I can’t resist bringing up politics what with election frenzy underway… but I need a watery angle.

My opinion is… I’m sick of hearing about Joe The Plumber, it was funny at first but now I literally see McCain on TV talking about him everyday. Is it just the media making it look this way or is McCain really making this a big deal?

Apparently Obama would raise Joe The Plumber’s taxes and hey, I’m against that. Nobody wants to pay more tax, right?

But it’s complicated. The tax plan means that Joe’s taxes are going up because he earns more than $250k/year. Watch the original interview for yourself.

What? $250k?! That’s a lot. What kind of plumber is he? I heard Ohio plumbers made like $40k a year. ok, whatever. So suppose Joe makes a profit of $251k. He pays 3% more on the $1k or $30 more than he would with McCain.

Now here’s a guy making a quarter million dollars a year that doesn’t want to pay $30 more so that the rest of us don’t. Gosh, that doesn’t sound fair. Maybe in that case the guy making $251k can afford it.

But who knows how much Joe really makes? The law applies to anything over $250k. That covers $400k, $40M, on up… how high does it go? I heard Bill Gates made $8B last year. Out of all the people making more than $250k, what’s the median? $40M? If so, then that’s a better representative for this tax issue, not a plumber.

It’s clear why Joe The Plumber was coined by the McCain camp, to characterize the super-rich as working class.

I don’t want to raise a plumber’s tax. But someone making $40M year after year well… yeah, maybe they could pitch in a little more. 3% more specifically–back to the rate before Bush took over. Under Obama’s plan they would pay $1.2M more. A lot more significant than 30 bucks and I think that’s what this tax issue is really about.

Bear Lake Swim Video A great video a buddy put together documenting my swim challenge across Bear Lake in Michigan this Summer.

Two recent Alcatraz swims: First, the original, official Dolphin Club “Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon” for which I did the test swim, and piloted the event. Info | Photos Most of my photos are in the beginning of the 3rd group and some of the only images taken on the water during the swim.

The other one was just a plain old Alcatraz swim last week. Since I was swimming I don’t have any photos, but I can tell you that it was a blast doing another “beach start” on the island as opposed to jumping off a boat between Alcatraz & SF. I swam over to Barker beach, the only beach on Alcatraz and stood up just below the exercise yard. It’s eerie, it’s creepy, it’s great, it’s the full experience. You can imagine the prisoners in the yard looking down, thinking “If I could just make it down there…” Even though I’m slow as molasses I was awarded an honorary First Place for being the only person to do the full swim from land to land.