Worth the Fighting For, or The Sum of All Smears

The whole Joe the Plumber incident from Sunday, October 12 has taken on a life of its own. What happened on Sunday was that at a political rally in Ohio, a plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher questioned Senator Obama and expressed concern that Obama's proposed tax increases might adversely affect Wurzelbacher's plans to some day own his own business. Obama's response was quite revealing:

"My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

However, on Thursday, after Joe the Plumber's name had been brought up multiple times during Wednesday night's debate, Obama said the following at a campaign rally (h/t Ace of Spades):



May this whole matter cost Obama the election? Perhaps.

And predictably, the left has started to go after Joe the Plumber, finding out that he doesn't have his license and suggesting (falsely) that he may be related to Charles Keating.

The lesson here is simple: if you dare question The One, the left (and their mainstream media sympathizers) will come after you. But if you are an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, they will treat you with kid gloves.

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I'm off to North Padre Island for the weekend and am looking forward to enjoying some respite from the daily grind of work and the insanity of the presidential campaign. See you all on Monday.

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Update:

I just have to add this extra commentary. In asking whether any of the people in his audience know any plumbers who make $250,000 a year, Obama is displaying his fundamental lack of knowledge when it comes to the whole matter of private enterprise, in addition to misquoting what Wurzelbacher said to him.

Wurzelbacher never said that he was making or would make that much money per year personally, but that the business he was considering buying would. If a business is bringing in $250,000 a year, that is not what the owner is taking home at the end of the day. Expenses have to be paid in the form of rent (or mortgage) for the site where the business is located, employees have to be paid, and a variety of other daily operating costs must be accounted for. Whatever the owner brings home after all of that is squared away is far less.

And as for knowing (or knowing of) plumbers whose businesses make that much money, there was just such a person who lived within walking distance of the upper middle-class home I grew up in down in Laredo, Texas. This neighbor of mine wasn't "rich," but he ran a successful business that was still in operation some twenty years after my family first moved into the neighborhood, and I'll bet his plumbing business was likely bringing in more than $250,000 per year by then.

Had Obama spent any significant part of his life outside the left-elite circles he has lived in, he would have acquired this simple bit of knowledge about how businesses operate. Talk about being out of touch with mainstream America.

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Also, Michelle Malkin has this excellent account of the personal assaults launched against Mr. Wurzelbacher by the unhinged left. First there was Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), then Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS), and now Joe the Plumber Derangement Syndrome (JTPDS). How absolutely vile and pathetic.

Now is the perfect time to assuage my anger by listening to some more Anne Murray: