Foxnews.com: Obama Accuses McCain Campaign of ‘Swift Boat Politics’

Lipstick-gate?!

Ad removed from you-tube, still at McCain's site:Web Ad: Lipstick

Every time a democrat is in deep - deep trouble, he claims to be swift-boated. While to Democrats that might mean loosing the election to their nemesis, to others it has a completely different meaning. To republicans it means: "Telling the truth about a Democrat to the point where that politician looses a campaign". Democrats insinuate that they are being wrongfully accused.

Here's an old column by Ann Coulter: "Hillary, Swiftboated! "

Hillary is being "swiftboated"!

She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem.

Similarly, John Kerry's claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders -- who said he would have been court-martialed if he had gone anywhere near Cambodia -- but also the simple fact that Nixon wasn't president on Christmas 1968.

In Hillary's defense, she probably deserves a Purple Heart about as much as Kerry did for his service in Vietnam.

Also, unlike Kerry, Hillary acknowledged her error, telling the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke." (What if she's sleep-deprived when she gets that call on the red phone at 3 a.m., imagines a Russian nuclear attack and responds with mutual assured destruction? Oops. "It proves I'm human.")

The reason no one claims Hillary is being "swiftboated" is that the definition of "swiftboating" is: "producing irrefutable evidence that a Democrat is lying." And for purposes of her race against matinee idol B. Hussein Obama, Hillary has become the media's honorary Republican.

In liberal-speak, only a Democrat can be swiftboated. Democrats are "swiftboated"; Republicans are "guilty." So as an honorary Republican, Hillary isn't being swiftboated; she's just lying.

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Here's today's fox news piece (the link is labeled on the url line as pig-fight, nice touch foxnews):

Barack Obama responded Wednesday to the McCain campaign’s call for an apology concerning his pig on a lipstick remarks, by calling the controversy “phony and foolish” and defended it as an “innocent remark” that was taken out of context.

Obama said his remarks were meant to compare the policies of McCain to those of President Bush, and were in no way a reference to Republican vice presidential Sarah Palin.

Obama accused the McCain campaign of “lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics” and said the “made-up controversy” was “cat nip for the news media.”

The Republican National Committee and John McCain’s campaign released a Web ad Wednesday seeking to exploit Barack Obama’s use of an expression about dressing up a pig with lipstick, which the GOP claims was a personal attack on vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

The Web ad, called “Lipstick,” builds on McCain’s mobilization of its “Palin Truth Squad,” which on Tuesday accuse Obama of comparing McCain’s running mate to a pig and called on him to apologize.

The “Truth Squad” — composed of dozens of McCain supporters as a way to counter attacks on the Alaska governor — launched its first objection just a couple hours after Obama drew the pig analogy when describing his opponents before a Lebanon, Va., crowd.

“John McCain says he’s about change, too, and so I guess his whole angle is, ‘Watch out George Bush.’ Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics … That’s not change. That’s just calling something the same thing, something different,” Obama said.

“But you know … you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You know, you can … wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

The colorful cosmetic has become a political buzzword, thanks to Palin’s joke in her acceptance speech that lipstick is the only thing that separates a hockey mom like her from a pit bull.

McCain’s campaign called Obama’s comments “offensive and disgraceful” and said he owes Palin an apology.

Obama’s campaign said the “lipstick on a pig” expression — frequently used in Washington D.C. — wasn’t referring to Palin, and GOP outrage is “a pathetic attempt to play the gender card.”

The common analogy is “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,” said Obama campaign senior adviser Anita Dunn.

The Obama campaign swiftly circulated a 2007 article that quoted McCain using the term “lipstick on a pig” to refer to a health care proposal from Hillary Clinton.

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki also noted that Obama too has used the expression before — to criticize the troop surge in Iraq.

“I think that both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are capable people who have been given an impossible assignment,” Obama told The Washington Post in September 2007. “George Bush has given a mission to General Petraeus, and he has done his best to try to figure out how to put lipstick on a pig.”

But McCain supporter Jane Swift, former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said the line was clearly directed at the Alaska governor.

It was “pretty clear to the crowd that he was leveling” the insult at Palin, she said.

“It’s clear to me … that Senator Obama owes Governor Palin an apology,” Swift said, calling Obama’s comments “disgraceful.”

She said, “This is just the latest in a series of comments that many folks like me will find offensive.”

Indeed earlier in the day, Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan, appearing at a speech by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, said that Palin is “someone with zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick.”

A questioner at the Virginia event also asked Obama to join Republicans and agree that candidates’ families and religion are off limits. Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter and the teachings of her church, the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church, have been the subject of scrutiny since McCain picked her as his running mate.

Obama responded that he already has said families are off limits and he’s very protective of his daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha. He said he doesn’t want their inevitable future mistakes to become newspaper fodder if he gets to the White House.

He stressed that he’s a Christian and “so the fact that Governor Palin is deeply religious, that’s a good thing.” He said poking around in her religion or saying it’s wrong is “offensive” and he wants to have a debate about the issues.

“But don’t give people some sort of religious litmus test because I don’t want somebody to question my faith and I’m certainly not going to question somebody else’s,” he said.

I think the funniest thing about it all was said by the blogger Weasel Zippers:

either he's a f@@@@ idiot (and therefore unqualified to run the country) or he's an asshole....take your pick

Mike Huckabee on Hannity and Colmes yesterday was more subtle; wasn't using any profanity, he said he believes Obama didn't refer to Palin because he gives him the credit of not being a complete idiot.

Others suggested the next lines of the speech were as offensive, calling McCain an old fish that's going to stink. Seriously - that's the level of the campaign right now.

CNN wants us to know that "Enough is Enough":

Barack Obama accused the McCain campaign of "lies" and "Swift boat" politics Wednesday, after nearly a day of claims his 'lipstick on a pig' comment was a sexist attack leveled at GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin.

"Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change," Obama said at the start of an education event in Virginia. "We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.

"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics," he also said. "Enough is enough."
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UPDATE: Responding to Obama's comments, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, "Barack Obama can’t campaign with schoolyard insults and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign."

"His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn’t exist," Rogers also said.

Right on CNN - enough's enough... stop making a big something out of nothing. Hypocrites.