Barack Obama's defenders point out that "lipstick on a pig" is a pretty common expression. Fair enough. One could also point out that politicians tend to re-use parts of their stump speeches over and over again as they appear before crowds all over the country. People in general also tend to use certain expressions more than once when they speak off the cuff.

So the question is, has Barack Obama used the expression "lipstick on a pig" ever before on the stump, or is this the first time? Is it just a coincidence that he used the expression now, in reference to the McCain-Palin ticket, a few days after Sarah Palin talked about her lipstick in her convention speech? Hopefully, someone out there with a Nexis account will do some digging. We couldn't find any evidence on Google. It looks like he was trying to be clever and it backfired.

Less noticed, he seemed to be taking a shot at McCain too: "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, but it's still going to stink after eight years." Who you calling an "old fish", pal?

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