Team Obama is busily preparing to dash his supporters’ hope for change should he win the presidential election on Tuesday. Even in the final days before the election, the pressure to deliver on his lofty promises has Obama attempting to dampen expectations on the campaign trail:

“The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference,” he said. He has also been reminding crowds in recent days how “hard” it will be to achieve his goals, and that it will take time.

“I won’t stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy – especially now,” Mr Obama told a rally in Sarasota, Florida, yesterday, citing “the cost of this economic crisis, and the cost of the war in Iraq.”

This should be a huge wakeup call to any voters who remain undecided.  Hope and change are on backorder.  Barack Obama is scaling back his resplendent rhetoric because it has been empty rhetoric. He is a demagogue whose promises of hope are as fraudulent as his fundraising operation. Whether or not you find inspiration in his message, understand that Barack Obama cannot and will not deliver positive change. Can unfulfilled hope sustain you and your family for the next four years?

I won’t make false promises that a McCain administration will someday inspire unparalleled awe and reverence in historians. His presidency will revolve around the decidedly unsensational task of cleaning up inherited messes, and he isn’t likely to provoke tingly exhilaration in crowds. But all evidence indicates that John McCain is a man of his word who loves his country with breathtaking intensity and unwavering devotion. He is a man of honor who doesn’t need need an Olympian backdrop to lend gravity to his words or an embellished resume to inflate his experience.

Only one candidate has told the truth about the state of the union and the challenges we face. When Barack Obama spoke of hope and change, he was blowing smoke. When John McCain says he’ll put country first, he means it.

The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you.

We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and “play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama”

We do this to stifle your motivation and to destroy your confidence.

We did this the whole primary and it worked.

Sprinkle in mass vote confusion and it becomes bewildering. Most people lose patience and just give up on their support of a candidate and decide to just block out tv, news, websites, etc.

This surprisingly has had a huge suppressing movement and vote turnout issues.

Next, we infiltrate all the blogs and all the youtube videos and overwhelm the voting, the comments, etc. All to continue this appearance of overwhelming world support.

People makes posts to the effect that the world has “gone mad”

Thats the intention. To make you feel stressed and crazy and feel like the world is ending.

Wrangled by strategist David Axelrod, the Axelturfers also did their best to skew polls in favor of Obama. The tipster also told HillBuzz, “There is a huge staff of people working around the clock, watching every site, blogs, etc. We flood these sites. We have had a goal to overwhelm.”

If you have a political blog (or lurk or comment on one), then you’re already familiar with this artificial grassroots movement. The email confession is far from shocking, and in many ways just confirms what we already know. But how will the right use this information?

Many writers on the right side of the blogosphere have weighed the relationship between bloggers and the GOP, and have found it wanting at best. The rightroots movement, if it can be said to exist at all, is extremely disorganized and consequently, ineffective in contributing to the success of Republican campaigns.

Undoubtedly there will be a wealth of discussion in the coming months about how the right must respond to a well-developed leftroots operation. This discussion will focus on technological organization and how we can leapfrog past the left and beat them at their own game. Further attention will be paid to the development of alternative news sources that counter the bias of the mainstream media. But there are also some questions that need to be asked that will strike many as distasteful. Can we beat the left by always taking the high road? Are we willing to employ the sleazy tactics of the Obama campaign? Is it necessary (or desirable) to serve our candidates by playing dirty while they keep their boots clean?

I don’t know the answers yet, but I have my suspicions.

This extravagant prime time broadcast will be funded, in part, by a fraudulent donation racket deliberately facilitated by Team Obama.

Take a stand tonight. Use your remote control to show the country and the world that the American people are sickened by Barack Obama’s campaign finance fraud. We’re not interested in another half hour of carefully scripted pablum. Let his campaign know that we’re not buying what they’re selling, even if the Shamwow guy himself offers up an endorsement.

Barack Obama can slice and dice pineapples in mid air or guarantee a sleigh full of confidence and a sack full of pride, but it won’t matter. You see, people buy infomercial products knowing that they have the Better Business Bureau, the FTC, and their credit card companies to protect them from fraud. But Americans know that their votes are the only things to protect them from an Obama administration.

So tonight, show your support for John McCain by NOT tuning in to one of the seven channels airing Obama’s As Seen On TV Extravaganza. ( I promise you’ll be able to catch it on the Internet later, or you can check out Michelle Malkin’s live blog of the Obama variety half hour.)

Instead, take the thirty minutes between 8pm and 8:30pm eastern time to join John McCain’s voter-to-voter phone bank. Come on, you know you have at least thirty unused cell phone minutes this month, so make a few calls to Ohio or Pennsylvania and help get out the vote.

Leave the infomercials to Chef Tony and Ron Popeil.

So sayeth the editors of The New Mexico Sun News. More than a week before the presidential election, the liberal paper published an article declaring Obama the winner.

The papers are popular because of the headline. It reads “Obama Wins!”

The admittedly left-leaning publication is calling the election a week early because it supports Obama and because the bi-monthly paper will not be published again until well after the election.

The article does, however, remind all people to vote even though, in their words, “(They) did spoil the ending for you.”

Congratulations to The Sun News for hatching a short-sighted plot to improve their circulation for a single issue. They can’t keep the papers on the stands and It’s just as well. New Mexicans will need something to line their hamster cages next week.

Obamaween is the new Americana.

Just watch. Then watch it again to catch all the detail.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Loved the video? Send an email to the creator, C. A. Velasquez – his email address appears at the end of the video. And leave him a comment on YouTube.

Hat tip: Pamela Geller, who also has a long email from the filmmaker about how he became a Republican. It’s well worth the read, especially for those of us who had similar epiphanies about our political leanings.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on Ashley Todd’s connection to Ron Paul and his nutty disciples:

In March, Ms. Todd was asked to leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms. Todd posed as a supporter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies.

“She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information,” Mr. Costine said last night. “We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her.”

About a month earlier, he said, Ms. Todd sent an e-mail to the Ron Paul group saying her tires were slashed and that campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Mr. Paul.

“She’s the type of person who wants to be recognized,” Mr. Costine said.

Like Ron Paul and his minions, Ms. Todd is a distraction from the seriousness of this election season. Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent, don’t allow her hateful, deplorable actions to further distract from the final days of the campaigns. Focus on learning as much as you can about John McCain and Barack Obama, and make sure your vote is something you won’t regret later.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama? Obama? No, no merci. No merci beaucoup.

Indeed!

If you’re feeling like President Obama is inevitable, just remember that so was Hillary Clinton. Things change. Yes, even in 11 days.

I wonder if K-Lo would be willing to hire herself out for the next 11 days.  I could use my own personal cheerleader, and her qualifications are impeccable.

See also: The Fat Lady Has Laryngitis.

Update, 10/24/08: Ashley Todd’s story was a complete fabrication. I’ll leave the post up, but I’m turning off comments because I can’t spend all day forwarding death threats against Ashley to the authorities. If you have something you need to get off your chest, use the contact form.

Update, 10/25/08: More on this racist cretin’s politics, including her participation in the Ron Paul campaign.  I was inclined to believe she was a self-absorbed loser looking for attention, but the Ron Paul connection screams nutjob.  At least she’s not a real McCain supporter.

**********

Remember when Barack Obama told his supporters that they should seek out independents and Republicans “to argue with them and get in their face”? Well, at least one Obama supporter has reportedly taken that battle cry quite literally. Via Drudge comes this terrifying story of a young McCain volunteer named Ashley Todd who was savagely attacked for her political allegiances:

Pittsburgh Police are investigating a report by a campaign staffer for John McCain that she was mugged and the letter B was cut into her face following a robbery in Bloomfield last night.

Police say the 20-year-old woman, who is from Texas, reported that the attack occurred around 9 p.m. after she withdrew $60 from an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street.

She said a man armed with a knife demanded her money. She gave it to him and began walking toward her car, which has McCain stickers.

Although the robber had moved away from her, he became agitated when he saw her car, punched her in the back of the head, pushed her to the ground and carved a B into her face, she reported.

Fox News reports that John McCain called Ashley this afternoon, and the Obama campaign extended their thoughts as well. KDKA says Sarah Palin also called the victim.

The right side of the blogosphere is already rife with suspicion that this brutal attack could be a hoax and that it has “a Tawana Brawley feel.” Some find it suspect that the incident occurred outside the range of ATM surveillance cameras and suspicious that the victim refused medical treatment at the scene. Other skeptics point to the fact that a photograph of the woman shows a backwards “B” carved into her face, as though she used a mirror to mutilate herself.

Others are inclined to believe the report and think it’s unlikely a woman would intentionally scar herself that way. Rob Taylor reminds us it ain’t easy to blacken your own eyes. HillBuzz is demanding that Obama condemn the actions of his follower and Gateway Pundit is horrified.

My thoughts go out to Ashley Todd, and I hope this incident doesn’t deter her from continuing to be involved in the political process.

But here’s my big picture take: It doesn’t matter whether Ashley was genuinely attacked for her political beliefs. What counts is that the story seems entirely plausible, and that’s scary. It’s entirely believable that an Obama supporter would viciously maim a McCain volunteer because we expect that behavior from people who delight in smearing the minor children of politicians.

Even if Ashley’s story proves to be completely false, ask yourself whether you believe it could happen. Do you want to vote with people you expect to physically attack their political opposites, or against them?

Update: Michelle Malkin also calls b.s. I still say the veracity of Ashley Todd’s story is neither here nor there. It’s the notion that vicious behavior from one of Obama’s enraged followers isn’t at all shocking that should give you pause.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.

Card’s only mistake is believing that the people to whom he directs his letter care about honor and honesty, that they value ethics and truth. But this election season has made clear that there won’t be any light bulb moments in newsrooms across America. These people have already decided: epiphany, thy name is Obama.

He continues:

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

I appreciate Card’s optimism in reaching out to these “journalists,” and applaud his attempt to call them out on their despicable betrayal of Americans’ trust. But these rhetorical questions won’t shame members of the media into doing right by their readers. It is the American people – Joe the plumber and Tito the construction worker and Jenn the blogger – and not the media elite who will ultimately shape the outcome of the election.

We have reached a Dickensian moment in American history, the age of foolishness in journalism and the age of wisdom among patriotic citizens. So let the mainstream American media plummet into the worst of times; it is at the polls, and not in the newspapers, that we will ensure the best of times.