HorsesAss.Org

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by — ,

Trevor chats with his Grandma about apartheid and tours her home.

Stephen remembers George H.W. Bush.

Vox: The problems with rebuilding beaches.

Chris Hayes: Every vote counts.

Trevor with Al Gore: The Climate Reality Project and “24 Hours of Reality”

Late Show: Planet Earth’s climate change episode.

The Dotard Трамп and His band of Co-Collusioners and Embezzlers:

Daily Show: Meet District Attorney Mark Gonzalez, criminal justice reformer.

Adam ruins mattresses.

Stephen: PETA forgot to correct these anti-animal phrases

Full Frontal: GLUE—Gorgeous ladies unionizing everywhere!

Minute Earth: These names can kill animals.

Jimmy Kimmel: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Beto O’Rourke for President?

WaPo: What you need to know about the possible government shutdown

Daily Show: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet

The G.O.P. and Related Election Crime Organizations:

Mental Floss: Everything you need to know about space.

Roll Call: What is a continuing resolution? Decoding this jargon as Congress averts a shutdown.

Trevor hosts the Global Citizen Festival to Honor Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday:

The Atlantic: The last chess shop in New York City.

Stephen with Michelle Obama: It is hard to hate up-close.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Comments

  4. 4

    @3 I doubt it. The motivation was pure simple greed. A convicted con man got paid for stealing elections however he could and developed a “business model” utilizing absentee ballots for the purpose. Mail votes happened to be the easiest target. But you can bet Republicans will use this case to bleat that mail-in voting is “wide open to fraud.” Kinda like if a Republican robs a bank and the GOP then claims there’s a “crime spree” because Democrats are “soft on crime.”

  5. 5

    Maybe one reason Trump is so far out of touch with reality is that he’s getting bad information. For example, his favorite pollster is the worst pollster:

    “The midterm elections prove that …Rasmussen is dead wrong and traditional pollsters are correct. … Rasmussen’s final poll was the least accurate of any of the 32 polls” graded by Nate Silver. “They had the Republicans ahead nationally by one point. Democrats are currently winning the national House vote by 8.6 points. That’s an error of nearly 10 points.”

    And that’s not all. Rasmussen also puts Trump’s approval rating about 10% higher than it actually is. No wonder Trump thinks he’s the greatest president evah.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/08/politics/poll-of-the-week-trumps-favorite-pollster/index.html

  6. 6

    4)I used to be a pollbook judge for King County Elections, and we had a few times people having to change parties so their was one Republican in the polling places. Most of the voters voted absentee anyway, but the cabinet the optical scanner was mounted on had a compartment for absentees.

  7. 7

    @5

    I doubt that because Trump has proven time and time again he hears just what he wants to hear. It doesn’t matter if it is good or bad news, it either affirms what he believes or he calls it “fake.”

    Trump is a narcissistic moron. His family money has allowed him to surrounded himself with “yes men,” Trump has a reality, but his reality is different that 99% of the rest of the world. The only people that really share Trump’s world view are a few other billionaires, oligarchs, and despot dictators (and Dr. Dumbfuck).

  8. 8

    The new WH staff are essentially signing on to spend the next two years smearing federal law enforcement for political gain and cooking up “innocent” sounding explanations for the collusion. That sort of thing is a career builder for Republicans these days.

  9. 9

    @8 There’s no doubt anymore that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. That fact shines through all the redactions.

    Trump can continue to deny it for a while, as his associates are going to jail for other reasons, and the true believers will shut out reality until the end of time.

    But Trump’s time is coming. With every passing day, he has fewer friends and supporters, and when the GOP poobahs conclude he’s no longer a useful tool, they’ll act in their self-interest like they always do.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/opinions/will-the-republican-party-turn-on-trump-zelizer/index.html

  10. 10

    Rasmussen also puts Trump’s approval rating about 10% higher than it actually is…

    Does Faux Snooze Channel use that hack still?

    There was a time when the consensus was that Rasmussen knew what he was doing but apparently he didn’t change with times polling increasingly the same demographic that listens to Limbaugh and Hannity.

  11. 11

    The verdict is in for Trump’s costly corporate tax cuts. In an article titled, “The Corporate Tax Changes Have Been a Bust,” Barrons magazine says,

    “So far, businesses have not radically altered their behavior. Most profits that had been retained offshore for tax purposes have not been repatriated, mergers and acquisitions have not picked up, cash payments to shareholders through dividends and buybacks have not meaningfully increased, and investment spending has not accelerated. …

    “The most compelling justification for the tax changes was the impact it would have on corporate investment behavior. … In practice, … companies do not seem to be responding as hoped … investment spending … has not grown by more than would have been expected without the tax changes.”

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/last-years-corporate-tax-overhaul-hasnt-made-much-of-a-difference-1544226832

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: $2.4 trillion added to the debt over 10 years in return for nothing. Typical of GOP economic policy. They can’t manage soda pop machine change, let alone the economy.

  15. 15

    I think I was right. Fight! All Dcontrolked houses and States need to do the same.

    Republicans Around The Country Are Working To Declare Democrats Unconstitutional

  17. 17

    9)Part of me was still skeptical, but the increasing attacks on Mueller were telling. If there was nothing, why are they trying to do Saturday Evening Massacre part II?

  18. 18

    9,
    The redactions tell us that the sources are either under previous seal to protect the investigation (Sater, Weiselberg, Flynn, Deutsche Bank) or to protect national security (PRISM, STORMBREW, etc).
    In other words Mr. Mueller has already run a sigmoidoscope well into the dark, gassey recesses of the companies, the campaign, the foundation, and the family and recorded his discoveries to filings that cannot be suppressed.

    Defending the minions is made problematic by their clumsy efforts at obstruction. Defending The President falls to his compatriots in the Senate. But depending on the precise violations, indictments could follow him out the door in 2021.

  19. 19

    I’ve been watching with some fascination the buildup to what I am pretty sure is the inevitability of Fat Donny’s impeachment and likely prosecution for the hundreds of Felonies he’s racked up over the last several decades. Bear in mind that FD has been repeatedly investigated for various crimes dozens of times since the mid-1970s. All that evidence gathered, all the information that those investigations have developed still exists and is certainly to be part of Mueller’s deeper investigations into the activities of Fat Donny, his little slumlord mafia and their dealings with various foreign criminal organizations and their operations around the world.

    One reality of government, for good or bad, is that in order to create a justification for something amongst the general public, the machine that operates the information flow spends a lot of time building up the background narratives. The Politics of something needs to be carefully shaped. People’s perceptions have to be steered in a certain direction to get something done, especially when that something is politically disagreeable or dangerous to the individuals who have an actual, mandated duty to something beyond just keeping their fucking jobs.

    This was done with the Second World war, quite visibly when one takes a look at the newspaper articles and such during the mid to late 1930s. Roosevelt knew that a hard war with either Japan and/or Germany was inevitable, probably by 1936 or ’37, in that those countries expansionist and increasingly brutal assaults on their neighbors was becoming too much to ignore for everyone, even the people that supported the Third Reich in Great Britain and North America. There were quite a few of those. With regard to Japan, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a limited military strike, against a military target in response to the embargo the United States and Great Britain had put on their oil and metal imports. Japan had made its intentions clear with their massive murder spree in southern China and the Pacific islands. People in Western civilization had a moral outrage at those atrocities.

    That was all the justification Roosevelt needed to roll the bones for War. Germany declaring War on the Allies two days later was just icing the cake. They made it easy for the President to declare. Congress had no political problem with approving that declaration.

    The man who put it that way, was a retired US Army Colonel that explained it like that way to me years ago. He taught military history for years at West Point and the War College in Langley VA. I’m pretty sure ol’ Mike was one to know what the fuck he was talking about.

    This information flow, really propaganda, isn’t dumped into the public information flow all at once, it comes in little bits and bites of information presented over periods of months or years through editorials and small incidental anecdotes in the news.

    Looking back at the last fifteen years and especially during the last ten, it is very comparable to the way the Russian and American oligarchs have fed their points of view into the media through FOX, Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity, Sinclair and Clear Channel, etc. It has been a clear storyline of carefully filtered or outright manufactured data that creates a certain confluence of ideas that seat themselves into people’s minds, one way or the other. That is, some people will accept certain anecdotes as being factual, and others will dismiss them as being non-factual.

    If there is one thing the Russians have real expertise doing, it is in creating propaganda. Israel as well, and certainly they and the Saudis have been planting various tidbits of “information” into the American mediasphere to create the positive or negative perception of various events. As an example, most Americans see the active pogroms/ethnic cleanings in Israel as being a “positive” in that it is acceptable for Israel to defend itself from the “terrorists” who would exterminate the Jews, while the Zionist State uses that rationalization to continue its program to to destroy the Palestinian State without any sense of irony. They use bulldozers on farms and small towns, backed up by military power to evict “trespassers” who have historically lived in the region for hundreds or thousands of years in order to create living space for the immigrant populations. They’re literally erasing any traces of what existed before, in order to manufacture a new State that didn’t exist 70 years ago.

    What the Zionists don’t want anyone to see is the destruction of the Palestinian homeland comes at the cost of their own integrity as a civilization. What the Zionists don’t want anyone to realize is that the Palestinians are in fact, a semitic people, while the bulk of Jewish immigrants to Israel are not, they are actually nearly all Eastern Europeans with no real ties to the region except for their religion. Many of them, including Netanyahu are descended from people that opposed Russian influence on their homelands more than they did the German. Quite a few of them are the children and grandchildren of people who fought as partisans against the Russians and the communist revolution in eastern Europe.

    That all being said under the influence of coffee this morning, I have noticed the shift in the “flavor” of the propaganda coming out of the various information channels, in that the notion of Fat Donny’s criminality and intransigency is not being openly dismissed as being false as vehemently as it was just a year ago.

    So this is my own possible (mis)perception of what is going to happen. Fat Donny is going to be impeached. There is no more question of that. It really is just a matter of a month or two at this point. The “moderate” Republicans are goddamn tired of the bullshit, the idea that they continue to support a fucking total criminal imbecile has become just to much to bear for the people that run the party apparatchik, and whether or not they believe any of it to be true, they see it all as being a net negative to their Party. I believe that there are a lot of folks who see the fact of Fat Donny’s naked visibility as a liar, a career white-collar criminal and the fact that he comes across the TeeVee screen as being barely short of a drooling moron to an increasing number of people is causing them to realize that their continued influence on Government is probably going to come to an end unless they do something serious to solve the problem. They are going to have to make a radical decision in order to salvage whatever they might have left, which really isn’t much. I think they’re just going to cut the knot rather than attempting to untie it in a nice, tidy fashion.

    Thus, when the issue of Impeachment does actually come to a head, when all of Mueller’s evidence comes to light, the Republicans will mostly go along with it. They just cannot afford to lose their place in Government. The damage that has already been done to the Party is just too much. It would then seem apparent that in order to maintain some tenuous level of credibility with the public, they’ll take the hit and then go about propagandizing that they “did the right thing for the Nation” and run for office based on the fact that it was really their idea to begin with.

    They are going to have to make a choice between a head-on collision on the freeway, or steering the vehicle into a tree to avoid it. I think they’d rather just go off the road. They’re not all idiots, no matter how hard they’ve tried to make themselves look that way for the last sixty-five years.

  20. 20

    @19. I disagree. The republicans in the senate won’t convict him because their voters will primary them if they do.

  21. 21

    @ 20:

    They’re already fucked. What’s the difference? The people who have an absolute lock on their Senate seats are less common than you think. Come next election, Senate seats in Texas, Arizona and Kentucky are kinda up for grabs, especially after Mueller dumps his information on the public. Hell, Cornwin and McConnell are both balls deep with Putin. He’s grinning his ass off for a reason.

  23. 23

    20,
    Agreed. For all the meta analysis about large movements of average public opinion it’s easy to overlook how much President AdultDiaper’s popularity has grown with the shrinking base of angry, impotent, balding, racists. They really adore him. And their numbers add up in certain states and Congressional districts.

    That leaves mostRepublicans in Congress essentially trapped between two growing powers. For those who are able to survive, in states and districts with the minimum concentrations of trailer parks and tire dumps, they have no real choice. As with Trump, there will be no pivot. They have passed beyond Teh Orange Event Horizon. This is really who Republicans are now.

  24. 24

    Poor Hillary. Her absolute lock of 252 electoral votes having failed her, she and Bill are forced to turn to Groupon in order to sufficiently shill themselves.

    Even Goldy never stooped to Groupon level.

    Desperate measures! Bill and Hillary Clinton resort to using Groupon to sell half-price tickets after their 13-stop paid speaking tour fails to draw the crowds

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6473637/Bill-Hillary-Clinton-resort-using-Groupon-generate-ticket-sales.html

  26. 26

    Yes. This is really who Republicans are.

    The “beard” for convicted felon Republican campaign adviser George Papadopoulos must have been in a hurry to pimp herself to herself on one of her many fake Twitter accounts and she forgot to switch. Ooops:
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt3nNlWXgAIGOeI.jpg

    Classic. Puppet? No puppet. You’re the puppet!

  29. 29

    @24

    Poor you. You thought 27,000 was in the headlights. Wrong! Don’t hold you breath either. Or maybe you should have.

  30. 30

    @24

    Plink, plink, plink, keep plucking away at that Clinton string. It is pretty evident that most people don’t really care what the Clintons are doing anymore, except for you.

    I think it is fair to say that most of America, heck, even those that live in ‘merika, no longer what the so-called “dynastic families” to govern. Trump and his crooked ilk, upon election, should have been the canary in the coal mine to those long standing families such as Bush, Clinton, and even Kennedy. It is time for a new generation of leadership.

    However, Hilary on her worst day would have been a better POTUS than Trump on his best day.

  31. 31

    @22 et seq.: Well well, the retired radiologist crawled out from under his rock. Apparently his missus doesn’t want to be seen in church with him. Thanks for showing up here, doc, so we can kick you around. Better you get bruised than us.

  33. 33

    Chuck Todd says he was “shocked” by how gullible Trump voters were in 2016.

    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/nbcs-chuck-todd-blames-gullible-voters-for-trumps-election

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: He shouldn’t be surprised, let alone shocked. Even people smart enough to get into Caribbean medical schools fell for Trump. Gullibility is a common human trait. I’m not saying all you stupid humans are gullible, but clearly some of you are. Otoh, I can say without fear of contradiction that the number of talking rabbits who voted for Trump is precisely zero.

  34. 34

    Just saw a re-dub of a Trump/Hillary debate done to “Baby, it’s cold outside”.

    Facebook doesn’t always suck.

  35. 35

    Trump supports riots when they’re against curbing climate change.

    “Meanwhile in Washington, President Donald Trump, tweeted in apparent support of the protests, saying it was ‘time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement’ aimed at curbing climate change.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-s-finance-minister-warns-catastrophic-effects-yellow-jacket-protests-n945766

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: This isn’t surprising. We already knew he encourages violence against journalists and liberals.

  37. 37

    @ 30

    I think it is fair to say that most of America, heck, even those that live in ‘merika, no longer what the so-called “dynastic families” to govern.

    Hey, someone remind me of this quote when Michelle O announces her run for the presidency.

  40. 40

    “However, Hilary on her worst day would have been a better POTUS than Trump on his best day.”

    Hillary has gotten away with murdering 121 people, up from 97 since only a year ago, and has successfully concealed her alien space baby for decades. Hell, Hillary’s been a badass since she was a kid…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD8HIDRxktk

  41. 41

    39,
    If that guy turned it down things have got to be unbelievably bad.

    This is a guy who would eagerly munch his way through a mile of shit to kiss the ass of power. So it isn’t about the abuse. It can only mean he regards the position as career poison and a glidepath to a federal indictment. Even in an administration as undisciplined and politically incompetent as this one, the COS is among a small handfull of the most powerful people in that town, empowered to grant enormous wishes and make or break careers.
    Perhaps he fears he wouldn’t fare well in prison.

  42. 42

    40

    Bill and I will never get prosecuted for anything. We’re the Kool Kids on the Block!

  43. 43

    “Hey, someone remind me of this quote when Michelle O announces her run for the presidency.”

    Really?! Bob, what the fuck are you smoking?

    Bob – you don’t even have to counter the bet. But if Michelle Obama ever runs for the presidency then you got $500.00 coming to you, so long as I am alive.

  44. 44

    @39

    Anyone associated with Mike Prude I can’t be left alone with Woman doesn’t sit well with me.

    My first reaction to the announcement that Ayers would succeed John Kelly was negative. But then I though well maybe it isn’t such a bad thing after all because this guy is likely to head The Prick’s Presidential run and if he does succeed Kelly then he’s most probable to get caught up in some Hump scandal leaving him tarnished and not so much of a help for The Prick.

    Looks like he knows better too.

    Hopefully The Prick is already tarnished himself.

  45. 45

    “Republican Senator Rand Paul warned against over-criminalizing campaign finance violations, telling NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that errors in disclosures should be punished with fines, not jail.”

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/12/09/top-democrats-say-trump-may-face-impeachment-jail-over-hush-money/23613542/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Let’s unwrap this burrito one layer at a time.

    1. Republicans don’t like, respect, or comply with campaign finance law.
    2. Neither do their voters and donors.
    3. Republicans don’t take campaign finance violations seriously.
    4. Neither do their voters or donors. In fact, their donors evade campaign finance laws all the time.
    5. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Sen. Paul, a Republican, is minimalizing Trump’s campaign finance violations. It’s what you expect from any Republican.
    6. No way will he or any other Republican senator vote to remove Trump from office for campaign finance violations.
    7. Nor will they remove Trump from office for committing obstruction or perjury in relation to campaign finance violations.
    8. The public will shrug it off. Most low-information voters will go, “He paid off his mistresses. So what? It was his money.” And not see anything wrong with it, or lying about it, either. After all, they lie about their cheating, too.
    9. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

  46. 46

    @34 “Facebook doesn’t always suck.”

    Correct. Sometimes it blows. Sometimes you are inside the barrel, sometimes you are outside. Sadly, your horse always gets tied to the hitching post.

  47. 47

    @41 Looks like Munchkin may take the job. Why not? He has no reputation to lose.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/09/steven-mnuchin-under-consideration-to-be-next-trump-chief-of-staff.html

    Meanwhile, Dow futures are down 175 points, so it appears the selloff will resume tomorrow.

    It’s possible this still could be a positive year for stocks, but with only 15 trading days left and this kind of negative momentum, I doubt it.

    It’s been said that Trump considers the stock market to be his report card. If so, he’s well on his way to earning a big fat “F” from the people and rabbits who vote with their money.

  48. 48

    @37 “Hey, someone remind me of this quote when Michelle O announces her run for the presidency.”

    The House of Obama is not a dynastic family. Michelle has never run for public office, unlike the Kennedy clan, Bush clan, or Clinton clan.

    Michelle isn’t going to run for POTUS: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/410942-michelle-obama-on-if-shell-run-for-office-absolutely-not

    You will have to do better than that to spread hate and fear to the Trump Klan supporters.

  49. 49

    @42 “Bill and I will never get prosecuted for anything.”

    That’s because you haven’t broken any laws. Criminal activity is a prerequisite for criminal conviction. Trump easily clears that hurdle, though. The good news is he won’t have to live in an 8×10 concrete box with Bill or Hill because they’re not mobsters like him and his family. He might get one of his sons for a cellmate, though, unless they stash him in solitary at ADX.

  50. 50

    @43 “Bob – you don’t even have to counter the bet.”

    That is good because Bob is known to welsh on his bets.

  52. 52

    45,
    I don’t expect campaign finance violations to be either the central or most serious charges attatching to President PornAbortion.

    Obstruction and conspiracy to defraud out of SCO. Tax fraud and bank fraud out of SDNY. These are not “innocent” offenses.

  54. 54

    “That is good because Bob is known to welsh on his bets.”

    To be fair to Doctor Dumbfuck, all the trolls who have ever made a bet here have lost and welshed on their bets. One deplorable troll even became known as Mark the Redneck Welsher.

  56. 56

    @54 These welshers wouldn’t do well with Pascal’s Wager, either, because God would welsh right back on them. I have that on good authority from the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit.

  57. 57

    Comey doesn’t like the idea of ousting Trump via impeachment, because a third of the country would see that as an illegitimate coup; instead, he’s calling on Americans to bury Trump in a landslide at the ballot box in 2020.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/james-comey-donald-trump-2020/index.html

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: He seems to be assuming that Trump will be the GOP’s 2020 nominee, but that’s not a given; he could get primaried. For example, Kasich has talked about running against him. There’s probably not a spine that’s stiff enough in the GOP Senate, though. They’re all a bunch of frightened little rabbits who didn’t even have enough backbone to keep a rapist off the Supreme Court.

  58. 58

    @57

    I think the Pence dynamic has to be thought about too. Pence and evangelicals want The Prude to be The Hump of new. I think this is why Ayers didn’t take Kelly’s position. I think he and The Prude want Oneeeeeee Milllliiion Dollars.

    All the vultures will be circling.

  59. 59

    “Social conservatives see a diversifying population outnumbering white America. And economic conservatives see “takers” voting themselves a raise by confiscating the property of the rich minority.”

    This is the desperation of a party who’s ideology is fading in popularity. The more marginalized they become, the more they cheat. They are so convinced that they are on the right side of a battle of good vs. evil, they rationalize the means with which they maintain their status.

    They think they can act evil to win a battle of good vs. evil. It’s weird.

    http://nymag.com/intelligencer.....-game.html

  60. 60

    59,
    Chait is a superficial thinker in my opinion. And a bit of a naif.

    Fundamentally most conservatives think in terms of moral political frameworks that depend on authoritarianism and systems of rewards and punishments. As conservatives see these things, to any extent that a participant is successful at “rigging” the system, it is the fault of the system and not the participant. Thus when their beloved President PornAbortion pays no taxes, impregnates dozens of prostitutes, sexually assaults adolescent fashion models, and conspires with Russian spies to rig elections, they applaud him for his “genius”.

    It isn’t “weird” at all.
    This is really who Republicans are.

  62. 62

    Not helpful.

    The statute includes elements requiring willfulness and witting intent. So ex post facto declarations seeking to nullify the criminality of the statute itself are kinda the exact opposite of helpful.
    When your lawyer calls, answer the fucking phone.

    #owngoal

  63. 63

    @60 “Fundamentally most conservatives think in terms of moral political frameworks that depend on authoritarianism and systems of rewards and punishments.”

    In other words, mentally, they’re still six years old.

  64. 64

    @62 No matter what happens in the stock market, I don’t have to put up with that bozo as a client, boss, or relative. Life is good.

  65. 65

    @59 The more Republicans cheat for power, the less legitimate they are in the eyes of the majority. This matters because democracy is based on mutual consent. When a society loses that, it’s only a short step away from civil war.

  66. 66

    Government = Force, no matter the label associated with that government.

    The best government is the one that governs least.

  68. 68

    66,
    So, do you like coffee?

    Just grow the fuck up. Or move into the wilderness and leave the rest of us alone.

Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?

Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!

Follow Goldy

[iire_social_icons]

HA Commenting Policy

It may be hard to believe from the vile nature of the threads, but yes, we have a commenting policy. Comments containing libel, copyright violations, spam, blatant sock puppetry, and deliberate off-topic trolling are all strictly prohibited, and may be deleted on an entirely arbitrary, sporadic, and selective basis. And repeat offenders may be banned! This is my blog. Life isn’t fair.