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DEL.ICIO.USThe ‘Joe the Plumber’ campaign comes to Roswell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican defense of Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio, the instant cultural hero and man of pipe dreams, spread to Roswell on Tuesday.
One of the curious things about American politics is the chasm that jumps up when certain words are introduced.
Take Joe the Plumber, who on Oct. 12 confronted Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over the issue of taxes.
Say “plumber” to a Democrat, and he hears “blue collar.” As a profession in Georgia, plumbing was worth an average $47,350 in 2007 — a good living, but not the stuff of early retirement.
Say “plumber” to a Republican, and he hears “small business.” In fact ,the McCain campaign has used Joe the Plumber as a rallying cry. This e-mail was sent out this week by its Georgia operation:
We’d like to activate as many small business owners as possible to speak out on Obama’s plans to drag small business owners and their employees down. Please reach out to your friends, family, and neighbors to recruit new Joe’s. Thank your local baker, the couple at your corner store, and even your plumber for their hard work and dedication, and invite them to share their story with us at gajoetheplumber@johnmccain.com.
About 50 self-described “Joes” gathered at Chaplin’s restaurant near the Roswell Square on Tuesday. Nearly all hammered on the phrase used by Obama in his discussion with Wurzelbacher: “Spread the wealth.” All accused Obama of socialism or something like it.
Jason Thompson, a Lawrenceville attorney, declared that his one-man office “would most certainly be undermined by Barack Obama’s plan to redistribute wealth,” which he called “a socialistic system disguised as tax relief for the middle class.”
But in these confusing times, none mentioned the word “Bush” or noted that, like Obama, their candidate supported a $700 billion program that has resulted in the slight nationalization of major U.S. banks.
Many focused on that $250,000 figure used by Obama — Americans underneath that ceiling will benefit from a tax cut, the Democrat has promised.
Sherry Blue, founder and co-owner of Cohutta Contracting in Jasper, testified that an Obama administration would mean bankruptcy for her.
“In a good year, which means one of every three or four, we might just get above the $250,000 figure,” Blue said. “The rest of the time, we make less or, like this year in a recession, actually lose money.”
Elect Obama, she said, and “we literally will have to close our doors.”
Barry Schmidt, owner of a small utility construction company in Grayson, the point that a tax hike for those who make $250,000 or more is a tax on ambition.
Schmidt said he doesn’t earn $250,000 a year. But Obama’s middle-class tax cut “would take away the incentive of going in that direction,” he said.
One thing missing from the Roswell event: Plumbers. Honest-to-goodness laborers who provided much of Ronald Reagan’s support in the 1980s.
“When you’re in a really small business, the distinction between being a business owner and someone out in the field begins to blur,” said John Sours, one of the event organizers and a McCain activist.
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Comments
By DaninMacon
October 21, 2008 3:45 PM | Link to this
What was the Obama camp thinking by attacking an average Joe. Poor form, Obama. Poor form. Joe the Plumber is the best gift the right could have gotten. Well, apart from Biden saying that the country will be attacked if Obama is elected. We are all Joe the Plumber.
By Not Joe the Plumber
October 21, 2008 4:40 PM | Link to this
Joe the “Plumber” doesn’t even have a plumbing license! That’s American values!
Plus, the guy only makes $40,000 a year. He would get a bigger tax cut from Obama than from McCain.
The average American is far smarter than Joe the “Plumber.”
By DanianHasNoClue
October 21, 2008 4:55 PM | Link to this
Danian, when did the Obama campaign ever malign “Joe the plumber”? The media has, and he deserves it for misrepresenting the business he’s buying (he’ll actually be taxed LESS under Obama’s plan than McCain’s), not that he pays the taxes he owes anyway.
Secondly, Biden DID NOT say that the country will be attacked IF Obama is elected. He predicted a crisis within the first 6 months regardless of who was elected.
Honestly, it seems all you guys can do is LIE and DISTORT. Pathetic…
By Will Jones
October 21, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this
Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher is a liar, racist, fraud, and a pathetic wannabe in service to the same Roman Anti-Christ his German Roman Catholic g-g-grandfather was serving, as cannon-fodder for the pope failing in his attempt to destroy America and the Jeffersonian South, so it makes good sense that he supports Married to the Mob McCain and his Hitler-in-Drag runningmate.
Bet he’s a hack plumber as well.
Our White, Black, Jew, and Gentile Whig Founders were correct to take recalcitrant Tories to “The Oak.” Hopefully it won’t come to that again if Diebold doesn’t get away with the scam the Anti-Christ pulled on us in the last two presidential elections.
“They” know what they’re doing. America better wise up and chop the serpent…it’s the Beast and has a very powerful demon leading it.
Only G-d is righteous. Humble, well-graced Obama is the best we have this time around.
Those who “speak with crooked mouths” are not of G-d.
Chambliss, Bush, Wurzelbacher, McCain: liars all.
Martin Obama/Biden ‘08 Let’s put Georgia on the map for America again.
By james
October 21, 2008 5:00 PM | Link to this
Many plumbing and other business’s will gross more than $250,000 per year, but that is not take home pay. After overhead the owner makes much less. But if his gross is taxed even more, he really may go out of business, or at least not try to expand any more, and hire more people.
By Earl_Marietta
October 21, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this
Joe the plumber really gets under liberal skin because he knows two things: 1) when Obama says he will only raise taxes for those making $250K he is lying; and 2) he knows that in America he can aspire to that kind of income and recognizes how fundamentally unfair it is to punish hard work, risk taking and achievement. The difference between Joe and liberals is that they are always for anything that doesn’t cost them personally and they can’t understand a person with principals like Joe.
By Mundy
October 21, 2008 5:07 PM | Link to this
The Daily AntiKos is running a Joe The Plumber Hero fund to help him raise money because he can’t work now due to the Dems and the Media!
By Earl_Marietta
October 21, 2008 5:11 PM | Link to this
Here are Biden’s quotes:
“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. “
“Watch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
You tell me he wasn’t talking about Obama and it will prove that you are delusional. He has promised an attack on America by our enemies and that is a fact. Spin away but there is a reason they sent him packing to Delaware.
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
October 21, 2008 5:15 PM | Link to this
Either Joe CAN work because his statement about not needing a liscence to be a plumber is true…
OR
Joe was working without a permit and breaking the law, thus making it his own fault.
By Nick
October 21, 2008 5:19 PM | Link to this
Okay, first of all…Joe Wurzelbacher is NOT required to have a license in Ohio to work for a licensed plummer. If in fact Mr. Wurzelbacher was working for a licensed plummer then has violated no law. It is the same concept as if Joe was an apprentice plummer. He still earns pay, he still works as a plummer, and the tax plan still hurts him.
Second of all, to call governor Pallin a “hitler-in-drag” is a little outlandish and quite frankly, childish. Especially when senator Obama has ties with a homeland terrorist by the name William Ayers and also supports a pregnant woman killing an innocent unborn child because it an “inconvience”. But that’s ok, we will let the left wing media make the republican canidates to be evil, racist war mongers. Eventually people will learn NOT to trust what a newspaper says until they look into the subject on their own.
“If you want change you can believe, look under your damn sofa coushin. I will believe in that before I belive in Obama”
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
October 21, 2008 5:31 PM | Link to this
So he has broken no law.
Explain how he’s not able to get work then?
Pallin is not ‘hitler in drag’…she’s McCarthy in Drag.
True, McCarthy was McCarthy in Drag….maybe that makes Palin just a Drag?
And Nick, no one who opposes Abortion (I do, vehemently) who also opposes SCHIP has any credibility with me.
Republicans are, by and large, racist warmongers. Not all Republicans mind you. Just the ones voting for McCain.
By Will Jones
October 21, 2008 6:52 PM | Link to this
Palin wants the government to force raped women, or incested girls, to bring any resulting pregnancy to full term…the same rejection of a woman’s sovereignty exhibited by Adolph Hitler, and Hitler Youth alum, gay Pope Benedict. She is marked under curse by G-d direct, as is any who refuse to see the writing put “on the wall” by the Invisible Hand. Palin is without grace…convicted of Abuse of Office. Any who deny that confirm membership in the Anti-Christ.
The Whig Party founded America. Their ideals are enshrined in the Mottoes which are Our Creed:
Annuit Coeptis: Divine Providence blesses our endeavors…only. Individual sovereignty, which is the basis of American Exceptionalism’s departure from the norm of despotism throughout human history, is predicated on the common American belief that each citizen answers directly to the Creator, or not, as he or she sees fit. No earthy authority is above an American. Government is our servant. Those we make El-ect serve in civil/holy office. Bush/Cheney/Chambliss and the Gay Old Perverts have defiled that office and committed 9/11 treason for false war and factional aggrandisement.
Novus Ordo Seclorem: The New Secular Order which displaced…the Ancien Regime - the Old Sectarian Order of king and pope - caesaropapism, thrives on stunted sectarian factionalism…the opposite of…
E Pluribus Unum: Of Many, One…We, the People, righteous, dwelling in Truth and Justice, by the Constitution, under only G-d, are sovereign. No hypocrite, no traitor, no bureaucrat, no pedophile priest, no tyrant shall do here what has been done elsewhere throughout the course of human history: the individual shall rule his or her own body obedient to the Creed and the Constitution under which the Roman Anti-Christ and its Rockefeller/Bush Fifth Column shall be banished.
Losers like hack wannabe pseudo-plumber “Joe,” who into his forties lacks the gumption or intelligence to qualify as a licensed plumber, but wants to lie to the American People about his fake aspirations, in service to the McCain/Palin branch of the Anti-Christ, against a Constitutional Law professor willing to humble himself and serve us as president, takes the cake.
Palin is Hitler-in-Drag. No American aware of her wish to force girls raped by their fathers to bring a resulting pregancy to term can disagree. She and her ideas are abomination to G-d.
America is G-d’s country. Abomination is bad for us and must go…at the point of a sword if necessary.
Those who embrace the pedophile priesthood over the American Creed need to rethink their views or pack their bags along with the illegals’ invasion you have been promoting since Reagan.
By Maria
October 21, 2008 7:30 PM | Link to this
Regarding Biden’s comments: While the McCain/Palin campaign is mocking Joe Biden’s statement that the Obama Administration might face an international crisis, CNN pointed out that the Cuban Missile Crisis started off Kennedy’s Administration; the fall of Saigon, Ford’s; the first World Trade Center bombing, Clinton’s; and 9/11, Bush’s.
By Maria
October 21, 2008 9:21 PM | Link to this
Regarding Biden’s comments: While the McCain/Palin campaign is mocking Joe Biden’s statement that the Obama Administration might face an international crisis, CNN pointed out that the Cuban Missile Crisis started off Kennedy’s Administration; the fall of Saigon, Ford’s; the first World Trade Center bombing, Clinton’s; and 9/11, Bush’s.
By Maria
October 21, 2008 9:22 PM | Link to this
Regarding Biden’s comments: While the McCain/Palin campaign is mocking Joe Biden’s statement that the Obama Administration might face an international crisis, CNN pointed out that the Cuban Missile Crisis started off Kennedy’s Administration; the fall of Saigon, Ford’s; the first World Trade Center bombing, Clinton’s; and 9/11, Bush’s.
By Maria
October 21, 2008 9:22 PM | Link to this
Regarding Biden’s comments: While the McCain/Palin campaign is mocking Joe Biden’s statement that the Obama Administration might face an international crisis, CNN pointed out that the Cuban Missile Crisis started off Kennedy’s Administration; the fall of Saigon, Ford’s; the first World Trade Center bombing, Clinton’s; and 9/11, Bush’s.
By Dale evans
October 22, 2008 3:31 PM | Link to this
I am a small business owner. I work 16 hours a day, 24/7/365. I have gone without to make sure I could meet payroll for my employees during lean times. My first three years in business, I earned less than my lowest paid employee. I sacrificed and put my financial future on the line to build a business that provides much needed jobs in my community. Is that being “greedy”? Is that the definition of “winning life’s lottery”?
I owe my customers excellent service at a competitive price. I owe my employees decent wages and good working conditions. I do NOT owe anyone else beyond that and I’m sick and tired of being told I need to do more.
By Dale evans
October 22, 2008 3:41 PM | Link to this
I am a small business owner. I work 16 hours a day, 24/7/365. I have gone without to make sure I could meet payroll for my employees during lean times. My first three years in business, I earned less than my lowest paid employee. I sacrificed and put my financial future on the line to build a business that provides much needed jobs in my community. Is that being “greedy”? Is that the definition of “winning life’s lottery”?
I owe my customers excellent service at a competitive price. I owe my employees decent wages and good working conditions. I do NOT owe anyone else beyond that and I’m sick and tired of being told I need to do more.
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
October 22, 2008 3:42 PM | Link to this
Funny, we feel the same way.
And Mr. Evans, for ever legitimate businessman like yourself, who earned his way through life, there are a dozen cases of inherited wealth, who did nothing to earn their money, or simply craptastic CEO’s who didn’t sacrifice and didn’t do anything but make secret backroom deals with their buddies to get golden parachutes that they received with no accountability for the company’s performance.
By Will Jones
October 22, 2008 4:16 PM | Link to this
“Dale evans” - Do you profit from the labor of others, your “employees,” to glorify the One G-d, by America’s Creed Annuit Coeptis, that you “outlive your handiwork,” as a state chartered form of limitied liability public corporation, to be a lasting benefit to your heirs and to the People, sovereign, in America? Or do you reject the Creed, not wishing to be a part of E Pluribus Unum?
Do you worship idols of gold and silver?
It is transparently obvious to all but committed philistines and knowing agents of the Anti-Christ’s Fifth Column, that the spiraling concentration of wealth in America, founded by an anointed Prophet, Thomas Jefferson, as a Whig Utopia on earth, is a direct result of the machinations of a treasonous bi-partisan sectarian faction, violating all aspects of Our Creed, which has usurped the Constitution and the sovereign People to puchase through bribery, and intimidate by assassination, what is now “the best government money can buy.”
McCain, bereft of any vestige of integrity since long before his stupidity turned him into a songbird for his captors in Vietnam; and Palin, a pathetic clotheshorse whose lies, hypocrisies and curses could not be more apparent, are overt agents of the spirit of evil now assailing the American Dream: the Roman Anti-Christ/Amalek.
Did you not know McCain’s drug-stealing wife is a Mafia princess? Does Alaska’s determination that Palin committed abuse of office, or her overt failure as a mother, not trouble you?
Perhaps those whose family roots are rife with criminals and perverts have no difficulty with the dysfunction, and perversion of accepted convention, so noticible in the Gay Old Perverts ticket this year?
Vote Obama and notice how your business’ bottom line improves…and how much happier those whose welfare G-d has entrusted you to faithfully improve, will labor with their hands for your profit.
Divine Providence shall bless our endeavors once more if we, as a Righteous Nation, reject the evil which has fouled our air since before the Rockefeller/Bush machine created the Oil Monopoly in 1870’s Cleveland through unredressed murder and arson.
By Roswell Democrat
October 22, 2008 4:50 PM | Link to this
Roswell Republicans gather to stomp and shout about the scourge of socialism. YAWN!! What’s new? They screech about immigration while Pepe and Carlos landscape their expensive, water-sucking lawns and Ylena scrubs their dishes and toilets. Legal? Gee they said they were… They wear the name of their mega-churches around like the greek letters they wore in college, turning their nose up at those who are different, and say they’re followers of Christ. They drop a tithe in the plate to build a new rec hall their own families will use to further their children’s extensive sports careers, but holler with indignant outrage at the very mention of the state managing a program to feed the “trailer trash” children of a family that lost a parent through no fault of the children. They stand proudly with the President and the Troops, but when their own children graduate from high school and can’t ride the Hope to UGA, they pony up the big bucks for out of state tuition, because THEIR up and coming socialite spawn can’t be bothered to risk their necks when there are plenty of blue-collar types to do it. They bob their head in unison to the “pro-life” message, but lose no sleep at all over bombing little brown children in an country that didn’t invade us. As anyone in Roswell can tell you: SOME PEOPLE MATTER. SOME PEOPLE DON’T. (Unless it’s the meet & greet moment on Sunday morning in the Sanctuary, then they pretend for a moment or two.)
Yes, I am your neighbor. I see you. I know you. Have a blessed day.
By TWilliams
October 22, 2008 11:11 PM | Link to this
Wow. Have you people watched the actual footage or are you just going off of what McPalin is saying about how Obama’s interaction went w/ Joe?! He thoroughly explains his plan, and how small businesses are the backbone of the economy and how they will even be better off under his economic plan! And please believe that McCain would face the same issues in the first six months that Barack will. Joe Lieberman said the same thing, historically, American presidents are tested at that point. It doesn’t matter who it is. If it helps you sleep better to think that McCain isn’t gonna fall under that, go for it but don’t use that as something Barack Obama specific. I’m glad that Joe the Plumber asked the question and I’m satisfied with Barack’s answer. Watch the footage yourselves, don’t be sheep. Let the group-mind go. And a socialist is against capitalism flat out. Barack Obama is not, ergo, Barack Obama is not a socialist.
By Freetobe99
October 23, 2008 12:19 AM | Link to this
To true Independents (everyone else please disregard): in two weeks you’re about to lose your independence! If you don’t agree with the Obama Agenda, you will be shut up or shut down. Get the facts, not the propaganda. McCain is no Reagan, but he’ll keep this country safe, crack down on Wall St corruption and keep YOU as the owner of your own destiny! And Obama is no Kennedy: he will finish the job Bush started and bankrupt this country for good! Just look at his campaign spending vs. McCain’s - when he’s president the money will Really flow out of your wallet! If you work to make a living, don’t believe for a moment you’ll pay less taxes if you make less than $250,000 (incidentally, that arbitrary amount could be lowered to, say, $150,000, if Congress decides they need more money…). Follow this: tax a million Joe the Plumber’s, they close shop and go on to work for someone else or collect welfare, fire some workers, who then go on to the unemployment line, etc., etc. Who pays for all the additional welfare? YOU DO!!
By Will Jones
October 23, 2008 2:11 AM | Link to this
You think an erratic nutcase like McCain’s going “to keep us safe?”
From naming Hitler-in-Drag, Caribou Barbi, the abuser of high office, and manifestly cursed, as his runningmate, to doublemindedly cancelling the long-scheduled debate appearance to “take charge” of the welfare fascist bailout in Washington, to showing up in St. Louis a perfect blinking idiot, you think him worthy of the presidency?
Tell us you never voted for the homosexual draft-dodger pal of his cheated into the White House through vote fraud and the Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court. …a testimony to your “judgment” and “credibility.”
“Joe the Plumber” doesn’t have a “shop.” He’s a lying con working as a journeyman/apprentice with racist, papist delusions of thwarting the American People’s Revolution against Wall Street fascists and Las Vegas moguls who think they can extend the scam they bought into with the CFR/Skull&Bones/Rockefeller/Bush crowd who kills our leaders, built Standard Oil on unredressed murder and arson, financed Hitler for the Holocaust, and sends us to die shedding innocent blood in false war to keep their slaves on the plantation, restart the heroin trade, steal oil or shore up the Saudi royal buggers.
We all know Bush and Cheney committed 9/11 and you think your con is going to stampede us into voting for a punk loser, proven to be without any integrity, married to the Mob, whose captors named “Songbird?”
No wonder you don’t bother putting a real name on your bilge.