HAS DEAN WON ALREADY? The political gadflies at The Note -- ABC News' political unit's way of getting the juices warmed up in the morning hours -- do a good job of laying down some fundamentally strong observations about current Dem front-runner, Howard Dean. Like Dean or hate him, he's shown in the past few months that he knows how to play with the best. And just one year from the general election, there are some critical things that set the winners apart from the losers: money, attitude, money, message, money, and acting different from the rest of the pack. Dean continues to lead on all fronts. Can he beat Bush? I'm not sure. Can he beat the other Democrats? Probably.

So, on this Day After the SEIU/AFSCME news, when Dean's frontrunning status has hardened even more, let's review those things that we have suggested are the truths about Howard Dean, the sundae on which the labor cherries are going to be placed next week:

1. Dean will raise more money in the year before the election than anyone else seeking the Democratic nomination, and that historically in the modern era is (with one exception) the iron-clad predictor of who wins in both parties.

2. Beyond money, this year Dean has dominated in message and media, two other fabu things to have.

3. None of the other candidates can overtake Dean in the fourth quarter — they can theoretically do damage to him (although, outside damage with the Chattering Class, we doubt that too), but they can't cripple him. There just aren't enough people paying attention yet.

4. What doesn't kill Howard Dean only makes him stronger.

5. Fair or unfair, the media has not held Dean to the same standards as the other major candidates. Wes Clark's entry into the race sucked up a lot of publicity and took the spotlight off of Dean at the one moment when critical mass was being reached.

6. At the same time, some of Dean's explanations for his alleged inconsistencies and flip flops are actually pretty convincing.

7. Dean's core supporters don't care about Sunday show gaffes and pratfalls, New York Times editorials, or what Terry McAuliffe or the Dingells think.

8. People actually listen to Dean talk at his events.

9. Dean's willingness to cede control to volunteers in the states for planning events and executing political activities is an act of confidence and strength, and has directly resulted in his drawing unprecedentedly large crowds and building genuine grassroots support.

10. Most Washington Democrats who are scared out of their wits about Howard Dean as their nominee have never been to a Dean event and don't have a genuine understanding of WHY he has succeeded this year.

11. Skipping the matching funds is a general election strategy, not a strategy for winning the nomination.

12. Governors do well as presidential candidates, and the members of Congress who are running against Dean still for the most part haven't learned not to talk like they are from Washington ("We CAN get Breaux-Gilchrest out of conference!!!! We can DO it!!!! And then passed by both chambers!!!"). Dean talks like a real person, and voters like that.

13. Dean is no newcomer to national politics; his work on the NGA and DGA (where he recruited ruthlessly) gives him as much applicable experience as almost anyone else running.

14. Howard Dean doesn't have cable TV.

15. Howard Dean has not developed a general-election winning message on the economy — yet.

16. Dean can theoretically win a general election race against President Bush, but not without growing significantly as a candidate and a person, including and especially in his rhetorical and symbolic relationship to faith, family, freedom, and national security.

17. All of the other five major candidates think they can and should be in the end the Dean Alternative, and each has enough hold on key state and national support that they have no incentive or desire to get out of the race and consolidate beyond one of the others. The pro-war candidates in particular are splitting a piece of the pie that is large, but it is still a SPLIT piece.

18. The people who work for DeanforAmerica have FUN, from the interns in Iowa to the senior stuff; the staffs for the other campaigns don't always remember to do that.

DEMOCRATIC HAWKS RETURN TO THE NEST The Democratic foreign policy hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski has made his more liberal dining partners shudder for two decades, but the ascendency of idiot thinking via the Bush administration has made Brzeziniski a hero among the Dems. Here's some snippets from slate.com of a recent speech he gave; a link to the full transcript is on slate.com.

He bemoaned what he called Bush's "paranoiac view of the world," which has resulted in "two very disturbing phenomena—the loss of U.S. international credibility [and] the growing U.S. international isolation."

He called for "a return to fundamentals" in U.S. foreign policy, including the construction of genuine alliances, "particularly with Europe, which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies."

In an implicit indictment of Donald Rumsfeld, Brzezinski added, "We cannot have that relationship if we only dictate or threaten and condemn those who disagree. … We should seek to cooperate with Europe, not to divide Europe into a fictitious 'new' and a fictitious 'old.'… While America is paramount, it isn't omnipotent. We need the Europeans. We need the European Union."

He asks whether a world power can "really mobilize support, and particularly the support of friends, when we tell them that if you are not with us, you are against us." He says the "war on terrorism" cannot effectively be defined as an "abstract, vague and quasi-theological" struggle, or waged with pre-emptive attacks, which only "reinforce the worst tendencies in a theocratic fundamentalist regime" and "widen the zone of conflict in the Middle East."

His conclusion: "If we want to lead, we have to have other countries trust us. When we speak, they have to think it is the truth. … We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness."

And the crowd went wild.

JUST SMURFY Thank you, USA Today's Hip Clicks for alerting me to the rebirth of the Smurfs. What a frightening time we live in.

THE WISDOM OF WESTERBERG The Onion chats it up with musical craftsman Paul Westerberg, who somehow managed to survive his utter stoner years with the brilliant Replacements without losing the ability to write fucking good rock music.

O: Was there ever a temptation, if only for your career, to leave Minneapolis?

PW: No. I always thought it was more helpful for me to stay. L.A. gobbles you up, and New York does the same. To me, anybody who has to move somewhere to become something they're not isn't the real thing. If you've gotta move to Los Angeles to make it, then you ain't got it.

CRYSTAL GLASS The Onion chats with radio superstar Ira Glass, the man who reinvented public radio by blending the craft of the 1930s with the voyeurism of the 1990s.

IG: See, but I don't like that whole "art should challenge you" thing. Because I don't feel like art actually does challenge you. I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that experience, actually. Also, it's not interesting. You have that experience the very first time you see a serious film. I feel like it's way more about... Some people are looking for a feeling that they can relate to, unless most of your feelings are really dark, then you're stuck. I was talking to [cartoonist] Chris Ware, who wrote maybe the most depressing book ever put out. But then, in a way, his work is like a comic strip where at the end of every page, it just gets worse. Instead of a punchline, there's the opposite of what a punchline would be. As the book goes on, it just gets further and further down, until you're wondering, "How far are we going to go with this?" It just gets worse and worse and sadder and sadder, and I was asking him, "Why not have a character who's happy?" He said the entire culture was organized for people who are happy. People who are miserable need reassurance that other people are miserable.

O: Why do you think Chris Ware's work is so compelling, if it doesn't work the pleasure centers that entertainment conceivably should?

IG: I think that is a pleasure center. I think that being able to relate to something is one of the main things a story can do for you. The grammar in that last sentence was really shameful, and it's going to look even worse typed out on a page. It's funny: So many stories come through the show, and we try stuff, and half of it just fails. We don't put it on the air. Thinking about what makes a story really compelling versus the ones that don't, often it's like certain plotlines have a good character. They're catchy as a plotline in the way a melody is catchy. I think he's got a real gift for that. There's something about the way he composes a story that's like a catchy melody, where you get on at the beginning and you feel yourself tugged ahead, and it's so easy to relate to, and there's the sheer fucking craft of it. It looks like nothing else, and it's so nice-looking. Everyone who reads it ends up being like, "Wow. Colors are nice." All those things are enjoyable. The meticulousness of it is one of the best things about it. The entire book is like the world's most perfectly organized desk.

O: You mentioned pledge drives. You're famous for taking a very proactive stance toward fundraising. How do you feel about pledge drives in general?

IG: Like all public-radio listeners, I hate the pledge drives. In fact, at one point, the public-radio system did audience surveys where—I'm not even sure I'm allowed to talk about this in public, but anyway—they did these surveys, and our listeners said that during the pledge drive, they felt like their local radio station had been taken over by these morons that they hated. Those were the qualities: They felt that the people on the air were stupider, and they hated them, and they felt they did not share the values of the programs that they listen to, where people seemed to be kind of smart and inquisitive and alive. So my feeling about the pledge drive is that I don't like things to be bad. I just didn't want to be boring on the radio. I couldn't face that, so we put a lot of work into trying not to make it boring, some years with more success than others. There have been two different times, once in Chicago and once in Boston, where we did a thing where if you called during our show, once every five minutes we'd choose another name from a hat, and I'd deliver a pizza to that person that day. At the end of an hour, I had to deliver 12 pizzas to people. What else have we done? We did the paint-by-numbers set, but that doesn't sound too interesting. At one point, we sicced one of our contributors, Jonathan Goldstein... We told him that $20 million was the total amount of money the public-radio stations needed to raise in the fall pledge drive. We sent him out cold-calling people, trying to get them to donate the $20 million and end the whole thing right there.

TIM BURTON RETURNS In a holiday movie season filled with big war movies (LOTR, Last Samurai, The Alamo), Tim Burton's "Big Fish" is sure to be a crowd-pleasing change of pace. And in a change for the director of "Sleepy Hollow," "Edward Scissorhands" and other dark, offbeat films, "Big Fish" is a bright, offbeat film.

BRITAIN'S BELOVED BOOKS The BBC is polling Brits to see which of the United Kingdom's favorite books is the true standout. I was pleased that I had read more than half of them, though two were by way of the old Illustrated Classics comic books.

LET FREEDOM RING HOLLOW Even as I periodically grimace or roll my eyes in dismay or bemusement at the haphazard policy pronouncements of the Bush administration, I sometimes find myself wishing that -- just once -- they would follow through on something in an honest, transparent way. President Bush's comments yesterday, when he said that the United States needs to stop accomodating repressive governments in the Middle East, would be one of those times. But is the Bush administration truly interested in drawing a line in the sand for Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen and a host of other governments in the region run by dictators, monarchists and cabals? Will actions follow words? Does his vision apply to Asia? To Latin America? Somehow I doubt it.

And, more importantly, if the Bush administration does intend to follow through, are they willing to accept the consequences of democratization? The truth of the matter is that -- for the short term, at least -- the United States would need to be prepared to deal with hostile, democratic governments if true reform were to take place in the region. For some reason, I think even the idealistic neoconservatives would prefer dealing with Pakistan's military than with Pakistan's people.

In a speech that redefined the U.S. agenda in the Middle East, President Bush waxed eloquent yesterday about his dream of democracy coexisting with Islam and transforming an important geostrategic region that has defiantly held out against the global tide of political change.

But Bush failed to acknowledge the tough realities that are likely to limit significant political progress in the near future: the United States' all-consuming commitment to fighting a global war on terrorism and confronting Islamic militancy. Washington still relies heavily on alliances with autocratic governments to achieve these top priorities.

The president's vision was an attempt to wrap together major U.S. goals in the Islamic world -- new governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Arab-Israeli peace, as well as political and economic openings in a wide swath of countries from North Africa to South Asia -- under the wider rubric of promoting democracy. Bush pledged new momentum to foster broad change comparable to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

ECO IN ALEXANDRIA When I managed to find the Bibliotheca Alexandrina during a visit to Egypt in 1999, it was under construction and I was underimpressed. Built as a representation of the original Great Library of Alexandria, it remains a curious place. Al-Ahram reports on last week's visit to the library by Italian author Umberto Eco.

OLIVE TREES IN PALESTINE Last winter, a young American activist was killed near Rafah. Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer as she and others were protesting the IDF's policy of destroying Palestinian homes in retaliation for suicide attacks. The Palestine Children's Welfare Fund is committed to planting 1,000 olive trees throughout Gaza and near Rafah in Rachel's memory. You can find out more about Rachel at a website maintained by her family.

THE MODERN SUPERHEROINE Style takes a look at Alias' Jennifer Garner. She's surprisingly human.

LET LOOSE THE DOGS The NYTimes did a piece a few weeks ago about the types of dogs lurk along the streets of Manhattan. And they ran a trusty map with neighborhood breakouts.

STARING AT THE SUN The CSMonitor's Science Weblog gives a well-written, rollicking account of the historical understanding of solar phenomena.

It’s pretty obvious something is going on with the sun and for the most part we have don’t have a clue. It’s a fascinating subject to investigate, at the intersection of astronomy, physics, engineering, electromagnetism, chemistry, and geology.

We have some theories, but don’t understand how two new Jupiter-sized sunspots, coincident with multiple near-record breaking electromagnetic solar flares blasting out at more than 4 million miles per hour from the sun’s inner core, will make their presence known on planet Earth.

But first, don’t look directly at the sun, as it can cause serious harm. Second, don’t look directly at the sun. Am I clear on not looking directly at the sun? It would be the equivalent of taking a pistol, putting six bullets in the six chambers and playing Russian ruelette with your eyes.

If you really do want to get a glimpse of these sunspots, either go online www.space.com, or find a friend with a quality solar filter on her telescope. I can assure you, viewing these two, new huge sunspots is, as the expression goes, "totally awesome."

What we’re going to do here and in the next two or three Scitech blogs is offer an overview on the solar phenomenon currently taking place, the aurora borealis that is one of the historic indicators of such activity, and what it all might mean to us, from using our cellphones, flying in an airplane, to watching the NFL Sunday afternoon on Satellite TV (now that’s important).

Today’s blog offers some historic context.

LOCATION, LOCATION Part of the reconstruction-and-stabilization problem in Iraq is the Bush administration's total and complete lack of foresight. Another component is simply that getting anything into Iraq is complicated and dangerous. The Washington Post follows the efforts of USAID to get millions of school bags (with pencils, pens and paper) delivered to Iraqi schoolchildren.

ANOTHER IRAQ WEBLOG Here's a well-written online journal from a National Guardsman doing duty in Iraq.

LOCAL ROCKERS The fellows in Meanflower are hard at work -- recovering from their recent tour, rehabilitating their massive Petersburg warehouse, and beginning work on a new recording.

THE SOUND OF A BALL DROPPING The NYTimes has an astonishing portrayal of conversations and negotiations that took place in early March between the Pentagon and the Iraqi government. The level of compromise the Iraqis put on the table was huge, but the door was never fully opened by either side. Was the offer real? Hard to tell. But what a different story we'd be following if war had been averted.

WHO'S DRIVING THE BUS? Thomas Friedman says the ongoing attacks against coalition (read: U.S.) forces in Iraq will only begin to be addressed when Iraqis have a central authority to govern the country -- preferably a democratically elected authoority operating under a Constitution. Everything else is a stop-gap, and everything else has the appearance of a sham.

I repeat, yet again, Lawrence Summers dictum: "In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car." Too many Iraqis still feel that they are renting their country, first from Saddam and now from us, so they aren't really washing yet. We cannot just toss the keys to anyone, as France suggests. But we can insist — much more vigorously — that they begin the constitutional process that will produce a legitimate body of Iraqis to accept the keys and eventually drive off on their own.

DON'T FORGET THE WOUNDED Until recently, the Pentagon did a stellar job of clamping down on the release of the numbers of wounded in Iraq. And, sadly, the U.S. media did a fantastic job of underreporting the numbers. That's beginning to change.

Few newspapers routinely report injuries in Iraq, beyond references to specific incidents. Since the war began in March, 1,927 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, many quite severely. (The tally is current as of Oct. 20.) Of this number, 1,590 were wounded in hostile action, and 337 from other causes. About 20% of the injured in Iraq have suffered severe brain injuries, and as many as 70% "had the potential for resulting in brain injury," according to an Oct. 16 article in The Boston Globe.

Current injury statistics were easily obtained by E&P through U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon, so getting the numbers is no longer a problem. According to Lawrence F. Kaplan, author of an article on injured troops in the Oct. 13 issue of The New Republic, this information has only recently been readily accessible. "Pentagon officials have rebuked public affairs officers who release casualty figures, and, until recently, U.S. Central Command did not regularly publicize the injured tally either," Kaplan wrote.

The difference between "hostile" and other injuries, according to Army spokesman Maj. Steven Stover at the Pentagon, is that "one is gonna get you a Purple Heart, and one's not. One's for wounds inflicted by the enemy. It could be any type of injury inflicted by someone who intends you harm."

A United Press International investigation, published Oct. 20, revealed that many wounded veterans from Iraq, under care at places such as the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia, must wait "weeks and months for proper medical help" and are being kept in living conditions that are "unacceptable for sick and injured soldiers." One officer was quoted as saying, "They're being treated like dogs." The Army has said it is attempting to remedy the situation.

THANKS, RIDLEY Ridley Scott has crafted two images of the future that have stood the test of time -- Aliens and Bladrunner. And the restored version of Aliens that hit the screen last week shows us that the future isn't so much about science as it is about boredom followed by horror. And that's what made the movie such a masterpiece.

DEATH BY CUSTOMER SERVICE Ted Gup says the CIA is suffering from the same malaise that is crippling poorly managed corporations -- all the right messages, all the wrong actions. Actually, what Gup says is that the CIA has traveled too far down the path of incorporating, or trying to run an agency like a business. The result is that the agency is blind to its poor performance, too eager to satisfy its customers (primarily the White House) without question, and too hidebound to do anything about it.

FASTER AIN'T BETTER Columnist David Broder says Terry McAuliffe's decision to speed up the Democratic nomination process may spell doom for the Dems next year. Why? Because the rush to the finish line has created a blurry set of candidates who not only have little that distinguishes them from one another, but who are virtually invisible to anyone who doesn't live in Iowa or New Hampshire. And what the rest of the country learns in the next four months will largely be negative as the 9 candidates tear each other apart in their race to the gate.

GET THIS PARTY STARTED It's a shame that Joe Leiberman is such a cadaver, because he's probably the most qualified candidate running for the Democratic nomination. And it's a shame that Al Sharpton is so unqualified, because he's the only candidate with a mean sense of wit and irony. The candidates (minus Gephardt) hung out with hip newsboy Anderson Cooper last night to take questions from hip, young thangs interested in politics. The transcript follows...

LINKAGE SHRINKAGE A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that fewer and fewer Americans see Iraq as being a primary battleground in the war on terrorism.

Only one in seven Americans agrees with President Bush's assertion that the conflict in Iraq is the most important fight in the war on terrorism, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Since Sept. 7, when Bush addressed the nation to build support for the war in Iraq, he and his aides have described Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terrorism. "We will fight this war against terror until it is won," Bush said recently in one typical speech. "We are fighting on many fronts. Iraq is now the central front."

But the poll found that, although 61 percent of the respondents believe Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, just 14 percent think it is the "most important" part.

This doubt -- shared by some experts in military strategy -- poses a potential problem for Bush, because it indicates that a large majority of Americans disagrees with his main argument for justifying the continuing occupation of Iraq, which has proven costlier and bloodier than was generally predicted before the war. Experts in public opinion say it may explain why support for Bush's policies on Iraq has sagged.

FODDER NEEDED, APPLY WITHIN It's been obvious for more than a year that the U.S. military is poorly positioned to battle terrorism, stabilize Afghanistan, occupy Iraq and face any new threats (i.e. North Korea). Bush's decision to put boots on the sand in Iraq has stretched the military to its limits -- depending on the type of unit, it takes 5-9 soldiers working behind the lines to support one front-line soldier. So, it's no surprise that the Bush administration is quietly staffing up local draft boards. What's surprising is that no one is screaming about it yet.

FACES OF WAR The Washington Post has a heart-wrenching look at the hundreds of men and women of the U.S. military who have lost their lives in Iraq. Browse by name, or by date killed. Either way, it's an entirely sad, extremely human look at the fallen.