blog thom hartmann in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture republicans are quickly trying to distance themselves from representative todd akin's legitimate rape comments and are calling for him to drop out of a senate race but is this really the height of hypocrisy since the party today officially adopted the legislative version of akin's extremist position on rape and abortion also paul ryan and mitt romney are hammering away at president obama and his so-called cuts to medicare are considering the ryan budget eliminates medicare and it's entirety and replaces it with a voucher program of the same name this is the best debate for the republican nominees to be adding an internet it's a big interview we'll talk with michael ratner

a member of julius on just legal team about us on just current status and his battle to seek political asylum in ecuador. you need to know this republican party is desperately trying to distance themselves from republican congressman and senate candidate todd akin after he made these remarks on sunday. about the case of rape should it be legal or not it seems to be first of all for what i understand from doctors that's really real if it's a legitimate rape the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down a can is refusing to drop out of the race in fact today was the deadline for him to be replaced as the senate nominee in missouri instead they can really release this campaign ad masked as an apology. i'm todd akin and i approve this message rape as an evil act i used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that i

apologize as the father of two daughters i want tough justice for predators have a compassionate heart for the victims of sexual assault and i pray for the fact is rape can lead to pregnancy the truth is rape has many victims the mistake i made was in the words i said not in the heart i hold i ask for your forgiveness but not all republicans actually have a problem with what they can had originally said at least not the republicans who are currently drafting the party's two thousand and twelve platform as far as we can tell which according to reports is said to include a constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest this gets right to the heart of what akin was trying to argue basically that being raped and impregnated isn't a legitimate excuse to have an abortion he's got lost on the way to that argument by spinning out some bogus phony science that's been used by men to rationalize rape for thousands of years and whether or not the entire republican party agrees

of the pseudo science they can put forward remains to be seen but the party does agree with they can the rape is not a legitimate reason to have an abortion that's why last year every single republican in the house of representatives including vice presidential candidate paul ryan voted to redefine the word rape in h.r. three the no taxpayer funding for abortion act which makes abortion available only to those women who can prove that they are victims of forcible rape or what a can might refer to as legitimate rape so the question is how can the republicans call on a can to drop out while at the same time adopting a can see extremist position on rape and abortion and in fact adding to the official party platform joining me now are nancy l. cohen historian political commentator and author of the book delirium the politics of sex in america and sarah seltzer reporter and associate editor at alter net writing about the story today nancy sarah great to have you both with us tonight.

thank you very much nancy if i can start with you views on rape and abortion are functionally no different than the republican party. at least in terms of policy is he in trouble because he tried to make a bogus scientific argument you know biologically impossible for women to hear pregnant from rape and where the heck does that argument even come from. well he's in trouble because he pulled his mouth off of the extremists who run the republican party right now this is actually been the republican party position since one nine hundred eighty four when they added this constitutional amendment to ban abortion in all cases to the republican party a number of other republican presidential candidates have tried to fight against it and lost we don't have any evidence that romney actually tried to fight this inclusion in the platform and so there are a number of things going on here there's the politics of talking about what they

really believe and then the politics of the far right and the way that they have rationalize their cruel and frankly evil policy on no abortion in cases of rape to a general public who absolutely completely disagrees with them on this issue it's really quite extraordinary sir mitt romney has called on akin to the race. kind of too little too late. romney is want to do are you surprised by the reaction the g.o.p. has taken to a can especially considering the party has a long history frankly of of making controversial remarks about rape and women and abortion not to mention voting to redefine rape last year. i think that the g.o.p. knows that this in particular is a losing issue and that the american public will not i think they have taken too kindly. this view on abortion to be so callous towards. on the other hand i

think that what is what's interesting about it is that it's an opportunity for romney to appear are to make himself appear more moderate i do not think it has an extremist and he can sort of himself a little bit closer to the center and say oh i'm not like that you know i'm i'm compassionate towards think that well not something to be changing his position i mean he's my presidential candidate as you said was one of the sponsors of age are three but yet i've read a faint defined breaks of forcible rape. you know as pretty much as an extreme anti choicer as can be and right in a inflames have been together on a number of these anti choice initiatives you know nancy it's it's really quite extraordinary the idea of the most i think most americans don't realize how extreme the republican party has been on this issue since as you pointed out in one thousand nine hundred four. is this the sort of thing that's going to be

a wake up moment for women in america are you know is there are there precedents for this sort of thing you know breaking through the wall of infotainment and actually awakening many women who you know from the last election the whole buzz was you know there's all these women out there are devoted obviously a lot of men as well but could this be a real pivotal moment. yes i do think so absolutely you know rape is rape is rape that's what every woman knows that's what every woman believes we should really stop talking about the todd akins you know so-called legitimate rape and talk about the legislative rape that the republican party and the republican ticket ryan run romney and ryan have planned for women you know there's h.r. three which would redefine rape there is the let woman die bill that brian was a co-sponsor of which would have allowed hospitals to deny lifesaving treatment to pregnant women if the fetus was in danger you know there's all the economic hits to

women that are coming so there is precedent for women waking up and getting active and saying no thank you to the republican party and what's going on right now particularly reminds me of what happened in ninety two to bush sr at the so-called family values convention you know there they had another fight over abortion they had a fight over culture wars the sexual fundamentalists in the republican party came to the convention and knocked down a challenge to moderate that extreme anti abortion position you know bush's position was as romney says his is oh i'm not against abortion in the cases of rape and incest but the activists at the base one and the presidential candidate last so we have to realize that romney is the leader of the party that wants to do

these quite awful cruel things to american women and i think as long as the democrats keep the news about this you know run clips of a can run clips ryan then they will be able to parlay this into a good landslide vote among women. could there be a flip side to the. if you know the more publicity this gets the more the the radical hard right anti-abortion. wedge slice whatever of the republican electorate becomes energized and gets out there there you know abortion is not been a big topic in this election cycle this might make it one could this be something that would actually a near benefit to the romney ryan ticket i don't think it can benefit them in the sense that there's so many rabid and he choices are extreme and he turns out there that them showing up really influence the election i think that the primary motivation in my opinion of the battery extreme right wing would be to just get

obama out of office but i think what i said before is the real danger is that that we forget that we forget that romney you know is as extreme in terms of the legislative position that he endorsed or the fact that he has fought is extreme measures within his own party and that he's able to sort of pivot off this and appear moderate i think that's what you're seeing with all those denouncing it and i think it's also important to remember that. you know saying that you are ok with abortion in the case of rape or incest is not and make you some kind of compassionate pro woman first and it means that you are still anti choice and you know it almost all respects and that you're not really going to necessarily influence policy and i think romney's strength is beholden to that right wing so the danger is number one romney appearing to be more moderate and yet. and number two you know brownie not being able to stand up to that rabbit by right that rabid

right wing as mccain wasn't and as other. other more moderate g.o.p. presidential candidates have not been able to do either nancy what the state of debate on abortion in america has changed radically over the years precept three roe grow v wade by even if you will go back a decade before that the will is the cunningham case i believe or whatever it was out of connecticut where it was illegal to even have condoms in your home if you were married couple went to the supreme court then then roe v wade and then the anti death penalty movement which used to be called the right to life movement. co-opted by the anti-abortion movement where are we at in terms of this this the ebb and flow of the debate around the issue of abortion and for that matter even birth control now in the united states and the right of women to make these decisions right it's a good question i mean romney's predicament that sarah is talking about is the

result of forty years of sexual counterrevolution in the republican party basically religious fundamentalists who want to roll back women's rights and won't roll back gay rights. infiltrated the party in the seventy's and have taken it over from bottom to top so i think what we're seeing today is this coming kind of full circle and seeing what happens when the republican establishment is the captive to the anti women anti case extremists in the base in the base now if you look at the polling on abortion all the polling on pro-life pro-choice has changed people's opinion about whether abortion should be legal as it is according to roe v wade has changed very little since one thousand nine hundred seventy three when they started polling on this that's and we have a public that is somewhere between depending on how you phrase the question

somewhere between fifty one and sixty three percent in favor of women having the legal right and the freedom to make the decision for themselves about whether they will have an answer great stats and thanks thanks for the work for a lot of time here though here she answers how rattled i don't think that's you can hear me nancy thank you so much i'm sorry we've run out of time nancy. we'll be right back. pepper spray that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything if you buy a lot of sort of loses thousands of times we're stronger than any kind of the body of ever put.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so please you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. into it on your military mechanisms that do not work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. mr

. in screwed news we don't republicans want to distract people from paul ryan's legislation and medicare as we know it by line that president obama who has actually strengthened medicare is actually cutting it and giving the money to poor people obamacare republicans think this sort of bald faced lie is actually a winning strategy. we've heard a little about medicare lately from the president. we want this debate we need this

debate and we're going to win this debate about medicare so here's how that's all why the president's cuts or i should say streamlines don't actually affect any benefits for seniors and are primarily targeted at waste fraud and abuse in the program mostly by the big insurance and drug companies and by a limited in that waste fraud abuse medicare remain solvent for an extra eight years although we have to twenty twenty four instead of twenty sixteen where it was before in other words if romney and ryan are pledging to undo president obama's medicare reforms and they are pledging to do just that and the solvency of medicare is cut short by eight years so what do they propose to do instead well now they're suggesting the one thing president obama didn't do and that's to cut benefits q romney adviser ed gillespie talking about this issue on sunday. what are you going to do to keep the saldanha between two thousand and sixteen after you repealed

obamacare and twenty twenty three mcchrystal other reforms as well as you know governor romney supports gradually increasing over time bringing the medicare eligibility age in line with the social security retirement age. increase the retirement age in other words cut benefits so is this medicare debate really as winnable as paul ryan claims especially when his team is running on a platform to cut benefits in medicare and then later get rid of the program altogether here to answer that is the last spring host of the truth for america radio show and author of the book conscientious equity now welcome back hey tom thanks for having me and i just i just lost my audio i can't hear anything. they were ok on one side we have president obama who extended the life of medicare without cutting any benefits on the other side we are romney and ryan who want to voucher rise medicare and cut benefits why does paul ryan think he can win this debate. it's absolutely winnable it's just been so much distortion the demagoguery

first of all the reform doesn't doesn't affect anyone fifty five and older and then there's a voucher system which is an option that you can opt in to keep everything the way that they are so is it we show here on if five you've been given is say your say you're fifty four years old for thirty years you've been paying into medicare and you're just screwed now you're going to get a voucher and you can go to a big insurance company and beg them for something you know republicans ronald reagan cut a recording back in one thousand nine hundred sixty four calling medicare socialism the republicans have been opposed to medicare from day one and what you're describing it sounds to me like what you're describing is let's phase out in two steps you know will will phase out for the young people first and then when the old people die off they'll be nothing left. but tom i mean how do you explain that romney's percentage of young people is up ten points since ryan has been announced to be his v.p. candidate i think because i think as a young guy who's actually because you know i believe that. the young people

believe that the ryan plan will have something lift for them when they get of age to take something out tom you are a successful entrepreneur and you know that. you can't just keep taking out all of these funds and not booking putting anything back again it just won't those if if what you are saying is true i'm really baffled because the ryan plan increases costs on average six thousand dollars it raises the retirement age according to his in his own district ryan's plan would eliminate new preventative care benefits for one hundred twelve thousand medicare beneficiaries in his own district it would increase prescription drug costs for ninety seven hundred medicare but beneficiaries who are in the donut hole forcing them to pay an extra ninety five million dollars for drugs of the next decade i mean he how can how can he sell those without just lying and saying that he's not doing what he's doing well with tom tom first of all the ryan plan came out of

a clinton bipartisan commission to save that doesn't make it right here it was current well it came out of a democratic president it's these administration we all know that we're headed for a i don't believe even on these it hasn't matter it's a i can't believe the bill clinton would have ever said oh yeah let's turn let's turn medicare over to the big insurance company but it didn't and how do you explain congressman wyden as being one of the co-writers of this bill on why is it as ron wyden really made the mistake of attaching his name to to a small piece a small piece of this legislation at that time on the air i called him out and i said and i know ron white he was my is my senator for years and i said he's playing the role of useful idiot he has no idea how badly he's going to be used for this one democrat in all of america got on board with ryan in a partial way and you're reciting his name but don't put up with tom but tom how do you explain that obamacare is still a very much despised by the american people nearly sixty percent of the people want

to repeal not true when you look at when you when you talk about right now names we all don't like gail right which america when you talk about them and it gets people love it. anyhow neal i would deal with certainly not showing up in the polls ok i don't think we have to wrap it up well we will find out yeah come november we'll definitely know neal asper thanks so much for being with us i think that tom thanks for having me whether medicare is a winning debate or not republicans are hell bent on having it they're also hell bent on having a debate on president obama's stimulus package passed in the first months of his presidency back in two thousand and nine the most economists the stimulus act prevented all great depression but to mitt romney it was a complete failure. a stimulus approach has not worked the idea of of item by item looking for a quick solution to throwing a little gasoline on the fire that hasn't worked the first to melissa of almost eight hundred billion dollars didn't create private sector jobs all right well my next guest literally wrote the book on the stimulus package and with two and

a half months until the election in the debate over the stimulus act and president obama's efforts to improve the economy not going away any time soon it's worth hearing what he has to say joining me from new york is michael grunwald senior national correspondent with time magazine the author of the new book the new new deal the hidden history of change in the obama era michael welcome thanks for having me thanks for joining us name right by the way and yet that's good chris thank you where are where are we today based on your reporting. with regard to this i mean actually you've made some very very strong statements in the synopsis of the book that that this was really a new new deal this was a major piece of legislation. is it right and then and why don't most people know that. well part of this was sort of standard keynesian stimulus in fact and you heard mitt romney in two thousand and eight republican and democratic presidential candidate who was in favor of stimulus and romney in fact had the largest plan. the

obama administration came in after the fourth quarter of two thousand and eight g.d.p. crashed nine percent that's a depression after the stimulus passed they had the biggest improvement in jobs in thirty years so the stimulus did money in through middle class tax cuts through aid to the victims of the great recession and aid to states so that they didn't have to lay off teachers and cops that did essentially stop that freefall but what it also did that people don't realize is this is the sort of new deal part of it is it was really the purest distillation of what obama meant by change this was where he kept his campaign promises to reform energy and health care and education with race to the top and as the sort of way our economy is structured with the largest infrastructure investment since eisenhower the largest research investments ever the largest tax cut middle class tax cut since reagan so there really was a lot stuffed into this bill that people didn't realize at the time and certainly

not now while the and the certainly not now is the part that really baffles me michael you would think that if nobody else the administration's in the cells for the last three years i mean when george bush after two thousand and one decided to stimulate the economy you know with his tax cuts and whatnot bernie sanders was pushing for everybody in america to get a three hundred dollars check bush adopted that not only did email that check out but i remember when i got it there was a letter attached to it that said president bush has given you those three hundred dollars you should be so happy with him you know or words to that effect how could it be this so many in america has don't understand what's going on. well that's a perfect example because when the obama guys decided that they were going to do a similar similar tax cut through through payroll they had they thought they'd be smart because actually behavioral economics show. so that when you get a check like that you're more likely to save it but if you just sort of slip it in through decreased withholding so you get maybe ten bucks in your in your paycheck every week then you're more likely to spend it in stimulate the economy because

you're less likely to notice it but you're less likely to notice it so wrong the manual running around saying we're denying ourselves an ed mcmahon moment right that squeal of publishers clearing else pleasure when you know the check from barack obama comes in the mail the fact is the republicans have disparate distorted this thing beyond you know beyond recognition the media has done a horrible job of saying what's actually in it so you hear about you know levitating trains to disneyland and mob museums and all kinds of nonsense that never made it into the stimulus and finally you had a jobs bill at a time where jobs are disappearing you had eight hundred thousand jobs lost in january two thousand and nine there was no way they were going to going to close that hole so here we have a president united states barack obama who literally saved us from another great depression who has put us on the path in some sort of positive direction and stablished a whole bunch of really good and positive stuff is it too late for that message to

get out and and if not how will it get out if the administration themselves are not out there touting it. you know it's tough you're talking about this with the government i mean look i hope i hope my book becomes a runaway bestseller and then of course everybody will know about i do too the homelessness prevention programs and you know the build america bonds and high speed rail and all kinds of things that really are creating change but just as with the way people like their medicare and their defense and their social security but say they don't like government when everybody says they hate stimulus right there was a poll in two thousand and ten that showed that the percentage of americans who thought the stimulus had created jobs was lower than the percentage who believed elvis was alive but people actually like the things that are in the stimulus they like their middle class tax cuts they like their aid to the unemployed you know they they like clean energy the doubling renewables a record spending on energy efficiency and the smart grid and electric vehicles and

the factories to build all that stuff the green stuff in the united states so i think you know he's he's trying to get out the message about what's in the recovery act even if he isn't running around saying stimulus stimulus stimulus it's amazing it's all about branding i mean it's just the previous guest we were going around and he was saying everybody hates obamacare but when you ask them about the details of it they go oh yeah i love that same thing here with the with the stimulus michael grunwald done a brilliant job will they summarize it in this and your book the new new deal i highly recommend it thanks so much for being with us tonight. thank you very much. coming up in tonight's big interview we'll get the latest on the julia saunders case with human rights attorney michael ratner number of these songs legal team.

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old don't you tell the truth. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i love driving hip hop music and. he was kind of it yesterday. i'm very. well with its place.