Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

All hail the time of the bunny!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

“But what about the lurkers?”

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

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67Comments

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    Maybe the Reply Button went Galt on you John Galt Cole.
    Only the True Free Marketeers(tm) rule here now!
    Mwah ha ha, etc.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    just how does one lend “ah”?

    Must be some new fangled the kids are doing these days.

    And thanks for posting. I got concerned about you hearing about the riots in Malaysia.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    John: am assuming your answer to this is “no”, since you’ve not responded previously, but

    could we have a BJ bumpersticker, maybe featuring Tunch or Lily (or our choice), saying “I support President Obama”?

    1) it would help identify fellow Balloon Juicers
    2) raise money for animals and
    3) would be a cool way to say “I am sick of the Tea Party and Republicans.”

    For me, would just have more pizzazz than the campaign bumperstickers.

    And would be worth getting the car keyed or the ragtop slit, which is a consideration. (Meanwhile, “W” and “Bush-Cheney” cars still roll around safely, maroons at the wheel.)

  9. 9.

    scav

    Personal / Private / Paramilitary, most obvious ones are in the wrong location. I’d sign up for Pie-throwing though.

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible
    “The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up.

    But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem. The budget deficit, not jobs, has been dominating the conversation in Washington. Unlike the hard-pressed in, say, Greece or Spain, the jobless in America seem, well, subdued. The old fire has gone out. “

  12. 12.

    Martin

    In the off event that you actually read the comments, do this:

    Find this style:

    .yarr {
    visibility: hidden;
    }

    and delete the ‘visibility: hidden;’ line.

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @scav:

    I’d sign up for Pie-throwing though.

    For anyone who has not yet pied me, may I cordially ask that you set your phasers to “chocolate”.

    And wtf is up with the spell checker not recognizing “phaser” ??

  16. 16.

    Citizen_X

    Uh, Ree Ply?

    I would have gone for Fat Albert-speak: “My-buh, reply-puh button.”

  19. 19.

    Remfin

    While we’re on the subject of “the codez”, would it be possible to change #content-wrapper to be 82% width instead of 79%? If you’re on a large-enough horizontal resolution, “Switch to our mobile site” actually creeps up as a column between the ads on the left and the rest of the site on the right. I don’t believe that will affect anything else but this situation since there are only 2 main columns and the other one is 17%.

  21. 21.

    MonkeyBoy

    The reply button bug and fix is discussed in this WordPress support blog: [Plugin: @ Reply] broken after upgrade to plugin version 3.1.3.

    Here is my external fix that works now for Firefox and Chrome. If you go to that page and you don’t have the Stylish extension installed I think it will prompt you to install Stylish. After Stylish is installed (which will require and exit and reload for Firefox), click to install the style fix.

    The stylefix itself patches BJ pages with the CSS

    li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible !important }

    (I was unknowledgeable about Stylish for Chrome which is why I wrote two distinct style rules – it turns out the the Firefox rule works for both).

  23. 23.

    PeakVT

    Instead of confusing John with code snippets, just send him the whole CSS file.

    ETA: I checked and there are at least 8 different CSS files for the site, so NM.

  26. 26.

    gogol's wife

    Obama/Tunch bumper sticker is a great idea. My cheapo “2012” one they sent me is already peeling off the car.

  31. 31.

    Amir_Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    I be OK. I stayed at home all day Saturday. Couldn’t go anywhere anyway. Most of Kuala Lumpur had been shut down by the cops from Friday night, including the light rail systems. Lots of stores were closed on Saturday, partly because their staff couldn’t get in. Some thousands of people still got into KL for the demo — 6,000 if you ask The Bloody Garment; 50,000 say the demo organizers; 20,000 according to independent analysts.

    Whether there were “riots” (in KL; nothing was happening outside the city center here, or elsewhere in Malaysia) depends on who’s describing what went down. The Bloody Garment’s version, per the ruling coalition-linked mainstream media, is that an informal coalition of non-governmental organizations, in cahoots with the opposition coalition, is spearheading an effort to overthrow it by inciting public unrest. So the Royal Malaysian Police was unfortunately forced to do, you know …

    Or you can look at this more opposition-friendly account. These accounts and
    Youtube videos like these show that any violence was meted out by the cops. One 59-yo man collapsed and died running from a police tear gas attack. Anwar himself and a few others sustained some minor injuries.

    The sense I get is that the government’s reaction has been seen as more heavy-handed than merited by any real threat to public order. I’d call the outcome a draw between the Bloody Garment and the organizers, which makes it a clear moral victory for the latter, and may help the opposition gain more ground at the next general election.

    Some background, if anyone is interested:

    These demonstrations are the continuation of something that began in 1998 with Dr Mahathir’s sacking of deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim, and has continued with the development of a credible Anwar-led opposition coalition. These particular demos, organized by a nonpartisan group but endorsed and participated in by Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat coalition, were meant to call for more transparency in elections and governance.

    The Barisan Nasional coalition has ruled since independence in 1957; in the absence of a broad-based opposition that can challenge it in national elections, it has acquired a too-cosy relationship with big-money interests and a sense of special entitlement to power. That Barisan is powered by parties with an ethnic base, the Malays’ UMNO and the Chinese MCA, has only helped perpetuate the armed truce that exists in Malaysian race relations, and that blows up in our faces on a regular basis.

    Pakatan, a group of old and new non-ethnic opposition parties, is certainly no host of angels. But at least it isn’t in bed with Big Money (yet) and isn’t all about the old stand-off between Malay political might and Chinese economic power. It has made an impact in the past few years, particularly in the 2008 general elections.

    The next GE is due by 2013, but will more likely happen in 2012. It should be interesting.

  33. 33.

    MazeDancer

    @MonkeyBoy:

    WOW! Reply button returns!

    Thank you, MonkeyBoy!!

    Attention everyone on FireFox who wants a working BJ reply button: Just go to MonkeyBoy’s post #21

    (Which you can now do by clicking on @MonkeyBoy in this comment, thanks to him!)

    Click on his link. Click on “install Stylish” in upper right corner. FireFox restarts. Then, click on “Install with Stylish”. MonkeyBoy’s patch loads into your FireFox while you do nothing. Presto, you have Reply.

    For us non-coders it feels like magic. Yay, MonkeyBoy.

  34. 34.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    @11 Corner Stone

    Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible

    Fortunately, these parasites surely have the wherewithal to clap louder for President Obama.
    .
    .

  35. 35.

    Sharl

    @Amir_Khalid: Thanks for the report from Malaysia. On occasion I’ll check for rumblings from your neighbor Singapore, which for some reason I find to be a bizarre, fascinating place.

    The Barisan Nasional coalition has ruled since independence in 1957; in the absence of a broad-based opposition that can challenge it in national elections, it has acquired a too-cosy relationship with big-money interests and a sense of special entitlement to power.

    Sorry to hear that; there seems to be a lot of that sort of thing going around.

  36. 36.

    parsimon

    Regarding the Damned Reply Button: I’m only an occasional commenter, but I don’t miss it. It seems to me that people replying to comments by referring to commenter name and comment number works to reduce drive-by commenting (the kind that ignores and doesn’t even read what’s been said since, say, so that you get threads that wander wildly).

    I know this site hasn’t worked that way before; it does change the nature and pace of comments.

  37. 37.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    @28 arguingwithsignposts

    As much as i like Monkey Boy’s hack, it does nothing for iPad safari. A proper fix would benefit us all.

    Agreed on a proper fix, and Safari.
    .
    .

  40. 40.

    hilts

    OT

    John Galt Must See TV reminder

    Cole’s favorite Randian Lord of Flatbush, Nick Gillespie, is the guest on this week’s Q and A which airs on Sunday night at 8 pm eastern time on C-SPAN with a rebroadcast at 11 pm eastern time

  44. 44.

    Dee Loralei

    Firefox won’t let me add stylish or anything. Why is that?

    Amir, glad you are well sir. Stay safe.

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack

    @Cole:

    If you go to the WordPress page linked to by MonkeyBoy above, you will see that the fix is a one-line code change to the file AT-REPLY.PHP, i.e.:

    replace

    .comment:hover .yarr { visibility:visible }

    with

    li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible }

    If you have access to the source files for your Web site, you can make the change yourself with any text editor. If you have to kick it upstairs to your Web drone, it’s still a five-minute fix-and-test.

    Git ’er done!

  47. 47.

    ppcli

    @Corner Stone:

    Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible

    This is what makes me feel like Cassandra – as if I’m watching a replay of a car wreck unfolding in front of me. I know what’s coming and my knowledge makes no difference. The Republicans won in 2010 repeating “jobs, jobs, jobs”. If unemployment is as high in a year as it is now, they will repeat “jobs, jobs, jobs” and they will win big again. It won’t matter if Bush bears the lion’s share of the blame, and it won’t matter if the Republicans did everything they could to keep unemployment high. People will blame Obama. That’s just the way these things worked before there was 24/7 Fox news, and Fox has amplified it. It won’t matter if (probable opponent) Romney has an abysmal record as a job creator (though a quite spectacular record as a profit-making job destroyer), and it won’t matter if the Republican’s only “solution” to unemployment is fantasyland talk about business and upper-class tax cuts and eliminating regulation and busting unions. It won’t matter if Obama cuts the deficit by some amount because nobody actually cares about the deficit, and it such cuts will have no positive benefits to the economy. (Though if Obama participates in cuts to Social Security and Medicare, you can bet that the GOP will demagogue him about that. 2010 again.)

    The Republicans will say “jobs, jobs, jobs” because it will test well, and they will stick with it, and it will be a winner for them. Period. So for God’s sake, Obama, make this priority number one.

  48. 48.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Dee Loralei:

    Firefox won’t let me add stylish or anything. Why is that?

    Sometimes Firefox or whatever Firefox is using in your operating system gets temporally broken.

    If you can’t install Stylish,
    1) First try exiting Firefox and restarting it and trying again.
    2) Next try rebooting your computer.
    3) Create a new profile and see if Firefox works correctly there.

    Knowledgeable users will often try #3 before #2. Sadly for the inexperienced it is possible for your profile to become corrupted and #3 (or something similar) must be done to get things working.

  50. 50.

    Amir_Khalid

    @MonkeyBoy:
    If John Cole has a fix to the Reply button problem applied at his end, would those of us who installed your Stylish-based solution be affected in any way?

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    @ppcli:

    It won’t matter if Obama cuts the deficit by some amount because nobody actually cares about the deficit, and it such cuts will have no positive benefits to the economy.

    Well, it’s funny. Because people here want to crow about Boehner Blinking and all that.
    But when Nov 2012 comes round and we have 8.5% U3 (or worse), and I’m afraid it will be close to 9% still, we’re going to see how the 11-D Chess worked out on the Grand Bargain.

  53. 53.

    Corner Stone

    Geithner said Obama “is willing to do very, very difficult political things” including changes in the Medicaid and Medicare programs to reduce future outlays.

    Very difficult for who?

  54. 54.

    Anne Laurie

    https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/10/the-damned-reply-button/#comment-2664787:

    Dee, Monkeyboy’s excellent plugin told I can’t install Stylish because I have an “outdated” version of Firefox. And I can’t install the new approved FF version right now, because my creaky desktop desperately needs a memory upgrade with complete re-install before doing that, which the local Tech Specialist (aka Spousal Unit) is going to get around to one of these days, okay already!. But if you have access to a less dilatory Tech Specialist — or a more trustworthy PC — you might think about letting FireFox upgrade itself to the new shiny version…

  55. 55.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Amir_Khalid: If Cole fixes it now there will be no problem – there will just be 2 rules saying when to make the Reply button visible.

    If the Reply Plugin gets revised in the future then there is a itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenie chance that the Stylish patch might cause a problem. If it does then all you have to do is click on the Stylish icon (white S in colorful box) on the top or bottom of your screen and disable the Baloon Juice rule or go to “manage styles” and disable or uninstall the style.

    If the Reply Plugin gets revised so that the ‘.yarr” class is no longer used then it is ok for the rule to still exist because it will wind up doing nothing.

  56. 56.

    Dee Loralei

    Ok Monkeyboy did 1 and 2 with no luck. You said knowledgeable users would do 3. What about computer illiterates?

  57. 57.

    licensed to kill time

    @MonkeyBoy: Got my reply button last week with your fix, you God of the Code dude!

    Watch, Cole will try to fix the code and bork the whole site.

    BTW, if you use NoScript, you have to ‘temporarily allow all this site” for the MB reply button to work.

    eta:Thanks for the info about what Stylish might do if the original reply button comes back, I wondered about that too.

  58. 58.

    yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)

    I just want to know when pirates became coders.

    The stuff a person can miss if they blink, nowadays…

  60. 60.

    Jade Jordan

    Stop eating yuppie food, eat meatloaf and potatoes (fried or mashed) like an American and your life and coding will get better.

  65. 65.

    Cris (without an H)

    @PeakVT: Instead of confusing John with code snippets, just send him the whole CSS file.
    __
    ETA: I checked and there are at least 8 different CSS files for the site, so NM.

    Doesn’t matter, because it’s not in a CSS file. The CSS for this particular plugin gets written as an inline block by the php file. He’s got to fix the plugin file, as Steeplejack &c. said.

  66. 66.

    Pseudonym

    I sent JCole a couple of emails but they seem to have ended up in the big circular filing cabinet in the sky. Oh well… at least I get to enjoy my greasemonkey script.

  67. 67.

    Catsy

    @Yutsano:

    Holy shit. I can’t believe it was just. that. easy.

    This would probably be a good time to once again point out what idiotically bad design the appearing-disappearing reply button is.

    There is no reason whatsoever why that link, out of all the other functional links on this site, needs to disappear when you’re not hovering over it. It adds unnecessary complexity, which–as we’ve all now seen–just makes it that much more likely that the code will get broken. It’s a major usability sin. It overlaps with the ends of sentences on the right margin. And did I mention that it is Completely. Fucking. Unnecessary. Just make it a static button and avoid this nonsense.

    I swear, sometimes it’s like web designers discover DHTML and forget how to do things simply.

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