This document should be in the Smithsonian. It should be preserved as part of the written history of American democracy. I can hear the spirit of Thomas Paine saying, "Well done." https://t.co/vSs4BpfBU4 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 13, 2024 Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
People I Thought Were Dead
Jim Bakker – televangelist Richard Benjamin – actor Joe Biden – U.S. president Elizabeth Dole – U.S. cabinet secretary Sandy Koufax – baseball player Kreskin – mentalist and TV host Ralph Nader – consumer activist Richard Petty – auto racer Updates Jimmy Carter, died 12/29/2024, age 100 Kreskin, died 12/10/2024, age 89 Read more →
Be Careful What You Wish For
https://t.co/FsmFMDsHe8 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 8, 2024 I live in the greater L.A. area, so I’m familiar with Gascón. How many times has this happened over the past few years? Voters elect “progressive” DAs, only to vote them out at the first opportunity when it turns out that progressive prosecutors don’t want to prosecute anyone, resulting in high-crime areas that no one wants to live in. A couple of years ago in San Francisco, voters didn’t even wait till the next election. DA Chesa Boudin was ousted in a recall election. I’m not as familiar with Boudin, but if you’re too progressive for San Francisco, you’ve got to be completely off the charts. Be careful what you wish for. Read more →
Cockiness Gets a Scolding
Let’s Play Some Soccer!
"This Is about Biology': New Hampshire Girls Soccer Players Boycott Game over Male Opponent https://t.co/30nbu2XWwT — Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 3, 2024 The team didn’t boycott the game, but several of the players did, which required the coach to fill out the roster with JV players. According to the story, this happens in every game that the Kearsarge Regional High School team plays — multiple girls on the opposing team refuse to play. I don’t blame them. Aside from being unfair, it’s obviously totally unsafe. I’ve seen men beating the hell out of women in boxing and MMA. I read about a high school girl suffering brain damage from being hit in the face by a volleyball spiked by a boy. I’ve heard about high school girls getting their teeth knocked out by boys playing on girls’ field hockey teams. I’ve seen a large high school boy playing girls basketball… Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Pete Rose
Pete Rose was the greatest baseball player I’ve ever seen. If I had to explain baseball to an alien from another planet, I’d show the alien a highlight reel of Pete Rose. Rose is baseball’s all-time leader in hits, won three World Series championships, three batting titles, one Most Valuable Player Award, two Gold Gloves, and the Rookie of the Year Award. He made 17 All-Star appearances in an unequaled five positions (second baseman, left fielder, right fielder, third baseman, and first baseman). Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford gave Rose the nickname “Charlie Hustle” after Rose sprinted to first base after drawing a walk, which he did his entire career. (Current players rarely sprint to first base under any circumstances.) Despite, or because of, the derisive manner in which Ford intended it, Rose adopted that nickname as a badge of honor. There’s another version of the story in which Ford bestowed… Read more →
Perverse Incentives
CORRUPTION: Ever wonder how politicians get so rich? They funnel billions into NGOs where their families work and who pay them to speak and to serve on boards. The $24 billion California spent on the homeless crisis went almost exclusively to NGOs who rely on a steady stream of… pic.twitter.com/48g8WkO9Y0 — @amuse (@amuse) September 22, 2024 This is common. People make money advocating for the solution to a social problem. They don’t solve the problem, they advocate for a solution to the problem. If the problem were solved, their money stream would dry up. Perverse incentives, as the poster says. Read more →
Fear
NBC: Trump Is Just Asking to Get Shot
So he was asking for it, according to NBC. Use fierce rhetoric, get shot. No mention of the possible effect of fierce rhetoric used *against* Trump.https://t.co/yPQEnLSujz — Paul Epps (@paulepps) September 16, 2024 Read more →
Another Instance When it Would Be Great to Have Functioning Media
If indeed this turns out to be true, which is looking increasingly likely, consider the character of the presidential candidate that would cheat in a debate, allowing her staff to negotiate the questions in advance, the camera angles, the required fact checking of her opponent,… https://t.co/RrmYoy151N — Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 15, 2024 I’d like to see CBS or NBC or some other news outlet look into this but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Everyone seems to be on the same team. Read more →
Jesus and Mo: Lesions
Political Suicide Averted
Gavin Newsom Slaps Down Democrats’ Attempt To Give Home Loans To Illegal Migrants https://t.co/NPkK9lDjDu via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) September 8, 2024 I heard Nancy Pelosi on Bill Maher’s show saying this bill was a great idea. Maher suggested that free houses for migrants is maybe not a great idea. “It’s not free housing,” Pelosi said. “It’s making the American dream available to more people.” HAHA. “It’s making the American dream available to people who are not Americans.” People who’ve lived and worked in the US their whole lives can’t afford to buy houses. Especially in California. Let’s say we did give free down payments to illegal immigrants. How are they going to make the payments? It’s illegal for them to hold a job. How are they going to pay for insurance, property tax, HOA, upkeep? To Newsom’s credit, he recognizes political suicide when he sees it. Read more →
Complacent Mental Laziness
I can’t find even one comment on this LinkedIn post from someone who went to X and did a search for “billie eilish donald trump” and discovered, as I did, that that video is all over the platform. It’s not deleted. Or forget the search. Even the phrasing is an obvious lie. How can you retweet something if it’s been banned? Complacent mental laziness is a national disease at this point. Read more →
The Melting Pot
https://t.co/NJuaJumx5R, https://t.co/DaaxpAmyoB — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024 The “outrage” seems to be over Trump’s implication that Kamala Harris is using racial identity in an opportunistic manner. Which she probably is, making it a fair topic of discussion. Let’s go back a few years to President Obama. His mother was white, his father was black. I never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than black. Do you think it would have been silly if President Obama had identified as white? It would have been silly, right? But he had one white parent and one black parent, so if you can just pick the race of one parent and say “that’s what I am”, ignoring the race of the other parent, what difference does it make which one you pick? To me, the only accurate description would be to say that he’s mixed-race, but mixed-race doesn’t get you… Read more →
Google “Bugs” in Trump Searches
Google's "explanations" are a complete joke. https://t.co/nluR7FtC1c — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024 Google’s “explanation” for this is a complete joke as is their “explanation” for why searching for “Donald Trump” brings up information about Kamala Harris. Software engineers have always called software errors “bugs,” because if you call something an error, it implies that someone is responsible for making the error, whereas if you call something a bug, it sounds like it’s nobody’s fault, really, just something that crawled in there of its own volition, like a cockroach in your kitchen. You could also use the word “bug” for something that was not an error at all. You did it on purpose but got caught out and need to disavow it. That’s what Google is doing here. This seems very important to me. It’s not good at all and here’s why: Google has become synonymous with online search.… Read more →
I Don’t Believe in God, I Believe in Vouchers
We spent a few days in Orlando . . . coming back to Orange County, we had a connecting flight booked through Atlanta. The Orlando flight was supposed to take off at 3:20 p.m. but there was (allegedly) a tornado watch in effect, which delayed the flight until 4:30, then 5:30, then 6:15. By that time, we were guaranteed of missing the connecting flight in Atlanta, so we rebooked on an 8:50 flight from Atlanta to Orange County, the last Orange County flight of the night. Unfortunately, the flight from Orlando to Atlanta was delayed again, didn’t take off until 7:30, and we missed the 8:50 flight. There were weather issues throughout the Southeast, a lot of flights were delayed or cancelled, and the line we had to stand in at the Delta customer service center was very, very long. We were already able to use the Delta app to… Read more →
What Has Happened to Major League Baseball?
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Boras Corporation (@borascorp) Blake Snell of the San Francisco Giants, the league’s reigning Cy Young Award winner, pitched the first no-hit game of his career a couple of nights ago, beating the Cincinnati Reds 3-0. Not only was it Snell’s first career no-hitter, it was the first complete game of his career. What has major league baseball come to when a starting pitcher wins a Cy Young award without throwing one single complete game?! It’s not as common as you might think for a reigning Cy Young winner to throw a no-hitter. It’s only happened five times before. Going back to when I was growing up watching baseball, Bob Gibson did it in 1971. As the Cy Young winner in 1970, Gibson pitched 20 complete games. That’s for one season. In his career, Gibson had 255 complete games. Baseball’s a totally… Read more →
Enlightenment is the Ultimate Disappointment
Perhaps I had inadvertently brushed up against the Buddhist axiom, that enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment. “From the mountain you see the mountain,” wrote Emerson. — Maggie Nelson, Bluets Read more →
Solitude With a Problem
I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one’s solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. — Maggie Nelson, Bluets Read more →
Can I Get a Witness?
We sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. — Maggie Nelson, Bluets I can’t live alone anymore. I’ve tried it and I can’t do it, the reason being that I need to have a witness to my life. Without the witness, I say things and no one hears them, I do things and no one sees them. It’s like I don’t exist. As a younger person, I lived alone successfully, but even then I imagined a witness, an observer. Read more →