Just like John Kerry not introducing legislation to continue the assault weapons ban, then blaming Bush for letting the old one expire, the Democrats are now blaming Republicans for the conspiracy they, themselves, set into motion.

Back on September 14, Terry McAulliffe launched ‘Project Fortunate Son‘ to coincide with Dan Rather’s hit piece on 60 Minutes about Bush’s National Guard Service. While Joe Lockhart, a Kerry campaign adviser was discussing forged documents with Bill Burkett, an admittedly partisan hack with a score to settle, the Dan Rather was tossing softball questions to Ben Barnes, a Vice Chair, and top fundraiser, of the Kerry campaign. Both CBS and the DNC continued to maintain that even if the documents were fake, Bush was somehow obligated to respond to the contents. They even ignored warnings from independent document experts (because they knew they were fakes) and instead went fishing for more partisan hacks to put on the air, like Marian Carr Knox, the secretary of a dead man - who was admittedly critical of Bush, calling him “unfit for office.” Such a beautifully orchastrated and concerted effort. To say nothing of the ridiculousness of requiring the accused to respond to fake documents alleging false claims. They’ve lost their friggin’ minds.

This whole charade was transparent from the outset. But the Democrats are so desperate now, they’re actually accusing Republicans of some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy* again to deflect attention away from themselves.

So let me get this straight:

1. The same week the DNC launches a campaign about Bush’s Guard service

2. CBS airs a hit piece about Bush’s Guard service

3. CBS uses forged documents to support its hit piece

4. The forged documents were supplied by a guy who has been proven to provide falsities in the past and was known to have a grudge against Bush

5. The Kerry Campaign spoke with the source prior to the CBS show and DNC campaign

6. CBS hired experts who told them the documents were fakes

7. CBS interviewed a Kerry campaign Vice Chair to support its hit piece

8. The man referred to in the documents contradicts the documents’ contents about Bush

9. CBS dug a deeper hole hiring experts and old ladies who would continue to bash Bush and claim the fake documents weren’t fake

10. CBS finally admits the documents were fake, but says Bush should still answer the charges contained within them

and somehow this is all a conspiracy cooked up by the Republicans. Beautiful.

*(Assuming this really was created by Republicans, how hard would it have been for CBS to not “get duped” considering they had experts telling them the documents were fake and never bothered to interview the secretary or the man mentioned in the documents, and how dumb are the Democrats who had access to the source and still launched their false campaign - which they’re still sticking with, by the way….interesting considering they’re claiming it was all a Republican prank)

He’s a fighter, Not a weenie…

Someone ought to remind John Kerry that fighting involves more than just shouting that you’re a fighter.

“Bring it on. I have only just begun to fight.” - January 28, 2004

He had only just begun, but apparently nobody noticed, because 3 months later, he had to remind us:

“I’m a fighter…Boy, wait until you see the fire in my belly.” - March 3, 2004

He’s started to sound like a series of U.N. resolutions. “No really, this time we mean it, just you wait and see….”

“These guys, they’ve got me in a fighting mood.” - September 21, 2004

Well thank goodness, because we’ve been waiting since January to see the fighting you’d just begun and since March to see the fire in your belly. So when do you stop yapping and start fighting?

“That’s our slogan,” quipped his ad man, Jim Margolis. “John Kerry: He’s no weenie.”

Beautiful.

September 20, 2004 - “Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell, but that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.”

December 16, 2003 - “Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe that we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.”

Are there any election laws that prevent a candidate from running such negative campaigns against one’s self? Negative or not, John Kerry is running one hell of a campaign against John Kerry.

Sen. John Kerry said Monday that mistakes by President Bush in invading Iraq could lead to unending war and that no responsible commander in chief would have begun the war knowing Saddam Hussein didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction and wasn’t an imminent threat to the United States.

“Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?”

“Is he really saying to Americans that if we had known there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is resoundingly no because a commander in chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.”

Get more help from other nations.

Provide better training for Iraqi security forces.

Provide benefits to the Iraqi people.

Ensure that democratic elections can be held next year as promised.

1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwil, to do so.

2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.

Conscious of the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security in the area and of the need to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons…

Deploring threats made by Iraq during the recent conflict to make use of terrorism against targets outside Iraq and the taking of hostages by Iraq.

8. Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of:

(a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities;

(b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities;

10. Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally undertake not to use, develop, construct or acquire any of the items specified in paragraphs 8 and 9 above and requests the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Special Commission, to develop a plan for the future ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq’s compliance with this paragraph, to be submitted to the Security Council for approval within one hundred and twenty days of the passage of this resolution.

John Kerry keeps telling us that Bush let the assault weapons ban expire. What Kerry seems to be forgetting is that HE is the one in Congress…. that HE is the one with power to sponsor legislation… that HE is the one responsible for getting legislation to the President to sign into law.

In fact, President Bush supports the renewal of the 10-year-old ban on the sale of certain assault weapons and promised to sign a measure renewing the ban. Where is the Kerry Assault Weapons Ban Bill before Congress? Where’s the Edwards Ban? The truth of the matter is JOHN KERRY and JOHN EDWARDS allowed the ban to expire by not reintroducing legislation, not lobbying Congress to vote thereon, and not delivering the bill to the President, to sign it as he promised he would. John Kerry fails to act and somehow it’s the fault of his political opponent. He seems to take pleasure in accusing his opponent of the very failings that he, himself, is guilty of.

To make matters worse, John Kerry is shooting his mouth off again and accusing the President of the United States of aiding terrorists.

“In the al-Qaida manual on terror, they were telling people to go out and buy assault weapons, to come to America and buy assault weapons,'’ Kerry said. “Every law enforcement officer in America doesn’t want us selling assault weapons in the streets of America, but George Bush, he says, ‘Well, I’m for that.’ ‘’

Here’s a question, John, if the al-Qaida manual on terror was telling people to come to America to buy assault weapons, then what good was the ban anyway? It seems al-Qaida was perfectly content, according to your findings in their manual, to come to a country that had an assault weapons ban in place to purchase such weapons.

Does it hurt when you twist yourself into such logical pretzels?

Kerry once again stumbles in front of a crowd while trying to curry favor with constituents and proving he’s just making this shit up as he goes.

At a campaign event last month, the Democratic presidential nominee called the hallowed grounds upon which the Packers play football “Lambert Field” (Hey John, it’s Lambeau) — a slip of the tongue carried on television, in papers throughout the state and on ESPN’s Web site.

And back on August 1st, Kerry dug a huge hole for himself in Michigan, saying, “There is nothing better than Buckeye football, period!” In MICHIGAN!

In July, John Kerry, asserting himself to be a true Bostonian professed to be a big fan of Boston Red Sox baseball player “Manny Ortez,” then re-emphasized the phoofery by correcting it to “David Ortez.” (Note to Kerry: It’s Manny Ramirez)

This was reminiscent of a few years back when Kerry went on a Boston radio station and said “my favorite Red Sox player of all time is The Walking Man, Eddie Yost,” who never played for the Red Sox.

On March 10, John Kerry said, “Let me tell you something, when Matthew Shepard gets crucified on a fence in Wyoming because, because, only because he was gay,” Kerry said, “and Mr. King gets dragged behind a truck down Texas by chains and his body is mutilated only because he’s gay, I think that’s a matter of rights in the United States of America.” Kerry, however, misstated Byrd’s last name, and referred to Byrd’s sexuality when he should have referred to his race.

John, stick to your talking points and scripted speeches. Apparently you’re not capable of venturing outside the bounds of your prepared statements. I find it ironic that your side claims your opponent is the idiot, when you consistently prove you’re up to the challenge to take the title. Somebody call Terry McAulliffe and arrange for a verbal leash for this moron before he puts an eye out or something.

UPDATE: It’s official, the 527 organization “Football Fans for Truth” is launched. It’s time Kerry comes clean with Americans… he’s really just a band geek parading as a sports fan.

“With respect: answer the questions,” said Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor. He was asking a direct question to President George W. Bush, his re-election campaign and his political allies in the press and on the Web. “We�ve heard what you have to say about the documents and what you�ve said and what your surrogates have said, but for the moment, answer the questions. “I say that with respect,” he added. “They�d be a lot stronger in their campaign if they did do that.”

As I’m watching this Rathergate story unfold before my eyes, I continue to ask myself what a trial might look like if Dan Rather and CBS were arguing this case before a jury. Let’s call for their opening statement:

Correspondent Dan Rather has new information on the president�s military service � and the first-ever interview with the man who says he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.

Dan calls his first witness, Mr. Ben Barnes:

George W. Bush had just graduated from Yale, and faced the prospect of being drafted himself. But former Texas House Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes says he helped keep that from happening.

Mr. Barnes, what is your current affiliation with the Kerry campaign?

“Uh, um… I’m Vice Chair of the Kerry Campaign.”

Are we to believe your testimony here today is unbiased and not political?

“I’ve had hundreds of phone calls from people wanting to know the story. And I’ve been quoted and misquoted. And the reason I am here today � is that I really want to tell the story. And I want to tell it one time. And get it behind us. And again, it is not about George Bush’s political career. This is about what the truth is.”

Oh really? I bet it would interest you to hear what your daughter has to say about that:

I love my father very much, but he’s doing this for purely political reasons. He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And [the Bush story] is what he’s leading the book off with. … He denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out [of Vietnam service]. Now he’s saying he did. … This came out in 2000 and I asked him then, at the time, if he [helped get Bush into the Guard]. He said: “No, absolutely not. I did not do that.”

At this point Dan jumps from his seat, documents in hand and says:

But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian’s personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about “how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.”

Wow, such a stunning blow to the other side… And Dan, we assume, if the court requests, you’ll produce Col. Killian to discuss these documents in question?

Uh…um…Col. Killian died in 1984.

Well, can you please explain to the court just how you intend to provide adequate foundation for the admission of these documents before the jury?

60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic. Rather said CBS’s lead expert was Marcel Matley of San Francisco, a member of the National Association of Document Examiners who has taught, lectured and written about his field, testified in numerous trials and consulted for government agencies. Matley said Friday night that a “60 Minutes” executive had asked him not to give interviews.

Ok, so the alleged author is no longer living, but you’ve got an expert witness to authenticate these documents. Mr. Matley, what are your findings?

“There’s no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them,” Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco.

Dan, perhaps you can offer some other experts that can authenticate them?

Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast. “I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter,” she said. Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.

A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them. “I did not authenticate anything and I don’t want it to be misunderstood that I did,” James said. “And that’s why I have come forth to talk about it because I don’t want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents.”

“I’m virtually certain these were computer-generated,” Sandra Ramsey Lines (a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences) said after reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz.

The personnel chief in Killian’s unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake. “They looked to me like forgeries,” Rufus Martin said. “I don’t think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years.”

A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush’s National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.

“I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake,” said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s.

Retired Col. Maurice Udell, the unit’s instructor pilot who helped train Mr. Bush, said Friday he thought the documents were fake.

Ok, Dan. So you’ve produced documents allegedly written by a man unable to authenticate them from his grave. You’ve produced an expert who is incapable of authenticating them. And we have numerous people calling them fakes, including experts YOU HIRED.

Dan: Your honor, I call to the stand, Ms. Marian Carr Knox, Jerry Killian’s secretary to authenticate these documents:

�These are not real,� she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. �They�re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.�

Well, that probably wasn’t the testimony you were hoping for, was it? Do you have any other evidence supporting the authenticity of these documents?

In its broadcast last night, CBS News produced a new expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant. He said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents. Any argument to the contrary is “an out-and-out lie,” Glennon said in a telephone interview. But Glennon said he is not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos’ authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network’s offices.

Ah, that’s better. Now you’re offering the statements of a man who admits he’s not a document expert and to whom you refused to provide copies… to prove the authenticity of the documents. Good job. So you’re saying he’s just here to tell the jury that it was possible a typewriter that existed somewhere on the planet in the 1970s might have been capable of producing the documents in question? Well, by golly, that means case closed, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more…

Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font, disputed Glennon’s statement to CBS. He said “fairly extensive testing” had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.

Oops. Let’s try again. Maybe you can get someone named in the documents to authenticate them.

The Dallas Morning News said in a report for its Saturday editions that the officer named in a memo as exerting pressure to “sugar coat” Mr. Bush’s record had left the Texas Air National Guard 1� years before the memo was dated. The newspaper said it obtained an order showing that Walter B. Staudt, former commander of the Texas Guard, retired on March 1, 1972. The memo was dated Aug. 18, 1973. A telephone call to Staudt’s home Friday night was not answered.

Dan, Dan, Dan, do you have anything… anything at all to authenticate the documents you’ve produced to the viewing public to support your claims against the President of the United States?

Rather said on The CBS Evening News that broadcast memos questioned by forensic experts came from “what we consider to be solid sources.”

CBS used several techniques to make sure these papers should be taken seriously. Talking to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist that the documents could have been created in the ’70s.

“We decided there was a preponderance of evidence that they are what they purport to be, ” said Rather.

So what you’re telling us is - that despite numerous experts, including your own, stating these documents are likely forgeries and despite the fact your interviewee has a totally different story given under oath than the one he gave on your program, and despite the fact that, aside from the obvious problems with the documents, at least one references pressure from a man who, at the time, was no longer even in the Guard - that the only supporting evidence you have on the authenticity of these documents is your word? Ignoring everything else, you expect the jury to rely on YOUR decision that the documents are what they purport to be?

Well, your honor… he is Dan Rather.