Does Joe the Congressman sound better than Joe the Plumber?

Of course, you remember Joe the Plumber.

He's that T-shirt-clad Everyman who lives on an Ohio cul-de-sac and forthrightly confronted a campaigning Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential contest about the Democrat's crippling small business tax policies. (See video above.)

During the course of their taped street discussion, Joe's questions prompted Obama to utter the accidentally revealing words "spread the wealth," which set off socialist alarm bells that can still be heard in conservative quarters.

Republican candidate John McCain mentioned "Joe the Plumber" several times in an ensuing debate in New York and turned Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher into a passing political icon that changed the course of the worker's life.

Since then, Joe has been a globe-trotting correspondent for conservative publications, a celebrity speaker and "tea party" worker.

And now -- guess what? -- Toledo Republicans are touting him as the 2012 challenger to Democrat Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in Congress (14 terms).

Joe says, yup, he's thinking about it. 

The chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, Jon Stainbrook, cites “high-level interest in the national Republican Party” in a Wurzelbacher campaign.

With Joe's broad tea party ties, it could become one of those symbolic races that draws donors from across the country.

Of course, what really matters is voter interest in Ohio's Ninth.

Such a challenge would surely be suicidal in Kaptur's heavily Democratic district that hasn't seen a GOP representative since Ronald Reagan was fighting Jimmy Carter's recession.

Oh, but wait!

Ohio is losing a pair of House seats following last year's census. And Buckeye voters were so happy with Obama's first two years that they not only replaced Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland with former House member John Kasich, they turned the Legislature over to the GOP too.

As it turns out, those are the folks drawing the new districts. Maybe they'll help Joe out. And help Kaptur to join Lucas County's 10.5% unemployment lines.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher. Credit: Madalyn Ruggiero / Associated Press

Marco Rubio at Reagan Library: 'Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up'

  
If you're hale, hearty and running for president on the Republican ticket, you might be out of luck adding Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to your team. More on that in a bit.

At the personal invitation of former first lady Nancy Reagan, the first-term U.S. senator spoke Tuesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Scroll down for Rubio's full text and click here for a video version.

It was something of a West Coast political coming-out party for the Floridian, who's been more focused on things Florida and Washington is his early months in office.

The 40-year-old former state legislator told the overflow audience about his Cuban-immigrant roots, his family, his experience coming of age during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, his belief in the American free enterprise system and his conviction that America can be both a prosperous and compassionate nation.

But some of the most interesting parts of the evening came before and after the formal remarks.

Rubio entered to the cheers of the crowd with former first lady Nancy Reagan on his arm. She'd written to invite him to speak.

Before Rubio took the podium, there was an incident the Ticket described earlier today, when the 90-year-old presidential widow started to fall.

After the speech, there were written questions submitted earlier by attendees and some from the audience.

The first was, "If your mother asks you to accept the V.P. spot, what would you say?"

There was much whooping and cheering at that, including someone who yelled out what sounded like, "Stop Obama!"

Rubio cracked, "Am I getting heckled at the Ronald Reagan center? Is there another question there?"

He continued, "I'm just going to say this -- it's a great honor to be thought of in that way. As I

Marco Rubio to the rescue! Freshman senator saves a falling Nancy Reagan

It all began with smiles Tuesday night at the Reagan Presidential Library.

In a kind of West Coast political coming-out party, newly-minted conservative U.S. Sen. Marco....

....Rubio of Florida, a tea party favorite, had been invited to speak as part of the Simi Valley institution's prestigious speakers series. His name keeps surfacing in 2012 GOP vice presidential chatter.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, now 90 years young, plays an active role in the frequent events, which she sees as an important ongoing part of the political legacy of her husband. Ronald Reagan was the 40th president. He died in 2004 and is buried a few yards from the auditorium.

On Sept. 7 the library will be the site of the next Republican presidential primary debate.

According to tradition, as hostess of the speaking events, which are live-streamed on the library's website, Mrs. Reagan enters the packed house on the arm of the evening's speaker.

Tuesday night Mrs. Reagan and the 40-year-old Rubio walked slowly down the aisle to the enthusiastic applause of some 1,200 guests, plus an overflow crowd.

Mrs. Reagan acknowledged with nods and smiles some familiar faces in the crowd.

But as they neared Mrs. Reagan's front row chair, something happened.

She seemed to lurch to her right. Her cane appeared to slip on the floor.

And the frail first lady lady began to fall toward a hard landing on her right side.

Many in the crowd were still buzzing with excitement and could not see what....

.... was unfolding near the front. Others nearby could and there were audible gasps.

Fortunately, Rubio sensed the stumble. He braced his legs and caught the president's widow by her left arm as she swung into him.

Secret Service and other crowd members quickly rushed in to assist Mrs. Reagan to her feet and a chair. She appeared to be uninjured and after some moments, the program proceeded. Mrs. Reagan previously suffered a fractured pelvis in a 2008 fall that required hospitalization.

Click here for a separate item with video on Rubio's 23-minute remarks and Q and A session with audience members.

We also have video of the incident here from MyFoxOrlando.com.

VIDEO: Nancy Reagan falls : MyFoxORLANDO.com

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-- Kate O'Hare

Media critic Kate O’Hare is a regular Ticket contributor. She also blogs about TV at Hot Cuppa TV and is a frequent contributor at entertainment news site Zap2it. Also follow O'Hare on Twitter @KateOH.

Speaking of 2012, follow The Ticket via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or click this: @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle. Use the ReTweet buttons above to share any item with family and friends.

Photo series: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press.    Video: MyFoxOrlando.com

Sarah Palin's noncampaign campaign-style video 'Iowa Passion'

  

Sarah Palin has a new video out.

President Obama headed to Iowa on a bus tour shortly after the Ames Straw Poll, but it wasn't a campaign trip, he said. Sarah Palin took her "One Nation" bus tour to Iowa shortly before the Ames Straw Poll, but it wasn't a campaign trip.

Well, we know at least Obama is actually running for reelection -- and we wouldn't be a bit surprised if his shiny new buses showed up again then -- but if Palin isn't....

C-SPAN and The Ticket discuss the latest politics

For a summer weekend in a non-national election year, it was a busy time.

Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll, but not by much over the loyal legions of Ron Paul. Tim Pawlenty finished a distant third and dropped out. (Scroll down for related links.)

And Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the Republican race, stealing some of the media thunder from Ames by announcing his candidacy at the RedState Gathering, an annual meeting of conservative online writers, in South Carolina, the first Southern primary state.

We joined C-SPAN's Steve Scully Sunday morning on 'Washington Journal' to talk about the unfolding events. Watch the video below.

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Video courtesy of C-SPAN, 'Washington Journal.'

Bonus Ticket pic of the Week: NASA's Juno begins its long trip to Jupiter (video)

WHERE JUNO'S JOURNEY BEGINS

The Juno journey began Friday morning at 9:25 Pacific atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Watch the launch here, including dramatic shots from the ascending rocket.

 

 

Juno's journey will end sometime in late 2017 when the 4-ton solar-powered craft makes a suicidal plunge into the thick, cloudy atmosphere of the solar system's largest planet.

Already this morning, Juno has flown by the moon about 250,000 miles away.

You think it takes a long time to fly across the U.S.? It will take Juno another approximate 1,822 days (five years) to reach Jupiter, a distance of 1,740,000,000 miles, give or take 1 million. At speeds from a pokey 33,000 m.p.h. to 133,000 m.p.h. (or 36 miles per second).

Arriving in the summer of 2016, just before the next national party conventions after next year's party conventions, Juno is scheduled to go into a polar orbit of Jupiter for about one year.

Jupiter is about 1,300 times larger than Earth. Jupiter has local hurricanes that are twice the size of Earth. The International Space Station orbits Earth every 90 minutes. Juno will complete one elliptical orbit of Jupiter every 11 days or so.

The schedule calls for 33 orbits while Juno's eight scientific instruments peer beneath the planet's deep clouds to measure its structure, atmosphere, magnetosphere and whether the gas giant even has a planetary core.

"Jupiter," says Scott Bolton, the mission's principal investigator, "is the Rosetta Stone of our solar system. It is by far the oldest planet, contains more material than all the other planets, asteroids and comets combined, and carries deep inside it the story of not only the solar system but of us. Juno is going there as our emissary -- to interpret what Jupiter has to say."

When its orbital work is complete, Juno will be directed to plunge down through whatever is there and radio back readings as long as it can.

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More Juno videos over here.

WHERE JUNO'S JOURNEY ENDS

 -- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Gary I. Rothstein / EPA (Juno launches Aug. 5); NASA (Jupiter as seen through the eye of the passing Cassini spacecraft in 2001).

White House claims Obama’s bus tour is presidential, so taxpayers will fund it

Somehow, from somewhere, a bright political strategist on the president's reelection team has come up with the idea of sending Obama out in a bus on Midwestern roads in two weeks, just like real Americans, or real Americans who can still afford a short summer road trip.

The spectacle of a passing politician's bus and waving citizens provides grand visuals for TV during the usually slow summer news days. The president of the United States might even happen upon a curbside lemonade stand operated by surprised children who deserve the kind of future he has in mind for all Americans. And more of that.

Not so good visuals of the trailing motorcade of press buses, Secret Service SUVs, SWAT team vans and communications cars. Nor the angry motorists stalled nearby because the highway and every on- and off-ramp has been closed by uniformed motorcyclists wearing large guns.

But a presidential bus tour could help refresh the image of this poll-plagued Democrat a year before his renomination for POTUS.

For weeks now Obama's only been seen at a pompous lectern lecturing members of Congress about the need to raise the national debt limit so he can make new "investments" in America's future and avoid default.

Or he's been seen reminiscing about the good old disastrous days of 2008 with Windy City poobahs who dropped $35,800 each to say they had dinner with the president.

Or Obama could not be seen in closed-door meetings with union leaders, who really liked the $787 billion stimulus plan but don't like any of this spending cut talk. As one result, Obama's job approval has never been lower.

So, on Aug. 15-17 he'll set out from somewhere and go somewhere else in a bus. You wouldn't announce your itinerary until the last minute either if you had Republicans itching to buy critical billboards along the route. And compute how few miles per gallon your big bus gets.

Political road tours do have other dangers. Remember Democrat John Edwards' bus breaking down on an icy Iowa roadside in early 2008, providing an irresistible media metaphor for his campaign on life-support?

So, where's the commander-in-chief going? Politically, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan make strong sense, although a dash into Iowa could help rain on campaigning Republicans' media parade. Yes, they're all run by Republicans now after last November's Democratic debacle. But Obama's got to retake at least two of them if he hopes to keep putting his feet up on that Oval Office desk.

However, according to Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney, the 72-hour bus trip is not political. (Laughter) No, really. Carney told doubting reporters this week, "The air of cynicism is quite thick. The idea that the president of the United States should not venture forth into the country is ridiculous."

Carney was fed such lines during his reporting days. But he persevered with the president's pitch: "It is absolutely important for the president, whoever that person is, in the past and in the future, to get out and hear from the people in different communities." Scroll down to watch Carney attempt to make that case on video.

The main trip topics will be the economy and jobs, he said. And no one would suspect the topics have anything to do with more discouraging employment figures expected out this morning.

Anyway, because the bus trip is so clearly presidential, America's taxpayers will be footing the bill for the non-political, three-day Obama odyssey through politically important Midwestern battleground states.

After all, taxpayers covered all the costs of Sarah Palin's successful One Nation bus tour back in June. Oh, wait. No, they didn't. Her political action committee paid for that.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: (top) Sarah Palin. Credit: Steven Senne / Associated Press

(middle) President Obama makes an appearnace on Tuesday. Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg

Illegal parking: One mayor's ultimate urban solution

Illegal parking is one of the most stubborn and annoying problems plaguing crowded urban America.

Authorities have tried tickets. They didn't even work on state Sen. Barack Obama back in Chicago years ago. Many cities have tried tow-aways. They've tried the incapacitating Denver boot.

But now Arturas Zuokas has devised a new strategy that pretty much guarantees a particular offending vehicle will not be illegally parking ever again.

Zuokas is the mayor of Vilnius in Lithuania. He was elected in April after two previous terms interrupted by some kind of bribery scandal. But that's not the issue here. The issue is illegal parking by rich people who ignore the laws with their fancy cars.

"What should the city do about drivers who think that they are above the law?" the mayor asks in the video below.

Zuokas is an inveterate bicycle rider and campaigned successfully on a platform including making it easier to get around in the city's narrow streets. Previously, he instituted bike lanes along the curb.

To discourage illegal parking, Mayor Zuokas got an armored military vehicle and drove over the top of one illegally parked car, a shiny Mercedes, as it happened. He completely crushed it into uselessness. See video here:

The fact that the mayor purchased the Mercedes himself and purposely parked it there to make this compelling municipal public service message does not detract from the object lesson that some Vilnius drivers no doubt learned.

Watch the mayor's face as he obliterates the offender. It reflects the same satisfaction that one or two American drivers may have imagined feeling at times while parked with hundreds of other would-be commuters on U.S. freeways.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Secret Service captures second White House intruder in 48 hours

For the second time since Sunday an intruder made it onto the White House grounds Tuesday night before being captured by Secret Service agents with guns drawn. It was not Joe Biden.

The incident occurred during a live CNN show, "John King USA." The capture was captured on video. Scroll down to watch.

The incident began when a man threw a backpack onto the lawn and then climbed over the fence.

Although the Salahis and before them Kevin Kline in "Dave" made entering and exiting the White House look easy, truth is it's a very secure place. Those wide open grassy areas may look empty, but they are not.

Within seconds, Secret Service agents with pistols and automatic weapons were cautiously approaching and shouting at the man to lie face down on the ground. He complied. He was frisked, handcuffed and led away under arrest.

Officials identified Tuesday's intruder as James Crudup, a 41-year-old homeless man. Due to previous incidents there, he was charged with violating a court order to stay away from the presidential residence and with unlawful entry.

Sunday night another intruder made it onto the grounds before apprehension. But she was a 6-year-old girl who slipped through the bars of the fence.

The youngster is still undergoing interrogation. No, just kidding. She was returned to her parents outside the fence. 

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press (guards came from everywhere during the intrusion on the White House grounds).

Fox News viewers win cable-ratings argument, as Obama and Boehner talk debt ceiling

  

In a news conference on July 11 -- which in debt-ceiling-debate time seems to be a hundred years ago --  President Obama answered a reporter's question on public skepticism about the value of raising the national debt c eiling by saying, "The public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a Treasury option goes."

Whether or not Americans were paying attention then, they sure are now, especially if they watch Fox News Channel.

Among those tuning into cable news to see the president's latest speech on the debt ceiling at 6 p.m. PT on Monday, FNC viewers outnumbered those watching competitors CNN and MSNBC by a comfortable margin.

Over 3.5 million watched the president's address on FNC, with a slight uptick to 4 million for....