McFinished

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

These scumbags will stop at nothing...

Hoax: McCain volunteer admits to fabricating attack story

Ashley Todd, the McCain campaign volunteer who was robbed and allegedly beaten after the assailant spotted a McCain bumper sticker on her car, has admitted to police that she made the whole thing up. KDKA:
Police tell KDKA that a campaign volunteer has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker. Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car. Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.This story was fishy from the start, and while it's sad that anyone would go to such lengths in order to fabricate a political story, I'm glad the truth has come out. This is probably the only time I'll ever say this, but kudos to Michelle Malkin and the some of the more reasonable right-wingers out there who called foul from the very start. Another interesting facet of the story: John Moody, executive VP of FOX News, is on record saying that, if true, this story could sink Obama. If not, says Moody, McCain is done. We're awaiting your update, John. Jon Perr adds: "Joe the Plumber" has been replaced by "Ashley the Fraud." UPDATE: From Jamie:
MSNBC is now reporting that in a press conference with police Todd said she didn't know how she got the B, but she may have done it herself. They also say she has had mental problems in the past. So far she is being charged with filing a false police report and other charges may still follow.
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McCain Campaign fed the Hoax Racist Assault Story to the media!

Big news just hit the fan for McCain. I knew this was a bogus story when it came out that she refused medical treatment for her wounds. I've been through enough these last few years and know the pain would have been incredible and anyone of us would have begged for a doctor immediately. Well, it looks like the McCain campaign has their fingers all over this phony volunteer attack story and that's big trouble for him.
John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.
John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson." Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax...read on
This should hurt McCain severely. As FOX's Executive VP, John Moody said:
If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.
For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.
Bozell's operation ran with it and attacked the media. "Obama Supporter Maims McCain Volunteer, Will Media Care?"Now I ask the question. Since McCain's camp was involved in trying to promote this race baiting attack story against Obama, will the media care? Let's hope so.
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Will someone from Camp BushCo get in the room with these amateurs and tell them how it's done before Grandpa goes unhinged and strangles someone?

The time to let on that your [P]rezzziduntial ticket is clueless is after they're electorated.

Memo to Joe Biden: Let Palin Talk

For those who worry about expectations being so low that she can't help but beat them, that she did well in Alaska debates (by being spunky and bluffing through with gimmicks like patting a "stack of solutions" on health care), consider this:

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin.

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

Crooks & Liars reading LoC, but then again who isn't?

John McCain is headed to Ole Miss finally, wins the debate before it even begins!

Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: "McCain won the debate--hands down."

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liberal media HATING McCain camp just because they get a little confused about the facts sometimes

I guess we'll have to keep explaining to them over and over the difference between factual truth and emotional truth.

Sen. John McCain’s top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Sen. Barack Obama’s record.

But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.

The errors in McCain strategist Steve Schmidt’s charges against Obama and Sen. Joe Biden were particularly notable because they seemed unnecessary. Schmidt repeatedly gilded the lily: He exaggerated the Biden family's already problematic ties to the credit card industry; Obama’s embarrassing relationship with a 1960s radical; and an Obama supporter’s over-the-top attack on Sarah Palin when — in each case — the truth would have been damaging enough.

“Any time the Obama campaign is criticized at any level, the critics are immediately derided as liars,” Schmidt told reporters. (Yeah! And since you always lie about us being liars, that means every time you accuse us of lying, you're lying again, so we're not the liars, you're the liars - LIARS! Ed.)

But as he went on to list a series of stories he thought reporters should be writing about Obama and Biden, in almost every instance he got the details wrong.

America-hating Britons hating America

Walter Reed Middle School

SITTING behind McCain, I didn't see the screen behind him, but apparently quite a few people were puzzling over the plush-looking building projected on the screen. Wonder no more: it was Walter Reed Middle School, presumably chosen by a confused RNC staffer who was looking for a picture of Walter Reed Medical Centre.

Just so long as they don't mistakenly try to take out Ireland's nuclear programme.

Is the John McCain campaign and future White House smarter than a 6th grader?

No.

Sixth-grader Joshua Popue offered the explanation most commonly being floated Friday both at the Irvine Avenue campus and in political circles: Somebody in the McCain campaign mistook Walter Reed Middle School for the military's troubled Walter Reed Army Medical Center when preparing the Republicans' high-tech video background wall.

"McCain messed up. He was talking about Walter Reed hospital, and he used our picture by mistake," said 11-year-old Joshua.

. . .

School officials were not amused, however.

Principal Donna Tobin declined to comment because she was too busy with the first week of instruction, aides said. Later, however, she issued a statement declaring that "permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any party or view."

Speaking of running off and doing s#i+ without permission...

"Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late '70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there."