podpolia

Obviously, John Edwards doesn't pay attention to the news, at least as far as the discussions of forged documents go. I highly doubt he's actually in the dark about this, he's probably just trying to brazen it out for a while, getting as much mileage from it as possible before it disintegrates.
The Bush camp has responded, wisely having McClellan say they don't know if they're authentic, but hinting that it's just possible they're not (something more and more people are suspecting anyhow). This way, no matter how it goes, Bush doesn't lose much of anything. They're sitting back and letting the media hash this one out — and expecting that the end result will work in their favor.

Another plot thickens as well.

The plot thickens…

Real bugs apparently aren't good enough… now we have artificial ones.

I thought I'd throw in my analysis of the current episode of “Bush in the Texas Air National Guard” while I'm still thinking about it. Politically, this is not likely to do very much to hurt Bush — most of this has been dragged through the mud repeatedly (May of this year, and in 2000 when he was running against Gore) and isn't news to most people. Reminding people of it may do a little bit to help Kerry, but nothing new and shocking is likely to come out (as could still be the case with Kerry, if the mainstream media actually looks into the accusations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth instead of ignoring them as minions of Karl Rove).
Speaking of Karl Rove, if he plays his cards right, he could get a LARGE chunk of this wiped away by pressing on the whole “forged documents” bit. If they can be conclusively (or even close to conclusively) shown to be forged, and the Bush camp pushes on the “they're even forging documents to make me look bad, and they can't even do THAT properly” keys, public perception will likely be that much, if not all, of the National Guard story is false.
This is rather a rare opportunity: CBS put out the documents bashing an obviously resurgent George W. Bush. The documents appear to be forged, and for the most part only CBS was tooting this horn — and the networks are always looking for an opportunity to make their opponants look bad. Peter Jennings mentioned the story tonight, and didn't add many details (such as the fact that it matches EXACTLY the output from typing the same text into Microsoft Word) but you could tell that they were accenting that CBS put it out.
Quite the opportunity — may not be usable to gain an advantage for Bush in the long run, but it may well be possible to erase any damage done to his polling numbers.

A good, though brief, account of what Bush's military record is. I have yet to see where the new allegations of him not showing up for a physical fit into all of this; in another article on the subject that I read, he missed the physical (which made him unfit to fly) for the period when he was in Alabama, and was doing desk jobs and was not allowed to fly anyhow. It'd be nice to know all of it.
It'd also be nice if Kerry released as many of his military records as Bush has.

Interesting… I bet Karl Rove is probably breathing a big sigh of relief on this one — if it's true.

Succinct summary of what Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say about Kerry.

This is the Paris underground.

This is a hint to Karl Rove: it's time to start publicizing Kerry's Senate record, since it's obvious that if he's the most liberal member of the Senate, he should be recognized as more of what he is.
Then again, this is what happens when you don't take any positions other than not being George Bush.