HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread July 28

by — ,

Man, the last 2 days of the convention were also pretty great. Obama doing a greatest hits. Clinton doing a lot from her stump speech, but also some smart funny anti-Trump stuff. I thought listening to it that “No Donald, you don’t” was her in grandmother mode.

… I guess I should have checked the home page before I started writing the open thread. Oh well.

Comments

  2. 2

    So, in responding to this piece in today’s WaPo:

    Why raising the minimum wage in Seattle did little to help workers, according to a new study

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/study-raising-the-minimum-wage-did-little-for-workers-earnings-in-seattle/

    will Goldy and Invictus treat Seattle as a city, or as part of the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metropolitan area?

    It’s always such a guessing game. Unless it’s clear that City data are better than Metro data or vice versa, in which case it’s easy to tell which data set they’ll choose to exploit.

  3. 3

    How much do they know it’s over part 41…

    The banner headline over a Fox is about how BLM “Shouted Down” a moment of silence for cops because actually covering the speeches would be a little too, I don’t know, news.

    BTW, if you want to know what “Shouting Down” sounds like, it is two solo voices, funny, how only during a moment of silence would a microphone pick up a lone voice in a crowd of tens of thousands, saying “Black Lives Matter.”

    Fox news, fair and balanced.

  4. 4

    If you read the WaPo piece @ 2 and scroll down into the comments, you’ll find a link to this piece from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy:

    http://journalistsresource.org.....nimum-wage

    It’s only two days old, and delves more than a little bit into both sides of the minimum wage issue. You know, like Goldy used to do before he realized that he could better feed himself and his daughter by shilling for a billionaire.

  6. 6

    Limited-service restaurants in Seattle

    March ’14: 2031
    March ’15: 1917

    This week: 1816

    Although not worries. Instead of some inexpensive quick-serve restaurant in the Central district, the lower-earning Seattle workers can just grab a bite at some Capitol Hill hot spot or one of the new places opened by Tom Douglas.

    Plus, they might spot Goldy and Paul hob-nobbing with Seattle’s liberal elite.

  7. 7

    @5

    Ah, good rebbuttal, a reddit post.

    White noise machines work on frequency cancellation. So I guess they were cancelling out every frequency within the realm of human speech. If that were the case, the voice wouldn’t be heard at all. And if that were the case, chants would never have been heard.

    Now look at the General speaking if you dare. Funny how a light chant of “no more war isn’t squelched.” But, but, but, white noise generators…tin foil…if you play the speech backward it says, “I love abortion on demand and I love satan!…

    a few comments from the reddit post (again, good source)

    “I’m sitting here laughing my ass off at the people building a conspiracy around a Cisco Grayling wireless access point antenna. White noise generator, that’s rich!”

    “It’s not a white noise machine, you all are ridiculous. It’s a cisco wifi antenna… http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/t.....13p4mn.pdf”

    “That is not a white noise machine its a Cisco WIFI antenna!!! Here is the product link: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/t.....13p4mn.pdf. I dislike the DNC as much or more but get a clue.”

  8. 8

    @2

    Things seem to be going pretty well since Seattle bumped the hourly minimum wage for large businesses up to $11 last year, from the statewide minimum of $9.47 an hour. Low-wage workers are getting more time on the job and making more money. Fewer businesses are closing, and more new ones are opening. The technology and construction sectors are booming. Even the weather cooperated for a change. The spring was unusually dry in Seattle, which was good for the city’s fishing fleet.

    Yet the actual benefits to workers might have been minimal, according to a group of economists whom the city commissioned to study the minimum wage and who presented their initial findings last week.

    In which a study that doesn’t even confirm the premise but MIGHT say something I agree with is held up as proof of something.

    Well played.

  11. 11

    @ 8

    CZ, if something proven was your standard for something you post here, how many items would you post?

    In @ 6 I offered no proof that the increase in the Seattle minimum wage caused a 10% decline in the number of fast-food restaurants in the city.

    However, doesn’t it seem noteworthy that in a city with employment growth and economic development as hot as Seattle’s, there has been a 10% decline in the number of fast-food restaurant licenses pretty much correlating temporally with the passage of the minimum wage increase by the City Council in 2014?

    Food for thought. So to speak.

  14. 14

    Boob get a clue? He’s got glue. I have to wider if he know what an X-ray machine looks like.

  15. 15

    I might get laid tonight! Reading comprehension does come easy for the Freedom Fighters.

  16. 16

    The loon must still be trying to put his head back together. He really shouldn’t bother. It’s only going to blow up again.

  17. 17

    “I’m sitting here laughing my ass off at the people building a conspiracy around a Cisco Grayling wireless access point antenna”

    This one is too damned funny. It’s all over the internet. It looks like every wingnut in America is falling for it, including Bob.

  19. 19

    @11,
    “However, doesn’t it seem noteworthy that in a city with employment growth and economic development as hot as Seattle’s, there has been a 10% decline in the number of fast-food restaurant licenses pretty much correlating temporally with the passage of the minimum wage increase by the City Council in 2014?”

    At the risk of being trite, correlation is not causation.
    One sub category of one business license category from one single licensing agency taken in isolation and then selectively compared to a change in min wage probably can’t tell you much about anything at all. To begin, what the fuck is your question?

    Are you asking if locally raising min wage has negatively impacted a certain type of business locally? Then you’d need to compare the local growth rate of that business with the non-local growth rate. And then you’d need to adjust for other local factors: differences in non-labor costs, differences in demand, etc. I know most of this data either isn’t available or isn’t reported in a way to allow these comparisons. And I’m not throwing it out just to put a stick in your spokes. I just mean to point out that the correlation you imply is far from obvious given so little information. It just isn’t. Within the universe of information you have selected it is entirely possible that the nationwide/statewide/countywide decline rate for “limited service restaurants” is >10%. We don’t know. So no conclusion can be drawn. And it really isn’t noteworthy absent all the missing information.

  20. 20

    Of course Boob disappears after finding out the reality of the White Noise Machine.

    Boob retire already, retire from HA!

  21. 21

    Some good news for Democrats.

    First, polls show voters like Clinton’s speech more than Trump’s.

    http://www.aol.com/article/201...../21441602/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Overall, Democrats had a better convention than Republicans did, so Hillary’s convention bounce should at least cancel out Trump’s convention bounce, which would leave her with about a 3%-4% lead going into the fall campaign. And it could be more than that. Then, the debates and advertising campaign should help her even more. Although Trump has managed to tie in recent polls, that probably won’t last.

    Second, a federal appeals court has struck down another state’s attempt to discriminate against black voters.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/co.....er-id-law/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: North Carolina is in play, and this should help there. A close popular vote won’t matter if Hillary locks up a big lead in electoral votes. Meanwhile, Boob will keep daydreaming about the election going to the House, hahaha.

  23. 23

    @11

    It might be worth pondering if you ignore a greater rise in mobile food licenses and Coffee based licenses. Particularly the coffee based. They are categorized outside ‘limitted service’ but most serve food.

    So to boob it’s the minimum wage. It couldn’t be new business models (food trucks) increased competition from coffee shops and even QFC/Safeway where grab and go expansion and salad bar installation is a relatively new feature. Nor can it be that a fool who opened the 49th Jimmy John’s or Subway or Pho shop didn’t realize that she was the fourth in a ten mile radius and couldn’t make it work

    Those theories are equally anecdotal bit it must must be that minimum raise and not changing dining habits and competition are the key. No one goes to a juice bar instead of McDonalds. No one grabs a breakfast sandwich at Lladro, they all go to IHOP. It just has to be the minimum wage. “The Heritage foundation assured me it was so and I know it in my gut.”

  24. 24

    The court apparently found no other reason for the law to exist except to deny people of color the right to vote. How disgusting. Every one of those legislative racists that passed this law should be forced to kiss the graves of all the people of color that sacrificed their lives in service to this country. Kiss until their filthy lips bleed.

  25. 25

    @1 You’ll do fine. The stock market isn’t judgmental. You can be yourself and it’ll smile on you as much as me.

  26. 26

    Of course, Sandy Rios goes “there”. Christ wotta fuckin’ hag that woman is.

    And, well, the former Anointed Golden Boy of the GOP is still under indictment, even though one of the major charges have been dropped.

    I would love to see this guy spend a decade or so breaking rocks with a ball and chain around his ankle.

    Afterthought: With Louie Gohmert supervising his every move.

  27. 27

    @2 Wherein Boob argues that workers are better off earning $9.47/hr than $11.00/hr.

    Roger Rabbit argues everybody is better off quitting their jobs, remaining unemployed, and becoming capitalists.

  28. 28

    @7,
    Watched the Vidme linked in that reddit post. A true classic.

    Also, all the comments pointing out the obvious fact that it’s a WiFi ant are being removed by the Cheeto Jesus mods.
    Here’s a rundown of the lunatic Casandra Syndrome Wingnut “conservative” media luminaries running with “DNC White Noise Machine” paranoid hallucinations:
    Washington Examiner;
    Gateway Pundit;
    LiveLeak;
    megynkelly.org;
    legalinsurrection.com,
    and of course thousands of twitidiot feeds.
    Almost a perfect rundown of the “reliable” sources our racist imbecile troll depends on for his FACTS. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  29. 29

    @4 “You know, like Goldy used to do before he realized that he could better feed himself and his daughter by shilling for a billionaire.”

    You say that as if you think it’s less honorable than sucking on the Medicare teat.

  30. 30

    @5 Why don’t you accuse me of being a bootlicker? I’m the biggest bootlicker around here. I admit it! I’m a Democratic party hack and boldfaced liberal propagandist. I’m a partisan toady if there ever was one. What’s more, I do it free, because it’s for a good cause. I don’t even get a charitable tax writeoff, but I don’t really need it, because unlike your typical Medicare-sucking radiologist, I don’t have to worry about ending up in the 39% bracket. All my stock dividends are tax-free.*

    * Seems unfair to wage earners, but I didn’t create this Republican tax system.

  31. 31

    The tax code contains massive disincentives against wage income, and then people wonder why workforce participation is dropping like a rock without a parachute.

  33. 33

    @6 Boob, have you ever wondered if some Seattle restaurants close because there’s too many good jobs available in Seattle competing with them for workers?

    Most restaurants in my neighborhood are Asian takeouts whose labor force is family members.

  34. 34

    @23,
    Why on earth, and irrespective of min wage, are there any IHOPs left in Seattle? Is it just for late night post last call drunken vomit fuel? Breakfast is the cheapest dining out available. Anybody with a job can afford to eat better than IHOP. That shit is fucking poisonous filth not fit for human consumption.

    Look, since I’ve relocated to an undisclosed secret volcano lair in Oregon, I share my community with a whole lot more working poor than I ever saw in King County. The census data back it up too. My new county has a much higher percentage of working (and non-working) poor and also folks on assistance than you’d ever encounter in a enclave of wealth like Seattle. My new city is about the size of my old Seattle zip code. My old Seattle zip code had at least 10 high end coffee shops and not one single fast food restaurant. My new small city has at least two of every major fast food franchise and more than a few I never new existed. At least three have opened in the last year. And our local economy is flat line to moderate growth. I don’t know what any of it means for sure. But at least it tells me that the picture is a whole fuckuvalot more complicated than Boob is hoping to imply. It’s certainly possible that as local incomes rise, demand for shitty take out meals prepared by robots declines. I would hope so.

  35. 35

    @11 Maybe there’s too many fast food restaurants here. Maybe the Seattle fast food market is oversaturated. Most towns in eastern Washington have only 1 or 2 if any.

  36. 36

    @ 31

    The tax code contains massive disincentives against wage income, and then people wonder why workforce participation is dropping like a rock without a parachute.

    Well, that pretty much describes me. I’m retiring next year at 55. Enough set aside now and this year will be the first that I’ll be subject to the AMT. Every year thereafter, AMT. Enough with this crap. Federal taxes, FICA and Medicare, AMT, NIIT.

    Problem with your insinuation that it’s taxation disincentive, Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit, is that the labor participation reduction is disproportionately due to young people delaying entry or otherwise not coming into the market at previous rates. That’s not a taxation issue. 11 million jobs created under Obama isn’t enough. 90 months at 150k/month meets population growth needs, and doesn’t replace the missing jobs Obama inherited. So we’re short on job availability.

    We’ll see growing numbers of young adults in college because the jobs aren’t there for them beforehand, and they feel, or are made to feel, that they have to do something. So they go to college, and in doing so they incur debt.

    Then they come out of college and the opportunities don’t make up for their indebtedness. Not anymore.

    I do appreciate the contributions Goldy’s daughter’s future FICA deductions from her paycheck will make to the retirement I’ll begin collecting in several year, tho. Much appreciated.

    And that taxpaying job I’ll be vacating? Someone will fill it. Eventually. Probably.

  38. 38

    @32 Gee, Boob can cut and paste cyrillic from Google Translate. I’m impressed!

  40. 40

    @36 Wherein Boob announces he’s dropping out of the workforce at age 55 and then blames “young people” for the declining participation rate. I dropped out at age 56, but I don’t blame my laziness on kids.

  41. 41

    @ 34

    Wiki says that 99% of IHOPs are franchisee-owned.

    Want to reduce their number? Pass a minimum wage law just like Seattle’s, and fuck the franchisees the same way Seattle did.

    They’ll fold like Bernie Sanders did this weekcheap suits.

  42. 42

    @36 “And that taxpaying job I’ll be vacating? Someone will fill it. Eventually. Probably.”

    You’ll be replaced by a robot in India.

  44. 44

    @ 42

    Plenty of US radiology work done in India but it isn’t by robots.

    Google ‘wet read’.

  45. 45

    How klownservatics exert “power”:

    Luhn put on the black garter and stockings she said Ailes had instructed her to buy; he called it her uniform. Ailes sat on a couch. “Go over there. Dance for me,” she recalled him saying. She hesitated. “Laurie, if you’re gonna be my girl, my eyes and ears, if you are going to be someone I can depend on in Washington, my spy, come on, dance for me,” he said, according to her account. When she started dancing, Ailes got out a video camera. Luhn didn’t want to be filmed, she said, but Ailes was insistent: “I am gonna need you to do better than that.”

    When she had finished dancing, Ailes told her to get down on her knees in front of him, she said, and put his hands on her temples. As she recalled, he began speaking to her slowly and authoritatively, as if he were some kind of Svengali: “Tell me you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. At any time, at any place when I call. No matter where I call you, no matter where you are. Do you understand? You will follow orders. If I tell you to put on your uniform, what are you gonna do, Laurie? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, LAURIE?” Then, she recalled, his voice dropped to a whisper: “What are you, Laurie? Are you Roger’s whore? Are you Roger’s spy? Come over here.” Ailes asked her to perform oral sex, she said.

    Later, Ailes showed her the footage of her dancing. She asked him what he intended to do with it and, she says, he replied, “I am going to put it in a safe-deposit box just so we understand each other.”

    After that, Luhn said, she regularly met Ailes in hotels for sexual encounters. He asked her to buy a boom box so she could bring music to dance to. Ailes always left cash for her. A couple of times, while he was advising French politician Jacques Chirac, he gave her francs. “I remember I had to go exchange the money,” Luhn said.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelli.....years.html

    Wow check out the fair and balanced family values on your klownservatic god trolls.

    Yes trolls all you fiends care about is power! Can we all see the Donald’s schedule now?

  46. 46

    @ 45

    YLB, we care about consequences, too.

    I’m a firm believer that stupidity should be painful. That has nothing to do with power, girlfriend.

  47. 47

    I’m a firm believer that stupidity should be painful.

    And unskewed polls and other bullshit you bring here from the likes of Roger Ailes was what???

    That has nothing to do with power, girlfriend.

    LOL! So rhetorically adorning your male adversaries with female attrributes (moist, vagina, girlfriend) has nothing to do with stupidity or exercising some form of control.

    Too funny! Thanks for playing boob! Keep it up till November – the only way, save for pharma, you all know how.

  50. 50

    @45 I’m sure Murdoch knew about it for years. He didn’t give a shit about Ailes’ conduct. The only reason Murdoch fired him was because the legal liabilities threatened to get out of hand.

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.