HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 12(!)/2

by — ,

– Mark Deiscoll is the worst and he steals from the worst.

– Oh look people are actually getting health care coverage.

– I’m rather excited for the campaign for a $15 minimum wage coming to Seattle

– Jameis Winston, and the Overlapping of Football Culture and Rape Culture

– This is maybe the least thought out heist of all time (Seattle Times link).

– Are you ready for some traffic between Monday Night Football and maybe some snow?

Comments

  1. 1

    I love that Mark Driscoll is getting some light shined on him. What an asshole. He’s a tattooed, profane post-modern poseur fleecing the rubes just like his more-traditional predecessors like Falwell and Roberts and Hinn.

    $4000 suits, million-dollar mansions, shady business deals, plagiarism, misogyny, homophobia, megachurch – what a barrel of toxic waste.

  2. 2

    Since I’m commenting on it, he probably won’t do it – but it would be fun to take bets on which post number on this thread puddibigot chimes in on and accuses the Victoria Clipper thief of being a “dummocretin” or an Occupy “jock-strapper”.

  3. 3

    Thank goodness for the discussion of the intersection of football culture and rape culture.

    I find football encapsulating, distilling, all the worst parts of our culture. Superficially entitled males prized for their physical size, pardoned for transgressions and not held to standards that everyone else is. The actual exploitation of those males, too young or naive to realize that the petty privileges are fleeting and shallow, who are used up and thrown aside, often permanently and irreparably damaged. The actually powerful, that is, the owners and alumni supporters, who through the exploitation of those young and vulnerable men gain either money/power or a status symbol of a successful college team. The scantily clad curvaceous young women on the sidelines, “cheering” on the team, a superficially titillating tease for the frustrated men in the audience.

    It’s sick, like our culture is sick.

    I was appalled when my younger son, then 10, had a friend who was playing in the local little league football – and they had an organized cheerleading squad for the little 10 year old girls – training everybody for their strict roles to play.

    Steubenville. Penn State/Paterno/pedophiles. Jamies Winston. It goes on and on and on and on. From the linked story…

    I can keep going: Miami and Connecticut in 2011; Notre Dame and Montana (coach and athletic director may have been involved in the cover-up) in 2010; Michigan in 2009; Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2005; Brigham Young University, Arizona State (the school knew the rapist was a threat and did little to protect his victim), and Kansas State in 2004; Notre Dame in 2002 (one player pleaded guilty, transferred schools, played at Kent State, and then went into the NFL); and the University of Washington in 2001. Colorado football players were accused of raping women in 1997, 1999, and 2001.

    On the high school level, Steubenville has drawn attention to other cases, including one in Torrington, Connecticut, and, more famously, one in Maryville, Missouri, where the rape victim’s house was burned down in a likely act of intimidation by members of the community.

    Part of a healthy, sustainable, egalitarian, non-violent future is evolving the culture to a more feminist one.

  5. 5

    The willingness of some humans to exploit other humans for personal gain never ceases to amaze us rabbits.

    http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_.....italy?lite

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s not like rabbits are into sharing, we’re not socialists, but we know how to kick and bite, and nobody takes lettuce or carrots from us without a fight. In other words, we don’t pick veggies for other people’s gain.

  7. 7

    This seems a good sign.

    R.I.P. Obamacare repeal movement: Crusade is officially dead
    Without anyone realizing, all mainstream efforts to kill the health law have disappeared.

    Since the end of the government shutdown fight, House Republicans have taken zero repeal, defund, or delay votes.

    I think the hopelessness of the repeal campaign — the absence of a viable legislative vehicle, the turning tide of Healthcare.gov, the initiation of insurance benefits — is becoming clear to elected Republicans, and its dying embers will be fully extinguished by early next year.

    http://www.salon.com/2013/12/0.....ally_dead/

    House republicans were voting, what, once or twice a day, to repeal the Affordable Care Act and now they have stopped. I think it’s also because no republican can articulate a credible alternative that is true to conservative ideology that the public wants.

  8. 8

    As Marilyn Volan points out over at TomDispatch, in the past year and a half, banksters in Wall Street hedge funds, big banks and private equity firms have purchased hundreds of thousands of mostly-foreclosed houses across the country.

    Blackstone, for example, bought 1,400 homes in Atlanta in one day, and owns nearly 2,000 houses in the Charlotte, North Carolina metro area.

    http://www.truth-out.org/opini.....sh-of-2016

    Is this the reason that rentals have gone up sky high?

  9. 9

    Now that the Catholic Church is not supporting their world view, it’s amusing to watch some Tea Baggers attack the Pope.

    Tea party activist: ‘Jesus Christ is weeping in heaven’ over pope’s criticism of capitalism

    But Moseley says the pope is wrong to argue for government intervention in the distribution of wealth, and he defends the pope’s American conservative critics.

    “One truth shines out from the Bible: Jesus spoke to the individual, never to government or government policy,” Moseley writes. “Jesus was a capitalist, preaching personal responsibility, not a socialist.”

    He says the pope has directly contradicted Jesus’ strategy of changing individual hearts one at a time by calling on political leaders to help improve the lives of the poor and to address the issue of wealth inequality.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....apitalism/

    Cause, you know, that tea bagger knows more about the intent of God.

  11. 11

    This is weird.

    A new report from corporate watchdog Essential Information titled “Spooky Business” details how American corporations such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, McDonalds, and Shell are allegedly spying on nonprofits in the environmental, consumer safety, pesticide control, gun control, and animal rights areas.

    That leads to a situation in which corporations can apply a variety of tactics against nonprofits, including penetration testing of the organization’s digital infrastructure, computer hacking, obtaining phone records, wiretapping, voicemail hacking, and the sheer theft of computers for the valuable information on their hard drives.

    http://venturebeat.com/2013/11.....a-hackers/

    So let me see, it’s bad to trust the government, but we can trust corporations to to be honest?

  13. 13

    Is someone forgetting to feed the meter at Slack Jack’s Hosting Service and Storm Door company or what? It seems for the last couple weeks when I’ve so much as tried to get to HA’s home page, to say nothing of posting anything, the chances have been about 75% that I’d get a cryptic message about “Resource Limits Exceeded”.

  15. 15

    @13. Maybe the site is slow because of all the people cyber shopping and getting affordable quality health care.

  16. 16

    @8 “Is this the reason that rentals have gone up sky high?”

    Yes. The banksters and hedgies haven’t given up their quest to strip the middle class of every penny it still has.

  18. 18

    Raising the minimum wage may possibly reduce employment opportunities for some people, and the loss of those opportunities might just motivate those laid-off employees to upgrade their skills and education to pursue jobs above the new minimum wage level.

  21. 21

    In other weird wingnut news, Trey Gowdy (Na-SC) is now claiming that the whole “preventative care” (meaning birth control mandates) aspect to the ACA is just an elaborate ruse by President Obama to trick women into voting for him, while he knew that the Supreme Court was going to strike it down anyway.

    You Fascists want to know why intelligent people think you’re all just totally full of shit? It’s because all of your Representatives in Congress are fucking insane. If the Fascists want to convince people to vote for their party candidates, it might behoove them to stop fucking lying and shit all the time. You sound like a bunch of schizo-effective paranoid psychotics.

    Oh, of course, that is your constituency anyway.

  23. 23

    @11 Meanwhile, a truck driver was fined $183,000 by a Bush-appointed judge for trying to crash a Koch Industries computer being used for anti-union political activities.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....74365.html

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Actually, this is even worse than it looks, because Koch Industries learned about the planned cyberattack ahead of time, hired a consultant to defeat it, and the judge ordered the only cyber attacker (of many) who was caught to pay the company’s entire consulting fee incurred in advance of the cyberattack.

  24. 24

    @13 I’m having the same problem. Probably the host server doesn’t have enough capacity. HA is a wildly popular website.

  25. 25

    Sorry Tea Partiers and other sundry trolls:

    “In other words, the political world is in the midst of a transition as it relates to the Affordable Care Act. Republicans spent much of 2013 fighting to take away Americans’ health care benefits, but it was something of an abstraction – they were benefits consumers were poised to receive but did not yet have. Next month, they’re an abstraction no more – families will have coverage they previously lacked, and well over 1 million Americans will have insurance they would otherwise lack.

    It’s exactly what makes a repeal vote more dangerous than at any previous point. There’s a profound difference between “Republicans are voting to deny you a benefit you don’t yet enjoy” and “Republicans are voting to take away your health insurance and replace it with nothing.”

    The former struck GOP officials as plausible; the latter is politically suicidal. The right doesn’t want to hear this, but the repeal push effectively died on Election Day 2012. It’s taken a year for the news to settle in among Republicans, but the fact remains that the law isn’t going anywhere. With each passing day, more Americans enroll, and the law has another constituent that won’t tolerate going backwards.”

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-ma.....es-whimper

    It will be amusing to hear the shrill noise from the dwindling number of true-believers in “repeal and replace with nothing”.

  26. 26

    @25 The Rethugs always understood that once people started getting these benefits they would never be able to dislodge them. That’s why they tried so hard to push implementation back a year — putting it past the 2014 elections. If the administration can iron out the startup wrinkles, Obamacare is here to stay — and the Republican Party has lost its decades-long fight against “socialism.”

  27. 27

    @17 …or the folks who stood in the square as Pontius Pilate presented a flogged-half-to-death Jesus (who had previously admonished them to love one another) and hollered “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

  28. 28

    17)They want the church to just keep up the pro-life stance, which Pope Francis has said won’t be changing. They don’t want the church doing anything that hurts Wall Street. I believe Pope Benedict was also decrying runaway capitalism, Pope Francis is just doing it louder.

  29. 29

    It Looks like excessive speed could be one factor in the Metro-North commuter train derailment. It hit a 30mph curve at 82. The speed limit on the Metro-North is 70, at least on the Hudson line. (The New Haven line shares track with the Northeast Corridor) After Sputen Duyvil, Metro North goes through Harlem, the Diesel services switch off the engine and engage the third rail for the last mile into Grand Central Terminal.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....-1.1534730

    Also, the Metro North is mostly ex-New York Central, once oened by the Vanderbilt family.

  30. 30

    Puddy has free space in schmucko-lunatic’s head @2.

    Long live Puddy. Thanks for playing.

  31. 31

    Wait… what? Oh no schmucko-lunatic will claim another teahiddist site! .NOT.

    “When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time.”

    When you attend one of their conventions you meet some really cyber scary individuals.

  32. 32

    Wait… WHAT again? PuddyCommentary… Now that more peeps can view Obummercare… peeps are learning that a much higher percentage of their disposable income will soon go to pay for more expensive health insurance that is substantially worse than what they had before. So there you have it… overpriced, sub-standard health insurance with fewer doctors participating; fewer hospitals participating; those doctors and hospitals who will participate will be more restricted in the new hospital/doctor payment system; substantially higher deductibles with higher premiums and much higher out-of-pocket limits.

    That’s DUMMOCRETIN cheered Obamacare. No thank you!

  33. 33

    Fascist Pigsty…

    Why repeal something when everyone can view the self-inflicted wounds of Obummercare. They are standing back and allowing the American people to view the mess themselves. 5,100,000+ have lost coverage so far.

    You always have to visit overseas because the slobbering libtard DUMMOCRETIN msm will not publish the truth!!!

    Little Hunter Alford needs chemotherapy to treat the rare and deadly cancer he was born with but has lost his health insurance under an administrative blunder seemingly caused by Obamacare.

    While the president’s signature policy promised that no one with a pre-existing condition would not be covered, the Affordable Care Act has seemingly caused the seven-year-old Gainesville, Texas, boy to face an agonizing wait for treatment as his parents battle to get him back on his insurance plan.

    PuddyCommentary… So Fascist Pigsty, why would Republicans need to pile on. Obummer and his sadministration cronies are doing a yeoman’s job as it stands right now.

    Man, you are really stooooooooopid Fascist Pigsty. Thanks for playing!

  34. 34

    An interesting take on the Pope’s commentary. If it wasn’t for capitalism where would charitable contributions come from. Oh yeah DUMMOCRETINS don’t know about charitable giving… Just look at Al Gore’s giving resume… Or Joe BiteME’s giving resume… Oh Bill and Hillary giving away used WJC undies… Yep DUMMOCRETINS are cheep bums!

  35. 35

    In other news we learn that the slobbering libtard DUMMOCRETIN media is cheap too!

    America’s leading liberal periodicals are aware of the obstacles to advancement the less privileged face in our decidedly not meritocratic society. Indeed, they often provide excellent coverage of the class war, from union-busting at Walmart to the fight for a living wage at fast-food chains. At the same time, though, many of them are exploiting workers in a way that would make corporate America proud: relabeling entry-level employees “interns” and “fellows” in order to dance around US labor laws.

    Paying people little to nothing because you can—a practice aided by the awfulness of the job market and the desperation of people trying to make it in “glamour” industries like journalism—is both exploitive and discriminatory, but many good liberals do not appear to recognize it as such, even as they decry that behavior elsewhere.

    PuddyCommentary: it’s so typical of DUMMOCRETINS… Do as we say not as we choose to do! And you have to love that Robert Reich expose. So much for that “living wage” DUMMOCRETINS scream about left and right! If you are a well connected DUMMOCRETIN you can afford these “internships”. That’s why the slobbering media votes 85% DUMMOCRETIN all the time. They take care of their own in the DUMMOCRETIN led media!

    Puddy will be looking for those American Prospect linked posts from now on!

  36. 36

    Thanks Liberal Scientist! I find your spews insightful and thought provoking. I also respect you for trying to deal with an insane fool in a real manner. You are a positive force on this blog! Keep up the good work!

  37. 37

    @35 Rant much? Legal unpaid internships must satisfy the following criteria:

    “The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has developed the six factors below to evaluate whether a worker is a trainee or an employee for purposes of
    the FLSA:

    1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the
    employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic
    educational instruction;

    2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees;

    3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close
    observation;

    4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;

    5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and

    6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

  39. 39

    Internships are, and always have been, an educational activity. They’re not jobs. But don’t bother puddy with facts. He’ll just get annoyed.

  40. 40

    @34

    I don’t think the puddibigot is smart enough to realize that he’s “thinking” in circles.
    He seems to be saying that if it weren’t for the deep disparity between rich and poor, there would be no rich to donate to the poor.

    *FACE PALM*

    He also seem to want to revisit his claims of moral superiority based on patterns of charitable giving that he perceives vindicate him. This was of course the treacherous shoals that sank CheapshotBob in such spectacular fashion.

    Finally, his critique of the Pope seems to rest on the rantings of the Acton Institute, a conservative Catholic “think-tank” whose purpose seems to be the superficial moral prettying of rapacious capitalism.

    They are climate science deniers, Monsanto lovers, defenders of amoral wealth generation, and have on their board, among others, Betsy DeVos, AmWay billionairess and sister of Blackwater dude Erik Prince.

    As usual, the puddibigot has given us a bunch of turds to clean up, and links to propaganda that are entirely suspect, and not at all an honest and thoughtful critique of important topics.

    Just more of the same from our village idiot.

  42. 42

    @28 Exactly. Under Benedict, the Vatican issued a strongly-worded statement to the effect that unhindered capitalism “has failed to meet the basic needs of humanity”. Also, while there’s been a great deal of hand-wringing (from the left) and cheering (from the right) of the US Bishops’ directives about pregnancy and end-of-life issues (which may or may not leave room for interpretation) there seems to be all too little awareness about the USCCB’s policies regarding adherence to “Catholic Social Teaching”.

  43. 43

    @40 Or….it may be that in his heart of hearts (assuming he has one), Puddy might ascribe to the notion of economics that absent some medieval artifice like a “gold standard”, the most reliable anchor on which to hang the value of money is how much of it is needed for the barest level of subsistence. In other words, the rich need for there to be poor people or they can’t figure out how rich they are.

  44. 44

    Finally, his critique of the Pope seems to rest on the rantings of the Acton Institute, a conservative Catholic “think-tank” whose purpose seems to be the superficial moral prettying of rapacious capitalism.

    Seems to be… Puddy’s critique… That’s all schmucko-lunatic has left in the quiver. Without capitalism where would the charities get their money from schmucko-lunatic? DUMMOCRETIN giving? HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR! Puddy knows schmucko-lunatic doesn’t give to real charities like Wounded Warrior Project, Salvation Army, ADRA, etc.

    Thanks for playing schmucko-lunatic.

  45. 45

    @28 Exactly. Under Benedict, the Vatican issued a strongly-worded statement to the effect that unhindered capitalism “has failed to meet the basic needs of humanity”.

    Yes FartyArt… Billionaires spending very LARGE on 2012 Obummer relection… Puddy posted five richy riches who wasted all that money. This is money they could have been given to the poor. Butt noooooooooooooooo, not DUMMOCRETINS.

    In other words, the rich need for there to be poor people or they can’t figure out how rich they are.

    Exactly. Rich DUMMOCRETINS need the poor so they can demonstrate how great they are.

  46. 46

    Betsy DeVos, AmWay billionairess and sister of Blackwater dude Erik Prince.

    Why does schmucko-lunatic hate wimens? There is a very sad pattern here!

  47. 47

    Why does schmucko-lunatic hate wimens?

    I obviously don’t hate women, like you do.

    I hate fascists.

  48. 48

    Without capitalism where would the charities get their money from schmucko-lunatic?

    I did say that you were to stupid to perceive the circularity in your “logic”.

    You prove me right. Every. Damn. Time.

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.