Pretty Little Pig Y'got There...

[cross-posted to People First Politics]

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. An old adage of folk wisdom akin to not buying a pig in a poke, not happening until pigs fly, and teenager's bedrooms likened to a pig-sty. It's been a coon's age to a gnat's ass, he needs to buck up and take it like a man, you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Republican John McCain's campaign flunkies are all over this observation about the situation in Iraq, claiming that Obama called VP hopeful Sarah Palin a "pig" because she likened herself to a "pit bull with lipstick" in her RNC acceptance speech. What a total load of hooey! Looks to me like John McCain's campaign thinks of Sarah Palin as a pig wearing lipstick, and wants everyone to notice.

When Joe Biden talked about funding for stem cell research in hope of treatments and cures for genetic diseases, the McCain campaign insisted the subject of people with 'special needs' is off the table because Palin has a baby with Downs Syndrome. Huh!??! That's like saying the subject of health care is off the table because Sarah Palin flew 2,000 miles and drove an hour across the tundra after her water broke so she could have a baby with Downs Syndrome at her local stitch-em-up. Or...

The subject of sex education is off the table because Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter is pregnant. The subject of co-mingling church and state is off the table because Sarah Palin's a dominionist holy-roller. The subject of reproductive rights is off the table because Sarah Palin can't keep from getting pregnant. The state of the union is off the table because the Palins have secessionist ties. Science education is off the table because Sarah Palin believes Adam and Eve rode to church on a dinosaur. The subject of family law is off the table because Sarah Palin's in the middle of a blood feud with her ex-in-laws...

Wow. Who'd have thought at the beginning of the summer that the Republicans would succeed in taking all issues of national concern and policy off the table just by picking a whiny, self-described pit bull wearing lipstick as Vice-Presidential running-mate? Thaaaaat's some clever new 21st century Politics!

There is hope that the Tabloid Press can manage to reach the millions of low-information voters at the grocery checkout lines with lurid details of the Palin family's dysfunctional soap operas in the not-so frozen northland. But then, those same low-information voters might vote for McCain/Palin just to keep themselves in cheap entertainment for the next four years. There is hope that Americans with 3-digit IQs will wake up and smell the frying bacon... er, mooseburgers, vote the nation's best interests this fall instead of their own boredom.

You never know... we might be pleasantly surprised.