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 →
EppsNet Archive: Death
And That’s the Truth: The Wrong Way to Go
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gianno Caldwell (@giannocaldwell) I feels just terrible for the man an his little brother, not just cuz he got shot but he got shot just standin around instead a gettin shot resistin arrest, in which case he’d be a national hero. Police found 50 shell casings at the scene. Somebody took 50 shots at 3 people and only killed one of em?! I said it befo but thank the Lord black people caint shoot straight, no tellin how many people be dead. And that’s the Truth! Read more →
See You in Hell: Marla Maples Edition
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — I saw recently that Marla Maples, of all people, was trending on Twitter. It turns out the reason for that is that Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, died, Trump said some kind words about her, and then a bunch of people with nothing better to do jumped on Twitter to remind everyone that Trump was romancing Maples while still married to Ivana. It takes a lot to shock me but a person being unfaithful to their spouse?! You could have knocked me over with a feather! I assure you that every one of these people posting about Marla Maples either a) has been unfaithful themselves, but since they’re a bunch of nobodies, it’s not headline news; or b) can’t get laid. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
5 Reasons We’re Not Helped by More Gun Laws
The most common statistical sleight of hand when it comes to showing charts of gun murder rates per capita by country, with the United States always in the lead, is that these charts, somewhere in the fine print, and sometimes not at all, note that they’re only charting so-called “developed” countries, meaning that the U.S. is being compared to countries like Japan and France, but that Latin American countries and African countries, among others, are left out. So — 50+ people shot to death in a Nigerian church? Doesn’t count because Nigeria is not a “developed” country. And so on. (The other thing you have to pay attention to is whether a chart is showing gun murders or gun deaths. The U.S. has a very high suicide rate compared to most other countries — more than 60 percent of our gun deaths are suicides — so rolling the suicides in… Read more →
After School Drag Shows, What’s Next?
I have to chuckle when I see this picture, not just because the guy facing the camera is grotesque, but because my own son grew up in the Irvine school district, which is a very academically oriented district, especially in north Irvine (where we lived) and south Irvine, both predominantly Asian neighborhoods, and if an Irvine kid texted home a photo like this, there’d be a lynch mob in the district office by 3 p.m. the same day. The question on everyone’s lips would be “How is a drag show in a school gymnasium going to help my child get into a top university? Where does this go on the college application?” We all have our little peccadillos, sexual and otherwise. How exhibiting certain of these (though not others), e.g., cross-dressing, not only in public but in schools became a thing that people do is a mystery to me. Speaking… Read more →
Mayor Pete’s Definition of Insanity
Pete Buttigieg Calls ‘Door’ Solution To Mass Shootings ‘Definition Of Insanity’ — huffpost.com Mayor Pete’s timing was not ideal as a few days later, a man aggressively trying to enter an Alabama elementary school was shot and killed by police. He couldn’t get in because the doors were locked. It seems like any serious solution to school shootings would have to include multiple steps, one being hardening the physical security at the school. Does Mayor Pete lock the doors of his home? Does he lock the doors of his car if he doesn’t want anyone getting into it? But locking the doors of a school is the “definition of insanity”? Read more →
Paul Pelosi DUI Charges Dropped
White privilege! Although unlike Ted Kennedy, Paul Pelosi didn't actually kill anyone in his DUI accident. Democrats are getting better at drunk driving. https://t.co/VdCaOAsagD — Paul Epps (@paulepps) June 8, 2022 Read more →
Assessing the Dangers That We Face in Life
Since a mentally disturbed 18-year-old white supremacist murdered 10 African Americans and injured three others at a Buffalo market May 14, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021” has been cited repeatedly as evidence of the lethal threat posed by far-right extremists. There are a lot of problems with the ADL data, starting with the fact that many of the “white supremacist” killings were not hate crimes aimed at terrorizing blacks or other minorities. For example: Two members of a white supremacist prison gang allegedly killed a member of the rival Southwest Honkeys prison gang. A New Jersey man who had vandalized synagogues and distributed neo-Nazi pamphlets strangled his wife. A white supremacist with a swastika and SS tattoos on his face killed another man in an extended-stay hotel following an argument over a social media post. A member of a white supremacist… Read more →
Ending Gun Violence With T-Shirts
“I was gonna shoot up a school but then I saw Steve Kerr wearing a T-shirt and changed my mind.” Well, if that doesn't end gun violence I don't know what will. Jesus fuck, if you've got a serious proposal then make it, but T-shirts?! What a fucking clown show. https://t.co/QLE26J6nEB — Paul Epps (@paulepps) June 6, 2022 Read more →
What the Gun Debate Misses
From Kevin D. Williamson: Almost every single substantive gun-control proposal put forward by our progressive friends is oriented toward adding new restrictions and regulatory burdens to federally licensed firearms dealers and the people who do business with them: what they can sell and what they cannot sell, to whom they can sell, under what conditions they may sell, etc. But, as I often remark, gun-store customers are just about the most law-abiding demographic in the United States. The best information we have comes from the Department of Justice, which found in 2019 that less than 2 percent of all prisoners had a firearm obtained from a retail source at the time they committed their crimes. Criminals mostly don’t get their guns at gun stores — because they mostly can’t. The great majority of murders committed in the United States — upwards of 80 percent — are committed by people… Read more →
Schools Focused on the Wrong Things
In a study of mass shootings from 2008 to 2017, the Secret Service found that “100 percent of perpetrators showed concerning behaviors, and in 77 percent of shootings, at least one person—most often a peer—knew about their plan.” — dailysignal.com 100 percent is pretty high. It doesn’t get much higher than 100 percent. It’s always seemed to me that mass shooters turn out to have been known to family, friends, co-workers, law enforcement, mental health professionals, etc., as violent and unstable, but no one took effective action to keep the person from going off the rails. For example, co-workers of the Uvalde school shooter had a nickname for him: “school shooter.” Meanwhile, here’s what the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is focusing on. Last September, the NSBA drafted a letter to President Biden calling for use of the “Army National Guard and its Military Police” to prevent parents from becoming… Read more →
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
15-Year-Old Arrested in Shooting Death of 11-Year-Old Girl — usnews.com Give the poor kid a break. He was shooting at a 13-year-old boy and missed. The girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Read more →
Who is to Blame for Buffalo?
From Kevin D. Williamson: Before the blood was even dry in Buffalo, Democrats were asking the most important question: “How can we well-heeled white progressives most effectively use the murders of all these black people to our personal and political advantage?” The murderer in Buffalo didn’t kill anybody you’ve ever heard of, and so the first thing to do if you want to exploit the deaths of all these people — and that is what Democrats intend to do — is to connect the crime to some famous name or prominent institution. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t any actual connection: Just assert it, and that’s good enough for the newspapers and the cable-news cretins and the impotent rage-monkeys on Twitter. The usual suspects: social-media platforms, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox News, the National Rifle Association, etc. The shooter was actually well known in advance as a… Read more →
It’s Time to Ban Things That Are Already Banned
My 4-year-old just FaceTimed to ask what I’m doing to “help the people in Buffalo” and “why did the bad man do this?” Absolutely gutting. This cannot be his normal. It’s time to BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS. #EndGunViolence — Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 16, 2022 “Assault weapons” are already banned in New York. New York has every gun law you could possibly want, including a “red flag” law. Do you have a more serious suggestion than “It’s time to ban things that are already banned”? BTW, the replies to this dubious tweet are hilarious. A couple examples: In the middle of enjoying her after-dinner all-natural watermelon fruit bar popsicle, my 5-year-old leaned back in her chair, looked me dead in the eye and asked, “What will we ever do to escape this inflationary spiral in which this country currently finds itself.” I’m shook AF. — Will Stafford (@WillStaffordLSU) May 17,… Read more →
I’m the Damn Paterfamilias!
He couldn’t have just turned off the set? Read more →
Gilbert Gottfried, 1955-2022
One of my favorite comedians. We saw him do a show at the Improv in Irvine. I lived in Irvine for many years but didn’t go to the Improv much because comedians of any stature rarely show up there. I don’t know why. They do the Hollywood Improv, you’d think they could just drive up the road a piece, do a set in Irvine and pick up another check. I also heard Gilbert interviewed many times and I think he was even funnier conversationally than he was in his act, and his act was very funny. RIP Gilbert Gottfried Read more →
The Ballad of Joking Jesus
Goodbye goodbye write down all I said Tell Tom Dick and Harry I rose from the dead What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly and all of it’s breezy goodbye now goodbye — James Joyce Read more →
P.J. O’Rourke, 1947-2022
Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor’s letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I’d abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist who, at the end of a forty-five minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting, “You’re fucked up! You don’t belong in the Army!” He was certainly right on the first count and probably right on the second. Anyway, I didn’t have to go. But that, of course, meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you… 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 →