Saturday, October 18, 2008

epitaph: they went for this...political bullshit about narratives



although peggy noonan's comment was in response to the palin selection, the same could be said about joe the plumber. you'd think that mccain would have discarded this poorly researched, dang near catastrophic illustration by now. but no, he's still prattling on about the unlicensed, tax dodging, duplicitous plumber.

for such a smart man, mccain sure is running a stupid campaign.

7 comments:

Mike Murrow said...

and what is wrong with being unlicensed?

you know, everyone who doesn't know dick about the trades is making it out like being unlicensed is this huge deal, like it is akin to infanticide. that is total BS. any jack ass can get a license, i know cause i've worked for a lot of jack asses who were licensed and they didn't know dick about the trades.

second, he has tax liens, that doesn't mean he dodged. i got nailed by the IRS a while back because i made an error in my reporting and because i fought them over it they put a lien on me for a bit, then i submitted and they f***ed me in the...

finally, what is duplicitous?


if you are going to go after the guy you should point out that although he claims to be independent he sounds a hell of a lot like the libertarian wing of the GOP.

g13 said...

you make a good point about licensure. i don't know dick about that, i freely admit. i have a tendency to speak in unhelpful, sweeping generalizations that are not helpful. i'm sorry about that.

that being said, joe the plumber appears to be pursuing the right career because his self-representation sure appears to be full of shit. this guy clearly misrepresented the value of the business he wanted to purchase - in later interviews he confessed that the two man shop he works for doesn't net anything close to the 250K gross limit that obama is proposing. it has also been reported that his facebook profile claimed a membership in a plumber's local that he has never been a part of. not having a license is one thing. claiming that you have credentials you don't have is clearly another.

that, on top of the fact that the guy is "worried" about mythical future taxes when he can't even seem to pay his current tax bill, (which, granted, could have been a mistake, but then the guy has fallen victim to error twice and has said nothing about a failure in the process) seems to suggest that the guy was not the best illustration of an ordinary, hard-working business man for mccain to call upon again, and again, and again.

of course the purpose of this post was not, primarily, to impugn joe the plumber for misrepresenting his potential tax status to a national politician. rather, the point was to ridicule mccain for picking such a porous illustration to support his argument against barack obama's tax plan. from what i can tell, people had video and info on joe the plumber in advance of the debate. you would have thought that mccain's team would have done their homework and figured out that ole joe wasn't the best illustration for their argument.

Mike Murrow said...

yeah, on your over all purpose i'm right with you.

the difference in joe the plumber and sarah palin is that joe has given more interviews and press conferences.

g13 said...

cool.

one of my assertions was incorrect. it appears that one of the liens applied to joe's income was due to hospital bills, not taxes. so he's had one battle with back taxes, not two as i stated earlier.

i also agree with you that joe has more balls than sarah palin.

cade said...

sometimes...you just can't pay your taxes.

it pisses the government off and they dog you for years...but it happens.

g13 said...

yeah cade, i have no doubt.

my primary point is that the plumber joe is simply another fiasco in the long line produced by the mccain campaign.

unfortunately the post has offended in ways that i did not originally intend. sorry about that.

Mike Murrow said...

dude, giving offense is like 88% of why i blog.

perhaps if you would have gone at McCain straight forward and pointed out that his new star is all spun up like Palin was when she was introduced instead of going after the plumber dude your point would have gotten through? i dono.