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I've got to hand it to Rep. Anthony Weiner after watching this interview. It's not every day you get to see Sean Hannity get his hind side handed to him with a smile. Our friends over at Think Progress caught this segment and just showed the end portion of the interview. What they didn't show is that besides hitting Hannity for wanting to protect Uncle Rupert's tax cuts, he also hammered him time and time again for wanting to look out for the rich. If you're a Democrat and you're going to go on Fox with the likes of Hannity, this is the way to handle a class A bully like him.

From Think Progress -- Rep. Weiner To Hannity: ‘You Want To Borrow For Rupert Murdoch’s Tax Break’:

Last night on his Fox News show, Sean Hannity interviewed Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and expressed his outrage that Weiner wants the rich to pay more in taxes. Noting that Weiner is from New York, Hannity said, “Let’s go through the New York numbers.” The Fox News host then said if Weiner had his way, New Yorkers would be paying “55, 60″ percent of “earned income,” a figure he calculated by including federal, state, and city taxes, sales tax, property tax, estate tax and “other hidden taxes.” “Why do you think you have a right to tax 60 percent of people’s money?” Hannity asked.

Weiner replied that it’s not about wanting to tax anyone, that “it is just about choices.” “I choose to stay on the side of the middle class. You want to defend the rich,” Weiner told Hannity, adding, “You want to borrow for Rupert Murdoch’s tax break,” referring to Hannity’s boss and billionaire News Corp. chairman. However, Hannity wouldn’t budge, and he didn’t dispute his love for Murdoch:

WEINER: If you give a tax cut to Rupert Murdoch. — We got to borrow the money to pay Rupert Murdoch’s tax break. You want to do that?

HANNITY: Listen, thank God, you know why for Rupert Murdoch? — Rupert Murdoch is a job creator. Rupert Murdoch is a taxpayer, Rupert Murdoch donates to charity and more than you do Congressman.

WEINER: He’s a very fine man. He’s a very fine man but that is not the question. The question is, you want to give him a tax cut and borrow it from my kids, no deal. No deal.

HANNITY: You know what, thank God Rupert Murdoch created a job for me so, I could tell you, you’re taking way too much in spending too much of the taxpayers dollars.

Go read the rest. The only thing I wish I'd seen Rep. Weiner hit Hannity for as well is just how much of his own tax break he's looking out for since he landed a $100 million contract back in '08 for his radio show. I don't have the numbers on what Rupert Murdoch is paying him at Fox, but I'm sure his propaganda isn't coming cheap there either.

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Joe Scarborough apparently wasn't too happy with Chris Van Hollen's op-ed in the Washington Post -- First, fix the estate tax giveaway:

House Democrats think this trade-off should be debated and voted on in the light of day. With Washington Republicans sharpening their budget knives to cut spending on national priorities such as education, border security and public safety, it is hard to believe they think it's wise to give a windfall to heirs such as Paris Hilton. Let's find out if Republicans really want to jeopardize income tax, payroll tax and estate tax relief for every American in order to provide a budget-busting bonanza to the country's richest estates.

Scarborough didn't like Van Hollen pointing out that it is primarily people who don't work for a living, who just happened to get lucky by being born into the right family that will be benefiting from lowering that rate. Instead, as Media Matters pointed out, he joined the Fox yappers who have been demonizing the estate tax and pushing the family farm myth.

Hey Joe... you can't pay any taxes if you're, you know... dead. The children of those who are passing that money on didn't "earn" that money, they inherited it. So they haven't already been taxed on it.

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Rachel Maddow highlights some of the points Bernie Sanders attempted to make during his 8-1/2-hour long speech on the Senate floor that most of our Beltway media have chosen to ignore, like just who benefits and how much from lowering the estate tax for billionaires.

Rachel is exactly right about the media doing their best to ignore all of what Sen. Sanders had to say in his speech and not just the points he made about the estate tax. He got very little coverage and what coverage he did get showed him up there speaking while some talking head gave their opinion about what was going on instead of allowing viewers to actually hear what he was coming out of his mouth instead of theirs.

Rush Limbaugh goes to C-PAC and they're giving him commercial free coverage on CNN. Sarah Palin goes to speak to the teabaggers and the media covers her flame throwing speech. But Bernie Sanders gives this amazing almost eight and a half hours long speech and they shrug their shoulders.

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Week after week we have our media pushing the idea that right wing ideology is somehow "centrist" with Bill Kristol's hackery here on Fox News Sunday just being another recent example. Even though Kristol admits that every one of the policies he's praising President Obama for embracing are all Republican ideas, he paints it as being a pivot to the center. Sorry Bill, but it's a hard turn to the right in the under the guise of "compromise".

WALLACE: The subtext in all this Bill is after his midterm shellacking, the president moved to the center and won reelection. Is that what Obama began to do this week, making his deal with Republicans to pivot to the center and how do you think that will work for him?

KRISTOL: Yes. That's exactly what he did. We predicted this I think right at the Sunday, right after this show everyone was like oh, he's such an ideologue, he'll never move to the center, he can't do what Clinton did. Remember that debate that took place a couple of weeks after this election? Could Obama pull a Clinton? Obama's literally pulled a Clinton... he's standing there with Bill Clinton and they're accepting... Barack Obama and Bill Clinton stood up there and defended the Bush tax rates and the Republican estate tax proposal. Now just think about that for a moment.

They weren't defending the Clinton tax rate. They weren't defending the Obama tax...

LIASSON: They were defending the payroll tax cut and...

KRISTOL: They were defending the payroll tax cut which is something Republicans have liked for a long time. Anyway, I'm saying this is from a policy point of view, this is a big move to the center by President Obama, following incidentally on his symbolic little freeze for government workers pay which is something Republicans have been for. The South Korean free trade agreement, something Republicans have been for. He's going to stay in the surge in Afghanistan. Remember that December review where Obama was going to begin pulling out. No way, no how. David Petraeus is in charge of Aghanistan.

So the president has pivoted to the center which is good for the country. It's good for conservatives. I do think it helps his reelection prospects some because being you know, moderate conservative...

WILLIAMS: That's what I was saying...

KRISTOL: There's still enough things he's on the left on that I think Republicans will be fine.

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Rep. Anthony took Megyn Kelly to school when she tried pushing the lie that the estate tax is double taxation. This woman has a law degree so I'm sure she knows what she's saying isn't true as well, but facts don't seem to matter much if you want a job at Fox News. From Think Progress --

Rep. Weiner: ‘You Aren’t Paying’ Taxes On Your Estate ‘Because You’ll Be Dead’:

President Obama this week announced a tentative deal with congressional Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans for two years in exchange for a 13-month extension in unemployment benefits. While the deal included other popular tax credits and incentives, one provison in particular has drawn fire from progressives and Democrats in Congress: reinstating the currently-expired estate tax. In what the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein called an “ugly surprise” in the deal, Obama and the GOP agreed to exempt inheritances up to $5 million and to set the tax rate at 35 percent instead of an exemption at $3.5 million and the tax rate at 45 percent, which the House passed last year. [...]

Also today, Fox News host Megyn Kelly defended the estate tax deal in an interview with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) — who has also been critical of it — saying that these Americans shouldn’t be taxed twice. Weiner pointed out the obvious flaw in that line of thinking:

KELLY: I don’t have a five million dollar estate, I’d like to someday, but if I work all my life and I pay my taxes on my income and then I die and I want to pass on what it would be great if it were a $5 million estate to my kids, why should I pay the government again? Why should there be a 35 or 45 or 55 percent tax on that again?

WEINER: You aren’t paying anything in that case because you’ll be dead. … Do you know how much this adds to our debt? It adds an enormous amount. No one can be in favor of that and then come on your show and say, “Oh I’m so concerned about the debt!”

As Congressman Weiner rightfully pointed out, the tax is on unearned income which heaven forbid Republicans don't want to tax in the same manner they tax wages.

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If it's Sunday, it's another week of Republican politicians repeating more of their lies on the bobblehead shows. Lindsey Graham really wants to keep those Bush tax cuts in place and when asked by David Gregory if there's any way the Republicans will compromise with the Democrats on taxes, he offers up being willing to work with them on the "death tax" -- or the more aptly named estate tax, as it used to be called before the Republicans started paying Frank Luntz -- which he claims needs to be fixed before it's reinstated to "prevent devastation to small business and family farms."

GREGORY:  Is there room for compromise on tax cuts?  Say, if the president were to extend all the tax cuts for a period of a couple of years, would that be able to attract Republican support?

GRAHAM:  It might.  There's certainly some room to compromise on the death tax.  In January it goes back to 55 percent, at the end of this year it's at 0.  So maybe you could find a way to compromise on the death tax to have something below 55 percent, a $5 or $6 million exemption for American families out there that would prevent devastation to small business and family farms.  But if the--the idea of increasing taxes now, David, makes no sense to most people. 

And the agenda the president and his Democratic colleagues has offered the country has increased the deficit, increased the role of the federal government.  And he ran as a centrist, and most Americans would say, "Well, I never believed he would do all this." And everything has been so partisan.  There was a bipartisan bill on health care, Wyden-Bennett, that was rejected.  Senator McCain had a $450 billion stimulus bill.  But we didn't go down any of these compromise roses--roads, just big government, more spending. And the Democrats don't have a whole lot to talk about going into November other than more debt and more government.

That's some major projection Graham's got going on there when it comes to partisanship and the failure to compromise. He needs to go take a look in the mirror if he wants to see what a partisan hack looks like. And The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has more on why Graham's statements about the estate tax are ridiculous. It doesn't need to be fixed so that it doesn't "devastate family farms". It didn't do that before and won't after it is reinstated next year.

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