Reply #16: These are responses

[Nicholas_J]

To legitimate threads with magazine articles. They get mad becasue there are no real sources outside of Dean For America, that praise any of Deans accomplishemnts in Vermont.

No progressive or liberal media has anything good to say about him.

So when they see articles about Dena from liberals/progressives like Alex Cockburn about Dena like this:

Alexander Cockburn
Creators Syndicate

Anybody but Bush? Watch out, Dems!
Let's aim higher than pro-death penalty, pro-drug war Dean

Take Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. Right now, he's enjoying a boomlet. Across this great land, ambitious Democrats are hopping from foot to foot in an agony of indecision. Kerry, Graham, Dean, Gephardt: Which way to jump? Dean! Clinton without the satyriasis, Carter without the Baptist sanctimony; a simple country doctor (albeit with Dean and Witter armorial bearings) who ran Vermont through the Nineties, and who, somewhere in the mid to late 90s, began to set his compass for the White House. Progressive, but not radical; against the war, but no peacenik.

I'm a realist. I know that anyone hoping to win the Democratic nomination has to achieve acts of political prestidigitation equivalent to, though harder than, guiding a herd of rampaging Gadarene swine through the eye of a needle. No matter that a candidate might have the idealism of William Morris, the conscience of Philip Berrigan, the moral clarity of Robespierre or Ralph Nader, he'd still have to act as ruthless swineherd. I know that. But I'll confess it. The more I look at Dean, the less I like him.

The death penalty? Yes, Dean evolved into a pro-death penalty position just when he was debating a White House run. For heinous crimes like killing kids or cops. Now, with his eye on the primary in South Carolina, he's added "terrorists" to those into whose arms he would stick the needle. Isn't that the posture of Ashcroft or of W. Bush, who signed more death warrants than any other governor in U.S. history? It is, but be reassured by the Dean campaign. In a Dean administration, those consigned to Death Row will know, even as the needle starts pumping the poison into their veins, that President Dean went that last half mile to ensure fairness.

Medical marijuana? Is the Democratic candidate wholly owned by the pharmaceutical companies, the blue-nose lobby? Dean says, "My opposition to medical marijuana is based on science, not based on ideology." Oh, yeah. Dean's opposition is based on 200 percent proof political calculation. He looked in the crystal ball and decided he didn't want to be pilloried by Tim Russert and the other telly-pundits as a friend of the herb, so Gov. Dean headed off a really good medical marijuana law making its way through Vermont's lower house, the same way he headed off a pioneering health initiative in Vermont. Recently, he called Gephardt's health proposal "pie-in-the-sky radical revamping." He was gung-ho for welfare "reform," which he has called an "incredibly positive force." He's a "fiscal conservative," which is kiddy code for serf of capital.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15211

Dean supporters then flood DU with their own personal opinions about Dean, touting them as the only truth, and attacking all who dare question Holy Howard (Sancte Howard ora pro nobis), then develop some kind of political tourettes syndrome and start wailing and cursing and attacking anyone who does not support the Doctor.