How many times did Tucker have this coming when he worked for MSNBC but he never made the Worst Persons list since he was at the same network? Keith lets loose on him in this segment.

OLBERMANN: The Beck theory that the government is using On Star to track your whereabouts. This close to claiming they implanted microchips in his head.

That‘s next, but first time for COUNTDOWN‘s number two story, tonight‘s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to Boss Limbaugh. I‘ll just read this: “Obama is out there saying that Fox News is talk radio. I‘m living rent-free in this guy‘s head. Fox News is talk radio. If that‘s true, MSNBC is pornography. And Obama likes MSNBC. CNN is child porn.”

Wow, his imagery gets more and more disturbing every day.

The runner-up, Tucker Carlson, world sophistry champion. “The two most senior members of the White House staff attempt to bully a news outlet into silence and hardly anyone in the press says a word. Meanwhile, the same White House that had just finished lecturing working journalists on the superiority of straight news coverage hosted a secret, off the record briefing for Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. The two, along with several other liberal commentators, spent more than two hours with Obama. Why is the press corps giving the White House a pass for behavior it never would have tolerated from other administrations? Conservatives believe it‘s simple bias.”

I‘m a little tired of the sanctimonious, amnesic crap from people like Tucker Carlson. The previous White House planted questions in its own news conference, secretly paid conservative columnists, staged massage briefing sessions for radio hosts, sent out a list of questions they hoped I would use to discredit Joe Wilson, publicly attacked NBC, publicly attacked MSNBC, by the admission of the press secretary, just the other day, cut MSNBC out of access to administration officials, and its party leadership tried to blackmail NBC News into removing me from election coverage by threatening to boycott a presidential debate.

This White House finally called out a group of amoral political operatives posing as journalists. That was it. They didn‘t deny them credentials. They didn‘t try to silence them. They didn‘t take them off the air. They didn‘t try to take them off the air. They called them what they are, the media propaganda wing of the Republican party.

And I‘m a little tired of the false equivalency here. You go ask this White House if they‘re happy that I‘m insisting on the public option when they‘re not. You go ask this White House if they‘re happy that I‘m pushing for torture prosecutions and they‘re trying to soft pedal them.

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This post should have gone up the other day, but I accidentally deleted it. Anyway, many Republicans in Congress think that the teabaggers are just your average extreme wingnut who has been radicalized by FOX, but still loves them their conservatives.

Well, Lindsey Graham got a taste of what has been going on far more times than the media will ever mention. Part of the teabagger base has no love for the warmongering Bushies either. They are too ignorant to apply the same rules for Beck and Hannity because they need leaders to focus their hatred for them, but Lindsey does not have such a luxury. They want the country to be made up of militia-style right wingers that are heavily armed and want no part of the black president.

Brad Johnson fills us in.

Right-wing activists across the nation are enraged by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) decision to work with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to craft comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. In an op-ed published in Sunday’s New York Times, Graham and Kerry discussed their agreement on a framework for mandatory global warming pollution reductions linked to government support for the nuclear, coal, and natural gas industries. The Natural Resource Defense Council’s Dan Lashof embraced the announcement as a “game changer.” Bill Scher noted that Graham has “crossed the climate Rubicon,” abandoning denialist conservative activists by recognizing the threat of global warming and working with Democrats.
--
Graham held a town hall meeting in Greenville, South Carolina in which local Tea Party activists accused him of “going to bed with John Kerry” and making a “pact with the devil,” accusations which generated tremendous applause by the assembled crowd. This unhinged response is reflected in the conservative blogosphere, where Graham has been called a “fake Republican,” “RINO” (Republican in name only), a “traitor,” “disgrace,” “asshat,” “democrat in drag,” and a “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy”

You can expect this behavior for a long time. If Dick Armey were still part of the Republican congress, he too would be getting the same treatment if he tried to help solve some problems facing America today with any Democratic politician. Instead, he's out there helping organize these characters -- at the behest of the insurance companies. Guys like Graham get to deal with the beast they've unleashed.

From CNN's State of the Union. Looks like some pushback against the Lindsey Grahams of the world from Jim Jones.

National Security Adviser Chides McChrystal:

President Obama's National Security Adviser James L. Jones suggested Sunday that the public campaign being conducted by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan on behalf of his war strategy is complicating the internal White House review now underway, saying that "it is better for military advice to come up through the chain of command."

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands the 100,000 U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, warned bluntly last week in a London speech that a strategy for defeating the Taliban narrower than the one he is advocating would be ineffective and "short-sighted." The comments effectively rejected a policy option that senior White House officials, including Vice President Biden, are seriously considering nearly eight years after the U.S. invasion.

McChrystal's statement came a day after he was challenged by senior White House officials over his dire assessment of the war -- and what it will take to improve the U.S. position there -- during a video conference from Kabul with Obama and his national security team. Obama then summoned McChrystal to Copenhagen the day after the general's speech for a private meeting aboard Air Force One.

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Of course no one in the media is bothering to ask why Obama would have promoted the likes of Gen. McChrystal in the first place given his record.

McChrystal's Pat Tillman Connection:

Now the man who greased the chain of command that orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given explicitly for combat, even though he later testified that he "suspected" friendly fire.

Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen. John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it became clear that he kind of drifted away."

And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise for Obama's new general, must once again raise the inconvenient truth.

[....]

What particularly rankles about Obama's choice of McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and shadowy world of "black ops," is that his actions in the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional.

[....]

Clearly President Obama is trying to "own" the war in Afghanistan: upping the troop levels, making it his "central front" in the battle against terrorism and now placing his own general in charge. But the president is also disappointing a generation of antiwar activists who voted for him expecting an end to imperial adventures and torture sanctioned by the executive branch. Now a man who should perhaps be on trial at the Hague is in charge of Afghanistan. Obama needs to know it's not just the Tillmans who are enraged by this terrible choice.

As Siun at Firedoglake notes:

Jones was not the only one to push back on the McChrystal PR campaign this week and it seems that a number of informed voices seem to share my concern that McChrystal is “teetering towards insubordination.”

Transcript below the fold.

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John King asks Mary Matalin what she thinks about Lindsey Graham's statement that Glenn Beck does not represent the Republican Party and Matlin does her best to distance Beck from the party as well. This is looking like a new theme her from them. He may not be willing to call himself a Republican but he sure as hell is doing their dirty work for them.

KING: All right. One more. One more before I let you go. Glenn Beck works for another network here in town. I believe it's the FOX News network. And there's been a great controversy about some of the things he said about the president. It was put to Lindsey Graham, a conservative senator from North Carolina, this morning on another program. Does Glenn Beck speak for you and the Republican Party?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: No. I'm not saying he's bad for America. You've got the freedom to watch him, if you choose. He did a pretty good job on ACORN.

What I am saying, he doesn't represent the Republican Party. When a person says he represents conservatism and that the country is better off with Barack Obama than John McCain, that sort of ends the debate for me as to how much more I'm going to listen.

So he has a right to say what he wants to say. In my view, it's not -- it's not the kind of political analysis that I buy into.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This is the political analysis I buy into. What do we make of this?

MATALIN: Well, full disclosure, Glenn is a threshold author, Simon & Schuster imprint, of which I'm associated with. Glenn has two best-sellers. This has never happened before. Two No. 1 best-sellers in hard cover and paperback, non-fiction. All right. Somebody out there is listening, what Glenn Beck says. I know he doesn't listen and Lindsey doesn't listen.

Glenn Beck is unequivocal in saying he's not a Republican; he's not a Democrat. He possibly has libertarian leanings in a vacuum. So what he has tapped into is really, really what I think is going to be the dispositive future for us. Maligned mothers.

He did not -- it wasn't just ACORN. He did the czars. He was instrumental in these tea parties and this rising opposition, again, of people who aren't typically listened to. He doesn't affiliate with either party, or any party, but he has tapped into this mainstream of America who feels otherwise not listened to.

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Fox News' Bret Baier asked Sen. Lindsey Graham to elaborate on his opinion that Glenn Beck is a "cynic" Sunday.

"What I am saying, he doesn't represent the Republican Party," said Graham.

"But at the end of the day, when a person says he represents conservatism and that the country's better off with Barack Obama than John McCain," Graham continued. "That sort of ends the debate for me as to how much more I'm going to listen."

Lindsey Graham uses the news that eight American troops were just killed by the Taliban in a remote outpost to try and make it seem like President Obama doesn't support the troops if he doesn't bow down to Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan on FOX News Sunday.

GRAHAM: Well, the one thing I can tell you for sure, without reinforcing our troops, you’re going to hear more of what happened today. General McChrystal said without reinforcements we cannot change the momentum that the Taliban has achieved, and the insurgency cannot be defeated in a year if something doesn’t change.

We had this very dilemma in Iraq. We didn’t have enough troops. Everybody thought Maliki was a sectarian prime minister. The country wasn’t governing itself. The security environment became terrible.

The one thing I can tell you, if we don’t add more troops, you’re going to see more of what happened yesterday. The security situation’s going to get worse. And any hope of better governance is lost, and the Taliban will re-emerge.

If you send troops in, we’ll have a second chance at governance. You need to put Karzai’s feet to the fire, or the next government’s feet to the fire, to do a better job. But it’s impossible to bring about better governance without security.

American troops have been getting killed in Afghanistan for a long time and Graham never made that claim before. Are their lives any less meaningful before McChrystal's request? And the troops were stationed in a position that would not be occupied by McChrystal's plan so Goober Graham is wrong on that front too if I understand the strategy correctly.

Eight U.S. troops died in tribal militia attacks on two remote American outposts in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, military officials said.

The attacks, which also killed two Afghan security officers, were the deadliest in months for American troops, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The coordinated attacks by tribal militia occurred in the Nuristan province, along the Pakistan border, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

The tribal fighters mounted the attacks from a mosque and a village in the Kamdish district in the eastern part of the province, and American forces "effectively repelled the attack and inflicted heavy enemy casualties," the U.S .military said.

U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal has outlined a new strategy to close down many of the remote outposts like those that came under attack.

And you'll never hear a FOX host or a republican talk about Iraq with any real honesty. A major reason why the violence went down in Iraq was because we paid off a whole lot of Sunni leaders with big bucks so they would stop the violence.

Now we put up a 100,000 Sunni militia on the American payroll, people who used to be shooting at the United States who are now on our payroll.

A google search helps me find this from a blog called Political Impressions:

In an April 2008 report, The Christian Science Monitor stated,

He (Abu Abdullah of the Islamic Army of Iraq) also maintains that while the US has succeeded in driving a wedge between AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) and Sunnis in Anbar Province, many of the tribesmen there who are now on the American payroll are still aiding IAI and other insurgent groups.

Members of these US-backed militias now number almost 91,000 and are paid a total of $16 million a month in salaries by the US. They are often lauded by President Bush in his speeches on Iraq.

Who do we pay in Afghanistan? Can the Taliban be bribed in different regions? I don't think so. The two countries are completely different in every way and so the comparisons of a surge between the two are absurd.
Don't forget abput Blue America's Afghanistn action called "No Means No!"

Sen. Lindsey Graham believes the US should shoulder the responsibility of attacking Iran if an attack is necessary. An attack by the US is preferable to an an attack by Israel, according to Graham.

"I think an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare for the world, because it will rally the Arab world around Iran and they're not aligned now. It's too much pressure to put on Israel," Graham told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

He continued, "Military action should be the last resort anyone looks at, and I would rather our allies and us take military action if it's necessary."

But Graham doesn't think an attack should be limited to airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we use military action against Iran, we should not only go after their nuclear facilities. We should destroy their ability to make conventional war. They should have no planes that can fly and no ships that can float," said Graham.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss agrees. "The problem with military action also is that you're probably not going to be able to stop the production of uranium by just a simple airstrike. Lindsey's right. It's an all or nothing deal. And is it worth that at this point in time when we know they have the capability. We can slow them down, but a full-out military strike is what it would take," said Chambliss.

John Amato:

These warmongers are in their element in this clip. It's bad enough that members of Congress are talking about attacking Iran on national TV. Have they ever seen a country they wouldn't like to blow up? Not only do they want to strike the possible nuke sites, but want to engage in all out warfare regardless of how many civilians were to be killed. They forget to mention how the Arab world would feel about us if we were to strike Iran too. Do they think they would be putting America at risk for their Iran war fantasies? And do they honestly believe American would side with these Neocon war hawks that would actually put us in a third front?

[YouTube here, via MisterMovies.]

This was too funny to pass up. We've known all along that Glenn Beck is a two-bit phony. Now we see how Glenn Beck gets himself properly weepy for the cameras: A little Vicks Vaporub.

One might dismiss this as merely a one-off for this shoot. But you can hear Beck himself say:

Beck: I think it's getting used to it -- my eyes are getting used to it.

From regular and continuous use, mayhaps?

The whole scene reminds us that Beck practices his schtick over and over before he performs. Which means he's gotten real good at working up those tears and choking up to say, "I love my country -- but I fear for it!"

This may be what Sen. Lindsey Graham had in mind yesterday:

Via Sam Stein:

"Only in America can you make that much money crying," Graham said of Beck. "Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers."

In other Beck news:

-- Media Matters has an excellent followup to the Salon piece about Beck's disciplehood at the feet of W. Cleon Skousen -- which in turn illustrated Beck's long history of promoting extremist beliefs -- pointing out that Skousen was not exactly what you would call ... enlightened on matters of race:

Fox News' Glenn Beck has heavily promoted the writings of far-right activist W. Cleon Skousen, even making Skousen's book, The 5000 Year Leap, a central part of his 9-12 Project. Skousen is the author of several controversial works, including The Making of America: The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution, which presented as "the story of slavery in America" a passage from a book that attacked abolitionists for delaying emancipation; cast slave owners as "the worst victims of the system"; claimed white schoolchildren "were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates"; and claimed that "[s]lavery did not make white labor unrespectable, but merely inefficient," because "the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken."

This continues to remind me of last week's interview with Katie Couric, when he refused to explain what he meant by white culture.

[Via ThinkProgress.]

-- Beck is having a little difficulty dealing with Internet memes. Especially when dealing with charges that, by golly, we haven't been able to disprove yet!

-- Finally, has anyone else noticed that, on the cover of his new book, Beck looks exactly like the illegitimate love child of Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz? Just wondering.

Ruh-roh. John Boehner had better watch it or the Tea Baggers are going to be angry with him. He must think that no one has him either transcribed or recorded for the last year. Think Progress cites one example.

Boehner is lying. He has said that what Obama and Democratic leaders are doing is socialism. From his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference a few months ago:

Well, the stimulus, the omnibus, the budget — it’s all one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment. … All of these bills seek to replace our economic freedom with the whims and mandates of politicians and bureaucrats.

GREGORY:This question about the role of the government, and, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying this week what she worries about in terms of the tone of debate is that it could lead to violence, as it did in the ‘70s; you know, there was anti-government violence in the ‘90s in Oklahoma City, as well. How much of a concern is that? Do you share it, or do you think that that was an overstatement on her part?

GRAHAM: Well, quite frankly, I mean, the whole idea of the role of government needs to be debated. The public option; she says there will be no bill coming out of the House without a public option. America is saying, listen, the government programs we’ve got like Medicare is $34 trillion underfunded. The Baucus bill will let—adds 11 million to a Medicaid system that can’t—the states can’t afford. So a lot of us are concerned that Nancy Pelosi and others are pushing government to control prices when it will not work in health care. Competition and choice. If you’ve got only one plan in Alabama, let the people in Alabama shop around the country for plans. But I’m not so worried about—you know, her criticism about the opponents of the plan don’t bother me. The fact that we’re broke...

GREGORY: She’s talking about violence, though.

GRAHAM: Yeah. I don’t...

GREGORY: I mean, we’ll get to the health care. You don’t buy that.

GRAHAM: I don’t think any responsible person is asking for a violent response.

GREGORY: Do you—is that hyperbole?

BOEHNER: David, I’m, I’m not concerned about violence.

GRAHAM: No.

BOEHNER: I mean, I’m sure Speaker Pelosi was sincere in her concern. But let’s remember something. The debate that we’re in here is not just about health care, it’s about the, the trillion-dollar stimulus that was suppose to be about jobs and turned into nothing more spending—than spending and more spending. It was about a budget with a, with a nearly $2 trillion deficit this year and trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see. It’s a cap and trade system, this big giant tax on the American people that this week, we just find out, the Treasury Department said will cost the average family $1700 per year. You add to that this whole question of health care and the government option, the government involvement, and Americans today are getting more news about what’s happening in their government than they have ever gotten before, and Americans are genuinely scared to death. Scared to death...

GREGORY: But, Leader, don’t they get even more scared when you got the head of the Republican Party sending out an e-mail that, you know, to challenge the president and Democratic leaders for a socialist power grab? I mean, is that appropriate conversation? Is this, did you really think the president’s a socialist?

BOEHNER: Listen, when you begin to look at how much they want to grow government, you can call it whatever you want, but the fact is, is that...

GREGORY: Well, what do you call it, though? This is important.

BOEHNER: This is unsustainable. We’re, we’re broke.

GREGORY: That’s fine. Do you think the president’s a socialist? Because that’s what...

BOEHNER: No.

GREGORY: OK. But the head of the Republican Party is, is calling him that.

BOEHNER: Well, listen, I didn’t call him that and I’m not going to call him that. What’s going on here is unsustainable. Our nation is broke. And, and at a time when we’ve got this serious economic problem, a near 10 percent unemployment, we ought to be looking to create jobs in America, not kill jobs in America. Their cap and trade proposal, all this spending, all of this debt and now their healthcare plan will make it more difficult for employers to hire people, more difficult and more expensive to have employees, which means we’re going to have less jobs in America. But Americans are scared. That’s why they’re speaking up and that’s why they’re engaging in their government.

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The White House ready to abandon the public option, according to GOP Senator Lindsey Graham. "I think the public option is dead. It's probably been dead a long time because the public is very afraid," Graham told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

"I think one thing we can say if the deficit matters, which I'm glad to hear it does, and the public option is unacceptable, then the house bill is dead, we should just throw it in the garbage can, because it's $239 billion added to the deficit," Graham said.

Remember how the Iranian elections results made the GOP assume voter fraud and start screaming about election integrity? The world is curiously silent now, isn't it?

In the southern Afghan district of Shorabak, the tribesmen gathered shortly before last month’s presidential election to discuss which candidate they would back. After a debate they chose to endorse Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai’s leading opponent.

The tribal leaders prepared to deliver a landslide for Abdullah – but it never happened. They claim Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and leader of the Kandahar provincial council, detained the local governor and closed all the district’s 46 polling sites on election day.

The ballot boxes were taken back to the district headquarters where, tribal leaders allege, they were stuffed with ballots by local policemen. A total of 23,900 ballots were finally sent off to Kabul, the capital – every one of them a vote for Karzai.

The alleged fraud, which Ahmed Wali Karzai denies, was the most blatant example among hundreds of incidents that have threatened to make a mockery of the election.

The sheer scale and audacity of the cheating, which includes supposedly “state-sponsored” ballot-stuffing, vote burning, intimidation and the closure of polling stations in antigovernment areas, has overwhelmed the country’s fledgling Electoral Complaints Commission.

Its staff are battling with more than 2,600 reports of vote-rigging, including at least 650 deemed serious enough “materially” to influence the result.

“This is a blatant violation of the procedure and I think it is stealing in daylight,” Abdullah said yesterday.

His aides say privately that if Karzai wins the 50.1% of votes needed for victory in the first round, they won’t accept the result. Abdullah said he intended to use all legal means to challenge any Karzai victory; his supporters talked menacingly of “Iran-style protests with Kalashnikovs”.

So this is the test: do we really care about bringing democracy to Afghanistan?

Ah, you've got to love these war mongering Republicans like Lindsey Graham, huh? Never found a war they didn't like. Not that I can say much better about way too many Democrats. Domestic spending to fix health care...the horror! We can't afford that. Money to go blow up some brown people on the other side of the world, hey, let those money coffers flow. We've got to stay safe from those turrists don't you know.

As The Political Carnival noted, Lindsey Graham just turned Don Rumsfeld's name into a verb. It's always so nice to see them admit screw ups after they've allowed America to go blow up both Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't have any business invading either country IMO.

Schieffer: Sen. Graham, what about that? What about when we put our eye back on that area along the border? What's going to need to be done there, and how far do you think Congress is going to be willing to go?

Graham: Well, your question was what would you, what would Congress do if the President said we need more troops in Afghanistan. I'm one Republican that would support more troops in Afghanistan. I do believe, quite Frankly, I'll be shocked if more troops are not requested by our commanders. Afghanistan has deteriorated . In July of last year the President said, when he was a candidate for office that Afghanistan, not Iraq was the central battle in the war on terror.

I disagreed then because Iraq was hanging in the balance. Iraq is more stable. The President is right. Afghanistan is now the central battle front on the war on terror. That means more of everything. More troops, more political engagement, more economic engagement. Carl is right, our NATO allies need to send more troops. The Afghan army being doubled would be a $20 billion appropriation over five years.

America is now paying 90% of the Afghan army. NATO contributed $100 million when Gates passed the hat to help pay for the Afghan army, so I would urge our NATO allies to submit more troops, more funding and I'll be shocked if more troops are not needed. We must secure Afghanistan, and it is not secure now because we don't have enough troops.

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Counting Crows – Mr. Jones

It appears that National Security Advisor James Jones is hitting the trifecta of bobblehead shows, appearing on Face the Nation, Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. I’m guessing that he’ll be discussing North Korea and running defense over the insane GOP talking points.

Of course, the rest of the shows look like nothing more than partisan navel-gazing. My Deaniac heart thumps loudly that Howard Dean will be on This Week, only to sink at the thought of Dean being forced to appear next to Newt Gingrich. Ugh. Carl Levin will be on Face the Nation, but with the perennial Republican guest Lindsey Graham. Maybe Bob Schieffer will ask Huckleberry how he feels about being the only GOP vote for Sonia Sotomayor. I'd like to think that Fareed Zakaria will have a good interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but given that one of the topics on the table is the non-existence of Chelsea Clinton's engagement, I'm not too optimistic.

ABC's "This Week" - Former national Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - National Security Adviser James Jones; Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Jones; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” – Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, John Heilemann, Kathleen Parker. Topics: Who is responsible for the heated rhetoric over President Obama's ethnicity? How has Nixon's reputation recovered? Is Clinton seeing the same resurgence? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Republican pollster Bill McInturff; Democratic pollster Peter Hart; Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House's Health Reform Office; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor.

CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” - Fareed Zakaria sits down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Kenya for her most exclusive interview yet. How did former President Bill Clinton end up on the mission to secure the two journalists' freedom in North Korea? Plus her views on Iran, Afghanistan, health care, and Chelsea's hand in marriage.

"Fox News Sunday" - Jones; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the U.S. Army's North Atlantic Regional Medical Command.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

July 23, 2009 C-SPAN

Part 1

Part 2

When Jeff Sessions speaks, weird things happen.

He was talking to Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, about scheduling a Senate Judiciary hearing on the disparity of the penalties for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine

Sessions said he and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had been talking about it. "Senator Leahy and I were talking during these hearings, we're going to do that crack cocaine thing you and I have talked about before," Sessions said.

The hearing room cracked up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., looked over at Sessions. "Please rephrase it, Senator. Please rephrase," he said.

Sessions laughed along with the crowd. "I misspoke," he clarified. "We're going to reduce the burden of penalties in some of the crack cocaine cases and make them fair."