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: Media
It All Depends on Who’s Slinging the Hash
‘This Is Shocking’: Some Democrats Demand CNN Apologize, Denounce Alleged ‘Islamaphobia’ Made Against Ilhan Omar https://t.co/PkDdBuwt6f via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 16, 2024 It is shocking! I haven’t been as shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe. I think Democrats really do believe that the role of corporate media in general and CNN in particular is to serve as a public relations arm of the Democratic party. A journalist taking an adversarial position vis-a-vis a Democratic representative should not be allowed to have a job. What CNN commentator Scott Jennings said is that Ilhan Omar is a “public relations agent for Hamas living in the United States Congress.” To me, that’s a pretty good one-liner, no better or worse than political barbs I read every day. All the people that I see complaining about the remark are people who’ve called Donald Trump Hitler, Satan, a fascist,… Read more →
Gun Laws Don’t Work Even When They Do Work
Police Officer Paul ElmstrandPolice Officer Matthew RugeFirefighter Adam Finseth They were shot and kiIIed yesterday near Minneapolis. Another officer was injured. The alleged shooter is Shannon Gooden. Gooden applied for a gun in 2020 and was rejected due to his violent… pic.twitter.com/wV8eTbHa6F — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 19, 2024 Gun laws don’t work, even when they do work. The shooter in this case tried to buy a gun but was rejected because of his violent criminal history. Amazingly, he was still able to get his hands on a gun, despite the legal prohibition, and the victims are just as dead. I haven’t seen anything about this case except a mention in an X account. I can’t help thinking that if you flipped the script and a police officer shot a black man, there’d be a thousand times more media coverage than a black man shooting a police officer, or shooting… Read more →
Joy Reid
‘A Little Creepy’: Joy Reid Links Desire To Have Kids To ‘Slavery’, White Supremacist Conspiracy https://t.co/hLy6mTILXA via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) February 27, 2024 This may have lost something in the headline. I think she was trying to make a point about IVF in Alabama. It probably doesn’t matter because you can pick anything Joy Reid says and rely on it being hateful and stupid. Her brain just cannot get past the most primitive explanation for any event, which is that everybody is a racist. If it weren’t for the existence of Rachel Maddow, I’d say that Joy Reid is the most pathetic person in broadcast media, but as it stands, she’s no worse than a close second. Read more →
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 →
Seven Years
We’ve had seven years and counting of Hitler and Nazi references directed at Trump and his supporters, but in recent months we’ve had an opportunity to see who the real Jew-haters are in our country. And they’re not MAGA Republicans. Amazingly, the Hitler references continue. They haven’t stopped. This seems self-destructive. We’ve had seven years and counting of “Democracy is in danger” from a party that rigged the 2016 Presidential primary so Bernie Sanders wouldn’t win, rigged the 2020 Presidential primary so Bernie Sanders wouldn’t win, colludes with intel agencies, corporate media and Big Tech to lie, spy and censor. Amazingly, “Democracy is in danger” continues, even as they prosecute political opponents and take names off ballots. You can’t vote for the wrong candidate if his name isn’t on the ballot, right? Forget democracy. Democracy is dead. We had to take away your right to vote for the candidates of… 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 →
We Cannot Remain Silent, Except When We Can
We cannot remain silent about Elon Musk’s reckless decision to suspend numerous journalists’ Twitter accounts. — Center for American Progress, AFT and other progressives The New York Post responds: “Journalism is the cornerstone of free speech,” 14 progressive groups fume. “An attack on journalism” is an “assault on one of our fundamental pillars.” No, progressives can’t “remain silent” when that happens — unless, of course, it’s The Post reporting a story that’s unfavorable to a Democratic nominee for prez, as with the paper’s 2020 scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop. When Twitter banned The Post for that, you could’ve heard a pin drop from the supposedly high-minded defenders of “journalism” and “free speech.” Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: RESIST
I hate all forms of it: RESIST, resistor, resistance, any of the preceding as a hashtag . . . What do resistors think they’re resisting? The dominant force in DC, Hollywood, academia, the US Security State, corporate media and Big Tech is liberalism. Resistors are about servitude to power. As devastating as it is to their self-image as brave dissidents and radicals — nobody in any power center regards them as threatening. They’re servants, obedient dweebs, useful tools for these institutions of power. No Democratic politician or group would be censored by Big Tech. Read more →
FBI: Exposé of Our Spread of Misinformation is “Misinformation”
The “Twitter Files” have been coming out in installments over the last couple weeks or so, documenting how the FBI, CIA, the Democratic party, almost every major news outlet, and tech giants like Twitter collaborated to label any information that might make people want to vote against Democrats as “misinformation,” and using that label to justify hiding the information from public view. The centerpiece of this collaboration was the Hunter Biden laptop story, reported by the New York Post shortly before the 2020 election. 50 members of the U.S. intelligence community signed a letter, which, if you read it carefully, said that the laptop could be Russian “disinformation,” although there was no evidence that it was Russian disinformation, and they really had no way of knowing whether it was Russian disinformation, but that it looked like like the kind of sneaky trick that Russia would pull, knowing that it would… Read more →
The Employment Numbers WERE Wrong. Implications for Elections?
It looks like I was right about the employment numbers not making sense, which is maybe not such a good thing, in that everyone could see the same things I saw and yet I didn’t notice anyone (including “reporters”) asking “Why am I being told things that do not match up with reality?” Thank god I’ve been assured by powerful people that there is no possible way our government could propagate these same kinds of mistakes (lies?) with regard to election results. Read more →
When a Mass Murder is of No Interest
Three University of Virginia football players were shot to death a few days ago. This has not set off a national media frenzy despite the fact that the victims were young, black, unarmed and not involved in the commission of a crime at the time of their death. They won’t get the “say his name,” George Floyd martyr treatment, no Black Lives Matter protests or condemnations, and very little press coverage at all, considering we’re talking about a mass murder of three black college students sitting on a bus. Why? Because the shooter looks like this: 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 →
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 →
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 →
A Celebration of Ignorance
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Without Citing Any Evidence
My fellow Americans – I noticed during the Trump presidency that the press developed an affectation where they reported everything he said as “Trump said ‘blah blah blah,’ without citing any evidence.” [Emphasis is my own.] Why Trump was the only human being held to this standard was never clear to me, but I thought of it again this week and perhaps it’s time for a resurrection of “without citing any evidence.” For example, President Biden’s announcement of a victorious withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been better presented as “President Biden, without citing any evidence, called the American withdrawal from Afghanistan a success.” Or when the August jobs report was released, showing that the economy added a disappointing 235,000 jobs vs. an estimate of 720,000, to which the president responded “The Biden plan is working,” more meticulous reportage could have been “‘The Biden plan is working,’ said the president, without… Read more →
The Knowledge of What They Really Are
Let’s express this as clearly as it can be expressed. Any journalist who treats unverified stories from the CIA or other government agencies as true, without needing any evidence or applying any skepticism, is worthless. Actually, they are worse than worthless: they are toxic influences who deserve pure contempt. Every journalist knows that governments lie constantly and that it is a betrayal of their profession to serve as mindless mouthpieces for these security agencies: that is why they will vehemently deny they do this if you confront them with this accusation. They know it is a shameful thing to do. . . . Even when they learn that they deceived millions of people by uncritically repeating a story that the CIA told them was true, they will — on the very same day that they learn they did this — do exactly the same thing, this time with a one-paragraph… 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 →
Then: “Kids in Cages”; Now: “Facilities Similar to Jail”
The number of unaccompanied teens and children in U.S. custody along the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record numbers, forcing children to stay longer in perilously overcrowded border facilities, many of which are similar to jail. — abcnews.go.com Unrelated thought: Didn’t President Biden campaign on amnesty and a halt to deportations? Read more →