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.

Thief Of Military Equipment Arrested For Possible Explosives

Military police at Fort Gordon, Georgia arrested a man for impersonating a soldier with possible grenades in his vehicle on the base today. Fort Gordon and Richmond county bomb squads were in to the location after officials searched the vehicle the man was driving and found possible explosives. Among the possible explosives there were apparently other "militarylike" items in the vehicle and I would imagine on the person.

Police believe that the man was possible involved in other thefts of military items in Fort Gordon according to base spokesman Buz Yarnell. A call of a suspicious person in Fort Gordon was what lead to the eventual discovery of possible explosives and other items of the like.

This is all coming after repeated terrorist attack attempts on domestic ground, along with the BP dillema off the Gulf Coast. President Obama has a full plate ahead of him and obviously something needs to be done about securing domestic bases or the next "possible" can become the next "attack."

I used to love my country.

BP Oil Spill - Who's Fault Is It?

Well, this started off well, didn't it? Apparently on April 20th, a blast killed 11 BP workers and released a massive flow of oil into the Gulf, and so far it has been a finger-pointing game. The government pointing their mighty finger of political power at BP, and BP? Taking the blame, well, they should, it is their fault afterall. But that isn't what gets me, no, I'm not concerned that BP is the fall-guy of the oil spill. I'm more concerned with the governments lack of response.

So I began to read on this issue a bit, and came across this blog entry at WashingtonPost.com which goes into pretty good detail as to what the government is doing, and, well, what they cannot do at this time. As that article explains, the government really couldn't do any more than what BP is already doing.

They have already had some remote vehicles get tangled, which only resulted in an even longer operation and if anything hindered the attempt to cull the situation.

The government has also already started to review a plan to place sand berms up to keep sensitive wetland protected, but as the blog above said 'it would take months to execute.'

What do I think? This country is angry, for multiple reasons, and quite a few of them pretty good reasons. However, we need to analyze a situation before we jump down the governments throat and claim them for the fault, we really can't have a 'jump first, check later' attitude at this point in time. We have to be more selective on what we jump on, and how we jump on it, throwing brash insults towards our government isn't going to fix anything.

More to come, I used to love my country.