Celebrating Five Thousand (and Seven) Posts: Will There Be Cake?

My five thousandth post should be something deep and profound...and have something to do with cake!

This sneaked up on me a little sooner than I thought! The actual 5,000th post was Sic Transit Gloria Americanus?

Transitions: No Sheeples Here Any More Either

It is with regret that we heard from our friend Carol over at "No Sheeples Here", that she is pulling the plug on her very fine blog. It was a "must read" for many of us. We will miss her wit and her enthusiasm and the wonderful photoshops she graced us with, like the one above, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. And sometimes just poking fun at the stuffed shirts in Washington.

I won't go into her reasons for, what we hope is only a hiatus from blogging. But, if you're a fan of No Sheeples Here, show the love and I'll let Carol know so she can come by and see what some of her fans had to say.

We'll miss you. Come back when there is once again balance in The Force.

Lady Cincinnatus Sprucing up for Spring

Lady Cincinnatus has made a few changes over at her blog.
I think it looks nice, but I'm a guy! What do I know?
Stop by when you have a sec and let her know what you think!

Happy Third Blogiversary, Proof Positive!

It's that time of year again! The third blogiversary of Proof Positive. A little "inside baseball": This time last year, there were about 2,600 posts , and 37,000 hits from 114 countries around the globe. Nine days after I started, I added the widget from Sitemeter, which started off at about three hits a day (and one of them was me!).

Today, over 4200 posts, with 154,000+ hits from 169 countries, averaging around a three hundred or so hits a day. I'd like to think that some of that growth is because of the content, provided by members of "Team Proof", some because of the "kindness of strangers" linking from some great blogs and some mighty fine looking women, occasionally featured on these pages. (Stacy McCain's Rule Five)

For those of you who visit on a regular basis, I thank you for the time you spend here, whether contemplating the deep mysteries of life or just laughing as we poke fun at the foibles of fools. For those of you who were just suckered in, er, enticed by a headline or photograph, I am grateful to you, too, and hope that once you stumble in here, you stay a while and take a look around.

I ultimately take credit and/or blame for everything that appears here. To make this something you enjoy reading, I first make it something I would. Not everything here is meant to be earth shattering or profound, sometimes it's just funny, or interesting to me. And there's at least some new content everyday for non subscribers. (Subscribers sit with me on the beach, sipping rum drinks at Hanauma Bay. Subscription price To Be Determined.)

It's been a great three years. I have been joined by some outstanding bloggers, to entertain, enlighten and inform you, and I am looking forward to more great things in the coming year, running up to the election in 2012. I propose we take back our country, and do it in style!

Thanks for stopping by. Come again real soon!
-Proof


Second blogiversary posting is here.

Friday Night Babeapalooza (Coming Soon!)

One of the hallmarks of the Friday Night Babe is five to six of the best shots on earth, of a very beautiful woman.

However, quantity and quality do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes one finds a single, exquisite shot of an extremely attractive woman, but search as one may, four others to match just cannot be found.

So, what if one were to take (at least) five or six of these, one of a kind photos for a rare and unique Babeapalooza?

Next week's Friday Night Babe (s)... be prepared for an eye opener!

Herman Cain on Democrats and S.I.N.

I found this bit of video over at Right Klik. Note particularly at the end, the three tactics of the Democrats:

Shift the subject
Ignore the facts
Name calling.

That's so true! Know any liberal trolls infesting your blogs that this describes? Me, too. And it fits them perfectly.

Update: The rest of the speech:



Cross posted at LCR.

Google "Katy Perry Elmo Shirt"...

...and here's what you see under "images" on page two*:



Look familiar? I've discovered one nice feature of Windows 7 is that a single click on a Google image search gives you an enlarged view without having to take you to the page where the image is located. In W-7, you can read the Buckley quote and the Churchill paraphrase quite legibly with a single click. The picture of Obama tossing money like confetti is an added bonus!

(*This AM, back when there were less that 42,000 results, we were on the first page!)

And, oh, yeah. It is a slow news day!

Adieu, Beltway Blips!

As some of you know, I have had a Beltway Blips rating button on my site for several months. There was also a feature of "Top Stories" that folks around the web gave a "thumbs up" to, featured on the side bar. I noticed a day or two ago that the button was missing, but I've been on the road and just wasn't sure whether it was some vaguery of the Internet or something peculiar to my computer, so I didn't think much about it. Then, this morning, in search of my lost button, I went to the beltway blips site and found this:

Thank you for your interest, but the website you are trying to visit is no longer being supported.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our bloggers, visitors, and advertisers who have supported our sites.

A'Googling I went to see what else I could find. Seems I wasn't the only one taken by surprise. Today's Politics by FreedomLover noted their abrupt passing.

I also enjoyed seeing my rankings among all the blogs they tracked. I had my own personal goal of surpassing LGF, which was not all that hard considering my ascendancy and Charles' descent into madness. FYI, I beat him twice this year, ascending as high as the low 220's while Charles hovered around the mid 230's.
For the most part, I had clawed my way up to around 250. (Our own fair Lady C. broke three hundred and stayed there consistently.) Given time I think those numbers would have continued to improve. And I always appreciated the traffic that the Daily Radar sent my way.

But, nothing lasts forever. I will miss Beltway Blips, and hope that those behind the site have moved on to bigger and better things. It was fun while it lasted.

On Anonymity and Blogging

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

No Sheeples Here, Either!

Over in the blog feeds, I trust you have noted the presence of, and visited on occasion, No Sheeples Here. Today, Carol has a heart warming piece up, "A Personal Witness: One Nation Under God".

Take a couple of minutes today, and click over. I don't think you'll be disappointed. -Proof

Team Proof and Manifest Destiny

Candidate finishing Team Proof employment application

Maybe not "Manifest Destiny". It might be more like "Demolition Man", where all of the restaurants are Taco Bell!
To that end, we welcome a new blogger to Team Proof: Andrew Roman
Andrew has been sole proprietor of the "Roman Around" blog, and announced recently that he was going to have to suspend operation over there.

So while his daily blog is on hiatus, I have invited Andrew to come join us here.
I just sent out the invitation, but after a long, protracted negotiation over the shape of the virtual table, we were able to come to an agreement, and perhaps against his better judgment, Andrew will contribute here shortly.

Please give him a warm welcome when he comes so he feels right at home!

Washington Post Blogger Resigns over "Fire" Remark

It is not too often, in the realm of civil discourse, that one party tells the other party to commit suicide to settle the debate. This brings us to Washington Post blogger, Dave Weigel.

"This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire."

Dave apparently wants Drudge to follow his example:

Dave Weigel...on a good day!

And because you can't make this stuff up, it is rumored that Weigel will soon be writing for...the Huffington Post! Heh.

On a Personal Note

My participation may be a bit light the next couple days as I crisscross the country.
With any luck, LCR and Lady C can help take up some of the slack while I'm on the road.

The key to the liquor cabinet is in the same place I left it last time. You kids be careful while I'm gone! Heh.

Site Announcement: Yet Another Member of "Team Proof"

We are joined today by the lovely and gracious Lady Cincinnatus, who will be contributing regularly, or whenever she darn well pleases! Heh. Please give her a warm welcome to the family!

Come for the Babes, Stay for the Snarky Goodness!

Not a video link. Ignore the arrow! Heh.

Welcome to all of you who have recently discovered "Proof Positive"! It's going to be a slow news cycle this weekend. All of the bombshells were unloaded Friday, hoping they'd be forgotten or "old news" by resumption of business on Tuesday, so I thought I'd do a little "inside baseball" here.
We recently got a little spike in traffic here. Okay, we got a substantial spike in traffic, due to one link from Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media, henceforth know as the "Patron Saint" of Proof Positive. Heh.
And the amazing, and pleasantly surprising thing to me, was not that a big dog like Pajamas Media can throw you a link and you get a lot of traffic, but the number of people who came back afterward because they liked what they saw. (Or enjoy laughing at our feeble efforts? But, anyway, you're back!)
The increase of traffic that is not directly from that link is substantial. (And you know who you are!)

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the babes! One of the purposes of posting pictures of the pretty ladies, aside from their obvious aesthetic qualities, is that they attract readers. And once attracted, many of them come back. Robert Stacy McCain codified this in his famous Rule Five of "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year" back in 2009. But, I knew the principle before Stacy wrote about it because it worked for me (The principle, not the Million Hits!)
The first political blog I ever read was NRO's "The Corner". I used to devour it, every post. I learned a lot from The Corner. Then, one day in 2008, as I recall, Jonah Goldberg made some reference to a blog in North Dakota, of all places, complete with a link. It was Say Anything.
At the time, Rob Port, in addition to the political stuff, was running a feature he called "Friday Night Babe". (So ladies, if you think the "babe" appellation is sexist somehow, blame Rob!) I don't remember if Jonah linked to the "babe" or just to another story on a Friday night, but I bookmarked the spot and sometimes, even on a Friday night, I'd come back.
What I found, alongside the pretty girl, was lively and insightful commentary on the issues of the day. And liberals futilely arguing their talking points, like fish in a barrel. I was hooked. I made my first comments on a political blog there*. Shortly after, I was posting an occasional guest post in Rob's Reader Blogs. Before long I was a regular contributor...and it all started with one link, aided and abetted by a pretty girl's picture, and I stayed for the snarky goodness!

I first got into the "babe" business by resuscitating Rob's feature. He'd started it as a bachelor, and after he got married, the ring through his nose, er, around his finger, cut off his circulation. I picked up the standard and have been carrying it ever since. (I kid, Mrs. Rob! I'm a kidder!)

But, whether you first stopped to admire the pulchritude, or see a video or read the commentary, we appreciate you stopping by. And be honest now! How many of you started reading this because you saw the picture of Audina above?
Some of you were even hoping I might even let her phone number slip! It's right here in my Rolodex...it's (562) 555-....

*And because so many of the commenters there shared my first name, I picked a pseudonym, a nom de cyber, if you will, later shortened to "Proof". I picked it to stand out from the crowd, so that anything I wrote, would be clearly attributed to me and the wackadoodle things said by others, would not. Who knew I'd be doing this after all these years? So, for the time being, I'm "Proof". Just as soon as I become a household name, I will make the transition to my real name, like Datsun becoming Nissan. Until then, bear with me! Thanks!

Greeting from the Left Coast Rebel

Greetings Proof Positive readers! Tim here, the proprietor of the Left Coast Rebel blog and fellow Once Golden State-Proof compatriot of Mr. Positive. Proof has invited me to contribute here from time to time and I am more than happy to oblige. Proof has also humbly offered to do the same at the Left Coast Rebel.

So look forward to seeing me around the block here now and again.

Cheers!