For anyone in the mood for some intelligent political debate over this holiday weekend, here's the UP With Chris Hayes special 2011 Year-in-Review. Their panel included Sam Seder, Michaela Angela Davis, Lizz Winstead and Nancy Giles and another quick panel on The Year in Funny -- with comedians Dean Obeidallah, Neal Brennan, John Fugelsang and Judy Gold.

Here's the first hour of the special.

Part two below the fold.

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Apparently I wasn't the only one completely disgusted by CNN allowing a host of Bush neocon war mongers to ask questions at their "national security" Republican debate, including torture advocate, Cheney's Cheney, David Addington.

HAYES: Alright, don't call it a comeback. The neocons have been here for years... and they were out in full force at this week's presidential debate. Paul Wolfowitz, the architect, one of the architects of the war in Iraq asked a question. There was Fred Kagan, one of many Kagans who were constantly advocating war in some place or other. And then there was David Addington, who helped craft the Bush administration's war on terror policy.

Mr. Addington got some applause from the crowd there. Can I just say something about David Addington? David Addington was one of... was probably the foremost legal mind, in the Bush administration […] who was masterminding the most maximalist, extremist positions on what the government could do, and he guided John Yoo through crafting the infamous torture memo, which essentially said anything short of pain, equal, up to and including what would be the same as organ failure... short of organ failure would be legal under U.S. law.

He was the mastermind behind pushing through the entire sort of regime of detention without, in the beginning, until the Supreme Court overruled, denied habeas, denied the most basic rights to contest imprisonment for those in prison, and I think there's a very good... a good case to be made that he is guilty of violating U.S. law and should be held to account.

And here he is, at this debate, along with a whole bunch of other people who were responsible for this travesty of Iraq, being treated like like any other eminent (inaudible) or think tanker to ask questions and I found it appalling. I found it absolutely appalling.

As Hayes noted, no one associated with the Bush administration that lied us into war has had to pay any kind of social cost for their actions while serving in the Bush administration and Hayes found it a “remarkable moment” to watch them being allowed to ask questions during that debate.

His guest, Eli Lake, from The Daily Beast claimed that they paid the ultimate cost by being out of power and the fact that they were “roundly criticized in almost all corners of the press, with the exception of the conservative media” and he noted that the justification for holding prisoners without a right to a trial has only been scaled back somewhat and is still being used today by the Obama administration when it comes to not releasing some of these terrorist suspects.

As Hayes replied, that just makes what Addington did “even more egregious” and that the ultimate cost would have been some of these Bush neocons being prosecuted and landing in jail and not just being shunned socially or in the media.

Lake continued to make excuses for the Bush administration excesses and Hayes followed up with this.

HAYES: People do think all the time... that break the law and then later look extreme and they still have to face... they still have to stand trial. They still have to answer for their actions and accountability.

What's really disgusting as well is that MSNBC has relegated Hayes' show to the crack of dawn on the weekends where they're hoping no one will watch it. It's too bad this type of conversation isn't what I'm waking up to on a daily basis when heading to work during the week on the satellite radio instead of the hackery on Morning Joe Monday through Friday.

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From Up With Chris Hayes -- Exclusive: Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street:

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker; Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website. Read on...

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If there's one thing you can count on from a Republican primary debate when the subject is foreign policy, it's that there will be lots of drum beating for the United States to go to war with Iran. This Saturday night's debate on CBS was no exception with Newt Gingrich going so far as to say we should be assassinating their scientists if that's what it would take to prevent their nuclear program from moving forward.

Gingrich wasn't the first Republican to call for assassinating scientists, since we heard the same sort of rhetoric from his fellow GOP primary challenger, Rick Santorum last month as Dave wrote about here -- Santorum: Dead Foreign Scientists a 'Wonderful Thing'.

GARRETT: Mr. Speaker, is this the right way to look at this question, war or not war? Or do you see other options diplomatically, or other non-war means that the United States has at its possession to deal with Iran that it has not employed?

GINGRICH: Well, let me start and say that both the answers you just got are superior to the current administration. You know, there are a number of ways to be smart about Iran and there are also a few ways to be dumb, and the administration has skipped all the ways to be smart.

GARRETT: Could you tell us the smart ways?

GINGRICH: Sure. First of all, maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable. Second, maximum coordination with the Israelis in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran. Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and a Margaret Thatcher did to the Soviet Union of every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down.

And I agree entirely with Gov. Romney, if in the end despite all of those things, if the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.

Compare and contrast Newt's statements to a segment that aired that same morning on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC, where former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman talked about the fact that the recent report coming from the U.N. which stated that Iran is moving forward with its nuclear program smells of the same sort of false statements and highly questionable intelligence that we were being fed in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

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From this Saturday's Up with Chris Hayes, a really wonderful segment talking about the generational divide we've seen between younger and older voters with party affiliation, the difference in the ages we've seen at these “tea party” rallies as opposed to those at Occupy Wall Street, the wealth gap between households over 65 and those under 35 and the differences between the social safety nets afforded our seniors and those for younger Americans.

As Chris went on to explain, it makes for some interesting and complicated dynamics when you look at how those differences are being played politically by the Republicans.

HAYES: The politics of all of this are far from straightforward, because the central democratic irony of American politics at this moment, is that those that most benefit from the social welfare state, people over 65 are the most conservative cohort, the demographic most aligned with the party committed to its destruction.

So Republicans need to marshal support for undoing the social welfare state while simultaneously promising their base they'll get to keep their part of it. It's a rhetorical two-step they've perfected. The first step is to cloak their contempt for the universal benefits of social insurance in the righteous mantle of defending future generations. They want to gut the welfare state and scrap some of the most successful programs in the nation's history on behalf of the grandchildren.

They hate to do it, really, but they must, to make sacrifices now for those in the future to prevent bankruptcy... for the grandchildren.

Cut to clips of John Boehner, Rand Paul, Joe Walsh, John McCain and Mitt Romney all fearmongering over the national debt and on how we have to “save” Social Security and Medicare for future generations and “the grandchildren.”

HAYES: See, the kids and the grandkids, that's who they're doing it for. But then the second step... and this is the key, is to tell current seniors and boomers, not to worry. We won't be scrapping your benefits. No. Heavens no.

Cut to Mittens, saying that current seniors don't have to worry about changes to Social Security.

HAYES: Let's all remember that Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare, the one that every single Republican member of the House voted for, wouldn't apply to anyone over 54 years of age.

So the rhetoric the right employs is that they are the courageous guardians of the interest of the nation's grandchildren, but what they're actually proposing is to maintain the same benefits for the grandparents and then destroy it for the grandchildren.

If there's a more disingenuous aspect of modern conservative rhetoric, I don't know what it is.

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On this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, Eliot Spitzer found himself getting some push back (thankfully) from his fellow panelist, Demo's Heather McGhee and Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky when he suggested that Democrats should consider raising the retirement age gradually for Social Security beneficiaries because Americans are living longer.

MCGHEE: I wish this weren’t so dire, but for wealthier white men, absolute longevity and healthiness has increased.

SPITZER: Yes.

MCGHEE: For working class women, it has decreased.

SPITZER: Over time we can do it.

MCGHEE: So you have to look at the equity issues unfortunately. I wish that weren't the case. [...]

SCHAKOWSKY: The very idea that we would raise the retirement age as Heather said for poor woman... that longevity has actually gone down. Maybe at some point we can do this. The other question is, so then where are the jobs? Are you going to go out at age sixty five and go find yourself a job? Where are those jobs? How are you going to have income? Ten percent of people rely on Social Security for one hundred percent of their income.

And the average Social Security benefit is $12,000; $10,000 for women. This is such a modest benefit. I think the idea right now of raising the age, which is a benefit reduction, is just ridiculous. At some point maybe we can consider it, when there are jobs for older people and when people are actually all living longer, not just rich white men.

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Chris Hayes decided to revisit his Welcome to Inequalistan segment which we featured from the second week of his his new series on MSNBC as his “story of the week” on this Saturday's show. Hayes opened up the segment by showing a scene from Annie Hall where Marshall McLuhan made a cameo appearance to correct one of the characters in the movie who was misrepresenting his work, telling him “You know nothing of my work” and Woody Allen addressing the camera directly in the movie, saying “If life was only like this.”

HAYES: Well, this week, we had kind of the wonk version of exactly that scene because for over a month, the Occupy Wall Street movement around the country has been growing and occupying the nation's attention with the same simple rallying cry... “We are the ninety nine percent.” And though there are no concrete demands or agenda, the one complaint, the central complaint is clear. The top one percent have managed to rig the game in their favor and capture a shocking percentage of the nation's total wealth.

And then amidst dismissals from the establishment and attacks from conservatives aimed at the wooly headed, naive, drum-circling hippies, comes a new report from the Congressional Budget Office that says to Occupy Wall Street critics, “You know nothing of my work.”

Hayes showed this chart from the recent CBO report which shows the shares of market income for the different income groups in 1979 compared to 2007 and as he noted, the only group that increased their share of the national income was the upper one percent of the country's wealthiest individuals.

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As expected, the talking heads over at Fox and CNN are being just as dismissive of the Occupy Wall Street movement as they were supportive of the AstroTurf "tea party" movement and Liz Trotta gave us another example on Fox this Saturday, comparing the OWS list of demands to the Unabomber manifesto.

TROTTA: Well, the media's really in search of itself. I advise anybody who has a sense of humor left about this to go to OccupyWallStreet.com and what you will read is the ravings of what sounds like the Unabomber, and also the use of the word meta, a Greek degree of language, which I won't go into at the moment. But these people have plenty of words to say, but again, and I don't mean to sound, just repeat what everybody else has said, but it is unclear what they want. But it's certainly better going down there and carrying signs than going out and hitting the pavement for a job.

Now, what's interesting about this is that media seems, the liberal media is being accused of setting this up for Obama, so that he can use this as a, these people as a wedge against the Republicans in the election. I don't know if that's true or not, but the unions couldn't, the public service unions couldn't wait to get down there last week.

I'd say there's a fair amount of projection going on there given the fact that Fox and CNN did relentlessly promote the "tea party" in order to help get Republicans elected during the mid-term elections. So far the accusations made by Trotta here on how this movement was started are coming from one place in the media, and that's Fox.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Please donate to our #OWS Solidarity Pizzas #occupies because the 1%ers are very nervous.

Meanwhile this Saturday, the panel on Chris Hayes' new show on MSNBC discussed the equally dismissive coverage we saw from CNN's Erin Burnett of the protests as well. (Video below the fold)

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Rep. Jerrold Nadler joined the set of Chris Hayes' new show, Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC this Sunday morning to talk about President Obama's proposal to increase the tax rate on millionaires and a bill he's going to be introducing this week that should end this hostage taking we've seen from Republicans on the debt ceiling.

Here's more from The Hill on that -- House Dems introduce bill to eliminate debt ceiling:

Three congressional Democrats are introducing a bill Wednesday that would abolish the federal debt ceiling. The lawmakers say that the recent debate to raise the ceiling and avoid default had a "disastrous" effect on the U.S economy, and that the legislation would keep parties from using a potential default as a hostage in future budget debates.

"The debt ceiling is truly arbitrary and has nothing to do with the deficit," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a statement last Wednesday. "The debt ceiling does not prevent the United States from incurring new debts. That occurs when Congress decides to authorize more spending than revenues. The debt ceiling prevents the president from borrowing money to pay those debts when they come due."

Virginia Democrat Jim Moran and Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson will join Nadler in introducing the legislation. But the bill is unlikely to gain traction, especially in the Republican-controlled House. Members of the GOP were encouraged that they were able to use the debt ceiling as leverage to attain deep budget cuts during negotiations with President Obama and the Senate. [...]

“Republicans in Congress have shown they are willing to hold the fate of our economy hostage by using the debt ceiling as a political weapon. It’s a tactic that has far ranging effects, disrupting financial markets, damaging the peoples’ trust in government and delaying consideration of must-pass legislation to create jobs and get our economy back on track," Moran said.

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Chris Hayes has done a very good job of filling in during the week for some of the prime time hosts at MSNBC and he's now got his own show on the weekends. I'll just say I agree with Digby as to why his new show is a welcome change from, as she put it, "the usual cable news fare." It's definitely a welcome change from five hours or so of Alex Witt on the weekends and her cozying up to "her boys" Pat Buchanan and useless so-called "Democratic strategist" Peter Fenn and the general just gossipy and celebrity driven gist of her so-called "news" coverage, or the typical he said/she said nature of any of her "reporting" on politics from MSNBC on the weekends.

Shows like Witt's always seemed to me to be much more concerned over whether they're just being polite to their guests who come on their show and lie, rather than ever calling them out for those lies, because heaven forbid if you did that, they might not come back on your show again to lie some more to the public. Thankfully, the MSNBC viewers will now be exposed to two less hours of that each day on the weekends.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I heard Chris was going to get his own show, but it looks like he just gave me a reason to reprogram the DVR for the weekends if this first show is any indication.