What? Can it be that a former Fox News "somebody" is trying to "silence" a nobody blogger like me?

 

So much to talk about, like the recent conviction of a rap artist with political connections accused of being a conduit for Chinese intelligence and bribery, what many suspect was a false flag operation that Russia is infamous for to set the stage for a mass raid in an attempt at Zelensky's life, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's insistence on refusing to quit despite serious illness as damaging as Ruth Bader Ginsburg's was to the "liberal" agenda, and a new Alex Jones-like far-right falsifier on the horizon with the assistance of Elon Musk.

But that will all have to wait. I want to discuss something unusual that occurred beginning this past weekend on my blog. The number of hits I usually get suggests that most people just find it by accident; if you type in "to dare the gods" without the quotation marks, you'd never find it, although with quotation marks or running on the words it pops-up right away. Otherwise its either the few people who bother or if a search happens to connect with a post. 

By far the most "hit" post I have written was in regard to Laura Nyro's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, which still averages at least one hit a day; it was the sixth Google "find" when I typed in "laura nyro and hall of fame induction and son" without the quotation marks.

Anyways, Saturday and Sunday are usually the weakest days for “hits” on this blog, and to be honest, that isn’t saying much to start. But this past Saturday through through today saw more “hits” than I usually get for an entire month, and it “coincided” with Google notifying me that a post dated March 19, 2020 right when the pandemic was in full swing entitled “The craziness of Trump and his friends in the face of the mostly ‘political’ coronavirus problem” had been “flagged” by an angry reader for violating Google's "community standards." 

Google apparently thought it needed to put a warning acknowledgement for readers before the post could be read. It is located here, since Google has apparently blocked it from being "found" by any search term, even direct quotes:

http://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-craziness-of-trump-and-his-friends.html

You will likely encounter this from the link:

 

Frankly, I think that this was one of my better anti-Trump rants. But a lot of people rant about Trump, so what was the “big deal” about this one from over three years ago? I mean, it just shows you how few people actually read that thing, so why flag this out of over 2,200 posts I’ve written? OK, maybe I shouldn't have used a four-letter word not once but twice in the first sentence, but I suspect that it has something to do with  someone who is a little more "self-conscious" about their "image" than Trump is.

Who could that be?  Possibly Trish Regan, one of those “journalists” who once had an “award-winning” reputation at a network that had “community standards”—Bloomberg—before she skipped over to a network that doesn't (Fox News) for the big bucks where her reputation tanked like Maria Bartiromo’s did because of her apparent embrace of far-right lunacy (both should have kept to "business" and left their "opinions" to themselves). And yes, Regan is another one who is “shocked” by Fox News’ firing of Tucker Carlson, and is accusing the network of “abandoning,” what, the far-right extremist conspiracy views she has embraced?

The Google flagging does seem to suggest that there is some “silencing” going on here. But why “me”? I’m not the only one who commented on Regan’s ridiculous comments in regard to the coronavirus; before Fox Business News eventually fired her, The New York Times reported that even Fox executives felt compelled to “bench” Regan after the “outcry” over the same comments I talked about in my post; so why didn't Google "flag" both the NYT and Fox? Perhaps my view of the matter was a little too “personal”: people might come away thinking she really was just another one of those far-right fanatics who serves their corporate masters by feeding the ill-informed their daily meal of ignorance.

I rarely have anyone comment on my posts because, again, I’m just another anonymous nobody with an opinion, which everyone's "got." But apparently that doesn’t mean that another “nobody” might think that they might become “somebody” if someone read one of my posts. About 10 years ago just for the hell of it I checked to see if my name popped-up on the local court docket for some infraction someone was accusing me of, and sure enough there was my name. Some local woman had filed a complaint against me in small claims court, apparently because I had “defamed” her in one of my posts.

It seems that I had expressed an opinion about this person's comments that were printed in the Seattle Times. My commentary was only a paragraph long, within the larger context of homelessness in the city. Again, most people only encounter my blog by accident, so I figured this was just some self-congratulatory individual who was “eager” to find out how “famous” she had become for being in print; but outside the Times article, I must have been the only one who “cared” about what she said. And what she read was that I was unimpressed by this person with the Aryan-Nordic name, who spoke about how the homeless annoyed her in the usual bigoted, master race way of the self-important.

Of course I wouldn’t have known about this, because my address is a mail box, so if someone went there to serve me papers they were unlikely to find me, and the proprietors wouldn’t be inclined to be helpful, even if they did know where I could be found; hell, half the time I don’t even know where I am. I could see it now: a “liberal” judge laughing her out of court for claiming “damage” to her “reputation” by an empty chair for fair comment about her bigotry against homeless people, which she was conceited enough to be dumb enough to have in print in a major regional newspaper, even one that hardly anyone gets their news from anyways anymore.

Anyways, after six days of days of considerably higher than normal traffic on my blog (again a "relative" proposition, given my low hit count to start), the question is where these hits are coming from. Most of them are identified "other" as the "referrer" or search term, whatever that means. Linux also has been the top operating system used, and we find out that Google has its own in-house Linux on its desktops. 

What is also apparent is that according to blogger information, my old posts seem to be being hit one at a time. Despite its claim it doesn't "review" posts for content, I’m thinking that Google has someone sifting through my 2,000+ posts to see if I have a habit of violating “community standards,” and if that is the case so far they haven't flagged any other posts. In fact, today I received an offer from Google Analytics for a $500 "credit" if I paid $500 up front to set-up a Google Ads account. Is it worth it? According to "terms and conditions"

To earn the Google Ads credit: After the promotional offer is applied to your Google Ads account, your advertising campaigns must accrue costs of at least $500 (excluding any taxes or applicable fees) within 60 days. Making a payment of $500 is not sufficient. The tracking of advertising costs towards $500 begins after the promotional offer is applied. 

Given my "hit" record of not making the "Hot 100" chart even on a "good" day, it sounds like a money-loser for me, and I've already put in countless hours for no fiscal benefit. I'm sure once the "investigation" is finished (if that is the case), then my "hits" will go back to "normal." Maybe I should be “flattered” that someone thought I was any different than millions of other amateur bloggers who are "thankful" that anyone is paying attention to anything they have to say.