The Daily Take For Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

     There is absolutely nothing more impressive than the sight of the massive jet called Air Force One touching down yesterday at Albany International Airport.  If nothing else, the huge jetliner symbolizes the power of our Country.  Like many others, I watched the arrival and departure of the President on TV yesterday.  When they use the north-south runway (which is the only one that can handle the jet), the airplanes going south fly right over my home.  Seeing the jet takeoff on television and because of the low cloud cover you couldn't see it; then twenty seconds later I heard the sounds of those four GE jet engines pumping to get the President into the air.  That was as far as it got for excitement for me about Obama's visit.  Being an election year, one of the biggest issues is job creation.  While you can take and twist the numbers around to show that so many jobs were created in any given month, in my opinion it really bothers me to hear that the Nanotech facility as well as the Global Foundry plant in Malta are creating jobs in the area.  The numbers show that there are some supposed 3000 jobs between them.  How many of those jobs can be filled by the "average person" who has been out of work for two years.  Just look in the classifieds in the paper on any given Sunday "Wanted: Nano Astrophysical SuedoWidget Engineer. Must Have Masters Degree (PhD Preferred).  How many local people are qualified for those jobs?  Just take a ride up Route 9 through Malta sometime.  There are so many new housing projects going up that are obviously for people coming into the area from elsewhere.  How many of those jobs are for people without a Nanotech Engineering degree?  Albany is obviously losing out on Obama's job creation plan for the average person.  The sight of the giant jet will always be impressive........Sometimes I can just not figure out the American intelligence people.  I thought that when you had an operative working inside a terrorist group you would work him until his cover was blown or whatever else they do in the spook world.  Now we have this man who was working inside an al qaeda group in Yemen who gets on a plane bound for the U.S. carrying one of those "underwear bombs". According to news accounts he was found out by security people.  Good job intelligence people.  Then the next day the CIA is patting itself on the back on national TV for their outstanding work in planting this "double agent".  Why don't we just let the terrorist groups know when we are conducting an operation.  This guy is toast unless we relocate him to North Dakota or someplace worse.  Maybe we can put him into one of those $2000 a month townhouses in Malta.

And that is "The Daily Take"