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

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?

Jon Stewart calls out Beck for grossly flip-flopping on the quality of U.S. health care. Beck has either lost his mind or is a total hypocrite. You be the judge.

The bit starts at the 0:30 mark.

I’m all for the debate, but when you have loons like Beck running around stoking the fears of the ignorant, it’s a recipe for chaos.

Maybe that’s what the anti-reform people want.

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.

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.

Now that the campaign is over, we’re hearing more about the Sarah Palin fiasco. Fox News has the goods – Sarah Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent. She thought it was a country!

How many Republicans will defend her now that the election is over?

It’s embarrassing that the McCain campaign is clinging to Joe the Plumber in a final act of deperation. Mr. Plumber hit a new low when he agreed with a loon at a rally that the election of Barack Obama would lead to he death of Israel.

Shep Smith, one of the few voices of reason at Fox News, interviews Joe about his statement and unmasks him as a complete fool.

Hat tip – Andrew Sullivan.

The most recent poll in Ohio has some interesting news regarding the issue of immigration.

Let illegal immigrants stay here.

That’s what 56 percent of Ohioans said in a poll conducted this month by the University of Cincinnati Institute for Policy Research — and people polled in Southwest Ohio topped that figure.

In this corner of the state, 60 percent said they favored a government policy that allowed undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and become U.S. citizens if they met unspecified requirements in a certain timeframe.

That puts Ohioans in sync with the rest of the nation, according to a Gallup Poll last year, said Eric Rademacher, the institute’s interim co-director.

If you only listened to Fox News, Lou Dobbs and talk radio, you would assume that the entire nation is outraged by the conecpt of earned citizenship for illegals (which some call amnesty). Last year many in the media assumed that this issue would be crucial in the 2008 elections. Yet we don’t hear anything about it.

All of the Republican candidates who tried to exploit conservative anger about immigration flamed out in the primaries. Even one-time “moderates” like Rudy Giuliani flipped last year and tried to demogogue the issue in order to get the Republican nomination. He got crushed in the primaries.

America is getting serious again. We’re going through tough economic times, so it’s harder for politicians to distract the electorate with side issues like Bill Ayers, guns and illegals.

The next president will have a huge opportunity to pass a common-sense compromise on this issue that beefs up border security and provides a rational method for illegals to earn the right to stay in this country. The political rewards from such a compromise would be significant as well.

Another nut is added to the roster.

Did Rupert Murdoch set up a meeting that included Barack Obama and Roger Ailes, President of the Fox News Channel?

Rupert Murdoch brokered a “tentative truce” between his Fox News network and Barack Obama at a secret meeting with the Democratic presidential nominee, accor­ding to the author of a book on the News Corp chairman.

Fox News is seen by the Obama campaign as among its most hostile critics. Mr Obama initially rebuffed efforts by the Kennedy family to secure a meeting with News Corp executives, Michael Wolff writes in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

However, Mr Obama agreed this summer to meet Mr Murdoch and Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

While the senator for Illinois was “deferential” towards Mr Murdoch, who also owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, he “lit into” Mr Ailes, Mr Wolff reports.

“He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist,” the report states.

Mr Ailes responded that Fox’s coverage might have been more favourable had Mr Obama been more willing to appear on its programmes. The three men agreed upon “a tentative truce”, Mr Wolff writes.

Nick Shapiro, Obama campaign spokesman, said: “They had an open and frank conversation where they got the opportunity to clear the air.”

Fox News has been accused of below-the-belt coverage of Mr Obama this year. One news segment asked whether a fist-bump greeting between Barack and Michelle Obama – a gesture commonly used by American athletes – was a “terrorist fist-jab”. The network also referred to Michelle Obama as Obama’s “baby mama”, slang that refers to a mother who never married her child’s father.

I suspect Murduch is not happy with Fox’s ratings, and the country is shifting away from the GOP with the mess created by the Bush adminsitration. Fox hasn’t been able to derail Obama, so now they don’t want to be completely cut out if Obama wins.

A truce probably makes sense for Obama, but he shouldn’t trust Ailes or Fox. Ailes has a clear agenda – elect Republicans. He’s a legend in the GOP and his loyalties are clear.

These guys are so pathetic.

The mayhem at Fox News this morning shows that some members of that organization are becoming uncomfortable with Fox’s attempts to destroy Obama and distort everything he says.

This morning, one anchor on Fox News literally walked off the set after his two-co-anchors continuously tried to distort Obama’s statements and take them out of context.

Then, Chris Wallace came on air and said he was watching the program for two hours and expressed his disappointment that the program was basically engaged in “Obama-bashing” all morning, especially on a day when Obama was being endorsed by Bill Richardson and we have the passport controversy.

Good for Wallace. It’s nice to see he hasn’t completely forgotten the concept of journalistic integrity.