Friday, July 30, 2010

Are We More Unemployed Now?

Short answer: Yes. Unemployment is higher now than it was when Bush was in office.

Long answer: Yes. Unemployment was high when he took office in Januaury of 2009, at 11919 (number in thousands) when Obama took office. The month before was at 11400, and before that 10617. Did Obama get caught in some of Bush's leftovers? Yes, every president does to some degree. Null point.

At the one year mark of his presidency Barrack Obama hit at 14837, an increase 4220 over when he took office. Unemployment jumped from %7.7 to %9.7, an entire %2 in just one year of office, when Bush left office the percent of unemployment was %7.4 and the month before that at %6.9.

Current unemployment percentage is at %9.5, an increase of %.2. During the Great Depression the peak unemployment rate was %24.9, important to note that the unemployment rate today is calculated differently than it was during the Great Depression era. By the Great Depression era's calculation we would have to add 15 to our existing percent giving us %24.5, just shy of the peak unemployment during the Great Depression.

So where are the jobs going? The same place they've been going for decades, overseas.

Click here to see the data used through this report.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Diggers Realm: Los Zetas seize ranches

This story circulated on Sunday the 24th. It hasn't been confirmed by police, local news or really any other credible source. Kimberly Dvorak of Examiner.com confirmed the story later, and later after that another source at the same site debunked the claim.

I'm going to dig deeper, hehe.

Diggers Realm is a site that is hosted through GoDaddy.com, the location through the whois database at GoDaddy.com puts Diggers Realm in Scottsdale, Arizona. The claim is that San Diego minutemen quoted sources within Laredo, Texas police department as credible and pushed the story as true. Diggers Realm was contacted by San Diego minuteman Jeff Schwilk who relayed the story as being a story he can "personally vouch" for I suggest reading the updates on the website, it is quite humorous how easily they all screwed up simple information.

So let's shoot their credibility here to shit, huh?

San Diego is approximately 371 miles away from Scottsdale. San Diego is about 1,115 or so miles away from Laredo, Texas. Scottsdale, Arizona is about 847 miles away from Laredo, Texas. So that means that a minuteman from San Diego, approximately 1,115 miles away from Laredo recieved information from a mystical law enforcement (who only spoke on condition of anonymity) official from Laredo that Los Zetas had taken over two ranches. In turn he notifies Diggers Realm about 847 miles away from Laredo and 371 miles away from himself of this development?

Well, that adds up, doesn't it? Sure, if you are a producer at Fox News (even they didn't report it). So what really happened?

Well, Fox News did report on that. The U.S. State Department issued a statement to stay out of Nogales, Juarez, and Nuevo Laredo (funny that, Nuevo Laredo, Laredo). All of this due to on-going violence between Mexican officials and the Mexican drug cartels. I cannot at this time confirm a report that I found earlier that in fact Laredo, Texas is on lockdown due to the gun battle just beyond the border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico but I do recall seeing one yesterday.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

We're In This Together

A Nine Inch Nails song from one of Trent Reznor's greatest albums, 'The Fragile.' I'm listening to this as I watch my once proud nation fall apart at the seams, like someone didn't stitch it properly the last time they repaired what people before them fucked up. And I'm reminded, they all really do work together, they blend so well with their null arguments that inevitably go nowhere that no one really picks up on it. I picked up on this idea when I watched the first five or so minutes of 'Fall of the Republic' (no, I didn't watch the entire thing, more often than not I can't even make it through five minutes of the political garbage strewn all over YouTube.).

It kind of hit me like a light bulb you would buy at your local grocery store like Target, or Walmart, that's right, not a corner grocer, hell those have all been replaced by 7-11's and Cum-and-Go's. It really is kind of funny actually, to watch our country fall to the same greedy empire it escaped from, fucked up but none-the-less funny. It is kind of like when your parents always told you not to make the same mistakes they did as if it were supposed to reiterate the “don't do it” or something. I always had a thought that if no one was told what 'not-to-do' they wouldn't have the slightest inkling to even bother finding out about it, but because a preferential person tells us “no” we automatically want to dig it up and figure out ourselves.

Kind of like the government, obviously after Bush nailed us all to the marketing failure of a cross we wanted someone new. This is when we heard the word “Change” how prolific at a time when we all thought things needed to “Change.” This is really kind of the fundamental issue with our society, now I'm not on a McCain-Palin trip, because that would have been an awful choice as well. One flaw of our once great society is that we don't really know shit about politics, or those few of us that do are drowned by the millions that saw it on the news. He promised us this and that, he preached change, he can twist words better than a clown can twist balloons.

Debt was a big one, wasn't it? Yes, yes it was, and every Presidential candidate said the same thing “I will get us out of debt.” Which brings me to another song by Nine Inch Nails 'The Great Below' specifically 'and all that could have been.' Fitting, no? I think so and I'm going to roll with it, all that could have been is potentially where we all closed our eyes, or decided to ignore the best choice in light of pretty words on a colorful banner. In a sense this was kind of the last nail in my 'I Used To Love My Country' coffin. When, and exactly how, did so many people in such diverse landscapes suddenly stop learning on their own? I knew the best candidate was Ron Paul, I read what he wanted to do and his plans for the future of our country, I also read Obama and McCain's strategies (and in all honesty, McCain's was a hell of a lot better than Obama's.).

Yet, none-the-less, the majority of this country voted on the issue and it came back with Obama. Why? Well, let's see: Obama - $670 million; McCain - $370 million; Paul - $28 million (suspended in favor of Campaign for Liberty on June 12th, 2008.). And to be honest, McCain blew through a ton of that money pretty quickly and Obama made a killing in on-line donations (main source of contributions). So, what does this mean? We are a money hungry country and people, more money, the more we want it, more pretty words...of course, we want it. Pathetic, really, well, definition-wise it is purely moronic. But we can all watch TV pretty well, so at least we did get something right even if it isn't what we needed to get right in the first place.

Now, I'm not on a high-horse here telling to you go and try to impeach Obama, because that won't happen no matter how hard you click your heels together like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. All I am saying is try not to make the same damn mistake the next time around, okay? Look into all of your candidates on your own, read into them, look at their past decisions in government (or lack thereof), but most of all...do not let the television educate you on politics, because the news is surprisingly stupider than the population that follows it.
 
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