12 years so far.
pl
RSS- Yuriy Butusov on the “difficult situation in the Pokrovsky direction”
- “Project 2025 Is A Blueprint For Business Disaster”
- The smoke signals were correct. Biden bails out of the presidential race, right on schedule!
- “CrowdStrike update that caused global outage likely skipped checks, experts say”
- Efforts escalate to get Biden to withdraw as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president
- Duck Punt Sailing Around the World
- An old British soldier’s thoughts on the Trump assassination attempt
- The federal criminal case against Trump about classified documents is dismissed because the special counsel was illegally appointed
- Assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally; a wound is in his right ear area
- Model rocket nails vertical landing after three year effort
Thank you for your work in helping inform those of us who have limited insight of the structure of our government’s foreign policy. I place a high value on the information I receive daily from the committee’s contributers and I also thank them for making this site a quality resource for all of us who wish to gain greater understanding of the world around us.
Congrats and Thanks. I am sure the rate of increase will keep increasing as well.
Ishmael Zechariah
Thank you.
Your professionalism, moral strength, patriotism and powerful intellect make a great contribution to this country – and to our individual lives.
Congratulations, Col Lang! A well-deserved milestone. Look forward to many more!
I was reading through your archives and noticed the comments were 2 to 6 a day in the beginning. I guess success takes time to respond to. Thanks for doing so. Congratulations, maybe.
First post but a long time daily lurker. Thank you Col Lang and friends for providing sane, reasoned and adroit analysis. It is so refreshing to hear the issues of the day being discussed and analysis based on logic, knowledge and experience instead of the usual ideological talking points simply being repeated.
ann
There are days when I dread the comment feature but it is central to the project. pl
Incredible numbers due to incredible dedication.
Anna expressed it very well, so I’ll echo her sentiments Col Lang. I have no concept of what it takes to host, contribute to & moderate a blog open to the whole internet, but your selfless efforts in doing so certainly transcends patriotism. SST is highly relevant to our time, wherever you are.
Congratulations, well deserved!!
@Pat – Congrats. Good to see this site growing. And I totally understand that you sometimes “dread the comment feature”. I know that feeling.
(BTW- MoA stats as of now: 26763002 Lifetime Pageviews, it currently gets around 20,000 PV per day)
Congratulations! Ramming speed?
Thanks very much for your work all these years. This Committee has been critical for my understanding of the world these last twelve years. Thanks again.
b
Good for you! I don’t expect to grow a lot more. I am a compulsive kibitzer and this is my retirement hobby. pl
Congratulations, Sir!
Due to your integrity, efforts and dedication, SST keeps growing and going from strength to strength. There is no better source of insight on many matters from foreign affairs to national security and politics. Additionally you have attracted so many insightful correspondents that add so much value to gain better understanding.
Congratulations to colonel and the entire SST community, for keeping up this long. I think to moderate a blog like SST, non-monotonous, balanced and civilly, its a work of a orchestra like conductor, many thanks and congratulations to you sir.
Another wonderful readership count showing that often being ahead of the curve is relevant!
Since no matter how tenuous and seemingly unrelated to the topic at issue it may be, I try to sneak in jazz music whenever possible. Thus, I will do it again. Besides, music should be part of every celebration.
For your listening pleasure, here are a couple of performances demonstrating once again that expertise is not always blocked by age.
Doc Severinsen is a trumpet player who for years directed the Tonight Show Band in the Johnny Carson television show on the NBC network. Here he is, at 87 years of age, playing with the University of North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band, of college students, at a benefit show in 2015 and performing “Night in Tunisia”–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVswTDRYTw
Bill Holman is a saxophone player, composer, and arranger, who has written music performed by Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band, and by many others over the years–
https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/bill-holman
http://www.kathrynkingmedia.com/artist.php?id=holman
Marion “Buddy” Childers was a self-taught trumpet player, composer, and arranger. He became a member of the popular Stan Kenton Big Band at age 16. Fortunately for him, he grew up then and did not go to college now. Under the big stage and under the big lights, he was not quaking in his boots after being told by morons disguised as college professors that he needed a “safe space”, and needed to cower down from “micro-agressions”, and needed to knead play dough and color in a coloring book as a young adult in order to survive. However, his life of bringing joy to others through music was cut short by cancer when he passed away in 2007–
http://spieglmusic.com/buddy%20childers.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/30/local/me-childers30
The L.A. Jazz Institute is a repository of music and jazz history. It also sponsors programs and concerts–
http://lajazzinstitute.org/about.html
http://lajazzinstitute.org/
The following performance is probably from 24 October 2003, at a function sponsored by the L.A. Jazz Institute in Newport Beach, California; Bill Holman directs a group of area jazz musicians who perform a piece of music he composed and arranged for his friend, Buddy Childers, appropriately called, “Solo for Buddy”. Here are Bill Holman, at age 76, and Buddy Childers, at age 77, doing it right–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VWlfz7A2qY
Congrats sir.
FM
I have no idea what any of that gibberish means. Perhaps someone can explain it. pl
pl,
Congratulations on your perseverance and accomplishment… the epitome of FIDO. SST has become a significant part of my retirement activities as well.
Re: #21.
That’s part of the burden of running an open blog!
FB Ali
Sorry. pl
Congratulations
Is your growth exponential?
Would you be open to cross reference to other blogs of interest (pro or con but worth reading) thus gain more exposure and by default readers?
Also, you might want to consider a crowdfunding through Kickstarter.com , indigo go or gofundme.com
Colonel,
Allow me to add more praise: This world would be a bit saner if powerful people remembered that war serves political ends. War for the sake of war is toxic.
Congratulations, Colonel
p.s. when was that you wanted to throw in the towel? I am glad I was one of the voices against that.
Thank you, Sir, and much deserved congratulations!
Col. Lang
Congratulations to you and all contributors
To SST!!
James/All: Please cut to the real gun issue: make it illegal to own’ or sell AR 15s/family of guns and bump enhancers. Perhaps a 1k for turn-ins but that’s another topic.
Dear Colonel,
Congradulations!
Being a data junkie, I used the SST search engine to find the dates when different page views were surpassed, and modeled the trend as an exponential (correlation 0.998!) but only after you hit 4 million views after ~4.5 years. (it was slow before)
Projections suggest when SST reaches 15 (July 2021) it will be rounding in on 30 millions views!
and when SST is 100 yrs old, you will have approximately 9 trillion views!
Dear colonel
I have nothing i could contribute to this valuable project.
Yet i read your blog nearly every day to keep a sane and informed
picture of the world.Your blog is a great gift to me.
Manny thanks and great respect to you and the correspondents.
Ute
Colonel,
Congratulations. I have never commented much, but your blog has been a daily read of mine for the last 12 years. One of the brightest points on the web in my opinion.
Cheers.
ISL
That gives us something to look forward to. pl
Amir
Thanks for the suggestions. I want SST to be an original voice rather than a consensus. We are not doing ijma’ on SST. As for funding I don’t want to get into a tax situation in which service is performed for a fee or other payment. As it is donations are gifts and donors receive nothing that those who do not gift us receive. pl
Congratulations, Colonel. In a world in which, as the Chinese put it, “God is Drunk”, you daily help to keep a few of us at least partially sober.
Thank you.
Hood Canal Gardner,
Sure your comment is on the right thread? BTW how did that gun free school work sign work out when a criminal showed up? Did it stop the crminal? Do you think MS-13 will turn in their weapons? Surely those are important enough to round up or is that going to happen at some later date? Will you be sending the Broward County Sheriff’s office out to collect them or do you have some other group in mind?
Fred re BTW: if I’ve spoken when I shouldn’t have I stand corrected.
Alas, a 12′ fence with a Garrett walk-through metal detector and Broward Co Sheriffs guards at every entrance is pretty much DOA as is outlawing assault weapon ownership. Neither will stop intrepids, the pissed-off, or loonies. We both know that. What we do know is that carrying assault weapons (Glocks to AR15s or bad stuff stuffed in your shoes) will get you jail time if you try to get into the Pentagon or on an Alaska Airlines flight. But no jail time if you carrying them into a classroom or nightly performances of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Fred, maybe we (in the States) just have to accept a few kids and folks getting whacked every once in a while by whomever..Ie, accept the gift of privately held modern assault weapons as the preferred least price means to collect the janissary tax (blood tribute) levied by Jefferson’s constitutional tribe to keep America 21th century globally great.
It all beginning to sound like a conversation from Voltaire’s Candide…come on Fred lets hike out to the garden.
I am a compulsive kibitzer and this is my retirement hobby.
Touché, as it was in fencing.
Congratulation Pat, well deserved.
Colonel Lang,
Congratulations. I’ve read your blog since 2006. Your site stands out on the internet as informative and lively. I’ve learned so much from you and all your contributors.
Thank you.
Sherry
Many Years to you, Colonel.
Harriet the Spy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_the_Spy
Harriet the Spy is a children’s novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh that was published in 1964. It has been called “a milestone in children’s literature” and a “classic”. In the U.S. it ranked number 12 book for kids and number 17 all-time children’s novel on two lists generated in 2012. …
Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer who lives in New York City’s Upper East Side. Harriet is precocious, and enthusiastic about her future career. Encouraged by her nanny, Catherine “Ole Golly,” Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career, to which she dedicates her life. She follows an afternoon “spy route”, during which she observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood.
—————–
Amazing the trivia one can learn on this blog 😉
Thanks Prof Lang, for taking the time and energy to educate us all about topics that are not easy to learn or discuss knowledgably, but are very valuable in making sense of the world. I especially appreciate your commitment to moderating, which is the key to maintaining good quality conversation.
Thanks also to all who comment here and share their thoughts, insights and humor. It wouldn’t be the same without you 🙂
It is an unlicked young attractive Anglo-American female’s views on how to succeed in life.
Congrats, Colonel, and here’s to 19 million more.
Congratulations, Colonel. SST is is one of the most informative, enlightening and entertaining blogs on the web. I find thinking and learning to be entertaining.
Thank you very much for your service.
HCG,
“…. maybe we (in the States) just have to accept a few kids and folks getting whacked …”
Look at the shooting stats for Chicago, Baltimore, etc. Did you see a tweet from Barack about that in the last 90 days? Neither have I.
Nice framing and language choice. “assualt” that’s the word which modifies “weapon”. By the book. Kind of like “social” modifies “justice”. Social justice being a replacement for “Justice for all”. Which is a principle the citizens of the Republic once tried to live up to. Left out: family structure, discipline at home, self disciple, discipline at school. Lots of things inportant over the years it takes to civilize a human being. Better just extend childhood to past 18 – only for buying firearms, not driving, texting, social media use, voting or selecting gender. The last you can do at 6.
Thanks for the invite to the garden. Are you bringing a couple beers like Barack did when that Boston cop arrested professor Gates back in the good ole days, before the Tsaranov brothers blew up the marathon. Which they were succeful in because….
Congratulations Colonel, and thank you for providing education, focus, and sanity.
Fred,
I don’t know how well you would get along with gardener, but you might enjoy relaxing with a beer along the canal. Hood canal is a natural body of salt water, really a fjord. It’s about 65 miles long if you include the portion after the bend. It runs along the eastern edge of the Olympic Mountains, which are pretty spectacular close up, and features shellfish, wilderness, and Naval Submarine Base Bangor, which is part of Naval Base Kitsap. On good days, you may see a Trident or two.
Colonel, Thank you for your wonderful service of clarifying the deliberately confusing situation and groups involved in the current Near East conflict.
For a non-military person, you further provide such insight into the tactical options / pros / cons facing the major players in language that is understandable. Then again, your experience in how these many confessional groups have lived with and and even married each other through centuries provides real grounds for hope.
Though not from the Near East, I attend a Byzantine Church centered on Antioch (aka Damascus) and many of the parishioners have family in Syria and Lebanon — in other words in harms way. The war is rarely discussed, because it is so painful, but your blog opens the ability to understand and provide empathy.
FBI Ali, Colonel,
Both Pakistan and India are inches away from nuclear war between the two, that could start WW3.
Congrats ! Have always appreciated this space and hope to continue to do so for more time to come.
Dabbler,
I’m sure i’d enjoy it; unlike the inland seas we call the Great Lakes that body of water have an ingredient those are missing: salt. If the recruiters from Amazon get real about their salary offer I may just wind up out that way for a few years.
Colonel, with CNN’ report that Mr. Muller has started to investigate DT’ past business practices (meaning financials, source of funds) and sudden degrading of Jared’ top security clearance by General Kelly. I think what you said a few weeks back, that DT’ vulnerability lies on his past business deals is catching up to him. I think that was the reason for degrading Jared’ clearance.
Nuclear War between India and Pakistan will not start WW III, in my opinion.
Nuclear War between India and Pakistan will not start WW III, in my opinion.
Let’s put it this way–it has a higher probability of containment, that other possible nuclear exchanges.
Congratulations Colonel! I do not read every post, but I do pore over all those that you personally post. And I follow posts and comments by a select few of your correspondents.
On the other hand, I grew up a little south of Grand Rapids MI, and still have a very soft spot in the heart for the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
Dabbler,
There’s some great hiking and camping around Marquette and a great apple orchard near Northport. But it all gets overrun with tourists in the summer.