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From this Saturday's The Journal Editorial Report on Fox, host Paul Gigot asks his panel what they expect from President Obama during his second term, and after the initial response from Jason Riley, saying that the president is going to be looking to fund his first term agenda, because "socialized medicine is expensive," fellow panelist Daniel Henninger threw out this stink bomb:

GIGOT: Dan, what about this theory from liberals, which is -- and they're cheering it -- no more mister nice guy. The president is going to take on Republicans. He was way to compromising in the first term -- not that I recognize that president -- but that's the line that they're taking. And so, you know... look, he's going to put them in their place. He's going to demonize them, stigmatize them. Is that what we're going to see? What is that...

HENNINGER: We are going to see it. I mean, the left has been looking for years for an answer to right wing talk radio and they've got one -- the President of the United States. He's like a left wing talk show host.

Uh.... in a word Dan... NO. We've got plenty of "left wing" talk show hosts out there and they're mostly way to the left of President Obama. They went on to complain that President Obama is to blame for making the Republicans look bad and that he's causing them to fight among themselves, as though they needed an ounce of help in that department.

And the Republican health care plan he helped get passed that you all loved until a Democrat proposed it isn't "socialism." These wingnuts just keep pushing that Overton window further and further to the right.

Go read the whole thing, but I wanted to share at least this portion of Robert Reich's post from this Saturday: Bedford Falls or Pottersville?:

But we are still in danger of the “Pottersville” Capra saw as the consequence of what happens when Americans fail to join together and forget the meaning of the public good.

If Lionel Barrymore’s “Mr. Potter” were alive today he’d call himself a “job creator” and condemn George Bailey as a socialist. He’d be financing a fleet of lobbyists to get lower taxes on multi-millionaires like himself, overturn environmental laws, trample on workers’ rights, and shred social safety nets. He’d fight any form of gun control. He’d want the citizens of Pottersville to be economically insecure – living paycheck to paycheck and worried about losing their jobs – so they’d be dependent on his good graces.

The Mr. Potters are still alive and well in America, threatening our democracy with their money and our common morality with their greed.

Call me old fashioned or overly sentimental but I still believe the George Baileys will win this contest. They know we’re all in it together, and that if we succumb to the Potters we lose America and relinquish the future.

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From Monday night's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart went after Mitt Romney and his fellow right-wingers like Lou Dobbs, for their priorities on deficit reduction where PBS, which is a minute portion of the budget would get slashed, but heaven forbid we can't touch those subsidies for the oil companies, because those amounts would be almost meaningless -- or so says Dobbs and his faulty math.

After pointing out the obvious and that it really can't be the deficit they're concerned about, Stewart made a mockery of the talking heads over at Fox for their attacks on Sesame Street as some kind of evil socialist indoctrination program that's harming our children by teaching them things like how to share.

Jon and his Daily Show senior correspondents, Wyatt Cenac and John Oliver had some suggestions for how to make Sesame Street more palatable to conservatives, like putting Ayn Rand on the recommended reading list for the kids.

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MSNBC got rid of this old racist relic, but Fox just had to drag him back on the air so he can spout hatred like this -- Pat Buchanan: If Welfare Is Like "A Narcotic," "Obama Is A Drug Dealer Of Welfare".

I guess Pat didn't want to allow his sister to be the only Buchanan on the air out there embarrassing themselves carrying water for this debacle of a Romney campaign.

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Tea party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) is slamming President Barack Obama for using the word "Forward" as his campaign slogan, insisting that it is an "old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme."

"This is about whether we continue to be a republic governed by the Constitution," West told a Republican Jewish Coalition rally in Boca Raton, Florida on Sunday. "Or will we become a liberal-progressive, bureaucratic, welfare nanny state, which is exactly what the other side wants?"

He continued: "They want to bring out an old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme for their campaign called 'Forward'. I have to ask you one simple question. Where is the Soviet Union today?"

After the Obama campaign unveiled its campaign slogan in April, conservative outlets like The Washington Times and Breitbart.com warned that the word had a ties to Marxism.

"The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan — or maybe they did," Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said at the time. “That’s because ‘Forward’ has a very long history with Marxists and socialists and communists.”

"Forward" is also the motto of Wisconsin, where Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan serves as a congressman.

(h/t: Think Progress, Shark Tank)

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Adolf Hitler never wore a beret so Fox Business host Lou Dobbs is linking the U.S. Olympic team's headgear to the next best villain he can think of: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Earlier this week, the co-hosts of Fox & Friends echoed conservative outrage over the berets that are being provided to the Olympic team by U.S. fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

"The big question, though, is should the American team be wearing a beret?" co-host Steve Doocy wondered. "Why not a baseball cap? Why not a cowboy hat like we had when we went to Calgary? Why not just do something very American and just go topless?"

On Thursday, Dobbs picked up on the controversy by noting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thought they should burn the uniforms, which were made in China, and find new ones.

"But the controversy doesn't stop there," Dobbs complained "Some are also criticizing Ralph Lauren for topping off what is supposed to be a patriotic with a classic French beret of all things! I know, the U.S. Army Green Berets, Black Berets, etc. But it just so happens, I don't like those berets either."

"Berets are also the signature headgear of socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez," the Fox Business host added.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Jon Stewart returned from vacation this Tuesday night and responded to the article he read at the Huffington Post where Fox News chief Roger Ailes went after Stewart for admitting he's a "Socialist" and wouldn't do well without Fox. What we got in response was Stewart doing a really good job of explaining why being called a Socialist should not be a pejorative.

As far as not having enough material for his show if Fox did not exist, I'm sure Fox existing makes his job as a comedian easier, but as long as we've got wingnut politicians who are on the air either at the other networks or on C-SPAN spouting nonsense from the House or Senate floor, I don't think Stewart is in danger of running out of new material that's ripe for mockery any time soon.

After having a bit of fun with his "scenario" about what actually happened during that meeting with Ailes, Stewart went on to explain just what he meant by his remarks and what he considers "Socialism" such as protecting things like Social Security and Medicare.

He also took some shots at Republicans for pretending the health care law, or "Obamacare" is that dreaded "s- word", Socialism:

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During his victory speech in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich went on another one of his rants, attacking President Obama as a Saul Alinsky-loving Socialist who doesn't care about American exceptionalism and the media elites that don't want us to be Americans (???) as well as rehashing an old attack of his against San Antonio Judge Fred Biery:

GINGRICH: One of the key issues is the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites and if you get a chance, if you go to newt.org, my campaign site, there's a fifty four page paper there on the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role and eliminating dictatorial religious bigots such as Judge Biery in San Antonio who issued a ruling that if the students, not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word benediction, the word invocation, the word god, asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail.

Now, we don't have speech dictatorship in America by anti-religious bigots, period.

Considering the number of dog whistle appeal to racists in South Carolina Gingrich has made in the last couple of weeks, there is no level of hubris too high for him to decry "bigots." Apparently Gingrich isn't too worried about appealing to middle of the road voters were he to make it to the general election and win the nomination after this twenty minute long screed that was full of nothing but red meat for the right.

Think Progress has more on Gingrich's dangerous attacks on that judge in their post from last October -- Gingrich’s Awful Speech Part IV: Legitimization Through Intimidation:

Despite his authoritarian claim that he is free to simply ignore court decisions he disagrees with if elected president, Gingrich’s speech also implicitly recognizes that it is helpful to have your values legitimated by a judicial decision. Unfortunately, however, Gingrich also sees nothing wrong with obtaining the illusion of legitimacy by simply intimidating judges into doing whatever you want them to do:

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who had previously been avoiding doing any interviews with the media before it started looking like his frontrunner status in the GOP primary race was in jeopardy with Newt Gingrich rising in the polls, sat down with PBS's Charlie Rose and did his best to punt when asked what he thought about the shrinking middle class in America and the income disparity that has so many Americans upset these days.

Rose asked him straight up, twice, if he was concerned about the middle class disappearing and the class divisions we see growing deeper in the United States and in both instances, his response was to basically punt and make arguments about how we'd better not be too hard on that upper 1 percent, to trash unions, pretend that we're "punishing" those at the top if we would like to see them pay their fair share in taxes, and try to claim that if leave our economy to the "free markets" that everyone in society is going to end up being better off.

It really astounds me that after watching what forty years plus of what Reaganonomics have done to us that anyone in American politics could be so tone deaf to the fact that trickle down economics don't work and that without government intervening to make sure we protect American workers, we're going to continue to see America's economy go down the tank other than for the richest among us, like Mitt Romney, but that's exactly what we got from him during this interview.

If this is the best the GOP has to offer for the upcoming presidential election, and if these are the arguments Romney wants to make if he's hoping to be elected president, I actually look forward to watching him trying to repeat his performance with President Obama sitting across a podium from him, rather than Rose lobbing softballs with little follow up.

Romney's got all of his talking points down for the media as long as they allow him to change the subject and not actually answer their questions as he did here. He never really addressed the problem of income disparity other than to pretend that putting more money into the hands of the rich is going to solve it. I sincerely hope he doesn't get the kind of pass he did here if he wins the nomination once the debates start for the general election.

The other candidates may have their problems, but they truly don't have a better representative other than maybe Newt Gingrich of any of them that's more out of touch with the working class and what most average Americans are going through right now than Mitt Romney.

Some rough transcript of the beginning of the interview below the fold.

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Just before President Obama gave his speech this Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas, Fox's Megyn Kelly brought on The National Review's Sarah Palin fan-boy, Rich Lowry to opine over whether there was some risk involved for the president by invoking Teddy Roosevelt with this latest push to get Republicans to agree to an extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Naturally Kelly was very concerned over whether this would place some undue burden on the, as she called them, "so-called rich" and they dismissed the fact that we have record income disparity now which is similar to Roosevelt's time because no one paid personal income tax in those days. Naturally they also used the opportunity to repeat the Republican talking points that Americans are over-taxed, over-regulated and that our entitlement programs are out of control to claim that Roosevelt would be horrified by the tax burden placed on them now. Lowry repeated the lie that the administration is trying to take us back to the days when upper earners were paying as high as fifty percent or more in taxes, when no one is talking about going back to those rates now.

And of course they couldn't finish trashing President Obama for daring to want to talk about some fairness in our economy without pulling out the other Fox boogeyman... Socialism. The horror.