Another Ridiculous Myth: Hillary is Fully Vetted

[DemsUnited]

Watched a Clinton surrogate on CNN pedaling the memo that everyone already knows about all the Clinton dirt.

True, up until 2000, when the Clintons left the White House a million or so dollars in debt to lawyers.

Since 2000, the Clinton personal fortune has sky rocketed to $50 - 100 million. Some of what they did to accumulate this wealth, as well as several campaign and Clinton library contributors, isn't pretty.

A few connections simmering the last 8 years that haven't yet made the front pages during the primaries: Norman Hsu, Peter Paul, David Rosen, James Levin, Vin Gupta.

And there are more dubious connections, which is probably why the Clintons don't want to release their tax returns and donor lists. The right wing attack machine is already on the case, though, compiling lists such as this one: http://prorev.com/hillaryfriends.htm

Oh, and then there's Belinda Stronach, the Canadian Bill was rumored to be having an affair with a few years ago.

Is there any fire to go along with the smoke? Even if the answer is an emphatic NO, by the time the attack dogs are through, everyone will be remembering the way it was, and not in a good way for the Clintons.

So the idea that there is nothing left in Clinton closets for the 527s to swiftboat is naive and foolish.

[tularetom]

1. I wouldn't vet her with your computer

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. The Clinton supporters act like time stopped in 2000.

They are fools if they think that the reason that the RW noise machine has been quiet all this time is because there's nothing to report. Please. They've been salivating for Hillary to be the nominee so they can throw it out their in the general election season.

Also that surrogate on Larry King was a buffoon. Basically, he was saying that the reason Clinton was a better choice was because it was so much easier to catch her in a lie because her life has been so "documented". Probably the most blatant spin job I've ever seen. :crazy:

[Cha]

14. The underbelly side of the political spectrum is

what seems to be the surrogates who represent hilary.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

15. It's like Karl Rove did a training camp for them or something. nt

[Cha]

17. During the last 8 years when rove made

a move they watched, they listened, they took notes.

[MaraJade]

3. If Hillary returns to the Senate, do you actually think that

she will blindly support the Obama Presidency? If you do, you are smoking something!~
I actually hope that she picks him apart. Either way, you blind Obamaites will lose!

Good luck in the GE!!!

[MidwestTransplant]

6. And YOU WILL LOSE TOO unless you are a troll of course.

[Carolina]

7. and you Hillbot lemmings are already LOSING!

HRC is a shrill, lying bitch -- yeah I said it -- who will do anything to win: praise the opposing party's nominee, sit down with repukes like Scaife and Murdoch, give GWB a free pass (since she's already gone along with him on most things like IWR), exaggerate her already derivative resume...

She's a disaster as amply demonstrated by her abysmal, kitchen sink campaign. And your statement is equally applicable you blind Hillbots. HRC will not get support from Rs, Is and many Ds, so either way YOU LOSE! Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

[cui bono]

21. Gee, what a great attitude you have.

:eyes:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. I'm surprised no one has brought all these things up?

[karynnj]

5. Interesting - but I have a problem with the last sentence. You swiftboat with lies

What you list here are potential real problems.

The fact is that there was NO problem with Kerry's service - he had all the fitness reports on his web site - his record was exemplary - and it was checked by Nixon in 1971. If there was anything there they would have used it to very publicly destroy him. There was also nothing wrong with his protesting - in addition to his Senate testimony, he lobbied for 2 things - getting the disaffected veterans to register to vote so they could change policies politically and he worked to push the government to do more for veterans - in both of these he was an exceptional leader and a very good person. That is not what you are showing here.

[DemsUnited]

9. Hmm, very good point about the technicalities of swiftboating.

Was actually trying to give the Clintons the benefit of the doubt, because it's possible that these potential issues turn out to be much ado about nothing.

But it really gets my goat when the Clinton campaign claims that there will be no surprises because the Clintons are fully vetted.

And that is another technicality of swiftboating -- the element of surprise. So by the time the MSM stops with the blind regurgitating and starts to do some real research and reporting of actual facts(like in the case of Kerry's service) the damage is done.

[karynnj]

24. I agree with you on the element of surprise

The Kerry people very likely were prepared to deal with distortions of his laudable anti-war effort. The MSM was even more lame on dealing with the attacks on his service. When the SBVT first appeared, Kerry's response was to put over 100 pages of Naval records on his web site. In addition, the MSM had just (prior to the convention) played Nixon audio tapes that showed that they had looked into him and found that he was a clean war hero and that he was the ONLY antiwar leader they feared. They created a fake group led by John O'Neil to counter him. This was 2 years after Kerry was in Vietnam. If any of the SBVT stuff were true, it would have been easily available then and would have been used to destroy him.

The MSM did not need to dig up anything - that was the official record. The SBVT, on the other hand, countered the official record - even things some of them wrote on official records in the 1960s and offered absolutely no proof. The Kerry team went beyond the official record to prove that somethings in the book were provable lies and that the group had ties to Bush. The extent of the MSM bias is seen in the fact that they treated the outrageous comment by Bob Dole (that Kerry never bled) and the purple heart bandaids without calling them indecent or crossing a line. At that point, they knew the truth.

[Johnny__Motown]

13. You swiftboat with distortions..... Kerry did serve on a swift boat, then you distort what he did

[karynnj]

23. What am I distorting? Kerry was never the left wing radical that the RW wanted to make of him

Read Kerry's Senate testimony and you will see that he spoke about the country not providing the returning veterans with what they needed. He also was one of the founders of VVA that his friend Bobby Mueller led. There were many accounts in books written in the 1970s and 1980s,, where Kerry was criticized for the fact that he wanted to create change staying within the system. He left VVAW within a year of his testimony, resigning and publicly denouncing Hubbard and lobbying for the VVAW to reject him because of his lies - they didn't.

You are far too readily taking the RW lies on what Kerry did in that time frame. Read "Tour of Duty" or read the coverage of Kerry in the 1970s. In 2004, both the inside view of Kerry from the Nixon administration and the conclusion by the FBI after following him in 1971 and 1972 was what I said. From your other posts, it sounds like you voted against Kerry in the primary and that you accepted what were RW interpretations of that time period.

Aside from the fact that it was his service they lied about, because they, unlike you, knew he was likely prepared to defend the protest period. (Going up River does a brilliant job putting it in perspective.)

[mrreowwr_kittty]

26. But the aspect of the Swiftboat smear that was about Kerry's protesting was not technically a lie.

John Kerry did testify before Congress, detailing (documented) atrocities committed by American troops. This was the basis for the ads run by the shitboaters featuring POWs and their widows, talking about how Kerry "dishonored" them. It was a sleight-of-hand where the POWs, who were mostly pilots shot down, got to be offended over being accused of committing atrocities, which of course they hadn't. Pretty sleazy tactic, but still it was technically true.

Kinda like Hillary and her smears about Obama's "present votes" in the IL Lege.

[karynnj]

28. True - and Kerry spoke of that Senate testimony in his convention speech

He had one sentence for serving, one for protesting. The entire first wave of the SBVT was his service - and that is what I called pure lies. Had they NOT done that, it would have been MUCH easier to defend against the second wave - which dealt with his testimony.

There the best defense would have been getting the FULL speech out. There was a reason that it was praised to the degree it was in 1971. It was an intensely powerful, intelligent, moral statement. Kerry was there to speak of the winter soldier testimony. He opted to use a paragraph to define the winter hearings followed by the searing paragraph the Republicans used - cutting off the first several words in the first sentence - where he said that he attributed the following list to the soldiers there. (The Senate already had the full testimony - and they had the resources and authority to check them out).

Kerry then transitioned to a powerful call that they take better medical, psychological care of the returning vets and help them re-integrate into society. He then called the continuation of the war into question and finally, called for a demand that the US change their foreign policy - a demand he continued in the Senate when he worked against Reagan's covert Central American wars and which he now hopes would happen under a President Obama.

It is not "technically true" to take a sentence and eliminate the first clause making it mean something else. It's not worth the time, but I bet I could find a complex sentence you wrote - that when quoted, butchered as Kerry's was - would not be what you intended or said.

As to the atrocities:
1) The manuals for the services were changed to make those actions less likely - as strong an admission that Kerry did describe something that was then seen to be a systemic problem. The atrocities hurt their image.
2) As to "dishonoring fellow vets". I was in the population that had the most negative opinion of the military - the antiwar college kids. Before John Kerry, the best known example of a Vietnam officer was Lt Calley. Care to tell me that seeing John Kerry speak as he did did not improve our opinion of the military? I know in my dorm it did - it also made many of start to believe that Yale really did have smarter students than IU (where I was a student).

[XemaSab]

8. Also (and this is an admission)

there are MAJOR right-wing frames out there waiting for the flip of a switch.

"Slick Willie" is such a frame. Like many good frames, there's some basis in truth, but is he any slicker than Ronnie, GHW, or GW? Probably not. But nevertheless, once you tag someone with something like that, they're branded.

Every time I hear someone say "Slick Willie" I cringe... partly because it's a right wing smear but partly because there's enough truth there that I can't totally dismiss it.

Or today's labeling of Hillary as "Tonya Harding." OUCH. It's an effective tag because that's sort of how she's acting. Whacking someone ON YOUR OWN TEAM with a crowbar? Painful, yet apt. Time will tell if this one sticks, but it's definitely set something up that's going to lurk there waiting to be activated.

The longevity of some of these tags, "Tricky Dick," for example, can be extensive. The best frames are the frames that are accusations of sleaziness or impropriety. Now, if Bill Clinton does something like pardon an old crony, we can point to that and say "Slick Willie." Or if Hillary says ONE nasty thing about Obama we can call her "Tonya."

Right now they haven't tagged Obama with anything other than "Muslim," "madrassa," and "Pastor Wright." Which are all contradictory and are a lot easier to address. But frames that have been lurking in the mind of every American for 15 years? Tough to counter.

[Johnny__Motown]

10. the MSM has almost a month to test that theory, This Bosnia crap will have everyone digging into her

every claim.

[FrenchieCat]

11. There are questions, certainly......Like where did all that money come from?

[BenDavid]

12. I can tell you who the real bigot in this race is and it isn't HRC!

[Hardrada]

19. I'm impressed by how the HRC crew is going to go under the waves

drums beating and flags flying. There is something to be said for tenacity but not if it comes at the cost of a renewal of the Democratic Party.

[tabasco]

20. I'm not !

More like sliding down into the gutter and slinging filth until they go down the drain.

[MadBadger]

29. You are right BenDavid. All evidence points to you.

[tabasco]

16. 2000 was before the Clintons were completely assimilated.

Bill and Hill have spent much more time with Pappy Bush, Rupert Murdoch, and Richard Mellon Scaife since then.

They have gone completely to the dark side and they damn sure have dirty laundry!

WHY are the Clintons hiding their records from Democratic voters???

[FrenchieCat]

18. Because they have something to hide?

:shrug:

[AllentownJake]

22. The myth they won in the 90s

They survived...barely and they left pretty wounded. Cherry picking a senate seat to run in, in one of the most democratic states in the country is not that impressive.

[Orsino]

25. Her campaign has announced, with a straight face...

...that her tax returns will be hidden until the eve of the Pennsylvania primary.

That kills the myth.

[tabasco]

27. Watch her release some redacted bullshit

and then screech "See, I'm vetted!"