Deer Stoopid

A Fargo, N.D., radio caller seems to be a little confused about deer crossings.

And, you know, whether deer can read highway signs.

The woman identified only as Donna told radio station Y94 The Morning Playhouse she had been involved in three car accidents in the last few years, all involving deer just after she passed a deer crossing sign.

“My frustration is that Minnesota and North Dakota departments of transportation would allow these deer crossings to be in such high-traffic areas,” she told the radio hosts.  ”I mean I’ve even seen them on the interstate. Why are we encouraging deer to cross the interstate? I don’t get it.”

She goes on to say that she understands deer need to cross the road sometimes, but called encouraging them to cross on highways “so irresponsible.” She said she’d written letters to newspapers and TV stations, but no one seemed to want to spread the word on her issue.

As she talks, the radio host is heard saying, “um…”

Donna then comes to the conclusion that moving deer crossings to school crossings would be safer.

I thought this was a joke when I read it the first four times.  I couldn't believe someone was so stupid and they were using it to spread awareness for deer crossings because it's that time of year.

Well, played, Team Stupid.  Send in a rookie to distract us, way to go.

Sarah Steelman Exposes Stupidity

... her own.

Keep in mind, this is the woman who doesn't know what our minimum wage is, though she sure has a strong opinion about keeping it there.  This is the woman who said she would vote "no" on increasing help for families who needed help during a time when the best financial planning wasn't enough to save homes. Now she's at it again.

The bill reinstates three emergency livestock programs that could help farmers in Missouri recover from the drought. Steelman said Wednesday she is still opposed to the bill because it spends too much money on special projects and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps.

“I would have voted against the farm bill because it’s too much waste,” Steelman said during a campaign event Wednesday at the Springfield Livestock Marketing Center.

Looks like hungry folks who can't afford food are a waste.  This drought will send food prices soaring, putting folks who are just barely making it into not having enough.  Cut aid for people who are already on the brink and what's that spell?  H-U-N-G-E-R.  There's a lot of those hungry people in Missouri, where every single county has been declared a natural disaster by the USDA.  You know, those guys who know a hell of a lot about how farming and agriculture.

Steelman is so clueless she points to the soaring rise of food aid without realizing it's the number of people who are forced to rely on food stamps to eat enough to be productive at work.

Still think it's a good idea to vote unanimously to prevent fair pay for women?  To deprive half of our workers of the right to fair pay is criminal, yet the GOP was more worried about businesses suffering from the burden than they were for the women who work their asses off for less.  Steelman is against raising minimum wage for the same reason.  Businesses are people, too.  Real people can just suck it up and take one for the team.

I'd laugh if I didn't want to beat my head against a wall.

Useful Idiots At Netroots Nation

Our "liberal media" is having a fun time with this year's Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis, and it's hard for them not to pass out from sheer ecstasy when Russ Feingold's keynote speech is all about how evil Obama is for taking corporate money, and Dan Choi is ripping up Obama flyers and saying he won't support the President.

Needless to say, "progressives hate Obama" is the only story that matters to the Village.  Even Howard Dean got in on the action.

Former DNC chairman Howard Dean also addressed the opening day of the conference, noting that “grousing about the president is a stage we have to go through.” Dean said he will continue to support the president, but rather than focus on Obama, he suggested, people should focus on what they can do in their own communities.

“We are responsible for the change we can believe in,” he said. “Change does not come from Washington, DC. Change comes from the bottom up.”

“Politicians follow. They don’t lead. We lead, collectively, all of us.”

So at best, Obama needs to be bypassed.  That's a super message to have going into the campaign silly season.  And people wonder why the media doesn't take progressives seriously enough, and how the Republicans got control of the House along with dozens of state legislatures in 2010.

Ripping up flyers is certainly going to solve all our problems, eh?

Last Call

And now Howard Dean has just folded on Cordoba House.



Weigel:

As David Frum says: "Reid's comment on mosque = Dem retreat. Dean comment = Dem rout." Bill Kristol (via Twitter) suggests that Dean is telegraphing a coming primary challenge to Obama, which strikes me as the first time Kristol has ever suggested Dean's political instincts are more intense than his gaffe-making skills.

Yep, that's about the measure of it. Night folks, you've been great.

Bigots, you've just won the argument, Dems, you just threw Obama under the bus, and I don't see how this could possibly go any better for the Republicans as a campaign issue short of Hillary Clinton using this issue to question Obama's judgment so much that she's leaving the State Department immediately.

Double G:

Certain things are disappointing and surprising even for the most hardened cynics.  Hearing Howard Dean -- the former liberal standard-bearer -- join Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin by saying the following is definitely one of them.

Our political class is hopelessly broken.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

If only progressives had been more depressed about being stuck with the Medicare buy-in deal, Joe F'ckin Lieberman might have been duped into allowing it to go forward, where Lieberman would have just screwed the Dems over in the final markup anyway and completely scuttled the bill.

[UPDATE 3:08 PM] Howard Dean says "Kill it, reconcile the carcass."

Opposite Joe

So, there's a new plan on the table.  It's a grand compromise.  It's a breakthrough.

And naturally,  Joe F'ckin Lieberman hates it.

"My opposition to a government-run insurance option, including any option with a trigger, has been clear for months and remains my position today," Lieberman says.
That's crucial because, as I reported last night, a (admittedly very stiff) trigger is part of the bargain liberal and centrist health care agreed upon last night. We'll try to pin down whether the announcement, or details, of the deal make Lieberman any less likely to filibuster the health care bill.

"Regarding the 'Medicare buy-in' proposal that is being discussed, we must remain vigilant about protecting and extending the solvency of the program, which is now in a perilous financial condition," Lieberman said. Back in 2000, Lieberman ran for Vice President on a platform of allowing people under 65 to buy into Medicare.

"It is my understanding that at this point there is no legislative language so I look forward to analyzing the details of the plan and reviewing analysis from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid," Lieberman said.

Getting really sick of this man.  Really sick.

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean are all for this.

Thank You, Howard Dean

The BYAAAAAAAAH is wise. Believe in the BYAAAAAAAAH, for he knows what he is talking about. Here he is on Rachel Maddow, talking about the Baucus bill.

You know, this is going to be a hell of an issue in 2010 cause honestly, what’s the point of having a 60 vote majority in the United States Senate, if you can’t produce…health care reform. You can get health insurance reform. This bill is going to cost us a lot of money and it isn’t going to do anything, if this so-called compromise is true. This compromise does nothing, except it will reform insurance. That’s a good thing to do, but they ought to strip the money out of it cause we reformed insurance like this in Vermont 15 years ago. It’s a fine thing to do, but it doesn’t insure more people.

You know, we need to be hearing a lot more from Dr. Howard Dean on health care here. He's a doctor, he understands the consequences of what this will mean for people from an executive branch standpoint, and most of all he understands that the American people are going to pillage the Democrats if they foul up health care again. Nearly everyone who will be voting in 2010 remembers 1993. I don't know why the Democrats in Congress don't, particularly the ones that were around back then.

This guy, he gets it. He always has gotten it. He worked hard in 2008 to get Democrats into this position as party chair, and he's watching them toss his advice -- the advice that got the Democrats such a huge margin in Congress -- out the window in order to appease the Villagers and the lobbyists.

Those aren't the people that put you in Congress, guys. It's the voters.

More BYAAAAAAAAH please. Thank you.

[UPDATE 5:14 PM] BYAAAAAAAAH is in for Olbermann tonight. Neat.

The "Mandate" Mandate

Media Matters goes into the Wayback Machine of November 2004 and comes up with literally dozens of Village Idiots saying Preznitman had a mandate with his 286 EVs and 50.7% of the popular vote. Some of the best:

• John Roberts, CBS News chief White House correspondent (now with CNN): "With the majority of the popular vote behind him [Bush], with the Electoral College win, with a mandate that perhaps many people didn't allow him to have in the first term, can he afford to be more magnanimous with the press?" [CNN's Reliable Sources, 11/7/04]

• Andy Serwer, CNN host and Fortune magazine editor-at-large: "Interesting time for the president, obviously, he [Bush] seems to have a mandate from the people to go ahead and do what he wants to, his bidding. Where do you think this is going to take him?" [CNN's In the Money, 11/7/04]

• Christine Romans, CNN anchor: "When I talk to Democrats and people who watch the Democratic machine, they're furious that this was so close again and that now the president has a mandate." [In the Money, 11/6/04]

• Dan Chapman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution global economics and business reporter: "Bush, buoyed by a popular mandate and a more Republican Congress, will probably receive the financial and military wherewithal to fight the insurgency and rebuild Iraq." [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Bush gets voters' nod on Iraq, but outlook risky," 11/4/04]

• Keith Miller, NBC News correspondent: "Bush, who won by more than three and a half million votes, has a solid mandate that will force the attention of America's enemies and allies." [NBC's Nightly News, 11/3/04]

• Chris Matthews, MSNBC host: "Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews. And welcome to MSNBC's post-election coverage live from Democracy Plaza in New York's Rockefeller Plaza. Yesterday voters went to the polls and reelected President George Bush, giving him a mandate in his second term." [MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, 11/3/04]

So of course this means Obama has a major mandate now with 52% of the popular vote and 365 EVs, plus a much larger margin in Congress than Bush ever had, right? It should be a nearly unanimous lock among the Villagers!

But oh how wrong you would be.

Now, having said that, a few out there are calling this what it is.

But it doesn't help at all when even the Democrats in Congress are running away from the word "mandate".

President-elect Barack Obama's resounding election triumph was greeted Wednesday from nearly every quarter in Washington as a mandate for change. What was most striking after a resounding victory that also added at least five Democrats to the Senate and 23 to the House, was how gingerly Democratic leaders treated their new mandate.

It is "not a mandate for any political party or any ideology," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., "but a mandate to get over those things that divide us and focus on getting things done."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, warned that Obama comes to office with "more expectations than any president I can ever remember in my lifetime," and quickly sought to dampen them, citing the constraints of two wars and a sinking economy.

Even Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said, "I don't think it's a mandate for the New Deal. ... I think it's a mandate that the political class in this country has an obligation to young people in this country to stop fighting over stuff that might have been a big issue 25 years ago but it isn't anymore."

And people wonder why Democrats don't get mandates. They get told how to govern by Republicans. Your Democratic leaders, Harry, Nancy, and BYAAAAAAAAH, have already given up on Obama and the Democrats getting any real change done and they have surrendered in less than 72 hours.

Perhaps Obama and Rahmbo should be looking for new leadership in Congress.

The Bayh Line, Part 2

While I've talked about Evan Bayh before, the BooMan has more analysis on why he's the still the wrong choice:

I'm hearing word that Evan Bayh has at least a 50-50 chance of getting the vice-presidential nod and that the final decision will be made soon. Unfortunately, I don't have any other names to tell you so that you know what the alternatives are. The New York Times did a great job yesterday morning in explaining why the selection of Bayh would be problematic. It would be hard to fuck up Barack Obama's brand any worse than picking John McCain's honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. We really shouldn't have to say anything more than that.

Obama's Veep selection is either going to be a confirmation of his anti-war message and the anti-war beliefs of the people who got him to the big dance...or a complete repudiation of both. It's personal this year. As BooMan explains (emphasis mine:)

If Evan Bayh is acceptable then maybe John McCain's judgment isn't so bad after all. I might add that Al From of the DLC wants Evan Bayh and so does Cokie 'Myrtle Beach' Roberts. Those are two big alarm-bells. And I'd really prefer it not to be the case that Team Obama is more interested in appeasing Al From and Cokie Roberts than they are concerned with enraging their base of support online. There are many of us that were in the long fight to win the nomination with Obama who made that commitment out of a desperate desire to see the DLC sidelined and a new generation of post-Bush thinking Democrats put in charge of the party. We're the same people that fought off Tim Roehmer and Harold Ford for DNC chairmen and gave you Howard Dean and the immensely successful 50-state strategy. We did not put in all that work in order to see the former DLC chairman put next in line for the presidency.

Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but he's dead right about Howard Dean and the 50-state strategy. Obama must remember (and apparently we have to remind him) that he won the primaries because he reflected the majority views of anti-war Democrats. The terribad argument will be made for Bayh that 18 million Democrats didn't find any problem with Hillary Clinton's voting record on the Iraq War, but then "why not pick Hillary Clinton for Veep?" immediately and logically follows.

It's not just that Bayh is a bad choice, it's that the any logical process that would lead to Bayh as Obama's running mate has to cross that big thick red "Screw The Progressives" line, by reason that Bayh voted for Iraq on a number of occasions. The fact that Obama is even seriously considering Bayh is reason enough for the netroots to be pissed. Somebody in Obama's camp has convinced him that Screw The Progressives is acceptable, and the fact Obama hasn't shot this down immediately as a non-starter means he's thinking about it.

Bayh means Obama played the netroots and he's done with them, plain and simple. And he's not afraid of them should he go down that path, because he's convinced (or someone has convinced him) that they will not support McSame in the White House under any circumstances...even if those circumstances include Bayh.

And even if you accept the notion that Obama has tossed the netroots aside, the problem is even the most overly pragmatic reasons to have Bayh on the ticket do not work: he's not going to get Obama Indiana, he's not going to appeal to the PUMAs, he's not going to generate national buzz, the GOP isn't going to magically admit that an Obama-Bayh ticket is strong on national security and the guy's just kinda average in every other way.

So why is he even being considered at all? He's lose/lose all the way around.

Howard And Kumar Go To Ohio

How cool is this: Howard "BYAAAAAAAAH!" Dean and Kal Penn, "Kumar" from the Harold and Kumar films, will be in town tomorrow for a DNC voter drive event over on Montgomery Road.

Try to leave your nookular bong at home.

Equal time for the Other Team: McSame has a new downtown Cincy campaign office opening on Thursday.