Someone needs to tell Joe Walsh to "get a job" where it doesn't include lying to his constituents on a daily basis. Hate monger and deadbeat dad Rep. Joe Walsh decided to lay into activist Sandra Fluke for her appearance at the Democratic National Convention this week, and apparently he's not aware that she was not asking for the government to pay for anyone's birth control, or her own.

She was advocating that insurance companies pick up that tab, since it actually saves them money in the long run to do so. And he apparently thinks that she's never going to try to find a job once she graduates from college. I'm not sure what corner of the electorate this mean S.O.B. is trying to appeal to, but somehow I don't think screeching that someone who is continuing their education needs to get a job right now if they dare to want insurance companies to pay for birth control pills is going to resonate with a good deal of the sane public out there. Here's to hoping this idiot goes down in flames in the upcoming election, and that Fox doesn't hire him once the voters fire him.

Joe Walsh To Sandra Fluke: ‘Get A Job’:

At a campaign stop Saturday in Addison, IL, Walsh, who faces a tough reelection battle, went on a self-described rant about Fluke, attacking her support for contraception coverage and telling the law student to “get a job.”

“So at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night their first prime time speaker was Sandra Fluke, whatever her name is,” Walsh said. “Think about this, a 31-32 year old law student who has been a student for life, who gets up there in front of a national audience and tells the American people, ‘I want America to pay for my contraceptives.’ You’re kidding me. Go get a job. Go get a job Sandra Fluke.”

“This a woman who feels entitled that we all should pay for her contraceptives,” he said. “This is what we are teaching Americans? That was embarrassing. That was embarrassing.”

If Walsh wants to know what embarrassing looks like, just take a look in the mirror buddy.

From Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:

At the Democratic National Convention, "James Taylor" debuts "Romney & Bain" - his parody of the classic "Fire & Rain."

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From this Thursday evening's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was still reviewing some highlights from the prior evening and Bill Clinton's extremely long, but fact-filled convention speech. After giving Clinton a ribbing for "having more false endings than a James Brown concert," Stewart slammed the Republicans for their convention full of vague platitudes.

STEWART: How numerically deficient was the entire RNC? Not only did Bill Clinton offer more specifics in the Democratic plan than the Republican plan, he offered more specifics of the Republican plan than the Republicans.[...]

Oh my God! Math!

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From this Thursday evening's Democratic National Convention, this is what you call a barn-burner folks. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm brought down the house with her passionate speech thanking President Obama for saving the auto industry when no one else was willing to come in and rescue them, including Bain Capital, and took it to Mitt Romney for famously saying to "let Detroit go bankrupt."

Full text of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's speech at Democratic National Convention:

Good evening, I'm Jennifer Granholm, from the great state of Michigan, where the trees are just the right height! Let me tell you a story about the dark days in my home state. Towards the end of my time as governor, Ford closed one of its biggest factories, a factory in Wixom, Michigan. The Wixom plant had employed thousands of middle-class men and women in neighborhoods near—yet worlds away from—the place Mitt Romney was raised.

When Ford's decision hit, I went down to the local union hall. It was almost empty; a few workers milled about in shock and grief. I talked to a 45-year-old guy who told me, "This is the only place I've ever worked.

I've been loyal. I've done everything they've ever asked. And just like that, it's gone." He looked around the hall and said, "So, governor, is it over for us? Is the American auto industry dead?" Honestly, at that moment, I just didn't know. And that was just the beginning. When the financial crisis hit, things got a lot worse – and fast.

The entire auto industry, and the lives of over one million hard-working Americans, teetered on the edge of collapse; and with it, the whole manufacturing sector. We looked everywhere for help. Almost nobody had the guts to help us – not the banks, not the private investors and not Bain capital. Then, in 2009, the cavalry arrived: our new president, Barack Obama!

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Leave it to Stephen Colbert to make a mockery of Republicans for their claim that President Obama and the Democrats only moved President Obama's speech indoors because they supposedly would not have been able to fill the stadium where they were over-booked by almost 20,000 -- and that they should have "known what the weather was going to be like months ago" instead of being blindsided by the chance of thunder storms.

As Stephen noted, they could have just pulled out that Weather Channel 100 day forecast if they'd wanted to know whether it was going to be raining or not, or at least that's what resident curmudgeon over at ClusterFox, Charles Krauthammer seemed to be suggesting.

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Civil Rights era leader and icon Rep. John Lewis gave one of the more powerful speeches at the Democratic National Convention this Thursday evening which moved many of the convention goers to tears and I've got to admit, myself as well. It is truly tragic that we're still having to fight these battles and that the Republicans are trying to take us backwards.

h/t Pam Spaulding for the transcript:

I first came to this city in 1961, the year Barack Obama was born. I was one of the 13 original “Freedom Riders.” We were on a bus ride from Washington to New Orleans trying to test a recent Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination on buses crossing state lines and in the stations that served them. Here in Charlotte, a young African-American rider got off the bus and tried to get a shoe shine in a so-called white waiting room. He was arrested and taken to jail.

On that same day, we continued on to Rock Hill, South Carolina, about 25 miles. From here, when my seatmate, Albert Bigelow, and I tried to enter a white waiting room, we were met by an angry mob that beat us and left us lying in a pool of blood. Some police officers came up and asked us whether we wanted to press charges. We said, “No, we come in peace, love and nonviolence.” We said our struggle was not against individuals, but against unjust laws and customs. Our goal was true freedom for every American.

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Love him or hate him, there's one thing I think everyone can agree on when it comes to former President Bill Clinton and that is the fact that the man knows how to give a speech and his long, but extremely informative speech tonight at the 2012 Democratic National Convention was no exception. I think Bill Clinton just gave the best explanation I've seen from anyone yet, taking apart all of the lies we've been hearing from Republicans about "Obamacare."

Clinton veered wildly off script this Wednesday evening and some of that was during the portion of his speech embedded above, where he said this: Bill Clinton Takes On Paul Ryan’s Medicare Lies: ‘It Takes Some Brass’:

Bill Clinton singlehandedly dismantled the Romney-Ryan campaign narrative that President Obama is trying to put an end to Medicare at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night, pointing out that it is in fact the Romney-Ryan proposal for Medicare that would permanently change the program to a depreciating voucher system. “It takes some brass,” Clinton said, “to attack a guy for doing what you did”:

First, Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing medicare of $716 billion. But it is not true.[...]

So, President Obama and the Democrats did not weaken Medicare. They strengthened Medicare. When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play,” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Key cuts that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of medicare savings that he had in his own budget. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.

That's gonna' leave a mark. I can't wait to see Reince and his "rapid response team" try to spin themselves into knots rebutting the Clinton tonight.

Clinton's full prepared remarks from the clip above below the fold.

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From this Wednesday evening's Democratic National Convention, activist Sandra Fluke laid out the stark choices we face when it comes to women's reproductive rights in the upcoming election.

Some of you may remember that earlier this year, Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception. In fact, on that panel, they didn't hear from a single woman, even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman. Because it happened in Congress, people noticed. But it happens all the time. Many women are shut out and silenced. So while I'm honored to be standing at this podium, it easily could have been any one of you. I'm here because I spoke out, and this November, each of us must do the same.

During this campaign, we've heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past. Warnings of that future are not distractions. They're not imagined. That future could be real.

In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won't stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don't want and our doctors say we don't need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don't. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it's the America we could be. But it's not the America we should be. It's not who we are.

We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That's the difference.

Over the last six months, I've seen what these two futures look like. And six months from now, we'll all be living in one, or the other. But only one. A country where our president either has our back or turns his back; a country that honors our foremothers by moving us forward, or one that forces our generation to re-fight the battles they already won; a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn't apply to our bodies and our voices.

We talk often about choice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to choose.

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Regardless of taunts like those from right wingers like Brad Blakeman on Fox this Wednesday morning, Democrats dismissed their claims that the decision to move President Obama's speech indoors was because he could not fill the stadium.

Dems Scoff At GOP Taunts That Obama Couldn’t Fill Stadium:

Senior Democratic officials here scoffed Wednesday morning at Republican criticisms of the decision to move President Obama’s DNC address indoors on Thursday, shutting out tens of thousands of community members to the event.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, suggested the decision was a move to save face in case the event didn’t pack the house. “After promising to speak at Bank of America stadium rain or shine, Team Obama is moving inside,” he tweeted after the announcement. “Troubles filling the seats?”

“[Republicans] are gonna turn this into a political decision. It was a public safety decision,” a senior campaign official told reporters at a briefing Wednesday morning, following the announcement that President Obama will no longer speak outdoors at Bank of America Stadium because of concerns over “extreme weather.”

More than 65,000 community members had activated community credentials to attend the event, and another 19,000 people were on a waiting list for the event. Democratic officials said they expected the lion’s share of those with credentials to attend, because they had to go through a multi-step process that involved visiting a campaign office, and later activating a code using a computer or mobile device, to show that they were serious about attending. Read on...

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Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland delivered a barn burner of a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention this Tuesday night and landed some body blows to Mitt Romney for everything from his offshore tax havens to his vulture capitalism at Bain to wanting to allow Detroit to go bankrupt, which would have devastated Ohio's economy.

The HuffPo has the entire speech, but here's the portion from the clip above:

Now, Mitt Romney, he lives by a different code. To him, American workers are just numbers on a spreadsheet.

To him, all profits are created equal, whether made on our shores or off. That's why companies Romney invested in were dubbed "outsourcing pioneers." Our nation was built by pioneers—pioneers who accepted untold risks in pursuit of freedom, not by pioneers seeking offshore profits at the expense of American workers here at home.

Mitt Romney proudly wrote an op-ed entitled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." If he had had his way, devastation would have cascaded from Michigan to Ohio and across the nation. Mitt Romney never saw the point of building something when he could profit from tearing it down. If Mitt was Santa Claus, he'd fire the reindeer and outsource the elves.

Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. In Matthew, chapter 6, verse 21, the scriptures teach us that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. My friends, any man who aspires to be our president should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America. And it's well past time for Mitt Romney to come clean with the American people.

On what he's saying about the president's policy for welfare to work, he's lying. Simple as that. On his tax returns, he's hiding. You have to wonder, just what is so embarrassing that he's gone to such great lengths to bury the truth? Whatever he's doing to avoid taxes, can it possibly be worse than the Romney-Ryan tax plan that would have sliced Mitt's total tax rate to less than one percent?

My friends, there is a true choice in this election. Barack Obama is betting on the American worker. Mitt Romney is betting on a Bermuda shell corporation. Barack Obama saved the American auto industry. Mitt Romney saved on his taxes. Barack Obama is an economic patriot. Mitt Romney is an outsourcing pioneer. My friends, the stakes are too high, the differences too stark to sit this one out. Let us stand as one on November 6th and move this country forward by re-electing President Barack Obama.