February 4, 2018

My Ukrainian mystery.

You may remember that I was getting inexplicable traffic from Dnipro.

I look at Google Analytics today, and Dnipro is off my top cities list, which looks like this now:


Click to enlarge. The short answer is: #1 is Kiev.

202 comments:

1 – 200 of 202   Newer›   Newest»
David Begley said...

In other news, former CIA director John O. Brennan is now a paid shill for NBC as he spouts his coverup opinions in order to attack Trump. What a sham.

Dave said...

How many websites have Google analytics installed?

Suppose I want to not be tracked by Google. It is not simple enough to simply stop using Google's products since analytics is installed on so many sites.

What does Google know about me? Any health issues I search for, any politics I look at, who my family is, where I live, where I travel, everything.

And Google is dominated by Social Justice Bullies/Democrats who have no problems with issues concerning means/ends ethics.

Oso Negro said...

I keep telling you - it is n.n. spying for the Russkies. I would be SHOCKED if any of your commenters has visited your blog while physically present in Ukraine as much as I have these past four years.

tcrosse said...

Next week, Odessa.

Herb said...

Perhaps Inga has moved to Kiev...

Michael The Magnificent said...

It's the Ruskies using Scott Walker's secret router!

chickelit said...

Heh. Althouse is just now figuring out that most of her Trump-supporting commenters are just Russian bots, who, if they haven't yet heard from Mueller, shortly will.

robother said...

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Dave said...

Я не русский бот

mockturtle said...

Reading Althouse is better than reading the NYT for getting a taste of American values.

Fernandinande said...

Я доказываю, что я не робот.

Oso Negro said...

@mockturtle - Do you consider the New York Times entirely American?

sane_voter said...

Is that dot in the south Pacific Auckland NZ? And there is a dot at what looks to be Anchorage, Alaska and a couple in Hawaii.

Sean Gleeson said...

You have a way to check your referrers in Analytics, don’t you? See if there is a referrer from Ukraine. You may just have been mentioned on some high-traffic website there.

Narayanan said...

Qed: this blog is drop box for code messages to field operatives routed through Ukraine.
Server is in moving vehicle.

Dave said...

Вся ваша база принадлежит нам.

chickelit said...

The walrus is Paul (Soglin).

chickelit said...

@Dave: Any message ending in "ham" just makes me Hungary.

Kansas Scout said...

I have a blog (no longer contributing but still there) that used to get traffic from some very odd places considering it was about Old Time Ozark and Appalachian music. It was not that much but as it went along it was common to see visits from odd locations. Perhaps these visits are from computers sweeping the web by an algorithum with no person at the keyboard?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Perhaps Inga has moved to Kiev...”

Except that I’m not a Trump supporting Russian...

Dave said...

Lena Dunham...

Known Unknown said...

"Except that I’m not a Trump supporting Russian..."

Explain to me how a fracking-supporting President (the current one) is closely allied with a petrostate whose economy hinges on the continued production of oil?



Known Unknown said...

Also, Kiev is in Ukraine. Ukrainians probably do not consider themselves Russians.

chickelit said...

My code name is "Chickelit Kiev."

Ipso Fatso said...

For the record, I like Inga even though I do not agree with her most of the time. Inca, I hope things in Kiev are good.

Ipso Fatso said...

Correction: Inga. My bad.

chickelit said...

Dave said...Lena Dunham...

Don't get stuck in the pabst. She's actually looking good these days.

Seeing Red said...

Ooh can't you feel it?

The Russian bots are seeping into our brains.

Trump...Trump...Trump.....


I'm mesmerized.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Da, da all is good.

FIDO said...

First analysis:

You have some Russian computer guys trying to get credit card info from your Amazon portal or who are USING your Amazon portal to try to use other people's personal information to buy stuff.

Clyde said...

"Don't get stuck in the pabst." Wise advice. Life is too short to drink cheap beer!

Big Mike said...

Looking at who posts the most comments here one thing is clear: Inga, Toothless, and/or ARM are Ukrainians. A logical corollary is that Europeans fear the resurgent America that Trump is delivering.

Narayanan said...

Cheap beer was life extension treatment in middle ages and earlier.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Я не російський бот, я український бот

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Looking at who posts the most comments here one thing is clear: Inga, Toothless, and/or ARM are Ukrainians. A logical corollary is that Europeans fear the resurgent America that Trump is delivering.”

No, I’d say Drago is the Russian. He posts here more than I do. ARM doesn’t post for days on end at times, neither does TTR. I bet it’s Russia loving Ukrainians.

Also news flash BM, Russians love Trump.

Mike Sylwester said...

I write a blog about the movie Dirty Dancing. I don't have (as far as I know) Google Analytics; I use just the simple statistics feature of Blogger.

Recently there have been two periods when my pageviews went way up. When I looked at Blogger's Audience feature, I saw that the pageviews went way up because of France.

Right now, I am in the second such period, and again the reason is France. Right now, Blogger shows me this table for the past week:

France = 4,018 pageviews

USA = 649

Italy = 241

United Kingdom = 200

Australia = 75

Germany = 66

Canada = 42

Spain = 32

Ireland = 17

Poland = 11

In the previous period, France's pageviews were even more disproportionate. The previous period lasted for about two weeks, and then the French pageviews went down to normal (similar to Germany's).

Neither of these two periods seem to be related to any posts that would be of special interest to people in France. Perhaps there is some very popular blog in France that linked to me on those two occasions.

The first period corresponded with my series of posts showing videos of the song "Be My Baby".

https://dirty-dancing-analysis.blogspot.com/2017/12/be-my-baby-1.html

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Inga,

Tak not da. Ukrainians are not Russians. They have their own language. Ukraine colluded with Hillary to interfere in our election.

Big Mike said...

@Known Unknown, referring to a Ukrainian as a “Russian” is a deadly insult. Don’t do it to their faces without good healthcare coverage.

Ficta said...

TOR exit node traffic? That would be my guess.

chickelit said...

Clyde said...'Don't get stuck in the pabst.' Wise advice. Life is too short to drink cheap beer!

I'm bringing Maui Brewing's "Bikini Blonde Lager" and Barley Forge's "Orange Curtain IPA" to a Superbowl party. What do others drink during the game?

Dave said...

Nice blog you have there Lem. Some old names around.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Inga,

Tak not da. Ukrainians are not Russians. They have their own language. Ukraine colluded with Hillary to interfere in our election.”

Tak, tak, but aren’t there Ukrainians that corroborated with the Russians during the Russian invasion into Ukraine? Didn’t Manafort have big dealings with Victor Yanukovich and the pro Russian Urkrainains? Yes, I think he did.

tcrosse said...

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

rhhardin said...

It might be a bot.

$ Hello, I am Eliza.

* You may remember that I was getting inexplicable traffic from Dnipro.

$ We were discussing you, not me.

chickelit said...

I just looked at my stats for my blog "El Pollo Real." Proud to report the audience is overwhelmingly American.

Mike Sylwester said...

For the record, I like Inga

And I like her !!

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Russian Alehouse meddling...

Make Vodka Great Again ;)

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Aw thanks Mike S and IpsoFatso! It’s always nice to be liked among a sea of people who think leftists are the enemy. Maybe one day you guys can save my ass when the lefties are rounded up.

Mike Sylwester said...

Maybe one day you guys can save my ass when the lefties are rounded up.

I'll come to the concentration camp and slip you a crust of bread through the barbed wire.

Achilles said...

Dave said...
How many websites have Google analytics installed?

That's not how it works. If you don't use anonymous browsing they are tracking you. Websites don't have to install anything to get your meta data when you visit.

Suppose I want to not be tracked by Google. It is not simple enough to simply stop using Google's products since analytics is installed on so many sites.

Your browser will have an anonymous browsing option. But people who understand IP would be able to find you.

If you want to use the internet anonymously look up TOR. The Onion Router. It is not difficult to use. Your browser will also have an anonymous browsing option.

What does Google know about me? Any health issues I search for, any politics I look at, who my family is, where I live, where I travel, everything.

And Google is dominated by Social Justice Bullies/Democrats who have no problems with issues concerning means/ends ethics.


All true. More than most people know and more than you said.

JaimeRoberto said...

Maybe Althouse's followers are on a strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.

Paul Zrimsek said...

It might be one of those things like the French and Jerry Lewis.

Big Mike said...

Okay, fun’s fun but from a cyber security perspective the most likely reason is that one or more of our most enthusiastic commentators post via an organization that does ip masking, using a randomly produced ip address instead of their real one.

Known Unknown said...

"I write a blog about the movie Dirty Dancing."

This made my day.

Achilles said...

"My Ukrainian mystery."

That is your new visitors tab. If you put up a post about an area it has a chance to pop up in local media/discussion. If I was pushing a content site I would put up an interesting local story or post and have facebook/google focus ads in that area. Sometimes it works for free. If you got 1 in 20 to be a regular visitor you are victorious.

I don't know how big Dnipro is or how close it is to Kiev but most of their traffic probably goes through a large hub and Kiev probably fits the bill. If it is a suburb or some such everyone from the Dnipro area will show up as visiting from Kiev. Especially in less well developed areas of the world.

Big Mike said...

Achilles is correct, of course. I teach a cyber class as an adjunct professor at a local college but I have been retired for 2 1/2 years now so who knows what’s the latest material. Wish I could run my slides past you for review and comment.

YoungHegelian said...

Here's the problem with the Kiev located IP addresses being a commenter: look at the bounce rate.** It's basically 100%. A commenter wouldn't produce a bounce rate like that, as can be seen from the other cities (e.g Washington) which have a higher percentage of regular commenters. Something else is up.

**"Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits (or web sessions). It is the number of visits in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without browsing any further."

Big Mike said...

@Achilles, “Dnipro” is likely to be short for Dniprodzerzhynsk, and it seems to be a good-sized city. It’s in the Ukraine, but not all that close to Kiev.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

A logical corollary is that Europeans fear the resurgent America that Trump is delivering.

Resurgence? Lol. A resurgent chest being beaten by a resurgent fist.

I challenge all these Republican Russian agents to explain to me how Trump is doing anything differently than what Republicans were doing prior to 2008 and 1929.

You say you want a full depression well you know.
We'd love to think we're billionaires.
You tell me it's just about taxation, well you know.
We can see you're putting on airs.

But when you talk about restructuring.
Don't you know that you can count me out.

Achilles said...

Big Mike said...
Achilles is correct, of course. I teach a cyber class as an adjunct professor at a local college but I have been retired for 2 1/2 years now so who knows what’s the latest material. Wish I could run my slides past you for review and comment.

Oh no. I am no where near your level of experience. I am a CS Masters student, taken some courses, and I went to Pink Elephant Unicorn. One of my mid term goals is to set up a network "play-area." It is a field that I plan on entering. My operational security experience is in cell phone communication/acquisition field stuff. Going to the software side now.

I known enough to get in trouble and screw things up. I was going to post some other stuff but I still hold back. Anyone can recommend TOR.

Achilles said...

And before I forget the real culprit in all of this is Chrome. Over 50% of web traffic uses the Chrome browser.

I use Chrome for the web developer tools.

Other browsers do a better job of pretending to care about privacy. Chrome just shovels everything you do back to google whatever you do anonymous or not.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

Resurgence? Lol. A resurgent chest being beaten by a resurgent fist.

Wages are up for the first time in 10 years TTR.

Someone put some policies up that actually focus on the lower end of the wage spectrum and wages are going up.

Rejoice.

Rabel said...

Blogger has a blog. Have you asked them?

Curious George said...

This is why I love the internet.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Wages are up for the first time in 10 years TTR.

Why shouldn't they be? 10 years ago your party put us into a depression.

And for ten years it put the breaks on any stimulus.

It's possible Trump's doing "some things" that are helping.

But we'll see how this all turns out long-term.

I do know that the tax breaks are permanent for the billionaires, and temporary for everyone else.

You think Trump wants to help America long-term or just find a short-term way to shine glory onto himself and his administration?

Historical experience, especially with Republicans, suggests the latter.

And the current state of the economy is due to international performance, not American.

It's difficult to find an economist who attributes any current performance to Trump, rather than to long-term trends set in motion by Obama.

History is long and trends take time. Republican attention-spans are short and their concerns change on a dime.

Big Mike said...

Achilles, when you finish up your studies let's try to figure out how I can write a letter of recommendation for you to the CISO of my old company. If you could see our (there I go, 30 months out and I still call them "our") Corporate Security Operations Center (pronounced "See-Sock") I think you'd really get a kick out of it.

Have you studied SQL Intrusion? That was the main attack vector for us (there I go again) for a long time. That and the insider threat. Three cheers when commercial SQL Injection filters became available.

Can I ask what you use for textbooks? The one I'm using is the 3rd ed. of Joseph Migga Kizza's Guide to Computer Network Security but I'm always on the lookout for better.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Wages are up for the first time in 10 years TTR.

Why shouldn't they be? 10 years ago your party put us into a depression.

Only a troll or an idiot would post that.

It was government policies that were supported by all democrats and a few by republicans. All uniparty traitors. The same people who are now trying to pull a coup on Trump got rich off Fanny and Freddie and caused the 2008 crash

I know you are in a foul mood because your democrat heroes are about to start doing perp walks.

We are actually going to do what you say you want to do.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

So Amtrak just experienced a crash that killed some Americans.

I guess this is the Trump focus on improving our infrastructure in action.

Can't he just get quality without paying for it... the way he stiffed his contractors?

What a bitter reckoning. Oh well. With the 10 trillion dollar deficit increase his rich cronies just ordered up, there should be plenty in the budget to NOT keep our trains safe.

Making America Deadly Again. For Americans.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It was government policies that were supported by all democrats and a few by republicans.

In 1929?

Like deregulating Wall Street and repealing Glass-Steagall?

Let me know how progressive Bill Clinton was. Crime Bill. Welfare reform. Defense of Marriage Act. Don't Ask Don't Tell. NAFTA. Wall Street deregulation. Pretty progressive stuff? Right? Not COC/DLC, conservative, corporatist at all. He was your Republican establishment's wet dream.

I'm not here to talk up Democrats. Certainly not the way you're here to talk up Republicans, anyway.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga wrote:

"Except that I’m not a Trump supporting Russian..."

We already knew you didn't support Trump, you don't have to tell us again.

Big Mike said...

10 years ago your party put us into a depression.

My party put us into a recession (emphatically not a depression!). Here's that noted Democrat Barney Frank explaining why he and the Democrat leadership fought Bush's efforts to strengthen the reserves for Fannie and Freddie.

I'd apportion the blame as 10% George W. Bush for not pushing harder to assure that Fannie and Freddie could cope with the bursting of the housing bubble, 50% to the Democrats leadership in the House of Representatives, and 40% to the voters of 2006 for electing the Democrats, despite being aware of their congenital economic illiteracy.

Bottom line, between Clinton's election in 1992 and Trump's inauguration in 2017 you had a quarter century of addressing poverty via programs (like Midnight Basketball). Trump is addressing poverty by providing jobs.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

If Trump is all about "draining some swamp" then why did he staff his cabinet with them and deregulate everything they do on Wall Street?

Apparently his idea of "law and order" begins with the DEA and ends at the SEC.

His cabinet is so heavily staffed by billionaire swamp creatures I half-expect the camera taping their proceedings to pan out to an edge of the table and transmit an image of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sitting comfortably in between Steve Mnuchin and Betsy DuVos.

YoungHegelian said...

Are there any commonalities in the referral pages (a heading on the Analytics report) from Ukrainian/Russian sites? For example, I'm sure that instapundit.com is a common referral site to your site for US traffic.

If there are no commonalities in the referral sites then probably for some reason some Ukrainian crawler-bot is checking out your site. It could be, since the Ukraine does a lot of website development, that some clown is developing his new & improved , sooper-dooper web site crawler-bot, & well, he hasn't quite worked the bugs out yet & so it gets "stuck" on sites it visits.

Big Mike said...

Getting rid of Glass-Steagall was a Bill Clinton initiative.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I'd apportion the blame as 10% George W. Bush for not pushing harder to assure that Fannie and Freddie could cope with the bursting of the housing bubble, 50% to the Democrats leadership in the House of Representatives, and 40% to the voters of 2006 for electing the Democrats, despite being aware of their congenital economic illiteracy.

40% Bill Clinton for signing the Glass-Steagall repeal, 30% the Republicans who pushed for it, 10% Wall Street that runs our government and lobbied for it, 10% GWB and his congressional congress critter Republicans for not having a clue as to what would happen and 5% the people who didn't care. 5 more % if you want to blame people and legislators for making the lending standards more bizarre and lax. We have to leave something in there to blame on poor people, aspiring homeowners, minorities that were historically redlined and other people with the last amount of power who just wanted to share in the American dream. Obviously they're the biggest problem you think this country has, right?

Francisco D said...

OT, but relevant to those claiming that Gowdy threw Nunes and Trump under the bus.

"“They could have easily said it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton. That would have been really easy,” Mr. Gowdy told CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to footnotes in the agents’ request to the court. “It took longer to explain it the way they did, than if they just come right out and said, ‘Hillary Clinton for America and DNC paid for it.’ But they didn’t do that.”

Of course, now Gowdy is a traitor and a Russian spy.

/sarc off

Ipso Fatso said...

Inga, I live in Chicago, trust me I will be the one in a camp long before you.

Achilles said...

Big Mike said...
Achilles, when you finish up your studies let's try to figure out how I can write a letter of recommendation for you to the CISO of my old company. If you could see our (there I go, 30 months out and I still call them "our") Corporate Security Operations Center (pronounced "See-Sock") I think you'd really get a kick out of it.

I really appreciate that. Finding a place that can tolerate me will be interesting.

Have you studied SQL Intrusion? That was the main attack vector for us (there I go again) for a long time. That and the insider threat. Three cheers when commercial SQL Injection filters became available.

Only on the broadest level. Haven't actually done it and my forays into SQL as a student have been fraught with peril.

Can I ask what you use for textbooks? The one I'm using is the 3rd ed. of Joseph Migga Kizza's Guide to Computer Network Security but I'm always on the lookout for better.

I am he worst student in the world. Me and textbooks don't get along. I wish I could be more help. At this moment I am being forced to use Introduction to Algorithms Third edition because all of the homework is in it. Algorithms is the underpants gnomes field of math. Induction et al. in my opinion is literally:

1. State the problem

2. ...(lets guess...)

3. Problem solved!

Kills me...

The Java PDP course that is crushing me at the moment has a text book. Somewhere...

In general I watch youtube videos at 1.5-2x speed. Youtube is generally where I go for basic instruction.

Big Mike said...

@Achilles

Finding a place that can tolerate me will be interesting. My old company is a defense contractor, so if you are hard to tolerate because your politics are right of center, that won't be a difficulty. If you are hard to tolerate because you do crappy work, that would be quite a problem. If your issue is that you come to work buck naked, the female employees may object (or perhaps not, these days).

And, take from this old mathematician, that's not exactly how induction works.

Big Mike said...

@Francisco, consider this. Suppose Trey Gowdy is angling to replace Rod Rosenstein. Would he publicly blast Mueller, which would give the bad guys (i.e., the Democrat senators) a handle they could use to oppose his nomination? Or would he give every indication of strongly supporting Mueller, so that it seems almost plausible when he expresses his deep sadness at the "discovery" that Mueller's investigation is going nowhere and needs to be terminated for the good of the country?

Live in the Washington area long enough, and the word "cynical" takes on a depth of meaning you once would have though impossible to attain.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

FFS now Putin is getting talking points from Inga, Peanut Sitter and the LLR!

Achilles said...

Big Mike said...
Getting rid of Glass-Steagall was a Bill Clinton initiative.

That was a swamp initiative. Uniparty if you will.

It is pretty clear that the Republican party and the Democrat party were operationally aligned before Trump.

What was Bush's greatest "achievement" domestically? It was an entitlement/giant subsidy to Big Pharma funded by taxpayers.

Romney wrote and implemented Obamacare for gods sake.

And Romney and Bush clearly wanted Hillary to win.

Look at all the neocons now being approvingly quoted by leftists yesterday. wwww made the most hilarious list of "approved" reading on the memo possible. Every source was a never-trump neo-con the leftists previously wanted thrown in jail.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

So how much does everyone think the Trump Family tax cuts were worth? $10 trillion in debt? More?

Trump is truly a tax-cut and spend president.

Just let me know if it's worth it and how high you want the debt to go to finance the billionaires' boons.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

TTR bleats with baited breath, that’s. right, “baited,” It’s like somebody dumped a chum bucket. It broke TTR’s heart to see the Berlin Wall come down, and every time one of Castro’s snipers misses a swimmer trying to escape Cuba to Guantanamo, he says “Drat!”

So there really is no discussion with him. He is right, you are wrong and there are not enough insults in the English language to apply to you. It’s “science”!

Francisco D said...

@ Big Mike,

I think Trey Gowdy is playing this very carefully. I am not sure what he is angling for.

Your speculation makes good sense, but at this point it is just speculation.

My speculation is that Rosenstein stays, but has the Sword of Damocles over his head. He will be expected to keep Mueller from going even further beyond his mandate. This is just a reasoned guess. Time will tell.

Trump seems to be playing chess while his opponents in the MSM and DNC are playing checkers. He may be a better actor (i.e., playing a brash, unsophisticated, bull shit artist) than anyone realizes.

Big Mike said...

So how much does everyone think the Trump Family [sic] tax cuts were worth? $10 trillion in debt? More?

Less than $500 Billion over ten years, or about 2/3 to 1/2 what Obama wasted in one year with his phony-bologna "stimulus" (that stimulated nothing).

Speaking of infrastructure, first reports on the Amtrak crash are that the Amtrak passenger train was on the wrong track. Not an infrastructure issue (that we know of, yet) but apparently human error. Same as the wreck out by Seattle.

wwww said...



The bots set up to look like individual users.

Why the blog is getting targeted, I can't say. It's possible the bots are attempting to leave comments, but are getting caught with the verification.

Ukraine makes me think Russia, and of course they have got shells over there. The bots were on a release the memo campaign on twitter. Haven't heard of them targeting blogs. Strange for sure.

Weirdness!

Big Mike said...

Your speculation makes good sense, but at this point it is just speculation.

@Francisco, you are absolutely correct. I lived in or around Washington for nearly fifty years, and counted numerous federal employees among my circle of friends. My cynicism is well-honed. It's all kabuki.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

“Just years apart in the 1990s, they both gave up their top-tier private law firm jobs to return to the trenches of prosecuting criminals — Mueller as a junior prosecutor in Washington, DC, and Comey in Richmond, Virginia,” Washingtonian reports. “Both men were rising stars mentored and guided by Eric Holder in the 1990s during Holder’s time in the Justice Department under the Clinton administration.”. - Washington Post

Yeah, OK.

How how much money did Marc Rich save in taxes when Eric Holder got him that pardon from Clinton?

Big Mike said...

Ukraine makes me think Russia,

Don't let a Ukrainian catch you saying that! See my comment at 10:35.

Francisco D said...

"It's all kabuki."

Yes. And the actors seem to be playing us for fools.

Not this time.

Big Mike said...

Gotta bail. I have papers to grade before tomorrow.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Speaking of infrastructure, first reports on the Amtrak crash are that the Amtrak passenger train was on the wrong track. Not an infrastructure issue (that we know of, yet) but apparently human error. Same as the wreck out by Seattle.

Yes! Because human capital is not a cost to infrastructure! The train companies were supposed to run without any humans!

BTW, your Trump-debt numbers are way off and the entire discipline known as "economics" disagrees with your hatred for stimulus.

Dave said...

http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_block_your_browser_from_sending_information_to_Google_Analytics

If anyone cares.

Achilles says "it doesn't work that way" and I don't know what he means. I am entirely used to students knowing more than me, so I am sure there is something I am missing.

Achilles, can you explain a bit more? I personally am considering a dedicated VPN, which ironically enough, the USA is one of the best places for that because there are no logging laws. You can cut down any old tree you want.

On my Android at least, using TOR to access blogger (google) is very slow compared to other sites. I suspect this is done on purpose, but it might not be.

I do just fine with Firefox's dev tools, but I always test in multiple browsers. Firefox is really good for seeing what is happening with XS REST calls.

I like Inga too, though we disagree entirely.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Is me. I am Russian spy! This blog of Moose and Squirrel, no?

Note similarity of writing style herein displayed to most clever dossier!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I never had a discussion about any of those things but it helps Tim in Vermont's life in his fact-free world to imagine that I did.

Dave said...

"Because human capital is not a cost to infrastructure!"

I believe in infrastructure as code. It makes it easier for all of us here in Moscow.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

I think that a tl;dr version of Rosenstien’s words could be “The Constitution is nothing but a god damn piece of paper!”

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You're a fan of Putin's Russia now, are you Tim?

You like the way he runs it and think we need more of that over here.

BTW, I know you love Russia and see it as your mother country but I never anticipated you'd be such a fan of Facebook as to let them act as the clearinghouse for Russian-American election campaign ads.

What other things should Facebook be in charge of when it comes to our elections and government?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“I like Inga too, though we disagree entirely.”

WooHoo! Another fan. Thank you from the cockles of my heart. I am so blessed, who could’ve guessed today would be a “I like Inga” day for me at Althouse?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Tim in Vladivostok misses his days in the Siberian labor camps.

Make Siberia Great Again!

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

his fact-free world to imagine that I did.

I bet you didn’t. Too painful.

My point about TTR, since using figurative language confuses him terribly, is that he is a socialist and believes, like the old joke about Dukakis, that take home pay is defined as a “lost revenue opportunity.”

Ooops, used another joke! When dealing with an intellect at the level of a small child, one must be relentlessly literal. TTR believes that the government can spend your money far better than you can. If you disagree with him, he believes that you are being dishonest out of selfishness.

Anyway, if kerosene breath doesn’t understand that post, I give up.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Inga, if we didn’t like you, we would just completely ignore you.

Achilles said...

Big Mike said...
@Achilles

Finding a place that can tolerate me will be interesting. My old company is a defense contractor, so if you are hard to tolerate because your politics are right of center, that won't be a difficulty. If you are hard to tolerate because you do crappy work, that would be quite a problem. If your issue is that you come to work buck naked, the female employees may object (or perhaps not, these days).

Closer to the last option. More mentally than anything else, I dress in Khaki's made from flexible material and shirts almost exclusively. The defense industry is definitely going to be more receptive. Constantly a square peg surrounded by round holes. Not tall or pretty enough to carry it off.

And, take from this old mathematician, that's not exactly how induction works.

Standing in lecture about two weeks ago I forced a 5 minute discussion about the nature of the induction step. The term "Hand waving" was used liberally by all parties.

I think it is the difference between how a real mathematician sees it and a software designer sees it. It seems like all we care about in class is Big O. Theta and methods to avoid Big O seem more important to me...

Grunts have a tendency to find the lowest common denominator in everything.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Just to be clear, TTR never used the words “Take home pay is defined as a lost revenue opportunity.”

It was a joke. So don’t call me a liar simple one.

Dave said...

Not every bot is a human impersonator. There are thousands of automated processes targeting web servers. Within 5 minutes of bringing a server online on port 80 (www), it will be the recipient of an automated attack.

The huge automated DDOS attack that killed the east coast last year? Russia? Nope.

It was tween Minecraft entrepreneurs from the USA.

https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet/

Raw logs are a horrible thing to behold. At least turn them into rough cut lumber.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

It’s Usman! He’s the Russian/Ukrainian bot!

buwaya said...

Mueller didn't spend much time in private practice. Early on at Pillsbury Madison &Sutro in SF (1973-76).
I think he was subsequently off the USG payroll for periods of about a year (1988-89) and two years (93-95), and then in semi-gov't work (special master, etc.) from 2013-2017.

Other than that it was US DOJ employment for 33-34 years or so.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Achilles, TTR has a “more sophisticated understand of the law of supply and demand.” <<-- he said that. You see, flooding the US with cheap unskilled labor doesn’t hold down wages! All you have to do is declare a higher minimum wage! (I think that is what he thinks, the minimum wage thing, anyway), I don’t know how he is going to overcome the inflow of scabs into the US willing to work off the books with no benefits especially not health insurance, but I am sure it involves a lot of government hamfistedness.

It must be godawful frightening to him to thin about what keeping his stable of racehorses would cost without illegal alien labor, let alone his string of polo ponies, or “poloponies” as he calls them! <<- Joke TTR, Joke.

Jim at said...

Except that I’m not a Trump supporting Russian...

Kiev isn't in Russia, genius.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Kiev isn't in Russia, genius.”

No one said it was you retarded gnat.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

My point about TTR, since using figurative language confuses him terribly, is that he is a socialist and believes...

And you're an anti-social anti-social personality disordered fantasist who thinks that cooperation doesn't allow billionaires to compete against the working class easily enough and is troubled by that. You really do want a society that is at war with itself and must do all it can to stop any cooperation from getting in the way of its prime objective of competing against everyone.

DanTheMan said...

>>Maybe one day you guys can save my ass when the lefties are rounded up.

Well, maybe a little reeducation might do you some good. You do seem to know a lot that isn't true.

Should the lefties ever try to start rounding us up, I'd share some advice: When you come for me, don't send anybody you want back.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Achilles, TTR has a “more sophisticated understand of the law of supply and demand.” <<-- he said that.

I didn't say that. I said that economists need to account for data and facts whereas economist-haters like you only account for your strong feelings - in this case your strong, hateful feelings against immigrants.

This allows you to delude yourself into believing that xenophobia is the only economic policy worth having.

buwaya said...

I find it odd that so many people find Russia such a big threat to, well, its not clear what.

A genuinely powerful rival it isn't. It does not seem likely that it can mobilize any conventional force sufficient to threaten anyone but small fry. Its in terrible fiscal shape and has a very unresilient economy. Its only advantage is the residual military and institutional capital left over from the Soviet Union.

China is enormously more powerful economically, actively threatening the Pax Americana in strategic places, and expanding its strategic forces much faster than the US, its navy for instance. Both its air and naval forces are several times the size of those of Russia. And its got some very serious technical challenges to the US, with, for instance, as far as we know, Quantum technology that the US is way behind on.

Putin is a sleazy sort and an opportunist, but on the whole he is a small-time gangster.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Well, maybe a little reeducation might do you some good. You do seem to know a lot that isn't true.”

Scratch a Trumpist...you know the rest.

buwaya said...

When anyone starts rounding up anyone else, the secret weapon is a passport.

buwaya said...

The US has re-education camps already.
They have been in place in corporate America for decades, in US schools and universities, and their ideological line is being enforced with the greatest strictness.

In true US capitalist form, the US has successfully outsourced its re-education camp function.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

He did say it.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

When you come for me, don’t send anybody you want back.

LOL

DanTheMan said...

>>Scratch a Trumpist...you know the rest.

the rest...

"... you're likely to find somebody that loves the United States, mom, apple pie, and freedom."



buwaya said...

Its very interesting, actually, that China is not (or is very rarely) mentioned as a propaganda bogeymen of any side, other than in the most technical military-strategic venues.

A paranoid fellow (as we should all be) may come to suspect that there is a reason behind this. A dog not barking.

Mary Beth said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

So Amtrak just experienced a crash that killed some Americans.

I guess this is the Trump focus on improving our infrastructure in action.

2/4/18, 11:58 AM


The train was on the wrong track. According to The NYT, "While it was too early to speculate as to what might have happened, “it appears that one or the other of the trains failed to obey a signal." (The two trains are the Amtrak one and a CSX freight train that was stationary.

Just how does this equal Trump "Making America Deadly Again. For Americans"? You know what happens when you keep crying "wolf!" when there's no wolf.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

I find it odd that so many people find Russia such a big threat to, well, its not clear what.

Well, Hillary lost the election. A couple years before, it was all “Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house!” and “The eighties called, and they want their foreign policy back.”

Personally, I am all for getting along with Russia and staying out of proxy wars with them. There was a commenter hear yesterday, GWash, who said that it was because I put my membership in the white race above my citizenship in the United Sates. It shows you how dangerous propaganda is. These anti-Trump people are deranged to the point of beating the war drums against a guy that, frankly, is getting his ass kicked right now by US energy production. Ooop! “Supply and demand” again, that controversial law of economics!

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“....you're likely to find somebody that loves the United States, mom, apple pie, and freedom."

Like me! Although I prefer cherry pie.

Seeing Red said...

10 years ago your party put us into a depression.



Some of us have parents who were actually born during the Depression.







Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Recently there have been two periods when my pageviews went way up. When I looked at Blogger’s Audience feature, I saw that the pageviews went way up because of France.

You never know with that country. I rented a condo there once for a week, there were 150 channels, once there were two different Jerry Lewis movies on at the same time.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Like me! Although I prefer cherry pie

There is a small batch distillery in Door County Wisconsin that makes vodka from cherries. It’s pinkish but doesn’t taste like cherries, just tastes like the best vodka I have ever had.

Ann Althouse said...

"You have a way to check your referrers in Analytics, don’t you? See if there is a referrer from Ukraine. You may just have been mentioned on some high-traffic website there."

No, nothing at all like that happening. They aren't going to a particular post, but the front page.

Ann Althouse said...

More than 90% of my traffic comes in on the front page.

Francisco D said...

Russia strikes me as a mobster operation with Putin as capo, a big-time version of Tony Soprano.

Putin and his cronies are primarily concerned with enriching themselves. They do business with other mob operations, like the Clinton Crime Family. Bill and the foundation get money, the Russians get uranium and other goodies. It's a simple mob transaction.

Trump is facilitating America drilling for oil. That depresses prices and costs the world's leading oil exporter to lose money.

Lefty reasoning: Trump is in bed with the Russians because .... ?

If I could read Vlad's mind, I would find that he is terribly disappointed that Hillary lost. It's costing him a lot of money.

Oso Negro said...

@Francisco D - Damn, Francisco, you make Putin sound like the Clintons.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“There is a small batch distillery in Door County Wisconsin that makes vodka from cherries. It’s pinkish but doesn’t taste like cherries, just tastes like the best vodka I have ever had.”

Door county cherries are the best. As a child my family would go cherry picking, literally. My mother made cherry compote we ate over vanilla custard iced cream, delicious.

Oso Negro said...

@Buwaya - I don't know that anyone is all the worried about the Russians, but they are a convenient boogeyman for our politicians when one is needed. There really isn't a lot to worry about with the Chinese, either. Their culture limits them. We are at much more risk from ourselves.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Lefty reasoning: Trump is in bed with the Russians because .... ?

It requires far too sophisticated of an understanding for you to understand it, that’s why they never explain to us why low oil prices are good for Putin and Mother Russia.

tcrosse said...

Rhubarb pie is pretty good, too, but the stuff doesn't grown here in the Desert Southwest. It's available in the markets, but quite costly, considering we used to grow the stuff for free in the back yard in St Paul.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Putin has to be a little miffed at the amount of sunk cost he had to write off when Clinton lost though.

tcrosse said...

Putin has to be a little miffed at the amount of sunk cost he had to write off when Clinton lost though.

Not to mention the Economic Royalists of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Hollywood. No wonder they're pissed off.

Francisco D said...

My grandfather grew rhubarb and strawberries in central Wisconsin.

My grandmother made strawberry rhubarb pie that was incredible.

They were frugal farmers. Mason jars were central to their lives.

They passed nearly 40 years ago. I went up there to check out the stored product. No pie, of course. The homemade wine and gloog was truly awful. I miss them.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

He did say it.

I didn't attribute the quote to myself ---> as you implied, but to the experts that you think you and every other Republican are more expert than.

Some people might call that arrogance. But then, if Republicans didn't think they knew everything then how could they get away with pushing for such a fantasy-based politics?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Not to mention the Economic Royalists of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Hollywood.

Do they get the subsidies that you guys give to the Economic Royalists of Exxon Mobil and the auto industry?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Personally, I am all for getting along with Russia and staying out of proxy wars with them. <--- i.e. he wants them to help decide our election campaigns for us and to install for ourselves the leaders of their choosing.

Why not just build a box seat section on the Capitol Steps for your Kremlin contingent so that they have a ready-made cheering booth at every inauguration?

tcrosse said...

TTR must mean the GM and Chrysler bailouts by Obama to buy off the UAW. Just saying.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

he wants them to help decide our election campaigns for us and to install for ourselves the leaders of their choosing.

Is there any conspiracy so poorly founded that you won’t swallow it whole? History Channel always looking for people willing to shill “ancient aliens,” and you don’t even have to look that good on camera!

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Better to have leaders of the choosing of our secret police, a co-equal branch of government. After all, the constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

TTR is the revolutionary that believes everything the FBI and the newspapers tell him, the bourgeois revolutionary. If you don’t believe the op ed pages of the New York Times, your “anti-intellectual.”

“When will the economy recover from Trump’s election? First pass answer: ‘never.’” Paul "Nobel Prize winning Enron shill” Krugman.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

Always trust content from CNN or you are anti-intellectual! For instance, this is what they said last October about the “dossier”

But even by Trump standards, this morning’s tweet is somewhat remarkable. He is suggesting that a dossier prepared by a former member of British intelligence has not only been totally discredited (it hasn’t -- more on that in a minute) but that it might have been funded by some combination of Russia, the Democratic Party and, wait for it, the FBI!

Ha ha ha! What a card! But don’t check up on how the people who want to tell you what to think do against, you know, reality. Only losers do that!

Drago said...

TTR: "Do they get the subsidies that you guys give to the Economic Royalists of Exxon Mobil and the auto industry?"

Oil and gas companies receive no subsidies. None.

This is a rather sad and widely disbursed lie that makes some feel better about their anger.

As for auto makers receiving subsidies, these are limited to the electric car sales related subsidies.

The rest of the "auto makers get subsidies" non-sense is an "indirect" argument which asserts that the subsidies to oil companies helps keep the car companies afloat....but oil and gas subsidies are a lie.

So we see that the ONLY subsidies that exist for EITHER Oil and Gas and/or Auto companies are the direct subsidies paid to Auto manufacturers related to sales of electric vehicles...which is what the lefties love.

So, once again, a complaint about business from the left is BS and to the extent it is correct at all is due to democrat/left policy preferences.

How utterly shocking.

Now don't get me wrong, there are lobbyists lined up for 17 miles in DC just chomping at the bit to deliver real subsidies to the Oil and Gas industry as well as more subsidies (beyond electric vehicle) to the Auto industry.

We should all be manning the walls and telling them to take a hike.

Drago said...

TTR: "Why not just build a box seat section on the Capitol Steps for your Kremlin contingent so that they have a ready-made cheering booth at every inauguration?"

Good idea.

We'll call it the "Russia Reset and Flexibility Friendship Booth" Sponsored by Uranium 1.

buwaya said...

History channel used to be quite good.
When they were doing history.
Now all their good stuff is on YouTube.
YouTube turned into the thinking mans TV.

buwaya said...

Interestingly there is very little effort going into who else, as in foreign governments or their proxies, are purchasing advertising packages from Facebook and Google. One would think such a question would interest someone.

Known Unknown said...

I see no one bothered to answer my question.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

As for auto makers receiving subsidies, these are limited to the electric car sales related subsidies.


Yes, Obama declared that GM shall build a car for de volk! We will call it the Volt wagon.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Is there any conspiracy so poorly founded that you won’t swallow it whole?

So you dispute the facts that Russia paid for massive ads on Facebook for the 2016 presidential campaign and tried to hack the states' voter registration databases?

It sounds like you must believe an even bigger conspiracy if you think that all 17 intelligence agencies just made all this up.

tcrosse said...

Presumably the Clinton campaign raised a billion some odd dollars from the pennies, nickels and dimes scrounged up by millions of starving widows and orphans.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

We'll call it the "Russia Reset and Flexibility Friendship Booth" Sponsored by Uranium 1.

It's kind of sad that you think that whatever Hillary Clinton does is ok for the politicians you support to do.

I suppose that once a mass murderer gets elected Republicans will exhume the corpse of Charles Manson and put him on the ticket. They are very competitive. It's a race downhill to the moral bottom for them. Anything they can do to justify their own low standards, apparently.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

TTR is the revolutionary that believes everything the FBI and the newspapers tell him, the bourgeois revolutionary.

Tim in Vladivostok is the counter-revolutionary who is so paranoid of any convention or institution that he actually thinks he has all the intel that the FBI etc., etc., etc. just refused to give him. Or anyone.

That way the paranoia and the delusions of grandeur go together, you see. Textbook narcissism. They (intelligence agencies) can't all be out to get you if you don't have super powers that informs your paranoia of what they're really up to and what they're really all hiding.

Like I said, reactionary Republicanism is a mental disorder in search of a political project.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

TTR must mean the GM and Chrysler bailouts by Obama to buy off the UAW. Just saying.

Of course you're just saying (blurting) it. If you were actually thinking through that nonsense you'd come to the rational conclusion that letting a major industry precipitously fall overnight due to the implosion of a nation's economy is a hell of a lot more disruptive and destructive then just letting it die its natural death over time by refusing to be competitive and innovate.

Known Unknown said...

"paid for massive ads"

The ad buy was minuscule in connection with the amount spent total on the election, and Facebook ad conversion rates aren't some unicorn media method to get people to change or alter behavior.

Known Unknown said...

"I suppose that once a mass murderer gets elected Republicans will exhume the corpse of Charles Manson and put him on the ticket"

Yes, Charles Manson was totally GOPe.

buwaya said...

$100K in memes.

Seriously, someone SHOULD hire these Russians as political media consultants.
If what the Democrats say is true, they got many orders of magnitude more bang for the buck than the Democratic Party.
Or the Republican Party for that matter.
It used to be that American political media consultants were in demand, often showing up in European elections. The Podestas were just one outfit (when they employed Manafort, etc.).

But now the Russians have undercut everyone to such a degree that the political consultant business should instantly evaporate.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The ad buy was minuscule in connection with the amount spent total on the election, and Facebook ad conversion rates aren't some unicorn media method to get people to change or alter behavior.

Very admirable unevidenced assertions. Anyway, right now the Russians are doing the same thing to tip elections in other countries. I guess you'll give them a "cap," for spending limits then. A little bit of foreign influence in elections is ok for you, it seems. We all define "a little bit" differently, though. Just tell us how much control/expenditures you want Putin to have, then.

buwaya said...

Imagine what those Russian fellows could do with ... a million dollars!
(Insert Mike Myers Dr. Evil laugh)

tcrosse said...

Sp TTR repudiates his remark at 3:10 about the economic royalists of the auto industry. Cue the tantrum and namecalling.


Narayanan said...

@buwaya : is Putin seen to be doing his best to help the EU elect a new population? And cheered quietly by Bruxelles

buwaya said...

There are national media PR efforts run by every nation on earth.
The Soviets ran the most effective one in history.
On these grounds alone, had they had a better product to sell, they would have won the Cold War.
Oddly enough the US Democratic Party and US MSM did not have much objection to that, at the time.
One wonders why.

And the US has also always run the same sort of operation.
Spending more money to less effect, usually.

Drago said...

TTR: "It's kind of sad that you think that whatever Hillary Clinton does is ok for the politicians you support to do."

Identify any republican politicians with remotely similar interactions with Putins pals as Hillary with remotely similar results.

Feel free to take your time.

Narayanan said...

Ttr : you are saying USA does not interfere in other national elections??!!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You're not a very good reader, tcrosse. But you do like to fling accusations and avoid the point, don't you?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You know the answer to that one.

wildswan said...

Maybe they like the pictures of Wisconsin in the winter. The pictures look like the Ukraine but are more poetic and interesting than the ones you find on Ukrainian sites. Then these mysterious visitors go on and read Inga and LLR to find out what American lefties think - higher quality comments than Huffpo and covering the ground more rapidly. Then they study the responses. In this way they are upgrading their blogs / comments. One day Althouse will get a photo of an Althouse blog study session in Kiev.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

Do they get the subsidies that you guys give to the Economic Royalists of Exxon Mobil and the auto industry?

Silicon Valley is largely free of the regulations that the auto industry and petroleum industry have to deal with. You have to get numerous permits to dig a new well costing millions. I can throw up a new app/website and the only costs will be to private companies.

If you want the entire economy to perform like Silicon Valley you need to subject it to the same level of regulation.

The petroleum/energy industry faces massive extra taxation as well.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

The ad buy was minuscule in connection with the amount spent total on the election, and Facebook ad conversion rates aren't some unicorn media method to get people to change or alter behavior.

2/4/18, 4:15 PM

Yeah. I'm sure that all those union members in Wisconsin and Ohio and PA who voted for Obama in 2012 were swayed by Facebook ads for Trump in 2016. The ads also turned them into racists.

Amazing what those Russkies can do.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

Very admirable unevidenced assertions. Anyway, right now the Russians are doing the same thing to tip elections in other countries. I guess you'll give them a "cap," for spending limits then. A little bit of foreign influence in elections is ok for you, it seems. We all define "a little bit" differently, though. Just tell us how much control/expenditures you want Putin to have, then.

I don't even know what you think they will accomplish by hacking voter databases. Do you think they are actually able to change any fields there? Are they going to sell the information and undercut the states that openly sell them? I don't think you understand what the allegations mean or the potential affects are.

The Chinese are doing much worse. Their attacks on our systems are much more common, pervasive, and effective.

They are also much more powerful and much more dangerous. Their theft of intellectual property is easily more damaging to the US than anything Russia does anywhere.

Not sure why the "You can see Russia from my House we will have more flexibility after the election reset button" party who ran a candidate who took $145 million dollars from Russia for president goes on and on about this.

Seriously Russia just isn't that big of a deal anymore. China is far more important. I don't get why you are all about starting a war with Russia because Hillary lost.

Only Tools buy into that shit.

Humperdink said...

Drago said: "Oil and gas companies receive no subsidies. None."

Exactly right. How do i know? I own a small crude oil and natural gas production company. We receive no special tax breaks. None, zero, zilch. Lefties are such lying tools.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...
TTR must mean the GM and Chrysler bailouts by Obama to buy off the UAW. Just saying.

Of course you're just saying (blurting) it. If you were actually thinking through that nonsense you'd come to the rational conclusion that letting a major industry precipitously fall overnight due to the implosion of a nation's economy is a hell of a lot more disruptive and destructive then just letting it die its natural death over time by refusing to be competitive and innovate.

You are completely ignorant of how a real economy works. Painful to read this. Go educate yourself.

The rational approach would have been to let them go to bankruptcy and force them to settle with creditors. Part of that process is the creditors forcing the company to choose different/better leadership and/or someone coming in, buying the debt, and taking a role in changing how the company operates. Whomever takes on this risk steps in and runs the company. This process continues until someone competent takes over and makes money.

Instead Obama stiffed the creditors and gave the company to someone else. His cronies. The company retained the failed leadership. His cronies continued to operate in the same way. It has relied on massive government tax subsidies in the form of special carried loss exemptions. Then Obama used tax payer money to bail the government out of their stake in the again failing company.

What Obama did by inserting government was eliminate the standard rules for a failing company and rewarding people that donated to him.

It is a stupid way to run an economy. If every business did this the economy would collapse because you can't give every business taxpayer money. There just isn't enough money for idiots like Obama to take and hand out. Thinking that making special cases out of companies like GM because they give money to Obama is a good plan and showing complete ignorance of what normally happens should embarrass you.

Achilles said...

buwaya said...
$100K in memes.

It looked like a penny/click content push to get traffic. 100K got them enough traffic where their pay per click websites probably made some money.

100k was probably in really small ad buys too. Probably less than 1000$ at a time and had to do with fairly targeted groups.

Achilles said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

It sounds like you must believe an even bigger conspiracy if you think that all 17 intelligence agencies just made all this up.

If you are still saying the number 17 you are beyond hope stupid or trolling.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 17! Yeay!

Now piss off.

Humperdink said...

My favorite stimulus by Obama's crack economic team was the Cash for Clunkers fiasco.

The original Fed spending was $1B. The feds had to add another $2B.

"Strikingly, we find that Cash for Clunkers actually reduced overall spending on new vehicles," the researchers reported ..." (Texas A&M study).

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You are completely ignorant of how a real economy works. Painful to read this. Go educate yourself.

Yes, I don't doubt that for you the act of reading is a painful one.

That is why you never cite a thing you say. You just pull every comment out of your ass.

You never took an economics course. And no one ever relied on you for their economic well-being.

Educate yourself to understand the meaning of all that. The crap you wrote was so ignorant that it's not even worth responding to. If you really think that banks so big that the entire economy relied on them afloat - or the same, temporarily, for the auto industry that paid back those loans with interest to the taxpayer - was about Obama and cronyism then you are literally too stupid to talk to. I doubt you can balance a checkbook, let alone run a bank. All your assertions are made-up.

No citation Achilles. No knowledge Achilles. All conspiracy website Achilles.

Instead of posting comments, just make things easier and post to the worldnetdaily or tabloid that you're parroting and misconstruing as an actual point in response to what you just read.

Pathetic.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I don't get why you are all about starting a war with Russia because Hillary lost.

No one's "starting a war with Russia," you moron. Just trying to be independent of them.

Traitor.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Silicon Valley is largely free of the regulations that the auto industry and petroleum industry have to deal with. You have to get numerous permits to dig a new well costing millions. I can throw up a new app/website and the only costs will be to private companies.

If you want the entire economy to perform like Silicon Valley you need to subject it to the same level of regulation.

The petroleum/energy industry faces massive extra taxation as well.


That's because the wind, the sun and the computer don't require miners to lose their lung function by age 40 - (for which the government must maintain a special health fund - how's that for building a class of dependents upon the federal government, BTW?), pollute our rivers, streams and air with mercury, or cause ocean levels to rise high enough to damage the property on which Trump's golf course is sited.

The amount of things you don't know could fill a book. A new chapter for which you seem to write every night on this website.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

“Traitor” Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Traitor, it’s the new “racist”

The talking points are that we are more loyal to the white race than our own country, defined as The United States of the Democrats, so we all have secret shrines to Putin in our closets.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Traitor, it’s the new “racist”

For people who want to do just as much harm to their country.

I'd ask you to move, but obviously you don't have the means to do so.

We're stuck with shithole Tim from shithole Vermont and will have to focus on getting immigrants superior to him to improve the collective status of the country.

Achilles said...

Your posts are self refuting TTR. You talk like someone who read it in a book.


A book with mostly pictures...

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

At least I don't just make up everything I say.

You should try listening for a change. Instead of just yap-yap-yapping.

Humperdink said...

TTR said: "At least I don't just make up everything I say."

So tell me TTR, what special tax breaks am I missing that you alluded to earlier?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The ones that Achilles told me about.

Humperdink said...

Enlighten me.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The tax breaks were repealed as part of a hoax by the Chinese to make us un-competitive.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2016/05/26/138049/it-is-time-to-phase-out-9-unnecessary-oil-and-gas-tax-breaks/

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/08/06/the-surprising-truth-about-oil-and-gas-company-corporate-tax-rates

https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-the-oil-and-gas-industry-still-need-tax-breaks-1479092522

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-reform-bill-huge-for-us-oil-gas-industry-2017-12

Humperdink said...

Thanks for the update TTR. The ability to deduct cost(s) for doing business are afforded all businesses.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of New York said...

We’re stuck with shithole Tim from shithole Vermont and will have to focus on getting immigrants superior to him to improve the collective status of the country.

Immigrants who will vote the right way!

Achilles said...

By industry Energy always ranks one of the lowest by ROI. For example go to ROI and click on worst performing. Energy is the 3rd worst sector.

Somehow transportation is kicking ass right now. Need to look into that.

Big Oil makes about 10 cents per gallon of gas sold. INSANE!

The government takes 45-62 cents per gallon. Well since you put it that way!

It is pretty funny watching leftists talk about "deferred taxes" and "tax breaks." The idiots don't seem to realize that Depreciation and Expense Deduction are standard issue "tax breaks." Even Google depreciates their server farms and Facebook deducts labor expenses.

They really just don't know anything about how businesses really work. TTR is a perfect example.

Richard Dillman said...

Stalin imported large numbers of Russians to the Ukraine to control the population and to suppress Ukrainian nationalism. Stalin did this with most of the captive nations. For example, Lithuania has a large Russian population
because of Stalin's policy. Much of the eastern Ukraine is heavily Russian; while western Ukraine is more Ukrainian and focused on Europe. Putin relies on ethnic Russians complaining about mistreatment or oppression to justify his military incursions. Its not the Ukrainians, by and large, who are inviting the Russians in to rescue them.

Russians refer to Ukrainians as little Russians; Ukrainians obviously do not like the epithet.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

They really just don't know anything about how businesses really work. TTR is a perfect example.

Businesses that poison the people and destroy their land?

Bad Lieutenant said...

Just so, Dillman. Any country with an appreciable Russian minority owes it to itself to put these people out, hopefully in some nice way. First class with all expenses paid is not too high a price to get Russians out of your country.

Fernandinande said...

Inga said...
“Perhaps Inga has moved to Kiev...”

Except that I’m not a Trump supporting Russian...


Don't feel bad, Inca.

I thought Kiev was Dracula's home town, and that's even worse than thinking it's in Russia.

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