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:
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.
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?”
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.
I know this has been out there for a few days, but I had to post it. Hannity is the ultimate tool of the GOP, but I can't remember ever seeing him flip flop on a topic faster. We all know that this North Korean nuke deal is suspect to say the least, but Hannity fawns all over it in his opening to the segment until wingnut hero John Bolton attacks it and Hannity...well...see for yourself.
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transcript via Think Progress:
HANNITY: The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way? Joining us now for analysis, former ambassador to the U.N. and a Fox News contributor, John Bolton. What do you think this means?
BOLTON: I think it's actually a clear victory for North Korea. They gain enormous political legitimacy...In return, we get precious little. I think this is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the U.S. without raising a sweat.
HANNITY: Boy I tell you they've done it time and time again, and I'm sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven't kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan's "trust but verify"?
OMG, is this hysterical. Yes, will the press credit Bush with a monumental victory?----to---how could he be such a fool? The only fool is Hannity. Who needs Comedy Central when we have Sean . Should we even mention that since North Korea is one of Bush's Axis of Evil; isn't negotiating with them unthinkable? It made me think of this scene from Chinatown:
Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth.
Jake: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Jake: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
Jake: (He slaps her.) I said, 'I want the truth.'
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister. (He slaps her again.) She's my daughter. (Slap.) My sister, my daughter. (Slap. Slap.)
Jake: I said, 'I want the truth!' (He throws her against the sofa.)
Mrs. Mulwray: ...She's my sister and my daughter!...My father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?
On March 13, 2008, FOX’s Sean Hannity interviewed John McCain for the full hour. The interview started with questions about McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. At one point, this was said:
MCCAIN: I think it makes you a better person. Obviously, it makes you love America. I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company.
Get that? McCain “really didn’t love America” until he was a POW.
Jedreport.com discovered that the transcript of the McCain/Hannity interview on FoxNews.com had no mention of McCain saying he “really didn’t love America” until he was a POW. I checked and sure enough, it wasn’t there. So I started watching the video of the interview of FoxNews.com — it wasn’t there either. Read on...
This video proves Fox News scrubbed McCain's statement from the video and transcript on their website. We know Fox isn't fair or balanced and have come to expect this sort of hackery from them, but they still have to be called out for it. Call or write Fox and ask them why a so-called news outlet is trying to effect a presidential election by scrubbing John McCain's unflattering statement from their website. Remember, be nice...
1-888-369-4762
After lauding Oliver North for his new book that apparently has more pictures than it does pages (No doubt North's picture-book tells a much different story than the truth-laid-bare photos and accounts from an award-winning unembedded photojournalist like Dahr Jamail, but I digress), Sean Hannity asks North for his opinion on whether the President was right to compare the want to hold diplomatic talks with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis in the 1930’s.
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Oliver North: As you know, I’m the history guy at Fox News Channel, right? I’ve done this WWII series – 52 of our episodes about WWII. Had it not been for Chamberlain going to sit down with Adolf Hitler and try to cut a deal in Munich, WWII might never have happened, but it emboldened the dictator. That’s what the President said yesterday in Jerusalem. And a little reminder today, a shot across the bow here at the NRA, when John McCain got up and said, 'You cannot have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions, with despots and dictators' - dead on the mark.
For someone who was lucky not to have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates, he's got some nerve touching this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn't just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.
Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News' "history guy" is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool.
Negotiation is not appeasement and there are zero parallels between simply opening up a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and the capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the Munich Agreement. It's a ridiculous assertion, especially considering that the Bush administration itself has negotiated with Libya and North Korea, yet Iran's previous offers to put everything, including its nuclear program, on the table and peacefully negotiate have been completely ignored even after Iran had been an important ally of the coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Oliver North, just like John McCain and other conservatives, don't even have a clue what they are talking about. Apparently no one in this administration ever thought to ask Bush's own Sec. of Defense, Neville Chamberlain Robert Gates, for his opinion:
We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them. If there's going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander with them not feeling that they need anything from us.
Exactly.
Hannity's laughing at you, George, for making him the only clear winner of last Wednesday's debate.
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Hannity: The liberal blogs are losing their minds today in part because I suggested the question to George Stephanopoulos Tues afternoon on my radio show.
While we've had plenty of criticism for MSNBC's and CNN's debate coverage this season, nothing they did came anywhere near to what ABC pulled last Wednesday and Stephanopoulos' on-air dumpster diving for gotcha questions on Hannity's radio show will likely go down as one of the dumbest moves by a debate moderator ever. We've come to expect smear jobs like this from the likes of Hannity, and the Dems have rightly refused to attend any debate on the GOP/Fox News Channel because of it, but now we have ABC News's Chief Washington Correspondent and former Democratic presidential political adviser openly seeking their advice and unapologetically emulating them.
How is it that Stephanopoulos, of all people, thought this was a good move? Josh Marshall offers this depressingly valid observation:
I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators' claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on 'electability'. And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant. ...
Thankfully, there are still more than a handful of journalists who aren't GOP pawns who together have penned a letter slamming ABC for its debate debacle.
Cover your keyboards first, kids. If you didn't think they were lying liars before....And BillO is particularly talented in keeping a straight face for this one:
