In a discussion about the Obama campaign’s cartoon vision of “what women want” – the faceless, neuter-race cartoon that has become known as “Julia” – Democratic strategist and MSNBC contributor Karen Finney went a step too far in saying that a version of Julia’s life under policies advocated by Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans would end in her 30s… because she would be dead… get it? And, with that, Finney exposed the overreach of the Julia campaign and why it squanders the advantage that Democrats won among female swing voters in the early part of this year.

The Obama campaign’s latest effort to frame the administration’s policy achievements in a way that is equally informative and terror-inducing for those voters that might fear a Republican reversal of the President’s social policies in a cartoon woman named “Julia.” Republicans mocked the Obama campaign’s latest campaign tool on Thursday, but liberals claimed the attack on Republicans and Mitt Romney in particular to be effective. But are Republicans jumping the gun by declaring Julia a failed joke?

On Tuesday night’s edition of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert mock-defended Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who criticized Ryan’s plan as unjust, and from President Obama called the budget plan “thinly-veiled social darwinism.”

Rep. Paul Ryan‘s calls for fiscal austerity have not exactly been met with cheers around The Ed Show, as is to be expected. But on the program last night, host Ed Schultz took a look beyond the politics to Rep. Ryan’s interview with Catholic network EWTN, and how the Congressman has explained discrepancies in thought between himself and the church. Joined by Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, Schultz argued that Rep. Ryan’s reliance on the Church for charity was an easy way out, and Dyson argued that taking away safety nets was “antithetical to the fundamental issue of Jesus.”

Dana Perino appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to discuss David Axelrod’s comments on Fox News Sunday in which he appeared to suggest that the “path we’re on” needed work. Perino said in response that Mitt Romney is on track “in the next six to eight weeks, Romney will definitely pull ahead and be the frontrunner in the race.”

On Tuesday, Chris Matthews hosted a debate between former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Wall Street Journal economic columnist Steve Moore on the value of the debate over entitlement reform and the political good will that President Obama is hoping to tap in the electorate advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning where he said President Obama has a tendency to engage in “verbal tantrums” and he expects to see more similar behavior as the general election heats up.

In Friday’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks wrote unleashed a rather blunt attack on President Obama. The piece, entitled “That Other Obama,” criticized the president’s response to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. When Obama takes the “low road,” Brooks argued, he makes Mitt Romney look like “Mr. Authenticity.” While complimenting his intellect, Brooks noted the president has the tendency to occasionally put on “his Keith Olbermann mask.”

In a small but significant aside during his remarks at the Associated Press Luncheon today, President Obama cracked on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney over his use of the word “marvelous” to describe the Paul Ryan budget. The quip drew laughter from the crowd, and seemed designed to underscore Romney’s famous purported stiffness, but was there something deeper at play here? Is President Obama trying to draw on the old stand-up comedy trope of the stiff white guy?

President Obama had fighting words about Paul Ryan‘s budget, and Jay Carney spoke to Bret Baier on Tuesday to discuss it. As Carney defensively cited the president’s “balanced” approach, Baier sparred with him, pressing him on the Senate Democrats’ inability to pass a budget despite having enough votes.

With the Republican Party slowly but surely coalescing around Mitt Romney, Jon Stewart began his show today looking for some semblance of enthusiasm for the frontrunner among Republicans, and finding not all that much– from former President George H.W. Bush to Sen. Marco Rubio to his wife, Ann. He found so little, he rewrote a few previous Republican campaign slogans to reflect this level of enthusiasm.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the subject of an April Fools prank over the weekend, set by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R), in which he was tricked into appearing at a campaign event at which it initially appeared that no one showed up.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, Congressman Paul Ryan admitted he spoke out of school when he claimed that military leaders did not support President Obama‘s proposed budget for FY 2013. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that Ryan was essentially calling them liars. Ryan explained to Candy Crowley that he “misspoke” and that he “didn’t mean to make that kind of an impression.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on Fox & Friends Friday to endorse former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his choice to be the eventual Republican nominee.

Talk show host and author Tavis Smiley stopped by the set of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, where he was taken back by one particular aspect of Rep. Paul Ryan‘s commercial on the House Budget Committee, which shows the Congressman walking down a hallway and discussing the nation’s budget crisis while noting that he had been “here, in Congress.”

Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) sent Talking Points Memo a public apology Thursday after the site obtained audio of the five-term Republican telling constituents at a town hall this week that he’d have to personally shoot members of the U.S. Senate to get a budget passed through the chamber.

On Meet the Press today, Congressman Paul Ryan talked payroll tax cuts and much else, but David Gregory shifted the conversation to ask Ryan a more political question about the race for the presidency on his side of the aisle. If Mitt Romney ends up losing the Michigan primary to Rick Santorum and is no longer the moderate conservative who has the best chance against President Obama, does Ryan think another person should get into the race?

Congressman Paul Ryan appeared on This Week today, and he responded to a recent poll brought up by George Stephanopoulos that the approval rating of Congress is currently at 10 percent, worse than Nixon’s worst day during Watergate. Ryan’s response to everyone who is dissatisfied with Washington is simple: the Republican House has been working tirelessly to get legislation passed, but the Senate keeps stonewalling everything and preventing anything from getting accomplished.

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan appeared on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning to discuss the White House’s decision to cut and ration Medicare spending. “The President and his party leaders’ rhetoric never match up their agenda,” Ryan told host Gretchen Carlson, adding that he thinks things will be just fine for Republicans “once the dust settles” on budget discussions concerning Medicare.

Those of us who don’t like it when waitresses come over to us in restaurants to sing “Happy Birthday” should be able to sympathize. Congressman Paul Ryan‘s birthday is today, and yet he took time out of whatever decadent Bacchanalia he clearly had planned to stop by Fox News Sunday to talk politics and the economy with Chris Wallace. At the end of the interview, Wallace noted it was Ryan’s 42nd birthday, and then, inexplicably, one of Wallace’s crewpeople appeared on camera presenting Ryan with a birthday cake.

One of the biggest legislative battles to be fought in 2012 will undoubtedly be the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents claim the bill goes too far in its aims to combat online piracy and amounts to internet censorship. Protests and boycotts have emerged from the website Reddit, and after a huge boycott of GoDaddy after the domain hosting service announced its support of the legislation, activists are now targeting politicians who support the legislation, including an entire operation focused on Congressman Paul Ryan.

One overlooked effect of Politifact’s naming “Republicans Voted To End Medicare” their “Lie Of The Year” is that it gives the false impression that Paul Ryan‘s original plan to end Medicare as we know it was nothing to worry about, and paves the way for acceptance of the newer Ryan-Wyden Medicare “reform” plan. In an interview with Fox Business’s David Asman, liberal radio and TV host Thom Hartmann slammed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Politifact for their assault on Medicare.

Since announcing “Republicans voted to end Medicare” as its “Lie Of The Year” yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check outfit Politifact.com has faced more blowback than a chronic spitter on a Ducati. While they apparently think this is just griping by the left, even the conservative National Review says they got it wrong. What Politifact doesn’t seem to realize is that this wasn’t just a wrong decision, it was an irresponsible one that undercuts their own, and journalism’s, duty to serve the public.

Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website Politifact.com revealed its 2011 “Lie Of The Year” today, which is the essentially true claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare. While Politifact is taking heavy fire from liberals over its ridiculous decision, the site’s editor Bill Adair took to the airwaves to explain the award, and told a whopper of a lie himself on CBS News’ The Early Show Tuesday morning, while also demonstrating the central fallacy of the award, all in the same sentence.

ABC’s This Week began the first in a series of big debates that will continue throughout the next year. Today’s topic was whether government is too big or not, with two advocates on each side arguing for each position, and naturally the conversation made its way to drug legalization. In quite a surreal moment, Barney Frank asked George Will his position on marijuana and if it should be legalized.