It’s Joe Day!

Yet another post about Joe, only, in this case, it not about Joe Biden, but a growing throng of people who identify with Joe the Plumber and resent attacks on him from the mainstream media and the Obama campaign for daring to ask the Messiah a question that elicited a truthful answer:

The crowd laughed and cheered. But for them, Joe the Plumber is much more than a zinger in McCain’s stump speech. In recent days, the Joe the Plumber phenomenon has taken on a deeper meaning for McCain’s audiences, for two reasons. First, he is a symbol of their belief that Barack Obama is going to raise their taxes, regardless of what Obama says about hitting up only those taxpayers who make more than $250,000 a year. They know Wurzelbacher doesn’t make that much, and they know they don’t make that much. And they’re not suspicious because they believe that someday they will make $250,000, and thus face higher taxes. No, they just don’t believe Obama right now. If he’s elected, they say, he’ll eventually come looking for taxpayers who make well below a quarter-million dollars, and that will include them.

The second reason Joe the Plumber resonates with the crowds is what his experience says about the media. Everybody here seems acutely aware of the once-over Wurzelbacher received from the press after his chance encounter with Obama was reported, first on Fox News, and then mentioned by McCain at last week’s presidential debate. Wurzelbacher found himself splashed across newspapers and cable shows, many of which reported that he didn’t have a plumber’s license, that he wasn’t a member of the plumbers’ union, that he had a lien against him for $1,182 in state taxes, and that he failed to comprehend what many commentators apparently felt was the indisputable fact that Barack Obama would lower his taxes, not raise them. As the people here in Woodbridge saw it, Joe was a guy who asked Barack Obama an inconvenient question — and for his troubles suddenly found himself under investigation by the media.

In the audience Saturday, there were plenty of people who were mad about it. There was real anger at this rally, but it wasn’t, as some erroneous press reports from other McCain rallies have suggested, aimed at Obama. It was aimed at the press. And that’s where Tito Munoz came in.

Read the whole thing, especially the confrontation between Tito and a Caribbean-American woman who also identifies with Joe, and a reporter from The Nation. Their anger was clearly directed at the media and less so at Obama, but the media’s hounding of Joe may well have driven them off the fence and to McCain.

Can McCain harness this rising tide of anti-elite anger and concern about Obama’s redistributionist instincts, and ride it to the White House? I had my doubts when the "Joe story" first broke, but two weeks is an eternity in an election season.

Go, Tito!

(via Ace)

LINKS: Jennifer Rubin, Campaign Standard, Fausta.

 

Technorati tags: Tito Munoz, Joe the plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, Byron York, John McCain, anger, mainstream media, middleclass revolt

If you’re undecided, it’s because you’re racist

Don’t take my word for it. Just ask Joe Biden:

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports: As Election Day looms just over two weeks away, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Saturday that with Republicans firing "vicious" and "dangerous" attacks at Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voters are "having a difficult time" opting for the man who would become the nation’s first African American president.

"Undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African American president in the history of the United States of America," the Democratic vice-presidential nominee said at a San Francisco fundraiser Saturday evening. "So we need to respond. We need to respond at the moment, immediately, not wait, not hang around, not assume any of this won’t stick."

"You see these vicious attacks on Barack’s character," Biden told supporters. "I mean, this is dangerous stuff these guys are doing. This stuff is on the edge. It’s on the edge. You know, there’s some folks out there in the community nationwide that aren’t as stable as others. It’s a very small minority. But having these rallies where people are showing up saying, you know, the things they’re saying – I don’t even want to repeat them — it’s not a healthy thing."

In other words, you’re undecided because he’s … Black.

This isn’t a new line of attack for Democrats. Last March, Obama told an audience of billionaires in San Francisco that:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

In short, they’re knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing bigots who need to be patronized.

Need it explained more plainly? Here’s Representative John Murtha (D-PA):

Democratic Rep. John Murtha said Wednesday his home base of western Pennsylvania is racist and that could reduce Barack Obama’s victory margin in the state by 4 percentage points.

The 17-term Democratic congressman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a story posted Wednesday on its Web site: "There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area."

So, remember this: if you oppose Obama, it isn’t because you think he’s too inexperienced, too lacking in honesty, or too far to the Left in his policies. It’s because you aren’t ready for a African-American president.

You racist.

LINKS: Sister Toldjah.

 

Technorati tags: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John Murtha, racism, elitism, condescension, San Francisco

Biden says to vote for McCain

How else would you interpret this amazing statement:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right."

So, within six months of electing Barack Obama, a man with a scant two years’ experience in the Senate before he ran for president, we’re going to face an international crisis and possible war as our enemies test the rookie? Isn’t that an argument for putting the other guy in office? You know, the guy with real experience? The guy our enemies probably won’t want to "test?"

Oh, and what with this line?

"Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right."

Excuse me, Joe, but are you saying Obama’s decisions are going to be so out of whack with prior American policy that people (and other governments) are going to assume we’re wrong from the start?

And that’s a selling point? That’s a reason for electing your guy?

Maybe in Biden World. You know, the one in which the US and France kicked Hizbullah out of Lebanon? It’s just to the left of Bizarro World.

LINKS: Ed Morrissey, Sister Toldjah, Power Line, Ed Whelan, Fausta. Rich Horton wants to know what Joe has been smoking. Bill Kristol looks at the disturbing implications behind Biden’s odd remarks.

RELATED: The Republican Jewish Coalition has an effective ad out attack Obama’s naiveté in foreign affairs. Coming on the heels of Biden’s remarks, the timing couldn’t be better:

 

(via Ed Morrissey)

 

 

Technorati tags: Joe Biden, gaffes, Barack Obama, John McCain, foreign policy, crisis, experience

Just a guy in his neighborhood…

The Prophet Barack, when asked by George Stephanopoulos about his relationship with former (and proud) terrorist William Ayers, dismissed him as “just a guy in my neighborhood.” In other words, contact was incidental, trivial, unimportant. He hardly knew him.

Ayers was “just a guy” with whom Obama shared an office for three years.

And yet Obama never knew of Ayers’ past or his radical, anti-American views on education? The man who worked to have him hired to run the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, through which Obama then funneled over $1,000,000 to Ayers’ pet educational project? (And which happened to be run from the same address…)

Puh-lease.

Again, the problem isn’t that Barack Obama worked with an unrepentant ex-terrorist and (to this day) anti-American educator whose writings he admired, or that he directed millions toward this man’s projects to no discernable good for the children of Chicago (though either alone is bad enough), it’s that he has repeatedly lied about this relationship and, when caught in one lie, rapidly shifted to another lie.

Elections are about policies and character, and Obama’s serial evasions about his relationship with Bill Ayers speak volumes about his character and integrity.

And they render him unfit to be president.

LINKS: More at Gateway Pundit.

EDIT: Fixed some old, broken links, 9/26/2010 .

Technorati tags: Barack Obama, William Ayers, Mike Klonsky, 115 S. Sangamon, Small Schools Workshop, Chicago Annenberg Challenge, education