The Nazis were Marxists... ?

At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, with the attendant risks, I stumbled across an article on the American Thinker site which claims that Nazi ideology is actually closer to Marxism rather than right-wing ideology as is commonly expressed.

From the article:

The Nazis were Marxists, no matter what our tainted academia and corrupt media wishes us to believe. Nazis, Bolsheviks, the Ku Klux Klan, Maoists, radical Islam and Facists -- all are on the Left, something that should be increasingly apparent to decent, honorable people in our times. The Big Lie which places Nazis on some mythical Far Right was created specifically so that there would be a bogeyman manacled on the wrists of those who wish us to move "too far" in the direction of Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater.

Obviously some incendiary commentary, but further on there is this:

The first and only platform of the National Socialist German Workers Party called for very Leftist economic policies. Among other things, this platform called for the death penalty for war profiteering, the confiscation of all income unearned by work, the acquisition of a controlling interest by the people in all big business organizations and so on. Otto Strasser, the brother and fellow Nazi of Gregor Strasser, who was the second leading Nazi for much of the Nazi Party's existence, in his 1940 book, Hitler and I revealed his ideology before he found a home in the Nazi Party. In his own words Otto Strasser wrote: "I was a young student of law and economics, a Left Wing student leader."

Consider the following text from that platform adopted in Munich on February 20, 1920 and ask yourself whether it sounds like the notional Right or the very real Left:

"We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. The government must undertake the improvement of public health."

I have to admit, "broad extension of care for the aged" sounds like "socialized medicine" to me. The anti-business / capitalist "end to the power of financial interests" also hardly sounds like the invective of current right-wing types.

Further on, there's these two quotes:

Consider these remarks of Nazi leaders. Hitler on May 1, 1927:

"We are socialists. We are enemies of today's capitalistic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

Goebbels, who was the only major Nazi leader who stayed with Hitler to the very end, wrote in Der Angriff in 1928:

"The worker in a capitalist state - that is his greatest misfortune - no longer a human being, no longer a creator, no longer a shaper of things. He has become a machine."

Neither of those strike me as particularly right-wing, at least as is understood today.

I'm not sure how much credence to give the American Thinker article, but it does seem an interesting idea.

Both Nazism and Marxism led to totalitarian states which practiced wide scale democide; even if one could say one is right-wing and the other left-wing, it's not like either ideology is somehow exonerated by that distinction.

Some things cross cultures...

Unaware they were in a stand off with SWAT, suspects surrender

Yeah, really.

Apparently three people in the home, two 19-year-olds and a 21-year-old, had fired some shots around 1 this morning and then went to bed. The 21-year-old was apparently playing around with the gun and decided to shoot it.

When police responded, they apparently never knocked on the door. Instead they tried calling the home and had no luck. During the time police were trying to call the home, officers called in the swat team and began to evacuate the neighbors as a precaution.

Around 8:30 this morning, the guys finally woke up, realized what was going on outside, and peacefully left with the cops. All three were arrested for possessing a firearm and firing it.

Wow. Great job there.

A Cthulhu tract

Artist Steve Ellis and writer Fred Van Lente have come up with a Cthulhu Tract, similar to some of the religious pamphlets one sees scattered about near bus stations and all night eateries.

Worth a laugh, especially since it's in the same vein as some who take themselves very seriously.

French families adopt American graves

As seen on NPR:

Eight years ago, a French couple founded an organization that adopts graves of American servicemen who died during the Normandy invasion of World War II. The volunteer group encourages French families to lay flowers on the graves when the Americans' own families can't do it.

Damn, that's cool.

While the governments of our respective nations may quarrel, it's good to see the people of France and the US remember the sacrifices one made for the other.

Woman still recovering from dine and dash hit-skip

As a follow up to an earlier post, the woman hit by dine and dash suspect Michael Rose is still recovering.

From 10tv:

Earlier this week, doctors said it was doubtful Widomski, 28, would ever walk again.

On Friday, Widomski's aunt, Martha Manciano, confirmed the diagnosis.

"(Her spine) was severed in two places and crushed in multiple places," Manciano said. "Naturally she will never walk again."

Liu's husband, Paul, said his wife was recovering from a number of injuries.

"Julie has suffered a fractured sternum, multiple fractures on her ribs, a broken collarbone, her wrist is dislocated and she suffers from a serious concussion and a bruised brain," Liu said.

Let no one say someone trying to run you over isn't using lethal force. Injuries like that would seem to make gunshot wounds almost a simple matter in comparison.

Happy Caturday

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is this coming Monday.

While it's usually a time for picnics, barbecues, family gatherings, and the Indy 500, it's original purpose is a bit more solemn; to commemorate those who have died in military service.

Without getting into politics, I suggest a return to Memorial Day's original purpose is more timely than ever.

If you can spare a moment, swing by the gratitude campaign. Doesn't cost anything to say "thanks" and those of us who served appreciate it.

Just remember those who aren't here.

Hand grenade trifecta in play

First, a woman brings a hand grenade to a fire station:

GROVE CITY -- Columbus Fire's bomb squad was called out to the Jackson Twp. department, 3650 Hoover Rd., on reports of a hand grenade, NBC 4 reported.

A woman drove up to the department with the grenade in her vehicle. She said she found it while going through her father's estate and thought firefighters would accept it.

Since it still had its pin, firefighters and the bomb squad were worried the grenade was live.

Second, some kids picking up trash find a hand grenade:

HUDSON, Wis. (AP) - Three children picking up trash along a river in Hudson for community service work found much more than garbage. Charlie Thompson, 11, Maddie Roth, 10, and Demetri Roth, 8, came across a hand grenade, picked it up and headed home to show off their discovery.

On their way back Monday, they ran into a neighbor, who immediately called 911. Hudson police cordoned off the block, then determined the grenade wasn't a danger, even though it still had the firing pin inserted. Sgt. Eric Atkinson says the grenade was rusted and contained no powder.

Have to wonder if there's a third hand grenade incident out there waiting to happen...

Oracle: ORA-12545, part deux...

As a follow up to an earlier post, I think we found the problem.

Earlier, we were experiencing intermittent ORA-12545 errors.

Before this happened, the server group was performing some disaster recovery testing. Somehow, and of course they say they didn't touch it, the file permissions were changed on the /etc/hosts file. Only root had read permissions.

This caused commands like NSLOOKUP to fail completely. Really, you'd think this wouldn't be a problem with a tnsnames.ora entry where the HOST parameter was an IP address. I mean, with an IP address it's not like you have to resolve it.

Apparently though, that's not the case. Oracle appears to sometimes attempt to resolve the host name of the "HOST=" parameter even when it's an IP address.

As soon as we enabled world read access to the /etc/hosts file, the problems stopped happening.

Another link to the Smiley Face drownings?

There's apparently some interest in a 10 year old drowning case which may be linked to the Smiley Face Drownings:

From 10TV:

ATHENS, Ohio — 10TV News on Tuesday learned that investigators were re-examining evidence in the drowning of an Ohio University student 10 years ago.

Police originally determined that there was no foul play in the death of Keith Noble, 10TV's Cara Connelly reported.

According to investigators, Noble, 19, disappeared after a night of drinking on April 24, 1998. About two weeks later, his body was found in the Hocking River.

Now two retired New York City police detectives believe the drowning deaths of 40 male college students – including Noble's – are connected, Connelly reported.

How the investigation is going from "no foul play" to homicide is a question. I'll be interested in seeing if this pans out, or is just speculation.

Update on athens students drowning

Seems there's some new information on the two students found dead in a bathtub

http://www.wsaz.com/home/headlines/18550659.html

UPDATE TUESDAY 5/20:
ATHENS, Ohio (WSAZ) --New details were released Tuesday in the deaths of two college students found dead in a bathtub.

Preliminary autopsy results show that Kelly Armbruster and Christopher Theil probably died from a drug overdose.

The report also ruled out drowning as the cause of death -- there was also no sign of significant trauma.

Theil's mother found the pair dead in a bathtub at the River Park Tower Apartments in Athens last month.

Armbruster was a student at Ohio University; Theil attended Hocking College. Police say they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

I'll note the word "probably". Seems like the toxicology reports aren't in yet. That or "drug overdose" is the new excited delirium

Also, there's a photo circulating apparently from a facebook profile:

WHARRGARBL

Oracle: ORA-12545

I've no idea what happened, but one of the applications at work started to refuse to connect with the database. The error was ORA-12545.

Normally this is an easy error to correct. First thing, check the TNSNAMES.ORA entry for the service name in question.

An example looks like this:

ORA11 =
 (DESCRIPTION = 
   (ADDRESS_LIST =
     (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = zedatabaseserver)(PORT = 1521))
   )
 (CONNECT_DATA =
   (SERVICE_NAME = ORA11)
 )
)

First thing: Check to make sure the host name is correct. If it is, try resolving it on the client; use either nslookup or ping.

If that resolution is correct, the next thing to try is to change the host name to the IP address. So, in the above entry changing the host name would look something like this:

ORA11 =
 (DESCRIPTION = 
   (ADDRESS_LIST =
     (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 127.0.0.1)(PORT = 1521))
   )
 (CONNECT_DATA =
   (SERVICE_NAME = ORA11)
 )
)

That usually does it. Further problems are usually easy to diagnose; a complete lack of all network connectivity indicates the NIC has a problem, or someone's tripped over the cable again.

This time, none of the usual fixes worked. Even stranger, the problems only showed up in part of the application. Anything that used Crystal Reports, which itself used an ADO connection object, was refusing to connect.

The main application, and tools like SQL*Plus, worked fine. Eventually, multiple edits to the TNSNAMES.ORA file seemed to fix the problem, but I don't see how. We rather suspect someone from the server group was fiddling and "unbroke" whatever it was after they applied patches.

Very strange. If anyone else out there has seen something like this, feel free to leave a comment here.

UPDATE: Think I figured it out.

So, which Lebowski character are you?

Fun little quiz to see which Lebowski character you are:

http://www.alansmind.com/lebowskiquiz.php

Not much of a surprise what I got:

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Why don't you check it out? Or we cut off your Johnson!

If you've no idea what I'm on about... dude, read this.

Dine and dash suspect turns himself in

Ok, so this is still unfolding, but a man ran over three people who tried to stop him from leaving without paying.

The initial crime was rare enough: Fleeing a Short North restaurant without paying.

But then the man did something violent, Columbus police say: He intentionally backed his sport-utility vehicle over two people and hit a third who had chased him into the Haiku parking lot Thursday night.Late last night, police charged Michael A. Rose, 43, of 2348 Graydon Blvd. on the Northwest Side with four counts of felonious assault and sent alerts to officers in the Cleveland area, where they think Rose might be heading. Police were asking Rose to turn himself in.

Detective Aaron Mall said earlier yesterday that police had recovered the vehicle used as a weapon. Mall would not say where the SUV was found.

Meanwhile, two of the victims remained hospitalized, one in critical condition. Business owners in the dining and shopping district just north of Downtown are stunned.

The restaurant in question is Haiku, a decent sushi place in the short north area of Columbus.

Apparently the suspect, Michael A. Rose, has turned himself in:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The man who police said intentionally backed his sport-utility vehicle over two people and struck a third after he fled a restaurant without paying turned himself in on Saturday afternoon.

Michael A. Rose was charged with four counts of felonious assault after the Thursday night incident, 10TV's Lindsey Seavert reported.

Rose, 43, turned himself in at about 2 p.m., 10TV News reported.

Anyone with information about the incident is encouraged to contact Detective Mall in the Assault Squad at (614) 645-4189.

There's also a web site taking donations for the victims medical bills. While I don't know any of the victims, since they worked in the restaurant I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have health insurance.

Note: I probably don't have to say this, but I'm in no way associated with the Haiku Help site.

Happy Caturday

Prepare to repell... oohh... shiny!

Probably a photo from the Falklands War.

Ah... learning from the old folks

Didn't see that one coming...

Just kidding...

There is no candy...