November 2003 Archives

As a self-described Deaniac, I enjoy reading the Dean For America blog. However, while I can read it on my computer easily, there's been no AvantGo channel, and surfing the web on my Palm phone is somewhat slow and cumbersome. (I know; the world should have my problems.)

However, one can set up a custom channel on AvantGo quite easily, and there are RSS/XML feeds available from the blog. Combine these two things with readily available code to parse the feeds and translate them into HTML, and voila, instant mobile bliss.

So I got this script somewhere. Regrettably, I can't remember where so I can't credit the person or persons who created it, but I'm very grateful to whoever it was.

Anyway, here's the PHP code, modified for the blog. Enjoy!

I hope there's a Trader Vic's in heaven. (Not that my family believes in that crap.)

In a somewhat random fashion:

1. He spent a year at school in England, and then travelled around, between high school and Yale.


2. He made a point of asking for black roommates on his roommate preferences questionaire.


3. He did volunteer work in New Haven ghettos, and sometimes brought his "mentees" back to hang out with him at his dorm.


4. He wasn't a great student in college, but he read the New York Times every day.


5. He liked (likes) playing bridge and he's a big hiker and skiier.


6. It's possible that his brother's death halted his political evolution towards the far left.


7. He and his wife met in medical school, supposedly because they caught each other doing crossword puzzles in class.


8. In Vermont, Dean initially backed single-payer health care, but then he decided to try other ways to cover the uninsured that he thought would have a better chance.


9. He really is a fiscal conservative. He hates raising taxes.


10. He'd sometimes spend a lot of money on a project he liked.


11. He's moved to the right on the death penalty; he used to be totally opposed, now he thinks there's some times when it's appropriate.


12. He's very pro-business, sometimes too much so for Vermonters. He weakened Act 250, the anti-development law, during his tenure.


13. He is a big supporter of wilderness areas, and is responsible for the purchase of large areas of land that will be preserved from development.


14. He's "not a process person" but he does believe in collaboration to resolve issues.


15. Several of the people interviewed for the book who were critical of him... still support his run for the presidency.


16. He can be impulsive and say stuff he shouldn't.

He was a "small g" governor — not into power for the sake of power.

17. After he signed the civil unions bill, he went around the state to meet with people in various town halls so they could yell at him. Then he'd calmly explain why he did what he did. It worked, because he got reelected.


18. One elderly woman walked up to him at one of these gatherings and started swearing at him. He replied, "You should clean up your mouth, lady. You certainly didn't learn to talk like that in Franklin County!"


19. He is a devoted family man. No, he really is. It's not just for appearances. He'd go to PTA meetings and make other parents feel like he was just another parent, not a big-G Governor.


20. He's NOT too liberal! He really, really, really isn't. He got along really well with the Vermont Republicans, perhaps a little too well. He became famous for his opposition to the Iraq war, but his platform is a mix of moderate ideas that I suspect a lot of people would agree with if they became more familiar with them.


21. He's not perfect, but he'd make a good president, and if he doesn't have a chance against Bush, nobody does.

--> "Vt. Papers Pen Definitive Book on Howard Dean", Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher, November 7, 2003, www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/ article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2020984

Around Halloween, I donated money to Howard Dean's campaign and received a big orange "Bush Scares Me" button as a token of thanks. I'd been wearing it for the past week, and then, this morning, for some reason, I decided to remove it and replace it with the slightly beat-up "Howard Dean For America" blue button that has been pinned to my purse for several months.

That was a good decision, in hindsight.

I just got back from a lunch run to the Ferry Building (which is absolutely gorgeous inside and has some really cool, if somewhat expensive food shops — anybody in or near San Francisco should definitely check it out!). In the ten minutes I was there, two people commented on the pin. One, a clerk working in the ferry gift shop, gave me the thumbs-up sign and said "Go Howard Dean!" The other had quite a different response.

The other was a not particularly exceptional looking white man in his 50s. The undistinguished gentleman took one look and said, "Howard Dean, huh? Naw. Bush, baby! Four more years! And he'll win, too, thank G*d!"

I didn't react at first (trying to restrain myself) and then after a few seconds I responded with "Thank you for your opinion, sir." in what was probably a fairly icy tone of voice.

"Well, I like Bush a lot. He's the best thing to happen to this country."

"Really? What do you like about him so much?"

"Everything. He's done a lot of great stuff."

"Really? Specifically, what has you done that you like?"

"Well, everything! He's been great for the economy, Iraq... everything!"

"Really, you think Iraq is going well? But it's less stable than it was before! Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Saddam's gone, but —"

"Ah, don't believe all that stuff that you see in the news. They're making it sound worse than it is. I get my news from people that know what's going on!"

"Oh. Where do you get your news from?" (I suspected at this point I already knew what he was going to say.)

"FOX News!"

At this point I was, I think, speechless.

"Oh, but that's not the only place. I have other sources on the Internet. You can't trust newspapers. The Chronicle, that's not news!"

I agreed with him that the Chronicle wasn't a great newspaper, but I had to do it to his back, as, perhaps bored, perhaps afraid of actually having to defend his knuckle-dragging views on the world with sources and logic, he walked away down the hall.

These are the kind of people that run our country. Angry white men in their late middle age who get all their news from Fox, and appear to have great difficulty listening or even being polite.

This is no way to run what is supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world.

Feh.

(Man, if I'd been wearing the "Bush scares me" pin — maybe he would have hauled off and punched me! And then I'd be able to sue for millions! That would have been so cool!!!!)

Edit: I remembered after writing this that there was a bit more to the conversation (and believe it or not, there were a few more rounds of him making a statement and me asking for more info). I finally at some point said, "It must be nice to be so sure of your beliefs," and he responded with, "Well, you gotta go with what your heart tells you."

"Just as Congress recently voted to pre-empt key parts of the state's financial privacy law -- which would have given consumers the ability to restrict information sharing among affiliated companies -- special interests once again prevailed over individual rights in Washington. Yes, once again, Congress has come up with an industry-crafted alternative to a strong state law." says the Chronicle.

In my spam folder today, meanwhile, sits:

• "^_Boost your :P:E-N"I*S' LEN'GTH" from Tessa Felton


• "STOP SUFFERING IN SILENCE" from Christoper Yang


• "WANT; A BIG R'OD iesdqvfpaahr" from Rodolfo T. Betts


• "Great new development *" from Forrest D. Ashley


• "expand" your ^horiz-ons. wvongudi" from Gilda Marks (Tutti-Frutti, wvongudi, Tutti-Frutti, wvongudi, A-wop-bamma-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom!)


• "How much is your car worth on trade-in?" from Trade In Values


• "Hello, My antenna on cell sucks :-(" from Ashley Wheeler (maybe Ashley should talk to Rodolfo T. Betts?)


• "Info Information You need" from Marta Temple


• "splat Rate, SEE THIS MEDS OFFER abide armchair" from Jannine Lane (Divinely obscure to the point of surrealism...)


• "Earn huge money quickly from home..." from Allan Crouch (Would the huge money be earned via my BIG R'OD?)


• "cleaner colon wfbve" from Millie Story (EWWWWWWW!!!! That's NASTY!!!!)

I will be emailing president@whitehouse.gov today. I am also tempted to forward all of this spam to him, but I'd probably get arrested.

(Additional thought: about a new slogan for bumper stickers and such. Something like "I DON'T WANT A BIGGER PENIS, AND I VOTE!!!")

I think I stole that subject line from somebody recently. Oh well. Anyway, I'm sitting around tonight, watching "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and surfing the web when I should be writing. Anyway, wandered on over to MP3.com, which will be going away real soon now, and started downloading stuff. I was pleasantly surprised to find Q-Tip's "Vivrant Thing" in the hip-hop section. I then decided to take a look at the country section, since I like some stuff that could be considered country. I had forgotten how funny country music titles can be. I just had to click and download "Growing Marijuana in My Back Yard", "Bury Me At WalMart", and "The Boob Song" — I mean, WTF? I was less pleased to see one offering called "Victim of Abortion"; I haven't listened to it, but let's just say that maybe not all of MP3.com's songs need to be preserved for the ages. Maybe I'm being unfair; it could be a really great song. Somehow, I doubt it.

But I'm betting the ones about boobs and WalMart are fun to listen to. I just have to figure out some way of hiding them in my iTunes playlist so other people don't find out I listened to them. Oops, too late. :-)

Article in Wired about the ability to share your music lists via iTunes... and the ability of other's to pigeonhole you as a result of your musical tastes (or lack thereof)

"This one playlist had a lot of German techno," Aubrey said. "We predicted this was a kid wearing a mesh shirt who wanted to be a Nazi." At a party shortly afterward, Aubrey recognized the playlist and asked whose music it was. "They pointed to this kid in a mesh shirt with a swastika on his arm," Aubrey said.

Judging from my iTunes list, I wear a lot of mismatched clothing, have multiple personalities, and am registered with several clashing political parties. And the tattoos! Oh dear. (Goes back to listening to Badly Drawn Boy.)

--> "ITunes Undermines Social Security", Wired News, November 12, 2003, www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61177,00.html

OK, I need to stop procrastinating and start paying bills, but I found this choice misspelling in a comment on Larry Lessig's blog, on the subject of CNET buying mp3.com and destroying all the mp3s on it.

CNET's actions suggest that this was a rational economic decision. there were apparently few economic incentives in keeping the content. indeed, it would seem that the economic incentive was to get rid of it.

how is this anything like the wonton destruction carried out during the chinese cultural revolution?

I love wonton soup! Wonton destruction! Noooooooooo!

Reminds me of a typo in the opposite direction, on the menu of a Chinese restaurant that my friend Kimberly and I used to frequent when we lived in Rockridge. We'd cackle at the appetizer called "fried wanton" and speculate that we'd better not get too frisky or we'd end up as dinner.

This makes me sick. Holier-Than-Thou rightwingers basically threatened builders working on Planned Parenthood's new building in Austin, telling them that they'd never work in this town again. Their tactics succeeded. Planned Parenthood has rallied, saying that it will act as its own contractor.

I just heard one of the boycotters on the radio saying something like "It made me sick to think of what goes on under that roof." Yeah. You want to know what goes on under that roof? Women get health checkups. Women get birth control. Women who might otherwise not see a doctor at all. Yes, some women have abortions, but I bet that Planned Parenthood has prevented way more abortions than it's ever actually performed.

It just makes me want to scream that people think any different — and want to impose their twisted thinking on the rest of us. (Austin had a reputation of being a liberal town. Heck, Afghanistan used to be a destination spot for hippie travellers in the 1960s. Hyperbole on my part? Yes, but not that much.)

Sometimes it seems like all I do is bash Bush on this blog. As an American and a Jew (who works at a Jewish organization, to boot), I feel caught in the middle. On the one hand, there's Bush and all of his crap. Turkey is the latest front in the war on terrorism, eh? Gee, that war is going really well... on the other hand, I was walking around San Francisco today, looking at tall buildings and imagining what it would be like if a truck bomb detonated in front of one of them. Probably not much different than Istanbul.

It can't keep going on like this, can it? Al Queda issuing their endless statements, people getting killed, Bush screwing up his face into that smirk I know and detest and making yet more statements about how the terrorists are doing this just 'cause they hate freedom... it just seems like it gets worse and worse.

It's got to stop someday. Right?

Zig for great justice! Someone set us up the bomb!

Good article from Slate that Michael just sent me.

Once open, the debate is surprisingly winnable. Opponents of gay marriage will say it's really about homosexuality. But opponents of legal abortion made the same argument—it's really about abortion—and lost. Some anti-gay advocates will say marriage is for procreation. But that position is politically disastrous, alienating singles, infertile couples, and any married person who uses contraception. Other critics will warn of moral chaos. But moral chaos is what marriage prevents. If you want family values, the simplest thing to do is to let people form families.

"It's the Commitment, Stupid / How to sell gay marriage", William Saletan, November 19, 2003, slate.msn.com/id/2091428/

This is the card I gave my sister for her birthday, because her birthday was the same as the date of Ahnold's inauguration. (She also shares a birthday with Howard Dean — how cool is that!?!?)

In today's Chron:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Gov. Jeb Bush joked during a Florida Cabinet meeting that the people of San Francisco may be endangered and , "That's probably good news for the country."

The topic at hand was environmental land and at the time of his remark, Bush was looking at a map showing locations boasting a lot of different wildlife.

"It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing," Bush said during the meeting Wednesday. "That's probably good news for the country."

People in the room broke into laughter.

"Did I just say that out loud?" the governor asked.

My response:

I love Photoshop and ClipArt.com...

--> "Jeb Bush jokes people of San Francisco may be endangered", San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/news/archive/2003/11/13/state0340EST0012.DTL

You can't bring your "mini-gun" with you to fend off protesters, we're not going to shut down the tube, and if your secret service agents shoot any protesters by accident, we're not protecting them from being sued for it. We will make sure you don't have to see those big bad protests, though, so you can pretend that the population of the U.K. doesn't hate your guts.

So says the British Home Office. Is it just me, or is this one of the stupidest international visits ever?

On a more humorous note, some folks are having a lot of fun playing confuse-the-conman with the Nigerian spammers... engaging in protracted correspondence, not in the hopes of making off with a generous percentage of Robert Mugabe's nest egg, but for the chance to make total jackasses of the spammers. My favorite part of the article...

Though I've heard of Fairport Convention, I'd never really heard much of Richard Thompson's music before. He occasionally gets played on KFOG's "Accoustic Sunrise", and that's about it. Since finding his latest album on the late lamented EMusic, though, I've been listening to "The Old Kit Bag" over and over and over. Good album, and I'm also (perhaps unfairly) always impressed when somebody who's been making music for the better part of four decades still sounds fresh and inspired.

I was also very interested to learn today that he's a practicing Sufi Muslim! According to this site, he introduces one of the songs on his album, "Outside of the Inside" as "a song about how the Taliban see the West". I don't completely buy that, though — the song hits much closer to home, with its lyrics denouncing various great thinkers of the West. I mean, who seems the most anti-science and culture, lately? If you answered the American religious right, you get a cookie! I suppose that's what makes it a great song though... it could be about any fanatic, anywhere. And it shure sounds purty, too...

So Newsweek says that 50% of the country wants Bush's first term to be his only term, and 44% want to give him another chance. His overall approval rating is steady, boosted by reports of an improving economy, but the Iraq thing is hurting him. Still, when pitted against actual, as opposed to hypothetical, Democrats — even Dean and Clark — Bush comes out ahead.

So yeah, great, people are upset with him because the war in Iraq isn't going well. But things could still change. The economy could get better and the resistence could die down. Where would that leave us folks who want to get Bush out of there?

The thing is, though, it would be wonderful if the economy did get better, and if we could get Iraq on the road to stability, maybe there'd be some hope, and the rest of the world wouldn't hate us quite as much as they do now.

It still wouldn't make Bush a good president though. Because after reading Bushwhacked, it's pretty clear to me that with or without "the war on terrorism", and any ups and downs in the economy, even though he's not dumb as dirt like everyone likes to joke... none of this matters. He's still terrible for the country. The appointments made, the safety regulations removed, the financial regulations mocked, the science ignored, the people hurt... this was all happening before those planes headed for the World Trade Center and gave this administration a great excuse to play soldiers.

So now it's just a matter of convincing a couple of hundred million voters! (Yikes!)

--> "Poll: 50 percent of voters would not re-elect Bush; But job approval rating remains constant", CNN, November 10, 2003, www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/ 11/10/elec04.poll.bush/index.html

--> "An Early Assessment By Leading Presidential Scholars of George W. Bush's Presidency: Part One", FindLaw, November 7, 2003, writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20031107.html

I was thinking about my sense of musical aesthetics (or lack thereof)... puzzling over why I think some music is beautiful when other people might not (Neil Young), yet am left cold by music that is inarguably pretty (Sarah Mclaughlin).

And I blame my parents. They tend to listen to a different set of musicians and genres than me, but they exposed me to two key musical influences: 1) Randy Newman and 2) Stephen Sondheim. Those two gentlemen are masters of the sweet melody and the not-so-sweet subtext. Randy Newman can sing beautifully of slave ships and broken marriages, and Sondheim writes about thwarted loves, regretted choices, dead-end lives, and ways of life that have been swept away. He's covered everything from the opening of Japan to the West in the 1800s to the inner lives of presidential assassins.

The songs I like, while they are different genres (folk/rock/alternative/country?), are often similarly somewhat melancholy, even a little twisted. A new favorite of mind, Richard Thompson, gets inside the mind of a religious fanatic in "Outside of the Inside", Dar Williams waxes rhapsodically about life by the sea and then gets slapped down and told to get over herself by an actual fisherman, in "The Ocean", Kirsty Maccoll gets nostalgic about an illicit affair in "Titanic Days", and... I'm still not sure what "Pineapple Head" is about, but those Crowded House boys sure sang it like they meant it. Even a beautiful song about how we are all worlds within worlds has the improbably title "You Little Shits." Why? Why not?

I think my ears have been trained to need a hint of a sour note, not just unleavened sweetness. Sometimes pretty is just too... pretty. Sorry, Sarah M.! (This probably also explains why I'm not that thrilled by Andrew Lloyd Webber either.)

This sure doesn't sound good, no, not at all.

WASHINGTON - Sunday, NBC will air its made-for-TV movie celebrating Pfc. Jessica Lynch, whose capture and dramatic rescue is the feel-good story of America's war with Iraq.

But some African-Americans don't feel so good about Lynch's story. Instead, they ask: What about Shoshana Johnson?

Johnson, an Army specialist, belonged to the same 507th Maintenance Company as Lynch. Unlike Lynch, Johnson fought to stave off their Iraqi captors. Like Lynch, she sustained serious injuries.

But only Lynch got the headlines, the TV movie, the prime-time television interviews and a biography penned by a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Lynch, in short, got the full American celebrity treatment, while Johnson largely got ignored. Many African-Americans think that's simply because she didn't have the right "face.''

African-American suspicions of a racial double standard were reinforced last month when it was revealed that Johnson, who was shot in both ankles, will get only 30 percent of her monthly pay in disability benefits. Lynch, who had a head injury and broken bones in her right arm, right leg, thighs and ankle, will get 80 percent disability pay. Lynch's new book, "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story,'' says she also was raped by her Iraqi captors.

"Ex-POWs' treatment seems unfair to many", William Douglas, SJ Mercury News, November 8, 2003, www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/7213959.htm

Strikes again! Hee hee. Wouldn't it be nice if it turned out to be accurate?

"An Algorithm for Determining the Winners of U.S. Presidential Elections", Daniel Debowy and Eric Schulman, Annals of Improbable Research Online, October 20, 2003, members.bellatlantic.net/%7Evze3fs8i/air/Elections.htm

My favorite quote: "Schulman (2003) used the algorithm of Schulman (2001) to predict that either Howard B. Dean or Wesley K. Clark could defeat George W. Bush in 2004. As seen above, our more sophisticated algorithm indicates that any of the currently declared Democratic presidential candidates could in theory win the 2004 presidential election, provided they chose their vice presidential candidate wisely. However, Dennis J. Kucinich would need to choose someone who has been a banker and a college or university president or chancellor, or a college or university president or chancellor and the child of a U.S. Senator, or the child of a U.S. Senator and a banker. John F. Kerry or Carol Moseley-Braun would need to chose someone who has been a governor and/or a U.S. Representative for at least five years, who has been a banker and a college or university president or chancellor, or a college or university president or chancellor and the child of a U.S. Senator, or the child of a U.S. Senator and a banker. Joseph I. Lieberman would need to choose someone who has been a governor and/or U.S. Representative for at least five years, who is the child of a U.S. Senator, who has been a banker, and who has been a college or university president or chancellor. The existence of such a person is left as an exercise for the Lieberman campaign."

Hours of fun! Or in this case, mere seconds!

I have been sick to death of the Jessica Lynch rescue story... the maudlin, sacharine, manipulative movie that's coming out this Sunday (yes, I haven't seen the movie, but I HAVE seen the previews. All I can say is, "ECH!")... the distorted coverage... the lies of the Pentagon... etc, etc.

Now that Ms. Lynch has started speaking for herself, I have to say that I have a lot of respect for her.

Here are some quotes from a recent interview:

"It does [bother me] that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff... It's wrong."

"I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they [say], you know. ... All I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. ... I needed help. I wanted out of there. It didn't matter to me if they would have come in shirts and blank guns; it wouldn't have mattered to me. I wanted out of there."

"It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about... Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say ... I went down shooting. But I didn't."

As usual, the government is blaming other people for the inaccurate coverage and bullshit and saying they had nothing to do with it. The person who actually got hurt (she still has health problems and is on crutches) actually has the balls (ok, ovaries!) to take responsibility. She doesn't call herself a hero. But in the era of Dubya II, it seems like just being honest is heroic, especially when I'm sure there was much pressure on her to spin things the way the chickenhawks wanted. (I hope they don't cut her health coverage.)

--> CNN,www.cnn.com/2003/US/11/07/lynch.interview/index.html

Was sitting at my desk when I felt the floor move slightly. Just a gentle undulation, so slight, in fact, that I thought I'd imagined it until my coworker said "Hey, did you feel that?" What we felt was a 3.9 earthquake in Morgan Hill, about 80 or so miles away...

Preliminary details here

Dear Emusic Folks,

It is with great reluctance that I am writing to cancel my subscription. I've been a very happy Emusic customer and have enthusiastically recommended your service to everybody I know for the past couple of years... but that time has ended. I had recently paid for a year of service, but I would like to end my agreement and be refunded the unused portion of my subscription.

Here are the reasons I am cancelling:

1) The new download plans are not attractive or flexible. 40 songs for $10 or 65 songs for $15, and no other options (save some rumor of a $50/month plan, which is not realistic for most people's budgets.) You can tout the "per-track cost" all you want, but I doubt that people download mainly individual songs from EMusic -- and what good is 2 1/2 albums a month? The hit single has never been your company's strength, anyway.

2) The downloading functionality has pretty much stopped working. I keep having to hit Resume over and over, and sometimes I download empty sound files. Yes, I'm sure that's because people are downloading tons of stuff before they leave, but why didn't you anticipate that before making your announcement? I understand that you're also running ads to entice new customers to the service. Given how poorly things are running at the moment, it seems unwise to give a bad first impression like this. Why don't you fix your technical problems first before you try to grow the service?

3) The new attitude towards your customers is contemptible. EMusic had never done as much with the service as they could have, but the discussion boards and music lists were a good start. Finally, the passionate music fans could communicate with each other, and believe me, they were telling other people about this great thing too. Taking down the discussion boards was a good way to avoid hearing the inevitable complaints from your customers, but it also sent a clear message that you didn't care what your paying customers thought. Since that letter, there have been NO communications from Emusic -- although I do see press releases in the news about your new plans. You'd think you'd be trying to convince people to stick with you and telling them about your new features, but no. It's also nearly impossible to find any contact information about your company. I fail to see how alienating yourselves from your paying customers will benefit your bottom line... you have effectively gotten rid of a key component of your marketing and your word-of-mouth is not going to be good.

In short, you're asking customers to pay the same amount or more, in exchange for reduced value, nonexistent customer service, glitchy software, and a lot of frustration. You're taking a terrific service and running it into the ground. I'd rather not watch the carnage.

If you ever resolve these problems, believe me, I will certainly consider signing up again. The music selection has been terrific, and it's a pity that it's being managed so badly. For now, I will be taking my business to iTunes.

Sincerely,

So for once I'm not writing about politics!

Here's a picture of Michael in his Halloween costume. Yep. Ain't he a cutie?

"Nadine Polk, a Wheat Ridge, Colo., office worker who has switched from considering herself a Bush supporter because of Iraq, said, 'It's hard to see what the tax cuts have done for me. We did get that check [the expanded child tax credit], but it didn't even pay for the increase in our property tax. . . . I don't see any sign that they helped the job situation.'"

--> "Nation Again Split on Bush", Washington Post, November 2, 2003, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ A50026-2003Nov1_3.html

I've heard the quote they're referring to, and they are really fishing the bottom of the barrel. Anybody who really thinks Howard Dean thinks the Confederacy was a good idea is, to put it politely, missing the point of his speach, and to put it less politely, talking out of their a--.

www.cnn.com/2003/ ALLPOLITICS/11/01/elec04.prez.dean.confederate.flag/