Politics Plus

Pat has been a regular commenter here for over two years and followed us on Care2 for over a year before that.  She has won once before by posting the 59,000th comment in December 2014.  She developed some health issues, and we hadn’t seen her for much too long, when she suddenly popped in again to brighten our day.  She hails from across the pond, and is still exactly whom I think of when I see British programing featuring the slightly eccentric Lady of the Manor in a castle where the pets rule.  Her heart is huge.  She is dedicated to food safety, human rights, animal rights, and the environment.  Her sense of humor is magnificent, and her comments make her well loved by all here.

Please join me in reminding Her Ladyship just how special she is.  Thanks Pat!

Here are the results of our “Debate Performance” poll.  Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories.   Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population.  Nevertheless, our polls are usually factually accurate, and more often than not, they reflect thinking or will of the national majority.

Since our polling site no longer enables us to copy and paste your poll comments, you may read them here.

I voted "Considerable", because I saw it as the beginning of a Trump implosion that will result in enough Republican voters staying home that their down-ballot candidates will suffer as a result.

The new poll will last through election day.  Not that it does NOT ask why you prefer of for whom you will vote.  It asks who you think will win.

Last month, all categories were down from August.  It may be because I was at less than 100%, our Sasquatch had repeated trips to the vet and our Dutch Treat was roaming the world.

Here is our latest summary:

Year over year, 2016 is lower in every category except bandwidth.  Here is our latest demographic data from Quantcast:

They miss a ton of raw data, but among those they can identify they are a valuable source of information.  We are still mostly older, well educated, Democrats, and politically active, but we seem to have increased our incomes. I suspect an error there.  We are  about 45% male and 55% female. 

Here is our ClustrMap for 2016 YTD.

ClustrMap misses a lot of visits, because many visits can’t be easily traced to a location.  They have changed their format.  When you click the map in the left column, it shows the current month only, but they just changed their interface to allow me to pull up the YTD map.

Here are our top five articles:

Jane Smiley: Capitalist Pigs 1/17/2010 1,284
Last Week’s Insane Republican Moments 9/4/2016 267
Keith is Back! 9/15/016 249
Squatch’s Open Thread 28/06/2016 6/28/2016 248
Friday Fun – London Tube Station Revamped to Purr-mote Paws-itive Cat-titudes 9/16/2016 220

The count represents only the people who followed an external link to that specific article.  Four were from September.  Congrats to the Squatch and Nameless, both of whom had an article make the list.

Here are our top non-blog/news referrers (100 referral minimum):

Care2 2,538
Google 1,424
Stumbleupon 193
Facebook 102

Care2 is down by over 600,  Google  is down almost 300, Stumbleupon is down 17, Facebook barely made the list for the first time in ages and Google (Images) did not.

Here are our top  blog/news referrers:

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/
http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com/
http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/
http://hamsandwich66.blogspot.com/
http://tricountysentry.com/
http://www.thefantasyfootballguys.com/blog/\
http://welcome-to-pottersville2.blogspot.com/2

We had 8 sites  with 2 or more referrals, down three from September.  Putting blogs’ links here increases the ratings of their sites, so this “linkey love” is our thank you for their support.

While optimizing the site for better performance, I discovered that our Top Commentators plugin was such a resource hog that it was increasing the time it took to load our pages by 33%, so I discontinued it.

We have 356,539 links on other websites, up considerably from September.  I expect that to decrease, because thousands of our links are over five years old, dating back to a time, when we consistently averaged over a million hits a month.  I used to have the time and energy for 7-8 articles per day. Major sites (like Care2), where I used to post links are no longer available, I’ve stopped posting links at other major sites, and I no longer visit 20 – 30 blogs per day, because I just can’t do everything I used to do.  However, as quantity has gone down, I hope quality has gone up.

As of Midnight on October 1, we have 6,858 articles and 82,835 comments.

Congrats to Mitch D.  He won a Big Mouth Award in September, for the 82,000th comment.

I recommend using your own avatar. Go to Gravatar.  Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use as your avatar.  Whenever you comment under that email address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will become your avatar.

Your Administrators are Lynn Squance, aka Sasquatch or Squatch, SoINeedAName, aka Nameless, and I, aka TomCat, the Founder.  Your Editors are Joanne Dixon, aka JD the Erynator and Lona Goudswaard, aka Lona the Napster.  I just promoted them from Author to give them the ability to add graphics to comments and the ability to correct my innumerable typos.

This is our policy on links.  We do not embed links to extreme Republican websites, like Faux Noise, Breitfart or World Nut Daily.  However I leave notes in square brackets when I delete such links, (example: [faux noise delinked]) so readers, who wish to follow them can click through to the source article.  I also remove topical links.  Finally, I blank the target on all links, so they open in a new tab or window.  Please do so, or if you commonly leave links and don’t know how to blank the target, please say so.

Given our expanded talent, I expect to resume our overall upward trend, although my medical problems are still interfering with my writing.  One way you can help is to share our articles, not only with your family and friends, but also, on other sites, linking back to the article here.  The more exposure we get, the better we shall do at fulfilling our stated purpose, “Overcoming Right Wing Insanity One Day at a Time!”

Thank you for all that you do, here and elsewhere.  You are why we succeed!  You are the reason America can survive!!

Now lets keep kicking Republican butt!!  We have a month left!!

Remember . . .

Vote Blue for Dawg Catcher and UP!!!