There’s a new book out called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I haven’t read it but it did give me an idea for a fun drinking game. Every time you hear the phrase “threat to democracy” or a variant thereof between now and the presidential election, you take a drink. The downside is you’ll be dead long before November and you’ll never find out who gets elected. The authors of the book were interviewed on MSNBC this past week. One of the authors, Tom Schaller, said this: “First of all, [white rural voters] are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay demographic in the country. Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third: anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech, they’re most likely to say the president should be able to act… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: COVID-19
If Your House Burns Down and You Rebuild It, Did You “Create” a New House?
Over 13 million new jobs created.More Americans are working than ever.Record number of small business applications. Bidenomics is growing our economy. — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2023 I love these Biden tweets on job “creation.” ChatGPT tells me that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the loss of more than 22 million jobs in the United States. The 13 million jobs that Biden “created” are those lost jobs coming back. But he’s still 9 million short. What happened to those people? The unemployment rate is low, which suggests that people have left the labor force for some reason. If COVID didn’t kill them all, then they may have retired, given up (not everyone wants to work at fast-food restaurants), or cobbled together a welfare package they can live on. The labor force participation rate (shown below) has never come back to pre-pandemic level, and people who have left the labor force… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Learn to Read!
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Chicago Democrat sounds alarm as 55 schools report no proficiency in math or reading: ‘Very serious’ — foxnews.com “No proficiency” means there ain’t one kid can read or do math in the whole school. Not one. A Illinois state senator named Willie Preston says “I think that we have to reengage parents, have parents actively take a role inside the schools when they can be, but in addition, we need to make certain that we … spend our money in the right way as it pertains to our children’s education.” You gotta engage parents, I don’t see why you gotta reengage em. Damn schools were closed for two years. Parents had to school their own kids. If there ain’t one kid in the whole school that can read or do math, you tellin me the parents… Read more →
What the State of the Union Didn’t Say
The president entered office with a 1.4% inflation rate and spiked it to 7%. 30-year mortgages of 2.7% soared to 6.5% in less than two years. Eggs are $7 a dozen. A thin steak is $15 a pound. A sheet of plywood is $95. Gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when the president took office and even after draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it is still $3.50 a gallon. In my state, California, gas has recently been over $5 a gallon. The price of natural gas has tripled in less than a year. In two years over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border. The president said that he “lowered” inflation, energy prices and interest rates after sending them to astronomical levels and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit. Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down. He omitted… Read more →
Pfizer Employee Flips Out on Video
As I write this, YouTube has taken down the video, I assume because it shows a Pfizer employee acting like an out-of-control cartoon character and damages the vaccine narrative. The video is still up on Twitter. WATCH: Pfizer Official ‘Physically Assaults’ James O’Keefe, ‘Destroys iPad Showing Undercover Recordings’ https://t.co/OviQpYh2Ol — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 28, 2023 Read more →
Accountability Without Consequences
‘I was too ambitious’: Spotify CEO announces layoffs among 6% of employees as tech job cuts continue — msn.com Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the decision to restructure Spotify is an “effort to drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making,” adding that he takes “full accountability for the moves that got us here today.” I love it — and when I say I love it, I mean I don’t love it — when someone says they take “full accountability” for some disaster, knowing perfectly well that there won’t be any personal consequences. There’s no accountability without consequences. Had he said “I’m forfeiting my salary for the year and donating it to the employees who lost their jobs,” now that’s something I could respect. Popular Bookstores, Including Barnes & Noble, Are Closing Locations, Starting Feb. 11 — bestlifeonline.com JCPenney Is Closing Even More Locations, Starting Next Month —… Read more →
Render Unto Ukraine What We Need at Home
Now, I don’t think it’s controversial to note that many Americans here at home are not doing very well. You can pick whatever problem you think is the gravest: lack of wage increases and wage stagnation; the need to work multiple jobs if you have children, especially even if you’re a married couple — the fact that one parent, if they want, can’t stay home and take care of their children any longer, what was a foundational property of American life for decades and that no longer is the case. It’s gone. There aren’t enough good jobs, so people have to work two jobs just to sustain their family, to pay other people to raise their kids, and to pay other people to take care of their elderly parents. Huge numbers of people are without health care. Some of those people without health care got Medicaid benefits during the COVID… Read more →
COVID Vaccine Side Effects
Every drug commercial you see on TV, half the commercial is a voice-over listing all the side effects, many of which are worse than the disease that the drug is intended to treat. May reduce your body’s ability to fight infection, which could lead to serious illness or death . . . “Death” is almost always in there somewhere. And these are drugs that have been through years of trials, full FDA approval, not just emergency approval or experimental approval or whatever it’s called for the COVID vaccines. What are the side effects of COVID vaccines? Who knows? There wasn’t time to test for them, except very short-term stuff like you might feel tired or you might have a sore arm. In the software business, we call this “testing in production,” meaning we don’t have time to fully test the product in a non-destructive way, so we slam it into… Read more →
Unemployment Numbers Don’t Make Sense
From a Daily Wire newsletter: Tech giant Meta is laying off 13 percent of its workforce across all of its companies: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, etc. That amounts to around 11,000 jobs — the biggest tech layoff of the year. That’s an especially high number when you remember that since its founding 18 years ago, Facebook has never had to cut back its workforce. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to address the layoffs in a leaked video Wednesday afternoon, saying, “I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision…It was one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.” And… the company has signaled investors to expect further bad news in the fourth quarter. This comes after Meta announced a second straight quarter of declining revenue in October. Everywhere you look, big tech is struggling. Last week,… Read more →
Inflation Numbers and Unemployment Numbers
Latest inflation report came out today (BLS is the Bureau of Labor Statistics): Annual inflation via BLS just out: 42.9% airline fares33.1% utility gas30.5% eggs18.2% gasoline17.2% chicken15.7% coffee15.2% milk14.7% bread10.1% furniture9.2% vegetables8.2% all items8.2% fruit8.1% ham7.6% women apparel7.2% used cars6.7% rent3.7% men apparel — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 13, 2022 Core inflation excludes energy and food, so we get to say that inflation is at 8.2%, which is still the highest in 40 years, but most of the items on that list are energy and food, and many are a lot higher than 8.2%, so the 8.2% number doesn’t do justice to the enormity of current inflation. Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein said this: What the president said was that a recession is far from inevitable and I think what he was referring to there is the strength of our job market. Look, you just don’t have a recession when… Read more →
Biden and Gas Prices
I’m seeing that the White House is now taking credit for declining gas prices: I remember the whole time that gas prices were going up to record levels, President Biden was referring to it as “the Putin price hike” or blaming it on COVID, however that was supposed to make sense, while his sycophants kept repeating that “presidents don’t control gas prices.” But he does want to take credit when prices go down. Unfortunately, his timing was a little off because gas prices are going up again. Prices where I live in California had come down to less than $5.50 a gallon but then shot up about a dollar seemingly overnight. This is what our prices look like today: I thought maybe World Was III had started when I wasn’t paying attention. Read more →
A Couple of Thoughts on Student Loan Debt
I’ve taken out mortgage loans, auto loans, acquired some credit card debt . . . am I forgetting anything? But I’ve never acquired debt and not paid it back. It never occurred to me to do that. Transferring student loan debt seems like subsidizing irresponsibility. What happens when you subsidize something? You get more of it. I saw the Secretary of Education being interviewed and although I don’t remember his exact words, he seemed to blame the whole thing on the COVID pandemic. He said it was his job (or the government’s job) to make sure that people can bounce back from that and not be crushed by their student loan payments. I’d like to ask him where he got the idea that it’s the job of the federal government to make sure that citizens don’t suffer financial hardships. In the early days of our country, many people… Read more →
Talk to Them on iPhones as They’re Dying
It became evident very early on that science didn’t speak with one voice on the subject. . . . The idea that our leaders are just following the science, following the algorithms, following the experts, and we’re not even going to look into the faces of people who are losing their jobs because we shut the economy down? We’re going to let our grandparents die in isolation and talk to them on iPhones as they’re dying? It’s obscene. — James Hankins Read more →
We Are Led by Idiots
It’s hard to contemplate American public life in the 21st century and not arrive at the unhappy conclusion that we are led by idiots. The political class has lately produced an impressive string of debacles: the Afghanistan pullout, urban crime waves, easily foreseen inflation, mayhem at the southern border, a self-generated energy crisis, a pandemic response that wrought little good and vast ruin. Then there are the perennial national embarrassments: a mind-bogglingly expensive welfare state that doesn’t work, public schools that make kids dumber, universities that nurture destructive grievances and noxious ideologies, and a news media nobody trusts. — Barton Swaim Read more →
Governor Newsom on Bodily Autonomy
It's nice of our governor to take a short break from forcing people to wear masks, stay inside, and get vaccinated in order to lecture us about bodily autonomy. https://t.co/j3VDr7aacf — Paul Epps (@paulepps) May 15, 2022 Read more →
See You in Hell, Convoy Haters
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — You may remember back in 2020, pre-vaccine, when you were all in your comfy lockdowns, that everyone was fine with truckers being designated as “essential workers,” so they could risk their lives and health to deliver your stupid Amazon purchases, bring food to the supermarket, deliver medicine, make sure that presents arrived by Christmas morning, but as soon as they opposed government-mandated injections, the same truckers became racists, Nazis, etc. The people you’re screaming at in Ottawa are the people who kept the world turning. You were fine letting them risk their lives before there was a vaccine. Now you want to shut down their lives because they fail to show the proper obedience or they ask too many questions. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
If You Gotta Go, Go Now
One of my students says she was so frustrated with an assignment she was ready to throw her computer out the window. “What floor do you live on,” I ask. “Second.” “Oh, well that probably wouldn’t kill anyone, just a bump on the noggin. But you can’t say for sure if it hit them just right. Be sure you’re wearing a mask though when you do that.” She lives in New York. My son also lives in New York so I had to call to warn him to be on the lookout for falling computers. “Because I know someone who may be throwing one out a window. But only from the second floor so you’ll probably be able to see it coming and step out of the way.” If I lived in New York and it came down to being killed by COVID or by a falling computer, I’d take… Read more →
COVID Vaccines
At the start of 2020, when COVID first came to our shores, we didn’t know anything about it, we didn’t have a vaccine, and by the end of the year 400,000 Americans had died from the virus. By the start of 2021, we had a year of research and a vaccine. We’ve been vaccinating people for a year, and yet we have more COVID deaths under the Biden administration than under Trump, every day more vaccinated people are getting sick, so while the vaccine may keep you out of the hospital or the graveyard, it doesn’t provide immunity, it doesn’t stop the spread, I’m not sure it even slows the spread, given that we have more cases and deaths than ever. For a long time now, anyone saying “I don’t think vaccines are stopping the spread of COVID” or something similar have been persona non grata in public discourse. Is… Read more →
Djokovic is Not Your Big Problem, Mate
Thirty days ago, Australia had reported a total of 247,000 COVID cases. As of today, the case count has risen to 1.8 million. And they think their biggest problem is Novak Djokovic?! Note that Djokovic was not even deported for public health reasons. He’s had a positive COVID test, followed by a negative COVID test, and everyone agreed he was safe via natural immunity. He was deported because as some point in the past, he expressed skepticism about vaccines and to have him in Australia, well, he might influence others in the country to become skeptical about vaccines. I’d say what’s more likely to cause Australians to become skeptical about vaccines is the fact that COVID is spiraling out of control while 80 percent of their population is fully vaccinated. Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: “Science”
Here’s a meme finding its way around the internet: If you are not a scientist, and you disagree with scientists about science, it’s actually not a disagreement. You’re just wrong. Science is not truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you. It learned more. That is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. “Science” doesn’t have an opinion. Scientists have opinions but they often differ. When a scientist disagrees with another scientist, which one is wrong? If science is not truth, why is it wrong to disagree? If “science” can change its opinion, then everyone who previously held the new opinion was right, and “science” was wrong. Why must people who know nothing about science attempt to give science lessons to the rest of us like we’re all morons? OK, I know the answer. It’s this COVID… Read more →