Sean Hannity

Countdown's Worst Person--Malkin's 'Public School Lunacy'

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 17, 2009 with winner Michelle Malkin. Runners up Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

OLBERMANN: That`s next, but first time for Countdown`s number two story, tonight`s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to Orly Taitz Limbaugh. One of the great historians, he, described the second Reagan term and the only George H.W. Bush term as eight years of prosperity. "Now after eight years of prosperity under Bush 43, we`re again seeing the seething hate for profits."

Let`s see. The recession from July 1990 to March 1991. The recession from March 2001 to November 2001. And the current George Bush recession, which started in December 2007. Oh, oh, I forgot, when Limbaugh talks about prosperity and profits, he means his own personally; screw the rest of you.

The runner-up, Sean Hannity. This is special; he was outraged -- outraged -- because "the president has a new pen pal, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-il. Now according to "The Washington Post," the president wrote Mr. Kim a secret letter that was delivered last week to the communist dictator by the administration`s special envoy to North Korea."

This month is the second anniversary of the day Kim Jong-il got another personal letter hand delivered in secret. It was from President Bush. I guess that was OK. Maybe he had better penmanship or something.

But our winner, Michelle Malkin. She has exposed more persecution of Christians trying to celebrate Christmas, in this case a little boy who had been asked to draw something that reminded him of the holidays. "Public school lunacy of the day; a second grader in Taunton, MA was kicked out of school, suspended and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation for drawing a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross."

It`s the freaking Roman Coliseum out there for Christmas fearing celebrants, people. While Ms. Malkin`s readers are threatening the teacher, one small problem with the Malkin story -- actually five small problems. According to the superintendent of schools in Taunton, Mass, the nine-year-old was not kicked out off. He wasn`t suspended. And his class had not been asked to draw something that reminded them of the holidays. And actually he didn`t draw a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

He drew a picture of himself on the cross. Just in case his message was not clear enough, he wrote his name right above the picture. You know, maybe you want a doctor to ask him if everything is OK at home. Also, since 1914, Taunton, Massachusetts has been known as the Christmas city, because of the huge Christmas display set up each year on Taunton green, at town expense. Michelle "facts, what are facts" Malkin, today`s worst person in the world.



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The right wingers are pulling out all the rhetorical stops in trying to pretend that global warming is all just a hoax cooked up by Marxist ideologues. Take, for instance, Bill Bennett last night on Sean Hannity's show:

Bennett: It's amazing, you know -- the power of ideology to blind people to reality. You've got this Russian report that you cited -- you know, this thing is falling apart. You had the stuff out of East Anglia University -- I mean, this is reminiscent of the old alchemy, and phrenology stuff.

I mean, this, this -- there's so much junk, so much corruption in the fact that we would fork over a hundred billion dollars. Plus I think the biggest event at Copenhagen was the standing, thunderous standing ovation to Hugo Chavez when he condemned capitalism. That tells you really what that meeting is all about, it seems to me.

Hannity: That's what I want to get to. If we look at the ClimateGate scandal, coupled with what you just pointed out, we've pointed out, about this Russian climate center, what they had to say, there's another agenda. Why would a scientist -- and I have really not gotten a satisfactory answer from anybody -- why would scientists risk their careers and their reputations to lie and manipulate data if there wasn't some agenda? And if they are, and there is an agenda, what is it?

Bennett: Yeah, well, take a look at Soviet psychiatry under Stalin, take a look at various kinds of medical, quote, science under Hitler, and you'll again see the power of ideology to bend men to their, to the ways of the dictator.

You know, I remember reading that biography of Einstein. There's a list of all the scientists who were driven out of Germany by Hitler because of his crazy policies. It's the world's roster of greatest scientists. That's what's happening here. You're getting some of the best people in the world questioning what is going on in this supposedly accepted wisdom, and the thing's falling apart.

Really? A minor dustup among a handful of e-mails is just like Hitler's persecution of the Jews within the German scientific community? Climate scientists are acting like Nazi medical experimenters? Climate science is just like phrenology? Global warming is about bending us to the will exactly which dictator?

Christ on a crutch, get a grip, people. Or at least some tiny bit of perspective.

Hannity has been out leading the parade in trying to make global warming out to be a hoax. And he's obviously pulling out all the stops.

Bennett is right about one thing, though: This situation does indeed powerfully illustrate "the power of ideology to blind people to reality." Just not the way he thinks it does.

Or as the Pat Bagley cartoon put it:

GlobalWarmingCartoon_f96ff.JPG


The Daily Show: World of Warmcraft

From The Daily Show:

World leaders ride to a climate summit in limos, and Sean Hannity denies that global warming exists because it snowed in Houston.


Lyin' Michele Bachmann pulls health-care figures out of her butt

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Without a doubt, one of the worst aspects of watching health-care reform crumble before our eyes is dealing with gloating of the wingnuts who made it crumble -- and especially watching them lying again and again and again as they do so. It's just in their nature to lie, and to do it repeatedly.

Case in point: Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Outer Wingnuttia, went on Fox News last night with Sean Hannity and talked about how she hoped the health-care reform was dead and finished, and both she and Hannity were obviously gleeful at the prospect. At every corner she was a font of disinformation and false "facts". The topper came at the end:

BACHMANN: We need bipartisan reform, and we Republicans are there ready, willing, and able. We want bipartisan reform. Let's scrap what we have and let's move forward, because President Obama's bill will mean 5.5 million jobs lost, and that's according to his own economist, Christina Romer.

Well, as Media Matters explains, there's simply no such figure anywhere in anything Romer has ever said -- indeed, she has said that "health care reform is an economic necessity," and that it will "allow lower unemployment".

Politifact seems to have uncovered the source of Bachmann's "5.5 million" figure, other than the nether regions of her posterior:

Obama's economic adviser -- Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers -- has never said that a tax in the health care bill would cost up to 5.5 million jobs. Republicans have used her 2007 research to develop a calculation for job losses for any type of tax increase. If you have a number for tax revenues generated, then this model will give you a number of jobs lost. But there are factors that make this type of analysis troublesome when it comes to the health care bill. Romer's 2007 research, for example, said that tax increases that fund spending for social programs tend to balance out, and economic growth stays on an even keel. Another problem is that the Republicans take tax increases that happen over 10 years and treat them as if they happen in one year, which inflates the numbers of jobs that might be lost. Finally, this particular Republican analysis includes more taxes than just the surtax of page 336; it also includes the employer mandates of page 313. We find this analysis to be problematic and contrary to how Obama's economic adviser said the model should work.

Ah, but being truthful would not be as much fun as going on national television and lying.


Open Thread

fuzzball_2b19b.gif

From Fried Green al-Qaedas, currently hosting Zappadan, the annual Frank Zappa Blogswarm, December 4-21:

"I am a harmless, lovable little fuzzball. I am the most unthreatening, tolerant, lovable guy you could ever meet." - Rush Limbaugh, multiple occasions

"I'm a lovable little fuzzball! I have no idea what they would have to fear." - Michelle Bachman, 12/9/09

"I'm just a lovably harmless little fuzzball. I don't have any particular axe to grind." - Sean Hannity, sometime in the next 24 hours

Open Thread below...


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You knew that when Dick Cheney went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show for a sit-down interview last night, it was going to be a nonstop Obama-bashing fest.

Indeed, not only did Cheney back up the long-running Fox News theme that "Obama is a radical leftist America-hater whose plan is to weaken us and destroy us", but he went a step further -- essentially accusing the Obama administration of committing treason.

Hannity: You said that the president's cerebral approach projects weakness, and that the president is looking far more radical than you expected. I was, during the campaign, criticized a lot because I was warning, I thought, of the president's radical associations. How radical do you view him now? How radical do you view his opinions?

Cheney: I saw him, when he got elected, as a liberal Democrat -- but conventional, in the sense of sort of falling within the parameters of the national Democratic Party. I think he's demonstrated pretty conclusively now during his first year in office that he's more radical than that. That he's farther outside the parameters, if you will, of what we've traditionally had in Democratic presidents in years past.

Excuse me, but WTF?????!!!!! Neither Cheney nor Hannity explain this remark or give any example of Obama's supposed demonstration of his radicalism.

Let's see, was it Obama's decision to eschew a single-payer plan and head for a "public option" compromise on health-care reform that marked him a "radical"? His decision to increase troop strength in Afghanistan? Or maybe his willingness to scale back his stimulus package, at conservatives' behest, to the point that it failed to properly spark job growth? Maybe it was his willingness to throw Van Jones under the bus the moment right-wing talkers began circling around him. I dunno. They never tell us.

But Cheney keeps going, slagging and attacking Obama's presidency in some of the most vicious terms available -- including the suggestion that Obama and his administration have committed an act of treason.

This came when he and Hannity were discussing the upcoming trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and other 9/11 terrorists in New York:

Hannity: You said in an interview that New York City is great, this trial in New York City is 'great for Al Qaeda'. That's a pretty strong statement. What did you mean by that?

Cheney: I mean that I think it will give aid and comfort to the enemy. I mean that it will make Khalid Sheikh Mohammad something of a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam.

Um, yeah, except of course that KSM is already "something of a hero" in "the radical regions of Islam."

More importantly, the language "give aid and comfort to the enemy" just happens to be the same language as the very legal definition of treason, as laid out in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

Cheney is essentially accusing Obama of treason.

Hannity caps it off by asking Cheney if the Obama administration "maybe doesn't believe there's a war on terror," and Cheney agreeing that it doesn't.

History has already recorded that Dick Cheney not only was one of the worst vice presidents in history just in terms of governance, but moreover one of the most vicious character assassins and ethics-deprived manipulators ever to set foot in the White House.

Now he's just adding to that legacy.


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I'm planning on being around in ten years, Lawd willin'. And I'm really looking forward to holding up all these global-warming deniers, like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all their absurd guests running around their shows screaming that "CRU e-mails prove global warming is a hoax!" for some serious, serious ridicule.

Like Hannity last night on his Fox show, hosting the best author Exxon/Mobil money could buy, Chris Horner, to natter at length about the fake CRU e-mails scandal. At the very end, Hannity comes up with an epithet for global warming:

Hannity: Biggest scientific fraud, I think, in our lifetime.

Yes, that's what we'd call it too -- not global warming, but this fake scandal, as Media Matters explains in thorough detail.

Particularly when it comes to Hannity's and Horner's doubts that the e-mails were "stolen" (Hannity says: "I don't think that's an accurate story," and Horner says, "There is no evidence this was a hacking.") As MM explains:

CRU officials have stated that emails were obtained through "a criminal breach of our security systems." In its initial response to the reported theft, officials at the University of East Anglia stated: "Recently thousands of files and emails illegally obtained from a research server at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have been posted on various sites on the web." In a statement about the controversy, CRU vice chancellor of research Trevor Davies stated: "We are committed to furthering this debate despite being faced with difficult circumstances related to a criminal breach of our security systems and our concern to protect colleagues from the more extreme behaviour of some who have responded in irrational and unpleasant ways to the publication of personal information."

But beyond the fact that this is just another right-wing water-muddying exercise to advance their own propaganda, you really have to wonder how the rest of the media can so eagerly lap up such a non-story. Especially when confronted with the actual evidence of what in fact is occurring in the Real World, i.e., the natural world, to wit:

Climate change speeds up since 1997 Kyoto accord

Since the 1997 Kyoto international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the Arctic's once-frozen summer sea ice. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen:

• The world's oceans have risen about an inch and a half.

• Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

• Species now in trouble because of changing climate include not just the polar bear, which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.

• Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 degree warmer than in the dozen years leading up to 1997.

"The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Continue reading »


...why do Americans care if taxes are raised at all? And why should Americans care about tax cuts also?

As you guys know, I watch the mind numbingly sophomoric Fox Saturday block of Stock Shows that goes by the name of "The Cost of Freedom." They consist of four 30-minute shows, and every single week there's an idiot on who says the only people that pay taxes are the richest members of our society.

OK, let's say I agree. Then why should 290,000,000 Americans more or less give a rip about the ramifications of raising taxes? They make the argument for us that taxes should be raised since only the very rich pay them.

Dave Neiwert wrote about this in one of his earlier posts: Populism: It's all the right-wing rage these days

The Tea Parties, in every incarnation -- from the Tax Day protests to the health-care town halls to the "Tea Party Express" and the "912 March on Washington" to Michele Bachmann's lame "Super Bowl of Freedom" -- has been all about populism, and it is distinctly right-wing populism.

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend...read on

Don't you feel sorry for these poor rich bastards? If this is their argument, then I say President Obama should impose immediate tax increases like a war tax, a health-insurance tax and a jobs creation tax on the top tier of Americans. Make it a payroll tax and take it right out of their checks every pay period. That would immediately satisfy the deficit scolds.

After all, who will care if it's only the Fox Noise demographic? In the end all conservative policies do is destroy the least of us. They treat the American worker like trained seals, whose only function in life is to fuel their wealth.

Digby has more:

I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands. Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right0wing philosophies like Randism and militias. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.

I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.


From The Colbert Report:

Dan Esty believes President Obama will bring a change in spirit to the United Nations Climate Change Conference.


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Howard Kurtz points out the hypocrisy by those on the right and at Fox News who had a hissy fit over Alan Grayson calling a lobbyist a whore, but ignoring Glenn Beck calling Mary Landrieu a prostitute. The guy from The National Review's answer killed me.

GERAGHTY: I think I expect more out of a member of Congress than the 5:00 p.m. hour of FOX News.

Well, so do I but that doesn't excuse Glenn Beck for that pile of dung he calls a television show. I also don't think it's is a fair comparison. Grayson didn't call the lobbyist a street walker like Beck did Landrieu. He used the term whore which can also mean "a venal or unscrupulous person".

KURTZ: You know, a few weeks ago on this program, I talked about why I thought that CNN and MSNBC and other news outlets should have devoted more attention to something that Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson said. He called a lobbyist a "K Street whore."

FOX News went wild on this story. I thought it was underplayed elsewhere.

Now we have Glenn Beck using a similar term on FOX News. Let me play that for you and we'll come back on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLENN BECK: Well, I'm sorry. So we know you're hooking, but you're just not cheap. It's $300 million...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: OK. He's talking there about Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who did get a provision in order to get her support for breaking the filibuster on the health care bill, $300 million for Louisiana.

He said she was hooking. He basically called her a prostitute.

Let's go back a couple of weeks to what Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin were saying on FOX News when the Alan Grayson "whore" comment was made.

Continue reading »


Ed Schultz Calls Out Hannity For His Intellectual Dishonesty

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Ed Schultz awards Sean Hannity his Psycho Talk segment of the day for allowing Palin and Perino to go unchallenged on his show when they spout B.S.


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How's that recent nomination working out for you President Obama? Dana Perino decided to show her thanks by implying that the Obama administration did not want to call the shootings at Fort Hood a terrorist attack for political reasons, and went on to say this:

Perino: We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term. I hope they're not looking at this politically. I do think that we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.

Apparently, in the carefully airbrushed world that is Planet Wingnuttia, the 9/11 attacks happened on, um, lessee, musta been President Clinton's watch! Yeah, that's the ticket.

Of course Hannity wasn't going to bother to correct her. I'll repeat here what Logan said:

Perino's appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, so it's not a done deal, but we have to make our voices heard. Contact your Senators and let them know your thoughts on the matter.

Dave N: Just for the record, let's recall Bush's real record -- and not the one Republicans want to airbrush into our collective memories -- in terms of keeping us safe:

[After the 9/11 attacks], of course, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." (As a matter of fact, just such a scenario had been foreseen by intelligence officials in 1998, as Rice later admitted.)

Then there was the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," which concluded:

Continue reading »


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Anyone want to take bets on what the collective IQ of this pair is? Sean Hannity brings in The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck to do a bit of concern trolling for Sarah-Barracuda and that mean old "librul" media that just "hates" conservative women and the conversation turns to a bit of fear mongering over the trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed being moved to New York.

Hannity: How do you feel about Barack Obama? Do you think he’s a Socialist? Do you think he’s a radical?

Hasselbeck: You know I think he ran as from the middle of the road, right? But what we’re seeing are some what I think to be near extremist non…lack of decisions I should say. You know, take for instance Khalid Sheikh Muhammed getting a civilian trial here in New York City.

Hannity: Umm hmm.

Hasselbeck: The irony that we now are having this rock star KSM on the biggest Broadway stage of the world to what?—reenact and draw up all that happened on 9-11. Wow! What a chance for al Quada to come in…I mean they should start selling tickets now. This is going to be a circus—an absolute circus and no illegal combatant deserves a civilian trial and I cannot believe that this decision has been made.

Hannity: And that and they still have the investigation into Fort Hood which I can’t believe, but you’re right about Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. Think about this. We will pass on intelligence information…

Hasselbeck: Umm hmm…

Hannity: …to him and his defense team…

Hasselbeck: Of course.

Hannity: When he already admitted guilt and was willing to get the death penalty.

Hasselbeck: Speaking of defense Sean, who’s going to be the defendant here? Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, he’s going to then be “oh, poor guy. What did they chuck some water on him”. And then we have the Bush administration going to be the real defendant and let’s not kid ourselves here…

Hannity: You’ll get in as much trouble as me about chucking water…

Hasselbeck: I will. I’m sure. I’m sure I will.

Hannity: I’m glad we waterboarded him. It kept people safe.

Broadway stage? Really? I want to know when someone’s going to “chuck some water” in one of these two’s faces. Hannity never did respond to Keith’s challenge for him to be waterboarded himself. I await Sean making his Worst Person’s segment after this one.

You gotta' love Hannity's lead in here as well. Barack Obama...Elisabeth is he really a Marxist, Socialist, terrorist or is he just a radical that wants to destroy America? Give me your insightful analysis on this, would you? Because I know there's no one more qualified than a former Survivor contestant turned daytime talk show co-host to weigh in on that.


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Watching Sarah Palin being interviewed is always a little like watching an incoherent art-student film or something from a William S. Burroughs fantasy. It obviously comes from a completely different planet in a different quadrant of the universe.

For example, among the things you learned by watching Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night were the following nuggets:

-- Palin still is unhappy with the McCain campaign for not having smeared Barack Obama enough with phony association-game stuff about Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright -- you know, issues Americans really cared about.

-- She seems to have been watching a lot of Glenn Beck, though, because she practically repeats Beck's favorite talking points about Obama's supposedly nefarious associations.

-- Palin says "it wasn't negative campaigning and it wasn't off-base to call someone out on their associations." Hmmmm. Well, when Max Blumenthal and I did just that with Palin over her lengthy far-right associations, she completely freaked out.

-- Obama is "dithering" in Afghanistan. And evidently, if Palin were president, the only people she would listen to regarding the use of troops would be generals. Civilian advisers? Fuggedaboutit.

-- The reason she "blew" the question in the Katie Couric interview about what she read? She was irked by Couric's "arrogance." Apparently it's arrogant of media folk to ask national politicians softball questions that every other politico on the planet can readily answer.

-- What does she read? The first publication she cites is NewsMax. Yep, that NewsMax: The folks who, in the late 1990s, were peddling "Y2K apocalypse" theories and Clinton "New World Order" conspiracy theories. The same NewsMax that recently published a piece extolling the virtues of a military coup in order to remove Obama.

One thing that I think will become obvious in the coming weeks: Palin will not risk any more Katie Couric interviews. She will be completely ensconced only with friendly interviewers like Hannity. Oprah will have been her most risky interview.


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Fresh off warning us that President Obama intends to create a "one world order," Chuck Norris went on Sean Hannity's show last night on Fox and described his eliminationist fantasies if he ran for office:

Hannity: Why don't you run? No no no, there's a solution -- why wouldn't you -- Chuck Norris could be governor of Texas one day.

Norris: You know why? Because I'd be sitting here with my opponent, and debating, and then he would start attacking my character, and I'd jump over there and choke him unconscious.

[Laughter]

Hannity: You have more control than that!

Norris: I don't! That's the problem, you know. I have a thin skin. It was really tough in the film world. And in the political world, you know, I'd be killing half the people.

Because, you know, nothing bespeaks personal character like the volatile use of violence on your opponents.

He goes on to explain why he wouldn't fit well in political arenas like the Senate:

Norris: You know, with all the senators, you can't get anything done. You know, it's always right and left --

Hannity: No, no, you can, I disagree with you. You can.

Norris: Well, what I'd have to do, I'd have to choke out all the Democrats.

Hannity: [laughs] Well, it's a good start.

He also describes one of the eliminationist "jokes" in his new book:

Norris: One of the "facts" there [in his book] is America is not a democracy, it's a Chucktatership. And if it was, I said I would go to Congress, I'd line up every member of Congress, and I'd have Ron Paul, who I believe is one of the, probably one of the more honest ones there, I'd say, 'Ron, point out the honest ones' --

Hannity: I like Ron Paul. He's nuts.

Norris: Yeah, I know. That's why I like him. But anyway, I'd choke out the dis -- every dishonest politician that's up there.

Evidently, that would perforce include "all the Democrats." And any non-Paulbot Republicans. Which is most of them.

Well, paranoia and eliminationist violence often go hand in hand. And eventually, for the paranoid, the violence ceases to be a mere fantasy.