I’m throwing the B.S. flag on that one. It is a public rape of Joe. A discussion of the particulars of any hypothetical business he planned to start would have been appropriate. Rooting into his personal history for dirt (in order to distract the people from Obama’s answer) was not. He’s a private citizen who deserves (well, deserved; past tense) to remain private. He did not seek out Obama, nor streak the stage at an Obama rally. Why this need to publicize any “warts” he might have? The fact is, there is no way I would have known anything negative about Joe if the press and people working on behalf of Obama hadn’t started digging into his background. It wasn’t the McCain campaign that started looking into Joe’s personal history. Regardless, that history is of no relevance whatsoever to Obama’s answer. Let’s keep the discussion about Obama’s tax policy. Why is a progressive tax more “fair” than a flat rate tax? Why does the top rate need to be increased? Why is 250k the “magic number” for a marginal increase? All of these are reasonable questions that keep the focus where it belongs–on the issues, and on the views of a particular candidate. The fact that one citizen happened to generate an unguarded answer from Obama does not make that citizen a public figure who should then be subject to the type of muckraking that is typically reserved for Republican-nominated Supreme Court candidates.

Joe asked a perfectly valid question of the candidate. I’ve never maintained otherwise. Obama did not duck the question nor belittle the questioner; he spent six minutes respectfully answering Joe and discussing the issue with him in a courteous and engaged manner. It’s easy to find a link to the original clip of the entire exchange. I suggest you watch it.

Joe essentially asked, “If I buy a small company doing $250,000 – $280,000 of business a year won’t my taxes go up?”

The short answer was, “You might pay a higher rate on the amount over $250,000 depending on the specifics of your particular company and situation.”

This is the place where Joe’s “travails and wrinkles” have some bearing on the topic at hand. What are those specifics that might have an impact on his taxes? (Is that figure gross or net? How many employees? Will he buy the business outright or need financing to become the owner?)

Soon after their exchange McCain’s campaign choose to use tiny snippets from it to make points against Obama’s proposals, which is a reasonable political tactic. Then McCain made “Joe the Plumber” his centerpiece in the final debate. This is what transformed the dynamic from it being about the question … the possible impact of Obama’s tax policies on a growing small business … and instead turned the focus of public interest to Joe as a unique individual with a distinct personality and story.

Joe’s personal failures have no bearing on the question but McCain made Joe himself the story. So some reporters, bloggers, etc. who have gone digging have discovered various other facts that might cast a not entirely flattering light on Joe. This is not, however, a “public rape of Joe” nor is it some sign that Lenin has been reincarnated as a U.S. Senator. These are just hyperbolic and absurd accusations to make your point. And just what is that point?

You still don’t answer the question: Why does Joe’s travails and wrinkles invalidate the question he posed to Obama?

Instead of being a snarky a**hole, and changing the subject, put up or shut up. HOW DO THE DETAILS OF JOE’S LIFE BEAR ANY RELEVANCE TO THE VALIDITY OF JOE’S QUESTION TO OBAMA?

So, say “Yes, Joe’s personal failures invalidate his questions because……….

or, “No, Joe’s personal failures do not invalidate his questions because…….

There. I’ve structured the logic for you. Use the template and commit to a position, or get thee hence to somewhere else and stop wasting our time.

Sorry about final proofing before hitting the “submit” button.

So, how does one summarize this chain of events in a pithy sound bite? It becomes the “Obama campaign’s and the NYT’s public rape of Joe.” … by someone who can’t be bothered to read anything they don’t already agree with. You must be proud of your audience Neo. Yep, everyone here is more than ready for Oxford style debating on the level of Bill Buckley.

I stopped reading half way into this opening paragraph. My scan of the rest of it confirms my suspicion that it’s an Obamabot who has not even dared to go near the crux of the topic: the Obama campaign’s and the NYT’s public rape of Joe.

Lenin was right about these people. You do and say whatever it takes to advance the revolution.

It is telling that Neo uses a FOX clip in which a tiny fragment of Obama’s exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher [aka Joe the Plumber] is cycled over and over, along with a similarly repeated loop taken from a post debate stump speech in which Obama makes a jab at McCain’s obsessive invocation of Joe the Plumber during that debate. And, to complete the recipe, FOX’s editors add a shot of a poster in the Social Realism meets Andy Warhol style with Obama’s face above the label “SNOB’ … just in case anyone missed the point.

If Neo were actually interested in substance over spin she would have linked or embedded the full clip of the nearly six minute exchange between Obama and Wurzelbacher. In that clip Obama honestly engages “Joe the Plumber” in a discussion about his tax plan. The candidate is respectful and engages in a give and take conversation explaining his tax plan and discussing whether it might or might not have an adverse effect on Joe specifically.

The line seized upon by the McCain campaign was when Obama said, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” In context this was clearly about why he believes that some increase in the taxes on the top 5% can be justified to enable tax breaks for middle and working class citizens. It’s been spun to such a fare-thee-well you would think Obama was going to start collectivizing every American’s bank account as his first Presidential decree.

Now, if Neo wants to make the case for why trickle down economics has worked so well since Ronald Reagan won the primary debate with G.H.W. Bush (back in the day when it was also known as “Voodoo” economics), fine, make your case. Of course, the “trickle down” tax policies under all administrations from Reagan through Bush 43 have resulted in a dramatic redistribution of wealth from the lower and middle classes UPWARD with little to no measurable “trickle down” occurring, but why let facts stand in the way of a good partisan rhetorical point? Redistribution of wealth through tax policies that result in an ever-richer elite at the expense of the rest of us is now supposed to be the American Way? And any suggestion that it is not fair is supposed to be what, Communism? Let’s try to bring a little reality back into the debate, shall we?

If Neo simply wants to portray Obama as “sneering and condescending” it says a lot that she needs a partisan hatchet job from the skilled editors at FOX to do so, since the full clip of Obama and Joe the Plumber won’t serve that purpose. In fact, if one were to assemble a reasonably impartial audience to view all of the debates and ask them to pull clips in which a candidate appears to be “sneering and condescending” I dare suggest that McCain and Palin would rack up many more minutes than Obama and Biden … from the refused handshake to dismissively calling his opponent “that one” … there are plenty of sneers and condescension to be found in this campaign from the Pubs.

Maybe Neo could try to spin it that because Obama refused to take the bait, especially in the third debate, and fly off the handle after repeated jibes from McCain that this unflappable dignity proves Obama is “besotted with his own coolness”. It’s a real stretch, but in this echo chamber environment I’m sure it would be an easy pitch.

So, let’s see, do we want a guy in the White House who is cool under pressure and sticks to making their points without getting into a tit for tat volley of jabs and counter-jabs over every lobbed accusation or one who keeps beating a dead horse long after everyone else has tired of the exercise? You make your choice, I’ll make mine.

though i can understand completely where your coming from, and your right as to their spines, dont be too harsh. (got that odd quality that maslow talked about and used this incredibly long word -chapter 11 and 12 i think in his book on motivation)

the same harshness is why the left deals so poorly with the losers. they cant imagine that this situaiton in them can be changed. that its fixed. (evne though their system has methods for unfixing, moving, and refreezing at will, they dont make the leap).

they will learn, but the hard way… even now naomi wolf is going off her deep end rocker… she is in the situation where she has discovered that they are making something wrong. got religion. but still thinks that the threat comes from the right… so she is half more astute than the other blind ones.

but she is going teeter totter as she hasnt figured out that if your going to slowly move from right (individualism, liberty, freedom), to the left (collectivism, control, manipulated), then your going to have to pass through a hybrid of the two since they exist on a spectrum.

she thinks that the spying protocols of bush come from the ideology of the right… they dont, its the left… and so she doesnt realize that it was her, and her other friends (as stated by them in terms that cant be argued with – like we endorse and wnat communism), had moved us from liberty and individual freedom with cultural marxism, into the area of over fascism (rather than just soem economic control) leading to socialist collectivism by whatever name you want to call it.

she and they dont realize that they have been played with the way a child at a pin the tail on the donkey party has been. they are ona path with us to liberty and preservation.. then someone confuses them, and spins them around… they are now facing the wrong way, but feel its going to bring them to where they were going before they were turned around.

the more they go, the more the few others not spun around tell them, your going the wrong way… your going back into the tyranny that was the normal state of man in the past… and htey get more an dmore militant trying to get the others to go the way they are..

without a moral compass, they dont know that they are walking backwards and regressing to an earlier more brutal time full of more misery precisely because they let themselves get soft, and didnt choose carefully without emotion who to listen to, they chose to choose the listener by the message, not by their ability to be right empirically.

they are like children… and not to realize this and have a love for them, is to then look down on them and be wiling to imprision them.

its the differrence in the core of the politics, its the difference in how the two systems, judeo christian, and athiest look at their stewardship. its the same as they see their own families… (athiests are willing to have someone else take care of them as a group, while judeo christians want a traditional family in where the parents are a buffer against the false teachings of the agenda’d)

i see that those who are more capable have a charge of stewardship, and care to the others as if they are family. however, a healthy family dont tame money from the good kids and give it to the drunkards….

someone taught them poorly by design… and someone or some set of circumstances will teach them in a way in which they have no choice as to which message appeals to them. which is really the gist of our points.

that we fear we will suffer with them. that they are going to take us on a joy ride from hell just so that they can learn the hard lesson. that our lives are not long enough for us to enjoy the luxury of this mistake and then get on track. our lives are not strong enough to withstand the deadly end that this leads to.

C’est la vie… has it really been any other way?

there was never any promise that it wouldnt always be that way… at least we got one generation maybe two that never experienced lifes norms, the real reasons why we are the way we are.

we would never be here fred and able to discuss this on the computer if our natures werent what they are. So for all its worth, we never really had the promise of a tomorrow coming faster than otherwise. so they arent cheating us out of that future since it never is.

this has to happen this way, because this is how people are, and this is who we let act, and how we want it to be a nicer place as individuals.

to have that, we have to accept its vulnerability.

just as to have love, we have to accept that we become vulnerable to the other in a way that no one else in our adult lives becomes.

so dont get to upset.. its not good for your health, and i wouldnt want you unhealthy AND crapped out on this.

for the most part, the most conservative people do quite well in all this. yes its rough, but you have the tools to live in both times. they dont, they seem not to be able to live in either time, and arent satisfied with it staying in the state its in.

you can live with little and the closeness of your friends and family… conservatives who love liberty eventually outbreed the others… and it does its thing again.

ultimately on a personal level you will probably do all right… and if it goes bad, still go better into that goodnight than others will… but ultimately, your quality of life and what it turns out to be is going to be what it is, not what you planned, wanted, desired, dreamed, worked for, or any other reason that we feel may justify us feeling cheated for not getting what we thing we deserve.

we got life… compared to just the abortions in the past 100 years, we been pretty lucky. we were born in the US.. compared to most, we have had the sweetest life ably to grouse that its not sweet enough living better than kings not 200 years back.

we have it great. greater than any other living thing that we have contact with has ever lived other than some slightly luckier humans than us (who seem to be more miserable. soros doesnt seem like a very kind or nice person)

take heart… the opera aint over till the fat lady sings

historically speaking they are frustrated since we have dogdged the bullets each time quite interestingly. and the nation instigating most of this wont last the century.

right now the system is fracturing and will reform, and will do so stronger than before…even if obama is in office. the best he and his lackies can actually do is delay things. even if they bombed us to the stone age. we would find parts quite quickly as populations rose, and we would figure out old techn and catch up quite quickly.

dark ages serve the dynasties of the feudal, but they are swept away by the masses they imprision over the long haul. in case nobody noticed, their breeding programs fail as the new socialist woman tends to abort more than be willing to live as nature intended (on some level).

globalism will be fractured by space travel. so its a waste of their time..

we will do ok fred… if we live…
and if we dont, it wont matter to us anyway..

by the way fred…
great writing!!!!!!
its why i come here. there seems to be enough of it here that its has that critical mass that squeezes out inanity quite quickly. i notice that if a place becomes populist enough, you end up not having this. a certain critical mass of antoher type of person (i guess), will build and they will then link up and complain upon the fulcrums of more cogent and thoughtful discourse. punctuation, adherence to sound bites, conformity to a certain format they dictate, etc…

So its really nice to come to a place where there is real discussion. who gives a rat’s butt as to the harmony of false consensus? the discourse of such conversation os ours tends to lead to the disovery of things we wnould never get to otherwise.

thanks Neo!!!

As a former student of Philosophy at Loyola of Chicago grad school (and it was my minor at UNH as an undergrad), I do understand that logic proceeds from the premise. If the premise is an error, then you build a house of cards on it. I am also a huge believer in the role of the Socratic dialog. A person who cannot peel himself like an onion – going backwards to the core of himself and what he thinks and believes – is useless. Worse than useless.

But today’s rank and file collectivists who are told by their teachers that what they are learning is “progressivism” are idiots. They know not the true provenance of their ideas and display a dearth of curiosity about those. And they are not encouraged to do so, which is par for the course in our post-modernist milieu.

These are the knaves who consent to and aid and abet the kind of rape done to Joe the Plumber. Yes, they believe that they are doing a good thing, but what is the true value of their conviction when properly adjudicated for its epistemological worth?

Bah!! Pathetic and spineless creatures who no doubt would need a political officer’s pistol or machine gun at their backs in a real fight.