Why Does Joe The Plumber Hate Neil Armstrong?
Barack Obama wants to hike the top marginal income tax rate by a couple percentage points, and according to Joe the Plumber and his new BFFs John McCain and Sarah Palin, that’s ‘socialism.’ Of course, Joe’s economic illiteracy extends deeper — he’s also for abolishing Social Security and establishing a flat tax.
The trouble is, Joe-think is broadly appealing to many Americans. It’s a kind of Objectivism-lite: Joe imagines he lives in a cocoon of hard-workiness where his efforts are the only agency affecting his ability to accumulate personal wealth — other than the government, which seeks to take his wealth away. He begrudges the need for taxes, but they are always and forever too high, even when they are at historic lows.
Nor does Joe seem to grasp that in the current economic climate, the near-term and possibly long-term prospects of the construction industry, his chosen trade, are bleak indeed without some combination of public and private stimulus. He gives his support to a presidential candidate who promises to reduce government’s revenue further and institute a ‘spending freeze.’ Whereas, the guy who wants to shore up the country’s revenue shortfall so it can spend money on, say, infrastructure projects that might require, oh we don’t know, plumbing … is a ‘socialist.’
But all these are just words. Obama’s plan to readjust the top tax rates back to where they were during America’s last great economic boom under Clinton is better shown in the following graph that a buddy of mine put together last week, which shows the historical top marginal income tax rate all the way back to 1913, as compared to what Obama proposes to do:
Fig. 1
Obama’s proposed hike of the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent doesn’t represent the highest it’s ever been, not by a long shot. Joe the Plumber might be interested to learn that, in fact, when the top marginal rate was lots and lots higher, America did all sorts of cool shit, like win two world wars, invent the Internet and play golf on the Moon.
Now it may be that Joe the Plumber, John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t like kicking Nazi ass, cheap porn, and Tang. But real Americans do, even if they sometimes forget how we got to do and have those things. It took tax money to achieve the national greatness we all know and love. Conversely, when we stopped taxing rich people, lots of terrible crap happened, as this enhanced version of the above chart shows:
Fig. 2
So, Joe — thanks to FDR’s crazy socialist tax policies, you’re not reading the above chart in German while gnawing on a deep fried penny loafer in a hobo camp. Instead, a guy like you can now download anti-Obama talking points over the Internet before flying off in a plane that is exceedingly unlikely to crash, to go sit in a TV news studio that broadcasts your economic misrepresentations to the nation via satellite.
Which isn’t to say that government can solve everything — Milli Vanilli will always be with us.
Obama is going to take money from the rich and give it to the poor for a national program to teach Black Hipness to the white folks. I have already signed up for Groove Thing 101 and Hot Mama (Intermediate).
I’m not voting until I hear what Ivor the Engine Driver has to say about Obama’s tax plan.
It’s so cute the way you think “facts” matter to selfish rethugs.
Milli Vanilli will always be with us
The fact is, in 1998, ten years after Milli Vanilli’s debut, Rob Pilatus was found dead in a Frankfurt hotel of an apparent drug overdose. You latte-sipping elistists may sneer, but we in the Heartland remember and mourn.
The more I hear the Republicans scream about socialism, the more I think, “Hey, if they hate it so much, it can’t be all bad…
You latte-sipping elistists may sneer, but we in the Heartland remember and mourn.
Also his files were found missing. Incidentally who’s the blonde with the fake boobs? Are you implying that lower marginal tax rates turns fake boobs into real ones (Cheney)?
Also note, the phrase “cheap porn and Tang” is misogynist. Go ahead and claim that you’re talking about fake orange juice, but this chauvinistic dog whistle from you Obots is exactly what’s going to sink your Obamessiah. This is why millions of Reagan Democrats, and all those hard working blue collar Americans, are going to either sit it out Nov. 4 or are going to cast their vote for the truly progressive ticket of Palin and McCain, who by the way is a real American hero and was a POW.</Iris>
Is that Cheney? What’s with the Gorbachevian mark on his head?
Arrgghh, semi-colon!!!! From Hell’s heart I stab at thee, for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
You know, Joe, it was nice how you lied about every particular of your life and constructed a purely hypothetical question under color of real concern to ask a major candidate in bad faith.
Your willingness to sublimate ideology to common decency – indeed, to basic self-interest, given that even setting aside the long-term consequences of a ‘spending freeze’ and the large deficit McCain’s budget will invariably require, John McCain actually intends to tax you more heavily than Barack Obama – would make Comrade Bush proud. Truly you are a Stakhanov for the 21st century.
Incidentally who’s the blonde with the fake boobs?
That’s Milli Vanilli during their failed attempt at a comeback.
Reverse ‘ideology’ and ‘decency’ there. Thankfully, we don’t have corrective camps for that kind of unacceptably decadent mistake, but Reagan willing someday we will.
So — what do we call the government takeover of the economy and the nation’s banking system? “Not-socialism,” because shut up, that’s why?
I’d like to remind everyone:
Nationalising banks = not socialism
Raising the tax rate a little bit for the top earners = socialism
It only counts when rich people do not benefit. Silly liberals.
Just out of curiosity, didn’t Reagan and Bush I both raise taxes of various sorts? Anyone know whether those increases were larger (by whatever measure) than the increase that Obama is putting forward?
“Reagan raised taxes more!” would be a hell of a great line. I can’t check on this b/c I’m on the road today, so I have to resort to the Goldbergian dodge of asking others to do my work for me. I promise not to claim the credit, though.
[…] Illustrated By Doug Swiped from Sadly, No, is an illustration of just how socialist Barack Obama’s proposed tax increase on the wealthy […]
I’m afraid these JoeThePlumber types are legion, infecting the workplaces of the land. It doesn’t take a lot of brains or style or personal honesty to claim Genghis Khan as an ideological soulmate and it’s pretty obvious that the ladies just love a slapped-together veneer of rugged individualism.
Err…right, ladies?
Stalkin’ Malkin has a new hate-piece up on the theme of Joe The Plumber at The Moonie Times.
One of the funnier bits is when she decries all the Dems who started investigating the real Joe The Plumber and found all the dirt on him. According to her, this is a Bad Thing.
Irony to the google power.
I can say that Reagan dropping final marginal tax rates (e.g. the amount taxed on the money you make over the highest bracket) by so much that it more or less demanded major parts of social and state policy had to be pared back.
Healthcare in particular was cut to the bone, and the Reaganite drive to privatize mental hospitals (bolstered, unfortunately, by a post-Cuckoo’s Nest distaste for them) resulted in anyone without a 100% debilitating condition and insurance being turned out onto the streets.
The national homelessness problem is primarily attributable to Reagan, and especially to his vicious contempt for the normal functions of the state. Of course, Sam the Skinhead would probably find that practical and appropriate – after all, why take care of the dangerously insane when you can encourage them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?
I think this is the major problem with research on tax-cutting idiocy. It just gets fucking offensive long before you get into specific numbers. I think if I were to dig around in what Reagan did (and Lord, did he do a lot) for thoroughness I’d probably need to shoot something after.
Obama is going to take money from the rich and give it to the poor for a national program to teach Black Hipness to the white folks. I have already signed up for Groove Thing 101 and Hot Mama (Intermediate).
There is no such thing as ‘hipness’. Learning to be hip and cool (and all up in the groove thang) mostly involves a cranial-rectal de-insertion procedure that (while initially painful) declenches the posterior, loosens up the spinal column and brings your hips back into the alignment God intended. ‘Hipness’ isn’t a thing to be gained, rather results when you get your head outta your ass: firee your mind, and your ass will follow…
When it looked like Joe might’ve been a plant, it made sense to do a little digging. His first interviews he came off like a RNC Talking Point machine.
But it’s become pretty obvious that Joe’s just a schmuck who’s watched way too much Fox News. Barring an outrageous book deal and a truly gifted ghostwriter, he’s never going to see the marginal tax rate – no matter how much he wants it to be true. It’s just sad.
But not as sad as hiding in the bushes and peeping into windows for the sake of digging up dirt on a 12 year-old boy recovering from a brain injury.
Dems? Why do they say this? It was reporters doing their jobs after McRedscare dangled Joe in their faces again and again during the debate.
Can Malkin point to any liberal vendetta against Wurzenbacher a la peering into the Frost’s windows? The worst that happened was fake plumber dude getting roundly and deservedly slagged in leftosphere comment sections for being a fucking liar.
I can’t check on this b/c I’m on the road today, so I have to resort to the Goldbergian dodge of asking others to do my work for me
The fuck?!?, dude! He said “three, maybe four, hours a week. Mostly Googling and spell-checking…”.
I don’t give a crap about Joe’s skeletons, if he has them. I don’t care that he’s not anywhere near to making $250K a year. It’s okay to ask hypothetical questions. His was a particularly dumb one, that Obama patiently answered, but he still should get to ask it without getting Graeme Frosted.
What’s deliciously funny, though, is to see the look on Joe’s face when Obama says, paraphrase, ‘imagine 10 years ago, when you weren’t making as much money, Joe, when you were only making $50K or $60K’ … b/c it’s so obvious Joe isn’t even making that much RIGHT NOW.
I think I’d personally punch him in the nads, but only because my favorite uncle was a young licensed plumber whose career went into the shitter after fuckers like him effectively drove ‘im out of business.
Otherwise, this is just right-wing projection at its finest. She’s a stalking, eliminationist lunatic, so she imagines her enemies (always working together against her) are as well. Sam the Skinhead is a drooling phalangist, so he assumes that anyone who doesn’t share his rididiculous Secret-meets-Prosperity-Gospel politics is a Marxist.
Of course, they probably know this about themselves, and they might well hate it about themselves. I think Malkin understands that she’s a bad human being for what she was willing to do to a twelve-year-old child; that understanding doesn’t lead to contrition but only enables more and more vigorous shrieking and make-it faking it. M. the Skinhead working under the table for $80,000 a year and refusing taxes in a way liable to get his wages garnished knows he’ll never be Joe the Plumber making capital gains from buying a business and evading taxes legally, but that doesn’t bring him to think about what he’s doing wrong; it just makes him shamed and angry, makes him more, not less, desperate to go to bat for the future he is increasingly aware will never happen for him.
Enabling contradictions are a major part of the wingnut ideology. Take one of the foundational wingnuts: Augusto Pinochet, after pleading sickness to the court to which he had been extradited for torturing his own citizens under an anti-torture convention he had personally signed, telling them he was bedridden and could barely speak, went home and when he arrived at the airport in Santiago stood up and walked, waving to his cheering fans.
It’s not about accepting reality. It’s about being strong enough to make everyone pretend to accept your own. And if you don’t have that strength, you’re worthless; all you have to hope for is a grand gesture of infinite fealty to an invincible leader willing to condescend to let you bask in his glory.
he still should get to ask it without getting Graeme Frosted.
I agree, if out of nowhere I was given a chance to ask Barack a question, I’d probably ask something dumb too. But I don’t think what happened to Joe is quite the same as what happened with the Frosts. It’s not like there’s folks out there checking the kerning on his bald head.
So looking back, considering what we know now – the level of scrutiny Joe got does come off as unseemly (again, nothing compared to Stalkin Malkin’s own Citizen Journalism).
> Dems? Why do they say this? It was reporters doing their jobs after McRedscare dangled Joe in their faces again and again during the debate.
True, true. I was just quoting the theme of Lyin’ Malkin’s column.
Mmmmm. Flat taxes, like sales taxes – always fair because everyone pays at the same rate. Joe Six-Pack pays a tax when buying his kid a winter coat while Warren Buffet pays zero tax when buying a significant percentage of GE. Yup. Always fair.
Basically, OT, but excellent nonetheless: Thoughts From the Desert.
> I agree, if out of nowhere I was given a chance to ask Barack a question, I’d probably ask something dumb too.
I’ve already fantasized about the possibility. The groundwork I’m doing on the Obama campaign makes it a finite, although distant, possibility…he might drop in on one of the campaign offices (I’m working in a swing state).
Here are the questions – really they’re points, but what the heck:
1) restore the Fairness Doctrine
2) have a committee to plan and enact a fraud-proof election system for the whole country
Uh, is non-Joe the phony Plumber still around?
Really? Why?
.
I hope I live to see the day that Joe the Plumber and Milli Vanilli take the undercard bout on Celebrity Boxing.
> the level of scrutiny Joe got does come off as unseemly (again, nothing compared to Stalkin Malkin’s own Citizen Journalism).
Fair point, but the blame lies on the journalists, who are running out of stories about the election since Obama is headed for a landslide.
Naturally the whackjob wingnuts pin “Liberal” to the media. So the media excesses become “liberal excesses”.
alec says–
“I think Malkin understands that she’s a bad human being for what she was willing to do to a twelve-year-old child…”
Really? What makes you say so? Mightn’t, instead, she feel it’s part of her “job,” with all the deniability and special pleading and get-out-of-Hell-free cards that (in her mind) entails? What in her entire public life suggests she possesses a decent moral sensibility?
> I think Malkin understands that she’s a bad human being for what she was willing to do to a twelve-year-old child
Not at all.
She’s just selling papers. Making money is the Only Goal for republicans.
“Follow The Benjamins” is the key to understanding republican behavior.
Truman said it best:
The fact is, Mild Vanilla was found in Pilates Rob’s poisonous Frankfurter. Leche elitism is alive in the Heartland, where we discriminate based on cow production.
She probably does have a sense of right and wrong but just ignores it. I suspect that it’s not easy to grow up the daughter of immigrants, and she obviously is full of resentment, anger and spite. Instead of robbing a bank or shooting up a school, she makes political attacks.
The interesting thing is that people like her usually take their anger out on their kids. People without kids take their anger out on the world. Malkin might actually be a decent mother (albeit a hideous example) because she is such a public monster. I have no way of knowing, but the possiblity exists.
I actually had an opportunity; at the time, I intended to try and either give him an out on Iran or nail him to warmongering on it (the CIA thing was recent; basically, the idea was to pose it as the rest of congress being lied to systematically by the White House), but I didn’t feel like screwing the guy.
My fiancee asked him a question about compromising his moral principles when it came to equal rights, and he gave a forthright answer. We went in liking the guy well enough and went out intending to vote for him.
These days, maybe I’m voting for him, maybe I’m voting against the other guy, but in those early days he was able to give the impression that he was a normal human being, and God knows it’s been too long since we had one of those in the White House.
Eh, I think she at least has the bestial level of self-awareness necessary to understand that she’s doing something wrong. Enabling contradictions are more or less the central part of the way most movement authoritarians think, and her entire career has basically been a long string of condemnations of things she openly embodies (anchor babies, flaunting sexuality, darkies, etc). I don’t think a Filipina who spent time writing for vdare.com could possibly be ignorant enough for the contradiction to be hidden to her.
I don’t think it’s a decent moral sensibility as much as just simian awareness. Note I didn’t suggest she felt guilt – guilt implies some level of contrition, which is where a lot of morality begins. You don’t have to be a sociopath to be functionally amoral.
Too much FAIL in Joe The Plumber.
I’m no longer interested in how his 15 years of FAIL were caused by the future policies of a Democrat President.
News about Joe over at DU.
Some wingnut radio show took up a collection for his back taxes and plumbers’ license.
AKA, Handouts to the “anti-socialist” Joe.
More delicious irony from republicans.
Believe it or not, our dear Iris actually became an Obama supporter after the Democratic convention. Bill and Hill had to tell her it was OK.
Her support is appreciated, I guess, but wow…what a chump.
Even pure money-grubbing produces a sort of crude emergent morality; if she had even the vaguest concern for self-preservation she probably would have stopped well short of what she ultimately wound up doing to the poor right-wing hate object.
Right, she’s lost money because hatred drives her to such extremes that other hate-mongers are taken aback.
Milli Vanilli will always be with us
Not so much
In strictly factual terms, they’re only welfare if there’s an explicit obligation to support him. (Which the laws weakening the strength of unions in hiring practices do amount to – they’re basically guaranteeing him a plumbing job without his actually having to measure up to it. Of course, affirmative action isn’t affirmative action when it helps skinheads, is it?)
And in right-wing terms, other people get welfare and handouts; you get subsidies and charity.
Mr. Wonderful – I think the most accurate interpretation of Malkin’s behavior is to correct Alec’s take slightly — Malkin understands that it’s bad human behavior to do what she was willing to do to a twelve-year-old child … but only when others do it, not when she does it.
It’s the same mentality that fuels Joe the Plumber’s anti-tax position. Joe perceives the tax structure as him getting hosed and other people getting services that are paid for by him getting hosed. He cannot comprehend that others also pay taxes or that he benefits from services paid for by others’ taxes. Maybe he thinks public sector plumbing contracts and the market economy that affords him cheap plumbing supplies and the roads that he drives his truck down to get to his plumbing jobs and the friggin’ public sewers that he ties his plumbing into all magically appear out of thin air when glibertarians click their heels together three times and say ‘Me!’.
Chance are, though, that he doesn’t think that way … rather, he just doesn’t think about those things at all, because they disturb his deeply held political beliefs and make him question whether he’s really the master of his own fate at all.
At any rate, it turns out that humans are hard-wired for this kind of contradictory thinking. We’re really good at perceiving others’ failings and pretty terrible at acknowledging our own, as this article in Slate points out: http://www.slate.com/id/2202303/
Fairly OT, but if you wanna see the apotheosis of this almost uniquely American morality-is-what-I-say-it-is pseudo-moralism, here’s an interview in which Sarah Palin’s favorite Baldwin cannot name the Ten Commandments to which he considers obedience vital.
Bonus: he uses the same hyper-fideist nonsense theology as the rest of his dumb demotic church, but in application faith only counts if he likes someone: (irreligious) Alec Baldwin is going to Heaven, but (born-again) Bill Clinton is going to Hell.
Pastor Swank might think he’s the Pope, but Stephen Baldwin thinks he’s God.
Stephen Baldwin thinks he’s God.
HE’s not that interesting…
Anyone stupid enough to believe that Barack Hussien Obama is not going to make this great country of ours a socialist republic is a FOOL…Wake up the down of the dead ia approaching and sometime soon after you fools have elected through Acorn fraud this idiot OBAMA we will wake to the changing of the United States of America THE USA to the new USA Unitied Solcialist America..so wake up people and just say NOBAMA ! ! ! Cheers to Joe The Plumber for catching this fool without a script on his hand or a carefully Howdy Dowdy quipit
and while we are at it I would check my credit card statements you have probablly already given your money to that fool obama or shall I say he has already charged your account
USA Unitied Solcialist America
Is that, like, a Wicca America, that observes the solstices?
Didja hear! Breaking news at NYT!!!! Joe the Plumber doesn’t matter anymore, Tim the Patio Guy is the new demographic metaphor and the election turns on whatever he thinks! Oh, I am sooo excited that another category of rich white guy is determining the political discourse for awhile.
When I raised taxes on the oil companies and gave it to the people that was maverickynessdom. Nothing socialist about that! That’s not redistribution of wealth like Obama wants to do.
You know, I’ve heard a lot of lurid black stereotypes in my time, but I have to admit ‘cowboy’ is a new one.
> In strictly factual terms, they’re only welfare if there’s an explicit obligation to support him. (Which the laws weakening the strength of unions in hiring practices do amount to – they’re basically guaranteeing him a plumbing job without his actually having to measure up to it. Of course, affirmative action isn’t affirmative action when it helps skinheads, is it?)
Your points are definitely open to discussion and/or rebuttal 🙂
First, the equivalence of charity and welfare. The cliche of “I don’t take welfare” as a response to charity by proud poor people is absolutely not just a cliche. It was spoken to me after offering charity to both acquaintances AND distant family members (a branch that wasn’t doing as well as we were due to circumstances beyond their control)
Second, the proper response by unions to incompetent members is better training. If the training doesn’t take, other steps are taken. This is, again from my PERSONAL experience, actually what happens in a well-run union.
Thirdly, Affirmative Action can’t apply to skinheads. They have never been systematically examined as a socioeconomic class to see if they qualify.
> here’s an interview in which Sarah Palin’s favorite Baldwin cannot name the Ten Commandments to which he considers obedience vital.
Don’t forget the Colbert interview with the CONgressman who wanted to post the 10 commandments in the courthouse. He could only name 2 or 3 of them.
“Cheers to Joe The Plumber for catching this fool without a script on his hand or a carefully Howdy Dowdy quipit”
Finally, something on which we can all agree.
Incidentally, Powell has been on the ball on this one too: said recently that any taxes are redistribution of wealth, that nobody wants taxes but that they buy vital services and in a time of economic crisis they’ll unfortunately be necessary.
Both candidates are trying to redistribute wealth. Obama’s redistributing wealth the rich have no use for to an increasingly desperate and cash-strapped middle-class; McCain’s redistributing wealth from that same cash-strapped middle class – essentially planning to institute a surreal state-funding value-add to already-ludicrous health and utility costs – not even primarily to the American economic elite but to the Chinese economic elite.
John McCain is selling your children to the People’s Republic of China. After you idiots are done with this country there wouldn’t be enough to fund a national park, let alone a socialist republic. Sure hope you like meth and back-breaking irregular and underpaid labor, because the way the small towns are now – and I don’t mean burbs like Wasilla, I mean fucking holes a hundred miles from civilization too poor to support a Wal-Mart – is gonna be Republican America in a decade.
> I mean fucking holes a hundred miles from civilization too poor to support a Wal-Mart – is gonna be Republican America in a decade.
My casual hobby of taking cellphone pix of 20-year old rust heaps sporting “Bush/Cheney” or “McCain/Palin” bumperstickers only happens when I am in the midwest or the south.
I have already signed up for Groove Thing 101 and Hot Mama (Intermediate).
You mean Groove Thang 101.
Don’t forget the Colbert interview with the CONgressman who wanted to post the 10 commandments in the courthouse. He could only name 2 or 3 of them.
Lynn Westmoreland. Like Stephen Baldwin, a pro-American American from Real America.
Koufax-worthy post, imho.
Powell has been on the ball on this one too: said recently that any taxes are redistribution of wealth
He didn’t go far enough.
Capitalism is a redistribution of wealth, and taxes merely levels the playing field a little.
Everyone talks about lowering taxes but implicit in the phony Laffer Curve argument is that taxes can be too low as well.
And I think that if you buy into the supply side argument, you should be honest enough to ponder and study whether that might actually be true right now.
Certainly, the boom we had after Clinton’s modest tax hike speaks volumes in that direction.
yep, the wealth redistribution has been going for some time. From the middle class to the wealthy. Look how well that’s worked out.
Joe The Potemkin Voter is doomed to go down in history as one of the most slipshod examples of shilling in modern politics. I hope the GOP is paying him handsomely, because all this bad press is going to stick around long after November. He’s got the IRS’s attention now, I bet … as well as the unmitigated loathing of legit plumbers across the fruited plains. Being a neocon Culture Warrior just isn’t the ticket to glory it was in the 80s & 90s anymore.
Good luck living it down, Joe.
Reagan openly admitted that said “paring” was the actual ideological objective of tax-cut/trickle-down “Voodoo Economics” (h/t GHW Bush) … because a country in dire straits is scared enough to want GOP rule, especially if education is in the crapper along with everything else. It’s also handy-dandy self-fulfilling-prophecy: if government isn’t really the problem, get into power & MAKE it the problem with prolonged doses of massive fiscal sabotage. Reagan was a pioneer in domestic application of the Shock Doctrine – if he were still alive, BushCo would owe him royalties.
I know I already may have said this with regard to banking, but … the answer for America lies due north.
It ain’t rocket-science, folks.
Adjudicators from ALL parties at ALL the polls, voter’s lists that cross you off when you get your ballot, pieces of paper you mark with an “X” & clearly-defined nation-wide categories defining who gets a vote, with a broad range of verifiable ID that can be presented at the polling-place on election-day. If there’s a way to game Canada’s elections, Mandrake The Magician is being mighty tight-lipped about it – because nobody’s pulled it off yet that I know of.
Voila! Problem solved.
Send cash only – no checks, no Visa or MasterCard.
You mean Groove Thang 101.
And Red Hot Mama. From Louisiana, for advanced intermediates.
the down of the dead ia approaching
Silly boy! You don’t get down off a dead, you get down off a DUCK!
I’m already learning so much.
I meant more that people tend to avoid seeking formal job qualifications because they know they can’t hack it. Union-busting laws tend to make getting around those qualifications easier. I would bet dollars to donuts that Sammy-boy is a mediocre plumber at best.
It’s not a problem of people joining a union and being kicked out for being incompetent; it’s a case of people avoiding a union from the word go because they’re bad at what they do. And unlike other unionized careers, plumbing is the right mix of skilled and labor-intensive that being any good outside of the apprentice system is impossible – the normal ideological / pecuniary reasons for avoiding organized labor don’t cut it.
The definitions do get muddied a little in popular use, but part of what I do academically is defining and tracing the history of the state and private safety net. The state doesn’t have a choice in offering welfare and for a private body to replace welfare neither would it; charity is more on the basis of individual merit.
And I know that people take being self-reliant seriously. I think we’ve all been there, or at least somewhere like it. I’ve never understood it; then again we come from a culture that takes individual will so seriously that someone who makes a public career out of pretending to be worth five times what he is is an object of not scorn and derision but pity and outright encouragement. Our President spent a decade in a goddamn coke haze and thinks he’s setting a good example to kids by lying about it through his teeth – and his supporters honestly seem to think that as long as he doesn’t admit to it he’s effectively erased it from history.
The culture of super-effective willpower and self-reliance sucks bad when you’re far enough at the bottom that you’re getting screwed all the time by forces out of your control and expected to take full responsibility for that, even to the point of refusing assistance outside of your own control; but it sure is convenient for privileged assholes who want to pretend they’ve earned their inherited money and power.
Kiss me, Hardy. Haa ha.
Re: Lyle @17:33
Okay, ittdgy — have you been hanging out at Tennessee Guerilla Women again?! Looks like something followed you back over here.
(BTW, I’m still banned over there! Awesome! My very own Badge o’ Courage.)
the level of scrutiny Joe got does come off as unseemly
You know, I’m curious about Joe’s affiliation.
Now, it’s 100% obvious that if a candidate gives as much attention to an individual citizen like McCain did, he’s going to get more media attention. Any fool should know that.
But just approaching a candidate and having a conversation on film shouldn’t be something voters are afraid to do. And it should be OK to ask a hypothetical question, or to not fully disclose your own interest in the question.
The exchange I saw between Joe and Obama was – OK. It was a guy who was kind of an asshole, trying to play gotcha, but basically Obama answered his question and Joe accepted it with perhaps a smirk, but basically good grace.
So the issue is – what happened next?
I don’t care if Joe was already pre-determined to get on camera. That’s OK. But after he did – who made the connection to the McCain campaign?
Did he contact the campaign and call the footage to their attention? Or did someone else see it and bring it up?
Also – before the debate, did Joe know his name was going to come up? Did the campaign tell him? Or did he, in fact shill himself?
Did anyone let Joe know how much media attention he was going to get? Or did his phone just start ringing?
In some of the stories I’ve read, Joe pretty much admits that he probably would do better under Obama’s plan, given that he doesn’t make more that $40K or so. Is Joe himself crying victim, or are the Malkinites and McCainites just parading his bleeding corpse around without his buy-in?
See – I don’t mind a guy being an independent, attention-getting asshole. And if he’s a paid shill with an agenda, that’s so fucking par for the course it’s a ho-hum. But if the McCain campaign basically used the guy, and threw him to the wolves – that speaks to their character.
D. Aristophanes, I demand to know who the darling young lady is representing cheap internet porn!
…It’s for a friend.
Nice breakdown, g.
tophat – jenna jameson.
the down of the dead ia approaching
Silly boy! You don’t get down off a dead, you get down off a DUCK!
But the duck (or goose) has to be dead, right? So technically, he’s correct.
[…] to these folks when they realize the government actually does one or two things right, on occasion. So the good people at Sadly, No! have come up with a helpful chart: Now it may be that Joe the Plumber, John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t like kicking Nazi ass, […]
DA,
Lyle tells me your chart isn’t accurate because it doesn’t show Obama raising the top rate to 99.4% in 2011.
MzN: God, this shit hurts my head. Did they really buy the 90s right-wing effluvium where Clinton was supposed to be if Sontag and Dworkin had a radical gay baby? Do they still?
That’s because Obama will raise it 135 bazillion percent in 2009. It’s his not-so-secret agenda and all good Christian whites will toil in the black man’s work camp before Farnham time travels to save us.
That book stank like a great big stinking pile of rotted stink.
That photo of Darth Cheney is misleading. He will never turn from the Dark Side.
Farnham’s Freehold may be the shittiest book ever written.
alec: Uh — not sure what you’re asking. If you mean TGW, they went insane and got all PUMA n’ racist and shit after HRC lost to Barry Hussein X. Real nasty, shameful meltdown. The two or three commenters who haven’t yet been banned sound like Lyle upthread a ways.
If I squint and look at that little bitty image of Darth Cheney just right he looks like he received a bloody head wound just before the mug shot was taken.
I Will Fear No Evil sucked moar.
While we’re on the subject of that odious little man Heinlein, can explain to me the reasons behind his apparent obsession with incest?
Farnham’s Freehold may be the shittiest book ever written.
Worse than Liberal Fascism?
I heard a clip yesterday of JiSM3 speaking about how this wasn’t just about Joe Da Plummer. It’s also about Wendy the Waitress, and some other alliterative names I can’t remember, but it just made think this is what it has come to. McCain is trying to charge up his base of voters- voters that think of the world like a Sesame Street episode.
Frank the Fireman drives the Big Red Truck that goes wooo-wooo-wooo!
Yup, that was what. Racist, huh? Beautiful: any good examples?
I mean, I’d vote for the gay radical love-child of Sontag and Dworkin, but Clinton was by all evidence slightly to the right of her husband, an unremarkable if charismatic DNCoid. She didn’t deserve the passionate bile the VRWC spewed at her.
I like to be charitable and assume that’s why people are bitter about her losing, although for the PUMAs it was always a weird mixture of personality-cult and racist fervor.
Farnham’s Freehold may be the shittiest book ever written.
It really was a wingnut screed. Even when I was a young clueless socially-retarded geek, I could tell it was a lump of shit. Blargh.
Worse than Liberal Fascism?
OK, how about this: it’s the shittiest book ever written by an author who had the ability to write better stuff.
Not as bad as Left Behind.
But yeah, fuck Heinlein with Ayn Rand’s dick. I like how his fanboyz lurve what are basically pseudo-Libertarian chapbooks with splatterings of invented slang and a hard-on for guns and small children; seeing Stranger treated like great literature has always weirded me out, and after trying and failing to read it as an adult I’ve realized it’s like the people who call Fountainhead literature – they’re just crass ideologues who cannot imagine art as anything but propaganda.
The more I hear the Republicans scream about socialism, the more I think, “Hey, if they hate it so much, it can’t be all bad…”
Bingo. I never felt the urge to wear a Che shirt until I heard all the wingnuts braying about what a monster he was. It’s enough to make me read Das Kapital.
PS: here is Cadre tearing Heinlein a new asshole on his golden baby; and here, prophylactically, is the best Irishman on the worst Mormon.
stryx; Yup, Phil the Bricklayer and Rose the Teacher were in there too.
OT- Our favorite economist apparently doesn’t know a damn thing about statistics.
Ian the Insurance Claims Adjuster
Egbert the Elephant Enema Giver
Lloyd the Lobbyist
Tina the Ticket Puncher
Henry the Hedge Trimmer
Sherry the Sheep Shearer
Troy the Traffic Cop
Donald the Dope Peddler
My favorite parts were where Farnham planned to repopulate the world with his daughter and her beautiful young friend. And when his mama’s boy son is literally emasculated. And when the black leaders turned out to be cannibals. And when the daughter said she’s much rather breed with her father than her brother, because her father was more manly. Or something.
The Corner loooooves Heinlein.
Let us not forget John Sidney the jive sucka.
With the early voting going so well, can’t we get started with the forced gay abortions now? This is perhaps the one time in my life I don’t want to be a procrastinator.
I think I fucked up a prior post on this, so: here is Adam Cadre on Heinlein. He’s got tastes a lot different from mine, but his review here is pretty insightful and sufficiently vicious.
Heinlein was a misogynistic, reactionary, anti-academia, gun loving, faux libertarian. Of course they luvs them some Heinlein over there.
With respect to the incest thing, also recall Sturgeon’s If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? which deals with adult incest. As I recall, the incest apologist character engages in a very Heinleinian style Platonic dialogue.
Ted Sturgeon rooled.
the down of the dead ia approaching
Silly boy! You don’t get down off a dead, you get down off a DUCK!
But the duck (or goose) has to be dead, right? So technically, he’s correct.
You can pluck a live goose or duck.
You should buy it dinner first, though.
Paging Bob Somerby!
At any rate: According to Klein, McCain’s robocalls give us a look at “John McCain, 2008 edition.” He forgot to say what he surely knows: That McCain ran robocalls in Campaign 2000—in that case, against George Bush. In some ways, those calls were worse than the calls McCain is now running. You see, McCain ran those robocalls anonymously—and he and his aides flatly lied when asked if they were running them.
Pundits like Klein keep insisting that this is a new, different, vastly-changed McCain. It does make a wonderful, novelized tale. But we thought you might want to know the truth about Campaign 2000.
Joe Klein knows the facts which follow. We thought you should know them too.
I credit Joe Klein with seeing which way the wind was blowing earlier than his fellow bloviators.
But not much more. This administration could not have pulled the cr@p it did with out the complicity of the Villagers, and when it counted, Joe Klein was right there with them.
~
Ian the Insurance Claims Adjuster
Egbert the Elephant Enema Giver
Lloyd the Lobbyist
Tina the Ticket Puncher
Henry the Hedge Trimmer
Sherry the Sheep Shearer
Troy the Traffic Cop
Donald the Dope Peddler
I remember them! They were part of Mr. Robinson’s Neightborhood! Goo-goo-ga-joob, baby!
Joe “grounded from Straight Talk Air” Klein:
Here’s a question for you Joe, if you only read Michael Scherer, what would your opinion of McCain’s campaign be? If you read only Halperin, what would your perspective of the race be?
Either your colleagues are doing a shitty job or you owe a huge apology to JiSM3.
Now compare what you said (their jobs are different – they’re supposed to be giving you Team McCain’s perspective) with “Scherer is sucking up to McCain so that he can retain access” or “Scherer is full of fucking shit when he says he claims to have no bias” or “Scherer would love to blow goats but doesn’t, since his mouth is busy somewhere else”.
You can pluck a live goose or duck.
You should buy it dinner first, though.
Also, as Molly Ivins pointed out, you can gang-pluck chickens.
Um, charity is more on the basis of individual merit?!?! Alec, I think you got those glasses on with the rose tint that blocks bigotry based on race and creed that many charities indulge in. One reason charity doesn’t work is simply because they can pick and choose who to be charitable to, and you can guess how many charities choose.
From somebody’s link above: The Holland, Ohio, plumber [Joe] was in New York making the media rounds with his family,
God, this is just a modern American ritual, isn’t it? You get outed on TV, and you fly everyone in your family to NY on the networks’ expenses, doing the rounds of talk shows. Is Joe the Plumber on “The View” tomorrow? How about “Dancing With the Stars?” Is he doing Colbert next?
In my favourite alternative reality, candidates are arguing about whose tax package would benefit the demographic of affectless murderous covert operatives, with Victor the Cleaner as their poster-boy.
Charity?
When I was about eight or ten, we were visiting some friends and the adults were having a discussion about the dreaded Communist Menace. Someone quoted the “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” thing as an example of this dastardly, world-fucking philosophy. So, I asked, in complete innocence, “How is that different from what churches do by passing around the collection plate?”
“Well, the church doesn’t demand that you do that.”
“No, but God does, right?”
Whereupon I was immediately sequestered in the other room to watch teh teevee with the door closed. Which, of course, allowed me to delve into the guy’s stash of Playboy in complete privacy.
Heh. Precocious little jagoff, weren’t I?
As a Heinlein apologist let me just say… ah, fuck it. I was young and growing up in Texas. I’m sorry. I didn’t know any better. I will persevere in my admiration for the Heinlein juvenile stories. Red Planet ftw.
Joe the Plumber
A-hideous to the eye
A-hideous to the eye
Well hes a fat little insect
A fat little insect
A fat little insect
A fat little insect
And ooooooooh! here we go again
Joe the Plumber
A-dances on all fours
A-dances on all fours
Hes in his birthday suit
Hes in his birthday suit
Hes in his birthday suit
Hes in his birthday suit
And ooooooooh! a-here we go again
Tito the Builder speaks!
Dammit, PeeJ, you made me miss her again!!
/sad
You can pluck a pheasant, but you can’t —
Sorry, momentary lapse of good taste.
I like “Sammy the Skinhead” as this dork’s new nickname. It’s funnier and more accurate. Let’s spread the meme.
I notice no one’s yet mentioned Lovely Rita, Meetah Maid.
Yeah, and I wouldn’t expect McCain and Palin to mention Cedric the Entertainer or Dre the Motherfucking Doctor.
They may bring up Jimmy the Greek. That would be helpful!
Speaking of lapses in good taste, I’ll defend Farnham’s Freehold, at least a little bit. What I liked about the book’s actual storyline is that it demolishes the libertardian objectivist myth of the great man so well. Farnham’s leadership in the first part of the book leads to the group splintering, and he couldn’t save his daughter. A free life in the wild without civilization to hold a person back starts to seem more like a punishing grind that will eventually kill anyone foolish enough to try it. Farnham failed to truly be prepared.
The second half of the book demonstrates how a person can be perfectly intelligent and competent, but still be doomed to fail in life simply because society doesn’t favor your kind. Again, Farnham, the book’s obermench, fails miserably in his meticulously planned escape, murdering one of his few friends (and a fellow slave) in the process. Also, the turnabout in racial power as a result of a nuclear war between the world’s white powers was an interesting concept and could have been something great, but…. *ahem* moving on.
Sadly, Heinlein couldn’t let such conclusions stand, so he gives Farnham the hot young girl and a happy ending, rather than the ignoble end hanging from a meat-hook he deserved. Rather than just flipping the circumstances of white and black, he made the black slave masters cannibals, just so you don’t forget that they’re eeeevil. Farnham’s surviving family all became cartoonish villians who just love being slaves, so he won’t feel bad about abandoning them for his hot young trophy wife.
It’s a mixed bag, for certain, but it’s far from the worst book ever written; hell, it’s not the worst book Heinlein ever wrote. It really should have been a lot better, though. I find that ending is much more fitting if you assume that the post-nuclear world was the same world from The Road, and then further imagine that Farnham’s Freehold was eventually raided by marauding white cannibals.
As for Joe the Plumber, he’s just another Repug fuckwit who will vote to raise his own taxes because he’s ideologically opposed to raising them for the rich. How fucking stupid can you get? He fantasizes about making enough that a slight tax increase for the top 5% will effect him, gets really really angry about the redistribution of wealth taking away his hard earned fantasy salary, then bends over so the actual top 5% can more easily roger his ass with no lube. I’m sick of toadies like him. Somebody get this jackass a bag of dicks to eat and a shitbox to tonguejack. If he’s what passes for a “real American,” then America is well and truly done.
[…] [From Sadly, No! » Why Does Joe The Plumber Hate Neil Armstrong?] […]
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said,
October 21, 2008 at 19:54
That is what most people do not get. We would never be where we are now ( President Bush; Iraq, Katrina, the “cratering” economy, Guantanamo, FISA shit, such a close campaign etc if was not for the PRESS.
Sure Joe is calling out McCain now but does anyone remember Primary Colors? To my recollection, he was the first pundit to raise the impeachment of Bill Clinton on tv! Remeber FISA? Remember this?
Mark my words, on an Obama win Joe Klein will find a reason to kneecap the Obama. Just like Rush Limbaugh looked for a reason to support McCain after swearing not to, so will Klein rush back to writing crap about dems (undeservedly ). Isn’t the hottest item in pundit world a Democrat who criticizes other Dems in power?
What pisses me off is that when this will happen, he will be able to say that the libs hate him now simply because he opposes them; after all wasn’t he kicked off the McCain plane?
No one should be patting him on the head right now. What we should be working towards is a functional (issues not trivia) fact checking media. Not weather van pundits.
On the subject of taxes, Fred Clark has a beautiful bit about Reagan overseeing the biggest tax hike in American history – and McCain pretending as if that tax doesn’t even exist.
[…] increase in the marginal tax rate is somehow equivalent to collective ownership. Oh so amusing… Graphic and text from SadlyNo: Obama’s proposed hike of the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent doesn’t represent the […]
So funny; I have a Shih Tzu, I drink lattes every day and I am a liberal. Oh yeah, and I am in the top tier of income in the U.S. Good times!
Forgot to mention that I HATE Joe the Liar, er, Plumber…
[…] Exactly. With the government trying to figure out how to pay for school teachers, cops and firefighters (and their pensions) and California looking to (gasp!) legalize pot, the billionaires could help a lot by just paying their taxes. (I dunno, if these guys can afford to give away have their money, I’m pretty sure they can afford higher taxes). […]