joe the plumber

meet joe wurtzelbacher, or "joe the plumber" as he was referred to ad nauseum in last night's debate. this video clip is the actual conversation that occured with senator obama and joe earlier this week, when the senator's campaign went into the streets of toledo, ohio and had a chat about taxes and the plumbing business he'd like to buy.

after being mentioned 23 times (!!!) in last night's debate, mr. wurtzelbacher is all over the morning news today. my question is: why is this man easier to find and interview than gov. sarah palin?

let's look at mr. wurtzelbacher on the black hand side and talk about a few things that i'm fairly convinced no morning interviewer will mention.

first of all, he already owns four companies in cincinnati, ohio -- including construction, painting, and one for septic tank cleaning/repair. one of them employs less than 5 people and makes something in the neighborhood of $500K. that doesn't sound very middle class to me.

and another thing: if joe is going to buy a business in this economic climate, he'd better have excellent credit and quite a bit of capital on hand. he says that plumbing business has a net revenue of over $250K. doesn't that mean that he's supposed to come up with six times that much to make that point of purchase? yikes! that's $1.5 million bucks! that doesn't sound very middle class to me, either.

secondly, there is strong evidence that joe the plumber is a republican plant with ties to -- believe it or not! -- the keating five, another scandal linked to senator mccain that republicans don't want to mention.

how bizarre: could it be that mr. robert wurtzelbacher of cincinnati, ohio -- senior vice president of the lincoln savings and loan corporation's parent company and married to elizabeth keating, daughter of charles h. keating jr -- is indeed his father? stranger things have happened.

who knows? maybe wurtzelbacher is a really common name in ohio. (heh.)

thirdly -- this is the strange thing: when you really look at the details of each senator's tax plan, what senator obama is proposing -- tax the rich a lot, with less taxes for the middle class and the poor to pay -- would benefit joe the plumber more so than anything that mccain is putting on the table -- tax the poor a little, tax the rich a little, and watch the deficit blow up. unless, of course, joe the plumber is loaded. and judging by the numbers he'll need to crunch to buy that plumbing business, he probably is.

what's screwy is that mr. wurtzelbacher -- whose involvement may have swayed this election most securely in one direction or the other -- may not be registered to vote. that would have been okay before october 6 because for a week, ohio allowed voters to register and absentee vote on the same day. shockingly, republicans tried to block this. it didn't work.

the irony in all this is that the united association of journeymen and apprentices of the plumbing and pipe industry of the united states and canada endorsed senator obama in january, 2008. they are the first international union to endorse senator obama as its candidate. plumbers! who knew?

here's my favorite moment from the debate: senator obama looks straight into the camera and tells joe that he would have a ZERO fine because he intends to exempt small businesses. note senator mccain's reaction. this shouldn't have been the first time he or joe have heard this information, especially when it was discussed in the second debate.