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[h/t Dave]

Dick "Suck On The Toe" Morris is always good for a low mordant chortle or two, especially when he gets called out for shilling a group he has a financial relationship with.

Because Morris hasn't the good sense enough to stop at that point. So there he was yesterday on Fox's Hannity and Colmes, doing it yet again -- on the very day he was called out:

Morris: The Republican Party is dead at that point, it has no role at all to play, because you will have 60 votes in the Senate for the Democrats.

And I've been pushing very, very hard for a group called GOPTrust.com that is running a million dollars of ads in Georgia to elect Chambliss and defeat the Democrat. Now in the last couple of days, some of the liberals have lashed back at me, claiming that somehow I'm getting paid by this group. But the fact is that all they've done is buy ads on my website -- like they buy ads in the New York Times. I'm no more in cahoots with them than the New York Times is. And this has all been fully disclosed in their disclosure statements.

But I won't be intimidated by those groups. It is crucially important that every American who cares about the free-enterprise system go online as soon as this show is over and Alan makes his announcement and get online to GOPTrust.com and give Chambliss the money he needs to win. Your whole future depends on it.

Well, all you have to do is look at the Media Matters report to see that the money flow goes well beyond buying ads for his website.

Through publicly available records filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Media Matters for America found that GOPTrust.com has paid a firm apparently affiliated with Morris at least $24,000 since the beginning of October, mostly for "Email Communication." The "Mailing Address" for that firm, Triangulation Strategies, is listed in one of the National Republican Trust PAC's FEC filings as "dickmorris.com." In numerous other FEC filings documenting payments to Triangulation Strategies, National Republican Trust PAC listed the mailing address for Triangulation Strategies as a New York address connected to Morris. Additionally, a separate October FEC filing from a campaign unrelated to the National Republican Trust PAC directly connects Morris with Triangulation Strategies. Media Matters has documented more than a dozen Fox News appearances or columns in which Morris has mentioned, promoted, or fundraised for GOPTrust.com without disclosing his apparent financial relationship with that organization.

Morris isn't even a good liar. But he is good for a little comic relief.

November 02, 2008 C-SPAN

How low can the RNC go? There is no bottom to the ditch they are digging in.

The recording that viewers hear next is the final section of the "Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism" special program that ran recently on Fox News. That show, quite famously, featured Sean Hannity interviewing Andy Martin, an "Internet journalist" who once called a judge a "crooked, slimy Jew" and advanced the conspiracy theory that "[w]e have not seen a valid Obama birth certificate."...read on

McCain's other campaign adviser is getting a lot of extra work. Usually there is like a 36 hour time delay before McCain uses Hannity. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs destroyed Hannity over Andy Matin here.

I was going to make a video from Hannity and Colmes last night about Biden's remark, but it was so disgusting that I couldn't do it. Hey Sean, how's the white supremacist Hal Turner doing? He's your pal and has his own radio show because of you...Say hi for me will you?
The Nation did a feature on it.

This year a man named Hal Turner sat before his computer at his suburban home in North Bergen, New Jersey, posting bomb-making tips on his website, hailing the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes" and calling for the murder of immigrants. "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!" Turner wrote.

Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats...read on

After you read the rest of the article there's still more. Jason Linkins has a little something extra. And Dave first reported on the Hannity-Turner connection back in 2005.

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If there was any shred of credibility left to the McCain campaign, it's all gone now. On H&C Wednesday night, John McCain dived into Sean Hannity's bath tub and called for a full vetting of Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers. It's interesting how bad poll numbers turned the Media's Maverick into a bottom feeder now. He certainly has made Hannity, Karl Rove and Lee Atwater very proud tonight. I really thought it was going to be Sarah Palin who would answer these questions posed by the despicable Hannity as McCain sat and watched, (Hannity most recently used a known anti-Semite named Andy Martin to come on his show to smear Obama) but McCain answered them directly.

McCain: It's about Sen Obama being candid and straight forward with the American people about their relationship.

Hannity: Should the American people be concerned that he's capable in a post 9/11 world of fighting terrorism when he is friends with an unrepentant terrorist?

McCain: Well I think that's also part of the judgement the American people make. But first I think we ought to have a full and complete examination of the relationship and then the American people can make a judgment...

I hope it's vetted out, I think it needs to be vetted out.....including the ACORN organization

With the country suffering right now as much as it is, John McCain, who once said he would run a respectable campaign chose to become a clone of Sean Hannity. Sure, they'll grab a news cycle, but voters want answers to our problems not whacked out FOX News nonsense. Shame on you John McCain.

Obama has plenty of material to work with if McCain goes there in the last debate. Expect McCain's surrogates to go on the offensive too. And I find it laughable that Republicans are crying about voter fraud, but that's for another post.

Robert Gibbs, Senator Obama's communication director and senior spokesman called out Sean Hannity for using the likes of Andy Martin as a source that appeared on his own show to attack Obama with. Good for him and that's how it's done. (rough transcript)

Gibbs: Let me ask you a question. Are you anti-Semitic?
Hannity: Not at all.

Gibbs: On your show on Sunday, the show that's named after you, right? The center piece of that show was a guy named Andy Martin.

Hannity: I know you're reading your talking points.

When I interviewed Al Sharpton, when I interviewed all these controversial figures, you see on FOX we actually interview people of all points of view whether we agree or disagree.

Gibbs: Andy Martin called a judge a crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to....Martin when on to write that he understood better why the Holocaust took place given that Jew survivors are acting like a wolf pack...

Hannity:I find those comments despicable...

Gibbs: You put him on your show. It's the Hannity Show...Why am I not to believe that your'e anti-Semitic, why am I not to believe that everybody that works for the network is anti-Semitic cause Sean Hannity gives somebody a platform that thinks Jews are slimy?

Hannity: I'm a journalist that gives...

Gibbs: You put your whole show around him...

Gibbs:I don't think your Jewish viewers are going to take it very well that you had somebody like that on your show.

Hannity: I'm the biggest supporter of Israel and I've got a thirty year history of, a , on the record....

There you go. Hannity went on about the Ayers nonsense and brought up every slimy thing he could think of. Gibbs actually had Hannity defending his own record on Israel.
Hannity's a journalist too? Wow, who knew.

(h/t ArchPundit)

There's a special level in hell reserved for Sean Hannity for giving Andy Martin an international platform. Who is Andy Martin, you ask?

In his past, Martin also has expressed anti-Semitic views. When he ran for Congress in Connecticut in 1986, the name of his congressional campaign committee included the phrase “to exterminate Jew power in America,” Federal Election Commission records show.

In a 1983 personal bankruptcy case, he referred to a federal bankruptcy judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In a related court filing in the case, he also expressed sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

He also proudly takes ownership for originating the "Obama is a Muslim" email. Jane has more:

Jerome Corsi also uses Andy Martin as a reference multiple times in his new anti-Obama book. The same Andy Martin who once called a judge a "crooked, slimy Jew." I asked Corsi about it on a bloggingheads we recorded recently (isn't up yet), and Corsi said that just because he uses someone as a source it doesn't mean he approves of everything he says.

I guess it's okay if he only hates Jews on the side. Or something.

Ari also unearths this Martin quote:

I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property.

Andy Martin has filed so many frivolous lawsuits he's no longer allowed to file them, yet right wing outlets have consistently been granting him credibility and using him as a source to tear down Obama. Why isn't the perpetually vigilant Jennifer Rubin shrieking "anti-Semite" and seeking to discredit him at every turn?

  It was pretty comical watching Sean Hannity attack his own team player Dick Morris becuase Dick wouldn't follow Hannity's talking points after the debate. Even Morris gets honest once in a while.

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Dick your initial thought?

I thought Obama won the first, I thought McCain won the second. And overall since we hadn't had a terrorist attack last week, but had the economy failing apart. The economy is more important that I have to say unfortunately I think Obama won this debate.

Is Morris hoping for a terrorist attack<snark>

I disagree, I don't know what debate you were watching Dick and I'm going to be honest here because what was so amazing to me was everything that Sen Obama was saying, it almost seemed like it was book knowledge and that be it about the economy, be it about ...it was somebody regurgitating lines and you've been in presidential campaigns before Dick, they were fed to him and memorized by him, but  where was the real life experiences...

Sean, I'm voting for McCain. I agree with that, but Obama showed himself to be more concerned with 

You didn't answer my question. 

Well I told you, I'm voting for McCain, but what I'm saying what happened in the debate, not in reality is that Obama came across as really knowing and caring about the problems of the average person. I also thought McCain blew it by not focusing on why he suspended his campaign, why he wasn't going to go to the debate

Hannity suddenly thinks memorizing lines is a bad thing? What will he say about Sarah Palin? Oh, never mind. Once Sean says he was getting honest it kind of ruined it for me. Morris prefaces his remarks by saying that he's voting for McCain over and over again, but then gives the debate to Obama.

Hannity didn't like that all too much and tried to force Morris to agree with his idiotic point that Obama sure has a lot of "book knowledge."

  Keith does a great job of breaking down Palin's second TV interview.

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Jon dissects Sean Hannity's ridiculous, sycophantic interview with hockey mom Sarah Palin.

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Hannity: Is Senator Obama then using what happened on Wall Street this week? Is he using it for political gain? Is there a danger of a presidential candidate is saying to the world that America's situation of economic crisis is the worst that we've seen in decades — which was words that he was using yesterday — is there a danger in terms of the world hearing that?

Stewart: "I mean, Sarah, answer this for me: Shouldn't we be lying to the world? For instance, what if we told the world the stock market was like golf scores, lower numbers are better. Apparently for Sean Hannity, the greatest in an economic free-fall is acknowledging it. It's the Wile E. Coyote theory applied to economics." 

The juxtaposition with the late night debt-relief infomercial is priceless.

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.

This is one of the best TDS segments I've seen in a long time. These people just make it too easy. Whether it's Karl Rove decrying Tim Kaine's lack of experience (while praising the clearly less experienced Sarah Palin), or Dick Morris and Hannity bashing the "sexist" media attacks on Palin (despite peddling real sexist attacks on Hillary themselves), Jon shows that these people have no shame nor ethical consistency.

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"Karl Rove appears bitterly divided on the experience issue."

After BillO's Jamie Lynn Spears/Bristol Palin hypocrisy: "You see what happens with opinions on teen pregnancies is that they gestate over a period of months."

See this and more Daily Show / Colbert Report clips at Indecision 08.

  This just in from the Department of the Obvious: Scott McClellan admits to Chris Matthews that the White House made a deliberate effort to use FOX News commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly to disseminate White House talking points.

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Matthews: "Did you see FOX television as a tool when you were in the White House? As a useful avenue to get your message out?"

McClellan: "I make a distinction between the journalists and the commentators. Certainly there were commentators and other, pundits at FOX News, that were useful to the White House." [...] That was something we at the White House, yes, were doing, getting them talking points and making sure they knew where we were coming from.

Matthews: "So you were using these commentators as your spokespeople."

McClellan: "Well, certainly."

Straight from the source. Enough with the "fair and balanced" crap already.

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?

Continue reading »

Another chapter of: Here it comes...Sean Hannity and Rick Santorum attacked Barack Obama's faith and church last night on H&C. This is nothing new for Hannity since he smeared it before. How quickly he forgets (OK, he didn't forget) that he defended Mitt Romney's faith and was vehemently opposed to a litmus test being applied to the former LDS Governor. Expect more of this scurrilous behavior from the wingnut base of the GOP. Harold Ford correctly reminded Spawn of this fact.

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Ford :...even when Mitt Romney, I believe you were supporting for president for a period of time, I mean there were questions about his religion which I thought were completely out of bounds.

Hannity: But this is different, this is a little bit different.

Ford: The Mormons said I couldn't go to Heaven for a period of time and I believe it's been renounced now.

Sure Sean, he's not a Republican so it's A-OK to attack his religion since you're a Christian of some sort which means that---I don't know what it means. Is it fair game to dig deep into the beliefs of (CPAC's new hero) Romney's faith? To Spawn Hannity it wasn't.

"HANNITY: You know, Governor, I've had many, many friends that are members of LDS, Latter-Day Saints, Mormons, and I know you probably are frustrated, because I know every interview I've seen you in, this issue keeps coming up. It does not come up for any other candidate. And it's really troublesome to me, because it seems like they are creating for you a religious litmus test. And I will tell you, fundamentally, I view this as unfair. Your thoughts?"

Bob Cesca says:

What he appears to be saying is that we need to take religion off the table in the context of the politics and especially the presidential campaign, and to disregard the religious preferences of the candidates. It's "fundamentally unfair," and Mr. Hannity is exactly right. Of course, I would add that it's unconstitutional to mix religion and politics all around, but you know -- baby steps onto the elevator...read on