Oh, how I wish I had been fortunate enough to have a presidential candidate walk into my front yard. And have it taped by the media. And have my named mentioned 20 times during a debate. If it had been me, maybe I could have “secured my dream.”

As it stands, it’s not me — it’s Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber. I’d already heard he’d secured an agent in Nashville for a country music career; turns out, that’s not the half of it. Over at SecureOurDream.com, Joe’s not only blogging, but shilling a book that he won’t be writing a word of hasn’t written yet, AND a $14.95 subscription to the Joe the Plumber fan club.

The design is awful (though it’s noted that “SECUREOURDREAM.COM VERSION-2 [why the hyphen?] COMING SOON”), and the blog post too innocuous to really get rabid pro-plumber conservatives on their feet:

Congratulations to Barack Obama. The American electorate has decided that he will be our next president. As I have stated, I will honor and support my president, but there will be no free ride. When President-Elect Obama takes office in January, his term of service to the American people begins. We wish our new president blessings of wisdom and good judgment, and we pray he hearkens to our voice if ever we feel our American Dream is being threatened. It will be a loud voice, so good luck trying to ignore it.

None of the links go anywhere, really, except to “coming soon” or more ads for the book. My friend Adam notes that this is probably about a month too late… who really cares about Joe the Plumber at this point? I do think, however, that he might make a good sitcom star — the straight-laced, hard-luck husband whose wife is always getting into shenanigans and whose friends are always looking to him for advice. He’d definitely be as good as Jeff Foxworthy, right?

For anyone who’s heard something about this and wonders what it’s all about, here’s a good synopsis from a self-proclaimed conservative who sees it for what it is.

If there are six days until the election, it must be time for a ginned-up phony controversy.  The phony controversy derives from the story about the L.A. Times‘ Khalidi tape combined with the confident foreign policy pronouncements of Joe the Plumber Geopolitical Strategist that voting for Obama is voting for the “death of Israel.” …

For those of you who have wisely been ignoring the final days of the campaign, here is the story about the tape: back in 2003 when Khalidi was about to leave Chicago to fill Edward Said’s post at Columbia after Said had passed on, there was a farewell party attended by Obama, and there was a video record of it that was leaked to the L.A. Times that the newspaper first reported on in April.  This party and Obama’s attendance at it have been more or less common knowledge to anyone who has spent much time following Obama’s career, and the party and the relationship between Obama and Khalidi have been made out to be meaningful evidence that Obama harbors some pro-Palestinian attitudes because of things he said at this party about Khalidi. …

Now some are claiming that the tape purportedly has a record of Obama saying things not just about Khalidi, but about Israel and Palestine as well, but as far as I can tell this is just more baseless rumormongering.  It seems that the only reason why anyone suspects that there is something “damaging” (i.e., something not reflexively “pro-Israel”) on the tape is that the Times won’t release it because of an agreement it made with its source(s), but if the Times were to break its agreement with the source(s) and release the tape it would then presumably be accused of violating ethical standards in order to vindicate its preferred candidate. This is a very odd case of a newspaper being accused of “suppressing” evidence after having published a report on the very thing it is supposedly suppressing.  Had it acquired the tape and never reported on it, that would be one thing, but it did just the opposite.  What is most bizarre about all of this is that from everything we do know about what Obama said, his remarks about Khalidi clearly implied that he didn’t agree with his colleague, which is why in classic Obama fashion he applauded Khalidi for challenging him and making him face his own biases. …

Perhaps Joe the Plumber can return to worrying about incipient socialism and leave foreign policy to others. [bold mine-R]

Johnny and Barry: A tale of two three-piece suits. (Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP)

John McCain brought the heat — but Mr. Freeze wouldn’t melt.

Certainly the most interesting of the three debates, this one made me laugh. (For more laughter, I point you to this hilarious retelling by third-party conservative Daniel Larison.) For one thing, the split screen on MSNBC would’ve been great even with the sound off: Obama with his toothy smile every time McCain urged him to “repudiate” this or “explain” that, McCain with his bizarre facial expressions. As an actual guide to voting, however, it (like the others) left something to be desired.

It wasn’t Schieffer’s fault: He gave the candidates plenty of time to explain and re-explain various points, and asked some great questions (“Why would your vice president make the best president if he/she had to take over?”). But both elephant and donkey preferred to bicker — often, admittedly, at McCain’s continually-interrupting behest — and spent way too much time pandering to Joe the Plumber (more on this sudden political phenom here).

High points: McCain’s quick rebuke to Obama, “If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should’ve run four years ago”; Obama’s snappy retort, “If I get you two confused, it’s because…”; Obama’s observation that McCain’s suggested “spending freeze” would necessarily negate a lot of the other things he talks about doing; McCain’s pointing to his own participation in the “Gangof 14″ to confirm SCOTUS justices and Obama’s refusal to join said group; Obama’s pointing out that McCain’s campaign is almost singularly focused on terrorist-educator-neighbor Bill Ayers.

Low points: McCain’s saying that Obama “voted against Justice Breyer” (who was appointed in 1994!); Obama’s ducking most every McCain attack (he’s winning anyway, so why bother, that’s the rationale, I still don’t like it); McCain’s incessant whining about John Lewis and repeated urgings to Obama to “repudiate” the statement.

End result? McCain’s the longest shot in my lifetime, as evidenced by the latest Gallup tracking: