Hannocchio and his Tea Nut friends cost this nation $24 billion dollars. Next, Hannocchio cost a worker her job.

This crackpot is on the road of self-destruction, and he’s taking everyone down with him.

Hannocchio is the one who should be fired.

When the govt changed FT to 30 hours even though it had been 40 then you saw changes."

Yeah, I guess that’s why so many corporations knocked employees down to 30 hours to mark them as “part time,” which would loophole them out of providing insurance.

Oh, wait- You’re giving me the Fox News version. No wonder there weren’t any facts in there!

Joe Marsh, I linked to Hannity’s original call to Earline Davis in my post. He says something like, “Do you agree to talk?” Then he says, “Say yes” before adding something like “If it’s OK. You have to say that if you’re going to be on the radio.” She was wrong to agree but he was pushy about it. Same thing with his leading questions that were designed to elicit criticisms of Obamacare.

As I said, she should have known better but he was using her as a stunt and she wound up paying the price for it.

Thanks you, Visitor. Although the full video from Fox is not available any more, enough of it is in my last Waterboard post that you can see Hannity didn’t say he’d only agree to be waterboarded if Grodin did it. Plus, Olbermann offered more money (I forget the amount now) for every second Hannity lasted. He’d not have done that If Hannity qualified the offer.

From a Mediaite piece this evening:

---

Liberal radio host Mike Papantonio accused Hannity of being “desperate to create drama.”

“When you don’t have substance, when your ratings are tanking,” he added, “you start playing to the Honey Boo-Boo crowd — the lowest hanging fruit available.”

---

More here:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-goes-after-hannity-for-anti-obamacare-implication-his-panel-proceeds-to-savage-him/

Ellen, I’m not sure Slanthead “goaded” her into it. He played the recording of the original call in his first hour on the radio yesterday, and he did ask her right up front if she was okay with being “on the air?” (Of course it’s possible that Hannity’s Pro Tools whore doctored this, as has happened many times in the past.

But she did answer “yes” so maybe she just wasn’t fully aware of the situation.

He spent almost the whole first hour with he yesterday, and she sounded sincere to me, but a little out of her league. Another thought is that maybe she’s the latest in Slanthead’s plants (like those four people who hated Obamacare the other day?

But if we take this at face value, then she is simply an unfortunate individual who — whether she was aware of her company’s policies or not — got sucked up into another Slanthead stunt.

We’ll probably see many more of these as he tries to gin up publicity for his tanking broadcast career.

What no one seems to have brought up here is how patronizing Slanthead was to her yesterday. He asked how much she earned a year and she said $25,000. Hannity’s response: “That’s not bad…” If she was working full time, that’s a disgrace on that call center right there, as I read just the other day (forgot where) that income under $30k/year puts someone in a poverty classification.

So his “gift” of $26,000 (which he can give tax free to the recipient according to his accountant), if he actually follows through, is a drop in his bucket.

Note to Slanthead:

You may try to act magnanimous and and try buy yourself a label of “charitable” but we’re on to your slimy tricks!

“Wow, I can’t remember the last time I banned so many people at one sitting.”
In reality, Ellen, you probably banned only one REAL person….with a lot of sockpuppets.
Probably a j$ minion……fun while he/she/it lasted, though!

Oh, and one last thing. One of my long-held jobs involved dealing with the public. Whether it was in the rules or not, I was supposed to know that when someone was clamoring for information (even worse if they were calling while on the air) that was beyond the scope of my job or that I was not authorized to provide, I was supposed to refer the matter to a supervisor.

I think it was harsh to fire Ms. Davis for what she did and obviously she was just trying to be nice and helpful but she did not handle this properly. And Hannity goaded her into it. I suspect he’d fire anyone who worked for him who handled an inquiry from, say, MSNBC, in a similar fashion.

Wow, I can’t remember the last time I banned so many people at one sitting. I wonder how many work for Fox directly? Was that you, Oliver North, pretending to be Ken, the guy who served in the military?

Ken or Joshua or Johnny or Ashley, you left out something from your transcript of Hannity’s waterboarding promise. He never said he’d only do it if Grodin did the waterboarding. In fact, Grodin said he would not.

http://www.newshounds.us/sean_hannity_waterboard_weasel_1646_days_since_he_promised_to_undergo_dunking_for_charity_10242013

Furthermore, in my post about Hannity’s dinner bet, I explain why Goolsbee feels (and I agree) that Hannity did not follow through on his bet just because he gave Goolsbee a gift certificate from one of his advertisers.

http://www.newshounds.us/sean_hannity_waterboard_weasel_1646_days_since_he_promised_to_undergo_dunking_for_charity_10242013 In the meanwhile, you’ve been banned.

Joshua, I mean Johnny, I mean Ashley, I mean whichever J$ sock puppet published under the name “fiberals bite,” you are wrong. I left nothing out. I linked to the original radio discussion where the question was asked and I mentioned it in m post (though I did leave out the answer because I didn’t think it relevant.)

Since you care about fibbing, let me just point out yours: You have no evidence that Davis was fired because of that answer. Hannity says he doesn’t know why she was fired. Davis said she was told something like “We can’t have this.” It suggests that her bosses didn’t like her talking on the air to someone who wasn’t trying to sign up, not that she shouldn’t have given any particular answer.

And let’s just point out some more fibs of yours: You say you hate us and yet you refuse to stay away. So either you are lying about your feelings for us or you are paid to come here and say things to make us look bad. Maybe one of those Fox employees that go around posting on websites, eh?

http://www.newshounds.us/fox_news_reportedly_used_internet_sockpuppets_to_discredit_its_critics_0202013

By the way, I’ve got a review copy of the book on its way to me and then I plan to contact Mr. Folkenflik to get more info.

In the meanwhile, you’ll have to come up with another sockpuppet because this one of your phony identities has been banned.

Interesting that “Ken” does not seem to be aware of the reports of Fox News having their employees set up multiple dummy accounts in order to disrupt websites like this one. If “Ken” were to take five seconds to enter a google search of “Fox News” and “sock puppet”, he might learn something new. But I think he already knows that. Not sure where he’s getting this idea that “paid protesters and commenters are from the left”. This may simply be yet another example of Fox News and its supporters engaging in projection.

I’m glad to see that “Ken” has realized that Charles Grodin’s last name is indeed spelled with an “I” and not with an “e”. Interesting that he quotes the exchange without the context. Interesting that he doesn’t note the tone as I did. Interesting that he is unable to answer the basic points I made. Again, Hannity was being challenged on the fact that Erich “Mancow” Muller had just done a very public stunt of having himself waterboarded to prove that it wasn’t torture. After just a few seconds, Mancow begged for mercy and publicly admitted it was torture. Charles Grodin knew this, and Sean Hannity absolutely knew this. Grodin was challenging Hannity to do the same thing. Hannity said he would do so for charity. He then joked that he would let Grodin do it. Grodin made the point that he wouldn’t do it – which was consistent with the point that Grodin was making about waterboarding being torture. Meaning that Grodin wouldn’t engage in it, but Hannity was agreeing to undergo it since Ollie North had told him it wasn’t really torture. Just because Charles Grodin didn’t wish to personally torture Sean Hannity doesn’t change the fact that Hannity made a wild offer here – that he would agree to be waterboarded for charity to prove to everyone once and for all that it wasn’t torture. (Or at least as far as Grodin was putting it to him.) Years later, Hannity has still not fulfilled that offer, nor has he offered any explanation to justify his cowardice in this matter. We’re still waiting, and making excuses for him will not change that fact.

Everyone that disagrees with you folks must be a plant from FOX or the GOP. I don’t know where you get that from, most of the evidence of paid protesters and commenters are from the left.

Direct transcript from video since you all like to leave out the key components. If Grodin backed out why do you expect Hannity to go through with it?

GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded? We can waterboard you?
HANNITY: Sure.
GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?
HANNITY: I’ll do it for charity. I’ll let you do it.
GRODIN: I wouldn’t do it.
HANNITY: I’ll do it for the troops’ families.
GRODIN: I wouldn’t do it.

I should add that Hannity is being typically disingenuous with his repeated assertions that the ACA is going to cost everyone more money.

The reality is that the ACA will provide many people with cheaper alternatives to the plans they have previously had. It will also make it possible for many people who had not been covered by any plan to get such coverage now. This also means that some people will probably pay more. Some will pay a very small amount more, some will pay a bit higher. But the idea that everyone is going to be forced to pay for a plan they neither need nor want is simply ridiculous – and it’s exactly the kind of scare-mongering Fox News has been doing about the ACA from the beginning.

It’s fairly obvious that the true intention of the GOP and of Fox News is to scare as many people away from the ACA as they can, in the hopes that they can present it as a “failure” for the 2014 midterm elections. The notion of delaying the implementation was specifically intended to keep it from going into effect, so that if the GOP were to somehow win the Senate, they would be able to try another 40 times to repeal it entirely. And the purpose of that has nothing to do with helping anyone get affordable health care or keep it. The purpose has always been to trash the sitting President in any way the GOP could. Killing the ACA would be one big, visible way of accomplishing that goal. Sadly for the GOP, their determination to do so may have just cost them significant penalties for 2014. Just how much damage they’ve done to themselves will be seen in a year’s time.

I have to say that the Fox News contingent has been busy on this thread, assuming that it isn’t just one paid Fox News employee as recent reports have been indicating.

Let’s take the misinformation one step at a time, shall we?

First, we have the Sean Hannity offer to be waterboarded for charity during his interview of Charles Grodin in May 2009. Anyone can watch this clip online and see it for themselves. Grodin repeatedly challenged Hannity for his support of right wing ideas like torture being a good intelligence tool. Grodin specifically challenged Hannity about waterboarding since Hannity thought it was just a form of “enhanced interrogation” as the Bush people had happily termed it. Hannity said that he had asked Oliver North about it and went with North’s feeling that it wasn’t torture. Grodin then asked if Hannity would agree to be waterboarded, as Erich “Mancow” Muller had just done. (And Muller lasted only seconds before begging them to stop, at which point he admitted this was torture) Hannity looked into the camera and said “Sure.” Grodin then joked, “Busy this Sunday?” Hannity smiled, but continued in a serious vein by saying “I’ll do it for charity”. Grodin moved off the topic at that point. But Hannity’s offer to do this stands. He knew it was in direct reference to what Erich Muller had done, and he had made a specific condition to be attached to his submitting to this.

If we were to just dismiss Hannity’s offer as “a joke”, then this means that we’re giving him a lot more room for reasonable doubt than Hannity allows any of his political targets. Hannity regularly takes exact quotes from President Obama or Nancy Pelosi and then runs with them as far as he can. Is he now saying that he wants people to give him room he denies to people he doesn’t like? Sounds a bit like a double standard to me. And in this case, we have a genuine offer, including an offer to charity, made in the context of an actual waterboarding of a radio host. And Sean Hannity has yet to live up to that offer, now years and years after the fact. So it’s a legitimate question.

Regarding Leon Panetta’s statements about waterboarding and bin Laden, I wouldn’t go with a right wing website’s opinion of what Panetta said. I think it’s more important to listen to Panetta himself. Panetta was actually saying the opposite of what right wingers have tried to insist he was saying for years. Panetta was saying that they had information that came from a lot of different sources, including some that came from Bush Administration torture tactics. But Panetta made clear that most of the intelligence was put together without having to resort to Bush-era torture. Meaning that this wasn’t a case of the Bush people torturing someone with waterboarding and that person giving intelligence agents bin Laden’s address. It’s more along the lines of the intelligence agents compiling information from multiple sources and when all of it was put together, they were able to find that compound and tag it as bin Laden’s hideout. Whether a torture victim corroborated some of that information or not does not change this fact. And frantically trying to hide behind a right wing website’s opinion or Sean Hannity’s opinion will not make a legitimate case.

Regarding Hannity’s many offers to buy dinner for debate opponents, as well as offers to donate to charity, his record speaks for itself. The fact is that he guaranteed Austan Goolsbee that he would take him to dinner if President Obama was re-elected, because Hannity at that time was convinced beyond reason that Mitt Romney was about to win the 2012 election. When President Obama won instead, Hannity pulled out a gift certificate and figured that would be just as good as taking his “friend” Austan Goolsbee to dinner. It’s not. A gift certificate means that you have a small amount covered and you have to take care of the rest yourself. Being taken to dinner by your “friend” Sean Hannity means that you have a meal together and Sean pays the check. He did not do this. Further, he has a history of making wild promises to donate to charity or to buy dinners for people if his latest idea is proven false. The point is that he doesn’t have much of a record for living up to those promises. His fear of being waterboarded like Mancow is but one example. His attempt to welch on his promise to Goolsbee is another.

Regarding the firing of Earline Davis, Hannity is directly responsible for it. He has by his own admission been repeatedly calling in to the phone help lines and harassing the staffers on the other end. Earline Davis honestly tried to help him, and clearly had no real idea who she was talking to. And yes, there are policies at many workplaces about not going on a media outlet and making comments in public on your own. Certainly the department of HHS did not intend for Earline Davis to be their spokesman on television or radio. Her job was to help re-direct callers dialing in to her line, and to give individuals some basic information about the ACA and the website. Hannity used her to provide him with soundbites that he designed to be as embarrassing as possible. Personally, I think she should have been given a warning but not fired. Clearly, someone over her head was feeling unhappy about how Hannity was using the situation.

The reality here is that this is just the latest example of Sean Hannity and other right wing media hosts flailing at President Obama and the ACA. It’s simply a shame that Hannity’s antics caused Davis to lose her job. And it’s a fair question to ask whether Hannity is a reliable person to help Davis, given his spotty track record.

Antoinette-stumbled on this site with the crazy theories and had to stay since it is too funny.

Aria-Didn’t see those greedy employers having problems with part time and full time employees until the govt got involved and gave a financial incentive to hurt employees. When the govt changed FT to 30 hours even though it had been 40 then you saw changes.

Remember incentives matter and influence peoples behavior, you want to call them evil or greedy but the govt planned this and is getting what they want so why are you complaining?

Ken, do you mean all the people knocked down to part time so they wouldn’t be insured by their employers, then given the option of taking a gouge on part time employee insurance or going without?

Because here in the real world, we’re still waiting for proof the ACA made them do that, as opposed to the more believable they’re just that friggin’ greedy, as well as arrogant enough to think their employees would just sit back and take it.

Aria, the Fox “News” clowns do read NewsHounds and the PR department’s duties is to protect their "brand name. The others are friends of Hannocchio.

Oh, Fibby……
Human events?
Powerful Conservative Voices
Just FYI, the quote which I posted is EXACTLY what is shown on your link. We’re fully aware what was said.
But show us a link that shows that the Obama administration waterboarded people to attain evidence that resulted in the capture of Bin Laden, as you so merrily implied.

Oh, and Fiberals: The reason Hannity’s waterboard welsh is such a big deal was that he was planning to do it to prove it wasn’t torture, not to dispute whether or not it can get results. One thing I talked about on my social media recently the extremely controversial GTA 5 torture mission, where the FBI coerces your characters to torture an innocent man, in order to identify another man who turned out to be innocent later.

Here’s the scene. WARNING: Even as 3D mods, this is hard to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjlSmCm1K74

If you youtube the entire mission, afterwards the man doing the torture spells it out for the player- The man didn’t know anything the FBI couldn’t have found out through a dozen different means of interrogation, and a dozen more just doing their jobs. They made you torture him because they wanted to gratuitously harm a brown person, and putting it on the hands of the man they coerced gave them leverage over a suspect they were trying to control.

This wasn’t put in for commentary, it was put in as a visual explanation of fact: Even when a tortured suspect can give you information you can use, it’s often something they themselves didn’t know was relevant, or something they could have found out without torture. Not to mention that, as said before, it’s hardly ever anything another technique couldn’t have found- They just go straight to hurting people for something following his friend could have accomplished.

Wait, what set off the events leading up to the raid again? They tailed the guy they let run off that day, because they just wanted to torture the guy they were after then? Yeah, they got a bit of information they could have gotten just as easily by saying “Keep an eye on that one for the next week!”. But you keep up your little fantasy…

I wonder if any of the paid plants of Fox here would be willing to address the fact that Sally Kohn documented her experience signing up for Obamacare, and posted it on foxnews.com.

She came out with that she saved $5400 a year, and outright said that her network was straight-up lying about everything, from the extents the site is glitchy, to just about every regularly repeated claim they made about Obamacare itself.

Oh, and since I can’t get a straight answer on this… If any of you answer directly to a Fox News head, can you ask them for confirmation either way on the rumour that Kohn got shown the door for posting that? Because I’ve heard from several sources that she’s gone come New Year for saying something nice about Obamacare, and that she only has that long because her severance won’t go into effect until late December.

Yeah, a straight answer on that is kind of the only thing I wanna hear from you, seeing as how you’re just here to defend Hannity’s proven lies, while baselessly accusing us of lying about them reporting it. Just get an answer to my question, then get lost.

Here ya go..
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/03/leon-panetta-admits-information-from-waterboarding-led-us-to-bin-laden-video/

Visitor 55 in your response to Theresa you say there are no victims…what about all the folks getting their insurance cancelled and who now have to get coverage for things they don’t need?

Visitor 55, how many posts do I have to give you facts and write to you reasonably only to have you respond with your ranting, name calling, vapid responses before I admit that there is something wrong with you?

Waiting for your informed and reasoned response…

LOL just kidding, I can’t wait to read your rant…

blah…blah…kkklannity….blah…blah…kkklanity….blah…blah…evil…troll…blah…blah…jerk….blah…blah…kkklanity…blah

I think you only got three kkklannity’s in your longest post…can you try for four?

Dick, INFORMED is not the case, more like in denial. Watch the actual video not one edited by your MSNBC overlords. When Hannity said he would have Groden do the waterboarding to him, Groden states “I wouldn’t do that to you”

You had the integrity to admit you misunderstood what I wrote, are you now going to say Groden didn’t say that?

As for the dinner, arguing about semantics of I will take you to dinner or buy you dinner whatever the exact wording is, do you really think any of these “dinner” bets they really goto a place to eat together? They can’t bet money on air so they make a “dinner” bet instead. He “paid” the bet with a gift certificate, yes it is cheap if he gets it for free, is it any less a way to pay for the promised “dinner” did the guy still get a meal, yes so the bet is paid and this whole argument about Hannity not paying debts is silly.

Yes he is cheep on a personal level and admits to it, he also contributes a lot to charity so what is your point you are trying to make?

I will take your word as to your service and thank you. As a retired service member myself I will not argue your view on waterboarding, but I would challenge you to have at least as critical an eye toward the treatment of prisoners in other countries before condemning the USA.

Dick, when you are telling folks they “don’t have a clue” making up stuff about the reason she was fired and then calling Hannity a “jerk”, “pathetic”, and “evil fool” you sound NUTS!

Another follow up for Dick, as a former worker in a call center, if people want the product and it is a good product then they are pretty happy to call to get it.

The poor ambushed, unsuspecting, manipulated call center rep was told up front she was on the radio and asked if it was ok. In her subsequent interviews she is upset by the treatment of the government contractors and not Hannity. So I guess I should wait for you to call her an Aunt Tomia or something like that…

Dick peterson, I think you have a strange definition of facts and arguments than I do. Visitor 55 started by calling names then makes a false claim and then is back to name calling.

There was no discussion of Groden BEING waterboarded but conducting the waterboarding ON Hannity. I did not say Hannity would do it if Groden did it TOO.

Watch the video and actually listen to what is said and the context before making silly comments.

Groden asked Hannity if he would be waterboarded and joked about doing it on Saturday. During this Hannity agreed and said Groden could waterboard him and he would do it for charity. Groden declined and said he would not do that to Hannity.

Are you folks so blinded by ideology to realize it was joking around by two folks talking and when discussed in a bit more detail was dismissed by the person proposing it in the first place?

@mlp! If Dumbya Bush had read the intel reports in August 2001 of an imminent Al Qaeda attack on the USA rather than clearing brush on his ranch, 9/11 and a $2 trillion 10-year Afghanistan war never would have been occurred.

Panetta, Meet the Press, Feb 2013:
“The real story was that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to Bin Laden, there were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.”
Sooooo…Panetta used information that was available from prior techniques. That’s different than implying Panetta used waterboarding. Of course, also much different than ignoring intelligence like a certain GWB did before 9/11.