My boss got it in the mail from a friend, he was indignant (he's a moderate conservative) but even he suspected it was a fraud. Most reasonable people realize even their most bitter ideological enemies would not be that stupid, even if they were that evil. So I tracked it down with Google. My boss returned my link to his friend.

I get them all the time as email, from my brother's in-laws, and from my wife's family, and from other correspondents who seem to relish my outrage.

The funny thing is that I don't get analogous viral propaganda based on anti-conservative themes from my liberal friends. Robert the Red sends me volumes of very dull scholarly monographs crammed with references and citations and lengthy quoted passages. I don't take them any more seriously than I do yours.

I don't doubt liberal viral email exists, they just seem to be a lot rarer, and the ones I have seen are based on exaggerations, clearly accidental, out-of-context remarks and images, or are obviously satirical or clearly faked to make a humorous or insulting point (like a nude, gun-totin' Sarah Palin in a pornographic pose, one of my personal favorites, but clearly not legit). They are not expected to pass as authentic "ah hah!" moments. The deliberate fabrication of a falsehood in the hope it will be transmitted virally (like the birther or Muslim Obama memes)appears to be a primarily conservative specialty.

In fact, the worst slur I saw perpetrated on a Republican was a scandalous attack on John McCain by an extremist right wing group. (It might even conceivably have been "black propaganda", but in my experience, lefty propagandists are rarely that subtle). They accused him of having broken under torture while a POW in N Vietnam where he betrayed his comrades and was brainwashed as a modern day Manchurian Candidate. This supposedly explained McCain's leftist voting record (I kid you not). I wish I had saved the link for you, Tom, you would have loved it. They had plenty of footnotes and even corroborating witnesses.

As for Bush the Younger, I never thought he was a bad person, I just felt he wasn't too bright. And I've always had a grudging respect for his father.