ramblin man

Mixtape songs that didn't make the top 5

2010-05-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

Woody Guthry - This land is your land
This song is awesome. It is so simple, yet so complex. Throughout the song Woody describes the beauty of America. He uses wonderful imagery to depict the landscapes and historic places. He says things like "I've roamed and rambled/ I've followed my footsteps/ to the sparkling sands of her shining deserts." I used to love this song when I was little, and I can remember singing along to it in daycare with the other little kids. Time passed without me hearing the whole thing, and once I was a good bit older, I heard a part of the song that I had Never heard before. Woody normally ends each chorus with the phrase "This land was made for you and me," but something different stood out about the last verse. I noticed for the first time that the final chorus almost contradicts the rest of the song. It goes "In the squares of the city/ In the shadow of the steeple/ Near the relief office/ I see my people/ and some are grumblin'/ and some are wonderin'/ If this land's still made for you and me."

Bob Dylan - The times are a-changin'
Anyone can tell that this song has obvious political undertones merely by reading the title. The unabashedly political warning as bellowed by Bob amidst twanging guitar chords and short outbursts of harmonica warns of turbulent political times and advises support of a progressive movement. "For the loser now will be later to win/ For the times they are a changin'" he warns. The message is simple: change with the times or become obsolete.

on globalization

2010-05-07T02:53:00.000-07:00

Globalization has been equated with mutual benefit between nations through business and employment opportunities. If a business seeks to expand its market, it can begin selling its product in another country to tap into the money flow of that particular economy. If a country has a suffering economy, it can encourage its citizenry to seek work in another country and send a fat check back home to support the family that the person leaves behind. This allows money from another country to enter the suffering economy.

When one looks at such an issue, on the surface everything seems peachy. Everyone gets what they want so all is well. This is not always the case. In particular, I will look at the case of migrant workers who leave their countries in search of work in order to provide for their family who stays behind. A woman might leave her country because of the opportunities in another country such as the United States. A Filipino woman can come to America and be a maid and make 15 times what a schoolteacher would make in the Philippines. She can work as a live in nanny and have rent covered, reducing her living expenses so that she will have more money to send back home, thus securing a better economic future for her family. But what about the kids? In countries where it is common place for families to work outside of the country, delinquency rates are high among kids, the child suicide rate is also high, and the kids seem to perform poorly in school. This might help out economically speaking, but it also tears families apart.

Travel Warning extended to Mexico

2010-05-07T02:31:00.000-07:00

I have just read about the travel warning that the U.S. State Department has extended to Mexico. It seems that gang violence fueled by drugs and a rift between two major cartels has made many of the cities unsafe to travel in for American citizens. Most of the violence being committed victimizes only members of the opposite gang, but still, things are looking bleak in Mexico right now. In certain cities, hours long shootouts are not uncommon, and what is really scary is that the most dangerous cities are the ones bordering Texas. The Mexican government has been battling these two cartels, the Zetas and the Gulf cartel, and the two cartels have been battling each other.

Through all of this, the thing that strikes me as sickly ironic is that we have issued a travel warning that advises our citizenry to keep out of Mexico, yet Arizona has cracked down on illegal immigration and will surely be deporting more people from the country. Effectively, the U.S. has said "Everyone keep out of Mexico, unless you happen to be here illegally, in which case we will be happy to give you a free ride back."

Burden of the White Man

2010-05-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

This is a brief analysis of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. I found this and was intrigued by what it actually was supposed to mean.

In the poem The White Man's Burden, written by Rudyard Kipling, a critique is offered about what responsibilities a wealthier or "better" society has in regards to a poorer or more "inferior" society. According to Kipling, The burden of the white man is to essentially civilize cultures that were different from the predominant European culture. It was the responsibility of white people to show other people how to advance and become more like what the Europeans considered to be civilized. This poem epitomizes the Euro centric viewpoint that was so popular at the time.

The perspective that the European Countries were superior to nearly all other countries was not unique to Kipling. In fact, the belief that other cultures should be ruled by whites for their own benefit allowed many white people to feel justified in the conquering and enslaving of other peoples.

This idea of white people leading the world is not as old fashioned as it sounds. The U.S. is a predominantly white country and is often compelled to meddle in foreign affairs purely for its own benefit while justifying itself by believing it is for the good of the other country. Even when white people in the United States become a minority group, there will still be the eerily familiar drive to influence other cultures with our own, thus perpetuating the cycle of imperialism, or the idea that one's own culture is better than that of another culture.

MORE WEAPONS

2010-05-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

Apparently now we can bring our guns to more places in Georgia. A new law has passed allowing us to bring our concealed weapons to more parks, parking lots, and public places in general. This comes as a great relief to me, being an avid firearms enthusiast. Now I can swagger through the park near my house knowing that no one will mess with me because I might be packing enough heat in my belt to supply a small militia. This seems to me to be almost a throwback to the wild west, when ordinary citizens could participate in a full blown gunfight in order to defend their town from marauding outlaws. Perhaps the best way I might benefit from this law is that during my frequent road rage episodes, I will be more likely to be armed whilst commuting to the above mentioned parks or public places. This will help ensure that NO ONE will cut me off EVER and get away with it. This could also spark a local arms race of sorts. There is a greater chance that the criminally inclined will be carrying in more places, so that means the law abiding citizens must be better protected as well. Doesn't this sound like fun?

In case you, the reader, has yet to pick up on my sarcasm, I would like to state for the record that I do NOT support this law. The chaotic scenarios depicted above are exactly what I'm afraid of. Honestly, who thought that allowing people to carry firearms in more places would benefit anyone? The only results of this law that I can see are negative ones.

bp oil spill 2010

2010-05-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

The oil spill that started on April 20th still has yet to be resolved. Dead animals have been washing up on shore since early in the event. It seems that we are fighting a losing battle against this environmental disaster and our coastline is paying the price. Fisherman can't fish, hotel owners in popular vacation destinations are losing business, sea critters are in danger or dying, and there seems to be no effective means yet of containing the slick. There simply aren't enough booms to encompass the spill, the robotic submarines sent down to close the leaking nozzle have failed, and the domes that are being constructed are taking to long.

The cost of offshore drilling is being paid in full and the long term repercussions of this incident have yet to be felt. Drilling for oil in the ocean only leads to inevitable disaster. This is certainly not the only time this has happened and definately is not the worst case scenario, and it is only a matter of time before this happens again elsewhere. While it is important to back away from foreign oil, maybe the solution is not to create so much more of our own. I can only see that path leading to bigger and far more hazardous distasters in the future. Perhaps the ultimate solution is for our country to seek out alternative fuels rather than fossil fuels. This is of course already being looked into, however I do not see a whole lot of progress yet. It is our responsibility in the United States to keep going with the research and push through until we have a clean, environmentally safe alternative to fossil fuels.

SEAL Aquitted of Assaulting Detainee

2010-05-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

Matthew McCabe, the navy Seal who was accused of punching an Iraqi detainee, has been aquitted. He was accused of punching a detainee in the stomach, as told by the governments witness, Kevin Demartino. The detainee, by the name of Ahmed Hashim Abed, was convicted of orchestrating the murders of four U.S. contractors and hanging their burning bodies from a bridge. The two navy SEALs present while McCabe supposedly hit the detainee reported that they didn't see him hit Abed, and Demartino did not immediatly report the incident, and eventually did report it because he did not feel that he was doing what God wanted.

Am I the only person who thinks that even if the SEAL did punch the Iraqi detainee he should not have been prosecuted in the first place? This Ahmed Hashim Abed character sounds like a nasty piece of work to me, and if anything a punch in the stomach does not sound like such a bad deal. I do not think it is up to us to protect the rights of enemies of the state to such an extent that a navy SEAL can be tried for being to rough with someone like that. He killed four U.S. contractors in Fallujah and hung there burning bodies from a bridge for crying out loud! I will admit, two other SEALs who didn't see anything sounds a little fishy, as though they might have been just covering for their buddy, and in all likelyhood McCabe probably did actually punch the detainee, but for that i would like to shake his hand. This guy Abed is a homocidal maniac and deserves to be treated as such.

somebody is finally getting serious about immigration

2010-04-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

On Friday, an extremely strict bill was signed by Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona. Highlights of the bill include the ability of the police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant based on reasonable suspicion, and making it a misdemeanor to not to carry immigration documents. Arizona, being a border state, has serious problems from illegal immigration, but is this the direction we need to be moving in to deal with the problem of illegal immigration?

In my opinion, this is a wrong turn. Yes, this issue needs to be handled, and a drastic change in our immigration policies is needed. But to give the power to the police to legally harass possible U.S. citizens based on their discretion is a very bad idea. The governor urges people to trust law enforcement, but many others, myself included, do not think that we should rely on the discretion of the police. From my own personal experience, and the experiences of close friends, the police already profile and harass people enough without being given more power. I have a lot of respect for police officers that lay their lives on the line everyday to maintain order for us citizens, all while being underpaid. However, that kind of authority position tends to attract people that wear their badges as a crown and basically operate as a legalized gang. No one can deny that there are a few too many police officers who are simply uneducated, uninformed bigots that use their authority to harass minority groups, teenagers, or pretty girls just because they can. This kind of law that just got signed by Arizona will give such police officers even more power to do just that. I agree that there needs to be a change in how we handle illegal immigrants, but not like this. I would not feel comfortable placing my trust in the police force on an issue such as this, especially if I were a legal Latino immigrant.

Response to the SEC porn watching thing

2010-04-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

It has just come to my attention that during the panic of the financial crisis, the SEC has been watching porn while our country goes belly up. Yes, porn. Sexually explicit or sexually suggestive material has been found on government computers and at least 33 SEC employees or contractors have been essentially caught with their pants down on "official" time. Since more than half of these diligent, hard working individuals make between $99,000 and $223,000 per year while I currently am barely scraping buy on a few bucks an hour (without time for any porn watching), I am incensed by this. These cases all took place within the last 5 years, which, if I remember correctly, was a pivitol moment for our country in regards to finances. To my further disappointment, it was not merely the lowly office drones who might have been spending a little too much time in the office for too long due to the crisis, it was the senior agency staffers. And as if that isn't bad enough that they were doing it at all, the amount of time that some individuals spent doing it was pretty astounding to me. Acoording to this article in Associate Press, SEC Inspector General David Kotz posted a memo detailing certain cases. An SEC senior attorney spent 8 hours a day watching porn on a company computer. He ran out of hard drive space so he burned all his smut to cds and had them in boxes around his office. If I wasn't so outraged by this, I might admire on some sick level the life that this man had carved out for himself. Get paid the big bucks to pleasure yourself all day, maybe look at a few boring legal documents about the country being out of money or something, clock out, go home and relax after a hard days work. My life currently looks absolutley nothing at all like this in any way, shape, or form. Can somebody please tell me what I am doing wrong?