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Bill Maher had a warning for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who seems all too willing to push his luck with the United States given the fact that our country has been addicted to war for far too long. Maher also told his audience that it's time that we "start defining peace as strength" instead:

In the last part of his weekly “New Rules” segment, Maher lambasted “Kim Jong Pugsley of North Korea” for his threats of war with the U.S. and the West.

“Have you seen a North Korean rocket test?” he asked. “They don’t even look like real rockets. They look more like that thing the Russian kosmonauts were in when they crashed on to ‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.” [...]

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

“And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”

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Despite their insistence that they really don't want the United States to go to war with North Korea after all of the bluster we've heard from Kim Jong Un and his warnings that his country is authorized to wage nuclear strikes against the United States, Fox's Sean Hannity and his guest, Rudy "Noun, A Verb and 9-11" Giuliani did their best to push the notion that the United States should do just that.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not in the mood for a bunch of bluster from a couple of chickenhawks on Faux News, thumping their chest and complaining that President Obama hasn't been aggressive enough with his foreign policy to suit them.

I'm also not sure why someone who put the Office of Emergency Management in the basement of the World Trade Center and who lies constantly about his so-called "expertise" on terrorism is qualified to weigh in on anything, much less whether we should start a nuclear war.

Hannity is still bound and determined to rewrite history and pretend that George W. Bush's brand of foreign policy and preemptive invasions "kept us safe." He's been ranting and raving about this all week (Giuliani actually wasn't the worst of the recent guests complaining about how "weak" President Obama is on foreign policy. The day before, he had on Iran-Contra criminal, Oliver North.)

Faux "News" is becoming a bad parody of itself, day after day.

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Color me not shocked that Fox is carrying water for wingnut Sen. Ted Cruz and his dishonest attack on former Sen. Chuck Hagel during yesterday's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense. Sean Hannity opened up his show by replaying part of Cruz' cheap shot at Hagel earlier that day.

Fox's Hannity Lauds Sen. Cruz' Deceptive Attack On Chuck Hagel:

Fox News host Sean Hannity applauded Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for his attack on Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, claiming that Cruz' questioning during the Hagel's hearing demonstrated that he had made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments. But Cruz' claim that Hagel had accused Israel of a "sickening slaughter" was based on distorted quotes from heavily-cropped sound clips.

On the January 31 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity aired a portion of Hagel's confirmation hearing in which Cruz referenced an Israeli attack on Hezbollah and claimed that Hagel described Israel's actions as a "sickening slaughter." Cruz went on to ask, "Do you think it's right that Israel was committing, quote, a 'sickening slaughter,' as you said on the floor of the Senate?": [...]

Despite Hannity's approval of Cruz' line of questioning, Hagel was not accusing Israel of engaging in a "sickening slaughter" of Lebanon, he was decrying the escalation of violence by all parties in the region. As Slate's Dave Weigel points out, Hagel "described the conflict that way--a sickening slaughter was occurring --blaming both sides, and quickly following up by criticizing Iran and invoking the 'special relationship.' Cruz's truncation of the quote completely changed the meaning." [...]

Hannity also applauded a portion of the hearings in which Cruz used deceptively edited footage again to claim Hagel called the U.S. the bullies of the world after playing edited sound clips of an interview Hagel conducted in 2009. Hannity aired Cruz dismissing Hagel's denials, and called Cruz' questioning a "checkmate" on Hagel: [...]

In fact, the full context of the statements made by Hagel were not presented during the hearing, nor later on Hannity's show.

And who did Hannity follow up with to continue his dishonest attack on Hagel? None other than Liz Cheney -- because God knows we can't have a discussion on national security or foreign policy on Fox without getting the neocon point of view.

Hannity and Cheney called Hagel about every name in the book and implied that he was feckless after hearing his testimony today. That's pretty rich coming from Bush administration cheerleader Hannity and the daughter of someone who likely qualifies as one of, if not the worst Vice Presidents -- someone who dishonored the office in which he served. Both of them actually believe that Donald Rumsfeld did a good job as Secretary of Defense.

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I don't know why anyone would think that Baghdad Bob a.k.a. neocon Dan Senor would be on anyone's short list to discuss the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, but MSNBC loves this guy so much that he's now apparently renting out Pat Buchanan's old cot in the back of the studios, ever since the Romney campaign hired him as an advisor.

The campaign might be over but sadly, our days with Senor on the air are not. He's been on Morning Joe so much over the year or so, there were weeks I was starting to wonder if he was going to take Mika's place as the co-host. If Chuck Todd and MSNBC are going to bring this guy on to talk about foreign policy, maybe they should let their viewers know that his Foreign Policy Initiative with the lovely sounding name is just the latest reincarnation of PNAC. A few more of them might be familiar with that group's name and how effectively they beat the war drums to get us into Iraq.

And maybe they could ask him if he ever found out what happened to that $9 billion that they managed to lose in Iraq, like Bill Maher did back in February of 2006 on Real Time: Dan Senor Tells Bill Maher How We Lost 9 Billion In Iraq.

Here's more on Senor and why MSNBC should be putting warning signs above his head every time they allow him on the air, from my post last April: Romney Adviser Dan Senor: Too Wrong to Fail.