If you don't know who Julie Mason is, let me tell you she happens to be my talk radio goddess. Seriously. She hosts a show called The Press Pool on the Sirius/XM station POTUS every weekday where she interviews political reporters, often those who cover the White House. While she seems to be more conservative than I, she is one bright and knowledgeable woman dedicated to excellence in media and reporting. In short, she is the anti-Fox News. So when Bill O'Reilly called her a loon for saying he and Glenn Beck damage the Fox News brand – and complained that CNN's Howard Kurtz “didn't slap her down like he should have” because, he suggested, the two of them are working to get President Obama re-elected - well, Bill those are fightin' words to me.

Well, it appears that Fox News’ pal Ted “suck on this” Nugent has finally crossed the line. It seems that the Secret Service is investigating  him for comments he made last Sunday at an NRA meeting. The Secret Service views his remarks - that if President Obama  wins the 2012 election, Nugent will be either dead or in jail - as a threat. Nugent also made a disturbing comparison of voting for Romney to violent rebellion - which doesn't go well with his other implied threat.

Mitt Romney has hired an advisor to help him choose a Republican vice presidential candidate - and Fox & Friends wants to know "Who should we choose?"

Jon Stewart examined Fox News' outrage over what it calls a made up war on women - and found that women are the only ones Fox has not labeled the victims of war. Well, except for conservative women, of course. Warning to Steeve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity and more - you are the ones who come out looking like lying hypocrites.

Underscoring how the "more things change the more they remain the same," is the continued existence of those who remain in fear of left wing political philosophies. Sixty years after Joe McCarthy fomented paranoia about communists in the media, the entertainment industry, and politics, we have folks like Congressman Allen West denouncing liberal members of Congress as communists. And it's just not communists that the right wing fear and loathe. Socialism is also portrayed as part of the evil array of left wing agendas that trying to destroy Merka as we know it. Now that alleged commie-pinko Van Jones is no longer in the Obama administration, the fear mongering patriots on Fox need another scapegoat to get the pitchfork gang salivating. Thanks to right wing Tucker Carlson's intrepid reporting, most likely sourced from a blog run by anti-teacher's union partisan and Fox fave, Kyle Olson,  we have one such person who was denigrated on last week's Fox & Friends as part of their series, "The Trouble with Schools" which is just a bunch of hit pieces aimed at the public school system and teachers unions. For venom with your morning coffee, you just can't beat Fox & Friends.

Fox “News” defenders, who rarely have facts on their side, have been having a field day with the exclusive Gawker Fox Mole Joe Muto.  And, it must be admitted, there was great disappointment on the part of those of us (up to and including myself) who want to see Fox “News” taken down a peg or two by its own hubris, lies, and demonstrably false propaganda.  Alas, there was to be no schadenfreude in Mudville, mighty Muto had struck out.  Gawker wound up wasting $5,000 on reports of where Bill O’Reilly evacuates and other dreary minutia.  Newly minted blogger Andrew Kirell, who, just like Muto, worked at Fox “News” until last week, published his Fox swan song in an article titled Why I Never Became Mediaite’s Fox News Mole.  While Kirell quite rightly mocks Muto’s non-scoops on Gawker, he also reveals the real reason why so many people want to see Fox “News” fail:

Bob Beckel was so busy debating fellow Hannity panelist Jennifer Stefano tonight that he didn't realize the commercial break was ending. So when the show went back on the air, Beckel said, "You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

In the middle of his interview with Romney advisor Ed Gillespie, yesterday, Chris Wallace threw out a suggestion to the campaign in the form of a question. "Is there any thought to naming that running mate early, not waiting until the week before the convention, to give Romney some help on the trail on campaigning and fundraising?"

Fox “News” is heavily invested in the Phony War on Hilary Rosen, despite apologies all ‘round.  Why?  Because Fox has found this to be a hugely divisive topic, and all divisive topics works in its favor.  That’s why it’s a winner for the so-called Fair and Balanced network, which is also why it was still an active meme this morning as the real GOP War on Women never was.  Since the Rosen-Romney hullabaloo occurred after the last episode of The Weekly Stine™—that Monday morning Fox and Friends segment where ex-carny Brad Stine blames everything wrong with ‘Merka on Liberals—it was an obvious topic to outsource to Stine.  What was less obvious was for Stine to outsource his segment to Desiree Stine, identified helpfully by the chyron as “Wife of Brad Stine,” as if that is the “be all and end all” of her existence.  It may well be.

I thought David Axelrod struck just the right note of feistiness with Chris Wallace yesterday, including responses to his gotcha questions.