The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation” — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
The New York Post is the Paper of Record
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 3, 2025
The article contains photos of Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates, as well as Biden’s multiple denials that those meetings ever took place.
The New York Post remains the paper of record in my opinion.
Why the National Archives couldn’t have released these photos before they became totally irrelevant, I do not know.
I’m Anti-Incompetence
"A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household.
"Bureaucratic haggling, equipment shortages and logistical challenges mean a $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast has so far yielded just 47…
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 3, 2025
Lie of the Year 2024
PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ and its impact on the Ohio town caught in the middle | PBS News https://t.co/ICRRswZ3DE
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 31, 2024
According to PolitiFact, the Lie of the Year is that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH, were eating dogs and cats.
First of all, I’d like to see someone convince me that statement is a lie. I can’t prove that it’s true, but I have seen videos of Springfield citizens at city council meetings saying that it’s true.
How can PolitiFact say definitively that it’s a lie? There aren’t any missing cats or dogs in Springfield? What happened to them?
And secondly, even if it’s false, it’s trivial.
Here are some candidates for Lie of the Year, selected by me.
- “I will not pardon my son.” This was said by Joe Biden, then propagated by other Democrats and the media to exemplify that Biden is a true American who believes in democracy, not like Donald Trump. And then Biden pardoned his son anyway.
- Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as a presidential candidate was an act of selfless patriotism. Actually, party elites and mega-donors took him behind the barn and shot him.
But by far the biggest lie of the year, and perhaps the most ambitious coverup in the history of the country, was the lie that Joe Biden was mentally competent to be president, to fulfill the duties of the office, to serve and protect the American people.
Who’s been running the country?!
Who’s been making decisions to send tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to fund shooting wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? Who’s been handing out record numbers of presidential pardons?
I now feel my use of the word “coverup” to describe this scandal was inadequate. Everyone saw the daily videos of the president falling down, mumbling incoherently, wandering around lost and confused. We were told that those videos were fakes, posted by far-right conspiracy nuts. Behind closed doors, out of camera range, Biden was sharp as a tack, can’t keep up with him.
Maintaining this web of lies required the active cooperation of countless government officials and media members. As Matt Taibbi has said, “Is there even a word for fraud on that scale?”
PolitiFact also has a readers’ poll for Lie of the Year. The winner of the readers’ poll? Also the dogs and cats story, with 54 percent of the vote.
Of the three options I’ve listed here, the only one in the readers’ Top Ten is the “I will not pardon” lie, with 6 percent of the vote.
I Could Do It Then But I Can’t Do It Now
Is There Even a Word for Fraud on that Scale?
America has seen incredible political deceptions in its past, from the Gulf of Tonkin to WMDs, but this real-world Dave script involves someone not named Biden steering presidential authority to approve billions for shooting wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, while handing out pardons in record numbers, among God knows how many other things. Is there even a word for fraud on that scale? A lot of people need to go to jail behind this caper.
Arraignment or Runway Event?
Here’s how Women’s Wear Daily covered the arraignment of Luigi Mangione, accused of killing United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson:
At first, videos on TikTok identified Mangione’s crewneck top as Maison Margiela’s burgundy washed lambswool sweater, which was available for sale at $1,000 on ssense.com — the piece is now sold out… Users [later] determined he was wearing the “washable Merino crewneck sweater” from Nordstrom. The style is available for $62.65 in six other colors. However, the burgundy color that matched Mangione’s outfit is now sold out… Levi’s, Peak Design, Tommy Hilfiger and Monopoly were previously referenced in news stories…
“What we see with Mangione is he has quickly become a folk hero and a fashion folk hero. It’s almost like the movie The Joker, where people dressed like him,” Diana Rickard, a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York, previously told WWD…
As Everyone Knows by Now, the Pediatric Cancer Story is Phony
Jasmine Crockett: Trump wanted $90M for inauguration while cutting $190M from cancer research
Absolutely Mind Blowing
Drop a ? for Jasmine pic.twitter.com/f1I1Gk80Fb
— A (@bluhue123) December 28, 2024
The author and Crockett are a little late to the party. Thanks in large part to X, everyone knows that the pediatric cancer story is phony.
That bill passed the (Republican) house with virtually zero “no” votes in March, then went to the Senate, where it was never brought up for a vote and was eventually jammed in to a 1,500-page CR, along with a big raise for Congress and god knows what else.
It should have been voted on nine months ago as a standalone bill but wasn’t, so that if Republicans objected to a 1,500-page CR, Democrats could pull out that one thing and say “Republicans hate kids with cancer.”
What’s Going On in Delaware?
BREAKING: A former Delaware teachers union president cut off his friends and family because they voted for Trump.
He wrote them a letter right before Christmas and published it in the state's largest news outlet
He was forced to resign as union president in 2018
Buckle up ??
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) December 26, 2024
This may be the thread of the year.
As noted, the teacher was forced to resign in 2018, the reason being the discovery of some of his past tweets, including one calling then-Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner a “Butch Bitch” and wondering whether a video of “chocolate, caramel and vanilla brothas” gang-raping Minner would boost her poll numbers, another suggesting that “blowing all the Muslims up” perhaps isn’t such a bad idea, and one suggesting a child molester is justified if his wife is a “stank-ugly ho.”
There’s a lot more where that came from, so if that piques your interest, read the whole thread.
Remember as you’re reading it that this is the kind of thinking that gets you elected teachers’ union president. The teacher, Mike Matthews, is still a teacher in the district.
Matthews’s husband, Jose Matthews, is the current school board president.
Monkeys and Pedestals
Imagine that you’re trying to train a monkey to juggle flaming torches while standing on a pedestal in a public park. If you can achieve such an impressive spectacle, you’ve got a moneymaking act on your hands.
[Recognize] that there are two pieces to becoming successful at this endeavor: training the monkey and building the pedestal. One piece of the puzzle presents a possibly intractable obstacle in the way of success. And the other is building the pedestal. People have been building pedestals since ancient Greece and probably before. Over two-plus millennia, pedestals have been thoroughly figured out. You can buy one at a furniture store or a hardware store, or turn a milk crate upside down.
The bottleneck, the hard thing, is training a monkey to juggle flaming torches.
The point of this mental model is to remind you that there is no point building the pedestal if you can’t train the monkey.
In other words, you ought to tackle the hardest part of the problem first.
Why Engineers Make More Than Marketers
Monetizing Fake News
Monetizing fake news. It's genius.
Amazingly, several pundits are quoted to the effect that calling someone a rapist in the absence of a verdict is not such a bad thing. ?
It's slander, you numbskulls.https://t.co/CUvq9qieEp
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 16, 2024
Some of the comments are extraordinary. Someone named Michael J. Stern says
When George Stephanopoulos said Trump “raped” E. Jean Carroll, he was using the word colloquially.
I didn’t even know there was a “colloquial” use of the word “rape.” Did he use finger quotes when he said it. I bet he didn’t.
Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast says, “This sets a worrisome precedent,” i.e., that you can’t say someone is guilty of a crime in the absence of a verdict. The Daily Beast is worried about that.
God is Not Mocked
I’m not a believer myself, nor am I anti-abortion, but I have no use for “Catholics” with more reverence for abortion than for the teachings of the Church.
Should not have defied the pro-abortion Eucharist ban. God is gonna cut you down.https://t.co/lRH7weEVwq
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 15, 2024
Autumn in Berkeley
Please Say What You Think “Misinformation” Means
The author is chasing his tail in so many different directions that it’s hard to respond.
You should not write a looong post on “misinformation” without defining “misinformation.”
For example, during COVID, a NY Times reporter said that getting a COVID vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting or spreading COVID. Our government labeled that as “misinformation” and coerced tech companies to ban the reporter from social media.
Of course, now we know that statement to be true. I could go through more examples but the point is that labeling something as “misinformation” is arbitrary.
Pending a definition, I’ll say that “misinformation” generally means “something I don’t want you to read or hear” and is protected speech.
The author mentions hate speech. Hate speech is protected speech. Supreme Court precedent is very clear on this.
The author mentions fraud. Fraud is the intentional act of deceiving someone to gain a benefit. Fraud is illegal.
Your Karma Ran Over Your Dogma
Brian Thompson is the United Healthcare CEO who was shot to death.
Some of these comments on this post are really ghoulish. “Obviously murdering someone is inappropriate. However, . . .”
I mean, where do we set the bar here?
“Obviously murdering someone is inappropriate. However, I did pay $15 extra for express shipping and my package still arrived late.”
Or “Who do I have to kill to get an online flight with this airline?”
You can come up with more examples yourself.
I hope your dogma gets run over by your karma.
An Experiment in Educational Equity
"During one meeting, an educator recounted their experience of finding a colleague crying in a closet because they felt like such a failure teaching multilevel." https://t.co/RhU4kDFbZz via @BostonGlobe
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 11, 2024
Hindsight to Foresight
What you’ve learned in hindsight about giant stories like RussiaGate and Covid should now be converted into foresight
You won’t get everything right if you do this but if you don’t do it you will most surely get nearly everything wrong
What Is Your Life Worth?
I saw at the supermarket they were selling whole roasted chickens for six dollars. You get the whole chicken in one piece — six dollars.
Imagine if your life was only worth six dollars. I wouldn’t know how to explain this to a chicken.
A roasted chicken on its back still looks very much like a chicken, like it gave up its life for you, just like Jesus. For six dollars.
Supercut on the Hunter Biden Pardon
SUPERCUT!
Corporate media: Obviously Biden would never pardon Hunter pic.twitter.com/gJRhASCAUs
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 2, 2024
Anti-Trump pundits and cable news talking heads singing Biden’s praises for his no-pardon pledge and using it to rip Trump to shreds, pointing out the “stark contrast” with Trump’s complaints that the Justice Department was weaponized against him.
Did not age well.
