Joe the Plumber Resurfaces, Epitomizes Republican Party Problems

It turns out the fairytale that was Joe the Plumber was merely that: a fairytale. Sam J. Wurzelbacher, better known by his misnomer Joe the Plumber (in reality he was an unlicensed contractor before becoming the McCain campaign's "regular guy" spokesman), told Glenn Beck on his syndicated radio program (really, people listen to Glenn Beck?) that the actions of the McCain campaign - and McCain himself - sickened him and made him want to "get off the bus after I talked to him."


What happened after that? Wurzelbacher continued to campaign for McCain, despite the fact that he made Joe feel "dirty." Now that's sticking to your morals!

When asked why he remained on the campaign if he did not like what he saw, he gave a classic wingnut response: "The thought of Barack Obama becoming president scares me even more." Ahh, the good ole' scare tactic approach. We've seen this before (Bush saying that America loses if the Democrats win in the mid-term elections of 2006, perennially misinformed columnist Bill Kristol begging people to be scared of Obama, etc.), but clearly it did not work in this year's election (at least not enough to keep Obama out of the White House). As the adage goes - old habits die hard.

If the Republicans want any chance of salvaging their hemorrhaging party in the next 5 years, they're really going to have to make some major changes. This would include finally dismantling the "moral majority" and the religious right that has, as Kathleen Parker said three weeks ago, been "killing the Republican Party." There's nothing wrong with religion (when practiced in a responsible way i.e. not like the FLDS or the Westboro Baptist Church or radical Islam). The problem is that when you pander to a religious group, you tend to alienate a lot of the rest of the population. Some Republicans have said (McCain included) that America is a Christian nation. This is not true. The First Amendment states that there is not a national religion, and from the letters of Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s and subsequent Supreme Court cases, we have seen the codification of the separation of church and state. Like Adams alluded to (and I have quoted this quote often on this blog): we are a nation of laws, not of men. The supreme law in America (the Constitution) states that there is no national religion.

There are other changes, and Colin Powell gets into a lot of what needs to be done with the Republican Party in his interview with Fareed Zakharia that will air this Sunday. In it, Powell says that the party needs to stop polarizing the country with their talk of small-town values' supremacy and need to not just try to pander to the black, Latino, and Asian vote, but genuinely listen to them and try to understand how they can better serve them (a politician's first duty is, after all, to serve his constituents).


Powell also says that it wouldn't hurt to stop listening to nutjobs like Rush Limbaugh.

So while Joe the Plumber seems to be a symbol of the current, stagnant Republican Party, those who claim to further the right-wing agenda, such as Glenn Beck, are more than willing to give him a mouthpiece. This even after Wurzelbacher proved his lack of logic by saying - and then defending - that a vote for Barack Obama would be a vote for the death of Israel (again with the scare tactics).


It is just another example of the Republican Party (and its radio host mouthpieces) not knowing when to stop with something/someone. For example, why is David Vitter speaking for the party at all? This is a man who frequented prostitutes yet is in Washington on a pro-family platform. Vitter recently went on a diatribe against the auto bailout, calling it "ass backward." Jay Leno said last night that Vitter should know "ass backwards" because he used to pay extra for it. It's funny, because it's true! This just shows to hypocrisy of the Republican Party at times.

It's funny that Joe the Plumber claims to be shocked at how dirty politics really is after being whored out by the McCain campaign. Did he live in a fantasy world where you don't need a license to practice contracting and Barack Obama was the devil incarnate? Maybe the Republican Party is in that same fantasy world, where America is a Christian nation and Sarah Palin is qualified to be president of the country. Either way, both need to wake up. Peace.

Photos - Republican Party brand (Buy Costumes)

Joe the Unlicensed Contractor, Sarah Palin, and McCain's Hypocrisy: A Trifecta of Scare Tactics

While the main headline grabber yesterday was Obama's 30 minute informercial (which was done surprisingly well and not as schticky as I thought it would be), the McCain campaign yesterday still managed to make waves in the news world. The newly minted McCain campaign's Sabbatai Zevi (read: Joe the Unlicensed Contractor) dropped a bombshell yesterday at a McCain campaign supported bus tour in which he agreed with a member of the audience asking questions who stated that a vote for Barack Obama would mean the death of Israel. The scare tactics continue.

Later when Joe the Unlicensed Contractor was on Fox News with Shepard Smith (of Jenny from the Block Blowjob fame) he was pressed to explain why he felt that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for the death of Israel. He could not explain why he felt that way beyond saying that Obama has stated that he would sit down with the President of Iran without preconditions (something "Joe" mistakenly labeled as an action and not just words when, in reality, saying you will do something manifests itself in the form of words):



Joe said an interesting thing in the phone conversation. When asked what Obama's stance on Israel was, he avoided the question and stated, "Let people go out and find it...Find out why they would think that I would say that...You don't want my opinion on foreign policy; I know just enough probably to be dangerous." I think I know why Sam would say something like that. It's probably because he has no idea what he's talking about and cannot state Obama's stances on Israel. And Joe/Sam is right, we don't want his opinions on foreign policy.

All of this continues with the scare tactics of the McCain campaign (who, after Joe/Sam's recent fear mongering put out a statement essentially backing Joe's comments). But rule number one when trying to smear a distinguished professor in order to get a barb or two in about your political opponent: know how to pronounce the guy's name (skip to 2:25 if you don't want to watch the whole thing).



If Sarah Palin knows so little about Rashid Khalidi that she cannot even pronounce his name correctly, why are we supposed to listen to her assertions that Khalidi was a former PLO spokesman? Additionally, as the Olbermann tape above mentioned, in 1998 the International Republican Institute (IRI) gave $448,873 in a grant to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies (CPRS) (page 14 of the PDF, grant # 5180). The interesting thing about 1998 is that John McCain was the chairman of the board of the IRI and Rashid Khalidi was one of the founders of CPRS. In a statement yesterday the IRI stated that, "We understand that Rashid Khalidi was one of the many founders of CPRS, and we understand that he was for some (unclear) amount of time a board member. IRI did not in the 1990s conduct background checks of grantees’ founders or board members. IRI did on a number of occasions vet CPRS as an organization, including, as was our custom, with the Israeli government, and we were given no cause for concern." No concern, of course, until John McCain can try to use it as a smear against Obama.

So while Joe/Sam the Unlicensed Contractor seems to be Sarah Palin's male counterpart (not vetted properly, entirely unready for national attention, saying stupid things in front of the media, and embraced by the McCain campaign), a bigger McCain issue is his own hypocrisy. I understand that McCain could not have possibly remembered giving money (albeit half a million dollars) to Khalidi's organization, but don't the speechwriters at the McCain campaign factcheck or make sure there are no conflicts of interest or overt hypocrisy? If this is the competency level of the campaign with less than a week to go until Election Day, it makes you wonder how ready any member of that camp, nevermind the higher-ups, would be to run one of the most powerful countries in the world. Peace.

Photo - Joe the Unlicensed Contractor (who apparently may be in line for a country music deal) (popwatch.ew.com)

Real vs. Fake America?

Palin's comments last week, when she referred to the "pro-America" places that she and McCain visit as the "real America, have touched off a rhetorical firestorm. In her comments at a fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, she said that "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom." Apparently Palin thinks that big city folk do not possess the kindness and goodness of everyday Americans and that they do not fight in America's wars. In other words, the large cities (which, by no small coincidence, tend to lean democratic) are not pro-American.

Palin has since apologized for the comment, realizing how dumb it was to say. Of course, in the same interview she expressed how inexperienced Barack Obama was and rattled off her experience as being a mayor of Wasilla, Alaska as one reason she is more ready for the Oval Office than he is. Jon Stewart sent a correspondent to Wasilla to find out about its "realness" and also get an inside look into the mayor of Wasilla's duties:

No social services? Really? I guess they're too busy signing the checks over at Wasilla town hall.

But Sarah Palin is not the only one on the McCain campaign who sees different parts of America as "real" and other parts as "fake." Nancy Pfotenhauer, a McCain campaign adviser, dismissed an MSNBC anchor who, when discussing the state of Virginia and its vital importance to McCain come November 4, stated that the northern portion of the state, which tends to lean democratic, had recently strengthened in terms of its electoral power statewide. This was Pfotenhauer's response:

So it seems that anything liberal or sympathetic to the Democratic Party is not "real." Earlier this month McCain's brother Joe stated that northern Virginia was "communist country" while at one of the candidate's rallies. This pales in comparison to what North Carolina congressman Robin Hayes (R) said at a McCain rally in Concord, North Carolina. While first denying that he said it, Hayes finally admitted that he stated, "Liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

It's clear what this is. The old "Us vs. Them" idiom. The only problem is that the "Us" and the "Them" are on the same side: they're both American. It is idiotic to try to divide this country at a time when we are at war with two nations and as soon as one war seems to go well, the other falls apart (Afghanistan to Iraq, then back to Afghanistan) and the stock market is in turmoil because neither party stepped up to the plate to try to regulate the Wall Street leviathan. Instead of talking about these issues, we talk about what parts of the country are real and which are not, Joe the Unlicensed Contractor who brought the tax debate to the forefront despite his own tax liens, and how liberals are not as patriotic as conservatives (a move straight from Karl Rove's dirty little book). One congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann (R - MN), has even suggested that the news media do a "penetrating expose" on anti-Americans in Congress because she feels that Barack Obama may not be the only one:

Somebody wake up Joe McCarthy from the dead and get the old HUAC hacks, apparently their job is not done because there are still liberals in the United States.

If I could describe the way that this race has been going the past couple of weeks, I would choose pathetic. The country's economy is in the shitter, we are fighting two wars, the Bush Administration has used the Constitution as toilet paper the past few years, and we're talking about "real" parts of America and small town "pro-America" (never mind that 9/11 happened in the biggest city in the nation), anti-Americanism in the halls of Congress, and BILL FUCKING AYERS. Bill Kristol said in his column on Monday that he did not think that anti-intellectualism was "rampant in the land." Given the way that the McCain campaign and a lot of others in the Washington elite have been acting lately (Robocalls are not exactly intellectually stimulating), I would have to say McCain and company are banking on Bill Kristol being wrong (yet again). Peace.

Photo - Sarah Palin (www.foxnews.com)

McCain Cannot Let Go of Joe the Plumber

The McCain campaign strategy seems to be invoke something, find out it was a big mistake, but try to go with it and convince the American public that your mistake was actually part of the plan (see: Sarah Palin). So it is with Joe the Plumber. Without looking into Joe's credentials (or lack thereof), McCain decided to thrust the guy into the national spotlight in a an ill-advised debate style which hinged on him. Once the media looked into the guy (as McCain or any other sane individual knew they would) they found out some interesting facts.

Joe the Plumber's real name is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher and, in reality, he is not really a plumber. Despite insisting that he does not need a license to practice his trade, the folks who run Toeldo, Ohio say that he does. And his claim that he is about to buy his employer's $250,000 plumbing business may not be true, either. In any event, it is worth watching Obama's answer to Sam (Joe), because instead of brushing him off, he takes the time to explain his plan to him and makes sure that he understands it:

Wurzelbacher seems to get it and to appreciate Obama's time to answer his question. Now, beyond McCain's initial incantation of Joe the Plumber at the third debate, his campaign seems to be grasping the idea of Sam (Joe) the Plumber (probably in their attempt to portray themselves as populists). McCain has even gone so far as to call up Joe (Sam) to ask him to come out to some campaign rallies. Rather than let the Joe the Plumber fad die, McCain seems to want to embrace it despite the recent revelations of the real Joe (Sam).

Palin also seems to be embracing Joe the Plumber. She has said that he had the courage to stand up to Obama and that should be commended. Indeed, it should, because politicians do not get asked legitimate questions (it is too bad that this time it seems that the questioner was not the best person to be asking the question given his tax history). But Palin should not be praising Joe the Plumber, for when she faced a similar incident in Philly and was called out on it later, she said that Katie Couric was participating in "gotcha journalism": (you can ignore the interview with the guy who asked the question, because he seems like a pompous ass)



So, isn't Palin caught in "gotcha politics" (isn't that a pizza place?) when she invokes the Joe (Sam) the Plumber question? Is it not hypocritical for Palin to say that she should not be called out on her answer to a random voter (in which she agreed with Barack Obama's ill-advised plan to enter sovereign Pakistani land to get terrorists without Pakistani approval, which is in direct opposition to John McCain's position), but that Barack Obama's answer should be scrutinized? Or is it still sexist to ask Sarah Palin about things she has said and what she believes?

All of this Joe the Plumber stuff is getting annoying. He asked Obama a good question, and Obama answered him quite well. The McCain campaign, looking for anything to bring attention off of their policies and anything else that may mean something to the voter before the election, have continually brought up Joe the Plumber to show, "Hey, look, I own eight homes, but I still care about your average Joe; I'm a populist! Greed and corruption on Wall Street!" Once Joe's 15 runs out, it'll be back to the Ayers non-connection. But while McCain and Palin continue to use the image of Joe, I propose a name change . I think we should call him Joe the Unlicensed Contractor. Peace.

Photo - Obama and Sam (Joe) (www.timesonline.co.uk)