His talking points was about corporate insiders selling their stock while their companies were going downhill. He mentioned St. Phil sold 2.1 billion. He also mentioned many others too. With that kind of cash, I guess we don't have to worry about MLS going away anytime soon.
Honestly. Bill O'Reily is the biggest joke on tv. He acts like he is promoting real news, when all he really cares about are his ratings. His rants are so one-sided, against the most incapable of opponents are ridiculous. The best part is how he talks about how he came from a lower middle class family. BS. Upper middle class, yappy Long Island family is where he came from. This tries to court "real americans", but instead is just a fu(k looking to make a quick buck.
He's better than the trash on CNN and MSNBC. Still, not to good to see a loss like this. He might consider making "cuts" soon if things don't go up.
So some peoples rants are not one sided? If that is the case I don't understand the concept of a rant.
AFAIK, he's actually a Libertarian. That is why you see his mailbag segment containing letters calling him a flaming liberal, and others calling him a right wing extremist. While being a Libertarian means being very American-centric, it is not generally in a hateful and xenophobic way. It is the belief that we need to stay true to the original principals of small government, and worrying about American issues (i.e not placing military forces all over the world, and not jumping in on every little fight between 3rd world countries) I know, I am exaggerating on the military side, but that is basically what Libertarian's believe. Libertarians also preach tolerance for other American's of other beliefs, religions, creeds, etc. I would like to believe that O'Reilly is not a soccer-basher. Actually, I know he's not, because if he were, someone would have already started a "Bill O'Reilly bashes soccer" thread.
O'Reilly is not a libertarian. And for anyone who thinks that right-wing=anti-soccer, I would cite Phil Anschutz as exhibit A.
The fact that O'Reilly spends so little time "railing" Bush and his administration so that he can focus on recording 2 out of every 12 episodes that deal with Jesse Jackson and/or Hillary Clinton being jerk(s) who should hang is a little indicative of where he stands. Lest we forget, he works for fascist extraordinare, Roger Ailes. Quoth O'Reilly: "I believe there is global warming. I mean, I know that's controversial. For every scientist who says there is, there's one that says there isn't." Yes, indeed.
Libertarianism is wrong because it is based on obsolete assumptions about the modern world and its economic and power structures. Back in 1776, the Founding Fathers were afraid mostly of state power because the state was the only power big enough to worry about as far as undue concentration of power was concerned. The Founders were also not too keen on "trusts" or "combinations" as the early forms of corporations were called (the most prominent corporations being those like the East India Company against whom the Boston Tea Party was directed) but there were no corporations big enough to warp political power in early America and the Founders meant to keep it that way by placing all kinds of restrictions on corporations and what they could or could not do. They even made it possible for citizens, acting through the state, to revoke the charters of corporations that broke the law or otherwise acted in manners deleterious to the greater public good. It's a pity people today don't have the kind of balls to act against rogue private power the way our forefathers did. The Second American Revolution that occurred in the late 1800s after the Civil War undid the Founders' original aversion to corporations and created the giant unlimited "immortal persons" we know today. Unfortunately, this created exactly the huge raw concentrations of power into extremely few hands that the Founding Fathers so feared from the State and Crown in their day. As it stands, the only theoretically countervailing power to Big Business is Big Government. Unless the corporate genie is stuffed back into its bottle (Shyah. Right.), the government is the only weapon citizens have to avoid having their rights and the public good being trampled by the massive concentrations of power that are our giant corporations. Big Business knows this too and so the leaders of business have done everything they can to co-opt government power, get citizens disengaged from public action and to convince people that it is "the government", not the depredations of corporate private power, that is the greatest threat to liberty today. They try to make people forget that in a democracy we ARE the government. It is not something separate from us. It is not "out there" like some foreign occupying army. If we don't use our democratic rights, though, then the apparatus of government may be used by others against us. Therefore, to abdicate our role as active citizens to someone else (namely the plutocracy) or to reduce publically accountable government power in the face of concentrated private power is to abandon our role as citizens, hand over our sovereignty as a people to the kind of unaccountable private power that was, in the Founders' day, represented by the British Crown and is now the provenance of CEOs and to piss on the legacy of self-rule left to us by the Founding Fathers. As for the joys of isolationism, the global economy put paid to the ability of America to navel-gaze in splendid separation from the world. Japan's problems are now our problems. American workers are hurt when companies can open godawful sweatshops in third world hell holes the names of which Amercians can't pronounce that are run by ruthless murderous thugs put into power by our elites. What happens in a remote corner of central Asia comes at us to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. Sticking our heads in the sand won't make this go away. It will only make problems worse.
Bill O'Reilly came from Levittown. IN NO WAY is anyone from Levittown, especially at the time he lived there, "upper middle class." My school district (Island Trees) straddled Levittown and Bethpage. Trust me. Levittown never was and never will be the home of the "upper midddle class."
No, Bill O'Reilly didn't come from Levittown. According to his mother, in an interview with the Washington Post, Billy Boy grew up in Westbury, Long Island, which is a middle-class sub-urb a few miles from Levittown. He attended a private school and went to Marist College. His father's salary prior to retirement was $35,000 in 1978, which by todays inflation adjusted dollars would amount to over $90,000 (this all comes from www.fair.org).
This is from O'Reilly's website: We seem both to be right. Levittown spills over into Westbury. Levit's development crossed over postal code boundaries. Most houses in Levittown are Levitt houses, but not all Levit houses are in Levittown. Having grown up in Bethpage, a few points. Going to "priavte school" is not that strange on Long Island -- especially Catholic school. The tutition is not that high, and the schools raise funds in the church. I had a friend who graduated Chamimade (the best Catholic high school on Long Island) whose father was a baggage handler for Pan Am. Going to Marist college is not the same as going to Harvard. For a long time Catholics were not allowed in the secular colleges, so we founded our own. They provide good educations, but because of church support, tuition is usually not too high. His father earned a good salary before retirement? Good for him. But what about in say 1960, when he bought the Levit house and was trying to raise a family? Also, $90,000 while a good salary is not "Upper Middle Class" on Long Island. Taxes , real estate, and the general cost of living is very high.
Uhh, Bill O'Reilly was probably already in his THIRTIES in 1978. I doubt his daddy was still supporting him. What a ridiculous statement by fair.org, which should be renamed stupid.org.
Ah good. So that would put O'Reilly in his 50's or 60's right now. This might explain why he acts so senile. He claims to have won a Peabody Award while on Inside Edition, while in reality the show won the different (and lesser known) Polk Award the year after he left. Then a few weeks later, someone quotes him on this and O'Reilly denies saying it. Ask Al Franken, he's the one who pointed it out. The reason why his father's income is mentioned here is the fact that he claims his father never made more than $35,000 in his life, which I think is another one of his attempts to bend numbers to his advantage. As for the whole Marist thing, sure, Marist may not be Harvard, but Harvard is where O'Reilly got his graduate degree in public relations. He also went to Boston U to get an MA in broadcasting journalism. When someone pointed out a statistic provided by an Ivy League institution (namely Cornell) that ran counter to his own made-up stat, he said: "Cornell University? Well, there you go!" All I have to say is, "Harvard? Kennedy School of Government? Well, there you go!"
Yeah, because as we know, big government has worked so well, and never supresses the right of people. Look at China, USSR, E. Germany. Great "democracies" all. Get your facts straight, we are a Republican form of government. That means we elect people to represent us. We have no control over what they do for 2 (or 4 or even 6) years after they get there. Many voters show a stifling lack of intelligence in voting (i.e. Marion Barry getting re-elected in DC). We don't, however, elect everyone they appoint, or beaurecrats that are hired by government agencies. I promise you, there are significantly more examples of big government undermining personal freedom and abusing power than there are of big business doing so, even with all the creative accounting going on right now. Big goverment's policies don't even begin to harm the supposedly "evil" corporations you speak of. How do they trample our rights by the way?? They can just lay off workers when things get tight. The millionaires stick around. To that end...government trying to overregulate business hurts small business owners and the blue collar worker first and foremost. So, the idea of taxing the rich to no end is also idiotic as it affects the availability of mid-level, skilled and unskilled labor employment. I will say that I have no desire to go back to the days where people like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller paid their workers pennies a day, whilst hosting lavish parties at one of their many mansions, but I also have no desire for big government to choke the life out of business, small and corporate alike. And don't forget, the Constitution was written to protect us from the Government (see the 1st,2nd and 4th amendments)...not from business. Obviously our Founding Fathers realized something you don't. And don't give me the crap that the Constitution is outdated, it's done a pretty good job for the last 215 years.
Seriously, Eric, do you even read my posts? Not only did I never make the claim that government is ipso facto always good, I went out of my way to say exactly "If we don't use our democratic rights, though, then the apparatus of government may be used by others against us.". This is pretty much what has happened in the US and not only does it suit the elites here just fine, it's what they've been working for for so long. As for "great democracies" I can add Pinochet's Chile, Suharto's Indonesia and whole slew of the USA's other creations as well as the libertarians' puzzlingly favorite place, Singapore. When people accept tyranny and don't do the work of self-rule they will eventualy lose their ability to rule themselves. "Eternal vigiliance is the price of freedom" is not just a slogan for the military. In fact, while I'm not the greatest fan of Lenin who was not only not someone you'd really want to have a few beers with but who did things I disagree with and would disagree with even without the benefit of hindsight (would someone please pick Ian and Colin up off the floor?), I double dog dare you to read Lenin's "State and Revolution" for his take on the State and what should be done about it. What he says about the desirablity of Big Government will surprise you although he, of course, makes his comments assuming that in his version of a socialist society there will be no massive and ultra-concentrated private power that needs to be counterbalanced by the government. So was Athens and they had slaves. So was the Soviet Union unless you wish to argue they were a monarchy. I gotta love right-wingers who blather on ceaselessly about democracy, democracy, democracy and how the USA is so great because we're the world's leading democratic light to the nations blah blah blah - until someone points out the need for more democracy here. Then, suddenly, it's "We're not a democracy, we're a republic, dammit!". Self-rule is about so much more than mere voting althuogh I'm not surprised that you've fallen for the lie that voting is our only right or duty as citizens. Translation: "Hooray for monarchy or dictatorship! Keep those stupid voters from usurping the powers and privileges of our plutocrats!" This just reveals the core contradiction of the American Right. They're basically authoritarians who have learned that they have to at least sound like democrats most of the time if they want to justify themselves before Americans. Hence the amusing spectacle of the mental contortions they have to go through to come up with garbage like "market populism". You see what you want to see and don't see what you don't want to see. You're also helped by the not-surprisingly pro-corporate news media here that focus on the government as the source of all problems and either ignore corporate malfeasance or try to spin it as "a few bad apples" rather than the outcome of the inner logic of the economic system. The almost total lack of labor reporting in the US and lack of labor history taught in American schools also distorts peoples' views. I suggest you study some labor history, including recent history not only in the US but abroad as well. Ah, regulations and taxes, the twin bugbears of the elites who want to be able to do as they please and avoid contributing their fair share to the society that lets them have all their privileges and their "libertarian" dupes. So, all efforts to stop businesses from wantonly polluting our environment, force workers to work in unduly dangerous conditions, sell us faulty and dangerous products, discriminate in various ways racially, ethnically, religiously, by gender or sexual preference, collude to fix prices and markets and otherwise behave themselves irresponsibly and to the detrement of the larger society (and there is a rich history of businesses doing ALL of these. Go look it up - if you dare) are always bad? I wil grant you that the revolving door between government regulators and the industries they are supposed to be regulating has caused massive holes in the regulations and also unfair pro-Big-Business outcomes that may or may not hurt the small businessman. As for the impact of regulation on workers, ask people how many of them would trade places with their countrparts from the late 1800s or with workers in the unregulated paradises of the maquilladoras and sweatshops overseas. Assuming they know anything about working conditions in America before businesses were regulated or in, say, Guatemala, let me know how many microseconds it takes for them to laugh you right out of the room. Well, it's still going on only the names of the guilty parties has changed and the workers being crushed are probably, but not necessarily, in "third world" countries these days because American (and, to a lesser extent, Japanese and European) elites have used our/their government to put pet dictators into power who will ruthlessly crush anyone who even looks like forming a union, pressign for democracy or otherwise demanding basic human rights. Yeah, 'cuz we all know that stock prices are lower now that they were in 1970, the poor CEOs of the Fortune 500 hasn't made ANY money in the last 30 years while their employees' real wages have just skyrocketed since the late 1960s. What? Executives' incomes have gone through the roof since then while workers' real wages have dropped dramatically? Well I'll be damed. How did that happen? The original Constitution also allows slavery and denies women the right to vote in addition to somehow significantly failing to mention nuclear weapons, television and radio airwave rights and other facets of modern life not to mention unlimited corproations. Why does the Constitution not mention these things and why has it been radically ammended in the last 215 years? Because these things were not surprisingly beyond the ability of the Founders' imaginations because, as wise as the were, they were, sadly, not omniscient. The Founders were wise men no doubt but they were also creatures of their time who lived in a rural 18th century agricultural society almost completely untouched by the Industrial Revolution that was making the ideas in Adam Smith's "Wealth Of Nations" obsolete in England and Scotland even as the ink dried on the pages of its first edition in 1776. They didn't put protection from the depradations of the concentrated power of Big Business into the original Consitution document because Big Business simply did not exist in America back in 1776. We can glimpse a bit of their attitude, though, in their hatred of the Crown's chartered companies and all the limits they placed on "trusts" or "combinations" in their day that I mentioned in my post. Comparted to us, the Founders regulated the living crap out of corporations. For more on the history of the corproate form of business, go here: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/corplaw.htm The Founders would be horrified if they could see the almost unlimited license granted modern corporations and the massive concentrations of power in Big Business. The moves in the 1880s and 1890s towards undoing all the limits on corproations were diametrically opposed to the Founder's distrust of concentrated power in ANY form, private or public. We can also catch a glimpse of the Founders' attitude towards concentrated private power in the worried and apprehensive writings of those Founders who lived long enough to see the first glimpses of the industrial capitalism in the early 1800s and the concentration of economic power into few private hands that was the logical result. Again, you really need to read your history. You'll be very surprised at what our Founding Fathers thought and did.
Please provide evidence of Ailes supporting fascism, since you clearly have alot of evidence. Perhaps there's a diatribe from FAIR somewhere titled "why Roger Ailes is a fascist extraordinaire"?
Sorry, you are correct..."fascist" doesn't apply to Ailes...mea culpa...it applies more appropriately to a certain R. Murdoch Ailes is just a Republican conservative crony who worked as an advisor to Bush I, Reagan, and "I'm not a crook" Nixon. Fox News seems to be a haven for conservative Republican journalists, ie Brit Hume, Catherine Crier, Neil Cavuto, Fred Barnes, Bill "American Imperialism is Good" Kristol, and of course, Bill "Bush Said He was a President who would make changes- sounds good to me; I Hate Hillary" O'Reilly
Geez, you forgot all the other right-wing fascists at Fox News like Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Morton Kondracke, Alan Colmes, Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, etc.
Right. Like they matter. Those guys are just your "token" liberals/moderates. Don't tell me you didn't know that... the ratio we're dealing with in terms of conservative Republican vs. everything else to the left is like 2.5 or 3 :1 (not mathematical, mind you). And who is "etc."??? The cameramen? Hannity and Colmes is one of the most boring shows on TV partly because (no, mainly because) Alan "I'll Be Quiet" Colmes hardly even comes close to being Hannity's liberal equal...in other words, he's pretty weak. And this is coming from a moderate. Please. Colmes is a joke. And so is Hannity. Oh and by the way, Ian, why is it that Hannity is the only one that gets a camera shot inside his radio studio during the day, while Alan Colmes' show goes completely ignored? Morton Kondracke and Juan Williams (who Fox commentators and hosts love to emphasize was formerly of "that bastion of liberalism", NPR) are good whipping boys. Fred Barnes and Bill "Imperialism's Good" Kristol usually seem to have the upper hand in the argument in "the Beltway Boys" partly because the host (is it Brit Hume or Tony Snow? I forget? Is there a difference?) usually shuts Kondracke and Williams up before they make a point. As for,Geraldo...please, he's up there with Donahue = WASHED UP!!! He's just glad to have a job! Here's an excerpt from the job interview between Ailes and Geraldo: Ailes: You wanna job? G: Yes sir. I'll do anything...ANYTHING A: Good...I have a good one for you, you sensationalist media figure you. G: What's that? A: Go to Afghanistan. Stay fifty miles away from a REAL gunfight, tote a gun of your own, and then make it sound like you're really in combat. Got it? G: Deal. A: Excuse me, now. Rush Limbaugh is on. Greta Van Susteren...facelift. And she comes on in the morning, filling in for Paula Zahn's (yuck!) spot...big whoop. Why the facelift again? While I'm at it, let's also not forget about poster boy Shepard Smith and his annoying and obnoxious monologues ala the copier guy from SNL: This is news around the world...news not boring...news not biased...news that hits the g-spot...news that kicks ass...news that's cool...news that...etc. And his name is not Shepard, it's really Roland and his father got him that job since he's one of the executive producers at Fox. My brother knows his first cousin and he met him once. "Shep" is from around Yasgur Farms by Woodstock in upstate NY. Fox is nothing but a sensationalist's paradise, let's admit it. The analysis is deplorable and often in tune with the right wing. The pitch is all about in-your-face obnoxious journalism and not about substance or intelligent commentary. The only reasons to watch it are if you're a conservative Republican whose fed up with that communist Peter Jennings or you want to watch a good car chase or two in LA. The emergence of this network has forced other stations like MSNBC and CNN into a media war over who can fit more graphics and American flags on the screen at one time while giving the bare minimum of information at the highest volume. But then again, no news network is free from this in the United States, now, is there?
I have to say, for someone who says they deplore Fox New Channel, you certainly seem to watch it a lot.
Well, ok, I'll ignore your diatribe to note that Greta is on at 10pm primetime, hardly "the morning". The rest of your statements were just confirmation that conservatives mop up the floor with liberals when they are on head-to-head. There are no liberals who can succeed on television (or radio, for that matter) because nobody can tolerate nonsensical viewpoints for that long.