Out of My Mind

Sunday, May 04, 2008

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who understands finance pretty well, is not on board with the “gas tax holiday” plan.

Bloomberg said the “gas tax holiday” is “about the dumbest thing i’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view. i don’t understand why you think there is any merit to it whatsoever. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence. You don’t do that — oh, and incidentally having money to build infrastructure. All three of those things fly in the face of giving everybody 30 bucks a year.”

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How Our Leaders Make Us Safer. Not

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Another One Killed By The World's Greatest Healthcare System

A man who was denied a liver transplant largely because he used marijuana with medical approval to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.

***

His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.

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Another Soldier Dies For No Good Reason

Marine sergeant who became a symbol of resilience as he strove to recover from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq that blanketed 97 percent of his body with burns has died, the Defense Department said. He was 22.

Sgt. Merlin German died April 11 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he was continuing treatment for the injuries he suffered in combat on Feb. 22, 2005, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The former turret gunner was dubbed the "Miracle Man" for his determination in facing his wounds, which cost the former saxophone player his fingers and rippled his face with scars. He endured more than 40 surgeries, spent 17 months in a hospital and had to learn to walk again.

Meanwhile, he started a charity, Merlin's Miracles, to aid child burn victims and considered college and a career.

"Sometimes I do think I can't do it," he told The Associated Press last year. "Then I think: Why not? I can do whatever I want. ... Nobody has ever been 97 percent dead and survived, and lived to walk."

Born in New York City, German moved to its suburbs as a teenager. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in September 2003, according to his charity's Web site. He was medically retired four years later, the Defense Department said.

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More albeit rather biased info here.

President McCain's Class And Straight Talk

A Clive man drew gasps from fellow audience members at today’s presidential candidate forum by using a four-letter word in a question to Sen. John McCain.

A member of the audience, identified as Marty Parrish of Clive, asked McCain during the event at the Polk County Convention Complex about a rumor that McCain had once used a profane word referencing female genitalia to describe his wife.

A book, “The Real McCain” by Cliff Schecter, accuses McCain of using the word in an exchange with his wife, Cindy, in 1992.

Here’s a transcript of today’s remarks:

PARRISH: This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I’ve been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a (expletive)?

MCCAIN: Now, now. You don’t want to … Um, you know that’s the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don’t, there’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language. So I’ll move on to the next questioner in the back.

The audience gasped at the question and applauded at McCain’s handling of it. Parrish was escorted from the event and questioned by Secret Service, but not charged. Parrish had checked in to the event as a member of the press.

Parrish, a 45-year-old Baptist minister and technology business owner, said he attended the event specifically to confront McCain about the rumor.

“This is about character,” Parrish said, when reached by telephone afterward. “And in a moment of intemperance, he called his wife the most despicable name a person can call a woman.

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"Barron's" Bolshevik Claims Latest BLS Figures Fabrications

Read it and decide for yourself....

NO NEED TO WAIT FOR THE LAST BALLOT to be counted -- it's all over but the shouting. This is not -- repeat, not -- a prediction about the outcome of the election or even the pillow fight between Hillary and Obama. We're talking instead about something much more important, namely, who'll get the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The winner hands down, we fearlessly forecast, will be that brilliant narrative confected by, of all people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and published just last Friday under the deceptively bland title "The Employment Situation: April 2008." Although we're loath to deprive you of even a modicum of the thrill of devouring this marvelous work of magic realism by revealing too much of its contents, rest assured it's carefully designed to leave you with a comfy feeling in these rather trying times.

No doubt you've already gleaned the beaming news that instead of the 75,000-80,000 or even greater job losses and higher unemployment rate that the soothsayers were prognosticating, payrolls last month were trimmed by a much more modest 20,000, and the unemployment rate dipped to 5%, from 5.1%. Hallelujah! It's such a happy contrast to those nasty expectations and to the 81,000 jobs that vanished in March.

What makes the report all the more extraordinary is that it comes in the face of otherwise dismal dispatches from the employment front. Layoffs last month, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas, the placement firm, tallied 90,015, a hefty 68% greater than in March. New claims for unemployment insurance in the last full week in April rose to 380,000, from 345,000 the week before, while continuing claims topped the three million mark. Monster, the online want-ad outfit, reported a 6% drop in its April index compared with the same month a year ago, and the Conference Board's help-wanted index sagged to a new low while its measure of employment opportunities showed, not surprisingly, jobs are ever-harder to come by.

The BLS report, then, was like a burst of sunshine dispelling the gloom. So we take this occasion to tip our hat to the bureau's artistry in being able to fashion a comparatively heartening picture of the job market out of some very unpromising raw material. The populace, as recent soundings make clear, is plenty uneasy and disgruntled about the stumbling economy, feeling the pinch and worried about a paycheck; so anything that can provide a lift to sagging spirits is more than welcome.

Actually, the praise really belongs to the unknown (at least to us) and certainly unsung numbers-bender who crafted the so-called birth/death adjustment, supposedly created to capture the additional jobs of firms too new to be captured by the survey. As it has demonstrated time and again, it's much more a product of the imagination than of dull data, as, of course, any worthwhile work of fiction is.

We have on occasion pointed out the contribution the birth/death adjustment has made to the payroll total, but we have trouble remembering when the additional slots it conjured up were anywhere near as massive as they were in the April reckoning, when it "generated" 267,000 jobs. Put another way, ex the adjustment, last month's job loss would have ballooned to 287,000. Bit of a difference, eh?

Just one illustration points up the, shall we say, peculiarity of what the BLS adjustment has wrought. According to the birth/death model, 8,000 jobs were added in April -- are you sitting down? -- in the financial sector. Which, we assume, will come as a stunning surprise to the gosh knows how many poor souls who have been laid off by the banks, the brokerage houses and the rest of the not-very-robust financial fraternity. Must be something really wrong with our vision, moreover, since new firms in that sector appear to be conspicuous by their absence.

As Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood, the very bright bulbs who run The Liscio Report, point out -- though they usually view the birth/death model more kindly than we do -- among the stranger additions made via its agency in the April report was the 45,000 to construction jobs. (In case you've been vacationing on the moon, construction is not exactly booming.)

They also suggest that the 83,000 new slots supposedly created in the leisure and hospitality field is definitely suspect. "With vacation plans at near-record lows and restaurants reporting reduced traffic," they feel many of these supposed job gains could simply disappear come the next benchmark revision.

After reviewing the defects in the household version of last month's employment trends, Philippa and Doug warn, "given all its internal blemishes," it would be wrong to conclude from the April report that the economy and the job market are stabilizing. And they caution, "An economy providing lots of part-time jobs to the young and few full-time jobs to the prime-aged" is an economy that could have a tough time "sustaining life."

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Workers At A Profitable Business Get Screwed By The Owner

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The Wisdom Of President McCain

There is no excuse for electing this specially after the last eight years.

None.

At a townhall event yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) implied that the U.S. went to war in Iraq over oil, saying that if America had energy independence that would “prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East. Later, on his campaign plane, McCain tried to clarify his remarks, claiming that he was talking about the “the first Gulf War.” Pressed by a reporter, McCain stumbled when asked if he was actually “thinking about the first Gulf War” when he made the statement:
But then when specifically asked by an Associated Press reporter if, when he made the statement, he was “thinking about the first Gulf War,” he said no.

“No, I was thinking about- it’s not hard to- we will not,” McCain stumbled. “By eliminating our dependency on foreign oil, we will not have to have our national security threatened by a cut off of that oil. Because we will be dependent, because we won’t be dependent, we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil. That’s what my remarks were.”

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The Golden Age GOP Leadership Has Brought Us

Via Atrios.

There He Goes Again With The Flip-Floppery!

Beloved Lies Put Into Beloved Leader's Mouth

From Goebbels Central:

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

The right of ordinary men and women to determine their own future, protected by the rule of law, lies at the heart of America's founding principles. As our country celebrates the 50th anniversary of Law Day, we renew our commitment to the ideals on which this great Nation was established and to a robust system of ordered liberty.

The American legal system is central to protecting the rights and freedoms our Nation holds dear. The theme of this year's Law Day, "The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity," recognizes the fundamental role that the rule of law plays in preserving liberty in our Nation and in all free societies. We pay tribute to the men and women in America's legal community. Through hard work and dedication to the rule of law, members of the judiciary and the legal profession help secure the rights of individuals, bring justice to our communities, and reinforce the proud traditions that make America a beacon of light for the world.

Nearly 800 years ago, the Magna Carta placed the authority of government under the rule of law; centuries later, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution marked tremendous advances in the march of liberty. These documents established enduring principles that guide modern democracies. Today, we are reminded of that past and look toward a hopeful future as we work to secure the liberty that is the natural right of every man, woman, and child.

On Law Day, U.S.A., our Nation celebrates our belief in the equality of each person before God and renews our commitment to strive to bring America ever closer to its founding ideals.

More From That Freaking Crazy GOP Whacko In Indiana

I did not want to have to fight the Republicans in the primary, but I've had enough of their lies. I have no choice but to lightly respond.
http://tonyzirkle.com/CAMPAIGN/2008_05_02_Tony_Zirkle_Jabs_Back

This is interesting. http://poplicks.com/2008/05/vp-candidate-for-mccain-tony-zirkle.html

I have posted a transcript of an interview I had with a local South Bend African-American magazine, Site 360, on the right under 2008-05-02-Site-360-Interview-Self-Determination. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the topic for those critics of mine who have not studied international law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination

Some criminal or criminals are now targeting my family. Yes, this is the way of the Great Porn Dragon. Intimidate, threaten and refuse to debate the facts. Yes, the real Nazis, at least as the media portray them, are the Republican non-leadership and their supporters who are engaging in the "Nazi" tactic of "Tell the biggest lie because the bigger the lie, the more believeable it will be."

A campaign of flier distributors has been going around my Jewish Christian children's (their mother is a believing Jewish convert to Christianity who preaches the Gospel most effectively) neighborhood and is illegally putting fliers in peoples' mailboxes. Once I get the fliers, I'll post them here. They write this language:

"This person hates all race but his own. He puts [this neighborhood] in danger. His home is at ****. " The flier cites my speech before the National Socialists where I presented a Gospel book called the "Desire of Ages" to them. It also cites a lawsuit from a former client who ran a massage parlor that I'm simply ignoring.

*** I interviewed with CNN for The Situation Room with the Wolf Blitzer Show on May 1, 2008. I was interviewed in Chicago via Satellite by Carol Costello(sp?). CNN might not be able to broadcast it because the interview was definitely not politically correct. You can call CNN to contact Ms. Costello or her assistant Bob Ruff. Apparently, they were getting too many calls so they asked me to remove their phone numbers. I have done so as a courtesy. I believe they are in D.C. and New York, respectively. If any of you want to see it, you can call them and ask them to broadcast it, put it on cnn.com or maybe you can request a copy. Of course, my good friendly firing, knee-capping buddies, the Republican non-leadership, had spoken to Carol Costello at CNN prior to my arrival and thoroughly slandered me just to ensure I would not get to make the first impression myself. If anyone sees my interview with CNN leaked out, please e-mail me a link to it on the Web.

**I don't think the e-mail box at the bottom right works, so please e-mail me directly at campaign2008@tonyzirkle.com**

**Please note that pro-porners have posted on the discussion board. The "Be angel long ..." thread is now rated XXX because somebody posted a money shot pic. You must be 21 or older and consent to taking the risk of viewing obscene matter before you are authorized to view that thread of the discussion board."

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Another Hypocritical GOP Closet Queen

Of course, it's the Roy Cohn system: The rightists protect and, well, closet, those who otherwise be publicly abused, as it were, when they are of service to what you can call the American Counter-Revolution.

So here's today's what they call bitch.