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Bill O'Reilly

jimtron said:
I don't think you can make accurate generalizations about either group. I've met very thoughtful, intelligent people belonging to both groups, and I know an even greater number of knee-jerk, less than thoughtful people from both camps.

Why is it so hard to discuss politics with people representing opposing views, without getting into gross generalizations, ad hominem attacks, etc? I wish we could just argue the facts and not insult each other.
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We're not talking about "opposing viewpoints" here. For opposing viewpoints, that were presented with a minimum of insult for the first few pages, see the thread about parental rights and responsibilities here.

Here, though, we're talking about the reality of Bill O'Reilly, as presented with transcripts, video, and links to facts that contradict his statements... and on the other hand we have people who stand in opposition of reality, claiming that somehow the transcripts and video don't present what Bill O'Reilly actually said, and the factual evidence that contradicts him must ALL be false. So, the "opposing views" are actually "reality" versus "fantasy."
 
The Painter said:
Well, did you get what you were looking for on your quest for information? Or was this just a ruse so you can (as you seem to be doing) bash O'Reilly?
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I have learned quite a lot, thank you. And there was no ruse, but my preconception was that O'Reilly was pretty low.



What a strange thing to be indignant about. Concerned, yes indignant, odd.
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Quite.
 
The Painter said:
http://www.parisbusinessreview.net/

Paris Business Review was an April Fools parody. You know April 1st. O’Reilly mentions it on April 27th.

Now you tell me, which comes first, the 1st or the 27th?

Now you tell me, was he “fooled” by them, or did he make it all up?
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I spent a little time thinking about how best to break this to you. All I can say is that you're lucky you didn't start a thread with this post, because this is your Totally Copied REO Speedwagon moment.

See, here's the thing. www.parisbusinessreview.net's "taking the blame" for O'Reilly's fabrication is part of the parody. Here's the funny thing. You knew it was a parody and, yet, you bought that part hook, line, and sinker.

Don't believe me? Check the site's registration info (my emphasis):
Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Dates: Created 15-jul-2004 Updated 10-jul-2007 Expires 15-jul-2008
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Now, while you are correct that April 1st, 2004 comes before April 27, 2004, both of them come before the website's domain registration date of July 15, 2004.

To answer your question,
The Painter said:
Now you tell me, was he “fooled” by them, or did he make it all up?
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They did not exist at the time to "fool" him, ergo he made it all up.

I'm going to guess that you aren't going to do the honorable thing and concede the point. Heck, I doubt you will even respond to it. Surprise me.


The Painter said:
Now I know why you think he “fabricated” it. Oh my look at the source for that story.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200405020006
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Don't blame the messenger, Painter. Especially not when they are telling you the truth.
 
Does an O'Reilly fan or O'Reilly ever admit when they are wrong? --or is that just something they demand of others?
 
m_huber said:
While the definition of homelessness could be changed to include up to 3.8 million individuals, it currently stands at an estimated 744,313 on any given night (Source). If you take the numbers from that article, 195,827 veterans on any given night, divided by .26 to estimate the number of homeless people the figure is based on, you arrive at the figure 753,180. That is a difference of 8867, which is 1.2% of the actual figure. However, 1,000,000 minus 744,313 results in a difference of 255,687, which is 34% of the actual figure. I don't understand your problem. Perhaps your calculator needs new batteries?
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You beat me to it, except I was also going to work in pomeroo's comment about liberals being not too bright and conservatives needing to be sharp to survive.

Think that would have been too much?
 
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articulett said:
Does an O'Reilly fan or O'Reilly ever admit when they are wrong? --or is that just something they demand of others?
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Its rare, but it does happen. IIRC, he argued with a guy who pointed out that Jane Fonda didn't turn over notes from American POWs to the North Vietnamese. The guy pointed to Snopes.com, which O'Reilly had never heard of. A few days later, he admitted that whoever it was and Snopes were right.
 
As Darwin said and my sig confirms... Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge.

I often think that people who see Bush as a good leader are mistaken confidence for competence. The same for those who see O'Reilly as an honest guy.
 
jimtron said:
The Painter, please feel free to defend O'Reilly, and express your views, but do you really need to resort to statements like the one above that I quoted?
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If you've read The Painter before, you'd know that yes, he does.
 
Upchurch said:
I'm going to guess that you aren't going to do the honorable thing and concede the point. Heck, I doubt you will even respond to it. Surprise me.
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I suspect this will happen about the time The Painter admits he was dead wrong about claiming that the inheritance tax ruined the family farm.
 
WildCat said:
He might be honest, and stupid. Hard to tell a stupid honest guy from a dishonest smart guy.
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I'm not so sure about that.

With a stupid honest guy, you can usually see how he could make mistakes. Above, for example, The Painter made a stupid mistake but its easy to see how he made it. He credulously believed information on a parody website even though he knew it was a parody website. O'Reilly, on the other hand, invented a publication with no basis in reality whatsoever. That wasn't a mistake. It was just dishonest.
 
Upchurch said:
I'm not so sure about that.

With a stupid honest guy, you can usually see how he could make mistakes. Above, for example, The Painter made a stupid mistake but its easy to see how he made it. He credulously believed information on a parody website even though he knew it was a parody website. O'Reilly, on the other hand, invented a publication with no basis in reality whatsoever. That wasn't a mistake. It was just dishonest.
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Spend some time over at the CT forum, and you'll see why I get confused. There's people with academic degrees who don't think planes hit the World Trade Center. Are they lying, are they stupid, are they mentally ill? I don't know, maybe a mix of all. Maybe the voices in his head told O'Reilly about the publication. Maybe he's just a stupid liar, maybe a smart liar, maybe just stupid, maybe mentally ill. The difference is academic anyway. The important thing is to not believe anything O'Reilly says without reliable confirmation.
 
JoeEllison said:
I have pomeroo on ignore... and, yet somehow, magically, I knew someone was going to play the "liberal educational system" nonsense at some point in this thread. :rolleyes:
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So the K-12 public school system and undergrad colleges and universities espouse conservative ideology? The overwhelming majority of public school teachers and college professors are conservative? We are talking about the United States, right?
 
Upchurch said:
I'm not so sure about that.

With a stupid honest guy, you can usually see how he could make mistakes. Above, for example, The Painter made a stupid mistake but its easy to see how he made it. He credulously believed information on a parody website even though he knew it was a parody website. O'Reilly, on the other hand, invented a publication with no basis in reality whatsoever. That wasn't a mistake. It was just dishonest.
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One of the ways you can tell is how they react to it. O'Reilly, for instance, could have just corrected himself and moved on. Hell, it isn't that hard for him to excuse his own errors, intentionally or not. His mouth is open for a couple of hours a day, he could just say that his mouth got ahead of his brain, and crack(head) team of fact-checkers, apologize, and move on.

Instead, he gets all blustery when he gets caught, like how he reacted when he got caught out on his Peabody lie. He compounds his lies by attacking people for pointing them out, and will tell more lies to cover the first ones.

What's really interesting, though, is to see Bill O'Reilly's complete lack of self-awareness. Watch the video of him shoving and screaming at that Obama staffer from a few weeks ago. He described it on his show one way, showed the tape and claimed something different but still positive about it, and the actual tape shows him looking like a moron and a thug. And, can anyone confirm that this is the actual "best-of" clip reel that O'Reilly broadcast on his TV show?
 
Upchurch said:
Are you serious? Do you understand that the Department of Veterans Affairs is a Federal Government agency and not some political action group?
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Quick question: how many of those who are skeptical of the DVA's homeless claims ate up the whole "Iraq has stockpiles of WMD" nonsense? Count Bill OReilly as one.
 
Pomeroo:

I am interested in what evidence you have that the DVA numbers are vastly wrong. I understand your point that advocacy groups may tend to exaggerate their size of the problem they are militating against. Yet it is a government agency so I would tend to think they would not be as susceptible to exaggeration as private agencies.

Even if they were exaggerating, how does that make Edwards wrong? He is using a govt source for his numbers and there is no evidence that it is wrong other than your sneaking suspicion. Edwards clearly is doing nothing wrong by quoting govt figures.

Further, I would also add that they would have to be exaggerating by quite a bit to actually blunt Edward's point. If the actual number is 170,000 instead of 200,000 I don't think it makes a substantive difference and Edwards' point still stands. If the actual number of homeless vets is closer to 30,000 then I agree there is a problem. But thus far, I have no reason to doubt that the number provided by the govt is substatively off, your evidenceless complaint notwithstanding.

Lurker
 
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