Hey, If Joe the Plumber Makes 250,000 a Year, Why Can't He Afford a Few More Tax Dollars?

Nice white Joe the Plumber.  I'm not even as white as Joe the Plumber.  I have a lot of French in my line which some people suspect because it's right by Italy and romantically hot blooded, or so we're told.  I have a lot of Swedish too, but that just makes people look at me funny if I try to explain it.  Apparently the Swedish enjoy sex too much, too, according to some.  And all that makes me really suspect energy independent Icelanders.  They say they keep warm via their geothermal springs, but I'm betting that a lot of little babies are born just about the end of summer on that cold island.

But to get back to Joe the Plumber. A Washington Post Report shows that Barack Obama was the one to meet the man, but John McCain is the one to bring up Joe's last name in this debate according to Dana Millbank at the Washington Post in "Joe Again? Say It Ain't So. ". 

Either the guy is making, or stand to make a quarter million dollars a year or he's not going to be getting hit with any extra taxes.  So what is McCain's big beef?   How that usually works is that the net income is calculated byt subtracting all a man's or a family's deductions.  And, if someone is making over $250k they usually find a way to have a lot of that income deductible, so Joe isn't likely to be paying increased taxes.

Of course, since Senator McCain, seemed not to be entirely in touch with any of Senator Obama's discussion points, I guess this is all moot.

I liked Joe the Plumber though.

It could be Jose, Josephe, Josephito or Joe a black guy.  But John McCain gave Joe a last name for me.

"Wurzelbacher" we're told. 

Well, nice white Joe, if he has a big enough plumbing business (...And plumbers are going to be doing just fine.  If you need a plumber, you need a plumber...) that he's no longer a small business he can afford to buy health care for his employees.  

I heard the debate on the radio, not getting home in time, but then again the rest of the family watched the ballgame (because it wasn't only Philly folk who would forgo a debate for a playoff) instead.  But it seemed to me that John McCain's breaking in while Barack Obama was speaking was the verbal equivalent of the way the elder candidate wandered around during the second debate.  And both are as bad as Al Gore's charging George Bush, though maybe John McCain did his "charging" with less premeditation. But that makes it all the more disturbing.  Is John McCain really a crotchety, rambling man who can't give a worthy opponent a decent interval in which to speak?

Can he not understand when Barack Obama makes it clear that taxes will only be raised on people with net income of over $250, 000.  Or does he ignore reality in order to make his phony case that Barack Obama is like someone who will come in the middle of the night and take the money your children need for food.

One of McCain's videos kinda seemed like that.  It showed a woman holding her terrified young child as if a some kind of killer had broken into their house and had come to get them.

I didn't watch the video.  The front picture was nauseating enough.   It looked like something from Nazi Germany.  White Mommy holding her white child to try to save if from a baby eating ......

Get my point?

NYT Times report "Rivals Split, With Joe in the Middle " by Alessandra Stanley about the debate started like this:

Barack Obama looked like a prosecutor delivering a polished summation in a long civil case, Joe the Plumber v. George W. Bush. 

John McCain was closer to a personal injury lawyer, staring into the camera to address “Joe the Plumber” as if he were standing by with an 800 number. (“If you or a loved one has been wronged in an accident ...” or in this case, in an Obama tax bracket.)

Ms. Stanley nearly outdoes Maureen Dowd in her sardonic description of the debate. (I learn the two candidates were seated.)

The reporter tells us of McCain's complaint about ACORN:

But viewers saw not the happy warrior so much as the harping warrior as Mr. McCain needled Mr. Obama about his relationship with an “old, washed up terrorist,” William Ayers, the group Acorn (he said a voter fraud scandal was “destroying the fabric of democracy”)

Um, now that is even more blatant than the last charge, and will go along with McCain's call to arms that he delivers his most potentially violent followers.  But now we find that we mustn't complain about such tactics because that's dirty campaigning according to John McCain.

tags: presidential debate  john mccain  barack  obama  

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