The ugliness never stops coming from Republicans.

Jay Townsend, the official campaign spokesman for the freshman representative, went on a vicious online rant on Saturday, which he began by taunting a constituent who voiced criticism about an earlier post on gas prices. "Listen to Tom. What a little bee he has in his bonnet. Buzz Buzz," Townsend wrote."My question today... when is Tommy boy going to weigh in on all the Lilly Ledbetter hypocrites who claim to be fighting the War on Women? Let’s hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won’t abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector."

He attached a link to a Free Beacon article that claims female senators pay their male staffers more than their female staffers.A moderator of the NY19 U.S. House of Representatives Civil Discussion Center page responded to Townsend, asking him to "please refrain from calling our members names." The unnamed moderator also asked if Hayworth knew about his comments or whether he had "gone rogue."

This man should be fired immediately and made to apologize by House leader, John Boehner.

You'll never hear this on FOX, but can you imagine if a Democratic spokesman said this about Republican women? Bill O'Reilly would have an orgasm over it. Hannity would be so sick about it that he'd call in sick and Drudge, well. I'll leave that up to you.

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As Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski aptly pointed out, if you don't think women feel under attack right now, thanks to Republican majorities in the House and in many states, then go talk to the women in your lives. That we can't even get past that notion with the bewildering amount of legislation being introduced that affect directly the rights of women, demonstrates again why our media fails us to get to the real issues. And Republican strategist Alex Castellanos makes damn sure that we can't get to the facts to have a real discussion.

This is why I will never have a career as a news pundit. If I had been in Rachel Maddow's seat, I would have not been able to keep my cool, reasoned temper, as Rachel so admirably did. I would have gotten right into Alex Castellanos' smug, condescending face and rattled off a litany of all the ugly, factually incorrect and disgusting bon mots (can't call them facts) with which he has been allowed to pollute the national dialogue for decades. I would have thundered down on him his culpability for some of the most vile political ads in American history.

And excuse me, but what in the hell was David Gregory and executive producer Betsy Fischer thinking by booking this misogynistic jerk who is clearly overcompensating from years of rejection and insecurity about his manhood to discuss the systematic and coordinated attacks on women's health and freedom? Was there a bigger caveman who refused to come on, so they had to go with the lesser? All ideas are not equal. Condescension and patronizing false and cherry-picked facts about income that have nothing to do with the fact that Republican-led governments think they have the right to control the reproductive organs of half the population do not deserve a place at the table. Fischer and Gregory owe the women both at that table and in their audience an apology for such an abomination as Alex Castellanos opining on the rights of women.

Open Thread below....

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I can never tell with these tea party types if it's massive ignorance or hubris that keeps them going.

Because if I was the subject of an extra-marital sex scandal, I don't know that I would write a book entitled "Can't Is Not An Option." Seems like you're writing the jokes for your detractors.

Furthermore, if I was about to be possibly indicted for tax fraud, I don't know that I would make the rounds promoting that book, lest some very uncomfortable questions are asked.

And if by some chance I ignored all good sense and did the things above, when asked to proffer up proof that there isn't a war on women's rights within the GOP, I sure as hell wouldn't be stupid enough to say, "Well, women don't care about contraception."

But then again, I'm not Nikki Haley.

Because it's "The View", we're not going to be subjected to a deep discussion about it, but co-host Joy Behar pushed back right away and you can see that Haley knew she messed up good and immediately tried to cast about to save herself, conceding that women do care, but not only contraception.

HALEY: While we care about contraception, let’s be clear: All we’re saying is we don’t want government to mandate when we have to have it and when we don’t. We want to be able to make that decision, we don’t need any government making that decision for us.

Excuse me, what? When is the government mandating the use of birth control? Do you even understand the words coming out of your mouth? It's lucky for Haley that they ran up against a break before Whoopi and Joy could say anything.

And pundits sit and try to figure out why women prefer Obama to a GOP candidate by almost two to one.

As a woman who was raped at gunpoint in my own home when I was in my twenties, and shot at while escaping from another would-be rapist a couple of years later, then endured an abusive relationship just to round out the nightmare, I could relate very well to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin), who stood up on the floor of the House of Representatives and recounted her personal experiences of child molestation and of being raped as an adult — a rape that resulted in pregnancy and her now 40-something-year-old son — as part of a Democratic message to the GOP regarding the Republican “war on women.” I suspect there are a good many American women who can also unfortunately identify with Rep. Moore.

Once upon a time, the Violence Against Women Act had bipartisan support, but as the Republican Party continues to devolve into rightwing extremism, Republicans like Rep. Bob Turner (R – NY) — a good pal of Rush Limbaugh, and instrumental in getting the conservative talk show host his own television program back when Turner was a television executive — voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act. What a surprise.

But lest we think it’s all the fault of rich fat white men, the GOP has lost no time in trotting out their angry mama grizzlies to support the backlash against women and minorities in general. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington) the only woman in the GOP leadership, called Rep. Moore’s statements on the House floor a “distraction,” and accused Democrats of “manufacturing this war on women because the Democrats know that the Republicans won the women's vote in 2010.” Her colleague, Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) managed to expand the rhetoric to include anything the current administration supports. “Whether it is spending, whether it is the cost of your health insurance, whether it is the price at the pump, this administration is too expensive to afford.” Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) even managed to shoehorn a few sacred catchwords into the mix, evoking “moms of America” who want “freedom for themselves and their kids” ... whatever that means.

One might think that anyone with a mother, or a sister, or a daughter, or an aunt — which is to say most of the human race — would find state agencies, rape crisis centers, and organizations that provide services to vulnerable women to keep them safe and alive, to be something laudable. Something worth funding and fighting for. Something that transcends political affiliation. Apparently, not Republicans. They don’t give a flying Fox about women.

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Lauren Zuniga -- To the Oklahoma Lawmakers: A Poem (Strong themes, may not be appropriate for work or children)

We all process events through the lenses of our own experiences. I think what makes us liberals is that we do generally try to consider lenses other than our own. I haven't been the victim of institutional racism, but I can empathize with those who have, and it makes me more determined to challenge my presumptions. It's been my experience that conservatives typically do not care nor are they interested in any other lens but their own.

But I read something this weekend that made me realize that I had only considered my own lens in this mind-boggling GOP War on Women: it's not a war on women at all.

It's a war on all of us. Mike Penney:

[W]e’re all in this together – both male and female. The importance of an egalitarian balance amongst the genders is essential if the necessary cultural transformation is to transpire, so as realistically confront long-range planetary sustainability issues such as peak oil, global eco-rape, and the consumer madness depleting planetary reserves. A Higher Consciousness celebrating and promoting what the previously repressed nature of the feminine can contribute to the whole is essential; the repudiation of the right-wing, male-dominant culture’s “War on Women” is most immediate and imperative. Women are indeed the focal point, but it’s not just a “War on Women.” It’s worse. It’s an assault on all of us, women and men, seeking to escape the chains of a more primitive consciousness; it’s a war on all of us seeking a cultural transformation so as to leave a livable world for future generations of our species.

My focus has been on the violations against women, the infantilizing condescension that we couldn't understand our own bodies enough to make decisions without legislative interference. But that is a narrow lens. This condescension is an attitude that affects all of us, just like not pushing back against institutional racism reduces all of us. And there are tons of unintended consequences to allowing this kind of war on our health care. That's not just women being affected, but men, children and society as a whole.

So yes, women may be the focus, but this is a war on the kind of society we want to be. We must all fight, because we cannot let them win.

But under a state law taking effect Wednesday, Henry and other eligible women won't be able to get care at Planned Parenthood clinics — which treat about 44% of the program's patients — or other facilities with ties to abortion providers, meaning those women will have to find new health-care providers.

The $40 million program is at the center of a faceoff between conservative Republican lawmakers and the federal government, which provides 90% of the program's funding. Although Texas already forbids taxpayer money from going to organizations that provide abortions, the law will cut off clinics with any affiliation to a provider, even if it's just a shared name, employee or board member.

Well, here's a problem. Medicaid funding has some conditions tied to it, and Medicaid funding provides about 90 percent of the baseline funding for the Texas Women's Health Program.

Via Huffington Post:

Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO), wrote Texas health officials a letter on Thursday explaining that the state broke federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against qualified family planning providers and thus would be losing the entire program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to 130,000 low-income women each year.

"We very much regret the state's decision to implement this rule, which will prevent women enrolled in the program from receiving services from the trusted health care providers they have chosen and relied upon for their care," she wrote. "In light of Texas' actions, CMS is not in a position to extend or renew the current [Medicaid contract]."

The federal government pays for nearly 90 percent of Texas' $40 billion Women's Health Program, and nearly half of the program's providers in Texas are Planned Parenthood clinics. But the new law that went into effect earlier this month disqualified Planned Parenthood from participating in the program because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though no state or federal money can be used to pay for those abortions.

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I saw this commercial on MSNBC for the first time on Thursday morning. I truly hope MoveOn has ad buys in all the national markets on all the cable channels. If not, they definitely should.

What makes this commercial such a grabber is using women to speak the words men have spoken against them. I wasn't paying attention at all to the commercials, but I did a double take on this because what they were saying didn't make sense for them to be saying.

Which is, of course, the point. Well done, MoveOn.

Yet another casualty in the false equivalency battle in the GOP War on Women. This time, turncoat general Greta Van Susteren defended Rush Limbaugh by targeting yet another comedian who—in an isolated tweeting-while-drinking moment, for which he immediately apologized afterwards—said something unarguably offensive about a female public figure.

As part of the growing backlash to the backlash against Rush Limbaugh for his recent comments regarding Sandra Fluke, the host’s defenders have already latched onto Bill Maher as someone whose own remarks about women are every bit as misogynistic as Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute,” if you just remove them from all context. Now another, even more unlikely comedian is caught in the fray: Louis C.K., who late last week became a symbol of that alleged liberal hypocrisy, after Fox News correspondent Greta Van Susteren took a break from chewing on the day’s salient topics to blast him in a blog post as a “pig” who “denigrates all women”—though specifically Sarah Palin, citing a series of drunken tweets C.K. made in 2010, in which he spent a turbulent flight waxing rum-and-coke-fueled rhapsodic about Palin’s “c**t.” A just-now-highly-offended Van Susteren (long one of Palin’s most ardent champions) concluded by calling for a media boycott of the upcoming Radio And Television Congressional Correspondents dinner, where C.K. was scheduled to perform.

Somewhat surprisingly, she got her wish: Only a day after her post, C.K. pulled out of the gig, his representative saying only, “He just didn’t want to do it anymore”—which naturally gave rise to speculation that his change of heart was because C.K. wished to avoid getting mired any further in this sort of controversy.

These desperate false equivalencies are tiresome. Repeat after me, Greta: Sarah Palin is a PUBLIC figure. Public, as in, she chose to run for public office and thrust herself into the spotlight. Sandra Fluke has not. The standards of defamation are much higher for a public figure (who should be no stranger to criticism; hell, even in this small corner of the blogosphere, I've been subjected to being called the same as well. Get over it).

As a lawyer, you know this, even if your partisanship won't allow you to publicly admit it. This was an isolated incident, immediately regretted, directed at a specific individual. This was not a three plus day sustained attack on someone and EVERYONE who thinks like her. Louis C.K. tweeted his stupid statement (and I'm in no way defending the content of his message) which could only be seen in real time by people who followed both C.K. and Palin (he later deleted the tweets).

Rush Limbaugh abused the public airwaves, with an alleged listenership of 20 million. Airwaves that we taxpayers provide for his hate speech. Nuance is difficult for Fox News talent, I know, but surely even you can see the difference.

Comedian Michael Ian Black chimes in:

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A lovely video on the whole GOP war on women thing. PS it's interesting that the Right has reduced Limbaugh's three-day sex rant to "last week Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke was a slut." Open thread below...