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Links of the moment
The Sideshow —
The Raw Story is reporting that Ken Blackwell appears to have diverted nearly half a million bucks of GOP federal campaign money to his own gubernatorial campaign. Tsk! Why, just a couple of posts ago I was quoting Batocchio's complaint that political reporting doesn't have the virtues of sports reporting because sports reporters at least tell you what happened, and now Media Matters comes up with the perfect real-life example of Batocchio's illustration of a Green Bay Packers' game if it were covered the way the Villagers cover politics: "O'Donnell asked why not let McCaskill give a "red meat" speech at the DNC -- McCaskill ...
McCain-o-nomics, "you can't do it my friends"
Rising Hegemon —
via PaulVA.
John McCain, friend of Labor
Daily Kos —
John McCain owns more homes than he can remember. John McCain pays at least 3 times as much per year for the salaries of household servants as the average American household earns. And John McCain thinks Americans are too lazy to do strenuous work for $50 an hour. In April 2006, John McCain taunted workers at an AFL-CIO meeting who were concerned that immigration tends to depress wages in the US. Here's a transcript of his comments from an audio tape of the meeting: John McCain: "I don't think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do. I don't think I have to tell you that there are ... the ...
"John McCain and my father would be very good amigos"
Daily Kos —
Republican Convention speaker Sen. Abel Maldonado's dad was a self-made sharecropper: My father knows first-hand about the basics of economics. We were sharecroppers. Started in the fields, apparently, and now exports, among other things, lettuce: After years working for other people, my father started with one-half acre of strawberries of his own. Today, he exports strawberries and broccoli and lettuce all over the world. Which naturally means that: You know, John McCain and my father would be good amigos. ...
You Can’t Do It
Matthew Yglesias —
I’d heard the audio of this before, but here via Harold Meyerson is the first time I’ve ever seen good video footage of John McCain’s shocking claim that Americans would be incapable of working as lettuce pickers even if the job paid $50 an hour:
$50 an hour times eight hours per day comes to $400 per day. Five days in a week comes to $2,000 a week. Figure a fifty week year and we’re talking about a $100,000 job. Hard work? Sure. Something Americans would be incapable of doing? I doubt it. That kind of money may be chump change to a guy ...
You Can't Do It, My Friend
Eschaton —
I hope an ad with this goes into heavy rotation in certain areas at some point.
The Economics of $50 Lettuce
Matthew Yglesias —
John McCain has famously said that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should” and in addition to being rather offensive, his “you can’t do it” rant about the problem with paying people $50 an hour to pick lettuce is a reminder of that:
What you can see happening here is that McCain knows which position he’s supposed to argue for — namely that it’s desirable that we allow relatively high levels of immigration to, among other things, do menial agricultural work. His antagonist says ...
Hurting Workers’ Feelings
Matthew Yglesias —
Apparently, John McCain wants us to believe that questioning the state of the economy is a form of insulting American workers:
This by way of contrast, I suppose, by actually insulting American workers by insisting that they’re too lazy or inept to pick lettuce for $50 an hour:
Just remember, just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean the fundamentals aren’t sound. ...
