Is This McCain's Oct. Surprise ???

McCain has tried to put out we just don't know enough about Sen. Obama couple this with the lack of venting on Sara Palin.

Add to the fact that The campaign sent out its media itinerary for yesterday's bus tour through the Sunshine State and three times it referred to its "Joe the Plummer" tour.
When hes not a licened Plummer owes & back taxes .


Joe the Plumber’ may consider running for Congress in 2010.
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher told Laura Ingraham, in an appearance on her show Friday, he’d consider it.

Wurzelbacher would be challenging longtime Rep. Marcy Kaptur

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/25/joe-plumber-considers-run-congress/


Joe the Plumber was once Joe the Alaskan (are you surprised?)


Questions began flying about a a possible Doug-and-Joe connection and whether Joe, who confronted Obama in front of television cameras in Ohio, was a plant.

Now we have a Republican operative, apparently an up-and-comer in the GOP ranks, who calls in a false report about a black man mugging and then carving a backwards "b" in her face with a knife.

A McCain-Palin campaign volunteer who claimed she was robbed and cut by a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama confessed Friday to making up the story, Pittsburgh police said.
Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, is charged with filing a false police report. She told investigators she has had psychological issues in the past, according to Assistant Chief Maurita Bryant. Police said she was taken to an undisclosed hospital for a psychological evaluation

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_595166.html

McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of "Carved B" Story Before Facts Were Known

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.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:
A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman.

Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI's site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

There's no evidence that anyone from McCain national headquarters put out a version of events like this.

After the story appeared on KDKA's site and this and other pieces in the local press started flying around the political world, an Obama spokesperson in the state angrily insisted to KDKA that it was irresponsible for the station to air the McCain spokesperson's incendiary version of events before the facts were fully known, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

After that, KDKA went back to McCain's Pennsylvania spokesperson, Feldman, and asked if he stood by the story as he'd earlier told it, but he started backing off the story, a source familiar with the talks says. That prompted KDKA to remove the grafs.

Feldman couldn't immediately be reached, and a McCain HQ spokesperson declined to comment.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/mccain_aide_gave_reporters_inc.php

Police: McCain volunteer made up ATM robbery story

Why McCain will have to wear Ashley Todd’s scarlet letter

Here’s the question of the day: How did the entire blogosphere and twitterverse know intuitively that Ashley Todd was some imbalanced attention-seeker almost immediately after the story broke but John McCain, Sara Palin and their top staff did not?

Predictably, the liberal bloggers and tweeters were calling bullshit as soon as they heard Todd’s tale of getting mugged and having a backwards “B” carved scratched into her cheek while she was somewhere on the “wrong side” of Pittsburgh.

The B, presumably, was for “Barack.” The mugger, a tallish, thinnish black man (apparently dyslexic) became enraged after he noticed that Todd, a McCain campaign worker, had a McCain bumper sticker on her car.
Of course, everyone knew it was a lie just by looking at the picture of her “disfigured” face posted at Smoking Gun.

Why would the mugger carve a backwards B? And why did he take extra care not to break her skin with his knife after violently punching, kicking and throwing her to the ground?

I mean even conservative blogger Michelle Malkin called Todd out with a blog post that thought the story too odd to believe. However, many of Malkin’s conservative cohorts couldn’t resist fanning the flames of racial hysteria.

Jay Bookman with the AJC has a roundup of the dimwits hollering about the “thuggery” of Obama’s campaign.

They weren’t alone. Some mainstream media outlets were running with the story, despite the fact that the story couldn’t pass the smell test of any first-year journalism student.

Despite the doubts that were burning up the Internet, McCain and Palin both reportedly called Todd and her family to offer their support and sympathy. And lower down on the totem pole, McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director Peter Feldman apparently did his best to make sure the story got mainstream media attention.

TPM describes Feldman’s role in pushing the story:

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.

One presumes that the decision for the candidates to call Todd was made at the highest levels of the campaign, though at this point, that might be giving the dysfunctional McCain camp too much credit.

You almost can’t blame McCain or Palin for making the call.

They have extreme demands on their time and they certainly don’t have time to be surfing the web and reading all the back and forth discussion that was taking place about this story.

I’m assuming that they wouldn’t call Todd without first getting briefed by chief strategist Steve Schmidt or campaign manager Rick Davis, or at the very least, one of their top lieutenants.

This is a situation where you trust that your staff has vetted Todd’s story and realizes the potential blowback if it turns out she’s a psychologically-troubled young lady with a history of making things up.

Once again, team McCain failed. Perhaps not an Epic Fail (Fox News Executive VP John Moody, in an otherwise ridiculous attempt to link Obama politically to the alleged incident, went so far to say if the incident was a hoax, it was game over for McCain) but an embarrassing moment, nonetheless, which adds just another unwanted distraction to an already chaotic campaign.

Here’s what some other bloggers are saying:

Kos @ The Daily Kos:
The story was instantly suspect, as the pictures of her supposed beating, her Twitter account, and her timelines all patently contradicted themselves. But the wingnutosphere, with the healthy assist from Fox News, piled on anyway, letting their ideological blinders get in the way of reality. As usual.
And now they look like idiots. As usual.

As for Ms. Ashley Todd, being a liar and race-baiter is par for the course for College Republicans.

Clinical psychologist Alan J. Lipman @ Head of State:
Anyone who understands the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is well aware of what happened here. Extreme needs for attention combine with physically destructive behavior–most often seen in cutting one’s own skin–in an act meant to bring outer love and attention as it attacks inner self-hatred.

Shawn Williams @ Dallas South:
Introduce a black man to the story and you automatically get sympathy. That’s what happened to Ashley Todd as she was contacted by McCain, Palin, and apparently the Obama staff.

This is the race baiting that McCain has chosen to align himself. Race voting and fear mongering are his only chances for the White House.
B-Serious @ Jack and Jill Politics:

Thankfully, her lies didn’t work. But if they had . . . if she never confessed to the hoax . . . Pennsylvania voters would surely have been inundated with questions and imagery that stir some of the deepest and darkest emotions this country has ever known regarding race.

I doubt it would have been enough to flip the state. But it could have made things a lot closer.

I understand that she may have acted completely on her own. But I’m sure I’m not the only one with a few questions

Brian Williams: McCain Campaign Spread 'B' Hoax To Reporters

On Thursday, FOX News Executive VP John Moody wrote:
If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

The tone of FOX's coverage over the next 10 days will tell us whether or not Mr. Moody actually meant what he said.

But no matter what he or his network ends up doing, the words he spoke were the truth.

Up Date

Confirmed: Ashley Todd a paid CRNC organizer UPDATED X2
by dworth

Mon Oct 27, 2008 at 11:31:56 AM PDT

There still seems to be questions among even Kossacks as to whether is no longer any question that Ashley Todd was a paid organizer or not.

This has probably been covered, but since there's still confusion, I think we need to make sure this information is better distributed.
Today it was confirmed by Ethan Eioln of the CRNC (College Republican National Committee) that she was contracted to be paid $3,600 for her August to election day work.

So, case closed. Let's get this story back in the news cycle. The traditional media has now buried it, after only 3 days of coverage. We all know what would have happened if she were a liberal.

The CRNC is a 527 group with very close ties to the RNC.
The CRNC is clearly a major player for the Republican National Committee, receiving $25,000 from the RNC in 2002. The Center for Public Integrity also notes that most of the money raised by the group is spent on direct mail efforts and paying field representatives such as Todd.

So, this organizer was contracted for $3,600 (or $1,200 a month) for 3 months work as a College Republican organizer.
This should be on every news show in America tonight, on the cover of every single newspaper tomorrow.