final farewell to everyone!

This quarter has been a lot of fun and interacting with everyone in class/online with the blogs has been interesting. Having all types of ethnicities and different people interacting with each other and having different kinds of opinions was definetely a new experience for me especially in a classroom. Studying all these different topics and how they all relate to us has given me a bigger perspective of what really goes on in the world around us. Learning about the Vietnam War, Immigration, Free trade, and etc I just genuinely was interested in all the material. I wish everyone the best for the summer and I hope to see some of you guys around campus.

Happy birthday to me!! :) (omg im saying happy birthday to myself im so.....)

Vietnam.....why did we even get involed?

After finishing The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien I just have to ask Why did we enter this useless war. I found a clip after watching family guy and I think this video pretty much sums up the entire war.Copy and Paste
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk_YmV7aYVE
I appologize if that video offends anyone who have veterans who served but it jus further shows how much of a defeat vietnam really was. It goes way beyond the number of death statistics or anything that can be written on a black memorial. Recently Barack Obama announced that the U.S. will finally focus more on rebuilding our own situation instead of trying to "help" the world. This is a huge step towards rebuilding our country into what we expect and what it should be. After 10 years or so im glad we've finally heard those words from the president and too bad it took our president 20 years at the time of vietnam to realize the same thing. I'll leave off with PLEASE BARACK OBAMA STICK TO YOUR WORD AND HELP THE IMMIGRANTS for me!!!

Scott

Vietnam War and precious artifacts

I'm very excited in starting our unit on the Vietnam War because it was a war full of controversial, painful, and interesting aspects that helped shape us somewhat into the country we are today. In Sturken's Article she talks about these "artifacts" or precious belongings that people kept with them in order to help cope with the anguish of the war. These things ranged from pictures, letters, personal belongings reminding them of home, or anything they cherished. These soldiers made sure to keep all these things with them because they needed a sense of motivation to continue and also the memories to stay sane. We can relate this to the first chapter of Tim O'Brien's Novel The Things They Carried because the first chapter briefly goes into the background of the soldiers in the platoon and reveal personal "artifacts" that each possess with them that reveal their personality or home life. I personally believe that the Vietnam War was a mistake because we didn't really gain anything except a black memorial at Washington D.C. to show us how many died during the war. Since we can't go back in time to change what happened we should have learned the mistake of entering pointless wars......lol

New thoughts on Immigration

After 2 weeks of reviewing and learning about immigration policies in the U.S. that affect illegal aliens, I have gained a lot of new perspectives regarding it. I use to think bills like Arizona SB1070 were just stupid useless bills that didn't do anything except give people a reason to discriminate, but I now see that these bills do have some good purposes. I'm still going to be for illegal immigrant workers though because I can somewhat relate to these people as I am an alien myself. Coming to this country to find opportunity and a chance at a better life is something every person should experience if they decide to come to the United States. I think it's necessary to have some sort of legal status if you choose to live in the U.S. however, it's up to the government to make the whole process quicker, more efficient, and appealing to these immigrants. The whole process of getting admitted into the country and receiving work visas in some cases can be a long drawn out struggle that scares these immigrants from entering the country the correct way. Illegal immigrants just simply don't have the time or the money to wait for visas because a lot of these immigrants need to eat now, work now, and live now. I hope Arizona realizes that we should be embracing these hard working individuals trying to find a better life and not kick them out because they're physically or culturally different.

stupid blogger.com down for thursday! migrant workers bad for economy??

These migrant workers who are taking heat for taking jobs "away" from americans don't deserve that treatment at all. These migrant workers ,typically migrating into the country illegally", do not take jobs that most americans would even want in the first place. It's a standard for us to become educated by going to high school then college in order for us to move up the labor market for better jobs=better wages. These immigrants are taking jobs beings maids, construction workers, fast food restaurants, and other minimum wage paying jobs. It's easy for these americans(white people) to criticize immigrants by telling them "just go get registered and we wouldn't have this problem" well speaking from personal experience I have to say that the entire process of being allowed into the country is a very LONG one. These immigrants don't have the time or the money to wait so, I can understand people wanting to come to America. If you were to conduct a survey to only white people who were born in America and ask them "Would you work at mcdonalds?" a majority of them would say no because that type of job is typically reserved for the uneducated/poor class of people (immigrants). If you really want to blame someone for losing your job to an immigrant then point the finger at your boss who wants to save money by hiring someone who would work as many hours as you but for less pay. I'm not totally turning a blind eye to the whole illegal immigrant laws either because I feel that everyone needs to pay taxes, lowering crime rate, and etc.

ARIZONA SB1070 STILL WRONG!

arizona sb1070....racism encouraged?

           Arizona SB1070 became effective on April 13, 2010 by a 35-21 vote and basically allows police officers to check immigration status all based on "suspicision". Reading over this stupid bill made me angry because it's a slap to the face of all non-white people and specifically targeting hispanics due to the high population of them in the state. These arizona lawmakers created this bill because they felt like they had to preserve jobs/homes strictly to tax paying Americans. Since the economy is in a funk right now Arizona is trying a tactic that discriminates and denies rights to a certain group of people to benefit themselves. Being an immigrant myself I am definetly against this bill because It's not as easy as people think to get legal/citizenship status and to stereotype people based on appearance is just plain wrong! Immigrants are already a minority, so lets not make it harder for us to live freely!

lakers lost :) :)

Banks Invest To Fail

                 Since the start of the Global Financial Crisis  in 2007 we have seen  a total of over 300 banks  go down in the U.S. alone. Banks have been dropping like flies since the recession because of those worthless loans they handed out to people who didn't have the money to pay them back. The bigger banks like Citi, American Express, and Wells Fargo have been bailed out by the government while they leave the smaller banks to
crumble and fade out. These banks were the catalyst to Global Financial Crisis because of their greed to earn as much money as possible.

               The start of the recession can be linked to the subprime mortgage crisis. "Banks and lending institutions such as Country wide, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac adopted the idea of giving subprime mortgages to people who had no down payments, poor credit, or inadequate regular income" (Johnson, 140). Banks started giving out loans to people who weren't qualified and unable to pay them back. Who wouldn't take the loan when these banks made it seem like there was no harm in taking it? Due to the huge amounts of mortgages being handed out, housing prices started to drop and interest rates started to skyrocket. These two conflicts led to many foreclosures and made all  these subprime mortgages worthless now. This high risk investment by these banks completely failed and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Gary Schilling of A Gary Schilling & Co. has predicted that we will have another 20% decrease in housing prices in the foreseeable future.

              Those failed subprime mortgages were just the start of a chain reaction. The banks started to put these worthless mortgages in the market as derivatives in hope of having someone invest in it. Derivatives are contracts that acts as an underlying asset like stocks, bonds, or marketing indexes. Suspiciously rating agencies gave these derivatives great reviews causing investors to invest in worthless stock. These ratings even had insurance company AIG fooled and they invested billions of dollars that went down the drain. "Critics fault the United States for allowing companies to merge, grow, and develop financial methods that jeopardized the whole economy, treating the world as a vast "gambling casino" and exporting a culture of corporate irresponsiblity" (Johnson 143). High risk investments that failed to make these big corporations more money has brought our entire economy under the ground and keep us there for the forseeable future.

               One concern that continues to confuse economists and citizens is the government continuously helping the big corporations. "Instead, they say, as unemployment rises and home foreclosures rise, the federal government should improve the economy overall by directing money to people who really need it"( Johnson, 144). No reason to add more money to these CEOs who earn more than enough money as it is. Stabilizing these corporations isn't going to garuntee a positive result because in the end those corporations only care about their wallet and not anyone else's. We need to first stabilize the real estate crisis because citizens spend most of their income on house expenses. We need to help the needy and not the wealthy.