Piggygate

OK, so Obama isn't allowed to use phrases that come from before McCain's time.

Obama: "You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig - It's Still A Pig... You Can Wrap An Old Fish In A Piece Of Paper Called Change, It's Still Gonna Stink After Eight Years"
"John McCain Says He's About Change, Too - Except For Economic Policy, Healthcare Policy, Tax Policy, Education Policy, Foreign Policy And
Karl Rove-Style Politics"

McCain's campaign has formed a nasty outcry saying that with this statement Obama was calling the self-proclaimed "Pit bull in Lipstick", a pig. They went one step further and said that he was also guilty of calling McCain an old fish.

Well, McCain can be called a lot of things... many of them starting with the world "old". But I don't think that Obama called him an old fish. What I do know is that both of those sayings have been around "for a coon's age".

I grew up around these sayings, and I assume that McCain's crew did as well. In fact my father has thousands of them. In this case he probably would have said something like, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". Would that be calling the person a pig too? I never took it that way when he said that about an endeavor I was undertaking. Perhaps I'm not as sensitive as the McCain camp.

Was Obama calling Palin a pig in lipstick? Well, in order to truly explore the possibility you must go back to something that McCain said last October when he was talking about Hillary and her health care plan. He was talking about how it sounded very much like her old plan, the one from when Billy was in the Executive chair. "I think they put some lipstick on a pig," he said, "but it's still a pig."

OH MY! Did he just call Hillary a pig?

Of course I didn't remember this obscure reference... or what the response was... this is all for someone else to do. I found out about it in an article by John Tapper, "A Piggish Debate".

What I can't help but think about is how McCain's crew jumped the gun on this one. I mean come on, this could easily slap him right back in the face with his prior comment. Why aren't his people at least checking previous statements of Johnny Boy to see if maybe he's said something similar before they come out with such righteous indignation? How smart do you have to be to have every single word this guy has uttered programmed into a system which can immediately search out similar text?

Smarter than the McCain camp I suppose.

OK, on to something else which has come across my radar screen.
Rachel Maddow (my, now I wish I could receive American TV) calling a spade a spade.

Been reading:
Few Stand to Gain on This Bailout, and Many Lose This Fannie Mae Freddie Mac shit burns my butt!

Palin, with her meat loaf and rifles, reminds us that there are two hopelessly incompatible AmericasThis makes lots of sense, I'm afraid.

Last thoughts on politics (for a few days)Expat blogger's thoughts on the election before she takes a little news break.