Who is the real gaffe maker?

While we're waiting around for Sarah Palin to make her gaffes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are filling the gap.

First we have Joe Biden showing both insensitivity and scientific ignorance with this comment.

But he did refer to her when one woman asked about how he and Obama would help those with disabilities. In her convention speech, Palin said she’d be a voice for parents with children with special needs, noting her newborn son, Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome.

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have … the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability,” said Biden, who’s [sic] wife is a teacher. “Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?”

First of all, stem cell research would do nothing about Down's Syndrome which is a chromosomal defect. And I know of no claim that stem cell research would take on other sorts of learning disabilities.

Also, John McCain has voted for the stem cell research that President Bush opposed. McCain has the position that Biden is advocating. In May of last year he responded to a question in a debate about funding embryonic stem cell research,

I believe that we need to fund this. This is a tough issue for those of us in the pro-life community. I would remind you that these stem cells are either going to be discarded or perpetually frozen. We need to do what we can to relieve human suffering. It's a tough issue. I support federal funding.

So Biden is framing an argument with his vice presidential opponent rather than the top of the ticket and he's using her son against her to frame his phony attack. I think the GOP will have to reset their Biden Gaffe clock. How many times a day do you think Obama second guesses his decision not to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate?

And now we have Barack Obama making this remark that is a clear reference to Sarah Palin's comment as the difference between hockey mom and a pitbull is lipstick.

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."

"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

"We've had enough of the same old thing."

When you listen to the remark you can hear the crowd laugh. They know what he's referring to.

You know, I'll cut him slack on this one. I don't think he meant to call Palin a pig and that he was just using the expression, as his spokesman claimed.

Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs insists the senator was not referring to Palin. "That's an old expression," Gibbs says.

But it was a dunderheaded comment to make and you know that people are going to assume that he was calling her a pig and enjoy making a big fuss about this. We've constantly been told how smooth Obama is and what a great speaker and thinker he is. But now he says something like this that was just a dumb thing to say. It's a gaffe, not, I believe, a deliberate comment on Sarah Palin.

I think the Biden comment is much more offensive and dumb. But I think the fact that they're making these dumb mistakes is an indication of how rattled they are by Sarah Palin. They just don't know what to say about her. They want to attack her because that is what politicians do, but they're having trouble getting a handle on a comfortable way to attack her without offending people.

And we all know that if McCain was the one making these little mistakes, everyone would be taking it as a sign of his age creeping up on him.

If this keeps up I guess this guy will have to post a second edition of his Obama vs. Biden Gaffe Machine.

UPDATE: Sorry about that mistake between a genetic and chromosomal condition. I've since corrected that.

UPDATE II: While Republicans are having fun manufacturing outrage at Obama's comment, it all seems a pleasant turnabout after the whole manufactured "macaca" scandal from 2006. Will the Washington Post run front page stories every day this week analyzing the whole lipstick/pig impact as they did with George Allen's macaca remark?