The economic stimulus package has been passed by both houses of Congress and is set to be signed by the President on Tuesday. But while the voting is complete the debate rages on. And what about the next item on the president’s early agenda – the banking crisis and the question of nationalization? All that and more in today’s Sunday Show Roundup …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
Think U.S. bankers have it tough with the new executive compensation limits? Check out what Conservatives in Britain are proposing for bankers there.
I’m not sure what other ways he’s going to follow in Newt Gingrich’s steps. But GOP House whip Eric Cantor seems to have the megalomania and ego front down pat. He’s been putting out word over the last few days that he’s modeling himself off Newt and now apparently Winston Churchill too. And now there’s this from the Post …
But Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House minority whip who led the fight to deny Obama every GOP vote for the plan, is studying Winston Churchill’s role leading the Tories in the late 1930s, a principled minority that was eventually catapulted into power over the Labor Party. He calls the stimulus bill “a stinker.”
Now, I guess it’s possible this is the Post’s error and not Cantor’s. And even if it’s not you’d think they might have corrected this point. But Cantor’s handle on his new hero seems pretty thin.
In the late 1930s, of course, Great Britain didn’t have a Labour government with a principled Tory minority. It had conservative Tory government with a Labour minority. And Churchill was on the outs with both, although on some fronts he was beginning to make common cause with some Labourites on his key issue, which was foreign policy. When Churchill eventually came to power it was in a national coalition government for the purposes of fighting the war. And when he eventually went to the voters as head of the Tory party toward the end of the war they got crushed by Labour in a landslide.
I say all this as a big Churchill fan. But, I mean, not only is Eric Cantor no Winston Churchill, I’m not even sure he’s read a book about Winston Churchill.
Does the Post need to up for budget for fact-checking George Will’s column’s? Seems he may be making up some numbers on the global warming front, or maybe just getting his numbers from Fred Barnes’ expert.
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Slow news day, I’ll admit it. But it seems that in addition to Rep. Eric Cantor’s historically illiterate reverence for Winston Churchill, the great man is now at the center of a mini-tiff between the US and the UK.
After 9/11, as a symbol of the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK, Tony Blair loaned a bust
of Churchill from the government’s art collection to President Bush to keep in the Oval Office.
They extended the offer when Obama came into office, as TPM Reader DM just let us know. But the 44th president apparently said that wasn’t necessary and sent Churchill back. For the moment, Churchill is hanging out at the British Ambassador’s residence in DC. And it’s not clear yet when or whether he’ll be traveling back across the Atlantic.
The Brits seem to have their nose bent slightly out of shape over the incident, since Churchill’s bust has now been replaced with one of Abraham Lincoln. They’re trying to decide which if any alternative bust they should send with PM Gordon Brown when comes to DC in early March.
Coming off a devastating court ruling last week, Norm Coleman is back to pushing Minnesota to allow votes from his supporters in the forgery community.
From an article in tomorrow’s New York Daily News, by Tom DeFrank, who’s extremely wired in the Bush 41 world, among other places …
In the waning days of the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a last-ditch campaign to persuade his boss to pardon Lewis (Scooter) Libby – and was furious when President George W. Bush wouldn’t budge.
Sources close to Cheney told the Daily News the former vice president repeatedly pressed Bush to pardon Libby, arguing his ex-chief of staff and longtime alter ego deserved a full exoneration – even though Bush had already kept Libby out of jail by commuting his 30-month prison sentence.