Dean Dean Dean

There's so much that could be said about Dean's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday.

The funniest thing is that he refused to be on with the GOP's Ken Melhman, apparently ducking a joint appearance, which Mehlman subtly made note of during his time. So now people are calling him "Howard the Duck."

But that's a sideshow. As usual, Dean's appearance with Russert was catastrophically bad. As usual, he told a lot of lies, and wouldn't respond to a lot of questions.

He kept accusing Bush of lying, but offered no evidence of it. The point that Dean has nothing was made hilariously clear in this exchange:

MR. RUSSERT:  What did he withhold?
DR. DEAN:  He withheld--he knew, he knew that there was no connection between Saddam and 9/11 and he insisted on trying to make that case to the American people.
MR. RUSSERT:  But he never said Saddam was involved in September 11.
DR. DEAN:  He never actually came out and said just that, but ...

And this one:

DR. DEAN:  The intelligence was corrupted, not just because of the incompetence of the CIA; it was corrupted because it was being changed around before it was presented to Congress.  Stuff was taken out and not presented.  All of this business about weapons of mass destruction, there was significant and substantial evidence passed from the CIA and the State Department to, perhaps, the office of the vice president--we don't know just where--in the White House that said, "There is a strong body of opinion that says they don't have a nuclear program, nor do they have weapons of mass destruction."  And that intelligence was not given to the Congress of the United States.
MR. RUSSERT:  It was in the National Intelligence Estimate, as a caveat by the State Department.
DR. DEAN:  It was, a very small one, but ...

In other words: "OK, I am lying, but I am still right!" He never mentioned any other ways in which the President was "lying." He mentioned two ways, and then admitted that he was lying about both of them.

And on religion, it was just sickening:

DR. DEAN:  I am a Democrat because of my moral values, because I believe that we can't leave anybody behind, because I believe that what happened in New Orleans was appalling, because people died based frankly on their gender--excuse me, on their race, their age and their economic status. We need to do a better job, including everybody.

Is it a "moral value" and to lie and say that people died because they were black, implying that the Bush administration is racist?

I could go on -- Dean has a terrible problem with telling the truth -- but just read it yourself. There's really just one more quote I wish to highlight:

DR. DEAN:  I don't care who they supported.  They killed hundreds of nominations in the Supreme Court.  That is the most hypocritical nonsense.  As you know, hypocrisy is a feature of Washington's life daily.  That is nonsense.  They get no credit for voting for Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Justice Breyer after killing hundreds of Clinton nominations and killing Harriet Miers.  How dare they have--I saw an ad the other day.  How dare they have an ad saying, "We want an up or down vote on Judge Alito" when they wouldn't give one to Harriet Miers?

First, it is of course ridiculous to assert that the Republicans killed hundreds of Supreme Court nominations. It's not possible. That's just more of Dean being stupid.

But his implication that the Republicans' treatment of Miers is hypocritical is just a lie. The Republicans never, at any time, in any place, asserted that you should not use political pressure for a nominee to be withdrawn. What they've asserted is merely that a minority of Senators should not prevent a vote that the majority wants, that a filibuster should not be used to permanently prevent a vote on a nominee.

He goes on, and I could, but there's not much point to it. The man's a lying moron. Which is probably why the Democrats are not raising much money right now.