I guess John McCain was watching every TV clip of Obama out there, because he somehow knew about the "Joe the Plumber" encounter Obama had a few days ago. I myself didn't know what he was talking about when he brought Joe up during the debate. Poor Joe, according to McCain. This ambitious, hard working everyday stiff, with his American dream of owning his own plumbing business, was upset because, if he ever got to buy his plumbing business, might make over $250,000 and have to pay some extra taxes under Obama. McCain sprung Joe's pain on Obama in the last presidential debate, I guess hoping to use Joe to catapult himself in front of Obama as the savior of the American Dream from the Obama pickpocket machine.

It didn't work. In fact, it backfired - again. It had been widely reported after McCain chose the unknown and untested Sarah Palin as his running mate that McCain was a gambler. I don't mean symbolically - I mean literally. He apparently likes to gamble and bet on longshots. Maybe he trusts his "hunches" or rubs a rabbits foot or has a lucky coin, who knows what he relies on to makes these longshot gambles. But, as we all know, longshots are longshots by definition for a reason - they are highly risky and don't work very often. The 85 yard touchdown pass in the last seconds rarely gets completed. The grand slam homer in the bottom of the ninth rarely gets hit. The wild toss of a basketball at the buzzer from the other side of the half court line rarely goes in. And in this case, McCain's two longshots - picking Palin, and now using Joe the Plumber as his storyline, have met a similar fate - failure.

One has a perfect right to question McCain's judgment. He's in the middle of a presidential campaign and he's taking chances like this? He didn't properly do background checks on Palin, and while for a few days he got a bounce, Palin's inability to answer relevant questions intelligently, the silliness of some of her answers, and now the shield between her and the press have shown that McCain's choice of a person a heartbeat away from the presidency was foolhardy.

Now, with McCain bringing up Joe the Plumber, the same thing has happened, only on a shorter timeframe. Joe the Plumber, while complaining about this extra tax burden against his American Dream, it turns out, isn't paying his taxes under the current tax regime. He also doesn't have a plumbing license, and compared Obama to Sammy Davis Jr. as a tapdancer.

It turns out that Joe actually will receive a tax cut under Obama, and even if he made the money that he said he would make if he got to buy his plumbing business, something apparently he isn't even close to, he would have to pay $36 extra dollars. What an example of the "little guy." It's clear now that Joe the Plumber was a republican plant from the beginning, and not a very good one.

But what really is amazing to me is the republican talk - made by McCain, Joe the Plumber, and now Gingrich this morning on Good Morning America - that "sharing the wealth" of the U.S. with the less wealthy is somehow a terrible thing. Isn't it greed that has put our economy in such shaky condition? Isn't it supposed to be a good thing to want to help those who are less fortunate? What kind of world do these republicans want? One in which they and their friends have all the money, have no rules governing how they get it or what they do with it, and with no responsibility to the public in general - that's what. No thanks, I'll pass on that kind of world. That's what we've had for the last 8 years and it's ruining our country.

Do we want a gambler with his finger on the trigger of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world? Do we want a gambler writing the budgets for our nation? Do we want a person who doesn't believe in sharing the wealth in charge of our national treasury? I don't, that's for sure.