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It's hard to say what the worst part of this Sunday's Meet the Press was, whether it be David Gregory allowing Republican governors to take credit for recoveries that started before they came in office, allowing David Brooks to drone on constantly about how "both sides" are equally horrible, or this segment with former HP CEO and job destroyer, Carly Fiorina, doing her best to try to pretend Mitt Romney would not have allowed the American auto industry to go belly up.

As Media Matters has documented here, she's just touting the same lines as the rest of them who have been carrying water for Romney on this issue -- Right-Wing Media Help Romney Hide His Opposition To The Successful Auto Rescue . At least we had Rachel Maddow and E.J. Dionne there for some push back to David Brooks and Carly Fiorina's hackery, because lord knows David Gregory wasn't going to do it. Useless. The man is completely useless as a host. Sadly, he fits in perfectly with the lot of them that host these Sunday bobble head shows.

DIONNE: See, I disagree with David. I think this election is a fundamental choice and I think the trust issue links closely with the economic issue. Romney is almost one as a product. It’s like if you’re selling a car--you want air-conditioning, I’ll give you air-conditioning. You want rich, Corinthian leather, remember those old ads, I’ll give you a leather. Romney is saying you want right wing in the primary, I’ll give you that. You want centrist in the election, I’ll give you that. And the auto rescue is a good example where he was clearly against it. And in the debate, trying to suggest that he was for it. And I think it’s entirely appropriate that the auto rescue has been so important to Obama running so well in Ohio, because it’s really a choice. Either government should just sit by and let the market do its thing or government can come in and correct certain market outcomes and prevent catastrophe. That is the kind of choice we face in this election.

BROOKS: I mean, if-- if you want to talk about trust, what Obama is talking about on the trail, first of all, there’s no second term agenda. Second, when he goes off the record with the Des Moines register last week, he gives out a second term agenda which is nothing like what he’s been talking about on the trail.

(Cross talk)

DIONNE: That’s not true. It’s not true at all.

BROOKS: Okay. Wait. So let’s talk about cutting corporate tax rates, talking about weeding out immigration.

DIONNE: He said that all along.

BROOKS: He’s talked about immigration reform which he’s not talked about much in public.

DIONNE: Yes, he has.

BROOKS: And he’s talked about a grand bargain with cutting spending two dollars and fifty cents for every dollar of tax revenue. That’s a much…

DIONNE: Which is his proposal he’s put on the table.

BROOKS: …that-- that is not what he’s been running on.

(Cross talk)

FIORINA: But-- but I think if-- if you-- if you want to talk about being factually accurate, it is factually inaccurate to say that Governor Romney was against the rescue of the auto industry. If you read his entire op-ed, you guys are journalists I assume you believe that words are important.

DIONNE: I did read his entire op-ed just this week.

FIORINA: And what he says in that op-ed is that he believed that the government should have provided financial guarantees. The difference between Governor Romney’s approach and President Obama’s approach is who gets to stand first in line to get paid off.

(Cross talk)

DIONNE: There was no money in the market that was going to go into the auto industry and that was a recipe...

FIORINA: That’s what he said in the op-ed the government should provide guarantee.

MADDOW: What-- what government-- what government-- what government…

(Cross talk)

GREGORY: Okay. Hold-- hold on. Rachel, quick comment here, then I want to get back to Chuck on Ohio. Go ahead.

MADDOW: What Governor Romney said was you can kiss the automotive industry good-bye if President Obama goes ahead with the auto rescue plan that he went ahead with. That saved the auto rescue, auto industry.

DIONNE: Exactly.

MADDOW: And that-- and-- and it-- it was a success. And Mister Romney is trying to deny the fact that he was against it and he’s trying to take some of the credit for it.

GREGORY: All right. We’re going to get…

FIORINA: The company that is doing best, Ford Motor Company was not rescued…

DIONNE: They were for the auto rescue because they were afraid the whole supply chain would go out if the others went down.

(Cross talk)

GREGORY: All right. Let me get back in here. We’re going to have more on the economy as we move along, because the roundtable stays with us for the hour. I’m about to talk to John Kasich in Ohio where these themes are-- are perfectly in his wheelhouse because it’s really what’s going to decide Ohio.

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If it's Friday, it means PBS viewers are going to be treated to their regular dose of hackery from David Brooks during one of his appearances on The Newshour. This week Brooks is asked to weigh in on the presidential election and Brooks wants us to believe that one, the only voters who might be moved by the fact that Mitt Romney made massive amounts of money shipping jobs overseas are "people who don't pay attention to politics."

I'm not sure what world he's living in, but that is one issue I can tell you those who don't pay attention to politics along with those that do definitely don't like and are not happy about. I don't think it matters if you pay attention to politics or not to decide that you might not want the guy that you would never want to buy the company you work for, ever, because he'll raid your pension, fire you, make you reapply for work for half your previous salary and then maybe have the whole joint close up shortly after while he walks off with millions of dollars. I think there are some votes to be moved if that narrative makes its way into the general electorate's consciences.

Brooks also wants us to believe that "companies that outsource do create more jobs domestically." I don't know what jobs he's talking about, but I've seen no evidence of that. They do create a lot of jobs, just not in the United States. That would be the whole point of outsourcing them David, to get that cheap labor overseas to keep your overhead down, because God knows that CEO's got to make his huge salary for the year or the world will come to an end.

The one thing I've found about Brooks is that he likes to repeat himself a lot and once he's got his talking points for the week, he's going to go out there and repeat them in every venue he gets a chance to. He said pretty much the same thing during his conversation with Gail Collins which was published earlier this week here but elaborated quite a bit more than in the PBS clip above: The Debate We Should Be Having:

David: Obama’s ad is cynicism on stilts. Companies that outsource jobs become more competitive. They grow faster and then end up hiring more people at home. Outsourcing increases employment levels. Outsourcing increases productivity. It also decreases the prices consumers pay for stuff. Obama knows all this. He’s just paying the economic nationalism card for his own gain.

As for Bain leveraging debt on companies, that’s overstated. Companies Bain bought did not have higher default rates than other companies. That’s true for private equity firms as a whole too. I don’t like the way these firms prosper even when the turnarounds fail, but overall, their strongest incentive is to make the turnaround succeed.

Gail: I acknowledge that most of that behavior at Bain seems to have happened after the fatal year of 1999. But here’s the weird part of the argument we’ve been having about when Romney really, truly severed himself from Bain. Whenever it was, he’s never suggested that there’s anything that happened after he left that he disapproves of.

David: Nor should he. Outsourcing jobs is sometimes a good decision. So is firing people. When the government ran G.M. and Chrysler, Obama fired people and he sold Chrysler to a foreign company.

Besides, do people find it immoral when Toyota outsources jobs to America — or Nissan or Airbus or any other foreign company? Somehow outsourcing that comes here is wonderful but outsourcing that goes there is unpatriotic.

It seems lost on Brooks that the "outsourcing" those foreign companies are doing is to sell goods in America. The outsourcing the companies Mittens shipped overseas were to use cheap foreign labor and sell the goods back to America. It's not the same thing. And President Obama didn't "fire" anyone. He bailed out the auto companies to keep our economy from being destroyed. He wasn't running them.

I don't think either party has been protectionist enough with our trade policies and the Democrats need to be fighting harder against outsourcing and hitting the Republicans for refusing to fix our tax laws which reward companies for shipping jobs overseas. That said, Brooks' remarks, as usual, are ridiculous and full of false equivalencies making excuses for Romney's behavior and pretending that no one is going to care he profited personally from being a corporate raider who went after pension funds, busted unions and shipped jobs overseas to line his own pocket. I sincerely hope he's wrong about who's paying attention or who starts to as the election gets closer. It seems to me to be typical Villager fare where if an argument is hitting home and working too well, he's going to trash it to try to discourage them from continuing the line of attack. Thankfully it appears the Obama campaign isn't paying much attention to Brooks and his ilk of late.

Transcript from PBS below the fold.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz and E.J. Dionne highlighted some of Media Matters reporting this Wednesday evening on Fox News running 42 segments taking President Obama's words out of context during a campaign stop in Virginia. And now we've got the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney repeating the distortions as well.

As both Schultz and Dionne pointed out, the Romney campaign is desperate to change the subject from his time at Bain Capital and his refusal to release his tax returns and they're getting desperate. Anyone with an ounce of common sense realizes what the President was talking about during his speech and as Schultz and Dionne noted, he was making the same points as we heard from Elizabeth Warren when she said this on a speaking tour last year: There's Nobody in This Country Who Got Rich on His Own, Says Elizabeth Warren.

Romney knows he's lying and distorting Obama's words, but he's been lying so much on the campaign trail, he's not going to stop now. And at a campaign stop in Ohio, Romney let the audience there know he actually agreed with President Obama's underlying point: Romney Doubles Down On ‘You Didn’t Build That’ — Then Affirms Obama’s Point. As Ed Schultz pointed out, they can't run against the President's actual record or what he's been saying on the campaign trail, so they've got to resort to making things up.

Here's more from Media Matters: REPORT: Fox News Spends Two-Plus Hours Distorting Obama's Small Business Comments:

Over two days, Fox News spent 42 segments and more than two hours of airtime manufacturing a scandal by deceptively editing comments President Obama made at a campaign appearance in Virginia.

On July 13, Obama made the unremarkable observation that business owners do not achieve success in a vacuum, but that public infrastructure - such as roads, schools, and fire departments - create a community that supports businesses:

OBAMA: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Media conservatives have distorted those comments to accuse the president of expressing hostility toward business.

In discussing the speech relentlessly in the past 2 days, Fox has fixated on the passage where Obama said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that." But Fox ignores what Obama was talking about before saying "you didn't build that," when he touted "this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive," and said: "Somebody invested in those roads and bridges."

Fox's manufactured controversy has now become the focus of an official Mitt Romney campaign ad. Read on...

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From this Friday's PBS Newshour, we have yet another example of how PBS is doing their best to show they can be as bad as Fox or some of the other cable media outlets, with the inclusion of hackery like this from David Brooks every week.

While discussing the fact that Mitt Romney doesn't want to let the public know too many details about his plans for the economy, or health care, or much of anything else for that matter and would prefer to spend his time "laying low" and trashing President Obama and hoping the voters turn to him as an alternative, we found out that apparently David Brooks is capable of reading Mitt Romney's mind.

That or he knows what the rest of us know, and that it's no secret at all what Mitt Romney would do if elected, which is overturn the Affordable Care Act if he regains the Congress as well, take us right back to the status quo before the law was passed, tort "reform," deregulation and enact Paul Ryan's budget. And as E.J. Dionne rightfully pointed out, Romney doesn't want to talk much about the details of what he'd like to do because the public won't like it and it will lose him the election.

David Brooks on the other hand, just loves Romney's "secret" plan that he is supposedly yet to tell us about. That goes without saying of course, because Brooks is paid enough in wingnut welfare every week to write his terrible column at the New York Times and to appear on shows like this one, that he doesn't have to worry about not having insurance or adequate medical coverage.

Transcript below the fold. It's a pretty sad day for Brooks when even Judy Woodruff does a double take on him and has to ask him what the hell he's talking about as she did here.

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After the disappointing and frankly frightening results in this Tuesday's Wisconsin recall elections for someone like myself who has been a decades long union member and what it might mean for the future of the union movement if this emboldens Republicans to try to get rid of every union on the country, and the real possibility of seeing them push for putting a national right to work law on the books, I was glad to see at least one person leading a discussion on what's happened where we've got the working class voting against their own economic interests, and that was Ed Schultz.

If we had a few more discussions like this in our national media, rather than the constant union bashing we see instead, maybe more voters would be aware of the fact that pitting one group of workers against another just harms all of us. Sadly as Thomas Frank pointed out, this is something that's been going on for decades. And as E.J. Dionne noted, the severe decline in union membership on the United States has made it much easier for Republicans to play this game of divide and conquer with the working class.

This segment hit home for me particularly hard because it mirrored a conversation I had with a co-worker earlier the same day, who was asking me what I thought about what happened in Wisconsin and all the money poured in there and wondering how we've got so many within our own ranks who are union members and who are happy to have the security of that union membership when it comes to everything from decent wages, to health and retirement benefits, and some recourse with safety issues on the job to not worrying about being fired if they dare to speak up about problems in the work place, and yet consider themselves part of this ridiculous AstroTurf "tea party" movement.

Sadly I didn't have any good answers for him other than to make some of the same points made by Frank and Dionne here about the propaganda those members have been exposed to and the huge uphill battle we're facing to try to overcome that and the way unions are portrayed in the media.

Here's part of the conversation from Schultz's show where he was more or less following up on a discussion he'd had on MSNBC earlier that day on Alex Wagner's show and the need for union leadership to be doing more to educate their members. I agree with the points he made. The question is how do unions use the limited resources they have to potentially follow up on them when their ranks are under assault, which means their finances are as well.

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We got treated to round two of this Sunday's Meet the Press with the return of Peggy Noonan, E.J. Dionne and Joe Scarborough carrying more water for the Catholic bishops and their attacks on the new health care mandate on this Monday's Morning Joe. I don't agree with Scarborough about much of anything, but even he realizes that if this debate ends up being about contraception and not religious freedom, Republicans are going to lose that fight and he warned House Republicans not to push it too far in going after the new mandate.

Cue Peggy Noonan and another round of pearl clutching.

NOONAN: Let me ask you a question. Do you believe that at this point of this struggle, the White House and the National Abortion Action Rights League, and Planned Parenthood have decided that mischievously and for political gain they will put this whole issue and imbroglio forward as simply a disagreement on contraception? The Catholic Church is trying to take your contraception away from you? Those bad men are trying to mess up with your contraception?

Well that is not what this issue is about. It is not what the struggle and the imbroglio has been about. But I think you are suggesting, tell me if I'm wrong, that the administration for political reasons is going to muck up the waters in that way.

After Scarborough and Dionne pointed out that a lot of the Catholic institutions thought the President's compromise was perfectly reasonable with Dionne explaining that the insurance companies are not going to incur any additional costs because paying for contraceptive coverage actually saves money compared to the costs when women become pregnant, their arguments fell on deaf ears with Noonan.

NOONAN: Well, I'm talking the reality of it and they're going to pass it on to us too.

Completely tone deaf. Republicans have absolutely nothing to run on this year, so they're hoping to turn this into their big wedge issue to get their base riled up in the hopes they turn out at the polls. I'll repeat what I've already said about this, which is good luck with that. There are only so many Noonans and Bachmanns and Palins out there who are willing to throw their fellow females under the bus and then there are the other ninety some percent of us who know this is about reproductive rights and fairness and women having control over their own bodies.

You know, I'd really love to see someone ask Peggy Noonan if she's ever used birth control herself or not. She's a divorcee with one child. If she's so deeply concerned about the Catholic bishops having the right to impose their will on the women among their ranks, does she even follow their teachings? And for that matter, what does she think about the Catholic Church's views on divorce? I'm sure it will be a cold day in hell before one of her fellow Villagers ever asks her about either on the air.

I've really just had it up to here listening to these bloviating hypocrites pretending to take the moral high ground and feigning indignation over this issue and Noonan's been one of the worst offenders.

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From this Monday's The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur and his "Power Panel" of our own managing editor, Tina Dupuy, Michael Shure and Ben Mankiewicz discuss whether the Obama administration made a genius move putting Republicans in a box on the issue of contraception or if they're fumbling their way through and giving too much deference to the Catholic bishops and the likes of Chris Matthews and E.J. Dionne.

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I hate to break it to Peggy Noonan, if there's anyone out there who's taking an "extremist" position, it's the Catholic bishops and those on the right like herself, who are in disagreement with the 98 percent of Catholic women who have used contraception at some point in their lives.

Noonan joins the list of recent lackeys for the Catholic bishops, who are not only out of touch with their own female church members but with the American public in general. She does her best to conflate support for contraceptive services with being in support of abortion, and paints this as some black and white issue with only two sides which don't exist. I guess it's too much for her to grasp that if you don't want women to have abortions, then the first thing you should be supporting is for them to have access to contraception.

As always, what this really comes down to is sex and wanting to make people ashamed for having it. Conservatives can pretend this is about morality or abortion, but it always comes back to them wanting to control people's sex lives. And as far as these Catholic bishops go, when they stop protecting child molesters among their ranks and give women some equal standing in their church hierarchy instead of being second class citizens, maybe they'll have a leg to stand on to tell someone else what they're doing is immoral.

And if Republicans think running on a campaign of not paying for women's birth control is a winner this upcoming election as the Villagers in the corporate media keep trying to tell us it is, bring it on. They're going to see a backlash from this where they don't know what hit them once enough women start to realize they want to move backwards on covering contraception in the year 2012. Peggy Noonan is going to find out those so-called "leftists" in the Democratic base are actually right in the middle of where the rest of the country is at when it comes to the availability and affordability of contraceptives.

Transcript below the fold.

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Chris Matthews has been on a tear all week ever since the announcement that the Obama administration was going to require some religious institutions' health insurance plans to cover the cost of birth control. So who better to bring on as one of his guests than the Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger who just wrote an op-ed full of, as NARAL's Blog for Choice noted "misleading claims from anti-contraception groups regarding the Obama administration's decision to ensure millions of Americans have insurance coverage of contraception."

You can read their rebuttal to Henneberger's column here -- Counterpoint to Henneberger's Column in The Washington Post. You can read their entire response to Hennenberger's claims of discrimination and on the contraceptive coverage in their post, but I wanted to share wanted to share part of it here:

Response: Henneberger's claim implies that she knows the myriad of reasons why all women who happen to work at a religiously affiliated hospital or service agency might need contraception, including those whose doctors prescribe contraception for health reasons and not for pregnancy-prevention.

A recent story in The New York Times ("Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges," January 29, 2012) illustrates the dire consequences for women's health when institutions are allowed to block coverage of contraception:

One recent Georgetown law graduate, who asked not to be identified for reasons of medical privacy, said she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition for which her doctor prescribed birth control pills. She is gay and had no other reason to take the pills. Georgetown does not cover birth control for students, so she made sure her doctor noted the diagnosis on her prescription. Even so, coverage was denied several times. She finally gave up and paid out of pocket, more than $100 a month. After a few months she could no longer afford the pills. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically -- along with her ovary.

"If I want children, I'll need a fertility specialist because I have only one working ovary," she said.

Henneberger claims that the criticism of this new rule threatens the Affordable Care Act.

Actually, this woman's story from Georgetown is one of the key reasons the Obama administration's decision is a win for women. Now, women in this situation won't have to fight for insurance coverage of medication that could prevent them from having health-related complications in the future.

Something that was completely lost on both Matthews and Henneberger in the interview above. As Digby noted earlier today "Said it before and I'll say it again --- with friends like Melinda Henneberger women don't need enemies."

Taylor Marsh had a few words for Matthews and his ilk that are worth sharing here as well -- Rachel Maddow Slams ’60-something Male Pundits’:

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I've got to say I agree with Ed Schultz here. Whether you agree with his policies or not, I don't think we've ever seen a President of the United States put up with as much disrespect as we have since President Obama took office, with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer sticking her finger in his face here just one of the latest examples and not the worst by any means.

As E.J. Dionne noted in the interview, I'm sure it will score her a few points with the rabid Republican base, which hates the President and has just about lost their minds from the day he got elected.

From The Huffington Post -- Jan Brewer, Obama Face Off Over Book, Immigration Issues:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer traded words with President Obama after she greeted him at a Phoenix airport Wednesday.

Brewer and Obama "spoke intensely for a few minutes" after he landed at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, according to a White House pool report. At one point, the GOP governor shook her finger at the president.

"He was a little disturbed about my book," Brewer told a reporter after the incident, referring to her political memoir, "Scorpions for Breakfast." In the book, Brewer depicted Obama as "patronizing" during an earlier meeting.

"I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president," Brewer said. "The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So."

Brewer said Obama told her "that he didn't feel I had treated him cordially."

"I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn't get my sentence finished," Brewer said. "Anyway, we're glad he's here. I'll regroup." Read on...

Karoli adds:

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