Pancreatic cancer got him at 49. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-plumber-rose-fame-confronting-obama-2008-campaign-trail-dead-49
Up to now it seems like Pancreatic cancer is so stealthy that by the time is detected and/or you start showing any symptoms it's too late. You're choices end up being hospice or only marginally effective treatment that make your remaining life just awful. However, there is a glimmer of hope.
I feel as bad for the guy as anyone who dies of pancreatic cancer, but are we supposed to care that this particular guy died of it for some reason? Why does this rate a story in the AP? Did he refuse to get an Obamacare plan? Was he a victim of long wait times caused by Medicaid expansion? Did he go homeless first because his taxes were raised? Could he not get needed services because his taxes weren’t raised? This seems less impactful than “{Animal} from {Meme} Dies” stories. Why does someone who asked a presidential candidate a tough question once rate a national obituary? What am I not getting?
Nope, you just need to be wealthy enough to get good healthcare. If you can afford to have a doctor who runs all kinds of expensive tests on you, they can catch it early enough to stop it, it seems. 99.99999% of us can't, though.
I think in this day and age that the 15-minutes-of-fame political people get will mean a lot of people who are relatively minor are going to get obits. I mean, here we are participating in this thread as opposed to any number of things we could be doing, because for a hot second, this guy was a symbol and a culture war flashpoint.
I guess you missed his rather spectacular flameout that happened while Obama was in office. He got hired by some kind of garbage website as a "reporter," and did the talking head circuit for a while, then got sent to Israel to cover what was going on there. He was captured on video (I don't know if he released it or not, but if he did, lord, was he ever fucking dumb) talking to a bunch of reporters, bragging to them that he was a "real reporter," and that unlike them, he was going to "uncover the truth" about how Israel was 100% justified in their treatment of Palestinians, that those reporters were "refusing to talk about." The reporters he was talking to were all Israelis, and none of them were Palestinian Israelis, so the odds of them having a pro-Palestinian stance were pretty low. It's no different than covering a celebrity who was a bit of a flash in the pan and then is found dead in some kind of shitty hotel room of a drug overdose, surrounded by mounds of fast food containers, drug paraphernalia, and other trash.
He did what? okay yeah, that might merit something more than just the local news. Funny that the Fox News article failed to include that.
I can't find the video at the moment because all the search engines just want to spit out stuff related to him dying, and you've got to dig 20 pages deep if you want to find anything else on him. I know we had a thread here talking about it, but I don't know if it was just a post in a thread or an actual thread. However, if you do a Red Room search on "Plumber" just as part of the threat title, you come up with a number of gems about this guy (posted by people on all sides of the political spectrum, I might add), to indicate he was a poor sap who got sucked out of the world he understood, and into a world where he was flailing around because he didn't have the ability to grasp it.
Here's an example of one of those threads: Joe the Plumber: "In God We Trust" will get you shot in some places. Granted, it's not as crazy as things we've heard Trump say in the years since, but pretty bugfuck for '09.
I told someone last week: The fact that you used ‘logged on’ when talking about the internet means you need a camera up your butt. Now. Sorry, but thems facts.
Mostly true I would think…but…I do have a pancreatic “cyst” that showed after my critical illness five years ago. Medicare pays for routine MRI’s so maybe…
Been there, too. Done that, too. Twice! But don't feel sorry for old folks. Far too many people never get the chance to find out what old age is like. And for those of us who are still in (reasonably) good health, it does have its advantages, as well as its disadvantages. For example, I no longer feel as much pressure to "be normal" (something I never was, actually). At my age, they just smile and think I'm an eccentric old codger.
As Robert Heinlein (through his avatar Lazarus Long) said that while getting old doesn't necessarily bring wisdom, it does bring perspective. Sometimes it helps...like whenever Trump shows up on TV. Another thing he said that I like is the possibility of outliving your enemies which saves you the trouble of killing them.
