THE EARMARK

We here at The Earmark are delighted to see Joe “The Plumber” The Plumber back in the news again.  It seems like years since we were reporting on:

• His B. Dalton-packing book tour.
• His ground-breaking research in the field of Early Republic scholarship.
• His hard-charging journalistic career.
• His narrow escape from Barack Obama’s Death Panel.
• And who could forget … his country music career.

Well, now he’s tossing us some more low-hanging fruit in the form of an angry diatribe against John McCain!  Yes, the same John McCain who plucked him from YouTube obscurity and made him the iconic embodiment of the typical American working man (who apparently makes over $250,000 a year).

Here’s Joe the Plumber on his benefactor:

John McCain is no public servant. … I don’t owe him shit.  He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.

We’re not 100% sure why Joe is so mad at McCain - perhaps at some campaign event, the candidate got upset and threatened to give him a “switchin’.”  But we do know the best way to get revenge: meet McCain on his own turf.

By running for Congress.

A new Gallup poll released last week offers both good news and bad news for President Obama.

The bad news?  Obama is statistically tied with a generic Republican in the 2012 presidential election.

The good news?  Many Republicans surveyed believe that “generic” candidate should be either John McCain or Scott Brown.

To rephase: That’s one candidate who’s fresh off a 2008 loss, would be 85 by the end of his second term, and might lose his Senate primary to Atilla the Hun.  And a second candidate who has spent more time buck naked in the pages of Cosmo than he’s spent on Capitol Hill.

Among GOP frontrunners, McCain and Brown trail only Mitt Romney, whose entire governing experience consists of a single term as governor, and Sarah Palin, who didn’t even make it that far.

And that’s your top four: Romney, Palin, McCain, Brown.  This leaves us with just one question:

WHAT, no Ronald Reagan?  Or at least Curt Schilling, Barry Goldwater or Joe the Plumber– all right-wing heroes.  And what about Rudy?  It’s only been nine years since 9/11.  Hell, even Joe Lieberman should be on this list.

As for professional GOP campaigners like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Robot-in-Chief Bobby Jindal, the message is clear: They’d best either lose an election or irrationally quit their jobs pronto if they plan to be flipping pancakes in New Hampshire come January 2012.

The wait is finally over.

For those of you rapt with suspense in the hours, minutes and seconds that have elapsed since Scott Brown’s swearing in, we have good news: The Senator’s memoir will be here faster than a disemboweled health care bill!  According to Politico…

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the party’s hottest elected official, has decided to write a book that combines memoir and inspiration.

Now some will say that after only a week on the job (half of which was canceled by snow), Brown couldn’t possibly have enough Senatorial insight to merit a memoir.  But think of it this way: Thanks to his 72 hours on Capitol Hill, Brown already has more legislative experience than literary heavyweights Elizabeth Edwards, Andrew Young, Jenny Sanford, and Joe the Plumber– combined!  How could he not write a book?

As of press time, Brown’s is the only memoir to emerge from last month’s Massachusetts special election for Senate.  We’re told former Brown challenger Martha Coakley ruled out writing a one of her own, citing her internal polls that say the public undoubtedly knows everything about her and wouldn’t even need to read it.

As for Brown’s own tome, no official preview has emerged.  Nevertheless, we’re pretty sure the memoir will include…

- Snow accumulation totals since Brown was sworn in.

- What it’s like to ride in an elevator with Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID).

- The words Wrentham, Massachusetts.

- Something about a pickup truck.

- Tell-all tales of Simon Cowell (via Brown’s daughter).

- Nude photos of the Senator.

And if those aren’t enticing enough, then just buy this book out of societal pressure.  Because although he has yet to vote on any legislation– or even understand any for that matter– Scott Brown has already made his permanent mark in Washington.

At least until the snow melts.

For those of you out there who are not glued to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page (and we can’t imagine what else you’re doing with your time), you may have missed her discovery that Barack Obama intends to kill her infant child via the “Death Panel” established by his health care legislation.

Here at The Earmark, we oppose the establishment of an all-powerful federal cabal that has complete authority to vote on life or death decisions for ordinary Americans.  We prefer that the free market have that role.

But considering that we hear the Death Panel’s members are already assembling (Paula Abdul has already cleared her schedule), we’d like to forewarn you about its soon-to-be victims.

Death Panel Victim	Why The Panel Will Vote for Death	Why The Panel Will Vote for Life
Trig Palin	US Weekly has already offered his mother $300,000 for the first photos of his euthanized corpse.	John McCain’s advisers are privately pushing him as an Attorney General candidate.
Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)	Severe dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Tourette’s Syndrome have destroyed Bunning’s quality of life and contributions to society.	You never know, the man may have one more perfect game left in him.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney	Romney is Obama’s most formidable GOP rival for 2012. If the Death Panel knocks him off, that title will fall to the nation’s second-most viable Republican: Tom Tancredo.	Since Romney is a synthetic non-human super-predator, any attempts to kill him will hopelessly backfire.
Plumbers making over $250,000 a year	Under Obama’s socialist wealth-redistribution plan, these plumbers must be taxed at the levels they were under Reagan until they perish.	Many of them are needed for their cutting-edge journalism and authorship of bestselling books.

Take yourself back to Election Day 2008 and ask yourself what, at the time, would seem more plausible?

a) June 30, 2009 would be the day Norm Coleman conceded his Senate race.

b) On this same date, Joe the Plumber would still be in the news.

Fortunately both are correct answers!  Well, we’ve already heard about Norm, but good ol’ Joe (whose watch stopped running 14 minutes and 59 seconds after he bought it) dropped another nugget of wisdom on our proverbial front lawn over the weekend.  It comes in the form of this remark about the Founding Fathers’ economic ideology…

Referring to the Constitution as “almost like the Bible,” Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: “They knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.”

The only problem here is that the Constitution was completed in 1787, while communist ideology did not formally exist until the 1848 publishing of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Translation from the original Plumber-ese: Not only were the Founding Fathers economic visionaries, they were able to time-travel!

Now in truth, said Founding Fathers were mostly against the economic system wherein a king gets everyone’s possessions, declares ill-conceived wars, and generally acts like a lunatic.  Yet it seems to us that this king-based system fits in nicely with Joe’s own political dispositions, as it very clearly does not involve “spreading the wealth around.”

Joe concluded his comments by praising the Founding Fathers for never betting on baseball, never spamming anyone online, and never abusing crystal meth.