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Justice

Tea Party House Candidate Calls For Troops Along Arizona Border To ‘Start Shooting’

Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher

Samuel Wurzlbacher — known to most as Joe the Plumber — made an appearance at a fundraiser for a Republican Arizona State Senator candidate over the weekend, and told the audience that the way to solve the country’s immigration problem is to station troops along the border and have them “start shooting.”

The comment was first made at a Friday evening fundraising dinner for Lori Klein, the Republican candidate for her state senate district:

“For years I’ve said, you know, put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting. I’m running for Congress and that should be a bad thing to say. But you know what, it’s how I feel…I want my borders protected, I’m very very adamant about that.”

The dinner attracted both Wurzelbacher, who is running for Congress in Ohio, and infamous conspiracy theorist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, along with 125 supporters. His comment was met with nervous laughter, as seen in a video shot by local news outlet Prescott eNews.

Lest anyone think that Wurzelbacher somehow misspoke, he repeated the outrageous comment the following morning at another campaign event for Klein, an outdoor “Patriot rally” in Prescott:

“I’m running for Congress. How many congressmen or people running for Congress have you heard, put a fence up and start shooting? None? Well you heard it here first. Put troops on the border and start shooting, I bet that solves our immigration problem real quick.”

Wurzelbacher’s comments were swiftly condemned by his Democratic opponent, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). “Joe the Plumber’s comments have no place in a civil society…He should take back his words and apologize to everyone who respects life, the Constitution and the rule of law,” she said in a statement obtained by the Huffington Post.

Watch it:

Election

Joe The Plumber Defends Campaign Ad Tying Holocaust To Gun Control

Earlier this week, Samuel Wurzelbacher — known to most as Joe the Plumber — posted a campaign ad on YouTube that sought to blame gun control laws for human atrocities, including the Armenian genocide of the early 1900s and the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II.

Amazingly, Wurzelbacher kept digging. Yesterday in an interview with the Toledo Blade, Wurzelbacher defended the ad by denying he ever mentioned the Holocaust:

“All I said was gun control was implemented, and then governments proceeded to violate human rights,” Mr. Wurzelbacher said. “Nowhere did I mention the Holocaust or was I even talking about it.”

Let’s go to the videotape:

Apparently, Wurzelbacher can’t find any references–explicit or otherwise–to the Holocaust in the lines “In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, 6 million Jews and 7 million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated.” Worse, he goes on to blame “the liberal media” for pointing out the obvious–and deeply offensive–Holocaust reference.

His campaign spokesman Phil Christofanelli told the paper that the story was “generated by left-wing liberal blogs and picked up by the ‘sympathetic liberal media.’” Jewish groups were swift to condemn the ad, as were Democrats and the overwhelming majority of viewers on YouTube. As of publication, the ad has been viewed almost 50,000 times and most of the feedback has been negative.

For good measure, Christofanelli expanded on the ad as well, adding slavery to the list of atrocities that can be traced back to gun control. “Well, blacks weren’t allowed to own guns in the South, that’s a historical fact as well,” he told Politicker on Tuesday.

NEWS FLASH

Joe The Plumber: Gun Control Caused The Holocaust | Samuel Wurzelbacher, famously known as ‘Joe The Plumber,’ is running for Congress this year on a platform of party-line Republican reforms, including gun control. But while it’s only natural that he would make a campaign advertisement around the issue, the tack he took is rather unusual — Wurzelbacher has a new advertisement in which he says that gun control laws are responsible for the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust of the Jews. What’s more, he explains the theory while loading his gun and shooting fruits and vegetables. Watch it:

Update

Hunter Walker at the New York Observer reached out to Wurzelbacher’s spokesperson, who only worsened the comparisons, comparing gun control to slavery as well:

Phil Christofanelli [said] “there’s nothing offensive” about the video and discussed how gun control may have led to slavery in the United States too…. “Well, blacks weren’t allowed to own guns in the south, that’s a historical fact as well,” said Mr. Christofanelli. “So, it would seem that the argument would apply there as well.”

LGBT

Joe The Plumber Laughs Off His Homophobia, Accuses CNN Of ‘Gotcha’ Journalism

In his primary on Tuesday night, Samuel Wurzelbacher – aka Joe the Plumber – narrowly defeated Steven Kraus to become the Republican nominee to represent Ohio’s Ninth District. Wurzelbacher, who once said he wouldn’t run for office unless God asked him to, will face Marcy Kaptur in the race to represent the heavily Democratic district.

This morning, Wurzelbacher was interviewed on CNN’s “Early Start.” When program host Zoraida Sambolin asked him why he was qualified to serve in Congress, Wurzelbacher seemed to get agitated, saying he was “very much involved in the process of what’s going on.” When the discussion turned to his previous statements about gays and lesbians, like saying he would not let gays and lesbians near his children, the discussion got even more heated:

SAMBOLIN: Have you changed your position on this at all?

WURZELBACHER: So this is TMZ, this isn’t CNN, is what you’re saying?

SAMBOLIN: Of course it’s CNN. These are things that you said, that I would like to know if you still stand by them or if you changed your positions on them.

[...]

WURZELBACHER: Listen, in my dictionary, and everyone’s dictionary in 1970s, the word queer did mean strange and unusual. It was [sic] no slur to it. Do you challenge that?

SAMBOLIN: No, I’m just questioning whether or not you still stand on these positions on homosexuality.

WURZELBACHER: I’m trying to get where you’re coming from, what context are you using this in? Come on, you’re trying to do a ‘gotcha’ moment, it’s quite obvious.

Watch:

It is unclear why Wurzelbacher thinks a reporter asking him about his own words constitutes a “gotcha” question. As far as his fear of gays and lesbians being around children, Wurzelbacher need not worry – groups that try to paint LGBT individuals as dangerous to children often misrepresent studies on the issue to make their case. What studies actually show is that children raised in same-sex households are just as well-adjusted as those raised by a mother and father.

Reached by phone after the interview, Wurzelbacher complained, “They want to paint someone as a bigot – I don’t hate people. I am working for everybody.” But as his comments indicate, he doesn’t seem to think all of his prospective constituents deserve equal respect.

-Zachary Bernstein

Politics

Joe The Plumber Says He Would ‘Beat The Livin’ Tar’ Out Of Pelosi

This past weekend, at the right wing’s RightOnline blogger conference in Pittsburgh — sponsored by Americans for Prosperity — Alternet’s Adele Stan reported that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher attacked Nancy Pelosi for calling teabaggers “un-American.” (In fact, Pelosi said “drowning out opposing views is un-American.”) Wurzelbacher said that in the good ol’ days, he would have been able to physically “beat” Pelosi:

WURZELBACHER: For Pelosi to write about us bein’ un-American and disprespectful — I’ll tell ya what: I respect nobody who lies to me and manipulates me and takes my money and puts my children in debt. They want me to be respectful towards them? Please! You know, I’m not the most civilized person: Those kind of people, I usually took behind the woodshed and just beat the livin’ tar out of ‘em.

(UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.)

Joe reiterated his statement in an interview with Stan after his speech:

STAN: There’s a lot of talk about fears of violence in these town hall meetings, and you know there was a guy who showed up with a gun strapped to his leg in New Hampshire — and I’m wondering what you have to say to that narrative?

WURZELBACHER: Let me start off by saying that I don’t advocate the violence, however, that being said, Congress has been lying to us for years. They take advantage of us, they manipulate us, and years ago people like that would’ve been taken behind the woodshed and slapped upside the head a couple times. I’m not telling people to go out and do that and I don’t advocate that if we can make our point through facts.

Listen:

For someone who doesn’t advocate violence, Joe sure spends a lot of time talking about it. A few months ago, he told Think Progress that anyone who criticized the military would’ve been shot “back in the day” and that he’d personally like to slap around anyone who “talked treasonous talk about America.”

Update

Joe also provided some parenting advice at the conference, telling right wingers that his “size twelves” do just as good a job as teachers when it comes to making sure his children are educated. Watch it:

Politics

Joe the Plumber agrees with Meghan McCain: I’m just a ‘dumb plumber.’

joe-the-plumber-web1Last week, Meghan McCain responded to Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s claim that he doesn’t want “queers…anywhere around my children.” “Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass,” she said. “He should stick to plumbing.” Not taking her advice to “stick to plumbing,” Wurzelbacher showed up at an “Average Joes, Powerful Voices” event in Greenville, WI yesterday to speak to those protesting “taxes and government spending.” But it appeared that he agreed, at least in part, with Meghan McCain’s criticism:

Wurzelbacher described himself as a “dumb plumber” who nevertheless could understand the Constitution. His themes and complaints in a 13-minute speech were similar to those voiced by speakers before and after him in the two-hour-plus event. He criticized wasteful government spending, lack of accountability, the disconnect between Christian values and politics, and political correctness.

“Washington has no idea what’s going on here or anywhere else,” Joe the Plumber said in an interview after the event. “So we need to govern ourselves more and go back to state rights.” Seeming to then take issue with McCain’s (and his own) characterization, he also criticized those who paint him as a “bad person” or “some ignorant red-neck who doesn’t have anything to say about anything.” “[It's] not true you know,” he said. “I’m very educated, I know what I’m talking about, I know the facts.”

Politics

Meghan McCain: ‘Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass.’

joeThe day before the White House Correspondents dinner, Jamie Kirchick interviewed Meghan McCain for Out, largely focusing on her outspoken support of gay rights. During the interview, McCain took a crack at a man her father made famous during last year’s presidential campaign, Joe the Plumber:

Yet even as the balance begins to shift, the old guard is still yapping in the foreground. Shortly before McCain sat for this interview, Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he complained about “queers” and declared, “I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.” Unprompted, McCain rails against the man her father’s presidential campaign touted as an American everyman and made a showpiece in the weeks before the election. “Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing.”

Wurzelbacher later followed that comment up by saying, “Men kissing each other…it throws me off.” “It’s not something I want around my family,” he told a local ABC affiliate in Toledo, OH.

Politics

Joe The Plumber Says Immigrants Should Get ‘The Hell Out Of Our Damn Country’

While protesting government spending at Houston’s Independence Day Tea Party, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher stated that American taxpayer dollars would be best spent on the mass deportation of 12 million undocumented immigrants:

WURZELBACHER: I believe in making sure our country is safe first. I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants. Get them the hell out of our damn country and close the borders down. We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders? — That’s just ridiculous.

Watch it:

Wurzelbacher dedicated a private interview to saying that he’s tired of the government “sticking its hand” in his “back-pocket” and urging the government to “pull its head out of its butt.” Apparently he’s against bailouts and the stimulus bill, but he completely supports spending approximately $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually, to hunt down and deport all the undocumented immigrants living in the US. Joe probably doesn’t realize that such a policy would also mean a loss of $1.8 trillion in annual spending and $651.5 billion in annual output.

Joe’s demented view on immigration and government spending was echoed by tax protesters at tea parties across the nation. Jack Martin, Special Projects Director of the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) was a featured speaker at Virginia’s Prince William County American Freedom Day Tea Party. The Anti-Defamation League warned that white supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups were planning to take advantage of the tea parties to disseminate their anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant views and recruit new members.

Politics

Joe the Plumber won’t run for office: “You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

ap090415020081 Last year at the height of his “fame,” Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — aka “Joe the Plumber” — said that he was considering a run for public office. “I’d be up for it,” he said. Excited fans even set up a “Draft Joe the Plumber” site. But in a new interview with WorldNetDaily, Wurzelbacher said that he now isn’t planning to run because God doesn’t want him to:

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

He continued, “I believe he’s gotten me on this grassroots movement. If I can encourage leaders to step up, that’s what I would like to do. That’s a heavy role. That’s something I don’t know if I am prepared to do yet.”

But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

Right now, Wurzelbacher is preparing to participate in the upcoming tea parties.

Politics

Joe the Plumber: ‘Men kissing each other…it throws me off.’

Earlier this month, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher told Christianity Today that calling gay people “queer” “is not like a slur” because homosexuality is “strange and unusual.” Speaking of his gay “friends,” he also said, “I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.” Yesterday, a local ABC affiliate in Toledo, OH asked Wurzelbacher about his comment. “Men kissing each other…it throws me off,” he explained. “It’s not something I want around my family.” Later, while literally sitting in front of boxes containing numerous copies of his recently released book, Wurzelbacher said:

You gotta at least respect that I’m not sitting there trying to make a buck off my 15 minutes. Do I want to make some money? Absolutely but I’m going to do it the right way.

Not seeming to recognize the irony, immediately after making this statement, he then signed a copy of his book. While acknowledging that he hasn’t made as much money as he thought from the book, he said he thinks he has about a year left in the spotlight, adding, “I can also definitely see it from the other side where people are just like ‘Man just freakin go away!’” Watch it:

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