O’Reilly reacted to San Franciscans approval of Proposition I, which discourages military recruiters on public high school and college campuses.
He advised President George W. Bush to react by withdrawing any military protection for the city. “…If al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead,” O’Reilly said.
Let’s see, now. Considering San Francisco is a hotbed of sin and steamy gay liberal sex, they have had their protection from God revoked much like Dover. This removal of government protection will be a stunning blow to the security of the region.
WHAT. AN. ASSHOLE.
(h/t Drudge)
John has the video up at Crooks and Liars.
John S.
Yup. Saw it this morning on Crooks and Liars.
Retirement is calling Bill.
Pb
John,
I knew we could find some common ground! Incidentally, what’s your opinion of Sean Hannity? :)
Horshu
He’s becoming more and more difficult to watch every day. Like most TV shows that jump the shark, he overestimates his relevance and thus tries to be the tail that wags the dog.
And on retirement, yeah, I hope it arrives soon, because outside 7-8 PST, he looks like death warmed over. Seriously, watch him show up on Fox & Friends (or even Cavuto) vs. The Factor, and it’s like looking at George W and George H. W. Methinks his show should be called “The Max Factor” with the amount of pancake he’s laying on his face.
John Cole
You watch him? WHY?
jg
I don’t see no cat pictures.
Marcus Wellby
Who the hell still watches this blowhard?? He’s like Morton Downey Jr. chanelling an even less well-informed version of Archie Bunker.
And this dinkus STILL gets the highest rating on cable news! Though “high” ratings on cable news translates into average ratings for a 3:00am episode of Hogan’s Heroes.
John Cole
Working on it JG. New camera, new computer. Need to dl all my image editing files.
Jcricket
I can’t understand why people like O’Reilly. Limbaugh, I get. He’s got a nice radio voice and makes some funny quips (if you’re already disposed to believing his views). Even Savage I understand, because some people need an outlet for their hate.
But O’Reilly? He defines paranoid and shrill. Never funny, constantly thin-skinned and ugly to boot. On radio that might not matter, but this is TV we’re talking about. He spends most of his time railing against people he perceives to be his enemies. Why exactly is that interesting?
OCSteve
John:
I’ve been a reader for a couple of years – mostly because you’ll call out an a’hole from either side of the isle.
You are “right” enough for me – but you don’t hesitate to call BS on anyone on the right.
Bill does have some entertainment value – but I certainly don’t take my marching orders from him.
Keep up the good work.
guyermo
At least Bill O’Rielly hasn’t said that liberals are out to get rid of Christmas…..
Stormy70
Bill is a blowhard television smugly.
scs
Okay, I have to call the hypocrisy. He is the number one rated news show on cable, by far, and I have yet to find someone who admits to watching him. Come on you liars, ‘fess up. I watch him and I like him. First of all he was very neutral on the war, Bush, and Kerry, so you lefties should like that. He’s for environmental controls. His pet cause is strong sentences for child molesters, nothing wrong with that. He’s a little too obsessed with the border maybe, but at least he’s FOR a temp workers programs. What exactly is the beef with him? I have yet to see a valid complaint (other than his paranoia on personal issues, which I think adds to the entertainment.)
rilkefan
What I don’t get is what he thinks his life expectancy would be if, g*d forbid, al Q blew up SF (and don’t think we didn’t sit around at my lab at Stanford post 9/11 anxiously thinking about the city’s vulnerabilites and what a target it presents.)
Pug
You know, I’ve been wondering if we are going to have to listen to all this “liberals hate Christmas” stuff again this year. Sure enough.
Anyway, Merry Christmas!
Mike
Yes, he’s an idiot.
Who cares?
What about the clowns in San Francisco?
Does ANYBODY think these people are anything other than absolute Moonbats? Oh wait, that’s right, they “support the troops”.
Please.
Steve S
I completely disagree with San Francisco’s decision to keep military recruiters out of schools.
But O’Reilly is wrong, as usual.
From now on we’ll just call him “OW”, which is short for “Often Wrong”.
Horshu
John: I watch him and Hannity and Cavuto and even John Gibson mainly for shock value and partly for perspective. I’m very libertarian/liberal but watching shows that are *that* overtly and unashamedly propoganda/incendiary/false/self-righteous is entertaining. These days, I can only handle any of these shows for more than 10 minutes at a time, though, before I get either disgusted or tired of hearing the day’s talking points (including the exact friggin’ phrasing) that I watch “Rome” for the 5th time of the week.
Pug
I used to live in San Francisco and I will always love the city for its beauty, its weather (including the fog), its hills and its architecture, bridges and cable cars.
I wouldn’t have voted for either the gun or the military recruiting ordinance and, yes, they are moonbats. Always have been, always will be. That’s part of the charm of the place.
My son still lives there (no he’s not gay, he just graduated from Catholic school, USF). It’s pretty offensive of O’Reilly to talk approvingly about terrorists destroying a place where your loved one live but, yeah, he’s just an asshole.
scs
Come on. He was making a point, he wasn’t serious. Just like someone bringing up a Nazi reference.
DougJ
Scs, good for you. I’m glad someone here is defending O’Reilly. Otherwise I was going to have to.
Andrei
Glad I’m not you.
scs
Thanks. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. I thought this blog was center right anyway. Where are all the righties anymore?
Mike
Horshu Says:
John: I watch him and Hannity and Cavuto and even John Gibson mainly for shock value and partly for perspective. “I’m very libertarian/liberal but watching shows that are that overtly and unashamedly propoganda/incendiary/false/self-righteous is entertaining.”
Yeah.
It’s kinda like reading the NY Times, LA Times or pretty much any other big city newspaper.
scs
Likewise.
Pb
scs,
Maybe this *is* center-right–mwa ha ha ha ha!
Heh, sorry about that. What I meant to say is, maybe they’ve all fled to Free Republic and Red State to restore their faith in the Once And Future Bush Administration.
Full disclosure: yet another crazed leftie moonbat here, to all you crazed rightie wingnuts. Cheers.
DougJ
Mike, I’m not kidding, you’re blowing your cover here. I want you to succeed at this spoofing thing.
joshua
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. He read from a list of suspected chemical weapon stockpiles on his radio show damn near every day in the lead up to the war. He was as pro-Iraq War as anyone else on the right in 2002.
Jcricket
Well, to use John as an example, they’re all around you, except now they’re called independents, or in some cases, Democrats.
Look at Andrew Sullivan, for example. Or what’s happened on the Obsidian Wings and Moderate Voice blogs. People who used to consider themselves solid Republicans are just too disgusted by the current state of the GOP to stay with what passes for “right wing” these days.
DougJ
I got kicked off of Free Republic last week when I used the log in name “GodWarrior”. All I was doing was agreeing with the posters there that Joe Wilson should be executed for treason — hadn’t even started talking about how much I admired Dr. Dobson. They’re cracking down over there — any hint of evangelical insanity and you’re done. Not much of a *free* republic, is it?
jaime
Let me check this month’s copy of the Paris Business Review and get back to you.
Pistol1557
I live in San Francisco and voted against both the handgun ban and the recruiter restrictions. My neighbor is a staunch conservative, as was my former roommate. Saying all San Franciscans are Moonbats is like saying everyone who lives in Kansas only reads the bible and is married to their sister. Alas, we are stuck with the label. And in some weird way that makes me proud to be a resident of such a uniquely American city.
Sadly though, if my fair city were to be attacked, I feel there would be a fair amount of “I told you so’s” and “Good Riddance’s” from the right.
scs
Okay, I can see how that would irritate some people, especally the French. As for this,” He read from a list of suspected chemical weapon stockpiles on his radio show damn near every day in the lead up to the war.”, I don’t listen to his radio show. But I don’t remember him doing that on TV. Anyway, back then, a lot of people thought Iraq had WMD. Even Kerry, remember? He has said over and over that he has mixed feelings about the war and thinks that troops should probably come home soon. Sounds pretty neutral to me.
neil
Boy, there’s nothing I hate so much as those pig-headed liberal elitists making apologies for the terrorists and.. WHOA! Bill O’Reilly? Man.
Pb
DougJ,
They probably thought you were Jewish or Muslim or something. Was ‘ChristWarrior’ taken?
joshua
You’ll note that line of thinking came along around the time polls hit 50/50 on Iraq. He knows how to get and keep credibility and then use it to pander to the far right.
scs
Nah, he’s been that way since they decided there were no WMD in Iraq, near the midde of the war. Besides, if he were pandering to the right, he would have jumped on the Swiftboat thing, and hammered Kerry, which he didn’t.
DougJ
I don’t know PB, check it out. I’ve been IP-banned from the site (I went on from a cafe computer last week) for claiming that I found Spongebob’s asexuality just as offense as homosexuality.
SeesThroughIt
Bwah!
I watch him (and Sean Hannity and his troll sidekick) occasionally, never for more than 10 minutes or so at a time. Hannity’s funny because, well, anytime a less-than-erudite person tries to act like he’s the smartest person around, it’s pretty funny (see also: Mark Noonan). O’Reilly’s always been funny, but now that Stephen Colbert is eating his lunch every night, it’s even funnier because you can see exactly how well Colbert imitates O’Reilly.
As for the Bay…I freaking love it here and hope to never leave. It’s such a beautiful place to live, and of all the places I’ve lived, it’s the place where everybody gets along the best. But I actually live in Oakland, which has banned neither handguns nor military recruiters in public schools, and Billy is more than welcome to come here–preferably to East Oakland, where he’s likely to catch a case of lead poisoning from unbanned guns.
DougJ: That’s really funny about Free Republic.
srv
Bill O’Reilly
FOX Headquarters
Dear Bill,
We are happy to accomodate your desire to drop the City of San Francisco from DoD Defense Zone (like it helped NYC or DC much when they needed it).
We roughtly calculate that SF contributes per-capita about $2B to DoD.
Please deliver the check to the Toronado, where the Dept. of Peace will be operating from.
Thanks,
General SRV
CINCSF
Shell
Why should al-Qaida attack San Francisco when they are not letting military recruitment on campuses? This makes zero sense. Oh well, O’Lielly is right-wing — no sense MAKES sense to them. Imbeciles.
Caroline
Has anybody else noticed how much conservatives have been screeching lately? O’Reilly just sounds a little worse than usual.
Of course, there’s a war on Christmas and only Bill can save us! Talk about an inflated ego…
Sojourner
They’ve been embarassed into silence by the Repub leadership.
Jcricket
That’s it. No more disaster relief money from Blue states. You chose to put your fate in the hands of God, so why should we bale you out? Ask God for help next time the Tornado hits. Oh, and no more farm subsidies. If God grants you a good harvest, so be it. If there’s a drought, it’s the will of God.
This line of reasoning is ridiculous, but the fact that O’Reilly & Robertson are national figures with large audiences shows that it appeals to a depressingly large segment of the population.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
You paying homage to that troglodyte from “Trading Spouses?”
Kimmitt
O’Reilly is a lying sack of shit, and opposing lying sacks of shit is a liberal value, so there’s a left/right divide there.
Brian
Other than O’Reilly being 100% correct, I find his comments to be disturbing.
Jcricket
“Any dork-siders must leeeeeave my house. In Jee-sus name.”
Amen.
Jcricket
“Upon later reflection, the troglodyte decided to take the money”
Best part of the whole episode.
Perry Como
San Fran is a uniquely stupid place regarding gun control in a state full of stupid gun control laws. But San Fran has great sake bars. Crimes committed with handguns will surely drop now that handguns have been outlawed.
The Disenfranchised Voter
This whole “war on christmas” makes me laugh. The main reason why is because these “conservatives” uses their own arguments against themselves…
You see, it is the free market that makes businesses embrace such slogans as “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. The right-wing nuts believe that businesses and stores are being forced to use the term “Happy Holidays”, when in reality they are using these terms because of the FREE MARKET that real conservatives frequently champion.
If I own a business, I want my products and my sales to invite ALL customers–be they christian, jewish, or muslim. By using the slogan “Happy Holidays” I can incorporate them all–therefore I encourage ALL of them to shop–not just one religion.
The reason why businesses are choosing to switch to the “Happy Holidays” slogan is the Free Market. It is quite simple to understand.
Mike
“Shell Says:
Why should al-Qaida attack San Francisco when they are not letting military recruitment on campuses? This makes zero sense. Oh well, O’Lielly is right-wing—no sense MAKES sense to them. Imbeciles.”
Agree.
It makes no sense for Al Qaida to attack allies.
rayabacus
Some of the segments on Factor are decent, very few. When he has just a single guest on a topic of interest. When he and any of the other cable shows have guests with competing veiwpoints all you get is a bunch of yelling over each other and no substance.
And O’Reilly is a sanctimonious hypocrite.
BIRDZILLA
I agree 100% with him the whole damn city of hanoi on the bay should fall right into the pacific ocean
rs
O’Reilly is like a malevolent Cliff Claven.He seems to think he’s qualified to argue law with lawyers and judges,science and medicine with doctors and scientists…the best part of his show is the “nevermind” moment when some expert spanks him.
Darrell
Bill O’Reilly is an arrogant blowhard, but he’s right to be angry at the citizens of San Fran who collectively just gave our military the middle finger.
Steve S
See now that’s why I’m not a Republican.
I disagree with what San Fransisco did, but I wouldn’t call it giving the military a middle finger.
If you want to attract moderates with your arguments, you are going to have to ratchet down the inane rhetoric by about 10,000 notches, there.
StupidityRules
I wonder if Bill O’Reilly thinks it’s ok for Al Quaida to kill American Jehovah’s Witnesses since they according to their religion refuses to serve in the military? They obviously also have given the American Army the collective finger as Darell puts it. Wonder if he thinks suicide attacks in Israel that only would kill or wound Haredi Jews, who don’t have to serve in the military, is something to care about?
DougJ
Bill O’Reilly is an arrogant blow hard but he was right about Bush eating that baby.
nyrev
I’m sure that in Bill’s mind, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Quakers are just collateral damage in God’s mighty war against the peaceful.
Linda Binda
I suspect that San Francisco may have banned (“discouraged”) military recruiters from high schools and college campuses because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy… Could I be right?
Why are you all so quick to bash San Francisco for voting for it? Are any of you interested in learning or guessing WHY the residents may have voted for it, or are all of you so sure that it’s just partisan bias that may have been behind it all? And why should recruiters show up on college campus on a largely GAY town? Not to be facetious, but I bet to San Francisco residents, letting the military try to recruit in a town where a large segment of the residents is not allowed in is a lot like a Ku Klux Klan chapter begging for a parade ordinance in Detroit. Just think on it for a while, and then, suppose…
…”who were they KIDDING?”
Good for them. San Francisco only “discouraged” the recruiters from going to high schools and college campuses, places where many parents across the country have been campaigning to do anyway (thanks to a section of “No Child Left Behind” which allows recruiters to come after their kids (high schools)), and college campuses the whole nation over where they have broad no-discrimination policies, including discrimination against gays.
Methinks San Francisco is a big enough town for the recruiters to still look for recruits in. They just (probably) can’t go after gullible high school students and insulted gay college students, anymore — boo, hoo. They can’t have it THAT bad. Sheesh…
Don’t care for the gun ban, though, but I know nothing about it, so I won’t comment further. :)
SeesThroughIt
Excellent post, Linda Blinda. That’s exactly it. Most of the invective-hurling and hand-wringing I’ve seen has come from people who don’t really understand what the vote was about but know that SF is a place full of liberals, queers, and liberal queers and therefore must be un-American or something. These people also don’t care to look and see that
1) Nowhere does it say, “Nobody from SF may join the military,” and
2) Nowhere does it say, “Military recruiters are not welcome within SF city limits.” It just says, “Not on our public school campuses, please.” But people just waiting to get up in arms about the latest liberal treason or “aid and comfort to the enemy” or whatever the fuck the talking point is are hardly interested in making such distinctions.
StupidityRules
Linda Binda, you actually believe that San Francisco is a “largely GAY Town”? And do you actually believe that it’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that made people vote for discouraging military recruiters?
M. Scott Eiland
Agree.
It makes no sense for Al Qaida to attack allies.
Mike–sounding like Michael Moore is never a good thing:
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes’ destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!
Besides, the traditional American way to deal with seceders is to stomp them into submission, not sit back and say “told you so” as bad things happen to them. Yanking federal funds from schools that don’t allow recruiters–or arresting school officials for interfering with federal officials in the course of their duties if they play games short of trying to ban them altogether–is far more productive than this sort of nonsense.
Trump
O’Reiley isn’t wrong. I don’t see why rabidly anti-American and Anti-Military San Francisco is entitled to any protection from our military at all.
Let them suffer.
This is the new reality in America. Democrats won’t stand with me, so I won’t waste my time to stand with them.
Next time a terror attack happens, I’ll find a way to aid the Republicans affected, the Democrats can suffer.
I’ll never aid my enemies.
meg
I think this is an excellent opportunity for the terrorists. They should attack Bill O’Reilly. Not his building because I’m sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, just the douchebag himself. I think it wold give them a lot of good practice on precision work to kidnap O’Reilly and then they could use him in some propaganda videos. I’m sure if they showed translated clips of him spewing bile againt people in the middle east and then beheaded him it would be great for their recruiting.
The benifits wouldn’t all be one sided either. We would be rid of him and they would be better able to carry out an agenda without all the extra killing and property damage.
Just think, they could take out the she-male hate-monger Coulter, the bag of rotting corpulence Limbaugh and that corrupt freak Robertson.
It’s not about fighting terrorism, it’s about directing the terrorists’ energies to better suit pregressive agendas and America as a whole.
Linda Binda
Whee…I’m glad I wasn’t tarred-and-feathered, here. Thanks. :) I like this blog…I’m usually a lurker, but I just wanted to throw some food-for-thought out to you all…
>Linda Binda, you actually believe that San Francisco is a “largely GAY Town”? And do you actually believe that it’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that made people vote for discouraging military recruiters?
…San Francisco, “largely GAY Town…”
Well, I dunno…I’ve never been there, myself (I live in the metro Atlanta area) — I’ve been to L.A., and Mom’s been to SF, but she went on about the Chinatown than the GAYS… :D…
…Rosie O’Donnell lives there. Every comedian who bothers to joke about that city brings up “the gayness” that supposedly pervades the place. There was that time last year where SF’s mayor let a bunch of gay couples get married, before a judge declared all marriages null and void, and the Republicans made such a big stink about it come Election time.
That, and for some reason, the writers of this Wikipedia entry found the allegedly large gay population of San Fran worth noting…
“San Francisco’s frontier spirit and wild and ribald character caused it to become known as a gay mecca beginning in the nineteenth century. This reputation was enforced greatly during World War II, when thousands of gay male soldiers spent time in the City, while en route to and from the Pacific theater. The late 1960s also brought in a new wave of lesbians and gays who were more radical and less mainstream and who had flocked to San Francisco not only for its gay-friendly reputation, but for its reputation as a radical, left-wing epicenter. These new residents were the prime movers of Gay Liberation and often lived communally, buying decrepit Victorians in the Haight and fixing them up. When drugs and violence began to become a serious problem in the Haight, many lesbians and gays simply moved “over the hill”, to the Castro replacing Irish-Americans who had moved to the more affluent and culturally homogenous suburbs. The Castro became known as a Gay Mecca, and its gay population swelled as significant numbers of gay people moved to San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. The growth of the gay population caused tensions with some of the established ethnic groups in the western part of the city. On November 27, 1978 Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors and former police officer, assassinated the city’s mayor George Moscone and San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official, Supervisor Harvey Milk (see “Twinkie Defense”). The murders and the subsequent trial were marked both by candlelight vigils and riots within the gay community. In the 1980s, the AIDS virus wreaked havoc on the gay male community there. Today, the gay population of the city is estimated to be approximately 15%, and gays remain an important force in the city’s life. San Francisco has a higher percentage of gays and lesbians than any other major US city.”
Maybe I AM generalizing a little…Who knows? ;)
And as for the possibility of “don’t ask, don’t tell” encouraging voters to vote against letting military recruiters recruit on high schools and college campuses…
Here’s a page of a June 1, 2005, NPR story about the Solomon Amendment: U.S. Government Punishes Schools that Ban Military Recruiting
All of you self-appointed “pro-military” folks needn’t complain, anyway: the Solomon Amendment will probably make this Proposition unconstitutional, and San Fran will probably be forced to let the recruiters back on high school and college campuses, soon, so O’Reilly’s making a big deal about nothing.