Obama's Jobs Act, Is It Worth It

"The American tax payer will have to pay 200,000$ per job." Where will the money come from? Is this a long term solution? What will the jobs be doing? For instance, the US Postal Service I think is over staffed. With less mail they should be retasked to do other jobs that help the economy instead of just sitting in the post office with those frowns on their faces. Also Timothy Geitner answers the question "is it worth it" with "consider the alternative". As I said earlier, the government needs to stop passing and attempting to pass broken bills that seem to be the best of a bunch of bad bills. Also, the video in the link : http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/geithner-good-chance-jobs-act-pass/story?id=14609951

goes over how our state outsourced anyways, even after Obama said everything possible

should be "made in America". They should start with that all government parts have

to use only American parts unless shown that they need to outsource.

IBM Surpasses Microsoft

IBM is one of the few companies with consistent profits in today's times, whereas Microsoft's stock has been bleeding value for awhile now. IBM going up 22% with Microsoft loosing almost 9%. IBM passed Microsoft for market value for the first time since 1996. The difference between the two technology firms Ted Shadler says is that IBM goes past computers. I also think Microsoft does too with its XBOX (especially after they bought the HALO franchise). As we know Bill Gates started Microsoft and said that IBM would go out of business. That was obviously something Mr. Gates wishes he had not said. Also I would just like to say, Apple is still the largest technology firm out there. I think that other companies should look at IBM's history and learn from it especially because it had a turn around period. I think that Microsoft is undervalued because of its huge rate of expansion throughout asia when Apple and IBM are not as big, thus I think that this is only short term.

New Voting Restrictions?

Because the GOP controls many of the state governments, they are enforcing new laws of voting to prevent voter fraud (which as mentioned in the article is very rare) in reality, it seems as if there are other motives, i.e. attempts to stop poor /minority voters from voting. This is possible because these new laws make voting take a lot longer than usual which unfortunately will discourage working class people with busy schedules to not go out and vote, usually for democrat candidates. Republicans are doing this because they know that Obama is extremely powerful in that he has the power to "get more people to vote. In 2008, when he won the presidency he literally "rocked the vote" due to the fact that so many people who had never voted before actually went out to the polls and voted for him. These new laws remind me of voting restrictions in the south during the civil rights era.

Obama Losing African-American Support

As President Obama is starting his 2012 election campaign, support for him is dropping in the least expected area: African Americans. In the past few weeks, Obama has been criticised for "avoiding troubled inner-city districts," and suffered large drops in poll numbers among black voters. It seems that expectations were much too high to begin with, and so people were disappointed.

However, that isn't to say that African Americans don't support Obama. They are more likely not to vote at all than to vote against Obama. However, during the 2008 elections, the turnout for black voters was huge, and pretty much unanimous in who they voted for. With "Strongly favorable" views of Obama in black voters dropping from 89% to 58% in five months, Obama may have reason to worry.

Circumcision ban prevented

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Sunday that prevents the banning of circumsision. This act was in response to a San Francisco group that proposed a citywide ban of the practice.

In July, a Supreme Court judge ordered that male circumcision was a widely practiced medical procedure, and therefore left to regulation by the states, not the cities. The new bill takes effect immediately over the entire state.

I know that this post will probably not generate much debate, especially since nobody wants to talk about such... topics, but I thought it was interesting.

Our Government's Inability to Play Nice

"Congress brawls, your 401k fails". Think about it. When was the last time Congress was able to get something passed and have that bill perform to its fullest intention. Today, the problem is not with having one political group, as the founding fathers feared. It is that the current ones cannot do anything without having at least a partial shut down of the government. All they can do is compromise and have bills that do not work to the fullest potential. I don't know whether this is from their lack of learning of sharing is caring as a child, or from their attempt at saving face. Either way, it is hurting the governemnt, it is hurting the economy, and therefore it is hurting me. With elections coming up and myself turning eighteen, I think that I will vote for the person who seems the most likely to fix this inability to shake hands. Else we will have to hope that someone logical comes around and is as good a speech giver as Carter was. Don't forget that people will have to listen with an open mind too.

World Market trends Continue to Fall

The slowing market is not just the US' fault. Although we may feel like it is largely our fault for a economic down turn because of all of our outsourcing and an expensive labor market, we must remember (as I said early) about the European debt crisis and the fact that Asian markets are also falling. I believe that the greatest problem the global economy faces is in Europe where inflation has risen from 2.5% annually to 3% as http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/30/markets/world_markets/?npt=NP1 states. As we know, the periods of best growth for the US and the world has been during periods of time that had low inflation and long steady periods of growth, example being the 1990-2000 time period. I think that if the situation in Europe can be solved, the global economic situation would be put back on the track of continuing prosperity.

No More Last Meal in Texas

It has been common practice for the prison to give the prisoner the choice of his or her last meal before execution. However, this practice has been stopped in Texas, after a large request was not consumed. Upon hearing this news, Senator John Whitmire commented that "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. One which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim."

The drop of the last meal in Texas will surely spark some controversy over the humane-ness of it, as well as call attention to the cruelty of the death penalty in general.

What do you think? Does the prisoner deserve the privilege of a last meal? Or is he really deserving of being completely miserable before he dies?

And in case you were wondering, the prisoner who refused to eat his last meal was Lawrence Brewer, who was executed for his involvement in the infamous racially-motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to death.

The Euro And Its Problems

With the recent economic problems in Europe, especially Greece, I wondered what countries normally do in that situation. I found that one way countries try to fix a debt issue is to devalue their currency to make their goods seem better priced. However, in Europe, most countries use the Euro which is a shared currency. Thus there were talks of a "Euro Breakup". However with Greece near defaulting, it would cause huge problems for the currency. This is why countries like Germany and France, the more wealthy countries using the Euro, are rushing to help bail out Greece. Other countries however are also having problems, such as Italy and Spain. This would require germany and France to constantly provide these countries with "cash flow" to sustain the currency. However, I think that all countries in the end are in it for themselves and I do not see France or Germany helping those countries out much more. However, this would mean that Greece, Spain, and Italy would have to leave the European union in order to stop using the Euro and that is unlikely to happen. also, France and Germany cannot kick them out alone. That is why, in the end, I see the countries looking out for number one and devaluing the Euro in order to try and save their own economies. On a side note, I think this would be good for the US because it would drive the value of the dollar, hopefully, back up to a more level value with the Euro respectively. Or it could just cause the Asian currencies to sky rocket and we all loose a lot of money.

Are we Killing al Qaeda or Americans?

Recently there was the US government killed a US citizen by the name of al-Awlaki, a known al Qaeda member. The question is whether or not the government had the right to kill him. After all, he was a US citizen and therefore is protected by the government, supposedly anyways. Some libertarians are saying that we are becoming like the Soviets in how we are killing our own citizens in order to keep order, a police state. Republican Ron Paul said"If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it's sad, Al-Awlaki was born here, he's an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes". The idea is that a citizen deserves the right to be tried as a traitor, for murder, etc, in court. I find this ironic in how Ron Paul is a republican and republicans are more gun-ho but here he is against the killing of a known enemy. To be fare, I agree but largely, I do not. He was a member of a terrorist group. I believe that if one, knowingly and willingly joins a group that one knows is out to damage the nation as a whole, he or she should be treated as any spy would have during the cold war. Spies are not tried in courts, neither were Germans in WW2 who moved from the US to answer the Fatherland's and the Fuher's call. I believe that war was declared and that means that the government is authorized to take the action to kill the enemy. I however do believe that if the opportunity had arisen that no lives were in danger and we could capture him alive, and then sentence him in court. However, under the circumstances I believe the Obama administration did the right thing.

Singapore uses Facebook more than the US?

If you think that you spend a lot of time on Facebook, talk to someone from Singapore. Singapore has the highest average time spent on Facebook per session. If you're wondering where the US stands on the list: a mere fifth. Pathetic.

According to a study, Singaporean users spend an average of about 39 minutes every time they sign onto Facebook, compared to the United States' 21 minutes per session. While I'm pretty sure American teenagers use Facebook for much more than 21 minutes per session, it seems that Singapore has got us beat. Can it be that the US is not the procrastion-prone country that we all know?

This is unacceptable. If we want the US to be at the top of every list, we need to try harder. Stay on Facebook longer, and by the next time the study comes around, we can look proudly at the statistics, and know that we had a part in redeeming our country's position as having the best procrastinators in the world.

A Common Enemy

In the next couple of weeks and months, we will be seeing some of the bills and acts that Obama mentioned in his jobs address, such as the tax for millionaires that Lexi brought up, that will regretfully either not make it through Congress or will emerge in less effective and essentially powerless forms. The main reason for this is the bipartisan nature of America's political scene that has, as George Washington predicted in his Farewell Address, lead to the creation of two warring factions that would rather attack and hinder each other than work together to solve the many problems that our country faces today.

So how does one go about ending the bipartisan nature of American politics? I for one, think that a common enemy situation might be able to solve the problem. I think that if a really extreme and controversial President were elected, such as Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann, the moderates of their party, in this case the Republican Party, would eventually reject their President's crazy ideas, and choose to work and compromise with the other party, Democrats in this case, instead. This would have more of a long term effect rather than a short term effect, since it will take a little while for the moderates of one side to join the other and it will take even more time for the dissidents to settle into their new party (there would still be multiple political parties, except that the extreme party would be hopefully small enough to have little effect in politics) and then break away from the one party to establish smaller political parties for similar contingencies, since a party consisting of that many people with that many different ideas will quickly collapse into numerous smaller groups.

This is just my solution for dealing with the current bipartisan situation and there are plenty of other options out there, but in order to decide how to fix this problem, one must first consider if the current bipartisan situation is enough of a problem that it needs to be immediately addressed or it be left alone with the hope that it will naturally fix itself over time?

Why Do We Complain About Gas?

Gas has been an issue off and on ever since the fuel rationing imposed by President Carter. Today it is one of the biggest topics out there. Everywhere I go I hear my parents, my friends, people talking about how much gas costs. The "huge" gas prices has spurred on a whole market of gas efficient cars and electric cars. however, when I looked up global gas prices, prices astounded me. Some are extremely low, like in Venezuela, and most countries in Europe were extremely high. I looked around and found out that it was because of taxes. A few examples of high prices were Canada and Germany. But why Canada? Canada is one of our biggest suppliers of natural gas along with Mexico. Canada taxes the bajeesus on gas, a whooping 38% of their total price are taxes. Germany has a fuel tax and a value tax on gas as well. So why do we complain? I think we complain because we have been spoiled by our ability to get cheap gas from Saudi Arabia. Cheap gas we got from the Persian Gulf War for kicking the Iraqis out of Kuwait. However, the Saudi Arabian government now feels that they have paid us back in full now and are raising gas prices. When we went into Iraq with Bush people brought it up saying that Bush was crazy and going in for the oil. Well, I guess that oil does not look too bad now does it when you think about it. We, today, have relatively low gas prices. The news that gas is high is not a new topic. But what I found new and interesting was how little we actually tax on gas and how lucky we are compared to others in Europe. Imagine how much more revenue our government could make off the gas market. It could even spur on another real estate frenzy because people would want to live closer to work. It would change things economically for the country if we followed in the footsteps of Europe but I don't think we need that. I think that if one complains, they should take the train, ride a bike, go green for goodness sake, just stop complaining.

The New Space Race

Obama recently set a goal for NASA to reach and land on an asteroid by 2025 and to reach and land on Mars by 2030. This new project was the reason that the old Space Shuttle program was retired. NASA has already spent nine billion on a new project to get to the moon, which was cancelled for the Asteroid and Mars project. The project is slated to receive three billion a year for these next six years. Hopefully this would assure that, even though we are a slowing super-power on earth, we would remain the pioneer in space, continuing our legacy. On the legacy note, Armstrong, among other astronoughts have gone before the Senate begging for the reinstatement of the Shuttle program. They want it reinstated because as of right now, Americans have to rely on Russians for transport until private industry "space taxis" are completed. (The first of which is being created in the Arizona desert.) They just want a viable back up way to ferry astronoughts to and from low earth orbit. I feel like this option is viable for three reasons. The shuttle program is an iconic image of the US and, I feel, should not be replaced by a privitized back up that is not related to the government. It is not the same. Two, It is cheaper in the long run than having to pay a company millions to ferry men to the stations. And three, they would coninue to assert ourselves as the superpower in space. However, I think this could also be caused by a new space race that could occur between the US and China. China just launched their first space station and rockets early in the week. So the questions comes to: should we sacrifice all of NASA's programs and hopefully fix the current issues, continue the cutbacks on NASA, or keep everything running to win this new space age race? Can we really afford it? If not, what as a nation do we loose.

HTC Phone Security Holes

Heads up if you own an HTC Android Phone. A security hole was found that could give apps with internet permission access to personal information. While I'm sure that HTC phone users are unhappy, the HTC management is probably quite unhappy as well. With the iPhone 5's imminent release, they certainly don't want any more damage to their sales than they already have coming for them. So much for that.

For more information on the security hole, click on the title.

Playoffs and Profit

I know I'm a bit late, but this past Wednesday was a rather dramatic finish to the Major League Baseball's regular season. on the day, the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox both lost their last games, finally giving up their wild card leads and destroying their hopes of competing in the playoffs. If you remember, Mr Silton mentioned that a team maximizes profit by just barely missing the playoffs, due to the increased amount of tickets sold towards the end of the season, as well as avoiding having to pay players extra for playing more games. So really, I'm not sure how the management of those two teams feel about the loss. Did they want their teams to succeed, or is it really only about the money? Any conspiracy theorists wish to speculate?

And anyways, the Giants last season, despite winning their last game and therefore going to the playoffs, probably profited more by winning than if they had missed the playoffs. Due to their sudden popularity (as a result of their champion status), the Giants sold out every single home game this season, which likely generated more than enough profit to cover the paychecks of the players during the playoffs. So I'm not sure if the World Series Winner is an exception to the missing-the-playoffs-maximizes-profit rule, but i think that the teams (or rather, their management) should aim to make it to the playoffs instead of just barely missing them.

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney had his last 60 Minutes clip today. He is ninety-two. I think of this man as one of the smartest, logical, rhetorical and cynical men I have ever seen on television. He is renowned for his straightforward clear thinking that so many of us can relate to. He, I feel, has as much influence on people as many large public figures from senators. People would turn on sixty minutes just to watch his five minute segment. Tonight he said that "he is and always will be a writer, and a writers' job is to write and say the thoughts of the public". And in typical Rooney fashion he ended with a cynical remark that we all enjoy. He has has a wonderful career that was as influential as funny. Thank you Andy Rooney.

Solar Flares, A Real Threat

The Sun's cycle is ending. This means that there will be a large increase in radiation that will effect everything from space travel to airplanes. Also, it can and may interfere with satellites and power plants. This meaning that it may cause changes in flight paths and thus an increase in prices for the extra fuel used at lower altitudes. Also, with the solar flares and radiation possibly affecting satellites devices such as GPS devices and phones may go offline or at least be hampered, requiring more maintenance, more problems, and more pain. We have never experienced this phenomenon in today's modern age which is based heavily on electronics. This will undoubtedly cause problems in the future and I find this as a setback for any attempt at a turnaround in this economy.

"8 Ridiculous Iraq Projects the U.S. Government Spent Your Money on"

These "8 ridiculous projects" were brought to the attention of the people by Van Burren's new book, "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People". These projects were designed to help and restore Iraq's economy and to provide opportunities for the Iraqi youth or an alternative to do besides attacking U.S. Troops.

These ridiculous projects include: putting on a production, Under the Donkey's Shade, French pastry classes, a mural of an oiled up muscular man for a local gym, a children's art calendar, and a Baghdad yellow pages.

Here is a link to a video on youtube of a RT America interview of Van Burren

http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica#p/u/11/vC0C8vw66UY

Occupy Wall Street Protest

Right now there is a sit in protest on Wall Street in New York. The protesters are liberals who are protesting the bad financial status that our nation is currently in and to prove a point that our government is corrupt. This protest has been going on for about two weeks now and is spreading west of New York into other various cities. The protesters all have their own personal reasons for protesting and sleeping in the streets on the concrete for days on end but as a whole their cohesive message is:

"Occupy Wall Street is [a] leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

Although there has been more media coverage on the protest, protesters feel as if they are being ignored by the larger media companies. Why would the media not want to cover this spreading protest?