Traffic counter shenanigans
Tech stuff is not my strong suit. But as the owner of a blog, I’m forced to tackle it.
Years ago I had a kindly web developer helping me now and then, a relative of a relative. Most web developers of any skill will only take on large projects, and mine never was large. Now he’s unavailable, and so when something goes wrong I break out into a cold sweat and start pacing around and yelling at no one. And then I have to fix it myself.
The latest involved my site meter. My traffic used to be higher years ago. But natural attrition among older readers, fewer links to me, and perhaps better bot detection have reduced the traffic count.
But it’s still decent, although far from huge, and it’s been stable for several years. It goes up when there’s a big link and down a bit on weekends, but otherwise it’s quite predictable unless the blog goes down for a while. I don’t check it every day, but it shows traffic for a month.
Yesterday I checked it and was shocked to see that my traffic for the day was about 30% of the usual. That’s quite a dropoff. I couldn’t figure it out, and right up until yesterday the traffic was at the normal level.
Then I noticed that the people who administer the tracking site said that they had just installed a newer and even better bot blocker. So apparently, fewer bots were being counted, although they had supposedly been effectively blocked before.
Was it possible that over two-thirds of my traffic has been bots all this time? This was profoundly disturbing. Had I been living in a dream world till now?
I contacted the site and they suggested re-installing the code. It took me hours to figure out how to do that, but I did it. Unfortunately, there was no change. I also noticed that all the traffic that was being reported was said to be coming from “Icloud Private Relay,” which turns out to be a sort of VPN connected with Safari on Apple. So it seems the counter was filtering out all visitors but those.
I finally figured out something I think fixed it; I’ll skip the boring details. Now other visitors are being recorded as coming in from other sources. But I’ve lost faith in the counter.
I could install a different counter, and have many times. But every single one gets a wildly different count, and I’ve come to distrust all of them. Or, I could ignore traffic entirely and be grateful that you’re all here, however many of you there are.
The Virginia playbook: run as a moderate, govern as a radical
Spanberger’s very first order of business was reversing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47, which had allowed for coordination between the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That coordination was important because it allowed the federal and state governments to cooperate to remove people in the country illegally who had committed additional crimes. That it was necessary for Spanberger to make it harder to deport criminals is a tell that her moderate campaign commercials will instead translate into a much further left administration.
Spanberger isn’t alone in moving Virginia sharply leftward. Both branches of the state legislature are now also controlled by Democrats, and they’re introducing policies that no one campaigned on. House Bill 863 would reduce minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter and child pornography. If Spanberger ran on “let’s let rapists off easy,” the Virginia electorate somehow missed it. In fact, Spanberger’s campaign ads highlighted her law enforcement experience and that she’s a moderate who works with both sides of the political aisle.
More at the link.
Spanberger is in for four years.
Her approach makes Mamdani’s look good – at least, he campaigned on a radical platform. Maybe not as radical as the way he’ll govern, but close enough. Spanberger was more duplicitous. But voters don’t seem to learn; then again, maybe this is what the majority of Virginians really want. I doubt it, but maybe.
This author certainly perceived in advance what Spanberger was going to be doing; the following was written shortly before the election:
… [F]ew politicians, including Democrats, have been as partisan and divisive as Spanberger. The Heritage Action for America scorecard has given Spanberger half the rating of the average House Democrat, marking her as one of the most progressive Democrats in Congress and noting she has reached across the aisle far less than her Democrat colleagues. …
Under Governor Glenn Youngkin, Virginia has empowered parents, restored sanity to schools, and bolstered safety. Spanberger wants to reverse it all, returning to an extremist agenda for the state. Virginians deserve better than a governor who endangers girls and women while defending illegal gangsters and scandal-plagued allies. Her moderate mask is off—voters can see the truth.
Apparently they couldn’t see the truth. Or perhaps they did see it, and that’s what they chose.
What’s up with Trump and Iran?
I admit I haven’t been pleased with what’s going on lately from Trump on Iran. My main beef has been that he appeared to encourage the demonstrators with promises of help and then, when many were massacred, did nothing. I don’t think he caused the killings, which would have happened anyway. And he may have had good reasons for pulling back. But the whole process has left a distinctly bad impression and sends a weak, blustery message.
Trump is often blustery. But he’s not often weak.
And then, after the empty threats, it seemed (and still seems) odd to me that he appeared (and appears) to be willing to negotiate. Hadn’t he learned how fruitless that is with Iran? Does he think he can work some sort of magic with the mullahs? Or is he playing for time with another goal in mind?
Reports are pretty much useless, IMHO, because each party is posing and putting a spin on it that could be false. But if you read this sort of article, based partly on NY Times reporting, you get a gloomy feeling. Here’s a sample:
he U.S. delegation, led by Steve Witkoff, on Friday, conducted two rounds of inconclusive talks with the Iranian regime negotiators in the Gulf Arab state of Oman amid alarming reports that Tehran is relocating its weapons-grade nuclear material and rebuilding its ballistic missile stockpile. …
Iran appears to be dragging the negotiations, gaining time to crush the popular uprising and secure its nuclear and missile stockpile. The Guardian (UK) quoted Iranian negotiators, saying that “[f]urther talks are on the cards at a time and date yet to be determined.”
The regime seems pleased with how the talks are going. “It was a good start to the negotiations. And there is an understanding on continuing the talks,” Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Aragchi, said following the talks on Friday.
From the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage ordeal to the Obama-Kerry nuclear deal, the Mullah regime has always played for time while counting on the other side to make concessions or lose focus.
This isn’t esoteric information. Trump and his negotiators surely know it, unless they’ve lost their minds. Those who hate Trump and think he’s stupid probably don’t find these developments odd, but since I neither hate him nor think he’s stupid, at least so far, I am both surprised and puzzled.
The most benign explanation I can come up with is that it’s Trump himself who is playing for time, perhaps based on some Israeli information. Another less-good possibility is that he is so taken with the role of peacemaker that he’s making some poor calculations.
Open thread 2/6/2026
Guess what? There’s fraud and waste in red states too
This should come as no surprise:
Tapscott reported that the most startling takeaway from the 2024 audits (the latest available) was that “the results for the red states are strikingly similar to those of the blue states.” He noted that a sampling of those results “suggests huge waste, fraud, and corruption problems in how blue and red jurisdictions alike manage federal social welfare and other benefit fund programs.”
It shouldn’t be that difficult to put proper controls into the system. One has to conclude there’s little will to do so.
There are some interesting responses in the comments to the linked post. Several commenters point out that red states have blue cities with large populations, and that might be where the fraud occurs. Another commenter points out that some laws around these federal programs make it difficult to check up on the people receiving funds. And here’s another comment:
These programs were created in a high trust era where the public/taxpayer could mostly expect the bureaucracy not to allow fraud. Back then they’d still report shenanigans to supervisors who’d call in the cops and arrest the fraudsters. Today? Most of the bureaucracy is either enabling the fraud out of ideological conviction or too scared to report it b/c they’ve seen how other whistleblowers got hammered for sticking their head up. Many of the programs rely on aspects of ‘honor system’ v harsh audits. There’s many programs which offer instant acceptance based on approval for a different program…so if you scam your way into a single program you are automatically eligible for others without any scrutiny. These structures invite fraud.
Some or most of that is probably true.
The WaPo Dies In Darkness
It’s a sad day at the WaPo:
The Washington Post told staffers today that it was moving forward with a sweeping round of layoffs that was part of a “broad strategic reset” of the storied newspaper, which will include eliminating the sports desk, severely cutting back on its international coverage, dismantling its books section, and restructuring its local news team.
The WaPo had a sports desk?
More:
However, after emails were sent to staffers on Wednesday morning, it is expected that roughly one-third of staff — about 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom — will be laid off, with some staffers saying that this was a “bloodbath”.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” the Post’s former executive editor Marty Baron said Wednesday. “The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”
Now more than ever we need the WaPo’s propaganda, Baron seems to think. After all, the NY Times, The New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, the AP, and about a thousand other pro-left news outlets can hardly be expected to go it alone.
Speaking of the AP, here’s a sorrowful meditation by Dan Perry, a former editor at the AP, on what’s going on at the WaPo and why:
We faced a test over the past thirty years: Did we educate ourselves to value truth (and civility and justice and progress)? Do we care enough to pay enough to keep the machinery of reliable information going — the way we do for beer and sneakers? And guns in dumb places and guaranteed healthcare in smarter ones? Turns out that we did not.
“Reliable information” – he’s referring to the WaPo as a purveyor of reliable information. The irony could not be greater.
More:
People did not subscribe to The Washington Post because it was “digitally savvy.” They subscribed because it was authoritative, relentless, surprising, and serious. They subscribed because it had foreign correspondents who knew their regions, investigative reporters who knew their institutions, and editors who knew when to say no.
Actually, people subscribed to the WaPo because it told them what they wanted to hear, and what they wanted to hear was that Trump was evil and ultimately that he was in prison. The latter never happened, Bezos tried to make the paper slightly less leftist, and it lost some of the audience to which it had been catering – and began cratering.
Perry adds:
… [Bezos seemed to have] a belief that enforced “even-handedness” would broaden the audience and stabilize revenue. It did the opposite. Subscribers left in droves and trust eroded, with nary a Trumpist jumping on board. The Post lost identity at the moment it most needed clarity. People do not subscribe to legacy institutions for timid neutrality; they subscribe for intellectual confidence and moral seriousness.
As I said, they subscribe for confirmation of their already-existing belief system. But I think Perry is right that becoming a bit moe fair and balanced was never going to increase the WaPo’s revenue.
Open thread 2/5/2026
To stare or not to stare, that is the question:
Completely foreseeable result of the Epstein files dump
[Hat tip: commenter “Mike Plaiss.”]
From an editorial in the WSJ:
The Justice Department’s release of the so-called Epstein files has gone pretty much as skeptics warned. The feds published another three million pages on Friday. Such investigatory materials are usually kept private to protect innocent victims and witnesses—a lesson that Congress will now relearn at their expense.
Though the Justice Department sought to redact sensitive information, Congress mandated disclosure in 30 days. The Journal reports that last week’s documents initially failed to black out the names of at least 43 victims of Jeffrey Epstein, “including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.” Some of their addresses or email addresses were posted.
The files also included “dozens of unredacted nude images,” showing the faces and bodies of “young women or possibly teenagers,” the New York Times said. The Justice Department scrambled to fix the oversights. “You’re talking about pieces of paper that stack from the ground to two Eiffel Towers,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News. “We knew that there would be mistakes.”
Meantime, heinous accusations are circulating against prominent people, without any evidence they’re true. Since Epstein died in 2019, prosecutors have had time to chase real leads. The Epstein emails that show elites privately cozying up to a wealthy sex offender are embarrassing, but the government isn’t supposed to be in the business of posting scandalous raw evidence without a verifiable criminal case.
And yet this is what way too many people demanded. And now anyone who had dealings with Epstein is fodder for gossip and incorrect assumptions. Some are completely innocent. Some did smarmy and embarrassing but legal things. Casting the first stone is often so much fun, though, and good for clicks.
As Republican Representative Clay Higgins said when he voted to not release these files (apparently the only member of Congress to do so): the release “abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure” and “will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.”
The only good result I can see is that it should shut down demands for more – although there probably are many people who, disappointed in the evidence of actual crimes, think there’s still a big coverup and more files exist that would really implicate the elites, the Jews, or whomever is their particular target du jour.
I don’t like any of this, and I’ve written as much many times before (a typical example of such posts of mine can be found here).
Victor Davis Hanson health update
[Hat tip: commenter “Kate.”]
I want to call attention to this announcement from VDH:
… [H]ere is a brief update concerning my current temporary absence.
As I wrote, the removal of a cancerous lung mucinous adenoma carcinoma along with the lower right lung lobe roughly a month ago was successful.
But a post-op aneurism/bleed soon developed. That required a quick second reentry operation into the lung to stop the hemorrhaging—adding considerable time under anesthesia and requiring about five blood transfusions.
As a result, over the last 30 days, I developed low red blood counts, fatigue, and bouts of arterial fibrillation. All that has sort of slowed my recovery.
This type of nonsmoker’s lung cancer has a rare genetic/mutation profile. And it seems to recur about 40% of the time in the general lung area—even when, as in my case, the removed and biopsied lymph nodes, along with adjacent vascular/pleural samples, were all negative.
He adds that chemo is only slightly effective against the type of cancer he has, and he hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll do it. It certainly sounds as though he’s been through the mill.
The bottom line is that I’m hoping to come back as soon as possible. But I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back to near normal.
In the meantime, I hope to post things now and then on days when I feel better.
Sincerely—and again thanks to everyone!
Prayers and best wishes for healing go out to him.
NOTE: I’ll add that I have a very good friend who’s undergoing treatment for a cancer with a poor prognosis. Very distressing. I’m in that time of life when such news becomes more and more common. Many of you probably are, too.
Billie Eilish: “no one is illegal on stolen land”
Pop star Billie Eilish has been hit with calls to either return her $3 million Los Angeles mansion to a Native American tribe or welcome migrants inside following her controversial Grammys declaration.
The 24-year-old singer won a Grammy for her hit song Wildflower on Sunday, but it was her acceptance speech that got the country talking.
‘As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land,’ Eilish said, referencing the colonization of the Americas by Europeans.
As she stood alongside her brother Finneas, who co-wrote and produced the song, Eilish continued to address the ongoing immigration raids going on across the US.
‘It’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I just feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter,’ she said.
She concluded her brief but impassioned speech by shouting, ‘And f*** ICE, that’s all I’m gonna say. Sorry!’
Charming.
And I would have thought that, if the land is stolen, then everyone would be illegal except the original owners. But I also thought that native tribes didn’t have a concept of land ownership back then. This says as much:
The Native American concept of land ownership differs significantly from that of the European settlers who colonized the Americas or their descendants in that land could not be owned, only stewarded and lived with. The Earth is understood by Native Americans as a living, sentient being, and, therefore, no one can claim ownership.
To Native Americans, the Earth is one’s relative, requiring respect and care, as are all the animals and plant life the land supports. The definition of one’s ‘relatives’ encompasses all living things, not just the members of one’s family, and so, just as one would not claim to ‘own’ a relative, one cannot own the land; one can only act as a steward in caring for it. The European settlers’ understanding of the land was quite different …
The Tongva tribe had this to say to Eilish, however:
‘As the First People of the greater Los Angeles basin, we do understand that her home is situated in our ancestral land,’ they stated, adding that the A-lister has not reached out to the tribe herself.
‘Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property, we do value the instance when Public Figures provide visibility to the true history of this country,’ the spokesperson continued.
Well, Eilish already stated that no one is illegal on stolen land, so that would include her as not being illegal. However, she seems to think this guy is illegal:
… [T]he Birds of a Feather performer obtained a restraining order against a man who she said was stalking her and threatening her family and friends in 2023.
A man named Shawn Christopher McIntyre was ordered by a court to keep a distance of a minimum of 100 yards from Eilish, 21, her family and her friend Zoe Donahoe, TMZ reported, citing court docs. obtained a restraining order against a man who she said was stalking her and threatening her family and friends in 2023.
I wouldn’t ordinarily pay attention to the words of Eilish at the Grammys (or anywhere, really). But this was too ironic – and too typical of leftist celebrities – to ignore.