On this date, Aug. 24, in the year 79 A.D., an estimated 20,000 people died when Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Donald Trump
Michelle Obama Fact-Checked by Associated Press
Surprising! Normally as a Democrat you really have to go off the rails to motivate a media organization to fact-check you. “Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age,” AP fact-checkers said. It noted that photos of children in housing centers that were circulated by Democratic officials online to criticize Trump were actually taken in 2014. These pictures actually “depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama,” AP said. The “ripping migrant children from their parents and throwing them into cages” distortion was the most urgent issue in the world right up till the day everyone forgot about it, so why the AP is fact-checking it at this late date I do not know, but better late than never I… Read more →
“Mostly Peaceful”
Portland mayor says protesters are ‘attempting to commit murder’ and helping Trump’s reelection campaign — Los Angeles Times I’m not sure how those two things go together but look, Mr. Mayor (is this the “Summer of Love” mayor or is that in Seattle?), you’re not going out on a limb by taking a stand against murder. Pretty much everyone is opposed to murder. But if you’d enforced at some point over the last couple months the laws against lesser offenses like assault, theft and destruction of property, the state of affairs in your city wouldn’t have deteriorated to this point. You now look like a fool saying “Someone should do something about this!” Like who, the mayor? Read more →
Biden Is Not Available
Fox’s Chris Wallace: "In our interview last week with President Trump, he questioned whether his opponent Joe Biden could handle a similar encounter. Well, we asked the Biden campaign for an interview and they said the former VP was not available. We'll keep asking every week.” pic.twitter.com/5BIbp6dQ02 — TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) July 26, 2020 Read more →
How the Media Completely Blew the Trump Ventilator Story
FEMA acted quickly — much faster than is possible in the regular process — to get so-called notifications to purchase to ventilator manufacturers, so they could start work and hold their inventory, which ensured it wasn’t lost to foreign countries. The Defense Production Act was invoked with General Motors to get production moving as quickly as possible, and not back-loaded later in the summer. “We are going to be swimming in ventilators.” Last year, according to administration figures, the country produced 30,000 ventilators. This year, it’s going to produce something on the order of 200,000, and they are already coming in. “The balance now is growing daily,” the White House adviser says of the federal stockpile. “We are going to be swimming in ventilators.” By any measure, that’s a success, certainly compared with where we thought we’d be less than a month ago. If the media weren’t so devoted to… Read more →
Rip it Up
The Speaker’s decision to tear up the SOTU speech was A) childish; and B) well . . . I can’t think of a succinct word for B, but bear in mind that a number of people were recognized during the speech: The Tuskegee Airman and his great-grandson, people honored for service to country, people who have lost family members, and so on . . . I’d like to get a sound bite on how they felt about having the document ripped up. Especially the bereaved. How did it feel to have the public record of your loss ripped up right in front of you? I’d like to see party leaders — and adults in general, really — have the mental capacity and self-control and whatever it takes to refrain from doing something like that. Read more →
It’s Hard to Remember Which Side the Intolerant Bigots Are Really On
“One thing I’ve noticed about online dating profiles is that a lot of people will say something like ‘No Trump Supporters,’ but I’ve never seen one profile where someone says ‘No Trump Haters’ or ‘Trump Supporters Only.’” “That’s interesting. I mean, Trump is a polarizing figure but I’d expect it to split about 50-50 between ‘No Trump Supporters’ and ‘No Trump Haters.’” “No, that’s not the case. It’s not 50-50, it’s 100-0. Nor are there specific exclusions mentioned for other polarizing figures, i.e., ‘No Bernie Bros’ or ‘No Socialists.’ I’ve never seen ‘No Atheists’ or ‘No Christians.’ But I see a lot of ‘No Trumpsters.’ “Ironically, the main beef about Trump and his supporters, as I understand it, is they are intolerant bigots. It makes you wonder, you know, which side the intolerant bigots are really on.” Read more →
Ilhan Omar Forcibly Separating Children From Parents?
Ilhan Omar files for divorce from husband Ahmed Hirsi amid affair allegations — New York Post Why aren’t we hearing more about the Ilhan Omar extramarital affair and divorce? I remember when it was reported that Donald Trump had an extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels . . . that was a national news story for MONTHS! There was a period of time when her attorney, Michael Avenatti, was getting more airtime on CNN than the actual CNN hosts, for no reason other than to make derisive remarks about Trump. Unlike the Trump case though, where there was no divorce and everyone went on with their lives, Omar has filed for divorce, as has the wife of the man she had the affair with. Both families have minor children, who will be forcibly separated from their parents, and if there’s one thing the progressive left hates, it’s children being forcibly separated… Read more →
Greta Thunberg
I don’t like being lectured by children . . . because they’re dumber than I am, less experienced than I am, and have nothing interesting to say. (With rare exceptions. John Stuart Mill, for example.) You might not object to Greta Thunberg being terrified and programmed for political advantage because you like the positions she’s espousing, but it would be just as easy to program a child to espouse positions that you find abhorrent and then what would you have to say? Whoever is doing this does not have the child’s best interests at heart, in my opinion. President Trump responded to the Thunberg speech via Twitter and was widely condemned for mocking a child. She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see! https://t.co/1tQG6QcVKO — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2019 If you put a 16-year-old girl… Read more →
Life Goes On
Trump went golfing as Hurricane Dorian threatens US CNN So what? I was jerking off while my dad died of a heart attack. No, I made that up. The point is, life goes on. Did you stop fucking your secretary just because your sister was in the hospital? Of course not. There was nothing you could do for her, just like there’s nothing Trump can do about the hurricane. Give me a fucking break . . . Read more →
The New York Times vs. Trump
Slate has published a transcript of what it calls the New York Times “crisis town-hall meeting.” The transcript shows that Times executive editor Dean Baquet seems to fault readers for their failure to understand the Times and its duties in the era of Trump. “They sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president,” Baquet said. “And our job is to figure out why, and how, and to hold the administration to account. If you’re independent, that’s what you do.” This was followed by 75 minutes of Q&A with staffers in which, by my count, every question except one could be summarized as “Why can’t we call Donald Trump a racist more often?” In terms of figuring out why and how Trump was elected, I feel sure that “Can you believe what stupid racists Republican voters are?” moves us further from rather than… Read more →
Polarizing Ideas
Analyzing the actions and/or writings of mass murderers in hopes of being able to blame one’s political opponents is not an admirable impulse. The El Paso shooter wrote that his views predate President Trump, but I notice that didn’t stop motivated people from blaming Trump and his “polarizing ideas.” If we have to play this game, I think I could make an equally good case for “polarizing ideas” on the left. e.g., “When I’m president, I will decriminalize border crossings. People will be coming in from everywhere and when they get here, you’re going to be paying for their healthcare and education, all the way through college. Oh you’re trying to save up a down payment for a house? That’s too bad. Maybe they’ll take your job too. By the way, if you don’t think this is a good idea, you are a deplorable person. You’re a racist. You’re a white… Read more →
Anderson Cooper Has Not Been Cleared of Russian Collusion
Anderson Cooper is saying that CNN has never made any claims against President Trump . . . I’d put my research team to work on that if I had a research team, but since I don’t, I’ll just point out that 99 percent of CNN’s panel guests for the past two years made claims against President Trump, which I don’t think was accidental. There was a period of several months, for example, where Michael Avenatti was on CNN probably more often than Cooper himself, for no reason other than to make claims against President Trump. (Whatever happened to Avenatti, by the way? CNN seems to have lost interest in him.) There’s a technical distinction between making claims against someone and providing two years of airtime to other people making claims, but it’s not a credible distinction. Cooper also likes to say that President Trump was not cleared of Russian collusion,… Read more →
Sanctuary Cities?
Pelosi fumes over White House plan to release immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities Fox News Sanctuary cities: Immigrants, regardless of status, are safe in our city. Bring them here! They are welcome. This is the very point of a sanctuary city! President trump: Ok, we’ll send a few busloads over right now. Sanctuary cities: Wait — what? Read more →
Media Using the C-Word (“Crisis”)
White House requests $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border crisis Washington Post Daniel’s journey: How thousands of children are creating a crisis in America CNN Shocking Photos Of Humanitarian Crisis On U.S. Border Emerge Huffington Post “$3.7 billion [requested] to cope with the humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by unaccompanied minors from Central America.” ABC News Caveat: Those media quotes are from 2014 when President Obama was requesting emergency funds to deal with the border crisis. My go-to question for Democratic politicians would be “How do you respond to the president’s statement that we have a humanitarian crisis at the border?” And when they’re done with their predictably withering response, I’d say, “No, I was referring to President Obama’s statement.” President Obama, thank you for your great support – I have been saying this all along! pic.twitter.com/L506g9Aq4z — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2019 Read more →
CNN Runs “Breaking News” From BuzzFeed
On Thursday, BuzzFeed reported that President Trump “directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” Robert Mueller’s office, which in 20 months has never issued a comment on a media report, then released this statement: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.” By this time, CNN had actually run with the BuzzFeed report as Breaking News. For some reason, CNN objects to being called “fake news,” but a real news organization (I can’t think of one offhand) doesn’t broadcast an unconfirmed report from a clickbait site, no matter how bad it makes Donald Trump look, and no matter how much they would like it… Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Many are outraged that President Trump didn’t recite the Apostle’s Creed at the Bush funeral. Most of the outraged wouldn’t know the Apostle’s Creed from Apollo Creed. But they’re outraged because they were told that they should be. See you in Hell! Read more →
Making it Easier for Women to Do Things They Don’t Want to Do
Apple launching tech camps for women in bid to diversify industry Like other major tech companies, Apple has been trying to lessen its dependence on men in high-paying programming jobs. I don’t think “dependence” is the right word there. Is that dependence like alcohol dependence, or like dependence on foreign oil? It’s an oblique way of saying “we’re trying to employ fewer men,” but explicitly singling out members of a certain group for unwelcome attention sounds discriminatory and possibly illegal. Women filled just 23 percent of Apple’s technology jobs in 2017, according to the company’s latest breakdown. “Just” — why do we assume that working at Apple is a goal that a lot of women have? Maybe women found better jobs? Or something else they’d rather be doing? Industry critics have accused the technology companies of discriminating against women through a male-dominated hierarchy that has ruled the industry for decades.… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Why Was I Not Consulted?
I’m volunteering in a high school computer science class a couple mornings a week . . . If you’re going to work with computers, you need to be able to move around between different number systems, most commonly base 10, base 2 and base 16. As a warm-up, I asked students how many ways they could represent the quantity 7. Answers included the word “seven,” roman numerals, seven dots, a septagon, a Chinese symbol, and so on. “Quantities exist naturally,” I said, “but number systems are man-made. They’re just a set of symbols along with an agreement about how to order them. Why do we use the number system that we do? Who decided that?” Because I phrased it in a provocative way, some students realized that they hadn’t been consulted. “Yeah, no one asked me,” one student said. “Raise your hand in math class,” I suggested, “and ask ‘Why… Read more →
Was Jim Acosta’s Life in Danger?
It doesn’t look that way to me: Taking selfies with Trump supporters in Tampa. Really enjoyed talking to some of the folks at the rally and hearing their concerns. As I told many of them.. we can’t do the news just for the Republicans and Trump supporters. We have to do the news for all Americans. pic.twitter.com/onOOM6q9l8 — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 4, 2018 Read more →