Barack Obama accidentally exposes that he is a socialist. Liberal reaction? Attack the man who asked the question that Sen. Government was responding to. I don’t care if Joe the Plumber rapes dead cats while shooting pure heroin into his viens during a seance on the chuch steps. Joe, himself, isn’t the issue. The issue is Sen. Obama’s desire to “spread the wealth” by using the power of big government to take from the successful to give to those he considers deserving.
When a liberal uses the word “fairness,” he means bringing everyone, except himself and his cronies, equally under the oppressive fist of government.
October 17, 2008 at 8:03 am
Joe, himself, isn’t the issue.
If McCain believed that, Joe/Sam probably wouldn’t be the issue. If you think it’s liberals who made Joe/Sam, himself, the issue, I think you need to re-watch the debate.
October 18, 2008 at 7:54 am
The tale of Joe The Plumber has many facets and implications.
On one level, the elections appeal to the everyman consists of identifying a representative, and holding that representative forth to the public to say “here is the ideal person, and this ideal person supports our philosophy and our side”. Most often that person is the candidate or his running mate.
Sarah Palin fit that bill. With her buzzword-laden gibberish speak, dropped g’s and overt appeals to the politics of cultural resentment, she at least presented a credible ideal personage for some to latch on to.
Along comes Joe. Joe faithfully repeated the fantasy upon which Republicanism depends; that the ordinary person will someday be wildly rich, and will then need rich peoples taxes to be low.
Researching Joes background and coming up with ways in which he is inauthentic is a means to puncture that illusion, allowing its warm air to drain out. If Joe is a fraud, maybe Palin-whatshisname is a fraud too.
The Weekly Standard tries to put Joe in this narrative:
“But you see, Obama is not a man of new politics or leadership. He is a man who endorses raising the cost of free speech for everyone who disagrees with him. He is a man who sends out Action WIre alerts to mobilize voters to shout down detractors who appear on the radio. He is a man who sends letters to the Department of Justice to ask it to investigate political ads that aren’t even inaccurate, much less criminal.
Joe’s experience is making every sensible American voter wonder whether it’s worth asking their representatives that question they have on their minds. The man who talks endlessly about the value of getting new Americans involved in the democratic process is allowing their intimidation without comment.”
Is Joe a victim? If you believe the Toledo Blade article, Joe was never a plumber anyway. Is it disreputable to point that out? Today he is a celebrity. Is Joe cowering at home, wishing he’d never dared challenge ‘that one’? Doubtful. We’ll learn more with his upcoming TV appearances.
And since when is standard electioneering off limits? Radio debates, allegations that your opponents campaign activities violate the law – these have been standard campaign fare for a long time.
One wonders if the real crime here is that the tactics, in the employ of Democrats, seem to be working.
Paging Gordon Liddy…
October 20, 2008 at 8:58 pm
The bureau of labor statistics reports average annual income of plumbers in Ohio to be $47,930 per year. That’s for plumbers, defined as those who are registered plumbers with the State of Ohio, which Joe (actual name Sam) the plumber is not.
Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber’s income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.
Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.
So what does all this say about the candidates? Who’s really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?
Mr. McCain claims that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush’s policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, Mr. McCain proposes continuing Mr. Bush’s policies in all essential respects, and he shares Mr. Bush’s anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.
What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber’s complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Mr. Obama? Well, Mr. Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.
Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Mr. Obama’s proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there’s probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.
I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.
But that’s the point. Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans.
October 22, 2008 at 9:23 am
Another article today puts the median salary of an American plumber at $37,514 – ten thousand dollars less than Paul Krugman reported the Bureau of Labor Statistics listed it as.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/palin-clothes-spending-ha_n_136740.html
May 4, 2009 at 9:44 am
H was raised by antichristnain biggosts and communists radicals what else can we ever expect from him