The McCain campaign already has an ad out hammering Obama for his "lipstick on a pig" comment that many people, including my own co-author Melissa Clouthier, believe was deliberately aimed at Palin,

Whether it was intentional or unintentional, this was a huge screw-up by Obama for three reasons.

#1) Judging by the reaction, his own crowd seemed to think it was a gibe at Palin.

#2) A lot of other people genuinely think it was a subtle shot at Palin. (Prediction: The Left, being the Left, will take this meme and run with it.)

#3) It allows Obama to now be directly tied to the wave of disgusting, sexist attacks coming from the Left right now.

Additionally, whether he meant it or not, his comment is fair game just as McCain's "100 years" and McCain's "houses" comment were fair game for Obama. After pouncing on those rather minor slip-ups, Obama doesn't really have much room to complain about McCain playing the exact same game with him -- plus, he may have actually meant what he said about Palin.

That being said, I think it was just probably -- but not definitely -- another screw-up from the human gaffe machine. Keep in mind this is the same guy who popped off the "57 states" quip and spoke of "my Muslim faith" among many, many other errors.

This is a guy who says something dumb every other few days if he's off a teleprompter, so that's PROBABLY the case here, too. Yes, you can make a case that his remark was intentional, especially with all the sexism coming from the Left these days and his campaign's weird focus on Palin, but it probably wasn't.

Update #1: Here's an email I received today from one of Obama's fans that #1) doesn't know the bikini pic I debunked isn't Sarah Palin and #2) does apparently think Bambi was referring to Palin,

John...

Wouldn't you agree that a woman who is a Governor and mother while posing in a bikini holding a gun, allows her picture to be taken and shown on the internet, is a pig? Didn't Governor Palin open the door for her own ridicule when she referred to herself as a "pit bull with lipstick"? And once one side introduces comments in public, an opponent is allowed to use those comments to illustrate their point?

"You can put lipstick on a pig," Obama said during a campaign stop. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

Cedita Graves