As long as Fox News continues to present itself as “fair and balanced,” Jon Stewart will have plenty of material to work with.

Great stuff . . . again.

Fox News took umbrage at the White House’s assertion that the network is oftentimes a research and propaganda arm for the Republican Party. “The Daily Show” reveals the relationship between FNC’s supposedly non-partisan news anchors and the opinion people like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.

FNC apologists like to point at MSNBC and say that they’re just as biased the other way, but I’ve personally heard Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews be highly critical of Obama’s WH on a number of issues (torture, GITMO, the public option, etc.) over the past few months. Can Beck, O’Reilly and the hosts of “Fox & Friends” say they did the same thing when Bush was in office? And what about the hypocrisy of complaining about Obama’s WH treatment of Fox News when the same people were saying that the Bush WH should hang MSNBC out to dry? (Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino admitted in an interview on Fox that the Bush WH didn’t do anything with MSNBC late in his second term.)

Do these people realize that people are recording everything they say on television?

I’m not suggesting that Obama policies alone are driving the stock market. Many factors, particularly earnings, drive the overall market.

But, many conservatives were quick to blame Obama when the market slipped in the spring, implying he was to blame as opposed to the economic crisis he inherited. Melissa Francis and some of the other conservative market worshipers at CNBC were just a few of the examples. Well, the market is now up, and we’re not hearing conservatives talk about it much any more.

It’s hard to imagine how the angry right helps the GOP in the long run. The angry 30% of this country might get energized, but one would this this stupidity would turn off the middle.

Here’s “Tea Party” leader Mark Williams appeared on a CNN panel on “Anderson Cooper 360″ last night making a complete ass of himself.

The lunatic fringe has consumed the right. Funny stuff.

This is a pretty useless interview conducted by Keith Olbermann with Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos. I respect that both of them strongly favor the public option. I do as well. I also understand the point raised by Olbermann that many polls show broad public support for the public option. Yet the entire discussion is cast in terms of whether Obama is abandoning his progressive base by looking for a compromise on this issue, and Olbermann never mentions the real obstacle – the fact that many moderate Democrats in the Senate will not vote for a bill with a public option.

Olbermann has addressed this before, so he’s clearly aware of the political stumbling blocks, yet he makes no attempt to engage Markos in a constructive conversation about where we might be able to go with this. The only point here seemed to be a progressive high-five session similar to the right wing backslapping that we get on lame shows like Hannity.

I’m still a fan of Olbermann, but too often he slips into an “all-or-nothing” approach to issues that justify the caricatures of Olbermann now coming from the right. Unfortunately, it takes away from the good work he often does on his show.

Any notion that sweeping health care reform that gets rid of pre-existing conditions, stops insurance companies from dropping customers, and makes health care accessible to millions of Americans who can’t get it, but doesn’t include a public option that pleases everyone, is somehow a failure by the Obama administration is just ridiculous.

Olbermann should consider this simple fact. Progressives do NOT have a majority in either the House or the Senate. Public opinion is important, but in the end that alone does not get you the votes you need to pass a bill. All those moderate Democrats might be pissing you off now, but they help provide the majority that makes this health care discussion even possible. The Republicans might talk a good game about reform, but we all know they will do nothing to achieve it. They didn’t even try when they ran the place.

That said, progressives should push as hard as they can for a public option, but killing a bill that doesn’t meet all progressive demands is a terrible option.

Fortunately, I don’t think most progressive members of Congress will turn their backs on Americans without insurance and vote against reform when they are faced with a final bill. Arms will be twisted, deals will be made, and this thing will pass if it gets that far.

Wouldn’t a not-for-profit system work better, at least with respect to hospitals?

Since Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President, we’ve seen the lunatic fringe on the right push the limits of idiocy. Since his election, the levels of insanity on the right have grown exponentially.

The “birther” movement has set a new standard, even by the standards of the loony right wing. They make the teabaggers looks like sober economic scholars.

Naturally, Jon Stewart, the most trusted newsman in America following the death of Cronkite, has a field day with this one.

Pay particular attention to his smackdown of Lou Dobbs, who brings up “questions” surrounding Obama’s place of birth several days after a guest host ON HIS OWN SHOW completely debunks the asinine story. Further proof that Lou Dobbs is a complete buffoon. Why is this clown still on CNN?

They’re now concerned about banning part-human, part-animal creatures. Apparently they’ve been watching True Blood and they’re worried about human-animal hybrids. Keith Olbermann offers up the ridicule they deserve.

Here’s her speech. It’s classic Sarah Palin – a rambling mess. It’s barely better than her answers to Katie Couric, but here she had time to prepare her remarks, though she didn’t seem to have the benefit of her old speechwriters from the McCain campaign.

This may seem like a low point for the Republican Party, but in many ways this is a gift, unless of course she actually decides to run for President. The GOP will be stuck in the mud so long as the base is infatuated with Sarah Palin, and perhaps this lame resignation will convince enough of them that she’s a fraud.

What a surprise.

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ ”

The upshot? “It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow told listeners. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“Absolutely. I mean that’s drowning,” he added later. “It is the feeling of drowning.”

“If I knew it was gonna be this bad, I would not have done it,” he said.

Rush Limbaugh wants MSNBC to stop shining a light on his inane commentary. Keith Olbermann had this to say:

I love the bit with the music playing in the background. Classic.

I recently got into a somewhat heated argument with a conservative friend of mine about Fox News and whether it was more or less misleading than the other mainstream media outlets. I pointed to the two or three Pew polls that show that Fox News viewers on average were the least likely of all the major news outlets to have a clear understanding of the facts. I argued that MSNBC may on the whole be liberal, but at least they “deal in facts” (i.e. they cite their sources and don’t just make stuff up as they go along, like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity do). The following video is a great example. Bill O’Reilly attempts to debunk Obama’s assertion that Winston Churchill was anti-torture, even when he was under the most dire of circumstances. Notice how O’Reilly makes statements as if they were fact, with no supporting documentation, and how he distracts his audience by going on tangents that have nothing to do with the torture question. Then watch as Olbermann counters Bill O’s argument with facts and actually cites his sources.

It’s amazing to me that anyone still believes that Fox News is “fair and balanced.” What’s even more amazing is that the same conservative friend watched the documentary “Outfoxed” on my suggestion and agreed with much of what it had to say. Three or four years later, now that Obama is in the White House, that objectivity has vanished.

Don’t bother reconciling the two…it’s impossible.

Too easy.

Those nutty Republicans are making it too easy for comedians like Bill Maher. Check out his New Rules from last week.

I have a couple of conservative friends who say that they find “The Colbert Report” funny, which always struck me as odd since his whole shtick is that he’s an uneducated, close-minded conservative pundit. (The show started off as a bit spoof of Bill O’Reilly that Colbert put together for “The Daily Show.”) I never pursued the issue with them, but it’s apparent now with the release of a study conducted by Ohio State University that many conservatives think that Colbert is actually conservative. They realize that his show utilizes satire, but while the rest of us realize that 80-90% of his time is spent making Republicans and Republican policy look foolish, conservatives think that there is sincerity beneath his satire. Here is a segment on “Countdown,” where Keith Olbermann interviews the lead writer of the study.

I always wondered who was dumb enough to schedule Colbert to speak at the White House Press Corps Dinner a few years ago, but I guess if conservatives really think he’s a conservative, then it makes sense. If you haven’t watched his roast of George W. Bush, it’s definitely worth a look.

MSNBC is having a field day with this one. See how many double entendres you can find in the following clip. Hint – Dick Armey is one of the easy ones!

When you see Glenn Beck crying (or fake crying) in this video, you realize that he’s either a blubbering idiot or a deranged demagogue.