So That's What Happened to Joe

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Good news, everyone! Joe the Plumber has finally landed on his feet and got himself a real job.

You may remember Joe the Plumber, the lovable lunkhead from Toledo, Ohio, who made a big splash in the 2008 presidential race. Turns out, he wasn’t actually a plumber, but he got in candidate Obama’s face, and that was enough to make him an overnight darling among the rubes and the ignoramii, who saw a reflection of themselves in his bullet-headed belligerence and his imperviousness to actual facts.

For instance, despite multiple experts asserting that Obama’s tax proposals would either have no effect on or would actually benefit people like him, JtP continued to insist his taxes would go up under Obama.

John McCain mentioned Joe so many times and hosted him at so many campaign appearances that one began to wonder if he was going to ditch his running mate and put Joe on the ticket.

In the aftermath of the McCain debacle, Joe kicked around the wingnut grifter circuit for a while, picking up one high-profile gig after another. The online right-wing consortium Pajamas Media put Joe back in the headlines when they sent him as a war correspondent to cover the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which was at the time boiling over in Gaza.

While there, Joe contributed some deathless gems of war journalism, such as saying, on camera, “I have thousands of questions, but I can’t think of the right one.”

Perhaps the high point of his career came in 2011, when he ran as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives against Democrat Marcy Kaptur. The low point came shortly after, when Kaptur stomped him like a loan shark collecting from a bad debtor.

After that, we heard from Ol’ Joe only sporadically, like the time he appeared in support of Arizona State Senate candidate Lori Klein and suggested that the solution for illegal immigration was “put a damn fence on the border, go into Mexico and start shooting.”

It looked like he was headed for that limbo from which no man returns until and unless he surfaces on “Dancing With The Stars” (if he’s lucky) or as a commenter or one of those “World’s Dumbest” shows on TruTV (if he’s not).

Then, from this week’s Toledo Blade newspaper, came the happy news that Joe had found employment — with Chrysler. He’d even joined the United Auto Workers union.

Wait, what? Joe the Not-Really-a-Plumber, that tireless crusader against Barack Obama and his “socialist” policies, the man who told us in no uncertain terms that “our Founding Fathers knew that socialism doesn’t work” (think about that one for a moment) is working for the company that was bailed out by the government, a move widely denounced as “socialism” by the right?

The man who appeared at an anti-union rally in Wisconsin in 2011 shouting, “Unions don’t deserve anything, you don’t deserve anything, you work for it yourself!” is now carrying a union card?

Once again, we have received incontrovertible proof, as science fiction writer Spider Robinson once said, that God is an iron. (“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”)

I trust I’m not the only one chuckling at the fact that, as economist Sean McAlinden of the Center for Automotive Research told The Washington Post, “[Joe] wouldn’t have gotten a job in Toledo if Chrysler hadn’t been bailed out. … The unemployment rate in Toledo would have been at 15 percent.”

But fear not. Joe still holds fast to the only principle the Republican Party has left, summed up in the acronym IOKIYAR (“It’s OK If You’re A Republican”). Asked about his union membership after his vehemently anti-union stance, Joe explained himself by saying he doesn’t have a problem with private unions, like the one he’s in.

“Private unions, such as the UAW,” he wrote on his Facebook page, “is [sic] a choice between employees and employers. If that is what they want, then who am I to say you can’t have it?”

Unions for me and not for thee. Directly benefiting from government intervention in the economy while railing against it. Yep, he’s still a Republican, all right.

Government intervention can work. It can save jobs. Unions help workers. Joe and his ilk may never admit it, but they sure take advantage of it whenever they can.

Terrenoire Explains It All

The AIG Mess Made Comprehensible, If Somewhat Profane, courtesy of my good friend, David Terrenoire.

Maybe Somebody Can Answer This Question For Me (UPDATED)

Okay. I'm pissed off about AIG executives getting big bonuses after the bailout, too.

But I'm hearing things that suggest that at least some of these bonuses were already locked in contractually before the bailout was even requested. In other words, if AIG chose not to honor those contracts by paying bonuses already agreed on, they'd get sued--and lose.

Does anyone know if that's the case?

If so, then obviously, considering the performance of these executives, the contracts were bad bargains. Putting into an employment contract, 'you get a bonus, no matter what,' is, no doubt, a bad deal. But "we made a bad deal" has never been an defense for simply not paying.

But if we demand as a cost of the bailout that the company spend attorney fees defending a contract claim that AIG'S going to lose and end up paying anyway (with interest), doesn't that seem like a worse deal?

Now, demanding as a cost of the bailout that these idiots get shitcanned, given their agreed-on bonuses and escorted off the property by security with the contents of their desk drawers in a little box...THAT I could get behind without reservation. Demanding as a condition of the bailout that all future compensation be tied to actual performance benchmarks, definitely.

But the Feds coming in and saying "previous contracts are null and void...." Hmmm. Don't know if we want to go there.

UPDATE: an interesting proposal, via BoingBoing:

Congress, as usual, is merely whining. Here's what it might do: Enact legislation that imposes a 100 percent income tax on bonuses or whatever the financial wizards want to call them at the companies receiving our tax dollars for their, and the economy's, survival.

2009: The Year in Preview

Latest Newspaper Column:

I think we can all agree that this has been a year that won't look any better in retrospect than it did the first go-round. So, once again, we bring you 2009: the Year in PREview:

JANUARY: President Barack Obama is sworn in with his hand on the same Bible Lincoln used at his first inauguration. He has a Christian, anti-gay-rights minister give the invocation and a Christian minister giving the benediction. He invokes God multiple times during his speech. Right-wing bloggers and pundits insist this just proves that Obama is, in their words, "A Muslim. Or an agnostic. Or something. We're not really sure what, but we know it's something really bad.
Maybe he's a Goth. Yeah, that's it. A Goth."

FEBRUARY: Two weeks after the inauguration, Fox News airs the first of a 470-part series of reports (hosted by theoretically Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman) on "the Failed Obama Administration." The first one is entitled, "So Where's That Economic Turnaround, Mr. Smart Guy? Huh? HUH?" A motion at a Democratic Party meeting to censure Lieberman is voted down because, as Majority Leader Harry Reid says, "we're a big-tent party that encourages different viewpoints, even unfair and stupid ones."

MARCH: President Obama states that he does not intend to investigate or prosecute alleged war crimes by Bush administration officials who authorized the torture of detainees. "We believe," he states, "in looking forward, not looking back." O.J. Simpson immediately files an appeal of his armed robbery conviction under the new legal theory of "Hey, let's not dwell on the past."

APRIL: Hollywood is shocked when insanely maternal actress Angelina Jolie and husband Brad Pitt accidentally adopt a Japanese Little League team while passing through the Los Angeles Airport.

MAY: The Obama family, fully settled into the White House, adopts a dog, a male sheepdog they call Rags. Hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters declare the choice of a male dog "a slap in the face to hard-working females everywhere and proof of Obama's sexism and misogyny," while the Republican National Committee immediately files suit to force the disclosure of the dog's AKC papers. When the White House announces that Rags is not registered with the AKC, Fox News begins a nightly series of investigative reports on "Rags-Gate: What Is Obama Hiding?"

JUNE: The Big Three automakers return to Congress to ask for another $75 billion in loans. When asked what they'd done with the previous money allocated to them by President Bush, Chrysler's CEO Bob Nardelli looks at the ground sullenly, shuffles his feet and mutters, "I don't know. Stuff." GM CEO Rick Wagoner holds up a crayon drawing of an electric car he claims they're designing. Unfortunately, after being questioned more closely, Wagoner admits that car's electric engine has to be charged by a generator that runs on gasoline. "Clearly," Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker claims, "this is entirely the fault of the United Auto Workers." The automobile industry is saved at the 11th hour when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopt Nardelli, Wagoner, and the entire United Auto Workers.

JULY: A total eclipse of the sun causes right-wing bloggers and pundits to claim that the Obama administration is a "complete and dismal failure." "If we had only elected John McCain," theoretically Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman states while guest-hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, "the Moon Dragon would never have dared to eat the Sun."

AUGUST: Several banks and Wall Street investment firms return to Congress, also demanding additional bailout money. "It's those danged autoworkers, ya know?" one hedge fund manager shrugs.

SEPTEMBER: Hollywood paparazzi appear before Congress and request a $10 billion bailout, claiming that their business has been thrown into turmoil due to the lack of crazy antics by pop singer Britney Spears. "She hasn't shaved her head, dropped her kid, or attacked a car in months," dejected photog Guido Kleinmann tells a Senate subcommittee. "We're dyin' out here. Also, autoworkers." A compromise is reached when Congress agrees to fly drug-addled UK pop star Amy Winehouse to L.A.

OCTOBER: Theoretically Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman disrupts a presidential address to Congress by throwing a spear at the podium while President Obama is speaking. Senate Democrats vote down a measure to have Lieberman stripped of his committee chairmanships while in federal custody because, in the words of nominal Majority Leader Harry Reid, "Hey. What can I say? We're chumps."

NOVEMBER: President Obama, following the tradition of presidents before him, pardons the White House turkey. Congressional Republicans immediately demand an FBI investigations into whether the pardon was politically motivated, while Rush Limbaugh, through a mouthful of his special-recipe oyster and Oxycontin stuffing, lambastes Obama as a "phony" for eating Thanksgiving dinner anyway.

DECEMBER: Just in time for Christmas, Sarah Palin releases her political manifesto, "I Betcha You Think You're Pretty Doggone Smart, Doncha?" In what her literary agent (Joe Lieberman) calls a display of her "authorly maverickness," the book contains no actual words, just pictures, crude cartoons, and the occasional pop-up page.

Here's to the passing of a kidney stone of a year! May 2009 be better all around.

Bailout Plan Tanks Because House Republicans Get They Widdle Feewings Hurt (UPDATED)

ABC News:

The bickering over the vote began immediately with Republicans alleging that a speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blaming the crisis on the policies of the Bush administration prompted wavering Republicans to vote against the bill.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for this partisan speech by the speaker on the floor of the House," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader. He said Pelosi's speech "poisoned" efforts to get Republicans to back the bill.

Note well what' s being said here. According to their own leader, House Republicans whose support of this bill was necessary for its passage voted against it, not because it was bad for the country (which it very well may be) but because they got mad at something Nancy Pelosi said about them.

That's real leadership, right there. When are they going to get some damn grownups in charge?

UPDATE: Thank you Barney Frank:

"Well if that stopped people from voting, then shame on them," he said. "If people's feelings were hurt because of a speech and that led them to vote differently than what they thought the national interest (requires), then they really don't belong here. They're not tough enough."

UPDATE AGAIN-BARNEY RULEZ:


But think about this. Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country. That’s hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America, but not if anybody insulted them.

I’ll make an offer. Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.