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From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz get into one of those discussions over this week's breast screening recommendations in which the Republican simply constructs an alternate reality:

BLACKBURN: ... Debbie is right when she says they forgot about people. Indeed, they did. But we have to realize, this group that made this recommendation, this isn't some outside group. This is a part of HHS. And when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's an independent group. That is not accurate.

BLACKBURN: ... 118 -- when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It is not a part of HHS.

BLACKBURN: No, it is a part of HHS.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, it is not.

BLACKBURN: And when you look at what is going to happen with these 118 new bureaucracies with 62 directives that are given by the health choices commissioner on what insurance can be offered in this country after 2013 and what is going to be paid, you know that this is the bureaucrat in the exam room. This is how it's going to happen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha...

BLACKBURN: And this is the first step.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, there's an insurance company bureaucrat in the -- in between the patient and her doctor right now.

BLACKBURN: This is breast cancer. Well, and people don't like that, and we need to get rid of...

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And your bill -- your -- your alternative...

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: We need to get rid of all of those insurance bureaucrats.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: ... does nothing to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now.

Yes, George. Because your job is to provide a showcase. You're not supposed to confront the guests when they make things up.

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Politico:

A bunch of Broward County, Fla. Republicans convened at a local rifle range to talk politics and squeeze off a few rounds at bullseyes.

One of them was a poster of a scary dude in a traditional Middle Eastern headdress -- another was human likeness with the initials of local Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Among the members of the Southeast Broward Republican Club shooting their handguns and AK's Robert Lowry, who is waging an uphill campaign to unseat the popular Democratic incumbent in a district where D's outnumber R's two-to-one.

Lowry's target -- a paper silhouette -- had "DWS" written on it, a stunt Lowry first called a "joke" and later a "mistake."

You gotta love that "Culture of Life" the Republicans like to tout. Shooting at a target with your election rival's initials on it? Classy, classy, classy.

At what point will the Republican party repudiate the undercurrent of violence that falls into their reactions, like these political signs in Arizona that were painted over with the words "Kill Obama"? Who will be hurt before that? Howie Klein has more...

UPDATE: Wasserman Schultz has released a statement:

"There is nothing light or funny about pretending to shoot someone. At a time in our country when people are bringing guns to Town Hall Meetings and a preacher is calling for the death of our President, I find this type of action serious and disturbing. Tonight I am going to have to talk to my young children about why someone is pretending to shoot their mother. Trivializing violent behavior is the kind of extreme view that has no place in American politics."

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Contessa Brewer takes the NRCC to task for their remarks about putting Nancy Pelosi "in her place". I don't think I've ever seen her quite this pissed off. Give 'em hell gal.

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Looks like Mr. Glazed-Chicken Duncan Hunter is at it again with defending our torture of prisoners. I don't know what else Chris Matthews thought he was going to get from the likes of Hunter given his past appearance on his show where he called detainee abuse "left wing rubbish". Now he's claiming that waterboarding isn't torture, and it makes our Marines tough! I think Jesse Ventura would disagree with him.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz did a pretty good job later in the segment when she was allowed to get a word in edge-wise and took Hunter to task for his claim that the government got any information from KSM after he was waterboarded.

Media Matters has a good run down of where that latest talking point came from and debunks it here-- Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked. Unfortunately since so much of the segment turned into a pissing contest between Hunter and Matthews over whether waterboarding is torture or not, those points were barely discussed.

Of course the fact that they have to make things up to justify the use of torture is no surprise since it doesn't work. It's meant to extract confessions and to get the prisoner to tell the torturer what they want to hear, not to get at the truth. But that's not going to stop the likes of Dick Cheney and Duncan Hunter from lying about it or the media from giving them a format to do it.

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From Good Morning America: Fla. Congresswoman Pushes Cancer Legislation After Surviving Own Battle.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., introduces new federal legislation today that calls for a national breast-cancer education campaign that targets women between the ages of 15 and 39. The bill holds special significance for the 42-year-old because she quietly and successfully battled breast cancer in the past year.

Schultz's Breast Cancer Education and Awareness Act focuses specifically on young women.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz reveals cancer battle.

In the past year, she underwent seven major surgeries, including a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, while balancing motherhood, Congress and her roles as a chief fundraiser for House Democrats and a political surrogate, first for Hillary Clinton and then for Barack Obama.

''I had a lot going on last year,'' she said with a laugh, sitting in the living room of the Capitol Hill town house she shares with two other members of Congress when she's in Washington. ``I'm a very focused, methodical person, and I wasn't going to let this beat me. I wasn't going to let it interfere with my life.''

.....

''It just pains me to know that younger women, because they don't know and because they're blown off by physicians many times, and because they squeeze their eyes shut and hope that it's nothing, that their death rate is much higher,'' she said.

Her bill calls for a national education campaign, aimed at informing young women about the risks and encouraging them to conduct routine self-exams.

Wasserman Schultz discovered a breast lump through a self-exam, two months after her first mammogram at 40. Although the cancer was detected at an early stage, she also learned that as an Ashkenazi Jew of Eastern European descent, she was at greater risk of carrying a gene mutation that makes Ashkenazi Jews predisposed to breast cancer and recurrance. She tested positive for this BRCA2 gene mutation, prompting her to have both breasts removed.

She was also at higher risk of ovarian cancer and had her ovaries removed -- the day after Election Day. Her final surgery was in December, almost a year after her diagnosis.

Because the cancer was caught so early, she didn't need chemotherapy or radiation but will take the cancer drug tamoxifen for five years.

She said she decided to keep her cancer private, concerned mostly that her young children (then 8-year-old twins and a 4-year-old daughter) would worry, particularly with a mother who was also constantly on the go. They knew she was undergoing surgery, but she didn't tell them the cause.

'I knew from my doctors that if I went through their recommended course of treatment that I would get through it and I'd be fine, that I could come out the other side and confidently tell my children, `Mommy's fine,' '' she said. She planned to tell them Saturday night.

She scheduled her treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., during congressional recesses so she wouldn't miss votes in Congress.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz reacts to the GOP Governors who are refusing to accept the unemployment insurance money from the stimulus package out of a "matter of principle". Schultz calls them out for not caring about working people in this country and calls out Jindal for not minding taking assistance for Hurricane Katrina and considering that an emergency but not wanting to get help for the economic emergency we have now. She also makes it clear that all their "new ideas" for the stimulus package were more tax cuts and defends Governor Crist for actually showing some bipartisanship which he's been criticized for by his fellow Republicans.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Brian Bilbray square off over the stimulus bill on Hardball, Feb. 13, 2009. Bilbray does his best to run away from the Republican party and their past spending, and George Bush.

Wasserman Schultz sounds like she's got Bilbray's next opponent's campaign ad written for them.

Schultz: What Brian did by voting no today was he voted against giving 385,000 jobs in his own state. 8,000 jobs in his own district. Aid to his state to help....

Matthews: Did you look this up?

Schultz: Yes I sure did. (crosstalk) 8,000 jobs in his own district. Avoiding layoffs of teachers, firefighters and policemen. The bottom line is that this bill is designed to create jobs, turn the economy around, avoid layoffs, move us towards energy independence and the Republicans have just said "No". He can say all he wants, that he doesn't want this bill to fail. This vote for them was all about 2010. They are hoping that this doesn't work so that they can blame the continued poor economy on the Democrats and that is the bottom line.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz on CNN's State of the Union responding to John King questioning her with the media's latest talking points on bipartisanship and about what's going to happen to the bill once it goes to conference committee. She explains that Republicans refused the hand of bipartianship. The only people surprised by that are the media.

KING: As you know, the new president came to town promising a new era of bipartisanship. Eight years of George W. Bush, eight years of Bill Clinton, not much true bipartisanship in this town. Your speaker after the Senate compromise was reached on Friday, made clear she doesn't like it. She said this, "Washington seems consumed in the process argument of the bipartisanship when the rest of the country says they need this bill."

The process argument of bipartisanship. The president said it is a critical spirit to have in this town. Your boss in the House, the speaker, doesn't seem to think it's important.

SCHULTZ: On the contrary, Speaker Pelosi has made bipartisanship and reaching out in the Republicans in the House a priority. We made sure that we had markup after markup in committee this week and in the last few weeks which included Republican amendments that we heard, that some that we accepted.

We reached out our hand across the aisle, asked them to help craft this legislation. That was rejected. So we have made an effort at reaching out our hand across the aisle. They really seem to be more interested in making sure that this whole process fails. It's really baffling to me why they don't want to pass an economic recovery package. They'll have to answer the American people as to why that is.

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She just had to go there. During an exchange on Late Edition Oct. 26, 2008, Heather Wilson could just not resist taking a cheap shot at Biden for his hair transplants and compares the money spent by the RNC on Palin's clothing to what Obama spends on his ties as well. Since the Republicans have tried to paint Palin as a Washington outsider, a maverick and reformer---this clothing spree certainly shattered that image.

Let us remember how the Republicans went wild over John Edwards 400.00 hair cut. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee used it as laugh lines at one of the Republican Primary debates.

CNN:

BLITZER: Heather Wilson, are you embarrassed that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 buying designer outfits for Sarah Palin at Saks and Neiman-Marcus, another $20,000 for make-up in the first two weeks of October alone, $10,000 for hair? Is this what a hockey mom should be getting?

WILSON: Well, that sounds like there are some staffers at the RNC who need a little education on how to shop at Wal-Mart and Ross Direct. But it does concern me in the last 10 days of an election campaign we're talking about those things.

WILSON: And we could talk about Barack Obama's ties or the vice president's hair transplants or something like that.

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Barack Obama doesn't spend that kind of money on ties. He buys them himself.

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(h/t Heather)

I don’t pretend that I am some great political genius, but I do know that there are some truisms in America politics. One big truism is that senior citizens vote as a much higher percentage than other subset of the population and the biggest way to ensure that they will come out to vote is to threaten the programs upon which they rely.

That’s what makes announcing the intent to cut spending to Medicare by $1.3 trillion such an odd, Bizarro-world choice on the part of the McCain/Palin campaign.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to confirm that those all-too-critical 27 Florida electoral votes don’t look like they’ll be heading into the McCain column:

You are so right when you say that this is a third rail – of Florida politics – certainly, and politics nationally among senior citizens is Medicare and Social Security and John McCain and Sarah Palin are shockingly wrong on both of those issues. I mean, it’s bad enough that he clearly and consistently has supported privatizing Social Security. Especially considering that this morning the stock market was down 797 points at one point and he thinks we should just be investing—the best thing to do is invest people’s Social Security funds in the stock market. [sarcastically] That’s a really good idea, right now.

But then, on top of that, he goes so far as to say in order to cover about five million more people out of the 47 million that don’t have health insurance, his plan is to cut Medicare $1.3 trillion. Now there is 3.2 million Floridians that are covered by Medicare; we have the second highest number of Medicare recipients in the country and a higher percentage even than California of our population. I can tell you, I represent a district in South Florida for sixteen years, between the Legislature and Congress and there is no way that my senior citizen constituents are going to be supporting John McCain. They are really concerned about two things: making sure they don’t have their safety net yanked out from under them and making sure that their health care, that they have fought for and earned in the golden years of their retirement.

For the record, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have both signed off on Health Care for America Now.

Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Dave)

If you ever wondered how it was possible that we could possibly have this close an election when the vast majority of the American people highly disapprove of the job George W. Bush has done, yet there is still a disconnect with John McCain supporters that his would be a third Bush term, look no further than what passes for political debate on this morning's Face the Nation.  My head is still hurting from the stupidity of it. 

Still playing to the media narrative that the selection of Sarah Palin should somehow bring women to the McCain camp, they bring on four female proxies--Kay Bailey Hutchinson and former Mass Gov. Jane Swift for McCain, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz for Obama--to frame the debate as Obama vs. Palin.  Strange that.  All this time, I thought it was John McCain running for the office.  You know, the same guy that calls his wife an unforgivable slur and laughs at Hillary Clinton being referred to as a b*tch, and now the Republicans saying they're going to call out sexism when they see it? Maybe my silly little female head got confused.

And when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz throws down the gauntlet on all the GOP distractions and says that the truth matters and Gov. Swift opts to spin this into an inane deflection of whether Palin was actually in Iraq, wasting close to four minutes of airtime.  Wasserman Schultz holds her ground, pointing out that these embellishments to her record just show what a lightweight Palin truly is, but it's host Bob Schieffer that has to side with the Republicans by pointing out that Palin's actions 'have been alleged' to be less than her claim, but it's up to the voters to decide "the truth."

Um, Bob, isn't that supposed to be your function?  To help the voters know the truth from the spin?

Transcripts below the fold

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  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is one of those politicos that I can't figure out.  She was absolutely great taking down Chris Shays, terribly frustrating talking to Ed Schultz about impeachment, and now, she's downright infuriating with her refusal to assist fellow Democrat Annette Taddeo over incumbent Republican Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, an even more heinous betrayal considering that Wasserman Schultz has a leadership position in the DCCC, whose job it is to -- get this -- increase the number of Democratic seats in Congress.  AmericaBlog:

DavidNYC reports that leading House Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DWS), still won't help Annette Taddeo's campaign. It's ludicrous. Taddeo's opponent is the Bush-loving, right winger Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. It's especially galling considering DWS has a leadership role in the DCCC -- and may even try to run that organization in the next cycle. So, you'd think supporting all Democrats running for Congress, especially those in her home state, wouldn't be a tough call for DWS. But, it is. (Also, it should go without saying that supporting all Democratic House candidates should be THE main criteria for anyone in DCCC leadership.)

It's not like DWS is lacking funds. Besides her own campaign account (where DWS is sitting on over half a million with no real opponent this year), she has a leadership PAC, Democrats Win Seats PAC (DWS PAC, get it?). Check out her list of expenditures here. She's managed to contribute to a lot of House candidates across the country and to groups like the Ohio Democratic Party. But, she can't help Annette? What's up with that? If DWS wants to be a Democratic leader, DWS needs to help all Democrats -- and not put her friendship with a Republican ahead of party loyalty. That's not too complicated, is it? 

Since Wasserman Schultz is a no-show on trying to turn this seat for the Democrats, won't you consider donating to Annette Taddeo's campaign through Blue America?  At least we're committed to getting more and better Democrats in Congress.