strong>Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is the real-life Chauncey Gardner character who has become somewhat of a national sensation due to a conversation that he had with then candidate Barack Obama. Since then “Joe the Plumber” has guested on numerous cable news programs, visited Israel as some sort of dignitary, and recently decided to run for congress for his Cleveland area district.

On his show tonight (Now at 8 pm! Still not used to it!), MSNBC’s Ed Schultz spoke with Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (the artist formerly known as Joe the Plumber) about his congressional aspirations.

Have you all been missing “Joe the Plumber”? (Just go with it.) Well, you can find him on… MSNBC? Yup, on Thursday night, none other than Lawrence O’Donnell welcomed Joe the Plumber — né Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — onto his show to discuss his plans for a House run in Ohio.

President Obama took a few minutes, during his recent Florida trip, to sit down with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and four unemployed workers for a round of beers. Fox and Friends reported, this morning, that one of the men the President broke liquid bread with Tuesday night was arrested for DUI five years ago, and questioned whether anyone at the White House “vetted these guys?”

Co-host Gretchen Carlson also lamented how unfortunate it was that the man, Mark McKim, would “get a lot of publicity about this.”

Remember Joe the Plumber, né Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher? Of course you do. Well, Wurzelbacher is back in the news, and this time he has his eye on a House run in Ohio’s 9th district. On Friday, he filed candidacy papers with the Federal Election Commission and registered a campaign committee, of which he is treasurer, called “Joe for Congress 2012.”

Three years can be a lifetime in politics, but for one happenstance celebrity from the 2008 campaign, it may have been all the time he needed to marinate a Congressional run. Ohio’s Toledo Blade is reporting that Samuel Wurzelbacher, a contractor’s assistant turned motivational speaker dubbed “Joe the Plumber” during the Presidential campaign, may be plotting a political comeback as a Republican Congressional candidate against incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

If you thought Mitt Romney had his work cut out for him explaining his individual health insurance mandate, wait ’til you get a load of the policy skeleton that just popped out of Donald Trump‘s (R-$$) closet. The 2012 GOP maybe-hopeful has quickly ascended to towering heights on the strength of constant appeals to the “Birther” crowd, but his 1999 proposal to redistribute the wealth of the richest Americans via a one-time “Net Worth Tax” may invent a new brand of wingnut: the “Worthers.”

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly moderated a debate today, with radio host Jason Lewis and Democratic strategist Bernard Whitman, over President Obama’s innocuous remark about Robert Gibbs’ “relatively modest pay,” and the “outrage” it has spawned.

As loudly as they protested media coverage of Joe the Plumber (after John McCain mentioned him in a nationally televised debate 346 times), you might think the right would take a different tack with Sarah Palin protester Kathy Gustafson. You would be wrong. The electronic ink on the story is barely dry, and right-wing sites are googling their hearts out, getting it wrong, and injecting homophobia into the mix for good measure. Palin, meanwhile, explains why you didn’t really see her roll her eyes in that video.

You’d have been forgiven if you thought Joe the Plumber, the most celebrated living metaphor of the 2008 presidential election (and, it turned out, neither “Joe” nor a “plumber”) was done in the public eye. But you also would have been wrong. Joe is (marginally) back.

Much like candidate Obama’s passing comment about “redistributing the wealth” got a ton of airtime in the Fall of 2008, this too certainly seems like a quote we can expect to hear played over and over again in the run-up to the midterm election. Yesterday President Obama spoke about the reasons for pushing financial reform and let loose the following quip, which was immediately pounced upon by Sean Hannity and his guest Frank Luntz.

Conservative activist Jason Mattera, who created a stir at this year’s CPAC, has posted video of an ambush interview in which Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is driven to exclaim “You need to shut up right now!” During the interview, Mattera constantly interrupts Franken, calls him “Senator Smalley,” and attacks provisions of health care reform that support funding for schools and breastfeeding. At least Mattera wasn’t wearing a costume. Check it out after the jump.

Joe the Plumber, aka Samuel Wurzelbacher, is just a regular guy that tells it like it is. That’s why when the mainstream media takes quotes like “[John McCain] really screwed up my life” and “I don’t owe him s—” out of context, he feels it is his duty to set the record straight. His clarification tour has so far been short, sweet, and just in time for the five congressional primaries he has endorsed a candidate in so far.

Poor John McCain – not even his imaginary friend Joe the Plumber likes him anymore. Joe may have thought he could slip some harsh words against the 2008 Republican presidential ticket by the mainstream media, commenting to Pennsylvania Public Radio’s Scott Detrow, but the fifteen minutes of fame the McCain campaign gave him seem to be lasting longer than the excitement over a Levi Johnston Playgirl shoot.

This is what I get for watching The O’Reilly Factor.

I’ve found that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who hate “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (like me), and those who don’t. I’ve also found that members of the latter group are really, really amused by it. It is for them that I post Ray Stevens’ latest ode to mythological Grandmomicide, “We the People.”

“You’re not a celebrity,” the always outspoken Joy Behar said midway through her HLN interview with Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber. That may be so, but his fifteen minutes haven’t run out yet. He was back and at it again last night, dishing out on the Republican Party, homosexuality, and the Tea Party movement.

Proving just how low the bar is for humor in Washington, DC, Obama economic adviser and campaign flashpoint Austan Goolsbee completely outclassed the competition at the 16th Annual “DC’s Funniest Celebrity” contest last night. His routine was a total lift of Kevin Nealon’s “Mr. Subliminal” bit from Saturday Night Live.

The Vancouver Sun reports on an explosion of racially-charged slurs in the comments section of Free Republic, a popular conservative blog: “‘A typical street whore.’ ‘A bunch of ghetto thugs.’ ‘Ghetto street trash.’ ‘Wonder when she will get her first abortion.’ These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative ‘Free Republic’ blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama’s 11-year-old daughter Malia.”