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In case you missed it, the right wing has been feasting over a Daily Caller report that President Obama has a food tester. Besides the fact that this is not news – Hot Air reported on President Obama’s food tester in 2009 - it’s not even new for this presidency. Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher points out that St. Ronnie Reagan had one, too. But leave it to born-into-privilege Tucker Carlson to use his site's “scoop” as an excuse to accuse Obama of behaving like a king and then suggest the security measure is a waste of money.

Wonkette snarked Friday afternoon:

Why the nation’s first black president would feel compelled to employ someone meant to protect his food in this wonderful era of complete racial transcendence and political civility is beyond our comprehension, but it does automatically mean that Obama is an evil aristocratic dictator whose tyranny is only matched by his disdain for the common people.

From Wonkette's print to Carlson's lips, but in all seriousness. Friday night, he sneered on the Hannity show: “A food taster? It is good to be king. …and you’re paying for it.”

For anyone who didn’t get it that Carlson was suggesting we’re spending too much money on President Obama’s vainglorious security, he made that more explicit on Fox & Friends Weekend this morning.

In yet another segment in which the “fair and balanced” network whined about cuts to White House tours (and ignored cuts to programs for the poor), co-host Clayton Morris "asked," “How could you turn down kids yelling outside your gate, ‘Please let us in?’”

Carlson replied, “Because you gotta pay your food taster... your dog walker and all the rest.”

OK, it was a throwaway line and, fortunately, nobody has called for an actual reduction in President Obama’s security operation. At least not yet. But Carlson is deliberately planting the meme that a food tester is a wasteful frill less important than a White House tour. And nobody on Fox is objecting. In fact, Morris chuckled heartily at Carlson’s jab and FoxNews.com did its part with an article called, "Longtime Presidential Secret Revealed? GOP Senator Says Obama Has a Food Taster." Given the disgusting NRA ad suggesting the Obama daughters enjoyed special privileges with their security, it shouldn't surprise any of us if this latest nastiness didn't work its way into the mainstream of right-wing rhetoric.

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Just in time for Jeb Bush’s candidacy to get going – and to help deal with that pesky “Bush baggage” problem, Fox News has found a way to help the cause: recast ex-president George W. Bush as a great painter. Of dogs.

On this morning’s Fox & Friends Weekend, Alisyn Camerota chirped, “For the first time, we’re hearing from George W. Bush’s teacher, Bonnie Flood.” Only on Fox News would the painting teacher of one of the least popular presidents ever be received with such excitement.

Camerota played a clip of Flood saying:

He picked it up so quick. He just was amazing, actually. His whole heart is in it. 43, I mean, he has such a passion for painting. It’s Amazing. He’s gonna go down in the history books as a great artist.

Which is nice because he surely won’t go down as a great president. Except, probably, on Fox News. Camerota chirped on:

For one month, Flood spent six hours a day teaching the former president the ups and downs of her craft. She reveals he painted around 50 dog portraits and scenes from his Texas ranch.

No word about Bush’s proclivity to paint himself in the shower or bath!

Instead, the three hosts effervesced with words such as, “Incredible!” and “Beautiful!” and “So cool!”

But Clayton Morris gave the ultimate in Fox News blessings: Didn’t Ronald Reagan, wasn’t he a doodler? He has pretty good artwork, too, didn’t he?"

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Fox host Alisyn Camerota made a deliberate point of linking firefighter flunkies to race when she reported that “as many as 30” New York City firefighter recruits are too obese for the job. Without bothering to point out that obesity rates among firefighters are causing concerns all over the country or that women are also part of the FDNY recruitment efforts, Camerota highlighted increased minority recruitment as the only factor to consider:

Well, they sued for the right to become New York City firefighters but now they’re flunking out. As many as 30 trainees have already dropped out because they’re too overweight to meet the physical demands of the job. And more are expected to go. The first recruited class since 2008 was formed after a judge ordered the department to become more racially diverse. But now veteran firefighters are fuming, saying the candidates are oversized and underperforming and need to be cut breaks to pass their tests.

Do you think anyone in the Fox audience failed to connect the dots?

Apparently, this “news” was based on a similar report from sister company NY Post that also linked the problem to minorities. However, the Post pointed out what Camerota didn’t: the class was not made up of applicants from the general population:

FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano excluded applicants from the general population for this Academy class, limiting the pool to medics, whose ranks include a higher percentage of minorities than is found in firehouses.

…But they were rated only on a written exam. In years past, applicants had to score high on both a written and a physical test.

… The department’s own EMS Academy head, Lt. David Russell, admitted in a 2011 report that even when FDNY recruits from EMS got extra help, “the overall fitness of these recruits is still poor.”

In other words, it's quite likely that the population of medics, whose work, as the article also pointed out, is mostly sedentary, has a lower fitness rate than the general population. But Camerota misleadingly gave the impression that the same people who sued (a black fraternal firefighters organization) are the same people now flunking out.

By the way, those “fuming” “veteran firefighters” Camerota cited in her report seem to be anonymous ranters on a bulletin board not associated with the FDNY. The Post also wrote that “Veteran firefighters are fuming over the quality of the new recruits” and backed that up with comments from a few posters on a site called FDNY Rant.

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Michelle Malkin visited Fox & Friends yesterday to jeer discuss Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony in front of Congress Wednesday. The Los Angeles Times noted that the Republicans were so intent on “resurrect(ing) a specious political attack that got them nowhere in the final days of the presidential campaign,” they missed opportunities to get real answers as to how to prevent such tragedies from happening again. And, in the process, made Clinton look “stronger than ever.”

Malkin and her Fox News hosts were so busy following in those footsteps that they failed to consider how they missed the mark in just the same way

Malkin began her “analysis” by sneering that the hearings seemed all about “Hillary 2016.” But that's all the Republicans at both hearings were focused on, too -- getting a sound byte to use against her potential candidacy.

Malkin gave special attention to the widely-seen clip of Clinton responding to Republican Senator Ron Johnson in which he beats the political dead horse alleging that the Obama administration deliberately oversold an anti-Muslim YouTube video as the cause of the attack. Clinton's forceful and persuasive answer: "Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”

“It makes all the difference in the world,” Malkin said contemptuously. But she never explained why. She became too caught up in attacking Republicans for having “squandered the opportunity to really stick it, not only to Hillary and the State Department, but to this entire lying administration.”

She continued, “Now I understand that there are a lot of staffers and a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been so steeped in this that they don't realize that the basics still need to get out to the American public and that was the missed opportunity, I think.”

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An article in yesterday’s Washington Post, called “Sweeping new gun laws proposed by influential liberal think tank” (Center For American Progress) had the Fox Friends in an absolute tizzy of concern trolling this morning even though, as Chris Wallace later explained, there’s not much President Obama can do without Congress.

The article says CAP has “singular influence” in the Obama administration and is “pushing for a sweeping agenda of strict new restrictions on and federal oversight of gun and ammunition sales” including some “executive actions that would not require the approval of Congress — in what amounts to the progressive community’s wish list.” However, a closer read reveals that the “sweeping agenda” is really a bunch of moderate proposals and that the ones Obama can implement are even more so:

CAP’s proposals — which include requiring universal background checks, banning military-grade assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and modernizing data systems to track gun sales and enforce existing laws — are all but certain to face stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association and its many allies in Congress.

…There’s nothing here that interferes with the rights of people to have a gun to protect themselves,” CAP President Neera Tanden said.

…CAP’s top recommendation is to require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing loopholes that currently enable an estimated 40 percent of sales to occur without any questions asked. The organization also wants to add convicted stalkers and suspected terrorists to the list of those barred from purchasing firearms.

Apparently, those are fightin’ words to Fox News. In every one of the four hours of Fox & Friends this morning, they complained about CAP's potential influence in the process.

For example, Alisyn Camerota began hour three with the following:

They said no the NRA reportedly, but the administration is getting ready to unveil sweeping new gun proposals and there’s word this morning that they may be taking some of their talking points from a group with a left-wing agenda.

As if Fox would have cared a fig had any White House taken their “talking points” from a group with a right-wing agenda.

A few minutes later, Tucker Carlson said,

So the topic this morning, who is really influencing the White House’s gun control legislation? Well, it could be the NRA, which is one of the largest grassroots organizations in America (co-host Mike Jerrick nodded in agreement), but no, it’s a left-wing think tank funded by George Soros in Washington. The Center for American Progress, according to the Washington Post this morning, has given a list of 13 or so gun control ideas to the White House – which they may act on by executive order.

As the three co-hosts whined the White House will probably listen more to CAP than the NRA, Carlson said that what “bothers people here is the elitism inherent in this conversation, that people with lots of money or positions of power ought to have their own bodyguards and ought to be subject to not the same laws as the rest of us… There is a feeling that average people kind of get the shaft. They’re being told, ‘No, you can’t defend yourself.’”

Yeah, just pay no attention to the boatloads of cash from the gun industry that the “grassroots” NRA uses to outspend the “elites” 25 to 1.

Later, Camerota broached the subject again, this time with Chris Wallace who ran down Joe Biden’s likely proposals on gun violence. Camerota said, “One of the things that they (CAP) are calling for is some executive action. If the president can’t get Congressional consensus, that he just unilaterally make some of these moves. Politically, is that wise or unwise in this climate today?"

Wallace said:

Let me just make it clear, Aly, most of the things that I’ve talked about, he couldn’t do by executive action. He could do some things very much on the margin: better information sharing. The states for instance have a lot of information on mental health and criminal records and that doesn’t get into the national database. He could do some things to try to improve that. Or improve enforcement…

In terms of banning assault weapons or universal background checks, he couldn’t do that by executive action. So, what he can do just by himself, is only on the margins.

The New York Times reported similar possibilities earlier last week – which Fox & Friends somehow missed in an earlier round of inflammatory “wondering” about what President Obama might do a few days ago. But just as I didn’t expect those facts to replace paranoid speculation on Fox, there’s no reason to expect that Wallace’s will either.

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Climate change-denying, media savvy Phelim McAleer got a warm welcome on Fox & Friends this morning where he was the only guest to discuss a New York Department of Health review about fracking that a Fox banner misleadingly trumpeted as concluding, "It's safe." McAleer also just so happens to have a new pro-fracking documentary coming out.

Host Alisyn Camerota cited the New York review and offered up McAleer an immediate opportunity to swipe at environmentalists by posing this “question:” “Will all of that, do you think, quiet the critics?”

A banner on the screen read TRUTH ABOUT FRACKING: NY DEPT OF HEALTH REVIEW CONCLUDES IT'S SAFE.

McAleer took the bait:

The critics are not anti-fracking. They’re anti-fossil fuels, they’re anti-American, they’re anti-modernity, anti-progress… It’s a coalition of all sorts of extreme greens, celebrity, Hollywood celebrities and oddballs.

McAleer went on to say that fracking, which has been conducted for 50 years, "causes no health problems, it’s safe.”

Well, that’s debatable, to say the least.

For one thing, New York State’s review does not say that fracking causes no health problems. As the New York Times reports, the State says that fracking CAN be done safely. Secondly, the State’s review does not include any assessments of health impact. Also, the Times writes, “The analysis also rejects a broad quantitative risk assessment of fracking — the kind of study that would try to project the probability of various hazards — saying it would 'involve making a large number of assumptions about the many scenario-specific variables that influence the nature and degree of potential human exposure and toxicity.'"

Meanwhile, New York State aside, there is solid evidence to show that fracking contaminates water, causes earthquakes and is only loosely regulated.

Camerota barely mentioned any of that. Instead, she cited “anecdotal evidence” of farm animals dying “in some places.” However, she did note that there has been criticism of the New York State study as outdated. But instead of doing any research of her own, she relied on the blatantly-biased McAleer in asking whether a new study should be done.

“If you like throwing good money after bad,” he sneered. “We’ve got this vast data out there, report after report. So I think it’s time to stop reporting, stop analyzing and start doing… The analysis has been done, it’s safe.”

Camerota went on to note the famous scene in the documentary Gasland in which tap water was lit on fire. “That was debunked, thanks to you in part,” Camerota announced approvingly, “because you proved that this has been happening for decades and generations long before fracking.”

Not exactly. While it’s true that some water has been flammable in the past, that does not mean that the water in the film was flammable before fracking. Furthermore, ProPublica wrote in 2011 about a scientific study linking flammable drinking water to fracking:

The research was conducted by four scientists at Duke University. They found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself.

Predictably, though, McAleer took Camerota’s opening and ran with it. He claimed that where there is fracking, it’s because there is flammable gas in the ground that comes up naturally, thereby letting the suggestion sit that that is the cause everywhere the water has been flammable. Then he moved on to promote his upcoming pro-fracking movie that supposedly corrects the record.

“Nice tease!” Camerota gushed.

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Last night, Sen. James Inhofe did Fox News the favor of telling host Jeanine Pirro that Benghazi is “probably the greatest cover-up in my memory.” The predictable result was that the comment was re-played on Fox & Friends this morning (as it probably will be elsewhere on Fox) thus giving a boost to himself, Pirro’s not-very-prominent Saturday night show and, most of all, the Benghazi conspiracy theory that Fox clings to despite any and all facts disproving it.

The discussion started with a clip of Inhofe saying:

I have made a study of different cover-ups – the Pentagon Papers, Watergate and Iran-Contra. I’ve never seen anything like it. I think this is probably the greatest cover-up in my memory, anyway.

Of course, that’s ridiculous. Not even the Foxy Friends argued that was likely - though they studiously avoided saying one way or the other. As Karoli posted a few weeks ago, Rachel Maddow has demolished the whole cover-up conspiracy theory. So has The New York Times. And Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom Ricks tried to tell Fox News but their widdle feewings were so hurt by his accusation that they were politicizing the tragedy that they booted him off the set before they could debunk it. But even if you believe that there are still some unanswered questions out there, the entire “conspiracy” boils down to Who Changed The Talking Points About Benghazi and was the danger of Al Qaeda downplayed to help President Obama win re-election?

Well, now that President Obama has been re-elected – despite Fox News’ best efforts – the “fair and balanced” network is turning its sights on Hillary Clinton, a likely nominee in 2016. I guess you need to allege a giant cover-up if you’re going to allege Clinton faked her concussion to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Even though there’s no question that she will testify later, as even host Clayton Morris acknowledged.

Morris pretended that questions about Benghazi are questions about the death of Americans: “At the heart of all of this, of course, is the four individuals who died during that tragedy. And the answers are still not being found, as our own Catherine Herridge reporting yesterday on our show.”

But rather than focus on what happened to those Americans, Morris immediately turned his attention to Clinton and kept it there. He said:

(M)ore questions emerging about who knew what when at the State Department and when these cables, these sort of desperate cables for security and security issues – a series of them – how far up the chain of command did they go? Did they go to Hillary Clinton’s office on the 7th floor? …At least one cable, according to Catherine Herridge’s reporting may have made its way to (Clinton’s) office. Did she look at it? Was there any actionable information on that? Why didn’t they ask for more security at the time? And Hillary Clinton, of course, still suffering from a concussion, or recovering from a concussion, so hasn’t been able to answer that but she will at testimony coming up.

Yet somehow with all those questions, nobody thought to point out, as Karoli did, that it was Secretary Clinton who ordered the review and the review was done. Furthermore, as the New York Times reported, “Mrs. Clinton accepted all of the panel’s 29 recommendations and has already begun to make changes.”

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Just as I predicted a few days ago, the author who claims there’s a war on men is getting lots of sympathetic airtime on Fox News. This morning, Suzanne Venker – never identified as the niece of anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly - visited Fox & Friends where she offered up her totally unqualified and unscientific opinion that the reason marriage rates are down is because “women aren’t women anymore,” as host Alisyn Camerota summarized.

Last week, Venker wrote a jaw-dropping editorial on FoxNews.com, called The war on men, in which she said, among other things:

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Although Fox works overtime to deny there's a war on women, Venker was received hospitably by all three hosts.

As a banner on the screen read, “OVER-THE-TOP FEMINISM?” Venker told the Fox viewers:

The issue is that women have become sort of overdeveloped, if you will, in their masculine side because they’ve been groomed to… number one, for a life in the marketplace as opposed to a life at home. And so, of course, that whole plan is going to be very different in terms of what you’re gonna be, how you’re gonna prepare for it and what you’re gonna be doing with your time in your life.

Camerota sounded skeptical but neither she nor anyone else ever pointed out that Venker appears to have no professional credentials in the field of psychology, sociology or any kind of science. In fact, she boasts about her lack of professional credentials on her website bio:

I am not a psychologist or marriage counselor – which is good. We have plenty of therapists in this country. What we don’t have are enough people willing to speak out about things they know from experience to be true, even if they’re unpopular. Too many professionals tell people what they want to hear.

I tell you what you need to hear.

Venker assured Camerota that women who want careers can get married, too. But she also said, “The reality is that most people do want to get married and have families and so what I’m trying to say is that the roadmap that women are being led to plan out, map out for their life is not going to work for most women if the ultimate goal is to have a family.”

Host Clayton Morris was right with Venker’s program. He joked that in New York City women wait until age 50 to get married and then they “push the envelope of science” in order to have children. He asked if the “traditional idea of marriage” is “suffering because women want to go further and further into the workplace?”

Venker said that traditional marriage is suffering for a “lot of reasons” and that she “tapped into” only one reason.

The whole attitude toward marriage in general, for young people in particular, is such a negative one, and that’s really the premise that I’m concerned about because when you start out thinking so negatively and being taught things like ‘never depend on a man,’ and ‘postpone marriage as long as possible,’ – not that there’s anything wrong with postponing it, but with that attitude going forward, you’re probably going to end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to turn it around and say this is a good thing. Nurturing, families, marriage, it’s all good.

The funny thing is, she sure sounded like she was trying to be professional and authoritative – in other words, just the kind of woman she thinks there are too many of in this day and age.

Heather caught Stephen Colbert's scathing takedown of Venker this week. Predictably, that was another thing Fox & Friends didn't mention.

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On Fox & Friends this morning, Steve Doocy lamented that a surveillance video of what happened in Benghazi on September 11 will probably not be released until after the election. But that was no impediment for him and his co-hosts to adjudge President Obama guilty of allowing Americans to die in the attack on the consulate there.

Interestingly, the comments today very much echoed those of Fox News’ Peter Johnson, Jr. who “asked” last week whether Obama had deliberately allowed Americans to die for political purposes. Since then, Gabriel Sherman, in New York Magazine, has suggested that Johnson was acting as a surrogate for Fox chief Roger Ailes. The fact that such similar sentiments re-emerged today – still without evidence to support them – gives further credence to that theory.

Today’s accusations were based around a report that requests for help made by Americans under siege at Benghazi had not been granted. Clayton Morris acknowledged that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had said, “That zone seemed too hot to send in additional forces.” But Morris quickly cast doubt on that based on vague speculation:

There’s others who say it wasn’t hot and by simply allowing a helicopter gunship that had laser locked on these targets could have actually intervened and stopped this brutal slaying that was unfolding there.

Who those “others” were, Morris didn’t bother to say.

According to host Alisyn Camerota, the CIA “categorically denies that any request for backup was denied.” But everybody immediately ignored that. Even as she spoke a banner on the screen blared, ‘WHY DID THEY ALLOW HIM TO DIE?”

Steve Doocy said, “Apparently, there was a guy on the embassy roof who had a laser pointer and he was painting where the mortars were coming from and they were on the radio and they were begging, 'Please send us a gunship.' It never came.”

Camerota said, “It’s hard to know what happened… We need names.”

But why wait for names and hard information when it’s less than two weeks before a tight election? Clayton Morris pointed his finger directly at Obama:

Michael Scheuer on the show yesterday says, “Look, the buck stops with the president. This sort of thing goes up the chain of command and it would be odd or almost impossible for it not to enter the White House.”

What Morris didn’t tell the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers is that Scheuer is hardly a voice of credibility. He has longed for a terrorist attack to “save America,” characterized President Obama as a racist and suggested that Civil War might be justified. Or maybe that’s what passes for credibility on Fox these days.

Fox also aired a bizarre clip of the father of one of the slain SEALs directing comments to President Obama: “For your benefit I would want you to turn your life around and head the other direction so that blessings can continue to flow into your life. I want the best for you and that means you need to stand up, admit your fault and then change the direction of your life. I love this country of ours.”

Although I’m sure everyone’s heart goes out to that father, he didn’t have any direct information about what happened or what President Obama knew or did, either. But it’s a safe bet that clip will be played repeatedly on Fox.

The summation for the prosecution was left to Doocy. He didn’t need any more information to render a verdict:

It’s been six weeks. There are tapes that exist of exactly what went down. I believe the people who say that we asked for backup and it never came and it was denied. Somebody – look, the White House has thrown the intelligence community under the bus. They’ve tried the same with the Pentagon. I believe those guys.

Two days ago, Geraldo Rivera ripped the Curvy Couch Crew over the politicization of the tragedy at Benghazi. He also revealed the names of three like-minded Republican Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee who think hearings should wait until after the election. But that piece of information was excluded from evidence today and Rivera’s objections overruled in Fox’s kangaroo court.

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Fox News’ “Medical A Team” Psychiatrist (and resident wacko) Dr. Keith Ablow visited Fox & Friends this morning and delivered such a crackpot medical analysis of Vice President Biden’s debate performance that even the hosts argued against it.

Ablow – who never considered why Fox has been obsessing about Biden since the debate – acknowledged up front that Biden could have behaved the way he did “for stage presence.” Or, Ablow said, because he “has shown tremendous disregard for the perspective of others… In other words, don’t interrupt me with the facts.”

But then Ablow got to “the part I’ll hear about:”

I did not evaluate Joe Biden but if someone said to me, "Listen, we want you to do what’s really required to know what happened there," you have to put "dementia" on the differential diagnosis… If this were your Dad or your grandfather, wouldn’t you say, if you brought him to me, "Keith, you gotta tell me, is he suffering with dementia? Because he can’t seem to listen, he’s laughing inappropriately.

You know a Fox guest has gone over the edge when two out of three co-hosts start disagreeing with something anti-Democratic. Alisyn Camerota pointed out that Biden’s “command of the details was so solid. People with dementia can’t remember.” Dave Briggs added, “The substance was pretty solid.”

But Ablow stuck to his theory: “Not knowing every fact is not required to diagnose dementia. And I’m not saying he has it, I’m saying you put it on the differential.”

Ablow wasn’t through. He also said, “You want his alcohol level.”

By the way, this is the second time in less than two months that Ablow has come up with a psychiatric assessment of Biden without benefit of examining him. After Biden made his “chains” comment (which Fox also obsessed over), Ablow called it a “moment of truth" that reveals Biden's "contempt" for "financial success."

Ablow seemed to have forgotten all about that now.

Oh and one other thing? Ablow never said that Rep. Paul Ryan won the debate against this demented lush.