Happy Easter, everybody! - Also, we have another Disqus-problem - Open Post - UPDATE: The Disqus-problem has been solved!

By Patrick

Happy Easter, everybody! Just a short post - and I don't want start talking about politics at the moment. I need a little break from the daily insanity, and Easter is a good time for that.

As some people have certainly noticed, we have quite a serious new Disqus-problem. It does not seem to affect everybody, but on our computers, we cannot see the actual comments any more. Just on one computer, with Firefox, I can see them, but not with Chrome or any other browser. On the other laptop, we cannot see the comments at all. Very mysterious!

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We haven't changed anything, and I do hope that Disqus will resolve this problem soon.

Kathleen and I have visited my parents, and we had a very enjoyable time with them. My mother has put up some very nice Easter decorations, which we thought we would share with you.

Have a good time, and please chat away in the comments.

++++

UPDATE:

We have very good news! The pesky "Disqus-problem" has been solved, at least for now.

This is what happened:

For quite a long time already, "Blogger" sends visitors from different countries to sites with different "country-codes", so to speak. If a reader comes from the USA and arrives at "Politicalgates", the reader sees the ".com" ending. A reader from the UK sees ".co.uk.", from Germany ".de", and so on.

So far this never affected Disqus, but a few days ago, everything got messed up. The US-readers could now only read the comments from US-readers, and could not see the other comments, and the visitors from "outside" could also not see the US-comments. As I said, a real mess.

This has been discussed today on the internal Disqus discussion forum...

...and fortunately, an easy solution has been found, which is being explained in this post.

Basically, you have to insert a code into your blogger template, and the blog will then always redirect to the ".com" domain, which again creates an "unified" comment section, just like it has always been the case.

It is not complicated - follow the instruction on this page, and look for the "head" tag in your blogger template, which appears after about 20 lines. After the "head" tag, you have to paste the additional code. Just press enter and copy and paste the short additional HTML-code which is being provided in the article mentioned above into your blogger template, after the "head" tag. Then save the template, and that's it!

So it seems that we can now enjoy the comments together again, hopefully without any further glitches!

Happy Easter! - Easter politics: Conservatives slam Sarah Palin for the disastrous performance of SarahPAC, get into epic twitter-fights with fanatical Palin-fans

By Patrick

Easter has arrived! Hope you all have a quiet and enjoyable time.

As it is traditional on Politicalgates on such occasions, let's post a little bit of music, for your enjoyment.

There is a "hot new boy group" in town, but this time, a little bit different. Three young Italian singers formed the group "Il Volo", and they are not your "average boy group." They sing so beautifully, that even Barbara Streisand" could not resist and performed together with them.

I found this really sweet recording of the three "boys" (born 1993, 1994 and 1995) together with Barbara Streisand, who also sings absolutely beautifully in this clip:

From Kathleen I got one of their CD's for Easter today (thank you, honey, I love you!), and it's very good! 

The next one is a magical song by the amazing "Webb Sisters", who we saw a few years ago when they toured together with Leonard Cohen - "Words that Mobilize" (read the lyrics):

The next song is a "classic." I love it: "Invincible" by Muse, an incredibly inspiring song:

OK, the next one is unusual. It's actually a commercial for Wrangler from brilliant director Jonathan Glazer. I include it not only because it is real art in my opinion, but my question is: Have any of you ever done such a "wild trip?" :-)

Check on youtube for more excellent commercials by Jonathan Glazer.

Jonathan Glazer also created very creative music videos (for Radiohead and others), for example "The Universal" for Blur:

OK, enough videos for today!

There is another message I would like to emphasize for Easter: Be nice to each other! I say that because during the last two days, we witnessed with astonishment how "pro-Palin" and "anti-Palin" right-wingers got into a series of pretty brutal cat- and/or dogfights on twitter.

The underlying cause for these fights was the reporting by Wonkette on the March 28 and by the Daily Beast on March 29. There it was reported by these outlets that Sarah Palin SarahPAC spent more than twice as much on consultants in the 2012 election cycle as it did on candidates, despite the fact that Sarah Palin slammed consultants as a profession in her recent CPAC speech. It was also reported that 94 percent of the whole expenditures of SarahPAC went to the "overhead."

This was partially caused by a devastating post by A.J. Delgado at Mediaite, who is an author with excellent conservative credentials (she even wrote a book about how "cool" it is to be conservative).

I say "partially" because her article was preceded by "conservative outrage" on twitter about the laughable financials of SarahPAC, where the "enemy of consultants" Sarah Palin spent virtually all her money on consultants. The right-wingers gave the Palinbots a good beating on twitter.

From our "new friend", the right-winger Nathan Wurtzel, who is a long-time Republican Consultant and fundraiser (no, not a friend, he blocked us on twitter for being "Trig Truthers"):

An exchange with fanatical Palin-fan Gary:

From the usually "pro-Palin" website "The Right Scoop":

The right-wingers are simply sick of Sarah Palin and her insufferable cultists.

In pretty amazing exchanges, some right-wingers even agreed that the conservative media is just a big propaganda machine:

Nathan Wurtzel with another right-wing friend:

I exchanged some tweets with the conservative author of the mediaite articel, A.J. Delgado:

The following were particularly good tweets by A.J. Delgado in my opinion:

Tweet 1:

Yes, debunked indeed! In the report of Alaska state investigator Tim Petumenos from June 21, 2010 it was publicly revealed for the first time that the State of Alaska was actually willing to pay for Sarah Palin's legal defence - but she refused, for reasons which remain in the dark up until today.

Quote from the report:

Tweet 2:

Tweet 3:

I tried to be a positive example for being nice on twitter, and had a very civil exchange with Palinbot and C4P-writer Adrienne Ross, in which she was surprisingly tight-lipped:

Same with Palinbot and C4P-writer Michelle McCormick, who didn't answer my question about the funds, and who really should ask Sarah Palin for Trig's birth certificate next time she sees her (just to make sure!):

So, we had lots of fun on twitter!

What's left to say on this memorable Easter 2013? Let's give the last word to grumpy cat! :-)