I also voted for my daughter’s rights.
I voted for her right to free speech.
I voted for her right to practice her religion.
I voted for her right to peacefully assemble and protest a tyrannical government, regardless of her political leanings.
I voted for her right to bodily…
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 5, 2024
We’re tired of being condescended to by the Obamas, by Oprah, by rich celebrities, by corporate media people with multi-million dollar salaries, all with large homes in which they live, paid off along with their summer homes in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, telling us the economy is doing very, very well. We only think that we’re economically struggling because we don’t understand the data.
We’re tired of being insulted. We’re not Nazis. We’re not garbage. We want to be able to buy things. We want to be able to walk around our neighborhoods without being harassed or robbed or killed. We don’t want unchecked immigration.
We are trying to improve our lives and our jobs and our communities and no one is listening because they’re too busy posting selfies with Alex Soros.
We have a government telling us that they’re defending democracy while simultaneously doing things that we thought only happened in totalitarian dictatorships: censorship of political enemies, censorship of “misinformation,” prosecution of political enemies, trying to put the Republican presidential candidate in prison before the election, trying to remove his name from the ballot so no one can vote for him.
We hate the political status quo and we repudiate all of it.
My fellow Americans –
I’m proud of you today. I knew you could do it. The tree of liberty has been refreshed by the blood of tyrants.
You rose up to say, “We are Americans. We are not an afterthought to massive corporations and hedge fund billionaires and illegal immigrants. If your plan is to raise a ton of money and run nasty ads saying we can’t vote for this person, that he is flawed — well, stay up late election night and see what we’ve done.”
God Bless America.
Luis Tiant won 229 games, with 2,416 strikeouts, a 3.30 ERA, 187 complete games and 49 shutouts. He was a three-time All-Star for and four-time 20-game winner. He was the American League (AL) ERA leader in 1968 and 1972 and the AL leader in shutouts in 1966, 1968, and 1974.
In today’s game, where you can win a Cy Young award with zero shutouts and zero complete games, those stats would send you straight to the Hall of Fame but Tiant was not elected to the Hall of Fame.
In 1968, Tiant Led the American League in ERA (1.60), shutouts (nine, including four consecutive), hits per nine innings (5.30) and strikeouts per nine innings (9.22), while finishing with a 21–9 record. His .168 opponent batting average set a new major league record, and his 19 strikeout/10 inning performance against the Minnesota Twins on July 3 set the American League record for strikeouts in a game. His 1.60 ERA iwas the lowest in the AL in nearly half a century (since Walter Johnson’s dead-ball era 1.49 in 1919).
He did not win the 1968 Cy Young Award because Denny McClain of the Detroit Tigers won 31 games in 1968, won the AL Cy Young Award (unanimously) and the AL MVP.
RIP Luis Tiant
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
— 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.
"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 and every time he moved, girls were being knocked to the floor.
Even in sports where men compete against men or boys compete against boys, there are often multiple competitive divisions depending on the age and/or size of the competitors. Boxing and wrestling have weight classes. Junior hockey has age brackets in two-year increments. A team of 14-year-olds can’t compete fairly or safely against a team of 18-year-olds.
There’s actually a law in New Hampshire prohibiting high school boys from playing girls’ sports but the Kearsarge School Board voted this summer to ignore the law. I didn’t even know you could vote to ignore laws.
Refusing to play is one method of protesting male intrusion into women’s sports, but if I were coaching a team of girls competing against Kearsarge, I wouldn’t fill out the roster with JV players, I’d fill out the roster with players from the boys varsity team and tell them, “Just say ‘I identify as female.’ Anything beyond that, you say “Talk to my coach.”
Now let’s play some soccer!
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 the nickname after Rose, playing in left field, tried to climb the fence to catch a Mickey Mantle home run that was about a hundred feet over his head.
Rose was placed on baseball’s “permanently ineligible” list in 1989 by then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti, allegedly for gambling on baseball games, although MLB made no formal finding on the gambling allegations, and Rose continued to deny them for many years afterward.
Giamatti died of a heart attack eight days after announcing the Rose ban, which I’ve always viewed as a message from God.
As far as the gambling, I think every baseball player should be required to place a bet on his own team every game. You’d see a lot more players sprinting to first base, I assure you.
Rose still holds dozens of MLB and National League records, including the highest career fielding percentage for a right fielder at 99.14% and the highest National League career fielding percentage for a left fielder at 99.07%.
RIP Pete Rose
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.
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
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.
Every endeavor involves 2 things: skill and luck. Depending on what the endeavor is, more of one may be needed than the other.
Concert pianist? Your odds of playing all the right notes in a concerto by luck are pretty low.
Actor? Anyone can do it. Bodybuilders, wrestlers, singers, comedians. Luck is paramount.
Technologist? My experience in software engineering is that it’s a skills-based profession. If you know things other people don’t know and you can solve problems other people can’t solve, you are the king or queen of the programming jungle.
That said, I can’t recommend a course or bootcamp or resume trick, and in a bad market, you may need some luck, but it’s a skills-based profession. Skills and hard work. Get behind the mule and plow.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
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.
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.
‘A Disaster’: Black Chicago Residents Slam Democrats For Ignoring Them In Favor Of Migrants https://t.co/Eg1Zy6gThR via @dailycaller
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 24, 2024
Black Americans vote for Democrats in very high numbers. They have an unswerving loyalty to the Democratic party. If Kamala Harris literally spit in their face, they would still vote for her.
This isn’t the way to exercise political power, or any other kind of power. The way to exercise political power is “I’ll give you what you want but only if you give me what I want.”
If you announce in advance “I’ll give you what you want (my vote) no matter what.” you’ll spend your life begging for a few crumbs, which will not be forthcoming. No elected official cares what you want, or what you think, or what you say, because you’ve already given them what they want.
Chicago has probably not elected a Republican to any political office in my lifetime. But Chicago is just one example. There are other cities in America where Black residents live in terrible conditions, every elected official is a Democrat and it’s been that way for decades.
This is a pretty simple equation that somebody should have figured out by now.
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 12 percent of the vote, so he was black.
My son is mixed-race. His mom is Asian. I’ve never heard anyone — including me, him, or his mom — refer to him as being white or Asian. I don’t think it would make sense. He’d have to erase one parent and half of his heritage. He’s mixed.
To the right is a picture of Kamala Harris’s parents. Her father is Jamaican, her mother is Indian. It’s hard to tell from one photo, but her father looks like a light-skinned black man. His skin color doesn’t look much different from his wife’s.
Is Kamala Harris now identifying as black and that’s it? That’s a rhetorical question because I don’t really know, but if she is, it does seem opportunistic to me, or at least open to question.
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. No one says, “You should look that up on the internet.” They say, “You should Google that.”
And as a result, Google wields immense power over how people see the world. If Google doesn’t want people to think too much about the attempted assassination of a former president, oops, it doesn’t come up in autocomplete. If Google prefers Candidate X to Candidate Y, “bugs” cause information about Candidate X to be displayed in response to a search for Candidate Y. It’s a brainwashing operation.
I’d like to see something done about this. I don’t know what can be done or who can do it, but I was glad this week to see Google on the losing end of a landmark antitrust suit, so maybe there is hope.
