Comments on: Caught up.

By: Joe K

Joe K — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:21:59 +0000

Will someone explain to me how you can give a tax cut to 95% of Americans,when 40%, don’t pay any income tax????.
And who decided,$250,000, was the cut off point??
And if after say a year 250,000 still doesn’t generate enough revenue, who gets to decide what the next level of being rich is?? 150,000?? 100,000??
I really don’t care if Joe the plumber or Joe the ceo asked the question the Obama answer was still going to be the same. I am going to decide who is rich and then take YOUR money and give it to someone else. And one more question, If you tax Exxon Mobil’s profit, do you think they will sit back and say Oh well, will make do with what is left. or do you think they will raise their price to cover their tax bill thereby putting the burden back on the working people??
Joe

By: Howie

Howie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:07:43 +0000

Hear, Hear, Dexter from a baseball junkie who also happens to be a True Red Phillie Phanatic.

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:13:13 +0000

And no, Joe’s not a union member. The story from the Toledo Blade:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081016/NEWS09/810160418

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:03:53 +0000

Kirk:
Where Joe (really Samuel) works in Lucas County, Ohio, he and his employer need a license, and it turns out neither of them have it. Of course, now everybody knows this. They also know he has a lien on him (which HE probably didn’t know till now). I bet he ends up cursing the womb that bore him.

By: Jeff Borden

Jeff Borden — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:21:38 +0000

Mark,

Say whatever you want about Joe the Plumber, but Obama has been campaigning for almost two years now and has dealt with scores of rough questions. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, plucked from obscurity and thrust onto the national stage, has not and will not answer any queries unless they are made by rightwing toadies like Sean Hannity. Now the Washington Post is reporting that Secret Service agents are preventing reporters from interviewing members of the audience at Palin events. McCain, once the darling of the press corps, also has refused to have any press conferences since the convention. The Rovians have taken control of his campaign.

The historic nature of Obama’s campaign makes it easy for his detractors to claim he has had an easy time of it because he has attracted so much coverage. Yeah. Right. Much of that coverage has been negative or silly or both.

My favorite being that this man raised first by a single mother, who sometimes needed food stamps to get by, and then by his grandparents; who worked his ass off to get into Harvard and excelled; who only paid off his student loans a few years ago when his books sold well; who eschewed a guaranteed fortune on Wall Street or K Street to work as a community organizer; who married a South Side Chicago woman who followed a similar path; is somehow an elitist while the son and grandson of admirals; who attended Annapolis; became a jet fighter pilot; returned from Vietnam a hero; and married a beer heiress; and owns something like eight houses and 13 cars is a man of the people.

Please.

By: Gasman

Gasman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:12:05 +0000

mark,
Oh, come on! Nobody was critical of of Joe the Plumber, or McCain, because they deigned to ask Obama a question. Some of us were incredulous because of Joe’s more-than-a-little-miraculously-coincidental connections to Charles Keating. How about if a cousin of Genifer Flowers just “happens” to turn up and ask McCain a question that he can’t answer to her satisfaction? To add to the improbability, how about if Obama then brought it up onstage during a debate? When the media found out the connection, are you suggesting that you would accept that at face value?

Yet again, you dodge, weave, and obfuscate around the issue at hand. McCain tried to stage a theatrical “gotcha!” ploy and it backfired. He couldn’t even get the name right. Just another of McCain’s weekly Hail Mary passes lobbed into an empty end-zone.

McCain & Palin; beacons of truthiness in these troubled times.

By: LAMary

LAMary — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:25:03 +0000

Mark, I haven’t said anything bad about Joe. I will say I was tired of hearing about Joe about two mentions into the debate, since it was clearly one of those “look over there, not at what I’m actually doing” deals. According to the fact checkers on the radio this morning, Joe would not have to pay a fine if he didn’t insure his workers and Joe would not have had a tax increase. Joe and McCain choose to ignore those facts, and if that’s what they need to do, so be it.

By: Dexter

Dexter — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:08:20 +0000

I couldn’t watch much, because the Phillies were beating the Dodgers on the way to winning the NL pennant.
Baseball junkies can’t be distracted by a mere presidential election!
If Tampa Bay beats Boston and advances to the World Series, it will be the worst-case scenario for Fox-TV, according to baseball genius/guru Steve Stone today. With no LA, NY, or Chicago Cubs…shares will plummet, according to Stone, who I believe will be in the 2009 White Sox telecasting booth.

By: mark

mark — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:54:32 +0000

Well, I see the “attack the message by destroying the messenger” approach to argument around here extends even to poor old Joe. Keep looking, folks. Maybe he has a daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock- that will eliminate any relevance to Obama’s “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” comment. If his second cousin is on a sex offender list, or his wife got caught years ago on a “Girls Gone Wild” video, then you can claim complete victory.

The times are changing. People need to pay a high price for daring to ask Obama a question that elicits a revealing response, particularly when the cameras are running.

By: The Subtle Rudder

The Subtle Rudder — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:44:08 +0000

Watched a bit of the debate last night with mom, who’s a nurse. (Well, mostly we watched Project Runway, while I tracked the debate liveblogging on my phone). I knew she was deeply offended by the Palin pick, and that she’d had her first fight ever with her sister-in-law over Polar(izing) Spice earlier that day. But I was astounded when she turned around after 40 seconds of Grandpa Spice and said, “That’s it. He’s senile! Anyone can see it!”