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NeoNote — HRC and the 2016 election

HRC was not that likable as a candidate. The image of HRC appealed more than the actuality. She's many things, but she's not appealing, probably because she doesn't seem to connect on a personal level. That was something that Bill Clinton excelled at, and the lack in HRC just came off as disappointing.



My claim was that people relied on the polls so much that they couldn't be bothered to double check what was happening.

The election of HRC was already in confusion, not in the least because she manipulated the rules to deny anyone else the nomination. It wasn't the first time that people decided they didn't want her as a candidate. Even her election to the Senate wasn't so much winning as controlling the process to get her a Senate seat as a power base. Without that and without a big push from her husband, she couldn't make it as a candidate. As Bill Clinton's legacy became tainted and Democrats started avoiding him, HRC's "star power" faded.

I don't know why she avoided so many public appearances in 2016, although I suspect it's health issues that she never told people about. That certainly didn't help her.

You can blame Comey, you can blame the LEAKED emails, but HRC was never a strong candidate. She didn't even want to go up against Gore. She didn't dare go up against Bush League in 2004 because she was afraid she be washed up if she lost. In 2007, she got sold out by the Democrat leadership because they didn't want her in the White House. In thirty years, her reasons for running for President was that she was a woman, and it was time. Her whole strategy centered on victimhood while implying that she was owed the Presidency because Bill and others had done her wrong.
NeoNotes are the selected comments that I made on other boards, in email, or in response to articles where I could not respond directly.

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Thursday oversized roundup

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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Tuesday roundup

The Amazon Deal Shows Why We Must End Corporate Welfare



Top Ecuadorian Diplomat Destroys Guardian's Claim That Manafort Visited Assange



Migrant caravan hits tourism



Will Dems Protest Clintons, Too?



Macron Looks to Tax Measures to Curb



Truth Is What We Hide, Self-Serving Cover Stories Are What We Sell



Will Paris Riots Scuttle Climate Accord?



Revealed: Marriott's 500 Million Hack Came After A String Of Security Breaches



Paris protests reveal fracture between France’s haves and have-nots



Miseducated or Stupid?



I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me a lot happier — and that's a big problem for social media companies



Is the FBI Raiding Whistleblowers' Homes to Protect Robert Mueller?



I deleted my Twitter account. It's a breeding ground for thoughtlessness and contempt.


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Monday roundup

Youngest kids in class may be over-diagnosed with ADHD



Destroyed for Nothing

“The closing of GM’s Detroit plant—erected at the expense of a vibrant urban neighborhood—is a final twist of the knife in a tale of displacement and destruction.”

Exclusive: Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media In Search

You can be an advocate or you can be a search engine. You can't honestly be both.

Obama Tells Wall Street to Thank him for Making Them so Much Money



The work-from-home doctor will see you now



The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice



The Forgotten Legacy of George H.W. Bush That the Media Won’t Tell You About



Post Office Has Boom Year: Loses More Money Than Ever



San Francisco's Wealthy Leftists Are Making Homelessness Worse



G20 Summit, Top Agenda Item: Bye-Bye American Empire



Texas Bill Would Set Foundation for a “Gun Rights Sanctuary State”



Landlord Tells Harvard Student to Move Out Over Legally Owned Guns



Supreme Court Deals Unanimous, Welcome Blow to Administrative State in Frog Case



Curtains for the Clintons



The Cities That Amazon HQ2 Left Behind

“Amazon’s yearlong search for the location of its second headquarters was billed as a chance to transform an American city. In reality, it made plain an economic system that increases inequality, monopoly power, and political polarization.”
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NeoNote — What happens when progressives are in charge?

Will they tolerate similar "resistance" from conservatives?

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Politicizing funerals

Lauren Southern lets loose on organized libertarianism

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Clinton lied

Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.
     — Barbara Bush
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NeoNote — Trump racist or Democrat legacy?

We'll start with basics. The game is not what you think it is.

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Aggressively

Our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.
     — President Clinton, State of the Union address, 1995
Source : Take The 'Racist Xenophobe' Quiz: Who Said This About Illegal Immigration?
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Rightly disturbed

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
     — President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, 1995
Source : Take The 'Racist Xenophobe' Quiz: Who Said This About Illegal Immigration?
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Deportation

We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace
     — President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, 1995
Source : Take The 'Racist Xenophobe' Quiz: Who Said This About Illegal Immigration?
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Nation of immigrants

We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.
     — President Bill Clinton, State of the Union address, 1995
Source : Take The 'Racist Xenophobe' Quiz: Who Said This About Illegal Immigration?
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Friday roundup

Uranium One informant makes Clinton allegations to Congress

Clintons, the scandals that keep on giving

Canadian PM: Sharia law is compatible with democracy

In which the Canadian PM proves his idiocy beyond any doubt

Let Us Eradicate Poverty, Not Demolish Wealth

Smart headline, but the rest of the article worth reading

Before You "Buy the Dip," Look at This One Chart

I think this is sound advice

Judicial Watch Tom Fitton Reports 3rd Dossier Provided by Obama to Sen. Cardin

If there was a third dossier, was there a fourth and fifth? What did President Obama know and when did he know it?

Online Gambling -- None Of Washington's Business (But Its Enemies Don't Care)

Beware of politicos who promise things for "your own good"

Institute for Justice Sues New Jersey Over Ban on Home Bakers Selling Their Cakes

Notice how Big Government loves to go after the little guy

One year later: President’s regulations crackdown is working

Less government means more prosperity

Consumers Are Open to Superhuman Vision and Cognitive Enhancements. Are Regulators?

Regulators shouldn't have any say

Congress must stop union scheme siphoning funds from Medicaid

Yep.

Why are we still regulating Main Street like Wall Street?

Good question

Senate Report: Obamacare and Medicaid Expansion Contributed to the Opioid Epidemic

You mean reducing the cost of medicine by fiat made addiction problems worse? Gee, who could have foreseen that?

$20 Billion Hidden in the Swamp: Feds Redact 255,000 Salaries

Somebody is hiding stuff from the voters

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In which George W. Bush proves he is a gentleman, even if he did do most other things wrong

Courtesy goes a long way

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Response to my Ebert entry

Roundup of the headline links

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Friday roundup

The Google Memo: Four Scientists Respond

Google doesn't believe in diversity of thought. Related - The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo, Google Fires Engineer For Noticing Men And Women Are Different, The Google Firing Demonstrates That Identity Politics Is Incoherent and Vicious & Google is more afraid of liberal outrage than federal law


Graphic Video Shows Cops Hold Down Handcuffed Teen, Torture Him With Taser—For Sleeping in Truck

Why haven't these police officers been charged with assault?


The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time

The rules don't work. Pay attention to the XKCD comic mentioned in the article.


Obama administration knew about North Korea's miniaturized nukes

That Pentagon report that has everyone worried lately? It's from April of 2013. The Obama administration was notorious for released revised news and figures later, usually on Friday when no one was paying attentinon.


Justice Officials Sent Talking Points to FBI on Lynch Tarmac Meeting With Bill Clinton

I'd say this qualifies as suspicious.


Venezuela inflation quickens to 248.6 percent in year to July: opposition

Socialism fails every time it's tried.


A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack

This one is from The Nation. It's the first major left wing source that even admitted that it may not be the Russians.


The Afghan War Doesn't Need to Be Privatized—It Needs to Be EndedSo when does the perpetual war end?


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Tuesday roundup

As I said, the tax exempt status is a "devil's trade" intended in large part to silence churches.

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☆ Media utopia

When I was a kid, I delivered newspapers. After school I read them. Oh not cover to cover, I'd skip the ads and the sports and usually most of the “lifestyles” stuff. It wasn't hard to spot a pattern. What appeared in the newspapers usually appeared on the local news within a day or so. By the time I hit high school, I had discovered the local and school libraries with their out-of-state newspapers. Once again, there was a pattern. Three papers would usually have the “important” stories first, the next day or so the major papers would have the stories, and then within a week or so the other papers and the local television news.

It wouldn't be every story. But it would be the big stories, the ones that everyone would be talking about. So if you wanted to stay ahead of the curve, you'd read those three papers every day you could. The three papers were The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Oh, The Economist was good too, but I couldn't always find that.

These papers set the agenda that the rest of the nation's press followed. Not always the opinion, but definitely Which Stories Were Worthy. Even newsweeklies and the television news magazines followed the stories that these three newspapers had pointed out.

Telling people what has happened, that's reporting. But the best reporters went beyond that, they put it into context. If the President rapped his knuckles on the desk, they'd tell you what his predecessors did, when, and why. You'd understood how it fit.

There never was journalistic objectivity, but that was okay. As long as some differing opinions made it to press, the public would learn what happened. Reporting was the priority.

Over the years, the Washington Post grew convinced that it had taken down a President. Maybe setting the agenda wasn't enough. Maybe they could shape world events with their reporting. If they said it happened, maybe enough people would believe and the Elected Leadership would react. It worked kinda-sorta with Ronald Reagan, and it worked well with George H. W. Bush.

Then came Bill Clinton who wanted to change the world. So he cultivated and seduced the press. He convinced them that his administration together with the press could change the world if they only tried hard enough. And before the press admitted that there were all sorts of juicy tidbits in Clinton's background, it worked out pretty well. It also cemented belief that the press had a Higher Calling, and it was up to them to turn ignorance into enlightenment.

After Billy-boy came George W. Bush, Bush the Younger. Or Bush League as I eventually called him. Bush the Younger would have been a tolerable President, but then we had 9-11. And the press didn't want a war. Or at least, they didn't want an Official War® with heroes and patriotism and Amazing America riding to the rescue. So they decided to control the agenda. Most of the heroism coming out of 9-11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never made the headlines. The failures, real and imagined, did.

Yeah, about that imagined bit. It was the Higher Calling. American ideas couldn't be allowed to succeed, especially on a world stage. America had to have more failures if only because America had more success. For most of his administration, George W. Bush could do no right according to the popular press.

And then came Barack Obama, the Imperious Leader, He Who Could Do No Wrong. The press loved this guy. For the first time ever, a president mostly played along with what the press said. The press didn't have to report it, they could create reality. That's what happened for eight years.

By 2016, the press had forgotten that their primary job was reporting what happened. No one realized that while the Grand Vision was put in place, they were losing Democrat lawmakers and elected officials to keep it into place. Meanwhile many people resented being dragged into a Utopia without their consent. Especially when Utopia was more expensive and more tyrannical.

So Donald Trump happened.

The press completely missed it. What happened wasn't nearly as important as what was supposed to happen.

The truth was a prison. The answer was to do what had worked for eight marvelous years. Reality had to change. Legality didn't matter. Morality didn't matter. Only the Utopia.

The untruths came fast. No one was going on record but it was obvious that Trump would fail if he got pushed. He couldn't hope to succeed. So stories of high-level meetings that never happened came out. Stories about sex orgies and golden showers in Russia. Stories about Trump hoarding the White House ice cream. None of these stories could be verified. The answer was to accelerate the news cycle. That was easy enough with the internet. Literally hours after each story was released came the debunking, new stories followed minutes after that.

We've reached the point where most of the “news” about President Donald Trump and his administration can't be trusted. The newspapers and news sources I used to trust can't be trusted.

I hate admitting it, but Trump is right about the press. And it's because the press won't report the news. The press wants the Utopia.

Truth doesn't matter.
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☆ Selective

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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NeoNotes — The screws

Almost nobody bothers to ask if the screws should exist in the first place.

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Tyranny of the 16th

Bookworm is looking for scapegoats

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Presumed guilty until proven innocent

Does the secret Downing Street memo really tell us anything new?

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True Believer Rant

My take on true believers of all stripes.

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