Whoops:

The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina's attorney general said Tuesday.

Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state - all Republicans - are jointly taking a look at the deal they've dubbed the "Nebraska compromise."

"The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution - as well as other provisions of federal law," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.

McMaster's move comes at the request of Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

In a letter to McMaster, Graham singled out the deal to win Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's vote on the massive health care bill the Senate is expected to adopt Thursday. Nelson held out as fellow Democrats worked to get 60 votes to foreclose a GOP filibuster and the bill was amended to shield Nebraska from the expected $45 million annual cost tied to expanding Medicaid programs.

"We have serious concerns about the constitutionality of this Nebraska compromise as it results in special treatment for only one state in the nation at the expense of the other 49," Graham and DeMint wrote.

Nebraska wasn't alone in getting Medicaid breaks. Vermont, Louisiana and Massachusetts also got help with their programs.[..]

Also Tuesday, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Republicans need to stop complaining about deals their colleagues made.

"Rather than sitting here and carping about what Nelson got for Nebraska, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle: Let's get together and see what we can get for South Carolina," Clyburn said.

Boy, this is a tough one. As much as I don't want to validate the petty obstructionist machinations of Republicans, I kinda wouldn't mind Nelson's sweetheart deal struck down. After all, he thinks we women are second class citizens undeserving of full health coverage.

Sen. Lindsey Graham doesn't have much good to say about the president and his administration's handling of health care reform. Graham accused the Obama administration of giving "bribes" to Democratic Senators in exchange for their votes, calling it "seedy Chicago politics."

"You know, change you can believe in, after this health care bill debacle is now becoming an empty slogan. And it’s really been replaced by seedy Chicago politics, when you think about it, backroom deals that amount to bribes," said Graham.

The senator from South Carolina went on to criticize the Democrats' method of paying for health care reform. "No Congress is going to allow Medicare to be cut $470 billion. We will forgive those cuts to doctors and hospitals. That's how you pay for the bill. It's Enron-accounting. It's a sham," Graham told CNN's John King Sunday.

Let the abortion fear mongering from the GOP begin on the Nelson compromise. From The Hill -- Coburn: Nelson agreement with leaders 'threw unborn babies under the bus':

A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill.

“The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

[...]

“The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”

The agreement reached between Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will give states the choice to ban abortion coverage or not in the insurance exchanges the legislation creates. The deal will also separate premiums from insurance plans that pay for abortion from federal money.

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The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:

Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?

Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.

Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.

The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.

And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:

More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.

Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.

“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.

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December 01, 2009 CNN

Sen. Lindsey Graham of course has "concerns" about having a withdrawal date from Afghanistan.

WOLF BLITZER: Campbell, thanks very much.

Anderson Cooper it's going to be joining us in a few moments, as well.

But let's talk to Senator Lindsey Graham. He's a Republican from South Carolina. He spent a lot of time thinking about Afghanistan, the war in Iraq.

Senator Graham, thanks very much.

What did you think of the president's new strategy?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, there's some consensus and concerns. I think every American is disappointed that eight years into this thing, we need to send more troops. But that's reality. And I -- I support the president's decision to send 30,000 more troops. I hope it's enough. If General McChrystal says it's enough, that's good by me.

I hope the NATO troops that go in will be able to engage the enemy. Numbers matter, but you've got to be able to fight. So if we're sending more NATO troops in with rules of engagement that won't engage the enemy, we're probably defeating our purpose.

But I guess the one concern I have is that what does this mean about July 2011?

How -- how will the enemy perceive that?

How do the Afghan people perceive what we're going to do?

It's not realistic we can withdraw a lot of troops in 18 months, if your goal is to train the Afghan Army and police force to stand up and fight.

BLITZER: Is it your understanding that the withdrawal of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan would start in July 2011 and would be complete by election day 2012?

Is that your understanding?

GRAHAM: I don't know. And that's a really good question. I've enjoyed the panel, by the way. This is a thinking, devious enemy. They're going to compute in their strategy what this means. They're going to try to figure out what population centers to attack. They understand we're going into an election cycle. But maybe tomorrow we'll know better.

But from listening to the president, I'm uncertain as to what that means we're going to do in 18 months.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn't heard President Barack Obama's proposal for how to move forward with the war in Afghanistan but he's already saying that he will have a "real problem" supporting an increase of 30,000 or more troops. "You have to put Afghanistan into the context of what's happening in America today. What's happening now, not only a trillion-dollar national debt, we're in the mid midst of the worst recession since the great depression," Sanders told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday.

Cost estimates put the cost of escalation at $1 million per soldier each year.

From This Week with George Stephanopoulos Nov. 29, 2009, Sen. Lindsey Graham let's us know where his spending priorities are. Forget health care or stimulus spending, we need more money for Afghanistan. Sen. Bernie Sanders reminds us all what is so terribly wrong with that line of thinking.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, how about this question of cost, as Senator Sanders raised? It looks like the cost is going to be about $1 million per year for each additional service member, and a lot of Democrats, like the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, talked to our Jon Karl this week, said we ought to pay for it. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBEY: If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well.

JON KARL, ABC NEWS: How?

OBEY: By having a new war surtax. The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people who have been asked to sacrifice are military families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Does he have a point there, Senator Graham? If we're going to fight a war, shouldn't the American people pay for it?

GRAHAM: Well, I'd like to see an endeavor to see if we can cut current spending and find some dollars that we're spending today to pay for the war, and prioritize American spending. Where does our national security rate in terms of spending? Are there things that we can do in the stimulus package? Can we trim up the health care bill and other big-ticket items to pay for a war that we can't afford to lose?

So I welcome a debate about how to control government spending and pay for the war. I do want to let Bernie and anyone else listening know that from my point of view, the president is correct in assessing that Afghanistan is a war that must be won because the national security implications of what happens in Afghanistan will follow this country for decades, so I intend to support the president.

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Say what you will about Bill Gates and Microsoft (and Vista victims should have plenty to say), I try to separate that out from Gates' work with his wife, Melinda, at the Gates Foundation, which is doing great work in helping to fund research and global efforts to combat AIDS. The foundation now appears to be broadening its emphasis to encompass the cause of global health care. (Watch Glenn Beck's hair catch fire at the very thought.)

Bill and Melinda will be on Meet the Press today, and what they have to say will probably be worth listening to. (No one will blame you for skipping the Rick Warren half of the show, though.) It'll also be a nice changeup from the usual menu of gasbag Beltway insiders -- although certain matchups (Dede Scozzafava and Ed Gillespie on Face the Nation, and Howard Dean vs. Mike Huckabee on CNN) will probably be worth seeing for the entertainment value ...

(All times EST)

•ABC’s “This Week,” 9:30 a.m. — Guests: Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican; Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent.

•CBS’ “Face the Nation,” 1 a.m. Monday — Guests: Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat; former House majority leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican; Dede Scozzafava, former Republican U.S. House candidate in New York; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor.

•CNN’s “State of the Union,” 8 a.m. — Guests: Sen. Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican; Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat; Rep. David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat; former British prime minister Tony Blair.
•“Fox News Sunday,” 9 a.m. — Guests: Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican; Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat; former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Republican; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Army’s North Atlantic Regional Medical Command.

•NBC’s “Meet the Press,” 9 a.m. — Guests: Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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!"