Christmas ‘warrior’ and triple ‘Polkbody’ award-winning ‘Paris Business Review’ Founder and Editor-in-Chief Bill O’Reilly declared July 7, 2009 as “a sad day for America” in his ‘Reality Check’ segment on the O’Reilly Factor because…. “Al Franken is now a U.S. senator”.
Why so sad? Well, “Franken is a blatantly dishonest individual, a far-left zealot who is not qualified to hold any office, a man who trafficked in hate on his failed Air America radio program. With people like Franken on the Hill, this country is in deep trouble.”
“If you want proof,” said O’Reilly, “check out Page 96 in my book Culture Warrior.”
Of course O’Reilly could have provided his 'proof' right then and there on his show (or provide it on his website, or on FOX’s website, or in one of his syndicated columns, or on his radio show) but really, why should he just give his 'proof' away for free when he can sell it to you via his book? Or, you can just take his word for it---just like Bill himself does.
But anyway, whilst America’s innocent eyes brim with tears and its nose starts to run because Al Franken is now a Senator, Bill O’Reilly is no doubt looking for some way to cheer America up—but how?
Maybe he could call for a boycott of Al Franken’s state of Minnesota? After all, as Bill told Heather Malick of the Toronto Globe and Mail whilst threatening Canada with a boycott over two conscientious objectors to the Iraq War who had sought refuge over the border:
“…they’ve lost billions of dollars in France, according to the Paris Business Review”
And if you want proof of that claim as well, well unfortunately the Paris Business Review doesn’t have a page 96 (or a page anything, as it was entirely a figment of Bill’s imagination) but you CAN check out his July 6 response to Jack Mathews’ June 28, 2004, New York Daily News column in which Mathews described O’Reilly as an ideological thug who plays fast and loose with the facts:
“First, Mathews writes that an O’Reilly Factor-led boycott if France did not economic damage to that country”, Bill harrumphs, before delivering a defiantly inert ‘no-spin’ O’Reilly Factor ‘fact’: “According to U.S. government figures, in the months following the boycott call, France did $138 million less business with the USA than it did the previous year.”
Of course France’s January and February figures (being the months in question) in the year before Bill’s Brie and baguette boycott even existed, were slightly worse----on account of the usual, utterly predictable annual drop in French exports to the U.S. every January and February since probably the American Revolution.
But the point is that Bill was able to 'prove' (after two months spent executing a two-second Google-search) that (notwithstanding the utter non-existence of the Paris Business Review) the fact remained that France had lost a number of ‘–illions’ (billions, millions, the actual word for the actual number isn't important) immediately AFTER his call for a boycott!
And the ‘fact’ that rabid bears hadn’t been admitted into the Boy Scouts to teach the homosexual agenda at the exact same time was just a bonus that Bill was simply too modest to mention.
And the only reason Franceactually finished 2004 with a billion-dollar increase in its U.S. exports was undoubtedly only due to Bill signing-up for another tour in the War on Christmas (which by the way, he won, once again, as he does every year).
So if we are to learn anything from history (even though there’s obviously no point because, as George Bush essentially observed; ‘we’ll all be dead by then’) it is that a Bill O’Reilly-patented boycott of Minnesota (especially in the midst of a deep economic crisis) could be just the thing to put a non-liberal-fascist smiley face back on America’s down cast visage!!.
So wipe those tears from your eyes and the snot from your nose, you ‘little-guys’ of America that Bill O’Reilly look’s-out-for from his non-elitist Long Island mansion!
Lift up your hearts and boycott Minnesota like you did France—because when the O’Reilly Factor ‘facts’ finally come in from the Minnesota Mercantile Bugle, you will be able to see the proof of your victorious stand against reality by buying Bill O’Reilly’s inevitable next best–selling book, on a page Bill himself will personally recommend to you—but only if you really need proof of course.
And then when Minnesotans hear Bill tells them what happened to their state’s economy, like France did, they’ll think extra-hard about whom they choose to represent them next time!
On Friday, July 3rd 2009 ex V-P candidate Sarah Palin quit her job as Governor of Alaska whilst still in her first term, despite any particular evidence of the type of fiscal or moral corruption that usually triggers such actions.
Sarah Palin quit four different colleges and universities before finally earning her bachelor’s degree in Communications-Journalism.
She quit her second term on the Wasilla County Council to run for Mayor of Wasilla.
Leaving Wasilla (population 3,000) $25 million in debt, she then ran for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska.
Though losing the Lt. Governor position to State representative Lisa Murkowski (appointed by her father, then Governor Frank Murkowski), Palin was appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and served as its Ethics Supervisor.
Winning the Governorship in 2006 on an ethics reform platform, she rejected a pay raise and an appointed chef, but on other hand claimed per-diem expenses whilst frequently at home.
In her 2008 State of the State Address she stated that “we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]” but she’d had no problem supporting Senator Ted Stevens’ infamous $442 million dollar “Bridge to Nowhere” and though that project was canceled, had no problem accepting the funds for general transportation purposes.
Eighteen months into her Governorship, Palin accepted the offer to run as John McCain’s Vice President during which she lied about her previous support of the “Bridge to Nowhere” and the acceptance of its original funding for other purposes.
Palin also claimed credit for what she described as an active “40 billion-dollar” gas pipeline project when in fact the project was estimated at the much lower figure of $26 billion, and in fact not only was it not active but she’d paid TransCanada Pipelines $500 million for what amounted to a feasibility study (of which there is as yet no obvious sign of being conducted).
As thus described her political resume is typical of most politicians---savvy expediency served political success.
But Palin wasn’t chosen as the GOP V-P candidate for her own political savvy or policy experience, but for the expedient requirements of Conservative “intellectuals” and machinators (like William Kristol) who faced an alarming “regime change” as their expected “permanent Republican majority” was shrinking so small that it was about to be “drowned in a bathtub”.
An old ‘White Elephant’ representing the past, who became the GOP front-runner by default, was losing in the polls to a young (semi-) black man and an established white woman, both of whom represented an enticing future.
Palin was desperately picked as an ‘affirmative action’ candidate to steal the Democrats’ dynamic thunder and Hillary’s nationwide support on the assumption that women can be persuaded to vote with their vaginas (and Republican men with their penises) and not with their brains. Palin was supposed to split the Democratic Party vote by virtue of both her sex and her youth.
But whilst sex sells product, it doesn’t necessarily sell policy and as stupid and easily manipulated as the larger American electorate appears to have been in the past, the majority in 2008 weren’t buying—not least because they simply couldn’t afford-to, either literally or figuratively.
When Palin was finally permitted by her GOP handlers to expose herself to primetime national media vetting, her most challenging inquisitors were Charlie Gibson (a 19-year veteran of fluffy morning TV ‘newstainment’ who’d embarrassed himself representing GOP talking points as valid questions during a presidential ‘debate’) and Katie Couric, another morning TV veteran best known for her incessant perkiness and general vapidity.
Perhaps because of the near universal criticism of Gibson’s pathetically biased debate mediation, Gibson took a tougher approach with Palin and ‘tut-tutted’ her for her clueless response when asked to articulate “The Bush Doctrine”---but he also came across (to me at least), despite the validity of the question, as a sanctimonious dick suddenly puffed-up with freshly minted gravitas.
Presumably the subsequent interview with Couric was supposed to provide a more even playing field; ex-cheerleader to ex-beauty pageant queen. But even the naturally friendly Katie Couric was visibly baffled and progressively amazed at Palin’s inability to name a single newspaper or magazine that she read, even though Couric gave her time and several opportunities to do so.
It is notable that the public’s estimation of Kate Couric’s qualifications as a primetime news anchor rose significantly after that interview (especially as she followed up in the press with some intelligent candid reflections of what Palin had revealed about herself as a prospective Vice-President).
When Palin dismayed even the ultra-accommodating and effervescent ‘Queen of Nice’, what chance would she have against her domestic political opponents, let alone foreign ones?
From that point on only the most fawning of the media establishment would be allowed one-on-one access to Palin---Greta von Susteren of FOX News proved to be the ideal, as there was a lull in missing-blond-female-teenager activity at the time and Greta’s hubby was functioning as a Palin consultant.
Twenty-four hours after her announced resignation as Governor of Alaska, for reasons she’s claimed to have explained but that no-one can fathom, the present prognosis is that Palin is essentially just “a quitter”, that she has no spine.
I’m not sure that’s really fair, at least in the sense in which the charge is being presented---she didn’t quit on her formal education, and for over 10 years she didn’t quit on her political ambitions either.
I think a fairer assessment is that she’s simply a self-absorbed congenital simpleton, perhaps most amply evidenced by the fact that in the one subject in which she can claim any kind of peer-reviewed (as opposed to vested interest-reviewed) qualification—“Communications-Journalism” she was and remarkably still is utterly clueless.
From the first to the last she has always found fault with the media pointing out her faults—the most significant being her inability to bullshit consistently even to the industries of politics, P.R. and journalism for whom bullshit is largely their stock-in-trade
Whatever the reason Palin has decided to quit her official job, I’ve no reason to believe it’s because of some personal epiphany that she just doesn’t have the skills to fulfill her ambitions and the ambitions of her deranged supporters. In her view she isn’t quitting, rather everyone around her is quitting her. One can’t help but abscond-with and manipulate Norma Desmond’s classic lines from Sunset Boulevard:
Joe (The Plumber): "I know you. You're Sarah Palin! You used to be in presidential politics. You used to be big!"
Sarah: "I am big! It's the politics that got small!"
Sarah: "We didn't need policy! We had outfits!"
Palin claimed in her rambling resignation speech that her quitting the Governorship job was her decision and a selfless act yet still falsely blamed the media for viciously kicking her in the shins---and to think she might have been elevated to the highest leadership positions in the world!
In Sarah Palin's world, she's still claiming leadership by quitting because she got kicjed in the shins If it works for her, it works for me and dare I say it, it works for America too,
On Wednesday June 24th the US Men’s National Soccer Team (US-MNST) beat European Champions Spain in the FIFA Confederations Cup and will now face Brazil in the Final in South Africa on Sunday, June 28th.
“All in all, a great moment for the sport we call “soccer” but the rest of the world refers to as “football” gushes Gary Schmitt.
Who is Gary Schmitt and why are his observations of American 2-0 victory against Spain in the world’s most popular team sport particularly relevant?
Well, although Schmitt is a luminary of the Project for a New American Century (the organization that brought us the Iraq War), and an American Enterprise Institute ‘thinker of tanks’ (mostly of oil tanks but also of Abrams tanks) he’s also quite the aficionado of what the rest of the world calls “The Beautiful Game”, but that he artfully calls "The Not-so beautiful Game”.
After all, as he writes:
“As someone who didn’t play soccer growing up, but had a dad who did and whose own kids played as well, I can say unquestionably that it is the sport in which the team that dominates loses more often than any other major sport I know of. Or, to put it more bluntly, the team that deserves to win doesn’t.”
In other words, having grown up in an environment where everyone except him played and enjoyed soccer, Schmitt’s extensive experience of having actually ‘heard-of’ the game informs his profound opinion that soccer is fundamentally unjust and therefore un-American.
And for this state of affairs to be “okay” with his “soccer-loving friends” who "argue that it’s a healthy, conservative reminder of how justice does not always prevail in life”, Gary Schmitt’s mature and scholarly rejoinder is “Well, hooey on that. And, thankfully, Americans are not buying it”
(Well-done, Americans, for not buying soccer-hooey! Also; well-done for not buying American cars either!)
Though admitting that “one can drive by an open field on Saturdays and usually see it filled with young boys and girls playing soccer,” and though acknowledging that the game has grown in the US, the fact that soccer has failed to garner the same attention and commercial investment as Baseball, Basketball and What-Americans-Call-Football (but that the rest of the world doesn’t call ‘soccer’) is, Schmitt suspects, because “the so-called ‘beautiful game’ is not so beautiful to American sensibilities.”.
In other words, soccer is inherently and irretrievably un-American and real Americans (like himself) aren’t fooled by its supposed egalitarianism and generally democratic appeal, at all.
As Schmitt explains:
“We(--non-sporting, balding, Americans named Scott Schmitt--) like, as good small-“d” democrats, our underdogs for sure but we also still expect folks in the end to get their just desert (sic). And, in sports, that means excellence should prevail. Of course, the fact that is often not the case when it comes to soccer may be precisely the reason the sport is so popular in the countries of Latin America and Europe.”
(Where the former is too-poor and the latter is too-socialist to accommodate illegal drug-fueled sporting excellence).
So for all you down-sized, foreclosed-on, health-care-bankrupted, retirement-savings-depleted, terrorism-targeted Americans out there looking for a little joy in the victory of the underdog US Soccer Team beating the best in the world, get a grip!
International soccer is just another expression of European socialism and Latin-American welfare masquerading as competition! It’s just a cheap knock-off of copyrighted and trademarked ‘American Free-Market Competition’ that falls apart as soon as you buy it!
After all, what’s so great about the US Soccer Team ‘winning’ against a team of socialists in a socialist game played worldwide by poor not-Americans? By buying into this non-American sporting welfare system where the undeserving get to win all the time, the US team players are actually complete losers, contaminated with the cooties of European Socialism and endemic Hispanic poverty!
Real Americans don’t measure their victories and superiority by the rest of the world’s standards! Globally-acknowledged excellence is exclusive to real America, determined solely by Real Americans, in America!
Who wins The World Series?Americans do! And how do they do that? By using American steroids supplied by the world’s best doctors who are part of the world’s most profitable health insurance and pharmaceutical systems, that’s how!
So just remember folks, anyone who celebrates the US Men’s National Soccer Team’s victories is actually un-American and if the US beats Brazil on Sunday and actually wins the Confederations Cup, it will just be a victory for socialism, illegal immigration, abortions, gay marriage, high speed rail, and the anti-Christ Barack Obama.
If the US soccer team succeeds in the global market and the MLS then becomes a real competitor to Real American sports franchises like the WWE and Monster Truck racing, the free-market system will be destroyed and the Islamo-fascists and their socialist sympathizers will have won!
So everybody, on Sunday, pray for America to lose to Brazil, so that the symbolic socialism of soccer can be shown to be uncompetitive and un-American. And if the US wins, ask God to damn the US team and all it’s supporters to hell for secret socialists---to do otherwise would be to deny American exceptionalism.
What could be more American and more Republican than hoping ‘America’ loses whilst a Democrat President sits waiting and hoping to congratulate the National Team for their success? That’s how America’s newly self-appointed soccer-bitch sees it, and in the words of Walter Cronkite, “and that’s, the way it is.”
Before Dr Tiller was even buried, journalists and pundits weighed-in on whether ‘alleged’ murderer Scott Roeder was aided or abetted in his actions.
Conservative opinion insisted Roeder was an internally-driven lunatic “lone wolf”.
Liberal opinion charged that conservative-dominated media rhetoric encouraged Tiller’s killer, and that Bill O’Reilly appeared to be the most obvious enabler.
O’Reilly was not-surprisingly outraged at the accusation that the 28 episode segments of his show over the past 4 years devoted to Dr. Tiller---in which O’Reilly variously described Dr. Tiller as a “baby killer”, that he was guilty of “Nazi stuff”, that the doctor was the moral equivalent of NAMBLA and Al-Qaida and that Tiller “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."---might have provided ANY motivation for a fervent anti-abortion demonstrator to kill his philosophical and ‘moral’ opposite.
"Monday night we told you about the murder of George Tiller, the late-term abortion doctor in Kansas shot dead by an anti-government militant while he attended church last Sunday. We also told you that NBC News and other ultra-liberal outlets were blaming me and FOX News for inciting the killer.
"Now we have the murder of 23-year-old William Long, an Army private allegedly murdered by a Muslim militant in Arkansas. Police say 24-year-old Abdulhakim Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, a convert to Islam, told the cops he killed Private Long and wounded another soldier because of what the military had done to Muslims.
So here is my question: Is NBC News complicit in the murder of Private Long? After all, that network has relentlessly branded the United States as a torture nation, a country run by human rights violators. Didn't NBC News incite Mr. Muhammad to kill the soldier?
The answer is no. The killer is a loon. The media had nothing to do with it. That is the truth.”
Bill O’Reilly was absolutely correct! Of course NBC had nothing to do with Private Long’s murder, because NBC didn’t spend 4 years and 28 episode segments specifically accusing Private Long of mass-murder as O’Reilly did with Dr. Tiller.
Of course by exonerating NBC with regard to Private Long’s murder, O’Reilly also exonerates himself of culpability too (by the power invested in him by,…umm…him) under the collective innocence of “the media” whose only supposed responsibility is to report, and then let the viewer decide---“We Report, You Decide!”
Unfortunately this pat corporate phrase only helps to undermine Bill’s argument of his innocence; as he said himself in the New York Post on June 3rd:
"Even though I reported on the doctor honestly, the loons asserted that my analysis of him was "hateful." Chief among the complaints was the doctor's nickname: "Tiller the baby killer." Some pro-lifers branded him that, and I reported it”
Well Bill, the exact charge against you (and your ilk) is that you did indeed “report” and Shroederdecided, based open what you ‘reported’---which weren’t all facts, by the way, but overwhelmingly hyperbolic distortions and lies. .
Now, granted O’Reilly didn’t directly tell Shroeder to kill Dr. Tiller, but as a self-appointed moral authority figure Bill did say on June 12th2007:
“If the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now, Governor Sebelius."
And three days later Bill revisited his bloody theme and his demands for action:
"No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands. But now so does Governor Sebelius. She is not fit to serve. Nor is any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction. I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day.Kansas is a great state, but this is a disgrace upon everyone who lives in Kansas, is it not?"
Now what ‘right-thinking’ citizen, listening to Bill’s ‘reports’, wouldn’t want to avoid the moral stain of having “blood on their hands” from failing to “stop this man” that Bill repeatedly described as a “baby killer”?
And then, apart from Bill’s insistence that his particular four-year long rhetorical campaign against Dr Tiller couldn’t possibly have encouraged Shroeder’s violence, is the contention that the constant repetition of a particular message in the media as a whole has no impact on human behavior.
If that were the case, why does anyone advertise? Why does any place multiple ads? Why do corporations make adverts that appeal to emotions rather than simply reporting the factual details of their products? Why do politicians have advertising campaigns to persuade people to vote get elected?
O’Reilly’s multi-million dollar salary is based not on the actual intellectual superiority, practicality or moral rectitude of his opinions, but on the fact that around 2 million people a night are persuaded to constantly buy his philosophical product, and can also be persuaded to buy whatever crap is advertised along with it.
O’Reilly (and his ilk) advertised that stopping “Dr. Tiller, the baby-killer” would wash off the guilty “blood on their hands” from anyone who was the “first on their block” to buy the moral outrage that was being sold and act upon it. .
Now he’s claiming his promotions and advertising have no effect. So why does he advertise his own merchandise, and why does anyone advertise on his show?
Because promotion and advertising DOES motivate people, and Bill damn well knows it.
Like Lady Macbeth, Bill O’Reilly “doth protest too much” and try as he might, he can’t wash the blood off his hands.
Last weekend, after years of attacks by religious anti-abortion groups against himself his property and his staff, lawful abortion specialist Dr. Tiller was finally killed in the foyer of his church; long-time religious militant abortion opponent Scott Roeder is now charged with his murder.
Two years ago in Denver, Colorado, another abortion protest incident occurred in the foyer of a place of worship which also involved militant abortion opponents. In that particular case the local police responded immediately and no-one was killed.
In the subsequent trial of the accused, the litigant's spokeswoman asked the judge to "consider the safety of ministry employees and visitors" when handing down the sentences.
Did you catch that?
The incident that the police so efficaciously reacted-to did not involve a confrontation between legal abortion providers and abortion opponents, but rather between two factions of the anti-abortion movement and with the aggrieved party asking for future protection from harassment and possible violence.
WTF?!!
After years of vandalism, fire-bombing, death threats and an assault with a deadly weapon by members of religious groups, Scott Roeder was observed by eye-witnesses and recorded on videotape in felony acts by attempting to sabotage the locks on Dr Tiller's clinic---a federal offense under the FACE act.
The clinic provided the local police with the evidence of Roeder's felony and the police did absolutely nothing.
That left Roeder free to take his anti-abortion crusade to the next level in which he "allegedly" murdered Dr Tiller in a church foyer a few days later.
Granted, an act of vandalism is no predictor of murderous intent, but it is an indicator of violent tendencies. Furthermore Roeder had to know he was committing a federal offense and he had to know he might be exposed by the clinic security cameras, yet he took the risk anyway.
So, two years prior to Dr. Tiller's murder, extreme abortion opponents terrorized another establishment that was also protected by FACE statutes.
Rev. Bob Enyart, a pastor at Denver Bible Church who proudly refers to himself as "America's most popular self-proclaimed right-wing, religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host" was sentenced to nine days in the city pokey after refusing to pay a $400 fine for trespassing on the Focus [on the Family] campus.
Enyart, his brother Brian and fellow Denver Bible Church pastor Kenneth Scott were convicted May 8 [2009] in a one-day trial after the trio staged a Sept. 4 [2008] protest in the reception area of the multi-million dollar Christian ministry and publishing empire.
Got that? Two hyperbolic 'Christian' political factions got into a spat in the foyer of what passes for a place of worship, the police stepped in the whole thing got settled in a court of Law.
The FACE Act which was originally designed specifically to protect legal abortion clinics from aggressive and disruptive protest actions also contains protections for "places of worship" too---which is why FACE passed the Republican-controlled Congress at the time.
As the Colorado Independent reported at the time of the confrontation:
Bob Enyart's 2007 one-hour sit-in at James Dobson's place of worship was supported amongst others by the extremely militant Operation Rescue director Flip Benham.
Focus spokeswoman Lisa Anderson asked the judge to consider the safety of ministry employees and visitors when handing down the sentences.
In other words Focus on the Family wanted a deterrent judgment against the defendants and not just a routine misdemeanor punishment, for fear of further and more aggressive incidents.
The Colorado dispute revolved around Bob Enyart's belief that FotF needed to be more militant in its anti-abortion activities.
As Enyart had the support of Operation Rescue---which despite the FACE Act had been physically attacking Dr Tiller's clinic for years ---Lisa Andersen had good reason to fear continued harassment and possible violence against FotF members from Operation Rescue and its faithful, even though they were both supposedly on the same side.
Arguably Enyart could have been charged under the FACE Act instead of common Trespass but the fact remains that this single non-violent act of harassment by one very militant religious group against another less-militant one was dealt with effectively by the local authorities.
In comparison the Wichita police were provided with all the evidence they needed to arrest Scott Roeder immediately and charge him with a federal crime. They could have involved the FBI. Roeder could have been held on bail and if he made bail he could have been monitored by the FBI whilst awaiting trial.
Instead, nothing was done.
Dr Tiller is now dead, his clinic now closed, his employees now unemployed and women are further denied their legal and medical rights.
Meanwhile radical officially 'religious' groups use the particulars and principles of secular law for their own convenience and benefit even as they refuse to abide by them and seek to overthrow them, actively or passively abetted by supposedly secular authorities.
Scott Roeder was encouraged by religious leaders, his actions given justification by certain media authorities, his act enabled by the criminal negligence of the Wichita police and culpable Federal authorities.
When a religious organization in Colorado felt threatened by another more militant religious group, secular authority acted on mere trespass, but when a secular organization in Kansas had been attacked multiple times with vandalism, fire-bombings and assaults with deadly weapons and given clear evidence to act, Wichita authorities did nothing.
If Focus on the Family feared Operation Rescue and it's violent ilk (despite their common cause), shouldn't those they commonly opposed fear even more?
And shouldn't the Wichita police have been more aggressive in exercising the authority of the law when they possessed clear evidence of a federal offense?
It's not 'God' we should fear, but rather the "fear of God" and the lack of fear of the self-professed institutional "God-fearing" zealots and the negligent deference constantly provided them by supposedly secular authorities.
Note: As I was composing and editing this post over Thursday /Friday it turned out that the obvious conclusions I drew from this small comparative study are indeed symptomatic of an endemic problem, as evidenced by this story from Friday:
