Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


JOE THE….UM….WHATEVER….Chris Orr is agog at the attention conservatives are paying to supposed weathervane du jour Joe the Plumber:

Do not expect this ardor to be dampened by the facts that Wurzelbacher is not an independent, makes nowhere near the $250,000 that prompted his question to Obama, and is not, in fact, a licensed plumber.

Okay, but at least his name really is Joe, isn’t it? That counts for something.

UPDATE: I was just kidding, but it turns out his name isn’t Joe. It’s Samuel. Sheesh. But I guess he goes by Joe.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate