last year, prior to the election, Fox News was already fortifying its right flank. New multimillion dollar contracts were handed out to Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Hannity's show shed the dead weight of alleged liberal Alan Colmes. Glenn Beck was brought in to shore up the daytime crowd. Neil Cavuto, a bully who is every bit as obnoxious as O'Reilly poisons the economic news, and he is also managing editor of Murdoch's Fox Business News. And just this week Bill Sammon, author of a shelf full of bitterly partisan books, was promoted to VP and Washington editor for the network.

The result is a full-court press of some of the dirtiest political assaults ever waged by what is advertised as a "news" network. Fox News is shamelessly pushing a campaign to characterize Obama as a socialist--a committed opponent of America and its values--from 6:00 am with the crew of Fox & Friends, to after midnight with broadcasts and repeats of their primetime neanderthal shoutcasters.

Howard even reminds us that, as usual, "they get their marching orders directly from Rupert Murdoch who last September said that… "[Obama's] policy is really very, very naive, old fashioned, 1960s socialist."