Question of the day

How many times in one day can The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder fit “Obama” and “socialist” into the same headline?

Bonus question: When Ambinder mocks people for “mining the blood relations and voting history of Joe the Plumber,” does he recognize that they're doing so because the media is pretending Joe the Plumber is the most important thing to talk about? And by “the media,” I mean “people like Marc Ambinder,” who mentioned “Joe The Plumber” 11 times on his blog before mocking others for looking into the guy's background. Two consecutive (and three total) Ambinder posts put “Joe The Plumber” in the headline. Seven minutes after the debate ended, Ambinder announced: "Tonight's winner: Joe the plumber."

Last night, Ambinder was perfectly willing to write during the debate: “Obama does seem acknowledge that Joe The Plumber would see his taxes go up.”

Turns out that isn't really true. But now that people are pointing out that Wurzelbacher is a Republican who hates Social Security -- and who not only would not face a tax increase under Obama, he'd likely get a larger tax cut from Obama than he would from McCain -- well, suddenly, Marc Ambinder has heard enough about Joe The Plumber.

Maybe it's distracting him from trying to come up with evidence to support his claims that the media is paying more attention to Christopher Buckley than to ACORN.