H/t: BCF.

“Huffington” – a Greek word meaning “fool me twice.”

The countdown clock ……..
That’s 5 million visits since Dec.29, 2010!
Here’s our lucky 25M visit. Congratulations, whoever you are – a Mark Steyn Christmas album is yours for the asking.

Via William A. Jacobson ;

But Politico’s traffic losses appear to be part of a year-long trend on the political left. Media Matters For America’s website, for instance, lost 56.83 percent of its unique visitors between November 2010 and November 2011. In the same 12-month period, Talking Points Memo lost 41 percent, Wonkette was down by 32 percent, Gawker declined by 31 percent, Salon decreased by 22 percent and progressive blog Daily Kos shed 18 percent of its unique visitors.”

Via Sitemeter;

Thanks to you – each and every one – for your unwavering support of SDA!

I’m a bit under the weather this morning, so blogging will be light for the next few hours.

Did you know? It takes 20 hours to drive the Hwy 281 route from Topeka, Kansas to Delisle, Saskatchewan – and the scenery never changes. It’s like I told somebody lately – The unspoken truth of “Canadian identity”? We are more like Americans than we are one another.
See you in the morning.

To one of my best sources and daily reads – the invaluable Instapundit turns 10 years today. Congratulations, Glenn!

The amount of time Kate puts into this blog is astounding and the effort the guest and regular bloggers do while she is away is equally admirable.
This summer she is campaigning a very good dog, best Mini Schnauzer bitch in the US at the moment (Breed standard). Given the success of Venus and the requirement to keep ahead of the competition Kate has been and will be away a lot this summer.
Recently, SDA has suffered from a plethora of trolls, such a pox that it has become difficult for the guest bloggers to keep up. They are volunteers with lives of their own and it shouldn’t be on their shoulders to keep deleting the ‘N’s and others. The standard fare this year seems to be starting off reasonable and degenerating into the lefts worst nightmare. Some sort of proof device, I gather. Please do your best to ignore these fools.
For my part, I will be much more diligent than I have been in the past and there will be no mercy. IP ban and deletion of all comments. That’s for whomever I or the guest bloggers decide is a troll.
For everyone else, please keep your comments on topic and related to the post at hand. If you feel that you’ve been arguing a point five times…well, you probably have. Stop doing that, please. As the comment note says, “Take your extended debates and/or flamewars to private email.”
Thank you all for your participation in SDA, it wouldn’t be the best site on the ‘net without you.
Cheers,
lance
Oh, Go Riders!

Well, I’m back! I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable long weekend. We had a great trip, with all the dogs in the truck taking nice wins. Many thanks to the guest bloggers for holding down the fort while I traipsed across America.
Update, via my friend Tania who took this photo of our view from the show ring in Long Beach. I’ll post a later update with more photos when I find time to get them together.

I filmed the fireworks over Broadus, Montana last night on the final leg of my trip. (I’m not sure what happened to corrupt the first few seconds of the video, but it clears up quickly.)
Normal blogging will resume later today.

Regular readers will know by now that in addition to delivering a majority Conservative government, your blog mistress has been dividing her time with a fairly busy dog show campaign this spring – from Oregon to Kentucky and many points in between.
While I haven’t been posting on wins, lets just say we’ve been enjoying a series of very successful weekends in both Canada and the US.
Tomorrow I hit the road again for an extended trip stateside, so while I do expect to be posting when time and net access permit, the guest bloggers will again be stepping in to help out. It’s a testimony to their skill that traffic stats remain constant during my absences, and as a bonus, the time away from a screen this spring has done wonders for my eyesight. For the first time in years, I can read a racing program without glasses. Not that it’s done anything for my wagering.
Please mind your manners in the comments, and if activity here slows from time to time during the next three weeks, remember there’s a whole wide world waiting out there – push away from the computer and enjoy it!

…is back!

I have a lot on my plate over the next couple of days, so blogging will be light until Monday. Get out and enjoy the weekend! I plan to.

Re: Your ad account

A new project from Craig Smith – BlueCanada.ca

With another successful weekend behind us (this time in Denver), blogging should return to normal for a couple of weeks, before we return stateside to inflict yet more punishment on hapless American Miniature Schnauzer exhibitors. Shown only one weekend in Canada and three in the US, “Venus” is already ranked nationally in both countries. And while I lack the time and financial resources to pursue those goals for a full year, it’s been fun upsetting the best laid early plans of those who do.
Many thanks to the guest bloggers for helping make it all possible! It’s been many years since I’ve had a dog with both the quality and the willingness to compete at the highest levels – your assistance in keeping SDA rolling so that I can “enjoy the moment” is deeply appreciated.

And how you can vote for Watts Up With That.

10 days of (very successful) shows, followed by a 29 hour suicide run, and I’m home. Normal blogging will resume later today after I check back in with the news cycle and clear the road buzz from my head.
Thanks to our guest bloggers once again for a job well done!

This was the view out my windshield for much of today.



I’ll be in and out of the blog over the next 10 days. Until I’m home from this circuit, you’ll be in the safe hands of the guest bloggers!

You might consider sending it Anthony Watts’ way. His server just got Drudgealanched.

You are Sitemeter visitor number…

With the year winding down, this seems a very good time to thank you all – readers, tipsters, guest bloggers, and sponsors – for helping make SDA the success it has become!
Update! And here’s our visitor number 20,000,000.

Note: I use the Sitemeter count to mark SDA traffic milestones because it’s the public counter displayed on the blog. However, it’s not as accurate as the internal logs. For example, while Sitemeter shows 4,302,538 visits to the site since January 1st, internal logs indicates 4,596,908 “viewed traffic” (omitting robots, etc.). This evening there were as many as 8 visits per second coming into the blog.