My fellow Americans — I heard or read the Trump sound bite — “These are not people. These are animals.” — several times this week, always with no context to clarify who or what the pronoun “these” refers to. I plan to use that line next time I visit the National Zoo. It’s going to be hilarious. Listeners and readers were invited to apply the broadest possible interpretation, i.e., Trump said immigrants are animals. He was reviled by people who relied on the short, skewed attention span of the American public to avoid facing the regrettable fact that they use the same “dehumanizing” language themselves. This doesn’t work as well as it did before Twitter became an online memory bank for better or worse. For example, here is CNN “journalist” Ana Navarro: Once it became widely known that Trump was referring specifically to MS-13 gang members, Nancy Pelosi and other… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Donald Trump
Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
PolitiFact has a article headlined “Donald Trump’s NRA speech, fact-checked”. Here’s a sample: “African-American unemployment has reached another all-time, in history, record low … And the same thing with Hispanic American unemployment, which is also at the lowest level in history — unemployment, lowest level in history. And women’s unemployment — women, many women — is at the lowest level in almost 20 years. Think of that.” The “fact check” starts out like this: As far as the numbers go, Trump is correct. It then goes on for another five paragraphs to say that Barack Obama deserves “at least as much” credit as Trump for low unemployment. That’s a fact check?! Trump didn’t even say anything about who deserves the credit, although the listener is invited to make a favorable inference. Had he added “. . . and I deserve all the credit,” it would be fair in that case… Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Pope Francis and Donald Trump were both vexed this past week by natives of shithole countries. The pope showed up in Chile to accuse local sex abuse victims of calumny against the church. “Calumny” means he’s calling them liars. Look it up. Oh that reminds me! Cardinal Law sends his regards. Then he was on to Peru, where he called violence against women a “plague” across the Latin American region. They’re murderers, rapists . . . and some, I assume, are good people. What a character! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. See you in Hell! Read more →
Fake News Awards
I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 I’m looking forward to this! I find news media on both the left and right too smug and simplistic and agenda-driven. Read more →
Every Male Journalist Will Be Famous for 15 Minutes
Either for a sex-related termination or for botching another “bombshell” Trump story . . . Read more →
The Country is Turning Into One Big Junior Prom
Former Fox News anchor says Trump once tried to kiss her https://t.co/G3YakLpyaC pic.twitter.com/ZYVm4AqIvQ — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 9, 2017 That’s interesting. Have any other men tried to kiss her? Or is that the whole list? Why does anyone need to know about this? I’ve tried to kiss women. I hope Al Franken is saving a place for us in the unemployment line. There seem to be an awful lot of apparently adult women who should not be allowed to leave home without a chaperone . . . Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Bush 41 Calls Trump a “Blowhard”
Stinging rebuke from a one-term president who won the White House on the coattails of Ronald Reagan! Read my lips: Hurry up and die. I dislike Republicans and Democrats equally. It’s a choice between which gang of thieves you want to be robbed by. Elect a Democratic president and get four years of trench warfare against Republicans. Elect a Republican president and get four years of trench warfare against Democrats. One of the things I like about President Trump: Democrats don’t like him, Republicans don’t like him, nobody likes him except the people who voted for him, and that’s enough. Read more →
Spot the Fake News: Obamacare Subsidies
I read four news stories on the same topic — the end of Obamacare subsidies to insurance companies. The Wall Street Journal plays it straight down the middle: President Donald Trump’s executive order on health care issued Thursday marks the first major salvo in what the White House promises will be an extensive, targeted campaign to unravel the Affordable Care Act administratively. As does Bloomberg: President Donald Trump said he is moving “step by step” on his own to remake the U.S. health care system because Congress won’t act on his demand to repeal Obamacare. The Trump administration took its most drastic measure yet to roll back the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, announcing it would cut off a subsidy to insurers hours after issuing an executive order designed to draw people away from the health law’s markets. See if you can spot the fake news in the Politico version:… Read more →
Camille Paglia on Hefner, Trump, Masculinity, Feminism, Etc.
The Hollywood Reporter has an interview with the always articulate and interesting Camille Paglia: Before the election, I kept pointing out that the mainstream media based in Manhattan, particularly The New York Times, was hopelessly off in the way it was simplistically viewing Trump as a classic troglodyte misogynist. I certainly saw in Trump the entire Playboy aesthetic, including the glitzy world of casinos and beauty pageants. It’s a long passé world of confident male privilege that preceded the birth of second-wave feminism. There is no doubt that Trump strongly identified with it as he was growing up. It seems to be truly his worldview. But it is categorically not a world of unwilling women. Nor is it driven by masculine abuse. It’s a world of show girls, of flamboyant femaleness, a certain kind of strutting style that has its own intoxicating sexual allure — which most young people attending… Read more →
Tom Petty, 1950-2017
In December 2016, Tom Petty talked with Rolling Stone about his then-upcoming 2017 tour, which just ended last week at the Hollywood Bowl here in Los Angeles: I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one. I have a granddaughter now I’d like to see as much as I can. I don’t want to spend my life on the road. Sad, as President Trump would say. Big life events can kill you . . . RIP Tom Petty Read more →
The Jemele Hills of the World
Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 He has surrounded himself with white supremacists — no they are not "alt right" — and you want me to believe he isn't a white supremacist? — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 He is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 12, 2017 That’s a great opinion. It’s intelligent, well thought out . . . haha no it’s insane. I hope ESPN gets this woman some professional help. Oh you don’t see the world the same way I do?… Read more →
An Insignificant Number of Confused, Poorly Organized Losers
News networks have been running a two-week-long (with no end in sight) infomercial on white supremacists and white nationalists and neo-Nazis as though they represent a powerful force that has to be reckoned with, a vast army of domestic terrorists, which they don’t. The most important thing to know about white supremacists and neo-Nazis is that there are actually not very many of them. The leading white supremacist organization is the Ku Klux Klan. How many members do you think the KKK currently has? Take a guess. Keep in mind we live in a country of more than 320 million people. Estimates of current KKK membership run between 5,000 and 8,000 members. Is that less than you thought? As for neo-Nazis, the New York Times ran an article a few years ago on the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which they identified as the largest neo-Nazi group in the country. Take… Read more →
Poll: Most Black Americans Don’t Want Confederate Statues Removed
NPR and PBS News Hour conducted a poll asking whether statues “honoring leaders of the Confederacy” should “remain as a historical symbol” or “be removed because they are offensive to some people.” Results by race: White: 65 percent of respondents said the statues should stay, 25 percent said they should be taken down and 8 percent were unsure. (I know these numbers don’t sum to 100 percent but I’m taking them directly from the link above.) Black: 44 percent stay, 40 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. (Same comment as previous.) Latino: 65 percent stay, 24 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. The media, which according to a Harvard University study are very biased against Donald Trump, have been flogging him with this issue for the past week and a half, the thinking being that anyone who doesn’t support the removal of Confederate statues is a white supremacist, in which case 75… Read more →
No Political Violence on the Left?
I’m still shaking my head on this one: Even left-wing stalwarts like The Atlantic know that the Post’s “no violence on the left” premise is bogus: Look how peaceful and non-violent everyone is in the Post photo. Contrast that with, for example, these protesters at Berkeley earlier this year: I’m drawn to Berkeley examples because our son went to Berkeley and still lives in the area, because I know some current Berkeley students, and because Berkeley, ironically, used to be synonymous with the Free Speech Movement. The photos above show the protesters who showed up to violently shut down a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, but the same thing seems to happen whenever any university schedules a conservative speaker. Here are a couple more left-wing protests, in Chicago and Charlottesville: We could go on and on with this . . . we’ve all seen this before so I don’t know… Read more →
The Victimized Media
In the age of Trump, it’s acceptable for reporters to claim they “never wanted to be part of the story,” while waiting in a green room to go on TV and talk about themselves. — Washington Examiner Read more →
Great Moments in Socialized Medicine: Charlie Gard
If I’m understanding this correctly, socialized medicine really does mean that the government decides if you will live or die, and if your children will be allowed to live or die. I’m glad to see that the current president of the United States is not on board with the idea of a government being able to decide on the life or death of a baby, and to deny the parents of the baby the ability to counter that decree. If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2017 This is a good reminder — since there are people who think that “single payer,” i.e., socialized medicine, i.e., the government runs the healthcare system, would be a good thing to have in the United States — that the government,… Read more →
They’re the Oppressors Now
The Washington Post has an update on Brian Talbert, a gay man denied entry to the Charlotte Pride Parade because he voted for Donald Trump: Talbert — a 47-year-old North Carolina native — said he was one of about 50 people who attended the first pride parade in Charlotte in 1994. He recalled that Christian demonstrators threw rocks and bottles at the marchers and that someone spit in his face. More than two decades later, he said, the discrimination continues — but this time it’s being directed at him by the gay community. Talbert said he feels betrayed because it shouldn’t matter who you vote for. “I want them to realize that they’re doing the exact same thing they say bigoted people are doing to them — they’re the oppressors now,” he said. “It’s disgusting, and every gay person in America should feel ashamed.” Read more →
One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance: Gays for Trump Edition
Well, so much for acceptance and tolerance . . . The banned group is called Gays for Trump. Brian Talbert, a member of the group, said, “It was going to be fun. We wanted to be energetic. We wanted to show that we weren’t the racist, bigot, misogynistic . . . We wanted to show that we are Americans, love our country and our president. We wanted to be there to celebrate gay pride. Everything fell into place except being able to celebrate who I am.” Where that strategy fails is that showing Trump supporters are not anti-gay, racist, bigots, misogynists, etc., is not part of the mainstream gay agenda. Quite the opposite. The agenda is to keep that stereotype alive and keep those labels in play. “For a group of people to claim to want tolerance, acceptance, and give it to every single person you can imagine to give… Read more →
Big Losers
I saw this headline on an AP story today — Poor and disabled big losers in Trump budget. The story includes a photo of the budget (see below), so I think it’s safe to say that the AP writer didn’t read the entire thing before announcing who the “big losers” are. He’s just flogging his own agenda. (See also Harvard Study Says Media Are Very Biased Against Donald Trump) “Trump’s plan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 makes deep cuts in safety net programs . . .” the story says. What’s the difference between a “cut” and a “deep cut”? The latter sounds mean and scary. Why not just say something factual like “10 percent cut” or “50 percent cut” and let readers put their own characterization on it? “Safety net programs” is also a loaded expression. “Trump’s budget would cut the food stamp program by $191 billion over… Read more →
Harvard Study Says Media Are Very Biased Against Donald Trump
According to a Harvard University study, the mainstream media are very biased against Donald Trump. Here’s a chart from the study, showing that the tone of some news outlets is negative in as many as 98% of reports: I’ve noticed that even our local news station is about 90-10 negative on Trump coverage. We have to look at the way the media handled Trump before he was elected. How many newspapers in the entire country endorsed Trump for president? I don’t think the number is zero but it has to be very close to zero. Some newspapers — The Washington Post and New York Times come to mind — were virulently anti-Trump on the editorial page, which bled over into the news coverage. Every news network except Fox was anti-Trump, the only positive news being that he was most definitely not going to be elected. Well, actually it was that… Read more →