The factses about taxes

1 comment October 24th, 2008

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Kp62bNLcGJc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

“Attack” on McCain backer a hoax: Right-wingers mourn loss of chance to smear Obama

18 comments October 24th, 2008

A local mugging story in Pittsburgh exploded across the Internet yesterday when right-wing loonies, led by the Drudge Report, mistakenly assumed that they had finally found the scandal that would derail Barack Obama’s campaign.

The story involved claims by 20-year-old Ashley Todd (above) that she had been robbed at an ATM and then mutilated by her black attacker when he noticed a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. She said her assailant carved the letter “B” on her face.

Wacko bloggers all over the place (THIS GUY, for example) quickly assumed that the attacker was an Obamaphile, and word quickly spread that black hordes were sweeping across America looking for innocent McCainiacs to molest.

From the start, however, there were a few conservative bloggers smart enough to pick up the whiff of fraud in the claims made by the “victim.”  Michelle Malkin, for example, who’s as far right as you can get, expressed SUSPICIONS.

Then today, the cops ANNOUNCED that Ashley Todd made up the whole thing and has been charged with filing a false police report.

A lot of gullible right-wing bloggers have egg on their faces this afternoon. Serves them right, the idiots.

POSTSCRIPT: John Moody, executive vice president of Fox News, SAID this last night: “If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”

So there you have it. McCain is toast, by verdict of one of the top guys at Fox News.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign PUSHED this story, especially the Obama angle, until the truth came out.  Sleazeballs.

UPDATE II: CNN anchor Rick Sanchez FAULTS Fox News and certain other media for peddling this phony story to begin with.

UPDATE III: OK, now McCain’s going too far:

UPDATE IV: Here’s an OVERVIEW of how the “attack” story evolved in the blogosphere.

Scope of Palin disaster becomes enormous

5 comments October 24th, 2008

If John McCain loses the presidential election, as now seems likely, he’ll have nobody but himself to blame — mainly for having selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Any gains with the Republican base resulting from the Palin choice have been more than offset by all of this:

1) POLLS show that most Americans consider Palin unqualified; 2) Some major daily newspapers that ordinarily lean Republican have CITED the Palin choice as one of the reasons why they’re endorsing Barack Obama; a passel of conservative intellectuals (like THIS GUY), appalled by Palin, have jumped ship.

Six-figure tab for Palin’s duds and they send her out wearing a Democratic scarf?

6 comments October 24th, 2008

UPDATE: Incredibly, the highest-paid person in the McCain-Palin campaign during the first two weeks of October was Palin’s MAKEUP ARTIST.

Does GOP blame game portend civil war?

9 comments October 24th, 2008

Even a liberal partisan such as I will concede that John McCain could still win the presidency, but a growing number of Republican activists, including some in the McCain campaign organization, think the cause is lost and have begun LAYING BLAME for the failure.

If these GOP pessimists are correct and McCain loses, the current strife will escalate in the coming months to war over the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.