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After Anderson Cooper took his audience through some of Mitt Romney's revolving positions on the issue of abortion and access to contraception and the fact that there are some recent polls again showing that Mitt Romney is having trouble with women voters in swing states, Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan tied herself in knots trying to explain and defend Willard's flip flopping on the issue.

As much as I really detest Buchanan for her demeanor and just being really mean, nasty and aggressive with anyone unfortunate enough to appear on the air at the same time she does, I have to say, I don't envy her or any of the rest of the right wing pundits out there who have the unenviable task of trying to explain to the voters why Romney has had every position imaginable on the abortion issue and how women are not supposed to worry about who he might appoint to the Supreme Court.

Neera Tanden did pretty well holding her own with her, even though Buchanan did her best to bully her way through the interview and filibuster as much as Cooper would let her get away with it. The fact of the matter is that Mitt Romney has said he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which means rolling back the contraceptive coverage along with a lot of other benefits that everyone is now receiving. He has said he wants to appoint judges who would reverse Roe v. Wade. And Romney has proven during this primary process that he's beholden to the right wing of his party and he's not going to buck their will with what he's willing to either sign or veto if we're unfortunate enough to have him elected as president.

It's also a shame no one called Buchanan out when she tried to claim that making insurance companies pay for birth control is not having the "government" pay for contraception. That's a lie they're allowed to get away with way too often with no rebuttal. As Tanden did manage to point out on the issue, you don't really have access to something if you can't afford either the doctors' appointments or the prescriptions, and that's exactly what would happen under the policies Romney now claims he supports.

And Buchanan's lame defense that birth control has "been out there since the 1950s" is utterly ridiculous and meaningless. If it's only "out there" for the wealthy and upper middle class and not the poor, that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot for a good part of the population that would also like to have some control over their own reproductive health.

Transcript below the fold.

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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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Comedian and Stephanie Miller regular John Fugelsang has been filling in for Current TV's Eliot Spitzer this week, and he did a nice job during this short segment of reminding us of the struggles we've seen with attempts to get some sort of universal health care coverage passed and how far we still have to go after yesterday' s Supreme Court ruling.

As long as we've still got overpaid CEOs extrecting wealth from the system which is supposed to make sure our medical and health care needs are provided for, the system is still badly broken.

FUGELSANG: It's the year the Titanic sank, Woody Guthrie was born and Theodore Roosevelt quit the Republican Party and ran for president as a third party progressive, calling for universal health care. It's also our number of the day, 1912.

Now the past 100 years have seen a diversity of presidents attempt to promote the general welfare through universal coverage. FDR tried and ended up focusing on Social Security, which I now call FDR-care. LBJ got as far as Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon did try, but things got a little complicated in his life.

Bill Clinton made a bold play and a conservative Heritage Foundation countered his play by proposing a mandate for Americans to buy insurance. Gov. Romney even used that mandate in Massachusetts, that same mandate he now so despises.

And today the Supreme Court voted to uphold the Constitutionality of the American care act. A hundred years since Teddy ran, Republicans are furious that the Republican Supreme Court appointee just upheld a Republican designed health plan which will save Republican lives.

They wanted this thing to die before it could actually help anybody. Now there are things I don't like Obamacare, but I'll take it over the alternative, Republican-can't-care-less, and it's important to remember my friends, the long, slow march for Americans taking care of their own, of having the kind of universal coverage that typically gets called Socialist.

The kind of system all of our capitalist allies have still continues and there's a lot more at stake in this struggle than one man's presidency.

One day we'll have an America where insurance companies executives can't get rich off of somebody else's disease.

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I already posted some of Mitt Romney's interview with Charlie Rose from this Monday night on PBS. Think Progress posted this portion where it looks like Romney is determined to help the Democrats with having an easy time making some negative campaign ads against him if he does end up being the Republican presidential nominee.

Romney Defends "Wall Street" And "Insurance Company Executives" From Obama’s Criticism:

Appearing on PBS last night with Charlie Rose, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested President Obama is risking the very prosperity of the country and the middle class when he criticizes Wall Street and insurance executives:

ROMNEY: He has been the most divisive president I’ve ever seen. He has attacked one American after another, one group after another. He creates these straw men and says that Republicans believe this terrible thing, and aren’t they awful. He went after insurance company executives, Wall Street, all these bad people he finds out there. Look, Americans are not going to be a powerful and vibrant economic engine with a powerful middle class if we attack one another.

Romney doesn’t seem to be concerned with whether there’s any merit to Obama’s criticisms or not; he objects to the mere fact that the president would criticize anyone. For instance, Romney’s defense ignores the fact that Wall Street helped cause the financial crisis and ensuring recession. Obama’s main “attack” on Wall Street was the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which has hardly hurt the industry. [...]

The comments likely won’t help Romney beat the rap off being “Mr. 1 percent.”

As they noted, Romney also defended his time at Bain Capital later in that same interview and "said that attacking Bain for laying off thousands of workers is almost tantamount to an attack on capitalism itself." As previously posted at this site, Mitt Romney is still raking in the dough from Bain to this day.

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Here we go with more fearmongering over whether the super committee manages to come to some sort of agreement or not. A couple of weeks ago we had Chris Cillizza, filling in for Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown, allowing the senior Sununu to spread lies about Social Security and Medicare.

This week, he brings in Sununu's son and conserva-Dem Blanche Lincoln to espouse the values of bipartisan negotiations so we can have members of Congress make cuts to our social safety nets in return for “tax reform.” Of course by “reform”, they're taking about lowing rates for corporations and the wealthiest among us and supposedly closing some loopholes or tax deductions, which I'll believe will happen when hell freezes over since Republicans have done nothing but obstruct any effort to do so in the past, no matter what the supposed trade-off.

CILIZZA: Well, this is a happy topic to bring you two in on, but let's start with, we are now seven days away from a deal. The super committee is keeping their cards relatively close to the vest. You guys have been in intense negotiations when you know the American public wants something, but you just can't make your colleagues do it. What's the attitude in the Democratic caucus right now, Sen. Lincoln if you had to guess?

So Cillizza thinks Lincoln knows something about Congressional negotiations and being on the side of what the public wants? Really? I hate to break it to him, but Blanche Lincoln was not on the side of public opinion during the health care debate. She was on the side of the insurance companies before finally starting to flip-flop after enough public pressure was put on her to do so.

Lincoln replied by fearmongering over the super committee not reaching an agreement supposedly interfering with holiday spending that our own RJ Eskow wrote about here – If the Super Committee Doesn't Cut Your Medicare, Santa Claus Will Die!.

LINCOLN: Well, I would think it's frustration, just like the rest of the country. I mean, people understand on capitol hill how big these issues are and how important it is. One of the things I hope that they'll understand is that the timing of this is crucial too. I mean, you're going to hit Black Friday and cyber-Monday about the same time you come out with the possibility of nothing coming out of the super committee and what does that do to consumer confidence?

Apparently the producers of Chuck Todd's show and Chris Cillizza think their audience has short memories and have no clue about Blanche Lincoln and who's interests she was looking out for during her time in the Senate. Shameful. Here are a few posts I'd recommend any of them read before they bring her back on again, not that it matters. I'm pretty sure they know perfectly well how dishonest they're being to the viewers.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican candidate Sharron Angle squared off for their first debate tonight in Las Vegas, and one of the questions was on the issue of healthcare. Sharron Angle was asked by the moderator "Is there anything you think health insurance companies should be forced to cover?"

Angle hedged and said that "Forcing someone to buy something that they don't need is not the way to solve the problem" which of course didn't answer the moderator's question. When pressed again on whether there is anything at all the insurance companies should be forced to cover Angle replied.

I think that what we have here is a choice between the free market and Americanism. America is about choices and we need to allow people to have those choices. The free market will weed out those companies that don't offer as many choices and don't have a cost effective system. Let the people decide where they want to buy their insurance. You don't have to force them to buy anything and you don't have to force anyone to offer a product that no one wants.

Moderator: Okay, so no insurance mandates?

From reading some other accounts of the debate, I believe he got a nod in the affirmative.

Harry Reid rightfully pointed out that insurance companies don't "do anything out of the goodness of their hearts" and noted how horribly the premiums for most Americans were going through the roof if the government continued to sit by and do nothing.

This debate was painful to watch. Angle was terrible and Reid was so bad as well he didn't take advantage of it. This portion alone should have been like shooting fish in a barrel and would have been for someone with some better debating skills than Reid has. I'm sure most of the readers of this blog could come up with about a hundred better and more sharp and concise responses that would resonate with the public to Angle's nonsense than Reid did.

Sharron Angle's "free market solutions" boil down to people being "free" to have the insurance companies let them die because they'd rather line their CEO's pockets and pay their stock holders than cover the policies of the saps who paid into them when they actually get sick.

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Ed Schultz takes Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich to task for some of their recent comments at the wingnut so called Values Voters Summit last week. Here's what Huckabee had to say about people with pre-existing conditions.

It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition. Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, “I’d like to buy some insurance for my house.” He’d say, “Tell me about your house.” “Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today.” And he’ll say “I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned.” Well, no preexisting conditions.”

And here's Gingrich:

GINGRICH: When Secretary Sebelius said the other day she would punish insurance companies that told the truth about the cost of Obamacare, she was behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny. And if she’s going to represent left-wing thought police about Obamacare, she should be forced to resign by the new Congress.

This idea that we the people have to tolerate some bureaucrat being paid with our taxes to dictate free speech to us should end in January by the Republican Congress zeroing out her office and explaining that they would be glad to pay for it when someone is there who recognizes the rights of the American people.

Ed followed with some rah-rahing for the health care bill and insisting that Democrats shouldn't be running away from the issue this election cycle. I can understand why any of them that wanted single payer are going to have a hard time defending this weak tea that got passed instead. But as I've said all along, Republicans aren't going to do anything to improve it if they get back in charge. They'll either repeal or de-fund it and make it worse. They have absolutely no interest in doing anything to help anyone but the rich in the United States. And like Mike Huckabee who claims to be a religious man, they don't who care who dies while they play politics.

And the fact that crazy Newt Gingrich still has as much influence over Republican policy making and is considered credible by the party tells you about all you need to know about. The wingnuts have completely taken over the party.

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When Spike Lee finished filming his latest HBO documentary in Louisiana on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina he had no idea of the oil spill that was to come months later. The filmmaker had to work quickly to change the fourth hour of the film to include some of the effects of the biggest oil disaster in history.

"We were finished shooting before April 20th, but when the rig blew up, and I would say 11 people got murdered, we had to rethink the whole thing," Lee told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Tuesday. "So we made nine trips back and so the last hour of the four-hour piece all about BP."

The new documentary, "If God Is Willing & Da Creek Don't Rise," premieres on HBO Monday, Aug. 23 at 9:00 pm ET. Lee also produced the 2005 documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."

Lee is appalled that BP has been allowed to be the deciding authority on which claims it wants to pay.

"People here are still waiting for a lot of stuff that was promised from the havoc of Hurricane Katrina and the breach in the levees. We're getting the same thing from BP," he said.

"I think only 25% of the claims have been settled by BP and you see these commercials, [public service announcement] commercials, they run day and night. They say, like, well, we'll decide if you have a legitimate claim," he continued.

"That's like the insurance companies deciding down here," Lee chuckled. "Very few people got their money."

Lee believes that the greed of companies like BP is a true threat to the US.

"I think this is going to bring about the downfall of the United States of America," he warned. "We have people in office appointed and voted in and people in big business positions who only care about the dollar bill and people get harmed, people die. They say, that's the cost of doing business."

"That blowout preventer cost a half million dollars. Now, who knows how many billions later they're paying out? If they would have just done what they were supposed to do, but MMS was bought out," Lee said.

Hundreds of people attended a screening of the new film Tuesday at the Mahalia Jackson Theater. Phyllis Montana-Leblanc, one of the stars, focused on the advances made in an interview with NOLA.com.

Despite some lingering problems, “we’ve made a lot of progress here in New Orleans, depending on where you live,” Montana-LeBlanc said.

The city still doesn’t have a hospital in eastern New Orleans where she lives, she complained. And Nicholas — the 13-year-old son of her sister, Catherine Montana-Gordon — still can’t return to New Orleans “because the schools here are turning away special needs children.” But the progress in New Orleans is “indisputable,” Montana-LeBlanc said.

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Chris Wallace asks Mitch McConnell if he's worried about his party being labeled the "Party of No" after blocking lending assistance for small business, voting against extending unemployment benefits and voting against financial regulatory reform.

It's pretty bad when even Chris Wallace is questioning whether this is the best strategy for Republicans if they're hoping to make gains in the mid-term elections. Here's how McConnell responds when Wallace presses him on why the Republicans decided to block the small business lending bill.

McConnell: That is another TARP. You know, we tried that once under the previous administration and under this one. Basically the lending facility portion of that bill is TARP III or the son of TARP.

Wallace: But you're... because there have been some questions on whether this is a procedural issue... you're now saying that Republicans are against boosting lending assistance to small businesses?

McConnell: This particular provision is another TARP. It puts the government in the position of taking equity positions in businesses. Look... look at what they've done. They're running banks, insurance companies, car companies and nationalizing the student loan business, taking over health care.

We don't need the government taking equity positions, ownership positions in any more private sector businesses. That's not the way out of this. The way out of this is to kill this job killing tax increases coming that they advocate that is going to affect 50% of small business income and 25% of our work force.

That's going to be their plan in September to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.

As Ryan Witt pointed out:

There are a number of notable differences between the two bills including:

- TARP was passed as an emergency measure with little oversight by the legislative branch. The small business lending bill has been passed through committee and scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

- TARP involved over $1.61 trillion of government funds. It is therefore 53 times as large as the small business lending bill.

- TARP funds were almost exclusively given to large banks and corporations like AIG. The funds effectively "bailed out" those companies. The small business lending funds, by limitations put within the bill, go exclusively to the kind of "mom and pop" stores found on Main Street as opposed to Wall Street.

Despite these facts, Republicans always seem to find a reason to oppose proposals from Democrats. In November voters will have a chance to decide whether they agree with the GOP justifications for their most recent obstructionism.

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Alex Castellanos Republican dirty trickster claims that President Obama has been a divisive president because he's...gasp, daring to take on Wall Street and insurance companies. I'm sorry Alex, but anyone's going to claim he's being divisive, those are two items where I think you're failing pretty badly with your talking points. The only division I've seen on those matters is the liberal base thinking they've not been tough enough with what may be coming and the astroturf tea bagger dupes out there with their Hitler signs. The reality I live in with fellow co-workers who aren't too happy about what's happened to their 401K, there isn't anything "divisive" about regulating Wall Street at all. We're also not too fond of our insurance premiums going up year after year.

He then goes on to say that "the rehabilitation of George Bush is well underway". And he said it with a straight face. Sorry Alex, but history is not going to treat George Bush well despite your best attempts at turd polishing. I'd love to know what street Castellanos lives on, but if I had to guess it's one called Upside Down Land. What's white is black and vice versa in this hack's world. He should be taken about as seriously as CNN's other newest contributor, Erick Erickson. They're both nothing but flacks for the Republican Party that never allow facts to get in the way of their talking points.

Transcript below the fold.

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