Yesterday in Richmond, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) reminded us how hollow Republicans can sound addressing real people with real problems. When a woman told the story of an uninsured friend stricken with cancer, Cantor suggested she seek out “an existing government program” (presumably the ones Republicans haven’t succeeded in eliminating yet), a charity, or one of the “hospitals here who do provide charity care.”
And in a bold statement of principle, Cantor declared: “No one in this country, given who we are, should ever be sitting without an option to go be addressed.”
The hucksterism doesn’t translate well from cable news to town halls.
Go back to the go-go 90s with us to see Hassan Nemazee courting Clinton, Gore … and the GOP.
Stars speak out against Obama’s attack on health care insurers.
That seems to be what he’s saying. “As I’ve said to the president many times, ‘If that’s the bill you want, vote it up or down.”
No blocking votes?
From Allan Lengel at ticklethewire.com …
A married FBI agent who had an affair with a key government witness in the corruption case of ex-Rep. William Jefferson, was also having affairs with female FBI agents and was under internal investigation, according to court and FBI documents.
What a trans-Pacific flight that must have been: Randy Scheunemann accompanying Sarah Palin to Hong Kong where she addressed investors yesterday. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Jon Stewart, on the Values Voter Summit, porn making you gay, and Tom Delay’s gayer-than-gay dance moves. Watch.
VIDEO: Obama addresses UN General Assembly.
The news so far (to the extent that these sorts of speeches make news) Obama referred to the US practice of ‘torture’ and that he had put a stop to it.
Last night I flagged former Postie Allan Lengel’s story (it’s at his new fed law enforcement news site) about former FBI agen John Guandolo who came close to blowing the Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) corruption case with a one-man shagfest through much of the Bureau and at least one big case. The problem for Jefferson case was that Guandolo at first harassed and then began an apparently consensual sexual relationship with a key government witness in the case.
But it gets better.
Some snooping by TPM’s Justin Elliott reveals that since getting tossed out of the FBI for not keeping his pants on Guandolo’s become a big sensation on the wingnut speakers circuit and a darling of the screechier blogs as a would-be voice crying out in the wilderness warning of the Muslim takeover of America. As Atlas Shrugs notes here, Guandolo now claims that a hidden network of Islamic organizations are working to bring the US under Sharia Law.
We’ll have more on Guandolo shortly.
There have been a number of recent polls purporting to show that as crazy as rank-and-file Republicans may be on the place of President Obama’s birth or whether his coming was predicted in the Book of Revelation that a lot of Democrats are pretty far out there on the issue of trutherism. The problem, though, has been that the poll questions have all been too vague or poorly worded to get at what people are actually saying.
There is after all a world of difference between saying that the Bush administration had enough information about a pending attack that they should have done something to stop it and saying that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and intentionally let them happen in order to get an excuse to go to war in Iraq.
But this latest poll finally gets the question tightly worded enough to get at just what people are saying. And the number of Dems who believe the latter is pretty high.