If John McCain can’t stand up to the North Carolina GOP swift-boat freaks, how can he stand up to al Qaeda?
A group called “Savethevoters.org: a non-profit movement” has commissioned a poll purporting to show that “the eventual Democratic nominee is poised to lose over 30% of disenfranchised Democratic primary voters in Florida and Michigan in the general election if the DNC does not seat these state delegations according to the will of the people.”
According to the “Brief History” posted at group’s website: “SaveTheVoters.org was originally started by A.S. Achrol and A. Joseph Rao, a scientist studying neurosurgery at Stanford Medical School and a medical research scientist in Boston. The founders have long pushed for greater access to medical literature and life-saving treatments in the medical sciences and believe that the concept of access is one born out of the American way of life and is tied to access and accountability in our democracy …”
The group’s website address was registered on March 12th of this year.
Dana Perino: You can chase me around this podium and I still won’t comment on today’s North Korea-Syria briefings to Congress:
Late today, after the White House press briefing, Perino released the following statement:
Today, administration officials have briefed select Congressional committees on an issue of great international concern. Until Sept. 6, 2007, the Syrian regime was building a covert nuclear reactor in its eastern desert capable of producing plutonium. We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria’s covert nuclear activities. We have good reason to believe that reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year, was not intended for peaceful purposes. Carefully hidden from view, the reactor was not configured for such purposes. In defiance of its international obligations, Syria did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the construction of the reactor, and, after it was destroyed, the regime moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence. This cover-up only served to reinforce our confidence that this reactor was not intended for peaceful activities.
We are briefing the IAEA on this intelligence. The Syrian regime must come clean before the world regarding its illicit nuclear activities. The Syrian regime supports terrorism, takes action that destabilizes Lebanon, allows the transit of some foreign fighters into Iraq, and represses its own people. If Syria wants better relations with the international community, it should put an end to these activities.
We have long been seriously concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its proliferation activities. North Korea’s clandestine nuclear cooperation with Syria is a dangerous manifestation of those activities. One way we have chosen to deal with this problem is through the Six Party Framework. Through this process we are working with our partners to achieve the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The United States is also committed to ensuring that North Korea does not further engage in proliferation activities. We will work with our partners to establish in the Six Party Framework a rigorous verification mechanism to ensure that such conduct and other nuclear activities have ceased.
The construction of this reactor was a dangerous and potentially destabilizing development for the region and the world. This is particularly true because it was done covertly and in violation of the very procedures designed to reassure the world of the peaceful intent of nuclear activities. This development also serves as a reminder that often the same regimes that sponsor proliferation also sponsor terrorism and foster instability, and cooperate with one another in doing so. This underscores that the international community is right to be very concerned about the nuclear activities of Iran and the risks those activities pose to the stability of the Middle East. To confront this challenge, the international community must take further steps, beginning with the full implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions dealing with Iranian nuclear activities. The United States calls upon the international community to redouble our common efforts to ending these activities and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction in this critical region.
For now at least, the DNC has decided not to seat delegates from the non-DNC-sanctioned primary held in Michigan in January. Hillary Clinton won 55% of the vote in the election in which only her name (of the remaining candidates) was on the ballot. But now this weekend in state district conventions to choose delegates, Clinton supporters have managed to get not only the delegate slots that voted for her but as many of half the delegate slots that voted ‘uncommitted’.
It helps to have the party apparatus on your side.
Late Update: Chris Bowers has more (and in some critical instances more accurate) information
Well, reporters did ask John McCain today during his trip to New Orleans about Rev. John Hagee’s remarks that Hurricane Katrina was punishment for the sins of New Orleans:
“It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. I dont have anything additional to say. It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, I don’t have anything more to say….it’s nonsense. I reject it categorically.”
Senate Committee ‘admonishes‘ (“qualified admonition”) Sen. Domenici for pressure phone call to later-canned US Attorney David Iglesias.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how John McCain could have changed his positions on the economy by 180 degrees, not once, but actually twice in the last decade. There are many examples. But the clearest is on tax policy. Remember, McCain was one of the few Republicans who voted against the Bush tax cuts. And he was quite clear at the time that he did so not only on fiscal responsibility and deficit grounds but on equity grounds equally if not more so. Now, he’s not only championing the tax cuts he voted against and pushing for them to be made permanent; he’s pushing for a new round of tax cuts on the Bush model.
There’s a reason why McCain has been relatively consistent over the last decade on foreign policy but all over the map on economic policy: he just doesn’t know very much about economics. That’s something he’s often admitted. But I’m surprised at a number of his quotes over the last year that have cast this point into exceptionally high relief.
This got a little attention at the time. But in a Q&A with construction and building trade unions, in an effort to illustrate why undocumented migrant farm workers will do work Americans will not, he used this example …
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Now, my friends, I’ll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you’ll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So — OK? Sign up. OK.
You sign up. You sign up, and you’ll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can’t do it, my friend.
(ed.note: see further discussion of what McCain might have meant below.)
Undocumented migrant farm workers make $50 an hour? Let’s do the math. Obviously the work is seasonal, not all year long, but let’s compute it on an annualized basis. $50 x 8 hours (which understates the hours) = $400 a day x 5 is $2000 a week x 52 is $104,000 a year.
I think would put these migrant farm workers in like the top 5% of the US labor force in income. Does this guy have any idea how much money ordinary Americans make or don’t make?
Late Update: Some readers say that I’ve misconstrued McCain’s meaning, that he’s not saying migrant farm workers make $100,000 a year but that Americans wouldn’t do the work even if it paid $100,000 a year. And on second reading I think they may be right. But in terms of out being of touch with the wages most Americans make, I think it’s basically the same difference. Who thinks you couldn’t find Americans willing to work in lettuce fields if it paid over $100,000 a year? US labor statistics say the actual wage for this work is about $10,000 per year. And at that wage — which, let’s be honest, we all reap a benefit from in the form of cheap lettuce prices — no wonder Americans are unwilling to do it.
A senior Obama adviser tells TPM Election Central that Obama will “take Fox on” in his Fox News appearance Sunday.