Ted Kennedy Cares About the Chicken Pluckers
Actual official exchange between senators Ted Kennedy and Byron Dorgan, yesterday:
KENNEDY: "I would like the chicken pluckers to pay $10 or $15 an hour. They do not do it. They are not going to do it. Who are you trying to kid? Who is the Senator from North Dakota trying to fool?" (Sen. Ted Kennedy, Congressional Record, S.6452, 05/22/07)
DORGAN: "Mr. President, let me stand up and say a word on behalf of chicken pluckers. I had no idea that was the debate. But they will never get $15 an hour as long as we bring in cheap labor through the back door to pluck chickens." (Sen. Dorgan, Congressional Record, S.6452, 05/22/07)
There's surely something going on here -- we suspect it's about paying people a decent wage for awful jobs like preparing the corpses of chickens for human consumption -- but there's also a pretty good chance they're both insane. Dorgan, for example, seems to believe he is responding to President Bush and not Teddy Kennedy. (This is the same Byron Dorgan last seen threatening to personally kill all the prairie dogs.) Kennedy has apparently confused the laborers with the companies that sell chicken, and according to ABC News was also "red-faced and gesticulating toward Dorgan" and "continued to howl at Dorgan."
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