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MSNBC's Martin Bashir spoke to former Michele Bachmann staffer Peter Waldon, and although he's the man behind the recent ethics violations against her, he was still willing to defend Bachmann when it came to the fact that she lies like a rug just about every time her mouth is open.

None of us around here are big fans of either PolitiFact or The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, but when you tell so many lies that you're practically making it a full time job for the two of them to keep up with the magnitude of B.S. you're spouting on a daily basis, that's pretty bad.

After reading a number of them off, Bashir asked Waldon how he squared all of those lies with the fact that Bachmann portrays herself as a good Christian woman and here's how he responded.

BASHIR: How can a committed Christian say such utterly false and untruthful things, almost as a matter of fact each day?

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Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says President Barack Obama is a "small ball guy" but it's time for him to start "manning up" on cuts to earned benefits like Medicare and Social Security.

Speaking to Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Monday, Graham suggested that Republicans should not agree to tax rate hikes on the rich and should hold a debt ceiling increase hostage until Democrats agreed to "entitlement reform."

"Here's where the president is going to have a rude awakening," the senior senator from South Carolina opined. "In February or March, you have to raise the debt ceiling and I can tell you this, there's a hardening on the Republican side. We're not going to raise the debt ceiling, we're not going to let Obama borrow any more money or any American Congress borrow any more money until we fix this country from becoming Greece. And that requires significant entitlement reform to save Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy."

MacCallum noted that Obama told business leaders last week that he would not "play that game" with Republicans because "we’ve got to break that habit" of allowing them to use the debt ceiling in budget negotiations.

"Yes, we will play that game, Mr. President, because this is not a game," Graham insisted. "The game you're playing is small ball. You're talking about raising rates on the top 2 percent that would run the government for 11 days. You just got re-elected. How about doing something big that's not liberal? How about doing something big that really is bipartisan? Every big idea he has is a liberal idea that drowns us in debt."

"How about manning up here, Mr. President, and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece?" he continued. "So when it comes debt ceiling time, Mr. President, you're going to have a Republican Party that's going to make sure we save Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy and we save this country from becoming Greece."

Graham concluded: "He's a small ball guy. He's afraid of his own party."

A Washington Post fact check on Monday determined that Graham's assertion that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would go "bankrupt" was overblown because "the facts do not justify such rhetoric."

"In this case we are going to bump Graham up to Three Pinocchios," the Post's Glenn Kessler wrote. "Not only did he repeat the error of treating all of Medicare as one entity, but he did the same with Social Security. Moreover, his reference to Medicaid makes little sense, even if one has very expansive definitions of the words 'bankruptcy' and 'imminent.'"

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney took his claim that President Barack Obama had stolen $716 billion from Medicare to the next level on Thursday and asserted that seniors "most likely" would not be able to see specialists if the president is re-elected.

Throughout the last few months of the 2012 presidential race, Romney's campaign has been insisting that Obama "robbed" $716 billion from Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care Act, a claim that PolitiFact rated as "mostly false."

The former Massachusetts governor's staff, however, has said that they are "not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," and so it was not a surprise when Romney used the line again in Roanoke, Virginia on Thursday.

"I happen to believe that the choice you make [on Nov. 6] will have enormous consequence for a senior who's perhaps needing the care of a specialist," the Republican candidate explained. "If he or she makes a call to the doctor and if Obamacare is installed and the president's re-elected, why when making that call, you're mostly likely going to have the receptionist come back and say, 'Sorry, we're not taking in more Medicare patients.'"

After pausing for boos and moans from his supporters, Romney continued: "Because the president is cutting Medicare to pay for Obamacare."

A Washington Post fact check examined Romney's claim last month and found that "spending does not decrease in Medicare year after year; the reduction is from anticipated levels of spending in future years."

"The savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries — who, as a result of the health-care law, ended up with new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs," the Post's Glenn Kessler wrote.

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Here we go again. Earlier in the week we had Joe Klein repeating this nonsense. Now it was Chuck Todd filling in for Chris Matthews on his weekend show, making the claim that the Obama campaign is somehow “Swiftboating” Mitt Romney.

TODD: Dan, we know that this is, it feels right out of the 2004 Karl Rove playbook. In fact I think Charlie Cook wrote earlier this week that Karl Rove ought to get royalties from the Obama campaign on what they're doing. Essentially, they're Swiftboating Romney.

And Dan Rather agreed with him. I don't expect any better out of Gloria Borger or Kathleen Parker who will gladly repeat Republican talking points ad nauseum, but after what the Bush campaign did to him while the Swiftboat attacks were going on against John Kerry, you'd think we'd get a little more honesty out of Rather, and some push back as to why what the Obama campaign is doing with the Bain attacks is not the same as the attacks on Kerry's military record. Instead he was happy to play along and help Todd compare the attack ads to Karl Rove as well.

Kathleen Parker goes on to carry some water for the dishonest so-called “fact checker” Glenn Kessler over at the Washington Post who lied and claimed there was nothing to the attacks on Bain Capital, even discounting the other reporting from journalists at his same paper. For some background on why no one should be calling him a “fact checker” on anything, I'd recommend reading Marcy Wheeler's post about him from earlier this week before anyone else holds him up as some “journalist” who can be counted on to tell the truth: Yesterday’s Some-Sayers Have Become Today’s Fact-Checkers. Just go read the whole thing but she's got a very long list going back to the George W. Bush years on how Kessler's been doing this same sort of thing for a very long time now. All things are not equal when you have one side continually just making stuff up out of whole cloth and the other side attacking you for things that are true.

And all of them on the panel this week were completely dismissive of what a nasty, dishonest, mean spirited presidential campaign Mitt Romney has run from day one, but oh my goodness, don't dare let the Obama campaign run any nasty ads attacking Mitt Romney, or voters might not think he's a nice guy any more and there's going to be blow back. Funny how that only seems to apply to one side with our Villagers in the beltway media.