The media and the Administration are already out there spinning the results of the stress tests.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they say that all banks “passed.” But the real suckers would be those who invest in this “bump” in the market before another drop this summer.  The banks are still not viable and many are being propped up by distortions in their books and “funny money.”  If the results were great in the first place, the government would not have delayed the release of the reports.  I wonder if the politicians on Capitol Hill really think we are that dumb!?  Roubini, a noted economist and known as Dr. Doom, has been correct on most of his statements about the markets and about banks – he says the following:

The spin machine about the banks’ stress test is already in full motion. Some banking regulators have already served up–to The New York Times–their spin that all 19 banks that are subject to the stress test will pass it. In other words, not one will fail.

But let’s look at the actual data. The macro data for the first quarter on the three variables used in the stress tests–growth rate, unemployment rate and home-price depreciation–are already worse than those in the U.S. government baseline scenario for 2009. They are, in fact, even worse than those for the stressed scenario for 2009.

The government used assumptions for the macro variables in 2009 and 2010 that are so optimistic that the actual data for 2009 are already worse than the adverse scenario. As for some crucial variables, such as the unemployment rate–key to proper estimates of default and recovery rates for residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and other banks loans–the current trend shows that by the end of 2009 the unemployment rate will be higher than the average unemployment rate assumed in the more adverse scenario for 2010, not for 2009. Put plainly, the results of the stress test–even before they are published–are not worth the paper on which they are written.

Let us look at how the stress tests are done. According to the U.S. government, there are two scenarios: a more optimistic “baseline scenario” for 2009 and 2010 for the three macro variables (gross domestic product, unemployment and home prices); and a more pessimistic “alternative adverse scenario.”

The baseline scenario assumes–based on the average of the forecasts by the consensus of macro forecasters at the time when the stress tests were announced–that GDP growth will be -2.1% in 2009 and 2% in 2010; that the unemployment rate will average 8.4% in 2009 and 8.8% in 2010; and that home prices will fall 14% in 2009 and 4% in 2010. In the alternative adverse scenario, GDP growth is assumed to be -3.3% in 2009 and 0.5% in 2010; the unemployment rate is assumed to average 8.9% in 2009 and 10.3% in 2010; and home prices are assumed to fall 20% in 2009 and 7% in 2010.

The description provided by the government of the stress test also shows graphs–but not actual figures–for the quarterly behavior of the three macro variables in 2009 and 2010 for both scenarios. Based on these quarterly graphs, in the first quarter of 2009 the unemployment rate would approximately average 7.7% in the baseline scenario and 7.8% in the adverse scenario; the GDP growth rate would be -1.9% in the baseline scenario and -2.1 in the adverse scenario; and home prices would fall 4% in the baseline scenario and by 7% in the adverse scenario.

How do these scenarios actually stack against actual figures for the first quarter of 2009, with current consensus forecasts and with current likely paths for these macro variables?

Read the rest of the bad news at Forbes…

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Keith Olbermann, who is against waterboarding, would be willing to give money to have Hannity waterboarded.  This is quite interesting, you think that if you were against waterboarding, you would be completely against it.  I guess if you are a conservative, you can be waterboarded in Olbermann’s opinion. 

The rest of this video clip is nonsense.  The fact that a Huffington Post editor is brought onto this show proves that no experts or legitimate folks are on this network.  For Olbermann to bring up moral equivalency, morals, ethics and integrity is quite laughable especially after the shenanigans that the Democrats have been involved in over the years and even more so recently.

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The New York Times and the Boston Globe are both in dire straits.  To add more fuel to the fire, the Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times and both papers are losing significant amounts of money and are experiencing severe debt problems.

As The New York Times Co. tries to bask in the glory of having bagged five Pulitzers, the company is facing a cash crunch that could put it on the path toward insolvency.

According to its first-quarter earnings report, the Times said it had cash and cash equivalents totaling $294 million.

However, $260 million of that is earmarked to pay off debt that matures in March 2010, effectively leaving the company with $34 million.

That’s a particularly precarious position to be in, given the Gray Lady posted a wider-than-expected, first-quarter loss of $74.5 million amid worsening advertising declines, and is scrambling to raise cash as it labors under a $1.3 billion debt load.

This should be an indication of ultra liberal slants on newspapers and how they fare in Capitalist environments.  Most newspapers will probably go the way of the Internet with paid member subscriptions, but it’s quite interesting how most of the papers going out of business are more liberal than right-leaning.

There should be no bailouts in a capitalist society.  These companies chose their business models and how they would present news.  If people catch on and no longer purchase the paper and the companies can no longer make a profit, well that’s just the name of the game in free markets.

Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation’s print media.

“To the Boston Globe family,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote to employees of the 132-year-old publication, which faces closure unless it can come up with $20 million in union concessions to parent company the New York Times by May 1. The Globe is losing $1 million a week.

“America’s newspapers are struggling to survive, and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount,” Mr. Kerry said.

[...]

Mr. Kerry, who has called for Senate hearings on “the future of journalism” to begin May 6, also cited the negative influence of “agenda-driven reporting” and media conglomerates.

Of course there will be agenda-driven reportingif bailouts are received from the government.  Take for example the plan that Ms. Brooks, the newest member of Obama’s cabinet, has.

“Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off,” she wrote in her parting column on April 9.

Brooks said this would help rescue the industry from a “death spiral” and left the government unaccountable to the journalists who must keep it honest. “[I] can’t imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed,” she wrote.

But critics say her proposal would spell an end to the independent media and make journalists reliant lapdogs.

“The day that the government gets involved in the news media you see the end of the democratic process, because an independent news media is absolutely essential to the success of a democracy,” said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group.

A nice lesson in common sense for Ms. Brooks is in order, however, a woman who received a bailout herself for a job she is unqualified for, probably will never get it.

You simply can’t have “independent” media when it’s receiving taxpayer money from the government.  There would always be a major conflict on interest; something that happens already, but would be much worse.  They would just become propagandists of government.  We have seen state-run media outlets in dictatorships, fascist regimes and communist countries – let’s not go that route and maybe for once we could uphold our constitution.

“The decline of print newspapers doesn’t mean the decline of journalism. What we need to have for journalism is journalists, and lots of them,” testified Ben Scott of the Free Press, a nonpartisan group for media reform.

“But we should avoid the temptation to turn to policies that resemble bailouts. We should not relax the antitrust standards to permit further consolidation. The most consolidated newspaper companies are among those in the worst financial shape today,” he said.

Last month, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland Democrat, introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act” that would allow papers to operate as nonprofits, prompting many analysts to examine the political implications of the tactic.

Let’s get back to real objective reporting, shall we?

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GE shareholder meeting reaches crescendo:

The hostility between Fox News Channel and MSNBC reached a fever pitch Wednesday when a Fox producer infiltrated the GE shareholders meeting.

Just before GE re-elected board members, company brass were hit with questions from shareholders critical of an alleged leftward political slant at MSNBC.

But one of those questions came from Jesse Waters, a producer on “The O’Reilly Factor” whose criticisms were cut short when his microphone was cut off, according to several attendees. Waters apparently did not publicly identify himself as a Fox employee.

If Waters owns stock in GE he can be at the meeting!  Plus, reporting does require one to investigate and get to the truth of the matter.  It is obvious with recent guests like Janeane Garofalo calling conservatives racists, Olbermann calling Cheney and Bush fascists and Rachel Maddow having no idea what she is talking about, may lead people to believe that there is quite a liberal slant on the network.  There is also a lot to be said for Immelt and Zucker’s support of Obama, which has been more visible than previously.  Jack Welch was a lot more tight-lipped about his politics than Immelt when he last ran GE.  Since Immelt’s take over his company, which is usually one of the more stable stocks, has had to consolidate, restructure and cut dividends to try and make ends meet.  Back in the summer of 2008, GE also considered dropping NBC after the Olympics because they did not know how to run a media outlet properly since it did not fit their business practices and core competencies.  Immelt had also been selling equipment that could be used for violent purposes to places like Iran, who are banned on the export/ITAR lists.

Attendees who spoke to THR said shareholders asked about 10 politically charged questions concerning MSNBC as well as one about CNBC.

First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.

Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.

During the woman’s follow-up question, her microphone was apparently cut off. A short time later, Waters asked a question and his mic was cut, too.

“The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt,” one attendee said. “Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it.”

And the shareholders should be embarrassed since the leftward tilt was incredibly obvious when they cut off the microphones of those questioning them – even a woman who was a valid shareholder!  With actions such as the ones mentioned above, are we supposed to believe what they tell us about their account of the CNBC meeting?  Freedom of Speech is not allowed in Obamanation.

“My biggest surprise was the open hostility to MSNBC,” said Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund and a four-year critic of Immelt. “It was noticeable and loud. I don’t remember any of this going on last year.”

“Any time MSNBC was mentioned, there was a rumbling in the crowd of 400 people,” he added. Borelli also asked a question pertaining to GE’s stock performance since Immelt took the helm.

The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was described by all four of the attendees THR talked to subsequently as variously rancorous or critical. Other than questions about MSNBC, shareholders brought up questions about executive pay and cuts to the company’s dividend.

I’m glad some people are starting to wake up and are starting to speak up – it’s about time!

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Many of us, who continue to read blogs and stay on top of political news, are aware of both the DNC and the RNC and what the parties have turned into.

Republicans and Democrats used to have clear differences between the two, but now they are just a blurred combination of one another.  The point of the two party system was being able to have a choice; namely freedom.

The more I see how congress votes and what each representative or senator puts into their bills, the more I realize, at such a young age, that the government has become power hungry and spend happy.  Congress couldn’t care less where the money comes from; the more “bacon” they bring home to their constituents and their special interests, the more money they receive in donations and campaign contributions as well as a little extra padding in their pockets.

We are being “represented” by an elite political class or, as I like to refer to it, the Politburo.  This is a class of career politicians who have never worked outside of classrooms or as a lawyer or on their parent’s campaign. They have no idea what it is like to be average citizens in the United States working to live and living to work.  Those of us who work 9-5 jobs day in and day out, just to make enough money to pay the bills, know what our priorities are and what really matters in this world.  The political elite is reminiscent of the ‘popular’ clique in the high school I attended.  It was mainly dependent on the income and social status of parents.  Those whose parents belonged to a country club, played tennis, golfed, and went yachting were deemed ‘acceptable.’ However, regardless of your personality, looks, or good will if you didn’t measure up you were stuck in the middle rungs; never quite making it to the upper echelons of high school popularity.  Many went on to ivy league schools, not because they were intelligent, but because they could afford it or they had connections.  After spending 4 years hiding away in the bubble of elitism, some could quote text books or famous philosophers, while many were still incapable of doing anything.  One thing was for sure; they never left their comfort zone to experience life in order to truly understand the difference between intelligence and wisdom; life-experience.  Leadership tends to be a mixture of inherent characteristics as well as learned qualities through personal accomplishment and strife.

I was so incredibly appalled at what I saw and what I heard during the 2008 election cycle.  I thought, based on character and integrity, the choice was obvious.  I was wrong.  The ticket had two very honorable, down-to-earth, decent human beings who, having made it through tremendous struggles, were overlooked due to race baiting, liberal media bias, propaganda, elitism, ivy league degrees, and the usual ‘Bush sucks’ sentiment.

One of my favorite books is the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, and my favorite part of the story is when the Little Prince meets the Fox and discovers the meaning of friendship.  The book teaches us what really matters after you tear away all of the materialistic aspects of the outside world.  “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential, is invisible to the eye.”

I know I’m not the only person in my age group to understand the Little Prince, but I am few and far between who actually applies it.  What I have noticed during my young life thus far is the fact that those who appreciate honesty, morals, and ethics are usually those who have experienced something in their lives where they have been “enlightened” to a point where they have seen the “bottom” and know what it means to struggle.  When people have to build their lives back up again or work like there’s no tomorrow to make it to the other side, they appreciate what so many others take for granted and they value those things that so many lose sight of; because, let’s face it, our society has become spoiled and we’ve lived beyond our means for too long.

Sarah Palin is the epitome of struggle and accomplishment.  She represents the antithesis of the establishment and the elite.  She is someone who you could sit down and have a heart-to-heart with and feel as though you have been friends for years.  She is the quintessential Reagan type persona who so many have been waiting for.  I feel funny saying that since I was only born in 1981, but I’ve done a bit of research I even have a $1,000,000 bill with Reagan’s face on it hanging in my cubicle.  For all I know that $1,000,000 bill will be worth something soon due to all of this spending and the inevitable inflation!

Sarah Palin has fought her own machine and once you fight that monster under the bed it will keep coming after you for revenge.  We saw that during the Alaska legislative session this past year in her attempt to nominate a decent conservative man as the next Attorney General. We also see it at the national level where Republicans continue to fear her and turn their noses up at her.  The Republicans better be careful because the GOP’s approval rating is not doing too well either.  When Sarah Palin releases her FEC filings for SarahPAC I whole-heartedly believe that we will hear the creaking of “old geriatric” jaws dropping around the beltway.

The DNC is just as bad and just as corrupt, if not more so.  Obama is part of the Machine.  He came from the most politically corrupt city in the nation; Chicago.  He brought this style to Washington D.C. along with a slim resume and only 143 days of working experience in the Senate.  I am doubtful that Obama can manage a hot-dog stand let alone the highest office in the land.

We have seen him sign legislation behind closed doors after he stated that he would make transparency a priority; and we have seen him sign over 18,000 earmarks within his first 100 days after he railed against them.  We have seen him pay off his union buddies and not fire the head of the UAW but fire the head of GM.  (The Union contributed nearly $400M to his campaign).  We have seen him argue against Bush’s outrageous spending, but he has spent more than all presidents before him combined and in only 3 month’s time!

Barack Obama is not “change” or “hope.”  He is the very essence of what it means to be establishment and beholden to lobbyists and special interests.  Too many people were born yesterday in 2008, when it was obvious that the vitriol and hatred spewed towards Sarah Palin should have been reason and proof enough to vote for her ~ she isn’t the establishment and she isn’t in the pocket of the media, the lobbies, or anyone else. She scares the pants off of the Democrats, the Republicans, and the media for that very reason.

The D.C. elite have removed themselves so far from the purpose of their roles, as set forth in our constitution, that they all need to be thrown out as soon as humanly possible (2010).  So let me start the chant “Throw the Bums Out.”

We have seen throughout history the effects of the ruling class trumping democracy and none of those societies have ever ended peacefully and quietly.  One of the more humble and honest of politicians said the following when asked to run for re-election:

“We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.” ~ Calvin Coolidge

The media elite and the Politburo went after a woman’s family and continue to dump on her even after she lost the VP slot and has been quietly doing her job in faraway Alaska.  People may find themselves asking why?  The answer to me is blatantly obvious, but to others, maybe not.  She is a threat to everything they hold dear; the very epicenter of their control and power.  She stands true to her morals and principles and does not back down from them, nor does she feel ashamed.  She cannot and will not be manipulated to play machine politics and kowtow to the good old boys.  The people that the GOP prop-up in the media or select to give counter addresses are the people who won’t “rock the boat.”

The establishment wants to bring up non substantive stories about this woman’s family when Obama’s family is far from classy.  He has an illegal aunt living in the slums of Boston, a half-brother in Kenya living on a $1/day in a hut, another half-brother just hospitalized for cholera, and another half-brother just detained and turned away by customs in the UK for sexually assaulting a 13 year-old girl.  He was also born out of wedlock and has more half siblings than previously mentioned.  Joe Biden’s daughter was recently caught on tape at the age of 27, snorting a bunch of cocaine and she has been arrested before for drug possession and obstructing the law.  I’m curious as to why we didn’t hear about this in the media?  How many people in this world have had family members who have made mistakes and gotten into trouble?  Do we have control over family members?  And at what point as a parent do you let your children make their own mistakes so they can learn and become responsible adults?  I can’t choose my family but I can certainly choose my friends and associations.  That’s the difference between Sarah and Obama.  She didn’t choose to associate with domestic terrorists, radicals, or members of the Communist Party USA. She just had a daughter who made a mistake and suffered the consequences for it.

I take extreme offense to anyone who judges Sarah Palin based on the decisions made by her daughter.  Take it from an unruly, rebellious child writing this opinion.  My parents did the best they could with what they had.  They taught me that doing drugs was bad, they didn’t let me go to parties that were unsupervised, and they told me about pre-marital sex.  We spoke, we discussed, and they parented.  I made my decisions accordingly.  My parents never bent my elbow and forced me to drink, they never told me to hop in bed with someone, they never told me to put something up my nose to “feel good.“  Those were my decisions and I should be the one who is judged, not my parents.  The only way that we truly learn is by being allowed to make our own mistakes and applying those lessons in the next phase of our lives.

Sarah Palin is fighting this bipartisan backlash from both sides of the aisle; from both political machines in her state of Alaska and the lower 48.  She is the citizen pundit, the all-American politician, the person who is tired of the way things are and she decided she could make a difference by getting involved.  I’m curious as to whether the elite have a pocket constitution or realize that only half of the founding fathers had a formal education.  Ben Franklin and our first president, George Washington, were two of those men.  They wrote about regular citizens representing the government and the fear we should have if the government ever became too powerful.  Sarah Palin knows this and she believes in the founding principle of Federalism.  If people would only open their eyes and their ears.

Rob Harrison from The Spyglass writes the following:

Gov. Palin is now in a difficult, though probably inevitable, position.  She is opposed by a bi-partisan coalition of the machine politicians in Alaska, who oppose each other on policy but share a common higher loyalty to the old boys’ club and the perks and procedures to which they’re accustomed.  Gov. Palin has the support of a strong majority of the Alaskan people, but only a minority of the state’s politicians. This has meant that the State Legislature has been in full foot-dragging mode through the entire session – a fact which they now intend, via the Democratic Party PR department (aka the MSM, specifically the New York Times), to blame on her.

That the MSM will coordinate with the Democratic/Republican machine in Alaska on this is, I believe, a sign of their deepest agenda here—not just their general bias against conservatives, but a deeper bias yet:  as much as they bleat about “speaking truth to power,” they are not the outside critics of the machine that they pretend to be.  Rather, they are a part of the machine. They are inside the corridors of power, that’s where they want to be, and they really have no true understanding or interest of the world outside those corridors.

This is true, I believe, even of the conservatives within the MSM; which is why a lot of the elite conservative writers have been almost as unfair to Gov. Palin as their liberal colleagues. If a Democratic version of Gov. Palin were ever to emerge, a true reformer who bucked the party machine, I don’t think the likes of Eleanor Clift and Paul Krugman would be any kinder to that individual than the likes of David Brooks and David Frum have been to Gov. Palin.  The initial MSM reaction to the appointment of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat in the U.S. Senate certainly supports that thought.

Thomas Sowell also wrote an opinion entitled “Not One of Us,” in which he expresses the need to embrace Sarah Palin and explains why it is that those who are part of the Republican Elite have trouble doing just that.

Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama’s pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.

With Governor Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.

Governor Palin’s “inexperience” is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has. Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.

Governor Palin’s candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight, and disheveled Chambers, she said, “He’s not one of us.”

The trim, erect, and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was “one of us.” As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.

The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.

[...]

Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.

Governor Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life– an overdue challenge, much as Chambers’ challenge was overdue.

Whether Governor Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need a candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor– worse yet– the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.

The recent Rasmussen Polls only further drive home Sowell’s point when we see that the elite Politburo had an overwhelmingly unfavorable view of the recent Tea Party protests that took place across the nation.  Governor Sarah Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, actually attended one in Wasilla, AK, and Governor Palin, herself, applauded the efforts of the protesters and even mentioned them in her 45 minute Pro-Life Speech last Thursday in Evansville, IN.

These Tea Parties show the disparity between the elite and the working class of America, the engine of the economy and the majority of this nation’s citizens.  The Tea Parties are the embodiment of what most Americans desire of their government, which is representation, ethics, reform, principles, and their own interests served; not the ego of a politician or the pockets of the lobbyists.

But maybe it’s not best listening to someone from the states. Maybe it’s better to hear similar dislike and apathy toward the elite establishment from across the pond to further grasp that this concept and this problem is not exclusive only to us.

The New Snobs of Labour have gathered this week in Manchester for their party get-together. Snobbish? You bet. Our country is now governed by an elite that denies being elite. Our ruling class flaunts its state education, yet attended the best comprehensives in the land.

Of course, David Cameron’s cocooned background (Eton and Oxford) isn’t ideal preparation to lead the country, but David Miliband didn’t exactly grow up on a council estate either. Nor did I. However, like all those from the genuine middle I grew up around those who did. We went to school with them. We still see them. We couldn’t avoid seeing them even if we wanted to.

But for the new ruling class, which we might call the New Labour core vote, those from council estates are, knife crime aftermaths aside, invisible.

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cant’ have both.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis

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Or Should more aptly be called The Worrisome Educator…

Penn State University’s “Department of Counseling and Psychological Services” has a video presentation that should leave any decent American shocked, saddened, and yes, even enraged.  Credit David French of National Review Online for posting what might be the most definitive four minute expose on the tragedy of higher education in America.  Indeed, Penn State’s shameful video production of “The Worrisome Veteran” can provide all Americans some priceless insights into the kind of surreal institutions liberals create when left unchecked.
“The Worrisome Veteran” is part of Penn State’s “Worrisome Student Behaviors” video series which is designed to provide faculty and students the ability to “minimize risk” when encountering problematic students on campus.  Each video presents actors reenacting possible confrontations that may occur in various environments and suggests appropriate responses. The subtitle of the “Worrisome Veteran” presentation is: “I deserve a better grade or else . . .” In other words, to the progressive staff at Penn State, students who are veterans returning from the war in Iraq are simply potential criminals who’ve forgotten how to reason politely.

I will break this disturbing portrayal down into several sections:

1.  PSU and other institutions for higher education are singling out veterans and young military white males, specifically, returning home from war to receive an education.  The fact that veterans are being segregated is horrendous and discriminatory as should be clear to any clear-thinking human being.

2.  The female professor talks about feeling uneasy and uncomfortable with the veteran and why would that be?  It would seem like she is making the assumption that all military vets are aggressors and women-beaters on the brink of snapping at any moment.  This may be something portrayed in Hollywood or by the media who may harp on one individual to classify the entire group as such, but this happens to all people and more so for the average non-military type.

3.  The video uses the argument of the ex-officer having and using bad grammar as a reason to give a low grade.  What struck me was that they make an assumption that men and women in uniform are uneducated hill-billy’s another misconception that was echoed by the likes of the traitor, himself, John Kerry, when he said that only uneducated men and women join the military. 

4.  Why is the professor only telling him what he is doing wrong and making it very vague?  She should be giving him specifics should she not?  I would expect that a professor or any teacher would sit down with me during office hours to take the time and point out to me what areas of my english need improvement – do I have too many run-on sentences?  Am I incorrectly using prepositions?  Is my punctuation off?  One would think that an English Professor would be able to do this more so than, let’s say a Math Professor!

5.  The mere fact that this video has to bring up the fact that the student is feeling singled out and discriminated against due to the professor’s views on the war and political leanings, tell me more about the educators at this university than anything else.  They are basically saying that these views are held by a vast majority of the faculty at PSU and this could be a reason why students get upset.   Why would any English Professor espouse their views in such a class?  It’s not like this is a foreign diplomacy class or some type of political science class. 

6.  Why does the teacher feel that it is acceptable to diagnose the student by telling him he needs counseling or help?  This is something the student must come to grips with if he or she in fact asks for help or discloses they are having issues.  The assumption made by the teacher is incredibly condescending and yet again discriminatory.  Many men and women coming home from war have been getting diagnosed with PTSD lately, but that does not mean that the majority of these cases are military folks.  In fact most PTSD cases are those who are not associated with the military at all since PTSD is incredibly common and can occur due to any type of traumatic experience!  PTSD also does not mean that someone will snap… another common misconception.

6.  PSU is a PUBLIC school and has land grants this means that the PEOPLE own this land and there shouldn’t be political bias allowed in such institutions.  If the faculty would like to discuss their views and opinions behind closed doors among one another or at happy hour then so be it, but inside the classroom and in front of children that are not their own should be banned. 

7.  Could there be any coincidence with the latest DHS report and this university creating this video?  DHS did tell us that veterans returning home are more susceptible to right-wing extremism!

This is becoming insane!

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This is a little ironic after the recent CIA Gitmo “torture” memo release. 

North Korea has incarcerated two female journalists from the United States.  Laura Ling and Euna Lee visited North Korea in hopes to interview defectors.  They flew into Seoul and held meetings there for the beginning of their trip.  They flew to Yanji, a small Chinese city over the border of North Korea after their sessions were complete.  The women were advised not to leave the small city or else face possible incrimination by North Korea.  Rather than heed the warning, the women crossed the Tumen River, in which reports after which are varying.  One report states that the women were taken into custody because they would not stop filming, while another one states they were pursued back across the frozen river onto Chinese soil where they were brought back to North Korea.

The women have been jailed in North Korea for over a month now, while the Obama administration states it is trying to free them through diplomacy.  I’m curious as to why none of us here have really heard anything about this?  Nobody on the outside knows how the women are doing and Kim Jong Il is unlikely to release them anytime soon because of what U.S. captives mean for his country (usually money and food to continue to subsist on) and due to the grudge he is holding against the U.N. and the West for their reaction to his missile launch. 

Kim Jong Il no has a lot of leverage against the United States and these two women will merely be pawns in this game.  I hope that the “diplomacy” style does not wind up like Carter’s 444 day escapade.

Either way, within 24 hours Ms Ling and Ms Lee were taken in separate vehicles to Pyongyang for questioning. A week later it was announced that they would be put on trial.

Conviction for illegal entry carries up to three years in prison; the more serious crimes of espionage or “hostility toward North Korean people” are punishable by five to ten years.

The US State Department has said that it is making every diplomatic effort to free the two women and Mr Gore is said to have contacted Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, to ask for her assistance. The US has no embassy in North Korea but a representative of the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is said to have seen the journalists at the end of last month.

Koh Yu Hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said that Pyongyang was unlikely to release the journalists soon. Having two Americans was like having a “piece of rice cake rolling in for free”, he said.

“They’re going to make maximum use of this for multiple purposes. Rather than a trial by a criminal code, it will be a political trial.”

Iran has also taken a U.S.-Iranian journalist prisoner and has officially sentenced her to 8 years in prison based on charges of espionage. 

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American journalist, was convicted of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison on Saturday by Iran’s Revolutionary Court.

Ms. Saberi, a former American beauty queen, has been in detention in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since Jan. 31. She was charged with espionage earlier this month and tried this week behind closed doors.

The truth behind why she was detained in the first place is very disconnected with myriad reasons, which can only be expected by another “state”-run government much like North Korea. 

This makes me wonder if Obama’s new call of diplomacy and negotiatons with hostile nations will still consider no pre-conditions…

“Ms Saberi has been sentenced to eight years in jail and I am going to appeal,” her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told AFP. Under Iranian law, the verdict can be appealed within 20 days.

The case against Saberi, who has both US and Iranian nationality, has raised deep concerns in Washington and among rights groups.

She was initially reported to have been detained for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.

The ISNA news agency, quoting an unnamed judiciary source, confirmed that a revolutionary court had sentenced Saberi for espionage — a charge that could have risked the death sentence. No date was given for the verdict.

“Roxana said in court that her earlier confessions were not true and she told me she had been tricked into believing that she would be released if she cooperated,” her father Reza Saberi told AFP.

“Her denial is documented in her case but apparently they did not pay attention to it,” he added, without saying when he had spoken to his daughter.

“We are very shocked and we were not expecting it. We were hoping for six months and then clemency.”

The court ruling comes despite calls by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Saberi’s release and President Barack Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Iran after three decades of ruptured ties.

[...]

Last month, Saberi’s parents — who came to Iran to pursue her case and have visited her at least twice — appealed to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for her release, saying she was in a “dangerous” mental state.

Her mental state must be an indication of the wonderful treatment in Iran and the fact that no other countries use cruel and unusual punishment like the United States right?  At least we make sure that our methods meet protocol standards and we only persecute real criminals and terrorists unlike others.

Clinton said she had delivered a letter to Iranian officials on March 31, seeking Saberi’s release and making appeals on behalf of two other US citizens.

Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, vanished on the Gulf island of Kish two years ago, and student Esha Momeni has been prevented from leaving Iran despite being released from jail last year.

After three decades of severed ties, the Obama administration has called for dialogue with Tehran over its controversial nuclear drive, which Western powers fear could be a cover for efforts to build an atomic bomb.

So we are to believe that Iran does not have bad intentions with their nuclear facilities whilst they kill and capture U.S. citizens, whom we conveniently do not hear much about from our own media propagandists?

To help Roxana please visit www.freeroxana.net

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Sweet justice!

CNN’s Susan Roesgen has had a rough week, what with all the ordinary American/First Amendment practitioners bashing she so passionately and obnoxiously delivered in her TEA Party reporting.

Perhaps it was the sniping at the place she twice applied in 2005 – Rupert Murdoch’s House of Ratings, otherwise known as Fox News – that put her over the edge.

Or whether or not her email box was so overwhelmed with what was undoubtedly an endless stream of love letters and fan mail that it caused a server meltdown.

Whatever it was, CNN has announced that Miss Roesgen’s “tak(ing) a break.”

Two days after Susan Roesgen’s much talked-about Chicago Tea Party live shots, we are learning more about what happened off-camera.

Sources close to the situation tell TVNewser as Roesgen was reporting her 2pmET live shot for CNN, she heard shouts from the crowd including “Damn CNN” and “Shut up, bitch.”

As we now know, Roesgen wrapped up the live shot, saying “I think you get the general tenor of this,” that it was “not really family viewing” from an “Anti-CNN” crowd.

Our source says Roesgen received an avalanche of email messages, some supportive, and some “vitriolic with crude insults.”

Here are some of my thoughts for why she is “taking a break.”

A: Going in for the 28 day, 12-step program cure
B: Getting her out of town to avoid the incoming flak
C: Giving her 30 days to consider her unique qualifications for self-employment
D: Recovering from her Teabagging episode with Wolfe Blitzer
E: Cleansing herself at some swanky spa after getting dirty with all those filthy average working Americans.

We shall see!

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I think anyone who attended a tea party can honestly say that the rallies were anything but racist and to be perfectly honest, were quite bipartisan.  The fact of the matter is that most individuals, no matter what political party or walk of life, are upset with their government and with those who campaign one way to get elected, only to do another thing entirely when they are in office.

We don’t feel represented any longer and we don’t feel as though our elected officials are being good stewards on our behalf.  Politicians in the beltway crave power and control no matter which side of the aisle they are on.  Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves seeing the massive amounts of debt, government expansion, government control and intervention into our lives and the free markets.  This is why we are out there protesting.  Some may be protesting the progressive attitude and/or the collectivist or socialist direction the country has been taking for several years now.  Personally, I feel that McCain would have taken us on a slower road to this, whereas, Obama is taking us on a bullet train.  There is no difference.  The problem comes from career politicians who are accountable to special interests, major campaign donors, and lobbyists.

Many people, especially those in Hollywood, the media, and the elite upper echelons of D.C., N.Y., the North East, etc. just can’t grasp what it’s like and how it feels to be an average American, The Forgotten Man, trying to make a living and feeling as though the government is obstructing your dreams and your children and grand-children’s dreams.  Most of these “elites” suffer from “smug” as the creators of South Park so aptly named it – and it means they just can’t understand their average man or woman who doesn’t make millions of dollars/year.

Janeane Garofalo is one of these “special” people, who is now using the typical liberal technique to shut up opposition – call them bigots, intolerant, and most of all use the term racist.  I don’t know about anyone else who attended the tea parties, but we had a wonderful black man who spoke at the event and is an up and comer in the state of Maryland who is a conservative and a former marine.  I saw nationalities of all kinds represented, Asians, Hispanics, Blacks, Whites, Old, Young, British, Irish, Italian, Male, Female – it didn’t matter and this was a diverse and inclusive event.  Nobody received invites and all were welcomed to show their support of the cause.

America is a great country and it became great because we believe in exceptionalism, free markets, and individual liberties.  The constitution doesn’t talk about collective liberties!  Americans have always endeavored to be the best they can be, and as much as that may sound cliche, it is the truth.

I never appreciated my country as much as I did when I lived abroad in Spain.  I never appreciated the common spirit and patriotism that we all have deep down inside, which I saw and felt after 9/11 while I was in college, of all places!

Why do liberals feel that they need to change the very foundation this great country is built upon?  Why are they so arrogant to believe that they know what is best for every American when they have no idea what you or I go through on a daily basis?  Why are liberals so quick to judge and so quick to obstruct speech that differs from their opinion?  Why do they preach about tolerance but are the ones who seem to have a hatred for those of religion, those who consider themselves conservatives, and those who just simply disagree?  Why do liberals always have to break people into categories and segregate groups by singling out races, genders, religions, and sexual orientation?  If they are so focused on race and creed then maybe it truly is projection and the liberals who have the problem.  I wish they could understand that we were never the party of racism. And if they did their history they would also know that it is our party who has always fought for the individual and treated our fellow man as such.  We are not hyphens in society like African-American, Hispanic-American, Irish-American, etc.  we are AMERICANS – that is the point and one day I hope that their hatred for those who are different from them and who have differing opinions dissipates and shines some light on what it is we actually preach and who it is we actually are.

Enough of my diatribe, here is what was reported and what “joyous, tolerant” Janeane had to say:

Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance.

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Countdown” with Keith Olbermann Thursday evening. “This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.”

Olbermann did not once try to challenge her on those assertions.

The actress went on to describe the brain size of typical “right-winger, Republican or conservative or your average white power activist.”

“Their synapses are misfiring. … It is a neurological problem we are dealing with,” she said. This isn’t the first time she’s offered this analysis, either. Ms. Garofalo said similar things about Alaskan GOP Governor Sarah Palin’s brain last February in an interview with an environmental blog.

The actress went on to bash the GOP on MSNBC Thursday because it had “crystallized into the white power movement” as well as Fox News, which she said has captured the “Klan demo[graphic].”

“Who else is Fox talking to? Urban older white guys and their girlfriends who suffer from Stockholm Syndrome,” she said.

Ironically, Ms. Garofalo is currently playing a role on the drama 24, which is aired by the Fox Broadcasting Company and is popular among conservative circles.

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What a find – thanks Redstate and the Founding Father Bloggers!

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