Average GOP Joes: Joe the Plumber & Joe the Scarborough Reminds Us of How Republicans Are Different from You and Me

by Damozel |  Yeah.  Send in the clowns.  There ought to be clowns!...Whoops, er...don't worry.  They're here:

First, Joe Scarborough, maintaining for over 5 minutes---despite the great weight of expert evidence --- that torture works, because it must work, because Bush says so and because he, meaning Joe S, "knows it for a fact."  Furthermore, waterboarding and stress positions aren't torture.  Ali Frick at Think Progress comments:

In fact, the interrogator who successfully brought down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — and who has written and spoken publicly about how torture doesn’t work — told Laura Ingraham last month he broke one insurgent after he gave him a copy of Harry Potter. 
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At FDL, Jane Hamsher sets out the evidence in rebuttal.

Next, Joe the Plumber, newly minted war correspondent, arguing that the media should be banned from reporting on the war.

‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher told a group of journalists covering the conflict in Israel and Gaza that he didn’t think the media should be allowed to report on war.

“I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” Wurzelbacher said. “You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘well, look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

And he treats us to his own stellar brand of non-atrocity-focused war reportage:

In his first day as a reporter, Wurzelbacher described the hardships of daily life in the southern Israeli town of Sderot.

“I’m sure they’re taking quick showers, I know I would,” Wurzelbacher said. “So you can’t plan your day, you can’t take a picnic.“

Wurzelbacher said he thought Israel should have attacked Gaza sooner. He told a group of reporters that he was a “peace-loving man,” but that "when someone hits me, I'm going to unload on the boy.”...

He got a first-hand taste of reality in Sderot, when his group heard sirens warning of a rocket attack. With cameras rolling, Wurzelbacher and his group ran into a shelter.

“I’m in the bunker, I’m sitting there angry, outright furious, that I’m letting this terrorist dictate what I’m going to do because they’re firing missiles,” Wurzelbacher said. “It was fear at first, then outright anger, and then me wanting some kind of retribution. I’m not a person that runs from things, but when it’s a missile, you run.” (CNN)

Heh.  See Joe run....Or as TBogg puts it:

In a desperate attempt to change the course of a war gone horribly awfully really not very good, a crack team of Middle Eastern terrorists attempt to assassinate the one man who stands between them and their dream of a Palestinian homeland: Joe the Plumber.

So, you see, it's kind of like Valkyrie except, instead of Nazi generals trying to kill Adolph Hitler, it's a couple of refugees randomly firing a non-explosive rocket into a town that an American nitwit happens to be visiting.

Brad at Sadly, No! remarks:

I had hoped — honestly, I had really hoped — that completely losing their grip on power might have pushed our conservative countrymen...not to embrace stupidity so forthrightly. Being a pro-democracy kind of guy, I would like to see some kind of competing ideology for liberalism in this country that rises above the intelligence of your average Ford Truck commercial.

Bill Roggio at the conservative Weekly Standard doesn't disagree.

After a few days of watching Joe fumble through interviews and issue his awkward opinions, it’s clear the guy is in over his head....The real irony here is that PJTV, a 21st Century, Internet-based news organization is sending a reporter--who doesn't want reporters to report on war--to report on a war. And apparently Joe would love to return to the days when the news was influenced by the government and seen at the theater.

Blue Texan at FDL muses, "[I]t's not often you see stupid on quite this magnificent a scale."  

Memeorandum has more....

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