UPDATE: You Guessed It

TO WANT A BRAWL

This is terribly sad. This cherubic young girl, Ashley, a McCain volunteer from Texas, evidently attacked outside an ATM in Pittsburgh. She said that the attacker threatened her with a knife, took $60, and had stepped away from her when he saw the McCain bumper stickers on her car, became enraged, knocked her to the ground and carved this B on her face. Backwards.

It's sad on many counts: that this young woman is suffering these injuries, that many young women suffer injuries like this, and that it's probably a fake.

(2:16 PM- she's confessed: http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628)

All the features of this story are fuzzily familiar: the attacker is of course 6'4", of course black, and of course Ashley doesn't want to go to the hospital. Why would a 20 year-old be interested in a plastic surgeon repairing her scarred face?

The backwards “B”, besides being the dead giveaway, illustrates an old, sad, joke: Q:What’s the difference between genius and stupidity? A:Genius has limits. The crime itself is so very illogical and melodramatic it mirrors the cheap-novel gothic mind of a disturbed freshman: After getting sixty dollars,a pretty good haul, the mugger’s that outraged by a McPalin sticker? He hasn’t gotten used to seeing McPalin signs in Pittsburgh?

Instead of getting the hell out of there, he gently incises the more difficult of Barack Obama’s initials into her face, without leaving any ragged edges or even breaking the skin. Why not an easier O?

Self-mutilation through scratching is a not uncommon practice among teenage girls. Nor is texting, and she texted her search for an ATM to a group site she participated in with unusual devotion, carefully noting her transit to the Wrong End of Town. (the "wrong end of town" turns out to be a heavily white Italian neighborhood, the scene of the crime a busy intersection) Does downtown Pittsburgh have no ATMs? Downtown Manhattan is nothing but bank branches. Of course, many of them are failed banks. But the ATMs still work. Mostly.

So we have her placed in the Bad Section, a little Texas girl's prefab nightmare, and up pops the six-foot black man, who in classic bogeyman fashion, can't leave well enough alone by absconding with his loot, but has to turn back to attack the heroine. And I’m no expert in how blacked eyes heal, but this happened when, a couple days ago? The white of the blackened eye is clear.

For the first and probably last time in my life I have to write that I agree with Michelle Malkin on this. Which makes me breathless and sort of uneasy, but there you are. Hoax.

It certainly was:

• Her FaceBook page, which was screencaptured before it was taken down, has a statement about how much fun it is to lie.
• She called the McCain campaign office BEFORE she called the police.
• Security cameras showed she wasn't even an ATM customer.
• Here is a photo from her flickr page, showing her holding a sign she lettered. That "R" sure looks familiar! http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeinthefield/2962501339/

This poor addled race-baiting nincompoop is looking at some charges, I think, like filing a false police report, for one. (But what about the race-baiting nincompoops like Sean Hannity and members of the McCain campaign, who eagerly bit on this rotten story that even Michelle Malkin could see through? And can we now please recognize the go-to black bogeyman story employed by sad-sacks like Ashley for what it is the next time it's dragged out of storage among the other racist toys in their attic?)

GORDO THE PLUMBER

G. Gordon Liddy with his favorite party trick: demonstrating what a sick puppy he is by holding his hand over an open flame and leaving it there until his dinner partner begs him to stop. You want to talk palling around with terrorists? Alrighty, let's do:

G. Gordon Liddy, on his show August 26, 1994: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a xxxx (I know this quote is widely known, but I am not going to further disseminate the handy agent-killing tips Liddy is handing out)shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests....They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. xxxx shots, xxxx shots.... Kill the sons of bitches."

John McCain on G. Gordon Liddy's show in 2007: "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family....It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Contrast the the repeated statements of friendship and support between McCain and G.Gordon Liddy (who on his radio show advocated shooting Federal Agents, recommended methods for doing so, and never apologised for doing so) with the limited, formal contacts between Obama and Ayers.

Liddy is even now living off the notoriety he got for his crimes. He continues to have extremist views, but because he's an entertaining old sociopath, he's given a pass, even sought out for validation. One of the sicker aspects of humanity is that people seem to get a thrill from feeling they're accepted by a man who boasts that he's capable of murder.

Ayres went back to school and became an expert in the field of education. He's lived a non-radical life quietly contributing to society for the past thirty years, working with prominent Republicans like Walter Annenberg. Ayres does not live off of or benefit from having been a criminal, the way Liddy does. There are good reasons why he would be on a board along with Obama, none of them having to do with his radical past. The focus was on improving education.

There are no good reasons to associate with G. Gordon Liddy. He offers no expertise, has done nothing to rehabilitate himself, and openly flouts the law by keeping firearms though he is a convicted felon (Registered to his wife, but kept under his side of the bed). But he does have a radio show. The focus of his and McCain's association is mutual self-aggrandizement.

This tactic is not a winner for the Republicans. McCain and Palin are pointing out the speck in Obama's eye so as to draw attention away from the log in theirs.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Matthew 7:3

Johnnie Mac, the Intertubal Way

Now, this is the sort of partisan agitprop video with Profoundly. Melodramatic. Narration. In short. Urgent. Bursts. With Scary soundtrack. That. I. Don't like.

BUT it's about John McCain's temper! Which I am in a mood to highlight. After all, he two-facedly came out swinging at his opponent the day AFTER the match. That's not the MacNasty we need! But it seems that he can control himself if the opponent can hurt him back---aside from the contempt which leaks out of him in dribs and drabs. Is "That One" a drib or a drab?



Today, McCain and Palin continued to push the notion that Obama is a dangerous foreigner with terrorist ties, using half-truths, exaggerations and distortions. For instance, Obama served on the board of a charity with former Weather Underground member William Ayres. The charity was founded by Walter Annenberg, a conservative Republican and founder of Reader's Digest. But does anyone think he was a terrorist sympathizer?

At McCain and Palin rallies, shouts of "Kill him!" "Terrorist!" and "Cut off his head!" have been reported, but neither McCain nor Palin have said anything to calm down the mob mentality they seem to be cultivating. They simply repeat, "Who is Barack Obama?" as if it were Obama who'd been pulled out of obscurity five weeks ago and not Sarah Palin.

One day, people may deny that they were at McCain/Palin rallies the way older folks deny having been McCarthyites now. My folks once attended a McCarthy rally on a lark. Bad idea. My post on it: http://snarkopolitan.blogspot.com/2008/05/laughing-at-mccarthy-rally-bad-for.html

What does a hollow ex-hero's political career circling the drain look like? I think it looks like this. McCain managed to restrain himself, even attempt some false bonhomie (whew! excuse the elitist italics!), but his real contempt for Obama seeped out of his pores, his inability to even sit quietly while Obama spoke, and the moment where he jerked his thumb across his chest in Obama's direction and called him, "that one".