YouCanPutLipstickOnAPig.com ... A place where YOU Can Put Lipstick On a Pig and drill the world for oil at the same time, baby - oh yes oh yes oh yes you can!
Submit your political pig pics, plinks (links), and pigments (comments). Etc. Totally Boaring, you say? Nah: It's spit-roasting time.
Although there have always been rich and poor, the distribution of overall wealth has changed dramatically in the past 30 years, with the distribution of wealth becoming increasingly top heavy. If the pattern continues, the middle class will cease to exist; there will just be the rich, and the people who work for the rich at whatever rate the rich feel like providing.
It's happening now:
Across the U.S., companies are freezing raises, freezing new hires, hiring on new employees at lower rates than the laid off employees they're replacing, mandating capped raises that barely match inflation (say, 2% raises per employee, even for good performance), cancelling pension plans, canceling matching 401k payments, breaking unions, lowering commisions, reducing health benefits, and outsourcing jobs to foreign lands -- while at the same time the top executives have seen their salaries increase by hundreds and hundreds of percentage points over the last few decades.
And the big banks are getting bailed out while millions of Americans are losing their homes and jobs. The U.S. government takes out loans from China in order to pay for a war where Halliburton & Co. execs profits but average Americans see no benefits (and, eventually, somebody is going to have to pay for this war -- it's not a question of whether the war was right or wrong, it's a question of when we're going to actually pay back the debt). The oil companies are making record profits while Americans pay more at the pump.
With all of that in mind, you'd think that 80% to 95% of Americans would be up-and-arms, demanding at least moderate redistribution of wealth. Not Harrison Bergeron everyone-must-be-totally-equal territory; but at least some good old fashion American modestly-tax-the-rich leveling of the playing field.
Actually, that sounds more like how the GOP has been handling our hard-earned money -- giving tax breaks to profitable coporations and the super-wealthy, paying billions of dollars to various Military-Industrial-Complex contractors.
Obama's tax plan, on the other hand -- despite what you might think after hearing some of the more "controversial" O-man quotes trumpeted by the GOP -- essentially just calls for a repeal of the pro-rich Bush tax cuts on those making over $250,000 a year, while closing some corporate tax breaks and introducing new tax breaks for the middle class and the poor. Even if you are rich, these changes to the tax code are not going to dramatically effect your lifestyle; just get used to paying the same kind of taxes that you had no trouble paying 10 years ago. No big deal; it's not even that revolutionary, just a modest and fair adjustment to the current tax code..
Still, realistically, more taxes are going to be needed at some point -- to pay off the war debt, to pay off the debt from the financial bailout, to pay for new infrastructure to keep our roads and bridges and railways and energy system from falling into pieces. Nobody likes to pay more taxes; but, then again, nobody likes paying down their credit card debt, either. However, it has to be done. Modestly taxing the richest 5% of Americans isn't a bad way to start; an oil windfall-profits tax wouldn't be a bad idea either (note that even Partisan-Tactics Palin supported a windfall-profits tax scheme in Alaska).
The once terrific Oliver Stone hasn't made a decent movie in years, but he's hired Babe: Pig in the City farmer James Cromwell to co-star as George H. W. Bush in his epic comedy, W., alongside Josh Brolin staring as George W. Bush, the mind-blowing Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Ric, Richard "where's that guy been for the past decade" Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, and a host of other intriguing casting picks. Could Stone finally be BACK from the brink? The trailer gives us hope:
Dr. Zaius over at Zaius Nation takes the same Palin-Bush image-merging concept and nails it to the wall as only he can, with mad skillz:
While on Mark Halperine's "The Page" in TIME magazine, Palin flies on her lipstick to success, "amplified by a certain brouhaha involving a farm animal and cosmetics." The same Palin-obsessed issue of TIME also rejoices over "Tina Fey [dressing] up as Sarah Palin, who once dressed up as Tina Fey."
And on the subject of pig-lipstick, journalist David Seaton says, "George W. Bush is a symptom of America's decline, not its cause. George W. Bush is a symptom of America's decline, not its cause.... My favorite example of this complexity is the theory that Rome’s decline was brought about by the lead pipe plumbing of the Roman patricians that caused their women to become infertile, thus leaving the empire without leadership cadres. Following the Roman model, Bush is Caligula’s horse."
Not to be left out, Sarah Palin herself (well, a satiric first-person spoof version of Palin) asks "Am I a Pig?" over at The Official Sarah Palin Blog: Country First, Alaska Second (Sarah-Palin.com). "Sarah" includes a photo of her favorite current President Bush....
Finally, the Right strike's back by putting some Pigstick on poor ol' Hillary, with a frightening Photoshop derring-do.
Wait, did I say, "Finally"? Well, I was just putting blogstick on this post. So two more -- a McCain-Palin "When Pigs Fly" T-Shirt from Jon Titone's Flickr photostream, and some straight-talk from David Letterman:
Michael Kinsley is going to piss off a lot of innocent Alaskans with his latest essay for TIME, "Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics," but you have to hand it to him for really crunching the numbers to prove his point that she is anything but the "tough fiscal conservative" that the Republican establishment is making her out to be.
Saith Kinsley:
".... Palin has continued to repeat the already exposed lie that she said 'No, thanks' to the famous 'bridge to nowhere' (McCain's favorite example of wasteful federal spending). In fact, she said 'Yes, please' until the project became a symbol and political albatross.
"Back to reality. Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 2 1/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska's government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.
"Alaska is, in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC. It has four different taxes on oil, which produce more than 89% of the state's unrestricted revenue. On average, three-quarters of the value of a barrel of oil is taken by the state government before that oil is permitted to leave the state...."
Kinsley goes on to look at this issue more closely, and also to examine Palin's past budget cuts (or lack thereof).Be sure to read the full article. But one thing that caught my eye -- which I'd heard before but is worth pointing out again -- is that Palin has actually made some smart oil-tax moves that benefited the people of Alaska and could be applied to the entire U.S. via some intelligent changes to our current oil-company tax plans. The odd thing is that Palin isn't proposing to roll out her Alaska oil-tax scheme to the entire U.S., and instead is jumping on board the let-corporations-rape-pillage-and-never-pay-tax neo-conservative bandwagon:
".... One thing Barack Obama and McCain disagree on is an oil windfall–profits tax. McCain is against it, on the theory that it is a tax and therefore bad, and also that it would discourage domestic production. Obama is for it, on the theory that if oil companies can make a nice profit when oil sells for $50 per bbl., they can still make a nice profit when it sells for more than $100, even if the government takes a bit and spreads the money around to those who are hurting from higher oil prices.
"Although Palin's words side with McCain in this dispute, her actions side with Obama. Her major legislative accomplishment has been to revamp Alaska's windfall-profits tax in order to increase the state's take. Alaska calls it a "clear and equitable share" tax. The state assumes that extracting oil from the tundra costs about $25 per bbl. and takes as much as 75% of the difference between that and the sale price...."
The upshot?
".... Alaska residents each get a yearly check for about $2,000 from oil revenues, plus an additional $1,200 pushed through by Palin last year to take advantage of rising oil prices. Any sympathy the governor of Alaska expresses for folks in the lower 48 who are suffering from high gas prices or can't afford to heat their homes is strictly crocodile tears...."
Of course, guys like Vasko Kohlmayer feel the opposite (see: well-written but wildly right-wing American Thinker's article "Pigs, Obama and Sarah Palin").
But if Palin was promising me a check for $3,200 a year at the expense of the oil companies that are making record-breaking profits, I might actually vote for her! You know, if she wasn't just a big ol' hog pile of wedge issues.
And now, Barack Obama explains to David Letterman that Palin is the lipstick and McCain is the pig:
And remember, there's only one thing more fun than an American Election. What's that, you ask? Why, it's an American Pig Race. Duh! Everybody loves American pigs.
Photo credit: The pic featured at the very top of this post, which features a female hunter standing next to a huge American-flag decorated pig, was taken and slightly warped by yours truly -- the illustration itself is by Brian Stauffer for TIME magazine. Stauffer has a terrific graphical sense: check out his work.
From the Sept. 10, 2008 episode of All Things Considered: "The phrase 'lipstick on a pig' is commonly employed by politicians including Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rep. Charles Rangel. Joel Salatin, a farmer from Swoope, Va., talks about what actually happens when one attempts to put lipstick on a pig."Listen Now [3 min 29 sec]
I was gonna say, "Someone put some lipstick on that damn pig!" - but then I got worried that I'd sound sexist. And besides, I've got too much respec' for the comedy talent of Miss Piggy - if she doesn't want to wear lipstick while doing her best Sarah Plain and TallSarah Palin impression, that's fine by me.
(The clip above is of right-wing commentators Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy ragging on Sarah Palin while they thought their mics were off, while the clip below shows Porky Pig doing his best Bush impression)
So help me out: Email your best Political Pig pics to brachish [at] gmail.com and I'll post 'em to this site for all to love. Be clever, not pornographic - 'k chief?
And while you're at it, leave some relevant Political Pig links in the Comments area below.
"The concept is an old one, but... [m]any porcine proverbs describe vain attempts at converting something from ugly to pretty, or from useless to useful. The famous maxim that 'You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear' dates back at least to the mid-16th century. "
And then there's my favorite:
" 'A hog in armour is still but a hog'was recorded in 1732 by British physician Thomas Fuller. As Francis Grose later explained in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796), a 'hog in armour' alludes to 'an awkward or mean looking man or woman, finely dressed.' Charles H. Spurgeon noted another variation in his 1887 compendium of proverbs, The Salt-Cellars: 'A hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog'... "
Zimmer goes on to note,
"The 'lipstick' variation is relatively novel—not surprising, since the word lipstick itself dates only to 1880. The incongruity of pigs and cosmetics was expressed as early as 1926 by the colorful editor Charles F. Lummis, writing in the Los Angeles Times: 'Most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks.' But the exact wording of 'putting lipstick on a pig (or hog)" doesn't show up until much later. In 1985, the Washington Post quoted a San Francisco radio host on plans for renovating Candlestick Park (instead of building a new downtown stadium for the Giants): 'That would be like putting lipstick on a pig.'"
Finally, Zimmer points out that it was actually Texan Governor Ann Richards (archenemy of Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger) that really helped make plays on this phrase popular, with winners such as "This is not another one of those deals where you put lipstick on a hog and call it a princess" and "You can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it is still a pig."
Labels:
Bush,
Comic Books,
Election 2008,
Obama
Ok, I admit it, I suck at Photoshop.
" 'A hog in armour is still but a hog' was recorded in 1732 by British physician Thomas Fuller. As Francis Grose later explained in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796), a 'hog in armour' alludes to 'an awkward or mean looking man or woman, finely dressed.' Charles H. Spurgeon noted another variation in his 1887 compendium of proverbs, The Salt-Cellars: 'A hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog'... "
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