I made a little visit to Richard Okleberries’ blog, lincolnsblog.com. I have been there before, and have always been struck by the top front page claim, “Highest Traffic Month: July 2007 – 455,257 with 3,542,026 visits in 2007″. Those are extremely high numbers for blog with only several dozen posts spread out over about 18 months. hmmm…
While there, I plucked a couple of quotes for entertainment purposes. This is why I love the permanency of blogging. I applaud Richard for leaving it up.
Richard on Idiots and Peace:
When I see someone with a “Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home” or “US out UN in” sign in their yard, I can’t help think to myself, “what a total idiot.” – Richard Okleberry, March 2006
Richard on Morality based preemptive war:
However, we must not shy away from using our military to enforce international moral standards when necessary. I hope the next time you see an idiotic peace sign in someone’s yard that you remember one thing. While these people say they are against war they are also telling us what they are for. They are for the shooting of women in the back of the head for simply wanting to learn how to read. They are for midnight abductions and rape houses. They are for the torture and murder of political and religious dissenters. They are for genocide in the form of chemical and biological warfare. Richard Okleberry, March 2006
Richard on Military History:
In reality, the war in Iraq has been one of the most successful military campaigns in US history. When averaging the number of US combat casualties per day we find that the Iraq war is second only to the Revolutionary war for the lowest number of combat fatalities per day. Richard Okelberry – March 2007
Richard on Choosing a President OR “‘picking your Bible Study group:
As for me, I will likely vote for Mitt Romney because of this reason. I am also looking forward to a national discussion about the difference between Mormonism and traditional Christian faiths because bigotry is a product of fear that comes primarily from a lack of understanding and information. – Richard Okleberry – March 2007
That’s all for now folks.
#1 by Richard Warnick on September 23, 2008 - 10:54 am
Okelberry wants to enforce “international moral standards”? How about the United Nations Charter? Chapter I, Article 2:
#2 by JFarmer on September 23, 2008 - 10:57 am
My heck! Talk about overly simplistic, red-meat baited talking points designed to ensure the stupid and susceptible among us remain stupid and susceptible.
#3 by Cliff Lyon on September 24, 2008 - 6:04 am
Hey Okelberries,
Were you planning to address the erroneous traffic numbers to Lincolnsblog casue I’m calling you out on that.
#4 by Larry Bergan on September 24, 2008 - 4:30 pm
If I was a military industrial internet shill, I wouldn’t respond to this post either.
#5 by Richard Okelberry on November 18, 2008 - 7:08 am
Cliff my Warrior Brother!
Now how did I miss this little ditty about little old me? Man it’s hard to keep up with all your posts about me. I hate to tell you this Cliff, but my old traffic levels at Lincolsnsblog.com are completely on the up and up. Unless, of course the server side monitoring software used by my provider is out of whack. I must say though that the numbers are a bit skewed.
First, about one quarter of those visits comes from a single essay I wrote about Godzilla vs. King Kong which sadly had nothing to do with politics. In fact it was this post that eventually led me to taking down the user comments. At one point I received almost 15,000 posts on that one essay. Because I didn’t want my site used by dubious individuals to spread rumors and lies about people, I moderated each and every response that was submitted. As you can imagine, it quickly became overwhelming.
Another sizable chunk of my traffic came from a link that was up for a long while at Air America to an essay that I wrote about the misconception about Communism being the counter to Democracy. As I am sure you know Democracy is a political system and Communism is an Economic system, they both can co-exist but rarely do because communism usually needs an Authoritarian government to keep it from falling apart. I guess if you talk about Communism in an essay, Air America likes you.
Finally, as you have quoted it yourself, my ongoing updates about the casualty levels in Iraq Compared other wars have been very popular. I notice that you hate those charts but have yet been able to find a way to dispute them. My mother was so impressed with them that she sent it on to a major political talk show host. While the site was never mentioned by name on air the mention of the stats was enough to set a sizeable group of people out searching for them.
Besides those examples, the success of Lincolnsblog.com was likely a result of word of mouth. I never really did much to promote the site online, but I did have regular contact with elected officials at all levels of government. This included Harvey Perlman, Chancellor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln (UNL). While you may not understand the effect of Nebraska Football on politics in the state of Nebraska, I assure you that there is no higher state position in the minds of many with even the Governor regularly taking his council. He gladly responded to my many requests for information and in Nebraska, when Chancellor Perlman speaks, people want to read what he has to say.
I also like to think that the fact that I regularly write actual essays with new progressive ways of approaching issues and the fact that I produce much of my own imagery and graphics to accompany my essays has helped to make Lincolnsblog.com different from the huge number of ditto-blogs out there.
You can probably imagine why I was so reluctant to give it up. Still, we must all move on at points in our lives. I only hope that UtahFreePress.com will be as successful, if it is we will know that LincolnsBlog wasn’t just a fluke. If you would like any advise about how to improve your site, just ask Cliff.
By the way, I forgive you for calling me a liar…