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Bill O'Reilly

You need them to tell you what to think and what to be indignant about.
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This is presumptuous. I don't think anyone here needs to be told to be indignant about someone who makes up straw men, like the "war on Christmas," or someone who makes baseless claims (his boycott of France hurt their economy) by making up fictional periodicals (The Paris Business Review).

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?
 
jimtron said:
This is presumptuous. I don't think anyone here needs to be told to be indignant about someone who makes up straw men, like the "war on Christmas," or someone who makes baseless claims (his boycott of France hurt their economy) by making up fictional periodicals (The Paris Business Review).

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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All someone needs to do is 1) listen to O'Reilly and 2) have a functioning brain, and they'll be offended by his stupidity, hatred, and flat-out lies on pretty much any and every subject.
 
I couldn't care less about O'Reilly. I find it incredible how you people of the liberal persuasion get all work into a lather about trivial crap. So he made a mistake. You all think he's an idiot so you should expect him to make mistakes. You must listen to him to know about his mistakes. If you don't listen to him, then how do you know about it? Media-matter?


PS I don't think he made up The Paris Business Review. I think he was fooled by it. Believing it was real, not the parody it really was.
 
JoeEllison said:
All someone needs to do is 1) listen to O'Reilly and 2) have a functioning brain, and they'll be offended by his stupidity, hatred, and flat-out lies on pretty much any and every subject.
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But you fail the prerequisites on both counts.
 
PS I don't think he made up The Paris Business Review. I think he was fooled by it. Believing it was real, not the parody it really was.
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First of all, I'm pretty sure the parody came after O'Reilly cited it; I think Bill was the first person to come up with the idea of the fictional periodical (if someone can come up with a citation of it before he mentioned it; please do). In any case, let's say you're right--let's say O'Reilly believed there really was a PBR. Where's the article in that periodical (parody or not) supporting his assertion that France's economy took a hit as a result on his calling for a boycott? Also, if he can't tell the difference between a reliable news source and a parody of one, that doesn't speak well of his judgment.

Media-matter?
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By the way, it's "Media Matters." You can blame the messenger, and you can criticize O'Reilly critics for being liberals who can't think for themselves; or you could argue the actual substantive points. Your choice.
 
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Upchurch said:
No. I don't know where you got the 300,000 number, but the 195,000 comes from the Federal Government. Specifically, the US Department of Veterans Affairs.


Specifically, he said "And tonight, 200,000 men and women who wore our uniform proudly and served this country courageously as veterans will go to sleep under bridges and on grates. We're better than this."

Edwards was not speaking literally when he said they would be sleeping under bridges and on grates. It was a metaphor for homelessness. Just like "sleeping on the street" does not mean literally sleeping on roads where cars are driving.

Only at this absurd level of literalism can you twist Edwards words into being incorrect.

eta: pomeroo, do you believe O'Reilly was literally meant that Edwards' brain was sleeping under a bridge? Was O'Reilly lying about that?
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It is a fair assumption that an estimate issued by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is inflated to dramatize a problem that falls under its purview. Some of the estimates and numbers bandied about by various AIDS groups in the eighties strike us in retrospect as absurd. The guesstimate of three million homeless, a fabrication by Mitch Snyder, was dutifully promoted as gospel by the mainstream media. The message was hammered home 24/7, despite studies showing the actual number to fall within a range of 330,000 to 175,000, right up to the election of Bill Clinton, when the problem ended. Predictably, homelessness re-appeared the instant George W. Bush took the oath of office.

I haven't seen any recent studies, but I'd bet that the number of homeless vets is well below 200,000.
 
It is a fair assumption that an estimate issued by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is inflated to dramatize a problem that falls under its purview.
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Why is this a fair assumption--do you have evidence that the DVA would lie about stats to dramatize the problem? Pomeroo, what's the fairest way to determine the acutal number of homeless vets?
 
jimtron said:
Why is this a fair assumption--do you have evidence that the DVA would lie about stats to dramatize the problem? Pomeroo, what's the fairest way to determine the acutal number of homeless vets?
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Because clearly, if it comes down to US Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, or a known liar like Bill-O smearing a Democrat, Bill-O always wins?
 
JoeEllison said:
All someone needs to do is 1) listen to O'Reilly and 2) have a functioning brain, and they'll be offended by his stupidity, hatred, and flat-out lies on pretty much any and every subject.
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That's funny: I have a functioning brain, I listen to O'Reilly on occasion, and I see no evidence that he is stupid (an understatement--he is highly intelligent), that he is a hater, or that he lies more frequently than his counterparts on the left.
 
Cicero said:
Actually, one wonders why you did not bring up Laurie Dhue's exchange with Bill yourself. If you were intellectually honest, you would not need me to compel you to post their exchange.
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Because it only recently happened and only shows his refusal to admit he is wrong rather than being an instance of him being wrong. It neither furthers nor hinders my point.
 
jimtron said:
Why is this a fair assumption--do you have evidence that the DVA would lie about stats to dramatize the problem? Pomeroo, what's the fairest way to determine the acutal number of homeless vets?
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Evidence? Advocacy groups tend to inflate their problems. In the early nineties, several independent organizations conducted statistical surveys of the homeless employing recognized sampling techniques. Even so, the range of results was fairly wide. I suspect that someone will get around to quantifying this matter now that Edwards is calling it to everybody's attention. Notice that the Veterans Dept. hedged their bets by saying that their data "suggested" that there were 200,000 homeless vets on any given night.
 
pomeroo said:
It is a fair assumption that an estimate issued by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is inflated to dramatize a problem that falls under its purview. Some of the estimates and numbers bandied about by various AIDS groups in the eighties strike us in retrospect as absurd. The guesstimate of three million homeless, a fabrication by Mitch Snyder, was dutifully promoted as gospel by the mainstream media.
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Are you serious? Do you understand that the Department of Veterans Affairs is a Federal Government agency and not some political action group?


pomeroo said:
I haven't seen any recent studies, but I'd bet that the number of homeless vets is well below 200,000.
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I'd love to see you prove that, but you aren't going to.
 
The Painter said:
PS I don't think he made up The Paris Business Review. I think he was fooled by it. Believing it was real, not the parody it really was.
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Fooled by what? The parody websites didn't exist until after O'Reilly referred to it on his show. Please indicate what parody you think fooled him.


The Painter said:
So, are you saying you listen to his show? Radio or TV?
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I listen to his radio show, mostly. You know, when I can stomach it.
 
Homelessness is easy to underestimate because the people are invisible to the average middle class person and most certainly invisible to the average person considered upper middle class or better. Americans live in houses where one does not see the homeless except here and there on the street corners and in some urban parks and bus depots.

Lifetime and five-year prevalence of homelessness in the United States.
OBJECTIVE. Intense debate exists concerning the number of homeless people in the United States. Previous studies, counting currently homeless people, have provided point-prevalence estimates of homelessness but have been criticized on methodological grounds. This study reports lifetime and 5-year prevalence estimates of homelessness using a different methodological approach. METHODS. Random-digit dialing was used to interview 1507 adults living in households with telephones in the 48 contiguous states in the fall of 1990. Respondents were asked whether they had ever been homeless and if so, where they had slept while homeless. RESULTS. Lifetime and 5-year prevalence of all types of homelessness combined were 14.0% (26 million people) and 4.6% (8.5 million people), respectively. Lifetime "literal homelessness" (sleeping in shelters, abandoned buildings, bus and train stations, etc.) was 7.4% (13.5 million people). Five-year (1985 through 1990) prevalence of self-reported homelessness among those who had ever been literally homeless was 3.1% (5.7 million people). CONCLUSIONS. The magnitude of the problem of homelessness is much greater than most previous attempts to enumerate homeless people have led us to believe. This finding requires reconsideration of inferences about the causes of homelessness that were derived from point-prevalence studies of currently homeless people.
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The full text is available at the link.
 
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