Where the dickens is that knavish wingnut reporter Dave Weigel these days? In St. Louis, at the “How to Take Back America Conference,” along with every famous racist worth his or her salt. The hottest panels this weekend focused on: how to kill black people, why black people are worse than white people always, and how do we stop the black people from being alive? Also, this photo (of Dave took many more): “The golden wrench that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rep. Tom Price (R-Iowa) presented to Joe the Plumber.” Uhh. [Washington Independent]

Remember that wingnut Kenneth Gladney, who pretended to get super super beaten up by the Obama’s “union thugs” outside a town hall in St. Louis, and then wanted to make tons of money being half-famous like Joe the Plumber? His lawyer isn’t paying the website bills anymore! Huh. And so, with this, we will now close the very thin file on Kenneth Gladney. [Washington Independent]

This guy. Here he is at the 2009 “RightOnline” conference, which took place in Hell over the past weekend. In Joe’s speech, he said that his “size twelves” ensure the edumacation of his children. He stomps on his kids when they get bad grades! He also told an AlterNet reporter that back in the day, when he would run across the likes of Nancy Pelosi, “Those kind of people I usually took behind the woodshed and just beat the livin’ tar out of ‘em.” What an unlikely success story! And this concludes your update on Joe the Plumber. [YouTube, Think Progress, AlterNet]

• Joe the Plumber was the keynote speaker at the Houston Teabag Fiesta. And here’s a fun video of him autographing female breasts with a sharpie while talking about those “damn illegals.”
  [Think Progress]
• RedState intern Michele Bachmann writes about Dealergate, and some sort of Executive Order she is cosponsoring that will outlaw the census. [RedState]
• Matt Taibbi wrote a scathing customer review about Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, which you should definitely check out. And now Goldman is in a bit of a PR nightmare but no sweat, they still have all of our money. [Matt Taibbi]
• Andrew Sullivan is still groovin’ out to the eight tabs of LSD he ate on Saturday. The only question that remains: is he listening to Surrealistic Pillow or Volunteers? Curious minds want to know. [Andrew Sullivan]
• Have you heard the one where Harry Reid, Al Franken and a rabbi walk into a bar? [The Caucus]

Hmm. So maybe there is one of those “God” things after all? When asked if he’d run for political office, unlicensed handyman and Constitutional originalist Joe Wurzelbacher said, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’” Joe will be in Austin on July 3 to celebrate the day our anti-Communist Founding Fathers signed the Book of Mormon, which explicitly forbids taxation. Everyone’s invited! [WND via Think Progress]

Well, that’s what this dingus gets for not carrying around a pocket-sized copy of The Communist Manifesto, which was pretty clearly published in 1848, MANY MOONS after the drafting of the Constitution. At a recent appearance in Wausau, Wisconsin, he said that the Founding Fathers “knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.” On the other hand, the Founding Fathers knew two things did work: leeching, and slavery. [Wausau Daily Herald]

• FINALLY SOME JOE THE PLUMBER NEWS! He spoke somewhere and said hilarious things: “‘This country has been great for over 180 years,’ Wurzelbacher said after urging folks to study the Constitution. It wasn’t clear whether something happened in the late 1820s to make the United States great, but other than a few puzzled glances from the crowd, everyone went with it.” That’s when Ronald Reagan invented Internet pornography, of course. [Colorado Independent via The Plank]

You know your party has hit new lows of odiousness when even a rat-eyed tax-delinquent creep who makes propaganda videos for Pajamas Media wants nothing to do with you. So congratulations, Republicans, Joe the “Plumber” is dumping your ass. MORE »

Joe the Plumber is so angry about something! Are you angry about something or not? Your opinion counts! Here’s your chance: for just $0.99 (hilarious rationale here) you can “sext” Joe the Plumber either your “yes” or your “no” opinion about whether the IRS should be abolished and replaced with the Fair Tax, which is a *fair* tax — says right there in the name, “Fair Tax” got it? What are you illiterate or something? (No cap gains!) YOU’RE NOT SEXTING FAST ENOUGH. [IRSvote]

This is simple enough: Joe The Plumber gets asked about the Employee Free Choice Act — the piece of legislation he is on tour rallying against, for a corporation — and does not know what it is. He tells the cameraman here, “Drop it, brother, drop it. I never said I was an expert, man.” Yeah man he’s just an average guy and stuff. But he is “for America” though, which is better than any of you dirty fucking hippies can say. [Greg Sargent]

On Tuesday, Arlen Specter shocked America’s unions by switching sides on the Employee Free Choice Act and promising he would vote “no” if it ever came to a vote, on which he may have been the filibuster-breaking vote, thereby most likely killing the legislation for at least this year. In response, Joe the Plumber has organized a “grassroots” tour across Pennsylvania next week in which he will demand Arlen Specter promise to vote “no” on the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s almost as if Joe the Plumber does not follow the news! ALMOST. MORE »