Firefox with adblocker makes a huge difference. Firefox alone is a tad faster but add the adblocker and this site now loads 100% faster.

I've always been able to block popups but the lag time is all of the advertisments on the top and side of the site that load each time. I just removed them all.

The sponsor's text link is there but not the block ad that takes so much time to load. So all of the advertisers show up, just not as graphic ads, which is probably responsible for the lengthy load times.