private sector is coming back to a certain degree, but people who were once employed by the federal government no longer have positions to go to. there doesn t seem to be any kind of reconciliation that hey, these numbers could be better if perhaps we weren t slashing and burning at quite the rate that we are. yeah. and i think the economy s kind of a rorschach. if you look at the levels of just the current state of the economy, it s not great. it s not growing very fast. unemployment is really high. but if you look at the trend, it s getting better. and it s been getting better for a long time now. the recession was at this point five years ago. both of those things are true. it really allows you to make these kind of wildly disparate political arguments when you re looking at the same set of facts. chris, to that point, it s not only politically convenient to not have to move on extending long-term unemployment assistance, but it also goes to the core of this republican notion of
the pilot. in law enforcement, for example, they give psychometric testing to someone before they give someone a gun. a common one is the mmpi ii. it is given to people to see if mentally there is psychological issues or personality issues or mental issues. this is something we may see now coming for pilots. there s a wexler scale, the rorschach and in certain people who are responsible for people s lives before they are in the position to fly a plane or give them a badge or gun. it s dangerous we do not do a psychological test of individuals before they enter a profession. who is going to say i got problems, don t give me the job. or that person may not know they have problems.
want to point out these gerrymandered districts, because it is unbelievable. i think we have a whole audio-visual slide show. look at this. the gray area represents the district. that literally they are rorschach blot tests more than anything. what s happened to this country in terms of voting districts is unbelievable. ly si will say these are both democrat and republican. you can point to a 50%-50% poll in north carolina which you can also throw out window when you look at these. this is clearly a base play. this is the conservative republicans on the part of the governor. that s what s driving this clearly and any consensus on the issue is completely irrelevant. to sam s point, i would ask what you guys think of this. in terms of congress, eric cantor has made overtures in and around needing to do something about the voting rights act. tomorrow there is going to be a march commemorating i believe
and to top it all off, in the leadup to this week s voting mahmoud ahmadinejad was in a helicopter crash. ahmadinejad, the current president, the guy whose election sparked all the protests a few years ago, the guy who s really deeply controversial at home, the guy who certain elements of the current iranian government are not pleased with, last week he was in a helicopter crash in the northern part of iran. he s fine. nobody died. but the media reports on the ahmadinejad helicopter crash put air quotes around the word accident. as in president ahmadinejad just survived a helicopter crash. it s reported to have been an accident. nudge nudge, wink wink, yeah right. again, though, he s fine. the media apparently thinks he was set up. and the debates all last four hours. and the candidates sometimes mutiny on the moderators and there are rorschach tests for the candidates to respond to and there s a lot of fake crying for positive political effect including well-produced long campaign v
not pleased with, last week he was in a helicopter crash in the northern part of iran. he s fine. nobody died. but the media reports on the ahmadinejad helicopter crash put air quotes around the word accident. as in president ahmadinejad just survived a helicopter crash. it s reported to have been an accident. nudge nudge, wink wink, yeah right. again, though, he s fine. the media apparently thinks he was set up. and the debates all last four hours. and the candidates sometimes mutiny on the moderators and there are rorschach tests for the candidates to respond to and there s a lot of fake crying for positive political effect including well-produced long campaign videos that are just about the crying. the iranian elections are turning out to be amazing. even before we find out if they re going to be rigged again this time too. voting is on friday. watch this space. that does it for us tonight. thanks for being with us on this fine monday night. now it s time for the last word with