OMG! What A Difference A Word Makes

BEARINGS! Obama used this word when he was talking about something that McCain had said in the media. To me the word refers to a direction or a compass heading, but when did it become a word disparaging a person's age? Please, explain it to me. It takes a helluva imagination to get there from here.

I guess to be in politics, one would need to hire a walking thesaurus to accompany one everywhere to make sure that one's speech cannot be purposefully misinterpreted. It is just damn silly, to think that anything was implied by the use of the word bearing.

I will give the conservatives their props...they have a helluva imagination.