Corey am I missing something or has budgetary government cuts been a significant cause of a scarcity of gov't. contract work you are seeking?
Oh absolutely. I know we joke around about Alabama being this land of bumpkins, but I live in one of the most educated communities in America. More specifically, aerospace and rocketry are backbones of this entire area. NASA, Army Missile Command etc.. The Constellation program was jerked around for years by promises, lies and rumor before finally getting shelved. BRAC was supposed to be a boom for this area, but that wound up being a wash. Instead of 5,000 new jobs in 5 years we got 5,000 new jobs (still waiting on all of them to make it here) that were filled with 4,000 people from out of town. (the BRAC realignment has not created the promised 5000 jobs yet). I'd suggest you follow a bit more closely the whole Obama economic thing.. I have noticed that if you're a Vet, they'll find a job for you. So I'll say that for this area.. that's got **** to do with Obama though.
Hard to wrap my brain around a conservative hoping for more government expenditures and less cuts. But I see what you're doin there......
Just an observation Dave.. nothing personal. When you were job hunting, you considered your opinion to be that of someone from ground zero, at the front line of the battle ground and our opinions were to all be discounted because we were just lofty conservatives who couldn't possibly understand the struggles of 'the common man.' But when I'm in that role, you just dismiss everything I say as the words of a desperate man. Just food for thought. You do like to speak in sweeping generalities, and that's fine, a lot of people do that. The problem is that you so condescendingly dismiss the possibility of another perspective. I can tell based upon years of posts that you have zero idea about the actual makeup of this area. You tend to view the state of Alabama like much of America does. You see the white B'ham suburbs that are always doing pretty good and the poor Black Belt which really hasn't changed a whole lot over the past 100 years. You rarely, if ever, have mentioned the massive import/export/fishing industry in Mobile, much of which has deep rooted ties to government spending programs. You have zero idea that north Alabama is clearly divided into 2 segments. There's the Huntsville area that is heavily dependent on military spending and space exploration. Both of those programs are Federally funded. Then there is the Shoals are which is actually quite liberal and Democrat politically. They won't vote for gay marriage by and large, but there's a lot of Union Democrats and people in Education there (along with college students) who keep the Democratic party alive and well. The funny thing to me is that the union democrats are so poorly paid there, but that's another subject for another day. What you fail to understand about the Constellation program was that it was to be the successor to the Space Shuttle program and our next step in manned space flight/exploration. Obama put the program 'on hold' when he took office with a promise to resume funding in 5 years. Then he held an inquisition/review of the program which deemed the program to be under-funded and behind schedule, so Obama scrapped it. Now please re-read those sentences again. First of all, it's hard enough to put a deadline of science.. but to put the program on hold while cutting the funding, only to turn around 2 years later and whack the program because it's behind schedule and over-funded, that's laughable but it was one of the earliest examples of the blind eye many have taken toward Obama's hypocrisy. HE WAS THE REASON IT WAS BEHIND SCHEDULE AND UNDERFUNDED. I'll just go ahead and make that easy for you in case you didn't catch that in review. He then turned around and held his ******** press conference down in Florida (a battle ground state) announcing his 'new increased funding for NASA. The man gets up in front of the masses and preaches about a common good. He talks about how some programs should be above politics, but then he himself turns around and politicizes those very same programs worse than anyone before him as ever done. There's a lot of NASA and Federal contract employees in this area who voted Obama twice, who will most likely vote Republican next time if the GOP can just stop doing stupid ****. If not for Alabama's influence in Washington DC, the space program and about 60% of all military tech industry would be absolutely in ruin right now. The area barely has a pulse, but it's alive due to their efforts..not Obama's. Why would he? It's a GOP state..and winning the election is far more important than either our military's science or NASA Space Exploration programs... right?
Dave, I have a 2005 Mitsubishi with over 172,000 miles on it. We just got back from a trip to Michigan with it and will make at least 4 trips to Florida with it this football season. I will likely take it west to Kansas City next summer. I think it lasts well over 200,000 miles while being reliable.
Dave, a year or so ago an old colleague of mine referenced a lot of graphs that he said showed how things were so much worse under Bush that Obama. One big problem is that although he is a College English Professor he obviously had no clue how to read a graph. FYI, under Obama unemployment got significantly worse than under Bush. Under Obama the National Debt doubled, meaning increased as much as all Presidents preceding him. And no matter what you said gas prices are also significantly higher under Obama Under Obama we have had the longest period of unemployment over 7% in the history of the company So cut the nonsense about things being better, they are not.
Well Dave I just looked at your graph and have to observe that you are much like my friend mentioned above, I think you don't do a very good job reading graphs. Other than the couple of month spike you claim to prove your point, which doesn't by the way, the price of gas during Bush's was under $3.00 per gallon and was below $2.00 when he left office. Under Obama we have had prices between $3.30 and $3.80 per gallon for 3 years now with no indication it will decrease. If that graph was on a math test that you took and you interpreted like you did you would get a failing grade.
Bill, sorry my Gator friend but you didn't understand a word I said apparently. Corey... I am far from dismissive about your plight.....heck I am still living the upside down dream myself.... having to contemplate completely raiding my 401K in order to re-purchase a dwelling in Florida because I lost all of my usable equity in the sale of my home in 2010. And I am still far underemployed from where I was with no realistic hope at my present company of ever getting close to my previous income levels again and being completely unable to afford the exorbitant expense of my company's health insurance. I do understand the diversity/dichotomy of the state of Alabama and I agree that it's possible Obama would look at the voting base in Alabama as unimportant to his agenda because it's a hopelessly lost cause to the right.
The lack of equity is what will keep this economy in the dumps for the forseeable future. Add in wage stagnation and reduced hours and welcome to the new normal!
Agreed George. The lasting legacy of a terrible recession is what you say is "the new normal"... It's definitely NOT where we want to be as a nation.
Bill..... it's just not economically rational to make those statements without acknowledging where things were when Obama took office. Really?? The very top of the chart of historical gas prices belongs to W: http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx His trend before the economy tanked was a steady increase in the price of gas..... but then the bottom dropped out of the economy and demand for gas and oil went to nil and all speculation ended. You don't see the correlation on the chart to the Recession? Really? That's like saying how great it was that you could buy stocks at bargain basement prices when Bush was in office but that damned Obama has presided over an exorbitant increase in stock prices.... :lol:
It's very rational Dave as it's all true. And your statement about the very top of the gas price chart shows that you are more interested in irrational blaming of Bush than really understanding the chart. The price you refer to was a short term bubble, an outlier, that quickly sunk to a lower level. However under your idol Obama the price went up and stayed up. If you want to really understand how the gas price under each of the two presidents affected your pocketbook then you would need to do a linear regression of the data under Bush and the data under Obama. That can be estimated by eyeballing and drawing a straight line that averages the data under each. If you do that it is obvious that the prices under your idol are significantly higher than under Bush. Unless you acknowledge or understand that simple fact they you shouldn't be putting forth opinions.
Bill, do you have any idea why the price of fuel sunk so low from the summer of 2008 until Jan. of 2009? Just asking.... And you pay no attention ( other than that sad tragic correlation ).... to the overall gas price trends during the Bush admin.? Like I said.... you could pick up stocks at rock bottom prices too during that time? Was that a good thing also? Check out the Clinton years with regard to gas prices as opposed to the meteoric rise in prices begining with the Bush years: http://zfacts.com/gas-price-history-graph
You know George..... it's not all Bush's fault..... some of it is the tough international environment we face today.....politically and economically and Bush had plenty of those kinds of challenges during his time in office. But what I disagree with is the complete disregard for what did occur during Bush's tenure and with blind hatred and or despise for Obama and what has happened during his time in office. To say one is OK to acknowledge but not the other is wrong on both counts. And then to take that about 100 steps further is to tout the steep drop in gas prices during the last six months of Bush's tenure as something positive when it was the direct result of the damned near Depression we were very close to being in. That kind of Rushism is laughable.... preposterous junk. Those gas price charts tell a pretty good story on just what happened to the economy during Great Recession and the negative impact felt by all industry..... including gas and oil. Here is a pretty good explanation: http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=6446 "Here are the facts: Gas prices peaked at $4.12 per gallon in the summer of 2008. By the time Obama was inaugurated the following January, the Bush recession that began in the fall had caused prices to drop to $1.61. While everyone likes lower gas prices, nobody wants them to decline due to people being too poor to purchase it. But that’s what happened in late 2008. Arguably, the rise in gas prices since then validates the Obama economic revival that has produced higher retail fuel consumption. So a proper comparison would not begin at the lowest point of a recession that Obama had nothing to do with. It would begin from the pre-recession market until the present. By that measure gas is 17% lower." FYI.... this article was written in Feb. 2012 and gas prices now are very close to what they were when the article was written.