Barack Obama:
Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.
“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”
“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”
“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”
McCain campaign and wingnuts everywhere: OMG HE CALLED SARAH PALIN A PIG!
The fact that this was spearheaded by the McCain campaign and quickly became a meme in the right-wing wankosphere merely reinforces my firm belief that the McCain campaign is being run by wingnut bloggers.
On the upside of all this, the media is not swallowing this nonsense, and is in fact mocking the McCain campaign:
And yet, the inaugural conference call of what the McCain-Palin campaign is calling the “Palin Truth Squad” addressed Obama’s remark.
And interestingly, the Truth Squad call was full of half-truths and statements that weren’t true at all.
Speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift tonight flatly stated that Obama had called Palin a pig.
“[T]he formation of the Palin Truth Squad couldn’t have happened too soon, as we saw when Sen. Obama in Lebanon, Va., this evening uttered what I can only deem to be disgraceful comments comparing our vice presidential nominee Gov. Palin to a pig,” Swift said.
“Sen. Obama owes Gov. Palin an apology,” she said.
Asked why she was so confident Obama was “comparing” Palin to a pig, she said Palin was the only one of the four candidates on both parties’ tickets who wears lipstick.
“She is the only one of the four candidates for president, or the only vice presidential candidate who wears lipstick,” Swift said. “I mean, it seemed to me a very gendered comment.”
But, Swift added, if “as part of his apology Sen. Obama wants to say, no, he was calling Sen. McCain — who is a true hero in our country — a pig, then I suppose we could wait en masse for an apology to that, as well.”
It was pointed out to Swift that, after the line about the pig, Obama had said, “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still gonna stink after eight years.”
Swift then suggested that Obama was calling McCain a fish.
They are losing the press with their antics. Bonus buffoonery from Hugh Hewitt:
Either Obama’s dim as can be, or he is angry at having been thrown backwards week after week. When Obama denies having targeted Palin, keep in mind that everyone instantly made the connection. Is Obama really that clueless? An angry outburst does less damage than his pleading he didn’t mean it that way. Remember the raised finger?
Hugh’s link, in case you were interested, is to the video the Hillary dead-enders and PUMA’s watched 1000 times to convince themselves that Obama gave Hillary the finger. This video:
Obama gave Hillary the finger! Five of them, in fact!
I wish I was making this shit up. It isn’t just that this is so absurd, it is that these wankers really have a shot of running the country for four more years.
*** Update ***
More here, including video of McCain using the same phrase.
*** Update #2 ***
Remember when Captain Ed was just mildly crazy, but had a shred of integrity, and was still worth reading? Well, those days are long gone, and now he is worse than Hugh Hewitt.
dewberry
I am calling Fessik.
Truth squad meet brute squad.
liberal
The saddest thing is that, if McThug wins, after this nasty campaign the Democratic Congress will want to treat him like the dirt he is…but won’t have the backbone to really go through with it.
Keith
This is the best part:
This crap is unreal
Punchy
Please….PLEASE tell me the bolded part was snark by either the reporter, or Cole. Please, dear God, tell me she didn’t actually say this.
This is why I’m checking out of this race until it’s over. I simply cannot handle or understand the Level Of Stoopit necessary to comprehend the media or McCane campy. It’s impossible to quantify just how clueless my fellow voters have become…
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
I love the smell of flopsweat and desperation in the morning. It smells like… victory.
(Cue Ratfucker2xu clutching his pearls in 5… 4… 3…)
SGEW
How long before the press, as a whole, simply throws their hands up in disgust and completely turns on McCain for insulting their intelligence? When even Marc “Please Don’t Make Me State An Opinion” Ambinder has to write headings like “Obama Did Not Call Sarah Palin A Pig“, you know that patience is wearing thin.
Blue Buddha
The fact that Sarah Palin was picked without vetting was pretty conclusive proof for me that the McCain campaign is being run by wingnut bloggers. No one really knew or cared about her except for wingnut bloggers, who have been plugging her name for at least 6-7 months to be the GOP’s VP pick, because she was the “perfect candidate” based on five criteria:
— Not associated with Bush / “outside the Beltway”
— Pro-gun
— Pro-life
— Young, energetic, charismatic
— Minority or woman
Notice there was nothing in that criteria about pending investigations, possible corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, etc., etc.
Zifnab
Fix’d
McCain is a little hero in the Senate and will have the conservative Dems wrapped around his finger. In the House, Pelosi will embark upon a new level of bending over and taking it while the liberals in her caucus fume in outrage. McCain will veto everything that moves if he didn’t personally write the bill himself assuming he even keeps to the traditional money rules. It’s really only a matter of time before someone points out that the Treasury – as a department administered by the executive branch – really shouldn’t have to listen to a liberal Democratic Congress with an anti-American agenda when doling out funds in the Ongoing Righteous Patriotic War On Terra.
:-p Let’s just hope McCain continues to shoot himself in the foot. I really don’t want to think about an America that has to suffer four more years of this bullshit.
matt
What the fuck happened to our country?
Brian J
This doesn’t shock me at all. As Joe Biden said, what do you talk about when you have nothing to say? This shit. You’d think that it’d be enough to kill his chances, and maybe it will be. We still have almost two months until the election. I have a hard time imagining they can keep this up. At some point, perhaps Obama and Biden should just ignore both McCain and Palin and talk about themselves.
Also, John, just in case you were wondering, Palin did kill the Bridge to Nowhere. I am not sure if his other facts are right, but it wouldn’t shock me if DeMint was shading the truth just a bit.
Mike in MI
McCain camp out with an ad already. I’m guessing there’s not much of a buy. Probably just for talking head consumption since there really isn’t anything more important to talk about going on in the world.
Link
Even Huckabee wasn’t buying the bullshit:
jibeaux
From the WaPo this a.m…
John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters’ opinions of the candidates.
“The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”
I mean, you could make a “shorter” out of this, although it wouldn’t be very funny and it wouldn’t take any work at all:
“Of COURSE we’re lying. People are MORONS.”
myiq2xu
I don’t have any to clutch, but if you would like a pearl necklace I can help you out.
BTW – If you shower and use deodorant it will get rid of that flopsweat smell.
Incertus
Last night over at Pandagon, someone copied a comment from the pearl-clutchers over at LGF, and they were claiming that the fish comment was also sexist. Because Palin has a vagina, and all vaginas smell like fish wrapped for the last eight years in a paper called change I suppose.
georgia pig
I think he may have been calling McCain a stinky dead fish, which is somewhat accurate, although smelly old goat would be closer to the mark. The problem with the latter, of course, is you can’t wrap a goat in newspaper because of the horns and all. Oh, yeah, and a fish rots from the head down, for whatever that’s worth. These fucking people make my head hurt.
jibeaux
I would make a very bad journalist, because as soon as someone said something like that I would begin to hit him with my shoe. When he got to “Obama is calling McCain a fish”, I would use both shoes and my purse.
Face
Never. As Atrios mentioned yesterday, GE owns NBC. GE needs government contracts. Military ones, prolly. You’d better believe there’s a shit-ton of quid pro quo going on with GE, NBC, the Bush Admin, etc.
The media requires a Republican president.
Barbar
Brian J, she killed the bridge to nowhere 8 months into her term, after spending money on building a road to where the bridge would be, because they didn’t have enough funds. To top it off, she campaigned for the bridge to nowhere when she was running for governor.
This is unbelievable horseshit. Thanks but no thanks.
gbear
From the comments below. Apparently not all of the media is treating this as nonsense:
SGEW
Jibeaux beat me to the punch with that WaPo link.
Key line: ” . . . these little facts don’t really matter.”
There you have it folks. What more can we say?
Blue Buddha
Actually, she did worse than if she had it built: she still took the money that was earmarked for the bridge, built a brand new road leading up to the ferry that’s currently there, and is now trying to get funding to build the same bridge.
Incertus
Let me tell you, I’m really glad he wasn’t able to raise much money, because he would have given us crazy fits. McCain won on biography and a false mavericky-ness bestowed upon him by the press. Huckabee has real political skill.
Punchy
If true, this is the funniest thing I think I have ever read on a blog anywhere.
BTW, does that make her husband a fisherman, or a “fisherman, heh heh”?
SGEW
Hey, we’re not the only country that has political leaders who fail to vet their political appointees:
Resume Scandal May Weaken Iran’s Leader
Nice company we keep, yes?
Neo
Obama isn’t so stupid as to not understand why the crowd rose and appaulded when he uttered the “lipstick on a pig” line. It really wasn’t that great, especially if you assume it not to be an insult. If he had been smart, he would have put an end to it right there. At least with one of those “no no no no” lines that he does so well, but instead he just went on.
It was rude, lewd and totally unprofessional … and it is indefenseable.
Brian J
I know all of this. As I said once before, I must take a class to learn how to express myself properly. I thought it was clear that I was being facetious.
In any event, I am just surprised that The Wall Street Journal would publish such junk. Oh wait, we’re talking about the editorial page! Why should it surprise me that these people would publish information that directly contradicts what is in the newspaper itself? It’s an opinion from conservatives. Facts don’t matter!
SGEW
I think that Glenzilla‘s quip today sums it up quite nicely:
“All of this makes Nero’s fiddling look sober and responsible by comparison.”
mightygodking
In a shocking development, TalkLeft commenters are outraged at Obama for making a sexist comment and/or being stupid enough to say such an obviously inflammatory thing.
jibeaux
Priceless trolling. We must have a new 401(k).
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Someone is concerned, I see.
Stuck in the Fun House
It’s Oxymoron Wednesday folks. And the Palin Truth Squad is out to do the Lord’s work. And the Princess says for you all to STFU and get on with loving America. All we have to do is swoon and remember, that after all, John Mccain was a POW, and not a stinky old fish. I say there’s always room for one more in the Funhouse.
Conservatively Liberal
Those are considered bonuses and add to her Republican street cred.
I really think McCain and Palin need to take their families and make the next interview Jerry Springer. Just rip the facade off of the campaign and go for broke.
Nice of our resident ratfucking goatfucker to drop in with his recently milked pearls of wit and wisdom. Hey Mikey, you ever get your front teeth wired to that remote so they fold back to make blowing goats easier?
bartkid
Am I missing something or did Mrs. Palin not compare herself to a dog less than a week ago?
Hella weak.
liberal
Neo wrote,
LOL!
The only question (assuming it wasn’t a mistake) is whether it was tactically wise.
As for unprofessional…given that McThug and “She who takes plane rides after her water breaks in a high-risk pregnancy, thus unnecessarily risking the life of her infant” are waging the most disgusting negative presidential campaign in my memory, you doth protest too much.
4tehlulz
In the meantime, McCain puts out an ad saying that Obama wants your kids to get fucked
by himand the media doesn’t blink an eye.SGEW
Doug H. (Fausto no more) Says:
Someday this war’s gonna end.
Stuck in the Fun House
She shot that bridge, just watch it die!
SFOtter
I, for one, am very sorry that Sarah Palin is a pig.
Jake
Newsflash: reading TalkLeft kills brain cells.
There are a few people on the left suggesting this was pretty stupid/tone deaf of Obama, that he should have anticipated the ensuing wingnuttery from the right.
To such folks I only have one thing to say: please stop trying to skullfuck the rest of us. Thanks.
Napoleon
Hey listen to Diane Rheem – they have a bunch of reporters on about how they are covering the election. Call in and ask them questions as to what is going on.
http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/
AkaDad
NO. Palin did NOT kill the bridge. From the N.Y. Times.
SGEW
Whoa. Ambinder responds to Glenzilla (kinda), and gets all meta.
This election’s really getting to these guys.
Conservatively Liberal
Yes you are! About nothing.
liberal
Incertus wrote,
But the stakes are higher with McCain.
I could be wrong, but my impression is that the chance of Huckabee getting us into a war with e.g. Russia over the Georgia issue wouldn’t be that high—perhaps no higher than with Bush. (Yes, McThug makes Bush look like a wise leader on foreign policy. At least Iraq wasn’t a nucular power.)
With McThug, on the other hand, who the hell knows what wars he’s going to start?
With Democratic control of Congress, most of McThug’s domestic initiatives will be dead in the water, though I assume the Democrats will be too timid to just flat-out veto McThug’s USSC appointees.
But overall McThug will be limited domestically.
The real danger is war making. While the Founders had the wisdom to place that power in the hands of Congress, we all know that the president has usurped it (starting way before Bush got into office).
Given that Congress’ relinquishing of the war making power to the Prez is complete under Bush (viz, they neither impeached him over Iraq—which was clearly a violation of Congress’ sole right in this regard—nor exercised their control over purse strings), the one thing McThug will be pretty much unfettered on is warmaking.
And I don’t know about you, but that scares the hell out of me. As in “I fear for my life” scared.
Again, as my dad said, that the Establishment is willing to let someone like McCain anywhere near the nuclear football is frickin’ outrageous.
liberal
I wrote, “they neither impeached him over Iraq—-which was clearly a violation of Congress’ sole right in this regard”.
Not formally true, of course, because of the AUMF (Oct 2002).
My bad.
Jake
Anyone checked out Sullivan this AM? Not a single post about Obama or Palin or McCain.
He can’t possibly keep that up. The avalanche of STOOPID coming from Team McCain is too large to ignore.
Napoleon
Weisman on Diane Rheems just slapped down one of the other guest complaining about it (the guest is clearly a Rep plant) by saying that he has been using the pig line for months.
matt
From Ambinder:
From The Washington Monthly, 5 minutes ago:
KSMIAMI
I have decided that McCain really is a scumbag. No turning back, just a lying scumbag whose policies support rapists and child molesters. There I said it.
Jake
I can’t listen to Diane Rehm. I can’t stand her voice, and yes I know she suffers from some kind of illness/disorder, but well, I’m going straight to hell I guess.
Egilsson
That DeMint column in the WSJ is a piece of work. He has acknowledge that Palin is lying, but then says she was still a better anti-earmarker than Obama – but that’s a lie too.
DeMint doesn’t mention that Palin advocated for $750 million in earmarks (using an Abramoff lobbyist), while Obama sought $330 million (and none this year). In fact, Wasilla and then Alaska are both remarkably at the TOP of the earmark slop heap, per capita, in the NATION. Are you kidding me?
Palin is a like a poster-child abuser of what McCain / Palin now rightously condemn. It’s really unbelievable.
Conservatively Liberal
The expression grasping at straws comes to mind regarding the McCain campaign. The wheels are off the Straitjacket Express, it is lying upside-down smoking in a ditch and the patients have escaped and are running the asylum.
I would not be surprised if the McCain campaign was stupid enough to think that it could make up the technology gap with the Obama camp by bringing the wingnut bloggers in on the campaign. Actually, it makes sense as it explains how rapidly the same talking points are literally popping up everywhere at the same time.
matt
Yeah, Ed was tolerable because you could tell he was basically a good guy who didn’t really have it in him to be a full on smear merchant. Wonder what happened?
Jake
I will say that I am disappointed that Obama hasn’t found a more effective way to push back on the Tax Issue.
Did he run a single ad countering McCain’s lies about his tax policies? If he did, I didn’t see it, and I live in a so-called “swing state.” My father, who lives in NH, was likewise perplexed.
RareSanity
While I’m not a lawyer, I think that your initial premise is right. The AUMF is not a “declaration of war”. It is basically transferring a power reserved for Congress to the President. Which, I think, is illegal.
I mean the Supreme Court can’t just say that the Congress can rule on cases if it wants to…right?
Bedlam UK
Your media sucks.
Its embarrassing. My colleagues here are laughing at the American press, laughing at your politicians, just laughing.
Whilst we have crappy politicians too, and we get Sky News which is pretty bad.
We also have PAXMAN ( the journo version of superman )
Politicians avoiding Questions
How can such baldfaced lying as McPorkie be aired?
If Pepsi said in its add that its healthier than Juice and keeps your teeth shiny white, would there be some Broadcasting standard that would pull the ad as a blatent lie?
Do the same standards not apply for political bullshit?
Arguements about policy, morality etc are subjective and can be manipulated.
PURE LIES are proven as lies by the FACTS
matt
One more thing from The Washington Monthly CNN asked:
Is this really happening?
SGEW
Let me tell you about this charming place called “America,” where facts do not enter into many people’s understanding of the world.
After all, about 20%-30% of this nation believes that the world was created in its current form about, oh, 6,000 years ago. Around the time the Sumerians had invented soap.
God Bless America, as the athiest Jew said.
Conservatively Liberal
And we are laughing right along with you. There is no press left in our country. It is all corporate media and advertising, 24/7/365. The right owns the press, lock, stock and barrel. They just have to put up an appearance of objectivity, which they have miserably failed to do but somehow think they have.
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are more accurate than anything news oriented and they are comedy shows. It’s a sad situation when reality can be reported as comedy and no rewrite is necessary.
Texas Dem
I think one of the reasons Obama’s having so much trouble pushing back on McCain’s obvious lies is that, with the media thoroughly intimidated by the GOP, Obama needs a lot of cash to respond and get his message out, and (I suspect)he just doesn’t have it. There are rumors that his fundraising is running well short of his original goals. He’s also built this huge campaign organization and that takes a lot of money to maintain. Maybe they should have targeted their organization and media buys to a few key swing states and forgotten about states like North Carolina, Indiana, MO, etc. Perhaps, in other words, they were just too ambitious. I also think it may have been a mistake to pass up McCain’s offer of joint town halls. It would have given him a real opportunity to get his message out.
charlotte
Men are ready to jump Sarah’s delectable bones. Once they’ve had their magic way with her magic act, her phone calls will no longer be returned. One knows this, deep in one’s bones.
I know this even more keenly because I’m an old fish, a lipstick wearing pig, and a … let’s see … uh … beer soaked non-hockey mom pitbull suburban nightmare ready to vote McPalin off the island. Can we blast the two of them out into space so that they might people their own planet?
Speaking as a human, I won’t be satisfied until Obama calls McPalin out and mentions the unmentionable … He’s a doddering old hoker and she’s just exactly what she told us she was from the get-go … A nasty hockey mom with annoying yap yap action. Who likes to compare herself to female dogs. Sexist Sarah!!!
liberal
RareSanity wrote,
Well, I’d agree with you. But there’s so much ridiculous political history now, that the AUMF really did provide a lot of cover to Bush.
SGEW
It’s important to separate the AUMF for terrorism and the AUMF for Iraq.
There is not really any argument over whether the AUMF for Iraq was legal under domestic law (it is, unless SCOTUS overturns some major precedents), but there is significant debate over its legality in international law.
Tsulagi
No doubt both said with a straight face. You can always count on these guys to go for the batshit loony vote using comedy like that. Speaking of which…
Yeah, but that was before he became Michelle M.’s submissive.
Is that you Senator WideStance?
Conservatively Liberal
Rumors. The Obama campaign already released a statement saying that they broke previous fundraising records last month. They won’t say how much but that they were stating this to push back on the rumors that they were not getting donations at the same rate.
Well that much is true, they got more.
Jeff
From an undecided, conservative:
w vincentz
I really didn’t know what to make of the “pig” and “fish” controversy until now. See, I look at this as a person that enjoys food. I eat it.
“Pigs”, or hogs as they’re known around these parts, give us some good eats. All the bacon, and big juicy hams, chops, and loins besides everything else besides the “oink” that we don’t waste here. Though I’ve never seen one wearin’ lipstick, it would probably taste about the same.
I won’t discuss the benefits of cookin’ with pork fat at this time, as I think that should be left to another gormet topic.
Now, about “fish”. I also eat ’em. Salmon is one of my favorites. Some of the very best come from a beautiful bay that a certain governor named her first daughter after. It’s fed by a river that goes by the name of “Good News”.
So in that spirit, I give you the good news about “Salmongate”, a proposition that favors mining interests and limits arsenic pollution in the spawning streams.
Sorry for not linking it properly. (http://www.gourmet.com/foodpolitics/2008/09/politics-of-the-plate-salmon-scandal.
markg8
McCain has proposed to bankrupt the country even faster than Bush with bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% and more tax breaks for fossil fuel industries. Think any of that will trickle down to the rest of us? He’ll give you a tax “credit” less than half what it takes to go out and buy health insurance for your family but you’re on your own after that. He thinks we can throw the Russians out of the G8 when in fact the Russians would have to vote themselves out. Even the Bush Administration thinks that’s nutty. Everyone from the Iraqi government to the Bush Administration has adopted Obama’s timetable for getting out of Iraq but McCain still wants to stay for four, a hundred or a thousand years, or whatever it is this week.
Pigs will fly before any of that works.
TenguPhule
Another Day, Another Republican Craphole.
Is it November yet?
w vincentz
http://www.gourmet.com/foodpolitics/2008/09/politics-of-the-plate-salmon-scandal
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I think he may have been calling McCain a stinky dead fish, which is somewhat accurate
Jesus H Christ flogging a dead horse!
The starting phrase is “it stinks like a week old fish”, which is never used to refer to a person, but their position or what they say. Obama’s riff on it is clearly an attack on McCain’s platform.
ARRRRGHHHHH!!!!!
bobsy
Dear McCainaanites,
Mike Huckabee thinks you’re idiots. It’s time to go home.
The Populist
“There are a few people on the left suggesting this was pretty stupid/tone deaf of Obama, that he should have anticipated the ensuing wingnuttery from the right.”
Yet they keep asking Obama to be more in attack mode. He didn’t insult that woman. The response from Team McPalin is one of desperation.
LiberalTarian
This isn’t such an unknown phenomena in human relationships.
Did you know the most dangerous time for person in a physically abusive relationship is two years after they leave the person who has been beating the shit out of them? Now, a normal person (we’ll go with man, since they are the majority of abusers) might think, “Gee, she kicked me to the curb because I beat her up.” But no, the loss of control drives them over the edge, to “That bitch thinks she is going to get away from me?? I’LL KILL HER.” Because he loves her so much right? And, sometimes, they kill the kids, too. Is this rational? No. In fact, few people can even conceive the plight of the victim. “I would never put up with that for a second.” Many, although maybe not bad people in general, blame the victim!
What we are seeing is what happens when the victim throws off the controlling, abusive, batshit crazy aggressor. We all know that we have basically been abused by the GOP. After many years of snowballing abuse, we are getting out from under them. It’s the GOP that doesn’t realize that things are different. And, frankly, there are folks dying on our side of the aisle (UCC in Knoxville, Gwatney in Little Rock, AR).
Just like a battered wife, if we go back, it’ll be more of the same and worse. But getting out is no cake walk, either.
I presented this idea for the sake of argument, without intending hyperbole, but I do realize it is an strongly stated analogy.
The Populist
You know, Steve Bing, George Soros and other lefties have all this money YET they don’t start or buy a network to compete with CNN, MSNBC and Fox? If they made a true fair/balanced place where we could see ALL the news and not what is being fed to us, that would be a godsend.
Corner Stone
markg8 says:
WHY are you suggesting Gov. Palin illegally used the state jet to fly her family to hockey games after her water broke???
You sexist fuck!