(Updated and bumped)

So the big story is of this McCain worker who was mugged and assaulted by a supposed Obama supporter. Drudge has been pushing this story hard. Here’s the image of the “victim” that he had appearing at the top of his site for the last several hours:

Cesca and Wonkette have both questioned the authenticity of this. For a real shocker, I have to point out that I am even agreeing with Malkin on this that the story really smells.

Besides the obvious, the backwards B (think Morton Downey Jr. and swastikas) , notice anything else wrong? I have been the victim of plenty of black eyes from my rough younger days of bar fighting. When you got a shiner with that much bruising your eye is swollen up bad for at least a couple of days. This just happened less than 24 hours ago. Where’s the swelling?

Also – where are the broken capillaries that go hand in hand with this type of shiner? How about a bloodshot eye? What’s with the black streak above the B that happens to be the same shade as her black eye? Look again at the black eye. I have never seen one squiggle down as though a pen or marker made it, like hers.

A final thing. She refused medical care. Why was that? I hope these questions get answered soon. We are a nation waiting.

UPDATE:
Something else caught my eye. The Smoking Gun has a screen capture of her blog post right before the attack where she says she was looking for a Bank of America ATM so she didn’t have to pay the fee. That also happens to be my bank and what really got me thinking was a box that appears right on the Bank of America homepage:

Yup that box right there to search for an ATM location. So she could get online to blog, but not to search for an ATM? Yeah something really smells

UPDATE 2:

TMZ is reporting that they have spoken to Pittsburgh PD and they are saying that they are highly skeptical of the claims in this story. Sullivan also has this note from a reader that gets right to the point:

If you were being mugged and attacked by a big old angry man, would you be still enough for him to neatly scratch a “B” into the center of your cheek? Also, the “B” is backwards. It would look correct in the mirror if you were to scratch it into your own face. This is a sad story.

I thought the same thing and was just saying that to some friends.

UPDATE 3:

The police’s skepticism has grown over night:

Police planned to administer a polygraph test to Ashley Todd, 20, because her statements about the attack conflict with evidence from the Citizens Bank ATM where she claims the incident occurred, police said.

UPDATE 4:
Todd has a MySpace profile which she turned private last night. Thanks to Google Cache we can still see her quote here:

She openly admits to an enjoyment of lying? Then there is this little gem from her MySpace:

Todd kept a blog on her now-locked MySpace. A copy of the blog’s main page as it appeared on August 10, 2008 is embedded above. This passage from an entry posted July 1, 2008 jumped out at me: “Thankfully my closest of friends have assured me that when I finally am a victim of political assassination or brutal murder for running my mouth, that they will be honest at my funeral.”

I now think she is not only a liar, but also someone with serious emotional issues.