Joe the plumber is a ringer brought in by and for the McCain campaign. He's right out of central casting! A McCain product placement at a Obama event just in time for McCain to spin it at the debate. Ah, hackneyed political melodrama at it's most banal. "Joe the plumber" talking points were being unleashed like noxious gases before the debate was even over. Talk about telegraphing your next punch, how many times did McCain chant his name, 23...24?
The ’plumber’ symbol is very much like Palin’s, ‘joe six pack’, weak attempts to fool working class average joe Americans into thinking that the Republicans aren’t Republicans at all but are actually populists.
That’s why they brought in Sarah Palin. Basic, simple Sarah fresh out of the Alaskan wilderness toting her gun and evangelical credentials. Guns, god, and wink, wink, nudge, nudge!! Then they turned her loose to be an attack dog, which is normal for a VP candidate. However she wasn’t trained at all. No time! She had to hit the road running and snapping, the lipstick-ed pit bull!
You got to figure the Republican elite never expected to win this go round any how. Not after 7 years of ‘W’! They also knew the economy was going to tank. It allowed their Hail Mary play for their standard destroy government at all costs mania. I think they figured that any Republican candidate was going to be a sacrifice play. They had to pick the one with the least to lose.
Let’s see, who should it be?! The maverick(?). The war hero, the one who was too old to make the next go round. Think back in early primary season, McCain actually lost way back then. Then amazingly the old warrior rises from the battleground and now trudges on to his very own Alamo. Then pick a power mad newbie of no real consequence to be his toady and send them both out looking for windmills!
Now, just days away from Election Day, they stand. The old warrior and the ruined novice, their backs in a corner and nothing to lose. It is a very frightening scenario! This whole campaign has been a powder keg from the very beginning. This whole campaign season, starting way back before the primaries, has been straight up crazy and not a good crazy either. Not a “god, this is so crazy it’s almost funny” kind of crazy but a “fearful, anything can happen kind of crazy“! The kind of crazy that makes you turn your head away in embarrassment and sometimes in disgust.
This race for the white house has laid waste to my already dim opinion of our two party cistern. I haven’t voted since the ’68 election. That’s neither an apology nor bravado. It’s just a fact. However, if there was ever a time we needed our democracy to work it is now! The United States of America is coming apart at the seams. Our standing in the world is dangerously low and we are right on the cusp of losing the rest of our freedoms. I fear our time is running out.
Of course Joe the plumber was a plant. Just one of a number of very desperate actions taken by a dangerous faction of political people who are so beyond desperation they are bordering on anxious restless despondency. Some were talking, SCORCHED EARTH! (Praise be Armageddon!). Some said let’s plant a ringer at a Obama Rally. Luckily, they went for the ringer (a lot less to clean up).
However, we don’t have time for anymore melodrama. In these fragile economic times millions of dollars are being spent to throw lies and worse against the wall to see which will stick. I know that we’re primates, but this is beyond ridiculous.
Our once great nation is surely becoming a third world country. Our infrastructure is in shambles and our culture has devolved. We need to decide as a nation, just what is America’s direction in this new millennium. In order to do that we first need to settle this 50/50 split that seems to render any hope for decisiveness moot. It has become a vicious circle. I do know that even though we seem to be in the toilet. We certainly don’t need any more plumbers.
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