Good evening, gentle reader. Good to be back. I did have a wonderful time, though; I was getting my eyebrows lowered at a thoroughly swanky, decadent spa in – no, never mind, I’ll leave it to your imagination. Meanwhile Fox News has been busy lowering something else: namely the tone of the political debate. Ellen has already noted the dedication with which Fox News is spinning President Obama's remarks about success being not only a matter of individual initiative but also “because we do things together.” They were doing it again on last night's On the Record, with Brit Hume as chief spinmeister. 

“Objective news” host Jon Scott offered what he called a “fair and balanced” debate on Happening Now this morning. That is, if your definition of “fair and balanced” includes a host validating Republican talking points, asking all the skeptical questions of the Democratic guest, making no challenge to the conservative, pro-Republican guest and taking a gratuitous swipe at President Obama.

Yesterday, Romney-surrogate John Sununu made a series of stunning statements that were distinct dog whistles about President Obama’s American bona fides. One of them, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American,” even Sununu walked back slightly. Yet, when Sununu appeared on Hannity last night for a debate with liberal Juan Williams, he made no effort to call Sununu on such inflammatory rhetoric. In fact, Sununu again suggested that Obama is somehow Un-American even as the discussion was framed around the supposedly outrageous rhetoric coming from Obama.

By his own standards and the definition of Fox News Insider, Eric Bolling is a devout Catholic who regularly attends mass and lights candles for his friends. And like the *Catholic Inquisition, he has a very low tolerance for those who do not believe as he does. He once kicked an atheist off his Fox Business show because he thought his guest denigrated Jesus. Of course, Jesuit educated Bolling denigrates President Obama, liberals, Muslims and that's all good; but I digress. But Bolling's bias against atheists is not an anomaly on Fox News - the "fair and balanced" news network that has atheists on the top of its enemies list along with all those groups that do not hew to the orthodoxy of the GOP right wing. This morning, in yet another attempt to smear those evil, Jesus hating atheists, Fox & Friends provided Bolling with yet another opportunity to express his distaste for those godless beings. Torquemada? Torquemada?

Bill O’Reilly is very disturbed about President Obama’s plan to raise his taxes. It's all part of his job of looking out for you, of course. Tonight, he told former Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee that he's "looking at" a tax rate of 60% and if that happens, he’ll retire. You may recall O’Reilly made the same threat last September. He also repeated his threat to quit investing “at the level I am now” if his capital gains taxes rise to 40% and to move his money to the Cayman Islands and/or Switzerland.

Yesterday, Fox News played a deceptively-edited clip of President Obama talking about how government has helped small business owners and turned it into a talking point that Obama was dissing entrepreneurs. Now, Mitt Romney has picked up on those attacks and has even made a YouTube video based on them.

On Your World last week (7/12/12), Crystal Wright, of conservativeblackchick.com, discussed the Republican plan to cut $16.5 billion in food stamps. It was presented as a given that the cuts were a good thing. The only real “issue” was how to spin it so as not to look uncaring. 

Last week, I posted about John Stossel urging younger Americans to aim lower in their job searches and, while he was at it, argued for abolishing the minimum wage.  A day later, Stossel suggested students do away with pay altogether as he talked up the benefits of unpaid internships which, he told us, teach young people more than colleges do – and are free!

Bernard Goldberg, of all people, was Bill O’Reilly’s guest last night to discuss the "collapse" of the African American family. That’s right, O’Reilly chose not a sociologist but Fox’s white news and media analyst to discuss this sensitive subject. And not for the first time, either. So it’s a safe bet that O’Reilly knew that Goldberg would take a hard-line approach. But even he couldn’t swallow the “honesty” that Goldberg wished Romney had used when he spoke to the NAACP last week – “honesty” that amounted to lecturing them that he can't help them get jobs until they reduce the number of unwed pregnancies.

Mitt Romney may be floundering but he and his pals at Fox News know that Republican Rehab is what friends are for – Fox & Friends, that is. So when Romney visited with the curvy couch crew this morning, there were no pesky questions about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and what role he did or did not play in outsourcing jobs. No, siree. Instead, they helped him go on offense against President Obama – and offered a few not-so-subtle hints about how he might regain his footing.