That’s Joe the Plumber’s real name. The more Serious political blogs don’t seem to be worrying much about this story, but a few are having fun with it. It’s nice to know a little about the guy, and it makes McCain’s appeals to “Joe the Plumber” all the more ridiculous, making a potentially interesting point sound silly. Via Lester Hunt, I managed to locate the video of Obama’s original conversation with Wurzelbacher. Will Wilkinson, based on other videos, is writing Wurzelbacher in.

Overall in the original video, Obama comes of looking articulate, except for his comments on a possible flat tax, which I didn’t understand. According to Obama’s account of his tax plan, it would cost Wurzelbacher at most one-and-a-half grand a year out of a couple hundred thousand, not really so bad. I know other small business owners are worried about much greater tax increases under Obama, though. Among them are my uncle, John Hallquist, who has a software company out in California–I guess making him John the Computer Guy. I don’t remember the details, so I’ll e-mail my cousin, Nathan the Grad Student, for the details and post them if I can.

In other political news, half my favorite bloggers are going nuts over the fact that Hitchens has endorsed Obama. I think that says quite a bit–a year ago Hitchens was ranting against Obama for reasons unclear, and PZ accused him of supporting genocide. I notice, though, that PZ has resisted the temptation to gloat hard.

UPDATE 10/23/2008: Nathan the Grad Student suggested this WSJ article as a good guide to the issue.