Sean Hannity. Not making that up, and really, does anyone wonder if Hannity will question Ms. Palin's readiness to be Commander-in-Chief, the way he regularly does with Obama? And one wonders if the rest of her fall schedule is booked with O'Reilly, Brit Hume, and the gang from Fox and Friends. (h/t Oliver Willis)

UPDATED: Sean Hannity, the guy who says he's a big Christian Conservative, yells at Robert Kuttner, a policy wonk type of guy with such venom that it was kind of shocking actually. I would have expected Hannity's rage directed elsewhere so it struck me as odd.

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Kuttner: "I'm not here to be insulted, either. You're doing RNC talking points."
Hannity: I don't have any RNC - these are HANNITY talking points. I write the talking points. You spew this line..."
Kuttner: "I don't spew any goddamn line. Stop insulting me or I'm walking off the set."
Hannity: "Go ahead! Go! Good-bye! Leave! I don't care! Go right ahead! Walk off! You said the economy's in dire straits."
Kuttner: "Do you want to deny that, you fool?"

After Robert finished up the opening segment with Colmes, the cowardly Hannity went berserk on Robert, telling him all he said was garbage and more garbage, but much nastier than usual. When Kuttner said that Hannity was reading RNC talking points, Hannidate said that he writes the talking points. Now, he was talking about Hannity's talking points, but there is no differences between what Hannity says and what Drudge/Linbaugh and McCain's camp say. Usually there's a 36 hour turnaround from Hannity's mouth to the McCain camp making a video so Robert wasn't that far off.

Kuttner threatened to walk off the set and actually he should have. Instead, he called Sean a fool and a host of other names. Robert should feel proud though since Hannity called McCain a liar when he was backing Romney.

Read that headline twice. It might just be the dumbest statement made on television since Bush took office. After accusing Obama of voting to deny armor for the troops, Dick Morris tries to argue that Obama displayed poor judgment during the Georgian/Russian conflict because he pointed out that we would be in a stronger position to condemn Russia if we hadn't squandered our credibility by invading Iraq. After Colmes reminds him that Obama is right, Morris proceeds to make himself look even dumber by claiming we invaded Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein. Huh?

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Morris: You saw by these, these ill prepared reactions on Georgia. And you saw what he said today? Obama said that he understood that countries should not invade other countries and we would be in a better position to say that if we had not gone into Iraq.

Colmes: Where is he wrong?

Morris: Where he's wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government. Not as an invasion.

Colmes: We went to Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. [....]

Morris: We're in Iraq now at the invitation of the government.

Colmes: They've asked us to leave. They said there's a timeline to get us out.

Morris: We're in Iraq as a result of a democracy asking for us to come in there. It's not an invasion. It's not a takeover. We're not trying to annex Iraq.

Colmes: We went in there by our own...of our own. We went into Iraq originally. Not at the invitation of Saddam Hussein's government.

To recap: Obama doesn't want to protect the troops (he does); we invaded Iraq at the request of Saddam Hussein (we didn't); we're staying in Iraq because the Iraqis want us there (they don't); and America has the requisite credibility to scold other countries for doing exactly what we do (we don't). How much does FOX pay this clown?

Full transcript below:

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Believe it or not, Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity are still, even now, laughing like school children over the notion of properly-inflated tires.

A lot of Republicans have said a lot of stupid things about energy policy in recent weeks, but this may very well be the single most inane comment any of them have uttered publicly. (Worse than a House Republican from Texas exclaiming, “Let’s bring up the Paris Hilton plan”? Yes, even worse than that.)

Ben at TP valiantly goes to the trouble of pointing out why Gingrich’s argument is demonstrably ridiculous — explaining why tire maintenance is a good idea, and wouldn’t “enrich Big Oil” — but I’d just add that it’s worth remembering just how idiotic Newt Gingrich’s worldview can be.

About a year ago, the WaPo’s David Broder said the former House Speaker has “earned the label ‘visionary.’” That’s absurd; Gingrich is a little more than pseudo-scholarly nut.

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Why did Rick Warren lie to his audience and say McCain was in a cone of silence when he knew he clearly wasn't even at the event? I didn't know he was a stand up comedian. Did anybody understand the Maxwell Smart reference? This was a very visible and highly important forum during this presidential campaign and for him to now say the cone reference was a joke just doesn't fly. And when is it the job of the Secret Service to make sure John McCain wasn't getting any tips about Obama's appearance during Warren's forum? I'm confused. Aren't they supposed to be protecting his life? Warren says we're attacking their credibility. Huh?

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It goes to the issue of credibility. Why should we believe Warren now if he lied earlier? Why wasn't McCain on time? Does the Secret Service have an answer for that? Did Warren even ask McCain that? I don't really care if he told the candidates a few questions that he might ask if he was fair to both of them, but his integrity is in question now because of his attitude over McCain. The way it's worked out---Obama should have passed on this event.

Nothing John McCain did dishonestly in his life counts because he was a POW. So says Sean Hannity after he got caught attacking John Edwards and trying to play the average Amercian guy who just doesn't understand how Edwards could have cheated on his wife and then lied about it."Why should we trust you?" SH says. Colmes attacked Hannity over this as the two argued. An emailer said they rarely ever talk back to each other since it's not the format of the show. Colmes smacked Hannity around and asked the same question about John McCain's first marriage...

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.'

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Hannity: I'm not getting this. Explain to me and I'm wondering if you can't keep the promise to your family, can't keep your promise to your wife, you're having an affair, you're lying about the affair repeatedly, why should the American people trust you when you say you're not going to lie to them? Why should we trust you?

Colmes: And by the way, that's a great question Sean asks and so Amanda, if that's true and you can't trust somebody who had an affair. How can we trust John McCain to be President of the United States---he cheated on by his own admission on his first wife, he didn't keep his martial vows, he didn't keep his pledge to his first family...

Hannity: Thirty years ago after five and a half years of being a POW

Colmes: Excuse me Sean. You've had your chance to speak, I'm up. John McCain cheated on his wife, right. Amanda? So how do we trust John McCain? He cheated on his wife, why do you have a double standard and John McCain's running for President? John Edwards is not. John McCain's wife was in a car accident. John McCain's running for President, what about his affair?

(H) After five and a half years in a POW camp. (C) That has nothing to do with it. So it's OK to have an affair on his wife.

How about the good old Keating Five? Or Vicky Iseman? Does that count. Mr. Sean?

UPDATED: Silent Patriot says: Truncated transcript via Newshound, who has a great detailed recap.

Hannity: “If you can’t keep a promise to your family, can’t keep a promise to your wife, you’re having an affair, you’re lying about the affair repeatedly. Why should the American people trust you when you say you’re not gonna lie to them? Why should we trust you?”

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Rove tries to defend McCain's lobbyist pals on H&C with his typical "Obama has them too," routine. Colmes does a good job of pointing out the fact that McCain used to be a maverick when it came to lobbyists, but not anymore. And he didn't forget about naming Rick Davis either.

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Colmes: You have John McCain come out hard against Russia, his chief foreign policy advisor got lobbyists money. John McCain has talked about not taking lobbyist money and being a different kind of candidate back when he was a maverick. And then now he has all these lobbyists working for him.

I wouldn't get in there and start throwing mud at McCain over lobbyists associations without then realizing what kind of lobbyist associations there are among Democrats, particularly among congressional Democrats.

I think McCain is running for president and not the congress. Rove tries to say that Obama has plenty of them working for his campaign like McCain, but of course that's false. We've posted many stories on C&L about McCain's Army of Lobbyists. Here are but a few:

The John McCain Institute of Lobbyists

McCain Campaign Manager’s Alleged Russian Mob Ties

McCain Caught Off-Guard About Campaign’s Lobbyist Problems

McCain makes a distinction between good lobbyists and bad

And of course this big one: McCain: The Anti-lobbyist just loves lobbyists

Now the Washington Post follows that up with this:

In McCain’s case, the fact that lobbyists are essentially running his presidential campaign — most of them as volunteers — seems to some people to be at odds with his anti-lobbying rhetoric. “He has a closer relationship with lobbyists than he lets on,” said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The problem for McCain being so closely associated with lobbyists is that he’s the candidate most closely associated with attacking lobbyists.”

Public Citizen, a group that monitors campaign fundraising, has found that McCain had more bundlers — people who gather checks from networks of friends and associates — from the lobbying community than any other presidential candidate from either party. By the group’s current count, McCain had at least 59 federal lobbyists raising money for his campaign, compared with 33 working for Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani and 19 working for Democrat Clinton..read on

Here's the video of Hannity and Newt trying to frame Obama into the neat little narrative Rove has created for him.

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Gingrich: Narcissistic, stunningly arrogant---need, daring, stunning, full of himself, out of touch, he's floating 25 feet above the ground, take a week off and get back in touch with reality, sounding goofy...

And so it goes. Newt has the playbook down. Hannity can certainly take everything Obama says out of context like the best of them.

Did they leave anything out?

Update: It does sound like Newt is describing himself....

Friday bloopers!

Sean Hannity was in fine form last night as he had his fresh new Obama--GOP--attack--talking points ready to go. (I don't think Scott McClellan passed them off this time.) He wanted his audience to see Obama's newest ad to help lower gas prices, but unfortunately for him he aired an ad that criticized John McCain's energy plan instead. Oppps. He thought McCain had principles. Thanks for the extra publicity. I'm sure Obama thanks you too.

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Hannity: Here is Barack Obama's plan to lower gas prices, in his own words.

Ad: Sen. McCain, you let me and my kids down.

Fire that tech already Sean. You got punked. (h/t Moe)

How unpatriotic is Sean Hannity? He joins in with McCain's major economic dude, Phil Gramm and believes we are a nation of Whiners.

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Hannity: But in all seriously here, we haven't had a recession---there is an economic slow down. I share your concern. Everybody I talk to is furious at 4.50 a gallon for gasoline, especially when they know we have more resources than the middle east, but I want to know. I want to ask you this. I've met people that grew up in tyranny. I knew people that grew up in the former Soviet Union for fear of speaking out against their government. Never had an opportunity to pursue their dreams...In this country, maybe we do, is there some truth to the fact, maybe we do whine too much. Maybe we don't to appreciate this gift we have of freedom. Maybe we don't take advantage of, maybe too many of us look to the government to solve every problem we have, Health care etc...

Gingrich: Sean, I have the deepest affection for you..that is the least Ronald Reagan like quote I've heard from you in your entire career.

WTF is he talking about? My God, Newt rebukes him in the the worst possible way for a Hannity type robot. Calling him the anti-Reagan. I guess when you make over five million dollars a year like Hannity does, no worries about health care for his family, paying for gas and the high cost of food really isn't a big deal to him and many rich conservatives. You know the new term is "economic slow down." We're not struggling, there's just a little bump in the road so suck it up people!@

Heather says:

Gingrich tells Hannity that government should listen to citizens when they're complaining, and admits the truth when he says that "If your customer comes in and complains to you it is not good to say to the customer quit whining because then they get to go to a new store". That "new store" is the Democratic Party and he knows it. Of course that was qualified later with remarks that small business without the aid of government and the private sector is the answer to all of our problems instead of government holding those people back with I would guess their nasty regulations on business so they don't kill all of us while making a profit which of course all Republicans hate.