Rendell in Des Moines, Chilean Miner Video

Ready for Rendell: Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Ed Rendell is in Des Moines tonight to try to help fellow Gov. Chet Culver, raise some money for the Iowa Democratic Party and add a little fire to the Dems' efforts. Rendell is the keynote tonight for the IDP's Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner. I will be curious what kind of crowd he can attract. We caught his warm up act this afternoon at a campaign stop for Culver. Here are a few highlights:

He used a football analogy (appropriate on this football Saturday). He said if Dems were a football team, they would be 8-8 (hardly Heisman-hype-type talk, huh?). But Repubs, if they were a team, they would be only 3-13. So he asks why people would want to go back to that lesser record?

He called Culver's opponent, Terry Branstad's opposition to Culver's universal, state-funded pre-k education "about the dumbest idea I've ever heard". And goes on to ask, "What's he thinking. Is he thinking?"

He said Dems have the momentum. But he asked, "Will we get there in time?"

Finally, Culver, as you know, is called the Big Lug, by some supporters. Rendell said, "Knowing Chet and looking at him, when he gets momentum, pretty hard to bring down".

No one said Rendell was boring! ">Here's the video from Rendell Raw.

Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le!--MSNBC (anybody figure out what its new slogan, "Learn forward", means yet?) reports just how captivated we were with the miraculous rescue of those 33 trapped Chilean miners. The cable network said the only event for which it provided more live video streams was President Barack Obama's inauguration. 10 million live video streams, wow.