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Pennsylvania Voters
By Jim O | April 22, 2008
Get out and vote in your primary — for Barack Obama!
I don’t love the guy. I like him. A lot. I don’t hate Hillary Clinton like so many people do.
What I want is a clear choice in November. I do not want a choice where the biggest difference between the candidates is gender, with age second.
With John McCain having locked up the Republican presidential nomination, a Clinton-McCain race would pit two war supporting centrists against one another. Sure McCain is a bit right of center, but his record does not speak to his being as far to the right as he is trying to convince right wing members of his party that he is. And Hillary is a bit to the left, but her husband, a bona fide centrist is a bit to her left. Don’t think he was a centrist? Who signed welfare reform and balanced the budget despite an opposition controlled Congress? ‘Nuff said. Hillary has been a good senator for New York State, for all of it, not just the Democrats downstate. That’s why she received substantial Republican support when she was reelected in 2006. She worked with Republicans in the Senate when they controlled it and has continued to do so.
Barack Obama represents something different. It’s not that he’s sorta Black (or in his case African American is a term that really applies because his father was actually from Africa). He’s young. He speaks eloquently. He inspires hope. He’s anti-war and he has been so consistently.
There will be two main issues in this campaign, three if you count McCain’s age. The real issues are the economy and national security. If you take the war out of the equation, since Hillary and McCain agree on it for the most part, it becomes a debate about taxes and the economy and, sadly, most Americans do not realize that low taxes have their price tag as well. They see a bigger paycheck and they like it. They don’t realize that because of deficit spending China now has so many dollars invested in US government securities that it could seriously harm the US economy if it chose to dump them. They don’t consider that the weak dollar that has resulted has made imported items, like oil and clothing, more expensive. They also don’t consider that their children and grandchildren will be saddled with the debt that we created. We are a “we want it now” society, sadly.
On the other hand, if the race is between Obama and McCain there will be a clear choice. People are tired of the war. McCain is content to have troops in Iraq for 100 years. Obama, to say the least, would have them home before then. McCain has now realized that he can’t balance the budget in his first term. The fact that he is even considering a second term at his age astounds me. How inconsiderate of the American people can he be? Does he not remember Ronald Reagan and his second term Alzheimer’s?
The polls open in just a few hours. Let’s not drag this thing out any longer. Ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to get out and vote for the candidate who will give us a clear choice in November, Barack Obama.
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Hey Video
By Jim O | April 19, 2008
I always enjoy watching this one. I hope you do too. Don’t worry, nothing obscene about it, just some lip syncing and silly dancing.
Thank you Tasha.
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Pope Benedict XVI
By Jim O | April 19, 2008
Today is the third anniversary of the Pope’s election, and he is celebrating it in the US. He has spent a great deal of time visiting with leaders of other faiths and perhaps more importantly, with victims of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests. I admire that. I admire his visiting a synagogue in New York and greeting the congregation with a “Shalom”.
In my last entry I spoke about separating the terms Nazi and German. There were many non-Nazis in Germany. The Pope was born in 1927 and so he was about six years old when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and he was 18 when the war ended. He was a member of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) as was required (though the order was defied by 10-20% of youths) and he served in a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft battery near the end of the war. After his release from a POW camp, he entered the seminary. Am I backpedaling? No, I am not. He is certainly not to blame for the actions of Nazi Germany.
The Pope’s predecessor, John Paul II had a very different background. He suffered under the occupation of Poland by the forces of Nazi Germany during the period 1939-1945, and then under Soviet occupation and a repressive communist regime in Poland for much of his life. Vivid in my mind are the photos of John Paul II in Jerusalem at the Western Wall, leaving a prayer (Tzetel ) for God.
While I don’t for a moment believe that Pope Benedict XVI was a Nazi, he has referred to Jews as being “gravely deficient”. Of course he also refers to non-Catholic Christians as having “defects”. Jews have a long history of being persecuted. To deny that is to deny historical fact. The most recent large scale event was the Holocaust, perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Some survivors are still living. When they hear the leader of the Catholic Church, a religion with one billion followers worldwide, say that Jews are “gravely deficient” they are justifiably concerned.
When it is a German Pope who was in the Hitlerjugend they may become more concerned. Is it akin to racial profiling? Probably it is. But it is also understandable.
Pope Benedict XVI claims, and I wholeheartedly believe him, that he wants closer relations and cooperation with members of other faiths. His visit to a synagogue and his meetings with leaders of other faiths during his visit here are indication of his commitment.
Now is the time some symbolism here. How about a visit to Jerusalem, to the Western Wall with a Tzetel for all of that?
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Distinguishing Germans from Nazis in World War II
By Jim O | April 17, 2008
It’s not a secret that I run a World War II discussion forum called World War Two Zone. It’s also not a secret that I’m a Nazi hating Jew. The Nazis did many horrible things to many people in Europe, and they almost completely wiped out European Jewry. So why do I feel it’s necessary to make a distinction between the ordinary Germans and Nazis? It’s simple. Antisemitism was part of the Nazi message, not all of it, and was well established in Central Europe long before Hitler came about. The German nation was duped by Hitler and the chicken farmer (Himmler), the mouthpiece (Goebbels), the war hero (Göring), and the others. Not that they didn’t vote for them in the plebiscite of 1934, they did by a huge majority. They also paid a huge price for that vote later on.
My pet peeve is when reading historical texts or documents, especially from the Eastern Front, (the Great Patriotic War or GPW as the USSR called it, and Russians, Ukrainians, etc. still do), that the ordinary soldiers and armies are referred to as “Nazi Soldiers” or as “Nazi Armies”. Sometimes they also are referred to as “Fascist Soldiers”. Should we call our US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan “Repubican Soldiers”? After all, these wars have been prosecuted by a Republican administration.
Most of the soldiers who fought for Nazi Germany were ordinary Germans fighting for their country as patriots. They weren’t Nazi Party members. They weren’t members of the Einsatzgruppen that was responsible for the massacre of Jews and others in the east. They truly believed in the cause of beating back Communism. So did many patriotic Americans.
So let’s call a spade a spade, a Nazi a Nazi, and a German soldier a German soldier.
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The Saudis Can’t Make Bread from Oil…
By Jim O | April 16, 2008
… and neither can Hugo Chavez. With the exception of Russia and Canada most large oil exporting nations are importers of grain. Where does that grain come from? A large percentage comes from the country that consumes the largest per capita amount of oil, the good old USA.
Most of the agricultural data that I will present will come from the USDA via http://www.nationmaster.com/. Some of it is a few years old but the relative numbers can’t have changed that much, even if the absolute numbers have fluctuated.
First, let’s look at who imports wheat. Please click on the thumbnail to see the graph. The data is on a per capita basis and is in metric tons per million.
Note that Venezuela, Iraq, Libya, and United Arab Emirates are all on that list. Malaysia and Ecuador too. Oil exporters all of them. That list only goes to number 25, but also on the list are Iran (28), Nigeria (29), and Indonesia (31). All are, or were until recently, oil exporters and wheat importers.
Lets look at who produces and, more importantly who exports, wheat.
China and India produce the greatest amounts, but then each has more than one billion inhabitants, and both import large amounts of grain. Who exports the most wheat? Let’s go to the videotape.
As you can see, the United States is by far the world’s largest exporter of wheat. We are also the world’s largest producer of corn, or maize as the rest of the world calls it, and of soybeans.
Coarse grains, that is cereal grains other than wheat and rice, are also on the menu today. Briefly, in the next two graphs, I’ll show who imports coarse grains, and from where.
A couple of points bear mentioning here. First, it appears that the United States imports a large amount of coarse grains. That is not really so when you look more closely at the graphs. The import figures are in thousands of metric tons, so the US imported 2700 thousand metric tons. Exports are on a per million population basis. Figuring the US population at around 300 million, that means total exports of 52,197 thousand metric tons. So the imported amount was small compared to what was exported. Also, given that this was per capita data on the export graph, and given that the United States has a much larger population than both Argentina (41 million) and Australia (21 million), the United States was by far the largest exporter of coarse grains.
I believe that I have made my point and that is that the United States is suffering from the high demand worldwide of both oil and wheat and other grains. Some of the increase in food prices here have to do with corn and ethanol policy, a subject for another day. Much has to do with the global grain market. So here’s an idea that can help solve some of the problems that the US is facing. Let’s tell our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Kuwait that effective immediately, there is a $1000/bushel tax on all exported wheat until they turn up the pumps and oil goes down to $40/barrel. At the same time we can remind them that it’s hard to grow wheat and corn in the desert but that they are welcome to try it while their citizens are hungry for a loaf of bread. The US doesn’t need to form a cartel. It is the major player in the game.
Oh, and as for Hugo Chavez, his tax is $1,000,000/bushel and he can keep his oil. Then you will see him searching for a friend at home and abroad.
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Adolf - I’m Sitting in My Bunker — The English Version!
By Jim O | April 15, 2008
I could pretty much follow the German, but this is much more fun for me, and for any English speakers who are reading… erm viewing. Again thanks to Walter Moers. Danke schön!
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OK, You Have a WordPress Blog…Back it Up Part Two, Your Database
By Jim O | April 14, 2008
As I mentioned in OK, You Have a WordPress Blog…Back it Up Part One, Your Files, there are two parts of your WordPress installation, the file system, which we covered in Part One, and the MySQL database which holds data like the text in your posts, comments, encrypted passwords, which theme you are currently using, which plugins are active, and all of that kind of information. When one of the PHP scripts asks the database for information, it is returned to PHP, processed, and then displayed to the viewer. That is how a “dynamic” web page is generated. There are other kinds of dynamic web pages, but PHP is the system which WordPress uses. Any further discussion is beyond the scope of this article.
As you can see, the information stored in the database is a large part of what makes your WordPress blog uniquely yours, and so it is extremely important to keep that data safe and secure. Many web hosts make daily or so backups, but many of those are “on-site” meaning in their facility. A good enough solution if you corrupt your own database and need a restore, a tragedy if they have a fire or a tornado and the primary and the backup copies are both destroyed. It can happen. It does happen. Protect yourself.
For large corporate databases there are large corporate database backup services. In fact, many such databases are hosted at several locations simultaneously so the backup is built in. You probably don’t want to spend much money on a backup service for a database that isn’t more than 10-20 megabytes in size. If you get very big and you’re making lots of money from your blog that might be an option. For the rest of us mere mortals it is not.
We do have several options. Most web hosts install a MySQL utility called phpMyAdmin. You should be able to find a link to “DB WebAdmin” or something similar on your domain control panel. With phpMyAdmin there is an “Export” tab which enables you to export a copy of your database to your home PC easily. If the database gets large you can add compression (zip or gzip compression). You can store several backup copies of your database this way.
Another choice is phpMyBackupPro. This free product will make a backup of your database on demand or on a schedule, and will compress it using zip or gzip. It can FTP ityour backup to another server if you have access to one This is useful if you and a friend can swap backup folders if you have different hosts, or some ISP’s give some web space free of charge. It can also email the backup copy to an address of your choice. You can get a free Gmail account for receiving the backups. Gmail allows over 6 GB of storage and accepts file attachments up to about 20 MB. With gzip compression that should easily accommodate a database of 75-80 MB or maybe a bit more. If your database itself is larger than that you have a large blog and may want to consider other options. A second, inexpensive hosting account at another web host may be an option. That will give you an FTP account that you can use with phpMyBackupPro.
Another option is to use a product such as Navicat. It’s not cheap but it’s a one time expense and it will totally automate the process of copying your database(s) to your home PC. It has an intuitive GUI and is really easy to use.
If you are comfortable setting up a shell script and a crontab task, you can use automysqlbackup.sh on a schedule. This is especially useful for larger databases as it will split the backups into several parts. So if you are using Gmail to “host” your backups, you can set if for 15-17 MB parts which should be safe, even with the space needed for encoding. You must set the variables correctly in that script, and make sure that it is set to be executable (usually chmod 777).
Lastly, for the real hands on, do it yourselfers, there is the old command line way:
[you@yourserver ]# mysqldump - -opt -Q -u dbusername -p databasename > /path/to/backupname.sql
The Q option is to do it quietly, that is not to print each action to the screen, dbusername is your database user name, and databasename is the name of the database. /path/to/backupname.sql will be the absolute path to the backup that you wish to create. Make sure that it exists. You will be prompted for a password. Enter that user’s password for that database. And make sure you download it to home by FTP and/or email it to a “safe server” so that you aren’t sorry later.
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OK, You Have a WordPress Blog…Back it Up Part One, Your Files
By Jim O | April 14, 2008
…and you’ve picked out a nice new theme for it. But something is not quite right with it. You want to change something, modify it to your liking. The only problem is you don’t know how. You have three choices. You can live with it, you can pay someone to fix it how you like ($$), or you can learn to do it yourself.
OMG, you say, what if I break it? It’s always a risk, but the first rule of modifying or upgrading anything is to make a backup. It’s really easy and it will save you heartache in the future. I guarantee it. You probably won’t listen to me until after you’ve screwed up a couple or more times, then you will. Even if you love it just the way it is, back it up. You never know when a host’s server crashes or something else awful happens.
WordPress requires two types of backups. First there are the files in the file system on your server. Most of these files probably end with a .php extension. These are technically called PHP scripts. The other backup you need to make is of your MySQL database. MySQL stores all of your posts and settings and things of that nature. When you call for a page to be displayed by WordPress, the PHP scripts essentially pull from the database the information that you have requested, be it posts, comments, pages, or some combination of them, and tell the web server how to display it to you. Don’t worry too much about the magic behind it just yet. Suffice it to say that a WordPress blog consists of files and a MySQL database. All of the posts and other information that you have entered is stored in the database. Lose it and it may be gone forever (hence the need for backups). The files in your file system are most likely easier to replace, but still a pain in the neck. Make a backup. I know that I sound like a broken record. Like hundreds of thousands of people, I have learned the hard way the importance of backing up - by having to recreate a system from scratch, or from a day old backup from a web host.
For the average small blogger the best thing to do is to create daily database backups and somewhat less frequent file system backups on your host’s server and on your home PC. Don’t use your work PC unless you work for yourself. Your files are not private there, and are are subject to being deleted.
This article will deal with backing up the file system. If you have telnet or SSH (command line) access to your host’s server it’s really easy. You can use Windows built in client, but I much prefer a free client called Putty. It is available for download at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. First, create a backup directory. Let’s assume that your WordPress installation’s home path is /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/. This is a common Plesk file setup. First you need to create a directory to hold your backups. You want your this directory to be above httpdocs so it isn’t readable by search engine spiders and web surfers. These directions apply to Linux servers. If your WordPress is on a Windows server, you ought to consider moving it.
[you@yourserver ]# cd /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# mkdir wpbkup
Now you have a directory named wpbkup. Remember that in Linux and Unix systems file and directory names are case sensitive. This is not the case in Windows. In the next steps you will make the backup by copying the contents of your httpdocs directory to the backup directory. This uses the copy command with a recursive option (R) so that all directories and their contents are copied. It also uses a wild card (*) so that you don’t need to individually list all of the files and directories in your httpdocs folder.
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# cp -R httpdocs/* wpbkup
If you now change into your wpbackup directory you will see that there is a directory there is a complete listing of all of your web files.
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# cd wpbkup
You can run the ls command to see the files and directories at the top level, or use the recursive (R) option to list all of the files in all of the directories and subdirectories.
[you@yourserver wpbkup]# ls
[you@yourserver wpbkup]# ls -lR
Once your files are safely backed up onto your server, you should then also download them to your home PC, as I said. There are many free FTP clients out there. I use one that is cheap but not free called CuteFTP Pro. It has met my needs for years. It has a drag and drop interface so once you have created your wpbkup directory and populated it with your files you can simply download it to your desktop or to a different location of your choosing. You can search for “free ftp clients” on your favorite search engine and you should find several that meet your needs.
You should back up your web files once a week or after each time you make an edit to any of them. In fact, you should make one before you edit any files. If anything goes wrong, you have backup copies and can easily restore them. Saving before and after backups is not a bad idea while you are seeing if the functionality that you desired is actually what you have. You can make a virtually unlimited number of backup directories by calling them wpbkup1, wpbkup2, etc. You can even be more descriptive in file name such as wpbkup-before-adding-new-plugins-2008-04-14.
When you want to make a new backup, you can create a new directory, or a new subdirectory, or simply replace the files in the last backup. Eventually you will want to remove old backups as they do begin to take up space and serve no purpose. If you want to use subdirectories, make the directory wpbkup the top directory and change into it as follows:
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# cd wpbkup
Now create your subdirectory:
[you@yourserver wpbkup]# mkdir wpbkup-2008-04-14
Then make your backup into your wpbkup-2008-04-14 subdirectory. You can use whatever nomenclature system that you like but do not use spaces. They will confuse the copy command.
If you choose to keep only one set of backup files, or you want to delete your old files, change into your the level above wpbkup.
[you@yourserver wpbkup]# cd ..
Now recursively remove the directory. Use the force option so that you do not have to manually approve every deletion. Be very careful. The remove command is very powerful and can delete your entire file system if you are not paying attention to what you are doing. Then make your backup the same way that you did before.
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# rm -Rf wpbkup
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# mkdir wpbkdir
[you@yourserver yourdomain.com]# cp -R httpdocs/* wpbkup
If you do not have command line access, or if you use Windows, this can all be done from the CPanel or Plesk file manager, but it is much more cumbersome. Generally speaking, you cannot create directories or files with FTP clients though you can use them to move or download backups.
In the next part of this series I will talk about backing up your MySQL database.
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Concealed Handguns and the Second Amendment
By Jim O | April 12, 2008
OK, anyone who has actually read any of the few posts that I have made probably realizes that I have a bit of a left lean in my politics. If not, please read again or take my word for it. I oppose the war in Iraq. I don’t like or respect George W Bush (let me clarify - I respect the fact that he is my duly elected President, I respect the office of the President, I just do not respect, or like, the man), and I deplore Dick Cheney (for him I have no respect at all, and I thank my higher power for George W Bush’s continued good health!). I voted against them twice, not liking either opponent much but disliking “W” more. I didn’t care much for Bush 41 either, he that lied about Iran-Contra (and to think that Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about oral sex!). I may not have disagreed with what they did at the time, but lying about it later does not sit well with me. And pardoning Caspar Weinberger to buy his silence was more than a bit underhanded.
I have voted for Republicans, in fact I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I don’t regret that decision though in 1984 I felt that he was too old to seek the office again. I voted for his opponent that year, Walter Mondale. In retrospect, I was right about one thing. Reagan was too old to be reelected to the presidency. He was developing Alzheimer’s during his second term and nobody knows for certain who was captain of the ship during the last two years of his term. I suspect it was Nancy Reagan, but again, I don’t know. When Ronnie came back and testified about Iran-Contra and said “I don’t remember the details at all,”, he was telling the truth. Even if he was there he wasn’t there. In his testimony to Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor, he said “It’s like I wasn’t president at all,” Reagan said in response to one inquiry”. That was in 1992, less than four years after leaving office. I actually also voted for Republican Bill Weld for senator from Massachusetts when he opposed John Kerry in 1996. I voted for him twice for governor of Massachusetts as well.
What’s all this got to do with the Second Amendment? I wanted to show that my politics don’t swing totally Democrat and that I have voted for members of both main parties. I also have a concealed weapons permit and own a handgun. I take those privileges seriously.
Lets look at the full text of the Second Amendment, shall we? Well it isn’t that simple. You see the House and Senate approved a slightly different version than the one that was distributed to and approved by the states.
Here they are:
The Second Amendment, as passed by the House and Senate, reads:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The original and copies distributed to the states, and then ratified by them, had different capitalization and punctuation:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Both versions are commonly used in official government publications. The original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights, approved by the House and Senate, was prepared by scribe William Lambert and hangs in the National Archives.
Do the two versions mean something different, and if so, which is the “law of the land”? I wasn’t an English major (as if you couldn’t tell already). I’m sure an English linguist may be able to find a difference. I don’t really see one.
My interpretation is that the writers meant that well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State and so the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. OK, who are “the people”? Are they individuals? Are they the well regulated militias? Are they the sovereign states? Good question. If the militias are to be well regulated then it can’t mean anyone. That eliminates the individuals. So who is to regulate these militias? To me it seems obvious that it is the sovereign states. That is, it is up to each state to decide for itself what rights and responsibilities to grant its citizens. The amendment prohibits the central, that is federal, government from restricting that right, and in turn from becoming too strong. The amendment preserves the sovereign right of each state to have a well regulated militia, but it does not give citizens carte blanche to have any weapon they want to have. I don’t think the writers of the amendment envisioned your neighbors having a cannon in front of their house pointed at yours. Nor would they want them to have a dirty bomb. So where to draw the line? Well, the answer is where the elected officials of our sovereign states decide that it should be drawn. Don’t like their decisions? Vote for someone else next time.
I have heard the statement that unarmed people are subjects and armed people are citizens. Tell me please, how is a concealed handgun going to save you from a fed with an assault rifle?
I’m not 100% certain, but I believe that shotguns and non-automatic rifles are legal most everywhere in the US. Concealed handguns are the main issue. If your area doesn’t allow them, here’s an idea, move to a “shall issue” state and carry one. I did and I do.
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Dick Cheney’s Sunglasses
By Jim O | April 11, 2008
OK, so everyone seems to be making a big deal about this picture. Is it a naked woman? First, the answer is probably not. Second, even if it is, who gives a flying crap?
If it was a naked woman then she would be awfully small. That reflection would appear to be something other than what people are making it out to be. But if it somehow a woman managed to get past the rings of Secret Service whose job it is to take bullets and naked hotties for the veep, someone would have known and it would have leaked.
The bigger question I have is what is Dick Cheney smiling about? Planning an invasion of Iran, is he?
Photos courtesy White House
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