Obama: McCain 'Can't Put Lipstick on a Pig'
What's the difference between the presidential campaign before and after the national political conventions? Lipstick. The colorful cosmetic has become a political buzzword, thanks to Governor Palin's joke in her acceptance speech that lipstick is the only thing that separates a hockey mom like her from a pit bull. Senator Obama told an audience yesterday that Senator McCain says he'll change Washington, but he's just like President Bush. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts, and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Mrs. Palin's joke. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years." Mr. McCain's campaign immediately organized a telephone conference call in response and called on Mr. Obama to apologize for calling Mrs. Palin a pig. Mr. Obama's campaign said he wasn't referring to Mrs. Palin; he had been talking about Mr. McCain immediately before the lipstick comment. Last year while criticizing health proposals from the Democratic presidential candidates, Mr. McCain said Senator Clinton's health care plan resembled the failed plan she offered as first lady during the 1990s. "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," Mr. McCain said of her proposal.
PALIN QUESTIONED OVER HER 'BRIDGE TO NOWHERE' CLAIM
Who could have foreseen that Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere" would become the presidential campaign's debating point du jour? Yesterday the Obama camp and its allies came out firing, hotly disputing the credit Governor Palin takes for turning down federal funding for that proposed bridge in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Since Senator McCain tapped her as his running mate August 29, Mrs. Palin at every opportunity — using virtually the same phrasing — has told crowds that as governor of Alaska, "I told Congress, 'Thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere.'" She re-ran the line yesterday at a rally in Ohio. But she did so in the face of a release from the Obama forces noting that a plethora of reporting shows her stance on the project, which would have connected the small city of Ketchikan to the even smaller island of Gravina, isn't so black and white.
PALIN ASKED TO RELEASE E-MAIL MESSAGES
Governor Palin is being asked by a local Republican activist to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request, including 40 that were copied to her husband, Todd. Mrs. Palin had claimed executive privilege for documents copied to her husband, who is not a state employee, in responding to an open records request in June made by Andree McLeod, an activist in Anchorage. The administrative appeal filed yesterday by Ms. McLeod's attorney argued that by copying Mr. Palin on sensitive state correspondence, the governor and her aides shattered the privilege rightly afforded elected officials. The Washington Post
