36,718 hits
As far as I can recall, I’ve never had more than about 10,000 hits in one day. Yesterday I had 36,718. To show you how insane that is, at that rate I have 65,000,000 over 5 years. Mankiw just announced he had passed 20,000,000 over 5 years. Indeed Iwonder if there might be a mistake somewhere. Could someone’s computer be set to visit over and over? Anyway the graph below shows that when I’m not on vacation I’m generally in the 3,000 to 5,000 a day range.
I’ve also received a flood of comments. Some of them I’ll get to later, as there are important issues that need to be discussed this morning.
I will say that many comments seem to object to my throwaway line “Obama is obviously very bright.” I don’t plan to respond to each comment, as that observation is subjective and has nothing to do with the post (which complains Obama isn’t very smart about economics.) I will just say that he’s certainly smart enough to be President in a country where Ford/Quayle/Bush/Biden etc are considered presidential material.
Tags:
22. September 2011 at 05:11
If only you knew someone who understood traffic logs!
22. September 2011 at 05:49
Probably one of the blogs/sites linking you was a hub for online conservatism, I’ve rarely seen so many people pile on to this dumb meme about Obama being stupid. It’s extremely tempting to chalk it up to his race…there’s no good reason other than identity politics for them to jump to the most critical conclusion possible. People on the left made the same assumptions about Bush just because he didn’t fit their idea of someone intelligent.
22. September 2011 at 06:04
Some guy called Paul Krugman linked here yesterday.
22. September 2011 at 06:11
Pretty cool Scott! Keep up the good work.
22. September 2011 at 06:25
Any details as to hits versus unique ip addresses? Like you suggest, I wonder how many of the hits are simply me just refreshing the comments. I confess that I come for the Sumner, but stay for the Morgan…
22. September 2011 at 06:31
Great blog – meaty posts and lot’s of informed dialog. You’ve created a real community which is not easy thing. I think I’ll stay and lurk and see if I can learn something!
@johnleemk: Yup, you’re supposition is correct. I found the site from a link @ National Review’s “The Corner” (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/277983/i-guess-thats-why-they-call-it-twist-ramesh-ponnuru)…which would explain the number of the Obama comments.
22. September 2011 at 07:08
Morgan, Would that be you?
Johnleemk, Yes, I noticed almost everyone was saying “why does everyone assume Obama is smart” rather than discuss the actual topic of the post.
Britmouse, Krugman can drive it up to 10,000, tops.
Thanks Lars.
ChacoKevy, They are mostly new people, so I assume they are just visiting one or two posts. I’d say the number of independent viewers was fairly large, as it’s my normal viewers that come back several times. I’d guess 20,000 different people, at least.
Thanks BoMo, but I’ve had links at that sort of place before. Maybe it was at the “Rush Limbaugh” of conservative bloggers, whoever that is.
22. September 2011 at 09:49
“Obama is obviously very bright.”
Obama is highly intelligent. Much more than Bush or any of the Republican presidents since Eisenhower. BUT
1. He came to the White House with very inadequate political experience. As a result he mistakenly belived that he could work together with the Republicans in congress in a bipartisan manner to solve the nation’s problems when the Republicans actually had absolutely no interest in doing this and, instead, since day one were out to make him fail. Only now does he show signs that he has finally figured this out.
2. His field of expertise is law, and not economics. Obama appears to have had little knowledge of economics and listened to the wrong people, who gave him bad advice, especially Geithner. If he had listened to Christina Romer, the results could have been very different. Obviously failing to promptly fill the vacancies on the BOG was the administrantion’s most serious blunder. But in the light of the reality that the Fed is uttely unwilling to contol the rate of NGDP growth, either explicitly or implicitly, a larger fiscal stimulus was also needed. In light of how bad the condition the economy was in, Christina Romer’s 1.2 Trillion may well still not have been enough, but it would have helped.
Obama would have been better off if Hillary had defeated him and he was her Vice President. By 2016 he would have had the experience he needed to be a very successful president.
22. September 2011 at 11:00
Scott,
It sounds like it’s too late to help here, but you should consider adding Google Analytics to your site. It’s free, robust and extremely easy to use. There are plenty of other ways to analyze your site logs (I used to search marketing) but none are as user friendly and free. More than likely you got linked from highly trafficked site recently: I know I’ve been linking here on LinkedIn, Twitter and emails a lot recently. You have a link on the WSJ today too…
22. September 2011 at 11:25
Agree with Cthorm. Google Analytics is very easy to use and understand.
FEH, I’m afraid you are right. Though I am not sure if Obama would have become less stubborn or more enlightened about economics after those 8 years…
22. September 2011 at 11:31
It’s been said before but some errors require a high IQ.
Congrats on the 36K hits thing. You’ve obviously become a bit of an Internet phenomenon.
22. September 2011 at 16:23
FEH, I agree about Obama, I think 1.2 trillion would have done less than most assume, and Hillary would not have been re-elected.
Cthorm and Johnleemk, Thanks for the tip.
Thanks David.