Some thoughtful individual was so motivated by it that he/she exerted the energy to peruse my site for a contact form, fill it out, and send me the following constructive criticism:

Aww... shucks. I have a Secret Admirer.

Bit of trivia: this is my first ever "hate email," and I'm honored.

Jokes aside, is this indicative of the typical Obama-supporter? My Secret Admirer notwithstanding, I've received nothing but positive feedback about that post so far.

Why is the only dissenting point of view expressed in such a vitriolic manner? Why can my Secret Admirer say nothing of substance? Why must he/she throw around 3rd-grade playground insults?

I backed up my argument with sources (41 news links and 6 videos). My Secret Admirer didn't even have an argument. Is there nothing that can be said to explain the absolutely abysmal record of their beloved candidate? I really want to know.

If anyone has anything to add to what I've said, I always welcome a discussion, whether you agree with me or not.

So, Secret Admirer, if you're out there, reading this, please come talk to me. Show me how I'm stupid rather than just telling me I am. I don't want to feel bad anymore. Show me the way.

The post Is This the Typical Obama Supporter? appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Short version

1. He is the most pro-abortion president in history, arguing even for the killing of born children^*.
2. He has thrown out the 1st Amendment by directly attacking the freedom of religion.
3. He is the most financially irresponsible president in history.

Long version

Abortion

Before his presidency

As a senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted 4 times in 3 years to kill (or let die) infants that survived late-term abortions, arguing that to do anything else would weaken Roe v Wade.

The following is an audio recording of then Senator Barack Obama arguing against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

In 2003, he publicly expressed support for late-term (partial-birth) abortion:

Campaigning for the presidency

During his campaign, Obama repeatedly promised to reduce abortions. He even promised the Pope he would reduce abortions.

Then, at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser, Barack Obama promised that his first act as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

FOCA would have made it a constitutional right (in all 50 states) to obtain any form of abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason, and without parental consent; no matter the age of the mother. Fortunately, it never became law because even most pro-abortion politicians couldn't support it.

Watch the video:

As President

Since arriving at the White House, his promotion of abortion has only increased. As president, Barack Obama has promoted abortion over 200 times.

Mexico City Policy

His very first act as president, his third day in office, was to rescind the Mexico City Policy, ensuring our tax dollars would fund abortion in other countries, even though it is prohibited by law in our own (in most cases).

Supreme Court Appointments

Obama has appointed two pro-abortion Supreme Court justices: Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Elena Kagan (pictured right) is so pro-abortion, she forged medical testimony in an effort to stop the Partial Birth Abortion ban during Clinton's administration.

She showed that facts are of no consequence in her decisions and actions regarding abortion.

Health and Human Services

He appointed pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In 2005, Kathleen Sebelius destroyed critical evidence in a federal case against Planned Parenthood that included 23 felony charges.

The Dornan Amendment

In 2009, Obama overturned the Dornan Amendment by signing an omnibus spending bill that included forced tax-payer funding of abortion in Washington D.C.

The budget and Planned Parenthood

In 2011, during his budget negotiations with Speaker John Boehner, Obama refused to cut even $1 from the $480 million set aside for Planned Parenthood. This was in spite of the fact that he cut $600 million from funding for Community Health Centers, which provide far more comprehensive care than Planned Parenthood and do not perform abortions. This is also puzzling since by the numbers, defunding Planned Parenthood helps poor women receive better care.

Obamacare

He put forth Obamacare (a term which he said he likes, so I use it here), which provides mandatory, direct funding of abortion.

Advertising for Planned Parenthood

In 2012, Barack Obama recorded an ad promoting Planned Parenthood, from within the White House:

Were this any other non-government organization, being promoted by the president from the White House, it would be an incredible scandal and recognized as an abuse of power. But since it was for Planned Parenthood, the media completely ignored it.

Note also how he continues the lie that defunding Planned Parenthood would cut women off from mammograms, even though Planned Parenthood doesn't provide them.

During the second presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Obama repeated the lie yet again.

Conclusion

In this country, 1.21 million children are killed by abortion every year (330,000 of which are killed at Planned Parenthood). That's more than 2 children killed every minute, 24/7. And Obama's actions show he is intent on keeping that number high and making tax payers fund it.

I will not vote for such titanic injustice.

Religious Liberty

Through Obamacare - and the subsequent HHS mandates it authorized - Obama is violating the freedom of religious institutions and conscientious objectors to abstain from supporting and paying for things which violate their deeply-held beliefs. This includes contraception, drugs which cause abortions, and sterilizations.

Yes, Obama made his "accommodation." Unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing to solve the issue and allowed for even less exceptions than before.

There have always been accommodations for conscientious objectors. This move is unprecedented, and the proof is in the 37 lawsuits representing 110 plaintiffs (as of this writing) who are suing the Federal Government of the United States over the same policy.

I challenge anyone to find any other time in history when so many separate lawsuits were filed against the federal government over the same policy. Not. Going. To. Happen.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

This blatant disregard for freedom of religion is the act of a tyrant. And before you think my application of the word "tyrant" is extreme or harsh, consider the first definition of said word offered by Merriam-Webster:

1 a : an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution

I will not vote for such blatant tyranny.

Economy

National debt

Take a look at the following three numbers:

1.   $5,674,178,209,886.86
2. $10,024,724,896,912.49
3. $16,159,487,013,300.35

The first was our national debt on September 30th, 2000, just before George W. Bush was elected.

The second was our national debt on September 30th, 2008, just before Barack Obama was elected.

That means: In 8 years, Bush added $4.3 trillion to the national debt ($4,350,546,687,025.63 if you prefer). That's a rate of $544 billion per year.

In 2008, Barack Obama called that irresponsible and unpatriotic:

Now let's go back to that third number. That was our national debt on October 1st, 2012.

That means: In 4 years, Obama added $6.1 trillion to the national debt ($6,134,762,116,387.86). That's a rate of $1,534 billion per year, almost three times the rate under Bush.

Budget Deficits

When the federal budget adds more than $1 trillion in deficits per year, by itself, 4 years in a row, it's not hard to see how we got here: Deficit after deficit, year after year after year.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate spiked sharply the year after Obama took office, rising to 10.2% and nearly matching the all-time-high reached back in 1982.

Obama didn't add 5 million jobs. He lost 4.3 million, and has spent the rest of the time trying to recover them. In fact as far as the unemployment rate goes, we're just now back to where we started 4 years ago.

Even then, the unemployment rate is misleading as it doesn't count those who have given up looking for a job. A much better indication of employment is the employment-population ratio, which - for the past 3 years - has been hovering steadily at 58.7%. This is the lowest it has been since the 1980s and shows no signs of improvement over 4 years ago.

Conclusion

Finally, here's Obama saying - in his own words - why he shouldn't be re-elected:

I will do my part to help him keep his word.

I will not vote for such gross incompetence.

The post Why I will not vote for Obama appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Have you ever wanted to customize the appearance of alerts to fit the theme of your website? If you're using jQuery UI, it's almost stupid how easy it is.

Check it out:

Just add this to the top of your javascript

And add a little bit of CSS to make it look nicer

Usage

Now, calling:

Gives you:

(With the jQuery UI Smoothness theme)

Notice, you can use HTML in your alerts now.

Caveats

Since the old alert was an actual modal window, and this new one is simply mimicking it from inside the main document, there are a few differences in behavior that are worth noting.

• The new alert will not raise a window event like the old alert did. If your window is not in focus, the user will have no idea anything has happened.
• The new alert does not block javascript execution like the old alert did. With the old alert, as soon as it's triggered, all javascript stops and waits for the user to close the alert box.
• Because the new alert is non-blocking, you can have multiple alerts open at the same time. In the case of multiple alerts, the user will see them in reverse chronological order, which can be confusing.

Fallback

If you simply have to have your window-event-raising, javascript-execution-blocking, one-at-a-time, boring alerts, then you could also provide a fallback like so:

Then use like so:

Conclusion

As long as the caveats aren't a problem for you (hint: they shouldn't be in a well-designed web application) or the fallback works for you, enjoy your snazzy new alerts!

The post Override alert() With jQuery UI Dialog appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

For those who thought I had died, you can now breathe that sigh of relief you've been holding in for over a year.

I have some big news for you: Thanks to a very generous donation from a user, I will soon be releasing a major update to Youtube Feeder.

This update will include the #1 most requested feature from users: Playlist Support; as well as many other features.

There are so many features coming in this update that I had to completely change the roadmap of upcoming versions and features, which is where you should look for a full list of what's coming in this next release: 2.0.

I don't have a release date yet, but you can expect to see it drop within the next couple of weeks.

The post Youtube Feeder Update coming! appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Source: o5com on Flickr

There's a new bill on the horizon from California Democrat Jackie Speier.

The Do Not Track Me Online Act claims to be the "Do Not Call" Registry of the Internet.

Sounds like a great idea, right? Unfortunately, it sounds fantastic. I say "unfortunately," because the proposed bill is incredibly dangerous.

There are few ideas coming from California lately that have worried me like this, and that's saying a lot. All this bill does is show just how clueless lawmakers are about technology. The concept itself is fundamentally-flawed, completely impractical, and will almost certainly do more damage than good.

First of all, there's no mention in the bill of how exactly this would be accomplished. It's not nearly as simple as the "Do Not Call" registry. Everyone has a phone number that - for the most part - never changes. Not so on the Internet.

People are using a growing number of diverse devices to access the Internet: Desktops, Laptops, Netbooks, Tablets, Smartphones, Webphones, Game consoles, and even TVs; just to name a few.

Almost every device has several browsers available to them, and I'm not even going to get into the varied ways these devices connect to the Internet in the first place (Cable, DSL, Satellite, business networks, Wimax, Cellphone connections, etc.).

A "Do Not Track" option has been on the wishlist of privacy advocates like Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy for quite some time, and eight such organizations have announced their support. The FTC also indicated that it would back a "Do Not Track" option in December report.

~Mashable

This has all the stink of the gun control ideology (or should I say "idiology"? /stupid pun). "The solution to gun violence is more gun control laws." Nope. Sorry. Wrong. Tell that to the poor victims of the Fort Hood shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting, or any other school shooting you can think of. Those "safe zones" only prevented the victims from being able to protect themselves.

Now, of course this isn't the same thing. Stopping ad companies from tracking people isn't going to put anyone in mortal danger. It will, however, cripple productivity and the Internet economy as we know it.

Why? Who follows the laws? People who follow the laws. Who breaks the laws? People who break the laws. Read that again in case you missed it.

I can absolutely guarantee that whatever method used to implement this list would be easily detected and bypassed by Internet tracking companies. The only way it couldn't is if the country spent every last dime on this effort and didn't eat for five years.

So what will happen then? The law-abiding companies will obey, stop making money, and go under. The less-concerned-with-legality companies won't obey, and will make a killing because their services will be in much higher demand by the people who use tracking information.

How would this affect the rest of the world? Would ad companies in China, Russia, or any other country really be concerned with our laws on privacy? Probably not.

All this bill could possibly do is hurt U.S. companies who follow the rules and provide more incentive for others not to follow the rules. Internet advertising (especially targeted advertising) literally makes everything we take for granted on the Internet possible. Without the current infrastructure, the Internet as we know it, would not exist.

Plenty of (free) tools already exist that effectively protect privacy: TOR, Adblock, Noscript, etc. Heck, every major modern browser even has a privacy mode built right in (I would highly recommend TOR for anyone serious about protecting their privacy).

Want to help people protect their privacy? Raise *awareness* about those existing options.

But please, please, PLEASE don't create yet another inefficient, ineffective bureaucratic placebo that kills productivity and the economy of the Internet.

The post "Do Not Track" = "Do Not Think" appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

I've even offered a 50+ reputation bounty on it if you happen to be a member of that site. If anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated. I've also posted the same question on ubuntuforums.org with no luck so far.

I will accept any advice, but I need to scan whole directories recursively with clamdscan.

The post Clamdscan in Ubuntu appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Today is an important day for our country. It is the national holiday of Thanksgiving, characterized by a parade, a huge turkey dinner, football, and a day of sale-fueled insanity to follow.

These days, so many people try to break us away from the distractions and tell us what Thanksgiving is all about. They say it's spending time with family, thanking the people around us, remembering how fortunate we are, etc. While these sentiments are all true in some respect, they miss the whole truth of why Thanksgiving was established in the first place.

Rather than trying to explain it, why not refer to the words of the man who declared it as a holiday in the first place?


That man was our first president, George Washington, and this is what he said:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLIC THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; ...

Source: Early America

You should also check out the image of the original document, "Thankfgiving" spelling and all.

So take a minute today to remember where we came from, what has happened before us, and most importantly, to pray and give thanks to God for this country and everything else with which He has blessed us.

After all, that is, in fact, what this holiday is all about.

The post What Thanksgiving Is All About appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Inspired by my most recent post about embedding a Youtube feed with a shortcode, some features I wanted to add to it, and a certain amount of interest in expanding it, I have written my second WordPress plugin.

It's interesting that today is almost exactly 1 year from the date I released my first wordpress plugin (which I'll hopefully be updating soon).

Here's what the plugin does:

Youtube Feeder allows you to embed a dynamic Youtube video feed anywhere in your WordPress blog. The feed is always up to date because it pulls directly from Youtube's data api, but it can also cache the Youtube feed based on configurable settings.

The plugin is very flexible because every aspect is configurable. Each video feed can be configured separately, or you can use defaults that take effect site-wide. Each component is given highly accessible classes for complete customization of the display through CSS.

Head on over to the Youtube Feeder project page for more details!

The post New WordPress Plugin: Youtube Feeder appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

UPDATE: Looking for more functionality and an easier installation method?

Check out my WordPress plugin: Youtube Feeder

It's based on this code and has a LOT more features

WordPress shortcodes are great. They let you perform complex operations or display dynamic content with just a tiny bit of text in any page or post.

I recently needed a way to embed the most recent videos from a Youtube channel (very dynamic information) in a WordPress page, so I decided to write a shortcode for it.

The code is actually pretty simple. Just add the following to your theme's functions.php file:

And it couldn't be easier to use. The videos you see below were embedded simply by putting this code in the post:

The shortcode is completely configurable. The following code would have resulted in the exact same output:

You can change any option as needed.

You might have noticed the code gives each element a particular class to make it CSS friendly. All you have to do is add CSS rules for three classes: .youtubefeed, .youtubetitle, and .youtubecontent.

My stylesheet looks like this:

A quick note about requirements:

• Your server's PHP configuration needs to have allow_url_fopen set to On.
• You'll also need the PHP JSON extension

Most hosts meet those requirements.

So there you have it. It's a quick and dirty way to get functional, always up-to-date Youtube streams in your WordPress posts and pages.

The post WordPress: Embed Youtube Feed With a Simple Shortcode appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.

Simply run the following query from the command line or via a tool like phpMyAdmin

(Make sure to select your wordpress database first, of course)

Sure. Your site looks like it was just setup 2 seconds ago, but at least now you can access all the GUI-licious tools of the WordPress Admin panel to fix whatever broke your theme.

The post Recover WordPress from broken theme appeared first on AndrewEnsley.com.