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Rachel breaks through some of the spin on the election results from last night. Unlike most of the pundits in the “mainstream” media who have been doing their best to paint what happened in New Jersey and Virginia as some sort of shift by the electorate back to the Republican Party, Rachel does a very nice job keeping the results in perspective. As Rachel also notes, the Tea Baggers are gearing up for more conservative challengers in 2010 and for some more Astroturf protests on Capitol Hill, undeterred by the loss in NY-23.

MADDOW: But we begin tonight with the end of election 2009 and the very exciting beginning of election 2010 -- which, of course, starts with the breathless spinning of last night's results.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR ®, MISSISSIPPI: There's no question that these elections propel Republicans into 2010.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won one in California, we won the big one in New York 23, where the Obama agenda was at play were in the two congressional races, both of which were won by Democrats.

REP. ERIC CANTOR ®, VIRGINIA: Taking away from this, you know, we look to '010. People have clearly made a choice in our state. They have said no to the one-way street of the economic policies of the Obama administration and the Pelosi Congress.

MICHAEL STEELE, RNC CHAIRMAN: Assume the Heisman position. Yes, baby.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I told you!

STEELE: There you go. That's my moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Yes, baby.

Spin aside, the political map in this country did change last night. Before last night, here was the partisan breakdown of governor seats across the country: 22 Republican governors and 28 Democrats.

After last night, this is what it looks like. Yes, I know, stunning, right? Republicans picked up Virginia and New Jersey. So, we're now at 24 Republicans and 26 Democrats.

In terms of congressional races, last night California's 10th district stayed blue, but it got a little blue-ier as moderate Democrat Ellen Tauscher was replaced by progressive Democrat John Garamendi.

The congressional race that got all of the attention last night was, of course, in the northeast. It was New York's 23rd congressional district.

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Rachel Maddow talks to former Lieberman political rival Ned Lamont about what is driving Sen. Lieberman to obstruct health reform and threaten to filibuster his own caucus. As Ned notes, it was Republican money that got him elected and he's showing that political allegiance now. I think he doesn't care what party it is as long as his pockets are being lined.

Maddow: I have a feeling you're going to say "I told you so" but I have to ask. Does it surprise you that Sen. Lieberman would join Republicans to filibuster health reform?

Lamont: It surprises me in this sense, that everybody thought that our race three years ago was just about the war in Iraq, whether it was a good idea to invade or not, but we spent an awful lot of time talking about health care reform and during that race I accused Sen. Lieberman of dithering and after twenty years in the Senate not doing anything on fundamental health care reform, and he was the one that came back and said unilaterally "I support universal health insurance for all Americans and I'm going to fight for it". So I'm surprised that a few years later he is dithering again.

Maddow: I know...I went back and looked at some of the contemporaneous coverage from your race and I know back in September of 2006, during that fight Sen. Lieberman told reporters on a conference call “I have long supported the goal of universal health care. Ned Lamont can talk about it. I’ve been doing something about it all the time I’ve been here.” If he does end up being the one guy who stops it, if it is his filibuster, what do you think the political costs will be of that?

Lamont: Look the people of Connecticut are ready to have a vote. They want to have a vote on fundamental health care reform and they want the choice of a public option. Sen. Chris Dodd and all of our Congressionals are on board with that and it’s Sen. Lieberman who’s the outlier, so I think there will be political consequences if a Sen. Lieberman is the one person who stands in the way, who obstructs our opportunity to have a fundamental vote on health care reform.

Maddow: What do you think those consequences will be though? One of the things that we have to think about is what happens in Washington, whether or not the Democrats and the Senate allow him to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee—there’s also the question of whether he faces political consequences at home. He seems to be planning to run again.

Lamont: I believe—I probably wouldn’t know—I’d be the last person in Connecticut to know whether he’s going to run again but I can tell you this; there’s an awful lot of folks here who are looking forward to the opportunity of challenging Sen. Lieberman. You know during our race a few years ago he said nobody wants to have a Democrat elected president as much as I do. He supported health care reform. Nobody wanted to get the troops home more than he did. Three years is a long time. I think there are a number of folks, independent, moderates, Republicans and Democrats who are disappointed where the words aren’t matching the action and are looking for a change.

Maddow: Why do you think he doesn’t just become a Republican?

Lamont: I think he’s been a Democrat for an awful long time, but I think tactically he’s probably looking at his options right now. I’ve got to believe when you walk away from health care reform, when you deny your fellow Senators the right to vote on health care reform, that seems to be somebody that knows he was elected in 2006 with overwhelming Republican support. I think that’s his base.

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Lawrence O'Donnell took his turn filling in for Keith on Countdown and Rachel Maddow called out the Cheney's for their continual lying on her show the next hour. CREW's Melanie Sloan joined Rachel later in the segment to discuss the newly released interview by the FBI which did not reveal much--other than his willingness to throw Scooter Libby under the bus. More on that from Marcy Wheeler:

Hung Out to Dry: One Former VP Chief of Staff

If I were Scooter Libby right now, I’d be seething. I’d be utterly disgusted with the way Dick Cheney hung me out to dry, over and over and over, in his interview with Fitzgerald. Cheney denies any knowledge of issues he and Libby worked on together repeatedly and he denies that his own orders and instructions had anything to do with activities that ultimately (though Cheney of course didn’t admit this) ended up outing Valerie Wilson.

There are three general categories of information about which Cheney hangs Libby out to dry.

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Transcript from Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 29, 2009. Rachel reports that Evan Bayh is now walking back from his comments made on CBS News and has released this statement:

Senator Bayh will support moving forward to a health care debate on the Senate floor, where he will work hard to address his concerns and craft affordable legislation that reduces the deficit and lowers health care costs for Indiana families and small businesses.

Maddow: In other words according to his office's statement today Sen. Bayh is now promising to allow the bill to come to the floor, but would he still like Lieberman filibuster the final vote with Republicans? Would he block a majority vote on the final bill and force his party to get sixty votes to pass health reform instead of fifty? Well, exclusively this afternoon Sen. Bayh told us this.

He told us that his position on health reform is not the same as Sen. Lieberman. Sen. Bayh told us it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would filibuster health reform. He said there is nothing in the bill he is aware of now that would cause him to vote to filibuster and he said that he currently "can't think of a set of circumstances under which he would vote against cloture.

What does this mean? It means that it's been a very big 24 hours for health reform. Sen. Bayh's statement as of 24 hours ago indicated that he had walked through the door that Joe Lieberman had opened--that he was willing to go even further than Joe Lieberman—not only willing to filibuster the final bill on health reform, but to filibuster any debate as well, both of those perceived threats from Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana have been walked way back. Which means that Joe Lieberman stands alone—Joe Lonely.

And round and round we go. Lieberman needs to be stripped of his chairmanship and as I said in my post yesterday, if Joe Lieberman wants to filibuster his own caucus, break out the cot and the diapers Joe.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Glenn Greenwald about Joe Lieberman's threat to filibuster the health care bill if it contains a public option, Evan Bayh quickly following suit and the financial gain being made by both men and their spouses for doing so.

Maddow: Sen. Lieberman has made it very clear that he plans to oppose health reform that includes a public option. He’ll filibuster it in fact which would be historic. What do you think is motivating him?

Greenwald: Well I think you have to look first of all at a Research 2000 Daily KOS poll that was taken last month that shows that a margin of 68 to 21% of Connecticut voters, the people who he’s essentially representing, favor a public option. That’s a 47 point margin which is almost impossible to find on almost any other issue. So when you ask why he’s doing this, it’s clearly not because the people he’s supposed to be representing favor it.

I think clearly what it’s about is primarily that fact that the industry that he’s serving by doing this—by preventing competition with the public option—is an industry from which he receives very substantial benefits. He’s drowning in campaign contributions from the insurance industry, the health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry—more than $2.5 million.

In early 2005 his wife was hired by a large P.R. firm, Hill & Knowlton, in the pharmaceutical division, which at the time was representing the health care giant Glaxo in major legislation before the Senate. And several months later Joe Lieberman was on the floor of the Senate offering legislation that would directly steer huge amounts of incentives to that company in order to develop vaccines.

So I think what you’re seeing here is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery that runs the United States Senate; only in this case it’s particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Steve Benen about the Republican infighting going on in the New York 23rd District's special election. As Steve noted yesterday:

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd continues to pick up endorsements from leading right-wing figures. Yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) bucked his party and threw his support to Hoffman. Reps. Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Dana Rohrabacher of California did the same thing.

Transcript from MSNBC.

MADDOW: This is Betsy Markey. She‘s the Democratic member of Congress representing Colorado‘s fourth district. Betsy Markey got elected to that seat last November when she defeated a three-term, very far-right Republican incumbent named Marilyn Musgrave.

Even Colorado‘s—even as Colorado was thought of as a pretty safe Republican territory, the incumbent Republican, Ms. Musgrave, just got clobbered by the Democrat in this race. She lost by 12 points, wasn‘t even close.

This race is ringing a bell for you maybe because it‘s the only House race from the last election that we were still covering a week after the election was over, because not only did Marilyn Musgrave make news for being a conservative Republican who got trounced in what was supposed to be a safe seat, on this show at least, Ms. Musgrave also made news because even a week after she lost, she still hadn‘t conceded the race, nor had she called to congratulate Betsy Markey who beat her.

We called Betsy Markey‘s office today and confirm that even now, almost a year after that election, Republican Marilyn Musgrave still hasn‘t conceded the race. It‘s possible she still thinks she‘s in Congress.

Well, today, in “The New York Times,” we learned that one of the things Marilyn Musgrave is up to now is campaigning in a New York congressional race that‘s attracted a whole host of ambitious conservatives to rail against the locally-chosen Republican in the race in favor of a more conservative candidate.

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Rachel Maddow reports on some breaking news from The New York Times-Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll:

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

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Steve Hynd has more over at Newshoggers--Karzai's Narco-Trafficking Brother Is On CIA's Payroll

The New York Times, in what must be a measure of how sure they are of their information, rolled out the big guns today - Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen - to write the story of how Afghan president Hamid Karzai's brother has been on the CIA payroll for years. [...]

What the CIA has done, and done for most of the last eight years apparently, directly undermines any population-centric counter-insurgency that was ever possible in Afghanistan. The leaking of its ties to Karzai's brother is a disaster of nightmare proportions for any chance of COIN success there, the icing on the cake. Added to all the other factors - the election, the civilians bombed, the abysmal state of the Afghan security forces, the very fact of a foreign occupation - the occupation has passed its tipping point for sure. [...]

Although that will be bolting stable doors after the horses have all bolted. It's a pity in many ways that this will land on Obama's doorstep when it was obviously a Bush administration initiative. My advice to the current White House would be to forget about the usual "we don't comment on intelligence operations" bulls**t. We're talking a potential Iran/Contra level mess here - spill the beans.

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Oh you've just got to love this. As Rachel notes, right in the middle of a health care crisis with the swine flu, Republicans are playing politics with a Surgeon General appointment to get even with the Democrats for wanting to investigate a health insurance company. Isn't that special?

Maddow: Next up—remember when President Obama nominated a new Surgeon General? If you don’t remember that it’s because it happened a really long time ago, way back on July 13th when the President announced that Regina Benjamin, a family physician from Alabama who’s going to be his pick. Dr. Benjamin was finally and unanimously approved by the Senate Health, Education and Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month, but she hasn’t received a full vote in the Senate.

Senate Republicans are holding up her nomination as a favor to the health insurance industry. As we reported on this show last month the health insurance company Humana sent out a mailer targeting seniors that was designed to scare them about health reform. The mailer said in part “millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many … important benefits and services”. This is not only quite in poor taste and factually dubious, but quite possibly in violation of the marketing rules that Humana has to follow as a provider of part of Medicare.

Rules designed so that Medicare patients won’t be confused about who’s sending them information about their benefits—confused about whether it’s the insurance companies or the government.

Well Democratic Senator Max Baucus responded to that mailer from Humana by urging the Department of Health and Human Services to take action, which they did in the form of starting an investigation into Humana’s mailer. It is still ongoing and as Roll Call newspaper now reports it is because of that investigation that Senate Republicans are holding up the nomination of Dr. Regina Benjamin to the Surgeon General of the United States.

So the time where there have been a thousand deaths from swine flu and the President has declared a national emergency, we as a country don’t need deserve a Surgeon General because Republicans want the health insurance industry to be left alone to scare old people about health reform.

Country first?

No Rachel, I think that would be insurance lobbyist first.

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Rachel Maddow talks to editor and partner of BoingBoing Xeni Jardin about the bill introduced by Sen. John McCain that would block the FCC from keeping the entire Internet accessible to everyone. I completely agree with Rachel here. If I have to choose between the old guy who admitted that he doesn't know the difference between a MAC and a PC and that has also admitted he has to rely on his wife for "all of the assistance he can get" when it comes to using a computer, and who is as Rachel notes "the single largest Congressional recipient of campaign contributions from the telecom industry from Jan. 2007-June of this year", I'm going to "side with the geeks" as well who think this is a really bad idea.

Marcy Wheeler has more on this over at FDL--McCain Rediscovers His Passion for Screwing Us with Bad Telecom Policy and doesn't hold back any punches in her criticism of McCain. Harsh stuff but well deserved IMO.

McCain just joined the ranks of Ted Stevens and those Internet Tubes. Clueless, dangerous and willing to sell himself to the highest bidder on an issue he has absolutely no business being allowed to make policy on.

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Rachel Maddow reports on the funding source behind Liz Cheney's "Keep America Safe". Surprise, surprise...a man who's helping to attempt to "polish" Dick Cheney's political legacy. I don't know how anyone could possibly "polish" that big of a turd, but it looks like it's not going to stop them from trying.

Maddow: Big news to report tonight about a new effort by the Cheney family and funded by some of the biggest money men in the Republican Party to attack President Obama on national security to try to undermine his presidency. It’s an effort that’s being led on the surface by Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. And tonight we’re learning new details about whose bankrolling their mission behind the scenes.

In conjunction with former Vice-President Cheney’s speech this week attacking President Obama for not having yet announced a decision on the way forward in Afghanistan, a new pressure group headed up by Mr. Cheney’s daughter Liz has released this new attack ad. […]

According to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff Keep America Safe is gearing up to run TV ads and radio ads and web ads like that in the home districts of Democratic members of Congress in the lead up to the 2010 elections. They’re promising in particular to attempt to exploit the issue of closing Guantanamo for political gain.

The lead story on the Keep America Safe web site right now says “Transferring Gitmo Prisoners To U.S. Will Set Them Free”. Well today Mr. Isikoff revealed on Newsweek’s new Classified blog exactly who is bankrolling the Cheney family’s Keep America Safe political machine. America—meet Mel Sembler. He may not be a household name to most of us, but he’s a Florida real estate mogul who is very, very well known in Republican circles.

Mr. Sembler is the former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. He served as President Bush’s ambassador to Italy and he’s now throwing all of his considerable financial muscle behind the Cheney’s new anti-Obama venture. Mr. Sembler told Newsweek “I love Liz Cheney and what she’s doing… [I’ll be] as supportive as my budget will allow”.

Mr. Sembler is a very close friend of the Cheney family. Here he is posing with the Second Lady of the United States Lynn Cheney. He’s so close to the Cheney’s in fact that in addition to bankrolling the Cheney’s family’s new anti-Obama political group, Mr. Sembler is also the chairman of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust, set up to defend Mr. Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby when Mr. Libby was charged with lying and obstructing the investigation into the Bush/Cheney White House for outing a covert CIA officer as political revenge. The “Scooter Didn’t Do It” chairman is the new bankroller of the opposition to President Obama and incidentally the polishing of Dick Cheney’s political legacy, which seems like it might be an expensive undertaking.

Michael Isikoff joined Rachel to discuss his column at Newsweek--Update: Major Republican Donor Plans to Fund Liz Cheney’s New Organization

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Rachel Maddow weighed in on the ongoing dust-up between the White House and Fox News and the collective freak-out by Fox and the right wing over herself and Keith Olberman, among others, being invited to a meeting at the White House. She wrapped it up with this statement:

Maddow: You can be upset all you want that the president meets with people who you disagree with. But consider being fair and balanced in your criticism, at least admit that this White House has met with both sides while the Bush White House did not. You should especially admit that if you happened to have been a member of the Bush White House during that administration.

Keith joined Rachel later in the segment and talked about how hypocritical and completely disingenuous all of this pearl clutching has been by the right.

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Transcript below the fold.

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As Rachel reports, it looks like the vote taken by 30 Republicans to protect contractors rather than rape victims is not playing very well for them in their local papers.

Jamie Leigh Jones and her attorney joined Rachel to talk about what happened to her and weigh in on the Republican response that the amendment was just a way to take a "political shot" at Halliburton.

MADDOW: One specific vote on one specific part of the giant legislation that funds the Defense Department is turning into a real political problem for 30 Republican senators.

In Idaho, the "Lewiston Morning Tribune" called out its two senators in an editorial titled, "Senators Crapo and Risch Cast an Inexplicable Vote."

In Mississippi, "The Clarion Ledger" editorialized, quote, "Senators Cochran and Wicker voted to protect corporations, not victims, and they should own up to that."

An opinion piece in the "Osawatomie Graphic" was titled simply, "Kansas Senators are Disappointing." In Tennessee, a "Crossville Chronicle" writers asked, "Whose Side are Our Senators On?"

The "Athens Banner Herald" in Georgia headlined a letter quote, "Georgia Senators Embarrass State." And in Louisiana, a "Shreveport Times" writer asks, quote, "What exactly is Sen. David Vitter problem with women."

When Republicans are getting called out in Mississippi, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia, something big is going on politically. This all began when 30 Senate Republicans voted against an amendment by Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.

The amendment said that the government shouldn't give defense contracts to companies if those companies prevent their employees who have been raped or discriminated against from suing in court.

Franken's amendment passed, but 30 male Republican senators voted no on it. Now, much of the outraged response to that vote across the country is due to the fact that this legislation was prompted by a horrible real-life case, the case of Jamie Leigh Jones.

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So what happens when a moderate Republican (Dede Scozzafava) gets bushwhacked from the far right in her quest to win a seat in congress, in what would normally be in a district where the prospects were pretty good she'd win? First, her finances dry up; right-wing Club for Growth starts running ads for her Conservative opponent while she can't run any due to lack of money; she gets attacked by Dick Armey (albeit Newt Gingrich tried to come to her rescue); The Weekly Standard starts running snide things about her campaign so her campaign manager flips out and calls the cops on him.

And then this.

In what can only be described, charitably, as a severe lapse in judgment or common sense, a protest news conference staged in front of her Conservative opponent's headquarters goes awry. And the resulting optics were less than stellar. Scozzafava's pained expression probably came at the exact moment she realized she would be seen standing in front of a wall of signs for her opponent on the local evening news.

Somewhere Democrat Bill Owens and his campaign are chuckling at the continuing travails of the Republicans in upstate New York, and perhaps even the oncoming civil war within the national Republican party itself.

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Rachel Maddow weighed in on the race on her show last night.

Maddow: Common political wisdom is that the first round of elections in the new president‘s first year are a referendum on that president. This year‘s bellwether looks a lot more like a referendum on the state of the Republican Party. And at this point, Democrats rejoice. It‘s a cage match.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the trouble the Republicans have been having finding someone to run against him.

Maddow: So you now have somebody moving from another district—well two people—two candidates possibly moving from another district to run against you.

Grayson: Oh, they decided they’re in and three others—but you know we polled, we’ve already polled and we found out that people with fake names have better name recognition than people already in the race against me.

Maddow: You ran—you made up names…

Grayson: We made up names, right, we put them in a poll and the fake names did better than the current opponents.

Grayson on bipartisanship.

Maddow: On health reform let me ask you right now how you feel about the two sides right now. We talked about it at the top of the show. Sen. Jon Kyl, Republican, this weekend saying he doesn’t believe that death rates are higher for people who don’t have health insurance. The chair of the Republican Party says we just don’t need health reform. How do you see the two sides right now.

Grayson: I think that the Democrats have been fooled now for months by this fantasy of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is a concept that’s become a weapon of mass distraction to keep us from actually doing what we need to do—to give people in this country universal health care—to give them affordable health care—and to give them comprehensive health care.

Because a lot of people find they get all the health care they need as long as they don’t need any. And that has to end. That’s not what American is entitled to and that’s not the kind of America most people want to see. But instead we get bogged down in these nuisances. I don’t remember hearing a lot about bipartisanship when we were talking about tax breaks for the rich.

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Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz both responded to Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's new group Keep America Safe's ad, which accused them of being afraid to debate her. Rachel was polite as always and said Ms. Cheney is welcome on her show any time. Ed Schultz had some of his guests weigh in as well and was not so kind to Cheney. He questioned why she was qualified to work at the State Department in the first place and I think Bill Press' response was the most appropriate.

Press: You know what I think Ed? This was another balloon hoax. This whole thing is a total hoax, this Keep America Safe thing. It is. It's a total media creation. You're right about Liz Cheney. What about Bill Kristol? This is the guy that brought the country Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin—Bill Kristol—the one that wanted Bill Clinton to invade Iraq in 1997—what credentials—and I'm sorry Earnest, but the credentials of the people who represent the organization do say a lot about the organization. You’ve got Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol—neither of them know squat about security. And we’re supposed to believe them?