Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Joe the Plumber Debate

I thought for a moment I'd missed something. I'd expected last night's third and final presidential debate to include at least one question about the second bank bailout plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just the day before. Silly me! The three guys at the table at Hofstra University last night had other things to discuss. They had to talk about Joe the Plumber!

He's this guy, you see, who Obama met on the campaign trail. They talked about his desire to buy the business he'd been working for. Joe the Plumber favors John McCain's tax proposal. Maybe that's why McCain brought him up several times. After the first time, when he mispronounced his name, he simply became Joe the Plumber, like he's a mob guy or something (PS- the plumbers union has endorsed Obama).

Anyhow, here's a short list of McCain gaffes last night, courtesy, in part, of ThinkProgress.org. Keep in mind this isn't all of them, just some of the more obvious, in no particular order.

1) He called the idea of equal pay for equal work for women "A trial lawyers' dream".

2) He slammed Obama for voting present on several bills before the Illinois legislature. He, of course, has been absent from the US Senate 64% of the time in the past year.

3) McCain mentioned more than once Sarah Palin's son's autism. Actually, the boy has Down Syndrome (my 11 year old picked up on that one before I did)

4) McCain accused Obama of voting against the confirmations of justices Roberts and Breyer to the Supreme Court. I guess one out of two isn't bad. Breyer was nominated by President Bill Clinton more than a decade before Obama made it to the Senate. Earth to McCain: You meant Alito
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5) McCain asserted the average health care plan costs Americans $5800 a year. The actual cost is $12,680. Obama got that one right.

6) McCain said he'd use a line item veto to cut spending. Sorry, it was declared unconstitutional a decade ago.

7) McCain said he'd condemned every out of bounds remark Made by Republicans about Obama. He must have forgotten the statement made by the chair of the Virginia GOP that compared Obama to bin Laden. That one he didn't condemn.

And so, the debate season is done. Except, of course, for the 24 hour news outlets, which will still be talking about it through at least Friday. Oh yeah, and the students and alumni of Hofstra University, where the debate was held.

They get to hold their heads up high.

2 comments:

sanda said...

You know better than we do, that you will never get anything passed an 11 year old. Brava to her. (But, I was once 11. Actually, twice:leap year bday.)

On the plumber:it's all over DailyKos how he's got a lot of not-exactly-truths in his "who he is" or is not. Reminds me of possibly one more Republican game.

I'm upset that there has been almost or little mention of McCain's regard for the right to my "ownership" of my plumbing:that is, my right to supervise my uterus. Every woman and every parent of a girl child should have a look/listen/read of what he said about women and abortion. (Obama was wonderful on that.) And explain the history of choice to any young woman who doesn't know about what used to be:age appropriate explanation, like sex ed.

Finally, McCain's nastiness was really unsettling and unseemly to me.

angelinjones said...

John McCain apparently loves workers now (except for those in Columbia who are being killed trying to form labor unions). He brought up the apocryphal demographic, "Joe the Plumber," and then accused Barack Obama of "class warfare." He was condescending to working people and to women. It's an outrage that after a Republican administration that McCain voted with 90 percent of the time has waged an unremitting class war against the working people in this country -- robbing their earnings, their retirement accounts, and their children's futures --, here's John McCain tonight denouncing the idea of "spreading the wealth around.
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jones
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