Joe the Plumber's story struck me as unlikely when I heard it on Sunday. It reeked of fabrication. I suspect he made it up just to have grounds to challenge Obama on taxes and he thought it was a small enough white lie that it couldn't possibly come back to bite him. I think it will today.
Joe the Plumber's story struck me as unlikely when I heard it on Sunday. It reeked of fabrication. I suspect he made it up just to have grounds to challenge Obama on taxes and he thought it was a small enough white lie that it couldn't possibly come back to bite him.
I think it will today.
Here are some notable quotes from CNN.com video of him talking to a local CBS affiliate:
Joe the Plumber on CNN.com
"My mind's been made up for a long time, to be honest with you."
"McCain...was a real American hero...a pretty solid individual..."
"I want to see this country remain a democracy and not a socialist society"
Could he be any more obviously partisan? Why are the media trying to paint him as an independent or undecided?
A no-brainer Google search for "Al Newell Plumbing Ohio" led me to a Manta company profile for A. W. Newell Plumbing company in Toledo, Ohio.
Est. Annual Sales: $100,000.
Est. Employees: 2 (Presumably Al Newell and Joe the Plumber.)
Note: I don't know what's up with that site. If you go from here, it locks the Est. Annual Sales value. If you go there from the Google search results page, no data is locked.
Is this the company that Joe the Plumber told Obama he was going to buy that makes "250, 270-80 thousand dollars a year"? It would seem so unless there are several Al Newell Plumbing companies in Toledo, Ohio. It'd be tough to argue that $100,000 annual sales would result in a net revenue of "250, 270-80 thousand dollars a year".
Conclusion? Joe the Plumber lied to try and corner Obama on taxes. In the CBS affiliate interview, he sought "to set the record straight" about whether Obama's tax plan would raise his taxes. I guess he felt guilty about his little white lie.
So now McCain's problem is that his whole Joe the Plumber campaign is based on a fabrication and the truth is once again on Obama's side.