Shouldn't they be studying for finals?https://t.co/DZoaKGLPWY — Paul Epps (@paulepps) April 25, 2024 During the time my son was at UC Berkeley, they had a fair number of campus protests. Usually the protests were about tuition hikes or something race-related. As a parent paying tuition, I was against tuition hikes, but I was also against my kid participating in protests when he should be studying. Whenever I heard about a Berkeley protest in progress, I’d check in with the boy to make sure he wasn’t participating, which he wasn’t. I got the impression from the way he talked about it that not only was he not participating, none of his friends were participating and no one with any sense was participating. I was at the Berkeley campus myself during one of the protests. There were 100 people, maybe less, blocking Sather Gate to protest a microaggression or something, but it… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Fake News
The Secret is Out
When it comes to the countries of the collective West, the large network media, TV channels, (and) large newspapers can in no way boast of even trying to at least look impartial in terms of coverage. These are all media outlets that take an exceptionally one-sided position. Of course, there is no desire to communicate with such media, and it hardly makes sense, and it is unlikely that it will be useful. — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Read more →
Lying Your Way to the Top
For more than a decade, I have been saying in all kinds of venues, in my written journalism, in speeches, and in interviews, that the most bizarre and surreal aspect of American journalism is that getting caught lying is no barrier to advancement and success. Specifically, I’ve long said, as long as you lie for the right people and causes mainly to advance the interest of neo-liberal global economic institutions, or do the bidding of the U.S. security state, then, I said, you can lie for as much as you want and it will not have any impact whatsoever on your career in corporate journalism. But that formulation that I’ve long endorsed is far too generous to the point of being misleading. Indeed, it’s actually untrue to say that getting caught blatantly lying has no effect on one’s career in corporate journalism. I was wrong about that. It does have… Read more →
If I Had a Hammer . . .
My first thought on the Paul Pelosi hammer attack story was that it had to be fake. First, is it possible that the Speaker of the House doesn’t have the minimal level of security needed to prevent her husband from being assaulted in their own home? Second, I’m pretty certain that an 82-year-old man would not survive a battle against me and a hammer. I haven’t had any practice at it but that’s the point. How many hammer blows to the skull can an 82-year-old survive? I’d put the over-under at one. Paul Pelosi was heard to say after the attack, “My goddamn congressperson better do something about the level of crime in this city . . . oh, wait . . .” Third, “Democrats” and “violent crime” are becoming synonymous as midterm elections approach, so maybe there would be a way to find a high-profile story linking Republicans and… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Anti-Asian Racism
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth — PE] The media dont give a goddamn about Asians unless they can fit em into a narrative that they like and thanks to some idiot in Atlanta shooting up massage parlors, Asians can be fit now into two narratives. The guy in Atlanta said massage parlors gave him a sex addiction so he had to shoot eight people. Six of em were Asian women. I dont know if’n youve noticed this but theres a lot of Asian women in massage parlors. But the narrative is white supremacy and he hates Asians. So why did he shoot the other two people? Does he hate Asians but he caint tell is someone Asian or not? And the other narrative is wealth disparity. See, you got them crazy rich Asians and then you got the Asians who aint rich… Read more →
What is the Likely Result of Overcharging the George Floyd Case?
Active law enforcement officers, by policy, can’t have a voice in America. They’re not allowed to speak their mind. They’re not allowed to say what they’re going through because of department, anti-social media policies. It’s down to the point now where if their wives or husband likes something, they’re being questioned over that. So, I’m that voice. I don’t have the restrictions of having a department policy over me. And I have my ear to the law enforcement officers across the nation, what they’re going through amongst themselves with their supervision, with politicians, with the community. And I speak on that. And again, we get back to that false rhetoric, the narratives. There’s 800,000 police officers, sworn law enforcement officers in America. There are 300 million police community contacts a year, 30 million criminal investigation contacts, 1.7 million violent felonies. Police in 2019 shot under a thousand people and only… Read more →
An Underwhelming Correction
Here’s a pretty underwhelming correction: ?"Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so."https://t.co/PnQm0aJyOu pic.twitter.com/GEzAJmhWDY — Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) March 15, 2021 As a journalist, either put a goddamn name on the source so we can verify the information, or verify it yourself before publishing, not two months later, after everyone’s already assimilated the original bullshit as truth. Now a question: Why would anyone believe what they read or hear in the media anymore when “news” is attributed to anonymous “sources” and published without knowing, or apparently caring, whether or not it’s true? Read more →
Nobody Believes in Anything. Problem?
I get a daily email newsletter from the New York Times, in which one of this week’s entries was a conversation with John Schwartz, a Times reporter who focuses on the climate. If Schwartz has any qualifications on the subject of climate science like, say, a relevant degree or something, he modestly omits it from his Times bio. Much of the Pacific Northwest is blanketed in snow. Texas continues to endure frigid weather and electricity outages. Another winter storm is spreading across much of the country. How is this consistent with global warming? Well, as Schwartz “explains” it, when temperatures go up, that’s a sign of global warming, and when temperatures go down, that’s also a sign of global warming. He adds, “We’ve always had floods, fires and storms, but climate change adds oomph to many weather events.” “Oomph”!? Follow the science! Nobody believes anything from the media anymore,… Read more →
How Many Synonyms Can There Be For the Word “Lies”?
I’m hearing from the media that whereas President Trump provided “a torrent of lies,” President Biden has “missteps,” “characteristic stumbles” and “false statistical interpretations.” But not lies. 🙂 I’m envisioning media gnomes wearing out their thesauruses for the next four years trying to come up with synonyms for the word “lies.” A couple of things I don’t like: Being treated like an imbecile who doesn’t grasp nuances of the English language and doesn’t know when he’s being brainwashed. The absence in our country of an honest free press. This would really solve a lot of problems. A lot. Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Snails, Coups and Fake News
My fellow Americans – I recently read that scientists at UCLA made snails “remember” things that never happened. Why am I not impressed? Snails?! We have fake news that makes people remember things that never happened. Remember the “attempted coup” at the U.S. Capitol last week? That never happened. That’s what the fake news called it: an “attempted coup.” What is a coup? Isn’t it overthrowing an existing government and replacing it with a new one? The government is not a building. It’s not a room. Stealing Nancy Pelosi’s lectern doesn’t make you the new leader of the country. It’s not that easy. We declared a coup in 1776. But we still had to fight a war for the next seven years to actually make it real. There was no coup or attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol. You just remember something that never happened. Read more →
Steve Scully: Ex-Debate Moderator
No, Not Trump, Not Ever https://t.co/PFvHTeQSZu — Steve Scully (@SteveScully) March 18, 2016 Steve Scully was going to be the moderator of tonight’s now-cancelled presidential debate. I know a lot of people who think President Trump’s “fake news” feud with the media is based largely on his own paranoid imagination. But is a guy who has publicly stated that Donald Trump should never be president really a good choice to moderate a presidential debate in which one of the participants is Donald Trump? There wasn’t anyone a bit more impartial available? Wait, it gets better. While in college, Scully served as an intern for — wait for it — Sen. Joe Biden. OK, now for the coup de grâce! Today, C-SPAN suspended Scully indefinitely after he admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when he was confronted about a questionable exchange with former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci. Read more →
And That’s the Truth: 93 Percent Peaceful
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Somebody put out a report sayin that 93% of Black Lives Matter protests in the US were peaceful. Now if’n you got a brain in yo head, you realize that statement don’t mean a goddamn thing. Fust off, what counts as a protest? One guy on a street corner with a sign. Is that a protest? Next thing, what is “peaceful”? I mean, I seen clowns on the TV telling me they at a “peaceful” protest and there’s a big fire goin on behind em. So I dont know what a protest is and I dont know what “peaceful” is but even if I take the numbers they give me, 7 percent is 617 riots in 220 cities. Man, I bet Hitler is in Hell right now going “Why didn’t I think of this? Hey, I… Read more →
Traffic Stops and Swimming Pools
We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow When I was younger (we’re all very well-behaved now 🙂 ), I had several friends and family members who had unpleasant run-ins with police, where they were cuffed or arrested or beaten, the common thread being not that they were black (they were all white), but they were all wise-asses who didn’t respect authority and couldn’t find it within themselves to be compliant to a police officer. One day my 9th-grade gym teacher told us (again, all white boys) to be excessively polite to police officers — yes sir, no sir — have your day in court if it came to that, but better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. In my experience, the narrative that only… Read more →
Biden Blames Trump For Riots Carried Out by People Who Hate Trump
Joe Biden has emerged from his basement to blame President Trump for riots carried out by people who hate President Trump. Bear in mind that these are liberal groups, rioting in liberal cities, with liberal mayors, and liberal city councils, promoting radical liberal causes, and supported by liberal money. Amidst sinking poll numbers, Joe, the media and others on the left have pivoted from months of “Violence? What violence?” to “Rioting is terrible but it’s all Trump’s fault.” 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 →
Gimme Some Truth
I’m sick and tired of hearing things from Uptight short-sighted narrow-minded hypocrites All I want is the truth, just give me some truth I’m sick to death of seeing things from Tight-lipped condescending mama’s little chauvinists All I want is the truth, just give me some truth I’ve had enough of watching scenes from Schizophrenic egocentric paranoiac primadonnas All I want is the truth, just give me some truth — John Lennon, “Gimme Some Truth” Read more →
Vaping-Related Deaths Are BS. You Heard it Here First.
Trump administration readies ban on flavored e-cigarettes amid outbreak of vaping-related deaths CNBC Condolences to the victims but do six deaths in a country of 320 million people really represent an “outbreak”? Also, “vaping-related deaths” is bullshit as the article itself says in the first paragraph: The Trump administration is preparing to ban flavored e-cigarettes as federal health officials call for restrictions to combat an outbreak of a mysterious lung disease . . . “Mysterious lung disease.” In the headline, vaping is flat-out killing people; in the article it’s a mystery disease. I’ve read specifically about three of the deaths. One was here in Southern California, in Los Angeles County. The deceased was described as an older adult male, at least 55 years old, with chronic health conditions. A woman who died in Kansas was older than 50 and had a history of health problems. In Minnesota, the state’s “first… Read more →
Mass Shootings, Thwarted and Unthwarted
Arresting some knucklehead on a weapons charge and saying you “thwarted a mass shooting” is a speculative fantasy. Meanwhile, since El Paso there have been 25 actual unthwarted mass shootings (per Mass Shooting Tracker), which don’t make the news because they don’t fit the preferred narrative. For example, four of the shootings occurred in Chicago, where in each case the shooters fired into a crowd of people. By my count, about half the victims were women. I can’t find any reporting on this in Mother Jones, which is pretty shocking given their obvious interest in mass shootings. They’d rather report on imaginary mass shootings by white males than on the actual mass shootings of Chicago residents . 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 →
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 →