Did He Really Say That?

A word to the wise: A World War II era poster
provides a history lesson for today's candidates.

Wait a minute.

Did Sen. Barack Obama really say that? As they say in TV sports...Let's go to the tape!

From Ben Smith's blog over at POLITICO.COM:

Obama: 'Lipstick on a pig'

Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:

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."

The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

UPDATE: The McCain campaign is now saying Obama called Palin a pig, which he didn't. The Obama campaign notes that "lipstick on a pig" is a fairly common idiom Obama often uses, as in a recent Washington Post interview. McCain has also used the phrase.

Though on a day when Obama's surrogates were joking that Palin's record can't be concealed with lipstick, it was hard for those following the campaign not to hear the echo.

UPDATE: Obama aide Anita Dunn responds to the McCain campaign's claim that Obama compared Palin to a pig:

Enough is enough. The McCain campaign’s attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy – the same analogy that Senator McCain himself used about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.

Well, it's all there for you to judge.

Victor Davis Hanson over at National Review Online's "The Corner" took this view of it:

Was McCain the stinky old fish?

In all the furor over the Obama "pig" quote, commentators forgot to examine his entire attack:

"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."

When read in the entire context you can see what he seems to mean with his dual animate male/female references and why he probably evoked two metaphors: most would think that Obama is talking about both on the ticket and his anger how each has expropriated his change motif.

So in that sense he appears both to insult the 72-year old McCain as the "old fish" that is still going to "stink", and to refer to Palin, who had famously evoked the metaphor of lipstick in a nationally televised address, as still the pig despite the lipstick.

The fact that he used two metaphors to attack the two, and used expressions referring both to age and Palin's recent use of "lipstick" don't seem to be accidents and that's why the cooing crowd got the old fish=McCain;lipsticked pig=Palin immediately.

I'll leave it to others to deconstruct the historical use of pig as a sexist term in the recent climate of generic attacks on Sarah Palin.

PS. The VP nominee was just announced and already Biden has called her "good looking" and now “a step back for women”; most know what he intended, but like most Bidenisms they come out wrongly and confirm a popular perception that he suffers from logorhhea and that there is a different standard of reference applied to Palin due to her sex.

Someone in the campaign has got to manage the ex tempore carelessness.

These are the days when you have to watch what you say.

Extra: Tomorrow I'll run a poll asking how long it will be before we're already tired of the campaigns...

Will He Be Known By The Company He Keeps?

In a photo that accompanied a 2001
Chicagomag.com article, William
Ayers strikes a pose atop the U.S. flag.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama continues to gingerly step around the questions regarding his relationship with Vietnam War-era protester/terrorist William Ayers.

Ayers, who was a leader of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground, played a key role in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. (Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.") Currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he also is know as fellow Weathermen terrorist Bernardine Dohrn's husband and a supporter of Obama. According to the Web site, Discoverthenetworks.org, "In his 2001 screed, Fugitive Days, Ayers recounts his life as a Sixties radical, his tenure as a Weatherman lieutenant, his terrorist campaign across America, and his enduring hatred for for the United States. 'What a country,' Ayers said in 2001. 'It makes me want to puke.'"

Willaim Ayers: Seen better days?

According to Discoverthenetworks.org, "In the mid-1990s, Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn hosted meetings at their Chicago home to introduce Barack Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 1999 Ayers joined the Woods Fund of Chicago, where he served as a director alongside Barack Obama until the latter left the Woods board in December 2002. Ayers went on to become Woods' Chairman of the Board. In 2002 the Woods Fund made a grant to Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center, where Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was employed."

During the Democrats' Pennsylvania primary debate, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his ties to Ayers --

• STEPHANOPOULOS: "Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"
• OBAMA: "George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George. The fact is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those, either. So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't."
  

Now, Jake Tapper over at his ABC News blog, "Political Punch," links to Ayers' blog/comic strip. I normally don't quote/copy articles or blogs wholesale, but Tapper's comments -- along with his use of Ayers' strip -- are better served by its complete inclusion/use.

In a Not-Remotely-Comic Strip, Bill Ayers Weighs In on What He Meant By 'We Didn't Do Enough' to End Vietnam War

September 09, 2008 11:06 AM

In a four-panel not-even-remotely-comic strip, William Ayers, the former member of the Weather Underground and associate of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., weighs in on his blog on some of the controversy he's been causing.

It reads:

"From his Chicago home, Bill Ayers responds to the 'We didn't do enough,' statement, a soundbite echoing ad nauseam through the media."

Says the Ayers cartoon: "It's impossible to get to be my age and not have plenty of regrets. The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.

"During the Vietnam war, the Weather Underground took credit for bombing several government installations as a dramatic form of armed propaganda. Action was taken against symbolic targets in order to declare a state of emergency. But warnings were always called in, and by design no one was ever hurt.

"When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough s---."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.' "The war in Vietnam was not only illegal, it was profoundly immoral, millions of people were needlessly killed. Even though I worked hard to end the war, I feel to this day that I didn't do enough because the war dragged on for years after the majority of the American people came to oppose it. I don't think violent resistance is necessarily the answer, but I do think opposition and refusal is imperative."

Several pundits and scholars are currently digging into the Obama-Ayers (and more to come) stories. Stay tuned...

Extra: Those doing a great job digging into these ties and keeping the stories alive include John Batchelor, John Fund and Hugh Hewitt.

Decompressing...

Say goodbye: Eagan, Minn., temporary home to wayward
journalists, bloggers and other ne'er-do-wells during the
2008 Republican convention. Now it's just a memory.

I've returned to the old homestead after nearly a week in the Twin Cities covering the 2008 GOP convention.

A few notes:

• Minnesota -- a great place to visit...not sure I'd want to live there in the winter.
  

• The star of the show? -- At a political convention, you'd think it would be the presidential candidate. This time, however, it was the VP candidate. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is still wowing 'em.

• The GOP still has no clue when it comes to using music in videos and at events. Using Heart's "Barracuda" matched-up well with Palin (her nickname is "Sarah Barracuda"), but it isn't about an aggressive female basketball star who goes on to become governor (it's about a greasy music industry type). It also doesn't help that Heart doesn't dig Palin. Throughout the convention, the GOP audio/visual club resorted to continuously playing the sappiest stuff from the '80s. (It seems like they're always 20 years behind the curve when it comes to popular culture.)

Now we're into a two-month homestretch...debates...polls...smear campaigns...exposés ...

America -- What a country!

Extra: What's creating more interest, the presidential or VP debates? Polls seem to indicate the Biden-Palin match-up on Oct. 2.

Closing Time

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) closed out the 2008 Republican convention here at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., tonight with a speech drawing on his record of service and sacrifice to the nation. The speech also offered an administration that would reach out across the political aisle, his willingness to defy the status quo and his own party, and to bring change to Washington, D.C., in a way his opponent, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), wouldn't.

His moment: John McCain addresses the filled-to-capacity
Xcel Energy Center during the closing night of the 2008
Republican convention.

Among them: The convention's stage was reconfigured
so that McCain would appear more accessible and
surrounded by his family and supporters.

"A word to Senator Obama and his supporters," McCain said. "We'll go at it -- we'll go at it over the next two months. You know that's the nature of this business, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and my admiration. Despite our differences much more unites us than divides us.

"We are fellow Americans," he added. "And that's an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. No country -- no country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.

"And after -- and after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace."

Following Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's vice presidential acceptance speech the night before (which was still a hot topic of discussion even as the delegates were leaving the arena), McCain had an extremely tough act to follow.

Over at the New York Times, Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper wrote, "Much of the address, though delivered at one of the most prominent moments of a presidential campaign, was little different from the stump speech he has been delivering across the country. And it was often offered in a monotone as he stood before a solid-color backdrop that flicked from green to blue. The reaction was far more subdued than it was the night before for his running mate, Ms. Palin. There were stretches in which he drew only a smattering of applause."

In short, the speech had more substance than Palin's did but it lacked spark. But I think that was part of the math McCain did when he made the (national) political neophyte his choice for VP. In addition to helping solidify his conservative base of voters, he also was looking for what he's not: young, vibrant, fresh...On the other side, though, McCain brings gravitas, experience and a story unequaled in American political history (JFK's PT 109 saga comes close).

The curtain has come down and the adventures in St. Paul are now but slowly fading memories. History was made, speeches were given -- some memorable, others not so much, and the race between McCain and Obama officially kicked off. We've got about two months of attacks, debates, annoying dinnertime phone calls from campaigns, and more political commercials and mailers than we know what to do with ahead of us.

The curtain (balloons) come down on the convention.

Good luck to us, one and all.


Extra: No political convention is complete without a balloon drop, confetti and streamers. This convention was no different (video clip below).

(All photos except balloon drop -- and video -- courtesy 2008 Republican National Convention and Reflections Photography. Balloon drop photo and video courtesy of Yours Truly.)

The Morning After

Making the point: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin captured the
attention of voters with her speech at the GOP convention
last night...and more than a few of the delegates' hearts.

If you've read your newspaper, watched TV news, listened to the radio or perhaps even chatted with your neighbor today, some mention of Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention last night probably found its way into your life.

The general consensus, even among a good number of people who still don't think she's qualified to be vice president, was that she exceeded expectations, established a real presence on the national stage and managed to get a lot of people interested in the GOP ticket that might not have been otherwise.

A sampling of reactions:

• Typically unfriendly-to-conservatives Tom Shales over at The Washington Post: "Nobody could watch that speech and still consider her a joke, no matter how flimsy her credentials and qualifications may seem on paper. The joke, it seems, is on those who'd been laughing at her. Last night the laughing ended — and the cheering began."

• Andrew Coyne at Canada's Macleans: "[The speech] was that good. No, she’s not qualified, and the substance was thin, but my God — that was perhaps the greatest bit of political theatre I have ever witnessed. Her critics in the media and in the opposition may regret having piled on quite so enthusiastically, and with so little heed for who they hurt — or angered. Watching the tumultuous, ecstatic reaction in the hall, I was reminded of the famous words of the Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour: 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.'"

• Larry Kudlow over at National Review Online's The Corner: "Watching her phenomenal communication skill, and her disciplined yet positive style, I can't help but be optimistic. In part because she herself is clearly an optimist. I'm a sucker for optimism. Lord knows this country, and the GOP, needs it. Sarah America. I like it."

• Jim Sleeper writes at Talking Points Memo: "[I]f you didn't sense last night how deeply Sarah Palin channeled some of the country's deepest, most powerful currents of pent-up indignation and yearning, you don't sense the trouble we Democrats are in. Rhetorically, she was the anti-Obama,. She was stirring precisely because she was so artless, matter-of fact, and "American" -- with no cadences or grand, historic resonances, but with plenty of mother wit and shrewdness. Credit her as much as the speechwriters."

• John Batchelor took this view: "For drama, for performance, for style, certainly for all the spontaneous smiling, this was the pay-off for a storybook rise of a new American phenomenon. She is striking; she is relaxed; she enjoys the role of hockey mom and the role of campaign attacker. She did seem to spring on her toes to state more than once that her opponent is a "community organizer," adding, in the first instance, that her role as mayor of small town Wasilla was like a community organizer with "responsibilities." She enjoys the jab and the barb. She likes laugh line attacks. She has a nascent sit-com style, ready to deliver the same line again and again to get the right audience reaction."

• Michael Crowley over at The New Republic's "The Stump": Several moderate --Democrat friends of mine have been emailing—few if any would ever vote for McCain -- but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked. I completely misjudged how negative she would be. Her lines about Obama were brutally cutting and possibly over the top in places. But she's a far better messenger than an angry white man."

• Fergus Shanahan at England's The Sun: "Sarah Palin's sensational performance at the Republican Party Convention may turn out to be the tipping point of this rollercoaster American election. Obama fans hoping she would fluff her big night were in for a nasty shock. This speech has turned the election upside down. It was simply stunning."

Extra: Palin was the star last night -- even among party stalwarts/stars like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani -- but tonight will be another Big Moment...McCain's acceptance speech. Palin's speech last night -- and the subsequent excitement over it -- will be a tough act to follow.

She Hit It Out Of The Park...

That's the ticket: Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin
after Palin's landmark speech at the GOP convention
Wednesday evening in St. Paul, Minn.

...or at least out of the arena.

That's what Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did tonight as she accepted her party's nomination to be Sen. John McCain's running mate.

Before an electrified crowd of wildly cheering supporters (she was interrupted by periods of applause for almost as long as she spoke), Palin laid out her life, beliefs and politics for all of America. If the audience's reaction in the Xcel Energy Center -- and the callers to local Minnesota radio shows after the rally -- are any indication, there are a lot of people out there who just signed up for the Palin fan club tonight.

As Clive Crook writes over at The Atlantic.com: "Astonishing. It was a fine convention speech--but, reading the text, no better than very good. What was just sensational, far exceeding my expectations, was the delivery. After the thrashing she has received from press and television in the past few days, knowing what was at stake for the party and for John McCain as she stood at the podium, with a good part of the nation watching and waiting for her to trip, her composure and self-assurance were simply amazing.

"Who could fail to be moved by this?" he adds. "And it was even more impressive than it looked, because the waves of adulation from the audience kept interrupting her momentum: they did not know it, but at times the audience was making it harder for her. Yet she never looked hesitant or thrown. She paused when she had to and controlled the timing. She actually seemed comfortable. If ever there were a political natural, we saw one tonight.

But before Palin made her history making speech, the stage was set for her by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Some samples from their speeches:

• "Barack Obama’s excellent adventure to Europe took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don’t even vote or pay taxes here. But let me hasten to say that it’s not what he took there that concerns me. It’s what he brought back: European ideas that give the government the chance to grab even more of our liberty and destroy our hard-earned livelihood." -- Huckabee

• "Our economy is under attack. China is acting like Adam Smith on steroids, buying oil from the world's worst, and selling nuclear technology. Russia and the oil states are siphoning more than 500 billion dollars a year from us in what could become the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history. This is no time for timid, liberal empty gestures." -- Romney
  

• In response to Democrats attacks on Palin's experience, Giuliani said that Gov. Palin, a former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, (with an approximate population of 6,000 people or so) and who has been governor of her state for a little less than two years, "already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket..Barack Obama has never led anything, nothing, nada."

• "Just like you, there has never been a day when I was not proud to be an American. We inherited the greatest nation in the history of the earth." -- Romney
  

• "I want to begin by doing something a little unusual. I’d like to thank the elite media for doing something that, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure could be done, and that’s unifying the Republican Party and all of America in support of Senator McCain and Governor Palin." -- Huckabee
  

• Giuliani later echoed a sentiment many conservative women have been expressing after Obama supporters questioned whether a woman with a family of five children -- one a special needs baby -- would be able to devote her attention and energies to the office of vice president. “How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president? How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?” he said.

• "Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt. If he’s wrong just once, we will pay a heavy price." --Huckabee

• "She’s already one of the most successful governors in America -- and the most popular. And she already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket. She’s led a city and a state. She’s reduced taxes and government spending. And she’s actually done something about moving America toward energy independence -- taking on the oil companies while encouraging more energy exploration here at home. Taxpayers have an advocate in Sarah Palin -- she even sold the former governor’s private plane on Ebay."--Giuliani

• "The reporting of the past few days have proven tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert." -- Huckabee

Palin also had her share of memorable lines:

• "I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

• "I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

• "Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all."

• "I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA." (Audience chanting: 'Hockey moms! Hockey moms! Hockey moms!') "I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick."

• "I small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they're listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. No, we tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco. As I for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man."

• "I've noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have too. We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state senate. This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word 'victory' -- except when he's talking about his own campaign."

• When the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot -- when that happens, what exactly is our opponent's plan?"

• "What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer -- the answer is to make government bigger and take more of your money and give you more orders from Washington and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

Extra: Palin's speech ran approximately 40 minutes. The average length of a vice presidential acceptance speech is about 10 minutes.

The Pink Ladies

It's just not a political convention or rally unless the ladies (and their male friends) from Code Pink show up...in pink, of course. There's lots of singing, sign waving, some civil disobedience and, of course, lots of pink.

Today's rally outside the Xcel Energy Center included the usual chants and what looked to be three arrests. The ladies went quietly -- except whenever a GOP delegate would walk by the "booking" area and the Code Pinkers would shout at them to "put peace at the top of the platform!"

And now, the Pink Ones...

Take two: Two Code Pink ladies are questioned by police
on the way to being booked. They went peacefully.

Cuffed but poised enough to pose: When I
focused on the subject, she interrupted the
officer and struck a pose for all the photogs.

Marching on: The Code Pink ladies march on Rice Park,
where MSNBC broadcasts many of its shows during the
convention.

More Code Pink people marching in Rice Park.

Protesters voicing a number of concerns join Code Pink
in Rice Park outside the site of the GOP convention.

"This is what democracy sounds like!": One of the rallying
cries of the protesters rings true. Hundreds of voices
representing a variety of different -- sometimes competing --
causes filled St. Paul's Rice Park prior to today's sessions.

Queen for a day: Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin (wearing
the crown) leads fellow Code Pinkers in a march in St. Paul.

Extra: Some of the photos I've shot here at the convention will be used on FOX NEWS' "Fox & Friends" tomorrow morning. The photos are scheduled to air at 6:30am ET / 5:30 am CT. The timing is subject to change (if there's breaking news). But as of now, that's the plan. It's early, but I thought I'd let you know...