John Stossel

Bill O’Reilly Opposes Theocracy – Except For America And Christians

Posted by on September 24, 2015 at 7:27 pm. 9 Comments :

The dean of Fox News hypocrites has once again demonstrated why he is so revered for his ability to be oblivious to his own self-contradictions. Bill O’Reilly is notorious for his blustery argumentativeness and shallow grasp of substance. But he truly excels at making ludicrous statements that are often at odds with his previous remarks.

Bill O'Reilly

The latest example of this aberrant behavior occurred during a discussion about religion with Fox’s resident atheist, John Stossel (video below). The topic was spun from Ben Carson’s recent admission that he wouldn’t support a Muslim for president and doesn’t think that Islam is consistent with the Constitution. O’Reilly defended Carson’s bigotry in the following exchange with Stossel.

O’Reilly: If you look at Islam, the politics and the religion are always intertwined. In every single Muslim nation their laws are based on the Koran. You know that. Every one.
Stossel: That’s true, but you all week have been on a million TV programs saying “Judeo-Christian country,” philosophy. What do you mean by that?
O’Reilly: I mean that the founders of the Constitution – the people who forged the country – believed in the 10 Commandments, and that’s what they based the law on. There’s no doubt about that. […] They believed in the 10 Commandments as the litmus test of what is right, what is wrong.

Did you catch it? In one comment O’Reilly condemns nations that inject religion into the legal foundations of the state. And in his very next comment he praises the U.S. for injecting religion into the legal foundations of the state. It would be bad enough if the evident hypocrisy of these diametrically opposed comments occurred on different nights, or even in different segments of the same program. But the fact that they occurred literally one sentence following the other illustrates how religious bigots are blind to their own prejudices. They believe that theocracy is evil elsewhere but mandatory in America so long as it is based on Christianity.

Later, when asked if he would vote for a Muslim president, O’Reilly answered “If the guy was a super problem solver – a secular Muslim – I might consider it. I probably wouldn’t, but I might consider it.” So he probably wouldn’t vote for a Muslim, but if he did it would have to be one that didn’t actually practice his faith. How open-minded of him.

To top off O’Reilly’s twisted view and biased presentation, Stossel actually called him out for distorting a man-on-the-street segment that Stossel did. The video was shown earlier in the segment, but toward the end Stossel interjected to complain saying that…

“I just wanted to add, I asked 25 people [if they would vote for a Muslim president]. I thought most would have an objection. And your editor split it 50/50. But almost everyone just said no, no problem, without hesitation.”

Fox News using deliberately deceptive editing to leave viewers with false impressions is nothing new. However, it may be unprecedented that one of Fox’s hosts openly scolded a fellow host on the air for doing so. And it is just as much a testament to Stossel’s commitment to his principles as it is to O’Reilly’s lack of them.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Doesn’t Want Your Kids To Have Seat Belts On School Buses

Posted by on January 24, 2013 at 9:34 pm. 17 Comments :

As if America’s school children don’t already have enough to worry about since the Sandy Hook tragedy, now Fox News is complaining about a proposal to put seat belts on school buses.

An op-ed by John Stossel was published today that took the administration to task for the seat belt initiative. He characterized the safety measure as another boondoggle by big government. He mocked the agency that was proposing the new standards. He also argued that it was too expensive and that some studies have concluded that they were unnecessary. But what really destroys his case is that the evidence he relies on to bash the government is from – the government. In fact, it’s the very same agency that he’s bitching about, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

Stossel wrote that a few years ago the NHTSA conducted a study that concluded that seat belts on school buses were “of no value in the majority of fatal accidents.” He listed six additional items culled from the report. He didn’t cite the specific study or the year it was published. There was a study in 2002 that found that seat belts were not effective in severe frontal collisions. However, it also found that the benefits more than offset the risks, particularly with regard to preventing ejections. Apparently there are more types of collisions than just from the front.

Bottom line: Stossel is criticizing the NHTSA’s big government decision to install seat belts in school buses and supporting his criticism with older NHTSA big government data that he misinterprets. But to pile on the stupidity, take a look at the headline from Fox that mangles both spelling and syntax.

Fox News

That’s an apt demonstration of how idiotic the right-wing is in their haste to condemn any government initiative, even those designed to protect kids. They derisively portray Team Obama as spending wastefully on seat belts, just as they cast Obama as a Stalinist gun-grabber when he proposes safety measures to reduce gruesome shootings.

[Update] Fox News has removed this article entirely from their web site. That seems like a drastic reaction to a couple of grammatical errors. Could they have realized that Stossel’s argument was idiotic? Nah … if that bothered them they’d have to take down 80% of their site.

New Fox News Promo Asks: Everyone Should Vote? Answers: No

Posted by on July 27, 2012 at 12:03 pm. 10 Comments :

In a promotion for a new John Stossel program on Fox News, the viewer is asked whether “everyone should vote.” That question, which by itself belittles the traditional American value of Democracy and civic participation, is followed by a loud game show style buzzer and a big red circle with a line through it – the universal symbol for the negative.

So once again, Fox is taking a position in favor of shrinking the electorate. It’s a position that is consistent with their campaign to help states purge their voter rolls of undesirable voters like minorities, seniors, students, and the poor. The evidence of their determination to undermine free elections is overwhelming. The vast majority of those on the purge lists of states like Florida and Pennsylvania are citizens who would be likely to vote Democratic. And just this morning a report revealed that the former head of the Florida Republican Party admitted in a court deposition that the party openly discussed plans aimed at “keeping blacks from voting.”

Conservatives have long had an aversion to full participation in Democracy. They believe that the right to vote is extended too generously to members of society that they don’t happen to like. Here is a brief sampling of their recent remarks on the subject beginning with Stossel himself:

John Stossel (Fox News): “Let’s stop saying everyone should vote.”

Matthew Vadum: “Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country.”

Rush Limbaugh: “If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?”

Judson Phillips (Tea Party Nation): “If you’re not a property owner, I’m sorry, but property owners have a little bit more of a vested stake in the community than not property owners do.”

Steve Doocy (Fox News): “With 47% of Americans not paying taxes – 47% – should those who don”t pay be allowed to vote?”

Republicans know they can’t win elections honestly, so they plot to steal elections by preventing, discouraging, and obstructing legitimate citizens from voting. And this new program on Fox is further evidence of their brazen disrespect for Democracy.