O'Reilly says left is happy over economic downturn
Reported by Chrish - January 23, 2008
Once again Bill O'Reilly is sowing hatred among Americans, accusing his political opposites ("the hard left," aka the farleft) of delighting in the latest bad news - namely, the economic downturn that is now so apparent even the biggest Bush cheerleaders have to acknowledge it. Last night 1/22/08 he claimed it "comes as no surprise to 'Talking Points'", but says of the left "(f)or years, these people have been wishing economic disaster on America because they despise President Bush. " He is prescient; they are evil-wishers.
This is not a new observation:
"The left is frequently accused of celebrating and enjoying the bad news out of Iraq - increased violence, benchmarks like the 3,000th death last week, and other tragic incidents that are cause for despair to anyone with a heart. Presumably the hatred of Bush is so deep that anything that "makes him look bad" is cause for cheering from the un-patriots, according to demonizers at FOX News and the rest of the right-wing media. Of course this is rubbish; these items are reported and bemoaned with sadness and frustration and anger."
A few months later he said
"...some Americans are hoping bad things happen to this country. You may remember a couple years ago I let New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have it for distorting economic information to make the Bush administration look bad. Maybe I was too hard on Krugman but what I said was exactly true. He consistently paints a negative picture of the economy for partisan reasons. â Krugman is about as left wing as they come.Now, today Krugman described the latest stock market swoon as a, "great market meltdown" and "the financial wreckage of a global recession.
... So my conclusion is that Paul Krugman wants the economy to tank..."
But remember, O'Reilly the pundit is prescient while Krugman the Princeton University Professor of Economics and International Affairs, author or co-author of dozens of books on the subject, and New York Times columnist just wished it. Because he hates Bush. Remember too that attributing negative opinions to hatred emotionalizes the "hater" and invalidates their conclusions, removing any grounds for O'Reilly and his followers to engage in real debate.
O'Reilly, trying to alleviate the house o' hurt the Bush administration is in, brought up Bill Clinton with this whopper: "Now back in the year 2000, the last year of the Clinton presidency, there was a mild recession in America, and that helped President Bush get elected." (The National Bureau of Economic Research, who has determined the dates of these economic periods for 75 years, says the recession was from March 2001 to November 2001; Bush's Council of Economic Advisors issued a report in 2004 which moved the date of the start of the recession from March 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2000. The Supreme Court had much more to do with Bush's "election" than the economy.)
So what does Captain T Warrior do? He blames Americans first:
"So who's to blame here? First off, we are. Americans have not cut back on oil consumption and millions of us bought homes we couldn't afford. So we consumers have promoted economic chaos."
He also blames the oil companies and the banks, and concludes
"So higher energy prices and greedy lending have led to the shaky economy we have now. All of us are to blame: the folks, the government, and the corporations."
Comment: The farleft are the "kooks" who shop thrift stores, drive hybrids and bikes and take public transportation, eat locally, recycle, compost, garden organically, use canvas shopping bags and energy-saving lightbulbs, and generally try to reduce their imprint on the planet. Thrift, frugality, simplicity, respect - these are hallmarks of progressives. No one is happy about the state of the union (can't wait to hear the lipstick on THAT pig) or the world but rational people saw it coming and didn't buy the "everything is wonderful" BS that Cavuto and others spewed.
In fact, if anyone is gloating, it's BillO, who showed a clip of himself (supposedly) from 2006 saying "The price of oil will continue to rise and continue to hammer working Americans, because China and India need much more oil than they once did. Thus, the U.S. economy will soon be under enormous pressure. Almost everything will rise in price and Americans will be tapped out." Obviously, it didn't take an economics degree to see this coming, so why are political liberals happy and he, a conservative, just vindicated?
