to write one of those yellow Statue of Liberty checks, payable to “KENNETH LAY AND THE BOYS AT ENRON.”
3. This was accomplished through a middle-class tax cut that did not take effect until more than a year after Enron declared bankruptcy, and “Ken Lay and the boys” were out on their ears.
Like lots of people who are more knowledgeable than me, I don’t think Howard Dean will be president, and I don’t know that he’ll even get the Democratic nomination. Then again, I always thought everyone must surely see right through Bill Clinton, and he wouldn’t stand a chance.
[Quotations were edited for spelling and grammar.]