Apologies to Matt for stealing his format.
Right now, I'm waiting for the "True Joe the Plumber Facts" Internet meme to start.
- Joe the Plumber has more electoral votes than the entire Mountain time zone.
- Candidates don't campaign in Ohio. They beg Joe the Plumber for mercy.
- Joe the Plumber is the one man, and he has the one vote.
- Palm Beach County won't design its ballots without first talking to Joe the Plumber.
And so on. (Go look up the Chuck Norris Facts if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Update: A few more I dropped in the comments here...
- Joe the Plumber is, in fact, registered to vote… three hundred times. Legally.
- Joe the Plumber survives on a diet of pure PVC.
- Joe the Plumber writes your state’s voter lists.
- Joe the Plumber rebuilt New Orleans’ levee system with only a single pipe fitting.
And some from Matt in the comments:
- Joe the Plumber has had his taxes increased and decreased 837 times in this election.
- When Joe the Plumber visits his friend he calls it "Hanging w/ Chad".
- Joe the Plumber breaks up clogs with a real live snake.
And from Ben:
- Joe the Plumber's Law: Any presidential candidate who tries to look like he's blue collar when he's not, inevitably looks incredibly silly and deserves mockery....from Joe the Plumber.
- Joe the Plumber's Corollary: Godwin and Murphy are sissies. When they wanted to make laws, they first had to ask Joe the Plumber.
I think we might have enough for a website now. Anyone got a domain name? Basic HTML skills? This needs to be started, people.
Apparently you have to go south of the Rio Grande in order to be qualified to be president. Unless you're a hot chick.
No one will ever discuss the real reason why our education system is lagging - our ridiculous culture that brands anyone who is good at math or science as a social outcast, and that calls anyone who uses a four-syllable word an "elitist." The CNN talking heads were going on about how Obama sounded professorial - and apparently that's a bad thing. Don't we want a president who sounds smart and in command?
Either no one understands the idea of the oil market, or the candidates think we're too damn dumb to understand it. You can't choose the origin of your oil, idiots. Prices are set by global supply and global demand. Deal with it.
Sarah Palin has a kid with Down's syndrome; therefore, she is an expert on special-needs education. In other news, I just made spaghetti, therefore I am Mario Batali. Oh, and at one point McCain conflated Down's syndrome and autism. Real expertise there, hotshot.
I think the most intelligent portion of all the debates was during the beginning of this last one, when the candidates discussed their plans to bail out homeowners who took out bad loans. McCain, as Matt pointed out, wants to help everyone with negative equity reset their mortgages so they don't owe more than their house's value. Obama countered, saying essentially that this plan comes dangerously close to rewarding banks for making those bad loans in the first place, and would end up being just a big old bank giveaway that wouldn't help anyone with their payments. This proposal is the only substantive thing coming out of the McCain campaign these days, and both candidates make good points. I lean towards agreement with Obama here - negative equity is a temporary phenomenon, after all, and by the time the loan is paid off the house will probably have a good deal of positive equity. If you want to stave off foreclosures, direct aid to struggling homeowners is a better way to go - though part of me thinks that if you made an investment and the value of that investment declines, that's not the government's problem.
Either way, no one addresses the cult of homeownership that's at the center of this whole boondoggle. But that's not a votegetter, I guess.
I got Bingo this time around. My prize: A yard sign for this guy.
I'm working on the rest of those election issue posts. I'll probably dump them all at once in a week or so.
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8 comments:
"...just a big old bank giveaway that wouldn't help anyone with their payments."
My quibble is this: how is renegotiating a mortgage based on a lower house price not going to help people with their payments?
Generally, payments are lower for lower-priced homes. Not that I'm particularly fond of McCain's plan, but saying it won't help anyone but banks is ludicrous.
Negative equity is an issue, and I think it's more substantial than you suggest here (though, part of this is certainly because I come from a state that soared much higher and now has to crash much harder). The big issue is not, for me, that people who bought houses may lose money over more than a decade - I rent, and lose money to it every month.
It's that people who are upside down on their house are more likely to simply let the bank foreclose than people who still have equity if they have trouble making their payments. "Why pay against my negative equity now when I can walk away, wait a few years, and buy again when my credit's clear?" In some markets, home prices were so out of whack with their fundamental drivers, that people might not get out from being upside down for a rather long time - owing $300,000 on a $150,000 house means you have a long way to go before you have any equity at all.
Prices need to fall for the housing market to right itself. McCain at least acknowledges that, and wants to use the bailout bonanza to accomplish that.
No worries on the format; I don't think you can steal something in the public domain that every blogger uses now and then.
I liked listening to Obama on education. I also really liked the "I'm not Bush" line. McCain should have been running with that the entire time, instead of attacking. This was a winnable election for McCain and his strategy is causing him to lose.
On the bailout/homeowner stuff - negative equity is hypothetically a temporary thing, but if you actually look closer, the "mortgage products" that were sold were basically designed to create negative equity and ensure that 1. More people fell into that trap and 2. People are in that situation a lot longer. So we're talking about a bad situation that was made even worse by plummetting home prices, prices that won't increase a substantial amount for some time from the looks of it.
As far as direct aid to homeowners goes, that's also designed to make sure these mortgages are paid, so the effect is the same as the government buying them and renegotiating the loans.
Joe the plumber has had his taxes increased and decreased 837 times in this election.
When Joe the plumber visits his friend he calls it "Hanging w/ Chad".
Joe the plumber breaks up clogs with a real live snake.
Joe the Plumber's Law: Any presidential candidate who tries to look like he's blue collar when he's not, inevitably looks incredibly silly and deserves mockery....from Joe the Plumber.
Joe the Plumber's Corrolary: Godwin and Murphy are sissies. When they wanted to make laws, they first had to ask Joe the Plumber.
When Joe the Plumber can't decide which candidate to support he calls it "straddling the plumber's crack".
I don't have a domain or anything, but I'm certainly going to put this up on my blog later too. Great idea.
I keep thinking of them here and there. Some are definitely better than others.
Joe the Plumber has had his circulatory system replaced with very fine copper pipes.
Joe the Plumber handles the occassional dry wall job when business is slow.
Joe the Plumber's ideal candidate would be John McDraino.
Joe the Plumber was registered to vote 80 times by ACORN.
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