I hope this guy is ready for the investigation that is sure to follow:
A Toledo auto-parts factory worker is the star of a new TV ad by President Obama’s campaign focusing on what might be the President’s signature accomplishment as far as battleground Ohio is concerned — the 2009 auto industry bailout. The TV ad is one of two that start airing on Friday, joining a third that hit television screens in Ohio earlier in the week. All three hammer hard on the government-funded bailout for the auto industry that Mr. Obama supported and that his presumed Republican opponent Mitt Romney opposed.
Brian Slagle, who lives in West Toledo near Alexis and Telegraph roads, is shown getting up in the predawn hours and driving to an unidentified factory to work. Mr. Slagle could not be reached Wednesday for comment. A Facebook page with his name indicates that Mr. Slagle works for Johnson Controls in Springfield Township. The Milwaukee-based company makes automotive batteries.
While he drives on I-475, he gives Mr. Obama credit for having saved his job, the ad says. “The auto industry was crashing down. I was scared to death. I had a newborn baby, a wife, a house, and I got laid off. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do,” Mr. Slagle says, as images of him playing ball with his son, pouring a cup of coffee in an Ohio State Buckeyes mug, and driving in the rain flash across the screen.
A narrator says, “Under the President’s auto-rescue plan the industry restructured, saving over 1 million jobs.” The ad returns to Mr. Slagle who says, “Obama stuck his neck out for us, the auto industry. He wasn’t going to let it just die, and I’m driving in this morning because of that, because of him”.
Mr. Romney opposed a direct government bailout in 2008, saying the auto industry should have been allowed to face the judgment of the marketplace, with no “bailout check,” but with government guarantees to back up private financing. Democrats said there was no private financing to be found. On Monday, Mr. Romney went a step further and took credit for the auto-industry rebound, saying it was his idea that was accepted by President Obama to put the companies through managed bankruptcy.
I know I obsess on the state-by-state local nature of campaigns, but I really do think it matters. What we are hearing nationally is not necessarily what people are listening to. I also like this one because it’s a nice contrast with the spokesperson for the GOP, Joe the Fake Plumber:
In 2008, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher gave John McCain a face to put on his criticisms of Barack Obama’s policies. Now that Mr. Wurzelbacher has taken his own step into politics with his Republican challenge of Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the Arizona senator and former presidential candidate says he’s willing to return the favor.
“I am certainly glad when anybody wants to run to serve their country, and I’m sure if he asks for my help, I’m glad to do it,” Mr. McCain told The Blade on Monday. He was in Columbus stumping and raising money for Josh Mandel, Ohio’s treasurer and the GOP candidate taking on Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. Mr. McCain said he’s received no such call, but Mr. Wurzelbacher said he’ll take the senator up on his invitation. “John McCain is a veteran of politics,” he said. “I’d be a fool not to. Mama didn’t raise any fools.”
The premise behind Joe the Plumber was absolute nonsense. He asked Obama a question on taxes, and Obama answered the question respectfully and completely, although the question had nothing to do with “Joe” or his practical reality, but was instead the sort of silly “test” that political media and the McCain campaign were convinced Obama would fail. That Republicans seized on that as a HUGE WINNER shows how bankrupt they were even in 2008. “Joe” is still with us, 4 years after John McCain made him famous.
cervantes
We’ll soon know what kind of countertops Slagle has.
Kay
@cervantes:
Hopefully he knew what he was getting into.
rlrr
Joe the Plumber:
Not a plumber
Not named Joe
jwb
@Kay: I’m sure he knew what he was getting himself into and that the Obama team both vetted him and have given him some training. I don’t remember the Obama team ever messing up something like this.
balconesfault
@Kay: It is kind of scary, like standing in a cornfield holding a metal rod during a lightning storm. Being willing to be featured in that ad does take real courage, and I’m hoping the Dems did some excellent background research before they picked someone for the ad.
Ben Cisco
She raised at least one there, Skippy.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m sure that Malkin’s minions are even now mobilizing to make this guy’s life a living hell for daring to speak up on behalf of the ni*CLANG*.
Kay
@Ben Cisco:
He went to the White House “to try to ask Obama a question”, as a campaign stunt. Of course, he can’t just waltz in and ask Obama a question now, so I found the whole thing pathetic, like he was trying to relive past celebrity. John McCain should be ashamed of himself.
Egg Berry
And people wonder why more people don’t get involved in politics when howler monkeys like Malkin and Limbaugh, etc. will make life a living hell for anyone who speaks up. Props to this guy for standing up anyway.
General Stuck
Of all the bullshit memes the republicans have created, the one about letting the auto industry go through bankruptcy is one of the most pernicious pieces of garbage they spew out. It was the tea tard pure distilled right wing reactionary mentality in motion. Same with the banksters and AIG. It was the greed and avarice led by the republicans, that pumped into the national economic experience for 30 years that led to the financial collapse and auto industry collapse. The obsession with short term profiteering in lieu of responsible sustainable capitalism that brought it all down. And as a response, the wingnuts come up with mindless slogans of Obama soshulism while he and democrats were left to clean up the mess they made of things. And skip right past the fact that letting any of them go bankrupt in the face of cascading monetary fear, would have certainly caused catastrophe, because no one, except the government, would have loaned the auto companies, nor the financial industry, a single red cent necessary to pull off a chapter 11 restructuring. So liquidation was pretty much a certainty for all concerned, and with AIG going under as the backstop of insurance for the financial industry, the cascade would likely have enveloped the entire world economy.
It is good news the this bullshit is seen through on the local level, like with the guy in the thread post. Or we would be living in the total ignorance of the national meme bullshit factory of the msm and its accomplices.
dmsilev
Speaking of the auto bailout…
…another bit from Obama’s interview with ABC:
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
After the stunt of hugging a man who ordered the very techniques McCain suffered from in the Hanoi Hilton, John McCain demonstrated conclusively that he has no shame. Or that he’ll happily abandon it if his master, his relentless ambition, dictates it.
McCain may have been an honorable man once. He demonstrated conclusively that he is no longer. He’s an honorless cur.
Egg Berry
@dmsilev:
Wow, talk about sticking in the shiv! Well played, Mr. President.
amk
I don’t get it. Why should Slagle be investigated?
Kay
@amk:
Well, I’m not recommending it. I think there will be a rush to poke some sort of hole in his story. Not that it should matter, because Joe The Plumber was a wholly invented campaign narrative, but it may be hard personally for this man.
Sally Rakowski
Invetigation that is sure to follow??
It was Helen Jones-Kelley, the Director of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services who was forced to resign for ordering the use of state computers to search Joe Wurzelbacher’s records.
Because why, pray tell?
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
Slagle will be investigated by the vile minions of the right, to find something, anything to use against Obama.
handsmile
Kay:
[I posted the comment below at the end of the “Mitt Loses His Shit” thread; evidently while you were writing/posting this one.
Also, no apologies necessary for your “obsess[ion] on the state-by-state local nature of campaigns.” IIRC, that how’s people vote in this country.]
…If you have a moment I would be interested in your opinion on the prospects of Rob Portman being selected as Rmoney’s running mate.
To my mind his advantages are: swing state representation; service in both houses of Congress; positions in the Executive branch on both international and domestic economics; an apparently deferential manner (always important in service to an aristocrat.)
What am I missing/unaware of? (Actually that’s an enormous topic: I mean just on Rob Portman.) Your fine-grained knowledge of Ohio politics and politicking is always illuminating.
If you’ve already opined on this matter, sorry to have missed that thread. Could you give me an approximate date so I could find it?
Chyron HR
@Sally Rakowski:
Why are you asking us? It’s YOUR conspiracy theory, shouldn’t YOU do the research?
But since you asked so nicely, why don’t you start by investigating why Ohio’s state flag has an Obama logo on it? (This is what Republicans actually believe.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I can only hope this guy has a clue how closely the composition of his countertops will be examined – or at least reported, with or without examination. I suspect he’s been advised on that topic.
And the local state by state stuff is what’s critical. The MSM finds the national themes a better story, but actual elections happen on the ground in individual states. I’m glad you stay on it, kay. Thank you.
bk
@handsmile: Ummmmmm, Bush budget director?
Villago Delenda Est
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Moi aussi, Kay, and I don’t say it often enough.
Your energy, knowledge, and writing skills are a beacon in a dark media horrorscape.
Kay
@handsmile:
I answered you there :)
4tehlulz
Mitt Romney, bigger asshole than Bush?
Now give this prick nukes. Hilarity will ensue.
Villago Delenda Est
Seeing lots of ads, here and over at Powder Blue Satan, about “The Amazon Post”, hectoring me to “get the facts”.
It’s PR from Chevron, attempting to defend their inexcusable actions in Ecuador.
Kay
@Sally Rakowski:
For the same reason passport workers searched Obama and Hillary’s records in 2008. Which no one had a nervous breakdown about, although if it had been Sarah Palin, we would have a criminal investigation and a national conservative pundit OUTRAGE of historic proportions.
How’s that kid Palin went after doing? The one who used her moronic email password? Her self-pitying, wildly dramatic testimony was riveting, I heard. Jesus Christ. Talk about punching down.
Kay
@Sally Rakowski:
She was as incompetent at evading sunshine laws as she was at everything else.
dmsilev
@4tehlulz: Well, Romney has apologized. Sort of. Via TPM:
There should be a global ban on the phrase “if anybody was offended, I apologize”. An apology is for *your* actions, not for other people’s reactions.
RP
Don’t be silly. A shiv is subtle. That’s more like a sledgehammer to the face.
Cain
My brother works for Johnson Controls and tbat place he tells me are full of wingnuts. They were against the bailouts even though it would have effectively ended their jobs. I could never understand what drives these people. They are insane. It is like admitting something Obama has done good would be the end of the world.
My brother frequently gets harassed by wingnuts but he usually out argues them but they keep coming back for.more. :)
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Frank Bailey’s memoir of his years with Palin paints a picture of a woman whose primary motivation for high office seems to have been the pursuit of vendettas. Bailey notes there’s a reason why the people who volunteered to get her elected Mayor of Wasilla weren’t there to help her get elected governor…her incessant paranoia and mercurial manner of dealing with her supporters…as in tossing them in and out of her inner circle seemingly on a whim.
Loyalty to Sarah is a one way street.
And yes, Sarah seemed to spend much of her time in office in the pursuit of her vendettas, not in governing. Every perceived slight was a signal to start a vicious attack on anyone who dared to question or challenge her.
The woman is positively toxic.
Sally Rakowski
Relax, Kay.
Just asking why you’d lament the mere possibility of something happening- (the Toledo auto parts worker having his personal records hacked into) and then contrast him with Joe Wurzelbacher, while not mentioning that Joe Wurzelbacher’s personal records were used improperly by state employees.
It’s not a minor detail.
Steve
As an ex-pat Detroiter, I found most people outside of auto country had trouble processing exactly how many jobs actually rely on the auto companies. It’s not like everyone in Detroit works on an assembly line. But when you add up the jobs from the auto companies, the suppliers, the tool and die shops, the vendors, the restaurants where all those people eat and the stores where they shop, it’s a staggering number. The ripple effect would have been devastating.
At the time, I told people, “Look, oppose it if you like, but we’ll be down to 49 states if this doesn’t go through.” As Joe Biden might say, I meant it literally.
4tehlulz
@dmsilev: I’m almost certain Mitt is trying to tank the election:
...now I try to be amused
@cervantes:
I had thought the same thing would happen to “Julia” if she had been a real person.
Steve
@Kay: The kid who hacked Palin’s password did 6 months in federal prison and another 3 in a halfway house. Haven’t seen anything about him since he got out but I’m sure that criminal record is doing him wonders.
Kay
@Sally Rakowski:
I think you make poor comparisons. It seems to be your favorite thing, this is like THIS, but that’s the easiest and most surface argument to make, so I’m rarely impressed with it.
Joe the Plumber seems to love his new life as a full-time paid conservative grifter, so really he’s the big winner here. Kaptur will absolutely crush him in that race, but he can say he has a “job” for the next six months while living off donor contributions, so it’s all win for him.
dmsilev
@4tehlulz: We joke about the Romneytronic 3000 needing a firmware update, but things like this make me wonder whether there’s some truth there.
I still want some reporter to pose this question to Romney:
gaz
@Sally Rakowski: You’re aware of how stupid you sound, right?
Kay
@Steve:
I know “don’t do the crime” etc, but it really bothered me, her damsel in distress routine. She has grown children his age (22), and some of them have had (minor) legal issues. No mercy from Sarah Palin. She has been WRONGED.
amk
@4tehlulz: wow. The fucker is completely clueless, isn’t he ?
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve:
The thing is, the kid didn’t actually hack it, in the sense that he had to go to tremendous effort, like launch a dictionary attack, to get in. He just used several obvious “passwords” and found one that got him in.
It’s as if you left the key to your front door in a prominent, visible place on your front porch, and someone just picked it up and used it to get into your house. And look around a bit.
He didn’t even have to rise to the admittedly low level of the script kiddie.
geg6
They’ve been showing Obama’s very own morning in America ad non-stop here in Western PA. It’s not the same as this one, but will reach into eastern OH along with those of us in PA, since Pittsburgh is the media market for a lot of southeastern OH and the Youngstown area. Which, coincidentally, is very near the GM Lordstown plant, a plant which was almost completely shut down in 2008 which is now running at full capacity, turning Chevy Cruzes.
I have found the ad to be very effective. But then, I am biased.
RossInDetroit
@Steve:
True. My wife is a tooling designer and was laid off for 24 months. Most of the people she works with are independent single proprietorship specialists. Plenty of them never came back to the old work, and now that the industry is tooling up again there’s a scarcity of experience in specialties like precision grinding and EDM. The big automakers were saved but plenty of damage was done to the industrial ecology.
Villago Delenda Est
@gaz:
/raises and waves hand, frantically
Oooh, oooh, I know the answer to this one! Call on me! Call on me!
Steve
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought he researched the answers to her security questions and reset her password. Well, either way, you shouldn’t be poking around in other people’s email, but it does seem a little shocking that it’s a federal crime you do time in prison for.
@Kay: Palin is a huge finger-pointer, which is kind of ironic considering what she said about Hillary Clinton’s “perceived whine” once upon a time. The kid shouldn’t have done it, and you or I would certainly feel a huge violation of privacy if someone had found their way into our email account. But I mean, she tried to claim that it cost her the election!
Steve
@4tehlulz: I grew up in the 70s and not the 60s, so who knows, maybe the Village People changed everything. But the way I remember it, of course kids were teased for appearing gay. The gay thing was the entire point of teasing them.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: heh =)
Roger Moore
@Steve:
I don’t get how people can’t understand that kind of thing. Even if they don’t work in Detroit, most cities, large and small, in the US do have one or two dominant industries they depend on. They have to be able to imagine how badly their cities would do if their primary industry crashed and burned, so why can’t they imagine what it would do to some other city? I know just how much trouble Los Angeles would be in if the ports closed, or if the entertainment industry crashed and burned. Why can’t other people understand where their cities would be without their dominant industry?
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve:
Well, the fact that he was able to find answers to security questions so easily tells you how much Sarah pays attention to details.
The other issue is of course what he found out…how much of the Governor’s on the taxpayers dime time was being spent on shit other than governing Alaska, such as her incessant vendettas on anyone who committed a real or imagined slight.
Then there’s the idiocy of all the “emotional distress” of her family of vindictive assholes. To include her children, who apparently have learned much from their parents of the ways of both the grifter and the perpetual victim.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
I want somebody to ask him “Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about… your mother.”
Kay
@Steve:
Ugh. I used to just cringe when she’d invoke Clinton. So calculated. Clinton’s (female) supporters here were really offended (rightly, I think) by political media’s comparisons of Palin with Clinton.
They’re staunch Democrats, so they picked up that the comparison was girl = girl, which is patronizing and stupid. I enjoyed that, so I’d encourage them: “tell me more!”
LanceThruster
Why doesn’t Joe the fake plumber borrow $20,000 from his dad (or McCain) to start that plumbibng biz he was so hot for back in the day?
liberal
@Steve:
The most annoying thing about a case like that is that there’s the example of the Republican Congressional staff member who got into the Democrat’s computer system (or something like that) and got intelligence on what they were doing.
He wasn’t even charged. The excuse was that the system wasn’t properly protected, but I have a hard time believing he didn’t violate a criminal statute regardless of lack of appropriate protections.
Egg Berry
@liberal: Wasn’t there also the case where numerous members of the Bush White House were using RNC email addresses to keep stuff out of the national archives, and then they “lost” several years’ worth of archives?
Kay
@4tehlulz:
I love how he talks. He’s like a parody of an awkward person. “The fellow”.
When I was in school, the only people that used the word “youngsters” were teachers and principals, and they ALL used it. If I heard that word, I knew I was in school.
Another Halocene Human
@Steve: The industry got some absolutely outrageous (literally outrageous?) laws passed to defend their profits that will result in your ass rotting in the federal pen IF they catch you.
DMCA is an example (also directed at competitors–it made a form of reverse engineering, which has always been legal, illegal) although the telecoms got the first hacking laws passed because they were unamused by kiddiez figuring out how to 0wn their admittedly primitive digital systems. (Many of the “hackers” went on to have careers in the system, but of course others did not… kind of like how some bus groupies become drivers and others are like that nut in Australia who obtained uniform pieces, “borrowed” a bus and was running a route and collecting fare for an hour before anybody noticed… er…)
Industry has completely perverted our laws where software is concerned. It started with patenting software, which previously would have been illegal (can’t patent mathematical formulae). I firmly believe it should be copywriteable, not patentable. Software patents are making IP lawyers rich. (Also stock promoters, which is orders more useless.) Then there was the DMCA, which criminalized sharing music. Canada went a much better route on this. Not criminal and artists still get paid. However, the record co’s knew that their business model was sunsetting and decided to try to give their profit model force of law. Since then there have been various attempts to get rid of the free and open internet and replace it with a payola model like cable. You also have abuse of copyright provisions to get legal content that big companies don’t like taken down. And now there are further attempts to destroy online privacy which is one more industry-pushed attempt to try to monetize content and go after content sharers. (Of course, the REAL pirates don’t use the open WWW to share content… that’s actually the LAST place it shows up.)
Using federal power to protect big business. Just another day at the office.
I’d say that why we need to get rid of incumbents, but that’s been tried and it doesn’t work. So let’s get back to basics: we need an informed electorate. Informed electorates put pols in a corner where they have to tell lobbyists, “Sorry, not going to happen.”
Another Halocene Human
@Steve: Kids got called sissies in the 1950’s, and not just by other kids.
Then again, he’s a Mo. Their culture is extremely heteronormative, and homosexuality is really anxiety inducing to the point that maybe it wasn’t really talked about overtly.
Another Halocene Human
@Roger Moore: Sure, but if you aren’t paid to support that industry sometimes it’s easier to criticize. Is that necessarily a bad thing?
What if we drained some waste off the DoD budget and put some of it back into medical research? There would be regional winners and losers, but long-term, the entire country would benefit.
What if we stopped subsidizing cotton production in Cali? Some billionaires would be out of pocket, for sure, and everyone who scrubbed a paycheck off of them, but the environment would breathe a sigh of relief and maybe we would have a bit more money for Medicare.
What we subsidize and whether we should continue doing so are legitimate questions. Clearly the auto industry is still viable and in an industry with that level of complexity and an environment where every OTHER country is subsidizing and supporting their automakers, government intervention such as subsidized loans makes sense.
But just because a region depends on an industry (now) does not ipso facto mean it deserves a government check to keep going.
Another Halocene Human
@LanceThruster: Is there a big market for unlicensed tradespeople now that the housing bubble has burst? Whodathunk.
liberal
@Egg Berry:
Yeah, that one is actually clearer in my mind.
liberal
@Another Halocene Human:
Yep.
I always get amused whenever I chance upon a blog or position paper defending our idiotic patent system, and it turns out the authors are IP attorneys.
NCSteve
Jeebus Barfing Mice. Because clearly, opinions differ on whether in 2008 the world’s private credit markets had collapsed and the entire global financial system was in a panic-stricken descent into total meltdown necessitating instant passage of a vaguely worded 700 billion dollar bailout bill with the kind of haste usually reserved for declarations of war on countries that launch devastating surprise attacks on the fucking Pacific Fleet.
Noo, nooooo, noooo. Too controversial a point to dare take a stand on the veracity of this easily verifiable fact that’s seared into the memories of half the goddammed people in the western world. Someone might say “bias.”
LanceThruster
@Another Halocene Human: That’s why the 20K would be a vote of confidence in the free market and a show of support for the complete deregulation of ‘Murkhan commerce that would prevent a salt-of-the-earth industrial powerhouse like Joe the P from plying his trade merely because the fasclst soci4lists seek to deny him his freedom with their commie state controlled “licensing.”
Epicurus
@dmsilev: I’m quite certain that Romney is a “Nexus 6.” They still haven’t worked the bugs out of that one. At the convention, he’ll be spouting about having seen worlds the rest of us can only dream of…I bet he’s even watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate!
LanceThruster
@dmsilev: Win!
LanceThruster
@Epicurus: Roy Batty has far more humanity than Kap’n Kolob.
Death Panel Truck
The correct phrase is “Not-Joe the Not-Plumber.”
Because his name is Sam, and he ain’t a motherfucking plumber.
priscianusjr
@Chyron HR: