It might already be too late, but

From lyonesse, who got it from http://www.knightsout.org:

May 12 - call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1111.

Lieutenant Dan Choi is being fired because of his orientation. Lt. Choi acknowledges that he is one of tens of thousands, but we recognize him as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with this policy. A West Point grad, infantry officer, Arabic linguist, and Iraq vet – whose soldiers know he is gay, and support him – is being dismissed.

With the issue in the news, it is important to speak out NOW – not later – to make this happen.

On Tuesday, May 12, [that's today] call the White House at 202-456-1111.

Sample Script:
I’m calling to tell the president not to fire Lieutenant Dan Choi – and to keep his promise to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I am a [something about you and your personal connection to this issue]. We need all the combat officers, and Arabic linguists, and for that matter, every capable servicemember we can get – to keep our military strong. No more studies; we need President Obama to tell Congress to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law NOW.

Call Tuesday. It’s important that we flood the switchboards NOW. With your help, we can get this law changed. We can make this happen!

It won't stop it, but the point is to get enough numbers run through so that Mr. Obama's administration is aware that people are watching.

a few addenda

Yesterday, I talked about tax receipts imploding. Today we have some numbers. Net tax receipts down 20%, and the first April (tax month) deficit since 1983. Individual income tax receipts are down 24% ($-181B), corporate tax receipts are down 58% ($-100B) in April. Spending rose 20% at the same time.

The Fed just bought US$6B in treasuries, mostly short-term. This is the first back-to-back buy. The US trade deficit is down year-to-year to US$27B, which is good in terms of trading accounts deficit, but in worse in that China, Japan, et al. have less impetus to buy US treasury bills to sterilise their trade surpluses with the US and keep their currency valuations from rising. eta: To clarify, that's down year-to-year, but up from last month, mostly on falling US exports.

Advanta - a major speciality credit house for small businesses - is closing vast swaths of credit lines. As many as one million businesses have just had a substantial chunk of their credit cut off. Mish has more here.

An assortment of top GM executives have sold out their remaining shares, to "advantage of a trading window to sell their shares while there's still some value 'like most reasonable people would do.'" Calculated Risk reports that a GM bankruptcy is "more probable" than previously, but that they have found three bidders for the Hummer line. Naked Capitalism reports that various Credit Default Swap (CDS) holders are going to force GM to bankruptcy rather than a government-backed settlement deal. Karl at Market Ticker is extremely unhappy at the deal the government is handing unsubordinated bondholders. A variety of people are wondering who will be willing to buy any future (post-bankruptcy/makeover/whatever) GM bonds, given the circumstances bondholders are facing here.

CR also has a clarifying post on why bankruptcy and foreclosure house sales are a weaker class of sale than normal sales, even leaving prices completely aside. It's because they're "one-and-done" sales, where the seller isn't proceeding to buy another house - typically of higher value - themselves. There's no sell-through chain.

Meanwhile, oil is quietly approaching $60/barrel again, closing today at $58.85 as the economy continues to shrink, not grow. Brad Setser discusses the decline in oil imports year-to-year despite a year-to-year halving of prices here, as part of a general discussion on the trade balance you might want to read.

Zero Hedge has a post entitled "Why I Am Freaking Out." It's a guest post, and long, but interesting. Meanwhile, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet thinks the global economy has bottomed out. We'll see.

That's all for now. Good luck.