Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

There are no moderate Republican – only extremists, and cowards.

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

“In the name of Zandar, I will fight the Stupid!”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

This really is a full service blog.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site Updates and Open Thread

Site Updates and Open Thread

by | 72 Comments

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Folks,

I’m applying a couple of quick updates this morning and plan to update the theme early next week.

As that entails me editing a bunch of the files, this is a time when I’m deeper into the code and more able to tweak things without dedicating lots of time to that task.

So, consider this thread your chance to make suggestions, complaints, etc. I will not promise to do everything, but I’ll try to incorporate good ideas.

Otherwise – open thread!

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  3. 3.

    Leto

    Add a strike through button. We do that routinely enough that we should have a button for it. Yes the olds who can do all the manual scripting still probably type it out faster, but just add a button already!

  5. 5.

    PeakVT

    Can you check the feed for location of the favicon.ico? My newsreader won’t pick it up, though it may be that my reader is so primitive the file has to be located in the base directory of the website. Thanks.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    NO THREADED COMMENTS!!!

    Otherwise yeah a strike button for those who don’t know the HTML code would be good as well.

  10. 10.

    No Drought No More

    Why step on a rake when you can stride into a wall?

    Have you heard the republican controlled members of the “Intelligence Committee” will draw a literal line between themselves and democrats within the committee room? Odds are good Nunes likely shared a room with a sibling while growing up, and drew a line straight across its middle, too, which served as his own personal border wall-in-miniature. Or maybe he saw it on an episode of the Brady Bunch, who the hell knows…

    Between Nunes and the jealousies apparently unleashed by “cutest girl in school” Hope Hicks, it’s as if the United States is currently being governed by the biggest junior high school class in the world..

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I came here specifically to ask that a STRIKE option be added to the HTML buttons, but
    Leto beat me to it!

    In the boilerplate in the FP bios, it always drives me crazy to see “whooping.” Please change to the correct “whopping.”

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @BGinCHI: I love your first two requests! BG, it’s great to see you back here again.

    @Leto: Alain, I would like to second (or third) the strikethrough request.

  13. 13.

    Another Scott

    We’ve talked about lots of possible improvements/abominations/upgrades/destruction over the last year or so.

    Preview?

    Putting a reply-counter on the L/R flyout buttons (to quickly see if the previous/next post has changed without forcing a whole dB hit and page reload)?

    Button to activate klaxon in Cole’s house to get his attention when one of my posts gets thrown in moderation and he’s buried in Twitterland?

    Stuff like that.

    You also mentioned an “Issue tracker” site so that we could see what’s been requested/worked-on/rejected. Any news on that?

    Thanks for your efforts here, Alain. They’re greatly appreciated.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    John Kelly adheres to the Code of Silence unless you’re a POC or a woman and then he can pop off like a crazed racist and misogynist.

    — meta (@metaquest) February 9, 2018

  21. 21.

    Gin & Tonic

    @PeakVT: No debate; consensus.

    And to the whiners about strikethrough, is it that hard to type two angle brackets and “del”?

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    With Mark Warner conspiracy theory, Trump goes 0-for-3
    02/09/18 09:22 AM—UPDATED 02/09/18 09:48 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Donald Trump was very excited about the Republicans’ “Nunes memo,” though the stunt clearly didn’t work out well. The president was nearly as excited about a GOP report this week that suggested Barack Obama may have intervened in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton probe, before the story was completely discredited.

    But the guy who championed Birtherism for several years isn’t the type to give up on the search for exciting new conspiracy theories. And so, Trump published this missive last night about Sen. Mark Warner (R-Va.), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the Russia scandal:

    “Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a ‘paper trail’ on a ‘private’ meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.”

    The president – who ostensibly has access to a vast, multi-billion-dollar intelligence apparatus, providing him with almost limitless amounts of vetted information – was apparently relying on something he saw on Fox News.

    And that’s a shame, because Trump’s latest bombshell is also a dud. As the HuffPost explained overnight:

    Fox’s “exclusive” Thursday report said Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had “extensive contact last year” with lobbyist Adam Waldman to set up a meeting with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote a dossier on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Waldman runs the Endeavor Group, a Washington lobbying firm that worked with a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska in 2009 and 2010.

    Waldman offered last March to connect Warner with Steele to discuss the infamous dossier. The article states that “secrecy seemed very important to Warner” and that the senator “seemed particularly intent on connecting directly with Steele without anyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee being in the loop – at least initially.”

    But as the Fox News story eventually acknowledges, Waldman informed the intelligence committee about the messages months ago, and the communication appears to fall in line with Warner’s duties on the intelligence committee.

  24. 24.

    WaterGirl

    @BGinCHI: I am good, thanks for asking! That happens to me, too. Life is crazy so even if you get to read BJ about all you can do is lurk because the threads are already dead by the time I get to them.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    Iowa Old Lady: Thinking of you and Mr. IOL because you surely have your news by now. I am hoping the news was all good and that you heading out to a celebration lunch.

  26. 26.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rikyrah: Trump doesn’t understand “time” or “causality.” He lives in a continual present state of grievance. He’s also still 35 there.

  28. 28.

    schrodingers_cat

    I think Hope Hicks is not actually dating these dudes, this is a part of “working” at the WH. One does things that defy logic when one is a part of a cult.

    ETA: The wife beating creep that she was supposedly “dating” has/had a live-in girlfriend.

  29. 29.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Can the socialism problem be (re)fixed? For a while it was fixed, and then after one of the upgrades it regressed.

    Also, “last position” positioning after page refresh (and sometimes after back-button) is still screwy.

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The wife beating creep that she was supposedly “dating” has/had a live-in girlfriend.

    That doesn’t mean he isn’t doing something with Hope Hicks on the side.

  38. 38.

    No Drought No More

    Donald Trumpster: “As you probably know, [Porter] says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that… BECAUSE IT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’LL CLAIM COME THE DAY MUELLER REPORTS HIS CONCLUSIONS ABOUT ME TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Why is Hope the side piece of every other creep in the T orbit. Is that her designated job?

    I can think of a few not necessarily mutually exclusive explanations:

    1) She has terrible taste in men. More a statement of the obvious than a theory at this point.
    2) She is so busy she never has a chance to meet any men outside Trump’s orbit.
    3) The cult-like nature of Trump’s inner circle forbids members from forming relationships with outsiders.

  42. 42.

    Gin & Tonic

    @FlipYrWhig:

    He’s also still 35 there.

    How true. His brain (such as it is) seems to be stuck in a perpetual late-70’s-early-80’s NYC. He’s probably always wished he had the stones that he thought Bernie Goetz did.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I doubt Trump is pushing her to sleep around. I’m pretty sure the choice to sleep with those guys is hers to make, even if her circumstances restrict the range of choices of who to sleep with.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    BTW if Mr. Wife Beater was not a citizen, hypocrite Kelly’s DHS would have had him deported for the same offense.

    He’s white enough they’d probably make excuses for him.

  47. 47.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Gin & Tonic: Yep, he’s ret-conning a present-past of Gritty New York evenings alternating between Studio 54 hedonism and Guardian Angels vigilantism.

  52. 52.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Roger Moore: And you know this, how? My lived experience as a woman makes me smell a rat in this entire situation, something doesn’t add up. She is young and over her head, and not really qualified for her job as WH communications director. Why is she there? She is attractive, she can definitely do better than the much married wife beating types.

  55. 55.

    Leto

    @Gin & Tonic: The fact that you’re telling any of us to type it, instead of using a button, betrays your age. Hey look, clouds!

    (Is this chain firmly attached? Lets find out!)

  56. 56.

    Leto

    @Major Major Major Major: We could always have a Balloon Juice Discord VoiP server. They’re free, you don’t have to talk, plus we can create a multitude of channels to chat in. Link the server info over in the side bar, give moderator powers to the front posters and we’d be set.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    The threaded comments thing is not up for debate – Cole nixed that long ago. The “threaded” discussion is just for fun, I think!

    We could find out for sure by all of us emailing the question to Cole, with arguments for and against in ALL CAPS!!!

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:
    My impression is that Hicks is there because she’s a member in good standing of the Trump cult. She worked for Ivanka’s company, first as a model and then in PR, which is apparently something her family has done going back to her grandfather. She was brought to the campaign and then the White House because she’s worked her way up to loyal family retainer. It’s possible that sleeping with whomever the boss says is part of the way she’s proven her loyalty, but some of Trump’s reported comments- specifically denigrating Lewindowski for breaking things off with her- make me think he actually acknowledges her right to choose who she sleeps with.

  66. 66.

    hilts

    Fox News has removed a controversial column penned by executive editor John Moody about diversity in the Olympics because it did not go through the “proper vetting process,” a Fox News insider told TPM Friday.

    The column, titled “Darker, Gayer, Different,” slammed the U.S. Olympics for its efforts to attract a diverse group of athletes for the Winter Games.

    “Unless it’s changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger.’ It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.’ If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work,” Moody wrote Wednesday in the since-deleted column.

    A Fox News spokesperson told TPM that the column was removed because it “does not reflect the views or values” of the network.

    An insider at the network told TPM the column did not go through the “proper vetting process” before it was published.

    “In terms of John Moody, he has zero editorial oversight on any platform, his title is a formality and he hasn’t performed that function for years,” the source told TPM. “Editors were too deferential given his longevity and they didn’t give (the column) much oversight. … That’s why it was removed.”

    h/t https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-yanks-moodys-offensive-column

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    Great story in The Baltimore Sun for the seeming 50% of B-J commenters who are lawyers. A couple of tenants of an apartment complex owned by Prince Jared sue the management company in circuit court. Jared’s company moves the case to Federal court, saying none of the owners/investors reside in Baltimore (or Maryland, maybe.) Fed judge says, OK, let’s have a list of names and addresses of those folks. Jared’s company says we’d like to file that under seal. Judge says, no, it’s public information, and you have until Feb 9 to comply. So today, Feb 9, Jared’s company moves to send the case back to circuit court.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Alain, one improvement I’d like to see is in the “link” feature. Is it possible to get rid of the http:// that populates the box? I think close to 100% of us paste in a URL which already has it. Thanks!

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    Delicate subject to broach, but maybe the memorial in the sidebar needn’t be there in perpetuity and could be replaced with an In Memoriam entry in the Quick Links?

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I was just circling back to mention this. Most links that people paste in already have the prefix, and almost all browsers now are pretty good at fixing URLs that aren’t complete.

    Just leave that field blank. I bet it would cause far fewer problems then what we experience now.

Comments are closed.