Chipper Farley’s Blog

A Facebook friend of mine recently posted this…it’s hilarious.

Today the Obama administration published their budget for 2012.  By most estimates, it will result in about a 1 trillion dollar shortfall for the Federal Government for the year.  There are some cuts but they are inconsequential in the big picture and do little to nothing to address the larger problems that we have created for ourselves.  Here are a handful of facts:

1. America’s current debt is roughly 14 trillion dollars.  That is roughly the same as our GDP.  That means that we currently owe about the same amount of money to lenders as the value of every single good and service that exists in the country.
2. Beyond the current debt mentioned above, America’s unfunded liabilities exceed 50 trillion dollars.  The total unfunded liabilities of the government are possibly as high as 90+ trillion depending on who you listen to.
3. America’s savings rate is negative.  This means as individuals we spend more than we save and have little to nothing to invest.  It’s that investment that drives the innovation that we heard so much about in the State of the Union address.
4. A significant portion of America’s debt is owned by foreign countries, not all of them completely friendly to us.  An abrupt dumping of that debt by these countries would be more effective than any terrorist act in disrupting the functioning of this country.
5. Our currency is a debt instrument.  Dollars can not exist without being created by some sort of interest bearing loan.

So what does all this mean?  It’s really just a matter of numbers that don’t add up.  We have a debt load in this country that is dangerously large, is growing daily, and will explode in the future due to Medicare, Social Security, and military and interest payments.  And we have to pay for it all with a currency that puts us even further into debt by its very existence.  Bottom line: there’s more money going out than coming in.  And nothing seems to indicate that things are going to change anytime soon.  Nice.

So what do we do?  Well, as you can guess I have some thoughts on that too.

1. Congress needs to pass and the President sign a law that outright prohibits an unbalanced budget unless we are in a declared war (which we are not right now incidentally).
2. Congress must propose real cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and military spending to bring their costs in line with revenues.  It will be painful but it simply must be done if we are ever to get out of this mess.
3. Our currency must be reformed so that it is no longer tied to lending.  It should be debt free and issued directly by the government.

Now I’ll admit that there’s a lot in those three bullets.  The problem is that most people don’t seem to know what the problem is.  We absolutely HAVE TO address our debt problem in this country.  If we don’t, I don’t know what the future will hold for us but I think I might not want to find out.

Well, it’s looking like another great season with Vince Young here in Tennessee.  We’re 5-5 right now and our offense looks terrible.  Our defense is sub-par compared to years past.  And now we’re the focus of countless news stories and sports-talk shows as the current soap opera plays out.

Well, I for one wish we’d cut ties with Vince and move on.  Those who would tell me I’m crazy would likely cite his winning record as a starter.  To that I say this: Chris Johnson.  And Cortland Finnegan.  And Kieth Bullock (last season).  Our team has been pretty talented since Vince has been here with last year seeing Chris Johnson rush for a historic amount of yardage.  With all that being said, I’d say we’ve won despite Vince, not because of him.

Look at how the guy plays.  For sure, he was great at Texas where he was usually the most athletic guy on the field in every game.  In the NFL though, that’s just not the case.  Here, EVERYONE is the most athletic guy on the field.  To be good, you have to study the game A LOT and also have a certain quality that allows you to see the whole field while being rushed and make good decisions about what to do with the ball.  Drew Brees has those abilities.  Tom Brady does.  Clearly Michael Vick has those skills.  I don’t think Vince does.

Now, I’m not above saying I might be wrong.  I might be…who knows.  But if I’m right – and I think there’s a good chance I am – and we hang on to Vince, all us Titans fans are going to have to endure who knows how many more seasons of up and down performances on the field and childish drama off the field.

I just can’t take it anymore and am ready to move on.  Who’s with me?

Okay people (assuming more than one person actually reads this blog), it’s geek time again.  I recently had to setup a Fedora 13 based PHP server that needed to talk to an Oracle database and frankly had a tough time with it.  I was able to get it working though and thought I’d write the steps down here both for my own use and maybe to help someone else.  So here goes…

Firstly I did this all on a normal Fedora 13 box…nothing fancy.  I installed Fedora in the normal manner and the followed with an install of apache and php.  Everything from this point is done as root.  To start just do:

yum install httpd php5

You’ll likely get a whole bunch of dependencies that need to be installed.  That’s okay, just install it all.

After that’s done, we also will need a C compiler because the OCI8 php module gets compiled as part of the process.  So now do:

yum install gcc

This will also produce a laundry list of dependencies that need to be installed.  Just go on with that and install everything yum says you need to.

Next you need to install the Oracle instant client.  You can download it from the Oracle website.  The download site is here.  You will need to download two RPM’s to install: the Basic instant client and the SDK package that has “devel” in the filename.

Once both those packages are downloaded to our Fedora machine, install each of them with:

rpm -Uvh “the filename”

After those RPM’s are installed, you’re ready to install the OCI8 php module.  We’ll do that through PECL.  It’s pretty simple.  Just do:

pecl install oci8

You should get a big laundry list of stuff telling you that the source is being downloaded.  At some point it should stop and ask you for the path to the Oracle home directory.  Although it says ENTER will just do an autodetect, that never worked for me.  I had to specify the path manually. So, on that line enter:

instantclient, /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib

That path should be right but double check that your version is 11.2 and that that path exists on your machine.  If there are a bunch of *.so files in there you should be good.  After a bunch more stuff detailing what’s happening you should get confirmation that the OCI8 stuff installed okay.

Now, at this point php was still not able to load the OCI8 module correctly for me.  I wasn’t really sure why but I found in the httpd log complaints from PHP that it got permission denied to load the OCI8 module.  I did two things and am not sure which one fixed the problem.  Firstly, I changed the ownership of /usr/lib/oracle to apache:apache with:

chown -R apache:apache /usr/lib/oracle

Next I disabled SELinux by editing the /etc/selinux/config file by setting “SELINUX=disabled” and rebooting the machine.

Now, like I said, I’m not sure which of the above fixed my problem but after doing these two things, the system worked.  I was able to create a phpinfo script and saw that the OCI8 module had loaded.  It’s possible I killed a gnat with a howitzer here…not sure.  If you know of a better way to make it work, feel free to leave a comment as I’d be interested.  This worked for me though and I don’t need the detailed security of SELinux.

Hope this helps someone.

Chipper

Here’s a headline from today’s New York Times:

Bernanke Signals Fed is Ready to Prop Up Economy

I love that!  I wanted to add a few more:

• Mafia Boss Ready to Administer Humanitarian Aid
• Enron Executives Named Heads of SEC
• Mark McGuire to Investigate Steroid Use in Baseball
• Bill Gates Book Details Struggles of Living in Poverty

Anyone else find ALL these headlines (especially the one from the New York Times) absurd?

Okay, so I heard that there’s this massive famine in Niger in Africa…that thousands are starving.  It’s one of the worst famines in recent history.  The story was on the radio on NPR.  But I go to CNN and there’s a top story of “Teen’s Peace Mission to North Korea” at the very top with a picture and everything.  Nothing at all on the main page about this famine.  Even clicking the “more” button doesn’t bring anything up about it.  But there’s stories about learning the Inuit language…about beached whales….about babies with boobs (yes, you’re reading this right) in China.  But nothing about a massive famine in Africa.  That’s the screwiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!

Point 1:

If the healthcare bill passes, it’s likely that more people in the USA will work for the federal government than any other employer in the country.  If that happens, how likely do you think getting representatives elected that want to ACTUALLY reduce the size of government is going to be?  “Let’s see…vote for someone who wants to eliminate my cushy government job…no thanks!”

Point 2:

If the healthcare bill passes and a majority of Americans are working for the government, that means that the majority of people are going to be making their livings at the expense of the minority.  That almost sounds like a return to slavery.

This whole thing is crazy.  Make no bones about it…healthcare in the US is screwed up.  But folding it into the already out-of-control federal government is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gas on it.  I can’t wait.

Man, do I feel better.  I was all prepared for the world to end because, you know, this H1N1 flu thing was going to kill us all.  I mean, the government and the health care industry told me that if I didn’t vaccinate myself and my family with this new additional vaccine that we’d all die.  I’m just glad that now we can breathe a sigh of relief without fear of inhaling viral death.  It just feels good knowing that you can count on the government and those who lobby it the most to take care of us…

http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/Swine_Flu_Stirred_Profits_but_Fewer_Deaths_than_Predicted_100131

So Massachusetts elected a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate, thus providing the Republicans with enough seats to filibuster.  Oh, and Kool-Aid drinkers across the country are just giddy.  Typically liberal Mass has put a Republican in the Senate!  The tide is turning on Obama!

Hang on a second.  I would advise all my Republican friends (and remember here that I am a Conservative) not to get too excited about all this.  As of late, Republican control of power hasn’t been a lot better than Democrat control.  I’d say it’s been “less bad”.  Remember the under Republican leadership we had:

1. The Patriot Act.  The single biggest erosion of personal liberty ever enacted into legislation.
2. Tax cuts yes, spending cuts no.
3. Deregulation of the securities market with deference to huge banks that transformed investing into essentially gambling.
4. Monetary policy that promoted inflation and economic bubbles. Can you say Greenspan?
5. Policies of intervention in the affairs of other countries that have cost lives and untold billions of dollars.
6. Little to no progress on freeing us from foreign oil dependence.  “Drill baby drill” isn’t a long term answer.

The list goes on and on.  So, I would advise my Republican friends to dispense with the excitement and stay focused.  Republicans are doing no better guiding this country than the Democrats are.  We need Conservative leadership that will

• Actually cut spending significantly rather than just cutting taxes and growing deficits
• Restore a focus on limiting government that includes personal freedom.
• Revise monetary policy so as not to allow government inflation of the currency.
• Focus our military efforts on defending the US, not nation-building overseas.  We don’t have the money for all these wars.
• Return power to the states where it belongs.

My frustration is that this will probably never happen.  If it ever did though, I’d be as giddy as the talk radio pundits are right now.

Santa spreads some Christmas cheer!