If you're going to be out holiday shopping, set your DVRs for the debut of Cenk Uygur and the Young Turks on Current TV this Monday! Cenk will be on at 7pm Eastern/6pm Central weeknights on Current TV.

As an extra added bonus, if you watch on Friday, you might catch a glimpse or two of our own Tina Dupuy. :)

If you're not sure whether Current is available with your cable carrier, visit this page to get the channel number or petition your carrier to add them to the lineup.

Congratulations to The Young Turks on their new gig. Best of luck to them all!

Incredible but true: In a television interview, Rick Perry told the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators not to think about money so much. "Just find your passion," said Perry. "Stop thinking about money."

The other day Yours Truly co-hosted The Young Turks with Brian Unger, and in this segment Brian and I show the video and argue whether Perry is a shrewd re-framer of the debate, the last real hippie on Earth ... or just has a screw loose. Watch the video and take the poll - is the Governor a canny re-framer of political perceptions, a carefree spirit letting his inner love child out for a stroll, or speaking to us from a state of profoundly altered perceptions?

Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks was filling in for Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC yesterday, and had on Sam Seder and conservative blogger Matt Lewis about Netroots 2010, Right Online, and media bias.

Lewis actually started arguing that the reason liberals don't have a Breitbart is because we don't need one -- we have the whole liberal media. No, really, he said that.

LEWIS: You don't need Andrew Breitbart. You have the Washington Post and the New York Times and three tv networks. The conservatives had to invent Andrew Breitbart because of the liberal bias in the media for decades. It's only been since the advent of the blogosphere the conservatives hope to keep up.

You don't need him. You've got networks. The Washington Post and the New York Times don't run any -- whatever the liberals want them to run.
It's obvious.

It seems like only yesterday when the Times ran that investigative series exposing false intelligence and urging President Bush not to invade Iraq, doesn't it?

Dan Coats on The Young Turks from the 2008 Republican National Convention

I'm not sure if it's possible to get a more Republican candidate for Indiana than Evan Bayh, but the GOP isn't going to go down without trying. Former Senator Dan Coats has announced this morning that he will challenge Bayh for the Senate seat in the 2010 Election.

But for all of his high profile--and Dan Coats certainly does have that within the Republican Party--I'm not sure the GOP is really learning the lessons of the tea baggers distrusting the incumbents and politicians when opting to promote Coats for the Senate seat.

To wit, Coats is a member of the C-Street Family, responsible for the failed ushering of Harriet Miers through the Supreme Court confirmation process. I think his quote on Miers, who failed to capture even Republican support shows his contempt for Americans:

She certainly has the capability to be an excellent Supreme Court justice. If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole.

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Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks talks about the politicization of the concept of patriotism.

Meanwhile, since the establishment media is determined to tie Barack Obama to everything anyone he may have ever had contact with has said, Cenk says it's time to play the "Six Degrees of Barack Obama" game.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks interviewed Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA06) about what the Democratic majority in Congress is planning to do to get us out of Iraq.

Lynn Woolsey: I'll tell you one of the things -- and you're just going to hate this -- because I hate it. But, there's this sense that we don't have the votes to do what we need to do, the right things to do, so we're not going to do anything, virtually. And what I say is, okay well if our troops, our wonderful troops over there say, "Well, you know, this is really hard and I don't know we can win this battle, so I think I won't do it." I just think we are looking at this so wrong. And I think the people of this country...89 percent of Americans polled are saying that our economy is directly related to our involvement in Iraq. I mean, they get it. We shouldn't be there in the first place. It's bringing our country down and our economy down. So I would think that the reason they made us the majority party anyway was so that we would do something about it.

The entire interview is available here. I'm out of words to express my disgust. Hopefully, you aren't and you can contact your congresscritter and remind them that even if they're calculating on you not voting for another Republican majority, there is always a "write in the blank" option on the ballot. That includes all incumbent Republicans. There isn't a safer action for Congress to make, given the polling of how Americans feel about the war and yet, they don't feel they can get the votes. Unbelievable. How about this as a reason? We can't afford this anymore.

The Democratic Daily: Some Republicans claim to find Obama appealing...now. And the question of whom to support appears to be splitting families.

Words of Power: An interview with Erica Jong

Mercury Rising: Just another thing you'll never see leading the U.S. evening news

Pam's House Blend: The blog less traveled...(h/t SteveAudio)

The Young Turks: Differences between the GOP and Democratic debates.

Greatscat! 'Oopsies'

There are just some stories that really grind me to do. Vitter is one of them. It's one of those stories whose titillation factor (some pun intended) will keep it in the headlines when far more important stories get ignored. However, I have to ask, based on his statements during the Clinton impeachment, inserting himself into national politics he was merely a state representative, when we will expect to hear Vitter's resignation:

The Nation:

(I)n an October 29, 1998, opinion piece for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Vitter took issue with a previous article, written by two law professors who had argued that impeachment "is a process of removing a president from office who can no longer effectively govern; it is not about punishment." Given that Clinton was still a capable chief executive, they had maintained, impeachment was not in order.

Vitter [..] was aghast at this amoral position. He blasted the law professors for criticizing those congressional Republicans pushing for Clinton's impeachment. Their argument that impeachment is "not primarily about right and wrong or moral fitness to govern," he wrote, was utterly wrongheaded. He continued:

Some current polls may suggest that people are turned off by the whole Clinton mess and don't care -- because the stock market is good, the Clinton spin machine is even better or other reasons. But that doesn't answer the question of whether President Clinton should be impeached and removed from office because he is morally unfit to govern.

Cenk of The Young Turks thinks Vitter should apologize to Clintons... Howie has more (...and *gasp* another Republican scandal a-brewing)

Air America Radio talk show host Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks joined Crystal McCrary Anthony and Niger Innis on tonight's "Paula Zahn Now" to discuss the hysteria surrounding a lawsuit being filed by Pastor O'Neal Dozier and others to keep a mosque from being built in a predominately black neighborhood in Pompano Beach, Florida. Cenk points out the absurdity of the lawsuit and how it is driven by fear, hatred and ignorance.

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Zahn: "Are you at all sensitive to their fears about safety?"

Uygur:"No. Okay, because then it's the same argument they would have made back in the civil rights era. I don't know, you know there are some blacks who are violent, and so we gotta be wary of all blacks. And it's a terrible argument."

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks has been having an ongoing debate with John Hinderaker of Powerline on the subject of Jose Padilla. It's been a fascinating exercise in realizing how little one can debate with the classic conservative authoritarian mindset. Especially one that doesn't require facts to assert his side of the debate. The back and forth has left Cenk with just one question: Is John Hinderaker Ignorant or Purposefully Misleading?

I know which side I fall on, but I'm interested in hearing your take.