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As Ed Schultz noted earlier this week, it looks Sen. John McCain, who's done nothing but criticize President Obama at every turn for his handling of the situation in Libya, has a little explaining to do. This Friday, Chris Hayes went after him for talking tough and playing the bully, when in reality he's just another deal making politician who will cozy up with dictators if he feels it's necessary.

Here's more on the leaked cable from Politico --Leaked cable: John McCain pushed to arm Qadhafi:

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable shows that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain promised to help Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi obtain U.S. military hardware in 2009.

The cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks, reveals the pledge came at meeting that was attended by other prominent members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

In the meeting, Muatassim Qadhafi, the Libyan leader’s fifth son and national security adviser, requested U.S. assistance in obtaining military supplies, both lethal and non-lethal.

The cable indicates that McCain was the dominant voice among the congressional delegation in a push for military hardware for Qadhafi.

“Sen. McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its … security,” according to the cable.

McCain said that he understood the need for Libya to upgrade its existing ranks of C-130 Hercules aircraft. Libya had bought eight of the military cargo aircraft in the 1970s, but as bilateral relationships with the United States deteriorated, a ban of arms sales prevented the aircraft from being moved to North Africa. McCain pledged to do what he could to move the issue forward in Congress.

McCain stressed that Libya needed to fulfill its commitments of giving up its weapons of mass destruction in order for bilateral engagement to go forward.

Brian Rogers, communications director for McCain, said in a statement to POLITICO that the Arizona Republican never made any promises to Libya and never acted to help the Qadhafi regime.

“At no point did Senator McCain ever promise to help the Qaddafi regime secure U.S. military assistance. Upon the his return to Washington, there were no follow-up discussions and no action taken by Senator McCain or his staff to provide the Qaddafi regime with C-130s or any other military assistance,” said Rogers. “There has been no greater champion than Senator McCain for Libya’s democratic revolution and for the toppling of the brutal Qaddafi regime.”

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I'm so sick and tired of how our media has handled this latest fiasco with their coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial I'm beyond disgusted. Chris Hayes made some great points during this segment and it reminded me of what Jon Stewart said during his interview with Chris Wallace about what stories our corporate media decides to cover.

We posted a portion of that interview here, but here's the transcript from a bit of the interview that we did not feature at C&L:

STEWART: Because I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness. I wouldn't say it's towards a liberal agenda. It's light fluff. So, it's absolutely within the wheelhouse. I mean, if your suggestion is that they are relentlessly partisan and why haven't they gone and backed away from Weiner? Now, they jumped into the Weiner pool -- so, with such delight and such relish, because the bias --

WALLACE: Some things are indefensible.

STEWART: -- the bias of the mainstream media -- oh, I'm not saying it's defensible, but the bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness.

Chris Hayes took the conversation to a higher level and that is along with the fact that for whatever reason our media decides to glom onto one of these stories, the bigger travesty is what they're ignoring when they do it. Good for Chris Hayes, but imagine a world where our corporate media wasn't having this commentary compete with Joe Scarborough or most of their daytime coverage and hourly hackery on the same network.

It also would have been nice if he'd used the Flores family murder instead as an example of the type of story our media is ignoring while giving wall to wall coverage of the Anthony ambulance chasing and media circus.

I've read a bit on line saying that Hayes has been picked up by MSNBC with a contract for his own show. I'm wondering if that was a preemptive move by MSNBC to make sure Olbermann and Al Gore's Current TV didn't hire him instead.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word talked to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Jared Bernstein and the Movement Vision Lab's Sally Kohn about where things are headed on these debt ceiling negotiations.

As Bernstein pointed out, even stalling around with this game of chicken as Republicans are doing can start to have real costs and consequences for our fragile economy with the possibility of interest rates going up if the markets start to get spooked that nothing is going to be done as the deadline moves closer.

Sally Kohn I believe, really made some of the best points during the discussion where she noted that the majority of the public does want to see tax increases on the rich and asked why the Democrats are not fighting harder on those issues and what lines in the sand the Democrats should be drawing during these negotiations when the Republicans are acting like "ideological terrorists" who are willing to blow up the economy if they don't get their way on everything.

As Fran and Driftglass pointed out in their podcast this week, Kohn, who regularly appears on Fox but who isn't what you would consider one of your typical "Fox Democrats" actually wrote a very good article this week which appeared in of all places, Fox's opinion page on their web site, which you can read here -- We Don't Need to Cut Corporate Taxes, We Need to Raise Them.

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MSNBC stayed on the air to do some live coverage on the negotiations by the White House, John Boehner and Harry Reid to avoid a government shutdown. As John already noted, the President tried to put a "happy face" on this during his speech tonight. I'm really disgusted with the fact that he's validating Republican talking points on the deficit and our debt and the fact that making cuts to our budget in the wrong places is only going to make our already fragile economy worse.

Lawrence O'Donnell asked Chris Hayes about the statement coming out of Nancy Pelosi's office which he read on the air.

She commends the President for his hard work and perseverance. She then says, House Democrats look forward to viewing the components of the final funding measure. The American people's top priority is creating jobs.

As O'Donnell noted, Pelosi's statement means that this budget compromise is not going to sail through the House with all of the Democratic support John Boehner might want. As Chris Hayes noted, the Democratic minority was not even part of these negotiations, which isn't really that surprising given their numbers right now. But as Chris Hayes pointed out, even Rep. James Clyburn who's in a leadership position in the House could not tell him earlier just what programs are going to be cut. Hayes is exactly right when he says where these cuts are coming from and whose shoulders they're resting on really matters, and Nancy Pelosi was just articulating that it does matter where these cuts are coming from.

Then we move onto Howard Fineman who gave us the Villagers' view of what the White House's political game might be with the President deciding it was a good idea politically to be praising this deal with Republicans. And as Howard noted, a lot of Republicans in the House are not going to be crazy about voting for this deal as well. This passing is likely going to depend on some Democrats in the House voting for it as well. Whether Boehner can get enough of them to help him pass this remains to be seen. Fineman laid out what the White House is counting on here:

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The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow takes a look at the negotiating tactics being used by the GOP where they're more than willing to hold the country hostage to get their agenda passed no matter how damaging it is to our country and the Democrats never ending willingness to meet the crazy half way.

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The Nation's Chris Hayes laid out very plainly why the protests in Wisconsin matter. This move by Gov. Scott Walker is one of a series of power grabs by Republicans with the intent of achieving some of their long time goals; destroying unions and the middle class and getting rid of our public education system.

And as Chris noted, it's a reminder of the fact that when our political institutions fail us, people mobilizing outside of those institutions through the process of peaceful protests as we've seen in Wisconsin have brought about some of the greatest moments of progressive transformation in the United States.

Chris' fellow contributor to The Nation, Naomi Klein discussed how what Walker doing is a classic example of the Shock Doctrine, where politicians create a crisis and then using that crisis as an excuse to push through horribly unpopular economic policies. And as Hayes and Klein both explained, what ends up happening in Wisconsin is not only going to have local implications, but national as well.

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Rachel Maddow and The Nation's Chris Hayes discuss whether Fox's misinformation campaign and spreading of outlandish conspiracy theories, led by Glenn Beck, is damaging our discourse on American political and foreign policy.

Beck is so far off the rails this week I don't know how anyone who isn't mentally unstable could take anything he says seriously.

I can't stand watching him for more than a few minutes but our friends over at Media Matters have. Here's some of his latest fearmongering from this Friday.

Beck Channels Yoda, Declares That If You Haven't Been Frightened Watching His Show Yet, "You Will Be"

Beck Hosts "Expert" Joel Rosenberg To Further His Apocalyptic Talk About A Caliphate

Beck: We Must "Rebuild Our Communities, And Not Through Community Organizing, Because That's About Politics"

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What a guy. Sean Hannity never took up Keith Olbermann's challenge to be waterboarded. I bet he'd be every bit as reluctant to pick up a gun and help follow through on this idea of his. From Think Progress -- Fearing High Gas Prices, Sean Hannity Proposes Re-Invading Iraq and Kuwait To ‘Take All Their Oil’:

Tonight’s Hannity on Fox News featured a discussion by the Great American Panel about high gas prices, which host Sean Hannity claimed are “now gonna go up to three, four, five dollars a gallon again.” The panel ruefully noted that Arab sheiks possess great amounts of oil, and pointed out a recent statement by Kuwait’s oil minister that he believes the market can withstand $100-per-barrel oil. After noting that Kuwait is a country that “would not exist [but] for us,” Hannity angrily offered his remedy:

HANNITY: There’s two things I said. I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister — how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation, as these sheiks, etcetera etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us and saying ‘oh of course we can withstand [these prices].’”

This was from the Friday night edition of Hannity's show. More at Think Progress on just what the cost of the Iraq invasion has been already. Apparently no amount of loss of lives and treasure will ever be enough to suit Sean Hannity if it means Americans can still have low oil prices. This doesn't actually surprise me a bit that Hannity would believe this, but most wingnuts don't actually say this sort of thing out loud. So much for that "we're liberating them for their freedom" bullpucky, huh Sean?

At the end of this segment he let everyone know he'd be having Sarah Palin on his show Monday night. More on that below the fold from this past Friday's Countdown where Chris Hayes explained to us what it means to get Hannitized.

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As Chris Hayes reminded us before Harper's Thomas Franks joined him in the segment, "the Gingrich revolution in Washington gave way to crime and corruption with impressively staggering speed" and as he discussed with Frank here, this new lot coming in and their embrace of lobbyists looks like it's just business as usual for the GOP and their new leadership in the House.

HAYES: What begins as a movement becomes a business, which quickly turns into a racket.

Now, to be clear, this is not just a Republican problem. Congress is fundamentally broken and corrupt, and the Democrats are part of that problem, too. But over the past two decades, right up until today, Republicans really are proving themselves to be gold medallists in the race to become a racket.

Joining us now is Thomas Frank, columnist for "Harper`s" magazine, author of the book "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule."

Thomas, how are you?

THOMAS FRANK, HARPER`S MAGAZINE: I`m good. Yourself, Chris?

HAYES: I`m good. So, OK, what do you think of that thesis about that quote, the ark of the `94 Gingrich revolution sort of --

FRANK: I disagree with all that. I mean, you know, I remember exactly where I was when - I was living in Chicago at the time when they came in `94 and `95, and all the stuff about the idealistic freshmen that was the mime in the mass media, the idealistic freshman, they`re so idealistic. I don`t know if you know about this, Chris, but they had great idealists.

And it is not like it took a really long time for them to come in and sell out. They are sold out already. Remember, they believe salesmanship is a virtue. These are people who think that the market is something holy, and that government is a criminal enterprise, OK.

We`re not just talking about -- you know, I grew up around Republicans, there`s a lot of good Republicans in America. We`re talking about true believers in a very strange, you know, pretty right-wing doctrine.

HAYES: Right.

FRANK: Ideologues. And the listen that I -- this is the -- I mean, "The Wrecking Crew" is largely about Jack Abramoff`s career. He was really one of this group, although he was a member of Congress. He came to Washington with the freshmen -- the idealistic freshmen in 1994 and stayed here and helped bring them down.

HAYES: Right.

FRANK: But the lesson that I kept trying to hammer away at in "The Wrecking Crew" is that in this conservative world, in the world of conservative D.C., you can be an idealist and a boodler (ph) at the same time. They don`t -- they don`t contradict each other.

HAYES: That`s the first time boodler has been said on cable news.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: So, what you`re saying -- what you`re saying is the racket is the cause. The cause and the racket are one and the same.

FRANK: Yes, conservatism in this town anyway. Look, you go back to place like Wichita or Kansas City, you know, where I`m from and conservatism can be something very idealistic and often something very noble, OK? Here in Washington, D.C., it is an industry. People don`t go into it, you know, because they really, really believe in it. I mean, that`s helpful, of course.

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The Nation's Chris Hayes, filling in for Rachel Maddow, points out that just as they did during the tax cut debate, Republicans have already shown their hand on whether they'd be willing to raise the debt ceiling.

BOEHNER: We're going to have to deal with is as adults, whether we like it or not. The federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.

As Hayes noted, even though the Republicans are trying to placate the tea party, a.k.a. the extreme right wing of their base, they're never going to allow their Wall Street masters actually be harmed. His recommendation: Call their bluff this time around and make the Republicans walk the plank on this.