So dear friends on the extreme left, do you still want Howard Dean for president? Even after the guttural, angry, and strange howl he let out Monday night in Iowa? That outburst was one in a long line of gaffes that Howard has blurted out over the last few months. I know a lunatic when I see one. Let's look at the facts on Howard Dean.

Gaffe #1: Dean claimed that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks before they actually occurred. Really? Sounds like a pretty corny conspiracy theory. Does Howard have any proof? No. All he could say was that the truth was "out there." Didn't the X-Files use the same terminology?

Gaffe #2: Dean gave Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists equal weight on the scale of morality. He claims:

There is a war going on in the Middle East, and members of Hamas are soldiers in that war, and, therefore, it seems to me that they are going to be casualties if they are going to make war.

If you believe as Dean does that Hamas members are anything other than cold-blooded killers, click here. How many innocent Israelis has Hamas killed? Their victims are almost always civilians sitting at pizza parlors, cafes, and grocery stores; or riding buses on their way to work. Obviously Dean knows little about the situation in the Middle East.

Gaffe #3: Mr. Howard Dean said "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer" on December 15. Wow. That's brilliant. An estimated 300,000 dead Iraqis lay in some 260 mass graves, 40 of which have been confirmed to date. Saddam's rule meant torture chambers, dropping poison gas on civilians, starting an 8-year war with Iran which claimed a million lives, etc. Despite the current direct lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we know for sure Saddam had them in the past.

Gaffe #4: Dean wants to completely eliminate the Bush tax cuts. Or does he? After taking much flack, he's flip-flopped all over the place on his "tax strategy", of which there are few details.

But Dean's tax plan gets even worse. He said:

I tell you what we need in America. What we don’t need are middle-class tax cuts.

What wisdom. Raise taxes on America's economic power-house, the middle class. They'll stop spending, so businesses will make less, so businesses stop hiring, then people will spend even less, then businesses will lay people off, then people will spend even less... Sounds like an invitation to economic disaster. The truth: Bush's tax cuts have invigorated the American economy. Why "fix" something that isn't broken?

Gaffe #5: Apparently, Dean thinks Osama bin Laden is not necessarily such a bad guy:

I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.

I guess Dean was out to lunch when all the world's largest media outlets aired the video tape of Osama gleefully boasting about the 9/11 attacks.

Gaffe #6: Dean dissed the grass-roots democratic nature of the Iowa caucuses, claiming they were nothing more than toys of big special interest groups:

If you look at the caucuses system, they are dominated by special interests, on both sides and both parties ... I can't stand there, listening to everybody else's opinion for eight hours about how to fix the world.

When reporters cornered him in Iowa about his negative remarks, he turned red-faced and stammered inanities. A day later he was telling everyone how wonderful the caucuses were.

Gaffe #7: Dean threatened the Democratic Party, basically saying they either vote for his nomination, or he would withhold all his supporters' votes for any other candidate:

...Dean warned that "if I don't win the nomination," his million and a half supporters are "certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician."

This is democracy? Sounds more like megalomania.

Gaffe #8: Dean flat-out lied about having a brother in the military. His brother never served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Gaffe #9: Howard made racial slurs -- stereotypes, if you like -- about southern whites:

Over the past four months, the former Vermont governor has been in hot water for comments suggesting he wants to appeal to Southerners who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals.

Gaffe #10: Howard Dean's outburst in Iowa has scared his own supporters. Here are some samples collected by SFGate.com:

You could say that his pep-rally speech would feel appropriate had you been there in that crowd, and that it doesn't translate well as a sound bite, and that sound bites are no way to form an opinion. But there was still something disturbingly Hitler-like about it.

- Karen Smith, Mill Valley

and

Before Dean's manic, over-the-top performance in Iowa Monday night, I was fairly certain that he could not beat Bush. Now I'm absolutely sure of it.

- Robin Chanin, Santa Cruz

Critics and supporters -- even his own staff -- have been shaken by his banshee-like screech. According to the Boston Globe:

Top aides could only shake their heads when asked about Dean's performance following the Iowa caucuses results, while critics pounced on it as evidence of a man they said was out of control. Former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, said of Dean, "He looked like a prairie dog on speed."

"Tonight, after the caucus results, Dean gave his speech to the troops. Yes, he was over the top, but he wasn't speaking to America, he was speaking to us, the Deaniacs," one writer penned. "Having said that, I feel I must say this. . . . He should never broadcast a speech like that again. Never. Ever. Again."

For some Dean supporters in New Hampshire, his reaction was enough to spark questions about their man, with some paying a visit to Manchester's Holiday Inn Center to hear him deliver his first post-Iowa speech.

Judith Pence, a former school principal and now education consultant from Manchester, said she has been a Dean supporter since Labor Day. But after watching Dean react to the Iowa results, Pence said she was left unsettled.

"A simple congratulations to the winners and now on to New Hampshire would have been better," said Pence, who added that listening to Dean yesterday in Manchester reassured her.

James Carville, long-time Democratic strategist and architect of Clinton's '92 victory, has this to say about Dean:

I'm scared to death that this guy just says anything. It feels like he's undergone some kind of a political lobotomy here.

Not only is Dean kooky, dishonest, angry, and unstable, he's just plain ignorant of the issues that would face him as president. I wouldn't touch this guy with a ten-foot poll. Vote for him at your own risk, and at the risk of this nation's future.