Instapundit "Indeed." Counter

If you've ever surfed around looking at political blogs, you've probably come across Instapundit at some point. Its creator, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has been unfailingly pro-Iraq war since the beginning, and in fact is probably the foremost of the "hawk" bloggers.

Which is why it's so much fun trying to watch him squeeze around the increasingly bad news surrounding the war. No mention, for example, of the Ashcroft "torture is OK" memo, or newfound revelations regarding favorable treatment of Halliburton. While other on-line conservative pundits who actually are capable of introspection have discussed their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration lately, Insta has been chronically unable to admit that the war on terror maybe isn't in the best of hands.

But most hilarious are Insta's little tics. Sometimes, he'll post a link and say, "read the whole thing". More often, and this is my favorite, he'll post an excerpt, and give his trademark, one-word response:

"Indeed."

That's it. Indeed, period. That's often the limit to the good professor's commentary: nothing else needs to be said on the topic. Here's an example post of his on the Plame scandal:

Who were the Adminstration leakers but, more importantly, who in the CIA authorized Wilson's strange, off-budget, journey to Niger and why? Why is this more important? Because it could show people in our own intelligence agencies working against the wishes of our government, not just standard-issue partisan battling that goes on every day inside the Beltway.

Indeed.

Yeah, indeed. Indeed, indeed. Whatever.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to count up the number of times Instapundit has used the word "Indeed." just like that. What I didn't realize is that it would require a Herculean effort on my part. Instapundit.com alone has been around since 2001, and a search earlier today on his site reveals that the word "Indeed." was used in an incredible 309 posts.

So, I thought I would set up a fun graphical counter here at the Department of Homeland Furdellity. The rules are:

- Each time Instapundit posts or updates a post with the infamous one-word sentence, the Instapundit "Indeed." Counter (IIC) is incremented by one.

- Posts that contain or eventually contain the sentence more than once still only count as one.

- "indeed" and "Indeed," and other variations don't count. It has to be a standalone, one-word sentence.

- In the comments section for this post, give us the number you think the counter will show at midnight Eastern time on the night of the 2004 presidential elections (November 2). One entry per person (leave your e-mail address or URL with the comment), and once a number has been guessed, that person has dibs and it can't be guessed again. The winner is whoever's closest; he or she gets a prize to be determined, at my whim. In case of a tie, it's whoever's closest without going over, in the spirit of The Price is Right. Entries close on June 30th.

Without further ado, here's the counter. Oh wait... grrrr, it's gone up by two since I started writing this. This is going to be hard work.

Voila. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Ha ha, nothing to update. Just playin'.