Howard the Duck (oops, I Mean Dick, or is that Democrat?)

Howard Dean and five of the other Democratic presidential losers (all to the left of Nikita Kruschev) were in my fair state yesterday to be upstaged by the emcee of the event -- the person every true blue Democrat REALLY wants to run for president -- Hillary RODHAM Clinton. The event was the Jefferson/Jackson day dinner and if Jefferson and Jackson were alive today and knew what all these folks stood for, they'd be suing them for libel for using their names in vain.

No on seems to be able to stop the Dean juggernaut. Yes, it seems clear that the pacifist, we're no better than anyone else is so who are we to judge, tax you to give to your neighbor and vice versa politics are a winner in the Democratic Party. So let's analyze a couple of the positions of the man it looks like the Dems will anoint as their standard-bearer for the 2004 presidential election. What does he stand for and what kind of a mess would we be in if he actually were elected president.

National Security and the Military: (taken straight for his web site) I opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq from the beginning. While Saddam Hussein's regime was clearly evil and needed to be disarmed, it did not present an immediate threat to U.S. security that would justify going to war, particularly going to war alone. From the beginning, I felt that winning the war would not be the hard part winning the peace would be. This Administration failed to plan for the postwar period as it did for the battle, and today we are paying the price.

This is the same pacifist logic that got us into trouble 60+ years ago and could have had us all goose-stepping and reading Mien Kampf religiously before bedtime under threat of death had we not been forced into WWII by the Japanese. While Hitler was chewing up large chunks of Europe and gassing Jews, he didn't pose an immediate threat to us. Indeed, if we would have wanted to do something and sought "the cooperation and respect of friends and allies" (again, in Dean's own words) the pacifists in France would have denied their cooperation until the Nazi's were marching through their streets, which they did.

Dean goes on to say: "I will not divide the world into us versus them. Rather, I will rally the world around fundamental principles of decency, responsibility, freedom, and mutual respect. Our foreign and military policy must be about the notion of America leading the world, not America against the world. " Sounds cute, but makes me wonder if Dean was sleeping somewhere under a tree (next to his buddy Rip Van Winkle, perhaps) and woke up after 9/11 not realizing anything had happened. How can we develop "mutual respect" for terror groups and evil despots who want to wipe us and our culture off the face of the earth? Sometimes being the leader in the world as well as the country, means recognizing the nearly sacred role you have as the lone superpower and greatest and most successful experiment in democracy and understanding that you may have to make decisions, without the consent of other countries, that may not be popular, but that our very survival as a nation and as a civilization may depend on it. I want a president who understands that his number one priority is to protect the citizens of this great republic from enemies foreign and domestic, despite what other countries think. If he can't do that, nothing lese really matters. You can't go out and get the consent of other nations to act in our interests when half of them hate us and half of them are jealous of us. Dean's naivete on the issue of protecting our freedoms scares the hell out of me. We can't turn our national security into some encounter session circle-jerk with a bunch of backwards countries (such as those that run the United Nations). We're talking about the future freedom and security of my kids and their kids, for God's sake! And it’s very apparent that Howard Dean isn’t capable of handling this the most sacred of all presidential duties.

Dean on the Economy:

“The economic policies of the Bush Administration are misguided, unfair, and unsuccessful.” Mr. Dean, would this misguided economic policy include both the 7.2 percent GDP growth in the third quarter or the 256,000 jobs created in September or just one or the other?

Like the rest of the Democrats, Dean doesn’t get it on the economy either.

Dean goes on to say that Bush’s economic policies “fail to meet the basic standard of economic justice (?): decent, well-paying jobs for all who want them. They are policies that have created a legacy of debt for future generations. Huge tax cuts that benefit the wealthy are starving essential government services like education and homeland security and forcing states and local governments to increase sales, income, and property taxes. While America’s wealthiest individuals -- those in the top 2 percent of income brackets -- receive the bulk of the tax cuts, America’s middle class is left behind.”

You can’t really illustrate a more complete misunderstanding of basic economic principles than Dean demonstrates in this statement. First of all, it’s not the government’s business to create “decent well-paying jobs for all who want them”. (And, while we’re on the subject, what’s a “decent well-paying job” anyway? Five bucks an hour $50 an hour, $500 an hour or how about $1,000 bucks an hour. Now that's my definition of a "decent well-paying job"! I have yet to hear a Democrat clearly define the term.) When government creates “decent well-paying jobs” all we get is a bunch of fat bureaucrats and bloated government spending. When government gets out of the way, businesses create jobs and the economy booms. Reagan proved it in the 80s and Bush just proved it – cutting taxes helps spark economic growth and businesses hire people. As far as taxes go, it only stands to reason that the people who pay taxes are the ones who get tax cuts. The $800 rebate I got last summer was a whole lot better than a swift kick in the ass and I’m sure most of you middle class people such as myself who got similar rebates feel the same way. What did I do with mine? I went out and spent it just like millions of other middle class people did, which also stimulated the economy and created jobs. It’s pretty simple: when people have more money to spend, they spend it.

Another fallacy is that cutting taxes for the “wealthy” (I never thought of myself as wealthy, but I must be because I got a decent rebate last summer) causes deficits to rise. Again, as Reagan proved in the 80s, cutting taxes gives people more money to spend and they spend it on taxable economic activity and tax receipts rise. The reason this didn’t reduce deficits under Reagan and isn’t under Bush is because government spending is out of control. The key to erasing budget deficits is tax cuts coupled with actual spending reductions, not taxing people more. Until someone gets a handle on government spending (and if a Republican hasn’t been able to, don’t count on a Democrat to do it) deficits will continue to rise.

In a country where some date in mid-July – seven months into the year – is celebrated as the day when the average Joe taxpayer starts working for himself instead of every government entity that has their tax hooks into him, it’s hard to think that ANYONE could be under-taxed. It’s clear that Howie Dean subscribes to the Socialist notion that the money you bring home is merely what benevolent government is kind enough to let you keep. He may be a doctor, but he obviously failed Econ 101, If you trust Dean with the economy and taxes, you’re probably stupid enough to think you ARE under-taxed. More on taxes later. And more on the belle of the Democrats little Iowa ball – the female half of the Democratic Party standard-bearers, Hillary RODHAM Clinton.