Hey, that blood's just ketchup

A couple of months back a staunchly conservative, bordering on fascist friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail on Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now this friend, whom I will call Benito for anonymity's sake, and I have long had debates stretching for decades on topics ranging from the mundane, the exciting flat tax debate, to the controversial, whether we're better off nuking the Iranians and/or the French, to the bizarre, that Dennis Hastert is secretly cloning himself to ensure a Bush victory in November and future world domination.

Well, I lost that last debate when my reliable informant was found dead in a rundown hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi.

If you haven't received this forwarded e-mail, which likely was started by Benito himself (or perhaps good old Denny), the e-mail claims that Teresa Heinz's chests of money are going to a bevy of "anti-American" causes such as giving $4 million to a foundation that used the funds to support a list of "radical" groups including one with alleged links to Hamas and another foundation that is said to have offered to provide a lawyer for Saddam Hussein.

Further, the e-mail claims:

They support the National Lawyers Guild, organized as a communist front during the Cold War era. One of their attorneys, Lynne Stewart, has been arrested for helping a client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with terror cells in Egypt He is the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Holy wack, unlyrical lyrics!, you say, if Teresa is funding Hamas and other terrorists, then John Kerry IS funding terrorists, then John Kerry IS essentially a terrorist (an "evildoer") and thus not fit for the presidency. Case closed. End of election. Kerry is Dukakis. Kerry IS bin Laden.

Not so fast, Benito. You've been spinning lies, innuendos, and falsehoods and blowing toxic gas in my face since well before 2000. You've also told me that the election was over with Kerry's surprise early victories in the primaries. You long told me that venerable Dick Gephardt, who incidentally lost the House in 2000, was the Democrats' only hope. You told me it was over with Kerry's medals flap and, around the same time, when it was alleged that Kerry cheated on his wife. You told me it was over when the salacious Drudge Report reported that Kerry's coiffure is trimmed for a non-blue collar $75 and his hound dog face was regularly injected with Botox. You told me it was over when standup comic Al Sharpton spoke at the DNC, when the boyish John Edwards was chosen as the runningmate, when the respectable John McCain began pushing for George Bush despite their past acrimony and hate, when the vacuous Woopi Goldberg shot off her big, dirty mouth, when certain biased Vietnam War veterans denounced Kerry, when the economy upticked slightly, and recently when some crackpot began questioning Kerry's Vietnam record.

Yet, the beat goes on. We remain in a deadheat.

And now, it's Theresa. If you read the e-mail, it is startling. It, in fact, reminds one of the Fahrenheit 911 allegations levied against Bush...that he's too chummy with the Saudis, Halliburton, Enron, and the bin Laden family.

The problem though, Benito, is that the info contained in this e-mail is just another hoax, another fiction. According to Fact Check, who's been fact checking for both sides throughout, the e-mail is completely false, fallacious, apocryphal, bunk, just another unfounded smear campaign. Check it out for yourself. But, beware, the facts might get in the way.