Welcome, Googlers and Christian Science Monitor thevoteblog readers! It's September of 2008, a whole presidential-election season later than when we first published this post, but some things never change. For all Palin all the time, check out our category "Sarah get your gun." And for the record, in light of the currrent pig-in-a-poke brouhaha, we agree with Jennifer Rubin at Pajamas Media that "the Democrats are panickers. As such, one wonders if they are fit for high office." Meanwhile Scott Ott at Scrappleface reports that "After Obama Jab, Pig Lipstick Sales Surge." See also our latest post, "A pig in a poke?"

Image and caption from our August 30, 2008 post "All Palin all the time and loving it": We're savoring the joy of bloggers, politicians and media types who think McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as running mate is the best thing since sliced sourdough bread, not to mention the bewilderment of their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, who, like the proverbial deer — moose? — in the headlights, obviously didn't see it coming down the road to the White House. Above, "This moose made it across safely, though several hundred other moose end up in collisions with vehicles on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, causing injuries, deaths and property damage." (AP Photo/The Peninsula Clarion, M. Scott Moon)







Original post of November 2, 2004:

"As we say in Wyoming, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," quipped Vice President Dick Cheney in a stump speech yesterday, with reference to John Kerry's claims he would be a credible war president. It's part of the VP's daily refresher course in the presidential wannabe's all-talk-no-action lack of decisiveness [the Girlie-Man Syndrome]. Kerry makes it all too easy, as the Guardian reports on an earlier speech:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Sen. John Kerry's first response to Osama bin Laden's new videotape was to take a poll to find out what he should say about it. "It's as though he doesn't know what he believes until he has to go and check the polls, his finger in the air, to see which way the wind is blowing and then he'll make a decision . . . George Bush doesn't need a poll to know what he believes, especially about Osama bin Laden." [Kerry spokesman Joe "Cheating"] Lockhart said Cheney was referring to a Democracy Corps poll and inaccurately linked it to the Kerry campaign's private polling. Democracy Corps [founded in 1999 by Kerry stalwarts James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum] is a Democratic organization and not part of the Kerry campaign, though its management has worked closely with Kerry's team [We guess it depends upon what your definition of "linked" is]. Its most recent poll asked voters about the bin Laden tape and found that more people said it made them feel like Bush had taken his "eye off the ball'' in the war on terror than thought it underscored the importance of the president's approach.

We can't help but wonder how those Democracy Corps pollsters phrased the question to get a majority of respondents to say the Osama tape made Bush look bad [speaking of looking bad, didn't you think Osama looked like death warmed over?]. Hmmmm. Maybe something like "Since the President swore to get Osama "dead or alive" and then abandoned the war on terror to go after Saddam, does the bin Laden tape make you feel like Bush has taken his eye off the ball?" With their party's customary contempt for the intelligence of their fellow citizens -- the little people who don't know what's best for themselves -- democratic pollsters might well catch everyday folk off guard with their false premise that democratizing Iraq is not central to the war on terror.