Tuesday, September 4, 2012

What a Weekend!

Wow! We had a fantastic Labor Day weekend! Hope all of you did, too, and took a break from your labor....lol Anyway...

On Sunday, we got our engagement photos taken by our friend, Bailey. She lives in Hazard, so we hardly ever get to see her! It was so good to hang out with her again, and I can't wait to see how the photos turned out! We had her over to our place after the photo shoot to watch the UofL-UK game (Go Cards!!!) and made burgers and talked. Good times. Then she took us to hang out with her family in Cincinnati to watch the Labor Day fireworks! It was great! The fireworks were gorgeous and we met some people who actually live here, so maybe Josh and I will start having a social life soon! :)

Yesterday, Josh and I hosted our first official party at our new apartment! We had our families over and made tacos and had a great time! Lots of food, games, and laughing. We both miss our families, so it was really good to have all of us together.

In the news over the weekend...well, to be honest, I haven't watched it in two days! I did watch Mitt Romney's speech in Cincinnati on Saturday (and took notes so I could remember what I wanted to say for this post!). He started off by saying that Obama is 0-23M in jobs. He also brought up five ways he plans on creating 12M jobs.
1. Focus on using American resources--"our oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables."
2. "Make trade work for us." He was talking about how Obama isn't hard enough on trade quality control.
3. In education, he wants to focus on teaching our students "skills to succeed" and he wants to get rid of unions.
4. Cut the deficit to get a balanced budget.
5. "Champion small business" by lowering small business taxes.

He also mentioned getting rid of Obamacare; said that Obama's campaign is really focusing on the divisiveness of the issues between parties and that "America was built on unity" so we need to go back to that.

So. Here are my takes on what he said:

While I understand that 23M people are out of work, the population of the U.S. is 311,591,917, which means that if we are going to assume that if 23 million people are unemployed, the rest are employed, Obama is 288,591,917 to 23,000,000. I thought that was a really good way to present the issue, though, to make Obama look bad, for people who aren't going to actually think that statement through.

In terms of the five point plan, I'm just going to go really quick, point by point. This post is already pretty long, and I want to keep people coming back, so I'll do a quick rundown and then if in a future post I feel like going more in depth on one or more of the points, I will.
1. Please don't ruin the beautiful natural parts of our country by putting more oil lines through and continuing to dig for coal! It's time we take charge of our global environmental future by moving toward all renewable resources! Let's go with wind farms and electric cars, instead of encroaching on endangered species' habitats so we can continue our disgusting, polluting habits! *Note: I have a 2000 VW Golf--it's not a hybrid; I know it isn't good for the environment; it's what I can afford.
2. I don't know enough about this to really have a substantiated argument either way.
3. I actually agree with Romney on this one, instead of Obama. I think merit-based pay is the way to go in education. I have no idea what the rest of Romney's education ideas are, so I can't completely agree with his educational policy, but on getting rid of unions, I'm with him.
4. Yes, we should cut the deficit, but he didn't say how he is planning on doing that.
5. I definitely don't know enough about small businesses and taxes to comment on this. 
You already know what I think about getting rid of Obamacare. 
I really think it would be great for both candidates for them to agree to quit the attack ads. I agree that Obama has some really crappy attack ads, but Romney does, too. I would feel more comfortable voting for someone who spent their ad money telling us what they are going to do for us, not what the other candidate is not going to do.

Before I post this I just want to give a quick shout-out to my high school peer Oksana Masters who, with her rowing partner, took bronze in the mixed double sculls at the London Paralympics 2012 this weekend! You are amazing! This is the Team USA link about her.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world."--Gandhi

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