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The Nation's Jeremy Scahill sat down with his colleague Chris Hayes who was filling in for Rachel Maddow to discuss the latest farce concerning our occupation in Afghanistan and the lack of intelligence on the ground there.

Scahill recently spent a great deal of time actually doing some reporting on the ground in Afghanistan and you can read more about that here -- Taliban Leader Mullah Omar: The US and NATO Are Being Defeated in Afghanistan :

In a communiqué marking the beginning of the Muslim holiday Eid-al-Adha, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, claimed his forces were making gains against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and announced a new plan to increase attacks aimed at delivering a "crushing and decisive blow" against the presence of foreign forces. "The aim is to entangle the enemy in an exhausting war of attrition and wear it away like the former Soviet Union," declared Omar in his address on the "Festival of Sacrifice." Omar wrote that his forces had developed new short- and long-term strategies, saying that, overall, "our strategy is to increase our operations step by step and spread them to all parts of the country to compel the enemy to come out from their hideouts and then crush them through tactical raids." [...]

Current Taliban commanders and former senior officials of Omar's Taliban government recently told The Nation that while the US Special Operations Forces' targeted killing campaign against Taliban commanders has been successful, the strikes were actually producing a more radical generation of fighters and commanders. In his communication, Omar did not address the issue of the targeted killing campaign, but he did claim that morale among the Taliban remained high. "Our Mujahid people will never feel exhausted in the sacred path of Jihad, because it is a divine obligation," he wrote. "Fatigue can have no way into it."

Go read the rest and Scahill summed up some of his reporting during his interview here with Hayes.

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Oh goodie. Looks like we're getting six more years of Senator let's limit BP's liability Murkowski.

From TPM -- AP: Murkowski Wins Alaska Senate Race:

That call comes more than two weeks after the polls closed in Alaksa. State elections officials announced that there were only 700 votes left to count, with Murkowski holding a 10,000-vote lead over her opponent, Republican nominee Joe Miller.

The Miller campaign contested 8,153 write-in ballots that were counted for Murkowski, but she is still ahead by enough unchallenged votes to win the race.

The tea party-backed Miller won a surprise victory over Murkowski in the Republican primary, and has suggested that he'll demand a recount.

The Nation's Chris Hayes scored the first interview with Sen. Murkowski filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word. Murkowski looked like she'd rather be doing something more pleasant than talking to Chris Hayes like oh say... root canal work. Hayes asked Murkowski how she was planning to vote on Don't Ask Don't Tell and the DREAM Act during the lame duck session or at any time and she punted and refused to answer him.

We've got to get down to doing the people's work... uh huh. Like keeping those Bush tax cuts in place. While Murkowski's win is certainly nothing to celebrate I guess we can take some small solace in seeing Sarah Palin's teabagger buddy Joe Miller get "refudiated" by the voters of Alaska. We'll see how long Joe Miller decides to continue to drag this thing out shortly.

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Chris Hayes explains to Rachel Maddow why John Boehner is hedging on whether he'd support voting for the middle class tax cuts as he conceded during his interview on Face the Nation last weekend. He knows full well the Senate won't pass it and it gives cover to any of the Republicans in the House that want to vote for it as well. If he's right then Republicans are counting on voters being completely uninformed about what they're doing if they think this strategy is going to pay off with the electorate in the mid-terms.

MADDOW: So, did we just have a big Republican wobble on this issue?

Is their position clear now?

HAYES: I think it is very unclear. But I think part of it has to do with the different political calculations for the different houses. If you‘re John Boehner, you know, all of your members are up for re-election. There is a kind of anti-incumbent fervor and you don‘t want them take—you don‘t want them to have to vote against tax cuts in an election year.

I think McConnell, because there‘s more procedural control in the Senate and because cutting taxes for rich people is the core existential value of the modern Republican Party, he‘s going to make sure that that—he‘s going to do everything in his power to do that and he‘s less worried about the political implications because the races where the really competitive tend to be open seats, they tend to be against Democratic incumbents.

MADDOW: So, you think we‘re going to have a split between House Republicans and Senate Republicans on this, where Boehner actually does let people in the House vote for these things, but it doesn‘t matter because the Senate blocks it anyway. The Senate does hold the middle class hostage for the rich people.

HAYES: See that, yes, exactly that. And I talked to a Republican staffer today and said, look, if you get—on the House side—I said, if you get, if it comes up just the middle class tax cuts, does your—does your member vote for it? He said, sure. Because that‘s an easy vote.

You know, maybe I‘m wrong here, but my sense is that if you let the House vote on this first, it actually gives the Republicans in the House cover. They get to go ahead and kind of had their cake and eat it, too. They can vote for middle class tax cuts and then they can let the Senate hold it up and make sure it doesn‘t actually happen. And if I were the Republicans, I think that‘s the play that they actually would like to see happen.

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While most of the media is doing their best to help the Republicans fling massive amounts of poop against the wall to see what sticks in order to distract from the things we ought to be talking about leading up to the mid-term elections, at least The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow framed the ginned up controversy for what it is; a farce that started with a far right conspiracy theorist named Pam Geller who belongs in the same box as Orly Taitz.

HAYES: For centuries, a cult of eccentrics and amateurs and self-appointed scientists in the Middle Ages tried and failed to turn inexpensive metals like lead into gold. Now, in the environment of 21st century media apparatus, the political right has figured out how to do this. They have succeeded in a very special kind of alchemy—it‘s an alchemy that is able to transmute totally crazy, trivial, ginned up fake stories into media-captivating national debates.

So, while everyone sort of sifts through the media goal, that is the planned Park 51 Islamic community center, it‘s useful, I think, to trace it back to its origins as lead.

I did the same sort of thing as a reporter for “The Nation” magazine back in 2007 when I looked into the origins of the “Obama is a secret Muslim” rumor. What I found was that in all likelihood, the myth originated with a very strange figured named Andy Martin, a perennial Republican Senate candidate, notorious litigant, and self-described independent contrarian columnist, who was raising bizarre allegations about Barack Obama‘s heritage as far back as 2004.

Here‘s what else I learned about Andy Martin at the time. He was known as one of the most notorious litigants in the history of the United States, having filed hundreds, possibly thousands of lawsuits often directed at judges who ruled against him.

He once referred to a federal judge as a, quote, “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of ling and thieving common to the members of his race,” and once attempted to intervene in the divorce proceedings of a judge who ruled against him, petitioning the state court to be appointed as the guardian of the judge‘s children.

We saw similarly bizarre origins when we traced back the birther movement that. That began with famed dentist/realtor/lawyer Orly Taitz, whose $20,000 fine for filing for those lawsuits was just upheld by the Supreme Court.

Read on...

Meanwhile over at CNN, here's John Roberts filling in for Anderson Cooper. Nice softball interview there John. This woman has no business being legitimized on our airways.

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Well here's something we don't see enough of from our "mainstream media". The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow talks to labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan about his book “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?” and why European social democracy is something Americans should be embracing rather than falling for the fear mongering from the likes of Newt Gingrich, Jim DeMint, Bill O'Reilly, Mitch McConnell and a host of other right wing politicians and Fox "News" pundits. Hayes asks Geoghegan to give his pitch for why European Socialism is so bad and why was he born on the wrong continent.

Geoghegan: This is the time of year when we should be sitting around a lake drinking a few Beck Beers. If you like that kind of life and think your employer should pay for it, check out European Socialism.

Hayes: That would be a reference to the six or seven weeks paid vacation right? That is standard in the social democracies of Europe.

Geoghegan: Chris, in Germany and France the average work time per year is about 1500 hours. In the U.S. it’s closer to 2000. That leaves 500 hours of extra free time for Europeans. I mean you only have one life to live.

Hayes: You know an economics professor once said to me some very wise words which I’ve kept with me ever since which is that time is the one resource that’s never making any more of. But you know the response from the right when you bring up vacation like that is that well but look, they’re an economic basket case right? Yes, they get this vacation but you know, they don’t produce very much and they have high unemployment and they’re all indolent and the whole thing is going to go bankrupt soon.

Geoghegan: But Chris the reason I wrote the book is I wanted to explore, why is it that Germany is the most competitive country in the world? We’re the world’s biggest debtor. They’re the world’s, one of the world’s biggest creditors. Since 2003 Germany has either been tied with China or the leading exporter in the world and Germany and France together just wallop China in terms of exports sales.

So they do it through actually unions, high wages, worker control of, or more worker control than we ever dream of here of the corporations and a commitment to manufacturing that has completely disappeared in this country.

Hayes: Yeah, you talk a lot about the German model. There’s two elements I thought were interesting. One is there’s this focus on very capital intensive but very sort of high tech and expertise driven manufacturing and also that there is this union participation in corporate boards. How does that model work? It certainly sounds radical over here but you make a very convincing case for it in the book.

Geoghegan: What makes it work is the fact that the Germans have intense worker involvement, in fact it’s probably got the most worker control of any economy in the world and that includes China. It helps keep skills together. It’s a way… it encourages people to invest in themselves. It holds together if I may use a clunky economic term, human capital, high skills, in a way that flexible labor markets don’t. I don’t want to get into economics but I really am convinced that giving working people a kind of role in running the corporations that they work for, albeit it limited, putting them on corporate boards and putting high school graduates on the boards of big global corporations precisely because they are high school graduates, you know is one of the reasons that Germany has kept a commitment to manufacturing and being competitive while we’ve turned into a casino type capitalist society.

All I can say is amen brother.

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I agree with Chris Hayes completely here. If Republicans get back the House this midterm election this is what we're going to get to look forward to, one witch hunt after another from Republicans that makes the Clinton days look mild by comparison.

HAYES: Tom Tancredo, of course, is the anti-immigrant candidate. He is the "Bomb Mecca" candidate, but perhaps most hilariously, he`s also the "impeach Obama" candidate. For reasons that are as inexplicable as they are lackey, Mr. Tancredo thinks President Obama should be impeached.

And though Tom Tancredo`s name will not have an "R" next to it on the ballot, if he makes it that far, it is increasingly clear the Republican governing strategy should the party win back one or both houses of Congress this fall can best be described as Clinton era-esque and then some.

Republicans in the House and Senate wrote a letter late last week to the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanding an investigation into the Justice Department`s decision to not pursue a voter fraud case involving the New Black Panther Party.

They want a full and complete investigation into this outrageous decision by the Obama administration not to pursue criminal charges, just like the Bush administration. But that`s not the point.

The point is this tactic works. Investigators are now looking into the case which is described by one of those investigators, thusly, quote, "This has to do with their," meaning Republicans, "fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the Obama administration. My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion that they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president."

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The Nation's Chris Hayes filled in for Ed Schultz and did a good job of calling for everyone who is sick to death of business as usual in Washington D.C. to be demanding better leadership from our elected officials when our country is in crisis.

HAYES: House Minority Leader John Boehner unleashed a torrent of attacks on President Obama and the Democrats in an interview with "The Pittsburgh Tribune Review" yesterday. He also explained why Tea Party nation is so angry at the majority party. Boehner said, quote, "They are snuffing out America that I grew up in. Right now we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776."

Boehner went on to rail against what the - what he calls Obamacare and promised to repeal the law, if he gets his hand on the speaker’s gavel. Boehner criticized the president for overreacting to the oil spill in the gulf because of his moratorium on deepwater drilling. Minority leader also thinks Congress overreached when House and Senate negotiators reached a tentative deal on financial reform. Boehner said, quote, "This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon", end quote.

Now, Boehner isn’t alone in attempting to minimize the financial crisis. Fact of the matter is as soon as the bankers and the big shots were in the clear, when the bonuses started flowing on Wall Street and politicians could hit their fund-raising goals again, the establishment suddenly lost that sense of panicked urgency they had when in the fall of 2008 it looked like the entire crown jewel of American capitalism was swirling around the drain.

Let’s keep this in perspective. The baroque Ponzi scheme in which Wall Street engaged precipitated a recession that has, as I speak to you right now, left eight million people without jobs, 8.4 million people without jobs, three million homes foreclosed on, and as of 2008 at least a million more people living in poverty. And just today scared consumers are raising more worries of a double-dip recession.

The folks that number among those millions don’t think this recession is just an ant or a bump in the road. For them, it is an existential crisis, the death of life dreams. For John Boehner and so many of his colleagues this doesn’t amount to that big a deal because it’s not their ox being gored. I live in Washington which has one of the strongest regional economies in the country, and I can tell you the boom times are back.

The only way to wake the American elite establishment out of its complacency about the slow motion disaster of the great recession is for the people getting hammered by it to organize and to interrupt this ruling class idol, to remind the people in power that the crisis isn’t over and the real danger isn’t overreaction, it is the sin of forgetting, the threat of failing to use this moment to fix a dangerously broken economy.

Amen brother. Chris has done a good job with filling in for Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz even if he is maybe a little stiff in front of the camera when he's hosting a show rather than being just a guest. It would not break my heart if MSNBC was prepping him for a spot in their daily lineup. He's an excellent writer and on the right side of the issues for progressives. He'll get better in front of the camera if given a chance IMHO.

Lawrence O'Donnell is going to get an evening spot on MSNBC. I would love to see Hayes replace any of the news models that make up the majority of their daytime coverage.

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As Chris Hayes pointed out to Rachel Maddow, some of the most important amendments to the financial reform bill being debated now in the Senate have not come to the floor yet and Harry Reid is going to have to figure out how to get his own caucus under control before this thing gets passed. As Chris said, this is all probably going to end up being shaken out over the next few days. The only good news is that as the debate has drug on the bill has actually gotten stronger instead of weaker, which is a switch for how things normally go in the Senate. The leadership however really doesn't want some of the stronger reforms in this bill.

If anyone wants to keep up with what's going on, David Dayen, former C&L and Hullabaloo contributor and friend of the site who's now blogging over at FDL has been watching all of this like a hawk. You can read all of his latest updates on this debate over there under the FinReg tag.

It was nice to see him get some props for his work on Rachel's show. Sadly too often that is not the scenario, and the cable news shows use material they find on the blogs as their quasi-research department and don't give them credit when they're the source for a story or the reason a story is even on their radar screen. Rachel Maddow has been one of the better ones out there giving bloggers credit where credit is due. I wish I could say the same for the rest of them.

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After the panel on Fox News Sunday spending some time opining about how bad the Gulf oil spill disaster is going to be for the Obama administration and the MMS under Ken Salazar without managing to mention the name Dick Cheney, Brit Hume does his best to try to minimize how bad the spill actually is. Think Progress has more on Hume's hackery.

Brit Hume Shrugs Off Oil Spill: ‘Where Is The Oil?’:

This morning, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, “Where is the oil?” Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been aggressively downplaying the disaster and bristling at comparisons to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. During the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Hume dismissed the expert analysis that many times more oil have spilled already than the Exxon Valdez disaster, a point raised by fellow panelist Juan Williams.

...Independent experts, using both surface and subsea estimates, believe the vast sea of oil gushing from multiple leaks on the seabed surpassed the Exxon Valdez weeks ago. “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.” “The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out. ” Read on...

Hume's idea of an "adult conversation" is apparently lying through one's teeth.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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As Chris Hayes noted, it's rare you find this kind of bipartisanship in Washington D.C. these days, but we got it with the 96-0 vote to pass Sen. Bernie Sanders amendment to audit the Federal Reserve.

Senate Passes Amendment for One-Time Audit of Fed:

The Senate adopted an amendment Tuesday to the financial-overhaul bill that would boost transparency of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending actions during the financial crisis. Lawmakers voted 96-0 to incorporate the modified amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who scaled back his original language last week to overcome White House objections.

"This amendment begins the process of lifting the veil of secrecy of perhaps the most powerful federal agency," Mr. Sanders said at a news conference after the vote. Once the audit is completed, Mr. Sanders said he hopes it will unveil so many "back-room deals" that people will push for even more disclosure.

Sen. Sanders explained what's in his amendment to Chris Hayes who was filling in for Rachel Maddow. I know a lot of people would have liked to this audit to go further but considering the political environment we're living in, I'm surprised he managed to get this passed. Sanders gave credit to a strong grass roots movement from both sides of the aisle coming together and pushing our politicians for its success. This is one instance I must say where I'm glad to see that happen. I want to see the Fed audited.

Here's more from Sen. Sanders press release.

Release: Senate Approves Fed Audit Sanders Amendment to End Fed Secrecy Passes

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