Conservatism’s all-time top blogger, Glenn Reynolds, makes a practice of identifying repetitive memes with a particularly apt and cutting catch-phrase. His associate bloggers, especially Ed Driscoll, have gotten very good at using the same technique.
“JOE BIDEN, THE JOB-KILLING PRESIDENT: 70,000 JOBS KILLED ON DAY ONE, MORE SINCE.
Related: Biden’s pause on oil cause for big concern in New Mexico.
All web sites occasionally have technical issues, but Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit blog is the absolute top of the heap in Conservative commentary, and it is well-supported by skilled professionals. I’ve seen it down before for a few hours, but never overnight.
My guess is that the site was taken down by a deliberate and very technically sophisticated attack in response to some posting or other criticizing the government of China and attributing to it responsibility for the COVID-19 international pandemic.
Cross Fu Manchu and the nefarious Si Fan, and the next thing you know, there’s a hamadryad in your bed.
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UPDATE, 4/10:
Late yesterday, I was able to connect to Instapundit with Chrome & Explorer. Firefox still produces the same “Error establishing a database connection” message.
I have changed nothing in Firefox. Of course, an update may have.
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UPDATE, 4/11:
Vanderleun suggests that clearing your cache may solve the problem. I would not be surprised if he was right.
NEW UPDATE, later 4/11:
It’s fixed. Glenn Reynolds stepped in and got it done.
I am watching this, and I usually avoid long videos, principally because it is interesting to see, and hear, the superhumanly energetic figure who manages to teach law, write lots of books, and produce the single most important conservative blog at a scale of productivity that continues to astound.
His take on Big Tech Social Media is also obviously of considerable interest. Glenn Reynolds is already on the record as advocating the break-up of those “Internet monopolies,” a basically incongruous position for such a libertarian thinker.
He may be, of course, a just a trifle prejudiced here. Big Tech Social Media came along and turned out to be a powerfully effective competitor to the blogosphere. It cut my traffic down into only a fraction of what it used to be, and I expect its impact on the Instapundit blog was also impressive.
I’d normally myself be totally against Antitrust persecution of corporations, but the Big Tech leviathans are themselves hypocritical political partisans systematically misusing the power that’s fallen into their laps to create totalitarian satrapies in which non-politically-correct, often merely conservative speech is stomped out.
I’m currently serving my second 30-day sentence in Facebook jail. This time based on a stupid misinterpretation of my technical description of the characteristics of Fascism as a pro-Nazi posting, doubtless by some low-level employee with English as a second language.
Glenn Reynolds remains as indefatigable, witty, and preeminent among conservative bloggers as usual. One of his particularly effective blogging techniques is the use of amusing, and implicitly classifying and categorizing, post titles.
I happened to notice his use the other day of a scornful response to left-wing insolence and irrationality: “Sod off, Swampy!”, and I began wondering where that came from.
So I looked it up, and found that it goes back to a Greenpeace protest at London’s International Petroleum Exchange in 2005.
Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders
WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.
“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,†one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.â€
Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.†Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.â€
Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,†a spokesman said.
Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,†Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.
“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.†When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.
Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others.
They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts “open outcry†trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.
But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,†a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.â€
Mr Beresford said: “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.â€
Last night Greenpeace said two protesters were in hospital, one with a suspected broken jaw, the other with concussion.
A spokeswoman from IPE said the trading floor reopened at 3.10pm. “The floor was invaded by a small group of protesters,†she said. “Open outcry trading was suspended but electronic trading carried on.â€
Eighteen police vans and six police cars surrounded the exchange and at least 27 protesters were arrested. A small band blocked the entrance to the building for the rest of the evening.
Richard Ward, IPE’s chief executive, said that the exchange would review security but denied that protesters had reached the trading floor. However, traders, protesters and press photographers confirmed to The Times that the trading floor had been breached.
Can’t imagine why they’d do that, except that it seems to be happening to a lot of people for no obvious reason. It’s as if, despite assurances to the contrary, Twitter is out to silence voices it disagrees with or something.
Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content. …
I don’t even know that this is why I was suspended, as I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all. They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other.
Twitter can do without me, as I can certainly do without Twitter.
Infuriating. Who do they think they are? I’d like to see massive retaliatory hacking, denial of service attacks, and mobs armed with pitchforks and torches besieging these douchebags’ offices.
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Glenn Reynolds’ tweet was obviously intended as a quip, expressing frustrated indignation at the form of protest, blocking highways, that has recently become popular. Twitter censors took advantage of its dark humor to strike an exaggerated moralizing pose and punish the person whose politics they do not like.
But, really, faced with a crowd of racially-chauvinist rioters from the inner city criminal class getting through the blockers by threatening to run them down would simply be the most prudent course of action.
Congratulations to the all-time performance champion of all conservative blogs on the 11th anniversary of its start of operations. Instapundit is still the best.