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After the attacks we saw from the right on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the way that their treatment of Latinos really damaged Republicans in the last election, Rachel Maddow wondered if Reince Priebus and the RNC's new minority outreach program was going to work to convince Latinos to vote for them.

As she noted, if what we saw in reaction to the nomination of Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin or Rand Paul and his incorrect assumptions about Latino voters are any indication, it's probably not going to go very well for them.

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A conservative radio host on Wednesday warned Fox News that President Barack Obama was "becoming more like Hugo Chavez all the time" and that any effort to control guns in the wake of the Newtown massacre would be "like Nazi Germany."

Vice President Joe Biden, who is heading up a task force on gun violence, told reporters on Wednesday that the president was likely to take executive action in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but he did not give specifics.

"There are executives orders, there's executive action that can be taken," the vice president said. "We haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required."

The onservative website Drudge Report soon was blaring the headline, "WHITE HOUSE THREATENS 'EXECUTIVE ORDERS' ON GUNS" -- accompanied by photos of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

And within hours, Larson was bringing the Nazi Germany reference to Fox News viewers.

"If he does executive orders, he's becoming more like Hugo Chavez all the time," Larson insisted. "Under [Sen. Diane] Feinstein's bill -- which has now been introduced -- if the president plans to go that way, everybody in America who owns one of the guns on the list will be required to go in and give up fingerprints, mug shot, be entered into a database."

"It will be, '[give us] your papers please,' like Nazi Germany," he continued. "We're going to register everybody then you won't be allowed to transfer that gun... So that the day that grandpa dies and you don't know that he's got an AR-15 locked up in his safe and the police come for whatever reason and discover it there, the family is guilty of possessing a gun and possession of which is a felony."

Larson also worried that any effort to strengthen mental health checks would mean that "any person in America who's on any kind of prescription pharmaceutical -- Xanax, Prozac, lithium -- loses his Second Amendment rights."

"If you go to see a doctor or marriage counselor and say, 'Our marriage isn't working out well, we yell at each other a lot.' And the marriage counselor says, 'Well, there go your Second Amendment rights.'"

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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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George Will claims that there is no defense of BP and their terrible safety record and says of course no one wants to make apologies for them when asked about Joe Barton's remarks during the Congressional hearings last week. Then naturally he proceeds to play water carrier for the company and slams the Obama administration for getting them to set up the escrow fund, comparing it to something akin to Hugo Chavez nationalizing the oil industry in Venezuela.

TAPPER: George, I want to start with you. I know you don't agree with what Republican Texas Congressman Joe Barton had to say, but does the idea of this $20 billion escrow account make you uncomfortable?

WILL: It does. Look, there is no defense of BP which has an execrable safety record in this country, from the refinery disaster in Texas in '05, the Morris Slope leak in '06, all of that and so no apology from BP. But if you don't want to live in a Northern Hemisphere Venezuela, you ought to be a little queasy about the fact that a president, any president of any party, using raw political power, without recourse to courts that exist for this sort of thing, under laws, with due process, essentially confiscates $20 billion from a publicly held corporation, about half of its shares held by Americans, to be dispensed, again, with out judicial supervision, as the political branch sees fit. That is worrisome. Even, they have even said that BP maybe held responsible for the lost wages caused by, not BP, but the administration's own moratorium, six-months moratorium, on deepwater drilling. Which maybe more costly to the economy of the Gulf than the spill itself.

Later in the segment Will quotes Shakespeare and compares the President to Caesar and then reads from an article in The Economist which blasts Obama as being “Vladimir Obama”.

TAPPER: Rahm Emanuel seemed to really seize on those Barton comments almost as if President Obama were on the ballot this year, for the 2010 midterms, running against Joe Barton. Democrats argue that Barton's comments are not really out of Republican mainstream. And here are some comments from the Republican Study Committee, in the House; 114 members of the Republican Party in the House saying: "BP's reported willingness to go along with the White House's new fund suggests that the Obama administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics. These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been born out of this administration's drive for greater power and control." George, it seems like mainstream Republican thought, if that is from the Republican Study Committee?

WILL: Well, among those asking, upon what meat doeth our Caesar feed that he has grown so great?, is "The Economist" of London, which I think we have all accept as a mainstream publication. They say, in a section of their lead editorial, called "Vladimir Obama", "The collapse of BP's share prices suggest he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding. If the president does not stand up for due process he will frighten investors across the board. The damage to Americans environment is bad enough, the president risks damaging the economy, too." That's not a partisan outfit, "The Economist".

Phoenix Woman at FDL has more on that. UK, US Tories and their Media Circle their Wagons to Protect BP:

The intense propaganda campaign to protect BP at all costs is heating up. The wagons are being circled and the propaganda flows like a busted oil well.

The current meme in the Tory community, both here and across the ocean, is that Obama’s an evil Brit-hating Socialist out to destroy business.

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Newt Gingrich doubles down on calling the Obama administration "radical" and does a good deal of harping about them heaven forbid passing some bills that they want to get through, as though that should not be allowed by a party that won by huge majorities the last election. He then goes onto compare Henry Waxman to Hugo Chavez and in the next breath say that Democrats are using language they should not be and showing "hostility". Yeah Newt, there's nothing inflammatory about comparing a member of the House of Representatives to the right wing's favorite villain, Hugo Chavez.

He also plays concern troll for the bused in teabaggers that his buddies from these astroturf groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity brought in to disrupt town hall meetings. Oh my god... someone trying to have a meeting with their constituents dared to ask if the people there screaming at them were actually, you know, their constituents. And some of them got tired of receiving death threats and canceled their town hall meetings. It's all their fault for reacting to those threats, right Newt? Give me a break.

Gingrich wraps up the interview with this.

Gingrich: I think if you look at the language they use, if you look at the hostility they show to town hall meetings, I mean, the town hall meeting where a Democratic Congressman asked somebody to prove that they were a citizen in their district. Now this is from a party that normally doesn't care whether you're here legally or not. It's a party that normally doesn't care whether you're registered to vote or not. I mean, to suddenly, they were under such enormous pressure, they just quit holding town meetings. Now there's something... when elected officials can't go back home, you know, there's something wrong with the model of what they're doing and I, but I think what they decided was that they were going to pass, this was the highwater mark of modern left wing thought, that they're not going to have this many Senate seats, this many House seats again in the near future and they're going to drive everything they can through this year, take a beating this fall if that's what it involves and try to leave so much wreckage behind that they will have accomplished their goal of moving the country towards a European style Socialist welfare state.

Wow. Socialist huh? Really? And the Democrats are going to leave wreckage behind? That's one major bit of projection right there Newt. The Democratic Party has their problems as well, but someone please tell me one thing the Republican Party has done for the last thirty years that's done nothing but destroy the middle class in the United States.

As Robert Parry at AlterNet noted, Newt's strategy of destroying the Democratic Party goes way back, so this is nothing new. Same game, different era, but now he's got ClusterFox to help promote their agenda.

The Only Republican Plan Is to Destroy Democrats, Not Solve Problems:

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Looks like Mr. Man-on-dog Rick Santorum's irony alert button is broken, but that's nothing new. While complaining about the mean old President saying that one network is devoted to doing nothing but attacking his administration, Santorum makes his point for him.

VAN SUSTEREN: Former senator Rick Santorum joins us here in Washington. Senator, I think he watches cable news!

SANTORUM: It's not cable -- he's watching FOX. I mean, he's talking about the cable chatter. He's certainly not talking about MSNBC. I mean, my goodness, they're the biggest cheerleader -- you know, they're just -- they're all over Barack Obama. This -- this is an attack on FOX. this is -- this reminds me of what Hugo Chavez was doing down in Venezuela, trying to shut down the voice of opposition in the media! This is -- this is not good, really, in my opinion, not good at all.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, it's -- I mean, it's sort of a -- I mean, we have some people on this network who are, you know, politically conservative. Sean Hannity -- no one's going to dispute that.

SANTORUM: Sure.

VAN SUSTEREN: So he goes after him. But -- but we have a lot of news gatherers, as well, who are just gathering the news.

SANTORUM: And case in point, you. I mean, I don't think anyone's going to come and say, Well, you're just -- you've been brutal on Barack Obama. You've not been brutal on him. You've put the case -- you've made the case for and against him. When you thought he was right, you stood -- you stood out there and said it.

He's -- he's overreacting. This is a very thin-skinned president. This is a guy who's not used to being criticized. And the fact that some here on FOX are taking him on and some, like yourself, are just holding him accountable when he's crossing the line in the wrong direction -- you know, his reaction, I think, is really unprofessional.

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From The Daily Show April 21, 2009, This Week in Demagogues. Jon Stewart wonders just how badly President Obama's trip to the Summit of the Americas could have played in the U.S. media and why anyone cares what Dick Cheney thinks. Of course, as usual the Fox "News" pundits supply him with an endless amount of material.

January 09, 2009 News Corp