Was Clint Eastwood’s “halftime in America” Super Bowl ad for Chrysler really an ad for Obama? Was the straight-shootin’ conservative cowboy seducing you into supporting that evil taxpayer-funded bailout of the auto industry? Eastwood denied there was any “spin” in the ad. “It was meant to be a message just about job growth and the spirit of America.” But Fox News gave Karl Rove a podium to attack the ad as offensive and accuse it of being a thank-you to Obama for the billion-dollar bailout that so many conservatives hate so much. “It is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago style politics and the President of the United States and his political minions are in essence using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising,” Rove said.

The old saying "damned if you do and damned if you don't" is so applicable to how President Obama can't satisfy the religious litmus test of the Christian right who believe that Obama, a secret Muslim, does not fit their definition of a "true" Christian. While Obama professes to be a Christian, Jesus' BFF's in the Christian right aren't buying it and use every opportunity to paint the president as an emissary of Satan who is waging war against Christian Merka. So when the president recently spoke at a prayer breakfast and said that this Christian faith guides his policies, you'd think he'd get some props. Think again. The right wing trashed him because he used Scripture to support his call for fairness in the tax code and them's fighting words for those who believe in Supply Side Jesus. Not surprisingly, Fox's one true house priest for the 1%, Fr. Jonathan Morris, instructed his TV flock that Obama was wrong about Jesus. Funny, just last November, the little padre had his Catholic panties in a wad because Obama didn't mention "God" in his Thanksgiving address. Sometimes ya just can't win

Regular readers know that Fox News' “Democratic pollster” Doug Schoen is hardly a muscular voice for progressive values. He’s more often a muscular voice for Republican memes – and has even penned editorials calling on President Obama not to run for re-election. So imagine my shock when Schoen appeared on Hannity last night and took a strong stand on behalf of the Obama administration’s new rule requiring employers (including Catholic institutions, though not churches) to offer reproductive-health benefits at no additional cost as part of their health coverage. As Hannity hammed it up over Obama’s “war against our Constitution,” Schoen told him that this Republican hissy fit was going to cost “more votes.” So you know the polling has to be squarely on President Obama’s side.

Don’t forget this is the same Eric Bolling who last week attacked colleague Bob Beckel for not being respectful enough to hate monger Allen West because Beckel refused to call him “Representative” or  “Lieutenant Colonel.” Proof – again – that no smear is too low on Fox News so long as it’s a Republican doing the smearing and a Democrat and/or liberal on the receiving end. And why didn’t Beckel confront this disgusting, hypocritical smear with outrage?

Bill O'Reilly, who regularly channels "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy, thinks that the "One Million Moms" campaign to get JC Penny to fire Ellen DeGeneres as its spokesperson, because she is gay, is akin to McCarthyism. Oh, the irony!

Sarah Palin has pretty much shown herself to be a big nothing in 2012 politics. She hasn’t exactly endeared herself to Mitt Romney who will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. Recently, she urged Republican primary voters to vote for Newt Gingrich in Florida and Nevada and, well, it’s plain to see how that one worked out for her. Plus there was her ridiculous tease about a potential candidacy of her own that nobody with an ounce of intelligence could have possibly fallen for. But somehow Fox News has not gotten the message. They keep trotting her out for her so-called insights into the race.

You just can't make this stuff up. Bill O'Reilly provided a national  media platform for lies and vitriol against abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. This contributed to a climate of hate in which Tiller was assassinated by a man who shared Bill's "pro-life" views about "baby killers." Bill even received a "courage" award from the hate group, Family Research Council, for his bravery in promoting the "pro-life" cause. But now that the Komen foundation for breast cancer reversed their decision to withhold funds from Planned Parenthood breast cancer screening, as a result of the outrage it sparked among American women who value women's health and who stand with Planned Parenthood, Bill is whining about "bigotry" against those who are "pro-life." Cry me a river, pal.

Since when did ex-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani become an expert on the Middle East? Admittedly, he was the mayor of a city attacked on 9/11 but that hardly makes him an expert on Israel and Iran any more than getting caught in a horrific snowstorm makes me an expert on weather. As Brendan Nyhan noted in 2007, Giuliani didn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shiite even though he was ready to declare Iran as possibly “more dangerous than Iraq.” His current work is in security and law in the private sector. But Fox News’ Sean Hannity presented him last night to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers as some kind of sage about what's going on and what the U.S. should do in the Middle East. Giuliani’s chief credentials seem to be a willingness to attack Obama and Iran. It’s hard to know which Hannity considers the bigger enemy.

What a coincidence that during the same week that Mitt Romney came under fire for his “I don’t care about the poor” comment and looking like an out-of-touch 1%-er, Fox News Sunday chose a billionaire, private equity executive and philanthropist as its “Power Player of the Week” yesterday and host Chris Wallace made a point of likening him to Mitt Romney.

For some reason, The Daily Show sent me this clip of Bill O'Reilly's first visit to The Daily Show. It's pretty funny but also resonates today. The interview appears to take place around in 2001 (because O'Reilly says he has worked at Fox for 4 1/2 years and it appears to be very early in George W. Bush's presidency. Stewart confronts O'Reilly about Fox News' bias and O'Reilly claims that he'll let Republicans "have it" and "broadside 'em just as much" "if they misbehave." We can all see how well that worked out. Let me know when I missed Fox giving 9/11 Truthers the same kind of exposure and cred it has given to birthers and I might stop laughing. Meanwhile, O'Reilly and Stewart are stil funny togehter even after all these years.