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Lawrence O'Donnell had some fun with the "can't take a joke crowd" such as the prudes over at Fox GOPTV and Rush Limbaugh and their collective freak out over the new Obama for America ad featuring Lena Dunham. As O'Donnell noted, everyone carping about the sexual overtones of the ad which he showed in his video montage thinks that their idol, Ronald Reagan is a saint. But as O'Donnell noted, they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that it was their precious St. Ronnie that made his own "first time" joke way before Dunham did.

Ronald Reagan Made A ‘First Time’ Voting Joke 32 Years Before Lena Dunham Did:

Some conservative were outraged Thursday, when the Obama campaign posted a Web ad starring Lena Dunham, creator of the TV show “Girls,” in which she speaks about her “first time” voting, using innuendo to compare it to a girl losing her virginity.

“Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy…someone who really cares about and understands women,” Dunham said in the video, discussing such issues as health insurance, birth control, ending the war in Iraq, equal pay for women, gay marriage, and other big issues.

She then recalled her own “first time” voting four years ago: “It was this line in the sand — before, I was a girl; now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.”

But just as every generation thinks it invented sex, a “first time” joke about voting goes way back to another presidential candidate: Ronald Reagan, less than a week before he ushered in the Republican landslide of 1980.

You've got to just love these Republicans. You can make all the misogynistic jokes you want if you're Rush Limbaugh and now suddenly, as O'Donnell pointed out, he's trying to paint himself as some defender of women's sensibilities. I've got news for you Rushbo. You don't speak for women and most of us would prefer if you kept your yap shut when it came to speaking about us and our issues at all... ever.

Sadly, I don't expect he's going away any time soon as much as it would benefit the honesty in the public discourse to have him gone forever and par for the course, here's just another example in right wing world of IOKIYAR and don't dare mention to us our selective amnesia if it conflicts with our talking points for the day.

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Tea party-backed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Sunday defended Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's refusal to say whether he would sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by suggesting that the law was not really about equal pay.

Romney was widely mocked last week after he told a questionable story about "binders full of women" in response to a question about whether he supported equal pay.

"If you say you're for equal pay for equal work but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia," President Barack Obama snarked at a campaign event on Friday. "If you say women should have access to contraceptive care but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia."

On Sunday, Rubio told ABC's George Stephanopolous that the president's comments were "cute" but didn't explain his plan for a second term.

"Does Gov. Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or not?" Stephanopoulos pressed.

"I think anyone who is working out there and making a living -- if you're the most qualified person for the job, you should be able to get paid, you should get paid as much as your male counterpart," Rubio insisted. "Everyone agrees with that principle."

"But just because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn't make it so," he added. "In fact, much of this legislation is in many respects nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace."

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From this Tuesday evening's Democratic National Convention, Lilly Ledbetter gave one of the more rousing speeches of the night and got in a few zingers on Mitt Romney:

Good evening, I'm Lilly Ledbetter and I'm here tonight to say: What a difference four years make!

Some of you may know my story: How for nineteen years, I worked as a manager for a tire plant in Alabama. And some of you may have lived a similar story: After nearly two decades of hard, proud work, I found out that I was making significantly less money than the men who were doing the same work as me. I went home, talked to my husband, and we decided to fight.

We decided to fight for our family and to fight for your family too. We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value. That fight took me ten years. It took me all the way to the Supreme Court. And, in a 5–4 decision, they stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime, and my retirement just because I am a woman.

The Supreme Court told me that I should have filed a complaint within six months of the company's first decision to pay me less even though I didn't know about it for nearly two decades. And if we hadn't elected President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court's wrongheaded interpretation would have been the law of the land.

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From TPM -- Gillibrand: Romney’s ‘Hero’ Scott Walker Got Rid Of Equal Pay For Women Laws:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) chimed in Sunday on the battle for female voters, making an impassioned case that President Obama’s policies are far better for women than those of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

“It’s Barack Obama whose first bill he ever signed was the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act,” she said on NBC’s Meet The Press. “Mitt Romney? His hero is a governor from Wisconsin who just got rid of the equal pay laws there.”

She added Obama has worked to increase economic opportunity for women by focusing on education, pell grants and broading access to health care.

If Mitt Romney really wants to disassociate himself from his fellow Republicans like Walker, I think he's going to have to answer with something stronger than "I would not repeal" the fair pay act. The truth of the matter is, Republicans would never have passed it because they don't care about the gender gap in wages.

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Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) on Sunday ripped the Republican Party for "turning back the clock for women."

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked asked the congresswoman from Florida if it was unfair to call GOP policies a "war on women."

"The policies that have come out of the Republican Party, saying that we should have a debate again over contraception and whether we should have access to it and it should be affordable, saying that -- like Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, you know, he tried to quietly repeal the Equal Pay Act," Wasserman Schultz noted. "Women aren't going to stand for that. Governor Walker just signed a bill that repeals the equal pay law they had in Wisconsin for years."

She continued: "You have Republicans who have engaged themselves for the entire Congress trying to redefine rape as only being forcible rape, defunding Planned Parenthood and family planning programs. The Lilly Ledbetter Act -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act put teeth behind the notion that women deserve equal pay for equal work. That was the first bill the President Obama signed into law. The overwhelming majority of Republicans serving in Congress voted against it."

"So, the focus of the Republican Party on turning back the clock for women really is something that is unacceptable and shows how callous and insensitive they are towards women's priorities."

January 29, 2009 C-SPAN

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From The Colbert Report:

I say we create a new blanket statute of limitations. Any event at all more than six months in the past did not happen. That has always been my defense in paternity suits. I mean we should live for today. So I am sorry President-elect Obama. If you really want people like Lilly Ledbetter to get the justice they were denied in the past, he should get someone to deny their civil rights now.