Greetings. Regular readers know that if there's one thing that drives me crazy, it's when innocent remarks are taken out of context and exploited. I don't care if this occurs in the technical arena or within the quicksand bog that politics has become in this country -- either way such blatant dishonesty is appalling.

So today when the McCain campaign jumped on Obama's use of the colloquial idiom "putting lipstick on a pig" (Obama was discussing McCain's proposed economic policies at the time), by accusing Obama of smearing Sarah Palin (!) -- and I then saw the shameful "piling on" that followed, I got curious about McCain's own choice of words.

Sure 'nuf, it turns out that good ol' "Lawrence Welk" McCain (he spends much of his time now conducting audiences in cheers of "Sarah, Sarah" like the venerable late band leader conducted his musicians), is apparently a fan of pigs and lipstick himself!

Here are just a couple of very brief clips -- in both cases McCain was relatively recently discussing Hillary Clinton's health care proposals -- so presumably McCain was comparing Hillary with a pig? Of course not.

Politics has always been a pretty dirty business, but it appears that the McCain/Rove campaign machine is really rolling in the mud these days.

Update: November 4, 2008 10:24 PM: With the election over, this video has been removed. Congratulations to President-elect Obama!

--Lauren--