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Laura Ingraham fills in tonight. |
| On The O'Reilly Factor...
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| All content taken from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Each weeknight by 6 PM EST a preview of that evening's show will be posted and then updated with additional information the following weekday by noon EST.
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"After the Ben Nelson sellout on the health care bill, it's official: The moderate Democrat coalition in the Senate is dead, or it never really existed in the first place. With great fanfare last spring, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana announced he was forming the equivalent of what the House of Representatives already had - its own 'blue dog' moderate coalition. Bayh pledged that his group would tackle runaway government spending and deficit reduction. Fast forward to today. Every single member of this so-called moderate coalition, including Bayh, is supporting the wildly unpopular, insanely expensive, tax-hiking health care bill. This is unconscionable. Their constituents were completely opposed to this spend-o-rama, yet the lapdogs decided it was more important to yield to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and President Obama than the will of their own voters. If you're a Democrat Senator in a red state or even a purple state, you should - and will - lose in November and in every election year after that."
Laura welcomed Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who savaged the health care bill and the process behind it. "President Obama campaigned on the idea of transparency and a new way of doing business," Graham began. "He said we'd negotiate health care reform on C-SPAN, but what happened? Harry Reid negotiated with one member of the Senate to get the 60th vote. Now it's a 2,500-page bill with no Republican input." Graham complained that Democrats were desperate to pass a bill, any bill. "This wasn't about reforming health care, it was about getting sixty votes. This bill is built on false promises that will never happen. It is a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be proud of." |
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| Howard Dean and others on the Democratic Party's left wing oppose the Senate version of Obama-care, which they claim is too generous to insurance companies. Laura asked Democratic strategists Tamara Holder and Mary Anne Marsh to assess the bill and its impact on their party. "This is insane," Holder complained. "There is no public option and I think Howard Dean was right. Democrats need to go back to the drawing board and figure out the problems now, not after it's passed." But Marsh heartily endorsed the Senate bill. "This is a good first step because you're going to provide more people with coverage, reduce costs on businesses and individuals, and reduce the deficit. That's progress by anyone's definition." Laura was flummoxed by Marsh's assessment. "Do you really believe that by creating this federal behemoth we are going to save money for the federal government? And why would you rush through something when the majority of the country doesn't want it?" |
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| The atheist group Freedom From Religion has put up anti-religious billboards in Las Vegas. Laura was joined by co-founder Annie Laurie Gaylor, who explained the campaign's rationale. "It's meant to say something true," Gaylor stated, "that there is no God. The real reason for this season is the winter solstice and people celebrate at this time of year with evergreens and festivals because they recognize the natural holiday." Laura pointed out that some atheist organizations are surprisingly doctrinaire: "You can spend your money and take out ads, I am not bothered by it. But what's interesting is that there seems to be an orthodoxy and religious dogma among atheists just as strong as that among devout Christians or Muslims or Jews." |
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| A Muslim mosque and cultural center will be erected just steps from where Islamic terrorists slammed planes into the World Trade Center. Daisy Khan, who heads a moderate Islamic organization, explained the significance of the location. "The closeness to Ground Zero is a blow to the extremists," Khan declared. "We Muslims are fed up with being defined by the actions of the extremists. We are law-abiding citizens, faithful people and very good Americans. This center will promote what it means to be a Muslim, but also what it means to be an American. Extremists are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction." Laura praised Khan and her organization, the American Society for Muslim Advancement: "Your group takes a moderate approach to Americanizing and assimilating Muslims, which I think is fantastic." |
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| Laura introduced Bill's recent interview with lawyer Scott Fenstermaker, who represents one of the 9/11 terror suspects who will be tried in New York. "I don't think the defense is going to be anti-American," Fenstermaker predicted, "I think it's basically going to be a 'justification' defense. The trial and the jury will determine whether the people were murdered or not." Bill immediately objected: "Are you sitting here as a human being telling me people on 9/11 weren't murdered?" Fenstermaker's reply was evasive: "I'm telling you that the jury is going to decide that. I'm not a juror." Bill's response: "Don't you think people watching you think you're a weasel? You seem like a nice guy, but if someone can't say whether or not people were murdered on 9/11, he's a weasel." Fenstermaker concluded by declaring that "the way these men have been treated is contrary to the values of the United States." |
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| Sarah Palin was recently spotted wearing a visor with the name "McCain" blacked out. Left-wing blogs attacked Palin for disloyalty, even though John McCain himself laughed it all off. Laura spoke about the dustup with Republican strategist Andrea Tantaros. "Only Sarah Palin knows why she really did it," Tantaros said. "Maybe she did block it out because she had some bitter feelings about the campaign, but she said she just wanted to go incognito. This woman gets more press with a beat-up visor and an indelible marker than most Congressmen do in their entire career. She's such a force to be reckoned with." Laura theorized that Governor Palin may enjoy tweaking her political opponents and the media: "Don't you get the sense that Sarah Palin just likes to mess with people in the press? We're all talking about her once again." |
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| Just as delegates returned from the climate summit in Copenhagen, a winter storm dumped up to two feet of snow on the East Coast. Laura welcomed Christopher Horner, an author and climate change skeptic. "God exists and has a great sense of humor," Horner quipped. "He's now chasing Al Gore around the world with freezing temperatures." Horner portrayed the summit as an abject failure. "What happened was what we expected - a historic agreement was reached to meet again later, therefore securing the future for future meetings. But this time it cost us in the billions. Barack Obama could not leave Copenhagen without a piece of paper, so he had to agree to pay countries billions of our dollars to upgrade their infrastructure to better compete with us. Such a bargain!" Laura argued that many climate change alarmists are actually interested in bringing down capitalism: "This is about money and reducing America's standard of living. People just don't like the fact that Americans have lived pretty well." |
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