12 Days of Christmas

Mitch “The Turtle” McConnell

On the 12 days of Christmas, the Democrats showed to me:

1st Day - An impeachment inquiry

2nd Day - How the Turtle govs

3rd Day - Macron’s French zen

4th Day - Verizon’s calling nerds

5th Day - Prince Andrew’s sordid flings

6th Day - Ghislaine’s a laying

7th Day - The Swamp-crocs a swimming

8th Day - FBI raid’s a bilking

9th Day- Hunter’s pole dancers dancing

10th Day - Lords a vaping

11th Day - Excel pipeline piping

12th Day - Finger drummers drumming

Bull Bleep

Just got our Verizon FIOS monthly bill ... and took notice of the many add-on charges that padded some $31.90 to the total bill. Here is a list of these bull-bleep charges: Mass. sales tax, 9/11 Disability Access fee, PEG Grant fee, Federal Universal Science fee, Regulatory Recovery fee - Federal, Verizon Property Tax Recovery charge, Regional Sports Network fee, FIOS Broadcast fee, and FDV Administrative charge.

I wonder which of these charges pays for Obamaphones and other liberal give-aways?

Methbot

Back in early July, I noticed an unusual number of hits to this blog coming out of the small island of Mauritius ... then later in the month this activity shifted to Russia. At the time I attributed this surge to political intelligence gathering by the Ruskies ... see: From Russia with Love. Next my Verizon e-mail account was tagged for issuing spam ... all very suspicious! In a few weeks this spurt of Russian activity disappeared and I assumed I had been tasted by the bear and spit out.

Not so fast oh naive one ... for the Russian surge has returned in the last few weeks and today I think I found out why. It seems that there is a grifting group in Russia (and Mauritius too?) that are using a robotic Internet agent called "Methbot" that runs around the Internet referencing sites to artificially run up advertising revenue for some mysterious third party ... see: Fortune Magazine Story. I'm not sure that this is the bot jazzing up the impressions on this site but I am reasonably sure it is a bot because of the syncopation and magnitude of the references. And I also am seeing more originating in the United States of late. And all this for this blog that does't carry ads!!

The site of this blog is run by Google (in a rather haphazard and unprofessional manner). I would like to believe that the software and network talent at Google would be able to thwart such scammers. But maybe the technical talent there does not match their reputations or compensation? Or maybe all this phony bot ad revenue also benefits Google too? (We're talking about as much as two billion dollars of fake annual ad revenue from this one bot.) Just maybe the disincentive just isn't there ...

And just maybe Methbot was used to throw the presidential election? (Tongue in cheek.)