Last Call

Greg Sargent notes that Obama 2012 campaign pointman David Axelrod finally, finally gave voice to the GOP Plan to sabotage the economy.

I think this is something — something different going on right now. When you have the leader — the Republican leader of the Senate say, our number one goal — in the midst of this economy, our number one goal is to defeat the president, and they’re acting like it.

They don’t want to cooperate. They don’t want to help. Even on measures to help the economy that they traditionally have supported before, like a payroll tax cut, like infrastructure, rebuilding our roads and bridges and surface transport. These — so you have to ask a question, are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president or are they going to cooperate?

And, listen, there’s a reason why the Congress is at 9 percent in some polls, approval, lowest in history. Because this is different than we’ve ever seen before.

Sargent goes on to say that Team Obama is taking a page from Elizabeth Warren's populism playbook and that given the near total demise of their jobs legislation, that the gloves are now off. That was evident this morning.

Anyone who's read this blog for the last year has known that the GOP Plan to wreck the economy and to make sure it stays wrecked has always been the case, that was never in doubt. But to see David Axelrod finally admit as such on a Sunday show is something of a big step, one that was long overdue.

It's good to see it happen.  Now we need the White House to do something about it.  So far the President is taking executive action to help the economy while the GOP is doing exactly nothing about it.  Actually pointing it out is something that needed to have been done in March or so, but there is the valid argument that the President had to make every effort to work with the GOP before they could move on and make this point.  They've accomplished that.

Now we're seeing a strategic change in the White House approach.  Nobody believes the GOP wants to work with the President on anything right now.  President Obama knows that, his campaign people know that, the country is now painfully aware of that, but the forms had to be followed.  Now the game is really on.

This Week's WTH - Boy Scouts Edition

Reprinted in its entirety from Yahoo! News:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Confidential records show Boy Scout officials in the U.S. and Canada not only failed to stop an admitted child molester in its ranks, but sometimes helped cover his tracks.

A Los Angeles Times and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigation (http://lat.ms/tYtWBX) finds scout leader Rick Turley molested at least 15 children, most of whom he met through American and Canadian Scouting beginning in the 1970s.

Records show Boy Scouts of America officials didn't call police after he admitted molesting three boys. Turley then returned to his home country of Canada, where he signed on with Scouts Canada, and continued his abuses for at least a decade.

Now 58, Turley says he is surprised at how often he got away with it.

Turley is one of more than 5,000 suspected child molesters named in confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts of America.

What the hell? He admitted to it and they did nothing? And yet they don't want gays near the kids because that puts them in danger.  Meanwhile, look at the damage one man was able to do after telling them he was doing it.  And they did nothing.  Actually, that's not correct.  They helped him cover it up so he could keep going.

I feel sick.

Blackberry Resists Sharing User Information With Indian Government

Citing anonymous sources, the Journal says that RIM has a "small" facility in Mumbai that was set up earlier this year to field surveillance requests from the Indian government. The Journal's sources say that the government must provide RIM with enough legal justification for the company to hand over an individual's "decoded messages," including BlackBerry Messenger chats.

But Indian government apparently wants more. For example, the Journal's sources say, the government still cannot intercept corporate e-mail messages, which has long been its goal. The government would also like to put a law enforcement official in RIM's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, to more securely present surveillance requests to the company. Those terms, however, have not been accepted by RIM, the sources say.

RIM and India have been engaged in a bitter battle over government access to information for over a year now. And so far, RIM has balked at giving in to all of the government's demands, even though it has faced deadlines that, if not met, would result in the country shutting down its service. As each deadline passed, however, no such shutdowns occurred.

I'm glad to see them holding out on the most important things, such as email and messenger correspondence.  It's disturbing that the Indian government is so determined to intercept and read the private conversations, and that they are trying to establish a system where the citizens have no rights.

Blackberry's doing something right, I figured it deserved as much attention as their many mistakes.

Hot Dog! A Happy Ending

Daniel was slated to die along with several other dogs, who were perfectly healthy and waiting for a rescue that would not come.  At an animal shelter in Florence, Alabama his time had run out.

Except it didn't.  

For unknown reasons, though the other dogs were killed, Daniel (named after the biblical character who survived the lion's den) not only survived, he was completely unaffected.  His celebrity status has several wanting to adopt him, and the workers at the animal shelter hope to bring attention to the plight of innocent animals who aren't as lucky.

The Limited Government States' Rights Party

And the "Washington should let the states run things!" people have the perfect candidate in Rick Perry.

Texas Governor Rick Perry pressed a conservative social agenda at an appearance in New Hampshire, calling for the repeal of the state's 2009 law legalizing same-sex marriage.

Perry also praised efforts in the state to end funding for birth control and health services for low-income women provided by Planned Parenthood in the state.

The comments were made late Friday at an event in Manchester sponsored by conservative activist group Cornerstone Action.

Washington should let the states determine things, unless conservatives don't like it in which case it's a moral imperative to interfere.

A poll from the University of New Hampshire this month showed that 62 percent of residents oppose repealing the same-sex marriage law -- including a plurality of likely Republican primary voters -- while only 27 percent support repealing it.

Regardless, Republicans who swept to power in both state chambers of the state legislature in 2010 have this year introduced a bill to repeal.

"I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman," Perry said, adding that he supported the "sanctity of traditional marriage."

Even New Hampshire Republicans support the same-sex marriage law in New Hampshire, but apparently the will of the citizens of the Granite State doesn't actually matter to President Perry.  For a group that constantly complains how their rights are being systematically destroyed, Republicans sure are keen to revoke rights from as many groups as possible to keep them in their place, you notice?

Just About Done

At this point Michele Bachmann's all but wrecked campaign is relying on outright falsehoods in order to generate momentum.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is a candidate for President and a tax attorney, as she is fond of saying. Her website describes her experience as “five years as a federal tax litigation attorney, working on hundreds of civil and criminal cases.” However, that fact didn’t seem to help her in on the campaign trail in Iowa on Saturday.

The Des Moines Register reports that Bachmann, speaking at a campaign appearance in Ottumwa, said “The average amount of taxes that the average family (paid) was 5 percent overall,” in 1950, as way of saying that the tax burden in America has gone through the roof.

There was only one problem with that argument: the overall tax rate in 1950 was five times that much, and that rate is only a little over three percent higher now.

Yes, she thought nobody would bother to check or to question her, because in the Age Of FOX News, facts are whatever Republicans want them to be at the time.  It wasn't the only thing she lied about in Iowa this weekend, either.  Of course it's not like anyone really likes to fact check Republicans, because then you get called all sorts of names, so it's just a "miscalculation" on her part and not a deliberate lie:

The Bachmann campaign responded this afternoon that the 5-percent figure comes from the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, and that Bachmann has cited it for several years.

This evening, a campaign spokeswoman provided two documents that she said were the sources Bachmann relied on when making her comments. The spreadsheets, which contained no information identifying their source, show federal, state and local tax receipts as a percentage of the United States’ gross domestic product over the last several decades.

So of course she's magically correct by comparing "tax burdens" to GDP (which is like comparing apples to 18th century Hungarian cabinetmaking) and if you challenge her numbers, you're a horrible person and SHUT UP THAT'S WHY.