Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

White supremacy is terrorism.

How stupid are these people?

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Second rate reporter says what?

When I was faster i was always behind.

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

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

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Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    RepubAnon

    I go along with the joke 2016 Trump/Palin campaign poster from somebody’s web site. The proposed campaign slogan: “I Quit” – “You’re Fired!”

  3. 3.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Cole:

    When exactly did you get rid of the Sitemeter thing? The site doesn’t seem faster now, although the slowness has varied randomly (for me) over the last few days.

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    Better performance?
    No.
    Loading and refresh still takes about 10-15 times longer than it did a few days ago.
    If you edit a comment that works the same as before.
    Accessing the pipeline is slow, once in it works as normal. So I’d suggest a server issue rather than a particular site issue.

  5. 5.

    BD of MN

    Has the site performed better since I got rid of the sitemeter thing?

    No. And I didn’t think it was that bad before, seems even slower now…

  6. 6.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I’m repeating this because I can’t stop myself. My book is apparently now available in paperback, which I wasn’t expecting for a couple of weeks yet.

    amazon.com/Finders-Keepers-Dorothy-Winsor-ebook/dp/B011TECDJ6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1440895681…

    I will stop spamming you now.

    ETA: Wait. Now it doesn’t show. Maybe I misfired and will have to come back and spam you later.

    It shows here: smile.amazon.com/Finders-Keepers-Dorothy-Winsor/dp/1943549028/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1440894836…

  7. 7.

    FoxinSocks

    Going to bring this up in this thread as well: Are we doing fantasy football or did I miss it? Football season kind of snuck up on me, but I had so much fun with the Balloon Juice league last year.

  8. 8.

    different-church-lady

    ALTERNATE: They look like two cats in the prelude to a fight.

    Site seems to be just as sluggish as it’s been the past few days.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    Mobile version is pretty snappy, so it’s not the database or site per se, but some widget or ad or something that’s on the full site but not the mobile.

  10. 10.

    Poopyman

    Yeah, pretty much what everyone else says. No apparent difference.

    So can we have the Wonkette headlines back? They were entertaining.

  11. 11.

    Brendan in Charlotte

    The only thing that comes to mind when i see that picture is “Eep Opp Ork Ah Ah!!!

  12. 12.

    greennotGreen

    Yep, still pretty slow.

    I am not strong enough to watch the Trump/Palin debacle. Will someone give us a synopsis?

  15. 15.

    Comrade Dread

    Will someone give us a synopsis?

    I would, but I’m two weeks off the sauce and am pretty sure the sheer magnitude of derp would push me off the wagon. .

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    So how did Palin interviewing the Donald go? Did each one just talk past the other all the way through, or did they have a meaningful exchange of ideas (hee hee)?

  18. 18.

    Crusty Dem

    Very fast on mobile. For me it hasn’t worked well on desktop (chrome w/ABP) for months. Freezes up. Now it freezes up slowly. Which is actually an improvement…

    Win!!

  20. 20.

    jl

    It’s the dog days of summer. Maybe the front page posters caught the slows from the blog ‘puter.

    I read a summary of the Palin interview of Trump. And then, a glutton for punishment, I watched as much of it as I could stand. Started skipping through.

    More I see of Trump, the more I think he is just a much better master of PR and marketing than the others. Maybe that is what got him in. Maybe Trump was pissed that his previous political tries, when he actually tried to compete in (IIRC) Perot territory flamed out, and his brilliance was not universally proclaimed in circles within in shouting distance of serious policy discussion.

    So, he sees the GOP grifters and thinks, more or less, crap, making the dummy TV shows and resort deals and marketing books my ghostwriter puts out is hard work compared to that, and those idiots are blowing it. Eff it, I’ll show those losers how to do it.

    Trump understands how to modulate his personality and presentation, when to offer a carrot and when to bring a stick, whom to hold grudges against and with whom to let bygones be bygones. He knows when to play good cop and bad cop.

    So, Palin looked pretty amateurish compared to Trump. Not sure she would be an adequate side kick. But, since schlubs like Jeb? and Walker look like amateurs at PR compared to Palin, no wonder Trump can beat them up and take their lunch money on a daily basis.

  21. 21.

    David Koch

    Iowa Des Moines Register Poll

    Trump…..23
    Carson….18
    Cruz………8
    Walker……8
    Rubio……..6
    ¡Jeb!………6◄
    Carly………5
    Huck………4
    Baby Doc…4

    Clinton….. 37
    Sanders… 30
    Biden…… 14
    O’Malley…. 3

    Without Joe

    Clinton…. 43
    Sanders.. 35

    “This feels like 2008 all over again,” said J. Ann Selzer, pollster for the Iowa Poll.

    In that race, Clinton led John Edwards by 6 percentage points and Barack Obama by 7 points in an early October Iowa Poll. But Obama, buoyed by younger voters and first-time caucusgoers, surged ahead by late November.

    If you look at this polling graph, Hillary is in a tailspin and I don’t know how she gets out of it.

  24. 24.

    Comrade Jake

    The best part of the interview is Palin commenting that Trump’s entire campaign has been avant-garde.

  28. 28.

    Gex

    The front page loaded quickly. But when I opened this page to make that comment it took a long time to load. So, still slow it seems.

  29. 29.

    Scout211

    Still very slow using the desktop version on a Mac and an iPad.

    Mobile version (which I prefer not to use for many reasons) works fine.

  31. 31.

    Comrade Jake

    Anyone else see where Trump is trolling JEB over getting Eric Cantor’s endorsement? It’s hilarious.

  32. 32.

    mclaren

    Since I typically view this site with linux using adblock and NoFlash and NoJava in the browser, I don’t have any of the performance problems these other lusers have when they’re limping along with Windoze 8 Crap Edition, or Windoze 10 Blackscreen of Death Edition.

  34. 34.

    RSA

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    My book is apparently now available in paperback, which I wasn’t expecting for a couple of weeks yet.

    Hey, nice! The Kindle version is still embargoed (or whatever) until September 12. Strange, but I don’t get publishing in any case.

    I will stop spamming you now.

    I think that goes with the territory of writing a book, and you need to do it, however awkward it may feel. Have you applied to John Scalzi’s Big Idea series?

    ETA: I’m sorry if I sound dictatorial or even experienced; what I wrote isn’t meant in that way.

  35. 35.

    pete

    Not enabling autoplay may perhaps prove that there are limits to your dickitude, Cole, but that ain’t necessarily saying much. Resisting the temptation to post the video at all, now that would have suggested something more significant.

  38. 38.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @satby: Yes, it’s pre-orderable, listed to come out on Sept 12. I thought my publisher planned to have the ebook out for a week or so before the paperback because they make more money on the e-book. So I was completely surprised to see the paperback listed today. No one tells me anything.

  40. 40.

    LesGS

    @dmsilev: Yeah, I have been without a computer for a couple weeks and have been reading the site on my phone with no problems.

  43. 43.

    geg6

    Nope, Cole, still sucks. Tried on the laptop and iPhone both and the wait to reload is loooooooooooong.

  44. 44.

    mclaren

    @Ajabu:

    Nope. Still just as slow to load (particularly comments page)

    Speak for yourself, Windoze luser. My linux laptop loads BJ comments lightning-fast.

  45. 45.

    mainmata

    I access this site on iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro. I have never had any probems with intrusive ads – I mostly don’t see them. Could this be a WinOS phenomenon?

  46. 46.

    lgerard

    @Comrade Jake:

    I made a small choking sound when I heard her say that, then I realized that she has no idea what that term means.

    The best part of this meeting of the mindless is watching the people in the background ride up and down the escalator……. not quite as entertaining as seeing turkeys get slaughtered but still, another example of Palin production values

  47. 47.

    qwerty42

    John,
    I read this using Firefox on a Windows 7 sp1 box. I have not seen any slowness before or after the sitemeter.

  48. 48.

    geg6

    @mainmata:

    I don’t get the ads on my iPhone but it takes forever to refresh or post comments. Just upgraded the phone a couple of weeks ago, so I’m pretty sure it’s not the phone.

  51. 51.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    I haven’t caught all the threads where this has been discussed, so I don’t know what tests have been reported. But I went to WebPageTest.org and ran the test. Here’s the results:

    webpagetest.org/result/150830_ET_2WY/

    Yeah, it took ~ 10s for it to get the front page. :-/

    It seems to be saying that there’s a problem with the images. E.g. Betty’s roadside sign took forever to transfer because it’s fairly large. Compressing/resizing those things may help.

    Also, this explanation may be supported by reports that the mobile version doesn’t have these problems – IIRC, it is much less image intensive.

    It also complains that “keep-alive” isn’t used much, so connections aren’t being reused. If B-J’s server is being shared with lots of other sites, maybe it’s getting starved of connections unnnecessarily.

    I’m no expert, but thought I’d mention this in case experts here have better explanations.

    HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    satby

    @satby: Checking on my laptop now, seems a bit slow, takes a few seconds longer to load than what used to be usual, but I’m not seeing the extreme slowness of yesterday. So far.

    Edited to add, okay, that comment loaded pretty slow.

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    Problem is at the back end, not from 3rd party stuff. This time.

    Wish now I’d bookmarked it, but someone gave a link during this time of travail to a repair tool for WP, which looked quite promising, if the problem doesn’t derive from sloppy PHP code..

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Still slow on the iPad (Safari, desktop format). I hate the mobile format and won’t select it even for a brief experiment; bitter experience tells me that things will be fucked up for weeks to come if I do (e.g., even after I switch back to desktop mode it will keep defaulting to mobile, and make my username and/or email address disappear so I have to retype them every time I comment, or something equally annoying).

  59. 59.

    Bill D.

    Win 7, Firefox, NoScript, and it works fine. Methinks the site itself is not the problem. Posting took maybe 5 seconds, not bad really.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    Would rather be repeatedly poked in the eye with a white hot rusty barbecue fork than look at that video, thanks muchly.

  62. 62.

    danielx

    Snowbilly Snooki just…will not go away. Like shingles on the body politic, and there’s no cure in sight.

  63. 63.

    JPL

    There’s no significant difference between Chrome and Firefox for me. They are both slow.

    How sad… Kyle Jean-Baptiste, the first African-American actor to play the iconic lead role of Jean Valjean in the popular Broadway musical “Les Misérables,” died on Friday after falling from a fire escape in Brooklyn. He was 21.
    nytimes
    He was on the fire escape with his girl friend and slipped.

  64. 64.

    Arm The Homeless

    Slow on both mobile and desktop using Android 5.0.2

    Tried with Adaway on and off. Not much difference.

  65. 65.

    Scout211

    The website, Is it Down Right Now? still tries to connect to ballon juice and cannot. It registers ballon juice as “down for everyone” and that the “servers are not responding.”

    This has been consistent for the past 4 days.

    I’m no expert but it sounds like a server problem, maybe?

  66. 66.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    I’m on a MacBook, OSX 10.10.5, Firefox 40–

    The last few weeks, if I try to connect to BJ, the little circle in my tab will turn backwards for about 30 seconds before the server connects and the page starts loading. Same to go from the main page to any individual thread. I don’t know if it’s me or you, but FWIW, FreeThoughtBlogs is almost as bad. Nobody else seems affected.

  68. 68.

    Glidwrith

    Dear gods above and below, I actually watched that drivel. How can two people that are talking to each other convey absolutely no information? Vapid, vacuous, vomit-inducing….. I want back those 10 minutes. Who do I talk to in this joint for a refund?

  72. 72.

    Zinsky

    Having these two mindless twits having, for lack of a better word, a “dialogue”, really takes FauxNews into complete incoherence territory. Where nothing makes sense, down is up, fact is fiction and empirical data means nothing. In other words, batshit crazy land. Why anyone watches this shit is beyond me. It has absolutely zero information content.

  73. 73.

    Wilson Heath

    After Trump’s “my little cracker” reference to his communion wafer, I though the chances were about 99% that the same phrase would apply if he chose a veep on the GOP slate. Palin would be tailor made for that handle.

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    Something has changed on loading and refresh. It actually works. At the moment. First time in several days that the site loads in anything like a reasonable time. As I said up thread I’d bet it is a pipeline problem, a particular server at the host site.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    Please god, lock these two in a room together…and then take that room and sink it to the center of the earth…

  77. 77.

    sinnedbackwards

    Just for info: I’m on an Ipad on old OS and everything works fine and fast for me. Maybe Coyote loves me some how? Nah.

  79. 79.

    pluege

    always stomach turning when the imbecilla from Wassila gets on teevee. Paired up with trump and you have a megadose of vomit inducing elixir

  80. 80.

    low-tech cyclist

    I managed to watch 4 minutes of Palin interviewing Trump, and it was a real endurance feat to get that far. But there are limits to what the human constitution can bear.

    Is there a transcript anywhere? I can read ten minutes’ worth of their blather in less than a minute, and it would be kind of fun to ridicule the most idiotic things they said.

  81. 81.

    EZSmirkzz

    @LesGS: Sorry to be slow in responding. To be honest I may have got the first link to Jim’s site here at Balloon Juice. Failing memory is just one of the blessing of wheezer-hood.

  82. 82.

    EZSmirkzz

    @efgoldman: Jim’s busy, and as you may know writing is tough if you’re going to do it all the time. Used to be like throwing a rose in a well and waiting to hear the splash, but the intertube usually will give you quick feed back, and as I have discovered, people are inclined to take it in the wrong way given an option, which makes it even more difficult to convey any humor or witticisms, much less analysis based on factual evidence, which is always open to interpretation, and of course leads to the counterpoint of view, usually mis- or under informed.

  84. 84.

    Another Holocene Human

    @David Koch: Bad poll for iCarly. Seems like JEB! can get his mojo back if only he makes a series of heartless and condescending statements about women’s reproductive health. The base loves that shit.

  85. 85.

    TriassicSands

    Yeah, Trump’s heart is with the working people. Everything about Donald screams middle class.

  86. 86.

    Geeno

    I cannot believe JC didn’t put that on autoplay out of spite. Not drinking has changed him.
    LOL

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