Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

In my day, never was longer.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site Will Be Slow For A Few Hours

Site Will Be Slow For A Few Hours

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: ,

I’m actually cloning the site today, as opposed to getting distracted yesterday. This means the site may be a bit sluggish as I’m creating some big archives and transferring them to the test setup. I chose now in hopes of getting it all done before the 5 pm magic hour.

 

So my apologies if the site isn’t as responsive as normal, but take heart – your long personal nightmare will be over soon! :)

 

Also, another plug for a guest post on Oceanography coming at 12:30 Eastern on Friday. It will be neat, you’ll learn stuff, and can even ask questions!

 

Open Thread!

 

 

ETA: Slowdown over, ahead of schedule. Be well.

 

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  4. 4.

    Alain the site fixer

    Thursday may be optimistic, but one of many goals is to speed up the site and having a permanent test/dev setup will make that much less catastrophic should an incorrect option be chosen. A while back, I know some setting or other made the site seize up. It wasn’t tough to fix, but for about 2 minutes the site was down, much to the consternation of the community. I hope to avoid that again.

  6. 6.

    jacy

    I’m used to unresponsive. I have children.

    In all seriousness, thanks, Alain — you’re an incredibly valuable member of the Balloon Juice jackelpack and your ministrations, along with your comments and your pretty pictures in the morning, are more appreciated than we could ever express.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    Trump wastes little time breaking his key promises in a cruel budget
    05/23/17 01:05 PM
    By Steve Benen

    When Donald Trump rode down a New York escalator and announced his presidential campaign two years ago in front of an audience featuring people paid to be there, the Republican made international headlines by arguing that Mexican immigrants are rapists.

    But in the same speech, Trump was careful to break with GOP orthodoxy on some of the nation’s most popular social-insurance programs. He said, if elected, he would “save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts.” Trump added, “Have to do it.”

    Those who actually believed his rhetoric fell for an unfortunate scam. Indeed, Trump has made many of his defenders look quite foolish with the unveiling of his first federal budget.

    …………………………………………………..

    Trump’s budget, in other words, targets benefits for the poor and the sick, while cutting taxes for the wealthy, boosting an enormous Pentagon budget, and setting aside billions for a border wall.

    The plan also intends to eliminate the deficit within 10 years by relying on math that doesn’t make any sense.

    It even cuts Social Security, despite Trump’s promise, by cutting Social Security Disability Insurance by billions. Asked how to reconcile the president’s pre-election assurances with his in-writing budget plan, Mick Mulvaney argued to reporters yesterday that Trump’s promise came with fine print: Trump was talking about retirees’ benefits, not benefits for the disabled.

    Before anyone panics, it’s important to realize that there’s approximately zero chance Congress will approve Trump’s budget plan. Lawmakers in both parties have already announced their opposition to the White House’s blueprint, and some have even begun mocking it.

    And for some, that effectively ends the conversation. If Trump’s budget will be ignored by lawmakers, the argument goes, than it doesn’t much matter what it says.

    I disagree. There’s an old cliché that a budget is a moral document, and the adage endures for a reason: it’s true. This blueprint is a vehicle for Trump and his team to show what kind of country they want to build. The president is obsessed with making America “great,” and this budget explains – in black-and-while detail – what exactly the White House means when it uses the adjective.

    This is, in other words, Trump’s vision for the nation’s future – and it’s more than a little terrifying.

    Putting aside legislative prospects, it matters that the president, just four months in office, is already breaking the core promises of his campaign. It matters that he’s deliberately targeting some of the nation’s most vulnerable. It matters that many of those who’d be hit hardest by Trump’s plan are many of the same people who voted for him.

  14. 14.

    hovercraft

    I chose now in hopes of getting it all done before the 5 pm magic hour.

    You better be done by 5:45, we need to be able to discuss today’s new clusterfluck with rapid fire witticisms!

  16. 16.

    ? Martin

    @rikyrah: If Trump supporters fall through the safety net, it their own fault for not taking out a small loan of a million dollars from their parents when they had the chance.

  17. 17.

    hovercraft

    I wonder if FOX will tell Hannity to stop torturing poor Seth Rich’s family now.

    Bradd Jaffy
    ✔
    @BraddJaffy

    Fox News has just retracted its story on the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Will Hannity follow? http://fxn.ws/2qSj3l6
    2:23 PM – 23 May 2017

    927 927 Retweets
    1,425

    I’m not holding my breath, oh and can someone tell that other worthless piece of shit Geraldo to shyt the fuck up!

    Geraldo Rivera
    ✔
    @GeraldoRivera

    1) #SethRich shot in back(2)worked for #DNC which, (3)screwed @BernieSanders 4)#WIKILEAKS screwed DNC(5)Did #sethrich leak?(6)is it related?
    4:28 PM – 22 May 2017

    1,082 1,082 Retweets
    1,862

    I hope Roger is roasting on a spit!

    ET for grammar and spelling, yes I know shyte

  20. 20.

    amygdala

    Cloning? So you’re a biologist, as well as a computer guru.

    Thank you for the morning photo threads, and everything else you do here. Your kind heart shows in all of it.

  21. 21.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Villago Delenda Est: Melania no like holding his hand. You just know there’s some major pressure building there – that’s twice in public in as many days!

  23. 23.

    geg6

    @hovercraft:

    Remember when that wrestler or whatever bitch slapped Geraldo back in his “investigative reporter” days? That was sweet. Think he’d like to take a few more shots at that fake reporter on behalf of that poor family?

  24. 24.

    Alain the site fixer

    @amygdala: Kindness is really where it’s at, isn’t it? Sometimes it need to be reborn in us, but I swear, helping others simply, being aware and noticing those around us – like noticing a shorter person looking at an item on the top shelf, and just reaching up and getting it for them, saying “here you go!” with a smile – makes you feel really good, and helps them, to boot. And these days, we need all the kindness we can get/give.

  25. 25.

    hovercraft

    @Villago Delenda Est: , I just needed to borrow your name. I loathe these fuckers.

    ETA: WARNING POLITICO

    Trump Is America’s Most Honest President
    He just can’t help himself from blurting out the truth—even when it’s self-sabotage.

    By Virginia Heffernan

    May 23, 2017

    Donald Trump cannot keep a secret. In fact, the “liar president,” as his opponents would have it, might just be the most pathologically unsecretive—dare I say, honest—president we’ve seen yet.

    Sure, we’re accustomed to thinking of Trump as chronically deceptive and flat-out wrong, and he commonly is—about crowd sizes, illegal voting, his “fine-tuned machine” of an administration, the Iraq War, 9/11 cheering, the list is endless. But someone must be putting truth serum in Trump’s second scoop of ice cream these days. No matter the stakes, he doesn’t have even a White House junior aide’s gift for circumspection, spin or truth-shading. Lately, in fact, Trump can’t shut up even when almost everything is at stake.

    In a town of snakes and double-agents, the president’s extreme emotional transparency would be admirable, a sign of vulnerability, sincerity, guilelessness—that is, if it weren’t so self-incriminating. Most notably, on the firing of FBI director James Comey, Trump could not for one single day stick to the simple if ludicrous script that his aides hawked in the immediate aftermath: that Comey was fired at the suggestion of Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, the attorney general and his deputy, out of gallantry to Hillary Clinton, the damsel distressed by Comey’s political whims last October.

    No, Trump could not prevaricate. Evidently, the president dies in darkness. And it wasn’t even under interrogation lights that he gave up the truth. He volunteered it. I chopped down the cherry tree, Lester Holt!

    Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!

  26. 26.

    Alain the site fixer

    @schrodingers_cat: do repost that video; I see you removed it from the auto-trashed post. So I can’t see what the possible trigger could be….

  28. 28.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Alain the site fixer: Thanks! Will do. Its a part of a Sikh prayer from the 2006 Rang De Basanti ( Color of Sacrifice)
    Basanti==Spring like ==yellow or saffron, color of sacrifice in both Hinduism and Sikhism
    I am thinking of reviewing this movie for BJ Weekend Movie Club.
    What do you guys think. I will do a post about it soon about where you can see it with subtitles and other info before I do the review.

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    @hovercraft: I’m going out for beers with a couple of old buddies at 5:30, so Alain can take as long as he likes, as far as I care.

  34. 34.

    Alain the site fixer

    @schrodingers_cat: Not sure what was up; this was in Moderation, what I assume was the other attempt that you then deleted was in trash but not really gone-gone. So hmm.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    He’s in Rome now. Surely we’ll have some new faux pas of his to discuss by then.

    LARP of the Da Vinci code by Trump in the Vatican. With Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick holder.

  36. 36.

    Alain the site fixer

    @TenguPhule: I found bunch of comments from you from last week also in the trash. Is that common for you? Let me know if your comments disappear; that usually means they were auto-trashed and most other frontpagers don’t check the trash much.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @hovercraft:

    I may be detecting some snark in that that you are not. She doesn’t seem to be praising Trump for being honest, just marveling at the fact that he can’t even keep his own lies straight.

  39. 39.

    hovercraft

    @geg6:
    As C&L’s pointed out, the stories about this “murder” escalated as the shit hit the fan over the last week, they needed something “big” to justify not covering the Shitgibbons current shitstorm. You can only have so many legal experts on to explain that the shit sandwich in front of you is actually not made from shit, but is actually a healthy organic material made 100 % by nature with no additives, it is also homemade on the premises each day!

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @hovercraft:
    I think they’re missing the big picture with trump. He isn’t being honest because he’s honest. He’s failing to keep the story straight because he can’t remember it for that long. I think that’s the basic explanation for why he’s constantly undercutting his messaging team; they come up with a story, but the boss forgets so soon he gives the whole game away. I think the presidential workload is exacerbating his incipient senile dementia, and the added stress from all the investigations is just making it worse. I wonder how long it’s going to be before he has a complete mental breakdown.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    @Alain the site fixer:

    . I found bunch of comments from you from last week also in the trash. Is that common for you? Let me know if your comments disappear

    Depends. I notice that late night posts tend to get eaten by FYWP when I’m at home. No idea what’s triggering it since no links or video in the vanished posts nor as far as I know any banned words. Usually I just give it up as a lost cause and post something else because none of the admin are awake at the time.

  44. 44.

    hovercraft

    @Mnemosyne:
    I hope you’re right, but given the source I may have jumped to conclusions. If he’s losing GOPolitico, then he really is in trouble!

  46. 46.

    Alain the site fixer

    @TenguPhule: let me know when it happens – using the form or if you’re awake, in the 5 am On the Road post. I’ll login and see what’s going on. If they work from one device and not from another, then it’s likely something about the email address you use (some folks use a different email address on mobile device vs home or work PC, for example)

  47. 47.

    Gin & Tonic

    @hovercraft: It’s going slowly. I meet with the therapist every Wednesday, so I suspect my posts tomorrow evening will be foul-tempered. At this point we are still about flexibility, not strength. I’m allowed to use no more than a 2-pound dumbbell for shoulder raises. Still can’t get my hand flat in the palm-down position. There’s quite a ways to go.

  49. 49.

    Alain the site fixer

    Ok, slow work all done, way ahead of schedule and with no major issues. You may return to your normal kvetching activities!

  50. 50.

    TenguPhule

    @Alain the site fixer:

    If they work from one device and not from another, then it’s likely something about the email address you use

    I use the same email. Like I said, it appears to be completely random, so might just be my internet connection.

  53. 53.

    Alain the site fixer

    @TenguPhule: do let me know. I’ll investigate and it’s easier when it’s fresh! Shaky connection shouldn’t make a difference but perhaps….

  54. 54.

    Peale

    @geg6: Nice memory, but it was actually John Stossel who got his ear clubbed in. Those 20/20 libertarians with the mustaches…chair upside the head for all of them.

  57. 57.

    Mnemosyne

    I’ll ask again when there’s another open thread, but does anyone have experience with cats who have allergy or autoimmune issues? The vet says our cat Annie seems to have developed one of the two, but we have to go see an internist to puzzle it out. Poor kitty keeps getting crusty ears and crusty paw pads, but the ear mites that they thought caused those are long gone. She’s indoors-only, so she can’t have gotten into something outside. We’re stumped, though I’ve been saying for a while that corn allergies are common in cats and G has been resisting changing their food again.

  59. 59.

    hovercraft

    @Gin & Tonic:

    so I suspect my posts tomorrow evening will be foul-tempered.

    And that’s different how from every other day? Or am I mixing you up with OO and CS?

    Hang in there, it will be worth it in the end ; )

  64. 64.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne: haven’t had to do it with cats, but we’ve had dogs with allergies so we feed them grain-free, limited ingredient food where the protein is as obscure as possible. Think duck, alligator, misc. wild game, etc. The dog food section gets pretty exotic!

    Of course, if G won’t change their food then this is moot.

  65. 65.

    Steeplejack

    @Roger Moore:

    He’s failing to keep the story straight because he can’t remember it for that long.

    He’s a bullshit artist. He doesn’t care about “keeping the story straight.” He says what he has to or wants to in the moment. End of story.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    It’s complicated, because the oldest cat has constipation issues, so he gets dry food to help with that, and that’s the food I suspect Annie is allergic to. Feeding them separately doesn’t work. G is afraid that if they all get hypoallergenic food, Keaton’s constipation will get bad again. Ugh.

  67. 67.

    Aleta

    @Loneoak: Thanks ! They deserve a WH press pass, since ridiculous RW imaginary journalists** now clutter up the press seating and literally interfere with questioning.
    ** R- b l – Me *di -a ( of pizza // -ate); Am. -news New or-k;
    Ga- -te . W. ..-Pun. it; Li *fe. Ze -tte (i.e. Ing … ham);
    and T#w -n … h&ll (i.e. Her it age Fdn) all have correspondent passes

  69. 69.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Loneoak:

    Check out The Onion’s new Trump Documents dump. Gotta admire their fearless commitment to journalism.

    Oh my G-d. So much winning that I am finally beginning to be tired of all the winning.

    I couldn’t find a response to Obama’s 44-to-45 letter. Is there one yet?

  70. 70.

    NoraLenderbee

    @Mnemosyne: Not exactly the same thing, but my old cat tended to get yeast infections in her ears. We thought at first she had ear mites but treatment didn’t work until it was diagnosed correctly.

    /cue obvious joke about cat + yeast infection

  72. 72.

    eclare

    @Steeplejack: Obama said the same thing in a recent interview: he’s a bullshitter. He’s gotten away with it for 70 years, not gonna change.

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @Steeplejack:
    Two points:

    1) It should be obvious, but freestyle bullshitting doesn’t work as a coordinated media strategy. They’ve tried it both ways, with trump as leader and as follower. When he’s the first one to talk, his media team can sometimes come up with plausible excuses/explanations for the BS, but that gets blown out of the water the next time he opens his yap with a different line of BS. When they try to coordinate stories in advance, they get a better start only to be undercut when he doesn’t follow the plan.

    2) Some of his big recent problems have come about because he hasn’t been bullshitting. The Comey firing is the most obvious example; he stuck to the prepared line of BS for a while, but then undercut it by admitting that he was going to fire Comey regardless and that it was about the Russia business. I sincerely think he’s starting to have a hard time keeping the BS going and is starting to blurt out the truth because he can’t remember the lies he’s supposed to tell. Maybe that’s because he can’t deal with a coordinated lying strategy, but I think there’s some general cognitive decline in there, too.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    @Mnemosyne: I read up some on food allergies for the dog, who had chronic d. when he came, which cleared up as soon as we switched to limited ingredient.
    Two useful things were: 1-allergies can develop after too much exposure to an ingredient, so it can happen w pets after some years because almost of the food uses corn or soy or poultry meal. (Companies aim to get a good “minimum protein reading” as cheaply as possible.) So an alternative to the allergy testing can be to try a food w/o those (or eliminate one at a time, but takes longer.
    2- For an animal whose digestive track is upset (inflammation for whatever reason, such as feline AIDs or allergies or temporary upset) the fewer ingredients there are, the easier it is for the digestion to process. (Like for people who are given just rice or oatmeal or plain chicken when sick.) Hence the different limited ingred. diets, which are pretty varied but just have 3 or so ingredients instead of that long list. This worked great for the dog. Avoided corn, soy and poultry and immediate change.

    The L.I. foods also add probiotics, which help my cat a lot.

    As a first trial, you could also try just the probiotics first.. cheapest is to open a few human capsules and sprinkle a little on the food.

  78. 78.

    sharl

    @geg6: That rang a bell with me too. Sure enough: in 1988 he had Roy Innis and some white skinheads on his TV talk show. In this low-resolution YouTube video (2:38), chaos breaks out just beyond the one-minute mark. I don’t think the video is very interesting, but YMMV; in any event, here’s a written description (NYT) – Geraldo Rivera’s Nose Broken In Scuffle on His Talk Show:

    Geraldo Rivera’s nose was broken and his face cut during a skirmish yesterday midway through the taping of a program entitled ”Teen Hatemongers” on his television talk show.

    The violence broke out after John Metzger, a 20-year-old guest representing the White Aryan Resistance Youth, insulted a black guest, Roy Innis, calling him an ”Uncle Tom.”

    ”I’m sick and tired of Uncle Tom here, sucking up and trying to be a white man,” Mr. Metzger said of Mr. Innis, the national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. Mr. Innis stood up and began choking the white youth and Mr. Rivera and audience members joined the scuffle, hurling chairs, throwing punches and shouting epithets. ‘Racist Thugs Are Like Roaches’

    No other injuries were reported and no one was arrested, the police said.

    ”These racist thugs are like roaches who scurry in the light of exposure,” Mr. Rivera said after the brawl. As Mr. Rivera scuffled with one of the white supremacists, another hit him in the shoulder with a chair and then smashed his nose with a roundhouse punch from behind.

    Mr. Rivera, who used to be an amateur boxer, decided not to go to the hospital because he had two more shows to tape. Emergency Medical Services paramedics pronounced his nose broken, the show’s executive producer said.

    Mr. Rivera said he would not press charges. ”I do not want to be tied up with the roaches,” he explained.

    He said he approved of Mr. Innis’ actions, noting that ”if there ever was a case of deserved violence, this was it.”…

    Ahh, the civilized days of yore, before terms like “alt-right” and “keyboard nazis” even existed.

  79. 79.

    sharl

    @sharl: Missed the edit window, so a minor correction to my last comment has to be a separate thing: the white racists in that 1988 Geraldo show all had full heads of hair; not a skinhead among them.
    I regret the error…

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @Roger Moore:

    1. I wasn’t suggesting that bullshitting is a good strategy for anything, media or otherwise.

    2. “Some of his big recent problems have come about because he hasn’t been bullshitting.”

    Just because he occasionally strays into the truth doesn’t mean he is not still bullshitting. I don’t think he has any kind of “strategy” on some continuum where he keeps track of “what I said before and what I might want to say later” and how all that relates to the “truth.” He is focused solely on the transactional moment right in front of him and how to handle it. When he contradicts himself it’s only because he does (or may) have some memory that “I said A when this situation came up before and that didn’t seem to work, so I’ll say B now and see if it works.” But actually they both work, because they get him out of the current transactional moment and on to the next one. All the chaos, confusion and “lies” are a concern only for us losers.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hovercraft: Per Charlie Pierce, “Tiger Beat on the Potomac”. They should pray I never come to power; one of my first acts will be to make Broderism a capital offense.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I got it too, but I was on the road, at a doctor’s appointment, waiting with a little tablet. Now I have an actual keyboard, and can type on it. Today is Tuesday, is the only catch….

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