HolyCoast: O Good Grief!

As a republican I'm being told that I cannot use the letter "O" anymore because Obama and the Democrats now have exclusive rights.

Really.

That's what one Maine Dem candidate for governor is telling his opponent, whose name happens to start with "O" (from Top of the Ticket):

My, O my, now we're witnessing partisan fights over letters of the alphabet. It must be summer.

There's a Republican in Maine -- more than one, actually -- who's pondering a campaign for governor.

His name is Les Otten.

There's a Democrat in Maine named Arden Manning. In fact, he's the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party.

No doubt in the interests of bipartisanship, Manning decided to give Otten's 3-day-old candidacy exploration a gift of priceless publicity internationally in the already crowded 10-candidate field for Maine's gubernatorial primaries in 11 months.

Manning's already called attention to -- well, he objected to, would be more accurate -- Otten's possible campaign logo on his possible campaign website.

(See top image.)

Manning claims the red-white-and-blue-and-green logo bears a remarkable resemblance to the campaign logo of one Barack Obama (see image at right), who

raised $750 million with it to win the White House last November.

And still uses the red-white-and-blue O to rouse support for the new president's ambitious programs and to pressure members in Congress through Organizing for America.

When yOu think abOut it, O is really a pretty cOmmOn letter.

But then Manning appears to shOOt his own argument in the fOOt by saying, "Barack Obama was not elected president because he had a snazzy graphic and well-designed website."

Hey, you can't blame Otten for taking advantage of a situation to create something that will subliminally remind people of hope and change. Why do you think Pepsi suddenly changed their logo in the middle of last year's campaign to this: