YAY! back to CNN! I was watching this morning because Obama was going to give a national address. Since I’ve been writing about basically nonsense the past month (aka, random things in my life) I’m happy to get back on track! My thought sequence the past month has pretty much gone like this:

Self: Let’s see… I need to update my page. What can I write about?

Other self: BLOG ABOUT YOUR IDEALS!

Adam/Jaimie: Are you blogging about your ideals?

Shane: Remember that twix commercial… about blogging about your ideals?

Self: CUT IT OUT! Stop the voices! No blogging about my ideals. I refuse to be such a self involved life sucker to my readers.

Other self: come onnnnn! you know you want to. everybody is doing it. blog about your ideals and your life, people will come…

Self: Come where? to my website?

Other Self: if you build it.. they will..

Self: STOP! enough with the nonsense! What are you, self righteous? //stalks CNN//

So yes. It’s been a tough past month, what with fighting myself and my ideals and all. But alas! I have something to finally get back with!

So anyway, he opened up the address with an alarming fact. They’re predicting that unemployment may possibly reach the double digits. That’s a scary thought. I think the highest unemployment has EVER gotten was 6-7%. The United States currently has approximately 305,576,420 people in it. So if it hit double digits- say…. 10% (only because I’m too lazy to do math right now and that’s an easy number, much easier than 12.6578 or something) then that’s 30,557,642 people who could possibly be unemployed. That’s a really scary thought! Of course, with unemployment, there are rules. People counted as unemployed are seeking and able to work, who cannot find employment at the current time. This does not include full time students or prisoners.

There are also SO many types of ‘unemployment’. There frictional UE (I’m writing UE from now on, for unemployment, because I’ve been riddled with typos and it’s starting to annoy me. I keep typing unemplyment. Unempl..iment? NOT PLIABLE! not easily bent! not quite the same as unemployment, so UE it is.) There’s frictional, which occurs when you’re moving from job to job. Cyclical, which are things like landscaping etc, where you’re unemployed for a portion of the year… then there’s structural, which happens when your skills aren’t matched up appropriately to any jobs in the area.

Say you’re a tech guru and all that exists around you are culinary jobs. Why ONLY culinary jobs? Beats the hell out of me. Maybe you live in Betty Crockerville. Speaking of which, since I’m such a TALENTED cook (HA!) one of my new years resolutions is to learn how to cook better. I like food. I like food a lot. Now, I wouldn’t complain about living in betty crockerville. I would MARRY betty crocker given the chance. Also sarah lee, mainly because she’s filled with syrupy goodness.

So… where were we. Let’s see, not easily bent, betty crockerville, town full of culinary weirdos.. ah yes. The next time of unemployment is… OH! ha. haha. I never finished what I was saying before. So, say you’re a tech guru living in betty crockerville. There’s almost definitely no kind of job there for you, so you’re unemployed until you find your way to a town that’s blessed with technology. Now that we’re back on track, the last kind of classical unemployment. Since it’s clear I’m having writing ADD today, I would just like to point out that even though I made a big fuss about using ‘UE’ instead of writing … that word… (now I refuse to write it) I STILL kept writing unemployment! I can’t even follow my own rules! I don’t know myself at all.

Now that we have all those out of the way, let’s get back to Obama’s address. He was basically saying that he is trying to coerce congress to pass an $800 billion dollar stimulus package. That will put us in short term debt of course, but sometimes you have to spend to win. He wants to put out dramatic action now because he feels that this could last for years if we don’t attack it head on right now. He plans on updating all the public universities and community colleges with the latest technology, which is EXCELLENT and a fantastic idea. One of the biggest barriers for a country to excel is being outdated with technology. Our whole country relies on it and I think for us to excel we need the best out there. Technology is moving so fast that unless we start teaching our youngest generation as soon as possible, it may be something that surpasses us.

The most valuable part of our society is the brilliant minds that are in every corridor of the country. We have so many amazing people, whether they be in the science field or entrepreneurial, that make new discoveries and carry this country. We need to support those people and encourage them to keep going because that’s our super power. China and Japan churn out brainiacs everyday, and they house some of the smartest people ever (along with india) but their cultures are so different from ours that we have a benefit. We have the ability to use our minds in ways that they can’t imagine due to the freedom of our capitalist society.

He also wants to fix roads, bridges, etc as well as give every family making less than $200,00 a tax break of $1,000. (YES! he said it this time, so anyone who disagreed with me last time… kiss it :) just kidding. I felt like being rebellious for a moment) He also wants to make more of the medical system automated so that there’s less room for human error and patients won’t go through multiple or repetitive tests because their records aren’t kept up the right way. I think this is great, because the health care system as well as hospitals are some of the most backwards systems going on right now. So many discrepancies with insurances and patients not being treated right away and dying in the waiting room. (I think there were two cases last year of that. One person was literally on the floor dying, and when security walked in and saw them they just walked out and didn’t alert anybody. Sickening) The health care system can use a good unraveling and and fresh tie up. I don’t fear that we are turning into a socialist society and I think our health care will be okay. There’s just lots of things that need to be fixed. So anyway, if you would like to read the rest see the video of his address (my fingers are tired) please go to my best friends at this location:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/08/transition.wrap/index.html

EDIT: I just watched people’s responses to his speech and what they wrote in to CNN and it boggles my mind! Seriously.. “we need to eliminate taxes and kill the IRS!” (okay maybe not kill, but they pretty much said they want them to disappear). Let’s think about this.. do you think that the government pulls money out of their ass? Actually… don’t answer that.. cause they are pulling magical loans out of nowhere right now, but the point of TAXES are to pay for things the government gives us. Sure, let’s forgoe taxes. When I need to get a hold of you i’ll ride my bicycle to your cardboard box and put my ‘hello world!” handwritten letter through your makeshift lego mailbox. Just don’t sick scooby doo on me, cause I’m pretty sure the only pets we’ll be able to own during the cardboard lego era will be a cartoon one that we watch. OH WAIT! we won’t have dtv converter boxes! or TVs! They don’t make suzy homemaker fake TV’s yet… but at least we can bake yummy clay cookies! Maybe you can walkie talkie the sound of a barking dog.

I have thoughts on this whole bail-out as well as Bush’s presidential address (which was actually suprisingly literate and made sense) from yesterday. I will write once I get all my scatterdness together. This is more of a note so I remember to write about it haha but I guess you also get it as a preview :)

So by now I’m sure everybody has heard the good news- Hillary ‘I want to try and take over the world because I’m a woman’ Clinton finally submitted the other day, and she is NO longer in the race to be president. It is now Obama and Mccain. I guess I do feel really bad about badmouthing hillary, but seriously, she had some strange policies. I understand having Bill behind her was a strong point but come on. Will he help THAT much? He’s a good guy but he doesn’t like to make decisions, and I doubt he would really know how to fix what’s going on with our economy today. I’ve noticed that gas prices came to a halt. They even dropped a penny. Dare I say that they may be going down soon? I wish. I seriously have not been driving anywhere unless it’s necessary to try and save gas. I pretty much drive to Julie’s house to ride and check on the horses and that’s it.

I really hope Mccain doesn’t win. He’s much too old to be in office (he’s 71!!! 72 in a few months!) and all he wants is war, war, lower taxes, war. He is also against helping people out in this housing crisis. I was reading this magazine article (in glamour actually- who knew) about the mortgage crisis. There’s this lady who is an aerospace engineer, making 120,000 dollars yearly, and she’s actually facing the fact that they’re trying to take her house away. HOW does that happen?! Mccain stated that he does not believe in helping people when losing their houses is clearly their fault. He’s not blaming the economy- he’s blaming the people. How on earth is staying in war, using billions and billions more dollars, and not helping anybody in the housing crisis going to lower taxes??? The guy is nuts, honestly, and he’s only going to hurt us worse. It’s a fact that he doesn’t know much really about what’s going on with our economy and how to fix it. If people are out of homes and not spending money because they merely CAN’T, our economy cannot flourish and is going to keep going down the drain. Stupidity at it’s finest. And I’m sorry if I’m offending ANYBODY who likes Mccain, or thinks he is better than Obama (Hi char! If you even read this) but the man has contradicting points.

I DO agree with Mccain on one thing, and this is why I claim to be neither liberal or conservative. I agree with Mccain on the fact that the government should intervene less with our businesses, and let us remain purely capitalistic. Less government intervention=more money in the economy. They just mess everything up anyway. Liberals believe in the government intervening ALOT to help solve problems- whether it be in social and family life, or business. They want government in their bedroom. While I know that Obama is very liberal, I don’t feel like he will push TOO much of the government intervention issue without it being for the better. He knows what he’s doing, and I know that he won’t go overboard in having the government stick it’s dirty little nose into everything. A little is GOOD, when they actually HELP. I think he understands thats.

On another note- Julie is out of town so I’ve been checking up on the horses and riding as well. I had the best moment yesterday EVER. Julie suggested riding bareback every now and then with Fancy and just working on her headset since we think her back needs to be adjusted. So yesterday when I went to check up on them and put sunscreen on Dixie, I decided to hop on bareback. I left Dixie in the field with us just because she has sunburn and whenever I try to put the halter on her it grazes her burn… that and since everyone is gone from the house I think they’re lonely and she goes nuts when I put her in the other field. Anyway, I hopped on bareback and just sat on her while she grazed, and I had dixie next to me too. The sun was setting and I was all alone, rubbing Dixie’s ears and sitting on Fancy, and it was just PEACEFUL. So peaceful. It totally put me back to when I owned my last horse.. as I said earlier I loved riding bareback and I would always go out to ride, then stay on her back while she cooled down and grazed. It was just such a serene moment. I really do miss having my own horse. You can’t replace the bond that you get from owning your own horse by riding at a stable or someone else’s. It’s there- but deep down you know that it’s different. I plan on getting a horse again once I’m out of school (I think). I just need to settle down first and manage my money in order to do it (once I get a job in the real world).

PS!!!!!! The WWDC conference is today (for apple) and they’re supposed to be unveiling the new 3G iphone! I’m stalking it minute by minute because they’re also supposed to be releasing the new redesigned macbooks, but there’s been a rumor that they’re getting pushed off another month. I….. am a dork. and extremely excited. Anyway- just felt like sharing. Bye!

So, lucky for us, we have a gas station right next door to our apartment complex that also happens to harbor the cheapest gas in the general vicinity. Mind you, it’s only really like 4 cents cheaper than anywhere else, so I guess I shouldn’t make it sound that extravagant. I went there today to grab a coffee because I knew dunkin donuts and starbucks would be packed, and the gas station was CRAWLING with people. Every gas pump was filled, and people were WAITING for gas. It’s been like this the past few days and I just don’t understand why. I asked the guy at the register why on earth it was so busy and he said it’s because they have the lowest gas prices. I was like “well.. yeah but only by a few cents, the ones down the road have cheap gas too” and he’s like “no way, they’re all like 3.85 right now”. (Which they weren’t by the way, they were 3.79) But my point is, is it really worth driving all the way out of your way to get gas that’s 4 cents cheaper? If it’s along your path then sure, by all means go for it, but there’s people who drives from miles away just to get gas at a certain cheap station. If you have a 15 gallon tank, and gas is 4 cents cheaper per gallon, you’re only really saving 60 cents per tank that you fill up. If you drive 2 miles out of your way to get to this gas station, and you get 20 MPG, that’s about 18 cents for every mile that you drive, if the gas you’re driving to get is 3.75. SOOO really…. if my calculations are correct (and I’m totally just doing this quick off the top of my head) you really only save 24 cents when you go out of the way to get the gas, because you spend 36 cents in the 2 miles to get there. Anyway, it’s crazy. If people stop to REALLY think about it, it’s not that much of a difference.