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October 16, 2008
Yep, that'd be my reaction
Getting a lot of emails along these lines:
I don't know why I'm e-mailing you, except that I just need to vent to someone on The Corner. Pass this around to the others if you like — I bet I'm not the only one.I really don't like McCain. I'll probably vote for him just as a vote for divided government. I'm far too libertarian in my leanings to be comfortable with McCain (or Obama, for that matter).
That said, the way the pro-Obama media and bloggers, and Obama himself, have responded to Joe has got me nearly shaking with rage. They are attempting to destroy a man — a private citizen — who had the audacity to ask The One a question. Mind you, Joe was on his front lawn playing football with his son when Obama strolled up to give him his hopenchange spiel. Obama approached Joe, not the other way around. And Joe asked Obama an honest question. And Obama gave him an honest — and very, very revealing — answer. Again, mind you, the embarassment was on Obama's end, not Joe's. It wasn't a gotcha question.
And yet, for that Joe is being pilloried, every aspect of his private and professional life being sorted through and exposed. To prove ... what? What does that have to do with Obama's answer? What does Joe's situation have to do with Obama's philosophical answer — that he wants to "spread the wealth"? Obama's answer goes down the memory hole while the nation concentrates its fire on obliterating Joe the Plumber.
It's sickening, it's maddening and it's downright chilling.
Sorry for the length. But I am just SEETHING.
Elsewhere, there were these additional perspectives:
...They've done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they've done on Barack Obama in two years...The harassment of Joe the plumber is the singular biggest mistake of the Obama campaign. The MSM is making Joe a martyr. Heck, DKos just published Joe's home address. Obama is now not only a Marxist but a Marxist bully - just another Chicago thug. America roots for the underdog and they will not take this action kindly. If Joe were a hero yesterday, wait a few days.
Obi Wan's line in Star Wars when fighting Darth Vader comes to mind - "Strike me down and I will return more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Americans will realize what happened to Joe could easily happen to them. And they will remember this come November...
What I find really fascinating is the fact that the media elites are treating Joe the Plumber as if he is the one who is out of step with mainstream America, while Bill Ayers is an 'Eagle Scout'...
There is a stench of desperation surrounding this, as if they sense defeat coming from a moment of honesty from Obama about his real intentions to institute a regime of redistribution. They want to discredit the man who only asked the question as if he’s some political operative who magically forced Obama to sound...well, a little like a Marxist. Why? They want to distract people from Obama’s answer by sliming the man Obama picked at random to ask a question...The Tanning-Bed Media seems to feel that they have a duty to expose every last part of Wurzelbacher’s life, but that asking Obama to explain his political partnerships with Tony Rezko and William Ayers, and his long friendship and financial support of rabid demagogues Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, are not just out of bounds but downright racist." Whatever it takes.
The MSM can’t destroy Joe the plumber, because everyone is Joe the plumber. If he does have a tax lien on his property, he will be more sympathetic to average Americans. Aren’t we all in fear of losing our personal property because we can’t afford the taxes on it??They can try to destroy him all they want, his basic question remains: "Does Barack Obama have a right to take my property and give it to someone else?"
ABC News reports on Joe the Plumber, who seems to be the most effective spokesman for the McCain tax position:"To be honest with you, that infuriates me," plumber Joe Wurzelbacher told Nightline’s Terry Moran. "It’s not right for someone to decide you made too much—that you’ve done too good and now we’re going to take some of it back.""That’s just completely wrong," he added.
Joe is now everywhere explaining why raising taxes on little businesses is wrong. He is now a handy reference point for the argument that Obama’s tax scheme is not just going to impact Warren Buffett. (Obama never did answer in the debate why he’s raising anyone’s taxes.)
This is no small bit of luck for McCain...
Obama's response to Joe the plumber crystallizes what a lot of people have instinctively felt was the problem with Obama but could not verbalize or be heard over the worshipful response of the MSM.
This development could be one of those unplanned pivot points that sometimes alters the course of elections...as long as the multi-state voter fraud efforts by Obama's friends at ACORN don't overwhelm it.
Time will tell soon enough.
ADDENDUM
The Los Angeles Times reports:According to court records, creditors have secured at least two liens against [Joe the Plumber] Wurzelbacher, whose legal name is Samuel. Ohio has a $1,182 lien for owed taxes and St. Charles Mercy Hospital has filed a 2007 lien for $1,261.I think we can all agree that this is critical information.
Not because it says anything about Joe the Plumber, mind you. But it does serve a useful function: it warns any future citizen who might dare question Barack Obama that his life will be closely scrutinized for any irrelevant but embarrassing information.
So, you know. Critical in that sense.
Oh — I almost forgot to mention: Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. So do his companies.
You’d think that matters more than the tax liens of Joe the Plumber, wouldn’t you? But good luck finding a Big Media story about Nesbitt’s liens.
ADDENDUM #2
The liberal media throng and Democratic elites never learn the right lesson. It’s been only a month since they vilified Sarah Palin, leading to a gigantic backlash and the largest surge in John McCain’s standing in the polls yet. But they didn’t learn. They are at it again with Joe the Plumber and, once again, are exercising no self-restraint.They don’t, at bottom, respect non-elites from middle America or listen to their concerns. They treat them as cartoon characters or as frauds sent to foil their own quest for power. So they set upon Joe the Plumber in the mistaken view that what was significant about the interchange with Barack Obama were Joe’s concerns. And–surprise, surprise–you’ve got the makings of a backlash.
There are two problems with the approach of the Obama supporters. One, as with the Palin feeding frenzy and Bittergate, it convinces ordinary voters that the Democrats are vicious snobs. Two, it doesn’t address the problem: voters may begin to suspect that Obama is fixated on wealth re-distribution. That’s the idea the Democrats should be working to dispel. But since they can’t imagine that the public would have a problem with raising taxes in a recession, they don’t even bother to reassure voters that of course Obama wants the private sector to grow and of course he understands that you must tread carefully in tax-burdening small businessmen.
The McCain team must be pinching themselves: they can hardly believe their luck that the Democrats have attacked an everyman and prolonged a dangerous storyline...
ADDENDUM #3
...While the media and Left blogs continue to dig into Joe's personal life and affairs for asking The One a question.If Obama were truly a purveyor of a new kind of politics or a decent leader, in any sense of the word, he'd stick a different sentence into his stump speech. Something like, "Hey, everyone chill out. Joe is a man who asked me a question. As presidential candidates, John McCain and I have faced plenty of tough questions. The good citizens who ask those questions don't deserve to be torn down for their efforts."
Obama's frowning upon the practice would go a long way toward quelling the bad practice of vetting every townhall and ropeline questioner as if he were a Supreme Court justice.
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.
It seems Obama only approves of getting dead people, cartoons, and the Dallas Cowboys involved, via voter registration fraud. Mickey Mouse just don't talk back like Joe the Plumber does.
ADDENDUM #4
Jim Lingren via Instapundit:
...I was stunned to see some document showing Joe the Plumber's tax problems on my 10pm (CT) newscast on the local NBC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday night. They have very little time for any national news and they actually spent time on Joe the Plumber's tax problems. Amazing!But when an actual candidate — Barack Obama — released his tax returns, which on their face seemed to show an ethics violation of Illinois law, the press couldn't care less.
Just to remind you, Illinois prohibits state legislators from taking speaking fees, and Barack reported "speaking fees."...
Gotta love the MSM doing the work for it's favored candidate.
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Thank you. I've been getting a lot of the same reaction -- and of course, reading it all over the place. Regular people feel that the media elites are trying to destroy him because he asked The Obamessiah a question. The backlash has already started -- and it's wonderful.
To add insult to injury, Obama bin Biden were out on the campaign trail earlier today, essentially making fun of plumbers and working class blue collar people like them. Keep it up!
The particulars of "Joe the Plumber's" own business and all the other ancillary stuff which the smear machine is trying to dig up is simply not the issue. There are hundreds of thousands of "Joe's" out there. Fortunately, for a change, the McCain campaign "gets it" -- and I suspect, will use this to drive home a theme which will appeal to average voters.
And fortunately for us, Obama doesn't get it. I think it could be his undoing. Thanks to Obama and his media allies, we're going to be able to beat this like a dead horse right through Election Day. Thanks MSM media!
PS To use a baseball analogy, Obama is the Tampa Bay Rays, and McCain is the Red Sox. Rays had a 7-0 lead, and lost 8-7 (just had to get that in).
Posted by: Will at October 17, 2008 1:58 AMWill wrote:
Obama bin Biden were out on the campaign trail earlier today
Posted by: Phil at October 17, 2008 6:33 AMI don't think there's much here to take seriously. It's just another example of the smears and insults that many on this blog substitute for discourse.
"They've done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they've done on Barack Obama in two years"
Which makes sense, of course, because Joe the Plumber is running for the most powerful ... wait, no, he's not.
It'd be pretty funny if it weren't so important. Whenever someone does the job the msm should have been doing and reveals a substantive, troubling aspect of Senator Obama's candidacy, instead of simply reporting on the item, too many members of the msm go into defensive mode for the Senator. Or worse, don't report on the item at all.
Posted by: Monique at October 17, 2008 8:03 AMBack in the seventh inning of this race, we all thought Palin was the deux ex machina that would permanently change the race in the GOP's favor, too.
Posted by: rhody at October 17, 2008 12:16 PMMonique,
You poor benighted creature. If what you call the msm is not reporting things how do you know that they're not reporting? Tell us what you know that what you call the msm is not saying.
OldTimeLefty
Posted by: OldTimeLefty at October 17, 2008 5:41 PMCome on, cry-babys! Shaking with rage about how "Joe" has been terribly treated? Buck up, that is a pathetic response! Poor Joe, he'll be getting a tax cut NOW under Obama's plan. If he incorporates a business he'll still have tax breaks 7 help providing health care, unless he is dumb enough to pay himself more than $250,000 a year as a salary. And what is his potential crushing burden if he does? His tax rate goes from 36% to 39%!! How criminal and awful? Do you not think that anyone making $250,000 a year cannot pay a 3% higher tax rate (36 to 39%)? Do you not know (but you do!) that every progressive income tax spreads the wealth around a little? Every tax of Reagan & Bush and RI is a progressive income tax. We reject Steve Forbes flat tax all around. Anyway, Joe apparently cannot pay the taxes he has now!
Joe the stooge:
Besides, Joe is not really the all-American wonderful Joe McCain portrays- here's from the rarely libnerally biased US News & World Report:
(US News) Joe Wurzelbacher, the plumber so often referred to by Sen. John McCain in the third and final debate had better learn to shut his mouth. The more he speaks publicly, the more he looks like the GOP plant liberal blogs are starting to claim that he is. Watch him calling Social Security a "joke" on YouTube:
I'm no fan of tax hikes, but even I recognize Social Security is no "joke." It has single-handedly lifted millions of elderly and disabled Americans out of poverty and turned America's elderly from the most impoverished age demographic to one with an income more in line with that of working families.
Joe the Plumber so loves media attention, he's drawing pro-Obama bloggers to question his authenticity as an undecided voter:
Joe has been on so many right wing talk shows it appears pretty obvious that this is a coordinated attempt to pull a last second 'tax and spend' haymaker. Family Security Matters, a wingnut security policy thinktank, has the first interview with Joe after this Obama encounter. Hmmm. What's the chance that a group like this gets the first interview with this alleged 'undecided voter'?
Other blogs say Wurzelbacher may be related to Charles Keating of the Keating Five and that his father is a major Republican donor:
Joe the Plumber, the star of tonight's debate, may have a very interesting connection to John McCain. In fact, Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher) of Cincinnati, Ohio may be related to one Robert Wurzelbacher of Cincinnati, Ohio, who happens to be Charles Keating's son-in-law. Robert Wurzelbacher was implicated in the Keating 5 scandal, and sentenced to 40 months in prison in 1993. Wurzelbacher is also a huge Republican donor.
Keep watching this story because if it proves true that "Joe the Plumber" is the wealthy, Republican regular the liberal blogs are claiming he is, the McCain campaign could go down as the most corrupt and inept in history.
By Bonnie Erbe
Posted by: Richard at October 17, 2008 6:07 PMCopyright © 2008 U.S.News & World Report, L.P. All rights reserved
McCain lying about Joe the Plumber
Bloomberg News:
Obama talked about "spreading the ealth ONLY in response directly to Joe's advocacy of a flat tax. McCain is totally lying in discussing Joe and Obama on taxes. LIAR! And soon a loser.
McCain May Stumble With Focus on `Joe the Plumber' (Update2)
By Ryan J. Donmoyer and Kristin Jensen
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain's bid to shore up his poll numbers by highlighting ``Joe the plumber'' may backfire.
Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, the Toledo plumber who criticized the tax proposals of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, owes back taxes, isn't licensed or registered in Ohio and would fare only slightly better under McCain's tax agenda than under Obama's even if his income soared.
McCain this week thrust Wurzelbacher into the national spotlight as a symbol of overtaxed small-business owners after Obama opened clear leads in many states. Analysts said Wurzelbacher's circumstances have muddled McCain's effort to profit politically from the tax issue, making it unlikely ``Joe the plumber'' will have any more long-term benefit for his campaign than did the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
``Joe the plumber will have the same trajectory as Sarah Palin, but it will be tracked in hours rather than weeks,'' said Thomas Mann, a scholar at Washington's Brookings Institution.
During the last presidential debate, Oct. 15, McCain said that what Obama would ``do to `Joe the plumber' and millions more like him is have their taxes increased and not be able to realize the American dream of owning their own business.''
The problem for McCain, tax analysts said, is that the underlying premise that Wurzelbacher would face higher taxes under Obama is neither true nor typical of how the vast majority of small businesses would fare.
Buy a Business
Wurzelbacher told Obama Oct. 12 as the Illinois senator canvassed his neighborhood that he was about to buy a business that earns as much as $280,000 a year.
``Do you believe in the American dream?'' Wurzelbacher asked Obama, citing the Democrat's proposed tax rate increase for Americans earning more than $250,000. ``I'm being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream.''
He also asked Obama about instituting a flat tax, which Obama said he opposed because it would concentrate the tax savings in upper-income households and he wanted to ``spread the wealth around,'' a comment that has been criticized by conservative commentators.
Wurzelbacher hasn't paid the taxes he already owes, according to the state of Ohio, which placed a tax lien against him for $1,182.98 on Jan. 26, 2007, that is still active. A second judgment against him was filed in March 2007 by St. Charles Mercy Hospital for $1,261, records show.
The company McCain said the plumber wants to buy has annual sales of $510,000, according to an analysis by Dun & Bradstreet. That makes it unlikely that Wurzelbacher's purchase would give him a taxable income of more than $200,000 -- leaving him unaffected by Obama's proposal to roll back tax breaks for those earning more than $250,000, said Steven Bankler, a certified public accountant in San Antonio, who counts plumbers and other trade professionals as his clients.
Few Businesses Affected
Few such small businesses have enough income to be affected by Obama's tax changes, Bankler said.
One other problem in making Wurzelbacher a symbol of the overtaxed: he would pay just $773 more in taxes under Obama's plan than McCain's if he did earn an adjusted gross income of $280,000, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, a Washington research group that is critical of high taxes.
Earning that much would make Wurzelbacher very unusual among small businesses. According to the Internal Revenue Service, most small businesses organize in ways that allow their owners to pay taxes at personal rates rather than as corporations, which impose a second layer of taxes. Almost 95 percent of 21.5 million owners of small businesses who file as sole proprietors had receipts under $100,000 in 2007.
Another 4 million businesses organize as so-called subchapter S corporations, according to IRS data; less than 5 percent of them earn more than $200,000.
`No Joe Six-Pack'
If Wurzelbacher managed to earn $280,000, ``he's not an average Joe Six-Pack,'' said Gerald Prante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation.
``Rather than a game-changing blow for the McCain campaign, `Joe the plumber' is turning into a bad case of blowback,'' said Rogan Kersh, a public service professor at New York University.
Still, McCain is making an appeal to the white working class, a demographic ``disproportionately represented in many swing states,'' said Karlyn Bowman, an analyst at Washington's American Enterprise Institute. ``That's Joe's group.''
The tax lien was filed in January 2007, six months after the state certified a delinquency for the taxes, said Ray Ann Estep, section chief for revenue-recovery services for the Ohio attorney general.
``Unfortunately, sometimes people don't resolve their debts as quickly as we would like them to,'' she said.
No License
Wurzelbacher doesn't have a plumber's license and isn't registered as a plumber in Ohio, the Toledo Blade reported on its Web site yesterday. His employer has a state plumbing license, the newspaper said.
Before living in Ohio, Wurzelbacher was a resident of Mesa, Arizona, in McCain's home state, according to property records.
McCain gave Wurzelbacher an apology yesterday for throwing him into the spotlight.
``Joe, if you're watching, I'm sorry,'' McCain said on CBS Corp.'s ``Late Show'' hosted by David Letterman. ``But from what I've read, and I have not talked to him, but from what I've read, he's taken it pretty well.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at o rdonmoyer@bloomberg.netKristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 17, 2008 13:36 EDT
Posted by: PlumberLove at October 17, 2008 10:41 PMYou bet that Obama supporters and all media are looking into Joe the Plumber. But remember all Obama did was politely listen to him and tell him about increasing taxes from 36% to 39% on individual incomes over $250,000 (not horrible) and reducing taxes on incomes under $250,000. IT WAS McCAIN WHO PUT THE SPOTLIGHT ON JOE, mentioning him 24 times during the debate (without warning JOE) and IT WAS McCAIN and Palin who mention him in EVERY SPEECH. McCain and Palin caused the media to talk to Joe 24/7 and park around his house and hound him-- and investigate his background- which has exposed his real condition: eligible for tax relief under Obama! Surprise! IT IS RIGHT-WINGERS in blogs like these who TRY but fail to make Joe a "media victim" and "victim of Socialist (sic) Obama. Sorry, guys, you got is wrong again. I say let's leave Joe alone with his Obama tax cut & wish him well on his future business.
Posted by: Blue4You at October 17, 2008 10:57 PM