Poor Side of Town

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Do-doo-doo-wah shoo-be-doo-be

So welcome back baby
To the poor side of town

When is a poverty tour not a poverty tour?

When it's headed by a multi millionaire trial lawyer.

...publicity about his personal wealth - $400 haircuts, construction of a 28,000-square-foot house, hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary to speak about poverty and advise a hedge fund for the superrich - has opened him to charges of hypocrisy and threatened to undermine his message.

"Let them attack," Edwards said in a letter to supporters, asking for symbolic $8 campaign donations to support his effort.

Edwards poverty tour was supposed to be a break from fund raising and campaigning.

Do you see why there might be charges of hypocrisy?

Some at his campaign rallies do.

Last night in Fort Dodge, Dave Price reports this...

A woman first asked him if he would consider living on the "food stamp diet' a few members of Congress are trying. He told her he hadn't heard about it, but if he could make it work on the Presidential campaign trail, he would think about it. Then she brought up the haircut. She told him her family lives for weeks on what he paid for that one haircut. The comment brought a collective "ohhhh" from the crowd and silence for a bit from Edwards.

That's for a $400 haircut, but his barber---er, hairstylist was paid more.

Joseph Torrenueva has cut the hair of Hollywood celebrities, from Marlon Brando to Bob Barker, so when a friend told him in 2003 that a presidential candidate needed grooming advice, he agreed to help.

...Torrenueva has cut Edwards's hair at least 16 times.

At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail to meet his client, he began charging $300 to $500 for each cut, plus the cost of airfare and hotels when he had to travel outside California.

Torrenueva said one haircut during the 2004 presidential race cost $1,250 because he traveled to Atlanta and lost two days of work.

When this first came out Edwards said that he was embarrassed by the cost and that he "didn't know it would be that expensive," suggesting the haircuts were some kind of aberration given by "that guy" his staff had arranged.

16 times is not an aberration.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me 16 times you're a Fiberal Dummycrat.

...the Edwards campaign said this week that Edwards had arranged for the stylist to give him numerous cuts over the past four years. But it said that a personal assistant handled paying for the haircuts and that Edwards didn't realize how much they cost.

Really?

...According to Torrenueva, the last time he cut Edwards's hair was March 23, the day after Elizabeth Edwards announced that her cancer had returned and a month before the cost of the haircuts became public.

Unlike two prior haircuts in January and February, which were paid for by the campaign, Edwards personally paid the $400 for the March cut, the stylist said.

The Edwards campaign said this...

"Breaking news -- John Edwards got some expensive haircuts and probably didn't pay enough attention to the bills. He didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction or spring Scooter Libby; he just got some expensive haircuts."

No, Edwards lied about haircuts!

Pathetic!

There is one thing I can agree with John Edwards on...

"Democrats want to win. This is not an intellectual exercise for us..."

And the scientific community is united in that fact.

I can't blame you for tryin'
I'm tryin' to make it too

... Together we can make it baby
From the poor side of town

Do-doo-doo-wah shoo-be-doo-be
Do-doo-doo-wah shoo-be-doo-be
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