Because The Conservative Machine Is Swiftboating Hillary Clinton, We Must Share Videos Like These . . .

[This post is about the video.  I encourage you to watch it.  The intro has gotten longer than intended, so skip it if you will and watch the video.]

Every time the Republican nominee tweets 'crooked' in front of our future president's first name, 'crooked' embeds itself a little deeper in people's brains. He knows that repetition of a lie eventually becomes truth for many people.

Benghazi hearings and email 'scandals' show how little the other side has on Clinton.  The 'crimes'  she's been accused of are, at worst, minor offenses compared to what the Bush administration did regularly.  They really have nothing serious on Clinton.  Well, being a woman is probably her most serious crime in many Republican eyes, but most know they can't say that directly.

All the attacks so far on Clinton are part of the political weaponry of the Republicans - honed by people like Roger Ailes, who has just stepped down as head of Fox News for decades of sexual harassment.

It is the vicious fabrication of lies to bring down an honorable candidate.  They took war hero John Kerry and 'swiftboated' him until their draft-dodging candidate beat him in 2004. Such irony!  The party of the military, the party that despises draft-dodgers, the party that exalts 'war heroes,' slandering a hero so their draft dodger president would win.

Swiftboating is now part of the American political lexicon, like gerrymandering. Wikipedia says:

"The term swiftboating (also swift-boating or swift boating) is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" (SBVT, later the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—campaign against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry."

No candidate is perfect.  You can't reach the political level of a presidential nomination from a major party without having had made compromises along the way.  Nixon actually was a crook.  He authorized breaking into Watergate and physically stealing files from the Democratic party files and lied about it repeatedly.

Today, it appears Russian government sponsored hackers electronically broke into the Democratic party files and leaked them the day before the Democratic convention.  And the bigger fallout is on candidate Clinton, not on the Russians, or the Republicans who are hoping to benefit from this.

That's not to say Clinton is without flaws.  None of us are.  We have to weigh the strengths and weaknesses in each candidate and figure out who will be the best president.  The Republicans are swift boating her flaws into capital crimes.

But her opponent's flaws are so numerable and egregious and his strengths are so few that leaders of the Republican party - including former Republican presidents - stayed away from the convention.  Clinton is one of the best qualified candidates we've ever had, yet much of the American public thinks she's a crook, and  one delegate at the Republican convention called for  a firing squad.  (Does he know that we don't use firing squads any more?)

But I would argue that Hillary's skills, like any woman who reaches the highest levels in her field, are at least 50% better than most males at this level and her heart, as the video below demonstrates, is in the right place. (Her opponent's heart?  Does he even have one?)  Her fight with Sanders was mainly about policy, particularly about economic policy - PPT and regulations of the financial industry.  I lean with Sanders on those issues.  And even though the emails show bias against Sanders, it's nothing like the bias against Trump inside the Republican National Committee was.

What's probably most galling for the Republicans is that they FAILED to stop Trump even while trying to change the rules to do so.  Meanwhile the Democrats' SUCCEEDED in stopping Sanders because their rules already included super delegates.  What I've seen revealed in the emails so far happens in every campaign.  Newsflash:  People in DNC had favorites among the candidates.  Is anyone really surprised?  Officials have to appear neutral, but they mostly know who they favor.  It's no surprise.  What's surprising is that the media is treating this like a major scandal.    In any case, Clinton's the candidate now and has to be the choice in November for and people with the USA's best interests at heart. (I'll give a pass to people living in states like Alaska where the outcome is clearly red or blue already.)

The faithful's minds are set - on all sides.   But the undecided and leaning folks are reachable.  . So while the Republicans make foibles into indictable offenses and launch a fleet of swift boats against Hillary Clinton, we need to share those tributes that show a different Clinton than the Republicans would have voters believe.  I urge you to watch this video and share it.



Meryl Streep tells us of the side of Hillary Clinton that we normally don't hear about - how she visits women leaders of grass roots organizations in all the countries she visited as Secretary of State, and how important that was for women everywhere.

[I proposed in a previous post that the Republican candidate's name should not be voiced at the Democratic convention this week.  I'm going to try to follow that suggestion here this week as well.  Nothing could disturb him more.]

[Sorry, reposting - Feedburner stuff.]