Author Archive: Paul Epps

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Browns’ Isaiah Crowell apologizes for Instagram post of police officer having throat cut — USA Today Former Miss Alabama: Dallas Shooter ‘A Martyr,’ ‘I Don’t Feel Sad’ For Murdered Officers [Video] — Daily Wire Read more →

Boy, Were We Wrong!

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When the country elected Barack Obama president in 2008, those of us who disagreed with many of his policy ideas were nonetheless consoled by the fact that his victory illustrated that America had moved well beyond institutional racism. Certainly the fact that Obama had succeeded in both a hard-fought Democratic primary and a general election meant that the country was ready to move past the intense focus on race in our national politics. Boy, were we wrong! — Steven Malanga Read more →

Bernie Sanders is Wrong About Everything But He’s Raised the Intellectual Climate

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Socialism has been discredited about as thoroughly as possible, but one thing I greatly admire about Bernie Sanders is this: He’s never made a political issue of the fact that he’s Jewish. He doesn’t say “It’s high time we had a Jewish president.” He doesn’t say “If you’re Jewish, you should vote for me because I’m Jewish.” And most importantly, he doesn’t dismiss criticism or critics as anti-Semitic. And because he doesn’t do any of the above, I don’t see his supporters or the media doing it either. It would be easy for him to do those things because it’s what people expect. Political discourse in America consists mainly of people calling each other racists, sexists, homophobes and bigots. It’s hard to complete a sentence without someone taking offense to a trigger word, a microaggression or a dog whistle. Abraham Lincoln once said this: If you have ever studied geometry,… Read more →

Even Stephen A. Smith is Right Occasionally

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From the Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut files: Stephen A. Smith calls Kevin Durant’s decision to join the Warriors “the weakest move I’ve ever seen from a superstar.” Stephen A. Smith is never right about anything. In case you missed it, Stephen A. Smith has picked the last six NBA Finals winners incorrectly. It’s hard to be that wrong. How hard? The odds are 63-1 against. That means if you chose 64 random drunks at a sports bar, 64 dart-throwing monkeys, whatever — 63 of them would do a better job picking NBA Finals winners than Stephen A. Smith. (FYI, the “dart-throwing monkey” is a go-to metric in assessing investment portfolios. Follow the above link if you don’t know what I mean. It’s not a racial reference.) But Stephen A. Smith is exactly right about Kevin Durant. The Thunder blew a 3-1 lead to the Warriors and lost a series that… Read more →

Tom Kelly, Pat Summitt, Buddy Ryan

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The Grim Reaper very active in the sports world the last day or so . . . Tom Kelly dies at 88; broadcast USC football and basketball games for decades — LA Times Pat Summitt, legendary women’s basketball coach, dies at 64 — CNN.com Former NFL coach, defensive guru Buddy Ryan dies at age 82 — ESPN Read more →

The One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance: Herschel Walker Edition

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NFL great Herschel Walker was one of the early Trump supporters out of the gate but now he says he is losing speaking gigs by anti-Trumpers who are blackballing him. — Breitbart Maybe I’m not paying attention but I can’t remember any people with left-leaning views being blackballed from public discourse. At the risk of being super obvious, tolerance and freedom of speech don’t mean anything if you’re not willing to extend them to everybody — people you applaud as well as people you detest. Read more →

My Dog Is a Genius

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This needs a little setup . . . I used to take Lightning on weekend mornings to the Irvine Dog Park, then afterward to the Starbucks drive-thru, where I’d get a beverage and he’d get a pup cup (a cup of whipped cream). He loves Starbucks. He used to get super animated from the time he saw we were turning left on Irvine Center Drive (toward Starbucks) to the time he actually got the pup cup at the drive-thru window. He also recognizes the words “Starbucks” and “pup cup”: [youtube http://youtu.be/C1dDJ2SdF_o] He’s too old to enjoy the dog park now — he doesn’t walk well and he can’t see — so I walk to Starbucks myself on the weekends and bring the pup cups home for him. Today I took him to the Starbucks drive-thru, just like old times, and he got super excited again when we got there, just like… Read more →

George Orwell: “I Told You So”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met. — Associated Press Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said that Clinton “has always made an effort to be transparent since entering public life.” In addition to the unrecorded meetings with donors, this effort at transparency includes setting up a private email server to use as Secretary of State, and giving speeches at $200,000 per to Wall Street banks and investment firms, foreign governments and other special interest groups under a contract that prevents anyone from releasing a transcript of what she said. Merrill went on to say, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Read more →

Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson Endorses Hillary Clinton

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I’m seeing a lot of headlines today on Henry Paulson’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, in all of which Paulson is identified as “President George W. Bush’s treasury chief Henry Paulson,” or “ex-GOP Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,” or something to that effect. There are certainly other ways of identifying Henry Paulson, e.g., Former Goldman Sachs chief executive Henry Paulson Architect of TARP and “Too Big to Fail” Henry Paulson Wealthy Wall Street goon Henry Paulson Henry Paulson, who used his position as Treasury Secretary to bail out his Wall Street friends with taxpayer money It’s hard to see how an endorsement from Henry Paulson is anything but a nail in the coffin of the Clinton campaign . . . I took millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street banks and investment firms, including $675,000 from Goldman Sachs (see New York Times), and now they’re all endorsing me! (Shocking.) Also: I… Read more →

What Are the Rules on Refusing a Religious Funeral?

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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. —- The father of the Orlando gunman said his son was buried at a Florida cemetery this week. Seddique Mateen would not say where his son, Oman Mateen, was buried, but said it was an Islamic burial. — WPBF.com Is a Muslim entitled to an Islamic funeral no matter what kind of atrocity he commits, in particular, an atrocity committed in the name of Islam? What are the rules on this? Would a Catholic, for example, who pledged allegiance to the Pope before shooting 100 people be entitled to a funeral mass in the Church? I remember a couple of years ago in Australia when an Islamic extremist got himself and a couple of hostages killed in a siege, the funeral director with the Lebanese Muslim ­Association said this: We don’t care about him, we don’t know him, chuck him in the bloody shithouse. Nobody’s going… Read more →

How to Beat UConn Women’s Basketball: Transsexuals

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High School Boy Wins All-State Honors In Girls Track And Field — The Daily Caller Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, it’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world . . . I’m actually old enough to remember when female athletes were disqualified if they turned out to be male. Self-identification, i.e., if a boy says he’s a girl then he’s a girl, could take women’s sports in a crazy direction, given that males are better than females at any sport I can think of. For example, if a women’s college basketball coach wants to end the UConn dynasty, why not suit up a team of transsexuals, i.e., men who “identify” as women? Other teams would have to follow suit in order to be competitive. The only downside I can think of is that there would soon be few (maybe zero) biological women playing college basketball in America, or… Read more →

I Pledge Allegiance to [Omitted]

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House Speaker Paul Ryan called on the Obama administration Monday to “release the full, unredacted transcript” of the Orlando massacre gunman’s 911 calls, slamming the Justice Department’s censoring of all references to Islam as “preposterous.” — Fox News Here’s what Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, sounds like in the redacted transcript: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted]. No references to Islam, ISIS or Allah, who becomes “God [in Arabic].” In other news, 911 calls from the Disney World alligator attack are being released after redacting all references to alligators. It’s similar to 2012, when a terror attack (in Benghazi) was whitewashed in the months leading up to a presidential election, the thinking being that vulnerability to terrorism reflects poorly on the incumbent administration. This time they’re is not even bothering to lie about it (the Benghazi attack was supposedly a spontaneous… Read more →

Jesus at Gethsemane

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For those not familiar with the story: Jesus knows he’s going to die. He prays to God for help in the garden of Gethsemane, at the Mount of Olives. But there is no answer. If it is true that in the sacred Garden of the Scriptures, The Son of Man said what we see reported; Mute, blind and deaf to the cry of all creatures, If Heaven abandons us like an aborted world, The just will oppose disdain to this absence, And will answer from now on with only cold silence The eternal silence of the Divinity. — –Alfred de Vigny, “Le Mont des Oliviers” Read more →

EppsNet Movie Reviews: Finding Dory (and Coming Attractions)

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Loved it! Five stars! We saw trailers for some upcoming animated films as well. The BFG and Moana look promising, but the rest — including Ice Age: Collision Course and The Secret Life of Pets — look like non-stop grotesque slapstick. That being said, the audience seemed to find it all pretty funny, so in a “give the people what they want” world, perhaps the filmmakers aren’t entirely to blame . . . although I think it’s not so much a linear cause and effect, but more of a downward spiral. Nine Lives — not an animated movie, but a “man turns into a cat” movie — also looks horrible. Rating: Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →

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