Election debrief

I had a hard time at the polling booth. I always had a hard choice in my mind between two parties: the family party, and National. National was the safe choice, as the party which was always going to be the bulk of any non-Labour government. But I liked the Family party policies. They most closely represented my views in New Zealand. Things like:

• Honour the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In doing so, we recognise that the state is not the ultimate authority.
• Seek legal status for the unborn child
• Require parental knowledge and consent for child/teen abortion procedures
• Protect, esteem and encourage the traditional institution of marriage through policy and legislation
• Reduce all personal tax rates to a lower and flatter tax structure to keep more money with the earner and in the home
• The Family Party will fix current legislation that makes responsible smacking a crime. To that end, the Party aims to reinstate Section 59 of the Crimes Act that affords decent, loving parents’ protection from criminal liability in circumstances where corrective discipline is reasonable in the circumstances.
• The Family Party calls for a total repeal of the Electoral Finance Act to restore confidence in New Zealand’s democratic election process.
• The Family Party favours transparent Family Court processes that fairly balance the rights of both parents.
• The Family Party will seek a total repeal of the Prostitution Reform Act, which was passed in 2003 by a single vote and effectively decriminalised soliciting, pimping and brothel keeping in New Zealand.
• The Family Party is very concerned that sentencing measures do not reflect the seriousness of crimes committed. Sentencing and time served must accurately reflect the seriousness of the crime.

I wanted to vote for these policies, but in the end I voted National. There were a few main reasons for this:

1. New Zealand could not afford another three years of Labour/Green social engineering
2. The 5% threshold is too high. 4.2% of New Zealanders who voted New Zealand First have my sympathy.
3. The Family party were clear on their strategy to seek an electorate seat. They did not need my party vote to obtain representation this election.
4. National actually appeared to be a reasonable choice, although John Key professes no belief in God, which is a bad start.

With hindsight, I absolutely did the right thing. Had another 4% of the conservative vote given their party vote to either the Kiwi party or the Family party, we could well have had another three years of anti-family, anti-Christian policy.

One concerning feature of this election though, was how little an impact the Family party made in the electorates they targeted. The Mangere seat, which could have been a tight three way race between Family, Pacific and Labour, was nothing less than a landslide for Labour. The Family party candidate only achieved 856 out of 21687 votes cast. This is incredibly disappointing given their strategy, and calls the Family Party’s viability into question. 856 votes from the flagship electorate is too few for this party to be taken seriously in the future in my opinion.

So where to from here for the Christian voter? The jury is out on National. The big test will be to see how they react to the referendum on the anti-smacking legislation. If they ignore the will of the people here, it will be difficult to vote for the new-National again. I can only pray for a new Christian voice to arise in the public arena in New Zealand. Either as a standalone party, or as a God-fearing influence within one of the parties currently in parliament.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34

Monitoring Tomcat with jvisualvm on Redhat

Monitoring must be done using the VM owner, the tomcat user on RHEL. In a VNC session, “xhost +SI:localuser:tomcat” or equivalent needs to be run to allow tomcat to access the DISPLAY.

First I needed to setup some things as root, as the tomcat user home directory is owned by root and jvisualvm wants to create some preference directories.

su -
mkdir /usr/share/tomcat5/.visualvm
mkdir /usr/share/tomcat5/.nbprofiler
chown tomcat:tomcat /usr/share/tomcat5/.visualvm
chown tomcat:tomcat /usr/share/tomcat5/.nbprofiler

Then, one can just run jvisualvm as tomcat when required:

su - tomcat
jvisualvm

To monitor a long running jvm owned by the tomcat user, you will also need to ensure that the tmpwatch program does not blow away an important jvm file:

1. Edit the file /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch
2. Add the exclusion -x /tmp/hsperfdata_tomcat to the /tmp tmpwatch invocation.

Save their lives

Christian parents have a special stake in this controversy, because the Bible speaks so directly to the use of corporal punishment and the necessity of disciplining disobedient children.  Furthermore, Christian parents should feel a shiver go down the spine when the United Nations is invoked as the moral authority.

Mohler on the American facet of the worldwide push to criminalize discipline.

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death. Proverbs 23:13-14

A better New Zealand electoral system?

My suggestions to fix some “issues” with our current proportional system.

Issue#1 – Parties can stack the top of the list to assuredly get their favourites into parliament. Notwithstanding how obnoxious they are to the voting public.

Issue#2 – List MPs voted in on the party vote can end up voting against party policy.

Issue#3 – Voters cannot vote for who they want, because the 5% threshold is too high.

1. Remove list MPs, with the sole exception of the party leader. The party vote over and above the number of MPs actually elected would be given to the leader of the party.  So if National gets enough votes for 50 MPs, and 45 are elected, including the leader, then the National Leader has his own vote plus 5 “party” votes in parliament. What about an extreme case, where a party garnered 20% of the party vote, but no electorate seats in a 100 seat parliament? In this case there would be 101 MPs, with the party leader having 25 votes in parliament.

2. Remove the 5% threshold. If a party gets enough votes for one MP, the party leader gets in.

Who to vote for in 2008?

Act? An OK choice, but the worldview that sees corporations as moral entities is a bit silly.

Greens? Sue Bradford? Environmental achievements such as the anti-smacking bill and civil unions? No.

Family? An unashamedly Christian party. Mangere vs the 5% threshold. The heart choice.

Kiwi? Support Gordon Copeland? The schismatic slayer of the “single christian party”? No.

Labour? Can you be born again and still vote for Helen Clark and her crew? Yes, but Nooooo!!!

Maori? A legislated race based party? No.

National? Better by far than Labour, but still secular. A good choice as the safe vote against Labour.

New Zealand First? A better voting record, shame about the Peters circus. You could do worse.

Progressive? Too close to Labour. No.

United Future? The Treasurer, Mr Dunn, who voted with Labour against the nation and his own party’s policy to pass the Anti-smacking bill. No.

National or the Family party? Hmmmm.

Value your vote

You can see how the various parties voted on various issues.

Family Party Conference

Speeches by Richard Lewis

We’re a rugby mad nation. So I want to use rugby to illustrate my next point.

Whenever things get untidy and out of control, it’s best to come back to the game plan and do the basics right.
At the General Election in exactly six weeks from today, we have a chance to do exactly that. We’ll get a breather for a moment but then we’ll have to put a team back out onto the field.

And here’s where it gets exciting folks. You are the head coach and you get to pick the team. But just remember, you will be stuck with that team for the next three years. And there’s no rotation policy.

So lets look at some options.

The Greens don’t play rugby so they’re out.

We can’t put Labour back on the field because they’re primarily responsible for the mess we’re in, in the first place. They need a season on the bench to have a good hard look at their attitude.

Barring major injuries, National will more than likely take the field. But on their own they won’t have the numbers for a full compliment. That is the political reality.

We’re still uncertain about what game plan National has in mind, and whether it is really any different to Labours besides having different coloured jerseys. So we need an insurance policy.

Winston is out because National won’t throw him the ball. And even if they did, he’d likely tuck it up his jersey and deny he received it in the first place.

Rodney will likely take the field and that’s good because every team needs a right-winger: just not a whole team of them.

Peter Dunne will likely be there because he’ll basically do whatever it takes just to be there.

The Maori Party is also an option. The problem for National however is the risk that the Maori Party will decide part way through that they want to play League instead. National won’t play League.

and Paul Adams

So don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that the Christian vote has no meaning or that Christians cannot affect change in this country or that Christians should keep Christianity out of politics. It’s a lot of rubbish. Don’t you believe them for one second.

Anglicans sorry for upholding God’s word

Sob.  The Church of England apologizes to Darwin. Thank God for Dr Sarfati. Enjoy his viewpoint from the perspective of someone who takes the word of God seriously.

Albert Mohler also has some good words on the apology.

Britney I’m sorry

What a great song by Bebo Norman. I remember when Britney really lost it with Justin Timberlake. Her external beauty mirrors the real beauty that God sees in her. It is a real horror that she is so broken, but Bebo puts it so well. Wouldn’t it be great if Britney came back?

Britney im sorry for the lies we told
we took you into our arms and then left you cold
britney im sorry for this cruel cruel world
we sell the beauty but destroy the girl
britney im sorry for your broken heart
we stood aside and watched you fall apart
im sorry we told you fame would fill you up
and money moves the man so drink the cup

i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
you never see it coming back
i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
but i can see it coming back for you
yes coming back for you

britney im sorry for the stones we throw
we tear you down just so we can watch the show
britney im sorry for the words we say
we point the finger as you fall from grace

i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
you never see it coming back
and i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
but i can see it coming back for you

yeah, its coming back for you, yeah, its coming back for you, yeah, its coming back for you, yeah

britney i do believe that love has come
here for the broken
here for the ones like us

i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
you never see it coming back
and i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
but i can see it coming back

i know love goes around the world we know
and you never see it coming back
you never see it coming back
i can see it coming back for you

its coming back for you… yeah

Linux equivalents to Windows apps

A useful wiki page from Groklaw.