Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I could see both sides of this thing right up until about two-thirds of the way through when Bill and Annie have this dust-up about when it is & isn’t fair to toss something out about the President being a liar. At that point…words fail me. I’m just completely shocked. Not Captain-Renault-shocked, either. Shocked, like finding out an air traffic controller has always believed it’s perfectly possible for two objects to exist in the same space at the same time — you can’t do what you do for a living, thinking such a thing. “If He lies, He loses, if He lies, He loses…If it’s in the bill, He’s a liar! You jump too far ahead!”
Chrissakes, Bill.
I see now that my list of ways to motivate large numbers of people to do a dumb thing without anyone associating the dumb thing with your name later on is incomplete. It’s missing one tactic here…and our President is using that tactic with great aplomb.
I would word it this way: While planting a vision of an object in your audience’s collective head, convince them that their perception of this object trumps truth. I need to work on that wording a little bit. “Convince” doesn’t fit, because what’s being done here is kind of a Judo move, one of encouraging that audience to believe what they’re inclined to believe already. We get these descriptions of what the speaker says he desires the object to be, and from that we become unreasonably hostile toward any other claim about what the object really is.
It works pretty well, even on somewhat intelligent people who consider it their jobs to know exactly what’s going on. Clearly, it even works on 6’4″ leprechauns.
O’Reilly protests calling Obama a liar under this set of circumstances? I see O’Reilly’s point…kinda. Obama is the President, and if the bill doesn’t meet Obama’s expectations when it reaches His desk, He can jolly well reach for His veto pen — and if He doesn’t, The Great One becomes a liar. I get it.
O’Reilly should go back and watch some speeches from Ronald Reagan. Any one from a whole number of speeches, specifically about threatening the said veto. President Reagan never once used this method of deception Obama is using now. Reagan never once came close. He said “When that bill reaches my desk, it better not have…” or “I will veto any bill that reaches my desk, if it doesn’t contain…”
Obama could do that now. It’s a perfect description of what the job of President is. Instead, Obama’s choosing to go the route He is going, while, as Ann Coulter pointed out, these bills are going through the House. And there’s only one reason to do that.
Hat tip to fellow Right Wing News contributor Sharon Soon.
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O’Reilly’s failure to follow logic instead of pandering to the Left is what caused the blowup with Michelle Malkin. O’Reilly tried to split the baby on the illegal alien question.
- franklaughter | 09/12/2009 @ 10:01[…] Obama Inspires Me to Put in 120% Nine/Twelve Mentality Bill O’Reilly Doesn’t Know When to Argue About Laws Sceb the Outer Space Chicken Reviews Quantum of Solace 9/11 Plus Eight “The Soup is Terrible […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/12/2009 @ 12:13Wow, O’Reilly…. I have to ask why Fox keeps him on, what is his appeal? Glenn Beck is exposing the truth, what is O’Reilly doing? He’s flaking for Obama and his allies!
What a turd.
- KG | 09/12/2009 @ 19:04Annie’s right. Bill’s wrong. I’m reading her book, “Guilty” right now, and loving it.
Nah, O’Riley has his place. Some liberals actually like him, believe it or not. And that is a good thing, because by and large Bill’s basic philosophy agrees with ours. He may wander off the reservation, but his basic philosophy and our basic philosophy have some serious overlap.
But today Annie wins, hands down.
- philmon | 09/12/2009 @ 21:10I just don’t trust him anymore.
I think our resolve and our ability to handle truth — I should use the intangible noun “willingness” there, that’s what really nails it down — is tested like at no other time, when we confront a disagreement between two other parties in which one party is squarely in the right and the other party is squarely in the wrong. O’Reilly, to me, represents the “moderate” who simply can’t handle this. It’s gotta be 50-50, maybe 60-40, 70-30 is really pushing it. And so they end up keeping track of some kind of quota so they can say “look at me, I found for your side 35% of the time.”
That isn’t the way truth works. When someone makes it a priority to deceive, or doesn’t care about the truth, his words might very well be wrong 100% of the time, or something close to that. I’m not saying that’s a foregone conclusion. But it’s just as great a sin to reject that possibility outright, as it is to leap to it as a final verdict before doing one’s homework. O’Reilly’s constant pattern is to engage in the rejection, which makes him something of a bullshit artist, and I suspect he doesn’t even consciously understand this.
- mkfreeberg | 09/12/2009 @ 21:25