Bernie Goldberg ColumnBlog's for July, 2021http://www.BillOReilly.comBill O'Reilly2024-03-28T23:59:06Z2024-03-28T23:59:06ZBill O'ReillyThe Loose Cannon in Next Year's Midterm Elections: Hint, His Initials are DJTBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Loose-Cannon-in-Next-Years-Midterm-Elections:-Hint-His-Initials-are-DJT/-267555658213272346.html2021-07-19T18:59:00Z2021-07-19T18:59:00Z<p>Right after he was elected president, I made a prediction. I said that for the next four years – or however long Joe Biden was president – you wouldn’t hear even one good word him about from the opinion talking heads on Fox News. Not one good word no matter what he did.</p>
<p>Yogi Berra allegedly said that predictions are hard, especially when they’re about the future. But this one wasn’t hard at all. It was quite easy. Because if you know anything about how cable news operates, you understand that the way they make money – both liberal and conservative channels – is to give the audience what it wants to hear. Don’t do anything risky like expose the viewers to ideas they may disagree with. Pandering is the way to grow the bottom line. Throw red meat to the people watching, feed their biases, support their values, and entice them to come back for more.</p>
<p>So saying anything good about President Biden on Fox would go against the business model, which is not a good idea if you care about ratings and your job. And for the record, it was the same at the liberal channels during Donald Trump’s time in the White House. Bashing him was good for business.</p>
<p>No one paying attention would dispute the obvious — that we’re living in hyper-polarized times. And cable news is a major reason. Every night the hosts pour gasoline on the fire, because dividing the American people is what brings in money. If that sounds simple, it’s because it is.</p>
<p>We’ve heard a lot about Trump Derangement Syndrome – a malady suffered by liberals and progressives who hyperventilate at the mere mention of his name. Lance Morrow, the perceptive essayist, has written about the people who despise Trump. “Hating Mr. Trump and his followers dramatizes one’s own virtue,” he says. “It makes elites feel good about themselves in the way, classically, that poor whites in the South were able to feel better about their own lot by despising and discriminating against black people. Progressives think that hating not only Mr. Trump but all conservatives settles their debts and cleanses them of sin. It gives them a certain moral luster.”</p>
<p>Every word rings true. But there is a kind of psychological disorder to be found among his most loyal supporters too. They believe what most people rightly find unbelievable. Their reality isn’t the reality of most of Americans.</p>
<p>Which brings us to new poll by Morning Consult about the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. Six months later, only 30 percent of registered Republican voters blame Donald Trump for the riot that occurred that day. They are, I suspect, the same people who get their “news” from conservatives on cable TV. But there’s more. Forty-one percent blame … Joe Biden. Yes, more GOP voters blame Joe Biden for what happened that day then blame Donald Trump, who spent an hour riling up his loyal fans, some of whom then invaded the Capitol.</p>
<p>Whether a GOP voter thinks Donald Trump stirred up the crowd and bears some responsibility is one thing, but blaming Joe Biden is quite another. This goes way beyond normal partisan politics. This is just plain crazy.</p>
<p>How is Joe Biden responsible for the riot, or insurrection, or whatever else you want to call it? Could it be because he won the election? Maybe. I mean, if he didn’t have the audacity to actually beat Donald Trump, there would have been no mayhem at the Capitol on January 6.</p>
<p>But did Joe Biden really win? Not if you ask Republicans. A poll by Reuters/Ipsos taken in mid-May found that 53 percent of Republicans don’t believe that Biden won fair and square. Instead they believe Donald Trump is the “true president” — compared with 3 percent of Democrats who somehow believe that and 25 percent of all Americans.</p>
<p>Want more proof that Trump’s most passionate supporters don’t share the same reality as most Americans?</p>
<p>Another poll, this one taken in late May by Yahoo News/YouGov found that 73 percent of Republicans pin “some” or “a great deal” of blame for what happened on January 6 on “left-wing protesters trying to make Trump look bad” – this even though there’s no evidence to back up that belief and that both the FBI and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rejected the idea that left wing protesters were to blame for what happened that day.</p>
<p>As for the future: If you listen to conservative pundits you’d have every right to believe that the GOP will win big in next year’s midterm elections – and not only because a new president’s party almost always loses seats in Congress during the first midterm election.</p>
<p>This time around, Democrats have a surging crime rate in cities run by their fellow Democrats, the mess on our southern border and looming inflation hanging around their necks. So the wishful political thinking you hear coming from conservative media may in fact become reality next fall.</p>
<p>But there’s a wild card out there and surprise, surprise … it’s Donald Trump. If at his rallies this summer – and in his interviews with supposed journalists posing as potted plants on Fox — he continues to say that he really won, if he continues to look back instead of forward, there’s a chance that swing voters, independents and even some moderate Republicans might want to distance themselves from a party whose nominal leader — and many of his supporters — suffer from political delusion.</p>
<p>A lot can happen between now and November 2022. Crime may drop. The border may not look so bad. Inflation may not develop or only be transitory. All that would help Democrats. And remember, Donald Trump managed to pull off a political hat trick during his four years as president: He lost the House during his presidency, the Senate and the White House too. He and his ego are more than capable of causing still more trouble for the GOP next year.</p>
<p>There’s another quote attributed to Yogi Berra that confident conservatives on TV, the ones who are already predicting a huge GOP victory next year, might want to consider. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>Bernie Goldberg2021-07-19T18:59:00ZAbout Those Who Think Death and Economic Destruction Are 'Worth It'Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/About-Those-Who-Think-Death-and-Economic-Destruction-Are-Worth-It/992721582704662609.html2020-03-24T07:40:00Z2020-03-24T07:40:00Z<p>A very good friend of mine told me a story the other day that should have stunned me, but knowing the times in which we live … it didn’t.</p>
<p>My friend is conservative, in the mainstream sense of that word. He’s like millions of other Americans – not a big fan of Donald Trump’s character, but figures he’s better than what the Democrats have to offer.<br /><br />But my friend has a sister, who when it comes to politics, plays deep left field.</p>
<p>How deep? Well, she won’t visit her brother because – wait for it – he lives in a red state. Red states are Trump states and that’s enemy territory as far as she’s concerned.</p>
<p>They talked by phone a few days ago and of course the coronavirus came up in conversation. As he relayed the conversation to me (and said it was OK for me to share the story with you), after the usual back and forth about how it was affecting each of their lives, my friend’s sister told him that, “<span>If lots of people have to die to make sure Donald Trump doesn’t get re-elected, it’s worth it</span>.”</p>
<p>He knows his sister’s politics, but still he was stunned. “Can you believe it?” he asked me, figuring it was the kind of question that required no answer. But I gave him one anyway. “Unfortunately I can,” I said.</p>
<p>I told him that his sister wasn’t the only one who thinks that way; that there are millions on the left who are just like her.</p>
<p>No, we don’t usually hear such candor from Trump-haters, not out in the open anyway. But she was talking to her brother on the phone – not opining for the world to hear on national TV. She felt safe venting, sharing her hatred.</p>
<p>But just because such bluntness is not part of the national conversation, doesn’t mean that the angry left isn’t secretly rejoicing that this killer virus just might bring down the president – even if the virus also brings down a lot of their fellow Americans in the process.</p>
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<p>As my friend’s sister so <em>elegantly</em> put it: <span>It’s worth it</span>.</p>
<p>In that phone conversation, she said something else she thought would be worth it.</p>
<p>Again, as he related the conversation to me, she said: “<span>If the economy collapses </span><span>that also would be worth it</span>” if it would bring down the Trump presidency.</p>
<p>And on this, again, she’s not alone.</p>
<p>Remember what Bill Maher said on his TV show last year: He would gladly accept an economic recession because, “We have survived many recessions. We can’t survive another Donald Trump term.”</p>
<p>Wishing for a recession, or worse, is easy for a guy who makes millions telling jokes. He won’t have trouble paying the rent. But if the recession cost Bill Maher <em>his </em>job he might not be so cavalier.</p>
<p>And the same is true for my friend’s sister. She thinks that “<em>lots</em>” of American deaths would be “worth it” if it means Donald Trump would lose the election. But would she think that if her children were among the dead?</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton got a lot of things wrong last time around, but she also got a few things right. There really are deplorable people out there – except they’re not all the ones she had in mind.</p>
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<p><br /><br /></p>Bernie Goldberg2020-03-24T07:40:00ZElizabeth Warren Loves to Hate the RichBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Elizabeth-Warren-Loves-to-Hate-the-Rich/-125382798395382902.html2019-11-25T16:24:00Z2019-11-25T16:24:00Z<p>Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is at least a co-frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination, claims she’s a capitalist. But she sure has a funny way of showing it.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the way she described American corporations at October’s presidential debate: “They have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.”</p>
<p>Then there are her many “plans” to fix America, which would cost so many trillions of dollars that it would cripple the economy and put millions of Americans out of work.</p>
<p>Or how about her tendency (along with most left-wing Democrats) to shamelessly wage class warfare, to vilify the rich and punish success? But Elizabeth Warren takes it a few steps further, with her wealth tax, which would tax the super rich on money they’ve already been taxed on.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal looked closely at Sen. Warren’s many plans that supposedly would be financed only by the wealthiest Americans and discovered that she “has unveiled sweeping tax proposals that would push federal tax rates on some billionaires and multimillionaires above 100 percent.”</p>
<p>So what if it’s mathematically ridiculous; it still might be a good way to garner votes. Or at least that’s the cynical idea behind many of Sen. Warren’s quasi-socialist tax plans. All we want, Ms. Warren says, is for the wealthiest Americans to pay their “fair share” to help the less fortunate.</p>
<p>But as Thomas Sowell, the California economist with an abundance of common sense, has asked: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”</p>
<p>Someone ought to ask Elizabeth Warren that question at Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate.</p>
<p>If Sen. Warren had her way, the federal government would be even bigger and more intrusive than it is today — a lot bigger, and a lot more intrusive. There’d be a whole bunch of new regulations; Americans would lose their private health care insurance; shale fracking would be banned; blue-collar workers, for whom she claims to care so much, would lose their jobs.</p>
<p>But let’s not fret: Elizabeth Warren, after all, is a capitalist. Just ask her.</p>
<p>All this left-wing economic pandering got me thinking about one of my favorite books, the 1957 classic by Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged.”</p>
<p>It’s a novel about how the government of the United States punishes successful business people, how it sees them as the villains of society, and how a mysterious heroic man called John Galt convinces business leaders to walk away from their companies as a “strike” by productive individuals against the “looters.”</p>
<p>Rand said her goal for writing the novel was “to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to the world without them.”</p>
<p>What happened in “Atlas Shrugged” is that the most successful business people did, in fact, drop out of society, and guess what? Without them the economy collapsed; America sank into a great depression.</p>
<p>And imagine if, in real life, the wealthiest Americans followed John Galt’s lead and said something like, “You might be able to confiscate our wealth but you can’t stop us from dropping out. You can’t make us keep our businesses open. You can’t stop us from furloughing workers as a protest against your toxic class-warfare malarkey.”</p>
<p>What would all those Americans who applaud Elizabeth Warren’s plan to soak the rich think then?</p>
<p>Like the ending of “Atlas Shrugged,” they’ll be begging the rich to come back, to open their businesses, to resuscitate the economy — and give them back their jobs.<br /><br />Where have you gone, John Galt? With Elizabeth Warren and so many other progressive presidential wannabes vilifying success and offering “free” stuff in exchange for votes, America needs you, now more than ever.</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>Bernie Goldberg2019-11-25T16:24:00ZBrian Stelter and CNN Strike AgainBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Brian-Stelter-and-CNN-Strike-Again/-947451627274288506.html2019-11-11T16:32:00Z2019-11-11T16:32:00Z<p>Just when you think CNN can’t come up with anything new they don’t like about Donald Trump, they surprise you and come up with something new they don’t like about Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Last week, Brian Stelter, who hosts a Sunday show called Reliable Sources, (which ostensibly is about the media but is really about bashing the president as often as possible) exposed another reason the folks at CNN think Donald Trump is a dunce: He can’t spell.</p>
<p>Citing expert researchers, Stelter solemnly informed us that since he took office President Trump has made a whopping 188 spelling errors when he takes to Twitter.</p>
<p>Oh, the horror!</p>
<p>Some of the president’s “absurd errors,” as Stelter described them, include “shoebiz,” “hamberders,” “leightweight,” “Rupublicans,” and ‘Infair.”</p>
<p>The president even tweeted about a “smocking gun” and the “Marine core.”</p>
<p>“English teachers are horrified,” and “others are embarrassed by it too,” Stelter told his audience.</p>
<p>And get this: President Trump often confuses “it’s” with “its.”</p>
<p>I mean if that alone doesn’t constitute grounds for impeachment I don’t know what does.</p>
<p>“Everybody makes spelling mistakes,” Stelter graciously acknowledged, before adding, but “Trump makes a lot more of them than most people.”</p>
<p>And “most people” includes his Democratic rivals who make far fewer errors because, “They’re careful,” while “Trump makes constant mistakes.” Thank you Brian Stelter.<br /><br />What about Barack Obama? How does Donald Trump compare to him. If you said not well, give yourself a gold star.</p>
<p>Donald Trump started tweeting in 2009 and since then has made 350 spelling errors. Barack Obama took to Twitter in 2012 and he made – <span>wait for it</span>– only four.</p>
<p>If that doesn’t prove that Barack Obama was a better president than Donald Trump, what does, right?</p>
<p>Why does any of this matter? Because, Stelter says, “If you can’t get the small stuff right people worry about the big stuff.”</p>
<p>What people – besides the journalists who despise Donald Trump and work at CNN?</p>
<p>How about the people who despise Donald Trump and work at the New York Times?</p>
<p>As I pointed out in this space several months ago, The Times ran a page one story that took on the president because of his … <span>grammar</span>.</p>
<p>Times reporter Sarah Lyall told us that in late May President Trump tweeted about Democratic senator Mark Warner.</p>
<p>“… their is nothing bipartisan about him,” Mr. Trump wrote.</p>
<p>Get it? President Trump wrote the word … “their” … when he should have written … “there.”</p>
<p>The Times quotes Bryan A. Garner, the author of “Garner’s Modern English Usage,” who, when he read the president’s tweet, “could feel his blood pressure steadily rising,” as the Times describes it.</p>
<p>Did I mention that this story appeared on page one of the New York Times, on Sunday, no less, when liberals all over Upper Manhattan and Malibu sip their cappuccino lattes and search the newspaper of record for the latest crimes against humanity committed by the president.</p>
<p>And then there’s the dreaded dangling modifier offense. No fooling!</p>
<p>In one tweet, Ms. Lyall, tells us that the president “successfully managed to both dangle a modifier and misspell a four-letter word in the course of a single sentence.”</p>
<p>Another language expert, who acknowledges she doesn’t like Mr. Trump, accuses him of another capital offense: putting a comma where a period should go.</p>
<p>Someone call Adam Schiff!</p>
<p>There’s a word to describe all this concern over spelling and random capitalization and dangling modifiers and commas where periods should go. The word is “pedantic,” which my dictionary defines as a “narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously insistence that we follow the rules exactly” – the kind of thing that only annoying hall monitors of the English language demand, the same kind of people who made us diagram sentences in school for reasons I still can’t figure out.</p>
<p>Mr. Trump has many faults. That’s hardly breaking news. But so does CNN and the New York Times have faults — something they seem blissfully unaware of, introspection being a quality in short supply in too many American newsrooms.</p>Bernie Goldberg2019-11-11T16:32:00ZHarvard Discriminates Against Students of ColorBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Harvard-Discriminates-Against-Students-of-Color/578441572289643049.html2019-10-23T13:13:00Z2019-10-23T13:13:00Z<p>Racial discrimination is legal at Harvard University. A federal judge said so. But this time it’s not affirmative action against white students; it’s against people of color.</p>
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<p>Judge Allison Burroughs ruled against Asian-American students who sued Harvard arguing that the school used racially biased subjective standards to intentionally keep them out.</p>
<p>Harvard couldn’t disqualify the students based on their intelligence, so they found something else to use against them.</p>
<p>“Ensuring diversity at Harvard relies in part, on race conscious admissions,” the judge wrote. “Race conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process, but this is justified by the compelling interest in diversity and all the benefits that flow from a diverse college population.”<br /><br />At the heart of the lawsuit was a subjective rating Harvard gives to its students – about how they would fit in on campus. And Harvard decided that while, yes, Asian-American students do well when it comes to academics, they don’t do so well when it comes to “personal” traits. As Judge Burroughs put it, “Asian-American applicants disproportionate strength in academics comes at the expense of other skills and traits Harvard values.”</p>
<p>What other skills? They’re not as chatty as other students? Not as cool? They spend too much time in the library? As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal put it, “Who knew that Harvard had a quota on nerds – at least if they’re Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese or Indian descent.”</p>
<p>Imagine if some conservative Christian university gave low admission points to black kids on grounds that <span>they </span>didn’t fit in. Would any judge in the entire United States of America buy that argument? Wouldn’t the courts conclude that the subjective criteria were a discriminatory subterfuge, designed to keep black applicants out?</p>
<p>But somehow it’s not seen as a form of racial discrimination when it’s liberal Harvard doing the discriminating – against Asian-American kids.</p>
<p>Affirmative action, we were led to believe, was supposed to benefit people of color at the expense of white applicants. Someone had to pay a price to achieve diversity on campus. Why not all those kids suffering from “white privilege”?</p>
<p>But liberals didn’t play the movie all the way through. Because now, at Harvard anyway, it’s OK to discriminate against people of color – if the people of color are disproportionately good students, like Asian-Americans.</p>
<p>The case is on appeal and may wind up in the Supreme Court. And hiding among all the legalese will be a simple question: Is it legal to discriminate against Asian-American students using some vague rating system based on personal traits – when no school in the nation would be allowed to use that same rating system to keep out other minority students?</p>
<p>Why is one kind of discrimination acceptable and not the other?</p>
<p>It was to Harvard’s shame that they kept Jewish applicants out many decades ago because they didn’t want too many of <span>their kind </span>on campus. It was ugly discrimination back then, pure and simple. So is what Harvard is doing today.</p>
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<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2019-10-23T13:13:00ZThis Just In: Trump Declares War - on Canada ... Fox Exclusive!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/This-Just-In:-Trump-Declares-War---on-Canada-...-Fox-Exclusive!/-138990983134984025.html2019-08-31T00:11:00Z2019-08-31T00:11:00Z<p> </p>
<p>It’s 9 o’clock PM in the east and it’s time for Sean Hannity on Fox.</p>
<p><span>Hannity:</span> Tonight we open with big, explosive news … fair and balanced as always … on this show we hold everybody accountable … no one, no matter how powerful, is above our scrutiny.</p>
<p>OK, I’m kidding.<br /><br /></p>
<p>Earlier today the wussy prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, made hateful, vile comments about our president, the great Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Trudeau said, and I quote: “<em>I think President Trump is a very smart man … a genius actually. I think he’s a very honest man. And I think he’s one of America’s great presidents, in the same class as Washington and Lincoln. My only complaint is that his ties are a tad too long.</em>”</p>
<p>I, Sean Hannity, am appalled. Appalled that the leader of a hostile foreign country would say such vile things about our great president, the great Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Wait. Hold on. We’re just getting a tweet in from the president. I’ll read it to you:</p>
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<p>“<em>Because of the unprecedented harsh language uttered in Canada by Justin Sissy Boy Trudeau I am now issuing a minimal, reasonable, civil response to his detestable attack on me, your great president. I am declaring war on Canada. And, oh yeah, I’m also sending a few cruise missiles into downtown Toronto</em>.” <span>#NeverInsultMeEver</span></p>
<p><span>Hannity:</span> Is he the greatest president ever – or what?</p>
<p>Let’s call in our newest Fox News contributor, Sarah Sanders, who joins the Fox family because she can be counted on to give you, my loyal audience, honest, unvarnished analysis with no holds barred and favoritism toward absolutely no one.<br /><br /></p>
<p>Sarah, what do you make of the great Donald Trump’s minimal, reasonable, civil response to Sissy Boy Trudeau?</p>
<p><span>Sanders:</span> I think it was a minimal, reasonable, civil response to the Sissy Boy’s detestable attack on our great president. I know this president. I worked with this president. I’ve told lies for this president. And if he declares war on a hostile foreign place like Canada, I’m with him 10 million percent.</p>
<p><span>Hannity:</span> That’s why Donald Trump and I hired you here at Fox, Sarah. For your honest, no holds barred, take no prisoners, Katie bar the door analysis.</p>
<p>I know what my loyal audience wants to hear. And we make sure we give them what they want to hear. <em>Every freaking chance we get</em>.</p>
<p>See you tomorrow night, Sarah, when you’ll be back to analyze Donald Trump’s latest tweet, sent out 3 seconds ago, saying that he’s issuing an executive order mandating that his image be carved in stone on Mt. Rushmore.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’ll have something interesting on that one, Sarah.</p>
<p><span>Sanders:</span> Long overdue, Sean. Should have been up there 10 years ago. At least.</p>
<p><span>Hannity:</span> We’ll be back after this commercial break.</p>
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<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2019-08-31T00:11:00ZBernie Goldberg: After the Mueller Movie, Are Democrats Still Serious About Impeachment?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldberg:-After-the-Mueller-Movie-Are-Democrats-Still-Serious-About-Impeachment/-364860863690544735.html2019-07-29T15:10:00Z2019-07-29T15:10:00Z<p>We didn’t learn much from the Mueller hearings before two congressional committees last week that we didn’t already know … except that Robert Mueller — who was supposed to be the star of the movie version of the “book” nobody read — was a box office flop.</p>
<p>I felt bad for him. He’s a man who served this country for many years, both in war and in peace. But after watching some seven hours of him in the witness chair, it was obvious that he had lost more than a step over the years.<br /><br /></p>
<p>He didn’t seem to know what was in his own report.</p>
<p>He was asked how many interviews he attended during his two-year investigation. “Very few,” he answered.</p>
<p>He was asked about a letter he ostensibly wrote to Attorney General William Barr, a letter in which he complained about how the media was handling Barr’s summary of the Mueller report. Who wrote the letter, he was asked. “I can’t get into internal deliberations,” he responded.</p>
<p>Did he give the OK for the letter to be released to the media – or was it leaked without his knowledge? “I have no knowledge of either,” he said.</p>
<p>Based on his testimony, all we know for sure is that he <em>signed </em>the letter – not that he actually <em>wrote </em>it. We don’t even know if he knew what was in it.</p>
<p>He was asked about Fusion GPS, the outfit that spread the story about Donald Trump’s supposed connection to Russia. Just about everything on the subject was “outside my purview,” he repeatedly said.</p>
<p>Whenever any <em>inconvenient </em>question came up, inevitably asked by Republicans, Mueller responded that it was “beyond my purview.”</p>
<p>Was Robert Mueller hiding something? Was he covering for the people (at the FBI or in the intelligence community) behind what the president and others are calling the Russian collusion hoax?<br /><br /></p>
<p>And there’s another question: Was Robert Mueller even the man who ran the investigation? Or was it his team, made up entirely of Democrats, many of whom were Hillary Clinton supporters?</p>
<p>I’ve wondered why, if Mueller was the smart man everyone said he was, he wasn’t concerned about not only the impartiality of his team of prosecutors, but also the <em>appearance </em>of impartiality.</p>
<p>In one of the few times Mueller responded to a question with more than a single word or two, he said, “I’ve been in this business for almost 25 years, and in those 25 years, I have not had occasion once to ask somebody about their political affiliation.”</p>
<p>This time around, maybe he should have.</p>
<p>Sure it’s possible that prosecutors, like journalists, can put their biases aside and just do their job, objectively, without partisanship. But it doesn’t always happen that way.</p>
<p>Mueller’s lead prosecutor was a man named Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann was a Hillary Clinton supporter, no fan of Donald Trump, and attended what was supposed to be her “victory party” in 2016.</p>
<p>Mueller brought his aide Aaron Zebley to sit with him during the hearings. Zebley, as the Media Research Center describes him, “represented former Clinton Foundation aide Justin Cooper in 2015 and 2016 in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Cooper was the IT expert who set up Hillary’s server and smashed some of her mobile devices with a hammer.”<br /><br /></p>
<p>More than a few members of Mueller’s team contributed money to the Democratic Party and to Hillary Clinton herself.</p>
<p>If it wasn’t the <em>impeccable </em>Mr. Mueller, but his team of Democratic partisans who were calling the shots, is that why the report said the investigation could not “exonerate” the president of obstructing justice – even though prosecutors don’t “exonerate,” they either charge or don’t charge?</p>
<p>Is that why the final report seemed to be a not-so-subtle invitation to House Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings against the president?</p>
<p>But since Mueller provided no Perry Mason moment, no revelation of some previously unknown fact that would give the Democrats what they had been hoping for, you’d think impeachment was a dead issue.</p>
<p>Maybe. But do we really believe that Jerry Nadler and the 100 or so Democrats who want the president impeached are going to back off just because Robert Mueller didn’t give them the smoking gun that they desperately hoped he would?</p>
<p>And if Donald Trump wins re-election, even the cautious Nancy Pelosi may let her partisan hounds loose on impeachment; there’d be nothing to fear at that point about a voter backlash.</p>
<p>That’s the bad news for the president, a second term crippled by more investigations and ultimately impeachment by House Democrats. The good news is that the 5- year statue of limitations on charging him with obstruction of justice will have run out. Whether he obstructed justice or not, he’d likely be a free man.</p>
<p>But if he loses, and Democrats are running the show at the Department of Justice, Mr. Trump could be charged, tried, and if convicted, sent to prison. You think Jerry Nadler and his fellow Democrats aren’t salivating over that possibility?</p>
<p>The election is 17 months away, and the American people will have the final say in the matter of whether they want Donald Trump to serve a second term.</p>
<p>They’ll decide if he’s fit to serve four more years. But that’s unlikely to satisfy those who want Donald Trump impeached and humiliated.</p>
<p>Their movie flopped. Their star couldn’t even deliver his lines without mumbling through them. Their impeachment hopes were dealt a serious blow. This should be the time when the credits role and the words “The End” appear on the screen.</p>
<p>Don’t bet on it. Yogi was right: It ain’t over til it’s over.</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<div> </div>Bernie Goldberg2019-07-29T15:10:00ZBernie Goldberg: Marianne Williamson for PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldberg:-Marianne-Williamson-for-President/-344277841278601094.html2019-07-04T18:27:00Z2019-07-04T18:27:00Z<p>I watched every minute of both nights of the Democratic Presidential Debates and I owe each of the candidates a great big thank you. Thank you, Democratic candidates, for reminding me why I left your party and became a Republican.</p>
<p>That transition happened a long time ago when Democrats were merely over the top tax-and-spend liberals. Those were the good old days.</p>
<p>Now, progressives have hijacked the bus and are driving it over the cliff.<br /><br />We’re a polarized nation and the progressives aren’t doing anything to bring us closer together. Not with their open hostility to business, to success; not when they minimize our progress on race and still talk about America as a racist country; not when they shamelessly pander to the greed of voters by offering them all sorts of “free” stuff that would bankrupt the country; and not when they readily admit that they want to <em>fundamentally</em> change this country.</p>
<p>Bill di Blasio, the progressive mayor of New York who’s running for president, actually said that, “There is plenty of money in this world, and there’s plenty of money in this country, it’s just in the wrong hands. Democrats have to fix that.”</p>
<p>Karl Marx would be proud.</p>
<p>We need a break. We need a new way to look at our problems. We need a visionary. We need someone who has the capacity to heal our wounds. We desperately need someone who is … <em>different</em>.</p>
<p>And so, I’ve chosen this great day, July 4<span>th</span>, the day we commemorate our independence, to make an important announcement. Today I am proud to declare that I am endorsing … wait for it! … Marianne Williamson for president.</p>
<p>OK, I admit, until the debate I had no idea who she was or what she was doing on the stage. I thought maybe she was somebody’s girlfriend who didn’t want to watch the show from the green room.</p>
<p>Then she spoke, and I swooned. So did another conservative commentator, Jim Geraghty of National Review.</p>
<p><em>“I wonder if non-Republicans felt about Donald Trump in 2016 the way I, and it seems quite a few other conservatives, feel about Marianne Williamson,” he wrote.“Marianne, you beautiful lunatic. Every time you spoke, I didn’t know whether you were going to do a rain dance, cast a hex, or hold a séance. On those rare moments you got a chance to talk, I leaned forward because I had no idea what kind of absolute insanity was going to come out of your mouth. It was as riveting as a hostage situation. She contends Americans have chronic illnesses because of ‘chemical policies,’ she wonders where the rest of the field has been for decades (er, in public office), and her first call will be to the prime minister of New Zealand, and she wants to harness the power of love for political purposes. In many ways, she is exactly the candidate that today’s Democratic party deserves.”</em></p>
<p>Exactly, right?</p>
<p>And if not Marianne, who?</p>
<p>Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren? Bernie can’t say the word “billionaire” without spitting on anyone in the same zip code. And Ms. Warren was a great disappointment because while several other candidates proudly made their case in their native language, Spanish, Ms. Warren didn’t utter a single word in Cherokee.</p>
<p>Joe Biden? Kamala Harris? The Hickenlooper guy? Sure if all you want is a … <em>politician</em>.</p>
<p>So, Marianne Williamson, the author of “A Return to Love” and many other self-help books, is the obvious choice.</p>
<p>And I can’t wait for the big debate – the one between her and Donald Trump. I wouldn’t miss that if I were in a coma.</p>
<p>This is the woman who wrote, “Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.” That was in her book, “The Law of Divine Compensation: Mastering the Metaphysics of Abundance.”</p>
<p>All I can say is … WOW!</p>
<p>And she’s the woman who said, “Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.”</p>
<p><em>How good things really are</em>? Try telling that to your fellow Dems running for president who talk as if we’re in the midst of the Great Depression.</p>
<p>And how about this from Ms. Williamson: “We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.”</p>
<p>Serious question: Would you rather have her as the Democratic nominee or Eric Swalwell, the guy who’s entire platform consists of, “<em>Joe Biden is old and I’m not old</em>.”</p>
<p>At the debate, Marianne will walk over to Donald and put love beads around his neck before gently placing a white lily in his orange hair.<br /><br /></p>
<p>And Mr. Trump will respond with, “You’re not my type, besides you’re a loser and a maniac” before declaring that because she never served in public office she’s unfit to be president.</p>
<p>It could be the first presidential debate on pay per view. Please God, let it happen.</p>
<div> </div>Bernie Goldberg2019-07-04T18:27:00ZWhat's Next For Trump and America NowBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Whats-Next-For-Trump-and-America-Now/-281317440489183773.html2019-03-24T15:21:00Z2019-03-24T15:21:00Z<p>No collusion. No conspiracy. No coordination with the Russian government “despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign” during the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>That’s the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s exhaustive nearly two- year investigation into whether the President of the United States or anyone on his team was involved in what would have been the greatest scandal in American history. Despite non-stop speculation — and flat out allegations of the president’s guilt — from both Democrat partisans and liberal journalists that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin got together to corrupt our electoral process, it didn’t happen.</p>
<p>The special counsel’s conclusion, as reported in a four-page summary by Attorney General William Barr, is good news – and not only for President Trump. It’s good news for America.</p>
<p>Try telling that to Democrats who were hoping for the worst. For all their <em>concern </em>that the 2016 presidential election was rigged, you’d have every right to wonder if a rigged election is precisely what they wanted from the Mueller Report. If Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians he not only would be impeached in the House, he’d be convicted in the Senate.</p>
<p>And that’s what progressives have been dreaming of from the moment Donald Trump became president.<br /><br />So now that they can’t go after the president on collusion, Democrats are hanging their hopes on the possibility that he might have obstructed justice, an impeachable offense.</p>
<p>“Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller’s team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, determined that the special counsel’s investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller’s team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.”</p>
<p>The president’s lawyers (and other supporters) have said that absent an underlying crime – conspiracy with the Russians – the obstruction of justice possibility is a dead end. Not to Democrats in the House it isn’t who point out that the president could still be found guilty of obstructing justice, underlying crime or no underlying crime.</p>
<p>So now that the Mueller Report has been completed, Democrats will have to come to grips with an issue that’s been simmering for a while now: whether to begin impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump.</p>
<p>The American people will have a say on that matter. Polls will soon tell us if they want Democrats to pick up where Robert Mueller left off – or if they have had enough.</p>
<p>If the Democrats pursue impeachment to please their hard left base, if they do it at the expense of an electorate that may have grown weary of non-stop investigations, they’ll be handing President Trump a gift, which he’ll unwrap in November of 2020.</p>
<p>There’s more to come, either through leaks or the public release of more details. Stay tuned.</p>
<div> </div>Bernie Goldberg2019-03-24T15:21:00ZThe Mind Boggling Brian StelterBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Mind-Boggling-Brian-Stelter/630209434377198429.html2019-02-26T11:21:00Z2019-02-26T11:21:00Z<p>Apologies in advance, my friends: I usually try to write about something or someone important but today I’m making an exception. I’m writing about Brian Stelter, CNN’s so-called chief media correspondent.</p>
<p>It’s not just that Stelter is a hopelessly biased newsman. It’s also that he doesn’t know it, that he lacks introspection. He’s a media critic who doesn’t recognize his own media shortcomings. #Sad.</p>
<p>Week in and week out he goes after his two favorite targets – President Trump and Fox News. Good. No problem. When they screw up, which they often do, go after them. Hold them accountable.</p>
<p>But when he had the opportunity not long ago to grill his fellow Trump-detesting liberal, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, he chose instead to do what he does best: toss softballs and then sit there like a potted plant.</p>
<p>Here’s one of Stelter’s tough questions: What is the cumulative effect of President Trump’s attacks on the media?</p>
<p>Here’s another: Are the attacks out of control?</p>
<p>One more: How much has Donald Trump’s election contributed to a jump in online subscriptions at the New York Times?</p>
<p>I wrote a column about Stelter’s less than stellar performance and suggested a few questions he might have asked the editor of the Times, if Stelter didn’t have a man crush on Baquet.</p>
<p><span>Do you think diversity is important in America’s newsrooms? Why?</span></p>
<p><span>What about diversity of opinion? Do you think you have enough of that kind of diversity at the Times?</span></p>
<p><span>Do you think that a newsroom populated overwhelmingly by liberal journalists poses no problems with bias, subconscious or otherwise?</span></p>
<p><span>Would you be okay with a newsroom overwhelmingly populated by <em>conservative </em>journalists?</span></p>
<p><span>Do you believe, as many of your critics do, that there’s a liberal bias at the Times and in the media in general?</span></p>
<p><span>You’ve been a frequent critic of Fox News. Do you think Fox is any more biased than CNN or MSNBC?</span></p>
<p>There were more questions like that, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>I would have been more than happy to move on, to never write or think about Brian Stelter again. But along comes Jussie Smollett who inadvertently gives Stelter another opportunity to show us how dense he is.</p>
<p>Why in the world, Stelter wondered, would Smollett make up a story about being mugged by two white guys, who put a noose over his head, poured bleach on him and proclaimed “This is MAGA country.”</p>
<p>“It’s hard to imagine why anyone would think of orchestrating something like this,” Stelter said on CNN. “It just boggles the mind.” Several liberal colleagues sitting there with him were equally baffled.</p>
<p><em>“It boggles the mind! </em>One struggles in vain to think of another profession in which someone could evince or affect as much incompetence as Stelter and Co. and expect to remain employed.” is how Kyle Smith so elegantly put it in National Review.</p>
<p>Never mind that Stelter, as Smith points out, “has lived nearly his entire life in the era of hate-crime hoaxes” and so, you might think, wouldn’t find Smollett’s made up story so mind-boggling.</p>
<p>Did Stelter forget about the Duke-lacrosse gang-rape hoax of 2006? How about the University of Virginia gang-rape hoax of 2014? What about the incident just after Trump’s election when a woman on the New York City subway claimed drunken white men had ripped off her hijab – did CNN’s chief media reporter forget about that too? Did he forget about the Catholic high school kid in the MAGA hat in Washington and how the media got that story all wrong? <em>Does the name Tawana Brawley ring a bell</em>?</p>
<p>“Smollett purchased with his story things of immeasurable value: Attention, sympathy, love,” Smith says. “The world’s eyes were upon him when, the weekend after the attack, he gave a tearful, impassioned performance on stage in L.A. ‘I had to be here tonight, y’all. I couldn’t let those motherf***ers win. I will always stand for love. I will only stand for love.’”</p>
<p>Whatever you say, Jussie!</p>
<p>What about Brian Stelter? What does he stand for? Well, we can start with gullibility and move on to cluelessness. Like so many liberals, both in an out of the media, he was eager to believe the worst about Trump supporters, which led to his bafflement on why such a nice gay, black man would ever make up such a story.</p>
<p>But there’s a piece of evidence that should have set off alarms for Brian Stelter and his baffled compatriots in the media, in Hollywood and in the world of pandering politicians: Al Sharpton didn’t jump on a jet and head to Chicago to hold a well-publicized rally at the “scene of the crime”?</p>
<p>When white guys attack a black man in the dead of night and shout a pro-Trump warning at their helpless victim, and Reverend Al doesn’t head for the cameras and microphones … there probably is no scene of the crime.</p>Bernie Goldberg2019-02-26T11:21:00ZBeing a Liberal Journalist Means Never Having to Say You're SorryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Being-a-Liberal-Journalist-Means-Never-Having-to-Say-Youre-Sorry/-345625859500452109.html2019-02-22T19:06:00Z2019-02-22T19:06:00Z<p>In Chicago last year, 2948 people were shot; 561 were killed; almost all of the shooters and almost all of the victims were black. And the national news media yawned.</p>
<p>This wasn’t their kind of story. Black on black crime is not something that interests them. And it’s not only because in too many big American cities, it’s all too commonplace, amounting to a dog bites man story. No, there’s more to it than that.</p>
<p>Liberal journalists don’t like putting black people in a bad light, even if the black people in question are murderous thugs. White liberal guilt forbids it. Displaying good racial manners doesn’t allow it. So, by and large, they look the other way.</p>
<p>And then the <em>Empire </em>actor Jussie Smollett comes along to give journalists the kind of story they crave: a gay, black man minding his own business, just trying to get a sandwich on a bitter cold Chicago night, gets mugged by two white racists who put a noose around his neck and pour bleach on him while screaming racial and anti-gay slurs.</p>
<p>Oh, and one more thing that made the story too good to be true: They told their black victim: “This is MAGA country.”</p>
<p>If on top of everything else, journalists could blame Donald Trump supporters – and, of course, Donald Trump himself – for the crime, they’d have the kind of story they salivate over.</p>
<p>Except, as we now know, Jussie Smollett’s story has unraveled.</p>
<p>Chicago police say Smollett made the whole thing up, that he hired the two men – both black – to stage the mugging. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says Smollett, “took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to advance his career,” before adding, “I’m left hanging my head and asking why.”</p>
<p>That may not be so hard to answer. Jussie Smollett was simply taking advantage of the power that comes with being a victim in America. It’s how you get leverage. In Smollett’s case, he apparently was upset because he thought he wasn’t getting paid enough and wanted publicity to boost his career. Staging a fake attack – by anti-gay, anti-black, pro-Trump white men – was the way, he supposedly figured, to get sympathy and ultimately more money.</p>
<p>Race isn’t something you fool around with in America. But Jussie Smollett was willing to play with fire anyway. And too many mainstream journalists were more than willing not only to simply report the facts — that police were investigating his charges, which would have been legitimate — but to abandon their supposedly cherished skepticism and believe every word of his story.</p>
<p>Here are some examples collected by Breitbart:</p>
<p>Yamiche Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS, tweeted that,“We have to do better as a country. This is disgusting,”</p>
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<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_2/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">Joyce Vance, an MSNBC contributor, tweeted: “If someone commits this kind of act under your banner, you should have the decency to publicly condemn them and say it’s not what you stand for. But I doubt Trump will.”</div>
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<p>From Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone: “The brutal attack on him in Chicago appears to be yet another example not just of further moral decay, but of the brand of terrorism that still doesn’t seem to spark enough response by Americans.”</p>
<p>Or this from Zerlina Maxwell, an MSNBC analyst<span>: </span>“The media is broken. If they can’t call the attack on Jussie racist straight up then they need to find alternative employment.” Maxwell was upset by the use by some reporters of the word “apparent’ in front of “hate crime.” Here’s the rest of her outrage: “But to be clear pouring bleach on a Black person while you are yelling about MAGA = RACIST”</p>
<p>From Joy Reid of MSNBC: “Nooses never really disappeared as messages of a very specific kind of terror but every time they’re used, my God, it’s chilling. Praying for Jussie’s full recovery. And for us all.”</p>
<p>From Karen Attiah, an editor at the Washington Post: “Regarding the heinous attack on @JussieSmollett, yet another reminder that Trump’s ascendance and the resulting climate of hate has meant that lives have been increasingly at stake since 2015. Smollett could have been killed by those thugs screaming MAGA. Let that sink in.”</p>
<p>And finally, from CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, looking like an 18-wheeler just ran over her dog: “This is America in 2019.”</p>
<p>She’s right, but not the way she thinks. This is the state of too much American journalism in 2019, where reporters and editors are all too willing to believe anything that connects Donald Trump to a bigoted violent attack.</p>
<p>It’s also the state of too much of America in 2019 when playing the victim brings you sympathy and power and moral authority.</p>
<p>Before Smollett’s story fell apart, progressives who play at journalism were telling us how terrible the attack was, how saddened they were that something this terrible was still happening in America. But the dirty little secret is they were thrilled. It gave them the opportunity to show off their goodness, their racial sensitivity. It enabled them to provide “evidence” of one of their fundamental beliefs: that America is a racist, hateful country.</p>
<p>Liberal journalists apparently learned nothing from the fake Duke lacrosse rape story which they ran with despite the fact that there was no evidence linking the three Duke students to the supposed rape. All they needed to know is that the boys were white and supposedly privileged — and the victim was black.</p>
<p>They learned nothing more recently from the Covington, Kentucky Catholic school episode near the Lincoln Memorial, where a Native American walked up to a high school kid and banged his drum in the kid’s face – and the boy was portrayed as a racist – because he was white, male and was wearing a MAGA hat.</p>
<p>On racial matters, being a liberal journalist means never having to say you’re sorry – even when you should be.</p>Bernie Goldberg2019-02-22T19:06:00ZWhy Should Gov. Northam Resign?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Should-Gov.-Northam-Resign/451917499962334352.html2019-02-12T11:46:00Z2019-02-12T11:46:00Z<p>Let me state right here at the start, so as to avoid being hunted down like a rabid dog by the PC police, that I am no fan of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. I think he should resign. Not because he’s a racist. I don’t think he is. But because at first he said he was sorry that he was one of the two morons in that medical school yearbook picture – either the one in the KKK costume or the other idiot in blackface – but one day later he said that upon reflection he wasn’t either of them. If gross stupidity were an impeachable offense he’d be gone by now.</p>
<p>But it isn’t. So why should the governor step down?</p>
<p>Is it because his critics believe he’s a liar, that he really did put on a Klan outfit or went blackface for the picture? They have no proof of that. None!</p>
<p>Is he guilty simply because he acknowledges that around the same time he did in fact put dark shoe polish on his puss to look like Michael Jackson in a dance contest in San Antonio?</p>
<div>
<p>But if that’s reason enough to be labeled a racist why isn’t anyone calling Billy Crystal a racist? Never mind that Billy Crystal is not a racist. But he did put blackface on to look like Sammy Davis Jr. – on national television no less. It was funny!</p>
<p>But are we supposed to believe, somehow, that a white man going black to look like Michael Jackson is an act of racism but doing the same to look like Sammy Davis isn’t? How does that work?</p>
<p>And what about Jimmy Kimmel and Joy Behar? They put on dark makeup to, in Kimmel’s case, look like a black basketball player, and in Behar’s case to look like a “beautiful African woman,” as she put it — for Halloween. If Northam doesn’t get a pass, why do they? Same with Ted Danson and Sarah Silverman who decided to paint their faces black, for laughs.</p>
<p>This is a layup, but imagine if Donald Trump did anything like that – just for laughs, of course. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would personally put him on a raft and push it in the direction of the Bermuda Triangle.</p>
<p>Maybe the difference is that Ralph Northam is a <em>governor</em> and they’re only<em> comedians</em>. But it can’t be that. Kimmel and Behar fancy themselves a lot more than mere comics. They’re also social and political commentators who share their liberal opinions every chance they get.</p>
<p>So what else could it possibly be?<br /><br /></p>
<p>Maybe it’s what liberals who live in places like New York and Hollywood only acknowledge to members of their own progressive clan … about how deep down they think not much has changed in Mississippi and Alabama and even parts of Virginia in the last 50 years. Put <em>sophisticated</em> liberal elites on truth serum and there’s a good chance they’ll tell you how little they think of southerners, of their accents which elites equate with stupidity, and most of all, how they believe that a sizable portion of white (especially male) southerners remain to this day … unapologetic racists.</p>
<p>When I was working for CBS News many years ago in Atlanta, a CBS producer in New York asked me if they “wear shoes down there.” Yes, he was kidding but he didn’t ask people in Chicago or Los Angeles that question.</p>
<p>Maybe they want Governor Northam out because they believe he is, even now, a racist.</p>
<p>So let’s examine the life he’s led as governor: For one thing, he’s restored voting rights for felons; he supported the removal of Confederate monuments; and he attends an integrated church <em>with an African American pastor. </em> If he’s a racist today, he’s doing a pretty good job hiding it.</p>
<p>Former West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd didn’t pretend to be a Klansman. He <em>was </em>a Klansman – and not just any doofus, but an “Exalted Cyclops.” But when he repudiated his past he was accepted into polite circles. The NAACP even praised him. Why not Governor Northam who has apologized for the Michael Jackson thing and may not be guilty of the other thing?</p>
<div>
<p>It’s interesting that this is the same governor, who’s also a pediatrician, who just days before the pictures came to light calmly told an interviewer that if he delivers a baby that is alive, the result of a late term abortion that went awry, he would make sure the baby was comfortable while he consulted with the mother to decide what to do with the baby, whether the newborn infant should live or die. It wasn’t clear if he would simply let the baby “comfortably” die on its own or if he would help kill the infant.</p>
<p>To a lot of liberals, donning a KKK robe or putting on black makeup (<em>even if he didn’t really do it</em>) is a worse offense than infanticide. Go figure!</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2019-02-12T11:46:00ZSome Questions for Progressives Who Want to be PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Some-Questions-for-Progressives-Who-Want-to-be-President/52993697323788544.html2019-02-12T11:25:00Z2019-02-12T11:25:00Z<p>Politicians, liberals and conservatives, claim to support all sorts of controversial ideas knowing full well they’ll never have to actually vote on any of them. Talk is cheap. Pandering to the base, especially when there are no consequences, is good for business – and the business a lot of politicians are in is the business of keeping their jobs and with a little luck moving up the ladder.</p>
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<p>Before this political season is over several hundred Democrats may decide to run for president, most of them hailing from the progressive wing of the party. They know what their left wing supporters want and they’ll promise just about anything to win their vote.</p>
<p>But what happens if one of them actually gets elected? The things politicians say very often have absolutely nothing in common with what they would actually do.</p>
<p>So what if journalists asked the kind of questions that would force the presidential wannabes to state <em>not </em>just how they feel about this issue or that … but whether they would actually propose or actively support legislation to show off their progressive bona fides.</p>
<p>Here are a few questions journalists might want to ask their allies in the Democratic Party who are running for president. Some of the questions admittedly are provocative. But since we don’t know how far progressives would actually go if one of them were elected, asking provocative questions might shed some light on how far left they’d try to take America, both economically and culturally.</p>
<p>Here’s my list:<br /><br />1. Like most decent Americans, you are against racism in all its ugly forms. To compensate black Americans for what they’ve historically gone through would you support legislation that would pay them reparations – say, $50,000 to every African American man, woman and child alive today?</p>
<p>2. If you oppose <em>financial </em>reparations, would you at least support giving African Americans another kind of restitution that wouldn’t cost taxpayers any money? Would you be willing to give every African American voter TWO votes in every presidential election instead of just one – again, to make up for past injustices?</p>
<p>3. You have repeatedly said women earn less than men for essentially the same kind of work.You’ve also said this has been a longstanding problem in this country. So, would you propose legislation if you become president that would require employers to pay women at least 10 percent <em>more </em>than men, for essentially the same work to try to even things out? If not, why not?</p>
<p>4. Do you think a baby, <em>after it is actually delivered</em>, regardless of his or her deformities, is a person with all the rights of any other person? If a late term abortion, for whatever reason, went awry and resulted in a live baby being delivered, do you think doctors and mothers should have the right to withhold treatment and let the baby die? Would you want laws to punish doctors who take <em>active </em>measures to end the baby’s life – if that’s what the mother wants? Should the mother face penalties too if she tells the doctor to end her baby’s life?</p>
<p>5. Would you propose legislation if you become president to make college tuition free at all public universities? How high would you be willing to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for “free” college and other social programs like “Medicare for all”?</p>
<p>6. Do you support open borders with our Central American neighbors? Would you propose legislation that would open our borders to anyone from Central America who wants to enter and stay in the United States?</p>
<p>7. Would you as president ask Congress to pass a law requiring employers to pay their workers a minimum wage of $15 an hour? How about $20 an hour?</p>
<p>8. Would you support a so-called guaranteed living wage for all Americans? If yes, how much would that wage be?</p>
<p>9. Would you propose or support legislation limiting the amount of money a corporate executive is allowed to make in any given year? If yes, how much is “enough” in your view?</p>
<p>10. If elected, will you actively support your fellow progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” which includes a 10-year commitment to convert “100 percent of the power demand in the United States” to “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources.”? Are you on board with that part of the plan that calls for the massive expansion of high-speed rail so that most air travel would be rendered obsolete? Do you know how much the Green New Deal would cost American taxpayers?</p>
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<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_2/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__"><iframe id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_2/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0" src="https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-32/html/container.html" title="3rd party ad content" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" data-is-safeframe="true" sandbox="allow-forms allow-pointer-lock allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" data-google-container-id="2" data-load-complete="true"></iframe>One more thing about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party’s newest shiny object: She wouldn’t run from any of these questions. She proudly calls herself a democratic socialist. She believes the United States needs a major overhaul. Let’s see if her fellow progressives, the ones who want to be president, share her passion to fundamentally change the country they want to lead.</div>
</div>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2019-02-12T11:25:00ZIf You Want Donald Trump To Win A Second Term, Pray For Howard Schultz to RunBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-You-Want-Donald-Trump-To-Win-A-Second-Term-Pray-For-Howard-Schultz-to-Run/52458557511622695.html2019-02-07T11:44:00Z2019-02-07T11:44:00Z<p>Let’s see if we have this right:</p>
<p>Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, says he’s sorry he either put on a KKK outfit or showed up in a picture on his medical school yearbook page in blackface … wait … before he said the very next day, Never mind, I made a boo-boo, it wasn’t me.</p>
<p>Everybody this side of Pluto wants him to resign even if he’s now telling the truth and wasn’t in the picture. I want him to resign because he’s an idiot.</p>
<p>Then we have the next in line should the governor take a long walk on a short pier – the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax … who stands accused of sexually assaulting a woman, a college professor, in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention.</p>
<p>He denies it, says what happened was consensual. But when he pretty much called her a liar, she issued a statement. “What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault,” she says, adding that he forced her to perform oral sex on him despite her struggles against his doing so.</p>
<p>Remember when we were told we have to believe women when they make such charges. Funny thing, but most of the people who were lecturing us – the ones who oh so solemnly told the world they believed Christine Blasey Ford when she said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school – don’t want to talk about the allegations against the lieutenant governor.</p>
<div> </div>
<p>Howard Schultz as you surely know is the guy who became a billionaire selling over-priced lattes to millions of Americans at the company he turned into an international brand, Starbucks. Mr. Schultz is seriously toying with the idea of running for president as an independent. He thinks Americans are tired of polarization, tired of both Democrats and Republicans, and yearn for someone like him, pretty much liberal on social issues conservative on economic issues, someone who he says won’t be influenced by special interests.</p>
<p>If you want Donald Trump in the White House for two terms, pray that Howard Schultz decides to run.</p>
<p>If he does, he’ll be a factor only in blue states. He’ll split the Democratic vote. He can call himself an independent all he wants, but everyone knows he’s a <em>progressive </em>independent. That spells doom for the Democrat nominee.</p>
<p>But wait, you might say Ross Perot ran as an independent and hurt George H.W. Bush, not Bill Clinton. Yes, but that’s because Perot was more Republican than Democrat, no matter how many times he called himself an independent.<br /><br /></p>
<p>Schultz’ candidacy is a long way from a sure thing. Democrats – and Never Trumpers – will beseech him not to run. They’ll tell him if he does, he’ll elect a man they and he detest. They’ll tell him he doesn’t stand a chance to actually win.</p>
<p>He may take their advice. Or he may not.</p>
<p>Going back to the column I was going to write, if it’s a race between Donald Trump and almost anybody there’s a good chance almost anybody would win. Enough Americans who voted for Mr. Trump the first time around, either because they wanted to give a brash billionaire who was different from every other politician a chance, or because they flat out loathed Hillary Clinton, may very well have grown weary of the non-stop chaos and controversy of his presidency.</p>
<p>And if the Democrats muster the courage to put a moderate (relatively speaking) like Joe Biden at the top of their ticket, I’d bet the ranch Donald Trump would lose. But again, I don’t think he’d even run if he thought he didn’t have a good chance of winning. Why go out a loser when he could tell himself and his fans that he’s the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, if not greater?</p>
<p>So if you want Donald Trump to run and win a second term, put your money where you mouth is. Contribute to the campaign. The Howard Schultz campaign<br /><br /></p>
<p>It’s hypocritical, of course, but also understandable. Mr. Fairfax is black and having a (second) black governor in Richmond, Virginia — the capital of the Old Confederacy –would be quite a notch in the liberal/progressive belt. (Doug Wilder was the first.) Apparently, some allegations of sexual assault, credible as they may be, are worth ignoring.</p>
<p>And the third in line to the governorship, Mark Herring, the attorney general, who just a few days ago said the governor must resign, has announced that he too put on blackface at a party in 1980.</p>
<p>Is this a Mel Brooks movie or what?</p>
<p>The fourth in line is the speaker of the Virginia House. Guess what? He’s a Republican.</p>
<p>Stand by as Chris Matthews or Don Lemon or some other left-wing knucklehead comes to the conclusion that it’s all a Machiavellian Republican plot to install one of their own in the governor’s mansion.</p>
<p>And what are the odds that before this is over some conspiratorial progressive at the New York Times will blame Donald Trump for the mess in Virginia? I’m serious: What are the odds?</p>
<p>Alert: By the time you read this everyone involved may have resigned — and we may learn that the Republican Speaker of the House is Vladimir Putin’s brother-in-law. Hey, it’s possible!</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>Bernie Goldberg2019-02-07T11:44:00ZIf You Want Donald Trump To Win A Second Term, Pray For Howard Schultz to RunBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-You-Want-Donald-Trump-To-Win-A-Second-Term-Pray-For-Howard-Schultz-to-Run/555604050576476052.html2019-01-30T11:46:00Z2019-01-30T11:46:00Z<p>I was all set to sit down and write a column about how Donald Trump would never see a second term in the White House. About how he would look at the polls, determine that he didn’t stand a chance, tell America he accomplished more than any other president in the history of the planet – a booming economy, low unemployment, fewer regulations that suffocate business, the appointment of many conservative judges to the federal bench including two to the Supreme Court – declare victory and go back to his gilded penthouse on Fifth Avenue. About how if despite all this he decided to run anyway, how he wouldn’t win because he’d have to hold on to every state he won the last time around, about how he couldn’t count on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to go his way a second time. About how he couldn’t count either on Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, or a bunch of other states that voted for him in 2016. That was the column I was going to write … and then … Howard Schultz came along.</p>
<p>Howard Schultz as you surely know is the guy who became a billionaire selling over-priced lattes to millions of Americans at the company he turned into an international brand, Starbucks. Mr. Schultz is seriously toying with the idea of running for president as an independent. He thinks Americans are tired of polarization, tired of both Democrats and Republicans, and yearn for someone like him, pretty much liberal on social issues conservative on economic issues, someone who he says won’t be influenced by special interests.</p>
<p>If you want Donald Trump in the White House for two terms, pray that Howard Schultz decides to run.</p>
<p>If he does, he’ll be a factor only in blue states. He’ll split the Democratic vote. He can call himself an independent all he wants, but everyone knows he’s a <em>progressive </em>independent. That spells doom for the Democrat nominee.</p>
<p>But wait, you might say Ross Perot ran as an independent and hurt George H.W. Bush, not Bill Clinton. Yes, but that’s because Perot was more Republican than Democrat, no matter how many times he called himself an independent.<br /><br /></p>
<p>Schultz’ candidacy is a long way from a sure thing. Democrats – and Never Trumpers – will beseech him not to run. They’ll tell him if he does, he’ll elect a man they and he detest. They’ll tell him he doesn’t stand a chance to actually win.</p>
<p>He may take their advice. Or he may not.</p>
<p>Going back to the column I was going to write, if it’s a race between Donald Trump and almost anybody there’s a good chance almost anybody would win. Enough Americans who voted for Mr. Trump the first time around, either because they wanted to give a brash billionaire who was different from every other politician a chance, or because they flat out loathed Hillary Clinton, may very well have grown weary of the non-stop chaos and controversy of his presidency.</p>
<p>And if the Democrats muster the courage to put a moderate (relatively speaking) like Joe Biden at the top of their ticket, I’d bet the ranch Donald Trump would lose. But again, I don’t think he’d even run if he thought he didn’t have a good chance of winning. Why go out a loser when he could tell himself and his fans that he’s the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, if not greater?</p>
<p>So if you want Donald Trump to run and win a second term, put your money where you mouth is. Contribute to the campaign. The Howard Schultz campaign</p>Bernie Goldberg2019-01-30T11:46:00ZThe Ugliness of a Liberal Self-Righteous MobBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Ugliness-of-a-Liberal-Self-Righteous-Mob/526724189423050720.html2019-01-24T11:04:00Z2019-01-24T11:04:00Z<p>One of the good things about liberals is their dedication to calling out bigotry when others have chosen to remain silent. Liberals were the ones who had the courage to speak up – before it became popular — for black civil rights and women’s rights and gay rights. They deserve credit for that.</p>
<p>But liberals aren’t especially good at looking inward, at spotting their own narrow-mindedness. I have the episode at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in mind, the mess involving the boys from a Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky.</p>
<p>Why did so many on the Left – and some on the Right – rush to judgment about what happened? Why were so many liberals so willing to condemn the boys for the confrontation?</p>
<p>Yes, the first video might have given the impression that one of the boys was “smirking” at a 64-year old American Indian who was banging on a ceremonial drum, supposedly hoping to ease the tensions between several opposing factions. Later videos that were longer revealed a more complicated context.</p>
<p>Should the pundits have waited before delivering their guilty verdict on the boys? Of course! But why didn’t they? Was it the rush to be first to show off their white liberal virtue by condemning the boys? Was it a form of liberal bigotry the Left doesn’t like to examine? And why were they less enthusiastic about calling out the Black Israelites who were the real troublemakers – the ones who were shouting anti-white, anti-Native American, and anti-gay epithets at just about everybody?</p>
<p>Let’s just say that condemning bigotry when it comes from a minority group — while not unheard of — isn’t a strong suit of the Left; it kind of violates a certain liberal etiquette.</p>
<p>Were some of the boys rude? They might have been. Did they needlessly do the Tomahawk Chop as a symbolic shot at the Native American, a man named Nathan Phillips? Maybe, though in my mind, it was hardly a big deal.</p>
<p>The boys’ real crime in the eyes of so many liberals was that, as the Wall Street Journal explained it, they checked all the “culturally deplorable boxes” in today’s progressive America: They were white, they were male, they were Christian, they had just attended the annual March for Life, and perhaps most of all, they were guilty of wearing Donald Trump MAGA hats.</p>
<p>When you hate Donald Trump as much as the elite Left does, wearing one of his hats is pretty much a crime against humanity.</p>
<p>Reza Aslan, the best-selling author, tweeted that Nick Sandmann, the high school junior who calmly stood face to face with the Indian had a “punchable face.” Howard Dean, the former Democratic Party chief and presidential candidate, said Covington Catholic is “a hate factory.” Another progressive said their personal information – names, addresses and phone numbers – should be made public … presumably so they could be harassed or maybe even punched in the face, or worse.</p>
<p>Liberals need to confront their own problem with stereotypes. They assumed these boys started the whole thing because liberals believe that if you’re white, male, a Christian who opposes abortion and supports Donald Trump, you must be one of the deplorables Hillary Clinton condemned during her presidential campaign.</p>
<p>As for that stare-down between the 64-year old Indian and the teenage boy: Turns out, the student didn’t go out of his way to go head-to-head with the Indian; it was the other way around. The students were waiting for their bus to take them home when the drum-banging Indian and his entourage confronted them.</p>
<p>Let me end with some wise words from that same editorial in the Wall Street Journal, words about the ugliness of righteousness in the wrong hands:</p>
<div><span>“Most of those who so eagerly maligned these boys will face no lasting consequences, while the boys themselves will always have to wonder when they are turned down for a job or a school, whether someone had Googled their name and found only half this story. This is an ugly moment in America, all right, but there are few things uglier than a righteous leftist mob.”</span></div>Bernie Goldberg2019-01-24T11:04:00ZWarning: Jim Acosta Is Hazardous to Honest JournalismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Warning:-Jim-Acosta-Is-Hazardous-to-Honest-Journalism/-51041112288545614.html2019-01-16T11:36:00Z2019-01-16T11:36:00Z<p>It’s a fundamental, common sense rule of journalism: Hard news reporters don’t cover their friends. It’s just too difficult to be loyal to the truth when the truth makes a friend look like a jerk, or a crook. The same rule holds for commentators. Can they really give thoughtful, unfiltered opinions about a friend who, to use one easy example, is President of the United States? No, they can’t.</p>
<p>So anything hyped as an “exclusive interview” involving Donald Trump and Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Judge Jeanine Pirro or the entire staff of Fox & Friends, isn’t really an <em>interview</em>. It’s more like a <em>make-out session</em>.</p>
<p>Unlike hard news journalists, commentators have more leeway; they are, of course, entitled to their opinions. But being in the opinion business doesn’t give a commentator license to morph into a PR man or woman on behalf of a friend, especially when the friend sits in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>You’d think the people who run a business like the Fox News Channel would know this. If they do, they don’t care.</p>
<p>Liberals, I’m sure, would cheer every word you just read. But there’s another fundamental, common sense rule of journalism that the Left either doesn’t grasp or doesn’t care to grasp: Just as people in the news business can’t cover someone they’ve fallen head over heels for … neither can they fairly cover someone they viscerally detest.</p>
<p>Let’s start with an easy target, the poster boy for biased journalism, Jim Acosta, CNN’s senior White House correspondent. In that capacity, he’s a hard news reporter who’s supposed to keep his opinions to himself. But it’s obvious that Acosta is incapable of doing that. He loathes the president and he’s determined to make a name for himself by showing anyone watching how much he loathes the man who calls CNN “fake news.”<br /><br /></p>
<p>So before the president’s recent immigration speech from the Oval Office, Acosta asked Mr. Trump’s senior advisor, Kellyanne Conway, on camera, this loaded question: “Can you promise that the president will tell the truth tonight? Will he tell the truth?” And after the speech Acosta was just as snarky, telling the CNN audience: “I think that address probably should have come with a surgeon general’s warning — it was hazardous to the truth.”</p>
<p>It’s a safe bet that Acosta came up with that line before the president ever opened his mouth. You do that when you’re in the smart-ass business. Would Acosta ask President Obama’s press secretary if Mr. Obama was going to tell the truth in an upcoming speech – even after Mr. Obama told a whopper to the American people, promising lower insurance premiums and guaranteeing we could keep our doctors and our health care plans under his ironically-named Affordable Care Act?</p>
<p>I don’t think so, either.</p>
<p>Let me detour for a brief personal note. In 1996, when as a CBS News correspondent I had had enough of liberal bias at CBS and at other mainstream news organizations, I took on my colleagues in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Who at CNN, I wonder, is going to take on Jim Acosta? Who’s going to tell CNN chief Jeff Zucker that what Acosta does isn’t tough journalism; it isn’t even analysis. It’s nothing more than Trump bashing commentary masquerading as straight news reporting (which, by the way, is just what Jeff Zucker, who is desperate to boost his network’s pathetic ratings, wants).</p>
<p>CNN, of course, isn’t alone. We have the New York Times, a once proud newspaper that now, on a daily basis, shows us how hatred for the president motivates their journalism. Take the page one “News Analysis” piece by Peter Baker. “So it has come to this,” he writes in the lead paragraph. “The president of the United States was asked over the weekend whether he is a Russian agent. And he refused to directly answer.”</p>
<p>There’s no mistaking the implication in that last sentence — that maybe, just maybe, the president really is a Russian mole. But the next paragraph explains that Mr. Trump found the question too insulting for any kind of “direct answer.”</p>
<p>So why would a page one editor allow such a toxic line to get into the supposed newspaper of record? Because, starting at the top, a large percentage of the men and women at the Times just plain can’t stand the president, that’s why! He’s not sophisticated. He’s crude. He’s not well read. <em>He’s not one of them</em>!</p>
<p>Just one day later, another Times front-page story puts the president once again in the crosshairs. Here’s the headline: “At Inauguration, Spending Money At A Record Pace.” And the sub headline: “$10,000 Just on Makeup.”<br /><br /></p>
<p>This “scoop” appeared on page one <em>two years after the inauguration</em>. And who cares how much they spent on makeup? It’s as if the Times has a quota: Every day on page one there has to be at least one and preferably two or three stories that bash the president that the newspaper of record finds unfit for office.</p>
<p>And then there are the opinion pages of the Times where the wise men and women reside, the gods who on a daily basis tell us that American democracy is on life support because of a president who they believe must be impeached for the sake of the country. They constantly tell us how uncivil he is, how his name-calling lacks dignity.</p>
<p>Fair enough. But then they go and run a Paul Krugman column under the headline, “Donald Trump And His Team of Morons.”</p>
<p>Morons? I thought the Times was against incivility and name-calling, that such behavior offended the sensibilities of decent people.</p>
<p>In 2016, the same Paul Krugman wrote in the Times that thanks to Trump’s election, ” … we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.” So who’s the moron here?</p>
<p>The people who run the New York Times have been in a funk ever since the impossible happened on Election Night. Relentlessly going after the president on page one and on their opinion pages is a way to show their liberal customers how sorry they are.</p>
<p><em>Mea culpa, fellow Trump-hating progressives. We screwed up by allowing this idiot to become president; we didn’t grasp the anger, frustration and hatred of his many deplorable voters. But we will redeem ourselves. We will attack him relentlessly in every section of the newspaper until he leaves office, voluntarily, or better yet, involuntarily.</em></p>
<p>There ought to be a sign in big bold letters at the door of every newsroom in America: You can’t report on or give honest opinions about the friends you love … or the enemies you hate. We won’t let you do that here in this newsroom. It’s unprofessional.</p>
<p>And there ought to be another sign in big bold letters on the entrance to the Oval Office: Mr. President, please stop handing out ammunition to journalists who hate you … and stop doing “interviews” with TV sycophants who love you. It’s humiliating – to them and to you.</p>Bernie Goldberg2019-01-16T11:36:00ZIf It Bleeds It Leads - Especially If It's About the PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads---Especially-If-Its-About-the-President/-512687664977116929.html2018-12-31T22:33:00Z2018-12-31T22:33:00Z<p>Bad news is built into the DNA of journalism. Reporters don’t cover the bank that didn’t get robbed or the plane that didn’t crash. Tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes make page one. Sunny days don’t.</p>
<p>But we all know that most banks don’t get robbed and most planes land safely and most of the time there’s nothing special about the weather. So we automatically put the bad news into its proper context.</p>
<p>I thought about this the other day when I had some time off and put the television on and wound up watching news for way too many hours. Trust me: This is not a good idea – unless you like being depressed.</p>
<p>Just about all the news on TV is bad news and after a while you get a distorted view of the world. You think things are far worse than they actually are. In the old days, there were only a couple of times during the day you could watch the news on television – a few hours in the morning and Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley for 30 minutes (counting commercials) in the evening. Now the bad news is on all the time, 24 hours a day, every day. And if you’re a news junkie it’s easy to overdose.</p>
<p>The tsunami in Indonesia and the cop killer in California and the death of immigrant children on the southern border are all legitimate news. But there’s more – much more – that never gets covered. I guess that at some level we know that, just as we know most banks don’t get robbed. Still, too much bad news, I suspect, makes us more pessimistic about the world – and our lives – than is good for any of us.</p>
<p>But you can’t blame journalists for covering the dark side no matter how unrepresentative it is of a bigger reality. Dog bites man, after all, isn’t news. But what about the times when journalists go out of their way – sometimes, way out of their way –to find something to “expose,” usually about someone they have it in for? Which brings us to the media’s relationship with just such a person — Donald Trump.<br /><br />Mr. Trump visited troops in Iraq the day after Christmas and on TV we saw military men and women schmoozing with the president and enjoying each other’s company. There were lots of smiles and a few selfies with the president. There was video of the troops handing Mr. Trump their Make America Great Again hats and the president autographing them.</p>
<p>So far so good.</p>
<p>But it didn’t take long for CNN to bring us the <em>bad </em>news. We heard CNN contributor Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby – a former Obama administration spokesperson, by the way – say, “It is completely inappropriate” for the troops to ask the president to sign the hat, which Kirby said, “is a campaign item.” And he blamed the president too. “Every time he’s around military audiences, he tends to politicize it.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure if Kirby would have preferred the president to tell the soldiers, “I won’t sign your hat, it’s completely inappropriate.” Imagine if he had done that. Liberal journalists would have slammed him for his “completely inappropriate” heartless behavior toward the troops.</p>
<p>And on its website, CNN politics reporter Eli Watkins wrote a story under the headline: “Troops bringing Trump hats to sign may violate military rule,”</p>
<p>Let’s say Kirby and Watkins are right. Let’s say the president and the troops engaged in political activity and that such activity is, by the book, inappropriate. Is this really a big deal? Is this worth commenting on? The CNN people come off as annoying hall monitors, as grumpy scolds, who can’t look the other way even when the troops are enjoying a rare break from the daily tension associated with being in Iraq.</p>
<p>And there’s the Washington Post lead in the Trump visits Iraq story. “President Trump touched down Wednesday in Iraq in his first visit to a conflict zone as commander in chief, a week after announcing a victory over the Islamic State that his own Pentagon and State Department days earlier said remained incomplete.</p>
<p>“The president’s visit to Al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad, which was shrouded in secrecy, follows months of public pressure for him to spend time with troops deployed to conflicts in the Middle East and punctuates the biggest week of turmoil the Pentagon has faced during his presidency.”</p>
<p>As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal put it: “These reporters can’t even begin a news account of a presidential visit to a military base without working in a compilation of Mr. Trump’s controversies, contradictions, and failings.<br /><br />“The point isn’t to feel sorry for Mr. Trump, whose rhetorical attacks on the press have often been contemptible. The point is that such gratuitously negative reporting undermines the credibility of the press without Mr. Trump having to say a word.”</p>
<p>Donald Trump is wrong about many things. He’s wrong to call journalists, even biased journalists, “The enemy of the American people.” He’s wrong to throw the words “fake news” around as cavalierly as he does – usually to deflect from legitimate news he doesn’t like. But he’s right when he says he can’t catch a break from much of the press.</p>
<p>Yes, negativity is built into the DNA of journalism. We don’t need to know that the First National Bank had a routine day or that the Delta jet made a smooth landing in Atlanta. But the non-stop negativity of almost all the other news gives us a deceptively gloomy image of what’s really going on in the world.</p>
<p>It’s true in general and it’s especially true when the news media have a president they detest in their crosshairs.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-31T22:33:00ZA Handy Dandy Guide for Loyal Trump FansBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Handy-Dandy-Guide-for-Loyal-Trump-Fans/776023896663588944.html2018-12-26T21:54:00Z2018-12-26T21:54:00Z<p>From time to time when I write something about President Trump that his loyalists don’t like, some of them take to social media with a variety of thoughtful observations, like “Drop Dead, Bernie!” I always welcome intelligent comments, so thanks to all of you who send messages like that.</p>
<p>And every now and then the loyalists have well-meaning, questions for me, like “How come you haven’t dropped dead yet, Bernie?”</p>
<p>Thank you for those questions.</p>
<p>As a year end gift to those of you who send such heartfelt notes my way, I have prepared a handy dandy guide that might help answer some of your questions and deal with some of your concerns. I truly hope this guide helps:<br /><br /><img src="/images/aandb/angrytrump2.png" alt="" /></p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-26T21:54:00ZDonald Trump's Biggest MistakeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Donald-Trumps-Biggest-Mistake/384876981647503602.html2018-12-21T20:40:00Z2018-12-21T20:40:00Z<p>Donald Trump really screwed up. No, not with the Russian collusion thing. If there were anything to that we’d all know it by now. The New York Times would have run headlines the size of the Empire State Building telling us about it. “<span>Trump and Putin subvert American Democracy. Trump To Be Tried For Treason. Yea!</span>” MSNBC and CNN would be throwing New Year’s Eve type parties – <em>on the air </em>– with bright red graphics on the screen shouting, “<span>HE’S A CROOK. WE TOLD YOU SO</span>!!!”</p>
<p>The fact is Donald Trump screwed up <em>by winning the presidency</em> in 2016. That’s right. He screwed up by not losing an election even he thought he would lose.</p>
<p>Winning was never the plan. The plan, after Hillary beat him, was to claim the election was rigged, and then use his victim status to burnish the Trump brand and make money. I always thought he was going to start a TV channel after he lost – the Trump Channel, where he could pontificate anytime he wanted to an audience that would believe anything he told them, and sell Trump steaks, wine, ties and seats at Trump University during the many commercial breaks.</p>
<p>But he screwed up and won. He can’t do anything right, can he?</p>
<p>You think if he lost we’d even know who Stormy Daniels is? You think we’d care about his mysterious tax return, which he won’t show us? You think the New York Times would devote even 25 words to a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow?</p>
<p>If Trump had lost we’d remain in blissful ignorance over the meaning of the word <em>emoluments</em>. And maybe most of all we’d be spared having to look at and listen to the two Michaels: Cohen and Avenatti.</p>
<p>If Donald Trump should be impeached for anything, it’s for exposing us to those two clowns.</p>
<p>Thank you Mr. Trump – for nothing! And what did he get for winning? This is some of what he got, as Holman Jenkins put it so elegantly in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump was already an unusually heavily scrutinized figure. Now he’s attracting the kind of subatomic legal scrutiny reserved only for presidents of the opposite party when the press is inveterately hostile too. Example: the New York Times reauditing his family’s heavily audited tax returns to find a welter of abuses that somehow escaped the IRS and New York tax department.”</p>
<p>Happy now, DJT?</p>
<p>Someone needs to be indicted for all this. And it ought to be Hillary Clinton. If she hadn’t been such an unlikeable phony during the campaign someone like Donald Trump would never have been elected president.</p>
<p>No wonder he detests her so much.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-21T20:40:00ZTo Impeach or Not to Impeach? That Is the QuestionBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/To-Impeach-or-Not-to-Impeach-That-Is-the-Question/587608739540347493.html2018-12-11T19:27:00Z2018-12-11T19:27:00Z<p>So it looks like Donald Trump lied about sex then paid the two women he supposedly hooked up with to keep quiet about the liaisons. At least that’s the allegation from Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen who has pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and implicated Mr. Trump in the deal.</p>
<p>And paying hush money to a porn star and a Playboy centerfold is an impeachable offense? Really?</p>
<p>The perpetually angry Democratic base thinks so and it’s a safe bet they’ll put pressure on liberals in Congress to get the impeachment ball rolling when they take control of the House in a few weeks.</p>
<p>But Democrats know that impeachment could backfire politically and cause them a lot more damage in 2020 than it would cause the president. Do American voters really want to go through the trauma of impeachment over something like this – especially when everyone knows the president will never be convicted in the Senate?</p>
<p>Still, Democrats are falling all over each other trying to get to a TV camera to express their outrage that the president may have violated campaign finance laws when he paid the hush money.</p>
<p>But did he pay off the women, through his attorney Michael Cohen, in order to help him win in 2016 – or did he pay them off to save himself a little embarrassment?</p>
<p>The president certainly would use the latter as a defense if he ever had to testify under oath.</p>
<p>But even if he paid them to keep the news off the front page right before the election, campaign finance violations have traditionally been seen as civil matters, not criminal. You pay a fine and that’s the end of it.</p>
<p>Not when you’re a Democrat who’s been praying that the special counsel comes up with something, <em>anything</em>, that would sink the presidency of Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>Let’s start with Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, who will lead the House Judiciary Committee next month. He went on CNN and said if President Trump broke campaign finance laws by arranging hush-money payments to the two women, he would have committed “impeachable offenses … in the service of fraudulently obtaining office.”</p>
<p>Nadler, aware of the potential blowback that would hurt Democrats, did add: “Whether [the allegations] are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.”</p>
<p>Nadler, by the way, was a member of the Judiciary Committee when it voted to impeach former President Bill Clinton, which Nadler said at the time was tantamount to an attempted coup and a gross abuse of the impeachment power.</p>
<p>That was then.</p>
<p>And over at CBS, another liberal congressman, Adam Schiff, said that “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. … He may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”</p>
<p>That’s what wishful thinking sounds like when you want the progressive base to know you’re on their side.</p>
<p>Lying about sex and paying hush money may be wrong but what does it have to do with colluding with the Russians to throw the 2016 presidential election? After all, that’s what the special counsel was supposed to look into when he started his investigation 19 months ago.</p>
<p>And an editorial in the Wall Street Journal had this to say about the Democrats and their outrage: “Mr. Trump lied to the public about his dealings with Mr. Cohen. Bill Clinton lied to the public and under oath in a legal proceeding, yet Democrats defended him. Good luck trying to impeach Mr. Trump for campaign finance violations.”</p>
<p>Or as Alan Dershowitz put it on Fox:</p>
<p>“I want everyone out there to imagine the following scenario: Let’s assume that when Bill Clinton was running for president, Paula Jones came up to him and said, ‘Unless you pay me $130,000, I’ll reveal our affair.’ And let’s assume that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton together did exactly what is alleged that Donald Trump and [Michael] Cohen did together. I guarantee you, The New York Times, NBC, MSNBC would be railing against any prosecutor who dared to suggest that this was a violation of the campaign finance law. Everybody would be on the other side of this issue. There would be Republicans out there saying strip him of the presidency, impeach him, indict him. Every Democrat would be saying this is a witch hunt, this is terrible,” Dershowitz said. “We need a single standard. If you wouldn’t go after Bill Clinton, don’t go after Donald Trump. If you’re going after Donald Trump, then you have to go after Hillary Clinton for everything she allegedly did.”</p>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>Once upon a time that kind of even handed approach would have been obvious. But that was when principles mattered. Now all that counts is what side you’re on. Principles may have died but hypocrisy is alive and well.</p>
</div>
<p class="entry-meta"> </p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-11T19:27:00ZFruits and Vegetables Have Feelings Too, You Know!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Fruits-and-Vegetables-Have-Feelings-Too-You-Know!/521077956713379375.html2018-12-10T19:25:00Z2018-12-10T19:25:00Z<p>In my last column <a href="https://bernardgoldberg.com/157998-2/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">I wrote about PETA</a> … about the organization’s latest campaign – against what it calls “Anti Animal Language.”</p>
<p>“Just as it became unacceptable to use racist [or] homophobic language,” PETA tweeted, “phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start ‘bringing home the bagels’ instead of the bacon.”</p>
<p>No more “Beat a dead horse,” if PETA has its way. Instead, “Feed a fed horse.”</p>
<p>No more, “Take the bull by the horns,” in PETA world. It ought to be “Take the flower by the thorns.”</p>
<p>“Words matter,” PETA tells us, “and as our understanding of social justice evolves, our language evolves along with it.”</p>
<p>Yes, words do matter, I wrote. And then I offered a two word description of PETA’s idea: <span><em>You’re nuts</em></span>!</p>
<p>But now I’m re-thinking things. Why? Because not long after the column appeared, I got a call from the president of the Vegetarian and Fruitarian Association of America – a man named Russell Sprout.</p>
<p>“PETA is right,” he told me in no uncertain terms. “And we at the Vegetarian and Fruitarian Association of America also want changes in language about fruits and vegetables in order to reflect more kindly on our fruit and veggie friends.”</p>
<p>I thought he was kidding. Turns out he wasn’t.</p>
<p>“Names that suggest the slaughtering of vegetables is not a good thing,” Sprout said. “So let’s stop using the term ‘mashed potatoes.’ Potatoes never hurt anyone. We should not not use violent language to describe a tasty food.”</p>
<p>“Associating food with violence,” he explained, “gives food a bad name,” he said, before adding, ”It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”</p>
<p>“And scrambled eggs,” he went on, “are not just another bad use of language, scrambling an egg is also a form of homicide.”</p>
<p>“Homicide?” I responded. “Yes, we’re not only consuming the egg, we’re scrambling it first. How would you like it if somebody scrambled you and before she ate you,” he asked in all seriousness.</p>
<p>“I think I wouldn’t like it,” I sheepishly replied.</p>
<p>“The only fruits and vegetables we eat,” he said, “are the ones that are already dead, the ones that fall off trees and have passed away. Eating a living piece of fruit or vegetable makes the eater complicit in the murder of that banana or apple, plain and simple.”</p>
<p>His association, Russell Sprout told me, is also considering changing the name of a food we refer to as “nuts.” Why? “Because the word ‘nuts’ has a bad connotation,” he told me. “It implies the nut — tasty as it may be — is crazy.”</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I feel terrible about making fun of PETA in my last column. And it took Russell Sprout to set me straight. We should treat all fruits and vegetables with respect.</p>
<p>When I told my friend Chris P. Bacon about the call he said it was a real eye-opener to him too. Then he told me that his wife Peaches was under the weather and wanted him to stop off at the bakery and bring home the bagels.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-10T19:25:00ZHoly Cow, PETA ... Please Tell Us You're KiddingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Holy-Cow-PETA-...-Please-Tell-Us-Youre-Kidding/-315606971038058127.html2018-12-06T19:21:00Z2018-12-06T19:21:00Z<p>PETA doesn’t want you to use phrases like “Bring home the bacon” or “Take the bull by the horns” or “Kill two birds with one stone.” They represent “Anti-Animal Language,” PETA tells us via Twitter.</p>
<p>And they’re racist and anti-gay too.</p>
<p>“Just as it became unacceptable to use racist [or] homophobic language,” PETA tweeted, “phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start ‘bringing home the bagels’ instead of the bacon.”</p>
<p>Yes, you read that right. From now on, unless you want to foster anti-animal language and be compared to someone in the KKK, you should say, “Honey, I’m going to work now so I can bring home the bagels.”</p>
<p>Oh, there’s more.</p>
<p>Instead of saying, “Kill two birds with one stone,” PETA suggests, “Feed two birds with one scone.” Get it? Stone. Scone. Hilarious, right?</p>
<p>Instead of “Beat a dead horse,” you should say, “Feed a fed horse.” Whatever that means.</p>
<p>Instead of “Take the bull by the horns,” try, “Take the flower by the thorns.” This raises a question: Huh?</p>
<p>“Words matter,” PETA tells us,“ and as our understanding of social justice evolves, our language evolves along with it.”</p>
<p>PETA is right about that. Words do matter. So try these words, PETA people:</p>
<p><span><em>You’re nuts</em></span>!</p>
<p>And you’re trivializing real bigotry. Does PETA really think that telling someone to “bring home the bacon” is in the same moral universe as calling a black man a you-know-what?</p>
<p>Well, maybe the PETA people think just that. PETA has some history with overkill. Back in 2003 they ran a campaign comparing the slaughter of animals to the slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.</p>
<p>“To Animals, All People Are Nazis” was the caption over a split screen graphic: On one side, starving Jews cramped together at a death camp. One the other side, chickens in coops.</p>
<p>At least this latest PETA campaign is merely ridiculous.</p>
<p>Are they weasels over at PETA – or merely pig-headed? Are they serious or just trying to get your goat? Or do they simply want to give vegans a bad name? Holy cow, who knows?!</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-12-06T19:21:00Z10 Reasons Donald Trump Can Win Reelection - and the Economy Isn't One of ThemBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/10-Reasons-Donald-Trump-Can-Win-Reelection---and-the-Economy-Isnt-One-of-Them/691202332698629168.html2018-11-30T19:19:00Z2018-11-30T19:19:00Z<p>I have written several columns recently on what may be the rough road ahead for President Trump if he decides to run for reelection in 2020.</p>
<p>My main point was that his personality overrides his accomplishments; that moderate Republicans and independents find him so unlikable, his temperament so noxious, that they won’t vote for him next time around.</p>
<p>In my last column I wrote that, “Voters were willing to give the brash billionaire a chance in 2016. He was different. People like something different. Until they don’t.”</p>
<p>2020 is still a long way off, so anything is possible. And along those lines, here are 10 reasons Donald Trump – despite himself — could win in 2020.</p>
<ol>
<li>Sen. Bernie Sanders</li>
<li>Sen. Elizabeth Warren</li>
<li>Sen. Kamala Harris</li>
<li>Sen. Corey Booker</li>
<li>Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand</li>
<li>Deval Patrick (former governor of Massachusetts)</li>
<li>Terry McAuliffe (former governor of Virginia – and close friend of the Clintons)</li>
<li>Eric Holder (former attorney general in the Obama administration)</li>
<li>Sen. Sherrod Brown</li>
<li>Tom Steyer (California billionaire environmentalist who runs ads on TV calling for Americans to rise up and demand that Donald Trump be impeached)</li>
</ol>
<p>Once upon a time, just about everyone on that list would be considered too far left to to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. But the Democratic base has moved so far in that direction that these people are mainstream stars in a party whose democratic-socialist wing has grown substantially in influence in recent years.</p>
<div id="AdThrive_Content_1_desktop" class="adthrive-ad adthrive-dynamic adthrive-content" data-google-query-id="COvjseDC_N4CFZXeWwodG1cE4g">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_1/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">As for Donald Trump, no one is counting on a personality makeover. He is, as the expression goes, who he is. But if he can take a few baby steps in the direction of normalcy … if he can lay off the constant barrage of verbal smackdowns aimed at his opponents … if he can stop the vindictive cheap shots … if he can control his need to give juvenile nicknames to anyone who runs against him … and instead focus on progressive <em>policies</em>, then he’s got a shot at a second term.</div>
</div>
<p>Where’s the $32 trillion over 10 years going to come from to pay for their cherished “Medicare for all”? Do the American people want government officials making decisions about their personal health care? Who’s going to pay for so-called “free” college tuition? Bernie Sanders wants “wealthy people and large corporations to begin paying their fair share.” Candidate Trump should tell voters – in a grownup, civil way – that raising taxes on America’s job creators will mean fewer – not more – jobs, and a weaker – not stronger — economy.</p>
<p>So the Democratic field just might be Donald Trump’s best hope for reelection in 2020 – unless, of course, he can’t control his tart tongue and continues to alienate those moderate Republicans and independents he must have in order to win a second term.</p>
<p>And there’s always the special counsel and whatever he might come up with.</p>
<p>Final Note: Look out for a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. They check off all the identity boxes Democrats care about: One is on the old side, the other on the young side. One is a man, the other a woman. One is white, the other black. One is a moderate (at least by today’s Democratic Party standards) the other an unapologetic progressive.</p>
<p>If that’s the Democratic ticket, you heard it here first. If it’s not, I didn’t say it.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-11-30T19:19:00ZDonald Trump's Most Loyal Supporters Just Aren't EnoughBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Donald-Trumps-Most-Loyal-Supporters-Just-Arent-Enough/502876128042825557.html2018-11-26T20:44:00Z2018-11-26T20:44:00Z<p>For anyone who doesn’t want to see a Democrat in the White House in 2020 — a Democrat who very well may be one of those quasi-socialist progressive types who doesn’t especially like capitalism and thinks the answer to whatever ails us is taxing the rich and spending like crazy on everything from “free” college tuition to Medicare for everyone (when they’re not busy trying to abolish ICE) — you better hope Republicans figure out a way to expand their base, something Donald Trump so far has shown no interest in doing.</p>
<p>On Election Night it looked like a modest victory for Democrats. Yes, they took control of the House – the party out of power usually wins seats in the midterms — but at the time it didn’t look like they took control by all that much. Turns out they did.</p>
<p>Democrats picked up somewhere around 40 seats, which is the most they won in a midterm election since 1974, and that was in the wake of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation.</p>
<p>Donald Trump can say the wreckage had nothing to do with him, that his name wasn’t on the ballot. But even if he’s not capable of taking blame for the losses his party suffered – or for anything else for that matter — a lot of Republicans lost precisely because they’re on the same team as the president, the only president in the modern era whose approval ratings have never gone over 50 percent, according to Gallup.</p>
<p>Donald Trump may be lulled into a kind of comfortable complacency by the cheers of his supporters and may not understand that his acolytes are fundamentally different from most Americans. The turmoil and confrontation they seem to love, most Americans detest; the president they adore, the rest of America sees as toxic.</p>
<p>One reason the GOP lost the House was because moderate voters in suburbs abandoned the party. White, college educated, suburban voters once upon a time could be counted on to vote for the GOP candidate. That was before Donald Trump.</p>
<p>“These voters generally do not like what they consider rigid conservative positions on guns, abortion, and immigration. And they find Trump repellent, which is a problem for Republicans insofar as he is not going to change the traits and behaviors that revolt them and he is highly likely to be the nominee again,” as Ramesh Ponnuru explains it in National Review.</p>
<p>Donald Trump, narcissist that he is, has always been content basking in the adulation of his most loyal supporters. Someone needs to tell him that if that’s all he’s got, he’ll be a one-term president – that is, if he even decides to run again.</p>
<p>And here’s where things get even stickier two years down the road: If he eases up on those “rigid conservative” positions – on guns and immigration – he may win back some moderates who normally vote Republican, but he’ll run the risk of alienating his take-no-prisoners base, which abhors moderation and compromise. The president’s only hope is that his loyalists love him so much that nothing he does – literally, nothing – will cause them to abandon him. But counting on never-ending blind support is a big gamble for anyone – even for someone who admires himself as much as Donald Trump does.</p>
<p>Another warning sign for the president is that some of Democrats’ biggest gains in 2018 came in the states that gave Mr. Trump his Electoral College victory in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Take note, Mr. President.</p>
<p>And Donald Trump might not even be able to run on the one issue he currently gets good grades in: the economy.</p>
<p>Question: Do we think the economy will be better in 2020 than it is today or not as good? It’s unlikely to be better given how strong it is at the moment.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Donald Trump was the only Republican who could have won the White House in 2016. It’s possible that all the other candidates were seen as the same old same old, the kind of moderates who don’t excite the conservative base. These are the ones who would rather sit home on Election Day than vote for the likes of a Mitt Romney or John McCain, which, of course, didn’t stop the true believers from complaining about Barack Obama for eight years.</p>
<p>Voters were willing to give the brash billionaire a chance in 2016. He was different. People like something different. Until they don’t.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-11-26T20:44:00ZDoes Jim Acosta Have a Constitutional Right ... to be a Jerk?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Does-Jim-Acosta-Have-a-Constitutional-Right-...-to-be-a-Jerk/598850378068952235.html2018-11-19T21:01:00Z2018-11-19T21:01:00Z<p>I knew that bank robbers had the constitutional right to due process and that kidnappers and terrorists had due process rights, but I had no idea that a cable television news reporter who repeatedly tries to make himself the story and take over news conferences had such a right – that the White House couldn’t yank his press pass without affording <em>him</em> “due process.”</p>
<p>But a federal judge, as by now we all know, said the White House violated Jim Acosta’s due process rights by revoking his pass without first explaining the reasons for its actions.</p>
<p>The judge didn’t immediately address another constitutional issue, one involving whether Jim Acosta has a First Amendment right to cover the president of the United States. I can’t wait to see how that turns out (if it ever gets that far).</p>
<p>I’m not a lawyer nor am I a Constitutional scholar so go easy on me when I wonder what other rights Jim Acosta of CNN might have.</p>
<p>Does he have the constitutional right to more than his press pass? Does he have the right to actually be called upon at a White House news conference? If the president or Sarah Sanders ignores Acosta is that a violation of his rights?</p>
<p>Does Jim Acosta have the right to ask a follow-up question? Does he have the right to hog the microphone and ask 3 questions, or 4, or 10?</p>
<p>And while we’re at it, does he have a constitutional right to be rude, to act unprofessionally? Can he address the president any way he wants without losing his press pass? Can he stand up and say, “Hey Trump, you say the caravan is an ‘invasion.’ You’re nuts, right?”</p>
<p>According to one news report, “In court on Friday, the judge recounted the events leading up to the revocation of Acosta’s pass, noting that the administration’s initial explanation to the public for taking that action was based on a video that critics have said was doctored. [Judge Timothy] Kelly said the video’s accuracy was questionable.”</p>
<p>In question was whether Acosta intentionally smacked an intern’s arm as she was trying to take the microphone from him to pass on to another reporter, or whether the contact was merely incidental.</p>
<p>“The government must provide Mr. Acosta with due process,” Judge Kelly said. The White House gave back his pass and announced it was writing guidelines for proper conduct at White House news conferences.</p>
<p>I’m sure Jim Acosta sees himself as a tough reporter, as a journalist who confronts the powerful on behalf of the American people. Bull! He’s a TV narcissist (not unlike the president he detests). He wants to stand out in the White House press room. To be different from the others. He craves the spotlight (again, not unlike the president he detests). In these hyper-partisan times when too many journalists don’t even try to hide their distaste for this president (and vice versa), Acosta’s schtick is a way to bolster a career on television. Even though it’s worked for him at CNN, he has become a journalistic embarrassment.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I think President Trump made a mistake by taking away Acosta’s press pass. That only turned him into a martyr with other journalists coming to his defense. A better method would have been to ignore him at press conferences (and let the federal courts decide if that’s constitutional). To take questions from reporters who cover the White House for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC and a lot of other news organizations – but not from Jim Acosta.</p>
<p>Asked about the judge’s ruling by Chris Wallace on Fox, the president said, “It’s not a big deal and if he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”</p>
<p>And how exactly would he “stop the news conference”?</p>
<p>“I will say this, look, nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do and if I think somebody is acting out of sorts I will leave. I will say thank you very much everybody, I appreciate you coming and I’ll leave,” Trump told Wallace.</p>
<p>Let’s see how Acosta’s fellow White House correspondents like it if, because of him, they can’t ask any questions. Because of his pontificating and debating with Sarah Sanders or the president, the news conference comes to an abrupt end. Let’s see whose side they take if that happens.</p>
<p>As expected, many news organizations filed briefs siding with CNN and Acosta. So did the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the White House Correspondents Association. Journalists routinely circle the wagons when their biases and motives are questioned. Besides, reporters figured if the White House can take Acosta’s press pass, they might come after any one of them next time.</p>
<p>I just wish those journalists had added one simple line to their court filings backing CNN: “While we side with CNN and think Jim Acosta has a right to hold a White House press pass … <em>we also think Mr. Acosta is a blatantly biased journalist who also is a grandstanding jerk who shamelessly thinks he’s the story and the center of attraction and by hogging the microphone and making a fool of himself he makes all of us look bad</em>.”</p>
<p>Would that have been so difficult?</p>
<p>Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-11-19T21:01:00ZBye Bye MegynBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bye-Bye-Megyn/-619410627170579043.html2018-10-30T19:08:00Z2018-10-30T19:08:00Z<p>There will be no tears for Ms. Kelly. Anyone caught weeping for her may suffer the same fate, as they may be seen, as she was, as an insensitive racist. Besides, it’s not easy to weep for a beautiful blond who was earning more than $20 million a year and will wind up with a golden parachute that would make Midas blush.</p>
<p>Ms. Kelly’s ostensible crime as the whole world now knows was saying (OMG, on national television, no less) that she didn’t see anything wrong with white people dressing up in “blackface” for Halloween (or black people appearing as white) – a sloppy, historically insensitive remark for which she apologized, citing ignorance of how white racists dressed up as blacks at minstrel shows in the bad old days.</p>
<p>By the way, I say “ostensible crime” because her real crime, I suspect, was getting bad ratings, which in her business warrants an automatic death sentence. That she once worked for Fox News didn’t help.</p>
<p>Out of concern for my own well-being, let me be very, very clear: I am in no way defending her use of that term. But be assured that in this age of hypersensitivity about all sorts of speech “crimes,” all of us are one term away from getting our heads chopped off. Ask anyone you know if this thought has occurred to him. If he says “no” don’t let him get anywhere near sharp objects.</p>
<p>This, of course, does not mean that bigots must automatically lose their jobs. As the always thoughtful Victor Davis Hanson points out in National Review: “Had Kelly been unapologetically progressive (especially one deemed vital to the cause), like Elizabeth Warren, who fabricated and profited from an entire minority identity, then she might well have survived the incident. Perhaps had she been a minority, such as Sarah Jeong, and written (rather than spoken off the cuff) far more racially offensive things about whites, she would have kept her job — as did Jeong on the <em>New York Times</em> editorial board after her racist tweets surfaced, such as this, from 2014: ‘Dumbass f****** white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.’</p>
<p>Some bigots – and Ms. Jeong, based on her many nasty tweets, surely fits into that category – get a pass. She’s not a white male, after all.</p>
<p>So while we condemn real bigotry, let’s acknowledge that many Americans now fear the wrath of the ever-vigilant vigilantes who roam the airwaves and the internet to spot and call out racists and other bigots who have committed crimes, real or imagined.</p>
<p>“But beware of fickle revolutionary temperament,” Mr. Hanson concludes his essay. “Soon our 21st-century Robespierres may become so promiscuous and obnoxious in their beheading that they wear out even the mob — and find themselves next in line on a counterrevolutionary chopping block.”</p>
<p>One can only hope.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-30T19:08:00ZIs the Blue Wave Really Coming?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-the-Blue-Wave-Really-Coming/202090046541579161.html2018-10-26T18:13:00Z2018-10-26T18:13:00Z<p>Who knows what’s going to happen on November 6, but I’m starting to detect something that resembles fear among Democrats; fear that the big blue wave that they were planning on riding to victory in the midterms may turn out to be not much more than a mere swell by Election Day.</p>
<p>Let’s start with Bernie Sanders who went on TV the other day and said, “I happen not to believe that there’s going to be this great blue wave.” Or this from Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman: “I don’t use the term ‘Blue Wave.’”</p>
<p>Funny, we heard the term a lot – until recently. You couldn’t turn on CNN or MSNBC or read an op-ed in a liberal paper without coming across some pundit predicting disaster for the GOP. It’s possible, of course, that Democrats don’t want to count their chickens before they hatch. Or maybe it’s that they’ve checked around and are starting to worry.</p>
<p>And they might have good reason. Midterms are always to some extent about the popularity of the president. And Democrats were counting on Mr. Trump’s personal unpopularity with moderates and independents carrying more weight than the strong economy. But the president’s numbers have been going up recently. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll puts him at a 47 percent approval rating. That’s a point <em>higher </em>than the percentage he received two years ago – and that was enough to beat Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>So what’s going on? Two things, I think: The September surprise and now the one in October.</p>
<p>In September we had the Kavanaugh fiasco. In October it’s the caravan heading to the United States from Central America. Neither may turn out the way the Democrats had hoped.</p>
<p>I know someone, a Republican, who just moved to another state and thought he’d sit out the midterms because he hadn’t been around long enough to know the candidates in his new state. But after seeing what the Democrats did to Judge Kavanaugh, he voted early and enthusiastically — <em>for every Republican on the ticket</em>. And polls tell us that he’s not alone. Dianne Feinstein, Spartacus Booker and the whole progressive gang revved up GOP voters who might have stayed home on Election Day.</p>
<p>And just as Democrats tried to paint Republicans as anti-woman in September, now in October they’re trying to portray the GOP as anti- immigrant. And they can always count on their friends in the media to convey their partisan message — so the New York Times and Washington Post didn’t disappoint. How’s this for a headline on a hard news – <em>news </em>not <em>opinion</em>– page one story in the Times:</p>
<p>“Trump Escalates Use of Migrants as Election Ploy. Stoking Voters’ Anxiety With Baseless Tale of Ominous Caravan.”</p>
<p>And in the Post: “For Trump and GOP, a bet on fear, falsehoods.”</p>
<p>Liberals in and out of the media understand all too well that running against illegal immigration worked for Donald Trump two years ago – and they fear it might work for his party this time around too.</p>
<p>Even Americans who sympathize with the plight of those poor people in the caravan and understand why they want to escape chaos back home are more than a little uneasy with so many people flooding into the United States.</p>
<p>Who’s going to take care of them? What schools will their kids who don’t speak English attend? Who will pay for their medical care? Even if no terrorists are in the caravan – as the president needlessly suggested – how about common criminals? It’s happened before with the Mariel boatlift in Florida.</p>
<p>By and large, Democrats are pretending this is no big deal. Voters notice nonsense like this.</p>
<p>Democrats may hope that voters see the GOP as cold and uncaring, but a lot of Americans – no matter how they feel about the president — don’t like the images they’re seeing on television. They know if these immigrants are allowed in, other caravans will follow – and not just from Central America.</p>
<p>Nearly half of the world’s population – more than 3 billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day.</p>
<p>What about them? If they somehow could figure out a way to get here, should we let them in too? Aren’t they entitled to a better life?</p>
<p>With the midterms right around the corner, Democrats are running on two fronts: the evergreen Trump-is-a-disaster front and what Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal calls, the “We care” front. Democrats told us that they were the ones who cared about women last month … and now they’re telling us that they’re the ones who care about immigrants.</p>
<p>But caring may not be enough to win over the undecideds. And maybe that’s why we’re hearing less and less about the blue wave that until recently was supposed to be inevitable.</p>
<p>Democrats may still win the House; the odds are in their favor. But if they manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it’ll be because of the two surprises. The Kavanaugh hearings energized Republicans in ways the left didn’t anticipate. And now, progressive concerns for the migrants heading north may not be enough to win over voters who while empathetic, also fear that the thousands coming our way are just the beginning.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-26T18:13:00ZFauxcahontas is Making Donald Trump Look GoodBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Fauxcahontas-is-Making-Donald-Trump-Look-Good/-830912964296445174.html2018-10-18T18:15:00Z2018-10-18T18:15:00Z<p>With the midterm elections right around the corner, let’s take a few minutes to re-visit some of the dire predictions Democrats have been making since Donald Trump was elected.</p>
<p>Topping the list was their fear that the world as we know it would end right after he took the oath of office. It hasn’t. There’s been no nuclear war, no pact with Putin’s Russia to undermine and overthrow the institutions of the United States, no economic collapse either.</p>
<p>Minutes after Donald Trump won in 2016, New York Times columnist, and poster boy for Trump Derangement Syndrome, Paul Krugman wrote this: “So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”</p>
<p>Since that brilliant observation (from a Nobel Prize winner in economics no less), the stock market reached new heights, unemployment reached near record lows, and that global recession with no end in sight … is nowhere in sight.</p>
<p>Another liberal prediction was that Donald Trump would become Adolf Hitler and turn America into a fascist dictatorship. Despite their hopes that it would actually happen so they could take over the House, the Senate and the White House, it hasn’t. And won’t.</p>
<p>A third prophesy of the progressive left is that Donald Trump, who they were convinced was uncivil and unhinged, would do some really crazy stuff, like shred the First Amendment and shut down the New York Times and CNN.</p>
<p>Despite his needless (and dangerous) taunting of the press, despite his fake news rants, the press is alive and well and taking shots at the president every day of the week. That doesn’t happen when the leader is really an authoritarian despot.</p>
<p>As for uncivil and unhinged? Ok, they’re onto something there. But compared to what?<br /><br />Does President Trump look like a nut job compared, say, to Elizabeth Warren, who thinks she’s a Cherokee Indian because she has a drop of Native-American blood flowing through her 99.99 percent white European body?</p>
<p>I thought progressives were the ones who yelled about “culture appropriation” … who would scream “racist” if some Anglo guy wore a sombrero to a costume party or some white girl wore an Asian dress to her prom.</p>
<p>Who’s appropriating whose culture now, Fauxcahontas?</p>
<p>And as uncivil as Donald Trump so often is, is he nastier than Democrat Maxine Waters who wants her fellow lefties to harass Republicans – in public — every chance they get, “And … tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”</p>
<p>Is he more combative than Hillary Clinton who says Democrats won’t be civil until they win? Or Eric Holder who said when they go low, “We kick ‘em”? Or those self-righteous progressives who shout in the face of Republicans trying to walk through an airport or eat at a restaurant? Or the ones who call Justice Kavanaugh a rapist?</p>
<p>The point here isn’t that Donald Trump is Mr. Wonderful. He’s not. He’s dishonest, crude, nasty and brags way too much. And on certain days those are his good points. But by now, the American people know about all that. I suspect a lot of them are getting used to it – especially since those scary predictions about how he would turn America into a fascist dictatorship and start a nuclear war look like overheated, partisan political nonsense to normal Americans.</p>
<p>Ironic, isn’t it that the progressives who were so worried that America would somehow “normalize” the <em>horrible </em>Donald Trump may be witnessing their worst fears. And they’re the ones who helped make it happen.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-18T18:15:00ZThe Lunatics, the Asylum, and the Democratic PartyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Lunatics-the-Asylum-and-the-Democratic-Party/873114485763799761.html2018-10-12T18:15:00Z2018-10-12T18:15:00Z<p>You know that old line about how the lunatics have taken over the asylum? Well, they have. And the mental institution under attack is the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>The nuts on the street — the progressives who block traffic and shout in the faces of conservatives, the ones who won’t let Republicans have a peaceful meal at a restaurant, who sanctimonously yell “Shame” in the face of people who have the nerve to disagree with them, who form mobs to bang on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court to show how unhappy they are with the newest Justice – those are the ones who are now effectively calling the shots in what was once the party of JFK, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and other middle of the road Democrats.</p>
<p>The latest battle started two seconds after Donald Trump became president when the resistance took to the streets with signs that said Trump is Hitler. Then it was scholars who made the same point in op-eds published by once respectable newspapers.</p>
<p>There was also Madonna telling a rally how she’s thought a lot about “blowing up the White House”… and Kathy Griffin holding up what looked like the bloody severed head of the president.</p>
<p>There was Shakespeare in New York’s Central Park where Julius Caesar – dressed up in blue suit and long red tie to look like Donald Trump – was stabbed to death to the amusement of the liberals in the audience who love that kind of stuff.</p>
<p>And now we have the unhinged tweets. A Google engineer put this one out after Judge Kavanaugh won nomination to the Supreme Court: “You are finished, GOP. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL. I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames.”<br /><br />Or how about this from a Minnesota school teacher: “So whose gonna take one for the team and kill Kavanaugh?”</p>
<p>You might write all of them off as fringe goofballs. But now we have the establishment joining the party, the old-timers fearing if they don’t get their shots in, the angry base will devour them too.</p>
<p>“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”</p>
<p>Get it? No peace in America until her side wins.</p>
<p>For a woman who’s supposed to be smart, her remarks are breathtakingly dumb. If she’s right that “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for,” then Republicans could make the same argument against Democrats, right?</p>
<p>Beyond that, what is she actually talking about? Is it OK with Hillary if progressives shout in Ted Cruz’s face at a DC restaurant? Is it OK when women yell that a judge is a rapist absent even a shred of evidence that he is? Is she OK with left-wing screwballs shutting down traffic? Was it OK when the owner of a restaurant in Virginia told Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her husband that we don’t want your kind here?</p>
<p>What does no civility mean – besides, “Look at me, I’m not really old. I’m cool, just like the young, hip radicals who think civility is an idea whose time has come … and gone.”</p>
<p>Cue the horror movie music: It’s starting to look like Hillary wants to run again. Yes, for president. She and Bill are about to embark on a post-midterm 13-city tour where they’ll bedazzle their fans with their brilliant observations about all sorts of things like how deplorable you are if you didn’t vote for her.</p>
<p>So here’s some friendly advice, Hillary: It’s never good when you sound like your fellow Democrat Maxine Waters, who also is no fan of civility and who infamously said: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”</p>
<p>That stuff works in her Los Angeles district but it’s no way to win over Americans who live between the blue parentheses on either coast.<br /><br />And how about the former attorney general, Eric Holder who said when Republicans go low, “we kick them.” Nice, coming from such an establishment figure, no less than the chief law enforcement officer of the United States under President Obama.</p>
<p>This apparently is what a Democrat who wants to be president feels he has to say to prove he’s, you know, hip.</p>
<p>And let’s acknowledge the unfortunate obvious: This didn’t happen in a vacuum. Donald Trump set a nasty tone from the jump. He doesn’t have clean hands in what we’re now witnessing.</p>
<p>But what Democrats don’t seem to understand is that decent Americans may not like Donald Trump’s crude demeanor, but may think even less of the crazies on the left and their despicable behavior.</p>
<p>If Republicans hold onto the House, or at least hold off a massive blue wave, they can thank those progressive left-wingers who think civility is for losers. And they can also say thank you to every Democrat who wants to be president and thinks taking cues from the lunatics that are overrunning the asylum is the best way to get there.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-12T18:15:00ZWhen Liberals Behave Like StalinistsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-Liberals-Behave-Like-Stalinists/-655595583276550393.html2018-10-09T06:50:00Z2018-10-09T06:50:00Z<p>Now that all but the ugly memories of the Kavanaugh horror show are behind us, it’s worth asking how such a travesty could have happened in the first place. How did Democrats lose their way and abandon long held liberal principles about due process and the presumption of innocence? History offers up some clues.</p>
<p>Let’s start with Joseph Stalin, whose ruthless secret police chief, a monster named Lavrentiy Beria, would brag that he could convict anyone of a crime – even if the poor guy was innocent.</p>
<p>“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” was Beria’s infamous boast.</p>
<p>I couldn’t help but thinking about that during the Kavanaugh hearings. Donald Trump showed Democrats the man – Democrats, true to Beria’s dictum, showed us the “crime.”</p>
<p>First he was guilty of being a strict constructionist – translation: a conservative judge. Then he was guilty of being a sexual predator. Then the crime was his lack of judicial temperament. Then he lied under oath.</p>
<p>Democrats — whose mindless mantra is some version of “We believe the victims” — made a lot of the serious allegations that he sexually assaulted a 15-year old girl when he was 17 at a party when they were in high school. But it was never really about that. His crime was that he was the kind of judge who they feared might – <em>might</em>– someday overturn Roe v Wade. Never mind that he said Roe was well-established law. His crime was that he wasn’t an outright <em>supporter </em>of abortion.</p>
<p>Then there’s another quotation that came to mind during the Kavanaugh show trial. This one was from another communist, the revolutionary the left adores — Che Guevara, a man who thought due process was an idea only sissies would take seriously.<br /><br />“We don’t need proof to execute a man. We only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him,” Guevara said.</p>
<p>Che believed that the legal notion of “burden of proof” amounted to nothing more than “archaic bourgeois detail.”</p>
<p>Che was a true believer. And for true believers due process and the presumption of innocence are at times inconvenient obstacles that stand in the way of (their idea of) justice. So if it’s necessary to execute an enemy — figuratively or otherwise — proof is a frivolous concept.</p>
<p>Even now, none of us really knows what happened at that party 36 years ago, or at Yale during his freshman year. Republicans are more likely to believe his story; Democrats, hers. (For what it’s worth, I’ve wondered why Christine Blasey Ford couldn’t remember how she got home after the supposed attack by Brett Kavanaugh. And even more troubling, to this day no one has come forward to say, I drove her home. Something’s not right with that story.)</p>
<p>But beyond the partisanship, due process, the presumption of innocence, should matter to all of us, liberals as well as conservatives. Which brings us to the ACLU.</p>
<p>This is an organization that over the years has argued for due process for Nazis, the KKK, terrorists, common criminals and even pedophiles. But when it comes to Judge Kavanaugh, the ACLU has thrown its principles over the side.</p>
<p>Breaking from its long-held policy of not endorsing or opposing candidates for political or judicial office, the ACLU issued a statement opposing Judge Kavanaugh.</p>
<p>“We cannot remain silent under these extraordinary circumstances about a lifetime appointment to the highest court of the land. The standard for such an appointment should be high, and the burden is on the nominee. That burden is not met as long as there are unresolved questions regarding the credible allegations of sexual assault.”</p>
<p>As the Weekly Standard put: “You read that correctly: ‘the burden is on the nominee.’ The ACLU, an organization supposedly dedicated to defending the unjustly accused, believes in this case that the accused, not the accuser, bears the burden of proof. It is, of course, an egregious betrayal of the principle of presumed innocence .….”</p>
<p>There were many victims in the freak show we’ve been witnessing. Judge Kavanaugh for sure, and Ms. Ford, too. She wanted anonymity. But someone, almost certainly a Democrat, leaked her name to the press, hoping that her story, with her name and face attached to it in a public forum seen by millions on TV, would be enough to bring down the judge.</p>
<p>But liberal principles have also taken a beating. And the damage was self-imposed. That’ll happen when liberals behave like Stalinists.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-09T06:50:00ZThe Left Has Already Convicted Judge KavanaughBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Left-Has-Already-Convicted-Judge-Kavanaugh/-68614184062355355.html2018-10-01T18:07:00Z2018-10-01T18:07:00Z<p>If the FBI investigation into the accusations surrounding Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford turns up convincing evidence that the judge lied about what he did at that high school party 36 years ago, or what he did at a dorm room party while a freshman at Yale, Republicans, overwhelmingly, would abandon him. He’d stand no chance of becoming a Supreme Court Justice and there’s every likelihood he’d be impeached and removed from his current job as a Federal Circuit Court judge in Washington.</p>
<p>But if the investigation turns up nothing, if the FBI can’t find even one person to corroborate Professor Ford’s story, or that of the second accuser at Yale, Democrats – every single one on the Senate Judiciary Committee and almost every single one in the entire Senate– will still vote against him.</p>
<p>Their verdict was in before the hearings began. And they found him guilty.</p>
<p>The accusation alone, in the age of #meToo, is enough as far as they’re concerned. We have to believe women when they make allegations of sexual abuse, the feminists say. The presumption of innocence doesn’t apply outside the courtroom, liberals tell us.</p>
<p>When a reporter asked Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, “Do you agree, then, that he has the, quote, ‘presumption of innocence?'” this is how Schumer responded:</p>
<p>“There’s no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you,” he said. “Find the facts, and then let the Senate and let the American people make their judgment <span>not whether the person’s guilty or innocent</span>, but whether the person deserves to have the office.” (Emphasis added)</p>
<p>Let that sink in.<br /><br />It’s not whether the judge is guilty or innocent. But if that doesn’t matter, what does?</p>
<p>Liberals have a long and noble history of defending the rights of the accused, especially when the evidence against them surfaces suspiciously at the 11th hour and is not backed up by witnesses. Except, as it turns out, when the accused is a well off conservative who as a kid went to a preppy Catholic school and hung out at country clubs. Privileged people like that apparently don’t deserve the presumption of innocence. They already got enough breaks in life.</p>
<p>That Ms. Ford doesn’t remember where the alleged attack occurred doesn’t bother her supporters in or out of the Senate. That she doesn’t know how she got to the party or how she got home doesn’t bother them. Why she walked out the front door past her best friend after the supposed attack but never said a word about why she was leaving doesn’t trouble them. That she never told that best friend what happened upstairs at the party is of no consequence to them. That the best friend has no recollection of Brett Kavanaugh or the party doesn’t matter to them. That the accuser at Yale was drunk as a skunk doesn’t matter, either.</p>
<p>And in a perverse way, it makes sense: Because this isn’t about whether he <em>actually </em>assaulted her. To Kavanaugh’s opponents, that’s a mere technicality. It’s about not wanting a conservative on the Supreme Court for a very long time making decisions they won’t like — and blocking him by any means at their disposal.</p>
<p>Professor Ford says she’s 100 percent sure it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked her. She came off as credible at the hearing and may be right despite his vehement denials. Unlike a lot of hyper-partisans, I don’t know who’s telling the truth and who’s not.</p>
<p>But if we’ve turned a corner where the accuser, by the mere fact that she’s made an accusation, gets the benefit of the doubt, where an uncorroborated allegation is enough to sink a man’s career and forever taint his reputation, where the presumption of innocence <em>for some people </em>is an idea whose time came and went, then we’re all in trouble.</p>
<p>Liberals, who are constantly reminding us that they’re the enlightened ones, the noble ones who care about fair play, the decent ones who understand the importance of keeping an open mind, have revealed their dark side; they’ve shown us how easy it is for them to sell out their precious principles in favor of raw politics.</p>
<p>So let’s see what the FBI comes up with. But let’s not pretend that it will matter to the partisans on the left who already have convicted Judge Kavanaugh … and don’t really care if he actually did any of the things he’s accused of.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-10-01T18:07:00ZDoes Judge Kavanaugh Deserve the Presumption of Innocence?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Does-Judge-Kavanaugh-Deserve-the-Presumption-of-Innocence/-522385575073498862.html2018-09-28T18:12:00Z2018-09-28T18:12:00Z<p>In times of crisis it’s important to state the obvious … so here it goes. It’s not possible that Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh both told the truth, under oath, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. One of them lied. Which one?</p>
<p>Professor Ford says she’s 100 percent sure it was a drunken Brett Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted her at a high school house party 36 years ago when she was 15 and he was 17. The judge emphatically says it never happened.</p>
<p>The professor went first – and came off as sincere and credible. But when it was Judge Kavanaugh’s turn, he also came off as credible, and righteously indignant that he would be tarred as a sexual predator.</p>
<p>We may never know the truth with any certainty; there likely will always be doubt. But we can be sure of this: No matter what Judge Kavanaugh said at the hearing, no matter how convincing he may have sounded to impartial observers, he wasn’t going to get even one vote from any of the Democrats on the committee. As far as they were concerned, the judge was guilty even before the hearing began.</p>
<p>His real crime in their eyes wasn’t that he assaulted Ms. Ford 36 years ago, though they might believe he did. No, the judge was guilty of something equally if not more serious. His crime is that he’s a conservative judge who was appointed by President Trump – to a lifetime seat on the high court.</p>
<p>Democrats have long looked to the Supreme Court to validate their political views when Congress and the American people won’t. So a sixth conservative justice on the Court was something Democrats had to stop. And their leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, fearing the party’s hard left base, said as much.</p>
<p>“The ramifications of this battle will last a generation or more,” Schumer said in July, long before the sexual allegations surfaced. “I’m going to fight this nomination with everything I’ve got.”<br /><br />Nothing that happened during the hearings mattered to the Democrats. Their only goal was to try to convince a few wavering Republicans that Judge Kavanaugh was a sexual predator and derail the nomination – or at least delay it until after the midterm elections when they might take control of the Senate and have the clout to kill the nomination once and for all.</p>
<p>Make no mistake, if Judge Kavanaugh, at some time in his long career, had written that he thought Roe v. Wade was a great decision, that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, that he would never undermine or overrule Roe, there would have been no hearing like the one we just witnessed.</p>
<p>During her testimony, Professor Ford wasn’t interrogated so much as canonized by the Democrats. One after another they told her how brave she was, how courageous, how heroic to tell her story. Several even said they believed her – before the judge even left his house.</p>
<p>As I say, Professor Ford came off as sincere and credible. Despite that there still are no witnesses to the alleged assault. “No one else can place the two of them together at the party — not even the witnesses she’s identified. She is inconsistent or forgetful on a number of key points. She can’t even identify who brought her to the party or who took her home,” as David French points out in National Review.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Ms. Ford believes she told the truth, but after so many years, for whatever reasons, got it wrong. And it’s also possible that Judge Kavanaugh is a man who gets so drunk that he forgets what he did the night before. We don’t know.</p>
<p>In baseball, a tie goes to the runner. In the case of a credible accuser and an equally credible accused, the tie should go to the accused, to Judge Kavanaugh in this case.</p>
<p>It’s called the presumption of innocence. And, despite what Democrats have been saying, that presumption is not limited to criminal defendants in a courtroom. The presumption of innocence is a universal right, a human right.</p>
<p>It’s a right Judge Kavanaugh deserves.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-28T18:12:00ZThe Presumption of GuiltBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Presumption-of-Guilt/-894029131882312788.html2018-09-27T18:14:00Z2018-09-27T18:14:00Z<p>Let’s get the politically incorrect part of this column out of the way right at the top: Despite what feminists and other liberals tell us about how we’re supposed to think about allegations regarding sexual crimes, I don’t automatically believe all women who say they were sexually assaulted. Nor do I automatically believe that any woman who comes forward with her story about sexual abuse is necessarily courageous. Not after what happened to the Duke lacrosse players or the young men at the University of Virginia – all victims of made up stories that feminists and their liberal allies in the media were all too willing to believe.</p>
<p>That said, none of us knows who’s telling the truth regarding the allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Every ten minutes there’s a new accusation. So let’s review:</p>
<p>He supposedly sexually assaulted a 15-year old girl when he was 17 and drunk at a party in Maryland. Except the woman who may or may not have been assaulted can’t remember where the party was held. And all the people she says could back up her story say they know nothing.</p>
<p>Then there’s the time he supposedly exposed himself in a woman’s face at a dorm room party at Yale. Again he was drunk. But the woman making the accusation acknowledges she was plastered and wasn’t even sure Kavanaugh was the guy who exposed himself … until a week later, when with the help of her Democratic lawyer, she became “confident” he did it. On top of that, neither the New Yorker — the magazine that first shamefully reported the story — nor the New York Times could find anybody with first hand knowledge of the supposed incident.</p>
<p>Now we have a woman who says that decades ago Kavanaugh spiked the punch at parties so that his pals could gang rape young girls. Except the accuser never went to the police to report such a serious crime – not when it happened and not now. But she did go back to these “rape parties” over and over again. Really! And none of the supposed rape victims ever told the authorities what happened. And oh yeah, she’s represented by Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels lawyer (who gives sleazy a bad name), who broke the “news” not in the New York Times or the New Yorker, but on Twitter — and hasn’t made the accuser available to reporters.</p>
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<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_1/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">And did you know that Brett Kavanaugh raped a woman on a boat off Newport, Rhode Island in 1985. Except he didn’t. The accuser recanted.</div>
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<p>By the time you read this there may be 10 more accusations.</p>
<p>Democrats are salivating over the prospect that women voters will be so turned off by the evil Mr. Kavanaugh that they’ll throw the GOP bums out in November. Maybe. But it’s also possible that these women, who have husbands and sons and brothers, may see the events unfolding and wonder who’s really telling the truth. Might the men in their lives be next in the crosshairs – even if they did nothing wrong?</p>
<p>Let’s see what happens at the hearing today.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-27T18:14:00ZTime to Vote on KavanaughBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Time-to-Vote-on-Kavanaugh/146093612579376368.html2018-09-23T20:38:00Z2018-09-23T20:38:00Z<p>Back in 2005 I wrote a book called <em>100 People Who Are Screwing Up America</em>. If I wrote an updated version today, Dianne Feinstein would make the list. She might even top it.</p>
<p>Just when you thought politics couldn’t get any uglier, the senior senator from California proves you wrong.</p>
<p>Even the San Francisco Chronicle says what she did to Judge Brett Kavanaugh was “unfair.” But “unfair” doesn’t begin to describe how she disgraced herself.</p>
<p>By now you know the sordid details — that Senator Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, had received information in July or August from a woman who said that a drunken, 17-year old Brett Kavanaugh sexually molested her at a party when she was 15.</p>
<p>Ms. Feinstein sat on the information until right before the committee was to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, insuring maximum damage to the judge.</p>
<p>This is what a political ambush looks like.</p>
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<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_1/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">The hyper-partisans on both sides know exactly what happened. They know he’s a sexual predator – or that she’s a liar. In fact, they know nothing, which isn’t unusual for hyper-partisans on either side.</div>
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<p>The fact is that unless we get an unexpected bombshell revelation, we can’t know what happened that night 36 years ago. But the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, even if she might be telling the truth, no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>First she was going to testify before the Judiciary Committee. Then she wasn’t. Then she was again. But she would tell her story under oath only if she has her way.</p>
<p>One of the things she’s demanding is that she gets the last word. She’ll testify, she tells us through her lawyer, <em>after </em>the judge gives his side of the story. This is beyond absurd and violates everything we know about democratic procedures. First come the accusations – then the rebuttal. That’s how it works in America.</p>
<p>And of all the lawyers Ms. Ford could have chosen to speak for her, she picks one who hates Donald Trump and has a history of Democratic activism.</p>
<p>Which isn’t to say she’s lying. The Wall Street Journal had a reasonable take on what may be going on. “The vagaries of memory are well known, all the more so when they emerge in the cauldron of a therapy session to rescue a marriage,” the Journal said in an editorial. “Experts know that human beings can come to believe firmly over the years that something happened when it never did or is based on partial truth. Mistaken identity is also possible.”</p>
<p>As for the judge, he’s not waffling. He denies the allegations “categorically and unequivocally.”</p>
<p>If there’s a hearing with both sides testifying under oath, there’s one thing we can count on: Democrats won’t vote for Kavanaugh even if Ms. Ford says. I made the whole thing up.</p>
<p>One more thing: When progressives tell us that we must believe women when they make such charges, I wonder why it’s such an automatic. As Alan Dershowitz, one of the few fair-minded liberals left in America, says: Do women have some gene that compels them to always tell the truth? And do men have a gene that compels them to lie?</p>
<div id="AdThrive_Content_2_desktop" class="adthrive-ad adthrive-dynamic adthrive-content" data-google-query-id="CNmhxs7V0d0CFcnzZAod8JIHkw">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_2/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">Again, we don’t know who’s telling the truth, but Democrats would have more credibility if they weren’t such hypocrites on the matter of sexual abuse allegations. Where were they when Paula Jones, a low level state employee in Arkansas, accused then Governor Bill Clinton of exposing himself in front of her in a Little Rock hotel room? Remember what James Carville, one of President Clinton’s hit men, said about her: “If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”</div>
</div>
<p>And where were the feminists – and almost all of their allies in the liberal press, for that matter — when Juanita Broaddrick credibly accused then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton of rape?</p>
<p>Looks like the only women who must be believed in the nasty world of politics (though not Hollywood or the news media) are Democratic women accusing Republican men.</p>
<p>I guess we have to tolerate a certain amount of hypocrisy in politics; it comes with the territory. But progressive sanctimony is a lot harder to take.</p>
<p>And this entire sanctimonious Democrat charade is about just one thing: Stopping Judge Kavanaugh before he’s voted onto the Supreme Court. Republicans know this and they should vote on his nomination – the sooner the better — whether Christine Blasey Ford testifies or not.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-23T20:38:00ZThe Dems Ace in the HoleBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Dems-Ace-in-the-Hole/-76381752267204584.html2018-09-17T18:13:00Z2018-09-17T18:13:00Z<p>Unfortunately for Republicans, when it comes to midterm elections it’s not just the economy, stupid. Yes, a good economy can help the sitting president’s party just as a weak economy can hurt. But even more important is how the American people view the president himself. Never underestimate the power of likeability.</p>
<p>If the economy were the most important single issue in the upcoming elections, there’d be no talk of a blue wave. Republicans wouldn’t be biting their nails, fearing the worst. Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t waste her time dreaming about becoming speaker again.</p>
<p>But Donald Trump, narcissist that he is, has to be the center of attraction, all the time. And as James Carville, the author of that line about how campaigns are all about the economy, recently said about the president: “He’s made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump.”</p>
<p>The Oval Office isn’t big enough to contain this president’s ego. So the part about how “Every conversation starts and ends with Trump” is just fine with Mr. Trump — and his base. But it’s tough to win midterms if all you’ve got is your base.</p>
<p>Yes, his die-hard fan base love it when it sticks it to the so-called fake news media; they laugh when he demeans and humiliates his critics; they nod in agreement when he tells them at rallies how wonderful he is … but moderate Republicans and independents hate all of it. The president’s persona makes them cringe. And the GOP won’t hang on to the House – or maybe even the Senate – without support from moderates and independents.</p>
<p>Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, told the New York Times that, “People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on – they’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”<br /><br />Midterms are also about turnout. And, as of today anyway, Democrats have the wind at their backs. They’ll show up in November even if a meteor hits Earth on Election Day.</p>
<p>But a lot of Republicans – especially the president’s most passionate supporters – think the blue wave is a liberal delusion. Some believe it’s nothing more than fake news. If that confidence leads to complacency in November, there’s only one thing that’s certain: Democrats will be the midterm winners – and President Trump likely will face impeachment.</p>
<p>The election is less than two months off, but that’s still a long way in politics. But if the Democrats do well, it won’t be because of fake news, or moderate Republicans who didn’t have the president’s back, or Robert Mueller’s so-called witch hunt, or the late John McCain contempt for the president, or liberal bias in social media, or Barack Obama on the stump.</p>
<p>But neither will it be because Americans have embraced progressive ideas about abolishing ICE or funding sanctuary cities or a Bernie Sanders fascination with free stuff for the masses.</p>
<p>If there’s anything resembling a blue wave, it’ll be because Donald Trump craves attention and isn’t happy unless he gets lots and lots of it. His base loves that about him. Too many others are turned off by it. And before this is over, the tumult and chaos of the Trump presidency may obscure the booming economy he had so much to do with.</p>
<p>Or to put it another way: Donald Trump’s ego is the Democrats’ ace in the hole.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-17T18:13:00ZPredictions, Anyone?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Predictions-Anyone/551272307702126666.html2018-09-14T19:05:00Z2018-09-14T19:05:00Z<p>As the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra once supposedly said: Predictions are hard, especially when they’re about the future.</p>
<p>So, take a deep breath, put your partisanship on hold, and send me your predictions on how the midterm elections will turn out.</p>
<p>Will Republicans hold a majority of seats in the House? How about the Senate?</p>
<p>If there’s a blue wave how many seats will the GOP lose?</p>
<p>Again, if there’s a blue wave, who or what’s to blame? So-called fake news media? Moderate Republicans? Never Trumpers? Or could it be our polarizing president?</p>
<p>Keep it tight and on point.</p>
<p>I look forward to your thoughts.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-14T19:05:00ZWhat Donald Trump and Nike Have in CommonBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Donald-Trump-and-Nike-Have-in-Common/898002885028697642.html2018-09-06T18:05:00Z2018-09-06T18:05:00Z<p>One year ago this month, President Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Alabama in support of Luther Strange who was running on the GOP ticket for the U.S. Senate. Whatever he said about Strange (who by the way lost to a Democrat – <em>in Alabama</em>!) has long been forgotten. But what riled his base that night, whether the president’s supporters were in the arena or at home watching on TV, and what is still resonating today, was what he said about the NFL and the players who silently protested what they see as racism in America by taking a knee during the national anthem.</p>
<p>Throwing red meat to the crowd, the president said that NFL owners should fire the players who protest. “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “<em>He’s fired</em>!”</p>
<p>The Trump fans loved it. They cheered and nodded in agreement. The president got what he was after – a hot cultural issue that he knew would excite his base – and divide the country.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is a man who gives cynicism a bad name. Even though the protest movement was fading by the time he went to Alabama, he instinctively understood that he could capitalize on a social issue that portrayed highly paid athletes, most of them black, as un-American. He saw a tiny campfire and poured gasoline on it hoping it would become a political inferno. It did. And the flame is still burning.</p>
<p>Can you say Nike?</p>
<p>Of all the athletes in the whole wide world Nike could have chosen to be the face of the company’s 30<span>th </span>anniversary “Just Do It” campaign, Nike chose Colin Kaepernick. In a close-up black and white shot of the former NFL quarterback, who is staring right into the camera, you can see these words: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”</p>
<p>Neither Mr. Trump nor Nike started the fire; neither was the instigator of the culture wars in America. But both came to the same conclusion: that there was something to be gained by keeping the fire burning.<br /><br />I guess we didn’t have enough polarization in America before Donald Trump brought up the NFL protest out of the blue … or before Nike decided to team up with the most controversial athlete on the planet.</p>
<p>(A brief aside I’d like to share with you: I never got worked up over the kneeling protest. I would have preferred that the players picked another venue. I would have preferred they protested fatherlessness in black America or senseless violent crime rather than what they see as pervasive racism and social injustice in America. But the protest was silent. No one jumped up and down disrupting the national anthem. So, as I say, I didn’t lose any sleep over it. I was far more upset, though, with the socks Kaepernick chose to wear on the practice field – the ones that portrayed cops as pigs.)</p>
<p>Nike didn’t get to be a multi-billion dollar company by making reckless decisions. They know exactly what they’re doing. They didn’t pick Kaepernick to be the face of their campaign without foreseeing the blowback that was coming.</p>
<p>Nike made a conscious business decision; it played the social justice card. Sure, they’d rather their customers didn’t light Nike stuff on fire and boycott the company, but they knew that some of their customers would do just that. And they went with Kaepernick anyway.</p>
<p>Nike is a company that makes a lot of money selling sports apparel to young consumers here in America and overseas. And with young people Donald Trump is about as popular as Legionnaire’s disease.</p>
<p>Still, why pick Kaepernick of all the athletes they might have chosen? Why stir up such a needless controversy? Because the brain trust at Nike understands that controversy can be good for business.</p>
<p>The business Nike loses from older more conservative consumers, they figure, will be more than made up for with left-leaning social justice millennials who think Colin Kaepernick is a courageous hero not afraid to speak out against racism in America.</p>
<p>Donald Trump and Nike may be very different in very important ways. They have different values, different worldviews. But they have one thing in common: Both know how to rev up their base. Both are good at needlessly polarizing a country that is already way, way too polarized.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-09-06T18:05:00ZA Titanic Showdown Is ComingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Titanic-Showdown-Is-Coming/-259018715949568188.html2018-08-30T23:00:00Z2018-08-30T23:00:00Z<p>If you think it’s hot in Florida now, wait until summer is over – and the campaign for governor really heats up the sunshine state.</p>
<p>In one corner we have Congressman Ron DeSantis, a conservative Republican and a Donald Trump acolyte.</p>
<p>And in the other corner, there’s Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum,a progressive Democrat backed by the Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. Gillum wants to abolish ICE, institute Medicare for everyone, raise taxes on corporations, and impeach Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Florida is the nation’s largest swing state so the race between a Trump conservative and a Sanders progressive is already being called a “titanic showdown” and a proxy for the 2020 president race.</p>
<p>Florida went for Mr. Trump in 2016, but not by much, only about 1 percentage point. And the last time Florida voters elected a Democratic governor was 20 years ago. Florida isn’t Vermont so it’s going to be a tough road ahead for Bernie’s guy.</p>
<p>But if he did manage to win, he’d be the first African American elected governor in Florida. And if he should lose, rest assured the word that will be thrown around more than any other will be some form of … racism.</p>
<p>That’s more than an idle prediction. We already have reason to believe that race is going to be as big a factor in the campaign as anything else.</p>
<p>By now you’ve probably heard that DeSantis, who is white, said this on Fox the morning after he won the GOP primary:</p>
<p>“Florida elections are always competitive, and this is a guy who, although he’s much too liberal for Florida, I think he’s got huge problems with how he’s governed Tallahassee, he is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views, and he’s a charismatic candidate. I watched those Democrat debates, and none of that is my cup of tea, but he performed better than those other people there. So we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction, let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor Scott, the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That’s not going to work.”</p>
<p>Yes, he said monkey. A smarter politician would have said, “the last thing we need to do is <em>mess </em>this up,” or “<em>muck </em>this up.” Anyone not in a coma had to know that he’d be called a racist for using the M word.</p>
<p>This strikes me as way beyond crazy but such is our political culture.</p>
<p>The Huffington Post wasted no time – in what ostensibly was a straight news story – calling DeSantis a bigot. “Andrew Gillum became the Democratic nominee for Florida governor on Tuesday night,” the story began. “On Wednesday morning, his opponent, GOP candidate Ron DeSantis, made racist dog-whistle comments about him.”</p>
<p>And social media predictably lit up with comments like this: “12 hrs into the general election cycle, Ron DeSantis has already alluded to Andrew Gillum as a ‘monkey.’ This is the spirit of racial animus that fuels today’s GOP. That Trump and his friends in politics use to energize a white base. It’s baseless + un-American.”</p>
<p>I’m with Charles Cooke, who had this to say on National Review:</p>
<p>“We hear a lot about the ‘politics of division’ these days. Indeed, that phrase was used in a few quarters as a criticism of DeSantis’s words. But I can think of fewer more ‘divisive’ actions than falsely telling millions of people that the man who may well be their next governor believes that African Americans are monkeys. Those who did so should be ashamed.”</p>
<p>Gillum, also on Fox, accused DeSantis of “taking a page directly from the campaign manual of Donald Trump” and said he believes Florida voters are “sick” of the division from DeSantis.</p>
<p>And for good measure he threw in that “Well, in the handbook of Donald Trump they no longer do [dog] whistle calls,” Gillum said. “They are now using full bullhorns.”</p>
<p>So here’s my early bet on what the campaign will come down to: DeSantis will tell the voters over and over again that Gillum is a Bernie Sanders socialist. And Gillum will tell the voters just as often that DeSantis is a right-wing Donald Trump racist.</p>
<p>If you don’t live in Florida, consider yourself lucky.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-30T23:00:00ZPresident Trump and the "I Word"Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/President-Trump-and-the-I-Word/-21054953598941163.html2018-08-24T18:04:00Z2018-08-24T18:04:00Z<p>From the moment he was sworn in as president, progressive politicians and their PR associates in the mainstream media have been convinced that Donald J. Trump could not possibly have beaten their beloved Hillary Clinton unless he cheated; unless he conspired with the Kremlin to throw the election his way.</p>
<p>In their eyes, he has never been a legitimate president.</p>
<p>But if the special prosecutor had evidence that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians we’d certainly know it by now. Nothing stays secret in Washington, not for long anyway. Leaks are the coin of the realm. They’re how all sorts of people in government impress their allies in the media; it’s how they show journalists how important they are.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that there’s been no evidence that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin got together to toss Hillary over the side, progressives are salivating. They have convinced themselves that they’ve found the smoking gun that will spell the end of the Trump presidency.</p>
<p>And what is that, you’d have every reason to ask? Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer (and fixer) who once said he’d take a bullet for Donald Trump, now as a convicted felon says he paid off two women to keep their mouths shut about their alleged flings with Mr. Trump – a violating of campaign finance laws. And if Cohen is guilty, his lawyer (and close friend of Hillary Clinton) Lanny Davis says, so is the president, who the allegation goes, was in on the hush money deal.</p>
<p>Oh, the humanity.</p>
<p>Before we go on, let’s be clear that while violations of campaign finance laws are, well, violations – they’re not exactly crimes against humanity; they’re more like jaywalking or litterbug violations.</p>
<p>Granted a campaign violation involving hush money to a Playboy model and a porn star is more than a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to these things. But the president can credibly say he didn’t order the hush money payments to help his campaign – he did it to cover up a couple of embarrassing affairs that he didn’t want his family to know about.</p>
<p>Who knows? Maybe there’s more. We don’t know what we don’t know. Maybe Paul Manafort and Mr. Cohen have the goods on their old friend, the president. Or maybe they don’t. We’ll see, to use a favorite line from the president.</p>
<p>In any case, this isn’t simply about the law. It’s also about politics. And so, if the Democrats take over the House impeachment is more than a mere possibility. They’ll get to decide what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors. The progressives running for president along with their left wing base will demand impeachment proceedings. So will the media elites, who, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “want vindication for believing that Mr. Trump could never have legitimately defeated their heroine.”</p>
<p>Speaking of media elites, the Media Research Center reports that on the day after Manafort and Cohen bit the dust, “CNN and MSNBC reporters, anchors, and paid contributors used the word [impeachment] an absurd 222 times in 18 hours.”</p>
<p>Like sharks, they smell blood in the water.</p>
<p>If being a narcissist and acting like a vindictive adolescent were impeachable offenses, Donald Trump would have been kicked out of the Oval Office a long time ago. But they’re not. That’s the good news for the president. The bad news is, the party that controls the House next year will decide what is an impeachable offense.</p>
<p>And if that’s the Democrats as the polls seem to indicate, Donald Trump may look back on his first two years in office – as chaotic as they’ve been – as the good old days.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-24T18:04:00ZOmarosa May Be a Loser But She Said GREAT Things About MeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Omarosa-May-Be-a-Loser-But-She-Said-GREAT-Things-About-Me/-605849300639722016.html2018-08-21T18:12:00Z2018-08-21T18:12:00Z<p>Dysfunctional relationships rarely end well. Which brings us to the unhappy couple, Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault.</p>
<p>Why in the world, reasonable people ask every time she shows up on MSNBC with a new secret tape, did Donald Trump hire such a loathsome woman in the first place? Didn’t he know how duplicitous she was? How untrustworthy?</p>
<p>Well, there’s no need for speculating. The president – in what some might consider a rare moment of honesty — has told us.</p>
<p>In a tweet after she started her slimy book tour, President Trump said “When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!”</p>
<p>There you have it: Flattery will get you everywhere with Donald Trump; it can even get you a job in the White House.</p>
<p>But what if she’s a loser and nothing but problems? No big deal. She said GREAT things about the president. And note that he put the word “GREAT” in capital letters — just to make sure everyone knows how GREAT he is.</p>
<p>If Omarosa gives tawdry a bad name, Mr. Trump does the same for narcissism. Praise is the air he breathes. He craves adoration. He’s sooooo needy!</p>
<p>Which is why he loves those political rallies, where the cheering crowd, with every ovation, is telling him how GREAT he is.</p>
<p>But as I’ve noted before, what he gains in support at those rallies comes at a very high price. While he solidifies his hard-core base, the things he says alienates more moderate Republican voters and independents who might support the GOP if it weren’t for the president’s demeanor.</p>
<p>They like his policies; they just don’t like him.</p>
<p>When he calls the press the “enemy of the people,” when he humiliates political opponents, when he brags about how wonderful he is, he revs up his most passionate supporters — but he also energizes Democrats to vote.</p>
<p>Keep an eye on white, college educated Republicans in the suburbs, especially women. If they sit home on Election Day, turned off by what they see as the president’s cringe-worthy personality, it will be Democrats doing the cheering on Election Night.</p>
<p>And all the GREAT things Mr. Trump’s acolytes say about him won’t stem stop a blue wave. On the bright side, it’s still August.</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-21T18:12:00ZAvenatti and Omarosa vs. Trump in 2020 - Please God, Make it HappenBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Avenatti-and-Omarosa-vs.-Trump-in-2020---Please-God-Make-it-Happen/-149545504535533997.html2018-08-14T18:07:00Z2018-08-14T18:07:00Z<p>For a few days now I’ve been wondering who Omarosa Manigault reminds me of. Then it hit me. She’s the female, black version of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who never met a camera he didn’t like and who represents the porn star Stormy Daniels.</p>
<p>Both Manigault and Avenatti are opportunists. Both give sleazy a bad name. Avenatti actually makes ambulance-chasing lawyers look like Justices on the Supreme Court. And most importantly, both, let’s just say, aren’t especially fond of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Avenatti a while ago set up living quarters at CNN, where he established a world record by appearing on the channel 367,914 times – in just one day. This didn’t embarrass the “journalists” at CNN. They know who’s watching. And pandering to your audience is the lifeblood of cable news.</p>
<p>Now, Omarosa is shooting for his record. She’s an unserious person who used to sing Donald Trump’s praises until she had a book to sell and was almost certainly told by her publisher that scandal sells more books than nice stuff. But none of that fazes the TV news folks who can’t wait to get her into the studio. She has bad things to say about Donald Trump and that’s all that’s required to get on the air (even if they ask her an occasional tough question).</p>
<p>It’s a deal that benefits both sides: Omarosa gives the liberal TV channels what they need and they give her face time to sell her book. It’s called business. But rest assured, it’s not called old school journalism.</p>
<p>Do you think she’d get two seconds on Meet the Press if she had good things to say about President Trump? Sorry I asked.</p>
<p>Neither Avenatti nor Ms. Manigault are the kinds of people you’d want to wash you hands in the same sink they just used. But that’s not important to those in the media who spend most of the day bashing the president.</p>
<p>Oh sure, he deserves a lot of the heat he gets — but not from these two.</p>
<p>Avenatti is now telling people he’s considering a run for the White House in 2020. I hope he does run for president. And I hope he picks Omarosa as his running mate. And I hope they run against Donald Trump.</p>
<p>I once interviewed George Carlin who told me, “Bernie, I root for chaos.”</p>
<p>Me too.</p>
<p>Please God, Make it happen.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-14T18:07:00ZIt's Not Just the Economy, StupidBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Its-Not-Just-the-Economy-Stupid/668544980898093273.html2018-08-09T18:18:00Z2018-08-09T18:18:00Z<p>Note to loyal Trump supporters: It’s not just the economy, stupid. If it were, there might actually be the “red wave” the president sees coming. But there’s a dark cloud on the horizon. And his name is Donald Trump.</p>
<p>As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “The President’s persona is trumping positive policy results among voters, and without some intervening news or a change in strategy the result is likely to be a national left turn.”</p>
<p>It’s precisely what his most passionate supporters love – the way he ruthlessly goes after his critics, the way he tells fans at rallies how wonderful he Donald J. Trump is, his non-stop assault on so-called fake news – that repels moderate Republicans and independent voters his party needs to win.</p>
<p>One current indication of the GOP’s potential problems: While Republicans appear to have won a special House election in Ohio – (absentee ballots haven’t been counted yet) – the GOP candidate is ahead by less than 1 percentage point. And that’s in a heavily Republican district. This screams weakness, not strength.</p>
<p>“The ominous news for Republicans is that they hold about 68 House seats that are lessRepublican than the Ohio district,” the Journal reports.</p>
<p>Forgive the cliché, but making predictions is hard, especially when they’re about the future. So there’ll be no predictions here. November, by political standards, is still a long way off. Anything can happen between now and then.</p>
<p>But there is one thing we can be sure of. Donald Trump isn’t going to change the way he operates. He’ll continue to rev ups his relatively small hard-core base, but it comes at the expense of turning off a much bigger group of those moderates and independents the GOP desperately needs. The Trump math doesn’t add up.</p>
<p>And if they sit home in November, or vote for the Democratic candidate, the red wave the president wants to take credit for will be no more than wishful thinking. Even a booming economy won’t be enough to salvage the midterms.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-09T18:18:00ZShut Down the Government, Build a Wall, Say Hello to Speaker PelosiBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Shut-Down-the-Government-Build-a-Wall-Say-Hello-to-Speaker-Pelosi/379537822636626908.html2018-08-01T18:16:00Z2018-08-01T18:16:00Z<p>So our impulsive president is threatening to shut down the government right before the midterm elections if he doesn’t get money for his border wall. If he’s trying to turn the House over to Nancy Pelosi, he’s doing a pretty good job.</p>
<p>Here’s what the president tweeted on the subject: “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the wall.”</p>
<p>Who knows if he really means it or if he’s just flexing his muscles? Who knows if he’ll tweet out something that contradicts his previous tweet 10 minutes from now?</p>
<p>But if President Trump thinks he can help his party in the midterms with chatter about border walls and government shutdowns, if he thinks he can hold the House for the GOP by telling his most loyal supporters what they want to hear, he’s wrong.</p>
<p>The base may love tough talk from their macho leader, but what Donald Trump still hasn’t seemed to grasp is that his base is not like the rest of America and that their support isn’t enough to help him or his party win elections.</p>
<p>The rest of America doesn’t want a government shutdown. Most Americans don’t even want a wall. And while voters may, in theory, blame “both sides” for a shutdown, they know which party controls Congress and the White House. And they know which president put out the tweet about shutting down the government. So there’s a good chance it’s the GOP that will pay the price if the government actually is shut down – for a wall no less that one poll has said only 37 percent of Americans want.</p>
<p>Like his base, Mr. Trump is no fan of polls – unless, of course, they reflect news the president likes. And so, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-backers-stand-by-president-in-face-of-russia-criticism-cbs-poll/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7b&linkId=54882667" rel="noopener" target="_blank">a recent CBS News poll</a> must have put a smile on the president’s face. Here’s the question that was asked of “strong Trump supporters”:</p>
<p>“Who do you trust for accurate information?</p>
<p>Ninety-one percent said they trust President Trump. Only 63 percent said they trust family and friends. Eleven percent trusts the mainstream news media.</p>
<p>This is quite remarkable. The president’s most passionate base trust him more – a lot more – than they trust their own friends and family, their own wives and husbands and children and friends.</p>
<p>Can you say cult following?</p>
<p>This is just one more piece of evidence proving that Donald Trump has the power to mesmerize his most loyal followers. They’re not with him because of his cogent, reasoned arguments, or even because of a deeply held conservative philosophy.</p>
<p>They support him because he has tapped into something: their alienation. Once he gave the middle finger to the political establishment and the cultural elites, once he told them he was fed up with illegal aliens sneaking into the country, once he said we’re going to build a wall to keep them out, once he said the United States wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore and he was going too make America great again, they had found their messiah. The idea that they would ever vote for someone like Jeb Bush or John Kasich was laughable.</p>
<p>And there’s one more “villain” Donald Trump has trashed to the joy of his base: the national news media.</p>
<p>Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way: They’ve done a lot on their own to diminish their credibility. Too many journalists have let their hatred of this president infect their work. Their biases aren’t nuanced anymore. They’re right out there in the open. So, there’s a reason a measly 11 percent of Americans in that CBS News poll believe what the mainstream media tell them. Frankly, I’m surprised the number is that high, since the question was asked of “strong Trump supporters.”</p>
<p>But Donald Trump has also done a lot to delegitimize the press for his own cynical reasons. Call the media “fake news” enough and his mesmerized followers believe journalists flat out make things up just to hurt the president. It doesn’t matter that that’s not how it works. Trump loyalists don’t care.</p>
<p>Which brings me to a conversation I had nine days before the presidential election in 2008, when I interviewed Pat Caddell for my book, <em>A Slobbering Love Affair</em>, which was about how the mainstream media fell madly in love with Barack Obama.</p>
<p>In 1972 when I was a young producer at CBS News covering the presidential campaign of George McGovern, Pat Caddell was doing McGovern’s polling. Pat was a Democrat but over the years became the kind of Democrat, conservative Republicans respected. He was a regular contributor on Fox. Liberal critics called him a “Fox News Democrat.” Pat had principles.</p>
<p>Here’s what I wrote about that conversation in my book:</p>
<p>“Caddell worries that some day a demagogue is going to come along, somebody who makes Huey Long look like a shut-in. Somebody, Caddell told me, ‘who gets up at the start of his campaign and says, ‘<span>I want you to see the press. They are the enemy of the American people. They will do everything they can to stop me because they want to stop you</span>.’ And the American people will believe it.(Caddell told me) … Nobody will care what the press says.”</p>
<p>Remember, this conversation took place in 2008, right before Barack Obama was elected president. Caddell’s wasn’t talking about Donald Trump. Not knowingly, anyway.</p>Bernie Goldberg2018-08-01T18:16:00ZControl Yourself, Mr. President - If You CanBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Control-Yourself-Mr.-President---If-You-Can/-118347136808749132.html2018-07-26T18:28:00Z2018-07-26T18:28:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’ve often wondered what it would take for die-hard supporters of President Trump to say, “That’s it, I’ve had enough” and abandon the man who they so admire. And the fact is, I can’t think of anything.</p>
<p>And by “anything” I mean … <em>ANYTHING</em>!</p>
<p>Could he really shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose the support of his biggest fans? I’m convinced he could. Literally!</p>
<p>How about if he reaches the point where he’s had enough of what he calls fake news, and slaps Jim Acosta in the puss at a nationally televised news conference? What would his loyal supporters do then? They’d give him a medal, that’s what they’d do.</p>
<p>What if there’s some really nasty stuff in those tax returns he won’t make public? What if he made some unsavory business deals with the Russians? Would that bring condemnation to the president? From Democrats it would; from Republicans it would produce a yawn or maybe some cheers for sticking it to the IRS.</p>
<p>While Democrats loathe this president, Republicans, despite (or maybe because of) the non-stop turmoil he’s created from the day he took office, adore him. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 88 percent of Republicans “approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president.” (In total, 45 percent of voters approve of the president’s job while 52 percent disapprove.)</p>
<p>As William Galston writes in a Wall Street Journal column under the headline, “Why Republicans Can’t Get Enough of Trump” … “It is thrilling to have a leader who not only promotes your interests but also validates your passions.” Donald Trump is good at validating passions, especially of those who have long felt alienated and despise the cultural elite as much as their hero, the president, seems to.</p>
<p>But while the Mr. Trump may bask in the applause he receives at his campaign style rallies, from fans whose passions he knows how to validate, if he thinks his party can retain control of Congress in the midterm elections with a “base-only” strategy, he’s whistling past the proverbial graveyard.</p>
<p>And this is where the bad news for Republicans comes in. That same poll showed that the president’s job approval, while sky high among GOP voters, stands at only 40 percent among independents. Fifty-eight 58 percent of independents disapprove of the job he’s doing, with 46 percent “strongly” disapproving.</p>
<p>I’ve long thought that fans that comprise Mr. Trump’s base are like enablers who keep a friend’s addiction going, even though that’s not their intention. Donald Trump’s addiction is to applause and flattery. They’re the air he breathes. And at those rallies, his loyal base gives him what he needs. They fool him into thinking he’s more popular than he really is.</p>
<p>Yes, the president deserves a lot of credit for how well the economy is doing. And a strong economy is critical for the chances of the GOP in November. But a president’s popularity is also important in midterm elections. And so, if Donald Trump doesn’t turn things around with those independents, if he doesn’t stop behaving in ways they don’t like, then he — more than the so-called fake news, more than the Democratic resistance, more than the progressives who think he’s Hitler – will be responsible for Nancy Pelosi once again becoming Speaker of the House.</p>
<p>And however she personally feels about impeachment, the progressive wing of her party along with it’s growing left-wing base, will make enough noise to demand endless investigations into every aspect of the president’s life. And sooner or later, she may have to allow a House vote on impeachment, no matter what she thinks of its political wisdom.</p>
<p>Memo to POTUS: Your base loves you. They won’t leave you. You can count on their support. Stop going to rallies where they would coronate you if they could. Pay attention to those who aren’t crazy about you. To those who voted for you two years ago but aren’t so sure anymore. You’ve done a lot to alienate them. It’s not too late to win them back. But you have to convince them you’re not the danger that Democrats say you are. If you want to avoid disaster for your party this November, stop the impulsive comments and tweets that only get you in trouble. Knock off the nonstop, needless and petty provocations that turn away potential allies. Control yourself. That is, if you can.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-07-26T18:28:00ZThe New York Times Is the WorstBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-New-York-Times-Is-the-Worst/441659822013302641.html2018-07-16T23:23:00Z2018-07-16T23:23:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Every Sunday morning, at the crack of dawn, the New York Times arrives in my driveway. And every Sunday morning I try to resist the temptation to read the opinion pages because, as a general rule, I don’t like it when my head explodes.</p>
<p>Which it does when I give in to the temptation and open the paper to what they simply call the “Sunday Review.” This is a two-word euphemism for a section that, if honesty mattered, would be called, “How many opinion pieces can we publish in order to trash the president, his supporters, his party, conservatives in general — and still look like we’re not being mindlessly partisan but simply being reasonable.”</p>
<p>On page one of the Review this week was a guest column entitled, “The New York Yankees Are the Worst,” written by David Bentley Hart, an Orthodox Christian philosophical theologian, as Wikipedia describes him.</p>
<p>If Mr. Hart doesn’t like the Yankees, well, as the kids say … <em>whatever</em>!</p>
<p>But I instinctively knew this wasn’t going to really be about the Yankees. Not when it shows up on page one of the Sunday Review. Somehow this was going to fit the liberal template of the paper. This was going to be about the perceived deficiencies of a lot more than the Bronx Bombers.</p>
<p>But how, I wondered, was he going to drag Donald Trump into his column — which, of course, he did.</p>
<p>Before we go too far, allow me a few words about Mr. Hart. Let me say this as delicately as I can: He’s the kind of writer who uses SAT words (that even the <em>enlightened </em>readers of the New York Times may not be familiar with) in order to mask the well deserved conclusion that he’s trying too hard to impress us.</p>
<p>Here are a few words he employs to make sure we know how smart he is: Diabolists, bilious, bibulous, emulousness, revenants, orbicular, unguinous, cutaneous, prehensile … and my favorite, a description of how Derek Jeter fielded ground balls: “dainty coupe-chasse en tournant.”</p>
<p>As we used to say when I was growing up in the shadows of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx: Huh?</p>
<p>Okay, enough about how pretentious a writer Mr. Hart is and how he thinks he can fool us by tossing around French expressions that only an elite twit would throw around.</p>
<p>Now to what passes for the substance of his piece.</p>
<p>For starters, the Yankees are the worst, he believes, because for many years they played in a ballpark that was iconic, and described as a “temple of sport” — but was “More like the largest brothel in the world, being torn down only because a larger glitzier brothel was being erected across the street.” Why a brothel? Because the Yankees “purchased” their “championships” just like a customer at a brothel purchases sex.</p>
<p>How do you say, “unhinged” in French?</p>
<p>Here’s more about why the Yankees are so horrible: “The richest franchises – among which the Yankees enjoy archetypal pre-eminence – are content to let the poorest wither in a laissez-faire desert rather than make any reasonable sacrifices for the common good.”</p>
<p>Baseball in general (and the Yankees in particular), Mr. Hart laments, is “greedy.” It ignores “the needs of future generations.”</p>
<p>And take a wild guess what else is greedy and ignores the needs of future generations. If you said the United States of America and Donald Trump, give yourself a gold star.</p>
<p>Here is David Bentley Hart unleashing a not-so-original laundry list of progressive complaints about America. “America – with its decaying infrastructure, it’s third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a <span>degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president</span>–remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civil wealth for<em>civic</em>goods. Its absurdly engorged military budget diverts hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the public weal to those who profit from the military-industrial complex. Its plutocratic policies and libertarian ethos are immune to all appeals of human solidarity. It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few.” (Bold face emphasis above, added.)</p>
<p>And what you may ask does this have to do with why the “New York Yankees are the Worst”? Well, it’s because, as he writes in the next sentence: “And so, of course, the Yankees cannot help but be emblematic of everything that characterizes us as a nation and as an idea …”</p>
<p>Get it? The Yankees are rich and strong and successful and want to stay on top – just like the insensitive plutocrats that hold the keys to power in the United States.</p>
<p>Yes, we all get it, Mr. Hart. You dislike the Yankees – but a baseball team is only symptomatic of the much bigger problem that keeps you awake at night: America itself, and a populace that would elect an “imbecile” as president.</p>
<p>I would respectfully recommend that Mr. Hart, an obviously angry man, seek solace in his Bible; he is a Christian theologian after all. Perhaps he can learn to love his enemies instead of hating them as he does.</p>
<p>But we can’t let the New York Times off too easily, not when the editors of the newspaper of record published this tripe, which included the line about how the president is “a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist,” a reference, I assume, to the zero tolerance border policy that led to the separation of illegal immigrants from their children.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine the Wall Street Journal, with its conservative sensibilities, allowing a guest columnist (or anyone else for that matter) to call Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton an “imbecile” on its pages. Real professionals have standards and they adhere to them, regardless of their partisan feelings.</p>
<p>The New York Times has become the print equivalent of cable television news: Give the audience what it wants, (and not just on the opinion pages). Pander to your customers’ tastes.</p>
<p>It’s all about money. Old-fashioned professional standards are just that – old fashioned. The bottom line is all that counts. If the reader comes to your pages already salivating, encourage his raw passion. Get him even more worked up.</p>
<p>If David Bentley Hart thinks the Yankee Stadium is a brothel, what does that make the Times building in New York City?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-07-16T23:23:00ZThe Demonization of Judge KavanaughBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Demonization-of-Judge-Kavanaugh/-793431992596970139.html2018-07-11T18:09:00Z2018-07-11T18:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Maybe if President Trump had nominated Barack Obama to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, or perhaps Hillary Clinton, or maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old democratic socialist who just won a Democratic primary in New York City, the “Resistance” would happily go along and vote to confirm. I say “maybe” because the way things work these days, if Donald Trump is for it, Democrats have to be against it. So who knows?</p>
<p>The president’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is a smart legal conservative, a judge who sits on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Which means Democrats will demonize him. They’ll portray him as an ideologue hell bent on taking way the rights of women, minorities and everyone who isn’t white, male and rich.</p>
<p>The editorial board of National Review got it right:</p>
<p>“It would be utterly implausible, indeed laughable, for Senate Democrats to try to portray Kavanaugh as unqualified. They will instead try to present him as a right-wing monster. They will try to make him pledge to keep the Supreme Court rather than legislatures in charge of abortion policy, even though the Constitution requires no such thing; then they will condemn him for refusing to take the pledge. They will portray his concern for the structural limits on government power as a blanket hostility to government, which it is not. And they will cherry-pick decisions in which he ruled against a sympathetic cause or litigant, as is sometimes a judge’s duty.”</p>
<p>But Democrats have reason to worry. They’ve long seen the Supreme Court as the place to go when they can’t get their ideas validated either by a majority of the American people or by Congress. Now they’ve got a problem, one that could go on for decades.</p>
<p>But so do we have a problem. The Court has become more and more political in recent years. “In the past 10 years … justices have hardly ever voted against the ideology of the president who appointed them. Only Justice Kennedy, named to the court by Ronald Reagan, did so with any regularity. That is why with his replacement on the court an ideologically committed Republican justice, it will become impossible to regard the court as anything but a partisan institution,” as Lee Epstein, a political scientist and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School write in the New York Times.</p>
<p>How long can we have confidence in the Supreme Court if we see it not as the place that calls balls and strikes, but as a political institution, not unlike the other two branches of government?</p>
<p>And despite the “concern” coming from liberals, rest assured that if Hillary Clinton had won, she’d be doing the same thing that Donald Trump is doing: picking judges who share her values and will vote accordingly; tossing a juicy bone to the base.</p>
<p>Sooner or later, another liberal Democrat will be elected president, and he or she will pick justices not just for their legal smarts, but also for their politics.</p>
<p>It’s not that this is something new, it’s that the Court is becoming more and more divided along political lines, and the partisan divide is becoming more and more apparent.</p>
<p>So Democrats are understandably afraid. But fearful people often do foolish things. And Democrats will be taking a big chance if they go too far in the demonization of Judge Kavanaugh. Voters will see that he’s not a monster. And those who persist in pretending he is will come off as unreasonable, as hopelessly partisan, and in some cases, as borderline unhinged.</p>
<p>And there’s a good chance that partisan opposition to President Trump’s nominee, along with progressive demands that ICE be abolished, and the continuing harassment of Republicans in restaurants and outside their houses, won’t sit well with moderate voters in November. Unhinged, borderline or otherwise, rarely does.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-07-11T18:09:00ZProgressives and the Boy Who Cried WolfBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Progressives-and-the-Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf/-130553788217265274.html2018-07-03T18:14:00Z2018-07-03T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Turns out there’s one more thing we can count on besides the certainty of death and taxes — and it’s that every day Donald Trump is president the New York Times will publish at least one news story or column – and usually a lot more — about how utterly bad things are here in America.</p>
<p>And since CNN and MSNBC take their cues from the Times, turn on either of those channels and you’ll get more of what you get in the newspaper of record.</p>
<p>Here’s a recent example of how hopeless life is in the land of Trump, a column in the Times from Charles Blow, who has become a tiresome one-note samba when it comes to his take Donald Trump – and his supporters.</p>
<p>“It is truly a confounding time to be alive, to be an American,” Mr. Blow begins his column.</p>
<p>Why is that? Because Donald Trump “openly lies, fabricates and exaggerates;” because Donald Trump, “spurns our allies and embraces our adversaries;” because Donald Trump, along with “his congressional allies and his propaganda arm are waging open warfare on the Federal Bureau of Investigation;” and of course, because Donald Trump, “is a racist.”</p>
<p>What troubles Charles Blow, maybe more than the<em> evil</em><em> </em>president himself, is that, “ … somehow, many Americans, even those disgusted by what they see, have resigned themselves to this new reality.” Some “cheer” him on, others simply “shrug.”</p>
<p>And then Mr. Blow tells us why this bothers him so much. “I guess this is how empires begin to fall,” he writes.</p>
<p>I’m sure he believes America, as long as Donald Trump is president, is on a rocky road to oblivion, but here’s what Charles Blow and his fellow progressives don’t seem to grasp. Most Americans, even the ones who aren’t fans of the president, don’t really think America will collapse because Donald Trump is dishonest or boorish. I don’t think most Americans believe he’s a white supremacist, either. Or that he’s done as much harm to the reputation of the FBI as the FBI has done to itself.</p>
<p>When Mr. Trump got elected, Andrew Sullivan, a bright journalist tweeted, “America has now jumped off a constitutional cliff.”</p>
<p>Another journalist, Jeff Jarvis, tweeted,”I’ll say it: This is the victory of the uneducated and uninformed. Now more than ever that looks impossible to fix. They now rule.”</p>
<p>Upon learning that Donald Trump won the election, Carl Reiner, the liberal Hollywood icon who recently celebrated his 96<span>th </span>birthday (and father of left wing director Rob), tweeted what many progressives were thinking: “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo0ooooooo”</p>
<p>But Donald Trump has been in office for a year and a half and despite progressive fears the world hasn’t come to an end. Unemployment is low, at record lows for blacks and Latinos; consumer confidence is high. The doomsday scenario never happened.</p>
<p>The world was also going to come to an end when President Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Change Accord. The Trump-inspired tax bill was, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, “probably one of the worst bills in the history of the United States of America.” It was, again in her words, “Armageddon.” Americans got “crumbs.” And the left resurrected its old Nazi comparisons when his zero tolerance immigrant policy separated children from their parents.</p>
<p>Add to all of that the progressive certainty that Trump is evil incarnate, which allows them to harass anyone who works for the president. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” as Maxine Waters so eloquently put it.</p>
<p>Yes, this president is impulsive. He says things that aren’t true – a lot. He’s can be (and too often is) needlessly provocative and mean-spirited. But what Charles Blow and his fellow left-wingers don’t understand is that <em>they </em>are the reason so many Americans cheer for this president or shrug at his behavior.</p>
<p>They don’t understand that <em>they </em>are uniting the president’s supporters.</p>
<p>They don’t understand that it’s <em>their </em>over-the-top rhetoric, <em>their </em>relentless wailings about how Mr. Trump will create a Fourth Reich right here in the United States, that is having consequences not to their liking.</p>
<p>After a while the boy who cried wolf was no longer a legitimate concern of decent people; he became an irritant who simply had to be ignored. Progressives – those who are relentlessly warning us about the impending Trump apocalypse — take note.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-07-03T18:14:00ZHow the Unhinged Left is Helping Donald TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-the-Unhinged-Left-is-Helping-Donald-Trump/90594803543597804.html2018-06-26T18:24:00Z2018-06-26T18:24:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If progressives hate Donald Trump so much, why are they trying so hard to get him re-elected?</p>
<p>They may believe, with justification, that Donald Trump is vulgar and mean-spirited. They may think he acts more like a bully in middle school than a president. They may be convinced, based on the evidence before them, that he’s impulsive and dishonest.</p>
<p>But he’s not a Nazi, no matter how many times they say he is. And he’s not Adolf Hitler, despite what their fevered imagination keeps telling them.</p>
<p>That something so obvious even needs to be said is beyond troubling. When the angry left took to the streets with their signs that said Trump is Hitler, decent people, regardless of their politics, didn’t do enough. They pretty much just rolled their eyes.</p>
<p>We let them off too easy. We don’t simply roll our eyes when a bigot drops the N word on black people. We shun people like that. We should have done that with the Trump-is-a-Nazi crowd. Instead, reputable newspapers published their “scholarly” op-eds, comparing Donald Trump to Hitler.</p>
<p>Now we have not some anonymous leftist at a street rally but a former head of the CIA taking to Twitter to tell us that, “Other governments have separated mothers and children,” referring to the president’s border policy (at the time). And just in case you didn’t get the connection to the Nazis, Michael Hayden – who led the CIA under the presidency of George W. Bush – attached a picture of railroad tracks leading into the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.</p>
<p>Then, when he got hammered for his shameful comparison, he issued the standard non-apology apology: “If I [went too far] by comparing it to Birkenau, I apologize to anyone who may have felt offended.”</p>
<p>And if we needed any proof that there is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome just tune in to “Morning Joe” on MSNBC any day of the week. Here’s what Joe Scarborough had to say about the separation of children from their parents on the border: “Children are being marched away to showers just like the Nazis said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back.”</p>
<p>I’ve often wondered if when Joe says crazy things like that he’s simply pandering to his progressive audience for ratings and a big paycheck – or if he’s lost his mind.</p>
<p>The hard left apparently learned nothing from Hillary’s Clinton’s defeat. She lost for many reasons but one of them was her description of Trump supporters as “deplorables.” Voters don’t like it when elitists call them names.</p>
<p>Yet, we have “Morning Joe” regular Donny Deutsch, an ad executive and Scarborough sycophant, saying it’s not only Donald Trump who progressives should hold accountable, it’s everybody who supports him.</p>
<p>“This can no longer be about who Trump is, it has to be about who we are,” Deutsch said about the next elections. “We can no longer say Trump’s the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy.”</p>
<p>“If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy,” he repeated. “If you vote for Trump, you are ripping children from parents’ arms.”</p>
<p>Then, the inevitable comparison to Hitler and the Nazis.</p>
<p>“If you vote for Trump, then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border, like Nazis,” Deutsch said. “If you vote, you can no longer separate yourself” from the “evilness of Donald Trump.”</p>
<p>A mind is terrible think to waste, but that’s what’s happening to those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. They have lost touch with reality.</p>
<p>So let’s take a trip to the past, to get re-acquainted with historical reality. Our guide is Jay Winik, an historian and author who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Trump’s Critics Desecrate the Holocaust.”</p>
<p>“Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were rounded up and packed into cattle cars, with little air or light, no food and virtually no water, for a harrowing two-to three-day trip to Auschwitz. They rode in terror and anticipation, having no idea what was in store for them at the destination. Exhausted and scared they frequently had to stand for the entire trip. Mothers clutched sons; daughters held on to fathers; children gripped both parents’ hands; grandparents and the infirm struggled to stay alive. Many didn’t survive the journey.”</p>
<p>I wonder if Michael Hayden, Joe Scarborough or Donny Deutsch thought about any of that when they made their Nazi comparisons. I wonder if they considered any of what else Mr. Vinick wrote.</p>
<p>“When the trains arrived at Auschwitz, it was a scene of chaos, confusion and horror. After days trapped in darkened cattle cars, squinting into bright floodlights lining the tracks was almost unbearable. So was the stench, like nothing the captives had ever smelled before. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was the odor of burning human flesh and hair.”</p>
<p>Question for Joe Scarborough: Does that sound like what’s happening on the border between the U.S. and Mexico?</p>
<p>Does this?</p>
<p>“Outside they heard all kinds of noises: German shepherds and Doberman pinschers barking loudly, and commands in German most of them couldn’t understand. When they stumbled out of the cattle cars, disoriented and anxious timidly asking questions, the Germans shouted back, ‘Raus, raus raus!’ (‘Out, out, out!’) In the distance, the prisoners saw a skyline of chimneys, with bright orange plumes of flame shooting into the clouds. They didn’t know that most of them would be ash within hours.”</p>
<p>I found it painful to read those words. I wonder if Joe Scarborough and the others would find it painful too, or if their hatred of this president is so intense that it allows them to make Nazi comparisons with no sense of shame.</p>
<p>Contempt for Donald Trump may make the unhinged left feel good, but it might wind up helping him in 2020 — and his fellow Republicans in November.</p>
<p>The president’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was recently asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia because, the owner said, her restaurant “has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty and compassion, and cooperation.”</p>
<p>People who work for Donald Trump, apparently, don’t meet those <em>high standards</em>.</p>
<p>Trump supporters won’t forget what happened at that restaurant. Neither, I suspect, will independents, even if they’re not big fans of the president.</p>
<p>And they won’t forget what Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the progressive Democrat from California, said about that incident at the restaurant.</p>
<p>At a rally in Los Angeles she said that, “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you cause a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome – anymore, anywhere.”</p>
<p>Trump supporters know when they’re being called deplorable, even if the crazy wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t use that word anymore.</p>
<p>You don’t have to like Donald Trump to be disgusted with his most hateful, condescending critics. Maxine Waters, Joe Scarborough and the others suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome are so far gone they can’t see what’s happening: They’re not hurting the president they hate — but they just might be paving the way for his re-election.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-06-26T18:24:00ZAre the Liberals Who Run Harvard Guilty of Racial Discrimination?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Are-the-Liberals-Who-Run-Harvard-Guilty-of-Racial-Discrimination/-217945267132140276.html2018-06-21T18:07:00Z2018-06-21T18:07:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>People of good will, regardless of their political leanings, abhor discrimination based on race. But it’s liberals who were on the right side of history, who were the ones who led the fight for civil rights here in America back in the ‘60s. And maybe it’s because of that they’ve long since seen themselves as morally superior to anyone who doesn’t adhere to their “high standards” on matters of race.</p>
<p>They are the self-anointed guardians of civil rights, the ones who have assigned themselves the role of shining a bright light on racial discrimination whenever and wherever they see it. So far so good.</p>
<p>But what happens if you have no racial animus, but you’re not a fan of affirmative action as it’s currently practiced? Good chance the progressives will call you a bigot.</p>
<p>And what happens if you think the concept of “white privilege” is bunk? Another good chance that some <em>high-minded</em>liberal will say you’re a member of the patriarchy and too stupid to understand.</p>
<p>Liberals, bless their hearts, have never been short on sanctimony.</p>
<p>So that’s why it’s interesting that the people doing the discriminating in one particular case aren’t those supposedly evil conservatives, but are none other than members in good standing of the enlightened liberal elite.</p>
<p>And not just any old liberal elite … but the edified Harvard liberal elite!</p>
<p>A group called Students for Fair Admissions is suing the school, alleging that Harvard has set up what amounts to an illegal quota in order to limit the number of Asian American students who get in.</p>
<p>Harvard has some history with this kind of bigotry. Back in the 1920s and 30s, the Ivy League set limits on how many Jewish students they’d let in.</p>
<p>If they’d tell the truth (which would never happen, of course) it might sound something like this: <em>We have to limit the number of Asians we let in – or else the campus would be swarming with them. They’re smarter than everybody else. That’s why we had to keep those Jews out. You understand, don’t you?</em></p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, “An Asian American applicant with a 25% chance of admission would have a 35% chance if he were white, 75% if he were Hispanic, and 95% chance if he were African-American.”</p>
<p>In other words, if other words are really needed, Harvard doesn’t want too many Asian American kids at the school, no matter how smart they are because the Pooh-Bahs who run the place want a more diverse student body. And if they take in too many Asian students they might not have room on campus for other minorities, even if they’re less qualified.</p>
<p>Harvard, of course, would never acknowledge its bigotry. It says it’s a private school and its admission policies are a “trade secret” – a nice way of saying, “<em>What we do here in Cambridge is none of your damn business</em>.”</p>
<p>Not an especially convincing argument coming from a school that has no problem taking half a billion dollars a year in federal money. And it’s a good thing that federal civil rights laws apply to private schools like Harvard as well as public universities.</p>
<p>Harvard’s documents show that admission officers think Asian applicants are less well rounded than other applicants . They score low on personal traits –such as being likeable, and having a nice personality, and being helpful.</p>
<p>This is how sophisticated people manipulate subjective criteria. Or to put it more bluntly: how they mask their bigotry. If they weren’t so sophisticated they’d make Asian applicants tell admission officers exactly how many jellybeans are in the jar on the officer’s desk. That’s what bigoted white registrars did in the Old South to make sure blacks didn’t qualify to vote.</p>
<p>This is definitely not how affirmative action was supposed to work. According to the grand plan, it was OK for young white men to be turned away, regardless of merit. They were members of the <em>oppressive </em>class, after all.</p>
<p>But a funny thing happened on the way to the progressive Nirvana: People of color are being caught in the affirmative action crosshairs.</p>
<p>The case against Harvard may wind up in the Supreme Court where nine justices will have to decide how much discrimination is acceptable to sustain a system of racial spoils.</p>
<p>But whatever the Court decides the common sense verdict is already in: Harvard is guilty of discrimination based on race. But discriminating based on race is precisely how affirmative action works. It just wasn’t supposed to work <em>against </em>minorities.</p>
<p>As long as so-called privileged white kids were turned away from Harvard and other elite schools, liberals could justify their discrimination – and feel good about themselves at the same time. Let’s see how long they continue to justify discrimination against hard-working, talented people of color. Let’s see how long they can feel good about that.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-06-21T18:07:00ZThe Svengali PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Svengali-President/-641196000880342711.html2018-06-14T18:04:00Z2018-06-14T18:04:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>As regular readers of this column know, A) I’m not a fan of this president’s behavior – his impulsive vindictiveness, his narcissism, his dishonesty, and B) I’ve long been intrigued that despite all that, millions and millions of Americans don’t just like him – they adore him.</p>
<p>You’ll recall when candidate Trump said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any votes. He was right, at least as far as his legion of loving true believers was concerned.</p>
<p>But I’m more than intrigued, I’m downright fascinated by how even his biggest detractors – the ones who wake up each morning and wish he’d get hit by a bus – are under the control of Donald Trump’s Svengali like magic. The same power he has over his most loyal friends, he has over his most resentful enemies.</p>
<p>Take Robert De Niro. Please!</p>
<p>At the recent Tony awards in Manhattan, De Niro walked onto the stage and announced: I’m gonna say one thing: F*** Trump!” A few seconds later: “It’s no longer down with Trump, it’s f*** Trump!”</p>
<p>And the grinning progressive Trump haters in the audience gave Bobby a standing ovation.</p>
<p>De Niro hates Trump for many reasons; one of them surely is Mr. Trump’s vulgarity. So how does De Niro respond? With an F bomb. <em>Brilliant</em>! De Niro is under the spell of the evil Mr. Trump and doesn’t even know it!</p>
<p>Then there’s Bill Maher, who told his HBO audience that he was rooting for a great big recession. “I’m hoping for it because one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession,” Maher said. “Sorry if that hurts people but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy. … I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point.”</p>
<p>So what if ordinary Americans lose their jobs and can’t pay their rent or mortgage. Hey, nothing comes cheap, right? And recession and the misery that comes along with it is a price well worth paying to get right of the monster in the White House.</p>
<p>Never mind small details, like the one about how Maher won’t be paying any price if the economy tanks. He’s got enough stashed away to ride out the storm he wishes upon everyone else. Let everyone else suffer. Once again, <em>Brilliant</em>! And Maher thinks <em>Trump </em>is unhinged?</p>
<p>And let’s not forget the forgettable Samantha Bee, who tossed the c word at the president’s daughter, Ivanka. You see the power this president has over people like Ms. Bee? She thinks <em>he’s</em> mentally unstable so his very existence makes <em>her </em>mentally unstable.</p>
<p>The thing about true believers either side of the line is that they’re so enamored with their own brilliance that they figure that anyone who doesn’t see things the way they do is a moron – or worse. Usually worse. I mean who could disagree with De Niro or Maher or Samantha Bee? How about at least half the country?</p>
<p>Remember when in 2012 Congressman Todd Akin said abortions wouldn’t be necessary for rape victims because,“If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” A nanosecond later, liberals were tarring every Republican this side of Mars with that idiotic remark.</p>
<p>What if ordinary Americans, even the ones who aren’t fans of this president, start wondering if De Niro and Maher and Bee are the voices of progressivism in America? You think that would hurt Donald Trump? Or help him?</p>
<p>What I can’t figure out is how supposedly smart people really believe President Trump is a dictator and a tyrant and an authoritarian bent on destroying our democracy. Do any of these progressives geniuses really believe they could have said F*** Hitler or Pol Pot or Kim Jong-un and get away with it? Do they think they could wish for a financial collapse under a real dictatorship and have a TV show? Do they think they could call a tyrant’s daughter a c*** and not be hanged in the public square?</p>
<p>They can yell dictator, tyrant, and Hitler all they want. Ordinary Americans aren’t buying it. Liberals said the world would come to an end if Donald Trump were elected. It hasn’t. Normal people notice such things.</p>
<p>So here’s some free advice for all the Trump haters: Keep it up. Every time you say F You to the president or wish for a collapse of the economy or drop the c word on his daughter, you win converts to his side.</p>
<p>I don’t know if he’ll run again in 2020, but if he does, and if he wins, he can thank his most loyal supporters for the victory … and his most passionate enemies. Svengali looks like a snowflake by comparison to this president.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-06-14T18:04:00ZRudy, Mika and the Brouhaha Without the Ha HaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Rudy-Mika-and-the-Brouhaha-Without-the-Ha-Ha/-577100905511568180.html2018-06-11T18:04:00Z2018-06-11T18:04:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>From now on, beautiful women in high heels will no longer strut around the stage in bikinis on national television for the pleasure of gawking men. Not during one iconic pageant, anyway.</p>
<p>And if you have a problem with that take it up with the people at the Miss America Organization, who just put an end to the bikini part of the contest, condemning it to the junk heap of history as a relic of things past.</p>
<p>And if you bash women who have sex in porn movies, mainly for the pleasure of gawking men, then you’re a woman-hating male chauvinist pig.</p>
<p>If you have a problem with that, take it up with Mika Brzezinski.</p>
<p>But before we bring Mika into this, let’s go to Tel Aviv where President Trump’s lawyer and longtime friend Rudy Giuliani had a few choice words about Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Donald Trump a long time ago, a claim – try not to laugh — Mr. Trump denies.</p>
<p>“Excuse me, when you look at Stormy Daniels — uh, I know Donald Trump — look at his three wives,” Giuliani said. “Beautiful women. Classy women. Women of great substance. Stormy Daniels?” (Giuliani made a dismissive face after saying her name.)</p>
<p>“I respect women, beautiful women and women with value, but a woman who sells her body for sexual exploitation I don’t respect.”</p>
<p>(Later, in another interview, Giuliani said, “If you’re involved in a sort of slimy business, that says something about you, says something about how far you’ll go to make money.”)</p>
<p>Even after you factor in Rudy’s ulterior motive, that he obviously was trying to discredit Ms. Daniels, who has a lawsuit pending against President Trump for allegedly defaming her, what’s so wrong about what he said? That he doesn’t respect women who do what she does for a living? So?</p>
<p>Still, this was too much for Mika, who displays her righteous feminism on “Morning Joe” every chance she gets. After playing a clip of Rudy’s comments, she had nothing but disgust for Giuliani.</p>
<p>“You misogynistic fool,” she said looking straight into the camera. “Are you kidding me? ‘Just look at Stormy Daniels?’ Just look at yourself. Are you kidding me? In this moment where we are in history with women, you are going to tell us to just look at her? Are you out of your mind? You know what, that’s your only excuse, and I feel really sorry for you. That is the most — he was incredibly degrading. On top of the fact that you are hurting the president’s case on so many levels, so good on you, keep going, Rudy. I’m absolutely sickened about what I just saw.”</p>
<p>And later in the show, she added this: “Saying ‘just look at her’ and laughing derisively says everything you need to know about this presidency and their attitude toward women. Everything you need to know. It was about as disgusting as it gets.”</p>
<p>Maybe Mika was unfamiliar with an article that came out in June 2014 in Ms. Magazine that summed up the anti-porn argument. “The pornography industry is a complex machine that turns sex into a commodity that is more about power and profit than pleasure,” it read in part. “Pornography is an apparatus of the patriarchy because of the way it is aimed at male consumers,” the article said.</p>
<p>If Mika wants to defend one particular woman in porn – (even if she may not defend pornography itself) — that’s her business. But it doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out that this isn’t about porn. It’s about what everything on “Morning Joe” is about: Bashing Donald Trump. It’s about liberal hatred of this president. So if Mr. Trump’s friend demeans a porn star, Mika must defend the porn star.</p>
<p>Imagine if Barack Obama had said what Rudy Giuliani said – word for word. Mika and the rest of the “Morning Joe” crew would have nominated him for another Nobel Prize for upholding decency in the American culture. But this wasn’t about Barack Obama. It was about Donald Trump, which explains the outrage over Giuliani’s observation.</p>
<p>There’s an interesting test to determine how any of us really feel about a particular line of work: Would we want our children to be in that business? It’s a safe bet that Mika wouldn’t want her girls doing what Stormy Daniels does for a living. But why not? Because Rudy Giuliani had it right, that’s why not.</p>
<p>I can’t say with certainty, but I bet Mika Brzezinski, reliable defender of women that she is, thinks the Miss America folks did the right thing by eliminating the bikini part of the show. I mean, what reputable feminist would defend women showing off their bodies for the pleasure of gawking men?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-06-11T18:04:00ZThe Christian Baker Wins Round OneBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Christian-Baker-Wins-Round-One/90740208839482059.html2018-06-05T18:10:00Z2018-06-05T18:10:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>So a Colorado baker, a Christian man of faith, has the right to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. He has a right to practice his religion as he sees fit – and baking a cake for a same-sex marriage, in his view, would make him a participant in the wedding.</p>
<p>That’s more or less what the Supreme Court decided in its 7-2 ruling. More or less being the key phrase.</p>
<p>Actually, as the lead story in the Wall Street Journal explained it, “The Supreme court sidestepped a decision on whether religious merchants have a constitutional right to deny service to gay people, instead ruling narrowly that a Christian baker didn’t get a fair hearing before a state civil-rights commission.”</p>
<p>One of the commissioners in Colorado had said that, “freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust.”</p>
<p>The Supreme Court decided that talk like that showed an unfair bias against the baker; that the baker, Jack Phillips, didn’t get the fair hearing he deserved. Maybe, but religion has indeed been used over the years to justify all kinds of discrimination. It’s not exactly breaking news that while religion has the capacity to raise the game of some people, to make them noble and caring, it also has the power to make some people hateful and ignorant.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that Phillips is either hateful or ignorant. I trust he’s a sincere man who was willing to sell gays anything in his bakery but just wouldn’t take that next step and bake them a cake for an event that “celebrates something that directly goes against the teachings of the Bible,” as he put it.</p>
<p>Sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to tackle the issue head on: Does a merchant, whose business is open to the general public, have the right to turn away customers because they’re gay?</p>
<p>And if the answer is yes, can the merchant also discriminate against Jews or blacks or any other group his religion may not be fond of?</p>
<p>Here’s my take: If you open a store on Main Street, while you have the right to refuse to bake cakes adorned with Nazi slogans, you don’t have the right to refuse to bake cakes for gay weddings. Nazis aren’t a protected group in the Colorado civil rights law — or any other state civil rights law; discriminating based on sexual orientation, however, is against the law — and not only in Colorado.</p>
<p>I hope that someday the Court, while acknowledging the importance of a merchant’s religion, goes on to say that bakers and florists and photographers can’t turn away customers because of their sexual orientation. In my view, they shouldn’t have to deliver the cake or the flowers <em>to the actual reception</em>. Nor should they have to take wedding pictures <em>at the wedding</em>. That would be asking too much. But once you open your establishment <em>on a city street</em>, you shouldn’t be able to discriminate based on things like race, religion or sexual orientation.</p>
<p>But I readily acknowledge that it’s complicated.</p>
<p>Here’s the part I’m having trouble with: How can people of faith believe that the God they worship, the God who for whatever mysterious reason won’t lift a finger to save a child with cancer, or prevent a plane from crashing, or stop a terrorist from setting a helpless man in a cage on fire … how can the faithful believe that the same God who allows such atrocities is actually appalled when two people who love each other want to marry – whether they’re of the same sex or not?</p>
<p>My advice: Bake the cake for the gay couple. Sell them a wedding bouquet. Take their pictures. If God can accept children with cancer, he can accept all of that.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-06-05T18:10:00ZDid Donald Trump Really Say That?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Did-Donald-Trump-Really-Say-That/510140207097580196.html2018-05-28T18:08:00Z2018-05-28T18:08:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>My former CBS News colleague, Leslie Stahl, recently revealed something troubling, something she says Donald Trump told her, off camera, in 2016 after he had already won the GOP nomination for president.</p>
<p>Stahl says she told Mr. Trump that his constant bashing of the media was getting old.</p>
<p>“Why are you doing it? she says she asked him. “You’re doing it over and over and it’s boring. It’s time to end that, you’ve won the nomination. And why do you keep hammering at this?”</p>
<p>According to Stahl, the man who would be president responded with this: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t there. But I’ve had conversations over the years with both of them. I believe Leslie Stahl. Besides, her version of events sounds like something Donald Trump would say.</p>
<p>But what was the context of that conversation? Was Donald Trump joking? Maybe, but not likely. He hasn’t displayed much of a sense of humor over the years – unless you count his behavior itself as funny.</p>
<p>And before we go too far, let’s acknowledge that there are journalists out there who are just as bad, just as dishonest as they claim the president is. More than a few of them discredit and demean the president so that when <em>he </em>says things, no one will believe <em>him</em>.</p>
<p>But, as we used to say in third grade, two wrongs don’t make a right.</p>
<p>So what should we make of this comment, that he goes after the media for cynical political reasons? There are more than a few takeaways. One is that he doesn’t understand that in a free country we need not only a free press but also a press that has the trust of the American people. Yes, journalists have done their share to discredit themselves. But we don’t need the president contributing to what is already an unhealthy situation.</p>
<p>Another takeaway is that he <em>does </em>understand but doesn’t care. All that counts as far as Donald J. Trump is concerned is that Donald J. Trump looks good. And if yelling fake news whenever a story pops up that puts him in a negative light, he’ll yell fake news all day long.</p>
<p>But it’s not only the press that we need to have confidence in. It’s not only the media that we need to believe. We also need a president that we have confidence in, that we need to believe is telling the truth when he talks to us. This president has given us plenty of reason to question his honesty. Too often he has a long distance relationship with the truth.</p>
<p>But even if there was incontrovertible proof substantiating what Leslie Stahl says, even if there was a video tape of Mr. Trump saying he attacks journalists so the public at large won’t believe them when they report something negative about him, the president’s most devoted fans almost certainly wouldn’t care. They love him and they hate the media. And if their messiah lies about journalists to cover his own lies — that, I’m confident, would be no big deal as far as those who adore him are concerned.</p>
<p>And that may be the most troubling, and depressing, part of all of this.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-05-28T18:08:00ZMake It Stop!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Make-It-Stop!/802336549542090070.html2018-05-24T18:37:00Z2018-05-24T18:37:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I pretty much support the death penalty but only when the crime is especially heinous and guilt of the perpetrator is certain beyond almost any kind of doubt. That’s why I’m for capital punishment for those who have caused so much pain and suffering in America, who have disrupted so many innocent lives. Yes, I’m talking about the slugs responsible for robocalls.</p>
<p>I don’t know about you but my phone – landline <em>and </em>cell – are ringing non-stop with warnings about my computer, with offers for me to buy medical insurance, with deals to lower the interest rate on my credit cards, with giveaways for free trips to exotic places and much, much more.</p>
<p>I even got a call – from a robotic voice – that said the IRS was about to file criminal charges against me and I needed to call the number they gave me – immediately. I told a few friends. Guess what? They got the same call.</p>
<p>Sometimes the caller is a real human being. A lot of times the caller is a guy named Kenny or Billy … from Mumbai. Other times they’re recordings that sound eerily like a real person. “Hi, this is Tina, can you hear me?” When you answer it prompts the recording to continue with the pitch. Just between us, when “Tina” asks if I can hear her, I ask Tina a question that we can’t repeat in this space.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times, as bad as the problem has been, it’s getting worse. “Though automated calls have long plagued consumers, the volume has skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion in April. … That’s an increase of almost 900 million a month compared with a year ago.”</p>
<p>Congress has noticed the problem and has recently either passed or taken up legislation to deal with it. I’m not optimistic that a law will do much good.</p>
<p>Like many of you I’m on the National Do Not Call Registry. It means absolutely nothing to the weasels who disrupt my day. They call me anyway — when I wake up, when I’m working at my desk, when I’m reading a newspaper or watching TV, when I’m on my treadmill, and mostly when I’m trying to eat dinner.</p>
<p>But these calls are a lot more than simply annoying. According to the Times, Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General – until he resigned amid accusations of assault against four women – warned consumers “about a scheme targeting people with Chinese last names, in which the caller purports to be from the Chinese Consulate and demands money. Since December, the New York Police Department said, 21 Chinese immigrants had lost a total of $2.5 million.”</p>
<p>Not all calls are scams, of course. But all of them, as far as I’m concerned, are annoying, an invasion of my privacy. So there’s only one solution. The one I mentioned at the top of this column. Harsh? What’s your point?</p>
<p>Get back to me some other time. I have to run. My phone is ringing.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-05-24T18:37:00ZThe Racism Liberals Don't Recognize - Their OwnBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Racism-Liberals-Dont-Recognize---Their-Own/791792157916520192.html2018-05-17T18:04:00Z2018-05-17T18:04:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Commentators, almost always from the Right, have documented liberal media bias for many years now. And the response by the perpetrators of this bias has been both constant and predictable: Circle the wagons and blame the accusers. Accuse <em>us of</em> bias for seeing <em>their bias</em>.</p>
<p>The bias we’ve been talking and writing about is usually about partisan politics and hot social issues like abortion. But there’s one kind of liberal media bias that hasn’t gotten much attention. It’s a bias that liberals both in and out of the media often attach to conservatives, but almost never to themselves. It’s racial bias.</p>
<p>My friend Lee Habeeb, a conservative radio executive who appears on cable TV from time to time, has written a piece in Newsweek about how too many journalists have played down – and often downright ignored – the murder of young black men in places like Chicago.</p>
<p>“In Chicago, it’s Parkland every week,” Habeeb writes about a city that had more than 1,400 homicides in 2016 and 2017. And in just the first week of May 2018, 84 people were shot – nine of them wound up dead.</p>
<p>Journalists, of course, care very much about young black men who are shot – when the person doing the shooting is a cop. Then, news organizations, even those based a thousand miles away, report the names of the dead – like Michael Brown who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri — and (rightly) give as much information as possible about their deaths.</p>
<p>“But Americans know none of the thousands of innocent young black men and women killed by other black men in our nation’s third largest city — and across America,” writes Habeeb. “There’s a reason. A young black male’s life is not worth reporting when it is taken by another black male. That’s the real racism that prevails in America’s newsrooms. The marginalization of black urban life.”</p>
<p>Habeeb believes that liberal journalists don’t like the storyline. “Journalists and activists can’t blame the deaths on assault style weapons like the AR-15. Or the National Rifle Association.”</p>
<p>It’s true. Black on black murder doesn’t fit the liberal journalists’ template – and not only because assault weapons aren’t involved. Liberals journalists don’t feel comfortable when it comes to reporting dysfunction in black neighborhoods in places like Chicago. If white kids in tony suburbs were being gunned down in such horrific numbers, you can be sure that the liberal media would more than simply take note. They’d run stories on page one for days on end.</p>
<p>Does that mean that liberals think white lives matter more than black lives? It’s not that simple – not when you introduce paternalism and white liberal guilt into the mix.</p>
<p>When it comes to the slaughter of black young men, liberal journalists fear that playing up this kind of bad news could give ammunition to bigots, who might use the information to bolster their already nasty opinions of African Americans.</p>
<p>And since much of the killing is the work of fatherless young men, that’s another important story the national media would rather play down, and for the same reason. More dysfunction amounts to more ammo for the bigots.</p>
<p>“About 20,000 people live in my hometown of Oxford, Mississippi,” Habeeb says, “and there are probably as many guns. But I can’t remember the last murder spree in the local paper. That’s because my town has lots of guns, but lots of fathers, too.”</p>
<p>Too many on the Left, whether they’re in the media or not, worry about their “good racial manners,” a term that Shelby Steele, a black conservative scholar came up with.</p>
<p>And it would be anything but good racial manners to give black on black murders the space the story deserves in the national media. Playing down uncomfortable truths about crime and dysfunction in places like Chicago is how liberal journalists show how decent they are, how protective of black people they are. But mostly, it makes them feel noble – about themselves.</p>
<p>Liberal whites, Shelby Steele says, “must always imagine blacks outside the framework of individual responsibility.” It’s how white liberals redeem themselves from “America’s racial shame,” as Steele explains it.</p>
<p>But as the headline over Habeeb’s column in Newsweek points out: “America’s real racism? Ignoring the senseless killing of our black fatherless boys.”</p>
<p>It’s not just America’s racism in general. It’s also the media’s racism in particular.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-05-17T18:04:00ZMcCain Has Chosen Not to Forgive and Forget. Can You Blame Him?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/McCain-Has-Chosen-Not-to-Forgive-and-Forget.-Can-You-Blame-Him/475095008786837822.html2018-05-10T18:35:00Z2018-05-10T18:35:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If you want to lose faith in humanity, just glance at a few of the many angry comments posted on social media, especially the ones posted under a political column. Whatever else Twitter and the online comments sections are, they serve as platforms for hate, slander and stupidity.</p>
<p>By now we all know that thanks to social media everyone can speak out, now everyone has a voice, even those who traditionally had no real outlet to express their dissatisfaction with politicians, the culture, or almost anything else. That’s the good news. It’s also the bad news. Now anyone with access to the Internet can add to the sludge already polluting what passes for our national conversation.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this since word came out that John McCain, who is 81 and has brain cancer, doesn’t want President Trump to attend his funeral. Here’s how the story broke in the New York Times:</p>
<p>“His intimates have informed the White House that their current plan for his funeral is for Vice President Mike Pence to attend the service to be held in Washington’s National Cathedral but not President Trump, with whom Mr. McCain has had a rocky relationship.”</p>
<p>It appears that Senator McCain has chosen not to forgive and forget. Donald Trump, you’ll remember, mocked McCain’s agonizing years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. And he did it simply to score a few cheap political points. But that’s just one example. Donald Trump is needlessly nasty to lots and lots of people. He’s divisive whenever it suits his purpose.</p>
<p>And it’s ironic, if not downright hypocritical, for Donald Trump’s loyal fan club to be mad about McCain’s decision, given that their hero the president rarely forgives or forgets any slight against him. But they’re mad nonetheless. And not just mad, but vile.</p>
<p>Here’s a common sentiment aimed at McCain, put out on Twitter: “just die already & stop talking about it! We’re looking fwd to it.”</p>
<p>And there’s this: “WHO CARES IF TRUMP IS NOT AT McCAIN’S FUNERAL AS LONG AS McCAIN IS THERE.”</p>
<p>Or how about this: “WE WANT HIM DEAD RIGHT NOW!!!!!!”</p>
<p>We can’t know how many of these repulsive losers are spewing hate in defense of their beloved leader, the president. And Donald Trump can’t be held responsible for what his nastiest supporters say and do. But it would be naïve to pretend that President Trump isn’t an inspiration to a lot of these people. He feeds on their alienation. They play off of each other. They bring out the worst in each other.</p>
<p>It’s nobody’s business, of course, except McCain’s who he wants or doesn’t want at his funeral. For what it’s worth, if I were a public figure, I wouldn’t want Donald Trump at my funeral either. Yes, politics are not for the faint of heart, but Donald Trump crosses every line of civility out there.</p>
<p>Only such a man would be unwelcome at the funeral of a member of his own political party, a service that will be held not far from the White House.</p>
<p>Social media didn’t create the polarization that is dividing Americans. It just made it worse. Hate mongers were always out there, but it wasn’t until commentary was “democratized” – opened up to one and all – that the slime became part of the public conversation.</p>
<p>Maybe we’re better off when they have a way to let off steam. Maybe tweeting despicable messages is a better alternative than to have them stew in the dark corners of their basements. Who knows how that would end up.</p>
<p>The good news is that these people are not the majority. Not by a long shot. Even those who have legitimate differences with John McCain on matters of policy, even many of those who voted for Mr. Trump, understand that wishing McCain would “die already” crosses a line that separates decent Americans from the goons who don’t know the meaning of reasonable, honest criticism.</p>
<p>The bad news is that once that was a bright line.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-05-10T18:35:00ZA Few Questions for the Man Who Runs the New York Times NewsroomBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Few-Questions-for-the-Man-Who-Runs-the-New-York-Times-Newsroom/227896401352836867.html2018-05-03T18:16:00Z2018-05-03T18:16:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, was on CNN recently, interviewed by Brian Stelter, the host of the network’s media show, “Reliable Sources.” If they gave out Pulitzer Prizes for softball interviews, Stelter would have won a whole bunch of them.</p>
<p>Stelter’s weekly routine involves interviewing fellow liberal journalists almost all of whom share his views on whatever the topic of the week is – and the topic of the week is almost always Donald Trump and Fox News. Stelter and his guests don’t like either.</p>
<p>Brian Stelter may be a nice guy who loves his family, but no one will confuse him with an unbiased journalist who pushes hard against people with views he endorses.</p>
<p>So when he interviewed Baquet he tossed his usual softballs and the editor of the Times hit them over the fence.</p>
<p>What is the accumulative effect of President Trump’s attacks on the media, Stelter wanted to know.</p>
<p>“It’s bad, it hurts the media,” Baquet said. “I think the president missed the part of high school civics, where the First Amendment was explained and where the role of a free and independent press was explained.”</p>
<p>Is it out of control, Stelter asked?</p>
<p>“It’s out of control and his advisors should tell him to stop,” Baquet replied.</p>
<p>Stelter noted that the Times earned more than $1 billion dollars last year and has over 2.5 million “digital only” subscribers. How much is that the Trump effect?</p>
<p>“Some of it is, Baquet said. “People understand right now that there’s a need for an aggressive, independent press to cover a government that right now is in more turmoil than it’s been in a generation.”</p>
<p>I’m not taking issue with Dean Baquet’s answers. I agree with a lot of what he said. Despite the fact that a lot of journalists flat out detest Donald Trump, the president gives his media critics all the ammunition they need to take shots at him. The fact is, the president puts out far more false and misleading information — fake news — on a daily basis than any reporter does.</p>
<p>Despite that, Brian Stelter could have used the occasion to ask some questions the editor of the Times doesn’t usually get from his liberal compatriots. Here are a few I came up with:</p>
<p>Do you think diversity is important in America’s newsrooms? Why?</p>
<p>What about diversity of opinion? Do you think you have enough of that kind of diversity at the Times?</p>
<p>Do you think that a newsroom populated overwhelmingly by liberal journalists poses no problems with bias, subconscious or otherwise?</p>
<p>Would you be okay with a newsroom overwhelmingly populated by <em>conservative</em> journalists?</p>
<p>Do you believe, as many of your critics do, that there’s a liberal bias at the Times and in the media in general?</p>
<p>You’ve called President Trump a liar on Page One of your paper. When Barack Obama told the American people they could keep their doctor and their health care plans if they so desired, you didn’t call him a liar despite the fact that his statements were untrue? Why not? If you don’t think he lied, do you think he was so unaware of what was in his signature piece of legislation that he simply made an honest mistake? If you don’t think he was dishonest, do you think – at least in this one area – he was incompetent?</p>
<p>Is this a fair statement: If a journalist in your newsroom has slightly to the right political views – say she thinks abortion is morally wrong – she’ll stick out from the crowd. But if a Times journalist has a wide variety of liberal views he or she will fit right in?</p>
<p>You’ve been a frequent critic of Fox News. Do you think Fox is any more biased than CNN or MSNBC?</p>
<p>You allow your top correspondents to appear on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, where the host constantly bashes the president, often in disrespectful ways. Do you think that’s a proper forum for your supposedly objective journalists who rarely, if ever, take issue with the host, Joe Scarborough? Can you understand how Scarborough’s biases might rub off on your journalists?</p>
<p>A few days after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Charlie Cooke and Stuart Rothenberg, two well-respected Washington-based political reporters, appeared at a conference where Cook said the following: “Let’s face it, is there a Democratic and liberal bias in the media? Of course there is. … I think you can say that the media had a finger, more than a finger, on the scale on the Democratic side.” And Rothenberg added this: “I agree completely. I’m sure they (journalists) preferred Obama. They liked Obama. They’re Democrats. Obama got better treatment.”</p>
<p>Neither Cook nor Rothenberg is a right-wing journalist. So, do you agree with what they said – and if not, why not?</p>
<p>There’s a tendency for journalists to circle the wagons when they’re hit with criticism. Do you think journalists are introspective enough? Is <em>any </em>criticism of how you cover the news legitimate? Can you give us a few examples of what you’re doing wrong, beyond getting a fact wrong from time to time.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>Dean Baquet is likely to go on television again – and he’s likely again to pick a friendly forum, like Brian Stelter’s show on CNN. Maybe next time, Stelter can at least pretend to be an aggressive and independent journalist and ask some tough questions that hold the editor of the New York Times accountable – the kind of tough questions Dean Baquet says he expects his reporters to ask just about everybody else.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-05-03T18:16:00ZLeft-Wing Fools in the High Church of American LiberalismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Left-Wing-Fools-in-the-High-Church-of-American-Liberalism/-587117273955087495.html2018-04-25T18:20:00Z2018-04-25T18:20:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Where do we draw the line? If you’re a college professor with tenure can you say anything, no matter how hateful, and get away with it? Are there any limits to free speech on campus, especially at a public university where professors have First Amendment rights?</p>
<p>These are questions that come up from time to time, usually after a professor – almost always someone from the so-called progressive left – says or tweets something widely seen as indecent and outrageous.</p>
<p>And so now the questions have come up again, this time the offending boor is a professor of creative writing at Fresno State in California, who just moments after the announcement that Barbara Bush had died took to Twitter to tell the world how happy she was that the “racist … witch” was dead.</p>
<p>The professor, Randa Jarrar, tweeted that “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal.” And then this, for good measure: “I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis did.”</p>
<p>When social media lit up with criticism the professor said she was being attacked because she’s “An Arab American Muslim American woman with some clout.” And she laughed off demands that the school fire her, tweeting that, “I work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. I will never be fired.”</p>
<p>Her arrogance aside, she appears to be right, at least for now. There is a First Amendment after all, and it protects academic deplorables just as it protects the rest of us.</p>
<p>Fresno State’s president Joseph Castro has issued a statement saying that Jarrar’s comments were “insensitive, inappropriate and an embarrassment to the university,” but “are protected free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”</p>
<p>Last year, a history lecturer at the same Fresno State was put on leave after tweeting, “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and higher the better.”</p>
<p>He also called for “the execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant.”</p>
<p>Fresno State, of course, is not alone when it comes to hate-mongers posing as intellectuals.</p>
<p>At Rutgers University in New Jersey a professor took to social media to say that Israeli Jews want to “exterminate” Palestinians but haven’t succeeded because so may Jews in Israel … are gay. And on his Facebook page, he posted images of sinister looking hook-nosed Jews.</p>
<p>But because he’s a tenured professor, he kept his job. He did, however, get a slap on the wrist. The school said he could no longer teach required courses, which gave students the right to stay clear of his class.</p>
<p>A professor at the City University of New York went on Twitter to blame “white nuclear families” for racism and white supremacy.</p>
<p>A professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia was put on leave after he tweeted that, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He says it was a joke. He also tweeted that he was “trying not to vomit” watching someone give up a first class seat for a uniformed soldier.</p>
<p>A professor at Austin Community College in Texas resigned after tweeting about Trump’s education secretary, “I’m not wishing for it … but I’d be ok if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted.”</p>
<p>There are more, of course. Many more.</p>
<p>About the Fresno State professor’s comments on Mrs. Bush, Sigal Ben-Porath, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Washington Post that Jarrar’s opinion was disrespectful “but it was clearly protected under the First Amendment.”</p>
<p>“This is part of what we are expected to do as academics,” Ben-Porath said, “… not just work according to dogma, but push the boundaries of what is acceptable that people would say or think or consider. That is what academic freedom is for.”</p>
<p>Forgive me for wondering how liberal – <em>how open-minded</em>— the progressive left would be if a professor went on a twitter rampage with African Americans or Muslims or Latinos or women in the crosshairs. Would the intellectuals say, “This is part of what we are expected to do as academics” — “That is what academic freedom is for”?</p>
<p>But no matter how satisfying the thought, dismissing professors for expressing ugly views can lead to the dreaded slippery slope. Would <em>anyone </em>expressing views seen as deviant be safe? Would that rare bird – a conservative professor in the sociology department – be able to keep his job if he tweeted a few kind words about Donald Trump?</p>
<p>Universities have become the high church of American liberalism – a church where every kind of diversity is worshipped … except intellectual diversity. Inside that campus bubble left wing churls can masquerade as scholars – and feel not only safe, but also quite comfortable while they make fools of themselves.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-04-25T18:20:00ZOur PC Culture Just Got Even More RidiculousBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Our-PC-Culture-Just-Got-Even-More-Ridiculous/387834969306888305.html2018-04-19T18:14:00Z2018-04-19T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Every now and then a news item pops up that is so ridiculous that you figure it’s just got to be fake news, somebody’s idea of a joke. You check the calendar to make sure it’s not April Fools’ Day. And when you realize it isn’t, you come to understand that in our hypersensitive culture, a news story can be factual, accurate and preposterous all at the same time.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the TV play-by-play man for the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team in the National Basketball Association. The announcer, Brian Davis, was calling a game in which the team’s star player, Russell Westbrook, was having another spectacular game. He had just made a pass setting up a basket – one of a staggering 19 assists he made in the game — when Davis put an exclamation point on the Westbrook pass, saying Westbrook was playing “out of his cotton-pickin’ mind.”</p>
<p>Davis is white and Westbrook is black, in case you haven’t figured that out. And in case you have absolutely no knowledge of history, slaves once upon a time picked cotton in the South.</p>
<p>So reparations for the ugly past had to be paid, more than 150 years after slavery ended. How? By taking what passes for the moral high ground. The Thunder suspended Davis for one game. No fooling.</p>
<p>Never mind that cotton pickin’ is a term used in the South by a lot of old white guys <em>and </em>old black guys as a genteel replacement for a harsher words, like damn – and worse.</p>
<p>“It’s cotton pickin’ hot today,” sounds more refined to the southern ear than, “It’s damn hot today” or “It sure is f’ing hot today.”</p>
<p>The term has ugly racial connotations only for those who look in all sorts of places for supposed ugly racial connotations.</p>
<p>None of this matters, of course. The comment touched off a heated reaction on social media, where the sanctimonious play judge and jury. And when the verdict was returned, Davis was found guilty.</p>
<p>A team executive, Dan Mahoney, the Thunder’s vice president of broadcasting and corporate communications, said the Thunder considered the comment “offensive and inappropriate” and announced the suspension.</p>
<p>But it gets worse. Davis, the play-by-play man, said while he meant no harm, he deserved what he got. “While unintentional, I understand and acknowledge the gravity of the situation,” he said. “I offer my sincere apology and realize that, while I committed a lapse in judgment, such mistakes come with consequences. This is an appropriate consequence for my actions.”</p>
<p>The only word that comes to mind is pathetic.</p>
<p>Like most journalists I try to write about things that are important. So I hesitated to write about something so inane. But after a while I came to believe that this is important – as an indication of how silly we’ve become on important matters like race.</p>
<p>If using the term cotton pickin’ is “offensive and insensitive” then what should we call words that really are offensive and insensitive? Doesn’t making a mountain out of this molehill – if it’s even that – trivialize serious questions about race in America?</p>
<p>If there’s any good news coming out of this it’s that we’ve made so much progress on racial matters in this country since the days of Jim Crow, that matters like this come off to reasonable people, regardless of their race I suspect, as nonsense.</p>
<p>In the bad old days, Martin Luther King wouldn’t have wasted two seconds of his precious time on this. We shouldn’t either – except to point out how cotton pickin’ ridiculous our PC culture has become.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-04-19T18:14:00ZThe GOP's Secret WeaponBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-GOPs-Secret-Weapon/757399205840909547.html2018-04-12T18:13:00Z2018-04-12T18:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Paul Ryan, the GOP leader in the House, says he won’t run for re-election — the latest warning sign that a blue wave may be coming in November.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to be the Speaker of the House, with all the power that comes with the position; quite another to be in the minority. And if Ryan thinks the midterms will leave him in the wilderness, why stick around Washington?</p>
<p>It’s a question a lot of Republicans have been asking. Ryan is the most prominent Republican who’ll be leaving, his decision the most consequential; but more than 40 other House Republicans have said they’re also calling it quits, some expressing “intense dissatisfaction with the state of Washington under Mr. Trump,” according to the New York Times.</p>
<p>A recent Gallup poll puts the president’s approval at just 41 percent — with a majority of those polled, 54 percent, saying they disapprove of the president.</p>
<p>The president’s most loyal fans may think, as they always do, that the polls are rigged, that they’re just fake news. But those not under the spell of this president, are taking the numbers seriously.</p>
<p>No president in recent history has had such a low poll number in April of his second year in office. Barack Obama had a 48 percent approval rating; George W. Bush 76 percent; Clinton 50 percent; George H.W. Bush 68 percent; Nixon 57 percent; JFK 77 percent; and Eisenhower 68 percent. Only Ronald Reagan (44 percent approval) and Jimmy Carter (43 percent) came close to Donald Trump’s paltry number.</p>
<p>And that same Gallup poll shows a partisan divide of Grand Canyon proportions. Only 8 percent of Democrats approve of the job the president is doing while 89 percent of Republicans are still solidly in his corner — an exceptionally high number given the daily chaos emanating from this administration, much of it Donald Trump’s own doing.</p>
<p>Some of that support, of course, is tribal, rooting for the captain of your team. But with Donald Trump something else is going on.</p>
<p>He’s not only getting backing from people who like him. I suspect he’s also getting support from progressives who loathe him. And that just might turn out to be an unlikely bonus for his party this fall.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea for Republicans rightly worried about the midterms: Launch a well-produced ad campaign around the idea that if voters want to live in a country controlled by progressive Democrats, think about what that country would look like.</p>
<p>Let’s start with impeachment. If Democrats take over the House there’s a good chance it won’t be long before the president is impeached.</p>
<p>The GOP ad might ask: Impeachment for what? For obstruction of justice or collusion with the Russians? Unless the special prosecutor comes up with some hard evidence, independents – the group Republicans will need to hold onto Congress – will see impeachment as nothing more than a left-wing coup.</p>
<p>The GOP ad should hammer that message hard – and ask voters if they really want Nancy Pelosi running the House.</p>
<p>But it’s not only the important matters of consequence like supposed Russian collusion that could determine which party winds up in control of Congress next year. It’s also a lot of small things that could count too – small things that are like elevator music playing in the background while much bigger news is stealing the headlines.</p>
<p>Things like trying to shut down conservative voices progressive Democrats don’t want to hear. Whether it’s encouraging advertisers to boycott Fox programs because of an ill-advised Laura Ingraham tweet, or cupcakes on campus shouting down conservative speakers. These tactics don’t go over well with reasonable Americans.</p>
<p>Things like Hillary Clinton saying she won the votes of “optimistic” and “dynamic” people while Donald Trump won the votes of Americans who “don’t like black people getting rights [and who] don’t like women getting jobs.”</p>
<p>Little things like that snarky New York magazine cover portraying President Trump … as a pig. The pig cover won’t bother progressives in Manhattan, of course, but they sell the magazine in newsstands at airports where Middle Americans see it. And even if some of them don’t especially like the president, there’s a good chance they won’t like the disrespect even more.</p>
<p>And there’s the grating nonsense from progressives about white privilege. Republicans should make commercials asking: How are white blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt privileged? How is a white woman trying to make ends meet as a waitress in a small town diner privileged?</p>
<p>And is Donald Trump really a bigot who “wants to make America white again” because he wants to build a wall along our southern border?</p>
<p>“If Donald Trump is a bigot because he’s against illegal immigration,” the GOP ad might say, “Then what does that make any of you who also are against illegal immigration? Are you also trying to make America white again?”</p>
<p>The strong economy may help Republicans in November, but the midterms are likely to come down to enthusiasm. Which side has more: Those who detest the president or those who are sticking with him?</p>
<p>Candidate Trump ran against the elite media to his advantage. Republicans this fall can run against an elite progressive culture to their advantage.</p>
<p>But if between now and November the president fires Jeff Sessions, his deputy or the special counsel, then ignore everything you just read.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-04-12T18:13:00ZWhat George Wallace and Jerry Brown Have in CommonBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-George-Wallace-and-Jerry-Brown-Have-in-Common/-812271748157515693.html2018-04-05T19:21:00Z2018-04-05T19:21:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Who knows where George Wallace went after he left this life, but wherever he is, he must be smiling.</p>
<p>He and the other segregationist governors of the Old South didn’t want the federal government telling them how to live their lives. On June 11, 1963 Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama to bar two black students from entering.</p>
<p>The other racist governors didn’t think much of the civil rights laws either, so they sent in the police to stop black people from eating at lunch counters; they prohibited African Americans from staying at “white” hotels; they wouldn’t allow them to sit in the front of the bus or drink from a “whites only” water fountain; and most of all, they wouldn’t let black people vote, the surest way to keep them in their place.</p>
<p>Some 50 years later it’s not the governor of a regressive, intolerant state, but the governor of the progressive state of California, along with the <em>sophisticated </em>liberals in the state legislature, who think they can pick and choose which federal laws are worthy of compliance – and which, on grounds of morality, deserve to be ignored.</p>
<p>So they’ve pretty much declared California a sanctuary state. As for federal immigration laws, the <em>enlightened </em>politicians in Sacramento don’t think any more of them than George Wallace thought of federal civil rights laws.</p>
<p>Last year, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 54, which prohibits state and local law enforcement officials from informing federal officers when an illegal immigrant who has committed a crime is being released from custody.</p>
<p>Ah, but this is not in the same moral universe, progressives will tell you, as what Governor Wallace and the others did. Wallace shunned federal law to enforce an evil way of life. Jerry Brown and the Democratic legislature want to help people – not hurt them. They want immigrants who are here illegally to feel free to work with the police if they know something about a crime. If they’re afraid of being arrested, or even deported, they’ll stay in the shadows and remain silent.</p>
<p>There’s some truth to that. But what about the times when an illegal immigrant is released from custody and federal agents are not informed – and he goes out and shoots and kills a young woman on a pier in San Francisco?</p>
<p>And what about that political stunt in Oakland, California in February when Mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegal aliens of a secret raid by immigration agents? That reckless decision put her own citizens in danger by allowing illegal immigrants, many of whom had committed crimes, to avoid arrest.</p>
<p>How is that making things safer for the community?</p>
<p>Now, the federal government is suing California, saying a state government can’t override federal immigration laws. And several communities in California have taken sides — against the new law.</p>
<p>On March 27 the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to condemn the sanctuary law and is now working on a way to join the lawsuit on the side of the federal government. “Our concern is about criminal illegal aliens who are falling through the cracks because our sheriff can’t talk to federal immigration agents,” as Michelle Park Steele, a supervisor in the county explains it.</p>
<p>Eight days later the city council in Escondido, California followed Orange County’s lead and voted to file a brief in support of the federal government against the state’s sanctuary cities law.</p>
<p>More may follow.</p>
<p>And let’s consider where California’s supposed benign thinking could conceivably lead us. What if the Massachusetts legislature decides it doesn’t want to grant rights to gun owners on grounds that gun violence is a danger to the people of the state? What if they think the Second Amendment is up for grabs, that states can honor court decisions on guns – or not?</p>
<p>What if Nebraska thinks too much fake news is being passed off as the real thing, that the First Amendment is an irritant and that journalistic bias shouldn’t be tolerated or legally protected?</p>
<p>What if Mississippi thinks criminal suspects shouldn’t have the right to remain silent? What if the legislators there think they know better than the Founding Fathers who drew up the Fifth Amendment?</p>
<p>None of that, of course, is likely to happen. The American people, by and large, wouldn’t tolerate it. So why should we tolerate California’s decision to make an end run around federal law? <em>Because Jerry Brown and his allies mean well</em>?</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s important to state the obvious, so here goes: Jerry Brown is not George Wallace. Jerry Brown is a well-educated thoughtful man. George Wallace was a populist ex-boxer who played to the worst instincts of the people in his state – until he dramatically changed his ways late in life.</p>
<p>Still, the urbane Governor Brown is traveling down the same pot-holed road as Wallace once did. Jerry Brown says the federal government is “going to war” against his state. He’s convinced he’s doing the right thing for the right reasons. So did George Wallace.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-04-05T19:21:00ZDonald and Stormy in the United States of EntertainmentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Donald-and-Stormy-in-the-United-States-of-Entertainment/830242375436509422.html2018-03-30T18:08:00Z2018-03-30T18:08:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If there was any doubt that we live in the United States of Entertainment just check out the 60 Minutes ratings for its Stormy Daniels interview. They were the highest in almost 10 years. Twenty-two million people tuned in to get the lowdown on what happened – or at least what allegedly happened – behind closed doors in a hotel room between the porn star and the man who one day would be president.</p>
<p>If 60 Minutes had done a show on social security reform it would wind up being a cure for insomnia. But sex is interesting and social security reform isn’t, so it all makes sense.</p>
<p>What doesn’t make sense is the hypocrisy on both the Right and the Left regarding Donald Trump and Ms. Daniels.</p>
<p>When America learned that the president was involved with a much younger woman – I’m referring to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky – what was the liberal reaction? Who cares, they said, if the president was involved in consensual sex? Only prudes are obsessed with the president’s sex life. It’s none of our business. And MoveOn.org famously advised us all to … Move On.</p>
<p>Conservatives, of course, thought it was a big deal, that it revealed something deficient in the president’s character, that it showed he was a liar and on and on.</p>
<p>Now we have Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. And now it’s liberals who think Mr. Trump’s association with a porn star is sleazy and un-presidential and that his denials are proof that he’s a liar — and it’s conservatives who are saying, what’s the big deal, let’s move on?</p>
<p>For the record, I don’t care what Donald Trump did or didn’t do with Stormy Daniels. As far as I’m concerned, that’s between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Trump. But what <em>is</em> so troubling is that our principles apparently depend on who’s in the crosshairs – which means they’re not really principles we’re hanging on to; they’re something else, something akin to ammunition in the war between the Right and the Left.</p>
<p>Evangelical leaders who have made careers (and often a pretty good living) condemning immoral behavior suddenly have lost their voice – and their moral indignation — when it comes to Donald Trump. In the battle between principles and power, they’ve opted for power. He may not be the most moral president we’ve ever had, they say, but so what? He’s pro-life and defends Christian values. Case closed!</p>
<p>Ok, but is it really so difficult for them to condemn Mr. Trump’s behavior – including his hot mic admission that he can grab women in a sexual way because he’s a star – and still stand by him on taxes and his judicial appointments and his desire to build a wall on the southern border?</p>
<p>Why can’t they do both? Here’s a theory from Jonah Goldberg:</p>
<p>“It seems to me there are just two reasons why so many former professional finger-waggers refuse to do the minimal work necessary to protect their credibility. First, the president is incredibly thin-skinned and demands not only loyalty but flattery. Any criticism is seen as a betrayal. Second, the Trump base largely sees it the same way. It’s a right-wing version of virtue signaling, or really, MAGA-signaling. If you’re on board with Trump, you need to be all in.”</p>
<p>So what we have here is the latest evidence that principles are either dead or on their last breath in our divided states of America, a place where many liberals suddenly care about a president’s extracurricular sex life and many conservatives suddenly don’t.</p>
<p>Forgive me and anyone else who has a hard time taking evangelical leaders seriously; if we change the channel when they get pious. And while we’re at it, progressives shouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out why a lot of ordinary Americans think they’re unserious people who have squandered what was left of their credibility.</p>
<p>Before we all move on, let’s at least acknowledge that it wasn’t always this way. Conservatives and liberals have disagreed in the past, of course, but their disagreements were based on deeply held principles. Now disagreements are based on who’s talking. If it’s a liberal, conservatives have to disagree; if it’s a conservative, liberals have to disagree.</p>
<p>As the late Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci so depressingly put it: “The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.”</p>
<p>The good news is that we’re not there yet. The bad news is that we’re well on the way.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-03-30T18:08:00ZIf She's a Native American, then I'm ChineseBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Shes-a-Native-American-then-Im-Chinese/562312333910431933.html2018-03-21T18:15:00Z2018-03-21T18:15:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It’s not exactly breaking news that Donald Trump can be petty. That he can be needlessly vindictive. That he can sound like a kid in fifth grade when he puts down opponents with dopey, demeaning names like Crazy Bernie (Sanders) and Jeff Flakey and Psycho Joe (Scarborough) and Little Rocket Man. But I have to admit to a guilty pleasure: When he calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, I laugh. Out loud.</p>
<p>If Elizabeth Warren, the progressive senator from Massachusetts, is an American Indian as she claims, then I’m Chinese. For the record, I’m not. Though I have eaten at Chinese restaurants a few times and visited Shanghai once.</p>
<p>But, of course, I could be wrong about the senator’s claim. Maybe she’s telling the truth. Politicians don’t always make stuff up. So a cheap and easy DNA “spit in a tube” test would settle the matter once and for all. But she won’t do it – because Ms. Warren has evidence proving her Native American heritage. What evidence? What she calls, her “family’s stories.”</p>
<p>“As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage,” she has said. “What kid would? But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware, so my parents had to elope.”</p>
<p>A DNA test would be a lot more convincing than that “family story.”</p>
<p>But her tale does get credence in some quarters. On CNN, Jim Acosta, a White House reporter who prides himself on his toughness and skepticism – at least when it comes to anything related to President Trump — asked the senator if the Pocahontas jab annoys her. “Doesn’t that bother you because of your family’s heritage?”</p>
<p>Huh? What family heritage? The one she claims without any proof beyond “family stories”? Memo to Jim: You’re a reporter. Try to act like one.</p>
<p>And then there’s Harvard, where she taught at the Law School. Here’s an excerpt from a CNN story:</p>
<p>“Harvard Law School in the 1990s touted Warren, then a professor in Cambridge, as being ‘Native American.’ They singled her out, Warren later acknowledged, because she had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory. Critics note that she had not done that in her student applications and during her time as a teacher at the University of Texas.</p>
<p>“Warren maintains she never furthered her career by using her heritage to gain advantage.”</p>
<p>Sure!</p>
<p>But wait, it gets better. Some scholars at the most prestigious school in the solar system reportedly said Elizabeth Warren was the Law School’s “first woman of color.”</p>
<p>Only at an elite progressive institution like Harvard could such nonsense pass as a serious observation. Besides, if she’s a woman “of color” what color would that be?</p>
<p>The scholar, Victor Davis Hanson makes an interesting point about the progressive obsession with race and ethnicity. “But what if indeed the pink and blond Warren were found to have 1/32nd or even 1/16th Native American ‘blood’?” he writes in National Review. “Why would that artifact magically make her ‘Indian,’ much less a victim of something or someone, or at least outfitted with a minority cachet?”</p>
<p>Think about it. In the bad old days of the Old South, anyone with a drop of “black blood” was considered not white – and relegated to the second-class citizenship.</p>
<p>Now, one drop of “Indian blood” doesn’t get you a seat in the back of the bus, but in progressive circles it just might help you get a seat on the faculty of the Harvard Law School.</p>
<p>Senator Warren has been doing a lot of TV lately, and while that doesn’t automatically mean she’ll be running for president in 2020, it at least suggests she might be paving the way – even though she claims she’s not interested in the job.</p>
<p>Whether the senator is speaking with a forked tongue or not remains to be seen. Stay tuned.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-03-21T18:15:00ZI'm Against Waterboarding - 99 Percent of the TimeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Im-Against-Waterboarding---99-Percent-of-the-Time/135531853629119136.html2018-03-16T18:12:00Z2018-03-16T18:12:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>“Will a Torturer Be Allowed to Lead the C.I.A.?”</p>
<p>That’s the question posed in a headline atop an editorial in the New York Times, the “torturer” being the current deputy director of the CIA, Gina Haspel. President Trump wants her to lead the agency when its current director Mike Pompeo takes on a new role as secretary of state.</p>
<p>Here’s how the editorial explains it: “As an undercover C.I.A. officer, Ms. Haspel played a direct role in the agency’s ‘extraordinary rendition program,’ under which suspected militants were remanded to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel.”</p>
<p>What the Times calls torture included waterboarding and in one case bashing a detainees head into walls and subjecting him “to other unspeakable brutalities.”</p>
<p>The Times, needless to say, is not alone in its opposition to waterboarding and “other unspeakable brutalities.”</p>
<p>To be clear, nothing you read here is a defense of bashing prisoners’ heads into walls. It’s not even a blanket defense of waterboarding. It is, however, an attempt to raise a few questions about the total and complete opposition, mainly but not entirely by progressives, to what is sometimes called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”</p>
<p>Let’s say that waterboarding a terrorist produced information that would save one innocent American life. Would opponents still oppose the practice? How about 10 lives? What if waterboarding a detainee produced information that would save 100 lives – or 1,000? Would waterboarding still be immoral?</p>
<p>What if enhanced interrogation <em>encouraged</em> a terrorist to talk about imminent plans to unleash a dirty (nuclear) bomb in the heart of a major American city? Should good decent people still oppose the practice?</p>
<p>Gina Haspel will become a piñata during her confirmation hearings. And it’s not only a majority of Democrats who will take shots at her.</p>
<p>Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, says, “I find it just amazing that anyone would consider having this woman at the head of the CIA.”</p>
<p>Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said that “The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history,” adding that “Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process.”</p>
<p>Here’s what I hope Gina Haspel will tell her critics: “<em>I oppose waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques 99 percent of the time. But if in rare cases waterboarding would save innocent American lives – if it would prevent a terrorist from setting off a dirty bomb in Times Square or downtown Chicago or anyplace else in our country – then, yes, I would consider using those enhanced techniques</em>.”</p>
<p>We’re often told that waterboarding prisoners and employing other enhanced interrogation techniques simply don’t work – but more importantly, that they violate American values. When they go too far, if they’re used when other techniques haven’t been exhausted, then, yes, they do violate American values.</p>
<p>But what American values would we be upholding if, on grounds of morality, we didn’t employ some nasty interrogation techniques on terrorists and the result was a dirty bomb going off in the United States, resulting in numerous deaths?</p>
<p>While Gina Haspel, if she wants to head the CIA, will have to answer some tough questions, so should her opponents.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-03-16T18:12:00ZMedia Bias - Just What a Lot of Americans WantBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Media-Bias---Just-What-a-Lot-of-Americans-Want/52515737443939315.html2018-03-07T19:13:00Z2018-03-07T19:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>One of the great college basketball coaches in the history of the game, a very smart and successful fellow named Michael William Krzyzewski, better known as Coach K of Duke University, <a href="https://bernardgoldberg.com/interview-with-mike-krzyzewski/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">recently interviewed me on his satellite radio show</a> about a wide variety of subjects — and one of the questions was about my first book <em>Bias</em>, which explored liberal bias in the mainstream news media. The book came out in December of 2001 and Coach K wanted to know how things have changed since then.</p>
<p>My short answer was that bias in the media has gotten worse in the ensuing years. Before cable news, bias was nuanced, subtle. Now it’s in your face. And it’s not just liberal bias anymore.</p>
<p>“You tell me what kind of news you want,” I told the coach, “and I’ll tell you where to go to get it.”</p>
<p>So, if you want news about how great President Trump is, you go to one place. If you want news to confirm your belief that he’s incompetent, you have a whole bunch of other places where your views will be validated.</p>
<p>This, I said, is not good.</p>
<p>A few days after the interview, while surfing the web for more information about media bias, I noticed a report from Gallup that came out in January, about a poll it conducted in the second half of last year. The results are anything but comforting.</p>
<p>Only 32 percent of those polled say news organizations are careful to separate fact from opinion. In 1984, the number was 58 percent.</p>
<p>Forty-five percent say they see a great deal of political bias in news coverage. That’s up from only 25 percent in 1989.</p>
<p>And less than a majority (44 percent) said they were able to name a source that reports news objectively.</p>
<p>It turns out, not surprisingly, that where you stand on the political spectrum has a lot to do with how you see bias in the news.</p>
<p>According to the poll 53 percent of Democrats, but only 27 percent of independents and 13 percent of Republicans, believe the media are careful to separate fact from opinion.</p>
<p>And while only 26 percent of Democrats see a great deal of bias in news coverage, 67 percent of Republicans do.</p>
<p>I’m not going out on a limb to conclude most Democrats don’t see a great deal of bias in the news because the news reflects their liberal values.</p>
<p>Or to put it a slightly different way: Democrats don’t think there’s a lot of bias in the news … because there <em>is</em> a lot of bias in the news. The kind of bias they like.</p>
<p>We spend a lot of time pointing out the biases of news organizations, but precious little time pointing out the biases of news consumers.</p>
<p>“The survey asked those who could name an objective source to identify which specific outlets they believe report news objectively,” Gallup reported. “Among Republicans, Fox News was the overwhelming winner, with 60% of Republicans who named an objective news source identifying Fox News as that source.</p>
<p>“There is far less agreement among Democrats about which news source is objective. Rather than coalescing around a single news organization, Democrats name a number of sources, led by CNN (21%) and NPR (15%).”</p>
<p>So if you’re a conservative Republican you think Fox is giving you the news straight. But if you’re a liberal Democrat you think CNN and NPR are the honest brokers of information.</p>
<p>Are you following this? The very people who yell the loudest about media bias don’t notice it when it reflects their own biases.</p>
<p>So let’s knock off the sanctimony. Is there too much bias in supposedly straight news reporting? Yes. But more and more, the American people <em>want</em> bias in the news. As long as the bias is their kind of bias.</p>
<p>This is like a game of Ping-Pong. Lots and lots of Americans go to comfortable places for their news; places that put just the right kind of slant on the information. And news organizations – not all, of course, but too many – cater to what the viewer wants.</p>
<p>They don’t call it the news <em>business</em> for nothing.</p>
<p>I’ve often said that a free country needs not only a free press, but also a fair press. Too often, we don’t have that. But a free country also needs its citizens to <em>want</em> a fair press. And too often these days, we don’t have that either.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-03-07T19:13:00ZIs He Hiding Something?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-He-Hiding-Something/585306099896519422.html2018-03-02T19:16:00Z2018-03-02T19:16:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>When more than a dozen Russians were indicted for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, President Trump wanted to make something perfectly clear to the American people.</p>
<p>That he wouldn’t tolerate such an attack on our democracy?</p>
<p>That he would impose heavy sanctions on the Russians for what they did?</p>
<p>No such luck. Instead the president took to Twitter to say, “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion.”</p>
<p>That was two weeks ago and so far he still hasn’t expressed outrage at such an audacious attack on the country he now leads? Donald Trump’s concern then, and his concern even now, centers on – what else? – Donald Trump; on personal vindication. This raises a question: Are there no limits to this man’s insecurities and narcissism?</p>
<p>Even as his own national security advisor said that evidence of Russian intrusion was “incontrovertible,” all we get from the president is a version of “See, I didn’t do anything wrong.”</p>
<p>This is more than a little interesting because here we have a man who if they handed out Nobel prizes for humiliating your critics, he’d be on his way to Oslo.</p>
<p>During the primary campaign, he had dopey names for just about everyone he ran against. Marco Rubio was “Little Marco.” Ted Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted.” There was “Low Energy” Jeb. And, of course, “Crooked Hillary.” And now that he’s president he humiliates his poor attorney general anytime the mood strikes him.</p>
<p>But, the man who makes Don Rickles sound like Mother Teresa can’t find a bad word for Vladimir Putin. Strange, no?</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I don’t believe in conspiracies. I don’t think anyone with a gun was on the grassy knoll that day in Dallas. But I’m starting to wonder: Is Donald Trump hiding something? Why not confront Mr. Putin? He’d have Democrats and Republicans cheering him on if he did. And Mr. Trump likes nothing more than people cheering him on. Yet we get nothing. You don’t have to be a Never-Trumper to wonder what the heck is going on.</p>
<p>None of this means that his administration is asleep at the wheel when it comes to Russian interference in our elections. I’m sure the intelligence community is taking the Russian threat seriously. But, as the New York Times has reported, “the administration has been left to respond without the president’s leadership.”</p>
<p>Congress passed a law last year giving the president authority to impose new sanctions on Moscow. But Mr. Trump, for whatever reason, has not taken action. Why not?</p>
<p>Instead of confronting Mr. Putin, he focused attention on himself and his campaign. Somebody needs to tell the president this makes him look weak – here at home, in Moscow and in places that matter around the world. His loyal base of fawning admirers may not care, but just about everybody else that matters, does.</p>
<p>There was a written statement, issued in the president’s name that expressed concern. “We cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord and rancor to be successful,” the statement said. “We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections.”</p>
<p>Those words would have carried a lot more weight if they were uttered by the president and not merely put on paper and handed out to reporters.</p>
<p>So we keep coming back to the same questions: Why won’t he confront Moscow? Why go easy on Putin when it’s become clear that Putin tried to disrupt our democracy? <em>Is he hiding something</em>?</p>
<p>It’s one thing to avoid confrontation hoping that silence might lead to better relations between Russia and the United States. But after an attack on American democratic institutions, silence from the commander-in-chief isn’t the best signal to send. A better one would be for the president to make clear to Mr. Putin that if this doesn’t stop right now, there will be consequences – serious consequences that will hurt.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly a state secret that Donald Trump bristles at the suggestion that he didn’t win fair and square, that because of Russian interference he’s not a legitimate president. But why would a man who has achieved so much in life let the progressive left be the judge and jury regarding his legitimacy? Why let <em>them</em> define <em>him</em>. Maybe it’s because narcissists can’t help themselves.</p>
<p>But there’s something this president, who has told us more than once that he’s really smart, doesn’t quite seem to grasp: that now that he’s president, he has to put his insecurities and his narcissism aside for the sake of the country – if that’s even possible. He has to understand that there’s something more important than wasting time proving his legitimacy to people who hate him. What’s more important at this point is making sure Mr. Putin understands that Donald Trump is no pushover. And showing the rest of us that he has nothing to hide.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-03-02T19:16:00ZRooting For LaundryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Rooting-For-Laundry/-372822585717076540.html2018-02-22T20:27:00Z2018-02-22T20:27:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I reluctantly have come to believe that most Americans – whether they’re members of the chattering class in the media or your next-door neighbor — have lost the ability, and sometimes even the desire, to persuade anyone to change his or her mind on just about any important issue. Too many of us have put a “Do Not Disturb” sign around our necks and don’t want to be exposed to any ideas that we don’t already hold.</p>
<p>If you think the AR-15 is a weapon that should remain legal, there’s nothing anyone on the other side can say that will convince you to change your mind. If you think late-term abortion should be legal, no one on the other side is going to convince you otherwise.</p>
<p>Having strong beliefs and hanging on to your principles is a good thing. But as a friend puts it, it’s not beliefs we’re hanging on to, it’s identity that we cling to; what matters most now is what team we play for.</p>
<p>Take cable TV. We don’t watch opinion shows to consider what the other side is saying. We watch to get our own biases validated. If we’re on the red team we want conservative opinion. And if we’re on the blue team we look for liberal echo chambers that will confirm our progressive ideas. No one is watching the other side to learn something they hadn’t already thought of.</p>
<p>And then there are those online videos where an interviewer asks college kids what they think of something President Trump supposedly said. Almost all of them, of course, hate it. But then they’re told it wasn’t really Donald Trump who made the statement – it was President Obama. Suddenly they don’t hate the very same observation anymore. Now that they know it was their team captain who said it, they embrace the remark – usually without even a hint of embarrassment.</p>
<p>And remember when in 2012 at that presidential debate Mitt Romney said that Russia was America’s “number one political foe” and President Obama got snarky and said, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”</p>
<p>When liberals weren’t cheering for Mr. Obama they were laughing at Mr. Romney. Now, it’s progressives who think Russia is a dangerous threat to our democracy and it’s our Republican President who downplays Russia’s interference in our presidential election. Here’s a man who knows how to be angry but hasn’t shown any public anger toward the Russians.</p>
<p>Who cares? Not the liberals who were on Mr. Obama’s team and not the conservatives who are on Mr. Trump’s.</p>
<p>At least people of deep faith have principles, right? You tell me. Evangelicals would never support a liberal presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing women in a sexual way. But millions of them were more than willing to look the other way when it was someone on their team who made the crude remark.</p>
<p>Liberals are suddenly concerned about the national debt. But when the debt doubled in 8 years under President Obama they yawned. Trump supporters couldn’t stop talking about the debt when Mr. Obama was president. Now that their team is loading up on debt, it’s Trump acolytes who are yawning.</p>
<p>You can try to run away from this unprincipled nonsense but there aren’t a lot of safe havens anymore.</p>
<p>Once upon a time we could escape into the world of entertainment. But try watching one of those awards shows coming out of Hollywood. The glitterati talk a good game about diversity, but it’s not diversity of opinion they want. Their minds are made up and nothing anyone on the other team can say or do will make one bit of difference.</p>
<p>As for Mr. Trump’s most passionate supporters: They didn’t flinch when their hero, rocker and gun enthusiast Ted Nugent told Barack Obama to “suck on my machine gun” or when he said, Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton “should be tried for treason and hung,”</p>
<p>But when Kathy Griffin showed off a mask depicting a bloody and severed head of Donald Trump, the same hard right that cheered Ted Nugent demanded that Kathy Griffin be banished from civilized society.</p>
<p>Sports used to be another place where a lot of us went to escape the daily barrage of partisan politics. It’s one thing for athletes to use their platforms to fight for worthy causes like civil rights. That’s a good thing. But saying President Trump “doesn’t give a f*** about the people” and calling him a “bum,” as LeBron James did, crosses a line for me. So we get Fox host Laura Ingraham, who wrote a book called “Shut up and Sing” telling LeBron to “shut up and dribble” and then being attacked as a racist. And while we’re here, just imagine if a white conservative athlete called Barack Obama a bum and said he didn’t give a f*** about the people. Our outrage depends on what team we’re rooting for.</p>
<p>Sports fans cheer for the star player who wears their team’s uniform until he decides to put on another uniform and play for a rival that’s offering him more money. Then they boo the very same guy. As Jerry Seinfeld said, fans are just cheering for clothes; they’re rooting for laundry.</p>
<p>That’s what a lot of us are doing – rooting for laundry. So tell me how this is good.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-02-22T20:27:00ZThere's Only One Thing We Know for Sure after a Mass ShootingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Theres-Only-One-Thing-We-Know-for-Sure-after-a-Mass-Shooting/959663571969127437.html2018-02-16T19:19:00Z2018-02-16T19:19:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Here we go again. This time it was at a high school in Florida. It has become depressingly familiar. Not just the horrific shooting, but also the words that come after something like this.</p>
<p>Officials assure us that the victims and their families are in their thoughts and prayers. Then come the calls for more restrictions on guns. Then we get the reminders that if we see something we need to say something. It’s all so predictable.</p>
<p>But by now we know something else that’s predictable: It’s going to happen again — if not at a school, then at a concert or a nightclub or a restaurant or an airport or even at a church.</p>
<p>Nikolas Cruz had been expelled from school for getting into a fight with another student. Kids who knew him said if anyone were ever going to shoot the place up, it would be the kid who did just that. And last September a comment left on social media said, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” The name underneath the message: Nikolas Cruz.</p>
<p>A bail bondsman from Mississippi saw the comment and called the FBI. Five months later, just one day after the shooting, an FBI agent said, “No other information was included in the comment which would indicate a particular time, location, or the true identity of the person who posted the comment.” The FBI said it reviewed databases and made other checks, but was unable to identify the person who posted the comment.</p>
<p>So much for “If you see something, say something.”</p>
<p>But even if the FBI had found Cruz what could its agents have done? They can’t lock somebody up for saying what he said – certainly not if he told them he was only kidding. Even people who eventually go on a killing spree have free speech rights.</p>
<p>And he bought his gun, a semi-automatic AR-15, legally. Sure he was mentally deranged – nobody in his right mind does what he did – but being a loner and a troublemaker who loves guns isn’t a legal barrier to buying one.</p>
<p>And while everyone agrees mentally ill people shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns, how do we determine that someone is mentally ill until he does something that really proves it?</p>
<p>Do we want laws compelling mental health professionals to report the names of anyone they’re seeing for anger issues? For anyone who <em>might</em> go off the rails? Do we want laws that allow police and federal agents to lock people up if they give signs of mental illness – but have not been violent? Do we want laws that prohibit the posting of gun pictures on social media – or laws that ban vaguely threatening speech?</p>
<p>The same people who want more restrictions on guns would never sit still for more restrictions on speech or fewer restrictions on privacy.</p>
<p>So maybe the laws need to change. Maybe people like Nikolas Cruz should have been held a long time ago and forced to undergo a psychiatric exam. In retrospect, that might have done some good. But it’s an idea loaded with the possibility of abuse.</p>
<p>There’s already the predictable talk about banning AR-15s, the so-called assault rifles. They’re not needed to protect families from intruders, the argument goes; hunters don’t need them. Maybe something will happen this time, but it’s not at all likely.</p>
<p>We can beef up security at our schools and that might help. But last November, 26 people were gunned down in Sutherlands Springs, Texas – at the First Baptist Church. Do we need armed guards at prayer services all over America too?</p>
<p>The problem – and “problem” is <em>not</em> the right word – is that we live in a free country. And in a free country we can lock up criminals after they commit crimes – not before.</p>
<p>So let’s tighten security at every school in the country; let’s have the same familiar conversation about guns; let’s all agree that mentally ill people should not be allowed to buy guns. Let’s try to put an end to this American tragedy.</p>
<p>And then let’s acknowledge that not much is going to change despite the fact that 17 more people are dead. We can tell the victims that they’re in our thoughts and prayers, and after a while we’ll resume our normal daily lives – until it happens again. And we all know it will.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-02-16T19:19:00ZBizarro World - the Comic Book Version and the Real ThingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bizarro-World---the-Comic-Book-Version-and-the-Real-Thing/-688136085519868073.html2018-02-09T19:12:00Z2018-02-09T19:12:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Once upon a time, in comic book land, there was a planet called Bizarro World, a strange place where up was down and down was up and beauty was ugly and ugly was beauty. In one installment, a salesman was doing a brisk business selling “Bizarro Bonds,” hawking them to potential customers with this pitch: “Guaranteed to lose money for you.”</p>
<p>If in this Age of Trump and his many critics you feel like you’re living in a political version of Bizarro World, don’t worry. You’re not alone.</p>
<p>Remember when it was those <em>noble</em> liberals who bragged about their civil liberties credentials. They were the honorable Americans who railed against the establishment; they were the principled ones who didn’t trust powerful government agencies like the FBI, especially when J. Edgar Hoover ran the place and was tracking Martin Luther King’s every move.</p>
<p>Now, in political Bizarro World, it’s liberals who have become the FBI’s most ardent supporters. Now, anyone on the Right who so much as questions FBI tactics or worries about anti-Trump antagonism among some of its agents and higher-ups, is “smearing” the entire agency.</p>
<p>This convenient new outlook by progressives caught the eye of historian David Garrow, a self-described liberal Democrat whose books include “The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.” He recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he once “found it unimaginable that congressional Democrats, or American progressives generally would ever return to championing unquestioned acceptance of FBI claims that its surveillance practices must remain hidden from the public.”</p>
<p>But now, as he told Tucker Carlson on Fox, “I’m very worried at how people are giving up their principles, their civil liberty principles, because of the intensity of their partisan hatred of Donald Trump.”</p>
<p>And then there’s Russia, the country Ronald Reagan called an “evil empire” – a blast of un-PC honesty that gave liberals a bad case of the vapors.</p>
<p>Remember that presidential debate in 2012 when Mitt Romney said that Russia was America’s “number one geopolitical foe” and President Obama couldn’t resist being snarky. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because,” Mr. Obama said, “The Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”</p>
<p>That was then. Now, in political Bizarro World, it’s the progressive Left that’s waging cold war against the Kremlin — because of its meddling in the 2016 presidential election generally, and specifically because progressives are convinced Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the White House out from under the anointed one who was supposed to win, Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>And remember when liberals didn’t trust the spooks at the CIA either? Remember when anti-establishment liberals believed the CIA was spying on all of us – and it was those <em>nutty</em> conservatives who thought that liberals were more than a tad paranoid?</p>
<p>That also was then. Now it’s the Republican president who doesn’t trust the intelligence community, who has put the word “intelligence” in sarcastic quotation marks in a tweet — and it’s liberals who seem to believe every word the spies say.</p>
<p>Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law School professor who calls himself a “proud liberal” took aim at the hypocrisy of both sides in an interview on CNN.</p>
<p>“Isn’t it ironic that all the liberals are now saying you can trust the national security agency when they tell us there’s no wiretapping. You know years ago it was the liberals who would say, ‘Oh my god you can’t trust those guys of course they’re wiretapping <em>everybody</em>.’ But it just shows partisan politics have become so extreme that liberals give up their liberal perspective, conservatives give up their conservative perspective, everybody just wants to choose a side and whatever side you choose you’re just going to come down and say whatever helps your side. It’s a tragedy, how dialogue has suffered in this country.”</p>
<p>Bizarro World was a shining city on a hill, the very essence of principles and enlightenment, compared to what we’ve got today.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-02-09T19:12:00ZThe GOP's Ace in the HoleBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-GOPs-Ace-in-the-Hole/182897504998904065.html2018-02-02T19:18:00Z2018-02-02T19:18:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If history is any indication, Republicans could be in for a nasty November. The party of first-term presidents almost always loses House seats in the midterm elections – and having an especially controversial and polarizing president in the White House probably won’t help Republicans.</p>
<p>But the GOP just might have a secret weapon working in its favor this time around.</p>
<p>Yes, a booming economy might help Republicans, but that’s not the ace in the hole that might turn the tables on history.</p>
<p>Leave that to … the Democrats!</p>
<p>I’m guessing Donald Trump and the Republican Party colluded with whoever called the camera shots during the president’s State of the Union address. I wouldn’t be shocked if it turns out he was Russian.</p>
<p>There she was, Nancy Pelosi, dressed in black and looking miserable, as if she were attending a funeral. Okay, no one expected her to jump up and applaud for a president she detests, but she couldn’t even muster a few fake hand claps when he said it was a good thing that American workers are getting bonuses thanks to the new tax law (which, of course, she and her party had absolutely nothing to do with).</p>
<p>But then why should she applaud? This is the same Nancy Pelosi – one of the richest Members of Congress – who had said that those bonuses amounted to “crumbs.” A few thousand bucks may be crumbs to her and her tony pals in San Francisco, but it’s real money to real people with real jobs trying to pay real bills.</p>
<p>And when the president pointed out that black unemployment was at an historically low level, you’d think that might get at least a grudging positive response from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the ones who didn’t boycott the president’s address. But you’d be wrong. The camera caught them sitting on their hands, looking glum.</p>
<p>Hats off to Gayle King of CBS News for her honesty when she said, “Many of the Democrats, at many times, looked like they had bitten a couple of lemons, even when he was saying things most people would agree with.”</p>
<p>And there are numbers to back Ms. King up. According to a poll conducted by her network, an overwhelming majority of Americans thought the president was trying to unite the country and that the speech made them feel proud. But that wasn’t the reaction of progressives, the wing of the Democratic Party that’s calling the shots.</p>
<p>To progressives, even good news is bad news if Donald Trump is involved. Actually, it’s worse than that. The better the news <em>for the American people</em>, the worst it is for the Democratic Party. Bad news would practically assure a blue wave in November. Too much good news could present problems for Democrats.</p>
<p>Ordinary Americans are an optimistic people. But optimism isn’t something Democrats want to convey to voters in an election year when they’re the party on the outside looking in.</p>
<p>After the president’s speech, Mika Brzezinski, co-host of a Trump-bashing morning show on MSNBC, asked why Democrats should applaud for “the great dictator.” She may not be an important voice in mainstream America, but she is right there in the mainstream of the progressive left where her “great dictator” crack doesn’t come off nearly as unhinged as it actually is.</p>
<p>CNN’s Van Jones, who was a former adviser to President Obama, compared Mr. Trump’s speech to “sweet-tasting candy with poison in it.” Another CNN contributor, a far left author named Sally Kohn called it a “scary speech” and said that people chanting “USA” sends “chills” down her spine. These are not alien views in progressive precincts.</p>
<p>And Joy Reid of MSNBC tweeted this after the president’s speech:</p>
<p>“Church . . . family . . . police . . . military . . . the national anthem . . . Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for.”</p>
<p>As Heather Wilhelm wrote in National Review, “Ah, I can see the campaign posters now: “Can’t stand church and family? Neither can we! Vote for the Democrats in 2018!” It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>Yes, and so is this: Ms. Pelosi says the president’s immigration plan is designed “to make America white again.” How do you think that nonsense plays in Middle America – even among voters who don’t especially like this president?</p>
<p>Are we really supposed to believe that anyone who supports the Republican Party on immigration isn’t simply wrong, but is racist?</p>
<p>The economy may not be enough to save the GOP in November. But if it isn’t, desperate Democrats sounding deranged, just might be.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-02-02T19:18:00ZIs the President Nuts? How About the Psychiatrists Who Think So?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-the-President-Nuts-How-About-the-Psychiatrists-Who-Think-So/178427375938518177.html2018-01-25T19:12:00Z2018-01-25T19:12:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It’s been a while now since the president’s doctor said that while Mr. Trump could stand to lose a few pounds, he’s in “excellent” health. He’s got a good heart rate, good blood pressure levels — and when it comes to his cognitive abilities, he’s AOK.</p>
<p>When he announced all that at a nationally televised news conference you could see the disappointment on the faces of many reporters in the White House pressroom. And based on the questions they asked, you’d be excused if you got the impression, more than a few of them were kind of hoping he had a terminal disease.</p>
<p>And you just know that there’s not a progressive this side of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who believes the president is mentally okay, no matter what his doctor said. They thought the president was nuts before the examination and they think he’s nuts after the examination.</p>
<p>You might excuse the liberals who live in the world of politics for their wishful thinking, but what about the mental health professionals who also think the president is dangerous and most likely not playing with a full deck?</p>
<p>Last December, Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee briefed about a dozen Democrats in Congress on President Trump’s mental health. Later she told Politico, “He’s going to unravel,” adding that, “Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency.”</p>
<p>Dr. Lee compiled a controversial book called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a collection of essays by 27 psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals that raised doubts about his mental fitness.</p>
<p>Oh, before I forget, neither Dr. Lee nor any of the others who contributed to the book has ever examined Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Under the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule,” it’s unethical for a psychiatrist to comment on a public figure’s mental health without first examining him. Dr. Lee says she’s not engaging in “armchair psychiatry” and hasn’t violated any ethical code. But, after several Members of the House said they plan to bring her in to host future events, Sally Satel, also a Yale psychiatrist wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “I wish Dr. Lee would stop making House calls. Her actions risk discrediting our profession.”</p>
<p>After the president’s doctor said he passed the cognitive skills test, Dr. Lee said he needs a more comprehensive test, “an in-depth neuropsychiatric evaluation by experts,” as she put it in an op-ed in USA Today which she co-wrote with Norman Eisen, who served as Barack Obama’s ethics czar (whatever that means).</p>
<p>In that op-ed they wrote that, “The subject of the debate is Trump’s behavior — impulsive, inappropriate, offensive, reckless and shocking — which we as a nation have tolerated. Is it something more than a mere departure from decency and historical norms? How concerned should America and the world be if the nation’s chief executive acts this way?”</p>
<p>Here’s another question: How concerned should we be when a psychiatrist becomes a willing participant in a polarizing political war whose not-so-hidden goal is to show that Donald Trump is mentally unfit to serve as president?</p>
<p>But as is his way, Mr. Trump gives his critics plenty of ammunition. He doesn’t even try to hide his narcissism. He’s either compulsively dishonest or he just plain gets things wrong, <em>a lot</em>. Add to that, those stream of consciousness speeches where he wanders all over the place, and his seeming inability to take a verbal shot without firing back with childish taunts.</p>
<p>That might make him an odd choice to be President of the United States, but that’s what he is, and legitimately elected to boot — until or unless we hear otherwise from the special counsel looking into his ties with the Russians.</p>
<p>Yes, Donald Trump may come off as foolish to a lot of Americans who aren’t charter members of his adoring hard-core base – but foolish doesn’t make somebody mentally ill.</p>
<p>Besides, he was a narcissist and impulsive and vindictive and all the rest from the moment he came down that elevator at Trump Tower. There’s no evidence that he’s gotten worse since he became president.</p>
<p>The progressives who want him out of office and were hoping his doctor would hand them the smoking gun – concluding that he’s off his rocker — need to calm down. Donald Trump, despite what they believe, is not a mentally ill person – even if from time to time he does a pretty good impersonation of one.</p>
<p>As for the doctors who have never been in the same room with him but are pretty sure he’s unhinged, as Dr. Satel neatly sums it up: “The actions of Dr. Lee and her colleagues politicize psychiatry, and in doing so squander the profession’s authority and goodwill.”</p>
<p>It’s bad enough when politicians behave like political animals. We don’t need psychiatrists joining the menagerie.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-01-25T19:12:00ZWill She Or Won't She? Is He Or Isn't He?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Will-She-Or-Wont-She-Is-He-Or-Isnt-He/247321193509313924.html2018-01-12T19:10:00Z2018-01-12T19:10:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>There is a kind of mania sweeping Washington and beyond these days and unsurprisingly it’s about Donald Trump. It’s not just about whether he’s fit to be president. It’s about whether he’s downright crazy.</p>
<p>“Is Mr. Trump Nuts?”</p>
<p>This was the headline over a recent lead editorial in the New York Times. Just about everybody who doesn’t like Donald Trump – and more than a few who do – are asking the same question.</p>
<p>Michael Wolff, whose book “Fire and Fury” quotes West Wing insiders as saying the president is an “idiot” and a “dope” and pretty much insane, himself says “this is 25<span>th</span> amendment kind of stuff,” referring to the provision of the Constitution that allows for the removal of the president if he becomes unable – for mental or physical reasons – to function in office.</p>
<p>Then there are the psychiatrists who weigh in — without ever examining him — and pretty much conclude that’s he’s mentally unstable and a danger to America and the world.</p>
<p>And there’s President Trump himself sounding more than a little irrational when he responds to the North Korean dictator with a tweet that says my nuclear button is bigger than yours.</p>
<p>And even when he tries to convince us that he’s playing with a full deck, he just makes things worse. In a series of tweets aimed at defending himself he tells the world that I’m “like, really smart,” and that I’m “a very stable genius.”</p>
<p>Anyone who says he’s a stable genius probably isn’t a genius and might not even be stable.</p>
<p>And we haven’t even gotten to your everyday ordinary American friends, who used to ask you what you thought of the Knicks, who now are asking, “Is this guy crazy or what?”</p>
<p>On the same day the Times ran its editorial, the Wall Street Journal ran a column under the headline, “Trump Proves He’s Sane,” a column about how presidential Donald Trump has been acting lately.</p>
<p>One way or another all this talk about whether he’s nuts or sane isn’t good – not for Donald Trump and not good for the country. We ought to take it as a given that whether we agree with any president’s policies or not, we all accept that’s he’s not a madman.</p>
<p>Now, however, a sizeable portion of the electorate isn’t so sure.</p>
<p>Which brings us to another celebrity who, as with Donald Trump, also made a name on TV and who now may have ambitions to be president. But one whose mental stability is not even vaguely an issue.</p>
<p>When Donald Trump was campaigning, the liberal elite repeatedly told us that anyone running for president must have foreign policy credentials; should grasp the intricacies of important domestic issues; and certainly needs to understand something as basic as how government works. And, they made clear that unlike Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump flunked each and every category.</p>
<p>But yet … they love Oprah.</p>
<p>After her speech at the Golden Globes they practically began making arrangements for the coronation. But she’s not exactly a policy wonk, either. You think she knows more than Donald Trump – at this point – about foreign policy? You think she knows more about tax policy and infrastructure? You think she could name 10 Republicans – or even 10 Democrats — in the House or Senate?</p>
<p>But that’ not why they like her. Politicians can handle the boring stuff of government, they figure. They like her because they believe she’d make a great head of state — someone who won’t embarrass America in front of the rest of the world. And even if she tweets, they know it won’t be the kind about having a bigger nuclear button than “Little Rocket Man.” They know she won’t be vindictive and hostile and petty and vengeful.</p>
<p>And that’s why if she decides to run she’d have a good chance of winning. In a word, she’s likeable. Not to Trump supporters, of course, but to ordinary Americans who aren’t especially political – especially to women. Never underestimate the power of likeability!</p>
<p>Policy is important but it’s not as important these days as charisma and personality. As Ben Shapiro put it in National Review: “Policy simply isn’t enough. If it were, Oprah wouldn’t be anywhere near the conversation, and Trump wouldn’t be anywhere near the White House.”</p>
<p>That’s harsh. It’s also true.</p>
<p>Oprah Winfrey is clearly smart. The question is, is she smart enough not to run for president. Because if she runs, for the first time in her life, she’s going to be asked the kinds of things she hasn’t been asked before. Yes, liberal reporters would go easier on her than on Mr. Trump, if he decides to run again (and I’m not sure he will). Still, does she really want to bone up on tax policy and tell us what she would do with Kim Jong Un? Does she really want to answer the inevitable questions about her private life?</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I don’t think she’ll run – which would be good news for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and about 20 other liberal Democrats. I think she’s smart enough to know she doesn’t need the grief that would come with running.</p>
<p>But an Oprah vs. Donald race in 2020 would be a lot of fun. Right up until the moment one of them wins.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-01-12T19:10:00ZThe Media Will Help Trump Win in 2020 ... and Other DelusionsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Media-Will-Help-Trump-Win-in-2020-...-and-Other-Delusions/-233042618872295347.html2018-01-04T19:30:00Z2018-01-04T19:30:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Even journalists who are openly hostile to Donald Trump have a symbiotic relationship with him. He may detest them and they may despise him, but in a perverse way, they need each other.</p>
<p>While reporters may detest his demeanor, while they may think he’s a liar and hate his narcissism, while they may even be convinced he’s mentally unstable, there’s something else they know, even if they won’t say it out loud: that he’s made more than a few of them, who couldn’t be picked out of a lineup before he became president, semi-famous thanks to his attacks on them and their attacks on him; and most of all, they know that Donald Trump is good for business.</p>
<p>Bashing the president has spiked the ratings for CNN and MSNBC. And Fox is still king of the cable hill, the place to go for Trump-loving Americans who believe just about everything the president says, especially his tweets about “fake news” and “dishonest” journalists.</p>
<p>But journalists aren’t the only ones who know the value of Donald Trump. So does Donald Trump.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly breaking news that he’s a man who craves publicity. He may occupy the Oval Office but he still thinks like the reality TV star he used to be. He still worships at the altar of ratings, even if his are pretty crummy.</p>
<p>So, in his last interview of 2017, the president told the New York Times that he’s not only going to win re-election in 2020, but that the media that loathe him — wait for it! — will push him across the finish line.</p>
<p>How’s that supposed to happen? Again we return to ratings. The media, he figures, love their ratings more than they hate him — and in crunch time, will act in their own best interests.</p>
<p>Here’s how he explained it to the Times:</p>
<p>“We’re going to win another four years for a lot of reasons, most importantly because our country is starting to do well again and we’re being respected again,” the president told the Times. “But another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.”</p>
<p>I don’t get to say this often, but he’s right. When he leaves the stage, when the Trump show shuts down, ratings will indeed head south. Love him or hate him, he’s never dull. And the worst sin a public person can commit here in the United States of Entertainment, is to be boring. Whatever else he is, that he ain’t.</p>
<p>“Without me, the New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times,” the president told the reporter from the Times. “So, they basically have to let me win. And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, ‘Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.’ O.K.”</p>
<p>There may be some people in the business end of big media, people whose jobs depend on a healthy bottom line, who might secretly be hoping he stays in office for a second term. But the president is dead wrong if he thinks the journalists who cover him and the editorial writers who try daily to obliterate him, will get on board the Trump bandwagon.</p>
<p>Here’s something you can count on: The Trump acolytes will never abandon him, the more media bashing the better as far as they’re concerned. And the Trump nemeses will never support him. Never!</p>
<p>Hostile journalists would sacrifice their precious ratings — heck they’d sacrifice their grandmother, pushing her under a moving 18-wheeler — if only they could drive him out of office.</p>
<p>So despite what the president thinks, antagonistic reporters will never “be loving” him and they will never say, ‘Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump’” — because while ratings and circulation and clicks and the money they bring in matter, to the journalists who detest him and think he’s unfit for office, ideology matters more.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2018-01-04T19:30:00ZThey Can't Win Unless the President LosesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/They-Cant-Win-Unless-the-President-Loses/-988293984262871332.html2017-12-29T19:12:00Z2017-12-29T19:12:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>You know things are bad when the supposedly “loyal opposition” has morphed into the “resistance” and has become way too heavily invested in the president’s failure.</p>
<p>Democrats say no matter what they suspect, they really and truly hope there was no collusion between the President of the United States and the Russians because that would be a terrible thing for our country.</p>
<p>Translation: We Democrats, especially we progressive Democrats, hope and pray that there actually was collusion because then we can finally get rid of this embarrassment who should never have been elected in the first place.</p>
<p>Democrats say they hope President Trump won’t fire special counsel Robert Mueller because that would create a constitutional crisis.</p>
<p>In English that means they hope and pray that he does fire Mueller because then they can impeach him on grounds of obstruction of justice.</p>
<p>Democrats say the new tax law will hurt the middle class; that it will, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, bring on Armageddon.</p>
<p>But that’s exactly what Ms. Pelosi and her merry band of progressives are hoping, because Armageddon would lead to a blue wave next November that sweeps Democrats into a majority in Congress.</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh took a lot of flak for saying, “I hope he fails” as President Obama was about to take office. Rush was intentionally provocative because he understood that provocative plays well in the talk radio business. Democrats are more nuanced – and more dishonest. They won’t say they hope Donald Trump fails, but they’re hoping he fails.</p>
<p>Politics, they figure, is a zero sum game. They can’t win unless President Trump loses.</p>
<p>There was a time when the economy would save a president, no matter what. James Carville put it elegantly when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But it may not be that simple in the age of Trump.</p>
<p>Since he became president, the economy has been booming. Consumer confidence has hit a 17- year high and unemployment has hit a 17-year low. Despite that, more Americans disapprove of the job he’s doing than approve.</p>
<p>That may be because it’s not just the economy, stupid anymore. Now it’s also about values. And the American people – his loyal base, of course, excluded — don’t especially like this president’s values. They don’t like that he lives in a “dark and deeply personal pool of feuds and fulminations,” as Dan Henninger put it in his Wall Street Journal column.</p>
<p>Karl Rove, the wise GOP political guru, says Republicans should urge Mr. Trump to stay off the campaign trail leading up to the midterm elections; his unpopularity is likely to rub off on candidates he’s trying to help. He’s right. Donald Trump has the worst ratings in his first year of any president in the modern era. He would be an albatross around the neck of a lot of Republican candidates.</p>
<p>So here’s some free advice in the New Year for our president: Stop appealing to your base. You had them at <em>Hello, I’m the great Donald Trump and I’m here to give the middle finger to everyone you hate</em>. Yes, they give you the approval you crave; their cheers are your oxygen. But they also enable you to say and do things that turn off most other Americans. The base may love your divisive rhetoric and your needless battles. Most Americans don’t.</p>
<p>A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that 50 percent of voters want Democrats to lead Congress after the midterms; only 39 percent prefer Republicans. And the Democratic lead got bigger since a similar poll in October.</p>
<p>But, November is a long way off. So anything is possible. Maybe President Trump will stop the shenanigans that divide Americans. Maybe he’ll stop responding to every slight. Maybe he’ll knock off using Twitter to settle scores. Maybe he’ll take the high road for a change.</p>
<p>And while we’re at it, maybe progressives will stop praying for impeachment long enough to hope that the economy under President Trump actually gets even stronger. Maybe they’ll hope that still more people find good jobs and that the new tax law really does help American workers.</p>
<p>Before I go, I have a confession to make. Despite the byline, Bernard Goldberg didn’t write this column. I knocked him over the head and hijacked his computer. My name is Pollyanna.</p>
<p>Happy New Year!</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-12-29T19:12:00ZYou Don't Have to Like Donald Trump to Acknowledge the Obvious ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/You-Dont-Have-to-Like-Donald-Trump-to-Acknowledge-the-Obvious-.../87228447990239052.html2017-12-21T19:35:00Z2017-12-21T19:35:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The stock market is booming. Consumer confidence is soaring. The unemployment rate is falling. The economy is getting more robust every day. And President Trump’s approval ratings have just hit a new low.</p>
<p>Congratulations Mr. Trump. You are the president of your loyal base whose members still adore you and think you walk on water. The bad news, Mr. President, is that almost no one else does.</p>
<p>According to a CNN poll, only 35 percent of Americans approve of the way the president is handling his job. Fifty-nine percent disapprove. And in case you think CNN is out to get the president and actually rigged the poll numbers, the average of all major polls compiled by Real Clear Politics isn’t much better, where his favorable rating is just 38,5 percent and his unfavorable rating is about 57 percent.</p>
<p>The CNN poll was taken before Congress passed the new tax law, so he may get a bump in the next round of polls. But it’s unlikely to be more than just a bump. The economy is already doing well – and that hasn’t done much for his approval numbers.</p>
<p>So what’s going on? With the economy doing so well, why isn’t he doing better? I’m not exactly going out on a limb to suggest his low approval numbers have a lot to do with his tweeting, his bluster, his pettiness and a lot more. In short, a lot of Americans think he’s temperamentally unfit for office.</p>
<p>But you don’t have to admire this president, or even like him, to acknowledge the obvious: that more than a few journalists – like most other liberal Democrats –won’t rest until he’s out of office.</p>
<p>President Trump thinks they just make stuff up to hurt him – or at least that’s what he says. Who knows if he actually believes it. His loyal base believes it and that may be all he needs to keep the “fake news” narrative going.</p>
<p>But here’s another explanation: Contrary to popular belief, journalists are only human and so from time to time they make mistakes.</p>
<p>But mistakes, if that’s what they really are and not something more nefarious, should go in both directions. Funny, but when reporters make mistakes about this president they all seem to go in just one direction – the anti-Trump direction.</p>
<p>If these were simply honest errors, some of them, just by chance, would help the president. But they don’t. So what should we make of it?</p>
<p>To say journalists have a liberal bias and detest this president isn’t exactly breaking news. When it comes to Donald Trump, a lot of journalists figure if the sun rose in the east this morning, he must have done something wrong and they’re going to prove it. So they let their journalistic instincts lapse; they let their guardrails down. Instead of being skeptics, they become gullible patsies, taking in all sorts of later discredited information peddled by anonymous sources – as long as it makes the president look bad.</p>
<p>They put out false information about collusion with the Russians, for example, because that’s what they want to believe — that he conspired with his pal Vladimir Putin to rig the election. Collusion, after all, could lead to impeachment, their holy grail.</p>
<p>And if, heaven forbid, you criticize them for sloppiness or for going overboard, you’re accused to being a Trump sycophant who wants to put a stake through the heart of the First Amendment and democracy itself.</p>
<p>But how would these same journalists respond if it were Barack Obama or President Hillary Clinton who was under investigation by a special prosecutor who loaded up his team with <em>Republican</em> campaign donors? How would they react if a lead FBI investigator tweeted to his mistress that candidate <em>Clinton</em> is a [expletive] idiot” and that they needed an “insurance policy” in case she somehow won the election?</p>
<p>We know how they’d react: They’d say the deck was stacked against the Democrat. They’d be outraged. And rightly so.</p>
<p>Yes, Donald Trump, with his egocentricities, his thin skin, his unnecessary quarrels with critics, and a lot more, gives the media plenty of ammunition to use against him. It’s as if he’s saying, “I just loaded the gun for you; here it is; ready, aim, shoot me.”</p>
<p>Still, there are times when I wonder why he wastes so much time and energy beating up on the press when, thanks to their not so hidden contempt for him, they do such a good job beating up on themselves.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-12-21T19:35:00ZThe Only Republican Who Could Lose to a "Nancy Pelosi-Chuck Schumer" Liberal - in Alabama!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Only-Republican-Who-Could-Lose-to-a-Nancy-Pelosi-Chuck-Schumer-Liberal---in-Alabama!/-222621132930931791.html2017-12-14T21:03:00Z2017-12-14T21:03:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>In the entire ruby-red state of Alabama there was only one reliably conservative Republican candidate who could have lost the race for the U.S. Senate to a Democrat who was portrayed as a Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer liberal. And Roy Moore was the guy.</p>
<p>Moore was a disaster even before the allegations came out that as a grown man he was running around with teenage girls. He had been bounced twice from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to follow orders from federal courts; one of those courts being the Supreme Court of the United States.</p>
<p>Moore thought homosexuality should be illegal. He thought Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He said that Ronald Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world” could be applied to the United States today, because “we promote a lot of bad things” like same-sex marriage.” And he suggested that 9/11 might be the result of what he believes is America’s shift away from God.</p>
<p>And when the allegations about his relationships with young girls came out, that was the last straw for most Alabama voters, shattering a stereotype of many snobby liberal elites who think that just about everyone who lives in that part of America is a hayseed who walks around without shoes. The voters of Alabama showed them and anyone else who was paying attention that character still counts – a point ridiculed by those same liberal elites back when they circled the wagons around Bill Clinton despite a long list of credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him.</p>
<p>Maybe Roy Moore will now just go away. But given his long record of bad judgment, don’t count on it.</p>
<p>And it’s no secret that Judge Moore wasn’t the only loser in the Alabama election. So were Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.</p>
<p>For Bannon, Roy Moore was going to be his shining Exhibit A, his victorious candidate who was going to be the first of many other Bannon-molded victorious candidates who would deliver one deathblow after another to the GOP establishment. After Moore’s big win in Alabama, Bannon was going to lead the charge against every other Republican candidate he didn’t think was pure enough. Now that it didn’t work out the way he planned, let’s see where Steve Bannon goes from here. Far, far away would be a good start.</p>
<p>As for Donald Trump, a man who worships at the altar of “winning,” this is the third time in in the last few months that he’s backed a Republican candidate for statewide office … who lost. First it was in the Virginia governor’s race. Then it was in the Alabama primary. Then the president went all in for Roy Moore. Though in fairness, had the sainted Bear Bryant come back from the Great Beyond he probably couldn’t have gotten Roy Moore across the goal line with all the baggage he was lugging around.</p>
<p>So what comes next for the Republican Party with the 2018 mid-term elections less than a year off? A hard look at how Doug Jones, the Democrat, won won’t provide a lot of comfort for the GOP.</p>
<p>According to exit polls, women went for Jones 58 percent to 41 percent. Non-white voters, mostly African Americans, voted 88 percent to 11 percent for Jones over Moore. And voters under the age of 30 went for Jones by 60 percent to 38 percent.</p>
<p>Democrats will try to ride that trifecta — of women, minorities and young voters – to victory in congressional races all over the country next year. That doesn’t mean they’ll take control of either the House or the Senate – they’ll need a lot more than a victory in Alabama where more than a few Republican voters stayed home on Election Day to do that. But if a Democrat can win in a state as conservative and Republican as Alabama, if a Democrat could convince so many suburban Republicans to abandon their party, anything is possible.</p>
<p>Of course, if Roy Moore had won, Democrats would be hanging him around every Republican’s neck in the coming elections. So the Republican Party wasn’t really going to be celebrating even if Judge Moore had won in Alabama. But then, if the GOP had nominated a county dogcatcher with conservative credentials instead of the political equivalent of a toxic waste dump, we wouldn’t be discussing any of this today, would we?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-12-14T21:03:00ZLook Out Everybody: Doomsday Is Coming!!!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Look-Out-Everybody:-Doomsday-Is-Coming!!!/233973143553856263.html2017-12-07T19:14:00Z2017-12-07T19:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’m scared. Really, really scared. And I’m seriously thinking of renouncing my citizenship and leaving the United States of America while I still can.</p>
<p>If you have to ask “Why?” I’m guessing you’ve been in a coma and don’t know how the Republican tax bill will wreck our once great country. Don’t take my word for it. Let’s go to an impartial observer — Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House, who says the new tax plan amounts to “Armageddon” and that it’s “the worst bill in the history of Congress.”</p>
<p>Armageddon! The worst bill in American history!! Oh, the humanity!!!</p>
<p>If you want to stay in this wretched country after the Republican Party passes “the worst bill in the history of Congress,” be my guest. But don’t say Nancy didn’t warn you!</p>
<p>Among other things, Ms. Pelosi is concerned about what the new tax bill will do to our huge national debt. This alone qualifies her for a spot on Mt. Rushmore.</p>
<p>The experts say the GOP tax plan would increase the debt by $1 trillion over the next decade. That’s a lot of money, right? Okay, if you want to nit-pick, it’s not as much as the $10 trillion increase that we saw during the eight years of the Obama presidency – but Nancy Pelosi and other liberals were outraged about that too.</p>
<p>Contrary to what conservatives are constantly telling you, when Barack Obama was president, liberal Democrats cared very much about the growing deficit and how at some point it could wreck the national economy. It was on their list of major concerns – just below their anxieties over dirty windshield wipers, dog doo, and crab grass.</p>
<div id="AdThrive_Content_1_desktop" class="adthrive-ad adthrive-dynamic adthrive-content" data-google-query-id="CJ3Ystul-NcCFcJaDAodgpcIKQ">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_1/57aa3ff3d283537642f983d9_0__container__">But if you’re a cynic and don’t want to believe an honest woman like Nancy Pelosi, consider what a journalist has to say – because journalists have no biases and have no beef either with Republicans in general or conservatives in particular.</div>
</div>
<p>So say hello to Kurt Eichenwald, a journalist and author who from time to time offers up his invaluable opinions to friendly audiences on MSNBC, which is a cable news network that is right down the middle when it comes to political commentary. Here’s what Mr. Eichewald tweeted when it became clear the tax bill likely would become law:</p>
<p>“America died tonight. … Millenials: move away if you can. USA is over. We killed it.”</p>
<p>Yes, we killed America. And by “we” I mean “you,” you irresponsible Republicans. So now, we’re all doomed. And I’m starting to hyperventilate.</p>
<p>Okay, let’s get serious. These are the same people who say President Trump is crazy. As we used to say in third grade: “It takes one to know one.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to take these people seriously now that they’ve suddenly become deficit hawks. Now that it’s politically convenient, we’re supposed to believe that doomsday is on the way because we’re adding <em>one</em> trillion dollars to the debt — over 10 years – if it’s even that much?</p>
<p>I might accept that Pelosi and the others who stroll the Left bank really do care about deficits — if (and this is a great big giant “if”) they weren’t busy yawning – that is, when they weren’t busy spending money they didn’t have– during the last $10 trillion.</p>
<p>And they say Donald Trump is unhinged?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-12-07T19:14:00ZHate Speech and Academic FreedomBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hate-Speech-and-Academic-Freedom/-302034079731097377.html2017-11-30T19:13:00Z2017-11-30T19:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>In 2014 a Rutgers University professor wrote that, “white privilege kills.” She meant that literally. A 22-year old man (who was mentally ill) had just killed six college students in Santa Barbara, California — and that prompted the professor to write an article that contained this passage: “Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem.” Then she asked: “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”</p>
<p>Not that it mattered to the Rutgers professor, but the “white guy” was half Asian.</p>
<p>One year later another Rutgers professor tweeted: “Yes ISIS is brutal, but US is more so … 1.3 million killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”</p>
<p>She teaches journalism at Rutgers.</p>
<p>Now, Rutgers University, my alma mater, which opened its doors in 1766, is in the news again. This time the issue involves professors who — let’s be kind and say — are not particularly fond of Jews.</p>
<p>For openers, there’s the professor who took to social media to say Judaism is “the most racist religion in the world” … and that be believes Israeli Jews want to “exterminate” Palestinians … but haven’t succeeded because too many Jews in Israel – wait for it! – are gay.</p>
<p>No fooling.</p>
<p>And then there’s his Facebook page, which is filled with images of hook-nosed Jews.</p>
<p>For the record, the professor says he’s not anti-Semitic, that he was once married to a Jewish woman – a nice variation on the old line about how some of my best friends are Jews.</p>
<p>Another Rutgers professor claims that Israelis maim (instead of kill) Palestinians in battle “in order to control them.” And a third professor, who in a previous life served as a diplomat and apologist for Syrian President Bashar Assad, claimed that “international gangs led by some Israeli officials are now trafficking children’s organs” — an accusation that Israel has denounced as “blood libel.”</p>
<p>They have a name for this kind of tripe, which sadly is not uncommon on many of our finest (liberal) college campuses: It’s called academic freedom – which apparently gives professors the right to say just about anything and get away with it.</p>
<p>Several years ago, after the comments by the Rutgers professors about how mass murder is the result of white privilege and how America is more brutal than ISIS, the school’s president, Robert Barchi, said that “While I will not defend the content of every opinion expressed by every member of our academic community … I will defend their right to speak freely. That freedom is fundamental to our University, our society, and our nation.”</p>
<p>Now, he’s saying the same thing about the anti-Semites. In a statement, the university said that while “Rutgers “strive[s] to foster an environment free from discrimination,” faculty and staff “are free to express their viewpoints in public forums as private citizens.”</p>
<p>Is that all Rutgers could muster – a routine defense of free speech and a claim to “investigate any violation of the university’s non-discrimination policy”?</p>
<p>For the record, I’m for free speech too. I don’t think a professor should automatically be fired for making stupid or even hateful comments. But what I don’t understand is where Rutgers (or any university for that matter) draws the line? What kind of speech would <em>not</em> be protected by academic freedom?</p>
<p>Let’s imagine that a white professor at Rutgers posts on social media racist images of African Americans, say, with big lips and bulging eyes. What if he posted comments about the supposed inferiority of black Americans?</p>
<p>Would President Barchi condemn the content of his posts but defend his right to speak freely? Would he grant such a professor “academic freedom” to spout hate — as long as he does it on his own time?</p>
<p>How would Rutgers expect black students to be in the same classroom with a professor who thinks so little of black people? For that matter, how could Rutgers expect Jewish students to be in the same classroom with a professor who thinks Judaism is a racist religion and posts images of Jews with big, hooked noses?</p>
<p>Let’s see what the Rutgers investigation, into whether the professor’s posts adversely affect his ability to teach, produces. And while we’re at it, let’s see if threats by alumni to withhold donations to the school influences the decision on whether the professor stays or goes.</p>
<p>Censoring controversial speech is a dangerous game, especially on a college campus. And with liberals in charge of most universities, the few conservatives on campus might very well have targets on their backs if academic freedom didn’t exist. So let’s not call for anyone’s head, not at the moment.</p>
<p>But I’m still wondering: Where does the president of Rutgers University draw the line? If the First Amendment protects a professor’s right to peddle conspiracy and hate at a public university, what then? If even bigots have free speech rights and should be allowed to keep their jobs, how about public humiliation as a way to deal with them? And there’s one more question: How do people like those Rutgers professors get hired in the first place?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-11-30T19:13:00ZPartisans Without PrinciplesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Partisans-Without-Principles/155596677380083878.html2017-11-27T19:41:00Z2017-11-27T19:41:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>What do evangelicals and other social conservatives have in common with liberal feminists and the secular left? More than either side would like to admit.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, the religious right thought sexual misconduct – certainly involving someone holding public office — was immoral; something they simply could not tolerate. How could anyone defend a man like Bill Clinton, they asked — a man who was credibly accused of sexual misconduct by more than a few women? That, in and of itself, made him unfit for office.</p>
<p>That was then.</p>
<p>Enter Judge Roy Moore, who is running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Alabama.</p>
<p>Today, evangelicals – not all, of course, but a lot – want proof that Moore was really involved with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. How do we know, they ask, that the women aren’t just making it all up?</p>
<p>Funny, but they didn’t need video evidence that Bill Clinton was guilty of exposing himself in front of Paula Jones or that he groped Kathleen Willey in the White House or that when he was Arkansas Attorney General he raped a businesswoman named Juanita Broaddrick in a Little Rock hotel room.</p>
<p>Back then, the allegations seemed credible and that was enough for social conservatives. Today, they demand verifiable evidence that Roy Moore did all those things to so many women who were young girls at the time.</p>
<p>And what about liberal feminists and the secular left? Back in the 90s, to their everlasting shame, they rallied around Bill Clinton. After all, he was a Democrat who supported abortion rights — and that’s all that needed to know. And now, the same people who defended a man accused of rape denounce a man accused of fondling a 14-year old girl several decades ago.</p>
<p>It’s called tribal politics. And it’s not something partisans should be proud of.</p>
<p>But hang on, it gets worse.</p>
<p>Liberal Democrats have recently turned on the former president who they, or their ideological elders, once defended. Michelle Goldberg, one of the many liberal columnists at the New York Times, has written that she now believes Juanita Broaddrick, and that “Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have.”</p>
<p>I don’t recall reading stuff like that from liberal columnists in the New York Times back when it might have made a difference.</p>
<p>And Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a liberal Democrat from New York who holds Hillary Clinton’s former seat, recently said Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency because of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.</p>
<p>And you didn’t hear stuff like that from liberal Democrats who were busy rescuing Bill Clinton way back when.</p>
<p>But before we give them too much credit – “better late than never” and all that — let’s state the obvious: It’s not exactly courageous to speak up 25 years after the fact, when it’s safe; when Bill Clinton is of no use to Democrats; when his wife didn’t win the presidency; and when he’s the elephant sitting on the couch in the living room.</p>
<p>How can they go after Roy Moore, or any man accused of sexually abusing women, as long as they remain silent about the former president who was accused of sexually abusing women?</p>
<p>There’s just so much hypocrisy anyone can take before gagging – or laughing out loud at the double standard.</p>
<p>But there’s another reason some on the left are no longer covering for the former president. Their newfound <em>valor</em>makes it a lot easier to go after the current president.</p>
<p>When Democrats thought they could get rid of Mr. Trump because of “collusion” with the Russians, sex was on the back burner. But a year has gone by since he was elected and an uncomfortable possibility is starting to emerge: that maybe he won’t be thrown out of the Oval Office because he and Vladimir Putin were up to no good.</p>
<p>What then? What could Democrats dredge up to bring him down? How about sex?</p>
<p>Which brings us back to Senator Gillibrand who said we have a different standard on sexual misconduct today than we did when Bill Clinton was president. “Things have changed today, and I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction [to how liberals defended Clinton],” she said. “And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump.”</p>
<p>Get it? Take down Bill Clinton – when he’s no longer a force in Democratic politics – in order to make it easier to go after the man who currently resides in the White House, a man who once bragged on a hot mic that he could grab women by the you-know-what and get away with it — because he’s a star.</p>
<p>So what should we take away from all of this? Well, until something changes, the partisans will tend to protect their own: A 32-year old man who decades ago allegedly undressed a 14-year old girl is better than a liberal Democrat who supports abortion with no restrictions. And a president accused of rape was better in office than out because he supported “a woman’s right to choose.” And if going after Bill Clinton paves the way to unseat Donald Trump – hey, no one really believes politics is about principles, right?</p>
<p>There are exceptions, of course – Democrats who take on Democrats accused of misconduct and Republicans who condemn their own — but too many of us have chosen up sides, and our partisan passions allow us to accept bad behavior, but only if the accused miscreant is on our team. We’ve become partisans without principles – and as I say, it’s not anything to be proud of.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-11-27T19:41:00ZRoy Moore May Be a Creep - But At Least He's Not a DemocratBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Roy-Moore-May-Be-a-Creep---But-At-Least-Hes-Not-a-Democrat/109160521370418925.html2017-11-14T19:19:00Z2017-11-14T19:19:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Let’s imagine that Roy Moore is a Democrat and not a Republican. And let’s pretend he’s an atheist and not a Christian – or better yet, that’s he’s a Muslim. How many evangelical Christian voters in Alabama do you suppose would give him the benefit of the doubt regarding those salacious allegations that he fondled a 14-year old girl when he was in his early 30s?</p>
<p>If you said “none” you’re probably right.</p>
<p>This isn’t about whether Judge Roy Moore did what he’s accused of doing, though I have my suspicions. When asked if he would flat out deny that he dated teenage girls when he was in his 30s, the judge said: “It would be out of my customary behavior.”</p>
<p>If somebody asked you if you ever robbed a bank and you said, “It would be out of my customary behavior,” that would mean just one thing: You robbed a bank.</p>
<p>Roy Moore was a man of questionable reputation long before the latest slime hit the fan. He was twice removed from the Alabama State Supreme Court for flouting the law. When a federal judge ordered him to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from government property, Judge Moore refused. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage was legal, the judge ordered county officials not to issue same sex marriage licenses.</p>
<p>Roy Moore is one of those holier than thou characters, a man who gets his marching orders from the Bible and isn’t going to let some secular federal judge tell him what to do.</p>
<p>But conservatives who are forever screaming about activist judges are okay with Roy Moore’s activism – because he’s one of them.</p>
<p>And that’s why so many evangelical Christians in Alabama still support Roy Moore. He shares what passes for their values.</p>
<p>In an interview with liberal radio talk show host Bill Press in 2005, Moore was asked this question. “Do you think that homosexual–homosexuality, or homosexual conduct should be illegal today? That’s a yes or no question.”</p>
<p>“Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes,” Moore answered.</p>
<p>And lots of evangelicals in Alabama nodded in agreement.</p>
<p>But what if the allegations are true, that he had improper sexual contact with a young girl when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney? Well, he’s not a Democrat, is he?</p>
<p>Here’s Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review: “People are reminded frequently that Christian conservatives once demanded that Bill Clinton resign in shame for carrying on an affair with a White House intern. Now some of those supposedly godly men, or their sons, defend Moore’s predation of teenaged girls on the grounds that even a child predator is better than a Democrat.”</p>
<p>One of those supposedly godly men is Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler who said the allegations against Moore are “Much ado about very little” before hauling Jesus in as a character witness for the defense. “Take Joseph and Mary,” Zeigler told the Washington Examiner. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”</p>
<p>Get it? Mary was a teenager – just like the girl Roy Moore is accused of undressing and fondling. And Roy Moore is the adult, just like Joseph. And that turned out, OK, didn’t it?</p>
<p>Religion makes some people better – and it makes some people foolish.</p>
<p>But, hey, at least Roy Moore isn’t a Democrat, right?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-11-14T19:19:00ZThey Don't Call It the Cable News Business for NothingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/They-Dont-Call-It-the-Cable-News-Business-for-Nothing/902317241382725280.html2017-11-07T19:20:00Z2017-11-07T19:20:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>During a TV interview years ago, I said, tongue only slightly in cheek, that Roger Ailes, the visionary who created and ran Fox News, should send thank you notes and flowers to the presidents of ABC, NBC and CBS News for delivering so many of their viewers to Fox.</p>
<p>Fox was built on alienation. It was the place to go if you didn’t like the biases of the old TV networks. But I never bought into the fairy tale that those unhappy viewers, who rightly spotted a liberal slant at the networks, abandoned Dan Rather and the others because they craved “fair and balanced” coverage at Fox.</p>
<p>They went over, I was convinced – most of them, anyway – because they wanted a comfortable place where they could sit back, relax and get their own biases validated.</p>
<p>It wasn’t so much that they were against bias per se. They were against bias they didn’t agree with.</p>
<p>Ailes gave them refuge from the liberal sensibilities that held sway at the networks. Now – and more than ever in the Age of Trump — MSNBC and CNN are also places that cater to particular tastes in politics and culture. Yes, there are a few hard news broadcasts on cable that at least try to play it straight. But very often I can’t tell the difference between a news program and an opinion show. The line separating the two used to be bright red; now it’s fuzzy and gray.</p>
<p>The key to understanding how it all works is to grasp one simple concept: Cable TV is not broadcasting, which needs to appeal to a broad audience with varied tastes. It’s narrowcasting, which needs to attract a narrow audience with particular tastes.</p>
<p>Forgive me for stating the obvious: If you like Donald Trump you’re more likely to watch Fox. If you detest the president, MSNBC is the place for you, as are more than a few programs on CNN.</p>
<p>Kellyanne Conway may not be a model of objectivity, but she hit CNN’s Brian Stelter right between the eyes recently with an objective truth: “Just say we’re doing better in the ratings,” she told him, “we’re getting better ad revenues because we’re one of the more anti-Trump than down-the-line outlets, just own it.” In other words, bashing Donald Trump has been good for CNN’s bottom line. But Stelter had a reply — unfortunately it was a pathetic one: “We’re not anti-Trump, we’re pro honesty, we’re pro decency.” There’s a good chance even the brass at CNN got a chuckle out of that one.</p>
<p>A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center didn’t exactly break news with this analysis: “When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals.”</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>If you’re a car manufacturer it makes sense to survey your potential customers to learn what kind of cars they want. If they want SUVs, it’s good business to give them SUVs. If you make shoes and your customers want stilettos, give them stilettos.</p>
<p>But if your product is information, while it may be good business to give your customers what they want, pandering to their tastes comes with a price: it fuels an already toxic polarization in America.</p>
<p>There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, of course, protecting the rights of car manufacturers or people who make shoes. But the business of information – especially political information — being considerably more important to the wellbeing of the republic, is different than any other business. Or least it’s supposed to be.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-11-07T19:20:00ZThe War Between Trump and the Media: Good for Them; Bad for UsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-War-Between-Trump-and-the-Media:-Good-for-Them;-Bad-for-Us/-235782291173736166.html2017-10-26T18:21:00Z2017-10-26T18:21:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Here’s a statistic from a Politico poll that will warm the hearts of many Trump supporters — and trouble just about everybody else: Nearly half the American people – 46 percent – believe journalists flat out make up phony stories to hurt the president and his administration.</p>
<p>When you count only Republicans in the poll, 76 percent think the media invent stories about the president. And when you dig even deeper and count only voters who strongly approve of the president’s job performance, it’s up to 85 percent who believe the media concoct stories about the president and his administration.</p>
<p>Only 37 percent of those polled believe that journalists do not fabricate stories.</p>
<p>Given the near daily pounding the media take from this president — who has called journalists the “enemy of the American people” – it shouldn’t surprise us that so many Americans don’t trust them. Here’s a tweet from the president at 6:32 in the morning on July 12: “Remember, when you hear the words ‘sources say’ from the Fake Media, often times those sources are made up and do not exist.”</p>
<p>As with so many things, this president is just plain wrong. Journalists have biases; they make mistakes; sometimes they’re sloppy; and worst of all, sometimes they have a political agenda. But fabricating stories that they know are not true, inventing fake news sources: that is so rare as to be virtually nonexistent.</p>
<p>According to a Monmouth poll, six in ten Trump supporters say they will never abandon the president – ever! So when the president says the press is “disgusting,” or that reporters are “tremendously dishonest,” or that “they make up the stories” – why wouldn’t his acolytes believe him? They believe just about everything else he tells them.</p>
<p>I was trying to think of who else so many Americans would support, no matter what; who they would never abandon under any circumstances; who they have so much faith in. And all I could come up with was God.</p>
<p>Of course, the media are not innocent victims in all of this. Newsrooms are populated overwhelmingly by liberals whose coverage often reflects their liberal sensibilities and values. So the president’s attacks on the media wouldn’t resonate as much if reporters didn’t live in a liberal bubble and weren’t so openly hostile to him.</p>
<p>“Some may take pleasure in the discomfort of the media,” Ken Stern, a former CEO of National Public Radio wrote in the New York Post, “but it is not a good situation for the country to have the media in disrepute and under constant attack. Virtually every significant leader of this nation, from Jefferson on down, has recognized the critical role of an independent press to the orderly functioning of democracy. We should all be worried that [so many] voters think there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and that our major media institutions are seen as creating, not combating, our growing partisan divide.”</p>
<p>In a way – not a good way — both sides get something out of this turmoil: Donald Trump gets to give his base the red meat they crave, which draws them even closer to their savior. And journalists get to unload on a man many of them believe is unfit for office — and at the same time, make money. Bashing Donald Trump is very good for business. Ask Stephen Colbert or the folks at Saturday Night Live or the commentators at MSNBC if you don’t believe me.</p>
<p>Journalists, of course, should admit to their own shortcomings – but it’s something too many of them are unwilling or unable to do. They should acknowledge that their liberal sensibilities too often infect their coverage of the news – and that their hatred – yes, that’s the word I want to use – of this president, has colored their coverage of him and his administration. They should be introspective enough to at least consider the possibility that it’s their own failings that have led so many voters into the arms of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>But somebody needs to give Mr. Trump a message too. Someone needs to tell him that he’s the President of the United States now — and that calling reporters names is beneath him and the office he holds.</p>
<p>Both sides may get something out of this non-stop feud, but only for a while — because we’re all losers in the long run. You can’t have a free country – not for the long haul — without a mainstream press that the American people trust. And if people don’t trust the mainstream media, they’ll go to the dark corners of the web for their “news,” a place where rumors flourish in the muck and where <em>genuine</em> fake news thrives.</p>
<p>Both the president and his adversaries in the press might want to consider that.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-10-26T18:21:00ZTaking a Knee is Bad for BusinessBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Taking-a-Knee-is-Bad-for-Business/-506871791992655456.html2017-10-23T16:32:00Z2017-10-23T16:32:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It started as a one-man protest during the 2016 NFL season. Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, refused to stand during the National Anthem to make a point about what he saw as racial injustice in America.</p>
<p>A few other players joined the protest, but only a few. Then, at a political rally in Alabama last month, out of nowhere, President Trump decided to pour gasoline on the bonfire. He called players who kneel during the anthem SOBs and said they should be fired. The battle lines were drawn.</p>
<p>And when the NFL decided a few days ago to continue to let players “take a knee” during the anthem without also taking a penalty, the president tweeted: “The NFL has decided that it will not force players to stand for the playing of our National Anthem. Total disrespect for our great country!”</p>
<p>Now, even a football field on a Sunday afternoon is a political war zone. More polarization is just what we need in America, right?</p>
<p>None of this, of course, is good for the NFL’s business. Over the first six weeks of the season, TV ratings were down 7.5 percent over last year – and down 18.7 percent over 2015 (which, the NFL blames on competition from the presidential race). Some fans are staying home, leaving seats empty; some are boycotting NFL merchandise.</p>
<p>After meeting with players and league executives, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters, “We believe everyone should stand for the national anthem — that’s an important part of our policy. It’s also an important part of our game that we all take great pride in. And it’s also important for us to honor our flag and our country, and we think our fans expect us to do that. So that is something we continue to focus on this morning but really talking a lot about the opportunity that exists for our players to try to go and really make a difference in our communities in a positive way.”</p>
<p>But if NFL players really want to make a difference in their communities in a positive way, they might take a knee to protest the epidemic of fatherlessness in black America. More than 70 percent of African American babies are born out of wedlock, a staggering number that often leads to poverty and its many attendant problems.</p>
<p>Or they might take a knee to protest the senseless carnage we see in places like Chicago, where young black men with guns are doing much more damage to other young black men than a relatively few bad cops have done.</p>
<p>And what if players took a knee to make a statement about black kids who drop out of high school and then have little hope for success in a country that puts a premium on education?</p>
<p>George Orwell said that, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Apparently the same is true about protests in the NFL.</p>
<p>It would take a profile in courage to take a knee to protest dysfunctional behavior – behavior that is doing more to oppress black people in America than white racism.</p>
<p>It won’t happen. If you’re in the NFL and you take a knee to protest bad cops or what you see as a racist criminal justice system, liberals – both in and out of the media – will turn you into an American folk hero. If you’re a black athlete who takes a knee to protest destructive behavior, there’s a good chance they’ll turn you into an Uncle Tom.</p>
<p>The NFL says players “should” stand for the national anthem but won’t impose a rule against taking a knee. The league is trying to thread the proverbial needle: give the protesting players what they want without further alienating the fans.</p>
<p>In football, that’s what they call a Hail Mary.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-10-23T16:32:00ZThis Just In: Liberal Students Shout Down ... a LiberalBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/This-Just-In:-Liberal-Students-Shout-Down-...-a-Liberal/741999386101631190.html2017-10-12T18:20:00Z2017-10-12T18:20:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Hothouse flowers threw another hissy fit on a college campus recently. But this time it was different. This time the target in their progressive crosshairs wasn’t some conservative bogeyman whose views were deemed unacceptable and so had to be shouted down.</p>
<p>This time left-wing students, at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, went after the ACLU, an organization that champions all sorts of liberal causes.</p>
<p>Call me a bad person but it’s fun to watch the left devour its own. And here’s something else to giggle about: The ACLU speaker who was silenced by the progressive mob was on campus to speak about … <em>free speech on campus</em>.</p>
<p>You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p>This time the speech police were students affiliated with Black Lives Matter and were angry with the ACLU for defending white supremacist rights to rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. So instead of letting the woman from the ACLU speak, they chanted things like, “liberalism is white supremacy” and “Your free speech hides beneath white sheets” –reportedly for a full hour.</p>
<p>It was bound to happen. Why would left-wing students be content with simply shouting down conservatives? Why wouldn’t they shout down <em>any </em>views they don’t like? That’s what authoritarians do. Stalinists aren’t happy until everybody thinks the way they do, until all unacceptable ideas are crushed. If modern day progressives understand that, a lot of them don’t seem to care all that much.</p>
<p>So, after shouting down the ACLU representative, the Black Lives Matter students issued a statement trying to justify their actions. “[O]ur protest of the ACLU event … was driven by our firm belief that white supremacy does not deserve a platform. The right to free speech is a fundamental human right. However, speech that condones, supports or otherwise fails to explicitly condemn injustice must be directly confronted.”</p>
<p>What they mean is that, “The right to free speech is a fundamental human right” — as long as we agree with what you have to say.</p>
<p>You would think that by the time they reach college they’d understand a little something about how we operate in a free country like ours; you’d think they’d understand that the First Amendment protects all kinds of speech – not just speech Black Lives Matter deems acceptable. Once upon a time, it was liberal college students who fought to expand free speech on campus. Too often these days, it’s their ideological progeny that’s trying to shut it down.</p>
<p>The grownups who at least on paper run the school, said the behavior was “not acceptable,” but citing privacy concerns wouldn’t say what they would do about it. Here’s an idea: How about expelling the students who shouted down the woman from the ACLU? Or would that offend the delicate hothouse flowers and cause them too much mental anguish?</p>
<p>Any time campus bullies get away with shouting down speakers it only encourages more of the same. We’ve seen plenty of it already at too many colleges. And unless the authoritarians are sent packing, we’ll see a lot more.</p>
<p>But what we’ve been witnessing on campuses for some time now is only a piece of a bigger picture involving left-wing sanctimony. In the Age of Trump, progressives, who see themselves as noble and virtuous, have become quite open about how hateful they can be.</p>
<p>You’ve heard about the CBS executive who got fired after the Las Vegas massacre for posting this observation on her Facebook page: “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”</p>
<p>And after Hurricane Harvey, a professor at the University of Tampa tweeted that Red State Republicans pretty much deserved what they got. “I don’t believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas,” he wrote. “Hopefully this will help them realize GOP doesn’t care about them.” And when Irma hit Florida, he took to Twitter again: “Those who voted for [Trump] here deserve it as well.”</p>
<p>So here we have a modern day progressive mindset: If you don’t think the way we do, if you don’t believe in what we believe, if you hold views we don’t like, then you have no right to speak on campus. And in the grownup world, if you voted for Donald Trump you don’t warrant our empathy even in the wake of a massacre in Las Vegas or natural disasters in Texas and Florida – because you’re Republicans.</p>
<p>So Republicans, take note. Donald Trump touched a nerve when he ran against the liberal media that a lot of ordinary Americans had lost faith in. Running against self-righteous progressives in 2018 and 2020 may hit the same nerve.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-10-12T18:20:00ZBernie Goldberg on Guns in the Aftermath of the Vegas ShootingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldberg-on-Guns-in-the-Aftermath-of-the-Vegas-Shooting/-231586441589439382.html2017-10-06T18:10:00Z2017-10-06T18:10:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Since the carnage in Las Vegas, there’s been a lot of talk on TV and commentary in print about gun control. Not just any gun control of course, but “reasonable” and “common sense” gun control.</p>
<p>But since words matter, it matters how you define “reasonable” and “common sense.”</p>
<p>And on this, liberals and conservatives might as well be inhabitants of two different planets. As Daniel Henninger succinctly put it in his Wall Street Journal column: “Progressives embrace the benign, conservatives fear the malign. Liberals says, give peace a chance. Conservatives say, Annie get your gun.”</p>
<p>To that I’ll add, liberals embrace the federal government, conservatives are deeply suspicious of all that power – and think they need guns not just to protect themselves from common criminals but maybe even from their government.</p>
<p>I heard one liberal pundit on TV, after calling for what she considered reasonable tweaks in our gun laws, add, as if to satisfy silly concerns, well “no one’s” for taking <em>everyone’s</em> gun away.</p>
<p>Well, actually some people are for taking everyone’s gun away.</p>
<p>Back in December 2015, a journalist and author named Phoebe Maltz Bovy wrote this in the New Republic:</p>
<p>“Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not <em>not </em>because of those. Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.”</p>
<p>She’s not alone. You think progressives like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, if they could snap their fingers and make it happen, wouldn’t echo every word of what Phoebe Maltz Bovy wrote in the New Republic?</p>
<p>This is not an argument for doing nothing. It is an argument, though, for acknowledging that there may not be much government can do to stop what happened in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>Leah Libresco, a statistician, wrote in the Washington Post that two-thirds of gun deaths in America are the result of suicide; the next biggest group, about 20 percent, are young men killing each other, often in gang violence; then came women who were killed, usually the result of domestic violence.”</p>
<p>Focus on those groups, she wrote – “not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.”</p>
<p>The killer in Las Vegas had 23 firearms in his hotel room and 19 more at his house. Is that too many? It sounds like too many to me, but what should the legal limit be? Ten? Five? One?</p>
<p>The gun lobby won’t agree to any of that. Absolutists aren’t big on compromise. Even small, limited restrictions, they believe, will inevitably lead to more intrusive restrictions. And let’s be clear, the gun lobby isn’t only the National Rifle Association. It’s a big chunk of the American people.</p>
<p>A few days ago Rosanne Cash had an op-ed published in the New York Times where she called on her fellow country singers to stand up to the N.R.A. But she knows it won’t be easy. Anyone who gets too vocal about guns and says the “wrong” things winds up in the crosshairs him or herself. Here’s what Ms. Cash had to say about that.</p>
<p>“I’ve been a gun-control activist for 20 years. Every time I speak out on the need for stricter gun laws, I get a new profusion of threats. There’s always plenty of the garden-variety ‘your dad would be ashamed of you’ sexist nonsense, along with the much more menacing threats to my family and personal safety.</p>
<p>“Last year, I performed at the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence with Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder, Marc Cohn and the Harlem Gospel Choir, and we got death threats. People wanted to kill us because we wanted to end gun violence.”</p>
<p>The Las Vegas killer used something called a “bump stock” to turn his rifle into an automatic weapon, a kind of machine gun that’s been illegal for quite a while now.</p>
<p>Both Republicans and Democrats — and even the N.R.A. — are signaling they might support legislation that would restrict or flat out outlaw the use of bump stocks.</p>
<p>That sounds like a legislative limit a lot of Americans could get behind. But is it a change the absolutists can live with? Or will they worry that it’s the camel’s nose under the tent, the first step to more restrictions that will ultimately gut what they see as their Second Amendment rights?</p>
<p>Will anything change after Las Vegas? I’m not making any bets on that. But this much I’m sure of: Americans, a lot of them anyway, love their guns. And politicians – few of whom are profiles in courage — love their votes. So you tell me if anything will change after Las Vegas. And if it did, would it make any real difference regarding gun violence in America?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-10-06T18:10:00ZThe Divided States of AmericaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Divided-States-of-America/-289934996237013934.html2017-09-27T18:37:00Z2017-09-27T18:37:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I think it’s fair to say that the last thing you’d expect President Trump to talk about at a political rally in support of a Republican candidate for the United States Senate … was what he wound up talking about.</p>
<p>His remarks have been called divisive – and they were. He knew that most NFL fans in particular and most Americans in general don’t like to see athletes who make millions of dollars refuse to stand during our national anthem. So he cynically exploited the issue.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired.’” Then, after a moment’s pause, he he bellowed the last two words again, “He’s FIRED.”</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: Donald Trump didn’t start the fire – Colin Kaepernick did. But the president wasn’t averse to pouring gasoline on it.</p>
<p>Things aren’t going well at the moment for Mr. Trump. Repeal and replace was crashing on the rocks – again. He’s got almost no major accomplishments to brag about (the Gorsuch nomination notwithstanding). And who knows what the special counsel is going to uncover. So just as he had called for a ban on transgender people in the military – (which also came out of nowhere) — in order to change the subject from Russia or whatever, he did it again to an adoring crowd in Alabama.</p>
<p>But imagine if instead of calling a player who takes a knee during the national anthem an SOB, imagine if instead of saying players who don’t stand during the anthem should be fired, instead of saying fans should walk out of the stadium if the players kneel, imagine if he acted presidential for a change and said something like this:</p>
<p><em>I understand why some Americans including some in the National Football League feel the need to protest what they consider injustice in America. And if they feel that way they should speak their mind. But I ask them to consider how taking a knee comes across to many of their fellow Americans as disrespect for our flag. Maybe that’s not their intent, but how things look matter. So I ask anyone in the NFL who feels the need to kneel in the presence of our flag, to reconsider. Please think of those Americans who gave up so much, including in too many cases, their lives, for what that flag represents. Feel free to continue to express your grievances. But please find a more respectful way to do it.</em></p>
<p>Would liberals both in and out of the media praise him for taking that approach? No. But lots of fair-minded Americans would, even some who didn’t vote for him. He could have come off looking good for a change. But tossing grenades is more to this president’s liking. It’s the only way he knows.</p>
<p>But I wonder how liberals who have rallied around the players who won’t stand for the anthem would feel if other players took a knee for moral causes that they also care deeply about.</p>
<p>What if players who think abortion is murder decided that Sunday afternoon on the football field is a good place to showcase their cause and took a knee to protest what they see as an injustice to unborn babies who can’t fight back?</p>
<p>What if players who think fatherlessness – especially in black America where it’s rampant is a much greater roadblock to equality than white racism, decided to protest that injustice by taking a knee?</p>
<p>Would liberals in the media turn those protestors into heroes? I don’t think so. More likely, they’d portray them as divisive figures, pious religious nuts and borderline (if that) racists.</p>
<p>An editorial in the Wall Street Journal that ran under the headline “The Politicization of Everything” got it right. “American democracy was healthier when politics at the ballpark was limited to fans booing the politicians who threw out the first ball – almost as a bipartisan obligation. This showed a healthy skepticism toward the political class. But now the players want to be politicians and use their fame to lecture other Americans, the parsons of the press corps want to make them moral spokesmen, and the President wants to run against the players.”</p>
<p>And so we are all citizens of the Divided States of America. We’re more polarized than we’ve been in a very long time. I guess Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump didn’t think we’re divided enough.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-09-27T18:37:00ZIlliberal Liberals on Campus - It's Worse than You ThoughtBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Illiberal-Liberals-on-Campus---Its-Worse-than-You-Thought/181192820602516606.html2017-09-22T18:13:00Z2017-09-22T18:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It’s not exactly a secret that liberal college campuses are among the most illiberal places in America. Liberals talk a good game about diversity – a fundamental tenet of modern day liberalism — but it’s not diversity of opinion they have in mind. Just ask any number of prominent conservative speakers who got shouted down when they tried to speak on campus.</p>
<p>We know about the anecdotal evidence – the conservatives whose talks were disrupted at UC Berkeley, at Middlebury in Vermont, and at Claremont McKenna College in California, to name just a few. But now we have an important broad-based study that documents just how intolerant those liberal snowflakes really are.</p>
<p>John Villasenor of the Brookings Institution surveyed 1,500 undergraduates around the country and found a disturbing number of them don’t have a clue as to what the First Amendment is about. And large numbers of students have little interest in even listening to opinions they don’t like.</p>
<p>The survey asked if the First Amendment protects “hate speech”?</p>
<p>It does, but a stunning 44 percent of the students said that “hate speech” is not protected by the Constitution. Thirty-nine percent said it is.</p>
<p>The survey also asked about what actions the students thought was allowable to silence speakers they don’t like. Here’s one of the questions:</p>
<p><em>“A student group opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?”</em></p>
<p>More than half of the students, 51 percent, said it was acceptable to shout down the speaker; 49 percent said it wasn’t.</p>
<p>How about violence? Do students think that actual violence is acceptable to silence views they don’t want to hear?</p>
<p>Nineteen percent, said violence is acceptable; 81 percent said it isn’t.</p>
<p>While 19 percent appears to be a small number, that’s still one in five students who support physical violence to shut down speech they don’t want to hear. As the study points out: “Any number significantly above zero is concerning.”</p>
<p>And when asked which fostered a better education — banning speech on campus that offends some students or allowing all kinds of speech even if some students are offended, a majority of students — 53 percent — said they prefer attending a school that prohibits “offensive” speech. (Picture on homepage of this website shows a student carrying a sign that reads: “We Condemn Freedom of Speech that hurts other people’s feelings.”)</p>
<p>How did so many college students become so close-minded and intolerant of opinions that don’t jibe with their own? This isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s a malady that evolves over years.</p>
<p>Let’s remember that while a lot of college students went through middle school and high school learning all about how Columbus was a white European who destroyed the New World he came to discover, and about how our Founding Fathers were racists, and about how to put a condom on a banana, they clearly weren’t taught much about the Constitution. And they apparently weren’t encouraged to expose themselves to alien views, opinions different from the ones they hold.</p>
<p>But surely their professors on campus know better. So why haven’t they drummed into the heads of these pampered brats some useful information about the First Amendment? Why haven’t the grownups on campus done more to encourage civil liberties and open debate?</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because a lot of professors are ideological allies of the left-wing students. Maybe it’s because a lot of them were radicals themselves when they were students and sympathize with the lefties who shout down conservatives who expresses “unacceptable” opinions.</p>
<p>But who cares about any of this if you’re not a conservative on campus who’s been marginalized and bullied by the hard left? Well, consider this: You can’t have a free country – not for long anyway – without the freedom to speak your mind without fear of being shouted down or punched in the mouth by people who don’t like what you’re saying. Someday, these cupcakes will leave college and enter the real world. What then?</p>
<p>Now, when they’re exposed to views they don’t like, some school administrators offer them puppies and bubbles and coloring books to get over their trauma. Recently at Berkeley, students were offered free mental health therapy if they were emotionally shaken by the views of a young conservative speaker named Ben Shapiro.</p>
<p>You think when they leave college their bosses in corporate America will give them a coloring book if they’re having a hard day?</p>
<p>The Brookings study states that, “Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses.” That’s not only a college problem. That’s an American problem.</p>
<p>So here’s an old school way to deal with the problem: Expel students who disrupt speakers expressing views they don’t want to hear. And give them some Play-Doh on their way out.</p>
<p>But that would require a modicum of backbone by college presidents, something that sadly seems to be in short supply.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-09-22T18:13:00ZThe Worldwide Leader in ... HypocrisyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Worldwide-Leader-in-...-Hypocrisy/-317370253952200274.html2017-09-19T01:58:00Z2017-09-19T01:58:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Let’s get crazy and play pretend. Let’s imagine that a white ESPN male anchor, during the presidency of Barack Obama, put out a series of tweets calling Mr. Obama a racist, and said he was ignorant and offensive.</p>
<p>What do we suppose would happen to him? What do we think ESPN would say and do? Well, we don’t really have to wonder because we all know what ESPN would say and do. Management would fire the doofus in the blink of an eye and would put out a noble statement declaring that ESPN doesn’t tolerate that kind of hatred from its employees.</p>
<p>And in that make-believe scenario ESPN would be right.</p>
<p>But this isn’t pretend or make-believe: Jemele Hill, who is an ESPN anchor, still has her job even after tweeting that President Trump is a racist who is ignorant and offensive. Here is Jamele in her own words:</p>
<p><strong>Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.</strong></p>
<p><strong>He is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected</strong></p>
<p>And if Jemele Hill were not black (and liberal), she never would have kept her job after going ballistic the way she did. I know we’re not supposed to say things like that in polite company. But we also know it’s true.</p>
<p>Curt Shilling, the former major league baseball pitcher who is white and conservative was fired by ESPN last year for putting out a controversial (and dopey) message on Facebook about transgender bathrooms.</p>
<p>If he was fired, why wasn’t Jemele Hill, a lot of conservatives are asking.</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh quit his analyst job at ESPN back in 2003 after he caused a furor saying that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated and that the media didn’t point that out because journalists wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.</p>
<p>Before he quit, then Democratic presidential candidates Wesley Clark and Howard Dean said ESPN should fire Limbaugh. Clark called the remarks “hateful and ignorant.” Dean said they were “absured and offensive.”</p>
<p>For argument’s sake, let’s say they were. But then what should we make of Jemele Hill’s remarks? Aren’t they hateful and ignorant and offensive?</p>
<p>Well, that depends on how you feel about this president. It’s no secret that in the world of what we call mainstream journalism – one of the reliably liberal institutions in America – Ms. Hill’s contempt for President Trump is not at all out of line. In many journalistic circles, it’s taken for granted that he’s a racist.</p>
<p>And let’s be clear: This is America. Jemele Hill is entitled to her opinions. No one is arguing that she shouldn’t be allowed to think whatever she wants to think about Donald Trump or anyone else. But what should ESPN do when an anchor goes public with her thinking; when she goes on a rant that has nothing to do with sports?</p>
<p>Well, ESPN has provided us with an answer. They didn’t censure Ms. Hill. Nor did they suspend her. And they certainly didn’t fire her. What they did was pretty much … nothing! Oh yeah, the head of ESPN said what Ms. Hill did was “inappropriate.”</p>
<p>Take that, Jemele!</p>
<p>Last year, Ms. Hill defended ESPN’s decision to fire Schilling saying, “The values Curt Schilling was trying to promote didn’t line up with what ESPN wants to be as a company.”</p>
<p>That raises a question: Do Jemele Hill’s comments about President Trump line up with what ESPN wants to be as a company?</p>
<p>Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President’s Trump’s press secretary, said Hill’s comments amounted to a “fireable offense” — a statement that enraged several liberal journalists who thought she overstepped her bounds by commenting on the case from the podium in the press room. Sorry for the detour, but liberal outrage amuses me.</p>
<p>But whether or not you think Ms. Hill should get canned, let’s at least agree on this much: ESPN like most news organizations is a liberal outfit. And as such, the people who run the place will tolerate a lot more from a liberal than they would from a conservative.</p>
<p>For the record, Jemele Hill has now issued a non-apology/apology. “My regret is that my comments and the public way I made them painted ESPN in an unfair light,” she said in a statement.</p>
<p>In other words, she still thinks Donald Trump is a white supremacist hateful bigoted idiot but, hey, she’s sorry she made her bosses at ESPN look like the sniveling, pathetic hypocrites that they are by letting her off as easy as they did.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-09-19T01:58:00ZHarvey, Irma and Stevie WonderBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Harvey-Irma-and-Stevie-Wonder/-918831557749720357.html2017-09-14T18:14:00Z2017-09-14T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Celebrities got together a few days ago to hold a nationally televised show to raise money for hurricane relief. Good for them. The telethon raised more than $44 million.</p>
<p>But you’re not going to get a bunch of liberal entertainers together talking about hurricanes without a few of them bringing up … yes … global warming and climate change.</p>
<p>Stevie Wonder said, “Anyone who believes there is no such thing as global warming must be blind, or unintelligent.”</p>
<p>Beyonce said, “The effects of climate change are playing out around the world every day. Just this past week you’ve seen devastation from the monsoon in India, an 8.1 earthquake in Mexico, and two catastrophic hurricanes. We have to be prepared for what comes next.”</p>
<p>Before you write them off as <em>mere entertainers</em>, we have to acknowledge that a lot of scientists are also worried about climate change and say we need to be prepared for what comes next.</p>
<p>I’m just not at all sure the mainstream media, which has absolutely no doubts about the dangers of climate change, is the best place to look for reliable information on the subject.</p>
<p>Here’s why I say that: A while back I stumbled onto some fascinating research by a conservative media watchdog group called the Business & Media Institute (BMI) that looked into how the media over the years covered climate change. What they found (which I wrote about in my book, <em>Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right</em>) is eye-opening.</p>
<p>In 1924, the New York Times ran stories about “A New Ice Age.”</p>
<p>But nine years later, in 1933, the same New York Times reported on “the Longest Warming Spell since 1776.”</p>
<p>And then in 1975, the Times, like the weather changed again, this time reporting on “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to be Inevitable.”</p>
<p>There’s more. BMI went even further back in the archives and as I wrote in <em>Crazies</em>, “the media have been bouncing between hot and cold for more than a hundred years.”</p>
<p>In the late 1800s, for instance, mainstream papers were running stories about global cooling. On February 24, 1895, The New York Times ran this headline: “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.”</p>
<p>In 1923, Time magazine also fretted about global cooling. “The discovery of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of the glaciers in recent years,” Time reported, “have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age.”</p>
<p>But wait! In 1939, Time told its readers that, “Weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”</p>
<p>Then in 1974, Time was back to pushing the dangers of global cooling, reporting that experts “are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”</p>
<p>And in 2001, Time said that, “scientists no longer doubt global warming is happening.”</p>
<p>If you’re not confused you’re not paying attention.</p>
<p>For the record, this is not an argument that climate change is a hoax. I’m not saying Stevie Wonder and Beyonce ought to stick to music and leave climate change to the experts – especially since, as the media are constantly telling us, something like 95 percent of the experts agree with Stevie and Beyonce.</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that if you’re not staying up at night worrying about the end of the world, you’re not a hopeless fool who liberals call “deniers” and put in the same deplorable basket as morons who deny the Holocaust ever happened. If you’re just not sure – if you believe that the climate changes over long periods of time and the longer out you go the harder it is to predict what the climate will be – you may be onto something.</p>
<p>But here’s my handy dandy rule of thumb: Anytime almost all of the media agree on a subject – as they do now about the cataclysmic horrors of global warming – that’s a good time to be skeptical. As we’ve seen, when it comes to reporting on global warming and climate chang, journalists over the years have been wrong — a lot.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>Editor’s Note: In my last column I wrote that CNN’s Jake Tapper and Gloria Borger repeated on air a CNN.com mistake — about what former FBI director James Comey would say to a congressional committee. I was wrong. Jake Tapper never repeated the mistake. My apologies to him and to my readers.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-09-14T18:14:00ZFake News and Fake InnocenceBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Fake-News-and-Fake-Innocence/-354625755619799188.html2017-09-08T18:13:00Z2017-09-08T18:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>At a rally in Phoenix a few weeks ago, President Trump went rogue. He stopped reading his prepared remarks off the teleprompter and for 30 minutes went on a tirade, taking aim at his favorite target: journalists.</p>
<p>The crowd, of course, loved it.</p>
<p>But as I listened on television, I kept thinking that Donald Trump was reminding me of someone. But for a while, I couldn’t think of who it was. Then it hit me.</p>
<p>Donald Trump was sounding like Joe Pesci. Not the goofy con man Joe Pesce in <em>Home Alone</em>, but the Joe Pesci in <em>Goodfellas</em>.</p>
<p>No, I’m not comparing Donald Trump to the gangster Pesci played in the movie. It’s just that there are times when Mr. Trump sounds more like a wise guy from Queens than a dignified man who occupies the Oval Office.</p>
<p>I was a journalist at CBS News for 28 years and during that time I witnessed liberal bias; I witnessed liberal elitism; and I witnessed a few mistakes. But I never saw anything resembling the fake news the president is constantly wailing about.</p>
<p>During his rant in Phoenix Mr. Trump said journalists attribute stories to unnamed sources that don’t exist. He’s wrong about that. Sure, there have been a few bad apples over the years that made up quotes from non-existent sources. But that’s extremely rare.</p>
<p>To Donald Trump, fake news, more than likely, is simply news about him that he doesn’t like.</p>
<p>As for mistakes, there have been a few big ones since Mr. Trump became president. But they’ve been the result of flimsy reporting not a conspiracy to concoct make-believe facts to hurt the president – no matter what Donald Trump and his most passionate supporters believe.</p>
<p>In early June, the president’s favorite piñata, CNN, reported on its website that James Comey, the former FBI director, would contradict President Trump in testimony before Congress. CNN said Comey would contest the president’s assertion that Comey had informed him three times that he was not under investigation.</p>
<p>CNN’s Jake Tapper and Gloria Borger repeated the assertion on the air.</p>
<p>CNN got the story wrong and issued a correction.</p>
<p>Then in late June, CNN reported that Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci had ties to a Russian investment fund that had attracted the attention of investigators in the United States Senate.</p>
<p>CNN wound up retracting the story. And three of the network’s top investigative reporters had to resign. As the New York Times reported: “The retracted story and ignominious exits of three prominent journalists was an embarrassing episode for CNN, particularly at a time when there was widespread mistrust in the media and Mr. Trump was regularly attacking the press.”</p>
<p>Breitbart called the story “very fake news” — and President Trump tweeted, “Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!’’</p>
<p>Not really. No one who knows how it works believes that the CNN journalists simply made up the story to hurt the president. But it’s undeniable that too many journalists don’t like anything about this president – and that can lead to mistakes that look like fake news.</p>
<p>Journalists, as I’ve noted before, are not good at looking inward. Introspection is not a strong suit, circling the wagons is. So they don’t spend a lot of time examining their biases and how those biases affect the way they cover the news.</p>
<p>And so, if the president has an obligation to be fair in his criticism of the media – and not cavalierly throw the words “fake news” around the way he does – then journalists also have an obligation (as obvious as it may be): to be fair to the president even if they don’t like him.</p>
<p>While it’s true that President Trump deserves a lot of the criticism the press heaps on him, the press needs to acknowledge that too many reporters have such animosity for this president that it influences their journalism.</p>
<p>Here’s how Jonathan Tobin put it in National Review: “Since Trump took office, the willingness of journalists to mix opinion with news reporting has grown. Opposition to Trump and his policies is now seen as justifying any breech of the church–state divide between news and opinion. Any efforts to rein in this bias is denounced as buckling under to Trump’s intimidation even if those doing so are merely asking the press to play it straight rather than to signal their disgust and opposition to the president.”</p>
<p>In a free country like ours, people need to have confidence in the press; they need to know that reporters are honest brokers of information. They need to know that journalists are holding powerful people accountable and not settling scores.</p>
<p>So, it would help if President Trump stopped delegitimizing the mainstream media; it would help if he would stop channeling Joe Pesci when he’s ranting about “fake news” and the press.</p>
<p>And it would also help if reporters acknowledged what a lot of news consumers have already figured out: that too often, too many journalists have abandoned the role of objective observers and taken on the role of anti-Trump activists.</p>
<p>Shouting fake news is no way to deal with a press Donald Trump doesn’t like. And proclaiming fake innocence is no way to deal with a president reporters don’t like.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-09-08T18:13:00ZJumping the Shark: The News Media WayBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Jumping-the-Shark:-The-News-Media-Way/126539112464816410.html2017-08-31T18:24:00Z2017-08-31T18:24:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It was the fifth season of the sitcom “Happy Days” and producers figured they needed something to boost the show’s sagging ratings. So they had the gang leave industrial, blue collar Milwaukee and head for southern California where everybody is beautiful and the sun always shines. And on September 20, 1977 Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, better known to his pals simply as Fonzie, put on a pair of water skis, hopped into the Pacific Ocean and jumped over a shark.</p>
<p>“The idiom ‘<em>jumping the shark</em>’ is pejorative,” Wikipedia tells us, “most commonly used in reference to gimmicks for promoting entertainment outlets, such as a television series, that are declining in popularity.</p>
<p>Or a news magazine that almost nobody reads or pays attention to anymore.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, and 40 years after Fonzie jumped the shark, Newsweek came up with its own cheesy gimmick in an attempt to stay relevant.</p>
<p>Abandoning any pretense of grownup journalism, Newsweek plastered the words “Lazy Boy” on its cover with an illustration of President Trump sitting in a recliner covered in junk food.</p>
<p>Recliner. Lazy Boy. Get it?</p>
<p>He’s covered in Cheetos and has a bag of McDonalds on his lap. He’s got a diet coke in one hand and a TV remote in the other.</p>
<p>The words on the cover read: “Donald Trump is bored and tired. Imagine how bad he’d feel if he did any work.”</p>
<p>Once upon a time many years ago Newsweek was a serious news magazine whose editors would not allow their publication to resemble a comic book.</p>
<p>In 2001 when my book Bias came out, my focus was on liberal bias in the news and the refusal of mainstream journalists to acknowledge its existence, and try to tone it down.</p>
<p>But now bias is my second biggest journalistic concern. Arrogance has taken over first place. The snobbery of too many journalists is beyond annoying. It’s repulsive.</p>
<p>Take Stuart Rothenberg, a veteran political journalist and charter member of the Washington media elite.</p>
<p>While President Trump was speaking at a rally in West Virginia not long ago, Rothenberg took to Twitter to let everyone know that “Lots of people in West Virginia can’t support themselves or speak English.”</p>
<p>Look up the words <em>elite snob</em> in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of Stuart Rothenberg.</p>
<p>“West Virginia ranks 42nd in percentage of high school graduates,” he tweeted.</p>
<p>But as John Nolte reported on the Daily Wire: “According to a report dated April 2017 from the Department of Education, Rothenberg is lying. While the national high school graduation rate is 83%, West Virginia’s graduation rate sits at an impressive 87%, which elevates it well above such cherished left-wing states as California (82%), New York (79%), Washington (78%), Oregon (74%), Minnesota (82%), Rhode Island (83%), and Rothenberg’s precious Washington DC (69%).”</p>
<p>And finally, this from the sophisticated Mr. Rothenberg: “Of course they are hard-working. They mean well. Just close-minded, provincial, angry & easily misled.”</p>
<p>If elitism and arrogance were crimes, Stuart Rothenberg would be behind bars doing 25 to life.</p>
<p>And imagine for a moment that President Trump had held that rally in Texas instead of West Virginia. You just know that Rothenberg would be looking down his elitist nose at them too — and tweeting about how “easily misled” they were. After all, a lot of Texans voted for Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Except these past few days we all saw what ordinary blue collar Americans are capable of, what they do for each other in times of crisis. You think Rothenberg, before Harvey hit, would have also called them “close-minded and provincial” as he did the Trump supporters in West Virginia? Good chance!</p>
<p>None of those Texans, who are routinely ridiculed by liberals both in and out of the media, cared about race or ethnicity or whether someone was gay or straight; all that mattered was if they needed help.</p>
<p>I wonder if Stuart Rothenberg learned anything about the kind of people he apparently finds “provincial” from those images we all saw coming out of Texas.</p>
<p>So here’s a memo Rothenberg and the sophisticates at Newsweek: At least when Fonzi jumped the shark it was kind of funny.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-31T18:24:00ZNow Even a Horse Is a Symbol of White RacismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Now-Even-a-Horse-Is-a-Symbol-of-White-Racism/315391305468112108.html2017-08-24T18:11:00Z2017-08-24T18:11:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I recently wrote about the controversy over removing Confederate era statues from public places, and in my column I acknowledged the concerns of those who don’t want to honor or celebrate men who fought, at least in part, to preserve slavery.</p>
<p>But then I asked a question: Where does it end?</p>
<p>“Is taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis enough?” I wondered. Or after we scrub them from history do we have to move on to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two presidents who owned slaves.</p>
<p>I failed to mention Christopher Columbus in my column, but I guess I should have.</p>
<p>Not long after the violence in Charlottesville, a monument to Christopher Columbus in Baltimore was vandalized, and a video posted to YouTube shows a man striking the base of the monument<span> </span>over and over with a sledgehammer. The narrator of the video calls Columbus a “genocidal terrorist.” Columbus statues were also defaced in other cities, including Boston and Houston.</p>
<p>And I guess I should have also mentioned the University of Southern California mascot, a horse named Traveler. Yes a horse is now a symbol of white racism, at least according to a black student group at USC.</p>
<p>Why? Because the horse bears a name similar to that of a horse that Confederate General Robert E. Lee used to ride.</p>
<p>The USC football horse is called Traveler (one L), while Lee’s horse was known as Traveller (two L’s). Traveler, it seems is a not uncommon name for a horse. And the one at USC has no connection — none whatsoever — to Robert E. Lee or the Civil War or the Confederacy. Period!</p>
<p>When parody becomes reality, you know there’s a problem.</p>
<p>The real danger, of course, is that the hysteria won’t end with monuments or even horses. The real danger is that the morally superior crowd will want to silence any speech they consider hateful – and change any name – even that of a horse — they find offensive.</p>
<p>I watched one rally on television the other day and a young woman was holding up a sign that read: Hate Speech is Not Free Speech.</p>
<p>Well, actually it is.</p>
<p>Since Charlottesville, here’s a partial list of some of the statues and monuments that have been taken down or defaced by those who see themselves as the guardians of decency.</p>
<p>A plaque commemorating Jefferson Davis near Phoenix was tarred and covered in feathers.</p>
<p>In West Palm Beach, Florida, vandals spray-painted a Confederate monument.</p>
<p>In Atlanta, they defaced a statue of an angel holding an olive branch, standing over a Confederate soldier with a rifle.</p>
<p>Vandals spray-painted a red hammer and sickle on a pillar honoring the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Kansas City, Missouri.</p>
<p>A statue of a Confederate soldier in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was spray-painted, and according to a news report, “The base of the statue was defaced with graffiti, and black paint covered an inscription that reads, ‘Our Confederate Dead.’”</p>
<p>In Leesburg, Virginia, a statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the county courthouse was vandalized with graffiti that included obscenities and the message “you lost.”</p>
<p>Even Abraham Lincoln was targeted. In Chicago, a bust of the Great Emancipator was set on fire and defaced.</p>
<p>We’re witnessing a mob that is on the move, behaving like the American branch of the Taliban, white washing any history they don’t approve of.</p>
<p>If it needs to be said, this is not an argument in favor of Confederate monuments. If city commissions want to remove Confederate statues or even statues of Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln from the town square, that’s one thing. Mob “justice” in the dead of night is something else altogether.</p>
<p>And the mob has created a kind of feeding frenzy, where even otherwise sane people in the corporate world make crazy decisions based on fear.</p>
<p>You may have heard of what ESPN did. The people who run the network removed their announcer from the Virginia vs. William & Mary football game set for September 2 in Charlottesville because his name is … wait for it! … Robert Lee.</p>
<p>Get it? Robert Lee … sounds like Robert <em>E.</em> Lee.</p>
<p>The ESPN Robert Lee is Asian American.</p>
<p>When I first heard this I thought it was a joke. Nobody at ESPN could possibly be that PC. I was wrong. It’s no joke.</p>
<p>“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name,” ESPN said in a statement. “In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue.”</p>
<p>But it didn’t just become an issue out of thin air. It became an issue because of the cowardice of those ESPN executives.</p>
<p>Are we supposed to believe that someone watching the game on TV would be offended because the name Robert Lee sounds like Robert E. Lee? Do we think football fans will change the channel in protest?</p>
<p>So, is this utterly ridiculous decision by ESPN where it ends? Is this where sane people say enough? Or are the middle of the night raids by vandals on symbols of the Confederacy where it finally ends? Where decent people say no more of this lawlessness no matter how you feel about the propriety of Civil War statues in public places?</p>
<p>I don’t think any of this is where it ends. I suspect it’s only where it begins.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-24T18:11:00ZWhere Does It End?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Where-Does-It-End/-579971383786381133.html2017-08-17T18:18:00Z2017-08-17T18:18:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>When I was in high school, in the early 1960s, my family embarked on a car ride to the South – from New Jersey to Florida, where we had relatives. Along the way we got hungry so my father pulled his 1954 Plymouth into a parking space outside a country roadside restaurant. Just as we were about to get out of the car, I noticed a sign that said, “Whites Only” or “No Coloreds” — something like that. My parents weren’t bigots. They were appalled at what they saw on TV coming out of places like Mississippi and Alabama. But they were hungry and were people of a certain age and generation. They just wanted a sandwich before getting back in the car. I told them I wasn’t going in, that I wouldn’t go near a place run by racists like that. That’s all it took. My father put the car in reverse, pulled out of the parking space, and we were heading south again.</p>
<p>I tell you this story to make clear that I had no time for bigots then and nothing along those lines has changed over the years. Although I was born in the south I have no emotional connection to its history. Maybe that’s because I was born in the South … Bronx.</p>
<p>So I understand why there’s so much concern over statues in public places honoring Confederate soldiers who fought a war at least in part to maintain traditions — traditions that included owning slaves.</p>
<p>You can make a case that Donald Trump was the wrong one to ask the question, but it’s a question worth considering: Where does it end?</p>
<p>Is taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis enough?</p>
<p>In Durham, North Carolina, a mob chanting “No KKK, no fascist USA,” slung a rope around a statue of a generic confederate solder and pulled. After it toppled to the ground, they kicked the heap of crumpled metal.</p>
<p>Is that where it ends – with a mob of deciding what statues stay and which ones go?</p>
<p>Asking who’s next and where does it end doesn’t make you a white supremacist, or even unreasonable. It doesn’t mean you sympathize with the reprehensible neo-Nazi slugs who marched in Charlottesville. But “We are reaching the point where, if the Washington Monument were to be blown up tomorrow, it would be anyone’s guess whether jihadists or the ‘anti-fascist’ Left did it,” as Kyle Smith put it in National Review.</p>
<p>George Washington, after all, owned slaves. And if we don’t blow it up, how about just calling it something else? And while we’re at it, how about changing the name of the capital of this country?</p>
<p>Or maybe just changing the name of a few parks will do.</p>
<p>A pastor in Chicago has asked the mayor to remove the names of two presidents – George Washington and Andrew Jackson – from parks on the South Side because, he said, the city should not honor slave owners in black communities.</p>
<p>And what about the Jefferson Memorial? Should we board it up or just call it something else?</p>
<p>Should we change the name of Yale University because Elihu Yale, in addition to being a merchant and philanthropist, was a slave trader?</p>
<p>And what about Japanese-Americans? Do they have a case for tearing down monuments honoring Franklin Roosevelt, a man who put more than one hundred thousand innocent Americans of Japanese descent behind barbed wire in remote internment camps during World War II? Talk about stains on our history!</p>
<p>And why stop at offensive monuments? Why should we tolerate offensive speech and unacceptable ideas? Why should we allow white supremacists to speak in public places?</p>
<p>Leftists already shut down speech they don’t like on college campuses, including public universities funded by taxpayers. Is it such a stretch to silence people we detest from the public square?</p>
<p>And if you think the anti fascist activist gang cares about the First Amendment for people they hate, you’re naïve. These are not the ideological descendants of the civil rights heroes of the 1960s; they’re more like the progeny of the hard left radicals who wanted change “by any means necessary.”</p>
<p>So, let me ask one more time: Where does it end?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-17T18:18:00ZWhy Is Donald Trump Tougher on "Fake News" than Real Bigots?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Is-Donald-Trump-Tougher-on-Fake-News-than-Real-Bigots/-899595501273668605.html2017-08-14T18:10:00Z2017-08-14T18:10:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I don’t believe that Donald Trump is a racist. I don’t think he’s a closet white supremacist or a suit and tie neo-Nazi. I don’t believe he hates Jews.</p>
<p>So why didn’t he flat-out, unequivocally condemn the white supremacist, neo-Nazi, Jew haters whose public rally in Charlottesville, Virginia led to violence and death?</p>
<p>Why didn’t he specifically denounce the white nationalists who descended on the college town and converged in a park chanting, “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us”?</p>
<p>Instead, in a very un-Trump like way, he went generic and said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” And then, as he often does, he repeated himself. “On many sides.”</p>
<p>Imagine if during President Obama’s presidency, a supporter of Black Lives Matter ran his car into a crowd of white people, and Mr. Obama had said, “We condemn violence on many sides” – but failed to specifically mention Black Lives Matter.</p>
<p>As Stephen Hayes put it in the Weekly Standard: “Trump is quick to condemn—in specific and harsh terms—anyone he doesn’t like. He’s blunt, he’s direct, and he’s politically incorrect.</p>
<p>“So it was striking on Saturday when Trump refused to denounce the white supremacists and neo-Nazis whose public rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violence.”</p>
<p>During the campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly laid into Barack Obama for failing to utter the words “Radical Islamic terrorism.” I think Mr. Trump was right about that. But if he demanded that President Obama be specific when it comes to hateful villains, why didn’t he hold himself to the same standard when it came to hateful white supremacists in Charlottesville?</p>
<p>So if Donald Trump isn’t a bigot, what is he? How about a coward, a weakling who talks tough but is afraid to alienate even an extreme reprehensible wing of his base?</p>
<p>Remember back in February 2016 when a reporter asked candidate Trump about an unsolicited endorsement from David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – and Mr. Trump said, “Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke.”</p>
<p>Really? That would make Donald Trump the only person in America over the age of 15 who doesn’t know anything about David Duke.</p>
<p>A few weeks later they held the Louisiana presidential primary. Let that sink in. David Duke is from Louisiana. Could it be that the tough-talking Donald Trump was afraid that if he talked tough and denounced David Duke he might lose some of the bigot vote in the primary? In case you forgot, Donald Trump won that primary, with more than 41 percent of the vote. And he would have won without David Duke — but when winning is so very important, as it is to Donald Trump, why take any chances, right?</p>
<p>A president can’t be responsible for everyone who supports him, but he can get a bullhorn and tell the world that there is some support he just doesn’t want – like that of David Duke.</p>
<p>But perhaps since he only reluctantly (after much media badgering) disavowed Duke during the campaign, the former Imperial Wizard was back in Charlottesville, again lending support to Donald Trump.</p>
<p>At a rally he told his fellow white supremacists that, “We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”</p>
<p>And the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer put this out after President’s Trump statement on the violence in Virginia: “No condemnation at all. . . . When asked to condemn, [Trump] just walked out of the room . . . God bless him.”</p>
<p>When you make neo-Nazis giddy with joy, you know you’re doing something wrong.</p>
<p>Realizing things weren’t going well for the president, 36 hours after the demonstrations began in Virginia, the White House issued a statement that said: “The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, K.K.K neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”</p>
<p>Why didn’t the president simply say that in the first place? Maybe it was just sloppy work from his team that simply didn’t anticipate the response the president would receive.</p>
<p>Or maybe it was a conscious decision made inside the White House, a decision not to offend <em>any</em> part of the president’s base – especially now that his base is just about the only support he still has.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-14T18:10:00ZHave the Wrong Opinion and You Can Get Fired. Google it.Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Have-the-Wrong-Opinion-and-You-Can-Get-Fired.-Google-it./607178513418515875.html2017-08-09T18:11:00Z2017-08-09T18:11:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>On CNBC, an entrepreneur named Marcus Lamonis was asked what kind of people he prefers to hire for his businesses. Here’s what he said: “We look for more females than males, by design. I happen to believe that females, particularly in the sales oriented positions, are better. They’re more empathetic. They’re better listeners.”</p>
<p>Ho hum.</p>
<p>But if he had said, “We look for more males than females by design because men are better,” there’d be demands from the intolerant Left that CNBC never allow such a monster on TV ever again.</p>
<p>Exaggeration? Well, you tell me.</p>
<p>At Google, an engineer named James Demore, who has a Ph.D from Harvard, just had a run-in with the intolerant Left. He wrote an internal 10-page memo that basically said the reason there are more men than women working in Silicon Valley has less to do with sexism than it does with fundamental differences between the sexes.</p>
<p>He said the gender gap was partly due to biology; that men have a “higher drive for status” and that women are “more prone to anxiety.”</p>
<p>How crazy do you have to be to believe that women are more prone to anxiety? Except a publication called Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Review states that, “female-biased conditions include depression, anxiety disorder, and anorexia nervosa.”</p>
<p>Note: “female-biased conditions.” But hey, they’re only scientists. What do they know about these things? Besides, it’s a generalization. It’s not about <em>all</em> women. You can say men generally are taller than women but that doesn’t mean some women aren’t taller than some men.</p>
<p>In any case, when the internal document was leaked — and went viral — Demore got canned.</p>
<p>And before anybody goes yelling about “free speech,” employees of private companies have no such rights. Google had every right to fire Demore.</p>
<p>But let’s not pretend that if he had instead written a 10-page document saying that Google should hire <em>more</em> women because they make <em>better</em> engineers than men, he not only would not have been fired, there’s a good chance he would have been promoted.</p>
<p>You don’t have to agree with anything James Demore wrote to notice that in some liberal quarters certain views are just not tolerated. Try delivering a conservative speech on a liberal college campus sometime and let me know how it goes.</p>
<p>Liberals may not like generalizations about gender, but they have no problem generalizing about inequality – figuring that it’s usually linked to discrimination. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it isn’t.</p>
<p>Here’s an inconvenient piece of information that the holier-than-thou crowd might want to think about. When women get Masters degrees, by and large, they’re not in computer engineering, which would go a long way if you want a job in Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>Take a look at this list of the top 10 Masters degrees for women (as compiled by College Atlas):</p>
<p>Business Administration and Management</p>
<p>Education</p>
<p>Social Work</p>
<p>Elementary Education</p>
<p>Curriculum & Instruction</p>
<p>Education Leadership</p>
<p>Special Education</p>
<p>Counselor Education</p>
<p>Nursing</p>
<p>Reading Teacher Education.</p>
<p>But the top 10 Masters degrees for men include:</p>
<p>Electrical Engineering</p>
<p>Computer Sciences</p>
<p>Mechanical Engineering</p>
<p>Computer and Information Sciences</p>
<p>There’s something else Demore wrote in his internal document, which was titled, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.”</p>
<p>“Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.”</p>
<p>By “discrimination to reach equal representation” he means outreach programs that target women and other groups whose numbers in the workforce don’t comport with their numbers in the general population.</p>
<p>And he says, “Open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow.”</p>
<p>If Google had fired Demore for being naïve, they’d have a case. But they didn’t. They fired him for having an unacceptable opinion, and that just can’t be tolerated at such an open-minded place as Google, a place that welcomes a wide array of points of view — as long as they’re acceptable liberal points of view.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-09T18:11:00ZTake a Guess Who Embarrasses a Majority of American VotersBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Take-a-Guess-Who-Embarrasses-a-Majority-of-American-Voters/-8013323893036565.html2017-08-04T21:06:00Z2017-08-04T21:06:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Several new polls are out and none of them look good for the president.</p>
<p>Gallup has President Trump with only a 36 percent job approval rating — and a 60 percent disapproval number.</p>
<p>The news from Quinnipiac is even worse. In that poll, only 33 percent of American voters have a favorable opinion of him — while 61 percent disapprove of the job he’s doing.</p>
<p>According to Quinnipiac, “American voters say 54 – 26 percent that they are embarrassed rather than proud to have Trump as president. Voters say 57 – 40 percent he is abusing the powers of his office and say 60 – 36 percent that he believes he is above the law.”</p>
<p>Is President Trump levelheaded? Seventy-one percent say no.</p>
<p>How about honest? Sixty-two percent say he isn’t.</p>
<p>Does he care about the average American? Fifty-nine percent say he doesn’t.</p>
<p>Sixty-three percent say he doesn’t share their values.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to pick what is the most alarming number in the troubling trail of new lows for President Donald Trump,” according to Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “Profound embarrassment over his performance in office and deepening concern over his level-headedness have to raise the biggest red flags.”</p>
<p>To Trump’s most loyal supporters, who have next to no faith in polls, it’s all pretty much fake news. Except, they can’t be all wrong, can they? Of the five newest major polls, President Trump doesn’t hit 40 percent approval in any of them. The Real Clear Politics average has him at 38.4 percent approval and 56.9 percent disapproval.</p>
<p>President Trump does have a 76 percent favorable rating among Republicans in the Quinnipiac poll, but while that looks good by comparison, it’s not really a good number either. A president needs a lot more than 3 out of 4 members of his own party supporting him. And only 34 percent of independents like the job the Mr. Trump is doing.</p>
<p>But there is one group of Americans, as the New York Times explains it, that despite the daily chaos emanating from the Trump White House still strongly supports him and “has never really wavered: the leaders of the conservative movement.”</p>
<p>Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council who serves as a pastor at a church in Louisiana told the Times that, “There’s not a Sunday that goes by that I don’t have people in the congregation that will grab me and say, ‘How’s the president doing? Did you see him this week? I’m praying for him every day and I’m just so angry at the media and how they’re attacking him.’”</p>
<p>I’ve always been fascinated by this – by how people of faith who supposedly admire civility and decency and detest abortion so love this man who brags about grabbing women by the you-know-what and until he decided to run for president as a Republican, was a Democrat who gave lots of money to Nancy Pelosi, a leader of a party that stands, above all else, for abortion rights. But I guess when you decide (as the president did, in a tweet no less) to ban transgender people from the military that goes a long way to put smiles on evangelical faces.</p>
<p>And it’s not just evangelicals who haven’t wavered; neither have some media conservatives, the ones mainly on radio and TV. But while it’s one thing to support Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton, it’s quite another for radio and TV conservatives to willfully play the role of sycophants for this president.</p>
<p>Bret Stephens, the New York Times columnist asked a good question: “Thought exercise for Trump’s media defenders: If the president were to sexually assault a woman in the Oval Office tomorrow, would you still justify your vote on the view that Neil Gorsuch’s elevation to the Supreme Court made it all worthwhile?”</p>
<p>I wonder how Tony Perkins and Sean Hannity would answer that one.</p>
<p>Yes, poll numbers go up and poll numbers go down. To the extent that they’re accurate, they only tell you what’s going on in the moment. But if something doesn’t change soon, Republicans could lose the House next year. And if that happens, it won’t be long before there’s a vote by the Democratic majority to impeach the president. It won’t get far; there won’t be enough votes to convict him in the Senate. Still, Donald Trump and his loyal followers don’t need any of this.</p>
<p>There is one hope, a sliver of sunshine peeking through the clouds – and his name is John Kelly, the president’s new chief of staff.</p>
<p>That was a good move by the president. Now let’s see if a four-star, no nonsense Marine Corps general can rein in this impulsive president. The stakes are high. Donald Trump’s presidency hangs in the balance.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-08-04T21:06:00ZMemo to POTUS: You're Not Humiliating Jeff Sessions; You're Humiliating YourselfBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-to-POTUS:-Youre-Not-Humiliating-Jeff-Sessions;-Youre-Humiliating-Yourself/-721690276350878578.html2017-07-28T18:09:00Z2017-07-28T18:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Turns out there’s one more thing we can count on besides death and taxes – that whenever Donald Trump opens his mouth it’s a sure thing that it won’t be long before he puts his foot in it.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s his dishonesty; he makes a claim that is demonstrably untrue, and very often there’s video to prove how untrue it is. Or sometimes it’s his narcissism; bragging about how his TV ratings were better than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s — <em>at a National Prayer Breakfast no less</em>, to cite just one example. Or sometimes it’s his disloyalty, the things he says about people who have shown great loyalty to him.</p>
<p>As I write this, his target is Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, though there may very well be a new target 10 minutes from now. It’s one thing to go after a political enemy – but a friend?</p>
<p>Jeff Sessions, as everybody including Donald Trump knows, was an early supporter of Mr. Trump when no one thought he had a chance of winning the nomination; when every other GOP senator wouldn’t touch the guy with a 10-foot pole. Memo to POTUS: You’re not humiliating Jeff Sessions with your non-stop cheap shots. You’re humiliating yourself.</p>
<p>And there’s something else about this president: He’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.</p>
<p>Despite his Ivy League education, he still hasn’t figured out that he’s no longer running a relatively small company out of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.</p>
<p>When he was Businessman Trump his word was the law. He had no board of directors to answer to and no stockholders to please. He could be the king of his domain and get away with it.</p>
<p>But he’s not the king anymore; though I’m not at all sure he understands that. Being president requires collegiality, a Reagan-like optimism, an understanding of how to get things done when you can’t simply issue a decree — qualities in short supply with this president.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly a bulletin that Donald Trump has plenty of enemies. But another thing he doesn’t quite seem to grasp is that he doesn’t have the kinds of friends he really needs.</p>
<p>He needs to pretend that his most loyal followers — the ones who love anything and everything he does – don’t exist. Instead of throwing them red meat – whether it’s about “fake news” or Crooked Hillary (he can’t let that one go either) — he needs to ignore them. They give him a false sense of security.</p>
<p>If he doesn’t build the wall, he’ll still have his base. If repeal and replace goes nowhere, he’ll still have his base. If there’s no tax reform or infrastructure legislation, he’ll still have his base. They’ll blame obstructionist Democrats and “squishy” Republicans for any and all failures. But they won’t blame Donald Trump. Acolytes don’t blame the ones they worship.</p>
<p>But we understand why he continues to toss them the red meat that they love. It’s because he needs their adoration, their adulation, the way most of us need oxygen. Without it he can’t survive.</p>
<p>But they’re not his friends. Friends hold friends accountable when they do stupid things. Friends don’t let friends blow up their presidency.</p>
<p>President Trump’s approval ratings stink, to use a technical term. And they’re not going to get better by simply appealing to his base. What the base loves about him, most Americans don’t.</p>
<p>That’s because the Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters are not like most Americans. They’re angrier and more alienated. They believe they’re losing the America they grew up in and they don’t like it. And they sense that Donald Trump, the tough guy who doesn’t care what anybody thinks, understands them in a way that most politicians don’t — and never really have.</p>
<p>And he’ll remain their kind of guy even if he fires Sessions … and then dumps the deputy attorney general … and after that the special counsel who seems to make the president nervous. But if he does any of that, his days will be numbered.</p>
<p>Yes, he’ll still have his base. But that’s all he’ll have. And that won’t be nearly enough to make America great again. It might not even be enough to stay in office for his entire term.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-07-28T18:09:00ZIf Arrogance Were A Crime, A Lot of Journalists Would Be In JailBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Arrogance-Were-A-Crime-A-Lot-of-Journalists-Would-Be-In-Jail/-621279702938543405.html2017-07-25T04:32:00Z2017-07-25T04:32:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>No matter what he says, no matter what he does, no matter what he tweets — Donald Trump doesn’t surprise me anymore. Nothing he states as fact, no matter how demonstrably untrue, rattles me anymore. No amount of humiliation he publicly heaps on loyalists like Jeff Sessions, shocks me anymore. After six months of this president, I’m suffering from Trump fatigue. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.</p>
<p>But I’m also suffering from Trump-bashing fatigue, the non-stop drumbeat of negative news about the president; the crazy speculation about whether he’ll be impeached for high crimes including treason. This isn’t honest journalism. It’s wishful thinking.</p>
<p>If Donald Trump didn’t exist, the liberal pundits on MSNBC and CNN would have nothing to talk about. If he’s unhinged, as they so often tell us … so are they. If you don’t believe me, just tune in to “Morning Joe” on MSNBC sometime. It’s a three-hour orgy of unbridled mockery and hate aimed at the president every day. Or try Don Lemon on CNN at night, a supposed journalist who gives the word smug a bad name. Or those CNN panels loaded with liberals who detest the president and one lonely Trump supporter who serves as a convenient prop to show how “fair” CNN is despite what the president thinks.</p>
<p>And even when I agree with liberal journalists who point out the president’s defects, I find myself thinking that I don’t want to be on their team anymore. As much as I dislike President Trump’s demeanor, I dislike theirs at least as much. They’re smug. And if arrogance were a crime, they wouldn’t be on TV or writing op-eds; they’d be behind bars.</p>
<p>A Harvard study released this year showed that on CNN and NBC, 93 percent of the news about the president during his first 100 days in office had a negative tone. CBS wasn’t much better where 91 percent of the news was negative. At the New York Times the coverage had a negative tone 87 percent of the time.</p>
<p>Overall, the tone of the coverage at major news organizations in the survey showed only 20 percent of it was positive for the president – compared to Barack Obama’s coverage that was 59 percent positive.</p>
<p>No surprise there. Journalists adored Mr. Obama just as much as they detest Mr. Trump.</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that President Trump hasn’t generated a lot of negative news. He clearly has. But it is to suggest that such a massive truckload of negativity – even when the stories are accurate — is evidence of bias in and of itself.</p>
<p>Let’s say someone wrote a series of stories about CNN and 93 percent of it had a negative tone. Or let’s say 93 percent of the stories about Barack Obama were negative. That wouldn’t be honest journalism. It would be a hit job.</p>
<p>And then there’s the double standard. Liberal journalists are outraged at the president’s shenanigans. Okay, but where was the same outrage over Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice’s deceptions about Benghazi where four Americans were slaughtered? Where was their outrage over the IRS scandal, where conservative non-profits were targeted by a liberal middle manager (and who knows who else) who took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress?</p>
<p>And we’ll never know this with absolute certainty, but does anyone really think there’d be a liberal media feeding frenzy if Chelsea Clinton had met with a Russian lawyer that claimed to have dirt on Donald Trump? I can hear those liberal media pundits on TV now: <em>Nothing happened at the meeting. She loves her mother and was just trying to help. Everybody wants opposition research</em>.</p>
<p>It’s not good that Donald Trump too often has a long-distance relationship with the truth. And when the press points that out, it’s not “fake news” – it’s real, legitimate news.</p>
<p>But when so much of the hard news coverage and so much of opinion journalism are so overwhelmingly negative and so often laced with hatred of the president, this isn’t honest journalism — even when they get the facts right (which they don’t always do). It’s the ugly work of a lynch mob.</p>
<p>And even though Donald Trump brings so much of this on himself, no president deserves the non-stop snarky onslaught that this president has been getting – no matter how convinced journalists are that he should never have been elected in the first place.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-07-25T04:32:00ZTrump Says Sun Rises in East; Dems See Collusion with RussiaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Trump-Says-Sun-Rises-in-East;-Dems-See-Collusion-with-Russia/506796614868944316.html2017-07-14T18:14:00Z2017-07-14T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>In case you haven’t noticed, Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much these days. Donald Trump could call a news conference to declare that the sun rises in the east and Democrats would try to find a link to Vladimir Putin. And if Democrats somehow ever find a real, actionable, nefarious connection between the president and the Kremlin, Trump supporters almost certainly will echo their messiah and call it “fake news.”</p>
<p>So it’s no surprise that a new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that the right and the left can’t even agree on whether colleges are good or bad for America.</p>
<p>According to Pew, only 36 percent of Republicans view colleges in a positive light, compared to 72 percent of Democrats.<br />It doesn’t take a Ph.D to figure this one out. Progressives obviously aren’t troubled by illiberal liberals on campus who worship at the altar of diversity but don’t think intellectual diversity – diversity of opinion on campus – is that big a deal. Conservatives, on the other hand, are deeply troubled by this kind of thing.</p>
<p>Republicans may be split over what they’d like to see replace ObamaCare or what they think tax reform should look like, but when it comes to colleges, they know exactly what and whom they don’t like.</p>
<p>“Radical professors, race-obsessed provocateurs, gender-studies grifters, anti-Israel fanatics, weak-kneed administrators, disgusting libertines, angry feminists, and illiberal student protesters” — according to a short list from Elliot Kaufman in National Review.</p>
<p>And if I hear one more dumb remark from a left-wing campus clown about “dead white males” I’m going to get sick, hopefully on the head of the aforementioned left-wing campus clown.</p>
<p>Shakespeare is a dead white male. So are Hemmingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck. So are Newton and Einstein. Rembrandt and Monet are dead white males. So are Beethoven and Bach.</p>
<p>Progressives on campus may find the values and accomplishments of Western Civilization racist and repulsive, but regular folks, even if they never set foot on campus, implicitly embrace those values and accomplishments.</p>
<p>And it’s mainly Republicans who have figured out that the education a lot of kids are getting on campus these days isn’t worth the cost of it. There’s a joke going around that asks, “What does a liberal arts student say after he or she graduates from college? You want fries with that?”</p>
<p>Okay, that’s not totally fair. The joke doesn’t apply to <em>all</em> liberal arts graduates – just the ones who majored in French Poetry of the Middle Ages and the History of Feminist Art Circa a Thursday in 1912.</p>
<p>Liberals who ignore conservative concerns about academia do so at their own risk. Let’s not forget that the left also ignored criticism of the media, dismissing it as a conservative delusion, the result of right-wing paranoia. This was a big mistake.</p>
<p>“By refusing to own up to their own bias and weaknesses, the media didn’t make their critics disappear; they only angered and empowered them, making themselves more vulnerable to attack,” as Kaufman puts it in National Review.</p>
<p>And the same thing may very well happen with academia. By refusing to own up to their biases, the progressives who run America’s colleges won’t make their critics disappear, either. And they’ll also become more vulnerable to attack – which may very well have important political implications.</p>
<p>The same Pew survey shows that “Republicans, by about eight-to-one (85% to 10%), say the news media has a negative effect” on the country. And only 44% of Democrats say the news media have a positive effect while 46% say its influence on the country is negative. So even a plurality of Democrats are no longer fans of the media.</p>
<p>There’s a lesson in all of this for Republicans. Just as attacks on the media worked for Donald Trump — because the media refused to take serious criticism seriously — attacks on the unapologetic left-wing nonsense that goes on at our universities can be a rich target for Republicans in coming elections.</p>
<p>Here’s the headline over the National Review piece: “<span>The academy is primed to be a punching bag for the GOP’s next standard-bearer, just as the media were in 2016</span>.”</p>
<p>The media didn’t listen when critics pointed out their biases — and the academy doesn’t listen when critics point out their biases either. Instead those supposedly smart progressives on campus remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that there are a lot of disaffected Americans out there who are viscerally outraged when they hear about pampered liberal kids shouting down conservative speakers. And they resent the snooty campus elitism that views regular folks as the “unwashed masses” who live in “flyover country,” people not worthy of serious consideration because they’re just a bunch of right-wing yahoos – or so the nasty stereotype goes.</p>
<p>Putting liberal media bias in the crosshairs worked in 2016. Why wouldn’t putting the illiberal liberals on campus in the crosshairs work in 2020?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-07-14T18:14:00ZHere's an Idea, Mr. President ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Heres-an-Idea-Mr.-President-.../336072752766046820.html2017-07-06T18:17:00Z2017-07-06T18:17:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Sometime in 2011, I got a call from Donald Trump. He said he was thinking of running for president and wanted to know what I thought of the idea. I’m guessing he also called a million other journalists, but I had reported a story on his golf course in Scotland (for HBO’s Real Sports) and after it aired he told someone, “Bernie didn’t do me any favors, but he was fair.” Maybe that’s why he called. Who knows?</p>
<p>Anyway, I told him that because I’m a journalist I don’t give advice to people thinking of running for president (or any other office). We chatted for a few more moments and that was the end of it.</p>
<p>If he asked my advice now – he won’t! – I’d relent and tell him that since that conversation he has become the most disruptive president at least in our modern era and probably in all of our American history.</p>
<p>I’d tell him his war with the press is especially troubling. He says his critics in the media peddle “fake news.” Not really. A lot of them, though, do peddle “biased news.” They hate him and it comes out in their decisions about what to cover and how to cover it (though he gives them plenty of ammunition).</p>
<p>But I’d tell him that there’s a better way to deal with the press than waging non-stop war against journalists.</p>
<p>First, no more tweets about Mika “bleeding badly from a face-lift” she says she never had. And no more videos of businessman Donald Trump body slamming a guy with the CNN logo imposed on his face.</p>
<p>Someone needs to remind the president that he holds the same office as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. A little dignity is in order.</p>
<p>Let’s acknowledge that many of the president’s most loyal fans love it when he attacks the press, when he fights fire with fire, to use the term his press person used at a recent briefing. But appealing to the base isn’t getting him anywhere.</p>
<p>Mr. Trump won the election with 46 percent of the vote. Now his approval numbers are in the 30s, which means that even a lot of people who voted for him – the ones who weren’t crazy about him but who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary – even those people are abandoning ship.</p>
<p>The 25 or 30 percent who think he’s a messiah are not the kind of friends he needs right now. Yes, they give him the adulation he craves. But they’ll be there for him no matter what. And if they’re all he’s got he can forget about turning his vision of making America great again into a political reality. If the pols in Washington aren’t afraid of him – and they won’t be if his numbers stay in the 30s – they won’t put their necks on the line to support his agenda.</p>
<p>So here’s an idea for the president, an idea for a national TV address that his loyal fans might not embrace – who cares? – but just might win over moderates who aren’t in the Never Trump crowd. Imagine if he said something like this:</p>
<p>“My fellow Americans, my focus tonight is on one of the most important institutions in our great country: the news media.</p>
<p>“We all know we can’t have a free country without a free press. But neither can we have a free country without a fair press.</p>
<p>“Let me be clear: Journalists not only have the right, but they have an obligation to hold me accountable for my actions. With that, I have no problem.</p>
<p>“But let’s not pretend that journalists don’t have an agenda, one that goes beyond simply telling the truth. And just as I’ve been charged with trying to delegitimize the media, too many in the media have been trying from Day One to delegitimize my presidency.</p>
<p>“Joe Scarborough has called me a ‘schmuck’ on national television. He has said I remind him of his mother who has dementia. Mika Brzezinski has said I don’t love my country. Others have called me a thug, a pig, Hitler and a whole bunch of other less-than-flattering names.</p>
<p>“Tonight I acknowledge that my tweets in response too often have been needlessly vindictive – and counterproductive. But journalists “haven’t merely defended their reporting, they’ve doubled down on attacking” me, as a writer in National Review put it.</p>
<p>“So, as Monty Hall used to say, Let’s make a deal: I will continue to point out what I believe is false news about my administration and me. But I will stop the personal attacks on members of the press.</p>
<p>“But it wouldn’t hurt if journalists showed some contrition, too. It wouldn’t be so terrible if reporters acknowledged that because they think I’m “unfit to be president,” they also think it’s okay to inject bias and malice into their stories without fear of consequence.</p>
<p>“Someone has to put an end to this. Someone has to say ‘Enough.’ I’m saying it right here, right now.”</p>
<p>No, I’m not Pollyanna. I understand that Donald Trump may be incapable of <em>not</em> fighting back, often in childish ways.</p>
<p>But too many journalists see themselves on a noble mission to save the nation from this president – especially now that he tweeted about Mika’s bloody face and circulated that video of him beating up on the guy with the CNN head.</p>
<p>The more Mr. Trump attacks journalists the more they attack him. And the more they attack him the more he attacks them. He won’t stop unless they stop first. And they won’t stop unless he does, if then. This reminds of me third grade: You started first. No, you started first.</p>
<p><span>And with each new, nasty tweet the press he so despises feels more emboldened so save the nation from Donald Trump. If you think the war is ugly now, stay tuned.</span></p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-07-06T18:17:00ZYoung Voters for Old SocialistsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Young-Voters-for-Old-Socialists/-8671600601165454.html2017-06-21T18:19:00Z2017-06-21T18:19:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The thing about old socialist politicians, like Bernie Sanders who is 75 and Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn who is 68, is that they have youth on their side.</p>
<p>Across the pond, the youth vote allowed the British Bernie Sanders to do a lot better than the so-called experts thought he’d do in the recent general election. Here in America, we all know how the millenials went ga-ga for our Bernie. He got more millennial votes in the primaries than Hillary and Donald – combined.</p>
<p>I recently made a reservation for dinner at a restaurant in a very liberal city in North Carolina – using only my first name, Bernie — and the young hostess was a little disappointed that it wasn’t Bernie Sanders who walked through the door. I know this because she told me she was hoping it was Sanders who was coming in for dinner. She had a pleasant smile on her young face the whole time, but a pleasant smile is pretty much obligatory in the South, especially when you’re disappointed.</p>
<p>The fact is a lot of millenials actually like socialism. A 2016 poll conducted by Harvard showed that a majority of voters between 18 and 29 — 51 percent — rejected capitalism while a third said they supported socialism.</p>
<p>And a 2011 Pew poll of millenials revealed that there actually was more support for socialism than capitalism. Forty-nine percent had positive views of socialism while only 46 percent had positive views of capitalism.</p>
<p>How could this be? Doesn’t everybody know by now that socialism doesn’t work? Haven’t they heard the famous Margaret Thatcher line that, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”?</p>
<p>If they did hear it, they haven’t taken it seriously. In a New York Times op-ed that ran under the headline “Why Young Voters Love Old Socialists,” Sarah Leonard, a 29-year old editor at the far left Nation magazine explains: “[W]ithin this generation, things like single-payer health care, public education and free college – and making the rich pay – are just common sense.”</p>
<p>Of course it is. Until you run out of other people’s money.</p>
<p>Let’s acknowledge the obvious: Getting free stuff is fun – mainly because … it’s <em>free</em>! So it shouldn’t be a shock that young voters fell head over heals for a (democratic) socialist like Bernie Sanders who promised them a “free” college education paid for by those miserable rich people who have too much money anyway.</p>
<p>And just imagine if the Democrats somehow manage to come up with a young, progressive, attractive, even sexy version of the old socialist from Vermont next time around. Republicans – and more importantly, America – could be in serious trouble.</p>
<p>But here’s where millenials get off easy: No one is calling them out for what a lot of them are – which is, <em>greedy</em>.</p>
<p>Here’s how Thomas Sowell, the great thinker from California put it: “I have never understood why it is ‘greed” to want to keep the money you’ve earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”</p>
<p>So what we have is a greedy generation that feels entitled to all sorts of things including other people’s money. If this is the future, give me the past.</p>
<p>George Bernard Shaw had it right a long, long time ago when he said: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”</p>
<p>Who knew that Paul was 25 and voted for Bernie?</p>
<p>Memo to millenials: You won’t be young forever. And when you get older and have jobs and pay taxes, who do you think is going to pay for all those “free” goodies you once demanded when you were young and – forgive me — not-too-smart? The bill for all that “free” stuff — along with interest — is going to come due at some point, right? And the next generation of millenials is also going to want “free” stuff. You’ll be paying for that too.</p>
<p>One more piece of wisdom from Thomas Sowell, wisdom that young voters in the embrace of socialism might want to consider: “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else.”</p>
<p>Having second thoughts yet, millenials, about the virtues of socialism?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-06-21T18:19:00ZLiberals For Segregation...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Liberals-For-Segregation.../-143567759831159501.html2017-06-08T18:17:00Z2017-06-08T18:17:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It’s no secret that a lot of liberals nowadays don’t want to be called … liberals. Can you blame them? In recent years the word has taken a beating; conservatives would say, for good reason. So instead of liberal, the word many of them choose is … progressive. Who’s against progress? But euphemisms can’t hide inconvenient truths: that too many liberals have forgotten how to be liberal – and too many progressives act more like “regressives.”</p>
<p>Take race. Remember when liberals were the ones leading the fight to dismantle segregation? When they were the ones who wanted to take skin color out of the equation? Today, it’s progressives who sound like George Wallace.</p>
<p>On college campuses around the country, liberals still care about racial segregation – but not the way liberals used to care about it.</p>
<p>At some schools they want a “safe space” reserved for students of color – no whites allowed. At Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington, students demanded a day with no whites on campus. At several other colleges, they’re offering segregated housing for black students. And a few weeks ago, Harvard held a special graduation ceremony — for black graduate students only. It’s the first time in the schools long history they’ve done anything like that.</p>
<p>Free speech, once the hallmark of American liberalism has also taken a hit. We all know about those sanctimonious college kids who shout down speakers whose views they don’t like. No need to go down that road for the thousandth time.</p>
<p>What else, besides segregation, do progressives – and not just the kids on campus — celebrate? Well, how about terrorists.</p>
<p>This weekend, they’re going to hold the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City and one of the participants will be Oscar Lopez Rivera – the “prime recruiter” for the terrorist group FALN. In the 1970s and ‘80s FALN carried out more than 130 bombings that left six people dead. This apparently didn’t bother the progressives who organized the parade; they had originally named Lopez Rivera its first-ever National Freedom Hero. A backlash stopped that, but he’ll still march. Rivera had been serving a long prison term until a well-known man of the Left — President Barrack Obama — granted him clemency just before he left office.</p>
<p>And why is it that a lot of progressives get more worked up over President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord than they do about ISIS?</p>
<p>Mark Hertsgaard, the environment writer at the far-left Nation magazine, wrote a piece that echoes what a lot of progressives are thinking: that the president’s decision on Paris amounts to “murder” and a “crime against humanity.”</p>
<p>“To refuse to act against global warming is to condemn thousands of people to death and suffering today and millions more tomorrow,” he wrote. “This is murder, even if Trump’s willful ignorance of climate science prevents him from seeing it.”</p>
<p>It would be nice if progressives could muster that kind of passion and anger over what ISIS does. But it’s liberals who tell us to calm down, that we have a better chance of getting hit by lightening than being killed by a terrorist. Climate change, the progressives tell us, is the biggest threat to our national security – not ISIS.</p>
<p>And then too many on the Left make excuses for terrorists; they’re poor, uneducated, alienated young men, they tell us – even when they’re not. But anyone who doesn’t stay up nights worrying about the climate gets no such sympathy; instead they’re called “deniers” – not by accident, the same word used to describe lunatics who believe the Holocaust never happened.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I used to be a liberal when I was younger. But as things “progressed,” being pro-choice wasn’t good enough. Liberals had to be for a woman’s right to choose – no matter what. That presumably included late term abortion on grounds that women are the only ones who can decide what they want to do “with their bodies” – even when the fetus is really a baby days away from birth.</p>
<p>And we liberals were supposed to embrace the nutty feminist idea that women had some kind of constitutional right to be firefighters just because that’s what they wanted — even women who weren’t strong enough to carry a big man out of a burning building.</p>
<p>And I could never figure out how a black kid from a good upper middle class family was more worthy of affirmative action points than a white Anglo Saxon Protestant kid from West Virginia whose father worked in a coal mine. How was that white boy privileged?</p>
<p>It just got to be too much. Liberalism became something I no longer recognized. I didn’t want to be on that team anymore. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave the Left; it’s more like the Left left me. And I’m not alone.</p>
<p>We get a daily barrage of news about how bad off we are with Donald J. Trump in the White House. About how unfit he is to be President of the United States. About how he has “obstructed justice” and, who knows, may even be a traitor. About how any day now he’ll be impeached.</p>
<p>I wonder if the liberals who detest this president ever think about how they’re a very big reason he got elected.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-06-08T18:17:00ZThe Real Cowards of AcademiaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Real-Cowards-of-Academia/61843110164218457.html2017-06-01T18:15:00Z2017-06-01T18:15:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>One of the nice things about summer is that school is out and at least for a few months we’ll get a welcome break – from those sanctimonious liberal snowflakes on college campus who over and over manage to prove that old saying, the one about how the lunatics have taken over the asylum.</p>
<p>One such asylum is Evergreen State College in Washington State where each year they have something called “A Day of Absence” when students who aren’t white leave the campus and get together in some kind of symbolic gesture. This year they reversed it and told all the white people on campus that they had to leave for the day because of … Donald Trump.</p>
<p>According to the student newspaper, students of color “voiced concern over feeling as if they are unwelcome on campus following the 2016 election.” One white professor who protested had his class disrupted by about 50 liberal fascists – and had to teach his students in a park.</p>
<p>But, of course, this is only the latest example of snowflake sanctimony.</p>
<p>Not long ago students at Middlebury College in Vermont yelled and screamed and literally stomped their feet to prevent Charles Murray, the conservative scholar, from speaking on campus.</p>
<p>At Claremont McKenna College in California, an angry mob showed off their liberal tolerance by blocking the entrance to a building where another conservative scholar, Heather MacDonald, was scheduled to speak. She had to go to a safe place on campus where her talk was live streamed to a much smaller audience.</p>
<p>There was a mini-riot replete with smashed windows at Berkeley to prevent a conservative provocateur from speaking on campus.</p>
<p>At Harvard’s commencement recently, the school’s president, Drew Faust, took note of the trend and told students that they needed to hear opinions they didn’t like. “We must remember that limiting some speech opens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our own,” Ms. Faust said. “If some words are to be treated as equivalent to physical violence and silenced or even prosecuted, who is to decide which words?”</p>
<p>That sounds good. But wait, there’s more.</p>
<p>“We can see here at Harvard how our inattentiveness to the power and appeal of conservative voices left much of our community astonished, blindsided by the outcome of last fall’s election,” she said. “We need to hear those hateful ideas so our society is fully equipped to oppose and defeat them.”</p>
<p>Get it? One of the reasons liberals should listen to conservative voices is because they’re hateful and need to be vanquished – by warm and welcoming liberal ideas.</p>
<p>And what should we make of Ulrich Baer, the vice provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity, and professor of comparative literature at New York University who apparently doesn’t believe in free speech – at least not for people with opinions that offend groups that have been targets of discrimination.</p>
<p>When certain “views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good” and in “such cases there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in public,” he wrote in the New York Times.</p>
<p>This is quite remarkable. A professor and administrator at a major American university who isn’t ashamed to admit that unpopular speech is not worthy of debate. The real heroes, according to Baer, are the students who disrupt speech they don’t like.</p>
<p>“We should thank the student protestors,” he writes, “the activists in Black Lives Matter and other ‘overly sensitive’ souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.”</p>
<p>With college administrators like that is it any wonder that the lunatics have taken over the asylum?</p>
<p>But there is hope. And it comes from a liberal, Fareed Zakaria, the CNN journalist and Washington Post columnist who recently spoke at graduation ceremonies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He summarized his observations on his CNN program.</p>
<p>“American universities these days seem committed to every kind of diversity excepted intellectual diversity. Conservative voices and views, already a besieged minority, are being silenced entirely. The campus thought police have gone after serious conservative thinkers. …</p>
<p>“Freedom of speech and thought is not just for warm fuzzy ideas that we find comfortable. It’s for ideas we find offensive.</p>
<p>“There is, as we all know, a kind of anti-intellectualism on the right these days – the denial of facts, of reason, of science. But there is also an anti-intellectualism on the left—an attitude of self righteousness that says we are so pure, so morally superior, we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree. Liberals think they are tolerant, but often they aren’t.”</p>
<p>We need to hear more liberal voices like that.</p>
<p>As for liberal snowflakes on campus: They’re young and foolish and pampered — so maybe their cowardice in the face of inconvenient ideas can be understood, though not excused.</p>
<p>As for the grownups on campus, the college deans and provosts and presidents: Too many of them tolerate liberal intolerance, afraid to speak up, fearing a backlash from angry students and faculty. They are the real cowards of academia.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-06-01T18:15:00ZThis Is Not the Time to Circle the WagonsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/This-Is-Not-the-Time-to-Circle-the-Wagons/415987257304546482.html2017-05-26T18:18:00Z2017-05-26T18:18:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It’s been my experience, having covered the news at CBS for nearly 30 years, that when the media elites come in for criticism, they’re not very good at introspection. They’re much better at circling the wagons.</p>
<p>Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor, is Exhibit A. On February 8, 1995 he told Tom Snyder on his late-night TV show that, “It’s one of the great political myths about press bias. Most reporters don’t know whether they’re Republican or Democrat and vote every which way.”</p>
<p>On May 30, 2012, he told Jon Stewart the same thing. When Stewart asked, “In your experience, haven’t most journalists, haven’t their politics been somewhat more liberal?” Rather replied, “No, it hasn’t been my experience. … This is a sham.”</p>
<p>This is nonsense — breathtakingly untrue nonsense. Most reporters do know whether they’re Republican or Democrat and they don’t vote every which way. Studies have shown that there are far more liberals in America’s newsrooms than conservatives – and they vote Democratic far more than Republican.</p>
<p>After George W. Bush was elected in 2000, I got a phone call from a network news correspondent who said he thought he was the only person in his shop who voted for Bush and said his colleagues took to calling him a Nazi because of it.</p>
<p>In my 28 years at CBS News, I don’t recall running into a conservative – not one who would admit it publicly anyway.</p>
<p>What is a sham, to use my former colleague’s word, is the refusal of many liberal journalists – not only Dan Rather — to acknowledge the obvious: That journalism attracts more liberals than conservatives and that too many reporters let their personal views infect their coverage of the news.</p>
<p>Which brings us to an important new study from researchers at Harvard University that shows that coverage of Donald Trump in his first 100 days of office was overwhelmingly negative. Overwhelmingly!</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed the tone of coverage at <em>CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News</em>, the <em>New York Times, </em>the <em>Washington Post </em>and the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. Here’s some of what they found:</p>
<p>Coverage at CNN and NBC was 93 percent negative. At CBS, the tone was 92 percent negative; at the New York Times it was 87 percent negative; at the Washington Post, the negative tone was 83 percent; at the Wall Street Journal it was 70 percent negative; and at Fox News the coverage was 52 percent negative. </p>
<p>The numbers look like bias. But negative coverage is not necessarily biased coverage.</p>
<p>You can’t blame journalists for simply reporting the news, which in President Trump’s case is often filled with controversial statements and actions and so, understandably, would produce stories with a negative tone.</p>
<p>But when the negative numbers are so astronomically high, mainstream journalists would be better off employing some introspection instead of ignoring the study, which is what many did, and which is only a more nuanced way of circling the wagons.</p>
<p>The Harvard team also broke down the coverage by topic and found that on immigration 96 percent of the coverage was negative; on healthcare 87 percent was negative; and on fitness for office, 81 percent of the news was negative.</p>
<p>Here’s a theory: So much news coverage about the president has been negative because journalists don’t agree with Mr. Trump’s policies – and a lot of them just plain don’t like him.</p>
<p>For example, a lot of liberal journalists are at odds with the president’s immigration policies – whether it’s about building a wall on the southern border or rounding up and deporting some illegal immigrants. Is that why so much of the coverage has been negative and why journalists didn’t spend more time finding sources that agree with the president, and putting them in their stories?</p>
<p>A lot of liberal journalists, who adored Barack Obama, don’t like the president’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Is that why so much coverage on healthcare has been negative?</p>
<p>And it’s no secret that a lot of liberal journalists believe the president is unfit for office. Maybe that’s why more than 8 out of 10 stories on the president’s fitness were negative.</p>
<p>By the way, the same Harvard researchers found that Barack Obama got 41 percent negative coverage and 59 percent positive. George W. Bush got 57 percent negative, 43 percent positive. Donald Trump’s overall numbers: 80 percent negative, 20 percent positive.</p>
<p>I stumbled across an interesting essay by Washington journalist Robert W. Merry in which he says, “When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation’s elites, it’s a strong signal that the elites are the problem.”</p>
<p>Memo to America’s elites: Millions of Americans think you’re the ones who are deplorable. They don’t want to be called bigots because they worry about the effects of illegal immigration on America’s schools and hospitals and more broadly on the nation’s sovereignty and culture.</p>
<p>They don’t want to be seen as heartless because they believe that not everybody getting food stamps deserves them.</p>
<p>They don’t want to be viewed as Muslim-hating bigots because they, like the president, believe that a temporary ban on travel from a few countries — <em>countries that harbor terrorism</em> — is a good idea.</p>
<p>And they’re sick of being portrayed as unsophisticated dolts because they don’t abide by politically correct ideas that are so popular among the elites at some of our most prestigious universities.</p>
<p>This is not the time to circle the wagons. It’s a time for introspection by America’s elites, starting with the ones who set the agenda for the culture, who decide what the national conversation will be about … the media elites.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-05-26T18:18:00ZDonald Trump Is Good for Business - the Trump-Bashing BusinessBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Donald-Trump-Is-Good-for-Business---the-Trump-Bashing-Business/-14633902545368795.html2017-05-18T18:26:00Z2017-05-18T18:26:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Last year, during the presidential campaign, I told Bill O’Reilly, then of Fox News, that things would not end well for Donald Trump, that even if he somehow won the election, given his erratic behavior, his would be a tumultuous presidency.</p>
<p>I didn’t need a crystal ball to figure that out. He acted more like a nasty kid in middle school than a man running for president of a great country. Marco Rubio was “little Marco.” Ted Cruz was “lyin’ Ted.” Jeb Bush was “low energy Jeb,” Hillary Clinton was “crooked Hillary,” and Carly Fiorina had a face that didn’t belong in the White House.</p>
<p>Enough Americans didn’t care. Many of them hoped he’d rise to the occasion if he won. Besides, they had had enough of the old way and wanted someone brash to shake up the stodgy establishment. </p>
<p>But now that he’s president, Donald Trump isn’t exactly draining the swamp. If anything, the swamp is draining Donald Trump. He’s learning a lesson about how it was a bad idea to compare the intelligence community to Nazis and to bash powerful news organizations as fake news.</p>
<p>Every day there are embarrassing leaks that dominate the news and force the White House to explain the president’s side of the story – before the explanation changes and his people have to explain it all over again.</p>
<p>One day the biggest story in the world is his firing of FBI chief James Comey. Then it’s a story about the president giving secret information about ISIS to the Russians in the Oval Office. A day later it’s news that he asked Comey, when he still was head of the FBI, to back off the investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. Maybe he’s a victim of a smear campaign. Maybe. But in the eyes of a lot of Americans, Donald Trump no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. He has said too many things that turned out not to be true.</p>
<p>A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 39 percent of Americans approve of the job the president is doing. Not good!</p>
<p>But in spite of the low numbers there are more than a few high-profile Americans who, even though they detest the president, ought to send him a case of champagne and a few dozen roses along with a thank you note for all he’s done for them.</p>
<p>Who are these people? They’re liberals in the media – both the news and entertainment media – who are doing fabulously well thanks to none other than Donald J. Trump. These are people who would rather walk on broken glass than say something nice about the president. But they’ve discovered a very valuable secret: bashing him is not only satisfying, it not only gets them plaudits from their liberal friends, it’s also good for business. </p>
<p>Stephen Colbert went from worst to first by bashing the president on his late night CBS comedy show. It started with a few jabs and when his ratings went up, the jabs became more frequent and harder hitting and recently included a vulgar rant against the president.</p>
<p>The View’s ratings are also soaring thanks at least in part to the frequent Trump bashing by the show’s liberal women who pose as political scientists.</p>
<p>MSNBC used to be a joke. Not anymore. Knocking the president all day long has been good for business there too. According to recent ratings, MSNBC was the most-watched cable news network in weekday prime time in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 year old demo.</p>
<p>Saturday Night Live is having a spectacular year thanks to Alec Baldwin’s Trump is a doofus character and Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer is nuts routine. As one story put it,“Donald Trump has referred to himself as a ratings machine, and judging from the recent viewership of Saturday Night Live, he’s right.” Ratings for SNL this year have hit a 22-year high.</p>
<p>Business at the “failing New York Times,” as Mr. Trump likes to put it, is also doing quite well. Subscriptions have gone way up since Donald Trump was elected. Liberals love the constant barrage of Trump bashing on the editorial and op-ed pages – and on the front page too.</p>
<p>The media elite may despise him, but they’re the ones laughing all the way to the bank. Their numbers are up; his are down.</p>
<p>Now, with all the headlines about possible collusion with the Russians, with Democrats yelling about obstruction of justice and impeachment, the president is being portrayed as either a Manchurian candidate or an undisciplined amateur who can’t keep his mouth shut.</p>
<p>If only he had been more concerned with getting things right and less with bragging about what a great job he’s doing, if only he had been more gracious and less vindictive to his enemies, both real and perceived, he might have more friends and more support in these times of trouble.</p>
<p>But then he wouldn’t be Donald Trump.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-05-18T18:26:00ZTrump, Comey ... and the Wound that Just Won't HealBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Trump-Comey-...-and-the-Wound-that-Just-Wont-Heal/310583791222690435.html2017-05-11T18:14:00Z2017-05-11T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>For a while now Democrats have had about as much confidence in FBI chief James Comey as they have in Donald Trump. Next to none, and I’m being generous with the “next to” part. They’ve wanted Comey removed from office because they believed he was a big reason Hillary Clinton lost the presidency. Now, thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to fire him, they got just what they’ve wanted. Except now, they no longer want it.</p>
<p>If Hillary Clinton had won and fired Comey, Democrats would have said he got what he deserved. But Donald Trump could sign an executive order supporting sunshine and lollipops and Democrats would run to the TV cameras and with a straight face proclaim that this is proof that the president is a climate change denier who thinks kids should eat more sugar and get diabetes.</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at some of the things Democrats have said about James Comey before they changed their minds and wished they’d never said it. Last September, when Harry Reid, then the Democratic leader in the Senate, was asked whether he believes Comey should resign, Reid replied, “Of course, yes.” </p>
<p>Then there’s Reid’s successor, Chuck Schumer, who last November said, “I do not have confidence in him [Comey] any longer.”</p>
<p>How about Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, who thinks Donald Trump should be impeached. “The FBI director has no credibility,” she said.</p>
<p>And Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, last November called on “FBI Director James Comey to resign his position after his recent communication with members of Congress regarding the bureau’s review of emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server.”</p>
<p>That was then when James Comey was Judas and before he became Joan of Arc, as Kellyanne Conway put it. Now, Democrats are comparing President Trump to President Nixon. They’re resurrecting the ghost of Watergate. They’re weeping about the death of the Constitution and American democracy. These are people who give hypocrisy a bad name.</p>
<p>But in spite of their knee jerk partisanship, Democrats make a couple of points worth considering. First, are we really supposed to believe the early version of the story, that President Trump fired James Comey because he didn’t treat Hillary Clinton fairly? This is the same Donald Trump, you’ll recall, who had such animus of Mrs. Clinton that when his supporters chanted, “Lock her up,” he encouraged them.</p>
<p>And why didn’t he fire Comey right after he took office in January? Why now? Could it be, as Democrats claim, because he was leading an investigation that might soon have connected dots from the Trump campaign to Vladimir Putin’s effort to throw the election to Donald Trump?</p>
<p>But the Watergate comparison, while expected, is a political cliché by this point. Mr. Trump didn’t fire the FBI. He fired its director. The investigation will continue – at the FBI and in Congress, and probably without missing so much as a beat. Democrats know this.</p>
<p>But there’s also this: Last October, when James Comey said the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, candidate Trump said Comey acted with courage. “It took guts” to do what he did, Mr. Trump said at the time. So now we’re supposed to accept (again, the early version of the White House story) that he fired Comey in May for the very same reason that he praised him last October? Really?</p>
<p>So what was this unexpected dismissal really about? Is it meant to “forestall whatever storm is coming,” as one conservative detractor of the president believes? Or is it something more basic to President Trump’s personality?</p>
<p>Let’s remember that Donald Trump didn’t appoint James Comey, who was getting almost as much face time on TV as the president himself. This is no small point given the president’s narcissism. And “the last straw” according to a spokeswoman for the president, was when Mr. Trump watched Comey on TV tell a Senate committee that the idea that he might have influenced the election – <em>an election won by Donald Trump</em> – made him “mildly nauseous.”</p>
<p>Given the president’s thin skin, it’s no surprise that James Comey was skating on ice that was getting thinner and thinner by the day.</p>
<p>If they can clear the air long enough, the question both sides need to ask is whether James Comey was the right man for the job. Did he make too many mistakes during the campaign? At one time or another, both Democrats and Republicans said they didn’t have confidence in him.</p>
<p>If Donald Trump quickly nominates a well-respected, non-partisan replacement for James Comey at the FBI – maybe a federal judge with impeccable credentials — that should calm things down. But it probably won’t.</p>
<p>Politics in Washington has become a wound that just won’t heal.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-05-11T18:14:00ZPresident Trump's Secret WeaponBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/President-Trumps-Secret-Weapon/158414463125153906.html2017-05-04T18:11:00Z2017-05-04T18:11:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>He can’t go 10 minutes without saying something – let’s be diplomatic here and call it … <em>provocative</em>.</p>
<p>He, of course, is President Trump, who has said some – more diplomacy – <em>interesting</em> things of late.</p>
<p>First, there’s Mr. Trump’s understanding of American history. He said he believes that President Andrew Jackson saw the Civil War coming and was angry about it. </p>
<p>Could be, but Andrew Jackson died 16 years <em>before</em> the war started.</p>
<p>Mr. Trump also said that Jackson “Would never have let it happen.”</p>
<p>Could be, again, but Andrew Jackson owned slaves in his native Tennessee and might very well have let it happen. And many historians believe the war was inevitable, given how long bad blood between North and South had been simmering.</p>
<p>Then there’s North Korea.</p>
<p>President Trump said he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Un “under the right circumstances” to defuse tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program. “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Mr. Trump said.</p>
<p>A meeting is one thing … but honored to do it?</p>
<p><em>Honored</em> … to meet with a despot who threatens the United States every chance he gets? <em>Honored</em> … to meet with a tyrant who doesn’t tolerate anything resembling dissent and isn’t averse to murdering his opponents?</p>
<p>Maybe the president was just being polite. Or maybe he was just shooting from the lip, improvising foreign policy on the fly. Who knows?</p>
<p>So let’s leave North Korea and go to the Philippines – and another authoritarian leader our president would like to sit down with (at the White House).</p>
<p>Maybe President Trump isn’t aware that since Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took office nearly a year ago, he has overseen a campaign of extrajudicial executions of suspected drug addicts and drug dealers that has claimed more than 7,000 lives.</p>
<p>So, is a sit-down with a despot like Duterte — at the White House no less — a meeting that would give him a patina of legitimacy, good policy? Off the top of my head, I’d say no.</p>
<p>Despite all the needless turmoil he stirs up, President Trump has a secret weapon, unintended allies in unexpected places. They’re the Trump-hating progressives on the loony left who are doing their best to make him look good.</p>
<p>If it isn’t Stephen Colbert’s vulgar rant on national television aimed at the president, or left-wing masked anarchists violently disrupting May Day rallies, or liberal thugs on college campuses shutting down conservative speakers they don’t like — when they’re not yelling about “inappropriate” Halloween costumes, then it’s really important stuff – like accusing the president of bigotry because he calls their progressive heroine Senator Elizabeth Warren … Pocahontas.</p>
<p>Note to the crazy left: As a general rule, unhinged doesn’t play well among moderates who live between the coasts.</p>
<p>But now progressives have taken their anger to a whole new level: Some have actually cancelled their subscriptions to the newspaper they have long accepted as their progressive bible – the New York Times.</p>
<p>What ghastly sin did the Times commit? They hired former Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative and a member of the never-Trump club.</p>
<p>If only, in his first column for the Times, Stephens had stuck it to <em>despised</em> Mr. Trump. But he didn’t.</p>
<p>Instead, he had the gall to challenge the liberal party line on one of the left’s holiest of sacred cows – global warming.</p>
<p>“While the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable,” Stephens wrote, “as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future.”</p>
<p>In other words, we can be sure of what’s happening now and what’s already happened but we can’t be certain of what’s going to happen years and years into the future.</p>
<p>Because of his <em>blasphemy</em> many Times readers had a meltdown of nuclear proportions. Taking to Twitter they said:</p>
<p>“Bret Stephens first op-ed for the NYT is an abomination”</p>
<p>“It’s really a shame what has happened to this once-great newspaper”</p>
<p>“Democracy dies in the darkness. So, too, the climate. Thanks, Times, for spreading fake opinion”</p>
<p>David French put it elegantly in National Review Online: “The only people who can’t recognize that our nation has a ‘smug liberal’ problem are smug liberals.”</p>
<p>But these smug liberals may wind up being Donald Trump’s ace in the hole, because a lot of Americans – whether they like Donald Trump or not — find left wing smugness far more annoying than the president.</p>
<p>Crazy as it sounds, they may turn out to be Donald Trump’s most potent political allies, as we get closer to 2018.</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-05-04T18:11:00ZThey Really, Really, Really Don't Like This PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/They-Really-Really-Really-Dont-Like-This-President/-668703659899044918.html2017-04-28T18:23:00Z2017-04-28T18:23:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>For many years now, I have been making the case that bias in the news is not the result of a conspiracy, despite what some friends on the right may think. Journalists don’t go to work in the morning, meet in a dark room, give the secret handshake and salute, and then map out a strategy to bash conservatives. Granted, it looks that way. But that’s not how it actually happens.</p>
<p>It’s been my experience (I was a network news correspondent for almost 30 years) that bias is the product of groupthink, of too many like-minded people working in the newsroom who have the same ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong, abut what’s good and what’s bad. They see anything to the right of center as conservative – so far so good – and anything to the left of center as middle of the road, as moderate … and <em>reasonable</em>.</p>
<p>That’s how bias has infected the news. But now I’m noticing something new. </p>
<p>The other day Donald Trump’s economic team unveiled the outlines of a proposed overhaul of our tax system. “Trump Unveils Broad Tax-Cut Plan,” read the straightforward, no frills headline in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s what the New York Times plastered across five of its six column front page: “Tax Overhaul Would Aid Wealthiest.”</p>
<p>Well, since the wealthy pay most of the tax in this country, any cuts – as a strict matter of mathematics – might very well aid the wealthiest. But why let that tidbit get in the way.</p>
<p>Under that headline the Times notes that the plan would eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, “both moves,” the paper of record informs us “that would richly benefit Mr. Trump.”</p>
<p>Are we really supposed to believe that the president came up with this tax plan – whether you like its components or not – to benefit himself? Ask the next progressive you run into and I’ll bet the answer is a great big … YES.</p>
<p>Or just ask the gods who write editorials at the Times, a page where the motto might as well be, “Bash Trump Every Chance You Get.” On the morning after the plan was unveiled, an editorial tells us that the president’s tax proposal is “a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future.”</p>
<p>And on the op-ed page, one of the paper’s gaggle of liberal columnists, Nicholas Kristoff, writes that the Trump plan is a “budget-busting gift to zillionaires like himself.”</p>
<p>Ok you say, it’s the New York Times, the Bible of liberal journalism in America. What should we expect? And you’re right. But the TV networks, where tens of millions of Americans get their news, take their cues from this particular Bible and then the Trump-can’t-do-anything-right message gets even more play.</p>
<p>According to a study by the conservative Media Research Center, in his first 80 days in office coverage of the new president on ABC, NBC, and CBS was overwhelmingly negative. Eighty-nine percent of all stories on the president, the study found, had a negative slant. But on some topics, the negative numbers were even higher.</p>
<p>For the record: Donald Trump brings a lot of the negativity on himself. He says things that are instantly shown to be suspect at best, flat out untrue at worst. So negative coverage isn’t necessarily the same as biased coverage. Sometimes negative coverage is honest, well-deserved coverage. But let’s examine some specific areas the study covered.</p>
<p>According to the Media Research Center, news about the president’s travel ban executive order was 93 percent negative.</p>
<p>Stories about alleged collusion between Team Trump and the Russians was 97 percent negative.</p>
<p>Plans to repeal ObamaCare had at 94 percent negative slant.</p>
<p>Immigration stories got a 93 percent negative rating.</p>
<p>And stories about President’s Trump’s allegation that President Obama wiretapped Trump tower during the campaign had a 99 percent negative slant.</p>
<p>On that last statistic: Donald Trump is lucky the coverage wasn’t 100 percent negative. His allegation wasn’t true. And if it were true he would have produced evidence of its veracity by now.</p>
<p>There’s an example of negative coverage that is not biased coverage.</p>
<p>“I think the elite liberal media do not think that Donald Trump is worthy of being president,” Rich Noyes, the MRC’s research director and one of the report’s authors, said in an interview. “They don’t like his policies. They don’t like his character. And I think they are trying to just run his campaign into overtime to continue to try to discredit him in the eyes of the American public.”</p>
<p>As I say, President Trump brings a lot of the negativity on himself, but Noyes is on to something. The same media that slobbered over Barack Obama and gave him a fawning honeymoon period have no such intentions when it comes to our current president.</p>
<p>At the outset of this column, I wrote that I have long believed there is no liberal media conspiracy aimed at conservative politicians. It’s just that liberal journalists salivate more when going after Republicans than Democrats.</p>
<p>Now, I think a lot of journalists go to work in the morning, and while they may not actually conspire with other like-minded liberal journalists, they start the day, I believe, with an idea firmly planted in their sensibilities: That Donald Trump has no business being president; that he’s unfit for the office; simply, that he’s a jerk.</p>
<p>And then they cover the news with those thoughts in mind.</p>
<p>A sizeable chunk of Americans don’t like this president. An even bigger chunk doesn’t like the journalists who cover him. Both have a point worth considering.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-04-28T18:23:00ZThe Real Villain at O'HareBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Real-Villain-at-OHare/443382269141084942.html2017-04-24T16:30:00Z2017-04-24T16:30:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Unless you’ve been in a coma, you’ve seen the video – about 8 million times – of what I will delicately call the <em>incident</em> involving United Airlines at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.</p>
<p>You’ve seen the doctor turned into a bloody mess after airport cops hauled him off the plane because United needed the seats for its own crewmembers who had to be in Louisville for work – just like the doctor who said he couldn’t leave the plane because he had patients to see in the morning.</p>
<p>And you have come to your own conclusions as to who is at fault. Maybe you think it was United for forcing a passenger off the plane once he was seated. Or maybe it was the police who brutally dragged the man off the plane. Maybe you even think it was the passenger, 69-year old David Dao, who refused to give up his seat. </p>
<p>But I’ll bet you don’t know who the real villain is, the one who despite the fact that he was nowhere near Chicago is really responsible for the mayhem at O’Hare.</p>
<p>Here’s a hint: He’s the president of a major country in North America and his initials are DJT.</p>
<p>No kidding. President Trump is the bad guy. Just ask somebody named Frank Guan who writes for New York magazine.</p>
<p>According to Guan, the whole thing started with “President Trump’s January 27 imposition of Executive Order 13769, known generally as the ‘Muslim ban,’ which resulted in huge protests at airports across the nation, and seemingly emboldened some customs and immigration agents to inflict petty tyranny on helpless people whose skin is not white.” Dr. Dao is of Asian ancestry.</p>
<p>Never mind that there is no Muslim ban, despite what progressives who despise President Trump may think. The travel ban, which is temporary, affects only six Muslim majority countries – all of them either failed states or places connected to terrorism. Muslims from every country on earth except for Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria may still enter the United States.</p>
<p>Never mind too that there were no customs or immigration agents involved. And while we’re at it never mind that if cops are targeting Vietnamese senior citizens – because their “skin is not white,” that’s news to me. None of that gets in the way of the New York magazine piece. Frank Guan has scrupulously connected the dots and they lead from the White House to O’Hare Airport.</p>
<p>“While Dao was not abused Sunday by Customs and Border Protection or ICE agents,” he concedes, “the incident fits a general pattern that has emerged since the presidential election, of increased hostility from law enforcement toward people of color.” </p>
<p>Never mind too that the law enforcement officer dragging the doctor off the plane was also a “person of color.” He was African American.</p>
<p>Still, this is Donald Trump’s fault. But he’s not the only villain. It’s also white racism’s fault – and ultimately, it’s America’s fault.</p>
<p>Don’t take my word for it. Clio Chang has written a piece in the New Republic, another liberal magazine. which reports that Dr. Dao’s race wasn’t always mentioned in news accounts of the incident. Some reports referred to him only as a “passenger” or a “doctor” – leaving out his ancestry. That bothers Chang, who writes: “The problem with expunging the passenger’s race from the discussion is that it plays into this myth of the raceless minority. It presumes that there is little potential for an Asian man to be treated worse on a United flight because of his race than a white man. It suggests that Asians in America have more in common with white people than non-white people.</p>
<p>“The other way to look at it is as part of a pattern of prejudice in this country—violent and otherwise—against people of color.”</p>
<p>So there you have it: The incident at O’Hare is obviously racist America’s fault in general and Donald Trump’s fault in particular. (Tell me something I don’t know.)</p>
<p>That’s the view, anyway, from that comfy liberal elite bubble that too many journalists spend too much time in.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-04-24T16:30:00ZA Few Questions for Trump's Most Loyal FansBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Few-Questions-for-Trumps-Most-Loyal-Fans/-26307516160709644.html2017-04-14T18:14:00Z2017-04-14T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Generally speaking there are two fundamental types of critiques of the controversial Mr. Donald Trump: the honest analytical kind and the partisan political hack kind. It’s too bad so many of the president’s most loyal followers can’t tell the difference between the two.</p>
<p>The other night on Bill O’Reilly’s TV show I said that I thought Mr. Trump did the right thing in attacking Syria. I said, “I’m glad that he was moved by those images and did what he did.”</p>
<p>But I also said that “It’s important, I think, to point out that if you question what he did and you point out the inconsistencies of what he did that is not Trump bashing, despite what his fans think, that’s called legitimate journalism.”</p>
<p>I told O’Reilly that it was worth noting that there was a big difference between Citizen Trump and President Trump. Citizen Trump was vehemently and repeatedly against any military action against Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s first major poison gas attack against his own people in 2013. What changed between then and now, I asked? Assad committed a war crime in 2013 using poison gas — and he committed another war crime a week or so ago using poison gas.</p>
<p>If President Trump was so moved by the Syrian regime’s inhumanity in 2017 – why wasn’t Citizen Trump moved enough in 2013 to push President Obama to action, I asked. Instead, he put out numerous tweets all pretty much with this same message: “Don’t attack Syria – an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. …”</p>
<p>I thought that pointing out the differences between Citizen Trump and President Trump represented honest, reasonable commentary – but Mr. Trump’s most loyal fans didn’t see it that way. They saw it as an example of the partisan political hack variety of commentary.</p>
<p>Not long after my appearance on Fox, some Trump loyalists took to Twitter. Betsy said I was “an idiot.” Someone called Musray said I was a “doofus.” Mary wanted O’Reilly to “Ask Bernie to show us his Hillary t shirt on under his suit.”</p>
<p>Hey, it’s a free country. I get to speak. They get to speak. But despite their pervasive presence on social media – and their loud voices on conservative talk radio and TV – there really aren’t a lot of die-hard Trump supporters out there in America.</p>
<p>According to a CBS News poll this year, only 22 percent of Americans are characterized as “Believers” – people who support Donald Trump no matter what. According to the poll, “They put no conditions on their support: [They say] ‘I’m a Trump supporter, period.’”</p>
<p>So I came up with a few questions for the “Believers.” </p>
<p>1 What would your reaction have been if President Obama had said that President Bush’s administration “lied” to get us into a war in Iraq?</p>
<p>2. What was your reaction when candidate Donald Trump said precisely that at the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction; there were none. And they knew there were none,” candidate Trump said.</p>
<p>3. What would you have said if Hillary Clinton compared American intelligence agents to Nazis?</p>
<p>4. What was your reaction when on January 11, 2017 Donald Trump took a shot at the intelligence community and asked in a tweet: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”</p>
<p>5. What would you have said if the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders told Bill O’Reilly that he respects Vladimir Putin and then made a case for moral equivalency between what Russia does and what the United States does?</p>
<p>6. What was your reaction when President Trump on Super Bowl Sunday told Bill O’Reilly: “I do respect him [Putin].” And when reminded by O’Reilly that, “Putin is a killer,” Mr. Trump said: “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?”</p>
<p>7. Did you agree with Donald Trump in 2013 when he repeatedly tweeted that we should not get involved militarily in Syria?</p>
<p>8. What is your reaction now that he did get involved militarily in Syria?</p>
<p>9. Was your reaction outrage, like that of many conservatives, when in March 2009 President Obama told Jay Leno on the “Tonight Show” that his (Obama’s) bowling score of 129 was “like being in the Special Olympics”?</p>
<p>10. What was your reaction when Donald Trump on July 29, 2016 made fun of a disabled New York Times reporter by shaking uncontrollably at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs?</p>
<p>11. What would your reaction have been if liberal Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer had said John McCain was a hero only because he was captured – then added, “I like people that weren’t captured, OK”?</p>
<p>12. What was your reaction when Donald Trump said John McCain was a hero only because he was captured – then added, “I like people that weren’t captured, OK”?</p>
<p>13. What would you say if Donald Trump one day announces that he has changed his mind and no longer thinks we need to build a wall on our southern border – will you still support him, <em>period</em>?</p>
<p>14. Why do you think we attack some people for what they say and praise others for saying the same thing?</p>
<p>15. Do you think principles in this country are dead – or merely dying?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-04-14T18:14:00ZHe Was Against Military Action in Syria Until He Was For ItBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/He-Was-Against-Military-Action-in-Syria-Until-He-Was-For-It/118105889055854896.html2017-04-10T20:30:00Z2017-04-10T20:30:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Even many of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics are supporting his limited military response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s barbaric poison gas attack on his own people. But then it would be difficult not to support Mr. Trump given the images that he and all the world saw on television: children, even babies, gasping for air, foaming at the mouth, a grief-stricken father cradling the lifeless bodies of his two young children.</p>
<p>But President Donald Trump did have one prominent critic of his decision to use force against Syria. And that critic was Citizen Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Here are some tweets he sent out in August and September of 2013 after the Syrian government’s last major poison gas attack on its own citizens:</p>
<p>“Stay out of Syria, we don’t have the leadership to win wars or even strategize.”</p>
<p>“The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not!”</p>
<p>“President Obama’s weakness and indecision may have saved us from doing a horrible and very costly (in more ways than money) attack on Syria!”</p>
<p>“What I am saying is stay out of Syria.”</p>
<p>“Don’t attack Syria – an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again!”</p>
<p>“President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your ‘powder’ for another (and more important) day!”</p>
<p>“Obama must now start focusing on OUR COUNTRY, jobs, healthcare and all of our many problems. Forget Syria and make America great again!” </p>
<p>Yes, Donald Trump was against attacking Syria until he was for it.</p>
<p>There is no law – or any sound reason – that says Mr. Trump can’t change his mind. Being a candidate, after all, is not the same as being president.</p>
<p>So what accounts for President Trump’s inconsistency?</p>
<p>“I will tell you,” he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden, “that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.”</p>
<p>Donald Trump is a man of impulses. He saw something he didn’t like and he took action.</p>
<p>But his observation that “it doesn’t get any worse than that,” is questionable since Assad had used chemical weapons against his enemies inside Syria before.</p>
<p>Citizen Trump was against military action then.</p>
<p>And who knows how many other children have died terrible deaths, not by gas, but by constant bombing of their homes by the Syrian dictator’s regime?</p>
<p>Nor was it the first time a despot in the region had launched a chemical attack on his people. Saddam Hussein slaughtered his Kurdish enemies with poison gas – and those images were also shown on television.</p>
<p>Despite that, Citizen Trump told us over and over that he was against going to war in Iraq (even though that’s not completely true).</p>
<p>But seeing those images on television, now that he was president, was something he chose not to ignore. That was a good thing. But when you’re the president of the most important and powerful country in the world, acting on TV images and impulses is not always a good thing.</p>
<p>What happens now? What if – unlikely as it is – Bashar al-Assad uses poison gas on children again? Will President Trump sent more cruise missiles into Syria? How about troops?</p>
<p>What if one of Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombs wipes out a neighborhood and cameras record the bodies of dead children in the street? What then?</p>
<p>As the New York Times reported, when he was a candidate, Donald Trump “criticized Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who was Mr. Trump’s opponent in the election, as plunging heedlessly into foreign entanglements, drawn by misplaced idealism and the substitution of other nations’ interests for America’s.”</p>
<p>Was his decision to take military action against Syria a first step in the direction of his own foreign entanglement based on his own idealism?</p>
<p>Whatever the long-term answers, President Trump’s short- term response to Assad’s war crime makes sense. On top of the damage our cruise missiles did to that air base, the president also sent a message to North Korea and its benefactor, China: My tweets can be backed up with force. I am not Barack Obama. Proceed with caution.</p>
<p>And to Russia: My affection for your leader has its limits.</p>
<p>It’s too soon to know what impact those messages will have. But there’s something we already know: Impulsive actions – as satisfying as they may be – are no substitute for well thought out policy. And we’re still not sure what foreign policy this president will adhere to when the next crisis comes. And it will.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-04-10T20:30:00ZChanneling Baghdad BobBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Channeling-Baghdad-Bob/-5864001377571978.html2017-03-24T18:13:00Z2017-03-24T18:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I almost feel sorry for Sean Spicer. I mean the poor guy’s got a tough job. Defending the indefensible isn’t easy. Especially when you’re doing it in front of a bunch of people who detest your boss.</p>
<p>I’m starting to think that Spicer is channeling another well-known press flack. Perhaps you remember him – he went by the name of Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein’s Information Minister; the guy who had to say the most ridiculous things in defense of <em>his</em> boss.</p>
<p>Baghdad Bob would say stuff that no sane person could believe, like American soldiers were committing suicide inside Iraq “by the hundreds” – and that U.S. troops were on the verge of surrendering while in reality they were on the verge of demolishing what passed for Iraq’s army.</p>
<p>Sean Spicer doesn’t say anything that crazy. I mean defending his boss’s tweet that President Obama was bugging Trump Tower during the presidential campaign isn’t confusing fantasy with reality. Wait. What?</p>
<p>And when Spicer defended his boss’s claim that his inauguration crowd was way bigger than it really was, it’s not as if Sean Spicer stood at his podium, looked reporters in the eye, and said “This was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe.” Oops. I forgot. He really did say that.</p>
<p>And when Donald Trump said that 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants voted in the presidential election Sean Spicer once again rode to the rescue.</p>
<p>“The president does believe that … based on studies and evidence that people have presented to him,” he told reporters. Too bad neither the president nor his press secretary presented any evidence to support the claim – because there was none.</p>
<p>And just because Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was linked to pro-Russian Ukrainians, was Spicer wrong to say that Manafort “Played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time” in Trump’s run for the White House?</p>
<p>Well, let’s ask the very same Sean Spicer. In June, when Manafort took over Trump’s campaign and Spicer was the mouthpiece for the Republican National Committee, he told the Reuters news agency that, “Paul’s in charge.”</p>
<p>Hey, let’s cut the flack some slack. “In charge” can mean all sorts of things, right? </p>
<p>Spicer is not Donald Trump’s Baghdad Bob. I know this because Wikipedia says Baghdad Bob’s “announcements were met with widespread derision and amusement.” I’ve watched a lot of Spicer’s confrontations with the press at his daily briefing. Derision? Ok. Amusement? Not so much.</p>
<p>But it’s unfair, of course, to be too tough on press secretaries. I mean Bagdad Bob had a pretty tough boss. He had to say what he had to say. Which brings us to CNN’s Dana Bash who recently said that Spicer “has to say” what he has to say, “because he knows that he has an audience of one, the President of the United States, at this point, that’s really his focus. It’s pretty obvious.”</p>
<p>Sure, that’s easy for Dana Bash to say. What’s Sean Spicer supposed to do? Go out and tell the White House press corps, “<em>I know — and you know — that President Trump gets a lot of things wrong. I know — and you know — he’s impulsive and every now and then just plain makes stuff up. Who knows, maybe, from time to time, he even lies. I don’t like it anymore than you do. I’m just a guy with a family trying to earn a living doing my job – defending the indefensible. Now, let’s go to your questions.”</em></p>
<p>I don’t think so.</p>
<p>The late Tony Snow, who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, once said, “If it got to the point where I thought it would cost me my credibility, I would have no choice but to walk away.”</p>
<p>And Spicer, a likeable man with a good sense of humor, also has given some thought to his own credibility. “If you lose the respect and trust of the press corps, then you got nothing,” he said.</p>
<p>Finally, a statement from Spicer that the White House press corps actually thinks makes sense.</p>
<p>Permit me to go highbrow for my final thought. In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Thomas More is betrayed by Richard Rich, a corrupt little weasel who commits perjury against Sir Thomas to please the king. In exchange, Rich is named attorney general for Wales (which is akin to being named dog catcher of New Jersey).</p>
<p>To this, Thomas More says: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. … But for <em>Wales</em>?”</p>
<p>Or for that matter, Sean Spicer … for <em>Donald Trump</em>?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-03-24T18:13:00ZThe Pope, Panhandlers, and Liberal CompassionBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Pope-Panhandlers-and-Liberal-Compassion/708573482816006570.html2017-03-20T18:16:00Z2017-03-20T18:16:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>A while back, when I was a correspondent at CBS News, a colleague and I had just finished shooting an interview and were walking down the street in midtown Manhattan when we stumbled onto a common site in many of our big cities. A panhandler asked us for money.</p>
<p>I was prepared to just keep walking, but my friend, a Catholic who took his religion seriously, stopped to give the guy some money — a dollar or two as I recall.</p>
<p>You know there’s a very good chance he’s just going to spend it on booze or drugs, I told my friend. Yes, he told me, he knew, but he felt it was the right thing to do.</p>
<p>But you’re not helping him, I said. And I added, politely, I think you gave him the money to feel better about yourself. He acknowledged that was part of it.</p>
<p>I thought about that encounter the other day when I heard what Pope Francis said about helping panhandlers.</p>
<p>Giving to the needy “is always right,” he said, and he challenged those who make excuses for not giving money to people on the street.</p>
<p>Questioning my CBS News friend is one thing, but questioning the wisdom of the pope, especially when I’m not a member of his flock, is something else. But here goes, anyway: Giving money to a wino is not always right. In fact, it may always be wrong.</p>
<p>My reaction wouldn’t surprise Pope Francis. Because in his interview that was published in a Milan magazine, the pope acknowledged what I, and many of you, I suspect, are thinking: “I give money and then he spends it on drinking a glass of wine,” the pope said. But if “a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that’s OK.”</p>
<p>Really? How does that work? The guy on the street is an alcoholic, we give him money, he buys some garbage that will rot his insides, and “that’s OK” because “a glass of wine is his only happiness in life”?</p>
<p>“Instead,” the pope continued, “ask yourself what do you do on the sly? What ‘happiness’ do you seek in secret?” And we should realize that we “are luckier, with a house, a wife, children.”</p>
<p>Well, one of the reasons we are “luckier” than the alcoholic or drug addict begging for money is precisely because we’re <em>not</em> alcoholics or drug addicts. I realize that it’s not the thing to say in polite company but we made one set of choices and the addict made another.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean the panhandler doesn’t deserve help or compassion. But is it really compassionate to help some poor soul continue down a path that leads to still more destruction?</p>
<p>Let’s get the obvious out of the way: The pope is a good man. His heart is in the right place. He cares about the less fortunate among us. And so should we all.</p>
<p>But isn’t this the same old paternalism liberals are famous for? Isn’t this the same kind of thinking that created and perpetuated the welfare state here in America – the same kind of compassion that in too many cases left generation after generation no better off than when the supposed compassion started.</p>
<p>Liberals may genuinely think they’re helping, but they’re not the ones paying the price for their compassion.</p>
<p>And it’s no surprise that the pope got a big thumbs up from the Bible of liberal American journalism, the editorial page of the New York Times.</p>
<p>“New Yorkers, if not city dwellers everywhere, might acknowledge a debt to Pope Francis this week. He has offered a concrete, permanently useful prescription for dealing with panhandlers.</p>
<p>“It’s this: Give them the money, and don’t worry about it.”</p>
<p>How liberal of the New York Times to instruct us not to “worry about it.” Why should we? Even if our generosity doesn’t make the wino feel better – <em>we’ll feel better about ourselves</em>. And that’s really important too, isn’t it?</p>
<p>The Times editorial also tells us that, “You don’t know what that guy will do with your dollar. Maybe you’d disapprove of what he does. Maybe compassion is the right call.”</p>
<p>Or maybe buying the poor guy a tuna fish sandwich and handing that to him instead of a dollar bill is the right call. Maybe buying a bunch of cheap blankets then handing them out to people on the street in the dead of winter would be the right call, and more compassionate than simply tossing him a few coins or a few dollars and continuing on our way.</p>
<p>In Proverbs 14:21 we’re told that, “blessed is the one who is kind to the needy.”</p>
<p>Yes, but it’s not kind to contribute to the ruin of a human being already tottering on the edge – even if our compassion makes us feel better about ourselves.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-03-20T18:16:00ZThe Biggest Source of Fake News in America Is ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Biggest-Source-of-Fake-News-in-America-Is-.../-850407179849996309.html2017-03-09T19:13:00Z2017-03-09T19:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Many of us – no, make that <em>most</em> of us – have lost faith in important American institutions — which, and forgive me for stating the obvious, is not a good thing in a free country like ours.</p>
<p>A Gallup poll last June found that given a long list of institutions, Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in just three — the military, small business and the police.</p>
<p>Not doing so well was organized religion, the Supreme Court, public schools, banks, organized labor, and big business. </p>
<p>Congress came in dead last. Just 9 percent of respondents said they had a lot of confidence in the institution. I’m assuming more than a few blood relatives of senators and members of congress were counted in that 9 percent.</p>
<p>Then there’s the news media. According to a recent Gallup poll, “Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media ‘to report the news fully, accurately and fairly’ has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.”</p>
<p>We don’t even trust each other. A poll taken a month before the presidential election last year found that only 31 percent said, “most people can be trusted.”</p>
<p>As for the president, a USA Today poll conducted this month says that 47 percent of Americans approve of his job performance while 44 percent don’t.</p>
<p>“On personality, though, there is a broad and negative consensus,” according to the poll. “By 60 percent to 30 percent those polled disapprove of Trump’s temperament, and 59% say he tweets too often.”</p>
<p>The president has heard that before. But the tweeter-in-chief is unmoved. By tweeting, he believes, he can go over the heads of what he calls the fake news media and speak directly to the American people.</p>
<p>But even if he has enemies in the press — and he does! — the main source of fake news in America isn’t the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN. It’s the president himself. Let’s be kind and simply say he disseminates a lot of information that isn’t in the same zip code as the truth.</p>
<p>He doesn’t seem to grasp an important concept: The truth matters, especially when you’re the president. One day he’ll have to tell the nation something truly important – something that might require sacrifice from the American people. We need to believe what he says.</p>
<p>And the president’s latest unsubstantiated tweet alleging that he “just found out” that former President Barack Obama “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” just before the election is only the latest example of how this president shoots first and asks questions later.</p>
<p>Now he says he wants an investigation. Of what? To see if what he told us was true? This might be funny if he weren’t the most important person in the free world.</p>
<p>Instead of impulsively tweeting something he couldn’t prove, the president should have checked around before sending out his inflammatory message that put another well-deserved ding in his credibility. He could have asked the FBI chief what he knew about “intercepted communications.” He could have done a whole bunch of things – but decided to do the one thing that caused him the most damage.</p>
<p>So what else is new?</p>
<p>President Trump didn’t start the fire. Trust in our institutions has been eroding for a while now. But his intemperate claim that Barack Obama bugged his offices during the presidential campaign only fuels the mistrust and ratchets up the already dangerous polarization in America.</p>
<p>So here’s an idea: Apologists who have defended Donald Trump no matter what he’s said and done, need to do him a favor. They need to take him aside and let him know that if he wants to be a successful president he has to start acting like a president and stop imitating Pinocchio. They need to tell him to figure out a way to control his impulse to fire back at every slight, real or imagined. And someone needs to shut down his Twitter account, for his own good.</p>
<p>And the Democrats need to grow up too. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi need to tell their hyper-partisan base, a base that won’t rest until Donald Trump is impeached, that it’s not going to happen; and that as supposed “leaders” they will no longer reflexively oppose every idea the president and his party have just to make angry progressives a little less angry. They need to make clear that acting on principle is one thing; partisan politics and obstructionism are something else. But delivering such a message would take courage, and that’s a commodity in short supply in Washington.</p>
<p>Both sides need a timeout. Milk and cookies will be provided.</p>
<p>I know, I’m dreaming.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-03-09T19:13:00ZMemo from POTUS to MSM: This is War!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-from-POTUS-to-MSM:-This-is-War!/940449731782679883.html2017-02-27T19:13:00Z2017-02-27T19:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Donald Trump wasn’t shooting from the lip at the Conservative Political Action Conference the other day when he launched a blistering attack on what he calls dishonest and fake news. This wasn’t something the president came up with on the fly. It wasn’t part of his usual rambling stream of consciousness that we’ve come to expect.</p>
<p>No, this was a focused, intensified broadside. It was a declaration of war. Mr. Trump has been bad-mouthing the media for a while now, but this was a ratcheted up, coordinated assault on the news media that Donald Trump claims make up bad news about him.</p>
<p>“And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake. Phony. Fake,” the president told CPAC. “A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. They are the enemy of the people.” </p>
<p>The crowd loved it.</p>
<p>Here’s a good rule of thumb: You will never go wrong bashing the mainstream media to a conservative audience.</p>
<p>And one day before the president spoke at CPAC, the philosophical force behind a lot of his ideas, Steve Bannon, fired off a few rounds of his own. The media is the “opposition party,” he told CPAC, and warned that, “It’s going to get worse every day for the media.”</p>
<p>In the Washington Post, Chris Callizza wrote that, “Bannon doesn’t want to change the media. He wants to totally dismantle the media. He wants to break its back and leave it for dead by the side of the road.”</p>
<p>The Trump-Bannon war strategy isn’t complicated: Eviscerate what is left of the news media’s credibility, get the message into the national bloodstream that journalists cannot be trusted, that they make stuff up, and then when they report something about the president he doesn’t like – something that may do grave damage to his presidency – they can always say: “<em>You can’t believe them. They’re fake news.</em>”</p>
<p>Here’s the Cliffs Notes version of the war plan: Donald Trump and Steve Bannon want to bring down the media before the media bring them down. Period!</p>
<p>And while adversarial relationships between the press and the White House are nothing new, and while liberal journalists are tougher on Republican presidents than Democratic presidents, this is different. The animosity level this time around – on both sides — is in the unhealthy zone. A lot of journalists viscerally detest Donald Trump as much as he detests them. More than a few think he’s unfit for office and salivate at the prospect that he won’t last. </p>
<p>I don’t know if Nick Kristoff of the New York Times is one of them, but he did write this in his column: “Trump howls at the news media, not just because it embarrasses him, but because it provides an institutional check on his lies, incompetence and conflicts of interest. But we can take his vitriol: <em>When the time comes, we will write Trump’s obituary, not the other way around.” </em> (Emphasis added)</p>
<p>I get the impression Mr. Kistoff can’t wait for that day. And I’m pretty sure he’s not alone.</p>
<p>The president told CPAC that he’s not against the media in general; he just wants reporters to be fair. “I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources,” Mr. Trump said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.”</p>
<p>That’s interesting since Donald Trump is no stranger to anonymous sources. His campaign staff often spoke off the record when he was running for president; he invoked unnamed sources when he fueled speculation that Barack Obama was born in Africa and wasn’t a legitimate president, and oh yeah, just a few hours before Mr. Trump spoke at CPAC, his top aides held a press briefing at the White House, on the condition that they remain … anonymous.</p>
<p>Is there bias at mainstream news organizations? Absolutely. But fake news isn’t biased news, as poisonous as bias can be. Fake news isn’t news with a mistake in the story – or even news that quotes an anonymous source that got a fact wrong.</p>
<p>Fake news is fabricated nonsense, like the story that claimed Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington.</p>
<p>And fake news isn’t real news that makes Donald Trump look bad.</p>
<p>Yes, there have been times when journalists working at reputable news organizations put words in the mouths of people who didn’t exist. But, despite what President Trump’s loyal fans believe, it’s extremely rare.</p>
<p>When I was a correspondent at CBS News, I complained privately about bias and I wrote publicly about how it infected mainstream media coverage of all sorts of issues.</p>
<p>But it’s fantasy to believe that journalists arrive in the newsroom in the morning, get their coffee and meet in a dark room where they pull the shades and map out a strategy to make up sources and fabricate news to hurt this or any president. It just doesn’t happen that way.</p>
<p>At the risk of sounding like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, democracy works best when we trust our president – and when we trust news reporters to keep an eye on government.</p>
<p>Right now too many Americans don’t have much trust in either. And how exactly is this good for the country?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-27T19:13:00ZPresident Trump's Ace in the HoleBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/President-Trumps-Ace-in-the-Hole/-759038869928126620.html2017-02-23T19:46:00Z2017-02-23T19:46:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>No matter how many statements President Trump makes that are instantly shown to be untrue, no matter how much needless turmoil he causes with his tweets, no matter how gratuitously combative he is with his opponents, the man has an ace in the hole, a card slipped to him by the unlikeliest of allies: hard-core progressives who detest everything about him.</p>
<p>Go figure!</p>
<p>Even if they don’t have a clue, the unhinged wing of the progressive movement is always there to help the man they can’t stand – because they always seem to overplay their hand. </p>
<p>The hard left can’t go 10 minutes without calling for President Trump’s impeachment. On what grounds you wonder? Who knows? Bashing the media, even when he’s wrong, isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor — a point of absolutely no significance to his most ardent detractors.</p>
<p>So who looks goofier, our thin-skinned president who gets things wrong, a lot … or the people who want him thrown out of office simply because they want him thrown out of office?</p>
<p>And here’s a message for those progressives around the country who staged “He’s Not My President’s Day” rallies … on – what else? — President’s Day: Get over it. He won. You’re not winning any friends in Middle America – even in blue states — when you show that kind of disrespect.</p>
<p>Or how about that piñata party at the University of Chicago. The one where grownups stood around laughing while their little kids repeatedly hit a piñata effigy of Donald Trump. The kids just wanted the candy. The grownups wanted blood. They cheered when the Trump lookalike was beheaded and was left hanging from a tree. And when the body hit the dirt, they shouted, “Tear him apart.”</p>
<p>There’s a nice lesson in civility and respect to show your children.</p>
<p>Let’s imagine the unimaginable: that a bunch of right-wing yahoos encouraged children to rip into a piñata that looked like President Obama. Imagine if they cheered when his effigy was decapitated and yelled, “Tear him apart.” We all know how decent people would respond to that. We also know how liberals in the media would respond. They would put the story on page one and probably lead the evening news with it on TV.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the Trump piñata party got precious little mainstream coverage. </p>
<p>And now we have Congresswoman Maxine Waters who goes on TV to call the Trump cabinet, “Scumbags.” I once wrote a book called <em>100 People Who Are Screwing Up America</em> and Ms. Waters made the list. I said she had all the refinement of a pit bull in a bad mood. I now have second thoughts. Too bad for the congresswoman they’re exactly the same as my first thoughts.</p>
<p>And then we have those GOP town hall meetings that progressives are disrupting – on national television. They may make the Trump haters feel good, but I suspect no one else thinks shouting down speakers you don’t agree with is something we need more of in America.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget that old reliable standby: “Trump is Hitler” signs at progressive rallies protesting whatever he did they don’t like.</p>
<p>For at least four years the hard left will continue to call Donald Trump all sorts of names that pretty much come down to — he’s an incompetent jerk who has no business being president. And let’s not pretend he won’t give them the gun and ammunition they’ll use to fire shots at him. If they can’t help themselves, neither can he.</p>
<p>But if Mr. Trump is smart he’ll thank his most passionate detractors — because they’re doing him a favor by showing how sanctimoniously unhinged they can be. Unhinged doesn’t play well with mainstream Americans, even with the ones who aren’t big fans of the president.</p>
<p>Donald Trump may not realize how helpful those hard-left progressives are to him. And they certainly don’t understand how helpful they are to him.</p>
<p>Before this plays out, the lefties who hate Donald Trump may save him – from himself.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-23T19:46:00ZDefending Donald Trump - No Matter WhatBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Defending-Donald-Trump---No-Matter-What/206964179920732828.html2017-02-20T17:14:00Z2017-02-20T17:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’ve always found Donald Trump’s most passionate supporters more interesting than Donald Trump himself.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is easy to understand. He’s a man who craves adulation. Adulation, applause, ratings are his oxygen. When you understand that a lot of other things fall into place. His hard-core base loves him because he sticks it to all sorts of elite types they don’t like, mainly the liberal media elite.</p>
<p>And the news media deserve a lot of the criticism they get. I wrote a book called <em>Bias</em>, outlining how and why liberal journalists slant the news to fit their own worldview and their own values. I wrote another book called <em>A Slobbering Love Affair </em>about how a lot of liberal journalists fell madly in love with Barack Obama and embarrassed themselves in the process. </p>
<p>So I understand why so many people don’t trust what passes for the mainstream media.</p>
<p>But I don’t need to hear Donald Trump lecture us about “fake news.” Half of what comes out of Mr. Trump’s mouth is fake <em>information</em>. He gets so many things wrong you have to wonder what’s going on. Fake news to Donald Trump is <em>any</em> news he doesn’t like.</p>
<p>Before I get too far along, let me define what I mean by “his most passionate supporters.” I’m not talking about those Americans who held their nose and voted for him; the ones who couldn’t stand the idea of Hillary Clinton being president. I’m referring to those who <em>adore</em> him – the ones who aren’t put off in the least by his crude behavior. The ones who don’t care that he’s thin-skinned, vindictive and brags too much. The ones who don’t care that he gets so many things wrong; that he’s either sloppy with facts, lying … or is delusional. They just plain love the guy because he’s a symbol: a great big middle finger aimed at everyone he and his most loyal fans don’t like.</p>
<p>Which brings me to a recent appearance on television where I was asked for my reaction to his news conference which was if nothing else … entertaining.</p>
<p>I said no matter what others thought of his performance, his most avid fans loved it because anyone who takes shots at the media is their kind of guy.</p>
<p>But I said something else that got President Trump’s true-blue supporters riled up. I said Donald Trump “could have pulled out a gun and shot a few reporters [at his news conference] and his base would have cheered him on.” Then I added, “<em>And I mean that literally</em>.”</p>
<p>Social media lit up. His fans were not happy. </p>
<p>Chloe said, “That was an insane thing to say. Has Bernie lost it?”</p>
<p>Rick knew the answer to that one: “Bernie you have lost your marbles.”</p>
<p>Someone called Sensable let me off easy: “That’s a mean statement, Mr. Goldberg.”</p>
<p>John said I was a “fascist.”</p>
<p>Ronald spoke for many others when he tweeted: “Mr. Goldberg your full of crap, wiseup, it’s now very clear your [sic] not a Trump supporter.”</p>
<p>Here’s what makes their annoyance and anger so interesting. It was Donald Trump himself who on January 23, 2016 said this at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”</p>
<p>So that didn’t bother the Trump followers, but what I said did? I didn’t say anything more provocative than what he said over a year ago. And I’m only a commentator. He was running for President of the United States of America!</p>
<p>And that’s why these people are so, let’s be nice and use the word … <em>fascinating</em>. Donald Trump could say the sun rises in the west and his fans wouldn’t care. But if a journalist points out that he’s wrong, it’s the journalist who winds up in the crosshairs and accused of putting out “fake news.”</p>
<p>In fact, after watching me on television, one Trump fan on Twitter, wrote: “Fake news idiot Bernard Goldberg trash talking Trump.” The message was re-tweeted – a lot.</p>
<p>On that TV show I also said that I couldn’t think of <em>anything</em> that Donald Trump could do that would make his most loyal supporters abandon him. I also mean this … <em>literally</em>.</p>
<p>In the past I have said that Donald Trump has a great knack, an uncanny ability, to make his most loyal fans look foolish. I think that now more than ever.</p>
<p>He can make them abandon their conservative principles. He can make them forget how much conservatives supposedly care about civility and decency. He can say things that aren’t true. He can demean a military man who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He can make fun of a disabled reporter. He can insult the looks of a woman who ran against him. He can talk about grabbing women between their legs and getting away with it – because he’s a star. None of it matters to his most loyal supporters. He has a hold on them.</p>
<p>As a Trump fan named Diane put it on Twitter regarding my comments about the president’s performance at the news conference: “Yes, we loved it. Our President has been under siege by the idiot media; he is fighting back, so are we.”</p>
<p>Forgive me for repeating myself: There is nothing he can do that will make his disciples abandon their messiah.</p>
<p>And for those naïve enough to believe that Donald Trump would change his behavior when he became president: Forget it. And neither will his most loyal followers.</p>
<p>I have a bad feeling that this may not end well.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-20T17:14:00ZRoommate Wanted: But Not If You Voted for ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Roommate-Wanted:-But-Not-If-You-Voted-for-.../-591614632297841834.html2017-02-16T19:15:00Z2017-02-16T19:15:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Did you hear about those young snooty Republicans in Washington, D.C. who are looking for roommates to share expenses – and are placing ads that shamelessly say things like, “no smokers, no alcohol, no pets, no racists, no gay-haters … and no one who supported Hillary Clinton for president?”</p>
<p>They’re popping up all over the place — angry, closed-minded, intolerant conservatives ridiculously comparing liberals who voted for Hillary to bigots. How dumb is that?</p>
<p>Okay, I made it up.</p>
<p>Well, “made it up” is a bit of a stretch. The ads are real except it isn’t Hillary-hating conservatives who are placing them. It’s Trump-hating liberals who are showing how much they still detest the new president and anyone who supported him, by proudly putting “No Trump clauses” in their ads.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly a bulletin that more than a few liberals are still in a state of shock and still fuming that Donald Trump actually beat Hillary Clinton. And so, a lot of libs – especially the younger ones – have launched a campaign to wage their war of resistance: ads with the not too subtle message: Trump supporters need not apply.<br /><br />The New York Times – a newspaper whose reporters are on top of whatever it is on any particular day that irks progressives who think Mr. Trump is crude, vulgar and unfit to be president – reports that these young Washington libs are using social media to wage their resistance, posting their ads on Craigslist, Reddit and Twitter and putting messages up on Facebook.</p>
<p>And even though rents are pretty high in Washington, The Times reports that, “for some, it’s becoming more important to make sure that political views align before they split the cost with a stranger.”</p>
<p>A 23-year old woman posted an ad that said: “Alcohol, pets and meat products are not allowed in the house. Neither are Trump supporters.”</p>
<p>Two women in their 20s posted this: “We’re open to any age/gender identity/non-identity, so long as you didn’t vote for Trump.”</p>
<p>Another woman ran this ad: “Trump supporters this is not the house for you (no, seriously).”</p>
<p>The Times also reports that, “In one recent ad, a couple in the area who identified themselves as ‘open-minded’ and liberal advertised a $500 room in their home: ‘If you’re racist, sexist, homophobic or a Trump supporter please don’t respond. We won’t get along.’” </p>
<p>I’m always amused by how liberals who brag about being open-minded don’t have a clue about how close-minded they actually are.</p>
<p>How do we think liberals would respond if conservatives, say in a deep red state like Utah or North Dakota, were attaching “No Hillary clauses” to their ads. “I’m looking for a roommate, but if you voted for Hillary, get lost, creep. You’re not welcome around here (no seriously).”</p>
<p>I think we know how those “open-minded” liberals would respond. They’d be screaming about the hateful, intolerant idiots who voted for Donald Trump. And there’s a good chance the word “Nazi” or “Hitler” would be thrown in for good measure.</p>
<p>Whether this kind of discrimination is legal in Washington isn’t clear. The city has laws that go beyond the usual bans on discrimination. In Washington they have laws that make it illegal to discriminate based on political affiliation. But one lawyer in the Times story says it’s unclear if a person’s support of President Trump falls into that category.</p>
<p>A lawsuit would clear things up, but a Trump supporter taking the matter to court in a city where just about everybody voted for Hillary would be like rolling a bolder up a very steep hill.</p>
<p>In any case, we can all understand why a raging Hillary lefty wouldn’t want to live in the same zip code — let alone the same apartment — as a rabid hard-right Trump supporter. Fair enough.</p>
<p>So let’s not make more of this liberal act of defiance than it deserves. But let’s acknowledge what it is: one more warning sign, the newest tidbit that tells us something is very wrong in America.</p>
<p>I’m becoming more and more convinced that the two opposing sides not only don’t want to share the same apartment. I don’t think they want to share the same country.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-16T19:15:00ZBernie Goldberg on the Boycotting of Donald TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldberg-on-the-Boycotting-of-Donald-Trump/377529679044961611.html2017-02-13T19:09:00Z2017-02-13T19:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Moral thugs are the most annoying kind. Run-of-the-mill thugs, as despicable as they are, at least have the decency to not pretend they’re any good. They’re goons and they know it. They’re out to hurt you and that pretty much is that. Moral thugs on the other hand try to convince the world that they’re inflicting their damage for what we’re supposed to believe is a <em>noble</em> cause.</p>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>And the supposedly noble cause we’re witnessing today is a nationwide boycott launched by activists who so detest Donald Trump that they want to punish any American business that sells anything with his name on it – and shame businesses whose executives had the gall to actually support him.</p>
<p>Oh the humanity! </p>
<p>Anti-Trump activists haven’t had much luck in the world of politics — trying to block his cabinet appointments have gone nowhere. But they’re doing better in another arena. They’re having some success in the world of business.</p>
<p>Does the name Grab Your Wallet ring any bells?</p>
<p>Grab Your Wallet is a grassroots movement that started on social media and has come out with a long list of businesses that they’ve put in their crosshairs for peddling Trump merchandise. Macy’s is on the list, along with Burlington Coat Factory, Bed Bath & Beyond, Amazon, Lord & Taylor, Dillard’s, Hudson Bay, Bon-Ton, Belk, Bloomingdale’s, and a lot more.</p>
<p>QVC, the L.A. Clippers basketball team and See’s Candy also are on the hit list. Why? Because they advertise on Celebrity Apprentice.</p>
<p>Then there’s LL Bean, Lending Tree, MillerCoors and New Balance. Grab Your Wallet is targeting them because the company’s CEO or a board member had the audacity to raise money for the Trump campaign or a Super PAC that supported him.</p>
<p>And now there’s Nordstrom, the upscale department store that has become the latest a high-value target of Grab Your Wallet. Nordstrom no longer sells clothing and shoes designed by Ivanka Trump because she has the audacity to be President Trump’s daughter. In Grab Your Wallet circles such an offense will not be tolerated.</p>
<p>For the record, Nordstrom says the decision to dump Invanka was all about business, nothing more. In a tweet the company said, “It’s not a political decision for us. We didn’t buy the [Ivanka Trump] brand for this season based on its sales performance.” </p>
<p>But even the Grab Your Wallet crowd didn’t buy that explanation. As soon as Nordstrom caved the activists took to social media to gloat over their victory.</p>
<p>“It’s working people!@nordstrom <a href="https://twitter.com/Nordstrom">‪</a>is ending its relationship with Ivanka Trump products! Keep it up! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GrabYourWallet?src=hash">‪</a>#GrabYourWallet ,” was one tweet.</p>
<p>Another said, “Thanks to the #GrabYourWallet #boycott, @Nordstrom came to its senses and dumped @IvankaTrump. #LoveTrumpsHate.”</p>
<p>Grab Your Wallet has claimed several other scalps – stores that have either removed Trump merchandise from its website or from its brick and mortar stores. Collaborators, after all, are not innocent bystanders in the eyes of the high-minded folks at Grab Your Wallet.</p>
<p>Boycotts, of course, are legal and sometimes really do serve a noble purpose. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus and that led to the Montgomery [Alabama] Bus Boycott, which in turn led to a United States Supreme Court decision declaring that the city’s law requiring segregated buses was unconstitutional.</p>
<p>The Montgomery boycott was about something truly important, civil rights. The Grab Your Wallet boycott is about shoes and earrings and handbags and ties.</p>
<p>Despite his faults – and he has plenty – Donald Trump won. Grab Your Wallet activists don’t have to like it. A lot of Americans don’t. But to try to shame people for supporting him, to try to hurt businesses for selling anything with his name on it, is a movement steeped in its own smallness. What they’re doing is legal. But that’s all it is. And it certainly isn’t noble.</p>
</div>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-13T19:09:00ZBernie Goldberg on: The New Party of NoBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldberg-on:-The-New-Party-of-No/491159268482886398.html2017-02-08T19:07:00Z2017-02-08T19:07:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Powerful people, especially in politics, often get into trouble when they pay too much attention to the people who are blindly devoted to them and not enough to their critics. They wind up in a bubble believing they’re as wonderful as their admirers think and they learn nothing from those who oppose them.</p>
<p>Donald Trump may be guilty of that. He often plays to his most loyal fans while tweeting trash about his critics. If you thought the presidency was going to somehow change him, think again.</p>
<p>Hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t give his progressive opponents ammunition to fire at him. And many of them have decided that the only way to deal with a president they believe is illegitimate is to oppose everything he tries to do. </p>
<p>And because they live in their own comfortable bubble, they think they’re not only right, but that their views are far more popular than they actually are.</p>
<p>Let’s start with what passes for the mainstream media. Mr. Trump detests a lot of reporters, and many of them detest him. And if he’s trying to delegitimize them, they’re trying to delegitimize him. Here’s Michael Wolff in an essay he wrote for Newsweek: “The media believes that it speaks for Hillary Clinton’s national ballot box majority, for the millions who have now marched against Trump … and, as well, for obvious common sense. And the media believes that everybody believes what it believes. How could they not? <em>It’s Donald Trump!</em>”</p>
<p>His most partisan left-wing critics paint a picture of a coming Armageddon now that Donald Trump is president. There are many versions of this doomsday scenario but usually it comes down to the fear that the United States of America will become the Fourth Reich with Donald J. Trump playing the role of you know who, reincarnated.</p>
<p>But if you live between the coasts, and even if you’re not a big fan of the new president, this comes off, I think, as a more than a tad paranoid, not something they spend too much time worrying about.</p>
<p>And it’s not just the protestors in the streets with their Trump is Hitler signs who form what is known as the “resistance.” It’s also mainstream Democrats pushed by their progressive constituents – Democrats who, whether they realize it or not, are becoming the Party of No, a title once ignominiously held by the GOP.</p>
<p>If they’re not slow-walking or trying to kill off several of his cabinet nominees they’re putting his nominee to the Supreme Court in their crosshairs.</p>
<p>Everyone in Washington knows that Neil Gorsuch is eminently qualified for the job. But that won’t stop Democrats from doing everything they can to portray him as a right-wing radical. </p>
<p>And any Democrat who is prepared to work with the new president, on his nominations or anything else, runs the risk of facing a primary opponent put up by progressive activists who see any compromise with President Trump as a betrayal of principle, as a sign of weakness, practically as a crime against humanity – and they won’t tolerate it.</p>
<p>This is what passes for wisdom in the confines of the progressive bubble – the belief that the problem with Democrats is that they’re just too moderate. Crazy, I know. But if you don’t believe me, just ask Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Corey Booker or Keith Ellison who, unchecked, will lead their party right over the cliff.</p>
<p>In the bubble, it’s easy to believe that most Americans think the way supposedly sophisticated liberals think. But most Americans don’t oppose Judge Gorsuch, who comes across as smart, reasonable and decent. Nor do they think the temporary ban on travelers from a few Muslim countries – as amateurish as the rollout was – is a crazy idea. And there’s no liberal consensus that “the wall” is a horrible racist idea put forth by a horrible racist president. Polls indicate about half the country wants the wall to go up.</p>
<p>Donald Trump, of course, isn’t about to win over his critics in the liberal press or the ones who take to the streets every time he says or does something they don’t like. They’re not going to vote for Republicans in 2018 or 2020. But if moderate Americans grow weary of hyper-partisan Democrats in Washington and angry protestors in the streets, Donald Trump and other Republicans up for re-election may look pretty good in a few years.</p>
<p>The wise, conservative opinion writer John Fund recently wrote a piece about how “Permanent outrage and hysterical doom-mongering do not attract moderate voters.”</p>
<p>His point was that Donald J. Trump’s biggest asset might turn out to be his “unhinged opponents.”</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-08T19:07:00ZThe Circus Just Arrived ... at 1600 Pennsylvania AvenueBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Circus-Just-Arrived-...-at-1600-Pennsylvania-Avenue/708250687995001634.html2017-02-02T21:16:00Z2017-02-02T21:16:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’m starting to think the real reason the Barnum & Bailey circus is going out of business has nothing to do with the elephants. Rather, I think, it has to do with the stiff competition it’s been getting from the Trump White House.</p>
<p>The three-ring circus that’s been coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue makes “the greatest show on earth” look as exciting as a PBS documentary on The Joys of Watching Paint Dry.</p>
<p>If it’s not a very public fight with the president of Mexico then it’s an obsession with illegal voters who threw the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, or so the president claims. And if it isn’t that, it’s a fixation on the size of the crowd at his inauguration. And just when you think things are about to calm down, say, for 10 minutes, Mr. Trump rolls out a temporary ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, places that he believes pose a threat to our national security. <br /><br />Okay, but for whatever reason the rollout is so confusing that it creates needless turmoil at airports, and mass demonstrations denouncing the president as a bigot, and the (legitimate) firing of the acting attorney general for refusing to defend in court the president’s order, a dismissal that some liberals are only too glad to dub “The Monday Night Massacre.” And now one more distraction: It comes out that our president had a less than friendly (also described as blunt) phone conversation with the prime minister of Australia, one of our closest allies. </p>
<p>If Barnum & Bailey put on a show as “colorful” as the one President Trump has rolled out, they’d still be in business — whether PETA likes it or not.</p>
<p>Does Donald Trump thrive on chaos? Is that why he’s giving us so much of it? Maybe, but I think there’s something else going on.</p>
<p>When Mr. Trump was running his business out of a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, he was the boss. His company was private; it wasn’t listed on any stock exchange. So he didn’t have to please stockholders or a board of directors that could fire him. Sure he had to make nice to mayors and the like, but inside his tower in midtown Manhattan whatever edict Businessman Trump ordered was the law of his domain. As Mel Brooks so elegantly put it, “It’s good to be king.”</p>
<p>I’m getting the impression that Donald Trump may think he’s still running a business where he’s got the final say on everything that goes on. Yes, in his new job he can still make smart deals and try to cut costs the way a good businessman would, but now, for the first time in his adult life, he’s got people and institutions he has to answer to – whether he likes it or not.</p>
<p>He can’t sign executive orders non-stop for the next four years, though you get the impression he just might try. Sooner or later he’ll have to deal with Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats. The federal courts will also have a say on what he can and can’t do. As a businessman he didn’t have to worry if the general public liked the looks of his newest hotel. Now, as president, he needs to take the general public into account. And while it’s true that he’ll never have the support of hard-core progressives who take to the streets whenever they see something they don’t like, if there’s too much bluster coming from the White House, he risks losing the support of mainstream Americans who were willing to give him a chance.</p>
<p>And while he doesn’t have to kowtow to the news media that he so publicly detests, he does need to understand that the press is another check on his power. That’s what the founders had in mind when they drew up the First Amendment. He can call journalists dishonest if he wants, and his top advisor Steve Bannon can tell them to “shut up,” but they’re not going to shut up and they’re not going to be intimidated by this president. He may want bad news as a strategic matter, knowing that a large chunk of the American people don’t trust the media either. But a constant war with the press isn’t good for either side – or, more importantly, for the American people.</p>
<p>The introduction of his nominee to the Supreme Court was smooth and professional. We could use more of that President Trump. Still, Kellyanne Conway might want to walk into the Oval Office and gently remind her boss that being president of a company that builds skyscrapers and hotels and golf course is not the same as being president of the United States of America. Not even close. </p>
<p>As for the circus, we go there, whether we admit it or not, because a lot of us are hoping something crazy happens. Is the lion going to bite the lion tamer’s head off for rudely putting it in the lion’s mouth? Are the elephants going to relieve themselves on the guy with the whip’s shiny new shoes? Is the guy they shoot out of the cannon going to land in the net or in the first row?</p>
<p>The circus can be fun. But the White House isn’t the big top. And at the circus the clowns don’t talk.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-02-02T21:16:00ZHe's Not Your Father's RepublicanBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hes-Not-Your-Fathers-Republican/-524718538333865081.html2017-01-29T08:00:00Z2017-01-29T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>When I was growing up in the South Bronx, my father, a blue-collar guy who worked in a factory, liked to talk to me about politics.</p>
<p>The Democrats he said were for people like us; the Republicans were for rich people.</p>
<p>He stated it as a simple fact. Democrats were for the little guy. Republicans hung out at country clubs and bought stocks and bonds. In my neighborhood, I’m fairly certain everybody was a Democrat. Really. Everybody. </p>
<p>Yes, there’s been some movement by the little guy to the GOP, on and off, since the days of Ronald Reagan. But this time around the little guy opted for a billionaire – a billionaire who is not your typical Republican; one who may very well transform the Republican Party into something that will give Democrats headaches for a long, long time.</p>
<p>A typical Republican, in his first week in office, wouldn’t have met for over an hour with private sector union leaders – a long-time reliable piece of the Democrat coalition. President Trump did. And the union bosses left the meeting singing his praise.</p>
<p>Take note Democrats.</p>
<p>And blue-collar guys in places like Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, who voted twice for Barack Obama, broke with the party of their parents and grandparents because they saw Hillary Clinton as one more liberal Democrat who not only didn’t understand them, but had the nerve to call them names like deplorable and irredeemable. So they voted for the Republican who made the little guy, for a change, feel like a big guy.</p>
<p>Take note Democrats.</p>
<p>My father wouldn’t recognize today’s Democratic Party. He lived through the Great Depression and two world wars and so would have a hard time believing that climate change is the greatest threat to the United States. He wouldn’t know what to make of liberal cupcakes on college campuses who need puppies and “safe spaces” to shield them from people and opinions that make them feel uncomfortable. He didn’t have a lot of formal education, but he knew what socialism was, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have voted for Bernie Sanders. It’s also a safe bet that he’d never vote for a far out lefty like Elizabeth Warren. And he wouldn’t know why in the world Democrats who had far more education than he ever had were comparing Donald Trump to Hitler and the Nazis.</p>
<p>And what would he think of that woman from Idaho, the executive director of her state’s Democratic Party, who wants to run the Democratic National Committee, the one who said, “My job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt.” </p>
<p>I’ll take a wild guess and say my father, and a lot of other little guys, wouldn’t want to belong to a party that has anything to do with a nutty liberal like that.</p>
<p>Ronald Reagan famously said that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him. Well, the last election showed that it also left a lot of little guys who live between the coasts.</p>
<p>That’s why Democratic leaders met in West Virginia recently trying to figure out how they lost the presidential election and what they can do to not lose it next time around. They’re trying to learn how to connect with people who live in places not called Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Here’s a hint, Democrats: Try not looking down your nose at them.</p>
<p>In May 2016, then candidate Trump spoke to the journalists at Bloomberg Businessweek about how he planned to re-make the Republican Party. “Five, 10 years from now—[it will be a] different party,” he said. “You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry.”</p>
<p>Maybe there’s more to Donald Trump than his critics – I among them – think. Maybe, in addition to being a braggart who is way too thin-skinned and vindictive, he’s also a visionary. Maybe, he’s the one who can transform the Republican Party and make it a “safe space” for lots of Democrats who live in what the elites call “flyover country.”</p>
<p>If my father were still with us, he might have forsaken his Democratic roots and voted for the Republican billionaire who before he moved to the White House lived in a golden penthouse on Fifth Avenue — even though when my father and I had those political talks we lived in a tenement in the South Bronx.</p>
<p>Take note Democrats.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-01-29T08:00:00ZPresident Trump Meets George OrwellBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/President-Trump-Meets-George-Orwell/981976435505288199.html2017-01-25T08:00:00Z2017-01-25T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If you’re looking for a handy rule-of-thumb to make sense of the nascent presidency of Donald J. Trump, try this: If his lips are moving there’s at least a 50-50 chance that what’s tumbling out isn’t true.</p>
<p>Harsh? You decide.</p>
<p>One month after he won he told Chris Wallace on Fox that, “We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.” Fact: Trump’s victory ranks a paltry 46<span>th</span> out of 58 Electoral College results. </p>
<p>After his inauguration, he said it looked like a million to a million and a half people were on hand to witness the event in person. Fact: Independent estimates say the crowd was much smaller, perhaps only 250,000.</p>
<p>The other night he told congressional leaders at the White House that 3 million to 5 million “illegals” voted in the presidential election. Fact: He made it up. There’s no evidence to support his claim. None. Did some illegal immigrants vote? Probably. Good chance some dead people voted too. But he concocted the 3 to 5 million number in an effort to explain why he didn’t win the popular vote against Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>But if millions of illegal immigrants really did vote, wouldn’t that require an investigation by the new president? Yes, it would. And so President Trump announced he would launch a “major investigation.”</p>
<p>Prediction: That too will prove to be a false statement (and so will his promise to release his tax returns as soon as the audit is completed.)</p>
<p>But while Donald Trump is often wrong, he isn’t necessarily lying. That implies knowledge that he knows what he’s saying is wrong; that he’s intentionally trying to mislead the American people. As I’ve argued before, there may be another explanation for his many misstatements: Donald Trump – now President Donald Trump – may simply be delusional.</p>
<p>Take his first full day in office when he visited the Central Intelligence Agency. “I have a running war with the media,” he told several hundred members of the intelligence agency. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, and they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.”</p>
<p>“The reason you’re the No. 1 stop is, it is exactly the opposite,” President Trump added. “I love you, I respect you, there’s nobody I respect more.”</p>
<p>Fact: He said nothing about how he belittled the CIA and other intelligence agencies saying they were, “The same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”</p>
<p>He said nothing about how he accused the intelligence community of leaking an unsubstantiated report that Russia had damaging personal information about him, saying the leak was an attempt to take “one last shot at me” and then comparing the intelligence community to Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>He said nothing about how for months he refused to believe the intelligence community’s determination that Russia had meddled in the presidential election. Or how, in a tweet, he put quotation marks around the word “intelligence” to further mock the community.</p>
<p>Yet he blames the media for starting the feud. This is revisionist history at best, and the aforementioned delusions of Donald J. Trump at worst.</p>
<p>None of this will matter, of course, to his most loyal supporters; such is the admiration they hold for their hero, the new president.</p>
<p>But maybe Donald Trump isn’t actually wrong when he makes statements that are factually incorrect. Maybe those false statements are just “alternate facts,” to use a memorable phrase his advisor Kellyanne Conway came up with to defend administration statements that were untrue.</p>
<p>By the way, sales of George Orwell’s dark classic, <em>1984</em>, soared after Ms. Conway’s “alternate facts” observation. Mr. Orwell knew something about alternate facts and something he called “doublethink” – the art of government officials putting out two contradictory statements and calling both of them true.</p>
<p>And we’ve got at least four years to go.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-01-25T08:00:00ZEven Heroes Should Be Held AccountableBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Even-Heroes-Should-Be-Held-Accountable/770006087960742385.html2017-01-19T08:00:00Z2017-01-19T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Before the inauguration is just a distant dot in the rear view mirror, let’s not forget the movement Congressman John Lewis led – the movement that encouraged a large number of liberal House Democrats to boycott the big day in Washington.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget it because it tells us something important about the people we elevate to hero status: that given enough time, even icons can become tedious. And, sadly, Congressman John Lewis has.</p>
<p>Lewis was a genuine civil rights hero who earned his stripes on March 7, 1965, a day that has come to be known, for good reason, as Bloody Sunday. A close ally of Martin Luther King, Jr., he helped organize the now historic march from Selma to Montgomery. As Lewis and 600 others crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge that day, Alabama state troopers were waiting. And when the marchers stopped to pray, police on horses charged — and beat them with nightsticks. One of the troopers hit Lewis in the head and fractured his skull. He was a courageous man whose efforts made America a better place, and not only for African Americans. </p>
<p>I spent some time with Congressman Lewis when I was a correspondent at CBS News, reporting a story on one of the anniversaries of Bloody Sunday. He was gracious and dignified. I liked him.</p>
<p>But even heroes have to be held accountable. And over the years, John Lewis, the civil rights icon has become a hyper-partisan liberal Democrat who, absent his biography, would be seen more clearly as just that.</p>
<p>Now, he’s in the news because he says Donald Trump is not a legitimate president. That he lost his legitimacy because, in Congressman Lewis’ view, the Russians helped him win.</p>
<p>So he along with about 70 others who serve in safe House districts boycotted the inauguration. He also boycotted George W. Bush’s first inauguration. He too, in the congressman’s opinion, was illegitimate.</p>
<p>So apparently was John McCain. In 2008 the congressman compared Senator McCain to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace. “What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”</p>
<p>This is nothing more than ugly political slander, slander unworthy of the man John Lewis used to be.</p>
<p>In 2012, Lewis played the race card again, this time against Mitt Romney, suggesting that if he were elected president, America would go back to the bad old days of segregation. Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Congressman Lewis said: “I’ve seen this before, I lived this before. … We were met by an angry mob that beat us and left us lying in a pool of blood. Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back?” </p>
<p>What reasonable person could possibly believe that if Mitt Romney won, America would “go back” to the days of George Wallace and Selma?</p>
<p>Congressman Lewis, to state the obvious, has every right to think whatever he wants, but even for those of us who believe deeply in civil rights, it’s getting tiresome.</p>
<p>For a man who spent his young life trying to bring Americans together, his decision to boycott the Trump Inauguration does no such thing. All it does is polarize an already deeply divided nation even more.</p>
<p>John Lewis doesn’t seem to understand that not every Republican he opposes is George Wallace, who for the record was a Democrat. Lewis sounds like the old guy on the porch or at the barbershop who keeps telling the same story over and over about the old days, the glory days, not realizing how sad and boring he’s become.</p>
<p>And CNN journalist Anderson Cooper noticed what most others in his profession didn’t, or didn’t have the nerve to say out loud. “I get he doesn’t like Donald Trump,” Cooper said. “I get he doesn’t accept the results of the election, but is this helpful in any way? … If a Republican had said this about President-elect Hillary Clinton, Democrats would be up in arms.”</p>
<p>But they’re not. And neither is the national press corps, Anderson Cooper notwithstanding. Imagine if 70 House conservatives boycotted Barack Obama’s Inaugural. Journalists would condemn the entire Republican Party on page one in type the size they used for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.</p>
<p>But liberals aren’t allowed to condemn a <em>noble</em> man like John Lewis. He is, after all, an icon. And icons get away with things mere mortals, and Republican conservatives, can’t.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-01-19T08:00:00ZMemo to Meryl: A Simple "Thank You" Would Have SufficedBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-to-Meryl:-A-Simple-Thank-You-Would-Have-Sufficed/88339158420901996.html2017-01-13T08:00:00Z2017-01-13T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>By now Meryl Streep’s well-rehearsed performance at the Golden Globe awards may feel like old news. But like so much of Ms. Streep’s work, it stays with us long after the show has ended.</p>
<p>A less skilled performer would have called Donald Trump out by name, and not just once or twice, but over and over – and in a loud, angry voice. Ms. Streep never uttered his name in her 5 minute and 47 second speech – even as she calmly berated him to a worldwide TV audience.</p>
<p>I’m still thinking about her observation that “All of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now.” The remark haunts me all these days later because I had no idea that beautiful people who make millions of dollars and live in luxurious houses in Beverly Hills were such victims. Thank you Meryl Streep for pointing this out to me and to so many other un-cool people who didn’t know.</p>
<p>She talked about diversity, about how so many actors in the room came from so many different places in America and around the world. But it apparently never crossed her progressive mind that while the room – and Hollywood in general — was loaded with geographical and ethnic and racial diversity there wasn’t much ideological diversity there – or for that matter, in Ms. Streep’s line of work. If you’re a conservative in Hollywood, let’s just say you don’t brag about it.</p>
<p>Imagine if a Golden Globe winner had taken the stage and said, “I agree with much of what Meryl Streep said a few minutes ago. I think it was deplorable that Donald Trump mocked a reporter with a physical disability. And I don’t believe him when he says his critics have it all wrong, that he would never would do such a thing. And I also agree with Meryl when she said that a principled press must hold the powerful accountable. Too bad she didn’t say that during the entire eight years of the Obama presidency. <br /><br />This may come as news to those who work in Hollywood, but for many Americans Donald Trump represents hope. He represents change. He is a symbol, a middle finger extended in the direction of elites who think they’re smarter than <em>ordinary </em>Americans, and better too. We here in Hollywood are out of touch with Middle America. And I think many Middle Americans will view Ms. Streep’s speech as one more example of the elitism they don’t like. Ms. Streep deserves the lifetime achievement award she was given. She is a great actress. <br /><br />But Americans don’t want rich, privileged, and yes, too often sanctimonious actors lecturing them about how if Donald Trump kicks all the foreigners out of America all they’ll have left is football and mixed martial arts. That sounds like a nice way of calling them deplorable. And I know you’re going to hate to hear this, but the liberal mindset of our community is one of the reasons Donald Trump won. We may be different than <em>ordinary</em> Americans. But we’re not better. Thank you for listening.”</p>
<p>There’s a good chance the poor SOB would not only be booed off stage but also booed out of town and out of his livelihood.</p>
<p>What the glitterati in Hollywood don’t quite comprehend is that most Americans don’t care what they think about politics. If they did, Hillary Clinton would be the president-elect, given all the Hollywood endorsements she received.</p>
<p>And they don’t tune in to a celebrity awards show to hear what Meryl Streep thinks about Donald Trump. She won a lifetime achievement award; so here’s an idea, Meryl Streep: Talk about your life in the movies – not politics.</p>
<p>Responding to Meryl Streep, Donald Trump behaved the way he usually does when attacked. He took to Twitter and called her “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.” It’s not the first and it won’t be the last time Donald Trump says something both childish and incorrect.</p>
<p>Finally, after the Golden Globes, an LA friend reminded me of something the late screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said at the Oscars ceremony in 1978. When Vanessa Redgrave won an Academy Award that year she used the occasion to deliver a diatribe against Israel. A short time later, Chayefsky was on the same stage to present another award. Here’s what he said about Ms. Redgrave: </p>
<p>“I’m sick and tired of people exploiting the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda. I would like to suggest to Ms. Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”</p>
<p>It’s not a bad piece of advice that Meryl Streep might want to consider the next time she’s on stage getting an award.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-01-13T08:00:00ZHow Should the Media Handle Trump's Many False Statements?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-Should-the-Media-Handle-Trumps-Many-False-Statements/-101679004002329248.html2017-01-08T08:00:00Z2017-01-08T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>There’s a question journalists have been wrestling with ever since they realized that Donald Trump was more than a flash in the pan: Should they call him a liar, and his statements lies, when he says things that are clearly untrue?</p>
<p>When he said that he saw thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11 – that wasn’t true, but was it a lie, or did he really believe it?</p>
<p>Or when he said that millions of illegals voted in the presidential election – there’s not a shred of evidence to support the allegation, but again, did Donald Trump lie?</p>
<p>He was a prominent voice in the so-called birther movement, contending Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Another false statement, but if Donald Trump, for whatever nutty reason truly believed it, was he lying?</p>
<p>Trump said Hillary Clinton “soundly slept in her bed” during the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. The attack happened at 3:30 in the afternoon Washington time.</p>
<p>He said Ted Cruz’s father “was with Lee Harvey Oswald” before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy<span>. </span>This was based on nothing more than a grainy picture in a dopey tabloid.</p>
<p>Reasonable people would say that Donald Trump should have known these statements were not true. Fair enough. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s wired in such a way that he believes all sorts of things that reasonable people don’t believe. Telling a lie involves motive. Lying is more than simply passing along information that isn’t true.</p>
<p>I’ve been in journalism for a long time but I can’t remember ever characterizing anyone I interviewed as a liar, though there probably were a few who were. I know that what some politicians and others told me wasn’t true — and I pointed that out — but I don’t know what was going on inside their heads. Were they trying to deceive or were they simply making a mistake?</p>
<p>So it’s possible that Donald Trump isn’t actually lying when he gets so many things wrong. It’s possible he really believes the nonsense he so often spouts. And if that’s true, then we have a bigger problem with the president-elect than whether he’s allergic to the truth, though that’s obviously no small issue. Having a president who is delusional just might be a tad more serious.</p>
<p>It’s one thing for a column on the left-wing Media Matters website to begin a piece with this: “When Donald Trump is inaugurated later this month, the presidency will officially be held by an inveterate liar.” It’s quite another for the New York Times to call him a liar — on page one. But on at least one occasion, the Times essentially did just that.</p>
<p>In its front page headline, the Times declared that a Trump statement about President Obama’s birth certificate was not simply false — but a “lie.” Still, calling his statements <em>lies </em>or calling him a <em>liar</em> are rare in the mainstream media.</p>
<p>And while journalists are busy weighing the ethical implications of Donald Trump’s misstatements, I don’t recall such handwringing over false statements made by our current president.</p>
<p>Nearly 40 times President Obama told the American people that if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor and if you liked your healthcare plan you could keep your healthcare plan. This was demonstrably false – and millions of Americans who lost their doctor or their plan or both can attest to the falsity of the statement. But was it a lie?</p>
<p>Maybe the president intentionally misled the American people to get his cherished healthcare idea passed into law. If he did, that would be a lie. But it’s also possible President Obama wasn’t intentionally trying to mislead but actually didn’t know what he was talking about. In other words, it’s possible he was incompetent, but not knowingly dishonest.</p>
<p>The point isn’t whether Barack Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act or whether Donald Trump lies on a regular basis or simply spouts off when the mood strikes him. This is about journalists applying the same standard to people they like as to people they don’t like. How’s that for a novel idea?</p>
<p>Hard-core partisans on both sides have no time for subtlety. Trump’s liberal critics <em>know</em> with absolute certainty that he’s a liar — just as Hillary Clinton’s critics <em>know</em> she was lying about all sorts of things during the campaign.</p>
<p>But news reporters shouldn’t be partisans, hard-core or otherwise. And they’re certainly not psychiatrists who can divine what Donald Trump is thinking. If the past is any indication, we know that when he becomes president he will almost certainly say things that are not factually correct. But journalists are not expert enough to know what actually motivates him to say so many things that just aren’t true.</p>
<p>This was a point made by Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal on Meet the Press. “I’d be careful about using the world ‘lie,’” he said. “‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead.”</p>
<p>So here’s an idea for the new year: Unless there’s a smoking gun, how about if journalists report what President Trump says and if it’s not true also report that. But they should leave it to you, the news consumer, to decide whether he’s a liar — or something else.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2017-01-08T08:00:00ZIt's Worse than Bush Derangement SyndromeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Its-Worse-than-Bush-Derangement-Syndrome/922601982346142351.html2016-12-28T08:00:00Z2016-12-28T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I was hoping to write an upbeat column to kick off the new year, something about how all sorts of things in our great country are bound to get better in the months ahead, a column based at least as much on wishful thinking as hard-nosed reality. A columnist can get away with that kind of fluff this time of year. But it’s hard to be cheery when our nation is in the throes of a full-blown epidemic, one that is causing so much pain to millions and millions of our fellow Americans.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded mental disorder known as Trump Derangement Syndrome — or simply TDS.</p>
<p>You remember Bush Derangement Syndrome, right, when the mere mention of President George W. Bush’s name sent liberals into a fevered state of instability. Someone would carelessly say “Bush” and their eyes would involuntarily begin to roll, then came the shortness of breath, followed by foam forming on the poor victim’s mouth – though this mainly happened among Bush-hating liberals who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan or in Hollywood. </p>
<p>It was horrible, for sure, but not as horrible as Trump Derangement Syndrome.</p>
<p>Before the election the victims of TDS routinely compared Donald Trump to Hitler. Guess what. They’re still doing it. Articles in respectable publications written by professors at elite universities are warning us to be on guard, that a Trump presidency could imperil democracy-as-we know it and may very well spell doom for American civilization.</p>
<p>On election night, as it became obvious that their worst nightmare was about to come true, some libs fainted. Some vomited. Many more threatened to leave the country, but I’m pretty sure none actually did. As Donald Trump might say in a tweet: so sad!</p>
<p>On college campuses the snowflakes melted. At Cornell, students with TDS held a “cry in” to mourn the results with staff handing out tissues and hot chocolate to ease the pain of Trump’s victory. At the University of Kansas the cupcakes were offered therapy dogs. A dorm at the University of Pennsylvania set up a “breathing space” the night after the election where coloring books, snacks and puppies were available for students who needed to “decompress in a low-key and low-stress environment.” At Vanderbilt, the children who were traumatized by Trump’s election were encouraged by the grownups on campus “to take advantage of the outstanding mental health support the university offers.” At Yale, and many other schools where TDS was running rampant, tests were cancelled because students were in “shock.”</p>
<p>Trump Derangement Syndrome: It’s more terrifying than cancer.</p>
<p>Actually, I didn’t make that up. Here’s part of a letter to the editor published in the Miami Herald from a woman whose 90-year old mother, Ruth, a Holocaust survivor, is battling cancer:</p>
<p>“Today, in her beloved America, Ruth sees the same warning signs she saw in Nazi Germany: anti-Semitism, criticism of the free press, curtailed freedom of expression, religious slurs, overt racism and talk of punishing people for who they are and what they believe.” The daughter goes on to say that, “The thought of a president who foments and legitimizes these dangerous trends is more terrifying to her than the cancer she is battling.” </p>
<p>Got that? Cancer is bad. Trump is worse!</p>
<p>So in an effort to undo the election results and save the republic, Dr. Jill Stein, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, demanded a recount in three states that traditionally vote Democratic but narrowly went for Trump this time around.</p>
<p>When that turned up nothing, the TDS crowd tried to shame electors into voting for Hillary instead of Donald. There were even death threats aimed at electors who said they would vote for Trump, as they had pledged to do.</p>
<p>Imagine if Hillary had won and Trump supporters demanded a recount, tried to shame electors into rejecting Mrs. Clinton and went so far as to threaten to murder electors who voted for her.</p>
<p>Imagine how liberals would have reacted. Imagine how the liberal journalists who don’t even try to hide their hatred of Trump would have reacted.</p>
<p>Turns out that the same people who were outraged when Trump said he might not support the election results … were now the ones not supporting the election results.</p>
<p>And the ones who said he was trying to de-legitimize the expected Clinton victory … were the ones now trying to de-legitimize Trump’s actual victory.</p>
<p>The ones who said he was a threat to democracy … were now the ones proudly proclaiming that Donald Trump “Is not my president” – not grasping that comments like that were a threat to democracy.</p>
<p>I was and still am not a fan of Donald Trump. I find him to be both a narcissist and a braggart, not qualities I admire in a man who will soon be president. But, I find it more than a little ironic, that the people who have brought me closer to the president-elect are liberals with TDS, who I find more annoying than Donald Trump – and much more deranged.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, Happy New Year.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-12-28T08:00:00ZFake News and the Mainstream MediaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Fake-News-and-the-Mainstream-Media/653636687536516393.html2016-12-16T19:17:00Z2016-12-16T19:17:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Long before fake news became a hot topic, liberals in the mainstream media were practicing their own special brand of fake news. They weren’t misleading the public for malicious reasons; quite the opposite. They were simply showing off their humanity.</p>
<p>The best examples of this <em>fake news-for-a-good-cause</em> go back to the 1980s, when two of the biggest stories in America involved the rise in homelessness (in the age of Reagan) and the national scare over a new disease called AIDS. I was a correspondent at CBS News at the time and I witnessed first hand how – and <em>why</em> — the media got both those stories monumentally wrong.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the homeless.</p>
<p>The networks were doing lots of homeless stories back then and the homeless we put on TV almost always looked just like you and your next-door neighbors.</p>
<p>Except the homeless I saw on the streets of New York didn’t look anything like that. Most of them were either alcoholics, or drug addicts, or were talking to space ships in the sky.</p>
<p>But reporters felt they needed to portray the homeless as people just like you and me. In fact, Tom Brokaw actually said that the homeless are “people you know.”</p>
<p>How could serious reporters really think the homeless by and large were people we knew in our everyday lives? They saw the homeless on the streets. They saw what I saw. It didn’t take an investigative reporter to figure out that the homeless living in cardboard boxes in the freezing cold were nothing like the Americans who were watching Tom Brokaw on TV.</p>
<p>But the homeless lobby had an agenda and they needed their liberal friends in the media to help them pursue it. They needed to drum up compassion for the homeless – and one way to do it was to convince reporters that the homeless were just regular folks brought down by a bad break. And journalists, who pride themselves on their compassion, gladly went along. After all, if the homeless were mainly a bunch of winos and junkies the public might not want to fund government welfare programs to help them. But if they were “people you know” we’d all be more sympathetic. (Besides, putting homeless folks on TV who look just like the audience helps boost ratings.)</p>
<p>So liberal reporters became cheerleaders for a liberal cause they believed in. And something similar happened with AIDS. In the 1980s, journalists were spreading an epidemic – of fear. And that too was based on fake news.</p>
<p>A headline in U.S. News & World Report said, “The disease of <em>them</em> is suddenly the disease of <em>us</em>.”</p>
<p>The Atlantic Monthly headlined a cover story with this: “Heterosexuals and AIDS: The Second State of the Epidemic.”</p>
<p>The Ladies Home Journal ran a story with this tease on the cover: “AIDS & Marriage: What Every Wife Must Know.”</p>
<p>Life magazine ran a cover with this scary headline: “Now No One Is Safe from AIDS.”</p>
<p>And in 1987, one of the most famous and beloved Americans weighed in with a dire warning. “AIDS has both sexes running scared. Research studies now project that one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me.”</p>
<p>Who wouldn’t believe Oprah Winfrey?</p>
<p>Except she was dead wrong and so was just about everybody in the mainstream media. There was nothing resembling a heterosexual epidemic. Absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>According to the Centers for Disease Control, by the end of 1999, about 50 percent of those who had come down with AIDS were men who had sex with other men; 28 percent were IV drug users; 6 percent were men who had sex with men <em>and</em> injected drugs. There were also some cases tied to blood transfusions that were infected with HIV, the AIDS virus.</p>
<p>Journalists should have wondered: If AIDS is breaking out into heterosexual America, why haven’t I witnessed entire neighborhoods wiped out by the disease? That’s what was happening in gay neighborhoods in San Francisco, so why wasn’t it happening in suburban towns across the rest of the country?</p>
<p>They didn’t ask those questions because they didn’t want to know the answers.</p>
<p>So again, journalists misled the American people – and again, for a “good cause.” Just as the homeless had to be our friends and neighbors – or else we might not spend enough on them – people with AIDS also had to be just like us –or else the public might not care enough to spend federal tax dollars to find a cure for a disease that mainly hit gays and junkies.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: If even one person has AIDS it is a terrible tragedy. And the government had a moral responsibility to help find a cure for a disease that was killing so many people. But journalists can’t become cheerleaders – no matter how worthy the cause.</p>
<p>And in many ways the mainstream journalism version of fake news is worse than what the social media version, where jerks put out ridiculous stories about non-existent underage sex rings run by Hillary Clinton out of a pizza parlor.</p>
<p>Unlike the social media clowns, mainstream journalists have legitimacy. They help set the national agenda. They influence legislation. And it’s not just about fake homeless and AIDS stories. They’re still putting out fake news – about the supposed sexist wage gap between men and women doing the same job with the same experience (– if that were true why wouldn’t companies only hire women and save a boatload of money in labor costs?); about the <em>epidemic </em>of rape on college campuses; about the <em>99 percent</em> of scientists who supposedly believe Al Gore’s version of global warming and think everyone else is an ignorant science “denier”.</p>
<p>But hey, they’re faking the news for good causes, right?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-12-16T19:17:00ZThe Media Elite Didn't See the Tsunami ComingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Media-Elite-Didnt-See-the-Tsunami-Coming/568708191899517813.html2016-11-16T19:09:00Z2016-11-16T19:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’m going to take a wild guess and say that nobody in what passes for the mainstream media saw the tsunami coming, the wave of discontent that we witnessed on Election Day.</p>
<p>I’m sure there were one or two journalists who said something like, “<em>Of course Trump must be taken seriously because, as we all know (ha ha) he could win</em>.” But I’m pretty sure that’s not what they were saying privately. And how many thought Trump would win and the GOP would hang onto both the House <em>and</em> the Senate? I’ll be generous and say it was a number slightly greater than zero – if not zero.</p>
<p>It’s no secret that reporters were rooting for Hillary. All that was missing were buttons on their coats saying, “I’m with her.” As Will Rahn nicely put it on the CBS News website: “Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking ‘we did it’ feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.”</p>
<p>The media elite thought she was right when she said half of Trump supporters belonged in a basket of deplorables. They thought if his minions weren’t racist or sexist, they were, you know, not too smart.</p>
<p>So on Election Day, voters fed up with the arrogance of the elites didn’t only reject Hillary Clinton. Or Barack Obama. Or his legacy. Or big swatches of liberal culture in general. They also rejected in particular the liberal elite in the media, the ones who thought they were smarter than ordinary Americans, and better than them too.</p>
<p>All of this got me thinking about something I wrote in my second book, <em>Arrogance</em>, in 2003, in a chapter entitled, “Lose the Enablers.” Here’s some of what I said:</p>
<p>“It’s not just a cliché. Confession really is good for the soul. So now it’s time to move on.</p>
<p>“Literally!</p>
<p>“Alcoholics need to smash the bottle. Druggies need to flush their stuff down the toilet. And the media elites need to leave New York City. Simple as that!”</p>
<p>I went on to say, “There are too many enablers in New York, too many liberals whom the media elites are shamelessly trying to please.” </p>
<p>And the enablers, I wrote, “keep telling their friends that they don’t have a bias problem, that they’re doing just fine, that only those right-wing nuts think there’s a liberal bias problem in the news.”</p>
<p>So what to do? Here’s what I suggested: “I have come up with a list of five very nice places in this great country of ours, any one of which would be a good choice for ABC, NBC and CBS to locate their new worldwide news division headquarters, far from New York City.”</p>
<p>I suggested, Tupelo, Mississippi … Mitchel, South Dakota … Oklahoma City … Indianapolis … and Laughlin, Nevada.</p>
<p>I could have picked a hundred different cities and towns. The places I settled on mattered only because they were <em>not</em>New York City or Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>I understand that the sophisticates who populate America’s liberal newsrooms would rather drink battery acid and walk on shards of broken glass before they’d live in any of those places. But, in <em>Arrogance</em> I asked, “Wouldn’t it be a good thing for the elites to live among people who have a different worldview than they do? Wouldn’t it be helpful if the elites sent their children to <em>public</em> school with the children of people who work at the [Mitchell, South Dakota] Corn Palace or the Oklahoma Opry or at Don Laughlin’s casino [in Nevada]? What is so wrong with that? Are they afraid their kids will get cooties if they sit next to ‘regular’ kids? And while we’re on the subject, why would it be any worse than what we have now: elite parents sending their elite children to school with the elite children of other elite parents?</p>
<p>“What kind of diversity is that?”</p>
<p>Living in any of those places between Manhattan and Malibu would make them better journalists, I wrote. “Too many newsmen and newswomen don’t know the kinds of people who live in places like that.”</p>
<p>In any of those places, journalists would be exposed to people with different views – on abortion, on guns, on how to deal with terrorism, and on a lot of other hot issues of our time.</p>
<p>Right now, too many journalists live in a comfortable, elite, liberal bubble where they can go for a day, a week, a month, a year … and just about never run into someone with a different opinion on the thorniest issues confronting our country.</p>
<p>That’s not good for journalism and it’s why journalists didn’t understand what Trump was tapping into. The people he was attracting, by and large, weren’t elites living in a bubble, the people journalists knew best. They were ordinary Americans trying to get by.</p>
<p>I was a correspondent at CBS News for 28 years. So I speak with some credibility, I think, when I say that too many journalists are smug. And during this recent campaign they dismissed the angst of ordinary Americans who they never really liked or respected anyway. And on Election Day, ordinary Americans rejected them, the journalists who didn’t see the tsunami coming.</p>
<p>If they were living in Tupelo, maybe they would have.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-11-16T19:09:00ZWhat If They Took a Knee to Protest Destructive Behavior?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-If-They-Took-a-Knee-to-Protest-Destructive-Behavior/-113477849398421587.html2016-10-24T18:07:00Z2016-10-24T18:07:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback cum political activist, really started something, didn’t he?</p>
<p>First, he was out there all by himself, the only one who “took a knee” during the national anthem, protesting what he sees as racial injustice in America. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said.</p>
<p>Then other NFL players joined the protest. Then college players took a knee. Followed by high school players. </p>
<p>President Obama was asked about the protest and said, “I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that need to be talked about.”</p>
<p>And when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked to weigh in, she at first said his protest was “dumb” and “disrespectful,” before backing off, saying her comments “were inappropriately dismissive and harsh.”</p>
<p>But now, the movement has taken a new turn. Now, it’s not only athletes who are taking a knee in protest. Now, even a few of the people who <em>sing</em> the national anthem before games have joined the movement.</p>
<p>Before a Sacramento Kings pre-season NBA game, Leah Tysse knelt down on one knee during the last line of the anthem. As she sang, “”O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” she dropped down on the word “free.”</p>
<p>On her Facebook page she wrote: “I cannot idly stand by as black people are unlawfully profiled, harassed and killed by our law enforcement over and over and without a drop of accountability. …</p>
<p>“Whether or not you can see it from your vantage point, there is a deep system of institutionalized racism in America, from everyday discrimination to disproportionate incarceration of people of color to people losing their lives at the hands of the police simply for being black. This is not who we claim to be as a nation. It is wrong and I won’t stand for it. #Solidarity.”</p>
<p>So much of this is nonsense. She and the others who have joined the protest paint a dark picture of America. They see a deeply bigoted country where police shoot innocent people “simply for being black,” as she puts it.</p>
<p>There is nothing in her rant about investigations of police involved in shootings, or charges filed against police officers who might have broken the law, or how many of the people who were shot were resisting arrest, or how some had guns they were pointing at police officers who felt that their lives were being threatened. Nothing either about this jarring statistic: Gun murders of police officers are up 47 percent (through October 21) compared with the same period last year. As for the “disproportionate incarceration of people of color,” that just might be because people of color commit a disproportionate amount of crime that lands them behind bars.</p>
<p>When Ms. Tysse tells us that she “won’t stand for it,” I guess she means that literally. But rogue cops aren’t what’s plaguing portions of black America. Dysfunctional behavior is.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea for Ms. Tysse and Colin Kaepernick and all the others: Take a knee to protest 15-year old girls having babies who likely will grow up in poverty.</p>
<p>Take a knee to protest kids dropping out of high school – and mocking kids who don’t for “acting white.”</p>
<p>Take a knee to protest the epidemic of senseless murders in places like Chicago.</p>
<p>Or do black lives matter only when a cop – usually a white cop – is involved in shooting a black man?</p>
<p>It certainly is possible that protests against destructive behavior, well meaning as they might be, might not result in any meaningful change. But then, taking a knee during the national anthem isn’t likely to produce anything of substance either.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-10-24T18:07:00ZHillary Couldn't Deliver the Knockout BlowBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Couldnt-Deliver-the-Knockout-Blow/462367827557719177.html2016-10-10T22:02:00Z2016-10-10T22:02:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If you tuned into the debate expecting to see Donald Trump implode, you have my sympathy. While no one will confuse him with a member of the Oxford debating team, he was a lot better than in the first debate, which, I know, may not be saying all that much. But given the low bar, he actually did okay.</p>
<p>The question, of course, is with less than a month before the election is okay good enough.</p>
<p>Probably not, is my guess. As David French put it in a post-debate on line piece for National Review, “All Trump did tonight was live to lose another day.”</p>
<p>He had been on the ropes before the debate even began, given his poor performance in the first debate and the release a few days ago of that video where Trump can be heard making crude and vulgar remarks about women.</p>
<p>It was just “locker room” talk, Trump said more than once. But Hillary couldn’t deliver the knockout blow. So Trump was able to stop his own bleeding. But it’s not likely that anyone who wasn’t in his corner before the debate is there now.</p>
<p>As for Hillary, she was her usual less than scintillating self. But political pro that she is she knows how to show empathy, even when it’s just make believe. And in town hall debates, empathy matters. So she didn’t simply answer questions from real people in the audience, she walked toward them. She seemed concerned about them. She came off as sincere – proof that George Burns was right when he said that to be successful you have to be sincere. And once you learn how to fake sincerity you’ve got it made.</p>
<p>Hillary learned that lesson a long time ago.</p>
<p>I think Trump missed a big opportunity to hammer Clinton over a leaked email that purportedly reveals a conversation she had with Latin American bankers, telling them that her “dream” is to have a hemispheric common market with “open borders.”</p>
<p>Trump has accused her of just that for quite some time and has been hammered by the fact-checkers who contended Clinton never said she was for open borders. Well, she never said it publicly anyway.</p>
<p>Neither the moderators nor the undecided voters in the audience brought up the subject. Trump should have. It would have been a winner. Most Americans don’t want open borders and all that the idea implies.</p>
<p>Hillary’s dream would mean millions of poor people from Mexico and Central America would stream into the United States looking for work and driving wages down for other poor people. Her dream would mean that millions of kids who don’t speak English would enter our already crowded public schools. Her open border dream would also make roads more congested, housing more scarce and life generally tougher for everybody else in the United States, including immigrants already here.</p>
<p>While there were no knockouts, there were a lot of punches thrown. At one point, Trump threw a haymaker, calling his opponent a “devil.” She implied he was a bigot who didn’t have the temperament to be president.</p>
<p>And when she said, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump simply fired back with, “Because you’d be in jail.”</p>
<p>That round went to the underdog.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-10-10T22:02:00ZIf Trump Is So Horrible Why Is the Race So Tight?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Trump-Is-So-Horrible-Why-Is-the-Race-So-Tight/762912772063154745.html2016-09-19T18:09:00Z2016-09-19T18:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Hillary Clinton is spending tens of millions of dollars more than Donald Trump to win the presidency. If the polls are right, more Americans think she has the kind of temperament needed in a commander-in-chief than he does. She clearly has more experience in government, since he has none. And with the help of her loyal allies in the media, she has portrayed her opponent, with some success, as anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman, homophobic, irresponsible, unhinged, and downright dangerous.</p>
<p>So why is the race, as my old CBS News colleague Dan Rather might put it, tighter than a wet bathing suit on a long ride home from the beach? Why isn’t Hillary leaving Donald in the dust? What’s going on?</p>
<p>Despite his many shortcomings, Donald Trump has one thing going for him. Hillary Clinton. </p>
<p>Long before she made the charge that half of Trump supporters belonged in a basket of deplorables, lots of voters – including more than a few Democrats – didn’t like her and didn’t trust her. And whether the coughing fit and the pneumonia represent something more serious or not, she comes off as less than electrifying on the campaign trail; sometimes as downright sluggish. How she <em>appears</em> matters, and may also factor into the mix of why her poll numbers have been dropping.</p>
<p>Presidential races are usually about the future and Hillary is the calendar girl for the past. She’s been around forever and voters figure if we elect her nothing much will change.</p>
<p>Trump certainly is no visionary. He’s not a thoughtful man with a wise political philosophy. Yet, in his own way, he represents the future. If voters opt for the status quo, Hillary will be the next president. If they want change, Donald Trump has a chance. Here’s a headline from the New York Times: “Appalachian voters know Trump is dangerous. But they’re desperate for change.” So are a lot of other Americans who don’t live anywhere near the mountains of Appalachia.</p>
<p>But given the realities of the Electoral College, he’s still a long shot to win the big prize. Even if he manages to eke out a victory in Florida and Ohio, he still would have a tough time reaching the magic number of 270. When it comes to the Electoral College, the deck is stacked in favor of the Democrats.</p>
<p>If Trump stands a chance, he’s going to have to resist the temptation to channel Don Rickles. But that won’t be easy. In just the last few days he’s tweeted that former defense secretary Robert Gates is “dopey,” that panelists on CNN are “mostly losers in life,” that the New York Times “has become a laughingstock rag,” and that Times columnist Maureen Dowd is “a neurotic dope.” Most Americans are not like Trump’s most passionate supporters. They revel in the insults. Most Americans don’t. Donald may want to remember that in the debate that’s coming up in a few days.</p>
<p>Just a few weeks ago, it looked like Hillary would win going away. It doesn’t look that way anymore.</p>
<p>Here are some numbers from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight poll that tracks the candidate’s chances of winning in each of the 50 states:</p>
<p>It’s generally believed that Trump can’t win the election unless he wins in Florida. And in that crucial state, he has a slight edge over Clinton – 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent.</p>
<p>No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Trump is leading there as of this writing, 55.2 to 44.7.</p>
<p>And in other important swing state, North Carolina, Trump is ahead 52.3 percent to 47.5 percent.</p>
<p>Despite all that, FiveThirtyEight puts Hillary’s chances of becoming president at 61.8 percent to Trump’s 38.2 percent.</p>
<p>But, and this a a very important <em>but</em>, this is the headline over a Nate Silver story posted on his website just a few days ago: “<span>Election Update: Democrats Should Panic … If The Polls Still Look Like This In A Week”</span></p>
<p>It almost certainly won’t happen, but consider this: What if Trump wins the popular vote and Hillary wins the White House anyway? If you think Trump’s supporters feel alienated now, imagine their reaction if their guy loses because of an idea the Founders came up more than 200 years ago when America was a very different place than it is today.</p>
<p>On second thought, don’t imagine it. It’s too scary to contemplate.</p>
<p>So here’s something else to think about: Donald Trump’s biggest asset may be that he’s running against Hillary Clinton, but Hillary has one thing going for her too. His name is Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-09-19T18:09:00ZWho's the Real Candidate of Change?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Whos-the-Real-Candidate-of-Change/-601708030036384026.html2016-07-29T18:14:00Z2016-07-29T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Making the case for his wife as the next president, Bill Clinton told Democratic convention delegates in Philadelphia that Hillary is “the best darn change maker I ever met in my entire life.”</p>
<p>Lots of liberals are talking about change, about how Hillary is the agent of change who will fix what ails us.</p>
<p>With all the talk about Hillary Clinton being the “candidate of change” you’d think George W. Bush has been president for the past 8 years.</p>
<p>But imagine if W really were president and presided over the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. He didn’t. Barack Obama did.</p>
<p>Imagine if W accumulated just about as much debt in just 8 years as the United States accumulated under every president since George Washington. Again, it was President Obama who did that.</p>
<p>Imagine if income inequality got worse under W’s leadership. Bush was in Texas when that happened. It got worse under O’s leadership.</p>
<p>Imagine if, despite all that, the Republicans at their convention were by and large painting a sunny picture of life in America in 2016.</p>
<p>Democrats would tell voters how out of touch those dumb, rich Republicans are. They would say. “Now you know why nearly 3 out of 4 Americans think we’re on the wrong track.” As for the media: They would have a field day exposing Republicans as incompetents and fools.</p>
<p>While we’re imagining, imagine if it were the Republicans who spent more time at their convention worrying about climate change than ISIS. Imagine if Republicans brought on stage the mother of a thug, a nearly 300-pound kid who roughed up a store owner before getting into a tussle with a cop, then tried to take the officer’s gun and was shot dead because the officer rightly thought his life was in danger.</p>
<p>Not that the liberal media would make a big deal of any of that anyway, but Donald Trump gave them the opportunity to focus on him instead. As the whole world knows by now, at a news conference in Florida, Trump sounded like he was encouraging the Russians to spy on America. He says he was joking when he said, “Russia, if you’re listening: I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to Mrs. Clinton’s supposedly “private” emails she deleted before handing her server over to the FBI.</p>
<p>Let’s assume Donald wasn’t kidding. Let’s assume he was simply doing what comes naturally to him: putting his foot in his mouth and letting his opponent off the hook. If the emails really involved only private matters, what’s the big deal?</p>
<p>According to the Clinton campaign, the security of the United States is the big deal.</p>
<p>“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” according to Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s chief foreign policy adviser. “This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”</p>
<p>But if Mrs. Clinton was telling the truth – and the emails really were private, about yoga and her daughter’s wedding – how would that involve national security?</p>
<p>And wasn’t it even bigger news that if the Russians (or whoever actually did the hacking) were able to get into the DNC’s emails, there’s a good chance they also got into Hillary Clinton’s highly sensitive state department emails which were stored on a less secure server?</p>
<p>But Hillary has friends in the media who just love it when Donald Trump gives them ammo. They slobbered over Barack Obama because he was a historic candidate. Well, so is Hillary. They routinely put a thumb on the scale for liberal Democrats, because liberal Democrats share liberal journalists’ values. But this time, because they don’t simply favor the Democratic candidate, this time they viscerally detest the Republican candidate, they’re putting more than a thumb on the scale. They’re putting their liberal rear ends on the scale.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, in addition to a friendly media, has something else going for her: Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has something going for him, too: Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>A big chunk of the American electorate doesn’t like or trust either of them. A lot of Americans will cast a vote <em>against</em>one of them — not f<em>or</em> one of them.</p>
<p>Americans are not optimistic. They know this isn’t Ronald Reagan’s morning in America or the Bill Clinton years when the economy was also booming. This time around they want change.</p>
<p>What we don’t know in the summer of 2016 is if it will be Hillary’s version or Donald’s.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-07-29T18:14:00ZHillary, Donald and the "Compared to What" TestBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Donald-and-the-Compared-to-What-Test/-920393384052518244.html2016-07-11T20:03:00Z2016-07-11T20:03:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Just between us, despite my many misgivings about him, I would rather see Donald Trump in the Oval Office than Hillary Clinton. But I’d rather see Daffy Duck as the next president of the United States than either of them.</p>
<p>And apparently, I’m not alone. About 4 in 10 voters say they’re having a tough time choosing between the two candidates – because, they believe, neither would make a good president, that according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.</p>
<p>Donald makes me cringe every time he opens his mouth. I could be alone in the house watching him on TV and I get embarrassed when he starts to ramble. Hillary, on the other hand, bothers me in a completely different way. I would list them but I’m trying to keep this column to less than a million words. Let’s just say I get nervous when a progressive Democrat is in charge – of anything. </p>
<p>Like a lot of you, I was watching FBI Director James Comey’s impossible task on TV the other day. The one where he explains why he pretty much believes Hillary Clinton broke the law but doesn’t think she should be prosecuted for breaking the law because she was so unsophisticated about technology that she didn’t know what she was doing. That impossible task.</p>
<p>And when it was over and I was wondering if Comey really is as wonderful and non-political as almost everyone in the media has been telling me he is, I got a phone call. It was from a friend who thought that despite Comey’s decision not to recommend criminal charges, he still eviscerated Hillary.</p>
<p>“If Hillary were running against anybody else,” he said, “the Republican candidate would be up by double digits.” Such was the indictment of Mrs. Clinton’s dishonesty and incompetence that Comey delivered, whether he thinks that’s what he did or not.</p>
<p>My friend is right. But Hillary isn’t running against “anybody else.” She’s running against Donald Trump.</p>
<p>And that’s the problem for Republicans that just won’t go away. As vulnerable as Hillary Clinton is, she doesn’t look as bad as she should – not when you employ the “compared to what” test.</p>
<p>The FBI investigation of Mrs. Clinton shows that New York Times columnist William Safire was right, when 20 years ago he wrote that she is a “congenital liar.” Some things change over time. And some don’t. If she was telling the truth to the FBI about her emails, then she must have been lying to the American people.</p>
<p>Here’s where the “compared to what” test kicks in. Let’s stipulate that Donald Trump isn’t exactly Honest Abe, either. In fact, the best way to tell if Donald is lying is if his lips are moving. In public speeches and interviews, he tells lies more often than he tells the truth – literally!</p>
<p>According to PolitiFact, Trump tells the whole truth a measly 2 percent of the time; his statements are mostly true another 8 percent of the time; and they’re half true 14 percent of the time. As for the lies: PolitiFact says his statements are mostly false 14 percent of the time; totally false another 40 percent of the time; and pants on fire false 19 percent of the time.</p>
<p>What about fitness for the office of President of the United States? Given what we know about how “careless” Hillary was with sensitive government information, it’s fair to wonder if she’s competent enough to be trusted as commander-in-chief.</p>
<p>But even if you say no, do most voters really think Donald is? Did you hear his speech the other night in Cincinnati? This is a man who gives stream of consciousness a bad name. One minute he’s talking about how he hates mosquitos the next he’s yakking about Saddam Hussein and then it’s on to his golf swing.</p>
<p>He may be a big hit inside the arena but outside, I suspect, they wonder if the guy has lost a few marbles. As a journalist I have spent time with Donald Trump. I have interviewed him more than a few times. He’s always been cordial, civil and polite. He even stays on point. But when he’s making speeches to adoring fans at his rallies, the same Mr. Trump comes off as unhinged.</p>
<p>In a column you can read on this website, Pat Buchanan writes about Hillary in a piece that runs under the headline, “Is Hillary Morally Unfit to be President?”</p>
<p>“If, knowing what we know of the congenital mendacity of Hillary Clinton,” he writes, “the nation chooses her as head of state and commander in chief, then that will tell us something about the America of 2016.” And that something, he says, is not good. “And it will tell us something about the supposed superiority of democracy over other forms of government.”</p>
<p>I agree. And if America chooses Donald Trump that also will tell us something about America of 2016 and about the supposed superiority of democracy over other forms of government.</p>
<p>In both cases, it won’t tell us anything we should be proud of.</p>
<p>In a country of more than 300 million people, these two are the best we could come up with? Were Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian too busy to run?</p>
<p>Where’s Daffy Duck when we really need him?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-07-11T20:03:00ZLet's Combat Terrorism with ... LoveBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Lets-Combat-Terrorism-with-...-Love/19405179272351574.html2016-06-27T18:14:00Z2016-06-27T18:14:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney General, recently made a remarkable observation – an observation about terrorism and what in her view our response to it should be. I’ve held off writing about what she said because I didn’t want to offer up a cheesy knee jerk reply, one that would have painted her as hopelessly foolish and pathetically naïve. And that would have been a generous response on my part.</p>
<p>Ms. Lynch was talking about the massacre in Orlando – and it sounded like she was channeling the Beatles hit, <em>All You Need is Love</em>.</p>
<p>“To the LGBT community — we stand with you,” she said in Orlando. “The good in this world far outweighs the evil. Our common humanity transcends our differences, and our most effective response to terror is compassion, it’s unity and it’s love.”</p>
<p><em>"Our most effective response to terror is … love</em>”? Huh? Given the choice between hugging these psycho bastards and dropping great big bombs on their heads I’m opting for the latter.</p>
<p>When I asked a friend, one of considerable intelligence, what he thought about this, he offered up an analysis steeped in religion.</p>
<p>“As a Christian,” he told me, “I’m a believer in love conquering all. As a realist I recognize that some folks just don’t take well to the love I may offer them. Turning the other cheek worked for Jesus; not so much for me. And the radical Islamists won’t be moved by our offer of love unless a miracle happens, which I’m not counting on. But if Saul, who persecuted Christians, can be converted to love by Divine intervention there may be hope for a Damascene conversion. But I’m not holding my breath.”</p>
<p>Neither am I. What puzzles me about Ms. Lynch’s optimism is how exactly would this love thing work? How would love and compassion combat terrorism? Would the terrorists stop slaughtering innocents because we love them? Would they stop burning people alive in cages and cutting off the heads of their enemies?</p>
<p><em>How would it work</em>?</p>
<p>It wouldn’t. So we might just chalk this up as a silly comment worthy of a 60s hippy hanging out in San Francisco but not someone of her stature. But it’s par for the course with this president and his team, a president whose guiding philosophy seems to be: Let’s do whatever we can to downplay the reality of terrorism so I don’t have that inconvenient piece of history besmirching my iconic legacy.</p>
<p>Let’s not call it by its name, Radical Islamic Terrorism. Let’s call the Islamic State the JV team. Let’s say the Islamic State isn’t even Islamic.</p>
<p>In that context, what Loretta Lynch said wasn’t as crazy as it sounds.</p>
<p>I don’t know what Ms. Lynch was actually thinking when she talked about love and terrorism. I’m guessing she didn’t mean we should give the terrorists a great big kiss and the raw power of love would turn them into wonderful caring human beings. I’m guessing she meant that when they hurt us we shouldn’t let their evil consume us. Maybe it just came out of her mouth wrong. But for all I know Loretta Lynch is one of those devout Christians who honestly believes that love really is the most effective response to terror. But there’s another possibility: She may be nothing more than a loyal member of the Obama political team spouting nonsense to help out her boss.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-06-27T18:14:00ZSelling Out Their Principles - For Donald TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Selling-Out-Their-Principles---For-Donald-Trump/629682734731154224.html2016-06-20T18:15:00Z2016-06-20T18:15:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Let’s begin with something we all know: that Hillary Clinton is immensely unpopular; that she’s inauthentic; that she comes off as programmed; that she’s boring and not a very good campaigner; that she’s widely seen as dishonest and untrustworthy; and that whenever she lets loose with her signature laugh the word “cackle” creeps into my head.</p>
<p>Now let’s add to the laundry list that Americans almost never vote for the same party three times in a row in presidential elections.</p>
<p>Add it all up and Bugs Bunny could beat her this November if he were running as a Republican. The bad news for the GOP is that Bugs isn’t running but Donald Trump is.</p>
<p>An editorial in the Wall Street Journal points out that Trump is “running against one of the worst Democratic candidates in the last 50 years.” That would be great news for Republicans but for one thing: Donald J. Trump is <em>the </em>worst GOP candidate, possibly ever.</p>
<p>You can’t offend members of so many different voting blocs and expect them to vote for you – which helps explain why Trump’s poll numbers are underwater when it comes to support from women, minorities and young voters.</p>
<p>Ask a Republican in Washington what he thinks of Donald Trump and you better not blink — because he won’t be there when you open your eyes. “No comment” is the best you’ll get. His unfavorable numbers have hit all-time highs. Just about the only people who like Trump are blood relatives. <br /><br />A recent Washington Post-ABC News polls found that 70 percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump. Ninety-four percent of blacks don’t like him; neither do 89 percent of Hispanics. The poll found that, ” … there’s only one group for which a majority views Trump favorably: White <em>men</em> without college degrees. Every other racial/gender/education split views him negatively.”</p>
<p>But hey, anything can happen. November is still a long way off. And Hillary isn’t exactly Ms. Popularity. The poll found that 55 percent of Americans view her unfavorably. Pretty bad. But not as bad as Trump’s numbers. The fact is, she’s pretty much got one thing going for her: <em>Donald Trump</em>. She ain’t him!</p>
<p>But can a new more refined Donald emerge — one more-acceptable-to-the-masses? Well, he did recently speak not off the cuff but off the teleprompter and he even sounded like a grownup. But that lasted 10 minutes. So lets be realistic: The man is 70 years old. He is who he is. He may change his act from time to time but he isn’t changing his essence. And essentially he is a narcissist who is way too thin-skinned and not very informed about the issues.</p>
<p>None of this matters, of course, to those who worship the Donald. He is their messiah. But it’s true that not <em>everyone</em>who supports Trump worships him. Some simply see him as the lesser of two evils. Better Donald, they figure, than Hillary. Fair enough. What’s harder to figure out is why so many on the hard right, the true blue conservatives – especially media types who think anyone who isn’t Ronald Reagan is a RINO – support Donald Trump.</p>
<p>These are the “real” conservatives. If you don’t believe <em>me</em> just ask <em>them</em>. These are the ones with the big megaphones on radio and TV who expect nothing less than ideological purity from their candidate – unless his name is Donald Trump</p>
<p>Let’s set aside the long list of issues where Trump has taken a sledge hammer to conservative principles. Let’s focus instead on something else conservatives tell us they deeply care about: civility … simple, common decency.</p>
<p>Donald’s fans in conservative TV and radio – not all but way too many — looked the other way when he insulted a POW; when he mocked a journalist with a physical disability; when he took a nasty shot at a female opponent because he figured the American people couldn’t stand to look at her face for at least four years.</p>
<p>Imagine if Bernie Sanders had made fun of a serviceman who was shot down over North Vietnam and was captured by the enemy and spent years in a prisoner of war camp. Imagine if he had said of John McCain, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”</p>
<p>Imagine if Hillary did a loathsome impersonation of a <em>conservative</em> reporter with a disability.</p>
<p>Imagine if Barack Obama had suggested that Carly Fiorina wasn’t attractive enough to be president. Imagine if he had said, “’Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”</p>
<p>Conservatives would have rightly been incensed. They would have said this is why so many people detest liberals. They would have said liberals think they can get away with mocking people with “unacceptable” opinions because liberals think they’re better, smarter and most of all, more moral than everyone else. But with Trump, the “real” conservatives on radio and TV simply accepted his incivility, his indecency — proving a point I’ve long believed about Donald Trump: He has a knack for making his supporters – especially the high profile ones – look foolish.</p>
<p>Now, in the wake of Orlando, he’s stirred things up again. Was he being politically opportunistic, taking credit for predicting another attack? Was he being nutty Donald, suggesting that if the president isn’t downright incompetent when it comes to taking on terrorism, <em>something else</em> is going on?</p>
<p>As I say, I understand why “ordinary” Americans have rallied around their messiah. They’ve wanted to give the elites the middle finger for quite a while now. Trump – an elitist of the first order – is doing it for them. I get it. But for media conservatives to sell out their conservative principles – <em>for Donald Trump no less</em> – is beyond pathetic.</p>
<p>They would do him one big favor if they used those megaphones to demand that he start behaving like a guy running for president. They should tell him that he’s no longer playing only to angry blue collar GOP primary voters; that what worked for them won’t necessarily work for the bigger audience he’s now auditioning in front of. <br /><br />They — along with the Chris Christies of the GOP — could say, “If you don’t stop channeling Bluto Blutarsky (John Belushi/Animal House) we’ll <em>un-endorse</em> you!” One thing’s for sure: They’re not doing him any favors when, because they can’t stand Hillary, they cover for him. What they’re doing is helping Hillary.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal recently said that, “Mr. Trump needs to convince millions of skeptical voters that he’s more than an impulsive bully who poses too big a risk in the Oval Office.”</p>
<p>He’ll have no trouble convincing his fawning pals on conservative TV and radio that he’s more than an impulsive bully. No trouble at all. Convincing the rest of America won’t be nearly as easy.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-06-20T18:15:00ZPC Journalism and the Massacre in OrlandoBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/PC-Journalism-and-the-Massacre-in-Orlando/-539615411940311887.html2016-06-13T18:09:00Z2016-06-13T18:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The story was still developing, but there were already indications that the shooter at the gay dance club in Orlando was an American-born Muslim who somehow, directly or indirectly, was connected to radical Islam.</p>
<p>The panelist on “Meet the Press” knew at least some of this. So Chuck Todd, after acknowledging to his panel that the actual motive for the murders wasn’t known with certainty yet, asked Tom Brokaw, “Should it matter,” what the motive was.</p>
<p>This is a remarkable question – one drenched in liberal PC. Chuck Todd, who is a serious journalist (and in my limited contact with him, a good guy) would never have asked if motive mattered if the gunman was a white supremacist skinhead who had just gunned down innocent African Americans in a church.</p>
<p>In fact, when a white bigot shot up a black church in South Carolina, everyone knew that motive mattered. But when it comes to radical Islamic terrorism, liberals get queasy. Tom Brokaw did. He didn’t think the motive mattered either. “It shouldn’t matter,” he told Chuck Todd. Take a guess what should matter to Mr. Brokaw. If you said guns …</p>
<p>You got a problem,” Brokaw said, “get a gun. That’s what goes on now. It’s got to come to an end. It’s a terrible commentary.”</p>
<p>Joy-Ann Reid, a host on MSNBC, also saw guns as the main problem. ‘We have mass casualty shootings that are affecting children, teachers, people in church, whether it’s a hate crime or whether it’s related to international terrorism, we’re not getting to the core issue.” And what exactly is that core issue? “How easy it is to get a gun,” she said.</p>
<p>“How do we prevent terrorists from arming themselves,” Chuck Todd wanted to know. It’s a fair question, as far as it goes. But there’s another question that liberal journalists won’t ask: What is it about Islam that makes some of its faithful want to slaughter innocent people?</p>
<p>Hugh Hewett, the conservative radio talk show host, introduced reality to the discussion. The problem he said … was ISIS.</p>
<p>“This looks like the Paris concert hall attack,” he said. “ISIS wants to do this here. They want to do it they want to do it here a lot. … Every dead person is a tragic murder. But if ISIS gets their people here, or inspires [others], it will be a long series of years.”</p>
<p>When Joy-Ann Reid reminded Hewett that Muslim terrorists weren’t the only ones who want to kill Americans, that white nationalists like the gunman at the South Carolina church also want to kill large numbers of innocent people, Hewett calmly responded that ISIS – unlike skinheads — has the means to actually do it.</p>
<p>Brokaw got in the last word, again choosing to emphasize guns over terrorists. “We’re having this debate about [international] terrorism, or domestic; it doesn’t make any difference. There are a lot of dead people, dead people at the point of a gun. Guns are really easy to get their hands on.”</p>
<p>Except it does make a difference. Why people do what they do always makes a difference.</p>
<p>Still, this is not an argument about whether assault rifles are too easy to obtain – or even whether Americans should be allowed to purchase them. I’ll leave that for others at some other point in time. But in the wake of mass murder, no serious journalist should ever ask if motive matters. It does. Even when the motive makes liberal journalists uncomfortable.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-06-13T18:09:00ZDonald Trump and the "Angry White Male"Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Donald-Trump-and-the-Angry-White-Male/-337954185720002915.html2016-06-01T18:49:00Z2016-06-01T18:49:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The other day, I was trying to think of the last time I heard the words “white men” uttered in a positive way. I came up blank.</p>
<p>The context for those two words is just about always negative. Sometimes people who think white guys are the problem – no matter what the problem might be — throw in the word “angry.” And “angry white men” then becomes an easy way to dismiss even legitimate concerns and grievances by white men.</p>
<p>A female Rutgers professor once wrote that mass murder was the result of “white male privilege.”</p>
<p>The website Gawker once composed a list of the “worst 100 white men.”</p>
<p>Barack Obama said of Judge Merrick Garland, his nominee to the Supreme Court, “Yeah, he’s a white guy, but he’s a really outstanding jurist. Sorry.”</p>
<p>Ok, he was kidding. But imagine if some chucklehead came up with a list of the “worst 100 black men.” Or if some white male conservative politician nominated a like-minded African-American to the bench and said: “Yeah, he’s a black guy, but he’s a really outstanding jurist.”</p>
<p>This is not a woe-is-me sob story. I understand that the history of white men in America is vastly different from the history of black men or women of any color. And taking shots at rich white guys is like throwing spitballs at a battleship.</p>
<p>But here’s a bulletin: Not all white men are privileged. And a lot of the ones who aren’t have found a hero in a white male who is the very essence of privilege: Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>Either despite, or maybe because of, his nasty, crude, outlandish, childish, un-presidential behavior, a lot of white men who are not doctors or lawyers or hedge fund managers see Trump as the kind of no nonsense guy who would stick up for them.</p>
<p>Education is a bright red line defining the kind of white men who support or oppose Trump. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll Trump has 65 percent support among white registered voters without a four-year college degree – but only 46 percent among white college graduates.</p>
<p>White male Trump supporters who didn’t go to college are not only fed up with politicians and business as usual in Washington. They’re fed up with elites in general.</p>
<p>This is from Victor Davis Hanson in National Review on line: “Outsourcing jobs affects predominantly the lower middle classes; no pundit, D.C. staffer, or New York lawyer is replaced by some cheaper English-speaker from the Punjab. Obamacare follows the same pattern. Elites who praise it to the skies either have the money or the Cadillac plans to navigate around it. I doubt that Rahm Emanuel and his brothers queue up at a surgery center, hoping to win five minutes with an ophthalmologist who now treats 70 patients a day to survive under Obamacare.”</p>
<p>Donald Trump has figured out that there are a lot of angry white men out there. And he knows that just about none of them will be voting for Hillary Clinton. But I suspect he has also figured out that there aren’t enough white men, angry or otherwise, to actually elect <em>him</em> president. That’s why he needs to bring in a sizable portion of Mrs. Clinton’s traditional Democratic base, which won’t be easy.</p>
<p>That’s why he has to somehow convince enough blacks and Latinos and women that anyone who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars for a short speech to a friendly group that almost certainly is looking for down-the-road favors from Mrs. Clinton is proof that America is working just fine <em>– for people like her</em>, but not for people like them.</p>
<p>That’s why he has to somehow convince Democrats that Hillary is one of the elite hypocrites who, to use one easy example, decries the gun culture, even as she’s protected by armed guards day and night.</p>
<p>And that’s also why he has to somehow convince Democrats that Hillary cares more about the votes of coal miners … than the coal miners themselves.</p>
<p>If he can somehow pull that off while living the high life in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and flying around on a big private jet with his name plastered on the side, he might actually have a shot at accomplishing what many have long thought was impossible. It would still be a long shot. But who in his right mind ever thought he’d get this far?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-06-01T18:49:00ZSex, Donald, Hillary and BillBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Sex-Donald-Hillary-and-Bill/-332155018236799773.html2016-05-24T19:52:00Z2016-05-24T19:52:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p><span><em>“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.” </em></span>Hillary Clinton tweet, December 2015</p>
<p>If you’re not familiar with the name Juanita Broaddrick, or her story, you soon will be. Donald Trump will make sure of that.</p>
<p>Juanita Broaddrick says that in April of 1978, when she was 35, the then-attorney general of the state of Arkansas raped in her in a Little Rock hotel room.</p>
<p>Ms. Broaddrick was a businesswoman who ran a nursing home, and that’s where the attorney general, who was running for governor, first met her. They met again in Little Rock a short time later when Ms. Broaddrick was attending a nursing home conference.</p>
<p>She says they were supposed to meet in the coffee shop of her hotel, but when the attorney general got there he said there were too many reporters around and suggested they talk in her hotel room. Ms. Broaddrick says the request made her feel “a little bit uneasy” but she thought it was all going to be professional.</p>
<p>Ms. Broaddrick didn’t tell her story publicly for 20 years – not unusual in rape cases. Through his attorney, the former attorney general — Bill Clinton — has denied the allegation.</p>
<p>The other night, Donald Trump used the R word on national television. While Sean Hannity ticked off a list of offenses allegedly committed by Bill Clinton – “touching and fondling and touching against a woman’s will” – Trump added, “and rape.”</p>
<p>This caused a stir in the mainstream media, an institution that tried its best to downplay or ignore Juanita Broaddrick’s story when it first came out.</p>
<p>Matt Lauer on the Today Show said, “Up next, a word used by Donald Trump while talking about former President Bill Clinton that has him under fire this morning.” Under fire? From what source? Journalists?</p>
<p>On CBS, Nancy Cordes said<span>, </span>“The topic of rape is murky territory for Trump, who was also once accused of rape by his ex-wife Ivana — a charge she later recanted.”</p>
<div>Andrea Mitchell of NBC News called it a “discredited and long denied allegation.” And as if they were reading from the same talking points, Tom Llamas on ABC News said, “The rape accusation is decades-old and discredited.”</div>
<p>Old yes? But discredited?</p>
<p>It’s true that in 1998, Ms. Broaddrick told Paula Jones’ lawyers, who were seeking information about Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual abuses, that “I do not have any information to offer regarding a nonconsensual or unwelcome sexual advance by Mr. Clinton.” And she added: “These allegations (of rape) are untrue.”</p>
<p>Hence, the characterization that her accusation of rape was “discredited.” But there’s another possible explanation: Ms. Broaddrick had also told the Paula Jones’ lawyers that “It’s not pleasant and I won’t even go into it. . . . It’s very private. We’re talking about something 20 years ago. . . . It’s just that was a long time ago and I don’t want to relive it.” And she added this: “Well, there’s just absolutely no way that anyone can get to him, he’s just too vicious.”</p>
<p>Juanita Broaddrick didn’t go public with her story until 1999 – but only after her named got out and tabloid stories began to surface that she says were wildly untrue. That’s when she talked to NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>But she did tell her story privately, to friends immediately after she says she was sexually assaulted. In a January 20, 2016 piece in National Review, Ian Tuttle says, “… Juanita Broaddrick’s claim was supported by not one but five witnesses and a host of circumstantial (though no physical) evidence. Broaddrick’s colleague Norma Rogers, who was attending the conference in Little Rock with her, says she found Broaddrick in her hotel room crying and ‘in a state of shock’ on the morning of the alleged assault, her pantyhose torn and her lip swollen. According to Rogers, Broaddrick told her that Bill Clinton had ‘forced himself on her.’”</p>
<p>But even if the story is true, Hillary didn’t rape anyone. Trump may have brought it up to send a not too subtle message to Mrs. Clinton – <em>Call me a sexist and watch what I’ll do to your husband, and you</em> – but does that mean the media should play along?</p>
<p>Consider this: In 1999, a few months after telling her story to Lisa Myers on NBC, Ms. Broaddrick told the Drudge Report that Hillary Clinton met her at one of her husband’s campaign rallies just two weeks after the alleged assault. This is what Ms. Broaddrick says happened:</p>
<p>“She came directly to me as soon as she hit the door. I had been there only a few minutes, I only wanted to make an appearance and leave. She caught me and took my hand and said: ‘I am so happy to meet you. I want you to know that we appreciate everything you do for Bill.’ I started to turn away and she held onto my hand and reiterated her phrase — looking less friendly and repeated her statement — ‘Everything you do for Bill.’ I said nothing. She wasn’t letting me get away until she made her point. She talked low, the smile faded on the second thank you. I just released her hand from mine and left the gathering.”</p>
<p>In 2003, speaking to Sean Hannity, Juanita Broaddrick added this: “I could have passed out at that moment. . . . Cold chills went up my spine. That’s the first time I became afraid of that woman.”</p>
<p>Only two people know for sure what happened inside that hotel room in 1978 – and the mainstream media, which examined Donald Trump’s relationships with women (Page One, New York Times – and picked up by TV, print and Internet journalists) haven’t shown the same curiosity about Mrs. Clinton’s role, if any, in her husband’s sexual forays. Was she part of the slime machine that Team Clinton established to delegitimize women who made accusations against her husband? Did she keep silent for political reasons? Was she in any way an enabler?</p>
<p>Even though we can’t know for sure if Ms. Broaddrick’s story is true, given Bill Clinton’s history – with Paula Jones, who says Governor Clinton exposed himself in front of her while she was a state employee and was summoned to his hotel room; or with Kathleen Willey, who claims President Clinton groped her in the Oval Office, to name just two – the allegation made by Juanita Broaddrick sounds, at absolute least, plausible, especially coming from a businesswoman who immediately told her friends what supposedly happened.</p>
<p>And now Donald Trump has released a short black and white video on Instagram that features the voices of women who claim that Bill Clinton sexually abused them. One of those voices is that of Juanita Broaddrick. Bill Clinton is shown with a cigar in his mouth — and the ad ends with Hillary laughing … and the words: “Here we go again.”</p>
<p>This kind of attack, of course, could backfire on Trump – unless he makes absolutely clear that he’s not blaming Hillary Clinton for what Bill might have done; but that he’s blaming her for whatever she might have done to protect him – and by extension – to protect herself. Perhaps he had that in mind when he inserted a caption that runs with the ad. It reads: “Is Hillary really protecting women.”</p>
<p>For all we know the next ad Trump posts on social media may be one about that tweet Hillary Clinton put out last December, the one that says:</p>
<p>“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-05-24T19:52:00ZLiberal Intolerance on CampusBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Liberal-Intolerance-on-Campus/-384499632301527444.html2016-05-19T18:48:00Z2016-05-19T18:48:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Nicholas Kristoff wrote a column in the New York Times recently that ran under the headline: “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance.”</p>
<p>It was about the hypocrisy of liberals on college campuses who preach diversity but have no time for a certain kind of diversity – diversity of thought and of opinion – meaning conservative ideas that run counter to their liberal thinking.</p>
<p>“We progressives believe in diversity,” Kristoff wrote, “and we want women, blacks Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table – er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.”</p>
<p>This, of course, is something conservatives have known for a very long time. But, let’s be generous and give Nick Kristoff one cheer — for his better late than never decision to write about this particular brand of liberal conceit.</p>
<p>Kristoff says he “wondered aloud” on Facebook “whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.”</p>
<p>Here’s some of that scornful reaction Kristoff received:</p>
<p>Someone named Carmi said, “Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false.”</p>
<p>Michelle chimed in with, “The truth has a liberal slant.”</p>
<p>Steven said, “Why stop there? How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots.”</p>
<p>This is what liberal smugness sounds like.</p>
<p>Then there’s the Politics of the American Professoriate survey (2006), which found that while only 3 percent of professors in the social sciences consider themselves conservative — 17.6 percent consider themselves Marxists!</p>
<p>And the PhDs who run America’s universities aren’t even embarrassed.</p>
<p>I had my own long distance experience with liberal professors last summer when Deepa Kumar, a journalism professor at Rutgers University, my alma matter, tweeted this: <span>“</span>Yes ISIS is brutal, but US is more so, 1.3 million killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan”</p>
<p>Another Rutgers professor, Brittney Cooper, who teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies department, wrote a piece for Salon about what she believed motivated a mentally ill young man in California to go on a killing spree in Santa Barbara.</p>
<p><span>“</span>Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she wrote. How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”</p>
<p>Not only is this clearly racist, it’s academically lame. This is what the professor left out of her rant:</p>
<p>In 2013, Aaron Alexis, killed 12 people at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard. He’s black.</p>
<p>In 2007, Seung-Hi Cho killed 32 at Virginia Tech University. He’s Asian.</p>
<p>In 2004, Chai Vang killed six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin. He’s also Asian.</p>
<p>And in 2009, Nidal Hasan, a Muslim, murdered 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas.</p>
<p>As a Rutgers alum, I wrote to Robert Barchi, the university’s president, and asked him this: “Is racism acceptable at Rutgers so long as it’s politically correct racism – the kind that comes from a black professor and is aimed at white people?”</p>
<p>I made clear in my letter that I wasn’t calling for either of the two professors to be fired. “Even those who utter foolish speech have rights,” I wrote.</p>
<p>But I questioned whether such professors could be open-minded enough in the classroom to be effective teachers.</p>
<p>On the Rutgers website President Barchi acknowledged that “Some of the comments have been offensive to many people and have been inconsistent with the commitment Rutgers has to reasoned discussion and balanced points of view. Such comments do not represent the position of the University, nor should they be construed as having been expressed on behalf of the University.” <br /><br />And he ended with this: “While I will not defend the content of every opinion expressed by every member of our academic community, or of speakers who we invite to our campus, I will defend their right to speak freely. That freedom is fundamental to our University, our society, and our nation.”</p>
<p>I’ll also defend their right to speak. I’m not big on firing people for uttering unpopular – or even stupid – comments. But I wonder what the liberal response would have been if a <em>white</em>, <em>male</em> professor made a racist comment about blacks who kill.</p>
<p>What if the white professor had written a piece about the never ending slaughter in black neighborhoods — by black killers? <br /><br />What if he had written: <span>“</span><em>Another young black has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem. How many times must troubled young black men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that black males are dangerous human beings</em>?”</p>
<p>Or what would the reaction have been if an Evangelical professor – I doubt they have many of them on campus – had tweeted: “<em>The U.S. may have its faults but it’s better than any Muslim country on the entire planet</em>.”</p>
<p>Maybe the university president would have still defended the “right to speak freely.” Maybe the kids on campus would have accepted the comments in the spirit of free speech. Or maybe they would have viewed the comments as racist and anti-Muslim and called for the heads of those white, male professors.</p>
<p>Back at the Times, Nick Kristoff ended his column with some advice that conservatives have been offering for many, many years. “Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives,” he wrote, “from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish – like diversity – in our own dominions.”</p>
<p>Nice try, Nick, but I’m not holding my breath. And while nothing is comparable to racism in America, too many liberal professors on campus view conservatives the same way white bigots, in another era, viewed blacks: As inferior and not worthy of respect.</p>
<p>Or as Steve, the open-minded liberal put it in response to Kristoff’s idea about being more accepting of diverse (conservative) views on campus: “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots.”</p>
<p>If arrogance, smugness and having a false sense of intellectual superiority were a crime, our jails would be packed with college professors. And a lot of faculty lounges would be empty.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-05-19T18:48:00ZPolitics = Show Business: Get Used To ItBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Politics-=-Show-Business:-Get-Used-To-It/-794233016192411759.html2016-05-09T18:09:00Z2016-05-09T18:09:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>This is the campaign journalists have been salivating over. Clinton vs. Trump. <br /><br />If it were a movie it would be Animal House. Think of the scene where Belushi smashes the nerdy folk singer’s guitar against the wall at the toga party. <br /><br />If it were a fight it would be a heavyweight championship fight, the kind with eye gouging and low blows. Ratings for the first debate between the two contenders will go through the roof. A dirty fight makes for great TV — and even more important, big profits. <br /><br />The only bad news for the moguls who run television networks is that unlike a big fight, they won’t be able to put the campaign on pay-per-view. But if they could, they would.</p>
<p>And forgive me for stating the obvious, but Hillary isn’t the draw. Everyone will be tuning in to see if Trump pulls a Mike Tyson and tries to bite her ear off. I think I mean, figuratively.</p>
<p>Will the reporters cover the issues? Yes, but not enthusiastically. Social security is boring, right? That’s why this campaign for the most important job in the free world will be covered as a show.</p>
<p>Excuse the short detour, but President Obama held a news conference the other day and said what liberals always say when they want to divide people for votes: that the wealthiest people in this country don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.</p>
<p>Actually, the wealthiest Americans pay <em>more</em> than their “fair share.” A lot more. The top one percent pays nearly half of all federal income taxes. It’s all those other Americans who aren’t paying <em>their</em> fair share.</p>
<p>I bring this up because Mr. Obama made his comments not during lunch at Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s house, but right in front of the White House press corps. Except these bulldogs of journalism, who keep telling us how they hold the powerful accountable, didn’t challenge the president; they didn’t ask him if he was playing election year politics by demonizing the wealthy?</p>
<p>But they did ask him a bunch of other questions that they deemed far more important: questions about … wait for it … Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Question: Mr. President, what’s your reaction to Donald Trump becoming the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party this week?</p>
<p>Question: Mr. President, what does Speaker Ryan’s comments [about Donald Trump] tell you about the state of the Republican Party?</p>
<p>Question: How would you advise your fellow Democrats who appear to have to now run against Donald Trump as to how they can win in November?</p>
<p>There was even a question about Trump’s Cinco de Mayo tweet about Hispanics and tacos.</p>
<p>Question: Did you see the … taco bowl tweet? And your thoughts on it?</p>
<p>OBAMA: I have no thoughts on Mr. Trump’s tweets. As a general rule, I don’t pay attention to Mr. Trump’s tweets</p>
<p>Reporters want a food fight, with tacos or anything else that’s messy. Food fights get good ratings and get airtime and clicks for reporters while making their news organizations lots of money. That’s why they asked the president about Mr. Trump and his tacos tweet. This is what passes for substance.</p>
<p>A lot of Americans are hoping there is some way for Hillary and Donald to both lose. Yes, millions love them. But millions also hate them. That’s what entertainment is all about – conflict, confrontation, white hats, black hates, love, hate.</p>
<p>So sit back and enjoy the show. And consider the wisdom of the great jazz artist Billie Holliday who once said: “There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.”</p>
<p>Actually, you might want to consider that wisdom a lot between now and Election Day.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-05-09T18:09:00ZThis Just In: Hell Has Frozen OverBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/This-Just-In:-Hell-Has-Frozen-Over/693393510684630098.html2016-05-05T18:13:00Z2016-05-05T18:13:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Whoever coined the term “When Hell freezes over” might as well have had Donald Trump’s chances of winning the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in mind.</p>
<p>Just about all the smart money wound up looking stupid. When Trump did his quadrennial tease act, saying he was toying with the idea of running, none of the pundits saw how the show would end. We said Trump wouldn’t even get into the race. We said he was just talking because of his insatiable need to be the center of attraction. We said he was a reality show guy who puts his name on everything and that Republicans would never ever in a million years pick a carnival barker like him as their party’s nominee.</p>
<p>But Indiana is now history and hell has frozen over. And so we have not one but two candidates with huge unfavorable numbers whom the voters don’t trust, who are indeed their party’s nominees.</p>
<p>And so there are millions upon millions of American who are hoping that they both lose. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen. And based on current polls, Hillary Clinton will be the next president. But current polls only count if the election were held today. Still, Trump has a lot to overcome if he has even a long shot chance to win.</p>
<p>His passionate supporters may view him as their messiah, but they’re not like most Americans. In just about every demographic, Trump’s negatives are sky high. His gender gap with women is huge. Same with blacks, Latinos, young people, and just about everybody else except older white males and married women. Still, he has several paths to victory.</p>
<p>First, he can hammer Hillary and make her even more unpopular than he himself is.</p>
<p>Second, he would have to offset the Republicans who, on principle, won’t vote for him with Democrats and independents who will.</p>
<p>Anyone paying attention already knows that. What isn’t as widely known is that even if Trump manages to pull in those who don’t normally vote Republican, he’s got another obstacle – a very big one – standing in his way. It’s called the Electoral College.</p>
<p>Here’s what Chris Callizza has to say about the Electoral College math in a piece in the Washington Post:</p>
<p>“If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida’s 29 and you get 271. Game over.</p>
<p>“The Republican map … is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.”</p>
<p>If Trump loses, a lot of the blame will understandably be placed on Trump himself, for being so divisive. But the GOP has a bigger problem than the Donald. Ronald Reagan might have a tough time winning in today’s America, which is a lot less white than it was in Reagan’s day. And if Republicans don’t figure out a way to deal with the changing demographics of the country, they may be on the losing end of presidential elections way beyond 2016.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-05-05T18:13:00ZThe Slobbering Love Affair Between TV and Donald TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Slobbering-Love-Affair-Between-TV-and-Donald-Trump/-302256744091586301.html2016-04-29T07:00:00Z2016-04-29T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Campbell Brown, the former NBC journalist, has a piece in Politico that runs under the headline “Why I Blame TV for Donald Trump.”</p>
<p>Here’s some of why she blames TV for Donald Trump:</p>
<p>“I really would like to blame Trump. But everything he is doing is with TV news’ full acquiescence. Trump doesn’t force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him. TV news has largely given Trump editorial control. It is driven by a hunger for ratings—and the people who run the networks and the news channels are only too happy to make that Faustian bargain. Which is why you’ll see endless variations of this banner, one I saw all three cable networks put up in a single day: ‘Breaking news: Trump speaks for first time since Wisconsin loss.’ In all these scenes, the TV reporter just stands there, off camera, essentially useless. The order doesn’t need to be stated. It’s understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it’s always great television.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, she’s right.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that he only gets glowing coverage, though in some places the slobbering is downright embarrassing. Cable news (the platform that runs him virtually non-stop while the broadcast networks are running their usual tripe) presents a wide range of opinions about Donald Trump – from those who (literally) think he’s the worst thing to happen to the world since Hitler to those who seem to confuse him with the savior who has come back in the form of a loud-mouthed, braggart businessman in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie.</p>
<p>Diversity of opinion is welcome. That’s the good news. The bad news comes when a news organization runs any candidate for long stretches – <em>unfiltered</em>. When the journalist might as well be a potted plant standing off camera while the candidate goes on and on telling us how wonderful he or she is.</p>
<p>But there’s only one candidate who gets so many of his speeches and rallies covered wall-to-call with little or no journalistic scrutiny –and that, as you already know, is Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>It comes off not as news, but as one great big infomercial that Trump doesn’t even have to pay for.</p>
<p>But he is the frontrunner, after all, so doesn’t he deserve all the attention he gets on cable TV? Look at it this way: If anyone else were the GOP frontrunner – <em>anyone else</em>! – he or she wouldn’t get the same treatment. Kasich wouldn’t. Cruz wouldn’t. Huckabee wouldn’t. Bush sure as hell wouldn’t. None of them would get so much free, unchallenged air time.</p>
<p>That’s because unlike everyone else, Trump is ratings gold – and the others are your run of the mill vanilla politicians who if you could bottle them you’d have a cure for insomnia. On the Democratic side, even channels that like Hillary don’t give her as much airtime as they give Trump. If she could pull in the ratings Trump does, they would. But she can’t so they don’t.</p>
<p>You never know with Donald. He may (may?) say something even more outrageous than usual, and as Ms. Campbell notes, that makes for “good television,” which makes for good ratings, which makes for lots of money.</p>
<p>Just ask Les Moonves, who runs CBS. The over-the-top coverage of Donald Trump, in his view, “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”</p>
<p>That pretty much says it all. Except, Donald Trump is no longer hosting a reality show<em>. </em>He’s running for President of the United States of America. I wonder if Moonves, and others who see Trump as a money machine, know the difference – and if they do, I wonder if they care.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-04-29T07:00:00ZThey'd Rather Lose with Trump than Win with Somebody ElseBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Theyd-Rather-Lose-with-Trump-than-Win-with-Somebody-Else/895551791190864156.html2016-04-25T18:37:00Z2016-04-25T18:37:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Just about every poll indicates that if the election were held today Donald Trump would lose big to Hillary Clinton. His defeat would be <em>yuuuuge</em>. The newest RealClearPolitics average of polls has Hillary beating Donald 48.9 percent to 39.5 percent, a margin of more than 9 points. Good thing for Trump that it’s only April.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz does better than Trump but still comes out on the losing end, though not by much. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Hillary gets 45.3 percent of the vote to Cruz’ 43 percent. While that’s well within the margin of error, it’s difficult to see a hardliner like Ted Cruz winning the support of enough moderates and independents to beat Mrs. Clinton.</p>
<p>That leaves John Kasich, the only Republican left standing who consistently beats Hillary in the polls – and by a lot. In the NBC News poll Kasich wins 51 to 39. In the CBS News poll he wins 47 to 41. In the Fox poll, he wins 49 to 40. And in the McClatchy/Marist poll Kasich wins 51 to 42. The RealClearPolitics average has Kasich trouncing Mrs. Clinton 48 percent to 40.2 percent.</p>
<p>It’s easy to conclude from this that Trump supporters would rather lose with their beloved Donald than win with Kasich. Except, they don’t see it that way. They, like most true believers, are convinced that Donald J. Trump will beat Hillary and be the next President of the United States.</p>
<p>They believe Trump will not only win their votes but also those of disenchanted blue collar Democrats who don’t like Hillary as well as alienated non-partisan Americans who don’t usually vote at all. Could be. But it looks like he’ll also lose the support of a substantial number of mainstream Republicans who not only don’t like Trump’s policies (to the extent they even exist) but mainly don’t like … Donald Trump himself.</p>
<p>They don’t like the way he acts, which is like a wise guy in junior high. They find him, in a word, embarrassing. Lyin’ Ted and Crooked Hillary get a rise out of his loyal followers, but for lots of Americans – including a lot of Republicans – childish potshots like that make them cringe.</p>
<p>So here’s what I find myself wondering: Would you want your kids to behave like Donald Trump?</p>
<p>Would you want your kids bragging as much as Donald Trump brags? Do you want your son constantly telling everybody how great he is? Do you want your kids calling the other kids names (the schoolyard version of Lyin’ Ted and Crooked Hillary)? Do you want them to answer every insult with an insult of their own? Do you want them to admit their mistakes or insist today that they never said what you clearly heard them say just a day earlier? Do you want them making fun of people with physical disabilities? How about mocking POWs? Would it be OK if your son suggested – out loud – that he thought that one of the girl’s in his class was ugly?</p>
<p>Not to worry, we’re being told. Crazy Donald will morph into Civilized Donald after he wins the nomination. Maybe. But the best gauge of how people will act in the future is how they’ve acted in the past.</p>
<p>Besides, he didn’t get this far by being civil or polite. He’s the frontrunner precisely because he’s <em>not</em> civil or polite but because he’s outlandish and outrageous, traits his most passionate supporters cherish. If he wins the GOP nomination and starts to color inside the lines, he may become more acceptable to some – but he also may be viewed as too gracious and courteous for some of his most ardent fans who have fallen head over heels for the current uncultured and ill-mannered version of the Donald. So a Trump 2.0 might pick up some new support, but likely won’t lose very much (if any) old support.</p>
<p>Still, it’s true that people are capable of change. I just don’t think Donald Trump is one of those people.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-04-25T18:37:00ZHillary, Bernie and the Wisdom of Henry ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Bernie-and-the-Wisdom-of-Henry-.../85130932752217832.html2016-04-18T07:00:00Z2016-04-18T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>When Henry Kissinger was asked many years ago what he thought about the Iran-Iraq war, he gave an elegant response. “It’s a pity they can’t both lose.” That’s how I feel about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.</p>
<p>They hate the banks, they hate Wall Street, they hate big business, they think that any day now climate change will destroy the planet, they don’t think rich people pay enough taxes, they believe racism is rampant in America, that women are second-class citizens, that guns are bad and that the term “super-predator” is racist.</p>
<p>You don’t hear a lot from these two about 15-year old girls having babies which leads to poverty, or about how businesses pay billions in taxes and provide millions of jobs, or that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if Barack Obama uttered the words “Islamic Terrorism” every now and then.</p>
<p>But there’s one subject that separates Bernie and Hillary. And that’s Israel. When the questions turn to Israel, as they did at the Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn, Hillary sounds like the voice of reason while Bernie sounds like some left wing radical on a college campus.</p>
<p>Both candidates say that Israel has a right to defend itself. Saying that, of course, is not saying much. It’s the price of admission to get into the discussion. But Bernie is one of those liberals who believe in moral equivalence. So when Palestinians launch one of their <em>intifadas, </em>Bernie believes Israel has a moral responsibility to make sure its response is not “disproportionate” – which he thinks it has been.</p>
<p>Never mind, as Mrs. Clinton pointed out, that Palestinian terrorists often launch attacks on Israel while hiding among civilians, contributing to the disproportionality that so displeases the socialist from Vermont. In Bernie’s world, if the Palestinians kill 100 Israelis the Israelis should kill no more than 100 terrorists – and preferably a lot less.</p>
<p>While he acknowledges Israel’s right to exist, you get the impression that the real victims, in his worldview, are the<em>oppressed</em> Palestinians. No surprise there. A fundamental tenet of liberalism is to root for the perceived underdog. Power offends many on the left, progressives like Bernie Sanders, who probably liked Israel a lot more when it was weak. Not so much now that it’s strong.</p>
<p>In the real world, Bernie Sanders almost certainly won’t win his party’s nomination. But if he did that would be bad news for the GOP. In every major poll, he crushes the current Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump. He wins by 14 points in the Fox poll, by 17 in the CBS poll, by 14 in Quinnipiac and by 24 in the Bloomberg poll.</p>
<p>I have a theory on why Bernie draws such big enthusiastic crowds and does so well with younger voters. His supporters weren’t around to witness the great civil rights struggle of the 60s. They couldn’t march in Selma or ride freedom busses from the North down to Mississippi to stand up for justice. They didn’t know JFK or Bobby. Bernie is the closest they’ll get to something … exciting and yes, (politically) sexy! He may be 74 but he’s more passionate and a lot more genuine than Mrs. Clinton. He’s the one who’s leading the revolution. Who cares if his policies would bankrupt America? Not his adoring fans.</p>
<p>Still, it really is a pity they can’t both lose. I feel the same way about Donald Trump and Ted Cruz but we’ll save that for another day.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-04-18T07:00:00ZWhat Happened to Free Speech at Marquette?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Happened-to-Free-Speech-at-Marquette/128910432811093097.html2016-04-11T17:05:00Z2016-04-11T17:05:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The closest things we have to re-education camps in this country are college campuses. In the old Soviet Union, to use but one example of authoritarianism gone wild, if you said the “wrong” thing you might lose your job, your freedom or your life. Here in America, expressing the “wrong” opinion can cost you dearly, too.</p>
<p>Just ask Professor John McAdams, who used to teach at Marquette University in Milwaukee.</p>
<p>The story begins in 2014 when Cheryl Abbate, a philosophy instructor and PhD candidate at Marquette, suggested in class that for certain topics there pretty much is only one reasonable, decent, acceptable point of view. One of those topics was same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>After class, a student met with the instructor and secretly (if unethically) recorded their conversation. Here’s part of it:</p>
<p><strong>Student: Regardless of why I’m against gay marriage, it’s still wrong for the teacher of a class to completely discredit one person’s opinion when they may have different opinions.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Abbate: Ok, there are some opinions that are not appropriate that are harmful, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions, and quite honestly, do you know if anyone in the class is homosexual?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Student: No, I don’t.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Abbate: And don’t you think that that would be offensive to them if you were to raise your hand and challenge this?</strong></p>
<p>This is quite remarkable. A student can’t voice an opinion because other students – sensitive little snowflakes as they are — might be offended? Is this college or kindergarten?</p>
<p>More of the recorded exchange:</p>
<p><strong>Student: If I choose to challenge this, it’s my right as an American citizen.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Abbate: Ok, well, actually you don’t have a right in this class, as … especially as an ethics professor, to make homophobic comments, racist comments, sexist comments …</strong></p>
<p><strong>Student: Homophobic comments? They’re not. …</strong></p>
<p><span>Ok, so because they are homosexual I can’t have my opinions? And it’s not being offensive towards them because I am just having my opinions on a very broad subject.</span></p>
<p><span>Abbate: You can have whatever opinions you want but I can tell you right now, in this class homophobic comments, racist comments, and sexist comments will not be tolerated. If you don’t like that you are more than free to drop this class.</span></p>
<p>He did. But he also told Professor McAdams about it. The professor, who earned his PhD at Harvard, teaches political science and writes a blog. So he wrote about what happened, saying the instructor was “using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up.”</p>
<p>The blog went viral and the instructor got nasty, ugly emails.</p>
<p>That’s when the re-educators stepped in – they have titles at Marquette like dean and university president – and suspended Professor McAdams without pay and said he would not be allowed to teach at Marquette unless he admitted his conduct was “reckless” and he apologized.</p>
<p>If you haven’t guessed, McAdams said in effect, don’t hold your breath. He compared the demand to the “Inquisition, in which victims who ‘confessed’ they had been consorting with Satan and spreading heresy would be spared execution.”</p>
<p>Technically, the university is punishing Professor McAdams because he published the instructor’s name, resulting in those hate-filled emails sent to her. But if we follow this reasoning, a professor is not only responsible for what he writes but also for the reaction it produces.</p>
<p>What if university professors signed a petition against student athletes who supposedly raped an exotic dancer – which resulted in the athletes being maligned and put in the crosshairs of the angry mob? It happened at Duke with those lacrosse players who didn’t rape anybody. Should the professors — who already found them guilty absent a shred of evidence — be fired for causing innocent students distress?</p>
<p>The university also said that in his blog McAdams got some information wrong and that, “To endure, a scholar-teacher’s academic freedom must be grounded on competence and integrity, including accuracy “at all times.”</p>
<p>At all times? Really? I bet the liberals who run Marquette can’t name even one scholar anywhere who writes papers or books, who speaks at seminars, or who talks to kids in class, who has been accurate “at all times.”</p>
<p>Unless something dramatic happens soon, Professor McAdams will lose his tenure and his job for expressing opinions the authoritarians – at a Catholic University no less – found objectionable.</p>
<p>There should be an outpouring of support for Professor McAdams – and it should come from professors at universities all across America. But such an uprising is not likely. Too many of these academic liberals have long forgotten what it means to be liberal. They claim to honor diversity but for them that doesn’t include diversity of opinion – the kind of opinion, as Professor McAdams has said, they would rather “shut up” than even listen to.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-04-11T17:05:00ZMichelle Fields and the Elephant on the CouchBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Michelle-Fields-and-the-Elephant-on-the-Couch/-689112916654115890.html2016-04-04T14:59:00Z2016-04-04T14:59:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Look, I watched the video a hundred times and I still don’t know what actually happened between Michelle Fields and Donald Trump’s campaign manager. But I do know that whatever happened, wasn’t Kristallnacht, as Jonah Goldberg so elegantly put it in his weekly “news” letter in National Review.</p>
<p>But if the Nazi analogy is a bunker too far, let me suggest that it wasn’t the O.J. case either. In terms of its legal importance, I don’t think it’s even up there with someone fighting an overtime parking ticket. But that’s me.</p>
<p>Besides not knowing what actually happened, I don’t know Corey Lewandowski, the alleged “attacker.” Heck, all I know about the supposed victim, Michelle Fields, is that she came off as way too young to be so predictably conservative, when I used to see her on Fox. Besides, I’m uncomfortable with someone in her mid-twenties being a <em>pundit</em>. Cover a fire or a train wreck first. But that’s also me.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to stay away from this story, figuring it wasn’t nearly important enough to waste both your time and mine. But it won’t go away. And almost all the “wisdom” coming out of the chattering class on television has to do with a) what happened to Ms. Fields, b) does what happened constitute a crime, and c) what does this tell us about the Trump campaign.</p>
<p>But I keep wondering about the elephant sitting on the couch: the confrontation itself. Ms. Fields calls herself a<em>journalist</em> and she’s making a big deal over <em>this</em>? Really?</p>
<p>I don’t usually quote Piers Morgan, but in a tweet he said what’s been going through my mind and I suspect a lot of other minds too.</p>
<p>“If a male reporter tried to claim this was ‘battery’, he’d be rightly mocked.”</p>
<p>Sexist? I don’t think so. In fact, I bet a lot of female journalists aren’t cheering for Ms. Fields either. Tough women have covered dangerous stories in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and have done it with dignity and courage.</p>
<p>Compare that to what a visibly shaken Ms. Fields told Megyn Kelly: that the whole ordeal has been “awful” and the “worst experience” she has gone through other than her own father’s death.</p>
<p>Please!</p>
<p>I’m willing to believe that Corey Lewandowski is a jerk. He ‘s Donald Trump’s campaign manager, after all. And, OK, maybe he should have simply said he’s sorry and, who knows, maybe the tempest in the teapot would have gone nowhere – and most importantly, I wouldn’t have had to spend 10 minutes of a Saturday morning knocking out this column.</p>
<p>But Lewandowski doesn’t belong on trial – and he sure doesn’t belong in jail for this. Oh, and did I mention that the Florida prosecutor handling the case against him is a member of Hillary Clinton’s “Leadership Council” in Florida – and donated $1,000 to her campaign?</p>
<p>Whatever. But be assured that it’s way past time for serious journalists to move on to other things, like the many other more important ridiculous events that go on daily in the Trump campaign.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-04-04T14:59:00ZIf President Obama Is So Smart ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-President-Obama-Is-So-Smart-.../234405930670540411.html2016-03-29T18:19:00Z2016-03-29T18:19:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>President Obama is many things, but humble isn’t one of them. You get the impression he believes that if he were around when Rodin sculpted The Thinker, the artist would have asked him to be the model; the man who so thoughtfully sits there, his chin resting on his hand, the essence of intelligence.</p>
<p>How smart is Barack Obama? Well, he once said he was “a better speechwriter than my speech writers.” He boasted that he knows “more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” And that he’s “a better political director than my director.”</p>
<p>How lucky we are to have such a bright man leading our country. Or maybe he’s just a narcissist.</p>
<p>But even wise men have their lacuna, and Barack Obama’s knowledge gap involves his inability – or unwillingness – to recognize how illogical and inconsistent he can be, when it suits his purposes. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.</p>
<p>Consider the president’s take on terrorism. We have to put it in perspective, he believes. “Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do,” according to a recent story by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic.</p>
<p>True enough. But as any smart person knows, accidents are substantially a function of probability, based on lack of intent. Terrorist acts are intentional. Using the president’s standard, even a dirty bomb set off by terrorists in a small city, would fall below his bar.</p>
<p>How does such an intelligent man as Barack Obama even begin to make such a comparison between accidental deaths and those committed by savages who blow up airports or train stations?</p>
<p>And has the president considered this: There are more bathtub and car accident deaths in America each year than deaths caused by rogue white cops who shoot unarmed black kids. But you’d never know it listening to the president.</p>
<p>“I think everybody understands all lives matter,” Mr. Obama has said. “I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that’s happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”</p>
<p>He did not go out and play golf minutes after making that statement, something he did after announcing the beheading of an American at the hands of ISIS terrorists. Nor did he do the tango, which he did on camera after the murderous terrorist attacks in Brussels.</p>
<p>There are other inconsistencies in the president’s reasoning. He is troubled by collateral damage in pursuit of terrorists. This is understandable. No one wants to see innocents killed by American bombs targeting terrorists who live among civilians in places like Iraq and Syria. So the president has set in place a policy whereby our military will avoid dropping bombs on terrorist targets if civilians might get hurt in the process.</p>
<p>But if the president is so concerned about collateral damage, why would he release so many prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay? Surely he know that a certain percentage of them will return to the battlefield, and some of them will go on to kill innocents, including Americans. Shouldn’t the president think of that as collateral damage, too?</p>
<p>And if collateral damage keeps him awake at night, what about the collateral damage caused by illegal immigrants in this country? A new report by the Department of Homeland Security shows that over the past five years, 124 illegal immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and released rather than sent back stayed to commit murder in the United States. Tens of thousands more committed a multitude of crimes, including burglary, sexual assault and drunk driving that resulted in the deaths of innocents.</p>
<p>That’s a lot of collateral damage, even if we don’t get a lot of fretting about it from the president.</p>
<p>I wonder what our Thinker-in-Chief would say about all of that. Maybe one of his adoring fans in the media who have so much invested in his presidency should ask him about it at his next news conference.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-03-29T18:19:00ZAn End Run Around the Second AmendmentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/An-End-Run-Around-the-Second-Amendment/216839679790576561.html2016-03-22T07:00:00Z2016-03-22T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts – the highest court in the state — upheld the criminal conviction of a woman named Jaime Caetano who was arrested and convicted because she possessed what the authorities said was an unlawful weapon. The weapon was a stun gun, which she obtained for self-defense against her abusive and violent ex-boyfriend.</p>
<p>The Massachusetts court said that individuals had no right to have a stun gun, that it was “not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection” — because the Constitution only protects guns that were in common use at the time the document was written. In other words, stun guns didn’t exist when the Second Amendment was written so they’re not covered by the Second Amendment.</p>
<p>However one feels about guns, or the Heller decision that said individuals, not just militias, have the right to bear arms, the reasoning in Massachusetts borders on the absurd. Followed to its illogical conclusion, the Massachusetts court might also rule that broadcast journalists have no First Amendment protection because radio and television didn’t exist when the First Amendment was written.</p>
<div>The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and in a unanimous decision this week – rare in cases involving guns – the Justices struck down the lower court ruling. So how could the Massachusetts judges get it so wrong that even four liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices knocked down their ruling — and their reasoning? Could it be that this was nothing more than an end run by liberal judges who just don’t like guns?</div>
<p>That’s pretty much what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito believes. “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself,” he wrote. “To make matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her of a criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life. The Supreme Judicial Court then affirmed her conviction on the flimsiest of grounds.”</p>
<p>According to Alito, “if the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming people than about keeping them safe.”</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-03-22T07:00:00ZThe Debate over Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Begins - Cue the HypocrisyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Debate-over-Obamas-Supreme-Court-Nominee-Begins---Cue-the-Hypocrisy/-390854623138609841.html2016-03-17T18:15:00Z2016-03-17T18:15:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>As if the Republican Party didn’t have enough to worry about with Donald Trump cruising to the nomination and becoming the de facto face and voice of the GOP, now they have to contend with a soft-spoken 63-year old gray haired judge who might cost them votes in the November election.</p>
<p>By nominating Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, President Obama has put Republicans in a tough spot in this election year.</p>
<p>If Republicans refuse to even consider the Garland nomination they run the risk of feeding into the impression many Americans already hold of the party — that they’re obstructionists.</p>
<p>If they renege on their promise to block <em>any</em> Obama nominee until after the November elections, they run the risk of feeding into another impression — that they’re genetically incapable of standing up to the president.</p>
<p>And the president made it even more difficult for Republicans by naming Judge Garland, who is hardly a left-wing zealot, the kind Republicans could legitimately refuse to consider. Judge Anthony Napolitano, the Fox News analyst, said Garland was a center-right jurist. Perhaps a tad overblown.</p>
<p>“I’ve selected a nominee who is widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, evenhandedness and excellence” the president said during a Rose Garden ceremony. “These qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned him the respect and admiration of leaders from both sides of the aisle.”</p>
<p>And when Judge Garland spoke, one TV analyst said, he sounded like a Republican. Whether he did or not, he certainly didn’t sound like a progressive Democrat. Granted, that was probably by design. In any case, while he’s no Scalia, he’s no Ginsberg either, though Republicans are right to worry that he’d vote with her more than not.</p>
<p>Republicans almost certainly will stick to their guns and conclude that they have more to lose by considering the nomination than by blocking it. By stonewalling the nomination they will hold onto support from their conservative base, a base that fears that any pick by the president in his final months in office will tilt the Court to the left for many years to come.</p>
<p>Both sides will put on a straight face and say they’re acting on principle. The president arguing that the American people deserve an up or down vote on his nominee. The Republicans arguing that the voters should have their say in November before any nominee is given a hearing.</p>
<p>But what passes for principle in Washington is often nothing more than hypocrisy all dolled up.</p>
<p>So let’s not be naïve. If the tables were turned Democrats would do precisely what Republicans are doing. In fact, they already have done precisely what the Republicans are doing.</p>
<p>As a senator more than two decades ago, Vice President Biden argued that President George Bush should delay filling a Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, until the presidential election was over. Biden said at the time that it was “essential” that the Senate refuse to confirm any GOP nominee to the court until then.</p>
<p>As the New York Times put it, “Mr. Biden’s words, though uttered long ago, are a direct contradiction to President Obama’s position in the battle over naming a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia.”</p>
<p>I’m sure you’re shocked.</p>
<p>And upon hearing that Republicans would not consider any Obama nomination to the Court, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said: “When you go right off the bat and say, ‘I don’t care who he nominates, I am going to oppose him,’ that’s not going to fly.”</p>
<p>In July, 2007, when George Bush was still president, the same Chuck Schumer said if any new Supreme Court vacancies opened up, Democrats should not allow Bush the chance to fill it “except in extraordinary circumstances.”</p>
<p>“The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance,” Schumer said. “We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”</p>
<p>When Schumer made those remarks in 2007, Mr. Bush had about seven more months remaining in his presidential term than Mr. Obama has remaining in his.</p>
<p>Hypocritical? Sure. But in politics no one party has a monopoly on hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Back in 2007, Mr. Bush’s Press Secretary Dana Perino said Schumer’s statement showed “a tremendous disrespect for the Constitution” and amounted to “blind obstructionism.”</p>
<p>Are you following this?</p>
<p>A year earlier, in 2006, then Senator Barack Obama joined in a filibuster to block the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, telling ABC News that he supported the filibuster “because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values.”</p>
<p>This year, the president through his spokesman, conveniently said he regretted his decision. Sure.</p>
<p>And if President Mitt Romney were in the White House, do you think Mitch McConnell would hold up his nominee until after the election? Sorry I asked.</p>
<p>The banker and financier J.P. Morgan, a keen observer of human nature, once said that “A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good, and a real one.” He wasn’t talking about today’s Democrats and Republicans and their need to put lipstick on their hypocrisy and call it principle. But he might as well have been.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-03-17T18:15:00ZTrump, Chicago and Liberals Playing with MatchesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Trump-Chicago-and-Liberals-Playing-with-Matches/-684050867332014387.html2016-03-14T07:00:00Z2016-03-14T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Let’s imagine that members of the Tea Party went to a Bernie Sanders rally to do just one thing: disrupt it.</p>
<p>Let’s imagine they shouted during Sanders speeches and tore up Sanders campaign posters. Let’s say they had no intention of letting Bernie speak because they didn’t like what Bernie had to say.</p>
<p>Like all true believers, they were convinced they were right, so whatever they did, they reasoned, was fair game.</p>
<p>Who would get the blame? Bernie Sanders for “provoking” the Tea Party with his radical views … or the Tea Party?</p>
<p>We know the answer.</p>
<p>Yet, even though left-wing demonstrators went to that Trump rally in Chicago with plans to disrupt it, the question I heard a hundred times from journalists on TV is whether Donald Trump’s provocative rhetoric at his rallies was responsible for the mayhem in Chicago.</p>
<p>Donald Trump says no. He takes no responsibility for the trouble in Chicago. But he has said things that stoke tensions, even if he denies it.</p>
<p>When a protestor at a rally in Las Vegas was ejected, Trump told the crowd, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” That kind of talk is not presidential. It doesn’t cool things down. It heats them up.</p>
<p>But the demonstrators – Trump calls them “disruptors” – who went to his rally in Chicago to cause trouble were not Republicans. If they vote at all, they vote Democratic. More than a few of the troublemakers were holding Bernie Sanders campaign signs.</p>
<p>I take Sanders at his word that his campaign wasn’t behind the disruption in Chicago. But they were his supporters. If Trump supporters disrupted a Sanders rally – even if Trump had no direct hand in the matter — Trump would be held accountable. Why isn’t Bernie Sanders treated the same way?</p>
<p>Let’s not give Donald Trump a free pass, but the people who want to shut down speech they don’t like – whether they’re Sanders supporters or activists from Moveon.org or Black Lives Matters — are also villains in this story and deserve more of the blame for what happened than they’re getting.</p>
<p>They’re the authoritarians, the ones who don’t believe in free speech. They’re the ones who think that disrupting an opponent’s political rally is a legitimate tactic.</p>
<p>But they’re not who Hillary Clinton had in mind when she said, “If you play with matches, you’re going to start a fire you can’t control.” No, she was talking about Donald Trump. “The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” she said.</p>
<p>It’s much easier to take on Donald Trump than the crazy wing of her own progressive base.<br />But as disturbing as the video was from Chicago, we shouldn’t be shocked – and not just because sooner or later it was bound to happen. Donald Trump, after all, is a polarizing figure. Another reason we should have seen it coming is because the same thing has become commonplace on too many college campuses, where liberal students shut down speech they don’t like.</p>
<p>That is the historical background to what we’re seeing today. If you don’t like what the other side is saying, shut it down. There are no consequences. No one gets kicked out of school for shouting down a conservative on campus.</p>
<p>Just a few weeks ago, left wing demonstrators at California State University Los Angeles barricaded the entrances of a theater where conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was set to deliver a speech on censorship and diversity on college campuses.</p>
<p>According to one news account, “ Led primarily by the school’s Black Student Union and Black Lives Matter chapter, the hundreds of demonstrators, including some professors, poured into the Student Union building Thursday afternoon to block other students from attending the event.” At one point according to the story, “A demonstrator pulled the fire alarm midway through the lecture, but Shapiro carried on with his remarks despite the shrill noise and pounding at the doors.”</p>
<p>This kind of thing has become depressingly routine on too many college campuses. But I don’t recall Bernie condemning any of that. And I don’t recall Hillary warning us that, “If you play with matches, you’re going to start a fire you can’t control.”</p>
<p>The sensitive liberal snowflakes on college campuses who might faint if they were exposed to views that don’t comport with their own have been playing with matches for quite some time now. The grownups should have taken the matches away a long time ago. They didn’t. And that helps explain what happened in Chicago.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-03-14T07:00:00ZLiberal Hate Speech: Comparing Trump to HitlerBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Liberal-Hate-Speech:-Comparing-Trump-to-Hitler/90665488528817927.html2016-03-07T08:00:00Z2016-03-07T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>A few weeks ago the Washington Post published a guest column by Harvard professor Danielle Allen. Here’s how it began:</p>
<p>“Like any number of us raised in the late 20th century, I have spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand. Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country.”</p>
<p>When Ms. Allen says, any “direct comparison” between Hitler and Trump “is not my point” she means, “That is <em>precisely</em> my point.” Imagine if a conservative had written, “Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is that both were democratically elected and then tried to fundamentally change their respective countries, issuing edicts along the way. And, of course, both were gifted speakers and opportunists.” Then imagine if the conservative said, “Of course I’m not making any direct comparisons between the two.”</p>
<p>Here’s some advice to the professor from Harvard: You didn’t get your job by being a dunce. So don’t act like one. Don’t make comparisons – even indirect ones — between anybody and Hitler and then claim you didn’t mean it that way at all. You planted the seed right at the top of your column. You knew what you were doing.</p>
<p>While Ms. Allen supposedly is a serious person, no one is accusing the cast at Saturday Night Live of being a bunch of scholars, a cast that picked up – in the name of comedy, of course — where the professor left off. There was Darrell Hammond playing Donald Trump at the podium after his big victories on Super Tuesday.</p>
<p>“What a great, great night. I really am running the best campaign, aren’t I? The media is saying they haven’t seen anything like this, not since Germany in the 1930s.”</p>
<p>And now we have Louis C.K. — that well-know comedian and political philosopher – who has just weighed in on the Trump is Hitler routine — except he didn’t beat around the bush. He flat out said it. In an email to his fans, he wrote: “Please stop it with voting for Trump. It was funny for a little while. But the guy is Hitler. … Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.”<br /><br />As any regular reader of my columns knows, I have not been a fan of Donald Trump — not of his demeanor, which I consider un-presidential, and not of some of his policies. But this Hitler nonsense has to stop.</p>
<p>There is a well-established rule among serious people: If you compare anybody to Hitler, you lose the argument. Comparing Trump to a man who systemically slaughtered six million Jews and millions of others he also thought were sub-human, is hate speech – the very hate speech that liberals who are now making Hitler comparisons routinely decry. Building a wall to keep illegals out is not the same as rounding up Jews and sending them to the gas chamber. Promising to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering our country is wrong-headed, but it is not the same as putting into place an efficient, cold-blooded apparatus to create a master race by eliminating anyone and everyone who doesn’t fit the description.</p>
<p>And please, don’t tell us to lighten up, that you are only joking. Comparing Donald Trump to Hitler isn’t funny</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-03-07T08:00:00ZDavid Duke and Donald TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/David-Duke-and-Donald-Trump/-802939616714436487.html2016-02-29T08:00:00Z2016-02-29T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Politics can be tough. Answering complex questions with a simple answer can be difficult. Taking a position at odds with your base can be tricky. But nothing – absolutely nothing — should be easier for a politician than to say, “I don’t want to have anything to do with th Ku Klux Klan – or its poster boy, David Duke.”</p>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>But on CNN on Sunday Donald Trump couldn’t bring himself to say it.</p>
<p>A little background: While Duke hasn’t formally endorsed Donald Trump, he has embraced him. On his radio show, Duke said that, “Voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.”</p>
<p>In Klan talk, that means “Voting against Donald Trump is treason if you’re white.”</p>
<p>And on Facebook, Duke said of Trump: “I think he deserves a close look by those who believe the era of political correctness needs to come to an end.”</p>
<p>Duke, who was once a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, said America needed a leader who would dismantle what he called the “Jewish controlled” financial industry.</p>
<p>If this were basketball, condemning David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan would be an uncontested layup. But on CNN, Trump blew the shot.</p>
<p>Jake Tapper asked Trump – <em>three times</em> — about David Duke’s support. “Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say you don’t want his votes or that of other white supremacists in this election?” Tapper asked. Here’s how Trump answered:</p>
<p>“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.”</p>
<p>Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about David Duke? If that were true he’d be the only grownup in the entire country who doesn’t know anything about David Duke.</p>
<p>Then there was this exchange:</p>
<p><span>Trump</span>: You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. … If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow them if I thought there was something wrong.</p>
<p><span>Tapper:</span> The Ku Klux Klan?</p>
<p><span>Trump:</span> You may have groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know.</p>
<p><span>Tapper: </span>I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here.</p>
<p><span>Trump:</span> Honestly, I don’t know David Duke.</p>
<p>But it’s not the lie that came out of Trump’s mouth that’s so distressing; we’re accustomed to that from Mr. Trump. It’s how weak he sounded uttering the lie. It would have taken absolutely no courage to denounce Duke and disavow his support. But Trump couldn’t do it. Instead, he he came off as afraid — afraid to lose any support, even support from a bigot like David Duke.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz and John Kasich condemned Trump’s refusal to disavow Duke, and a spokesman for Marco Rubio said, “If you need to do research on the KKK before you can repudiate them, you are not ready or fit to be president.” It doesn’t matter that Rubio has a vested interest. He’s right.</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s weakness, of course, won’t put a dent in his support. Nothing he says or does hurts him. It just doesn’t matter to his loyal followers that he is a narcissist, or that he’s thin-skinned, or that he’s mean-spirited. As long as he tells “the man” to shove it, they adore him. Never mind that Donald Trump <em>is </em>the man! And never mind that he didn’t have the decency to denounce the former Grand Wizard of the KKK on national television.</p>
<p>“I don’t know David Duke,” he told Jake Tapper. “I don’t believe I have ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him. And I just don’t know anything about him.”</p>
<p>A few hours later, when he realized just how pathetic he sounded, Donald Trump took to Twitter and pointed to a statement he made at a news conference just two days earlier when he was asked about Duke’s embrace and replied, “I disavow.” And then on the Today Show on Monday he again disavowed Duke and again said he didn’t know what white supremacists groups Jake Tapper was talking about — and besides, he said, he couldn’t hear the questions clearly became CNN had given him a “lousy ear piece.”</p>
<p>Despite the lame excuses, the fact remains that on television on Sunday Donald Trump couldn’t bring himself to do the simple, easy and most of all, the right thing. That might have offended a few bigots who listen to David Duke and were planning on voting for their Great White Hope, Donald Trump. And Donald wouldn’t want to offend any potential voter. Every vote counts, you know.</p>
<p>And this is the man who is the odds on favorite to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States? I no longer care very much about Donald Trump. But I do care about a political party that would make him its leader – and possibly a nation that would make him its president.</p>
</div>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-29T08:00:00ZIt's Just Politics ... and OpportunismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Its-Just-Politics-...-and-Opportunism/-814485665123204983.html2016-02-29T08:00:00Z2016-02-29T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Chris Christie has a well-honed reputation, the public persona we’ve come to know – that of a tough-talking, no-nonsense Jersey guy who tells it like it is whether you – yeah <em>YOU</em>! — like it or not. But he’s also got another reputation – that of a pol who’s always looking out for #1, and does what he has to in order to come out ahead.</p>
<p>More on that in a moment, but first let’s take a stroll down memory lane and examine some of the things Chris Christie said about Donald Trump during the GOP campaign, a campaign that reminds me of the movie Animal House.</p>
<p>Christie called Trump one of the “carnival barkers of today.”</p>
<p>He said of Trump: “Showtime is over. We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief. Showmanship is fun, but it is not the kind of leadership that will truly change America.”</p>
<p>He said Trump was acting like a “13-year-old” when he threatened to boycott the Fox News debate.</p>
<p>He said Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims from (temporarily) entering the United States was “Ridiculous …”the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about.”</p>
<p>On Trump’s plan to force the Mexican government to pay for a wall to keep illegal aliens out of the United States, Christie said, “This makes no sense,” explaining that “This is not negotiation of a real estate deal, OK? This is international diplomacy, and it’s different.”</p>
<p>On Trump’s views regarding Syria, Christie said they were “Painfully naïve.”</p>
<p>When Trump said he saw thousands of Muslims cheering in New Jersey when the Twin Towers came down on 9/11, Christie said, “that didn’t happen.”</p>
<p>And the governor had this for Greta Van Susteren about Trump: “Donald’s a great guy and a good person, but I just don’t think he’s suited to be president of the United States. I don’t think his temperament is suited for that and I don’t think his experience is.”</p>
<p>Got it?</p>
<p>Now, here’s what Chris Christie said just the other day about Donald Trump, you know, the Donald Trump who is “not suited to be president” because he’s got the wrong “temperament” and lacks “experience.”</p>
<p>“I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States,” Christie said with Trump standing next to him. “I absolutely appreciate him as a person and as a friend.”</p>
<p>And …</p>
<p>“I’ve gotten to know all the people on that stage. And there is no one who is better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs, both at home and around the world, than Donald Trump.”</p>
<p>No, I’m a big boy and so I am not shocked. And yes, I know, it’s called politics. But I prefer <em>opportunism</em>. And I’m pretty sure it’s a sign that Chris Christie, that no-nonsense straight shooter, needs a job when his term is up in 2017 – a job like Attorney General of the United States, appointed to that lofty post by his good friend, that “great guy and good person” President-you-know-who.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-29T08:00:00ZCatching Up With the American PeopleBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Catching-Up-With-the-American-People/539583097892800711.html2016-02-26T08:00:00Z2016-02-26T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>By now everybody knows that when it came to Donald Trump, the pundits – those wise men and women of TV and the press — got it all wrong.</p>
<p>We got it wrong when we figured he wouldn’t run. We got it wrong when we said his candidacy was a joke that would go nowhere. We got it wrong when we thought he jumped the shark after he ridiculed a POW and insulted the looks of a female opponent and said he would ban an entire religion from entering this country until “our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” <br /><br />We thought he’d lose the South Carolina primary after he said President Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to get us into a war in which thousands of Americans were killed and many more grievously wounded. We got that wrong, too. And we got it wrong when we thought last summer’s romance with a reality TV star would fizzle and be nothing but a faint memory when fall and winter arrived.</p>
<p>Did I mention that we got it <em>ALL WRONG</em>?</p>
<p>But now that we’re acknowledging the obvious, that Donald J. Trump is the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination for president, maybe it’s also time that we acknowledge what else we got wrong.</p>
<p>We got the American people wrong. At least a certain segment of them.</p>
<p>The media elites are so out of touch, so insulated inside their comfortable bubble, that they didn’t understand the people who live between Manhattan and Malibu. Sure, the pundits knew they didn’t like Congress; the polls made that quite clear. But the supposedly “smart money” never really grasped just how disgusted they were — and not only with politics and the media. The elites didn’t grasp the <em>depth </em>of their alienation from what they saw going on all around them.</p>
<p>The media elites don’t feel dispossessed the way millions of “ordinary” Americans do — Americans who looked around and felt they were losing their country; Americans who believed that while they were working and going nowhere, others were mooching off the system and getting away with it. They weren’t against helping the truly needy, but were wondering why so many millions of people were getting free food (stamps) while they were busting their rear ends and paying for everything they got. Why were they expected to obey the rules while, in their view, their country was being overrun by aliens who just barged in? What really fueled the alienation is that they didn’t like the idea that THEY were taking over OUR country? <br /><br />I’m not saying all their grievances were legitimate. Some of them weren’t. Some were stoked by opportunistic Republicans who wanted to rile the base in order to win them over. And while not everyone who was angry was also bigoted, more than a few were. But to the aggrieved, their grievances were real.</p>
<p>The elites who were blindsided by Trump’s success, who couldn’t understand why any sensible person would be attracted to such a thin-skinned, often nasty, narcissist, didn’t grasp what was going on because too many journalists look down their elitist noses at “ordinary” Americans. Frankly, a lot of journalists wouldn’t wash their hands in the same sink with “ordinary” Americans. Too many elite journalists think that Fourth of July parades are for hayseeds. That eating at Red Lobster is a crime against humanity. Well, now the “hayseeds” have had enough and are fighting back.</p>
<p>It’s a safe bet that most Trump supporters don’t know or care what his position is on taxes or tariffs or a lot of other things. They don’t care that he’s not conservative or that he promises things that will never happen. They don’t even care that he says one thing on Monday and the opposite on Tuesday. What they do care about, I think, is that he’s telling the elites to take a hike – which is rich, given that Trump is one of the elites. Through Trump they’re telling the elites that despite what you think, you’re not <em>better</em> than we are. That’s also rich, since Trump thinks he’s better than everybody.</p>
<p>When I wrote <em>Bias</em> I had no idea it would go to # 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It was my first book. I was stunned. And then it hit me: I was catching up with the American people, the ones who thought the media didn’t respect them or their values. They also felt alienated and dispossessed. Without realizing it at the time, I tapped into that. I wasn’t leading anything. I was catching up!</p>
<p>Catching up with the American people can be a powerful force. And Donald Trump is doing just that. Not with all of them, of course.. Maybe not even with most of them. But for the moment, with enough of them.</p>
<p>So look out: He may win more than the GOP nomination.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-26T08:00:00ZWill Running for Obama's Third Term Make Sense After She Wins the Nomination?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Will-Running-for-Obamas-Third-Term-Make-Sense-After-She-Wins-the-Nomination/-170784474861939002.html2016-02-23T08:00:00Z2016-02-23T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Hillary Clinton is running for Barack Obama’s third term whether she says so or not. Here’s what she did say at the Democratic debate in Milwaukee this month.</p>
<p>“I want to follow up on something having to do with leadership, because, you know, today Senator Sanders said that President Obama failed the presidential leadership test. And this is not the first time that he has criticized President Obama. In the past he has called him weak. He has called him a disappointment. … And I just couldn’t disagree more with those kinds of comments. … The kind of criticism that we’ve heard from Senator Sanders about our president I expect from Republicans. I do not expect from someone running for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Obama.”</p>
<p>Sending a Valentine to the president in February may (and almost certainly will) work in the race for the Democratic nomination because Democrats generally still like President Obama. And none are more loyal than black Democrats who give the president his highest marks and whose votes both Clinton and Sanders are courting in advance of the primaries in the South, where African American voters have a lot of clout.</p>
<p>But does the strategy make sense when winter is just a memory and the summer campaign is in full swing?</p>
<p>Consider this: According to a recent Gallup poll, 71 percent of likely general election voters say America is on the wrong track.</p>
<p>Who’s been president for the past 7-plus years?</p>
<p>For a significant number of Americans, the economy is still anemic, wages are still stagnant, and millions of Americans can’t find good, full-time jobs. For those who lost their doctor or health insurance plan to ObamaCare, the man who promised that would never happen is hardly a hero.</p>
<p>Is this what Hillary really wants to associate herself with?</p>
<p>Besides, Barack Obama doesn’t have coat tails. Here’s how the Washington Examiner explained it:</p>
<p>“Obama has won whenever he has been on the ballot. But Republicans have found they can beat him badly every time he isn’t. In the last two midterm elections, a Democratic candidate’s coziness with Obama became a kiss of death, inspiring more passion among opposing voters than among supportive ones. This is why Democrats are at or near modern lows in their control of governorships, state legislatures, and U.S. House and Senate.</p>
<p>“Obama’s legacy is golden with the voters Clinton is courting in the next two weeks, but not with the ones she must win over this fall. For many voters, and not just the ones attracted to pessimistic populist messages of Sanders and Donald Trump, the Obama era has been one of economic stagnation.”</p>
<p>In politics, tomorrow is a long way off. November is light years away. Memo to Hillary: What works now doesn’t always work later. And I suspect that running for Barack Obama’s third term is one of those ideas that won’t sound all that good when she’s running against someone not named Sanders.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-23T08:00:00ZPandering in South Carolina and BeyondBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Pandering-in-South-Carolina-and-Beyond/-747159507128216977.html2016-02-22T08:00:00Z2016-02-22T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If it even needs to be said, Democrats don’t have a monopoly on pandering. It’s part of the DNA of all sorts of politicians. But when it comes to matters involving race, Democrats are in a class by themselves.</p>
<p>Republicans won’t speak hard truths about race in America out of fear. Democrats won’t speak hard truths out of a deeply held concern for their own self-preservation.</p>
<p>Republicans are afraid they’ll be called racists if they talk about the kind of behavior that leads to poverty – dropping out of school, committing crimes, having babies when you’re a child yourself.</p>
<p>Democrats desperately need black votes to win so they tell African Americans what they think they want to hear – that racism and white privilege are what’s holding them back.</p>
<p>If racial pandering were an Olympic sport, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would be vying for the gold, especially with so many primaries coming up in the South where African American votes hold the key to victory.</p>
<p>In Columbia, South Carolina, Bernie Sanders recently said, “We have got to achieve the day when young black males and women can walk the streets without being worried about being harassed by a police officer.”</p>
<p>Fair enough. There are some bad cops out there and they should be held accountable when they cross the line. But does Bernie Sanders really think that rogue cops are a bigger problem in black neighborhoods than black thugs? Does he think that the many good, decent black people who live in those communities worry more about bad cops with guns than they worry about fatherless young black men with guns?</p>
<p>And then there’s Hillary, who says that, “We have to begin by facing up to the reality of systemic racism. For many white Americans it’s tempting to believe that bigotry is largely behind us. Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind.”</p>
<p>Is there racism in America in 2016? Unfortunately, yes, some still exists. In a country of more than 300 million people, it would be nothing less than a miracle if it didn’t exist to some extent. Is it systemic? Does it permeate all our institutions? Does it run through the very bloodstream of America? No.</p>
<p>But here again, a Democrat seeking black votes figures she’s better off talking about systemic racism than systemic dysfunctional behavior in the poorer parts of black <em>and</em> white America. </p>
<p>Neither Clinton nor Sanders will tell black voters that a 72 percent out of wedlock birth rate in black America is a prescription for hard times. Neither will they tell black voters that the federal government – or even the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States — can’t do much to stop 15-year old girls from having sex with irresponsible men and having babies who statistically are likely to grow up in poverty.</p>
<p>Instead they talk about white privilege; a philosophy (of sorts) that says the deck is stacked against black people. But, as the always thoughtful columnist Dennis Prager points out, “If you are raised by a father and mother, you enter adulthood with more privileges than anyone else in American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity or sex. That’s why the poverty rate among two-parent black families is only 7 percent. Compare that to a 22 percent poverty rate among whites in single-parent homes. Obviously, the two-parent home is the decisive privilege.”</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders don’t care about the well being of black people in this country. I’m sure they do, as do all people of good faith. But keeping people in a perpetual state of grievance doesn’t help anybody – except the liberal white politicians who are doing the pandering?</p>
<p>So every chance they get they deliver a simple message: Vote for me and I’ll make life better for you.</p>
<p>Pandering might work in politics. But it’s a lousy solution to real problems that desperately need to be fixed.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-22T08:00:00ZThe Trump ZoneBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Trump-Zone/16444614116719800.html2016-02-19T08:00:00Z2016-02-19T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Have you ever heard of something called “The Tyson Zone”?</p>
<p>It was a term coined by sportswriter Bill Simmons and used to describe what has been called “train-wreck” celebrities like the Kardashians or Lindsay Lohan or the inspiration for the term, Mike Tyson, the boxer who once, in the midst of a heavyweight championship fight, bit off a piece of his opponent’s ear.</p>
<p>Here’s a description I picked up from a blog called the Mormon Iconoclast: “It essentially described someone who has made such a public mess of his life that there’s almost literally nothing you wouldn’t believe if you heard it about them. Let’s suppose someone said to you, ‘hey, did you hear about Mike Tyson? He’s converted to Scientology?’ or ‘He’s having himself surgically turned into an iguana?’ Or “he’s become a cannibal.”</p>
<p>You’d just say, “Yeah, what else is new – that’s Mike.” He could do anything and you not only wouldn’t be shocked, you might just yawn.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the political version of The Tyson Zone: The Trump Zone.</p>
<p>Nothing Donald Trump says or does shocks us. Imagine if someone said, “Did you hear about Trump … he just got into it with the pope.”</p>
<p>Is that any more shocking than if a year ago someone said, “Hey did you hear that Donald Trump is going to run for president?” Or if someone told you, “Donald Trump is moving to Saudi Arabia to open a bagel shop outside the Grand Mosque in Mecca.”</p>
<p>My response would be, “Yeah, so? What’s your point?”</p>
<p>But if a week or so ago you told me that Pope Francis was going to inject himself into the 2016 presidential campaign, I’d say, “You must be joking. Why would the pope do that?”</p>
<p>But on his flight home from Mexico to Rome, a reporter asked the pope about Trump and his promise to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out of the United States. The pope replied: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”</p>
<p>Trump who doesn’t take criticism from anybody – including the leader of the Catholic Church – called the pope’s comments “disgraceful.”</p>
<p>But I wonder what the pope thinks about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Are they Christians in his view? They support abortion, which is murder, a crime against the most innocent and helpless, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned.</p>
<p>Is building a wall to keep illegal immigrants out of your country worse than abortion?</p>
<p>I wish Donald Trump had made a point like that.</p>
<p>I understand that the pope is a man who cares deeply about the poor and the dispossessed. I understand that he was also sending a message, not just to Donald Trump but also to the leaders of Europe who are faced with a tidal wave of immigrants escaping the horrors of the Middle East. “Be humane,” he is saying. “Take care of people who need your care.” But he should have stopped short of declaring that people like Donald Trump are not Christians.</p>
<p>This won’t hurt Trump in South Carolina, and not just because Catholics make up a small percentage of the population. But also because a pope who lives behind giant walls designed to keep unwelcome people out, shouldn’t insinuate himself into American presidential politics. Most people, I think, understand that.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-19T08:00:00ZTrump Is for Whatever Works - for TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Trump-Is-for-Whatever-Works---for-Trump/219234910637151383.html2016-02-18T08:00:00Z2016-02-18T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If someday Donald Trump writes a book and comes clean about his run for the White House, I’m not going to be shocked if he says he gave serious thought to running as a Democrat but declined for one and only one reason: because he figured he had a better chance of winning the nomination running as a Republican.</p>
<p>Trump is like the wildebeest at the watering hole, the one with the most advanced, the most finely-tuned instincts; instincts that tell him to take off a nanosecond before the lion shows up to devour his pals. And it’s those well-developed reflexes, I think, that convinced Trump that a run against Hillary for the Democratic Party’s nomination would be futile. So, Trump figured, if I want to be President of the United States that leaves only one other choice.</p>
<p>But in spite of his decision to run as a Republican, Trump would have been right at home running as a Democrat. He thinks (as I’ve written in this space) that Bush “lied” about getting us into a war in Iraq. That’s what Moveon.org and Code Pink believe.</p>
<p>He thinks eminent domain is “wonderful” – and not only when the government confiscates private property to build a road or a school or a hospital. He thinks it’s great even when big government takes somebody’s house in order to build a factory, or a resort, or even a limo parking lot for gamblers at Trump’s casino in Atlantic City.</p>
<p>He says he’s against ObamaCare but in favor of universal health care paid for by the government. As recently as last September he told 60 Minutes, “I’m going to take care of everybody.” And when he was asked how he would pay for taking care of everybody, he said: “The government’s going to take care of it.” Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the socialist, would be fine with that.</p>
<p>And before he got into the race he sounded more like Rosie O’Donnell than William F. Buckley.</p>
<p>In 1999, he said the GOP was “just too crazy” so he joined the Reform Party.</p>
<p>In 2000, he let everyone know just how he felt about guns. “I hate the concept of guns,” he said.</p>
<p>In 2004, he came right out and said it: “I identify more as a Democrat.”</p>
<p>In 2007 he said that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified person to make a nuclear deal with Iran.</p>
<div>A year later he said he was “impressed” with Nancy Pelosi and backed the idea of impeaching then president George Bush.</div>
<p>But, yes, people evolve, so it’s possible that Donald Trump woke up one morning in his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York and had a come to Reagan moment and decided that conservative values made more sense than liberal values.</p>
<p>But who are we kidding: It’s possible only in the way that <em>anythin</em>g is possible – like going to Mars next Tuesday for doughnuts and coffee is kind of possible.</p>
<p>I’m not cynical, but if you ask me it was something else that turned Donald Trump to the right – on guns, on abortion, and the rest. I think it was good old-fashioned <em>opportunism</em>. And it was easy for Trump. He’s not an ideologue. More than anything else, he’s a practical businessman. His motto might as well be: I’m for whatever works – as long as it works for ME!</p>
<p>At any other time, voters would see Donald Trump for what he is, which as a friend of mine puts it is, “At best a phony untrustworthy ally and more likely an antagonist to most things they claim to hold dear.”</p>
<p>But this isn’t any other time, which explains why so many Republicans along with more than a few Democrats fill auditoriums wherever he goes. They may not know, or care, what his position is on taxes or how he would defeat ISIS or make Mexico pay for his wall. Those are mere technicalities to his loyal followers.</p>
<p>For them, Donald Trump, more than anything else, is a symbol. He is the middle finger aimed at everything they’ve come to despise about politicians.</p>
<p>And as crazy as it sounds, a lot of them aspire to be Donald Trump, the guy who flies into town on a big jet with TRUMP plastered in big letters on the side of the plane.</p>
<p>The Trump mystique works for them. And so far it’s been working pretty well for Trump too.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-18T08:00:00ZPolitical World Mourns Scalia - for About Two SecondsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Political-World-Mourns-Scalia---for-About-Two-Seconds/-115158404273446642.html2016-02-16T08:00:00Z2016-02-16T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The political world mourned the loss of Justice Antonin Scalia – for about two seconds. Then politics kicked in followed by the usual Washington hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Republicans are saying they won’t consider a nominee to replace Scalia – ostensibly because we’re in the final year of the Obama presidency and any replacement should be voted on after the November elections, so the people have a voice in the matter.</p>
<p>The real reason, of course, is that Republicans don’t want another liberal Justice on the Court – especially now, when a liberal would create a new majority on the bench – a new, liberal majority.</p>
<p>Understandably, Democrats are saying the president is still the president, that his term doesn’t expire for another year, and so he has a constitutional obligation to recommend a successor to Scalia – and the Senate has an obligation to vote on the president’s pick.</p>
<p>There is enough hypocrisy on both sides to choke the proverbial horse.</p>
<p>Upon hearing the news that the Senate wasn’t going to take up any nomination the president sent over, New York liberal Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer ripped the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as an “obstructionist.”</p>
<p>“When you go right off the bat and say, ‘I don’t care who he nominates, I am going to oppose him,’ that’s not going to fly,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.”</p>
<p>Who are we kidding? If the tables were turned, and a Republican president in his final year in office were trying to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Chuck Schumer and a whole bunch of other liberal Democrats would argue precisely what Republicans are now arguing – that no successor should be voted on until after the next election.</p>
<p>But wait. No need for hypotheticals. The tables were turned back in 2007, in what was then President Bush’s final year in office.</p>
<p>This is what the very same Senator Schumer said back then when President Bush had 18 months left in his term – nearly twice as much time as President Obama has now: </p>
<p>“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances.” Why? Because Schumer thought the court was already too conservative.</p>
<p>Ok, politicians speak out of both sides of their mouth. That’s hardly a bulletin. Still, maybe the Republicans played their hand wrong. Maybe they shouldn’t have said they wouldn’t consider any nominee. Maybe they should have said, “Send your nominee over Mr. President and we’ll consider him or her – in due time.” And then they could have let the clock run out until after the election.</p>
<p>Or maybe they should have agreed to consider the president’s nominee and then, no matter how qualified that person might be, do what Democrats did to Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagan’s nominee.</p>
<p>Democrats ran a despicable campaign against Bork. Ted Kennedy, the so-called “conscience” of the Democratic Party, led the mob, saying that if Bork were confirmed and became a Justice on the bench of the Supreme Court, America would be a place where “women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters” and “rogue police would break down citizens’ doors.”</p>
<p>He had to know none of that was true. Robert Bork wasn’t the gestapo. He was unquestionably qualified. He was already on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, already approved by the Senate. The Democrats just didn’t want another conservative on the Court. So they tried to destroy him and managed to turn his name into a verb. He was “borked.”</p>
<p>We are a nation divided. Barack Obama is one of the most polarizing presidents in recent history. We live in an “us versus them” country. They did it to us and now it’s our turn to pay the SOBs back.</p>
<p>Can you blame the Republicans for playing politics? They had good teachers.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-16T08:00:00ZTrump Steals a Page from the Progressive PlaybookBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Trump-Steals-a-Page-from-the-Progressive-Playbook/-589945917760098659.html2016-02-15T08:00:00Z2016-02-15T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Donald Trump has a knack for making his most passionate supporters look foolish, and worse. They often come off as Trump toadies, sycophants who live only to bask in his majesty’s glow.</p>
<p>How, for example, can an intelligent conservative support Trump after he said this at the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina about President George W. Bush and his administration?</p>
<p><strong>“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right? They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.”</strong></p>
<p>This is right out of the liberal Democratic playbook: Bush lied people died. Not that he made an honest mistake and got it wrong about weapons of mass destruction — but that he knew there were no WMDs and still went to war, a war that resulted in thousands of American deaths.</p>
<p>You’d expect to hear that from Michael Moore or anyone else who suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome – not from a Republican running for president.</p>
<p>The next day, Trump did what he so often does: He denied saying what he said — despite the fact that he said it at a nationally televised presidential debate and there was video to prove what he said.</p>
<p>On Sunday, Chuck Todd pressed Trump on Meet the Press about his statement that the Bush administration “lied,” that “They said there were weapons of mass destruction” … and “they knew they were none.” And with a straight face, Trump said: “I didn’t call him a liar. … I said maybe there were lies. … Was it a lie, I don’t know if it’s a lie, who knows?”</p>
<p>This is smarmy at best. It obviously dawned on the man who routinely shoots from the lip that calling President Bush a liar in South Carolina, where he’s still quite popular, was probably not a smart thing to do. But instead of saying, “I shouldn’t have said that,” – Trump seems genetically incapable of saying “I made a mistake” – he said, “I didn’t call him a liar.”</p>
<p>And this is something that his most passionate supporters admire? Or just don’t care about?</p>
<p>Trump’s followers in the media are different from the civilians who adore him, many of whom like what they see as his toughness – his promise to round up and deport 11 million illegal aliens; his assurance that he would (temporarily) bar all Muslims from entering this country. But his pals in the media are just that – his pals. They acknowledge that they consider him a friend. They like being around him. And then they do pretend interviews with their pal that resemble Valentine’s Day cards.</p>
<p>One of those friends is someone named Eric Bolling, a host on the Fox News Channel, who said this on TV on the day of the South Carolina debate:</p>
<p>“As you know I’ve never liked what the establishment class represents. I often talk about how they’re almost as bad as the liberals running DC, just more whiney about stuff. That usually elicits hate tweet, columns written by establishment types – Peter Wehner, the Goldbergs, Jonah and Bernie. … But you know what, they shouldn’t be shooting inside the tent. Look establishment, if you truly care about America as I do, Trump’s not your problem. Liberals and socialists are.”</p>
<p>Shooting inside the tent? This is what bothers Eric Bolling? Well then, why doesn’t it bother him that Donald Trump has shot just about everybody inside the GOP tent?</p>
<p>He’s called Ted Cruz a liar.</p>
<p>He’s called Jeb Bush a liar.</p>
<p>Of Carly Fironina he said, “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”</p>
<p>He said, “Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain.”</p>
<p>He said Rick Perry “should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate.”</p>
<p>After Ben Carson talked about his anger as a child, Trump said: “If you are pathological, there is no cure for that, folks. If you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, you’re a child molester, there’s no cure for that.”</p>
<p>And there was this ridiculous shot at Marco Rubio from Trump: “He sweats more than any young person I’ve ever seen in my life.”</p>
<p>There’s more, but you get the idea. If there’s a poster boy for shooting inside the tent, it’s The Wonderful Mr. Trump.</p>
<p>Memo to Donald Trump’s friends in conservative media: Journalists are supposed to hold candidates running for president accountable. We’re not supposed to be slobbering toadies. We care about America, too. That’s why we ask tough but legitimate questions about their policies and call on them to defend their statements and their actions — actions like visibly making fun of a disabled reporter, which Donald Trump clearly did right before he denied doing it.</p>
<p>But it’s asking too much to expect Trumps friends who only play at journalism to understand any of that.</p>
<p>So let’s end where we began: Trump has a knack for making his most passionate supporters look foolish.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-15T08:00:00ZTed Nugent Strikes AgainBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ted-Nugent-Strikes-Again/-414959045076502040.html2016-02-12T08:00:00Z2016-02-12T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>A few years ago I was one of the guest speakers on a Caribbean cruise sponsored by National Review, the conservative magazine. Each night the speakers — a group made up of writers, TV pundits and movers and shakers from the world of politics — had dinner and conversation with the folks who took the cruise to listen to the various conservative speakers. And each night we sat with different people, so that a rotating group of guests got to dine with each of the guest speakers.</p>
<p>One night I was seated next to a successful businessman, originally from New York State but at the time (and still, I assume) living in Asheville, North Carolina. He wasted no time telling me how disgusted he was with Congress – no surprise given that most Americans, especially conservatives, are disgusted with Congress.</p>
<p>Then he decided to share with me the liberal members of Congress who really turned his stomach. Every one on his list – every single one – was Jewish.</p>
<p>He didn’t say anything about Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. They didn’t make his list of villains. Not a peep, either, about Dick Durbin or Maxine Waters. He said nothing about Luis Gutierrez or Jim McDermott. Only Jews were in his crosshairs.<br /><br />If this were happening someplace other than on a ship at sea, and if it wasn’t a gathering of hundreds of very nice people who paid good money to listen to speakers and not watch a fist fight at the dinner table, things would have turned nasty. He (and his wife) had the good sense to leave long before desert arrived and that was the end of it.</p>
<p>The incident was a distant memory until just the other day when I heard about Ted Nugent’s version of my cruise story.</p>
<p>Nugent, who has been described as “an American musician, singer, songwriter, hunter, and political activist,” as well as a “washed up rocker,” is also widely known as a vile, bigoted, jerk. Earlier this month he took to his Facebook page to let his many friends know just what he thought about people who don’t like guns as much as he does. Here’s what he wrote under the headline: “So who is really behind gun control?”</p>
<p>“Know these punks. They hate freedom, they hate good over evil, they would deny us the basic human right to self defense & to KEEP & BEAR ARMS while many of them have tax paid hired ARMED security! Know them well. Tell every1 you know how evil they are. Let us raise maximum hell to shut them down!”</p>
<p>Then he posted pictures of these people Nugent finds so despicable. Every one of them is Jewish. One of Nugent’s “punks” was the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who Nugent described as “Jew York City Mayor” and said was a “9/11 Israeli agent,” whatever that means.</p>
<p>None of this should surprise anyone who knows even a little about Ted Nugent.</p>
<p>At a concert in August of 2007, he said then Senator Barack Obama was ”a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun,” and added that Hillary Clinton is a “worthless bitch.”</p>
<p>Ted Nugent, who is often seen in pictures holding big guns, which may or may not be his way of compensating for shortcomings in another area, is on the board of the National Rifle Association. So did the NRA kick him off the board after his Jew baiting stunt? If you said, “Are you kidding?” give yourself a gold star. After dodging news outlets for several days (including a phone call from me) the NRA issued a statement saying that, “Individual board members do not speak for the NRA.” How courageous.</p>
<p>In the big scheme of things Ted Nugent isn’t important – not in matters of culture or politics or at this point even music. What is troubling is how many conservatives think Nugent is just wonderful. His Facebook post got more than 7,700 likes.</p>
<p>And he has had many fans in conservative media, where the general rule is “If liberals hate you, we love you, no matter what.” Just 3 days after his vile attack on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Sean Hannity, on Fox, not only refused to condemn Nugent, but told a liberal guest on his show, “I like Ted Nugent, he’s a friend of mine.”</p>
<p>Does anyone think a principled conservative like William F. Buckley would have had anything to do with Ted Nugent?</p>
<p>As you might imagine, Nugent did get slammed by the Anti Defamation League, the organization that fights anti-Semitism, which said in a statement: “This is nothing short of conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Regardless of one’s views on gun control, this kind of scapegoating of an entire religious group is completely unacceptable and completely divorced from reality. It should go without saying that anti-Semitism has no place in the gun control debate. You should be ashamed for promoting anti-Semitic content, and we hope that good people on both sides of the gun control debate will reject his tactics and his message. We hope you will have the good sense to remove this share immediately so that it does not spread virally across the Internet.”</p>
<p>After that Nugent took to Facebook again to make sure his critics knew exactly where he stood.</p>
<p>“Just when you hope that mankind couldnt possibly get any dumber or more dishonest, superFreaks rise to the occasion. What sort of racist prejudiced POS [Piece of S**t] could possibly not know that Jews for gun control are nazis in disguise?”</p>
<p>I wonder if Sean Hannity still considers Ted Nugent his friend.</p>
<div> </div>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-12T08:00:00ZPundits Who Are Often Wrong But Never in DoubtBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Pundits-Who-Are-Often-Wrong-But-Never-in-Doubt/762991024336720081.html2016-02-10T08:00:00Z2016-02-10T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>A pundit, according to my dictionary, is “a person who knows a lot about a particular subject and who expresses ideas and opinions about that subject publicly such as by speaking on television and radio shows.”</p>
<p>You may recall that a year ago not one of those pundits “who knows a lot about a particular subject” – politics in this case – took Bernie Sanders seriously. After all, wasn’t he the socialist from hippy Vermont, the disheveled gray haired guy in his 70s who wanted to turn the United States into Sweden? No way this old man could possibly be a threat to the one <em>they</em> — members of the pundit class — deemed was Madam Invincible; the one <em>they</em> predicted would smile and wave at the adoring crowds on her way to the coronation.</p>
<p>Name one pundit who predicted that Sanders, a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, would come within a whisker – a couple of coin flips, actually – of knocking off Hillary Clinton in America’s heartland. Name one of those wise men or women who a year ago saw Sanders demolishing the Clinton machine in New Hampshire – <em>by 22 percentage points no less</em>!</p>
<p>These same pundits said Donald Trump wouldn’t run. Then they said he’d burn out in the blink of an eye. They said he jumped the shark when he insulted a POW who was tortured by the North Vietnamese. Wrong, wrong and wrong.</p>
<p>Which pundit a year ago predicted that a narcissist with a tendency toward gratuitous nastiness and vulgarity would in mid February 2016 be the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination for President of the United States?</p>
<p>And just a few days ago these pundits who know so much about politics assured us that it was a three-man race to the finish line. Tell that to John Kasich and Jeb Bush. Kasich came in second in New Hamshire and Bush came in fourth — but tied Ted Cruz in the delegate count and finished one delegate behind Kasich.</p>
<p>You would think given the kind of political season it’s been that the pundits, if they were really as smart as they think they are, would adapt; would learn the meaning of the word humility and spend less time making predictions.</p>
<p>No such luck. Even before Bernie Sanders took the stage to tell us how bad billionaires are, the pundits were telling us that Bernie’s campaign effectively was over; that he had no chance in South Carolina; that Hillary Clinton had the African American vote locked up; that Sanders had a nice Iowa and a gratifying New Hampshire but make no mistake: It was now over.</p>
<p>They may be right. But I won’t be shocked if they get this one wrong too. Whatever Hillary is offering black voters Bernie is offering more of it. I’m not predicting Sanders will win South Carolina. I’m simply saying given their track record, it’s not a good idea for members of the chattering class to be so damn sure of themselves. But introspection is not something that comes naturally to a lot of journalists.</p>
<p>And there’s one more thing the pundits didn’t see coming. Sure they and everybody else knew that Hillary was going to play the gender card; that she was going to say, “Vote for me because I’m a woman.” But tell me: Which pundit predicted the strategy would blow up in her face? Which pundit predicted that women – especially young women – would overwhelmingly reject the tired assumption that she was somehow <em>entitled </em>to be president because of her gender?</p>
<p>Which brings us to what I think was the most despicable single moment of the New Hampshire campaign. It came when Madeline Albright, at a Clinton rally with Hillary standing by her side, told the crowd “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Hillary loved it. She broke out in laughter. Except, the joke's on her.</p>
<p>Memo to the guy who runs the operation down in hell: Open the gates, a whole bunch of women are heading your way.</p>
<p>Women went for Bernie 55 percent to 44 percent for Hillary.</p>
<p>Yogi Berra supposedly said, “Making predictions is hard, especially when they’re about the future.” He also said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Pundits, take note.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-10T08:00:00ZWhen We Ignore the Nexus Between Faith and Bigotry...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-We-Ignore-the-Nexus-Between-Faith-and-Bigotry.../222651985440032925.html2016-02-08T08:00:00Z2016-02-08T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>The other day President Obama went to a mosque in Baltimore and said, “And so if we’re serious about freedom of religion — and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country — we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths.”</p>
<p>That sounds reasonable enough. No decent person condones “attacks” on Muslims or anyone else based simply on religion. But how about <em>challenging</em> a person’s faith? Are we permitted to question the tenets of one’s religion? Or does that constitute an “attack on one’s faith”?</p>
<p>I just read a smart piece in National Review, a column by David Harsanyi, in which he says: “We certainly don’t want people attacking peaceful Muslims, but it’s irresponsible and intellectually obtuse to act as if the pervasive violence, misogyny, homophobia, child abuse, tyranny, anti-Semitism, bigotry against Christians, etc. that exist in large parts of Islamic society abroad has absolutely nothing to do with faith.”</p>
<p>And there’s also this from Harsanyi: “Christian communities, often older than Islam itself, have been devastated by Islamic groups and left unprotected by moderate Muslim governments for decades. These attacks are aimed at Christians. We have done nothing to help them. It is then completely rational for Christians to be apprehensive about Islam.”</p>
<p>But let’s accept that the Mr. Obama’s talk at the Baltimore mosque was a reasonable attempt to reassure American Muslims that they are part of the American family – given that relations clearly have become frayed between Muslims and their fellow citizens in the wake of the mayhem caused by Muslim terrorists around the world.</p>
<p>“If you’re ever wondering whether you fit in here, let me say it as clearly as I can, as president of the United States: You fit in here — right here,” the president said. “You’re right where you belong. You’re part of America, too.”</p>
<p>Promoting tolerance, of course, is not a bad thing. But promoting the idea that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is another matter.</p>
<p>You may recall that Mr. Obama told us that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam because ISIS is “a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.” And the other day in Rome, Secretary of State John Kerry joined in, telling the world that Islamic State terrorists are “nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers, of thieves.”</p>
<p>You know, just your run of the mill crooks.</p>
<p>But then Kerry added this: “And they are also, above all, apostates – people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceived people in order to fight for their purposes.”</p>
<p>An apostate is someone who renounces or abandons his religion. And while we can understand that Kerry made the remark in an attempt to distance the Islamic State from mainstream Islam, he should watch what he says, given his limited knowledge of that particular religion.</p>
<p>“Kerry has no more theological authority to brand someone an apostate of Islam than King Salman of Saudi Arabia has to consecrate the Eucharist,” as David Harsanyi puts it. “Not even moderate Sunni clerics make this claim. Yet, over and over, leftists try and detach the branches of Islam they dislike from the trunk so they can call you a bigot for attacking their idealized conception of Islam.”</p>
<p>Tarring opponents as bigots is not a new thing with many on the left. If you don’t like Obamacare, there’s a good chance it’s because the president is black. If you question Islam, it’s probably because you suffer from Islamophobia — the unnatural fear of Muslims and their religion. A lot of liberals like calling out bigots — whether they really exist or not — as a way to show how good they themselves are. And this is why, I think, many on the left see America as a dark place, a place where bigotry lurks in the shadows just waiting to be unleashed on the innocent “other.”</p>
<p>It is these liberals, I think, who are the ones with unnatural fears.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-08T08:00:00ZAre We Really a Center-Right Country Anymore?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Are-We-Really-a-Center-Right-Country-Anymore/897663936523066067.html2016-02-03T08:00:00Z2016-02-03T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>For quite a while now pundits have casually thrown around the idea that we’re a center-right country – a country with old-fashioned mostly conservative ideas and values. But it’s time – maybe even past time – to re-think the premise.</p>
<p>This came to mind because of what just happened in Iowa where Bernie Sanders, a (democratic) socialist, finished in a virtual dead-heat with Hillary Clinton. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who happened to stumble upon a poll that came out right before the caucuses – a poll that found that 43 percent of likely Democratic voters in Iowa said they would use the word “socialist” to describe themselves.</p>
<p>Socialism never caught on in America, though Franklin Roosevelt gave it the old college try. Yet in Iowa – right there in the heartland of America – more than 4 out of 10 members of a major political party self-describe as socialists. This, I think, is quite remarkable.</p>
<p>But wait, Ted Cruz won on the Republican side and he was the most conservative candidate in the race. Which proves that not everyone in Iowa wants to turn the United States into Sweden. So let’s agree that Iowa voters are both very liberal <em>and</em> very conservative – and almost half of the liberals think socialism is just dandy.</p>
<p>But this fascination with socialism goes way beyond little, ole rural, white Iowa. Bernie Sanders makes no secret of the fact that he is a proponent of income redistribution and believes the federal government has a moral obligation to take from the wealthy and spread it around to those who aren’t. He’s proud of his (democratic) socialism. So what should we make of this: According to a New York Times/CBS News poll last November, 56 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide said they had positive feelings about socialism as a governing philosophy while only 29 percent said they had a negative view. <em>Fifty-six percent</em>!</p>
<p>Republicans, of course, aren’t fans of socialism – or of any of the baggage that goes along with it, like higher taxes that stifle economic growth or bigger government that’s needed to implement more and more expensive government programs. But the two Republicans who ran for president in 2008 and 2012 – neither one a scary right-winger who frightens the kids and the pets – were rejected by a majority of the American people who thought they’d be better off with one of the most liberal politicians ever to win the White House.</p>
<p>Can that America really be considered center-right?</p>
<p>In 2013, Ben Zweifach, then the editor of the Yale Law Review, questioned the old premise, that we’re a center-right nation. “As you go down the list, you’ll find that the golden apples of liberalism now occupy the center of American politics: 74 percent of Americans favor regulating green-house gas emissions, 68 percent oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or any other entitlement, 57 percent support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, 69 percent continue to support a tax-hike on those making $250,000 a year … and now a majority of Americans support gay marriage.”</p>
<p>Does any of that sound center-right?</p>
<p>None of this is to predict a Democratic victory in November. But in critical times it’s important to state the obvious, so here goes: Democrats, in Iowa and beyond, are playing deep left field these days – and that’s no longer a bad place to be in American politics.</p>
<p>If Bernie Sanders wins, as expected, in New Hampshire, then while his nomination would still be a long shot, it won’t be out of the question. And that alone is enough, I think, for pundits to re-think the long-held idea that we’re still basically a right-of-center country.</p>
<p>And even if the (democratic) socialist Mr. Sanders doesn’t win the nomination and the progressive Mrs. Clinton does — that’s also evidence that we’re not in Ronald Reagan’s America any more. Hillary, after all, is a lot more like Bernie than she is like Bill.</p>
<p>But what if a conservative Republican wins the White House? Then I’ll reconsider. But not until then.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-02-03T08:00:00ZWhat's the Single Best Thing the GOP Has Going?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Whats-the-Single-Best-Thing-the-GOP-Has-Going/-862803478329300819.html2016-01-30T08:00:00Z2016-01-30T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’ve been trying to figure out how a Republican can win the White House this time around and I’m having a tough time.</p>
<p>First, there’s the well-documented problem of demographics. Since minorities tend to vote Democratic, and since there are more minorities in America today as a percentage of the population than in past elections, that means there are fewer white folks around who are unhappy with the way things are going. And since Republicans desperately need white folks who are unhappy about the way things are going in order to win … you get the point.</p>
<p>Then there’s the related issue of the Electoral College, which is stacked against the Republican Party. As long as big population states like California, New York, and Illinois remain unwaveringly in the Democratic camp – and as long as Massachusetts and Vermont and Rhode Island and Connecticut and Washington State and Oregon and Minnesota and a few others historically throw their support to the Dems – Hillary (or, who knows, maybe Bernie) are on their way to victory before the first vote is even cast.</p>
<p>And then there’s that small matter of the civil war raging inside the Republican Party.</p>
<p>Donald Trump was right when he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in New York and he wouldn’t lose support among his many loyal followers. They love Mr. Trump, as they respectfully call him. They’re not passionate about the Republican Party. They’re not passionate about conservatism (how could they be if they’re supporting Donald Trump). So if Trump doesn’t get the nomination, there’s a good chance his devotees would claim the game was rigged and say something like “Drop Dead” to the GOP Party.</p>
<p>Cruz supporters are just as loyal — and doctrinaire, to boot. They comprise the hard right of the party – sometimes known as the suicide wing — that believes that anything less than ideological purity for the conservative cause is the same as selling out your principles. There was a time when they might have supported Trump if their guy didn’t get the nomination, but with all that bad blood between Trump and Cruz, don’t bet on it.</p>
<p>And if one of the more moderate conservatives somehow manages to win the nomination, he (or she, if the talented Ms. Fiorina pulls off the impossible) would have to be an incredibly masterful healer to unite the disparate factions of the party – and that won’t be easy (which is a nice way of saying, given the passion of the Trump and Cruz acolytes, that would be almost impossible).</p>
<p>The wild card are Reagan Democrats, blue-collar voters who don’t have much in common with country club Republicans but who see Donald Trump, a man right at home in the fancy clubs attached to his many golf courses, as their kind of guy – tough, anti PC, no nonsense. If enough of them turn out, anything is possible.</p>
<p>Republicans, of course, can hope the Democrats lose their minds and actually nominate the proud socialist Bernie Sanders whose politics make Nancy Pelosi look like Pat Buchanan. But that won’t happen.</p>
<p>So that leaves Hillary Clinton, who is unlikeable, and lacks charisma, who is not seen as trustworthy and oh yeah, the FBI may recommend criminal charges against her.</p>
<p>I wonder what Joe Biden is thinking right about now.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-30T08:00:00ZIs Hollywood, the Capital of Liberal America, Racist?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Hollywood-the-Capital-of-Liberal-America-Racist/627832085257600154.html2016-01-25T08:00:00Z2016-01-25T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Let’s take a brief break from politics and talk about something just as important as picking the next president of the United States. The Oscars.</p>
<p>By now you’ve probably heard that Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of actor Will Smith, and director Spike Lee, will boycott the Academy Award ceremony because not a single black actor was nominated for an Oscar.</p>
<p>Ms. Smith issued a statement explaining her discontent. “At the Oscars … people of color are always welcomed to give out awards … even entertain, but we are rarely recognized for our artistic accomplishments. Should people of color refrain from participating all together? People can only treat us in the way in which we allow.”</p>
<p>Maureen Dowd of the New York Times called it the Jim Crow Oscars. Chris Rock, who will be hosting the show on TV, sent out a tweet: “The #Oscars. The White BET Awards.”</p>
<p>But what does the absence of black nominees in the acting categories really tells us? Are the people behind the Oscars racist – or simply clueless about black people and black culture?</p>
<p>We’ll get to that shortly. But first we have to consider a concept in legal circles that goes by the name of “disparate impact.” Here’s what it pretty much means in everyday practical terms: If black people or other minorities are not represented in employment, housing, <em>or other matters</em>, in numbers that match their percentage of the population – regardless of intent — it’s evidence of discrimination.</p>
<p>Note well: <em>regardless of intent</em>. So you don’t have to be a bigot to be guilty of discrimination. Results are what matter.</p>
<p>Let’s say 50 people take the exam for lieutenant in the fire department. Let’s also say that 10 of the applicants are black and 10 more Latino. The results show that of the 20 minority candidates only one earned a grade high enough to get the promotion.</p>
<p>Even if no one is alleging that the fire department set out to discriminate against minorities, the department may still be guilty of discrimination – because of disparate impact.</p>
<p>Now back to the Oscars. If we apply the theory of disparate impact it doesn’t matter what motivated the Academy voters. All that would matter is that no black actors were nominated for an Oscar. The results came out all wrong. There wasn’t the proper amount of diversity.</p>
<p>Will Smith was brilliant in “Concussion,” the movie about head injuries in the NFL and how the league covered up evidence of the damage repeated hits to the head does to players in the league. But Mr. Smith was snubbed.</p>
<p>No actor in “Straight Outta Compton” was nominated.</p>
<p>Michael B. Jordan, who played opposite Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky in “Creed” was also passed over. So were all the actors in “Beasts of No Nation,” a horrific story about child soldiers in Africa.</p>
<p>Will Smith, who has joined his wife in refusing to attend the ceremony, says that, “We’re part of this community. But at this current time, we’re uncomfortable to stand there and say this is OK.”</p>
<p>But are we really supposed to believe that Hollywood, a place populated by some of the most prominent liberals in our culture, is bigoted? If the Oscars were handed out by the White Skinheads of America Film Society, then yeah, there’s an excellent chance racism might be in play. But Hollywood, the capital of liberal glitterati in the United States of America?</p>
<p>Here’s another explanation for the failure to nominate black actors. In 2012, the Los Angeles Times conducted a survey of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – the group of more than 6,000 members that runs the Oscars. Turns out that 94 percent of the members are white, 77 percent male, with a median age in the mid 60s.</p>
<p>In other words, older white guys are behind the culture curve. There are certain things about black culture and black movies that just don’t resonate with them. Diversity isn’t their highest priority.</p>
<p>Let’s acknowledge that more than a few people, black and white, inside and outside of Hollywood, take this matter seriously. So forgive my detour into another area of American entertainment: professional basketball.</p>
<p>If disparate impact is a sign of potential racism, then why isn’t the NBA potentially racist? Before you say, “Bernie, you jerk, the NBA is based on merit. The best players make the team. If blacks are better, then it only follows that there would be more blacks in the NBA than their percentage in the general population.”</p>
<p>Nice try. But disparate impact suggests that if the test doesn’t produce results that are acceptable, then something is probably amiss. Non-Hispanic whites make up 63 percent of the population; blacks make up a little over 12 percent.</p>
<p>Since 63 percent of the NBA isn’t made up of white guys, there’s a disparate impact – and you know what that means.</p>
<p>As for the Oscars, The Academy has just unveiled major changes in its structure and voting regulations in an effort to promote diversity. The goal is to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020 so that women comprise 48 percent of the organization and diverse groups make up 14 percent of total membership</p>
<p>That’s a start. But there’s another solution — one guaranteed to produce the proper results — that more than a few liberals would sign on to. The Academy could institute a rule that says 12-14 percent of all the nominations for best actor, best director, and best movie <em>must</em> go to African Americans and other minorities.</p>
<p>And to insure that’s it’s not just a way to appease those who feel alienated and dispossessed, 12-14 percent of the actual winners <em>must</em> then be made up of the African American film community.</p>
<p>Crazy? Sure! But it might actually work in Hollywood, where white liberal guilt knows no bounds. I’m guessing it wouldn’t go over so well in the NBA since the theory of disparate impact only applies to people in a “protected class” – which, of course, eliminates white males.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-25T08:00:00ZIs Hillary in Trouble? Can Bernie Pull Off the Impossible? Is America Going Nuts?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Hillary-in-Trouble-Can-Bernie-Pull-Off-the-Impossible-Is-America-Going-Nuts/117005117888102138.html2016-01-22T08:00:00Z2016-01-22T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>This is the headline that ran over a National Review story: <strong>Juanita Broaddrick Still Haunts Hillary Clinton</strong></p>
<p>Juanita Broaddrick, in case you don’t know, is the woman who accused then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton of raping her in a Little Rock hotel room, a charge, for the record, that through his lawyer, Clinton has denied.</p>
<p>Just a few weeks ago Ms. Broaddrick sent out a tweet about the incident. “I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73. . . . it never goes away.”</p>
<p>This is more than a tad inconvenient for Mrs. Clinton, who recently sent out a tweet of her own. “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported,” it said. Does that include Juanita Broaddrick?</p>
<p>Yes, National Review is a conservative publication that might find the Hillary angle too good to pass up, but the New York Times is a paper that’s not exactly hostile to liberal Democrats. Here’s the headline on a story the Times ran about Mrs. Clinton’s troubles with one of her key – if not her most important — voting blocs: <strong>’90s Scandals Threaten to Erode Hillary Clinton’s Strength With Women</strong></p>
<p>Right after the Times story, the Washington Post ran another about Mrs. Clinton, under this Q & A headline: <strong>Who had the worst week in Washington? Hillary Clinton</strong></p>
<p>Then there’s the headline on a Wall Street Journal op-ed: <strong>Hillary Is in Big Trouble</strong></p>
<p>The first sentence in that piece explains why. “Presidential races are about the future and Hillary Clinton is stuck in the past.” Fred Barnes, who wrote the op-ed, explained. “This year, angry voters have turned increasingly to populist, anti-establishment and future-oriented candidates. As a status quo candidate, she doesn’t fit the moment.” Besides, she’s a lousy campaigner.</p>
<p>On the same day as the Hillary is in trouble piece ran in the Journal, the lead editorial in that paper read: <strong>Taking Sanders Seriously</strong></p>
<p>“It’s time to take Bernie Sanders seriously,” the editorial began. “The Vermont Senator is leading in Iowa and New Hampshire and in Sunday’s debate he sounded for the first time like a candidate who thinks he can win. He still isn’t the favorite against the Clinton machine, but it’s no longer impossible to imagine the 74-year old as the Democratic nominee.”</p>
<p>So is Hillary really in trouble? Should we really take Bernie seriously?</p>
<p>Normally, the smart money would say no and no. But nothing is normal this year in politics. Who thought Donald Trump would still be around this late in the game? Who thought there’d be a good chance he’d win the GOP nomination? And who thought Sanders might beat Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire let alone just might be the party’s nominee.</p>
<p>What’s crazier than all that is how so many Americans actually do take Bernie Sanders seriously. If President Sanders got his way, he’d do what socialists always do: He’d run out of other people’s money and wreck the economy. Somebody’s got to pay for all that free stuff he’s promising to give away.</p>
<p>He’d start with higher taxes on the billionaires he detests. But even they don’t have enough money to pay for all of Bernie’s handouts. Free stuff is expensive. So the middle class likely would be next in line for a tax hike. And if President Sanders would never let that happen, we’d go so far into debt that we’d never come out of it in one piece.</p>
<p>I know. It’s <em>beyond</em> crazy. The American people are too smart to ever elect a guy like Sanders, right? Don’t bet on it.</p>
<p>According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted between January 9th and 13<sup>th</sup>, a whole lot of people really are taking Bernie seriously.</p>
<p>Here’s the question registered voters were asked: “If the election for president were held today, and Donald Trump were the Republican candidate and Bernie Sanders were the Democratic candidate, for whom would you vote?</p>
<p>Only 39 percent said they’d vote for Trump. But get this: <em>54 percent said they’d vote for Sanders. </em>(Five percent said they’d vote for neither or someone else, 1 percent said it “depends,” and another 1 percent weren’t sure.) Yes, more than half the registered voters polled would elect a nutty socialist over a loud-mouthed capitalist. Hey, who doesn’t want a free college education and lots of other free goodies – as long as somebody else is paying for it?</p>
<p>Polls this far out don’t mean much, of course. And I’m guessing Bernie will fade after New Hampshire. But I thought Trump would fade a long time ago. This time around, given the mood of the electorate, anything is not only theoretically possible but could actually happen.</p>
<p>Which brings to mind that old curmudgeon H.L. Mencken who famously said: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”</p>
<p>Don’t shoot your humble messenger. I’m not insulting anybody. All I’m doing is quoting the misanthrope who said it. But just between you and me … he’s right.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-22T08:00:00ZWhen Is a Crime Committed in the Name of Allah Not About Islam?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-Is-a-Crime-Committed-in-the-Name-of-Allah-Not-About-Islam/139271251869062667.html2016-01-15T08:00:00Z2016-01-15T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Politicians say dopey things all the time, but every now and then one of them says something so downright dim-witted that you have to stop and take notice.</p>
<p>Nancy Pelosi, of course, is such an example. When she said that Congress would have to pass ObamaCare so we could find out what’s in it, I thought that was the dumbest remark I’d ever heard from a politician.</p>
<p>But sorry, Nancy, move over — we have a new winner.</p>
<p>In Philadelphia, you’ll recall, a police officer was shot repeatedly while he sat in his police car. It was all caught on surveillance cameras. According to the city’s police commissioner, Richard Ross, the gunman, who was captured moments after the shooting, told police he shot the officer in the name of Islam; that “the police defend laws that are contrary to Islam”; that all he wanted to talk about in the police station was his devotion to Islam.</p>
<p>Just seconds after Commissioner Ross made all this quite clear at a news conference, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, went to the microphones to declare: “In no way, shape or form does anybody in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with” the shooting, which the mayor said, “does not represent the religion or any of its teachings.”</p>
<p>To the blissfully delusional mayor, the incident was just your run-of-the mill crime. “This is a criminal with a stolen gun,” the mayor said, “who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”</p>
<p>Right after the mayor made a fool of himself, the head of the police department’s homicide unit, James Clark, walked up to the microphones and said the shooter had repeatedly said that he was a follower of Allah and that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and “That is the reason I did what I did,” he quoted the shooter as saying.</p>
<p>Did I mention that Mayor Kenney is a liberal Democrat? Did I have to?</p>
<p>What is it about so many on the Left that requires them to deny the obvious? If someone says he tried to kill a cop in the name of Islam, why pretend that’s not what he did?</p>
<p>There was a time when the antics of the politically correct crowd were the butt of jokes. Speech codes on college campuses, for example, were, in their own way treacherous, but funny at the same time. There was a rule at one college that prohibited “inappropriate laughter” so as not to hurt the feelings of any of the hypersensitive students on campus. I know that’s serious business but it’s so ridiculous you have to laugh – at the left-wing jerks who came up with such a rule. As I’ve said many times: liberals over the years forgot how to be liberal.</p>
<p>When I heard about the remarks of the mayor in Philadelphia I went back to the files to find an op-ed I remembered reading in the Wall Street Journal on the subject of denial. It was by Ayaan Hirsi Ali who grew up a Muslim, is now an atheist, and who has become an activist calling for the reformation of her former religion. For this, she has received many death threats.</p>
<p>On March 20, 2015, she wrote this in the Journal: “I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace.”</p>
<p>“ When I assert this,” she went on, “I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam.”</p>
<p>Do liberals like Mayor Kenney – and for that matter, liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – not understand this?</p>
<p>Here’s what liberals in our country, who deny the obvious, have in common: They have a dark view of America – and more specifically of <em>Americans</em>. They believe racism in general and hatred for Muslims in particular is embedded in the DNA of the American people. They believe bigotry is always lurking in the shadows, just looking for an excuse to strike. So they say Islam has nothing to do with crimes committed in the name of Islam in order to ward off the mayhem against Muslims they believe is waiting to be unleashed by hateful Americans – 99.9 percent of them, of course, being conservative Republicans.</p>
<p>We are constantly being told that if we see something we should say something. Most Americans of good will see very clearly what happened in Philadelphia. They see that a Muslim tried to kill a police officer in the name of Allah. They see a man whose guidance came from his Holy book. But if they say something – if they say the obvious – the mayor of Philadelphia and the other liberals just like him – will call them bigots.</p>
<p>Political correctness isn’t funny anymore. It’s gotten downright dangerous. And millions upon millions of Americans are fed up, refusing to deny the obvious. The mayor of Philadelphia may believe that Islam or the teaching of that religion had nothing to do with the shooting of that police officer. But no one else, with an ounce of common sense, believes it.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-15T08:00:00ZCan the Republican Party Survive?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Can-the-Republican-Party-Survive/799882025902701532.html2016-01-11T08:00:00Z2016-01-11T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Every four years we get the same alert: “This is the most important presidential election in our lifetime.” The message is clear, if not spoken in so many words: Get out and vote because if you don’t and the wrong candidate wins … <em>America is doomed</em>! Of course, it never quite works out that way. Somehow we manage to survive. And then, four years later, we get the same dire warning.</p>
<p>But this time the boy may not be crying wolf. This time, at least for Republicans, it may very well be the most important election of a lifetime – and not because of the fear that if Hillary wins the country will go down the drain. This time the very existence of the party may be at stake.</p>
<p>The two leading candidates on the Republican side – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz – are also the most polarizing candidates in the field. Their supporters love them and their detractors detest them. They may be the most popular on the GOP side at the moment — but they may also be the least popular in a general election.</p>
<p>In a New York Times story, under the headline, “For Republicans, Mounting Fears of Lasting Split”, Senator Lindsey Graham says, in essence, that judgment day for his party is coming.</p>
<p>“If Trump or Cruz wins the White House, then my side of the party has to re-evaluate who we are, what we stand for, and I’d be willing to do that,” he told the Times. “But if Trump or Cruz loses the presidency, would their supporters re-evaluate their views on immigration and other issues that would grow the party? If they do that, we can come back together. If they don’t, the party probably splits in a permanent way.”</p>
<p>That’s not an exaggeration. Cruz supporters have very little in common with those who like John Kasich or Chris Christie, for example. Trump supporters don’t have much use for Jeb Bush or Carly Fiorina. Will the moderates really “re-evaluate” what their party stands for if their wing loses. Maybe. But it’s hard to imagine the hard right doing much re-evaluating – a process many in that wing see as selling out their principles.</p>
<p>As the Times points out, “While party leaders like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina say Republicans are in a ‘demographic death spiral’ and will not survive unless they start appealing to Hispanics and young people, many voters see such statements as a capitulation. They hunger for an unapologetic brand of conservatism that would confront rather than acquiesce to the political establishment — sentiments that have been amplified by conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and commentators like Ann Coulter, whose verbal broadsides influence the party’s agenda.”</p>
<p>The split is real. It’s not just that the hard right disagrees with moderates; the hard right detests the moderates, whom they see as wimpy RINOs. And the feelings are mutual going the other way. The moderates see the hard right as crazies who think compromise is a felony. So, do the two wings of the Republican Party have enough in common to actually come together and back the party’s candidate, whoever it turns out to be?</p>
<p>It’s plausible that if Trump doesn’t get the nomination, many of his followers, disillusioned as they might be, would jump onto the Cruz bandwagon. And the same is true if Cruz doesn’t get the nomination; many of his supporters would support Trump.</p>
<p>But what if the frontrunners don’t make it to the finish line? It’s hard to imagine Trump and Cruz supporters backing an “establishment” candidate. Marco Rubio might be a someone both sides can support. But that’s not a sure thing – or anything close to a sure thing.</p>
<p>America may not flourish if Hillary Clinton wins. The last thing we need next time around is Barack Obama in a dress. But America will survive. It always does. As for the Republican Party … I’m not at all sure about that.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-11T08:00:00ZTed Cruz May Win in Iowa, But Iowa Ain't AmericaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ted-Cruz-May-Win-in-Iowa-But-Iowa-Aint-America/843822621504483241.html2016-01-07T08:00:00Z2016-01-07T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>There are a lot of evangelical Christians in Iowa and Ted Cruz spends a lot of time courting them. If for whatever reason they sit home on Caucus Day, it’s no secret that Ted Cruz would be in trouble – and not just in Iowa. He’s expected to win there and if he doesn’t, it could set a string of losses in motion that very well might torpedo his hopes to be president.</p>
<p>From the start, a key element in Cruz’s strategy to win the GOP nomination was winning evangelicals, in Iowa and beyond. That’s why Cruz kicked off his campaign at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia — a school founded by Jerry Falwell, the late fundamentalist minister. It’s why in Iowa, Cruz’s father, a pastor, campaigns for him, targeting evangelicals. And it’s why if there’s a religious rally in the state, Cruz will be there.</p>
<p>And at one of those rallies Cruz told the crowd that Republicans lost the last two presidential elections because millions of evangelicals stayed at home. “I believe the key to winning in 2016 is very simple,” he said. “We have to bring back to the polls the millions of conservatives who stayed home, we have to awaken and energize the body of Christ.”</p>
<p>At another rally he said that people of faith who sit home instead of voting “allow non-believers to elect our leaders.”</p>
<p>When asked by a conservative pastor moderating a religious rally how important it is for “the president of the United States to fear God,” Cruz responded that, “any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation.”</p>
<p>That, it would seem, would disqualify Jews for the presidency – and of course, atheists. Jews don’t kneel in prayer and atheists don’t pray.</p>
<p>Does Ted Cruz really think Jews are unqualified to be president? That’s not a rhetorical question given the depth of his evangelical faith. And what about atheists? Does he not think an atheist could lead a good, decent, honorable life and be an inspiring leader – or is leading a good, decent, honorable life not enough? In Ted Cruz’s world do you really have to be a God-fearing Christian who starts each day on his knees to be commander-in-chief of the United States? Well, based on his words, yes.</p>
<p>Maybe Cruz was simply doing what politicians often do – maybe he was just pandering to the crowd. But I have long suspected that if he could simply snap his fingers and make it so, Ted Cruz would snap them and turn the United States into a theocracy. And I’ve also had suspicions that had he been born a Muslim, he’d be the kind of Muslim who favors Sharia law.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz is against gay marriage and that’s not only his right, it makes sense given his religious sensibilities. But he co-sponsored a rally for that county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples – despite the fact that she took an oath to obey the law and the Supreme Court had already spoken on the legitimacy of gay marriage.</p>
<p>Would President Ted Cruz issue executive orders to knock down Supreme Court decisions that violate his religious values? He’s called the decision on gay marriage “fundamentally illegitimate” and “lawless.” So he might.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz is preaching to the choir in Iowa, but the rest of America is not quite like Iowa. Fifty-seven percent of Iowa caucus voters identify themselves as evangelical Christians. The percentage in the entire United States is just 13 percent.</p>
<p>And Republicans aren’t quite like most Americans. A recent CNN poll found that a jaw-dropping 43 percent of Republicans believe President Obama is a Muslim — compared to 29 percent of all Americans. Mr. Obama is a Christian, despite what nearly half of Republicans think.</p>
<p>What works in Iowa and what works with Republicans, I’m betting, won’t work in the broader country. Ted Cruz could win the GOP nomination – that’s a possibility –but if he does, there’s a very good chance that Hillary will be the next President of the United States.</p>
<p>Why? One reason is that Americans are becoming less religious and more secular. A poll by Pew found that there are about five million fewer Christians across the country than there were in 2007 — and the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation rose to nearly 23 percent from 16 percent in 2007.</p>
<p>That may be good or bad for America in general depending on your point of view. But it’s not good for Ted Cruz in particular.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-07T08:00:00ZHillary Opens Door on "Sexism" - and Trump Barges InBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Opens-Door-on-Sexism---and-Trump-Barges-In/932476676237402493.html2016-01-01T08:00:00Z2016-01-01T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Everybody with a pulse knew that Hillary Clinton was going to play the gender card every chance she got in her pursuit of the presidency. Everyone knew that any slight – real or imagined – was going to be portrayed as a shot not just at her, but at all women everywhere on the planet.</p>
<p>So when, at a Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders said that “all the shouting in the world” would not solve the problem of gun violence, this, somehow, became an example of Sanders’ sexism.</p>
<p>“Well, first of all, I’m not shouting,” Mrs. Clinton responded. “It’s just when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.”</p>
<div>Bernie Sanders is a sexist pig. Who knew?</div>
<p>And when she was asked how her presidency would be different from President Obama’s, she didn’t talk about foreign or domestic policy. Instead she said, “Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. Being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had, including President Obama.”</p>
<p>Then when Donald Trump did what he so often does – act like a smart-ass kid in 9<sup>th</sup> grade – and said that Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” – a Yiddish word for penis – by Barack Obama in the 2008 election … and that her bathroom break during the last Democratic presidential debate was “disgusting,” she couldn’t resist. Donald Trump, she told an interviewer, has a “penchant for sexism.”</p>
<p>Never mind whether it’s true or not. Didn’t she know what she was unleashing?</p>
<p>This is the same Hillary Clinton, you’ll recall, whose husband Bill, you might say, also had a penchant for sexism. In fact, Donald Trump took to Twitter to say just that.</p>
<p>“Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!”</p>
<p>I’m not at all sure this is good politics on Trump’s part. After all, most Americans didn’t care about what Bill Clinton was doing to women even while he was doing it. Are they going to care now? And is it fair to expect Hillary to answer for what her husband did?</p>
<p>Well, yes.</p>
<p>According to the papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton once described as her “closest friend,” Mrs. Clinton referred to Monica Lewinski as a “narcissistic loony toon.” And in 1993, according to Blair’s diary, Mrs. Clinton ridiculed a group of women who made claims of sexual harassment against Republican senator Bob Packwood. Blair wrote that, “HC tired of all those whiney women, and she needs him on health care.” Senator Packwood was heading up her husband’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reshape the U.S. health care system.</p>
<p>And I don’t remember Hillary Clinton coming to the defense of any of the many women who were called “bimbos” by Clinton’s campaign team. Were they “whiney” too? Mrs. Clinton is nothing if not practical. She’ll yell sexism if she thinks it’ll help her, but stay silent when her husband was in the cross-hairs; one gets the impression not so much out of love or loyalty, but rather out of political expediency.</p>
<p>“I think he’s fair game because his presidency was considered to be troubled, to put it mildly,” Trump said. “Because of all the things she’s mentioning to me. She actually said sexism, I don’t know if you saw the following tweet, but I turned her words against her from that standpoint. She’s got to be careful and fair. We all have to fight fairly and we have to fight for the good of the country, for the good of the people, for the good of everybody. But we have to fight fairly. And she’s playing the woman’s card. It’s like, give me a break.”</p>
<p>As I say, as a political matter, Trump may not win this one, but he’s right. If Hillary is going to a) use her husband on the campaign trail to help her win the White House and b) throw around charges of sexism … she opened a “dangerous door,” in the words of liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. “It should surprise no one that Trump has barged right through it.”</p>
<p>So which is worse: Trump’s language – his <em>words</em> — or Hillary Clinton’s surrogate on the campaign trail, Bill Clinton’s actions? It may indeed be sexist to demean Carly Fiorina’s looks and talk about blood coming out of Megyn Kelly’s “wherever.” It may also be bad taste to chatter about “schlongs” and “disgusting” bathroom breaks. But Bill Clinton preyed on women, in the workplace.</p>
<p>If there’s a war on women, who’s the real guilty party here?</p>
<p>Yes, Donald Trump can be vulgar. But what Bill Clinton did goes beyond vulgar. And if Hillary plans to use him to help her get elected, Trump is on firm ground pointing that out.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2016-01-01T08:00:00ZIf Kids Are Off Limits, Don't Use Them as PropsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Kids-Are-Off-Limits-Dont-Use-Them-as-Props/447796582471035971.html2015-12-28T08:00:00Z2015-12-28T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>You can get away with a lot of things in the world of politics – just ask Donald Trump or Bill Clinton – but making fun of a candidate’s kids apparently is not one of those things.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m referring to the Washington Post cartoon that portrayed Senator Ted Cruz as an organ grinder in a Santa Clause outfit and his daughters, age 5 and 7, also in Christmas outfits, as … trained monkeys. The caption read: “Ted Cruz uses his kids as political props.”</p>
<p>Just about everyone has condemned the cartoon, starting with Cruz who said, “Not much ticks me off, but making fun of my girls? That will do it. Don’t mess with my kids. Don’t mess with Marco’s kids. Don’t mess with Hillary’s kids. Don’t mess with anybody’s kids.”</p>
<p>A Fox commentator said the cartoon was a form of “child abuse.”</p>
<p>Others were satisfied simply saying what the Post did was disgraceful and pointing out the media’s double standard — noting that it’s hard to believe a big city paper would ever run such a cartoon about the children of a liberal Democrat.</p>
<p>And just a few hours after the cartoon went up on a Post webpage, Fred Hiatt, the paper’s editorial page editor, yanked it and replaced it with a personal note – not quite an apology, but an admission of a kind of, sort of, mistake.</p>
<p>“It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it,” Hiatt wrote. “I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. I understand why Ann [Telnaes, the cartoonist] thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”</p>
<p>Fine. But if kids are off limits, someone apparently forgot to tell Ted Cruz.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to use your family as props, showing off your lovely wife and beautiful children around the Christmas tree – and leave it at that. But that’s not what Ted Cruz did.</p>
<p>In the video, Cruz, his wife and two daughters are sitting on the living room couch in front of the family Christmas tree with Daddy – the Senator — reading Christmas stories that are takeoffs on the classics. There’s “How ObamaCare Stole Christmas,” and “Rudolph the Underemployed Reindeer,” and “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails.”</p>
<p>Take a wild guess who that would be.</p>
<p>In the ad, Cruz’s 7- year old daughter (over-dramatically) reads a parody passage from the book: “’I know just what I’ll do’, she snickered, ‘I’ll use my own server and no on will be the wiser.’”</p>
<p>Take that Hillary!</p>
<p>Then the 5-year old says, “Please read this one Daddy,” handing him a book titled, “The Senator Who Saved Christmas.”</p>
<p>Let’s see if I have this right: It’s okay to use your daughters to make political points that you hope will help you win the GOP nomination for president, but it’s child abuse for a cartoonist to point out that you’re using you kids as political props?</p>
<p>As for Ann Telnaes, the cartoonist, she was unapologetic. “When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game,” she wrote.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, one more thing: Cruz is using the episode to raise $1 million for his presidential campaign. “I knew I’d be facing attacks from day one of my campaign, but I never expected anything like this,” Cruz said in a fund-raising email. “Help me send a message to the Washington Post. My daughters are NOT FAIR GAME!”</p>
<p>And what’s the morale of this Christmas tale? Never let a crisis – even a phony, trumped-up crisis — go to waste, especially if you’re running for president and need money.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-12-28T08:00:00ZHow Do The Most Faithful Trump Supporters Defend Their Messiah?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-Do-The-Most-Faithful-Trump-Supporters-Defend-Their-Messiah/-127347149997841438.html2015-12-21T08:00:00Z2015-12-21T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I’ve been trying to think of something – <em>anything</em>, actually – that Donald Trump could say that would cause his most faithful supporters to dump him. Something they would find so offensive that would get them to end their torrid love affair with him. And I finally came up with one possibility.</p>
<p>If at one of his massive rallies, Trump raised his hands asking for silence from the crowd, and said, “I believe Barack Obama is an American. I believe he was born in Hawaii. I believe his birth certificate is real. I further believe he is a Christian and therefore is not a Muslim,” that would do him in. But that’s the only thing that would do him in. And since that’s not going to happen …</p>
<p>There is nothing in the real world that would make his most passionate backers turn on him. Nothing. The other day, when Joe Scarborough on MSNBC asked Trump about the compliment he received from Vladimir Putin, Trump returned the praise saying, “at least he’s a leader.” But when Scarborough pointed out that Putin orders the murder of journalists and other political opponents, what did Trump say? “Our country does plenty of killing too.”</p>
<p>Imagine if Barack Obama had said that. Or Hillary Clinton. Conservatives would go wild. But when Trump takes a shot at his own country, they yawn; that is if they’re not cheering.</p>
<p>Something is very wrong here.</p>
<p>The fact is that Donald Trump’s supporters are different from Kasich supporters and Christie supporters and Bush supporters and Rubio supporters and Fiorina supporters and Huckabee supports and just about every other candidate’s supporters. And as I said in my last column and also on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Trump supporters are not like most Americans, either — in that they’re angrier, they’re more frustrated, and they feel more alienated from the political system.</p>
<p>You’d think they’d not only agree that they’re more disgusted than most with politics as usual but would wear the observation as a badge of honor, as a sign that they care more about the future of the country than most Americans. They didn’t see it that way. They were furious, especially since I said that the polls by and large show that Trump won’t beat Hillary if he wins the GOP nomination.</p>
<p>And how do Trump’s diehard supporters show their love for him, how do they defend their messiah from the blasphemy of a commentator with an “unacceptable” opinion? Here’s how (with ** replacing the actual words they wrote):</p>
<p>“Bernie, f**k you in the a** you punk,” wrote one Trump fan we’ll call Z, the first letter of his last name, the only name he apparently goes by in the dark recesses of social media.</p>
<p>Someone named Melanie wrote to simply tell me to “Shut the F**k up.” When I asked if she kisses her mother with that mouth, to her credit, she apologized.</p>
<p>Joseph said I was “the enemy of America” because I don’t support Trump for president.</p>
<p>Walter, who like many of the angriest in the Trump camp, can’t spell, wrote: “Your an idiot!” Don added an adjective, telling me that I’m a “senile idiot.”</p>
<p>Woody, who writes in capital letters, told me I should “DROP DEAD.” He wrote again to inform me that he “CONTACTED VLAD THE IMPALER—HE WILL GLADLY STICK YOUR POLLS UP YOU’RE A**—YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A TIMES HACK…”</p>
<p>I never worked for the Times, but since Trump supporters hate the media as much as they hate Obama and the GOP leadership, maybe Woody figured he’d take a shot at the New York Times while he was at it.</p>
<p>Josh wrote to simply say: “You suck.”</p>
<p>Von had a conspiracy theory. “We realize what they [commentators on Fox News] really want is for an Catholic to be President,” he wrote, and since Trump is not “an” Catholic the Fox crowd is going after him.</p>
<p>Then there are the ones who call Hillary Clinton, “Hitlery” and the ones who don’t like Jews or Muslims or gays or blacks and who think Krauthammer, Will, Hayes and O’Reilly are a bunch of wimpy liberals and that the Fox News Channel and yours truly should “Go to hell.”</p>
<p>These people shouldn’t be allowed to get anywhere near sharp instruments or cars.</p>
<p>And for the record, I’m not the only one who receives this kind of fan mail. There are others on TV, and others who write newspaper columns pointing out Donald Trump’s shortcomings, who get the same kind of <em>thoughtful</em> missives.</p>
<p>Not all Trump supporters are vulgar, of course. But too many are. And it’s their leader’s style – Trump’s gratuitous vindictiveness when responding to opponents who have criticized him – that unleashes the ugliness that is not good for politics or for civil debate in this country.</p>
<p>Trust me, I’m not looking for sympathy. I can handle bad language and dopey potshots. Still, it is depressing – and not just because people who like to think of themselves as conservatives, people who supported Ronald Reagan, shouldn’t act this way, but also because too many conservatives in the media, the ones who carry big megaphones and have the ability to influence opinion, don’t seem to care.</p>
<p>I understand that they don’t want to come across as a kind of clergy, piously lecturing their flock on how to behave. But is this kind of poison okay with conservatives on talk radio? Is it okay with Trump’s many friends on the Fox News Channel?</p>
<p>Do they hate liberals and Democrats so much that they won’t speak out against the venom that Donald Trump is bringing out in too many of his supporters?</p>
<p>Is this the kind of conservatism real conservatives want? Is it the kind of America they want?</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-12-21T08:00:00ZAre Trump Supporters Like Most Americans?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Are-Trump-Supporters-Like-Most-Americans/-575136252524428141.html2015-12-17T08:00:00Z2015-12-17T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Is there anything Donald Trump can say or do that would hurt him with his devoted supporters who think America is going down the drain and that a political version of Dirty Harry is the only thing that can save us? Is there a line Trump could cross that would cause them to look elsewhere for their knight in shining armor?</p>
<p>Let’s just say that if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now given all the things he’s already said and done and all the lines he’s already crossed. In fact, the more outlandish and outrageous Donald Trump gets, the more his supporters love him.</p>
<p>There was a time when Trump was seen as nothing more than a summer fling, as a romance that would end after the fascination with a billionaire TV star faded. But the so-called experts who thought that’s how it would end for Trump, underestimated – <em>vastly underestimated</em> – the frustration and anger his backers felt … for President Obama … for the media that support him … and mostly for the leaders of their own Republican Party, who they see as pathetically spineless and weak when it comes to standing up to the president.</p>
<p>For millions of Americans who feel alienated and dispossessed, Donald Trump is the antidote, the no-nonsense, anti-PC guy who, like them, is as mad as hell and refuses to take it anymore.</p>
<p>Now, even the so-called experts have come around and acknowledge that Donald Trump not only isn’t going away as they so confidently predicted, but that he may very well win the Republican Party nomination for president.</p>
<p>That’s what a lot of people are hoping — and not just Trump loyalists. It’s what a lot of Democrats are hoping too — Democrats who want Hillary Clinton to be our next president. And a recent Quinnipiac poll provides some tantalizing tidbits for the Hillary backers. A few numbers:</p>
<p>— Of the 12 Democrat and Republican candidates asked about, Trump has the lowest favorability ratings: 35 percent favorable, 57 percent unfavorable.</p>
<p>— 60 percent of independents dislike him</p>
<p>— 69 percent of voters between 18 and 34 years old dislike him</p>
<p>— 84 percent of Latinos don’t like him</p>
<p>— 87 percent of black voters don’t like him</p>
<p>And while voters in the poll found <em>both </em>Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to be more untrustworthy than trustworthy, by 67 percent to 32 percent, they thought Mrs. Clinton has “the right kind of experience to be president” while Trump’s numbers were the reverse: 34 percent to 63 percent.</p>
<p>In a head-to-head matchup against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump comes out the worst of all the top GOP candidates. According to Quinnipiac, he loses to her 47 to 41 percent. Among young voters he loses 52 to 32 percent. He gets only 13 percent of the Latino vote while Mrs. Clinton gets 76 percent.</p>
<p>Things can change, of course. The Quinnipiac poll is only a glimpse of how people feel today. And, yes, other polls have had Trump beating Clinton. But given his many reckless remarks, it’s going to be tough for Donald Trump to expand his base of true-believers. And given the many lopsided numbers in this new poll, as of now anyway, it looks like Donald Trump is a net minus for the GOP; that if he wins the Republican Party nomination, Hillary Clinton would be the next President of the United States.</p>
<p>The mistake Trump’s passionate, loyal, frustrated and often angry supporters make is that they believe most Americans think and feel the way they do. Most Americans apparently don’t.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-12-17T08:00:00ZA President Who Fails to Instil ConfidenceBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-President-Who-Fails-to-Instil-Confidence/736155094068815748.html2015-12-08T08:00:00Z2015-12-08T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>I can’t imagine that there are many Americans who listened to President Obama’s Oval Office speech on terrorism and when it was over took a deep breath and said, “Now I feel better.”</p>
<p>This isn’t entirely Mr. Obama’s fault, of course. At some level we know that what happened in San Bernardino can (and probably will) happen again someplace else in this country. No matter what the president does, it may not be enough.</p>
<p>But when it comes to fighting the war on terror, President Obama doesn’t exactly instill confidence. He hasn’t even used the term since January 23, 2009 – <em>his fourth day in office. </em></p>
<p>As for the most menacing face of terror, ISIS, in Mr. Obama’s words, was the jayvee team. They were “contained.” ISIS had other ideas and attacked Paris. One hundred thirty innocents were slaughtered. Mr. Obama called it a “setback.”</p>
<p>For too long President Obama refused to bomb the oil fields that ISIS controlled because, according to former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, the president was concerned about the “environmental impact.”</p>
<p>No one will confuse Barack Obama with Harry Truman. Or Franklin Roosevelt. Or Winston Churchill. Or Hilary Benn.</p>
<p>Yes, Hillary Benn, a member of Britain’s Labour Party, who recently rose up in the British House of Commons during a debate on a Conservative Party plan to bomb territory held by ISIS — and said something liberals usually don’t say.</p>
<p>Mr. Benn (despite his first name, it is <em>Mr.</em> Benn) not only challenged his own party on bombing ISIS, but also confronted his liberal colleagues who refuse to see the enemy for what it is.</p>
<p>“We are here faced by fascists,” he said. “Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight, and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.”</p>
<p>President Obama, of course, knows that ISIS needs to be defeated. But has he ever delivered a speech with such eloquence and directness as the one by Hilary Benn? To this day, he won’t utter the words “Islamic terrorists.” During the last Democratic presidential debate, all the candidates refused to state the obvious – that we’re at war with radical Islam. And Hillary Clinton said the term was “not particularly helpful.”</p>
<p>None of this liberal squeamishness is resonating even with those who once supported Barack Obama. Polls show that a big majority of Americans don’t approve of the way the president is fighting terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. But even in his Oval Office speech, he offered nothing new in the way of a strategy to defeat the Islamic State.</p>
<p>Mike Tyson once observed that every boxer has a plan – until he gets hit in the mouth. President Obama’s plan (whatever it is) has taken more than a few shots to the mouth. But it’s as if the president actually believes that his vision of a world –where ISIS is the junior varsity and is contained and terrorism is on the run — is the real world, simply because he deems it so.</p>
<p>Barack Obama once got by on his magic, on a charisma that few politicians are lucky enough to possess. The magic is gone. The charisma, such as it is, no longer mesmerizes. Americans know we’re at war with Islamic terrorists, no matter how inconvenient the president and Hillary Clinton find that fact to be. And no matter how many times they refuse to even utter those words.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-12-08T08:00:00ZIt's Time To Face Facts: Trump Can Win The GOP Nomination!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Its-Time-To-Face-Facts:-Trump-Can-Win-The-GOP-Nomination!/248164730461206617.html2015-11-30T08:00:00Z2015-11-30T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Donald Trump is making waves again on the campaign trail and stirring up another ugly controversy, which is like saying the sun rises in the east.</p>
<p>The scene of the crime this time was a rally in South Carolina, a rally where Trump jerked his body and contorted his arms like a man with a physical disability. To just about everybody, Trump was making fun of a New York Times reporter who said something Trump didn’t like. The reporter has a physical disability.</p>
<p>More than a few called Trump’s latest childish stunt “despicable.” Trump responded with a straight face, saying, “I would never mock a person that has difficulty. I would never do that. I’m telling you, I would never do it.</p>
<p>You have to hand it to Donald Trump. Everyone saw what he did, and still he’s got the audacity to ask if we’re going to believe him or our lying eyes?</p>
<p>Trump doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t say, “I went too far this time and I’m sorry.” Humility is not in his DNA. Instead he says <em>you’re</em> the one who got it wrong, thinking he would ever say or do what he just said or did.</p>
<p>Remember when he took a cheap shot at John McCain, saying he was only “a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” It didn’t take long for Trump to say anyone who thinks he said what he actually said, got it wrong.</p>
<p>And you remember when he mocked Carly Fiorina, “Look at that face,” he said. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Two seconds later he told the world how much he admires women and blamed any misrepresentation of his remarks on … you!</p>
<p>Now he’s making fun of a man with a physical disability and some are wondering if he finally has gone too far, if this latest crude insult will not only hurt him but finally do him in.</p>
<p>It won’t. Nothing he says, no matter how nasty, hurts him. Every time he calls somebody a loser or a moron or a dummy, his poll numbers go up. Every time he says something that even he, at some level, must know he shouldn’t have said, he denies saying what you think he said.</p>
<p>Brit Hume, the savvy Fox News analyst, got it right when he noted that Trump proves Lincoln’s dictum that “You can fool some of the people all of the time.”</p>
<p>Along with everyone else in the commentary business, I said Trump wouldn’t run. I said he was just teasing as usual. After he got into the race, I said he wouldn’t catch on. After he caught on, I said he jumped the shark when he mocked a genuine war hero. I said family values conservatives would desert him when he made fun of a woman’s appearance. Now I am throwing in the towel and at long last coming to the realization that Donald Trump can actually win the Republican Party nomination for president.</p>
<p>I was wrong about everything else I said about Trump until now. With a little luck I’ll be wrong about my latest prediction.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-11-30T08:00:00ZShould We Allow Syrian Refugees into America?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Should-We-Allow-Syrian-Refugees-into-America/834051622222596361.html2015-11-23T08:00:00Z2015-11-23T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Whether it’s mainly President Obama’s doing or that of his opponents, we have become a deeply polarized nation, a place where there is no shortage of issues that divide the political parties and the American people. The controversy separating the two sides at the moment involves refugees from Syria. For President Obama and many of his liberal followers it’s a question of morality. They want to accept 10,000 refugees into this country by the end of next year. For Republicans and their conservative followers it’s about security. They don’t want any refugees allowed in unless they can be thoroughly vetted to make sure no terrorists are sneaking in with the others.</p>
<p>Reasonable people, as the old saying goes, may disagree. But President Obama rarely sees those who disagree with him as reasonable. Republicans, he believes, are capitalizing on unjustified fear, playing cheap campaign politics, and adding for good measure that “Slamming the door” in the faces of those refugees “would be a betrayal of our values.”</p>
<p>Never mind that the concerns come in the wake of the Paris massacre that left 130 people dead – and news that at least one of the terrorists entered Europe embedded in the wave of refugees from Syria. If it can happen there, the president’s opponents are saying, it can happen here too.</p>
<p>Even some Democrats, who usually support the president on just about everything, have parted company with him. When the House passed a bill that would suspend the program allowing Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the United States until national security agencies certify they don’t pose a security risk, 47 Democrats joined 242 Republicans in favor of the bill. The New York Times unsurprisingly called the vote “fearful ignorance.”</p>
<p>Despite the Times’ editorial, the American people are worried too. According to a poll by Bloomberg, 53 percent oppose resettlement of the refugees in the United States while only 28 percent are with the president and a majority of his party in Congress.</p>
<p>None of this is likely to influence the president. He is a lame duck after all. He won’t face the voters again. This is a man who even after the slaughter in Paris, and more recently the terrorist attack in Mali that left at least 21 dead, still won’t utter the words, “Muslim terrorists,” or “Islamic terrorists,” or “Radical Islamist,” or anything that comes close.</p>
<p>Instead, the president speaks in what he sees as less offensive, generic terms, describing Muslim terrorists as “violent extremists,” and says, “Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.”</p>
<p>“We are not at war with Islam,” he tells us, as if anyone other than the demented terrorists and the paranoid think we are. “This great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence,” he says.</p>
<p>And Mr. Obama is not alone. Neither Hillary Clinton nor the other Democratic candidates for president would utter the words, “Radical Islam” when questioned at their last debate.</p>
<p>And while Mr. Obama may differ on many things with his Republican predecessor, President Bush said the very same things.</p>
<p>“The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself,” according to Mr. Bush. “The Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion,” he has said.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Bush is a scholar when it comes to Islam. They should not pretend to be. Nor should they run from an inconvenient truth: that Islamic terrorists don’t get their marching orders from a comic book. They don’t soak up their hatred by reading Catcher in the Rye. They learn their “values” from their holy book, the Koran</p>
<p>The president and the others say the terrorists have “perverted” Islam. What they won’t acknowledge is that radical Islam is more popular than they care to believe. This is how Ben Domench put it in the Daily Beast: The terrorists are “not an extremist fringe, but a real and indeed somewhat popular strain of ‘radical Islam’ … with significant mass support in places like Paris.”</p>
<p>So are the terrorists “perverting” their religion or simply adhering to it? What if they’re right, that they’re the <em>real</em> Muslims who follow the letter of Islamic law, and all the others are apostates?</p>
<p>This is something Mr. Obama has chosen not to consider, not publicly anyway. But he might want to think about something Timothy Egan, the reliably liberal columnist for the New York Times, wrote exactly one week after the slaughter in Paris and just hours before the massacre in Mali:</p>
<p>“The world’s worst terrorists are Muslim in name, and Muslim in warped practice, with Muslims as most of their victims. That truth should not be denied. They cite a holy book to do horrible things.”</p>
<p>In times of crisis, it’s important to state the obvious.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-11-23T08:00:00ZIs Obama Prepared to Wage "Pitiless" War Against ISIS?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Obama-Prepared-to-Wage-Pitiless-War-Against-ISIS/-660973764210736286.html2015-11-16T08:00:00Z2015-11-16T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>There’s an old joke that says it’s not really a war until the French surrender. It’s probably an unfair shot, but for a long time, at least among Americans, France has been the butt of more than a few jokes about weakness in the face of danger. So when the President of France conveys more strength and toughness than the President of the United States, you know we have a problem.</p>
<p>Francois Hollande wasted no time vowing to wage “pitiless” war against ISIS after the massacre in Paris. Here in America, President Obama can’t bring himself to utter the words, “Islamic terrorism,” presumably out of concern that he might hurt the feelings of some Muslims.</p>
<p>One day before the Paris massacre, Mr. Obama told ABC News that ISIS was “contained” – in Iraq and Syria. He may or may not be right about that, but no serious person would make the case that ISIS is contained beyond the chaos of the Middle East. Nor would any serious person contend that ISIS is a jayvee team, the term Mr. Obama once used to describe the Islamic State. And despite what the president has said, ISIS isn’t “on the run,” either. Wishful thinking isn’t a legitimate policy when it comes to fighting savages.</p>
<p>This is a president who wants to end wars, a president who is determined to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Obama is a reluctant warrior – and that may be a generous description.</p>
<p>But does anyone think that the people behind the Paris slaughter don’t have the United States in their crosshairs? Does anyone think they’re not contemplating a similar attack in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles – or Peoria? And do we really think that ISIS won’t try to sneak a few terrorists into this country when we accept thousands of refugees from Syria?</p>
<p>Marco Rubio is right: “This is a clash of civilizations. Either they win or we win. This is a movement motivated by religion.” If President Obama prefers to use words like <em>violent extremists</em> to describe <em>Islamic terrorists</em>, if he’s more comfortable describing the slaughter at Fort Hood by a Muslim fanatic in the U.S. Army as <em>workplace violence</em>, then it’s fair to question whether he has the resolve to wage <em>pitiless war</em> against the enemy.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-11-16T08:00:00ZWhat Ben Carson Can Learn from Brian WilliamsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Ben-Carson-Can-Learn-from-Brian-Williams/672639191314692041.html2015-11-10T08:00:00Z2015-11-10T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Anyone who reads my columns knows that I’m not a fan of Ben Carson. He says too many nutty things – about America being like Nazi Germany and about ObamaCare being the worse thing to happen to this country since slavery.</p>
<p>And now he’s in the news, standing accused pretty much of being a liar – of making things up about his past, presumably to craft an image that he figures will do him well in the public arena.</p>
<p>I don’t know if the allegations against Dr. Carson are true, but let’s just say I won’t be shocked if we find out he either exaggerated about his past or went farther than that to make his rags-to-riches story of redemption all the more powerful. He wouldn’t be the first person running for office to get things wrong.</p>
<p>Some conservatives say the media are bashing Ben Carson. But since his candidacy is based largely on his past, on his biography, his life story matters. And if he fabricated elements of that story, we should know. That’s not bashing. It’s journalism.</p>
<p>But it’s too bad the so-called mainstream media aren’t as passionate about exposing lies when it’s a liberal Democrat who’s fabricating stories for political gain.</p>
<p>The same media that are in a tizzy over whether Ben Carson really stabbed someone when he was a kid and whether he almost hit his mother in the head with a hammer and whether he really was recruited by West Point — all things that happened or didn’t happen many decades ago – don’t get worked up very much by lies Hillary Clinton told much more recently.</p>
<p>We all know the story about how she blamed an anti-Muslim video for the violence in Benghazi that left four Americans dead. We now know – thanks to the House Benghazi hearing – that she lied. We know that she told her daughter that it was a terrorist attack and that she told the Egyptian prime minister that the video had nothing to do with what happened.</p>
<p>Yet many in the liberal media called the performance the best week of her campaign. They said it was a big win for Hillary and a big loss for the Republicans, who they more than suggested, were only trying to bring her down because she’s running for president. Journalists were too busy throwing rose petals at her feet to note that she was exposed as a liar.</p>
<p>And why was the lie important? Because Barack Obama was running for reelection telling voters he had terrorists on the run. He could deal with an anti-Muslim video but a terrorist attack might cause him problems.</p>
<p>So Hillary lied to the American people for base political reasons. Her loyalty was to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party, not to the American people. And the media said, “Nothing to see here folks, just move along.”</p>
<p>And remember when Barack Obama looked the American people in the eye and said if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor … and if you like your medical plan, you can keep that too. For millions of Americans that was a lie – a lie he told to get his signature piece of legislature through Congress.</p>
<p>The media couldn’t ignore what the president said, but they didn’t dwell on those lies either.</p>
<p>And Ben Carson is right when he says that reporters who want him to account for what he did as a young boy in Detroit have not shown the slightest bit of curiosity about what Barack Obama did in New York, at Columbia University. Why are his college records still locked up? What’s in them that can’t be revealed to the American people? The media, Dr. Carson correctly says, are simply not curious.</p>
<p>I have often said that reporters will salivate more when going after a conservative Republican than a liberal Democrat. And yes, the double standard is infuriating. But if conservatives expect the media to hold liberal Democrats accountable for their stories, don’t complain when they hold people like Ben Carson accountable for his stories.</p>
<p>Ben Carson may be right, that he’s in the media’s crosshairs because he’s a “threat” to liberals in general and to Hillary Clinton in particular. But he has a great story to tell and doesn’t need to lie or exaggerate about it — if that’s what he’s doing. Just ask Brian Williams what can happen when you embellish stories that don’t need any adornments. </p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-11-10T08:00:00ZThe Liberal Dilemma: A Black Man Leading the GOP FieldBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Liberal-Dilemma:-A-Black-Man-Leading-the-GOP-Field/602147092940306373.html2015-11-03T08:00:00Z2015-11-03T08:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>Wait, I’m confused. If Republicans in general and conservatives in particular are a bunch of racists, why is Ben Carson at or near the top of just about every poll?</p>
<p>The latest poll, this one by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, has Carson leading the pack with support from 29 percent of GOP primary voters. That’s the highest percentage any Republican has gotten so far in that poll – and by “any” I mean black or white. Donald Trump, who I’m pretty sure is white, came in second with 23 percent.</p>
<p>Ok, back to my question: If Republicans and conservatives hate black people how do we account for the success of a black man running for president as a Republican? Actually, that’s easy: Republicans support Carson in an attempt to show that they’re not racists – while at the same time gutting any program that might actually help black people.</p>
<p>You see how devious those racist Republicans can be! Besides, Carson isn’t <em>really</em> black. He’s conservative.</p>
<p>I almost feel sorry for liberals. They have to concoct wild explanations in order to avoid coming to grips with reality. And here’s the reality, they can’t seem to grasp: Conservatives don’t have a problem with black people. They have a problem with liberal people, regardless of their color.</p>
<p>Or to put it another way: Republicans don’t have a problem with black people running for president – unless they’re liberal black people running for president.</p>
<p>That’s why conservatives admire Ben Carson and not Barack Obama. Or why they respect Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas and the scholar Tom Sewell, but not Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or black professors who actually think that mass murder is the product of white privilege.</p>
<p>It’s not complicated. And since liberals are so smart (just ask them) it’s odd that they don’t get it.</p>
<p>Now to the other side of the coin: Ben Carson is a nice man and it’s good that he brings civility to the campaign. But if his success with Republicans doesn’t fade, there’s a good chance Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.</p>
<p>I have outlined in this space the goofy things Ben Carson has said – about how ObamaCare is the worst thing to happen to America since slavery; about how some people go into prison straight and come out gay; and about his libelous smear that the United States “is very much like Nazi Germany.” You expect this from some right-wing nut who figured out a way to get on the ballot – not from a candidate who is leading the pack.</p>
<p>Conservatives were outraged when dopey liberals compared President Bush to a Nazi. But somehow now it’s okay to make outlandish comparisons between the United States under Barack Obama to Germany under Hitler?</p>
<p>This is the poison of polarization. When they do it, it’s wrong. When we do it, hey they did it first. We’re not in third grade anymore.</p>
<p>Here’s what Peter Wehner wrote in Commentary magazine on the subject: “Politics isn’t meant to be a catharsis. Yet for many of my fellow conservatives, raging against the system — the much-maligned ‘establishment’ — is just that. I get that it may be emotionally satisfying to cheer on careless rhetoric, to portray every political difference as a ‘give me liberty or give me death’ moment, and to imply that America under Barack Obama is like Germany under Adolf Hitler. But it is also intellectually discrediting, politically self-defeating and unworthy of those who are citizens of a great republic.”</p>
<p>Ben Carson doesn’t deserve the cheap shots aimed at him by liberals. But he doesn’t deserve the GOP nomination for president, either.</p>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div> </div>Bernie Goldberg2015-11-03T08:00:00ZThe CNBC Debate - a Media Hit JobBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-CNBC-Debate---a-Media-Hit-Job/450661332707945865.html2015-10-29T07:00:00Z2015-10-29T07:00:00Z<p>If you know anything about how the so-called mainstream media operate, you know that liberal journalists will run over their grandmothers with a tractor-trailer truck to get a by-line or some face time on television, but will always salivate more when going after a Republican than a Democrat. And in the CNBC Republican presidential debate, we got the latest example of that.</p>
<p>For the record, I’m all for tough questions. Journalists have a responsibility hold candidates for president responsible for their policy positions. They have an obligation to put them in the hot seat. But the overall tone of the debate wasn’t tough so much as it was snarky. And one of the moderators – John Harwood – was downright smug.</p>
<p>At one point Harwood asked Mike Huckabee about the cultural divide in America –but only in hopes of starting a food fight between Huckabee and Donald Trump.</p>
<p>“Governor Huckabee,” he began, “you’ve written about the huge divide in values between middle America and the big coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles. As a preacher as well as a politician you know the president needs moral authority to bring the country together. The leading Republican candidate when you look at the average of national polls now is Donald Trump. When you look at him do you see someone who has the moral authority to run the country?”</p>
<p>When was the last time Harwood asked if Hillary Clinton had the moral authority to run the country? After all, in poll after poll a majority of the American people say they don’t trust her. In one survey the words most associated with her were “liar” and “dishonest” and “untrustworthy.”</p>
<p>And after Harwood asked a few more questions that might as well have been written by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her Democratic National Committee, Ted Cruz laid into him with what turned out to be the line of the night.</p>
<p>“You know let me say something at the outset,” Cruz said. “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.”</p>
<p>Big applause from the audience.</p>
<p>“This is not a cage match,” he said. “And you look at the questions—Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? Why don’t you talk about the substantive issues people care about?</p>
<p>More loud applause.</p>
<p>Marco Rubio got a few good shots in too. Much of the media, he said, was portraying Hillary Clinton as a big hero after the Benghazi hearing — despite the fact that she was shown to be a liar when she said the violence at the consulate that left four Americans dead was the result of an anti-Muslim video, when her own emails proved she knew that wasn’t true.</p>
<p>The reaction from Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, may have been predictable, but it was legitimate nonetheless.</p>
<p>“The CNBC moderators acted less like journalists and more like Clinton campaign operatives,” he said. “What was supposed to be a serious debate about the many issues plaguing our economy was given up for one Democratic talking point after another served up by the so-call ‘moderators.’ They clearly war-gamed this thinking that a relentless series of personal attacks on the candidates would somehow drive their ratings and help Hillary Clinton.”</p>
<p>After the debate Bill O’Reilly asked me if NBC, the news organization that oversees CNBC, was in on the drive-by. I told him there was no conspiracy. No one met in a dark room, gave the secret handshake and salute, and said, “Let’s screw those Republicans.”</p>
<p>Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s groupthink. They’re liberal. They think pretty much alike. That’s the nature of liberal bias in the media: too many people thinking the same way. They don’t need marching orders to put out hits on Republican candidates for president. It just comes naturally to them.</p>
<p>But even though there’s a good chance the folks at CNBC are busy congratulating themselves on how wonderful they were, most “civilians” know the obvious truth: Liberal journalists don’t treat Democrats the way they treat Republicans. They slobbered over Barack Obama and they’ll slobber over Hillary Clinton. They’ll treat her campaign like a coronation and they’ll treat the Republican campaign like an abortion rally.</p>
<p>Republicans don’t need an excuse to believe that liberal journalists are out to get them. Republicans have plenty of reasons not to trust the media. And the CNBC debate was only the latest one.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-29T07:00:00ZThe Benghazi Hearing as Rorschach TestBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Benghazi-Hearing-as-Rorschach-Test/927747455591523489.html2015-10-23T07:00:00Z2015-10-23T07:00:00Z<p>The big news that came out of the marathon Benghazi hearing is that the coronation of Hillary Clinton is proceeding on course. She came off as calm under fire from Republicans. At times, when the pols from both sides were sparring, she just sat there looking bored. Nothing, I suspect, that transpired over those many hours will hurt her.</p>
<p>Which is not to say that the Republicans, who undeniably were tough, weren’t asking legitimate questions. They were. And two struck me as especially significant.</p>
<p>The first involves security.</p>
<p>Something went tragically wrong in Benghazi – on that, even Mrs. Clinton’s most loyal supporters can agree. But who bears responsibility for the insufficient security? Mrs. Clinton was the secretary of state, after all. Is that where the buck stops?</p>
<p>There had been more than 600 requests for more security from ambassador Christopher Stevens and his team. Yet nothing, or virtually nothing, was done regarding those requests. Secretary Clinton told the committee that Ambassador Stevens “did not raise security with me. He raised security with the security professionals.”</p>
<p>“Security professionals” was a term she used over and over again to make sure everyone understood that it wasn’t her job to make sure the ambassador had the right amount of security; security was the responsibility of “security professionals.”</p>
<p>But no “security professional” lost his job after Benghazi. No “security professional” lost so much as a day’s pay. Mrs. Clinton explained that’s because no one was found to be in “dereliction of duty,” so in essence, her hands were tied.</p>
<p>But she went further than that. She told Georgia Republican Lynn Westmoreland that those “security professionals” were courageous Americans who should not be so much as criticized for Benghazi. She implied that it was practically un-American to go after them.</p>
<p>“And I have to add, Congressman, the diplomatic security professionals are among the best in the world,” she said. “I would put them up against anybody. And I just cannot allow any comment to be in the record in any way criticizing or disparaging them. They have kept Americans safe in two wars and in a lot of other really terrible situations over the last many years. I trusted them with my life. … They deserve better. And they deserve all the support that the Congress can give them, because they’re doing a really hard job very well.”</p>
<p>To which Congressman Westmoreland quietly and politely replied, “Well, ma’am, all I can say is they missed something here. And we lost four Americans.”</p>
<p>No one could argue with that either.</p>
<p>So what is Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and all-but-official Democratic nominee for president telling us? That we shouldn’t hold the “security professionals” accountable for the disaster in Benghazi and that we shouldn’t hold her accountable either. The professionals aren’t to blame because they’re “among the best in the world” and she’s not to blame because security wasn’t really her job. So let’s just move on, she was saying, I’m on my way to a coronation.</p>
<p>The other line of questioning that was especially important was about the story, concocted someplace along the line, that it wasn’t anti-American terrorism but an anti-Muslim video made by some guy in California that touched off the violence that ended in the deaths of Stevens and the others.</p>
<p>Except even Mrs. Clinton knew the story wasn’t true. It turns out that she told her daughter that what happened in Benghazi was the result (not of a video, but) of terrorism. And she said the same thing to more than a few others, including the Prime Minister of Egypt.. But while she was telling them the truth, she was telling the American people something else. She was blaming what happened on that video.</p>
<p>And that matters because Mrs. Clinton decided to deceive the American people for only one reason: politics. The re-election of President Obama was on the line and Hillary Clinton decided it was more important to be on Team Obama than level with the American people. Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republicans supposedly out to get her, connected the dots.</p>
<p>“And a key campaign theme that year was GM’s alive, bin Laden’s dead, Al Qaida’s on the run,” he told Mrs. Clinton. “And now you have a terrorist attack, and it’s a terrorist attack in Libya, and it’s just 56 days before an election. You can live with a protest about a video. That won’t hurt you. But a terrorist attack will. So you can’t be square with the American people. You tell your family it’s a terrorist attack, but not the American people. You can tell the president of Libya it’s a terrorist attack, but not the American people. And you can tell the Egyptian prime minister it’s a terrorist attack, but you can’t tell your own people the truth.”</p>
<p>That, I think, is a damning analysis of Mrs. Clinton’s behavior after Benghazi. But I suspect it won’t matter. I suspect nothing we heard at the hearing will matter.</p>
<p>The Benghazi hearing was a Rorschach test. You saw in it whatever you wanted to see. If the day before the hearing you thought the Republicans were out to get Hillary Clinton, that’s what you think today. And if you thought Mrs. Clinton was responsible for the lax security in Benghazi going in, that’s what you thought when the hearing finally ended.</p>
<p>Those who say if John Kerry or someone else not running for president on the Democratic side had been secretary of state during Benghazi there would have been no hearing that went on and on and on. The questions would have been softer. The tone different.</p>
<p>They may be right. But Mrs. Clinton also played politics. And so did her Democrat protectors on the select committee. They were breathtakingly uncurious about who screwed up over there. They couldn’t care less about a phony story about a video. They played the role not of serious lawmakers looking for real answers to legitimate questions, but instead they were content playing the part of traffic cops – clearing away any obstacle that might slow up the caravan en route to the coronation.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-23T07:00:00ZYou Want Free Stuff, Vote for Me!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/You-Want-Free-Stuff-Vote-for-Me!/-976193665904489664.html2015-10-19T07:00:00Z2015-10-19T07:00:00Z<p>There was a lot of talk at the Democratic presidential debate about an issue near and dear to the hearts of liberals: income inequality.</p>
<p>It’s too bad Hillary and the gang didn’t have the courage to speak some inconvenient truths about why some people are on the wrong end of the income inequality stick.</p>
<p>I don’t want to sound like a broken record on this point, but dysfunctional behavior often leads to poverty, which is a major cause of income inequality. Here’s how George Will recently explained it: “ … family disintegration cripples the primary transmitter of social capital — the habits, mores, customs, and dispositions necessary for seizing opportunities. When 72 percent of African-American children and 53 percent of Hispanic children are born to unmarried women, and 40 percent of all births are to unmarried women, and a majority of all mothers under 30 are not living with the fathers of their children, the consequences for the life chances, and lifetime earnings, of millions of children are enormous.”</p>
<p>And here are a few other truths that liberals don’t like to talk about: Some people are smarter than other people, some are more reliable, some decided to run big hedge funds and others decided to teach third grade, some are named LeBron James and some are named Joe Blow.</p>
<p>So yes, there are a lot of reasons for income inequality that have very little to do with billionaires being evil SOBs. But while blaming Wall Street and putting rich people in the crosshairs may play with the Democratic Party’s progressive base, it doesn’t come close to telling the real story – and only stokes resentment and envy.</p>
<p>But can a Democrat win next year running on such dark forces as resentment and envy? Can Hillary or Joe get enough votes by pitting everyone against the wealthiest Americans?</p>
<p>It may be a cynical path , but it’s a better one than trying to convince voters that it’s morning in America. Millions upon millions of Americans know better. Too many have stopped looking for a job or are working only part time. People who do have jobs are worried about losing them. Middle class incomes are stagnant, at best.</p>
<p>Hillary and the other Democrats running for president can blame the GOP all they want for the insipid economic recovery, but a Democrat has been in the White House for the past 7 years. “With chutzpah one has to admire the party that in two terms weakened, if not wrecked, the economy, now presents itself as its savior,” is how Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger put it.</p>
<p>But chutzpah just might work. After all, it won’t be easy for voters to resist the Democratic candidate’s enticing pitch: You want free stuff, vote for me!</p>
<p>Who doesn’t like Santa Claus?</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-19T07:00:00ZIf Torture is Wrong, Why Did They Televise the Democratic Debate?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Torture-is-Wrong-Why-Did-They-Televise-the-Democratic-Debate/-796841950288930468.html2015-10-15T07:00:00Z2015-10-15T07:00:00Z<p>Here are a few things I was thinking while watching the Democratic presidential debate:</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton says she’s not campaigning on her last name. But if she had a different last name we wouldn’t even know who she was.</p>
<p>The five lefties on stage make freshmen at Oberlin College sound like right-wingers.</p>
<p>Bernie Sanders makes “billionaire” sound like a curse word. I’m not sure if he reminds me of Karl Marx or Groucho Marx.</p>
<p>Sanders just said fraud is a business model on Wall Street. I’m getting the impression he and the others hate rich Americans more than they hate ISIS. Too harsh?</p>
<p>Lots of talk about income inequality but nothing about dysfunction behavior that leads to income inequality. Sorry, I just remembered: Liberals aren’t allowed to talk about stuff like that.</p>
<p>Just heard a question about whether black lives matter or all lives matter. Anderson Cooper asks Sanders and O’Malley what they think but noticeably fails to ask Hillary. I wonder why. I would have liked to hear her answer.</p>
<p>Sanders defends Hillary, saying no one cares about her “damn emails.” Really? Polls show the American people care. Most think she’s dishonest. Why didn’t Anderson Cooper bring that up?</p>
<p>Sanders thinks climate change is the biggest problem facing America? Is this man a Republican mole?</p>
<p>Jim Webb says smart things and the audience yawns. Hillary and Bernie sneeze and get standing ovations.</p>
<p>I’m starting to feel sorry for billionaires.</p>
<p>If you’re a Republican you should pray that Bernie gets the nomination.</p>
<p>Is Bernie Sanders middle name Che? Just asking.</p>
<p>If Putin is watching he must be hoping the Democrats win next year.</p>
<p>You know what’s missing from this debate? Joe Biden telling us the answer to all our economic problems can be summed up with a simple 3-letter word: J-O-B-S.</p>
<p>You know which candidate most sounds like Winston Churchill? Neither do I.</p>
<p>I love America but if this goes on much longer I will give up state secrets.</p>
<p>After listening to these five for nearly two hours I’m starting to like Donald Trump.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-15T07:00:00ZIf Armed Guards Can Protect Our Money, Why Not Our Kids?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Armed-Guards-Can-Protect-Our-Money-Why-Not-Our-Kids/-86635299296571462.html2015-10-12T07:00:00Z2015-10-12T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>It may not be welcome news to some gun enthusiasts, the ones who think there are no restrictions on their right to bear arms, but there are.</p>
<p>None of our rights come without limits. The First Amendment says we have freedom of speech. But we can’t falsely yell fire in a crowded theater, without getting charged with a crime. We can’t libel someone we don’t like, without paying a price. We can’t take to the streets to incite violence.</p>
<p>There’s no question that the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms. But we can’t buy surface to air missiles and claim the Second Amendment gives us that right. With rights come limits.</p>
<p>But here’s what the other side, the anti-gun side, either is incapable of understanding or simply doesn’t want to understand: In certain situations, the only force that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.</p>
<p>I know it sounds like the kind of thing that belongs on a bumper sticker, the kind of shallow nonsense that no serious person can actually believe. But it’s true. If someone is shooting up a college campus, we better hope there’s a good guy with a gun nearby to stop the carnage.</p>
<p>Here’s the crazy part: While even anti-gun liberals have no problem when guards in banks carry guns to protect … <em>money</em>, they have a big problem with the concept of guards at schools carrying guns to protect … <em>students</em>. Does this make sense?</p>
<p>If there were laws that would eliminate, or just cut down, on mass murders at schools and churches or anyplace else, I’d be for those laws – as long as they were constitutional. So, let’s close the so-called gun show loophole, and let’s pass reasonable legislation on magazines that hold a hundred rounds of ammunition, and if there are other ways to stop the madness, and they don’t violate the Constitution, count me in.</p>
<p>So I’m with President Obama when he says the carnage has to stop, that something is terribly wrong when mass murder in America becomes routine. But what the president doesn’t acknowledge is that none of the laws he favors would have stopped the gunman in Oregon – or almost anyplace else.</p>
<p>Time and again, the killer turns out to be a young man who feels alienated, who knows he doesn’t fit in and doesn’t like it, who can’t get a date and who is perpetually angry over that in particular or his lot in life in general. What law is going to deal with that? We can’t lock people up for being angry. And how do we make it illegal to sell guns to angry, alienated young men who can’t find female companionship – if they haven’t been committed and never broke the law?</p>
<p>The problem is a lot tougher than President Obama and other liberals make it out to be. I suspect if the president could simply snap his fingers, he would issue an executive order to erase the Second Amendment and outlaw all guns in the hands of the American people. He’ll never admit this, of course, but it’s what a lot of liberals really want. But they know that won’t happen, so what to do?</p>
<p>After the Oregon shootings, a forensic psychologist wrote to me with an idea. He said not only should the killer’s name not be mentioned in the media as a way to prevent copycats, but also the shooting itself should be kept from the public — because “attention is their goal.” He later reconsidered and backed off his prescription for a total news blackout, writing that “it would be nice if some responsible middle ground between coverage and obsessive coverage could be found.”</p>
<p>I agree. Wall-to-wall coverage that goes on for hours and hours, I suspect, is more likely to influence copycats than simply mentioning the killer’s name.</p>
<p>But it’s a safe bet that some Americans (who blame the media for just about everything that goes wrong in our culture) would like a total news blackout — no news on mass murders because they don’t want to give the gunman the attention he supposedly craves.</p>
<p>While a news blackout may in some instances prevent copycat murders, it’s just not how we operate in a free country. What other bad news should we keep secret from the American people — <em>for the good of the American people</em>?</p>
<p>So, I freely acknowledge that I don’t have a solution to the problem of mass murders. It’s too complicated for me. But I’m pretty sure about this: If we can employ guards with guns to protect money, we can and should employ guards with guns to protect people. This isn’t an argument for guns in the hands of kids on campus. And it isn’t an argument for armed vigilantes on every street corner. It’s simply an argument for a more thoughtful approach to gun-free zones that don’t save lives and very often do the opposite.</p>
<p>That’s a start.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-12T07:00:00ZShould We Give the Mass Murderer What He Craved?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Should-We-Give-the-Mass-Murderer-What-He-Craved/-100145958372674781.html2015-10-07T07:00:00Z2015-10-07T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>If you watched any of the coverage on television of the mass shooting at that community college in Oregon, you probably heard Sheriff John Hanlin repeatedly tell reporters that he would never publicly utter the name of the shooter.</p>
<p>Sheriff Hanlin isn’t alone. According to the Wall Street Journal the sheriff “is one of a growing number of U.S. law-enforcement officials who are actively avoiding naming the suspects in mass shootings, noting that many cite prior killers as inspiration, and seem to be motivated by a desire for infamy.”</p>
<p>And more than a few in the world of television news see things the same way, and also refuse to give the killers name.</p>
<p>For the record, his name is Christopher Harper-Mercer. As a journalist I have absolutely no qualms saying who the gunman was. But there is something to the concerns of more and more people in law-enforcement and journalism. Here’s what the Oregon killer had posted about another deranged shooter, the one who not long ago killed two journalists in Virginia.</p>
<p>“A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”</p>
<p>But while it’s true that a recent study found that mass shootings do in fact come in clusters, “What it couldn’t determine,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “is whether withholding of the name and details of the perpetrator would have an effect in reducing such things in the future.”</p>
<p>Whether naming such killers influences copycat killings or not, here’s a question for those who won’t give the killer what he may crave – recognition. What if the shooter in Oregon was a gunman called Ahmed Mohammed?</p>
<p>Is there any doubt – <em>any</em>! – that journalists (especially in conservative media) would be shouting his name over and over again? What’s the difference between Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Harper-Mercer?</p>
<p>We all know the answer to that one, don’t we?</p>
<p>But Ahmed Mohammed clearly is a terrorist, they would say, and therefore his name is relevant and newsworthy. And what if Mohammed had asked the religion of his victims right before he shot and killed them? Wouldn’t that, all by itself, mandate that we tell the world who this monster is?</p>
<p>But there were reports from reputable mainstream news organizations that Christopher Harper-Mercer did just that, that he asked the religion of his victims just before he shot them. Here’s a headline from the Washington Post: “Oregon shooter said to have singled out Christians for killing in ‘horrific act of cowardice.’” And NBC News reported that, “The gunman who opened fire at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College targeted Christians specifically, according to the father of a wounded student.”</p>
<p>Those reports may have been misleading, as it turns out. According to at least one other account, while the gunman did in fact ask his victims if they were Christian, it was not to punish them, but rather to comfort them, to tell them that what he was about to do wouldn’t hurt. Then he shot them.</p>
<p>Whatever he was thinking, whatever motivated the question about religion, what if our hypothetical Ahmed Mohammed had asked the same question – wouldn’t that be enough for most journalists (and law-enforcement officers) to share his name with the public?</p>
<p>We all know the answer to that one too.</p>
<p>And if Christopher Harper-Mercer was seeking attention, terrorists are also seeking attention when they slaughter innocents. One may be seeking attention only for himself, the other for his cause. But both want their story to be told.</p>
<p>Still, many in journalism won’t show Christopher Harper-Mercer’s face or give him in death the satisfaction of uttering his name, because that supposedly is what he wanted.</p>
<p>But what if the next killer <em>doesn’t</em> want his name known by the whole world? What if he leaves a note that says, “I don’t want my family associated with this”? With mentally disturbed people anything is possible. So should journalists and sheriffs then name him –to deprive him of the anonymity he wants?</p>
<p>Do we really want disturbed people making those decisions for the rest of us?</p>
<p>When I was a reporter many years ago in Miami, there were lots of hijackings of commercial jetliners that were taken to Cuba. I have little doubt that news coverage influenced others to hijack planes. Should we have kept the public in the dark and not reported the hijackings?</p>
<p>That would be a dereliction of our duty as journalists. When we keep things to ourselves, bits and pieces inevitably manage to escape the darkness and the public doesn’t know what to believe. Crazy rumors spread. The public begins to hear things, and believe things, that never happened. How is this good in a free country like ours?</p>
<p>I don’t care what Christopher Harper-Mercer wanted. The public needs to know his name and as much about him as possible. But by doing just that, are we running a risk – are we putting ideas into the warped mind of some other angry, isolated young man out there? Maybe.</p>
<p>So if Sheriff Hanlin doesn’t want to utter the killer’s name, let’s allow him his silence. But journalists can’t keep the public in the dark – not about hijackings or mass murderers. Silence in a free country also has risks.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-07T07:00:00ZWhy the GOP Will Have a Tough Time in 2016 - and Why It Won'tBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-the-GOP-Will-Have-a-Tough-Time-in-2016---and-Why-It-Wont/81212388022900460.html2015-10-02T07:00:00Z2015-10-02T07:00:00Z<div class="entry-content">
<p>In July of this year, President Obama visited his favorite “anchorman” — Jon Stewart — and told him that the economy “by every metric, is better than when I came into office.”</p>
<p>When he came to office, you may recall, the economy was in free-fall, so telling Mr. Stewart that things are better today is not necessarily saying much.</p>
<p>What Mr. Obama conveniently forgot to mention is that on his watch, middle-class Americans aren’t doing all that well. Median income has gone down – and the percentage of Americans living in poverty has gone up. The number of Americans on food stamps has also gone up — dramatically.</p>
<p>It’s true that the unemployment rate has dropped since Mr. Obama took office, but so has the labor force participation rate – which is at its lowest level in about 40 years. Some of that is due to baby boomers retiring, but a lot of it is due to the crummy economy, one in which people who desperately want to work can’t find jobs.</p>
<p>Most Americans — more than 60 percent — say they think we’re on the wrong track.</p>
<p>And now we have the October jobs report, which in a word was terrible. The experts expected the economy to create 200,000 new jobs. Instead we got a measly 142,000.</p>
<p>None of this is good news for the American people, but it could be good news for the Republican Party trying to take back the White House. If Hillary Clinton essentially represents Barack Obama’s third term, why would a majority of Americans vote for her? And why, in one recent poll, does Joe Biden beat every Republican running for president?</p>
<p>The short answer is because most Americans like him more than they like any of the GOP candidates – and never underestimate the power of likeability. But there are other factors Republicans should worry about.</p>
<p>One is the Electoral College. As I’ve noted before, in the last six presidential elections, the same 18 states have voted for the Democratic candidate – and that comes to about 90 percent of the Electoral College votes needed for victory. So the Republican candidate is behind the 8 ball before the polls open.</p>
<p>Republicans need lots and lots of white people to vote for them and the percentage of whites in the population keeps dropping.</p>
<p>And there’s a third reason: Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have a significant ideologically pure wing of the party – a wing, ungenerously, but to some extent correctly, called the Suicide Wing.</p>
<p>The true believers love Trump and Carson and Cruz … and detest Bush and Christie and to a lesser extent the other moderates, like Kasich and Fiorina.</p>
<p>If Trump and Carson fade and if GOP primary voters pick one of the moderates as the party’s nomine, there’s a good chance the true believers will sit home on Election Day as they have the last two times around. And that of course means a Democratic victory.</p>
<p>That’s the downside. The upside is there are two factors going for Republicans. One is that historically, the American people rarely elect the same party three times in a row. The other is … Hillary Clinton. Even a lot of Democrats don’t like or trust her.</p>
<p>But will history, Hillary and the weak economy gang up on the Democrats and put a Republican in the White House? The only honest answer at this point is … who knows? But this much we do know: Democrats have won 5 of the last 6 popular votes for president. If the Republicans can’t convince enough minorities to vote for their candidate, if they can’t win over those Reagan Democrats, then 5 out of 6 may turn into 6 out of 7.</p>
<p>But in memory of the late great Yogi Berra let’s remember that it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. And while October may represent the final days of the baseball season, in politics, the season has barely begun.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-10-02T07:00:00ZI Didn't Jump Off the Liberal Crazy Train for ThisBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/I-Didnt-Jump-Off-the-Liberal-Crazy-Train-for-This/-25150056777610931.html2015-09-24T07:00:00Z2015-09-24T07:00:00Z<p>This one is personal.</p>
<p>I grew up in a blue-collar family in a working class neighborhood (the South Bronx) where just about everybody (if not <em>literally</em> everybody) voted Democratic.</p>
<p>In college, I was a liberal – and proud of it. The big issue was civil rights and liberals were on the right side of that one while conservatives – yes, mostly Democrats from the South – were on both the wrong side of history and the wrong side of decency.</p>
<div>When the issue of women’s rights came along, I was on board with that too.</div>
<p>I didn’t think much about taxes, mainly because I had no money and paid very little in taxes.</p>
<p>But there came a time, when I had to hop off the liberal crazy train. I couldn’t understand why affirmative action gave extra points to black kids trying to get into college – even black kids with money and a parent who was a doctor or a lawyer or successful in business – but didn’t give those same affirmative action bonus points to a white kid whose father was a coal miner in West Virginia. Was he really more privileged than the black kid who grew up well off in the suburbs? I’d be in favor of affirmative action based on economic need, but not based solely on skin color.</p>
<p>I was pro-choice but I wasn’t about to support late term abortion, which many liberal Democrats to this day won’t oppose. And then feminists argued that women had a right to be firefighters even if they couldn’t carry a man out of a burning building. I couldn’t support that, either.</p>
<p>And when Ronald Reagan said the old Soviet Union was an evil empire, liberals practically fainted. Why? The old Soviet Union was an evil empire.</p>
<p>I didn’t head right because I started to make money, as my liberal friends like to believe. But I got really tired of being vilified for having money. I got weary of hearing liberals say people like me had to pay our “fair share” even when we were paying way more than our fair share.</p>
<p>I don’t even know if I actually moved right or if liberals moved so far left that I couldn’t be on their team anymore. Whichever it was, I liked my new home on the right. Conservatives welcomed me into the tent, mainly because I was an outspoken critic of liberal bias in the news, but also liberal craziness in general.</p>
<p>But I’m starting to feel uneasy again, thanks to the current political campaign.</p>
<p>Now I’m in the same tent with a candidate who has said that ObamaCare is the worst thing to happen to this country since slavery; that America is like Nazi Germany; that some people go into prison straight and come out gay; and that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Yes, I know that Ben Carson has since either apologized for or “clarified’ his ridiculous remarks. Still, he said all of them and they’re all really dumb.</p>
<p>And I’m in the same tent with a narcissist who says John McCain was only a hero because he got captured, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured, okay?” McCain was a POW for five and a half years. He was tortured. And when his captors said he could leave, he refused, telling them he would go only when his fellow captives could also go. Maybe that doesn’t sound heroic to Donald Trump, but it sure sounds heroic to me.</p>
<p>But Trump just can’t help himself. He suggests that one of his opponents is too ugly to be president. And he allows a birther jerk at a rally to say this without interruption: “We got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. But anyway. We have training camps brewing where they want to kills us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them.” And how does tough guy Donald Trump respond? Does he shut the birther jerk up with a snappy putdown? No. He pathetically says, “A lot of people are saying that had things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking into that and plenty of other things.”</p>
<p>Does this disgraceful response by Trump upset his supporters? Of course not. Trump could call President Obama the “N” word and his angry backers wouldn’t abandon him.</p>
<p>Then there’s the candidate who says the president has the right to disobey a decision from the Supreme Court if he thinks it’s the wrong decision. For Rick Santorum, and several other GOP candidates for president, their religion apparently trumps U.S. law.</p>
<p>And there’s Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz who also think it’s perfectly okay for public officials who get paid by taxpayers to disobey the law if the law conflicts with their religious beliefs – as in the Kim Davis matter and her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples even after the Supreme Court said laws against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.</p>
<p>I get the impression that if some of these conservative Christian candidates were Muslim, they’d push for Sharia law in the United States.</p>
<p>And there are the candidates who oppose abortion even when the pregnancy results from incest.</p>
<p>And I thought liberals had gone off the deep end.</p>
<p>I have said that I would vote for Scooby Doo before I’d pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. And I would. In fact, I’d rather vote for Scooby than more than a few of the Republican candidates.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-09-24T07:00:00ZA Winning GOP Ticket?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Winning-GOP-Ticket/-363675308925016291.html2015-09-17T01:00:00Z2015-09-17T01:00:00Z<p>After the first two GOP presidential debates last month, I wrote a piece in this space under the headline “Two Debates – One Winner.” That winner was Carly Fiorina. Last night, as Yogi supposedly once said, it was déjà vu all over again.</p>
<p>Fiorina came off as Thatcheresque. Smart. Quick. Tough. Funny. At one point she was asked about Trump’s comment about her face, a nasty insult suggesting that people wouldn’t vote for her because she’s ugly. When pressed right after the remark, Trump lamely “explained” that he was talking not about her face, but about her “persona.” What did she think of Trump’s cheap shot? Employing the wisdom that less is more, Fiorina elegantly replied, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.” The audience at the Reagan library cheered.</p>
<p>And Trump, who supposedly doesn’t mince words and never admits he made a mistake, responded with, “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.” No one cheered that insincere comeback. Even his most ardent fans know that it was nothing more than belated damage control.</p>
<p>Carly’s remark hit the needlessly mean-spirited Donald right between the eyes. But who knows if her poll numbers will go up or if his will go down. Nothing he says has hurt him yet. Maybe this will. Maybe.</p>
<p>In a post-debate analysis on Fox, I told Bill O’Reilly that if news organizations had given Fiorina the air time that they’ve been giving Trump, she would have been in the lead long before the second debate. I’m guessing they’ll pay more attention to her now.</p>
<p>If GOP voters want to win, they’ll give Carly Fiorina a serious look. More than any other Republican candidate she can win over those suburban women who are scared off by the tone and manner of some conservatives and who might otherwise hold their nose and vote for Hillary.</p>
<p>Marco Rubio also did well at the debate. He came off as smart and knowledgeable and with a father who tended bar and a mother who was a maid, he’s an American success story. There are worse things for the GOP to contemplate than a Fiorina-Rubio ticket, a woman and a Latino, and outsider and an insider, middle age and youth. On paper anyway, that’s formidable.</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-09-17T01:00:00ZIf You're Not Appalled by Donald Trump...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-Youre-Not-Appalled-by-Donald-Trump.../-667910624262984800.html2015-09-16T16:43:00Z2015-09-16T16:43:00Z<p>If by now you still don’t think we live in the United States of Entertainment, I have just two words to set you straight: Donald. Trump.</p>
<p>Yes, we’ve heard all the theories about why he’s constantly leading in the polls. He’s blunt. He doesn’t take any guff from anyone. He sticks it to the bad guys. His loyal followers are fed up with politics as usual. They’ve had enough. And here comes a guy who says he’ll make America great again. They love his message and they love him.</p>
<p>Fringe is definitely in this year. Bernie Sanders isn’t doing as well as he is for nothing. His policies would bankrupt America. But to progressives, at least he’s not Hillary. </p>
<p>As for Donald Trump, yes he’s interesting – in a reality TV show kind of way. But he’s not nearly as interesting as the people who are supporting him.</p>
<p>These are salt-of-the-earth Americans who keep telling us how much they honor and respect our military. Yet, when Trump cheap-shots John McCain, his poll numbers don’t drop – they go up. Never mind that McCain, who was shot down over North Vietnam, could have walked out of captivity and ended his torture but chose instead to stay and leave only when his fellow captives were also allowed to leave. Who cares about trivial stuff like that? If Donald thinks McCain isn’t a hero but a loser, then that’s good enough for Donald’s fans.</p>
<p>And even though conservatives like to think they’re the ones who cherish old-fashioned values while those dreaded liberals are constantly degrading the culture, what happens when Trump implies that Carly Fiorina is too ugly to be president? Do women and all decent people say, “We’ve had enough of this guy?” No, they flock to him and his poll numbers again go up. </p>
<p>They’re not even upset when he’s not man enough to say, “Sorry. I was wrong.” Instead he says he didn’t really mean her face when he said “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” Trump, who portrays himself as a tough guy, comes off as a weasel when he says, I meant her “persona.” Sure he did.</p>
<p>And conservatives who can’t stop telling us how much they revere the Constitution and demand a literal reading of the document, think Trump is brilliant when he says children born in this country are not U.S. citizens despite the fact that the Constitution says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” </p>
<p>And, of course, they detest Barack Obama who they believe has hypnotized dopey liberals and made them part of his cult of personality. But they love Donald Trump who has made them part of his cult of personality.</p>
<p>Bret Stephens had a column in the Wall Street Journal recently that began with this:</p>
<p>“If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.</p>
<p>“If you have reached physical maturity and still chuckle at Mr. Trump’s pubescent jokes about Rosie O’Donnell or Heidi Klum, you will never reach mental maturity. If you watched Mr. Trump mock fellow candidate Lindsey Graham ’s low poll numbers and didn’t cringe at the lack of class, you are incapable of class. If you think we need to build new airports in Queens the way they build them in Qatar, you should be sent to join the millions of forced laborers who do construction in the Persian Gulf. It would serve you right." </p>
<p>We can understand why conservatives are fed up with those they see as weak in the knees Republicans, the kind who won’t go after President Obama and his liberal team in Congress head on. But is Donald Trump the answer? Do his supporters want a party led by a narcissist who sees opponents as stupid losers</p>
<p>For a sizable portion of the GOP base, the answer is a loud and clear YES. And since nothing surprises me anymore, I’m even willing to believe that Trump can win his party’s nomination and maybe even be the next President of the United States.</p>
<p>But I also know that while fringe is in at the moment, it may not last. And let’s not confuse the GOP base with the American electorate in general. And one more thing: If Joe Biden jumps in and takes Elizabeth Warren with him as his running mate, the combined force of the sympathy vote along with the women’s vote may be enough to sink Donald Trump — or any other Republican candidate.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2015-09-16T16:43:00ZMore on the County Clerk in Kentucky - and ChristianityBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/More-on-the-County-Clerk-in-Kentucky---and-Christianity/565920460838362747.html2015-09-08T12:44:00Z2015-09-08T12:44:00ZI just read a very important piece on the case involving Kim Davis, the country clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. The column in Commentary runs under the headline, “The Wrong Fight for Christians to Wage.”<br /><br />The author is Peter Wehner, in my view one of the two or three brightest and most reasonable conservative writers in America. He is also a devout Christian, which perhaps gives him special insight and added credibility on this subject. I will quote from his article, extensively.<br /><br />“This case raises several questions,” Wehner writes, “beginning with this one: If Ms. Davis was a judge supervising a divorce proceeding, does she believe a court entering a divorce decree would also conflict with her duties? Or is gay marriage rather than, say, heterosexual divorce, the only issue she’s willing to go to the mat for when it comes to fidelity to ‘God’s moral law’? (Ms. Davis might want to re-read Matthew 19:9, where Jesus says, ‘And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.’)”<br /> <br />On the political aspect of the case, Wehner has this to say:<br /><br />“It’s no surprise that Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee weighed in on behalf of Ms. Davis. Governor Huckabee, for his part, tweeted ‘Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country. We must defend Religious Liberty!’<br /><br />“This argument is both wildly overstated and muddled,” according to Wehner. “For one thing, if an atheist or Muslim refused to issue marriage licenses to gays, they, too, would be held in contempt of court. And imagine the reaction from Governor Huckabee and others if a person of the Muslim faith refused to enforce a civil law by invoking his conception of God’s law (sharia law).<br /><br />“Beyond that,” he writes, “to argue that public officials can simply refuse to uphold laws they don’t agree with is a prescription for chaos and lawlessness. Don’t Governor Huckabee and others see the problem of demanding laws to protect religious liberty while encouraging public officials to break the laws with which they disagree?”<br /><br />And what if the tables were turned? What if liberals in positions of authority decided to break the law and tell their critics that they were only following their religious beliefs? Here’s what Wehner has to say about that:<br /><br />“One can easily see the problem with the Davis-Huckabee line of reasoning. Assume that during a Huckabee administration liberals decided Bible verses about welcoming the stranger and alien in your midst were the basis to defend ‘sanctuary cities’ and, therefore, refused to abide by federal immigration laws. When told they needed to comply or face legal consequences, those breaking the law claimed religious liberties protection – and declared that penalizing them for their lawlessness qualified as the ‘criminalization of Christianity.’ Mr. Huckabee would rightly view that argument as absurd. One wouldn’t be criminalizing Christianity; one would be criminalizing those who don’t follow the law.”<br /><br />“Kim Davis,” he concludes, “may well be a person of sincere views. She may also believe she’s taking a principled moral stand. In fact, she’s being selective in which of God’s moral laws she insists must be obeyed – and obeyed not by those attending her church but by those living in our broader society. She could have allowed her deputies to issue the marriage licenses, preventing her from violating her conscience. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted to make this a (figurative) hill to die on.<br /><br />“In doing so, she’s inadvertently doing a disservice to her faith, furthering the impression to a watching world that sex, and homosexuality in particularly, is a fixation of modern-day Christianity. The result is to reduce ‘a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex,’ in the words of [New York Times columnist] David Brooks. There was no need for Ms. Davis – or Governor Huckabee and Senator Cruz – to elevate this issue into a national fight Christians are destined to lose, and, in this case, ought to lose. …<br /><br />“Christians,” says Wehner, “are in a period of transition and diminishing cultural influence. How we deal with our place in this changing world in a way that is both faithful and extends the hand of grace to others, that gives to others what God has given to us, that leads toward reconciliation and redemption, requires wisdom and discernment. Kim Davis and those who are rallying to her cause are showing neither.”<br /><br />I received an email after my most recent column – “God, Gays and an Obscure Country Clerk in Kentucky” – which came from a long time “admirer” (his word) of my work. His point was that, and these are his words, “Non-Christians commenting on a Christian’s faith-based (in her mind) behavior doesn’t sit well with some. You didn’t ask my advice, but I recommend you sit out this story.”<br /><br />I thanked him for his civility but said I won’t sit this one out. Kim Davis didn’t take her stand in church. If she did, that arguably would be none of my business. Her battleground was on public land – a government office. Her paycheck comes not from her faith community, but from taxpayers in the broader public community. This is my business – and everyone else’s – despite my faith or anyone else’s.<br /><br />But for those troubled that an outsider would comment on the civil disobedience of a Christian, that charge can’t be directed at Peter Wehner. I stand with him. Kim Davis is wrong. But I’ll leave it to a devout Christian to say that this is the wrong fight for Christians to wage. And let me add: It’s the wrong fight for conservatives, in general, too.Bernie Goldberg2015-09-08T12:44:00ZGod, Gays and an Obscure County Clerk in KentuckyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/God-Gays-and-an-Obscure-County-Clerk-in-Kentucky/-772339088991151495.html2015-09-04T15:43:00Z2015-09-04T15:43:00ZAs of this writing, God has not weighed in in the case of Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who says her Christian faith won’t allow her to issue marriage licenses to gay couples – and was sent to jail for violating a federal judge’s order to do just that.<br /><br />Ms. Davis, who doesn’t care what the U.S. Supreme Court had to say about gay marriage, believes that God’s law trumps the Constitution, which, by the way, she swore to uphold and protect.<br /><br />Here’s Ms. Davis’ thinking on the matter: “To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience.”<br /><br />But there’s a simple way around all of this, if only Ms. Davis were not such a coward. All she had to do was quit her job and find one that doesn’t involve duties that violate her conscience. But that would have been inconvenient.<br /><br />If she had quit her government job and not had enough money to pay her rent and buy food and pay her other bills, that, dear Jesus, would have shown how seriously she takes her precious conscience. But instead she wanted to both soothe her conscience and collect a check each week from the government. Kim Davis may be many things, but a profile in courage is not one of them.<br /><br />There was, of course, a much easier way out for Kim Davis. All she had to do was allow her associates to issue the marriage licenses and the federal judge would never have cited her for contempt. But that, too, would have violated Ms. Davis’ conscience so she refused.<br /><br />And now she sits in jail. Good!<br /><br />An editorial in the Wall Street Journal makes an interesting point about the case that runs under the headline, “My Old Kentucky Double Standard.” It quotes President Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, as saying, ”The success of our democracy depends on the rule of law, and there is no public official that is above the rule of law.”<br /><br />He’s right of course. But here’s where the double standard comes in. As the Journal explains it: “We don’t recall President Obama insisting on ‘the rule of law’ when his then Attorney General, Eric Holder, announced in 2011 that he wouldn’t defend challenges to what was then the law – the Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Bill Clinton – in the courts. Nor did we hear about upholding the law when mayors such as Gavin Newsom in San Francisco issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of state laws.<br /><br />“Officials such as Messrs. Holder and Newsom were as guilty as Ms. Davis of elevating personal preferences over the law. Yet they were lionized by those now holding up an obscure Kentucky clerk as a national villain.”<br /><br />This is a legitimate point which correctly hammers liberal hypocrisy. But in the end it comes down to “Oh yeah, well the other guys do it too,” which is not much of an argument and which is why the Journal acknowledges that the federal judge’s principle – “that Americans, and especially government officials, do not get to pick which laws and orders they will follow – is certainly right.”<br /><br />I have long thought that there are more than a few conservative Christians in this country who talk a good game about law and order but would toss the whole system out in a heartbeat if they could replace it with a Christian theocracy. I don’t know Ms. Davis but I wouldn’t be surprised if she were one of those people.<br /><br />And as with almost everything, there are political implications attached to the Kentucky case. Several conservative Christian Republicans who want to be president have stated their support for Kim Davis. This will please some members of the GOP base but I suspect it will turn away a lot more. Most Americans – including most Americans who take their faith seriously – understand how our system works. We are a nation of laws, which is something they point out whenever they believe Barack Obama breaks them.<br /><br />As I say, so far God has not weighed in. Best we can figure he has not come to Ms. Davis’ defense. If He does, I’ll write an update.Bernie Goldberg2015-09-04T15:43:00ZWhat Howard Cosell and Donald Trump Have in CommonBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Howard-Cosell-and-Donald-Trump-Have-in-Common/-762840881553622840.html2015-09-01T16:54:00Z2015-09-01T16:54:00ZIn the late 1970s, TV Guide ran a poll to find out which sportscaster fans liked the most and which one they disliked the most. Howard Cosell finished first in both categories. Which brings us to Donald Trump, another loud, over-the-top, brash personality.<br /><br />According to the latest Quinnipiac University national poll, when Republicans were asked who they would vote for if the primary for president were held today, Trump finished first. When asked who they definitely would not support for the nomination, the very same Donald Trump finished first again.<br /><br />Being a polarizing figure didn’t hurt Howard Cosell. Even people who say they didn’t like him tuned in to watch the game – and, truth be told, to watch him too. But politics is different. In that arena, you can get away with being polarizing after you win the election – Barack Obama is proof of that. But polarizing pols have a tough time winning in the first place; the math doesn’t add up.<br /> <br />So, if these were normal times, the numbers would be bad news for the Donald. But these are not normal times. Pundits who are still confidently saying he can’t win the nomination are the same ones who said he’d never get this far. Or to put it another way: The smarties aren’t as smart as they think they are.<br /><br />When voters were asked what was the first word that came to mind when you think of Donald Trump, respondents said arrogant, followed by blowhard and idiot.<br /><br />And when voters were asked what was the first word that came to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton, they said, liar, followed by dishonest and untrustworthy.<br /><br />Note well: These two are the front-runners! Rodney Dangerfield got more respect.<br /><br />So which party is in more trouble? You can make a case that it’s the Republicans.<br /><br />While 26 percent of Republicans say they would never vote for Trump, only 11 percent of Democrats say they would never vote for Clinton. Democrats don’t have the same ideologically pure wing that has hurt GOP presidential candidates in the past. Democrats, it seems, are more practical. They may prefer Bernie Sanders, or one of the others, but when push comes to shove, almost all of them will vote for Clinton. Why? They want to win.<br /><br />I recently received an email (through this website) from someone named Carl, who described himself as a conservative Christian, and told me that, “I have voted Republican since Eisenhower beat Stevenson and if Jeb, Christie, Kasich or Graham are nominated, I WILL STAY HOME!”<br /> <br />Carl is not alone. I received similar emails during the last two presidential campaigns and millions of the ideologically pure – who normally would vote Republican – did in fact sit home, if not handing the elections to Barack Obama, at least making it a lot easier for him to win.<br /><br />These purists have told me that there’s little or no difference between a moderate Republican and a liberal Democrat. They’re delusional, of course, blinded by their hard-right ideology, but that’s what they believe nonetheless. And depending on who the GOP nominee is, they could represent big trouble for the party.<br /><br />Finally, consider this: In the last six presidential elections 18 states have voted for the Democratic candidate every time, totaling 242 electoral votes – just 28 short of victory. That means Democrats are about 90 percent of the way to winning the White House even before the actual voting begins.<br /><br />Of course, anything can happen. Technically, history tells us only about the past. But it’s often a good indicator of what lies ahead.<br /><br />So if Republicans hope to win in 2016, they will have to unite and support the GOP candidate whoever he or she is. Republicans, who today are vowing to never support Donald Trump, will have to re-consider, should he win the nomination. And the conservative purists, who swear they will never vote for a moderate, will have to abandon their ideological purity – or abandon all hope of a GOP victory.<br /><br />This won’t be easy. But it’s the only thing certain in this summer of uncertainty.Bernie Goldberg2015-09-01T16:54:00ZIs Trump a Net Plus or Minus for the GOP?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Trump-a-Net-Plus-or-Minus-for-the-GOP/-170771657946554290.html2015-08-26T07:00:00Z2015-08-26T07:00:00ZIf I were to write a column or say something on television that is unflattering about Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Carly Fiorina or Chris Christie or any other moderate Republican, I wouldn’t get emails from their supporters calling me a moron and telling me to drop dead. But say something negative about Donald Trump – about his brash style or his so-called policies — and it’s bombs away … F bombs away to be precise. Not all, but many of Trump’s most passionate supporters, aren’t big on debating issues. Name-calling is their strong suit – just like you know who.<br /><br />After my last column and appearance on FNC about Trump, I heard from his supporters – and they weren’t happy. One Trump fan, after calling me an “idiot,” wrote that I “couldn’t carry Trump’s jock strap.” Good one, Ralph!<br /><br />Bob, another angry Trump supporter, wasn’t pleased that I told Bill O’Reilly that I didn’t think the Oval Office was big enough for both Trump and his massive ego. So he wrote this: “You say the White House isn’t big enough for Trump. I’ve got a s—t house big enough for an IDIOT like you! You ARE a f-ing MORON!”<br /> <br />“Thanks, Bob,” I wrote back, “you kiss your mother with that mouth?”<br /><br />Not all Trump supporters, of course, are so articulate. And their willingness to express such raw emotions shouldn’t surprise anybody. If there’s been a more thin-skinned candidate running for president than Donald Trump, if there has been someone in recent memory who lashes out at every slight real or imagined, I can’t think of who it is.<br /><br />He can’t seem to help himself. For example, just when we thought the Trump war with Megyn Kelly was old news Donald proves us wrong. One of the people watching her return after a two-week vacation was Mr. Trump himself. And he couldn’t resist sending out a tweet:<br /><br />“I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly. Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!”<br /><br />Nor could he resist re-tweeting a message from a Trump fan who called Kelly a “bimbo.”<br /><br />Bill O’Reilly recently told me on his program that he thought Trump was a net plus for the Republican Party. Bill has been wrong before.<br /><br />How is Trump’s plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants going to help the GOP? It’s what his angry supporters want to hear. But it’s not what Latino voters want to hear.<br /> <br />In 2012, Mitt Romney put forth the idea that illegals should deport themselves. He won a measly 27 percent of the Hispanic vote and lost the election. Trump – who back then said Romney’s plan was “crazy” — makes self-deportation look downright humanitarian. The man who wants to uproot families, put them on busses and ship them across the border would be lucky if 27 Latinos in the whole country vote for him – that is, if he somehow won the GOP nomination.<br /><br />But, you know, he just might. Nothing he says or does seems to hurt him – such is the level of anger and frustration among many Republican voters.<br /><br />In a piece for Commentary magazine, Peter Wehner writes about the anger and frustration, and Trump faithful.<br /><br />“This is a populist moment – and for them, Trump is Mr. Anti-Establishment. They see him as the confrontational outsider, unscripted and not politically correct, a person who can shake up the system. Donald Trump is The Great Disrupter. In addition, he knows how to ‘school’ the ‘establishment’ types and has their ‘number.’ The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s time to burn down the village – in this case, Washington D.C. — to save the village. And if the man lighting the match is vulgar, inconsistent, and unprincipled, no matter.”<br /><br />Yes, Donald Trump is tapping into something real – a real frustration with politics as usual. But anger and resentment are not policies. Nor are they attributes most of us want in our president. And before this is over, I suspect most Republicans will figure that out. Most Americans, I think, already have.Bernie Goldberg2015-08-26T07:00:00ZA Messiah the Angry, Frustrated and Fed-Up Wing Has Been Waiting ForBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Messiah-the-Angry-Frustrated-and-Fed-Up-Wing-Has-Been-Waiting-For/441467493981486819.html2015-08-19T23:21:00Z2015-08-19T23:21:00ZOkay, so what happens <em>after</em> Trump?<br /><br />What happens if he fades away or decides he’s had enough and drops out? What do his angry, frustrated and fed-up supporters do? Do they also drop out?<br />Early warning: This column has more questions than answers – usually not a good thing for someone who’s at least attempting to influence the conversation. But when writing or talking about Donald Trump and his run for the presidency, there are few easy, or obvious, answers to the many questions his candidacy raises. <br /><br />You’ve been warned.<br /><br />There is a civil war raging in the Republican Party, even if some conservatives don’t think so. It’s a battle between the angry, frustrated and fed-up wing and the more moderate types. At the moment Trump is the standard bearer for the angry wing, voters who may very well sit home on Election Day if Trump or someone they think is not “conservative enough” wins the nomination.<br /><br />Trump tells us he’ll deport 11 million illegal immigrants. It’s not going to happen and I suspect even he knows it. But so what? It’s what the angry, frustrated and fed-up wing wants to hear.<br /><br />He tells us he’s going to build a wall to keep illegals from south of the border out of this country – and the Mexicans are going to pay for it. That’s not going to happen, either. But again, so what?<br /><br />How’s he going to deal with China? Don’t you worry, he will. He’s a good negotiator. Just ask him. And that also is good enough for his the Trump faithful.<br /><br />When you’re angry, frustrated and fed-up someone like Trump looks like a messiah you’ve been waiting for. They don’t care if Trump is just spouting words that have little substance. They don’t care how impractical he is. His strong suit is that he’s not the others. And for the moment, that’s more than enough.<br /><br />Here’s another question: If Trump no longer is in the race will his acolytes throw their support to another “real conservative” or say the deck was stacked against their guy and sit it out?<br /><br />And what if that post-Trump “real conservative” is someone in the Trump mold, but a tad more sophisticated – someone like Ted Cruz? What if he also fails to win the nomination (which is a good bet)? Will the angry, frustrated and fed-up wing support Rubio or Kasich or Fiorina? How about Bush or Christie? Don’t bet on it.<br /><br />Of course, there’s another possibility – in my view, a very long shot. And that is: Trump actually<br />wins the nomination.<br /><br />Most GOP voters want anybody but Hillary (or Sanders or Biden), but do they want Donald Trump and his massive ego as the voice and face of America? Do they really want him in charge of the nuclear football? Will they vote for Donald – or sit home?<br /><br />We all remember that at the top of the GOP debate, Fox News moderator Bret Baier asked all the candidates if they would pledge to support the party’s nominee — whomever it might be. All but Trump said they would. But there’s another important question hovering over the campaign: Will GOP voters support the Republican candidate — whomever it turns out to be.<br /><br />The answer to that question would tell us a lot about whether the Republicans have a real chance of winning the White House in 2016.Bernie Goldberg2015-08-19T23:21:00ZHow Long Will the Trump-Sanders Thing Last?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-Long-Will-the-Trump-Sanders-Thing-Last/321688375331128529.html2015-08-17T17:22:00Z2015-08-17T17:22:00ZIf John Steinbeck were still around, the current goings on in politics might inspire him to write another book about unhappiness – this one non-fiction, which he might call, The Summer of Our Discontent.<br /><br />It doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out that that’s what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have tapped into – the electorate’s discontent with anything even vaguely connected to politics as usual.<br /><br />Republicans pray that Bernie pulls off the impossible and wins the nomination. And Democrats are praying (to the extent that liberals pray) that Trump actually stays the course and finishes first in the GOP race. Who in his right mind, both sides figure, would vote for that guy?<br /><br /><br /> <br />This is how bad things have gotten in America. Nobody knows what Trump’s position is on anything and something like 25 percent of GOP voters think he’d make a great president.<br /><br />We know what Bernie Sanders thinks about the issues — and what he thinks would sink the economy. And yet, he’s drawing crowds rivaled only by the NFL and the Rolling Stones.<br /><br />It’s not just Bernie’s authenticity that has his fans excited, it’s also Hillary’s inauthenticity. You get the impression that if you asked her about the weather, she’d consult with a focus group before telling you that it’s raining.<br /><br />And then there’s the daily drip, drip, drip of those pesky emails that has eroded the public’s confidence in her. A majority of voters don’t think she’s honest or trustworthy. Not a good thing for someone who wants to be president.<br /><br />But if Democrats really want someone other than Hillary to run against the Republicans, they can’t really think Bernie is the guy. Despite his popularity with the far left of the party, he (probably) can’t beat Hillary. But what he can do is entice someone else, someone more mainstream, to get into the race.<br /><br />Will Joe Biden jump in? How about John Kerry? Or Al Gore?<br /><br />And before we go too far thinking Trump is such a big favorite of GOP voters, remember that something like 75 percent of them prefer somebody else.<br /><br /><br /> <br />But in a nation that craves something new in politics, in a nation that also craves amusement, a Trump-Sanders race would be fun. If Donald had a say in the matter, he’d put it on pay per view.<br /><br />And as Trump put it on MSNBC the other day, talking about Bernie Sanders’ popularity: “He’s struck a nerve on the other side and I’ve struck, I think, an even bigger nerve on the Republican side, the conservative side. It’s amazing.”<br /><br />Amazing! That’s a good word to describe what’s going on during this summer of our discontent. But it’s worth asking if it’s just a summer romance, this fascination with both a billionaire and a socialist who detests billionaires? Or is it something more? We’ll know soon enough. Summer is almost over.Bernie Goldberg2015-08-17T17:22:00ZConservatives Who Never Really Wanted Fair and BalancedBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Conservatives-Who-Never-Really-Wanted-Fair-and-Balanced/591783623035284255.html2015-08-10T18:19:00Z2015-08-10T18:19:00ZLet’s pretend that it was MSNBC and not Fox News that hosted the first Republican primetime presidential debate.<br /><br />And let’s pretend that Chris Matthews started the ball rolling with a question about loyalty to the Republican Party – the question Donald Trump answered with a raised hand indicating he might run as an independent, which amounted to a threat that just might hurt him with millions of rank-and-file Republicans.<br /><br />Now imagine that the next question came from Al Sharpton who asked Donald Trump about calling women fat pigs and all that – another question that could sink the front-running Trump’s candidacy, especially with women who make up 53 percent of the electorate.<br /><br />Then we get another question, this one from Rachel Maddow about the Donald’s bankruptcies – another shot across the Trump bow.<br /><br />How would conservatives – the ones who religiously watch Fox News – react? It’s a safe bet a lot of them would be screaming about bias, about how those liberals were out to get the GOP frontrunner, about how the questions were crafted to not only bring down Trump but also the entire Republican Party. Guilt by association.<br /><br />Those conservatives, in my view, would be wrong. Asking Donald Trump about his “fat pigs” comment strikes me as legitimate. Maybe not as urgent as asking him how he would get millions of Americans back to work, but legitimate nonetheless.<br /><br />If Barack Obama had made the same comment, wouldn’t conservatives demand that journalists ask him about it?<br /><br />Same with the bankruptcies. If Hillary, who I suspect couldn’t run a lemonade stand, had actually been in business and had a few companies go under on her watch, wouldn’t Fox viewers want reporters to ask about that?<br /><br />And if liberal journalists didn’t ask those questions, wouldn’t conservatives accuse them of bias?<br /><br />So why are we seeing a right wing backlash – against what used to be their favorite place for news? Why are we seeing a segment of the Fox audience turning on Fox with the same kind of vitriol they usually reserve for the liberal media?<br /><br />We don’t want Fox picking our presidential candidate, was a comment from a Republican woman I heard on TV. Megyn Kelly, who asked the “fat pig” question, was a particular target.<br /><br />Here’s one tweet that put the Fox News star in the cross-hairs: “@megynkelly You were awful and biased. I would never watch anything that involved you again, ever.”<br /><br />Here’s a comment posted on the conservative Breitbart website: “Yep, about a month after Megyn got that new time slot she has turned into a smug smartass. I can’t stand watching her sometimes,”<br /><br />Of course, there were also conservatives who praised Kelly and Fox for good journalism. Still, how could this happen? How could so many conservatives become so disenchanted so quickly?<br /><br />Here’s the dirty little secret: A segment of the Fox audience never wanted fair and balanced news and opinion. They wanted a conservative slant – on news, on commentary, on everything. If they could get the weather from a conservative who would bash liberals while telling us it’s going to rain today, that would be just dandy with them. They don’t want a bias-free news channel, no matter what they say. They want a news organization that caters to their own biases; that validates their own biases. And a lot of the time, they felt, that’s exactly what they got.<br /><br />But they didn’t get it during the GOP debate. That’s when they got real journalism. And that’s never what a lot of them ever really wanted.Bernie Goldberg2015-08-10T18:19:00ZTwo Debates, One WinnerBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Two-Debates-One-Winner/-617964935187964658.html2015-08-07T20:50:00Z2015-08-07T20:50:00Z<p>So Donald Trump refuses to pledge allegiance to the Republican Party. If he’s not the GOP nominee, he can’t say what he’ll do – and that includes possibly running as a third-party candidate.</p>
<p>If he meant any of it, this would make Donald the real RINO in the race. But he doesn’t mean it.</p>
<p>The morning after the debate he explained that it was all about “leverage.” It was Donald’s way of trying to insure that the other GOP candidates treat him with respect, as he put it. If they don’t, if they’re mean to him and call him bad names, he just might take his ball and go home, which in political terms, of course, means running as an independent.</p>
<p>I was wrong when I said he wouldn’t run in the first place. I was wrong when I thought he’d never catch on. I was wrong when I thought he jumped the shark with his shot at John McCain. So here goes again:</p>
<p>Trump will not run as a third-party candidate – period.</p>
<p>If he does, there’s a 100 percent chance he’ll lose. And there’s no way anyone with his narcissism and his ego would intentionally do something that would legitimately label him a loser. And not that he loses sleep over being hated, but he would be if he ran as a third-party candidate since that would guarantee a victory for Hillary Clinton or whomever the nominee turns out to be.</p>
<p>And we’ll know soon enough – when the new polls come out in a few days – if his threat of political infidelity will hurt him – or who knows – will actually increase his popularity. I know it sounds crazy, but with Trump, you never know.</p>
<p>There were two debates, of course, the one in primetime with the big live audience, and the other one for the second-tier candidates. That one played to an empty arena, which was like watching a ball game on TV at home and noticing that nobody was in the stands. It didn’t feel right. Candidates need electricity in the room when they talk; they need reaction. Fox should have figured out a way to get rear ends in the seats.</p>
<p>Two debates, as one headline had it, but one winner. Carly Fiorina.</p>
<p>As Byron York put it in the Washington Times, “It was hard to declare a clear winner of the primetime debate. Combine the two sessions into one, however, and Fiorina emerged as the likely winner of the entire evening.”</p>
<p>He’s right. And she came off as the candidate you’d most like to see go head to head with that other woman running – the one on the Democratic side.</p>
<p>This was Carly in her closing statement:</p>
<p>“Hillary Clinton lies about Benghazi, she lies about e-mails. She is still defending Planned Parenthood, and she is still her party’s frontrunner. 2016 is going to be a fight between conservatism, and a Democrat party that is undermining the very character of this nation. We need a nominee who is going to throw every punch, not pull punches, and someone who cannot stumble before he even gets into the ring.”</p>
<p>Fiorina has been near zero in the polls, which is why she was on the undercard. There was talk that she was really running for the VP slot. But the day after the debates, that sounds more than a little condescending.</p>
<p>As for the others: I thought Marco Rubio did well. Same with John Kasich, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee. Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, not so much. They came off as run-of-the-mill politicians – and that’s not something voters seem to want this time around.</p>
<p>Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, came off as immensely likeable, especially in his closing remark when he tried to distinguish himself from all the pols in the debate. He mentioned that he was the only one on the stage who separated Siamese twins and finished with one of the best lines of the night: “I’m only one who removed half a brain, but if you went to Washington, you’d think someone beat me to it.”</p>
<p>If this were a Mr. Congeniality contest, Ben Carson would have been the big winner of the night. Too bad for him that it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Iowa and New Hampshire are still light years away. But we’re into it now for real. So let’s see if Donald fades – and Carly rises.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-08-07T20:50:00ZThe Guy Who Gives Egomania a Bad NameBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Guy-Who-Gives-Egomania-a-Bad-Name/-766757487432917483.html2015-07-30T18:50:00Z2015-07-30T18:50:00ZIn May, I wrote <a href="/b/Will-He-or-Wont-He-Toss-His-Hair-in-the-Ring/922909686357267891.html">a brilliant column in this space about Donald Trump</a> that began with this: “<em>Donald Trump says he’ll tell us soon if he plans to run for president. I’ll tell you now: He won’t. The boy has cried wolf once too often</em>.”<br /><br />I was wrong. Obviously!<br /><br />Then I figured, given his annoying narcissism, he’d never catch on. Wrong again!!<br /><br />And when he needlessly and mean-spiritedly bashed John McCain I was absolutely, positively certain that he had jumped the shark, that it was lights out for Donald Trump.<br /><br />I wasn’t only wrong on this one, too, but his poll numbers actually went up!!!<br /><br />So if you want to stop reading now, feel free. I deserve it.<br /><br />For those still with me …<br /><br />It’s no secret that Trump is doing so well because many Americans have had it with politicians, a word they spit out more than merely say. Voters don’t trust politicians who they think will say anything to get their vote. We think politicians are inauthentic, a nice way of saying phony. And millions of Americans see Trump as the guy who speaks his mind, who says what he means and means what he says, who tells the Chinese to fly a kite and the Russians too. And if he demeans Mexicans who sneak into this country – so what, they say? All Trump is doing, they reckon, is speaking the truth – something most politicians are afraid to do.<br /><br />There’s a great line from Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar, who wrote Me and Bobby McGee. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That also explains Trump. The voters are saying, we’ve got nothing to lose if we vote for him over those professional political phonies who have done nothing for us. And guess what. Trump is saying the same thing: If I lose, I’ll go back to being a billionaire. Big freaking deal.<br /><br />People like that about him.<br /><br />But here’s a thought for you to ponder: Barack Obama is also responsible for Trump’s unexpected success.<br />Voters know it isn’t morning in America. Most think we’re on “the wrong track.” Millions upon millions have given up looking for work. The gross national product is only limping along. In one poll, most Americans said they think we’re still in a recession. They know Obama isn’t Reagan or Clinton when it comes to their day in day out economic wellbeing.<br /><br />Enter the non-politician, politician … the TV celebrity … the guy who doesn’t give a damn what anybody thinks … the one who doesn’t read from teleprompters or even note cards. He may sound like a jerk constantly bragging about how great he is, but hey, ain’t he refreshing?<br /><br />And more and more voters are saying, “He’s just like us” despite the fact that he’s nothing like us. We don’t live in houses like his, we don’t sit in the back seats of limos like he does, we don’t eat at restaurants that he frequents, we don’t have our names on buildings and golf courses all over the place, and we don’t have his money.<br /><br />Mere technicalities. When you’re fed up – really, really fed up – you’ll convince yourself of almost anything that gives you hope for a better future. Even if that hope is Donald Trump, the guy who gives egomania a bad name. Besides, unlike liberals who resent the wealthy, Trump’s fans aspire to someday be rich just like he is.<br /><br />So now I’m about to make a few more brilliant predictions:<br /><ol>
<li>Donald Trump will say something even dopier than his remarks about how John McCain wasn’t a war hero. This time people will say, Enough!</li>
<li>Nothing lasts forever, and Trumps past due date is approaching fast. Even if he doesn’t mouth off in a big, way, the voters will simply get tired of him.</li>
<li>If he fails to win the GOP nomination, he definitely will not run as a third party candidate.</li>
<li>He definitely will not be elected President of the United States — ever</li>
</ol><br />One more, very important thing, you must consider: I’ve been wrong about everything I’ve ever written about Donald Trump.Bernie Goldberg2015-07-30T18:50:00ZPay Attention Republicans - Especially You, Mr. TrumpBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Pay-Attention-Republicans---Especially-You-Mr.-Trump/14007714035793314.html2015-07-27T18:49:00Z2015-07-27T18:49:00ZYou have to give Hillary Clinton credit, if for nothing more than having a great deal of chutzpah. Here she is making income inequality a big part of her run for the White House despite the fact that she could be the poster girl for income inequality in America.<br /><br />This is the same Hillary Clinton who has made $200,000 for a single speech and whose net worth, along with husband Bill, is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000,000.<br /><br />And the best part is that she condemns income inequality while maintaining a straight face. As her feminist pals might say, You go girl!<br /><br />Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Hillary Clinton used the first public rally of her presidential campaign to align herself with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, saying she wanted to ease income inequality and would push for expanded paid family leave, universal preschool and other liberal priorities.”<br /><br />Other liberal priorities like raising the minimum wage and re-writing tax laws to make sure the wealthiest Americans pay – what liberals like to call – their fair share, and generally playing Robin Hood by taking money from the rich and passing it around to everyone else — in exchange for their votes.<br /><br />If you’re a liberal Democrat – excuse the redundancy there – you’ll never get in trouble for pushing income inequality or bashing the rich – even when those fat cats on Wall Street are helping finance your campaign.<br /><br />But there’s one facet of income inequality Mrs. Clinton – and every other politician, liberal or conservative — won’t touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole. And it’s about why some poor people are poor.<br /><br />A year ago I wrote about a study conducted by two scholars from the University of Arkansas – Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch – who have looked into the reasons for income inequality. Here’s some of what they wrote in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal:<br /><br />“Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something – ideology, tobacco money – other than science?<br /><br />“Yet in the current discussion about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of single-parent families during the past half century.”<br /><br />In other words, having babies out of wedlock is often what makes people poor – and contributes to the income inequality that Mrs. Clinton and others supposedly care so much about.<br /><br />The problem for liberals, of course, is their inability to hold the poor accountable for dysfunctional behavior. Many poor people, of course, are hard working folks who simply lack the kind of skills that pay well. But others are poor because they’re girls who had a baby when they were 15 years old and never finished high school – and of course, never married the guys who got them pregnant.<br /><br />But here’s an opening for Republicans. They could acknowledge income inequality is a problem, but then explain that it’s not because some hedge fund managers make a lot of money. It’s because, in too many cases, people make bad choices that make them wards of the welfare state and keeps them poor. A message like that would resonate with many moderate Americans, not only conservatives.<br /><br />And then there’s the media’s reluctance to address the issue honestly.<br /><br />“Mainstream news outlets tended to ignore the … message about family structure, focusing instead on variables with far less statistical impact, such as residential segregation,” the authors of the study write.<br /><br />And, of course, there’s also the race factor. “Family breakup,” the scholars tell us, “has hit minority communities the hardest. So even bringing up the issue risks being charged with racism.”<br /><br />So here’s my free advice for Republicans in general and one in particular – Mr. Donald Trump. Instead of being both provocative and inane. Donald, by making ridiculous generalizations about Mexican illegal immigrants, and instead of taking cheap shots at John McCain, why not be provocative and smart, for a change? Why not say, “I’m also concerned about income inequality. I want poor people to do better, to live good, happy lives. But I’m not going to pretend some people are poor because guys like me are rich. Some people are poor because they have made really bad decisions and we need to point that out – or we’ll never making progress on this issue.”<br /><br />I concluded my column a year ago by writing that, “I get the impression that America is in the mood for a politician who isn’t afraid; one who isn’t constantly taking polls to find out what to say; one who talks about personal responsibility and makes no apologies for it. And if along the way that politician is called a racist, so what? I get the impression the American people are tired of that kind of nonsense too.”<br /><br />Republicans, are you listening? Mr. Trump, are you listening?Bernie Goldberg2015-07-27T18:49:00ZObama Wants Debate on Iran Deal. Just Kidding.Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Obama-Wants-Debate-on-Iran-Deal.-Just-Kidding./115467476810217006.html2015-07-16T23:31:00Z2015-07-16T23:31:00Z<p>We all remember Barack Obama’s bold promise on the eve of the election in 2008, when he said he would “fundamentally” transform the United States if he were elected president. Don’t say he didn’t warn us.</p>
<p>And he has gone about making good on his promise in many ways.</p>
<p>He started with the so-called Affordable Care Act, which he rammed through Congress without a single Republican vote – a massive bulk of legislation that was based on a slick marketing campaign about how we could keep our doctor and health plan if we liked them, which turned out to be untrue for millions of Americans. And there was the promise that our premiums would go down. Instead they’re going up – and in some cases faster than even a lot of critics thought.</p>
<p>There were Mr. Obama’s new ideas about getting our economic house in order, which mainly consisted of a nearly $1 trillion stimulus plan that didn’t stimulate very much and raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. But after more than six years in office, the economic recovery is still only limping along. As for the national debt, when Mr. Obama came into office it was around $10 trillion. When he leaves it’ll be about double that. How’s that for fundamentally transforming the United States of America?</p>
<p>And he wanted to pump life into the long-neglected middle class. Since he’s been president middle class incomes have gone down, not up.</p>
<p>He wanted to transform America by ending the long war in Iraq and so he didn’t push for a deal that would have left some American troops there to maintain stability. Now we have an unstable Iraq and something new — the Islamic State.</p>
<p>As the visionary he believes he is, he determined that climate change was Public Enemy Number One and unleashed the EPA on the coal industry. He has refused to green light the XL pipeline project. He spent truckloads of money on solar energy companies that went bankrupt.</p>
<p>He bypassed Congress and issued an executive order allowing illegal immigrants to stay in this country without fear of deportation.</p>
<p>He snubbed Congress again when he opened diplomatic relations with Cuba and didn’t push for an end to political repression in that country.</p>
<p>And now, we have a deal with Iran – a deal that may very well transform America, and not in a good way.</p>
<p>But let’s set aside for now whether the deal with Iran is, as Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu called it, an “historic mistake” – an assessment on which just about all Republicans and some Democrats concur. And let’s focus instead on something President Obama told the American people during his remarks on national television right after the deal was made.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama acknowledged that, “on such a tough issue, it is important that the American people and their representatives in Congress get a full opportunity to review the deal. After all, the details matter. And we’ve had some of the finest nuclear scientists in the world working through those details. And we’re dealing with a country — Iran — that has been a sworn adversary of the United States for over 35 years. So I welcome a robust debate in Congress on this issue, and I welcome scrutiny of the details of this agreement.”</p>
<p>Too bad he didn’t mean any of it, because here’s what else the president said: “I am confident that this deal will meet the national security interest of the United States and our allies. So I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal.”</p>
<p>So he wants the American people and Congress to go through the deal; he welcomes scrutiny of the agreement; he welcomes debate … but for what purpose? Nothing the American people or their representatives in Congress say will matter to him. His mind is made up — and closed to any ideas that conflict with his.</p>
<p>Yet he gets away with this kind of thing. Journalists should have pointed out his hypocrisy. They didn’t.</p>
<p>Nor did they hold him accountable for what he went on to say, a low-rent tactic he uses quite a bit.</p>
<p>“We do not have to accept an inevitable spiral into conflict,” the president said. “And we certainly shouldn’t seek it. And precisely because the stakes are so high, this is not the time for politics or posturing.”</p>
<p>With Mr. Obama there can be no legitimate disagreement. Those who don’t see things the way he does are unserious; they posture and play politics. He alone is above the fray.</p>
<p>This is the way of narcissists.</p>
<p>It may be unfair to believe that President Obama cares more about his legacy than he does about America, but one is tempted nonetheless to think just that. To secure his place in history he promised to fundamentally transform this country — and he clearly meant it.</p>
<p>Back then, tough questions should have been asked. Why the need to “<em>fundamentally</em> transform” America? What is so wrong with the United States? And if the media weren’t busy slobbering, they might have also paid more attention to something his wife said, five months earlier.</p>
<p>“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation,” Michelle Obama said on May 14, 2008.</p>
<p>There is a reason they’re dancing in the streets of Tehran. And it’s not because Mr. Obama made a good deal for the United States or its allies. The mullahs are not concerned about <em>our</em> wellbeing. Nor are they concerned about his legacy. Mr. Obama is on top of that one.</p>
<p><span>- See more at: http://bernardgoldberg.com/obama-wants-debate-on-iran-deal-just-kidding/#sthash.sw9w2iok.dpuf</span></p>Bernie Goldberg2015-07-16T23:31:00ZWedding Cakes for Gay Couples & Sanctuary CitiesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Wedding-Cakes-for-Gay-Couples--Sanctuary-Cities/-114834871418856132.html2015-07-13T21:59:00Z2015-07-13T21:59:00Z<p>Did you hear about the gay bakery in Greenwich Village – <em>Sweetie Pies, Cupcakes and More</em> — that refused to bake a wedding cake for a straight couple? Can you imagine?</p>
<p>When asked why they refused, the two gay bakers – Adam and Steve – said, “While we have nothing against straight people – some of our best friends are heteros – we don’t think straight people should fall into some ‘protected class.’ In other words, it’s our bakery and we can do whatever we want.”</p>
<p>City officials didn’t see it that way. They fined Adam and Steve over $100,000 because according to local law, a business open to the public must serve the public and can’t refuse service based on sexual orientation.</p>
<p>So whose side are you on? Do the gay bakers have a right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a heterosexual couple? It is their business, after all. Or was the government right in fining them?</p>
<p>In case you hadn’t heard about the Greenwich Village case, it’s because I made it up. But I suspect you knew that. And I understand that the Oregon case, which is in the news – where Christian bakers were fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple – isn’t exactly the same.</p>
<p>In the Oregon case, the bakers claimed it was against their religious beliefs to bake the cake. To do so would violate their fundamental values.</p>
<p>The state didn’t see it that way, ruling that, “Under Oregon law, businesses cannot discriminate or refuse service based on sexual orientation, just as they cannot turn customers away because of race, sex, disability, age or religion.”</p>
<p>(Before you ask, Should a Jewish baker be forced to cater a Nazi wedding, let’s be clear: Nazis are not a protected class. In many states — Oregon being one — gays are. So no on the Nazi wedding.)</p>
<p>Melissa Klein, the owner along with her husband of the bakery that was penalized, <em>Sweet Cakes</em>, in Portland, said this on her Facebook page: “We are here to obey God not man, and we will not conform to this world. If we were to lose everything it would be totally worth it for our Lord who gave his one and only son, Jesus, for us! God will win this fight!”</p>
<p>Fair enough. If they’re willing to lose their business by not baking a wedding cake for a gay couple, maybe that’s how God wants it, though I have a tough time believing that God gave even a second of his precious time to the question of whether Christian bakers should make a wedding cake for a couple of gays.</p>
<p>Still, I’d prefer that instead of continuing to wage religious war over this, we call a truce.</p>
<p>What if we had a law said that bakers have <em>no</em> obligation to actually deliver the cake to the site of the wedding; that a florist does <em>not</em> have to attend the wedding to make sure the flowers are arranged properly; that a photographer does <em>not</em> have to take pictures at the actual wedding ceremony? What if the law said, in essence, that business owners, if their religion forbids it, don’t have to set foot inside a venue where a gay wedding takes place.</p>
<p>But, under this compromise, the same law would say that the baker <em>does</em> have to simply bake the cake for the gay couple, and the florist <em>does</em> simply have to sell them flowers, and the photographer <em>does</em> simply have to take pictures <em>at his studio</em> – because businesses that are open to the general public must serve the general public or pay a fine.</p>
<p>There was a comment posted on Snopes.com by someone called “Solandri” that asked for give on both sides. “This [Oregon] case should never have gotten this far. It should have been resolved privately with the company baking the cake but not decorating it, and the lesbian couple decorating it themselves or hiring someone else to decorate it. Coexistence only works if all parties try to figure out a way to coexist with minimal disruption to each other, instead of immediately trying to inflict the maximum possible harm upon each other just because they disagree.”</p>
<p>I understand that some people of faith don’t want any part of gay weddings – even if that part is a small one, such as only baking the cake (and not being required to so much as show up in the same zip code as the wedding). But I worry about the slippery slope.</p>
<p>If bakers can refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because doing so would violate their religious beliefs, why can’t they refuse to serve openly gay people – period?</p>
<p>Why can’t the florist refuse to sell flowers to gay people – who simply want flowers?</p>
<p>Why can’t these business owners of faith say that homosexuality, in their view, is a sin and they can’t do business with sinful people?</p>
<p>In the ruling against the Christian bakers, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian said that, “This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”</p>
<p>He’s right.</p>
<p>Still, I don’t want to see those Christian bakers in Portland lose their business over this. But let’s not forget that they did make a decision to operate in a civil society. They did open their shop on Main Street. It’s one thing to say on Facebook, “We are here to obey God not man, and we will not conform to this world,” but if you really believe that, don’t open a bakery on a city street. Open it in your church.</p>
<p>Permit me a brief detour: In San Francisco the liberal establishment welcomes all immigrants, legal or otherwise. The mayor and city council have declared San Francisco a “Sanctuary City” and like the 300 or so other sanctuary cities in the United States, they don’t always co-operate with federal immigration officers on matters involving illegal aliens. In the wake of the tragic murder of that young woman in San Francisco, by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times and had many felony convictions, the city’s policy has left many decent people furious — though liberals, in general, still like the idea of sanctuary cities.</p>
<p>But should the city of San Francisco be the judge and jury on what laws it will embrace and which ones it won’t.</p>
<p>And should the Christian bakers in Portland, Oregon be the arbiter of what laws they will follow and which one’s they won’t.</p>
<p>The sanctimony of true believers is understandable. But at times it is also exhausting.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-07-13T21:59:00ZBernie Sanders' Big Advantage Over HillaryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Sanders-Big-Advantage-Over-Hillary/-38026949223862266.html2015-07-05T18:53:00Z2015-07-05T18:53:00ZA while back, when Bernie Sanders was still being compared to the nutty uncle you hide in the basement, I wrote a column that began with this: “I have a hunch, a hunch that Bernie Sanders is going to do a lot better than the smart money thinks.”<br /><br />If I weren’t so modest, I’d tell you how brilliant I am. So I won’t tell you. But I am.<br /><br />Bernie’s poll numbers have been going up almost daily, and so have the number of fans who show up at his rallies. The other day, Bernie drew a crowd of nearly 10,000 in Madison, Wisconsin.<br /><br />I know, it’s Madison … but still.<br /><br />Yes, progressives as they like to call themselves — since ultra left-wing liberal sounds so off-putting — like his message. But there’s another reason he’s doing so well. Bernie is authentic. Hillary is anything but. As a general rule, people don’t like phonies.<br /><br />That, of course, doesn’t mean he’s going to win the nomination. That still remains a very, very long shot. But Democrats in the early voting states seem to be taking him seriously. Bernie’s got ideas that the Democratic base likes. And journalists might want to ask the “inevitable” winner of the nomination, Mrs. Clinton, what she thinks of those ideas.<br /><br />After all, when Donald Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” … journalists were all over his GOP opponents demanding to know what they thought of the Donald’s remarks. The big question on the Sunday talk shows was whether Trump was “hurting the Republican brand.”<br /><br />But journalists don’t seem all that interested in whether Bernie Sander’s positions are hurting the Democratic brand. Isn’t it possible that he might scare off independents who don’t want to be associated with a party that embraces someone like Sanders — independents Hillary will need to become president? And the press hasn’t shown much interest either in what Hillary thinks of Bernie’s progressive ideas – ideas about how he would like to fundamentally change the United States of America.<br /><br />Bernie thinks that a $15 minimum wage is “reasonable.” Does Hillary?<br /><br />Bernie has proposed breaking up the nation’s largest banks. Does Hillary want to break up the banks?<br /><br />On immigration, Sanders wants to rein in the guest-worker program that provides many American businesses with low wage labor, arguing that it drives up unemployment. How does Mrs. Clinton feel about that?<br /><br />On health care, Bernie wants to go beyond ObamaCare. He wants Medicare for everyone – a single-payer system. What’s Hillary’s position on that?<br /><br />Asked by a reporter if a 90 percent top marginal tax rate would be too high, Sanders said “no.” How high would be too high for Mrs. Clinton?<br /><br />One of the reasons we don’t know where Hillary stands on these and other issues is because she finds it too distasteful to actually engage the riff-raff known as the press corps. But at some point she’ll have to actually talk at some length with reporters, who, if they’re doing their jobs, will have to ask how she differs from Bernie.<br /><br />Hillary may still be the main attraction at her coronation, but Sanders does have one big advantage over her. His name. Bernie. Don’t you just love it?Bernie Goldberg2015-07-05T18:53:00ZGay Marriage: The Supreme Court vs. Another High AuthorityBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Gay-Marriage:-The-Supreme-Court-vs.-Another-High-Authority/753756141244470358.html2015-07-01T18:05:00Z2015-07-01T18:05:00Z<p>On June 12, 1967, in what was a landmark civil rights decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a “basic civil right” and that states could not ban interracial marriage. The vote was 9 to 0.</p>
<p>On June 26, 2015 the Court again made history, ruling once more that marriage is a fundamental civil right, this time saying the Constitution guarantees gay Americans the right to marry in all 50 states. The vote was 5-to-4.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court was right in 1967 and it is right again now in 2015.</p>
<p>In 1967, the Court said that, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”</p>
<p>That may seem obvious to most of us today, but back then, it took the highest court in the land to override a decision by a state judge in Virginia who had ruled that, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”</p>
<p>And if opponents of interracial marriage 50 years ago got their marching orders from Almighty God, many opponents of same-sex marriage today also base their opposition on a higher authority than the Supreme Court of the United States.</p>
<p>But Justice Anthony Kennedy looked to the Constitution, not the Bible, for his guidance. Writing for the majority, he said that, “No longer may this liberty” for gays to marry “ be denied.” And as did the Court in 1967, Kennedy too invoked the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law, ruling that it applies to same sex couples that want to marry.</p>
<p>“No union,” he said, “is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”</p>
<p>An editorial in the Wall Street Journal noted that while the decision “is a triumph for the gay rights movement … it would have been better for American politics and self government had it been achieved by democratic means rather than judicial fiat.”</p>
<p>In other words, leave it up to the individual states to decide. It is an argument conservatives often turn to, whether they’re conservative Republicans now arguing against gay marriage or conservative Democrats who 50 years ago argued against civil rights for black Americans.</p>
<p>Even those of us who support the court’s decision would have preferred that all 50 states throw out their laws that ban gay marriage. But we have a Constitution for a reason.</p>
<p>What if only 40 states approved of gay marriage? What about the other 10? Shouldn’t gays in those states have the same right to marry as everyone else in the other 40?</p>
<p>Justice Kennedy had something to say about that. “An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection,” he said, “when he or she is harmed even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act.”</p>
<p>Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t see it that way. In one of the court’s minority opinions he said that, “Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.”</p>
<p>But that reasoning is hard to follow. When the law said an interracial couple could not marry, the court did in fact decide that judges have the power to say what the law should be.</p>
<p>Why should it be any different now? Why shouldn’t judges have the power to say what the law should be when they believe the law violates an individual’s constitutional rights? And while we’re on the subject, would Chief Justice Roberts have voted to uphold laws that banned interracial marriage back in the 60s on grounds that it’s not up to judges to decide what the law should be?</p>
<p>No, race is not gender. But, when it comes to constitutional rights, they amount to a distinction without much of a difference.</p>
<p>Religious conservatives may never accept the court’s authority when it comes to ruling on something like gay marriage, an issue that, for them, violates biblical teaching. Fine. The church is under no obligation to perform gay marriage. But the church is not the state. No less an authority than Jesus understood that, telling his followers to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”</p>
<p>Now it’s time for his modern day disciples to understand we don’t live in a theocracy, no matter how much they wish we did. The Constitution is not the Bible. Conservatives, Christian or otherwise, don’t have to like the decision. But they have to accept it – and they should move on.</p>
<p>And that’s what the Republican candidates for president should do: Accept the decision and move on – even though every one of them (at least publicly) is against same-sex marriage. It’s a shame that a Republican can’t come out in favor of same-sex marriage and have any hope of winning his party’s nomination. The Christian Right along with the loud voices of conservatism on TV and radio would destroy such a candidate.</p>
<p>Moving on makes political sense. All the GOP candidates need to say is that the Court has spoken. The case of gay marriage is now settled. Then they would be free to move on to the issues that actually help them, issues like the economy and national security. They should look at the Supreme Court’s decision not as a setback, but as a gift, a kind of get out of jail free card.</p>
<p>That, of course, may be easier said than done. Because too often Republicans come off as stodgy and stuck in the past. They see change all around them and they don’t like it. On some things, they’re absolutely right. There is a greater acceptance today, for example, of having babies outside of marriage. They <em>should</em> be against that — if for no other reason that single mothers raising kids on their own often leads to a lives of poverty and too often, chaos. But on gay rights, if Republicans are seen as stuck in the past, there’s no reason American voters will want to choose any one of them for president.</p>
<p>Americans always look to the future in presidential elections. Yesterday is just a glimpse in the rear view mirror. And when it comes to gay rights, too many Republicans are too busy looking in the mirror, they’re too busy yearning for the “good old days,” which weren’t all that good if you were gay in America.</p>
<p>Republicans are entitled, of course, to feel any way they want on the issue of gay marriage. And voters, especially young voters, of course, have every right to vote for the future and not the past.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-07-01T18:05:00ZThe Pope, Global Warming and the Elusive Meaning of MoralityBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Pope-Global-Warming-and-the-Elusive-Meaning-of-Morality/-133847036363978781.html2015-06-24T23:47:00Z2015-06-24T23:47:00Z<p>A while back I was on <strong>The O’Reilly Factor</strong> talking about the liberal idea of raising taxes on the rich. Bill brought the Bible into the conversation, referring to the passage about how it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.</p>
<p>I said, “I don’t care what the Bible says,” referring specifically to the tax debate. I received a ton of very angry emails for that remark from the faithful in Bill’s audience. The general message was, “You better care what the Bible says – or face the consequences.”</p>
<p>I wrote back to some saying if you’re so concerned about the teachings in the Bible why don’t you pay more attention to the part about not judging lest ye be judged. Let’s just say while I thought that was a good comeback, they didn’t. And let’s also say, it’s a good thing I don’t believe in Hell.</p>
<p>In any case, I now have second thoughts about my “I don’t care what the Bible says” comment. Unfortunately, my second thoughts are exactly the same as my first thoughts. I still don’t care.</p>
<p>I bring this up now because the Pope has just issued an encyclical, or teaching document, on global warming. Here’s how the New York Times trumpeted the news:</p>
<p>“Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, blending a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action. …</p>
<p>“The most vulnerable victims, he declares, are the world’s poorest people, who are being dislocated and disregarded.”</p>
<p>Since a papal encyclical is one of the strongest statements that can be made by the Catholic Church, this is a big deal.</p>
<p>Not to me, but I’m pretty sure Francis won’t lose any sleep over my indifference. To paraphrase my sage remark to O’Reilly on taxes: I don’t care what the Pope says on global warming.</p>
<p>First, the Catholic Church has a spotty record when it comes to pronouncements on science. Can you say, Galileo? You remember him, one of the greatest scientists the world has ever produced; the “heretic” who had the gall to say the planet Earth was not at the center of the universe; and for that was brought up on charges by the Catholic Church and sentenced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.</p>
<p>That Galileo.</p>
<p>And has the pope taken into account the probability that energy costs will go up, not down, if we do what he and other liberals want us to do to combat climate change or global warming or whatever they’re calling it this week? How’s that going to help the poor? What’s the pope going to say when poor people freeze in the winter because they can’t afford their higher energy bills? Blaming their plight on the evils of capitalism might make liberals feel better but it won’t make the poor any warmer.</p>
<p>For the record, I’m not saying humans aren’t at least partially responsible for climate change – if the climate is actually changing. What I’m saying is I’m not buying the doomsday scenario that true believers like Al Gore have been peddling. And I don’t need a pope, who is not a climate expert, throwing his substantial weight around trying to influence government policies.</p>
<p>On this, I’m with Jeb Bush who told a campaign rally in New Hampshire that, “I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope. … I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.”</p>
<p>According to the Times, “Francis has made it clear that he hopes the encyclical will influence energy and economic policy and stir a global movement. He calls on ordinary people to press politicians for change. Catholic bishops and priests around the world are expected to discuss the encyclical in services on Sunday. But Francis is also reaching for a wider audience, asking in the document ‘to address every person living on this planet.’</p>
<p>“Even before the encyclical, the pope’s stance against environmental destruction and his demand for global action had already thrilled many scientists. Advocates of policies to combat climate change have said they hoped that Francis could lend a ‘moral dimension’ to the debate.”</p>
<p>This is the position of many liberals in America. They also see climate change not only as a political issue but one of morality too. And they too applaud the pope for making the connection between politics and moral values.</p>
<p>One might argue that the church should stay out of debates about zoning laws or the speed limit in Wyoming. But how can religious leaders stay silent when the issues involve fundamental questions of morality?</p>
<p>The Times quotes Vincent Miller, a scholar at the University of Dayton, who says, “Critics will say the church can’t teach policy, the church can’t teach politics. And Francis is saying, ‘No, these things are at the core of the church’s teaching.’ ”</p>
<p>Liberals will love that message too. But here comes the uh oh alert. This was also in the encyclical on global warming: “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”</p>
<p>I’m guessing liberals weren’t too happy with that part. But abortion is also a moral issue at the core of the church’s teaching. And so is gay marriage — and to some extent, so is the sex change of the former Bruce Jenner.</p>
<p>So let’s review, members of the congregation: Liberals embrace the pope when he speaks out against things they’re also against – like global warming — but they want the church to mind its own business when its leaders speak out against things they support – like abortion and gay marriage.</p>
<p>But if this picking and choosing seems like a morality of convenience on the part of liberals, conservatives are no different and no better. Religious conservatives may not like it when the pope speaks out about global warming, but they love it when he and other church leaders speak out against abortion and gay marriage.</p>
<p>Morality, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<p>God help us, so to speak.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-06-24T23:47:00ZI Think Therefore I Am -- BlackBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/I-Think-Therefore-I-Am----Black/985177723788359635.html2015-06-18T19:47:00Z2015-06-18T19:47:00Z<p>When in 1637 the French philosopher Rene Descartes said, “I think therefore I am” I’m guessing he didn’t have Rachel Dolezal in mind. But you never know.<br /><br />In case you’ve been in a coma for the past week, Rachel Dolezal is the white woman who until recently was the head of the Spokane, Washington NAACP. Ms. Dolzesal thinks she’s black. Therefore, in her mind anyway, she is black.</p>
<p>You may not understand Ms. Dolezal’s reasoning but that’s probably because you’re not as smart as Descartes.</p>
<p>Ms. Dolezal has been blasted for her deception, but I kind of like the way she thinks. It makes it easier for me to think I play centerfield for the New York Yankees. Sometimes I think I’m a horse.</p>
<p>Well, as strange as all this sounds, we’re now learning, thanks to a guest column in the Huffington Post, that Rachel Dolezal isn’t alone when it comes to self loathing for being white.</p>
<p>Ali Michael, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote the column under the headline, “I Sometimes Don’t Want to be White Either.” Guess what it’s about.</p>
<p>Don’t bother. Here’s a portion of her column:</p>
<p>“There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors … and my descendants. I remember deciding that I couldn’t have biological children because I didn’t want to propagate my privilege biologically.</p>
<p>“If I was going to pass on my privilege, I wanted to pass it on to someone who doesn’t have racial privilege; so I planned to adopt. I disliked my Whiteness, but I disliked the Whiteness of other White people more. I felt like the way to really end racism was to feel guilty for it, and to make other White people feel guilty for it too. And then, like Dolezal, I wanted to take on Africanness. Living in South Africa during my junior year abroad, I lived with a Black family, wore my hair in head wraps, shaved my head. I didn’t want to be White, but if I had to be, I wanted to be White in a way that was different from other White people I knew. I wanted to be a special, different White person. The one and only. How very White of me…”</p>
<p>Professor Michael, who has a Ph.D, says, for her the desire to be black was a phase, a phase she has since moved on from. But she learned from her experience, she tells us. And so, this is how she ends her column:</p>
<p>“Being White — even with the feeling of culturelessness and responsibility for racism — is nothing compared to not being White. But being White — and facing the truth of what that means historically and systemically — can drive you to do the weird and unthinkable that we see in Dolezal today.</p>
<p>“It seems like a good warning. Rachel Dolezal’s actions are a potential pitfall for any White people on the journey towards recognizing the truth of what it means to be White and accepting responsibility for it. But we cannot not be White. And we cannot undo what Whiteness has done. We can only start from where we are and who we are.”</p>
<p>Yes!</p>
<p>And then we can check ourselves into the nearest asylum that specializes in the treatment of white liberal guilt.</p>Bernie Goldberg2015-06-18T19:47:00ZMemo to Jerry Seinfeld: Welcome to Our WorldBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-to-Jerry-Seinfeld:-Welcome-to-Our-World/324785409433790049.html2015-06-11T22:05:00Z2015-06-11T22:05:00ZJerry Seinfeld has been in the news lately because of his supposedly controversial observations about how the PC culture has gotten “creepy.” Jerry apparently has just discovered that you can say something with absolutely no malicious intent, and still be tarred as a racist or a sexist.<br /><br />Really, Jerry? This is news to you?<br /><br />It started with an interview on ESPN radio, when Seinfeld said, “I don’t play colleges but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges, they’re so PC.’ I’ll give you an example: My daughter’s 14. My wife says to her, ‘Well, you know, in the next couple of years, I think maybe you’re going to want to hang around the city more on the weekends so you can see boys.’ You know, my daughter says, ‘That’s sexist.’ They just want to use these words. ‘That’s racist. That’s sexist. That’s prejudice.’ They don’t even know what they’re talking about.”<br /> <br />Then on Late Night with Seth Meyers he picked up where he left off, this time telling a story about how uptight people are when the subject is about gays.<br /><br />“I do this joke about the way people need to justify their cell phone,” he said. They say, ‘I need to have it with me because people are so important.’ I said, ‘Well, they don’t seem very important, the way you scroll through them like a gay French king.'” As Seinfeld said this he made an exaggerated hand motion. “I did this line recently in front of an audience — comedy is where you can kind of feel, like, an opinion — and they thought, ‘What do you mean, gay? What are you talking about gay? What are you saying gay? What are you doing? What do you mean?’ And I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’”<br /><br />Here’s a better question, Jerry: Are you kidding us?<br /><br />Conservatives have been complaining about the creepy PC culture … forever. And you just discovered it? Welcome to our world, Jerry.<br /><br />And while I’m sure Jerry is a bright guy, there’s something he still hasn’t figured out: It’s his liberal pals who are responsible for the creepy PC culture that has him so worked up. It’s holier than thou liberals who call conservatives racists and sexists and everything else – simply because they disagree on a whole host of social issues.<br /><br />Seinfeld isn’t showing courage when he takes on the oppressive PC culture that has dominated many of America’s college campuses. Courage would be speaking truth to power – and taking on liberals who are guilty of trying to shut down ideas they don’t like.<br /><br />And it’s not just uptight sanctimonious liberal twits on college campuses who have become unbearable. It’s uptight sanctimonious liberal Hollywood twits too.<br /> <br />Remember when Sony pictures private emails got hacked and exposed an exchange between Sony co-chair Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin – emails about President Obama and whether he likes movies about black people. This was deemed racist by the liberal PC police (and by media conservatives who didn’t want to miss an opportunity to bash Hollywood). Pascal was in full mea culpa mode and desperately needed absolution. So who did she go to? Who else: Al Sharpton.<br /><br />Talk about creepy. But I don’t remember Jerry saying anything about that.<br /><br />Next time Jerry goes on a radio or TV show to tell us how upset he is about the PC culture, I hope he has the guts to say the reason things are as bad as they are is because too many liberals have become authoritarians … and they’ve forgotten how to be liberal.<br /><br />Let’s see if loveable Jerry remains loveable (to his liberal pals) after he says that.Bernie Goldberg2015-06-11T22:05:00ZThe Roadblock to Hillary's CoronationBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Roadblock-to-Hillarys-Coronation/134626919860352092.html2015-06-08T18:58:00Z2015-06-08T18:58:00Z<p>I have a hunch, a hunch that Bernie Sanders is going to do a lot better than the smart money thinks.</p>
<p>Yes, Sanders is playing deep left field and he makes Hillary look downright moderate by comparison. But a lot of the Democratic base is playing deep left field too, which may explain what happened the other day in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>The state Democratic Party held a straw poll, which as you might imagine, Mrs. Clinton won. She picked up 49 percent of the vote. But Bernie Sanders got a more than respectable 41 percent</p>
<p>As Politico reported, “The result is another encouraging sign for Sanders, who is drawing large crowds in early nominating states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. In the two weeks since he announced his candidacy, the Vermont senator has seen an uptick in the polls against Clinton — who remains the heavy favorite — and Sanders is showing signs he could pick up some supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive icon who has said repeatedly that she will not run for president in 2016.</p>
<p>Memo to Hillary: It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.</p>
<p>Now consider the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which may explain why Bernie is on a roll.</p>
<p>When asked about upward mobility in today’s America only 35 percent of those polled said anyone can get ahead — while 61 percent said “just a few people at the top have a chance to get ahead.”</p>
<p>Asked if they think that, “the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair,” just 27 percent said it is fair; 66 percent said money and wealth “should be more even.”</p>
<p>Should the gap between rich and poor be addressed? Sixty five percent said it should be addressed now; 16 percent said no.</p>
<p>Should the government do more to address the gap between rich and poor? Fifty seven percent said yes; 39 percent said no.</p>
<p>And when asked if large corporations have too much or too little influence in the country, 74 percent said too much, 20 percent said they have the “right amount” and virtually nobody said they have too little influence.</p>
<p>Welcome to Bernie Sanders’ America. Sure, Hillary’s a lefty too, and moving farther left by the day to keep the progressives happy. But it was Sanders, when asked if he thinks a top marginal tax rate of 90 percent is too high, replied, “No.”</p>
<p>“What I think is obscene,” he said, is “when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”</p>
<p>That may sound crazy to you, dear reader, but a lot of progressives were nodding their empty heads in agreement. Bernie reflects their values more than Hillary does.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget that Sanders sounds genuine when he talks. Hillary doesn’t. Bernie comes off as trustworthy. Hillary doesn’t. He even comes off as likeable, in a crazy uncle kind of way. Hillary is many things but to a lot of us, likeable isn’t one of those things.</p>
<p>So maybe, if Bernie sticks around, at least it won’t be a Clinton coronation.</p>
<p>But what if – <em>just … what … if</em> — she says something really dumb at the debates and Bernie doesn’t. What if she sounds like a programmed political robot and he comes off as a passionate lib “who cares about people like me.”</p>
<p>So is it possible? Could Bernie pull off the <em>im</em>possible and knock Hillary off. The short answer is no. Democrats can’t be that crazy and Republicans can’t be that lucky.</p>
<p>But one can dream.</p>
<span><br /></span>Bernie Goldberg2015-06-08T18:58:00ZReligion and BigotryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Religion-and-Bigotry/-419429409172547513.html2015-06-04T18:50:00Z2015-06-04T18:50:00ZA few more words on that Gallup poll that says Americans are becoming more liberal on social issues ...
<p>I was on Bill O'Reilly's show recently and he said the reason we're moving to the left on social issues is because Americans have become less religious - and when that happens, he opined, we become more tolerant of all sorts of things, both good and bad (gay rights on one side, I would argue, having babies out of wedlock on the other side. Gallup found that we're more "morally accepting" of both today than we were in 2001).</p>
<p>Bill said that his parents' generation was "much more religious" than we are today. I agreed.</p>
<p>But, I said, when we were more religious as a nation we were also more bigoted as a nation -bigotry aimed at all sorts of groups.</p>
<p>Like it or not, that's a fact. America may have been more religious 50 years ago but there were also more bigots among us 50 years ago.</p>
<p>I very clearly stated that, "I'm not laying the bigotry on religion." This didn't stop Allan, who saw the program, from writing to me and saying, "You imply that the two [bigotry and religion] go hand in hand which I find to be not only shallow thinking but personally offensive."</p>
<p>I wrote back to Allan and suggested he heard only what he wanted to hear since I said "I'm <em>not</em> laying the bigotry on religion."</p>
<p>I simply thought it was an interesting question, one I'd like to throw out to all of you: Why were we Americans more intolerant of blacks, and Jews and Hispanics and Asians and gays at the same time we professed to be more religious (than today)? Why did we bar blacks from eating at lunch counters in places where just about everyone went to church on Sunday? Why did people who claimed to be God-fearing Christians keep Jews out of certain professions - and, of course, out of their country clubs?</p>
<p>Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we have been <em>less</em> bigoted when we were <em>more</em> religious?</p>
<p>Or is the unspeakable possible: that religion somehow encourages intolerance - even as the Bible tells us to accept and even love everyone? Is it possible that there is a link - even though I did not make one on The Factor - between adherence to religious principles and bigotry toward all sorts of people who are not like ... us?</p>
<p>If not, why were we more bigoted 50 years ago when we were more religious? Why have we become <em>more</em> tolerant while becoming <em>less</em> religious?</p>
<p>Are these two ideas - about bigotry and religion - two ships passing in the night. Do the two concepts have nothing to do with each other. Is all this nothing more than a coincidence.</p>
<p>Since this is a smart crowd, I welcome your thoughts.</p>
<div style="float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0pt;"><ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display: inline-block; width: 300px; height: 250px;" data-adsbygoogle-status="done" data-ad-client="ca-pub-9388551201736268" data-ad-slot="8637350894"><ins id="aswift_0_expand" style="display: inline-table; height: 250px; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 300px; background-color: transparent;"><ins id="aswift_0_anchor" style="display: block; height: 250px; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 300px; background-color: transparent;"> </ins></ins></ins></div>Bernie Goldberg2015-06-04T18:50:00ZBad News for the GOPBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bad-News-for-the-GOP/623532016624078134.html2015-05-30T03:46:00Z2015-05-30T03:46:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>A new Gallup Poll says that on social issues, Americans are moving left. They’re becoming more liberal. This has huge political implications – implications not good for the Republican Party.</p>
<p>Americans find all sorts of social issues more “morally acceptable” today than they did at the turn of this century. In 2001, 40 percent of Americans supported gay rights; today it’s 63 percent.</p>
<p>On sex between an unmarried man and a woman, in 2001, 53 percent approved; today it’s 68 percent.</p>
<p>Even on a hot button issue like medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos, more Americans approve today than they used to. In 2001, 52 percent approved; now it’s 64 percent.</p>
<p>On social issues only five percent of those polled said they are “very conservative.”</p>
<p>So if only five percent of the voters are “very conservative” on social issues, does the Republican Party really want to pick the most socially conservative candidate to run for president?</p>
<p>Do the candidates really want to show that they’re more conservative than the next guy?</p>
<p>But if the party picks a moderate, the true blue conservative purists will sit home on Election Day. That’s what happened when both McCain and Romney were the party’s nominees. The suicide wing didn’t vote.</p>
<p>I’m sure Republicans don’t think about it this way, but Barack Obama’s coalition consisted of blacks, Latinos, single women, union members, academics and … angry conservatives. When the conservative purists stay home on Election Day, it’s a vote for the liberal Democrat.</p>
<p>Conclusion: Republicans have a problem.</p>
<p>On top of all this there’s the Electoral College, which helps the Democrats. The election is still more than a year off, but it’s a safe bet right now that Hillary will win New York State, California, Illinois, Washington State, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Massachusetts. Pick up only a few more here and there, and it’ll be time for the coronation.</p>
<p>There is one ray of sunshine for the GOP: Polls show that most Americans don’t think Mrs. Clinton is trustworthy. And – I know this is highly subjective – but she’s not especially likeable either. Except when Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey, the more likable candidate has won every modern day election. (Many conservatives will never acknowledge that Mr. Obama was or is likable in any way. A majority of voters may disagree, though his race was a major factor, at least in his first victory.)</p>
<p>So it probably would be a good idea if the Republicans pick someone who doesn’t scare the kids and the dogs. I can name a few who do, but you know who they are.</p>
<p>If they pick a “very conservative” candidate, the people who watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh will be pleased. But the euphoria will fade when Hillary Clinton is sworn in as president.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-05-30T03:46:00ZOn the Wrong Side of HistoryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/On-the-Wrong-Side-of-History/-235637550459003692.html2015-05-26T19:29:00Z2015-05-26T19:29:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>A reporter in Texas recently asked GOP presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz this question: “Do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans?”</p>
<p>Why would a reporter ask a Republican, running for president, such a question? I don’t know the reporter so I can’t say with certainty, but it wouldn’t shock me if he were trying to start trouble; if he were trying to trip up the senator into saying something negative about gays and getting some national publicity for himself in the process. But there’s another reason, I think, for the question. There’s no hiding the fact that some conservative Christians – <em>not a majority, maybe only a fringe</em> – do indeed have animosity against gays. And since Ted Cruz is a conservative Christian …</p>
<p>So how did Ted Cruz answer the question? With a question of his own for the reporter.</p>
<p>“Do you have a personal animosity against Christians, sir? Your line of questioning is highly curious. You seem fixated on a particular subject. Look, I’m a Christian. Scripture commands us to love everybody and what I have been talking about, with respect to same-sex marriage, is the Constitution, which is what we should all be focused on. The Constitution gives marriage to elected state legislators. It doesn’t give the power of marriage to a president, or to unelected judges to tear down the decisions enacted by democratically elected state legislatures.”</p>
<p>When I heard that, I wondered why Senator Cruz didn’t simply say, “Of course I have no animosity toward gays. Next question.”</p>
<p>It might be because he and a lot of other conservative Republicans running for president live in fear of what the well-organized organizations of the Christian Right might do if they answer the question the “wrong” way. The reporter may have been trying to be needlessy provocative, but still, can’t a Republican simply say “No” when asked if he has animosity toward gay Americans?</p>
<p>But on the question of gay marriage, Senator Cruz thinks the decision should be left to the states. The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will soon tell us if they agree with the senator or if a majority believe that gay marriage is a fundamental civil right that can’t be overridden by the states.</p>
<p>This question has come up before in our country. So let’s take a brief trip down memory lane. On June 12, 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that states could not forbid interracial couples from getting married. At the time laws banning interracial marriage were fairly common. Seventeen states, all in the South, had such laws on the books.</p>
<p>But the Supreme Court threw out every one of those laws, ruling that, “Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.” The vote was 9 to 0.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Senator Cruz, and others, would argue that banning i<em>nterracial</em> couples from marrying is not the same as not allowing <em>gay</em> couples to marry. For what it’s worth, I disagree. They both involve fundamental civil rights, the way I see it.</p>
<p>But since Ted Cruz almost certainly does see a difference, I hope some reporter asks him what he thinks the difference is. Does he think that while race is not a choice, homosexuality is?</p>
<p>And since the senator brought religion into the discussion – “Look, I’m a Christian,” he told the Texas reporter — it might be worth noting that religion was also deeply-rooted in the thinking of southern legislators and judges back when interracial marriage was illegal.</p>
<p>The case that went to the Supreme Court in 1967, started in Virginia, where a judge named Leon Bazile said this in upholding the state’s ban on interracial marriage:</p>
<p>“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”</p>
<p>Change <em>race</em> to <em>sex</em> and you hear the same arguments from conservative Christians today. They’re against same-sex marriage, they say, because God is against it. (Trust me on this: I get truckloads of emails from angry viewers whenever I tell Bill O’Reilly I’m for same-sex marriage. Almost all quote, directly or indirectly, some portion of the Bible to make their case.)</p>
<p>Maybe gay marriage is not the same as interracial marriage. As I say, when it comes to the law I think it is, but I’m not one of the justices on the high court. So we’ll see soon enough.</p>
<p>One more thing: The interracial couple in Virginia did not attend oral arguments before the Supreme Court, but the husband in the case, Richard Loving, gave his lawyer a note. This is what it said:</p>
<p>“Tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”</p>
<p>Looking back, decent people can clearly see how unjust those racist laws were. Though I suspect there are still a few who think interracial marriage is not only morally wrong but should also be illegal. As for gay marriage, I understand the sentiments of opponents. Their opposition to same-sex marriage doesn’t automatically mean they’re bigots, though unfortunately (based on the emails they send me) some are.</p>
<p>But one thing is clear: They are on the wrong side of history. No, not the way racists were on the wrong side of history decades ago. But they are on the wrong side of history, nonetheless.</p>
<p>America is changing whether they like it or not.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-05-26T19:29:00ZThe Real Problem Involving StephanopoulosBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Real-Problem-Involving-Stephanopoulos/12872643603941496.html2015-05-19T22:31:00Z2015-05-19T22:31:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Let’s imagine that Rush Limbaugh gives up his radio job and is hired by Fox News as a political commentator.</p>
<p>No problem here. Rush is a smart guy and his opinions would be interesting and provocative.</p>
<p>Now let’s imagine that Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, decides that since Rush is immensely popular with viewers he ought to move on to bigger things beyond simply giving his opinions. So Ailes makes Limbaugh the anchor of Fox’s lucrative morning news show, and has him do political interviews, and moderate debates, and anchor the channel’s Sunday news program.</p>
<p>Anything big and political goes to Limbaugh. And a presidential election is looming, so Rush is going to be pretty busy deciding all sorts of things, like what gets covered and what doesn’t and how stories are played on TV.</p>
<p>And when liberals complain, as they surely would, Limbaugh defends himself, saying: “I’m not a radio talk show host anymore. That’s what I used to be. Now, I’m a serious journalist who is no longer a partisan.”</p>
<p>After they stop laughing, it comes out that Mr. Non Partisan Honest Journalist gave $75,000 to a foundation run by the conservative Koch brothers – a contribution to help further good causes, of course.</p>
<p>Except, Rush never told Fox News about the contribution and he never shared the information with his viewers – even after he grilled the liberal author of a book that was critical of the Koch brother’s foundation. In that interview, Rush claimed that the author, who had worked in politics, was a partisan. What Rush <em>didn’t</em>’ point out was that in addition to the hefty contribution he was still serving on various Koch Foundation panels. Oh yeah, the wife of one of the Koch brothers was running for president.</p>
<p>Rush’s boss, Fox News, says what he did was nothing more than an “honest mistake.” He apologized, Fox explained, so let’s move along, nothing to see here. And yes, Rush would still be heading up Fox’s presidential campaign coverage despite the fact that he’s close to Mrs. Koch, who’s running for president.</p>
<p>That, of course, would not satisfy liberals who would be calling for Limbaugh’s head on a platter. They would accuse Fox of crimes against humanity. They wouldn’t be satisfied to simply point out that what Limbaugh did violated fundamental journalistic ethics. They’d question not only his contribution, but also his very role as a journalist. On being a pundit, they’d grudgingly say, OK; objective journalist, never.</p>
<p>But even if Rush really did undergo some major transformation since he left radio, and somehow, miraculously, got rid of every last drop of his partisanship, he’d still make us wonder: Could this man who bludgeoned liberals day in and day out in his past life, could he really be fair to politicians who hold views with which he with passionately disagrees?</p>
<p>Who knows? Maybe he could be fair. But perceptions matter. And liberals, understandably, would perceive Limbaugh to be – at some level – what he always was – a take-no-prisoners political warrior.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33528" style="float: left; border: 1px solid black; margin: 15px;" src="http://cdn.bernardgoldberg.com/wp-content/uploads/George.jpg" alt="George" width="300" height="168" />And that’s just how many of us perceive George Stephanopoulos.</p>
<p>He would always be the guy who ran the “War Room” and who would throw his own grandmother under the bus if it would benefit his boss, Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>If you think the Limbaugh analogy is a bridge too far, then consider this instead: Would ABC News have hired Karl Rove – who also was a political warrior who helped elect a president two times – to be its chief political reporter? Would ABC News allow him to moderate presidential debates and give him the job of anchor on its politically oriented Sunday news show? Would ABC let him lead the network’s presidential campaign coverage if he not only worked for President Bush, but also gave big money to the former president’s foundation? <em>Would they allow it if Laura Bush was running for president? </em></p>
<p>Of course ABC News wouldn’t. But why not? Like Stephanopoulos, Rove is smart. He also understands the intricacies of politics at the highest levels. The only significant difference between the two is that one is liberal and the other is conservative.</p>
<p>Or to put it another way: At ABC News (and the other networks) one is trusted to play fair and the other isn’t.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-05-19T22:31:00ZWill He or Won't He Toss His Hair in the Ring?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Will-He-or-Wont-He-Toss-His-Hair-in-the-Ring/922909686357267891.html2015-05-14T19:40:00Z2015-05-14T19:40:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Here we go again.</p>
<p>Donald Trump says he’ll tell us soon if he plans to run for president. I’ll tell you now: He won’t. The boy has cried wolf once too often.</p>
<p>The Donald would <em>like</em> being president, that’s for sure. Running and losing is something else altogether. Trump is the guy who fires people. Nobody fires him. And that includes GOP primary voters. He won’t give up a hit TV show to be a long shot, at best, in a crowded GOP field.</p>
<p>And that may be too bad. Sure, he’s not taken seriously by <em>sophisticated</em> political journalists who see him as a loud-mouth tycoon who brags too much about his ratings and his hotels and his golf courses — and who just might decide, if he ran and somehow won, to put the letters T-R-U-M-P on the White House … in gold.</p>
<p>But I watched an interview Trump did recently with Bret Baier on Fox, and The Donald, said the kind of things that just might resonate with ordinary Americans.</p>
<p>“Our country is going to hell, we have people running the country that don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. That might ring a bell with independents who have grown weary of Barack Obama and might see Hillary as Obama’s third term stand-in.</p>
<p>If he runs, he says, his campaign slogan will be: “Make America great again.” Sort of rhymes with “It’s morning in America,” a slogan that worked for Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>Ok, Ok. Trump isn’t Reagan. But you get the idea.</p>
<p>On taxes, Trump says, “I wouldn’t raise taxes, if anything I’d lower taxes.” And, “I’m proud of the fact that as a business man I want to pay as little tax as possible”</p>
<p>You won’t hear any politician – <em>any</em>! — say that.</p>
<p>On immigration, he says Mexico is “not a friend” and “We have to build a wall,” throwing in for good measure, “No one can build a wall like Trump can build a wall.”</p>
<p>As for the 11 million or so who are here illegally: The bad ones get shipped out immediately under President Trump; the good ones “go through a system” that allows them to stay in this country and live like the rest of us. He wasn’t asked if that means they’d be on a track to citizenship.</p>
<p>On foreign policy, Trump says countries take advantage of the United States, “because they have no respect for our leadership.”</p>
<p>Domestically, The Donald says we need a countrywide infrastructure project. “I’m the best builder. Who’s better than Trump? And I know how to do it inexpensively.”</p>
<p>Sure, it easy to say anything about anything when you’re just talking on television. Sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is a little harder. But despite his money, Trump’s connects with the other 99 percent. He’s not PC and he knows how to talk to people fed up with politics as usual. No, progressives wouldn’t vote for him. But Republicans would and so might a lot of low information types who don’t know much about politics but know they like Trump. He could also pick up some moderates who are tired of the Clintons and their shenanigans.</p>
<p>So, I could think of a lot worse things than Donald Trump running for president. But he won’t. And here in the United States of Entertainment, the long, long run to the White House won’t be nearly as interesting without him.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-05-14T19:40:00ZIs Thug the New N-Word?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Thug-the-New-N-Word/-679751201681972308.html2015-05-04T20:00:00Z2015-05-04T20:00:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>There is a split in America and it’s as wide as the Grand Canyon.</p>
<p>We can look at what’s been going on in Baltimore and depending on what team we’re on, we see what we want to see. Liberals, black and white, see poor people who have had enough. It wasn’t a riot to some on the left. It was an “uprising,” the actual word used by a left wing professor on CNN.</p>
<p>Conservatives, yes, mainly white, but more than a few blacks too, see dysfunction. They see crime and drugs and kids dropping out of school. What entrepreneur, they wonder, wants to invest in such a community. They don’t see an “uprising” — they see a riot.</p>
<p>Liberals shake their heads. Conservatives just don’t get it, they think. This is what the great divide in America looks like.</p>
<p>And now six Baltimore police officers have been charged in the death of Freddie Gray, whose spine was severed and who died in police custody. In Baltimore, there were celebrations in the streets when they heard the news.</p>
<p>It’s a safe bet that a lot of other Americans aren’t celebrating. If the police did something wrong, they want them to pay a price. But I’m pretty sure a lot of Americans are wondering why Freddie Gray ran from the police in the first place, resulting in a chase and his arrest and subsequent death. Let’s be clear: You’re allowed to run from a cop who hasn’t charged you with any crime. But if you’re a cop, in a neighborhood known for drugs and crime, you wonder why this guy is running — and you chase after him.</p>
<p>And in the midst of all this, in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a debate playing out on cable television, a debate stemming from the mayhem in Baltimore.</p>
<p>Here’s the question at the heart of the debate: Is the word “thug” the new “N word?”</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>If this were a Saturday Night Live routine, it might be funny. That’s it’s a question taken seriously on television news programs, is sad.</p>
<p>Here is Alex Wagner, a host on MSNBC, to Brittney Cooper from the liberal online magazine, Salon:</p>
<p>“To the use of the word [thug] itself, Brittney, I mean, I think there are folks like CNN’s Erin Burnett who don’t understand why it’s offensive, and why some people are saying the ‘T’ word is the new ‘N’ word. Give us your take.”</p>
<p>To which, Ms. Cooper replies:</p>
<p>“Sure. It’s rooted in a racialized understanding of black people. So, for instance, no one is calling the police who put this kid in a van and snapped his spine and crushed his voicebox ‘thugs’ – right? They’re only applying it to acts of violence against property – right? Acts of – and sure, acts of harassment, sure – acts of anger. But when are we going to have the language to talk about the systemic violence that white folks do in the name of anti-blackness and white supremacy in this country? We don’t have a language for that.”</p>
<p>I saw a similar discussion on CNN, where liberal professor Marc Lamont Hill didn’t like the word “thug” either … and while we’re on the subject, he’s the one who thought what was going on in Baltimore was an “uprising” — not a riot.</p>
<p>Now to the Erin Burnett reference. Here’s an exchange between Ms. Burnett and Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes.</p>
<p>“Erin Burnett: Isn’t it the right word?</p>
<p>Councilman Stokes<strong>:</strong> No, of course its not the right word to call our children, thugs. These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us. No, we don’t have to call them thugs.</p>
<p>Erin Burnett: But how does that justify what they did? I mean, that’s a sense of right and wrong. They know it’s wrong to steal and burn down a CVS and an old person’s home. I mean, come on.</p>
<p>Councilman Stokes: Come on? So calling them thugs — just call them niggers. Just call them niggers. No, we don’t have to call them by names such as that. We don’t have to do that. That’s exactly what we’ve sent them to. When you say ‘come on,’ come on what? You wouldn’t call your a child a thug if they did something which was not what you’d expect them to do.</p>
<p>Erin Burnett<strong>: </strong>Look, I respect your point of view. I would hope I would call my son a thug if he ever did such a thing.”</p>
<p>Good for Erin Burnett; good for her for not doing what so many liberal reporters do to show their good racial manners: She didn’t agree or start stammering just because the councilman is black.</p>
<p>My pal Bill O’Reilly has a column [nearby] on this subject, and in it he also took note of Councilman’s Stokes aversion to the word thug. “So what would the esteemed councilman call young men who smashed the windows of his clothing store and cleaned out the joint? Perhaps he would characterize them as ‘undocumented shoppers.’ Or he might reach way back to West Side Story and those timeless lyrics by Stephen Sondheim: ‘Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived.’”</p>
<p>I wish the councilman and others who take offense to the word “thug” would go back and watch those old Hollywood gangster movies. Every thug in those movies is a white guy.</p>
<p>And just for laughs, Google the words “Thug Life” and guess what you’ll find: pictures of a bunch of young black men showing off their bling. posing and preening, languishing in the image that they are … thugs!</p>
<p>So what’s going on here? How about this? If critics of the “T” word can convince enough people that rioters aren’t thugs, that they aren’t even criminals, then they can more easily portray them as victims – victims of a white culture that has left them behind in crummy neighborhoods devoid of jobs and hope. This is precisely why Professor Hill calls it an “uprising” instead of a riot. The looters are just throwing off their shackles, they’re just fighting back.</p>
<p>Early on during the mayhem in Baltimore, City Council President Bernard Young, a black man, called the rioters thugs. He later apologized, saying “They’re not thugs. They’re just misdirected.”</p>
<p>Like I said, if this were a Saturday Night Live routine it might be funny.</p>
<p>A final note about those six police officers charged in Freddie Gray’s death: At this point, we don’t know what happened. A trial will determine that. But if those officers did something to cause Gray’s death, then they’re thugs too — regardless of their race.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-05-04T20:00:00ZDid President Obama Go Far Enough on Baltimore?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Did-President-Obama-Go-Far-Enough-on-Baltimore/629998375369345816.html2015-04-29T07:00:00Z2015-04-29T07:00:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Two cheers for President Obama.</p>
<p>Speaking about the mayhem in Baltimore, Mr. Obama says, “There’s no excuse for the kind of violence we saw [the other day]. It is counter-productive. When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting. They’re not making a statement. They’re stealing. When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson. And they’re destroying and undermining businesses in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunities of people in that area.”</p>
<p>The president is absolutely right.</p>
<p>“It is not a protest, it is not a statement, it is a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes and they need to be treated as criminals,” he went on to say.</p>
<p>It was more than a “handful”, but let’s not quibble. The president is right again.</p>
<p>He also said there are “Too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions. And it comes up it seems … once every couple of weeks.”</p>
<p>He’s right on that, too. We don’t know what happened in Baltimore inside that police van, but there are some bad cops on the street. More than we like to admit. And when they are invested with so much authority, when the government gives them guns and badges, bad things can happen – and too often do.</p>
<p>This isn’t new, the president said. And we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new. What is new is that these days everybody walks around with a cell phone camera and now we know a lot more than we used to know. Cops who cross the line used to lie and often get away with it. It’s tougher now. That’s a good thing.</p>
<p>Then, Mr. Obama, went on to say what he has said before: that while the police are expected to deal with the immediate problem, they’re not the ones who should be called on to make fundamental changes. That, he says, is up to society.</p>
<p>“And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities,” the president said, “we also know that if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born in abject poverty, they’ve got parents often because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves can’t do right by their kids, if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead than they go to college; in communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men, communities where there’s no investment and manufacturing has been stripped away, and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks, in those environments if we think that we’re just going to send the police of doing the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without, as a nation and a society, saying ‘What can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity,’ then we’re not going to solve this problem and we’ll go through the same cycles of conflict between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and then we go about our business as usual.”</p>
<p>There’s a lot of truth in all of that, too. But this is where Mr. Obama only walks up to the edge. It would have helped, I think, if he aimed his message, not only at“society” in general, but at the community he wants to mend, in particular.</p>
<p>Condemning the rioters is a necessary start. But if the president really wants f<em>undamental</em> change, then he needs to go further. What if he had said, “Dysfunctional behavior is a dead end. If you have babies when you’re just a child yourself, odds are that you and your baby will live in poverty.”</p>
<p>What if he said, “You’re not a man simply because you impregnate a young girl and walk away and let the state take care of her and the baby.”</p>
<p>What if he said, “Education is the way out. And it’s free. Take advantage of it.”</p>
<p>President Obama, whatever else you think of him, is a bright man. He knows government can create programs for job training and the like, but I suspect he also knows that government is not very good at changing destructive behavior in individuals. That’s really hard.</p>
<p>The president says a lot of things that make sense, but stops short of saying, “Stop playing the victim. You’re making yourself the victim. Who would want to build a business in a community where thugs burn businesses down from time to time? Business go into safe communities. Make your community safe, he could have said, and jobs along with other good things will follow.”</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that racial discrimination has been wiped out. It doesn’t mean slavery and segregation haven’t taken a toll. But the slaveholders are dead and the bigots have no interest in making things better for African Americans. That’s why African Americans have to lead the way.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama is a man with charisma. On rare occasions he has used it to speak to black kids the way a good parent would speak to a kid on the wrong path. But he doesn’t do it often enough. Two cheers, Mr. President.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-29T07:00:00ZChristian Lives MatterBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Christian-Lives-Matter/374701741008956198.html2015-04-23T18:30:00Z2015-04-23T18:30:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Liberals in America have never been shy about expressing their outrage over all sorts of injustices, as they define the word.</p>
<p>When a black kid in Missouri attacks a police officer who then shoots him in self-defense, liberals are outraged.</p>
<p>When Americans protest a planned mosque in the shadows of the old World Trade Center, liberals are outraged.</p>
<p>They’re outraged over a phony war on women.</p>
<p>Outrage is one of the ways the American Left shows how compassionate it is.</p>
<p>So where is the outrage now that Christians in the Middle East are being slaughtered simply because they are Christians? Is ethnic cleansing not worthy of outrage? Where are the demonstrations?</p>
<p>But many liberals are ill at ease when it comes to condemning this particular kind of brutality – because the murderers are Muslims.</p>
<p>My Fox News fellow commentator Kirsten Powers has written eloquently about this in her USA Today column – a column that has gotten notice in conservative circles precisely because Ms. Powers is a liberal. She deserves our thanks.</p>
<p>She writes about the men aboard a migrant ship going from Libya to Italy who were thrown overboard by Muslims. Their “crime”? They were praying to Jesus. When Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, was asked about this at a joint White House news conference, he chose to play down the atrocity, saying, “The problem is not a problem of (a) clash of religions.”</p>
<p>Except it is – no matter how much apologists try to ignore a simple fact: Islamic extremists are killing in the name of their religion.</p>
<p>While the prime minister spoke, President Obama stood by … mute.</p>
<p>As Ms. Powers writes: “He failed to interject any sense of outrage or even tepid concern for the targeting of Christians for their faith. If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested? When three North Carolina Muslims were gunned down by a virulent atheist, Obama rightly spoke against the horrifying killings. But he just can’t seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or the eradication of Christianity from its birthplace.”</p>
<p>As troubling as Mr. Obama’s silence is, it should surprise no one. He can’t bring himself to utter the words “Islamic terrorism.” But at the National Prayer Breakfast not long ago, he had no problem lecturing Christians about the crimes their ancestors committed … <em>a thousand years ago.</em></p>
<p>And when Coptic Christians in Libya are beheaded simply because they are Christians, much of the world yawns. How terrible, we say, and then go back to whatever we were doing before. Where is the outrage?</p>
<p>But let’s not fool ourselves; it isn’t only Christians who are dying. Outrage itself is on life support. And when outrage dies, a piece of our humanity dies too.</p>
<p>Christian lives matter.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-23T18:30:00ZWhy Don't Americans Trust Hillary?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Dont-Americans-Trust-Hillary/-124043227819998783.html2015-04-20T18:20:00Z2015-04-20T18:20:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>So Hillary Clinton wants to be the champion of everyday Americans, the folks who haven’t done well in Barack Obama’s economic recovery. She wants to be president because she cares deeply about ordinary Americans. She hasn’t actually used the word, but you get the impression that she finds income inequality <em>un-American</em>.</p>
<p>It takes a certain kind of person to say what Hillary has been saying with a straight face.</p>
<p>She makes north of $200,000 for a single speech. Riding to Iowa in a van and eating a burrito at Chipotle on the way doesn’t make her one of the folks. Two-hundred thousand-plus for a talk is about four times more than the typical American household makes in a full year. How’s that for income inequality?</p>
<p>And who has the money to pay those kinds of speaking fees? Well, a lot of it comes from moguls at big banks and hedge fund managers. You know, the very people she’ll be putting in the crosshairs – wink, wink.</p>
<p>During the mid-term elections last year, Mrs. Clinton told a cheering crowd at a political rally in Boston, “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,”</p>
<p>Really? Then who does, Hillary?</p>
<p>But let’s cut Mrs. Clinton some slack. She’s not stupid. She doesn’t believe what she said. She just wants to be president. And she knows where the base of the Democratic Party currently resides – which is, much further to the left than when her husband ran for president. She knows that a lot of Democrats would prefer a candidate who is more “progressive.” So she’ll run a populist campaign of envy – portraying the wealthy as the bad guys – while taking billions from them to run her campaign.</p>
<p>You’d think big business would be worried. But they’re not. Why? Because they don’t believe anything she says. And they’re not alone. According to the most recent CBS poll, only 42 percent of the country thinks Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy.</p>
<p>So it’s no surprise that the Republican National Committee has taken notice of Hillary’s campaign rhetoric. “It’s hard to take Hillary Clinton seriously when she charges over four times what the average person makes to give a 90 minute speech, and when the Clintons’ own income has exceeded the CEO pay she now decries. There are clearly no limits on phoniness and hypocrisy for Clinton’s campaign,” said spokesman Michael Short.</p>
<p>While it may be true that Hillary is taking flak from all sides, when it counts the most she’ll get support from the cavalry that always rides to the aid of liberal Democrats: the so-called mainstream media.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s true, that they’re not big fans at the moment. They don’t like the fact that she ignores them and would rather talk to “everyday” folks who don’t ask tough questions than to them.</p>
<p>And it’s true that reporters would like someone else – someone like Elizabeth Warren – to jump into the race, because a fight is more interesting to journalists than is a coronation.</p>
<p>And, as Politico reported, “When asked why Clinton hasn’t done more to reach out to reporters over the years, one Clinton campaign veteran began to spin several theories. She was too busy, she was too prone to speaking her mind and the like – then abruptly cut to the chase: ‘Look, she hates you. Period. That’s never going to change.’”</p>
<p>So if she hates the press you can’t really expect the press to love her.</p>
<p>But …</p>
<p>When the Republicans settle on one candidate, when Hillary is running against a real person with a real name who is a living and breathing conservative opponent, the press will revert to form: They’ll treat her the way they treated the last historic candidate.</p>
<p>Except, they won’t slobber nearly as much. Barack Obama was new – and Hillary has been around forever.</p>
<p>And although liberals will never admit it, race trumps gender (unless you’re an ardent feminist in which case nothing trumps gender).</p>
<p>So the mainstreams won’t slobber over Hillary the way they did over Barack Obama. And they won’t like her as much. But when the campaign gets going for real, they’ll like her more than they like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee or Rick Perry or Carly Fiorina … or <em>any other Republican she might face</em>. In other words, they’ll like her enough.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-20T18:20:00ZI am Hillary, Hear Me RoarBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/I-am-Hillary-Hear-Me-Roar/-444982690054255267.html2015-04-13T18:54:00Z2015-04-13T18:54:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Just two days before her mother made it official, Elle magazine released its interview with Chelsea Clinton in which she said that while it’s good that about 20 percent of Congress is made up of women, “Since when did 20% become the definition of equality? And so when you ask about the importance of having a woman president, absolutely it’s important for, yes, symbolic reasons.”</p>
<p>There it is. Hillary Clinton’s daughter says her mother should be crowned president of the United States because “it’s important for <em>symbolic </em>reasons.” Electing a woman – a liberal Democratic woman and not, of course, a Republican conservative woman – would show just how far America has come. Symbols matter, right?</p>
<p>But we elected our last president largely based on symbolism and our economy is still only limping along while Iran tells us to drop dead and a lot of the rest of the world is on fire.</p>
<p>So let’s put symbolism aside for the moment and ask, what do we have in Hillary when we take gender out of the picture?</p>
<p>Well, we have a candidate with no discernible record to run on.</p>
<p>We have a candidate who is not seen as trustworthy. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows that more voters in key states see her as dishonest than those who think she’s honest.</p>
<p>Then there’s the authenticity factor. Hillary doesn’t have that either.</p>
<p>Presidential campaigns are about tomorrow. Hillary is about yesterday. She’s been around forever. Her last name shouts ‘90s.</p>
<p>And she’s a terrible campaigner.</p>
<p>So you can’t really blame her if she runs the “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” campaign. What else does she have?</p>
<p>A few weeks ago a group of Hillary “Super Volunteers” came up with a list of 13 words that, as they see it, are sexist code words – and if any news organization uses those words, the Volunteers will be on them before you can say cue up the Helen Reddy song. The 13 “sexist” words are:</p>
<p>“polarizing,” “calculating,” “disingenuous,” “insincere,” “ambitious,” “inevitable,” “entitled,” “over-confident,” “secretive,” “will do anything to win,” “represents the past,” and “out of touch.”</p>
<p>But Hillary<em> is</em> polarizing, just like George W and Barack Obama – and they’re not women, right?</p>
<p>And she <em>is</em> calculating and disingenuous. Look up “insincere” in the dictionary and you’ll find Hillary’s picture.</p>
<p>She <em>is</em> “secretive.” She used her own personal server while she was secretary of state, for crying out loud!</p>
<p>“Entitled”? Oh, yes!</p>
<p>And how are the other words sexist?</p>
<p>They’re not. We all know that. But this is what we have to look forward to: Say anything negative about Hillary – <em>anything</em> – and her devoted, progressive, feminist base will try to paint you as a Neanderthal bigot who hates women.</p>
<p>And now, from a psychiatrist named Julie Holland, we have still another biological reason Hillary should be president. In a Time magazine essay that ran under the headline: “Hillary Clinton Is the Perfect Age to Be President,” Dr. Holland writes:</p>
<p>“Biologically speaking, postmenopausal women are ideal candidates for leadership. They are primed to handle stress well, and there is, of course, no more stressful job than the presidency.”</p>
<p>So Hillary is ready to be president because she’s not menstruating anymore?</p>
<p>Can you imagine if a man, 20 years ago, said women shouldn’t run for president because once a month they get a little crazy – and you don’t want a crazy pre-menopausal woman with the key to the nuclear code, do you? NOW would take the poor jerk out to the back of the barn and shoot him.</p>
<p>And here’s the best part: If Hillary Rodham married some guy named Bill Smith we wouldn’t be having this or any other conversation about her. She might be a lawyer someplace or other but she wouldn’t be running for president – and wouldn’t have been elected to the United States Senate and wouldn’t have been picked as secretary of state.</p>
<p>Or to put it another way, Hillary got as far as she has because of a … <em>man</em>. A man whose coattails she rode to stardom. Without that man, there’s no Hillary as we’ve come to know her.</p>
<p>But that’s moot at this point. So Hillary won’t be a pushover. Quite the contrary. That’s partly because of the Democrats’ best friend in presidential elections — the Electoral College.</p>
<p>Democrats almost always win California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. That gets them pretty close to victory right off the bat.</p>
<p>So the GOP candidate doesn’t start out with a strong hand. And if ideologically pure conservatives sit home as they have when John McCain and Mitt Romney ran, if they refuse to vote because the candidate Republican primary voters picked isn’t “conservative enough,” then it won’t just be hard for a Republican to win. It will pretty much be impossible.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-13T18:54:00ZWhat the Media Left Out of the Phony Rolling Stone StoryBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-the-Media-Left-Out-of-the-Phony-Rolling-Stone-Story/392646043026608387.html2015-04-08T03:54:00Z2015-04-08T03:54:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The Rolling Stone story about a student named Jackie who said she was ganged raped at a fraternity house at the University of Virginia is a textbook example of journalistic malpractice. Rolling Stone got just about everything wrong. For openers, there was no gang rape. The reporter didn’t even try to talk to the alleged rapists. And now, a review of the botched story by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism concludes that Rolling Stone failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice.”</p>
<p>But something has been missing from the stories I’ve seen. We know that Jackie made the whole thing up. So shouldn’t there be outrage over the pain and suffering she caused? Incredibly, the editor of the article, Sean Woods says Rolling Stone was unfair – to Jackie.</p>
<p>“Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim,” Woods told the Columbia University investigators. “We honored too many of her requests in our reporting. We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, <em>we maybe did her a disservice.” </em>(Emphasis added)</p>
<p>Did <em>her</em> a disservice! Is this a joke?</p>
<p>And when a reporter asked a Columbia University professor who helped write the report if Rolling Stone’s publisher was on to something when he said part of the blame lies with Jackie, the professor responded: “We don’t believe that in this case Jackie was to blame.”</p>
<p>It’s true that Jackie may not be to blame for Rolling Stone’s abysmal journalism, but Jackie most certainly is to blame for starting the fire that caused so much trouble.</p>
<p>Journalists who are rightly bashing Rolling Stone apparently don’t want to discuss the role of political correctness in all of this. Liberal journalists and academics don’t want to put a supposed victim of rape in the crosshairs <em>even when she’s not really a victim of rape.</em></p>
<p>Jackie isn’t talking. She didn’t cooperate with Columbia University or the police who investigated her story. She’s the elephant in the room and just about everybody in the world of journalism is making believe Rolling Stone is the one and only villain.</p>
<p>Where are the editorials demanding that she be expelled from school? If she broke the law, shouldn’t she be prosecuted? There’s talk that while the gang rape never occurred something else might have happened to Jackie. Yes and maybe nothing else has happened to Jackie. She is a liar, after all.</p>
<p>In a statement responding to the Columbia report, University of Virginia’s president Teresa Sullivan described the Rolling Stone article as irresponsible journalism that “unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia.”</p>
<p>Shame on her too. Not a word from the president about how <em>Jackie</em> damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia.</p>
<p>Not a word.</p>
<p>Rolling Stone is guilty of monumentally bad journalism. We can all agree on that. But the media watchdogs are guilty too – guilty of cowardice, a cowardice that is so pathetic that they even pander to liars — as long as the liars are women who make claims against men — no matter how outrageous or false.</p>
<p>If a male college student made up some phony story about how a young woman on campus hit him over the head with a beer bottle, the media, the president of the University, and the police wouldn’t let him get away with it.</p>
<p>But Jackie is off limits.</p>
<p>That’s because in a liberal PC culture, women are seen as victims of male oppression. So what if Jackie wasn’t really raped? A mere technicality. <em>She could have been</em>. After all, rape on America’s college campuses is a “plague” — a word used by a former Washington Post ombudsman on CNN. Except, that’s another lie. There is no plague. There’s no epidemic of campus rape. Google “Myth of Campus Rape” and you’ll quickly find serious thinkers, scholars, who put a lie to that piece of feminist propaganda.</p>
<p>What we’re seeing here is how little liberal journalists and liberal presidents of places like the University of Virginia really think about women. They’ll look the other way when they lie. They won’t treat them like grownups who should be held accountable. Because if they did, Jackie would have been told to pack her bags and leave school a long time ago.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-08T03:54:00ZReligious Freedom vs. Gay RightsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Religious-Freedom-vs.-Gay-Rights/166280050383150561.html2015-04-06T19:41:00Z2015-04-06T19:41:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Should a born again Christian who runs a catering business have to provide the food and drinks at a gay wedding? Should an evangelical who operates a photography studio have to take pictures of a gay marriage? Should a baker have to deliver a cake to a gay couple’s wedding if same-sex marriage violates her religious beliefs?<br /><br />By now, these are old, even tired, questions. And reasonable people may disagree on all of that. Personally, I believe that when you open up a business on Main Street you have to serve the general public.</p>
<p>But I understand the other side. So, for the moment, let’s move beyond the catering, and baking and taking pictures at gay weddings.</p>
<div>Let’s deal with everyday matters.</div>
<p>Let’s say, an evangelical Christian runs a bakery and thinks homosexuality is a sin – and doesn’t want to serve openly gay customers <em>at all</em>. We’re not talking about baking cakes for their wedding here. We’re talking about selling them doughnuts.</p>
<p>I know that if this happens at all, it’s rare. But the current debate, sparked by Indiana’s law, raises questions that the politicians don’t want to answer – questions about where religious freedom truly ends and gay rights begin.</p>
<p>When George Stephanopoulos asked Indiana Governor Mike Pence flat out, “Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?” – the governor couldn’t bring himself to say either yes or no. A simple yes or no, he must have figured, would be too risky. Either way, he’s going to offend some group that votes. I always liked Mike Pence, but he’s no profile in courage.</p>
<p>And while I know this is far-fetched, let’s say two gay guys holding hands walk into a diner owned by a conservative Catholic or a devout Muslim who frowns on men dating men. What if he thinks this is an affront not only to him, but also to God? What if he doesn’t want to let them eat at his lunch counter?</p>
<p>Every politician I’ve heard since the Indiana law became news says something like, “We just want to protect religious rights – but we’re against discrimination.” Translation: I’m trying to appease both my conservative Christian base and the vast number of others who think gay people should have all the rights granted to everyone else in this country.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting we live in a country where business people routinely turn away openly gay customers. But the current debate seems only to be about the rights of people of faith when it comes to big things – like weddings. What about the small things? What rights may people of faith claim in everyday business matters?</p>
<p>When I’ve written about this before some of you wrote to me saying, “It’s my business and I can do whatever I want.” No you can’t. Not in America.</p>
<p>You can refuse to allow barefoot customers with no shirts into your restaurant. But you can’t refuse service to blacks or Jews or Muslims or women. You give up certain rights when you open up a shop on a public street. And that’s how it should be.</p>
<p>Still, some Christians think they’re under attack. They think they’re being forced to do things that violate their religious beliefs. They worry about heavy fines if they don’t cater that gay wedding.</p>
<p>But if business people of faith are allowed to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, by what logic should they not be allowed to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple – period?</p>
<p>So, what if we had a law that <em>specifically</em> said business people may legally refuse to bake cakes or take pictures or cater gay weddings – <em>in the name of religious freedom – </em>but have no right to refuse service to gays for everyday dealings, like getting a photo taken or eating a meal or simply buying a cupcake. – <em>in the name of gay rights</em>.</p>
<p>Gays might not be happy about a businessman or woman refusing to cater their wedding. That’s understandable, but there will be other businesses that will gladly do business with them.</p>
<p>And some Christians won’t be happy knowing that if, for whatever hypothetical religious reason, they refuse more mundane service to gays, they could go broke due to heavy fines.</p>
<p>But, I think, such a law, with very specific language, might be a step in the right direction.</p>
<p>On the fundamental issue of gay marriage, most Americans are no longer against it. The polls tell us that a majority of Catholics and Jews support same-sex marriage. It’s even supported by 62 percent of white mainline Protestants. But few black and Hispanic Protestants favor gay marriage. And only 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants do. So it’s this relatively small minority the politicians worry about. After all, they’re organized. They speak into a big megaphone. And, of course, they’re are free to oppose gay marriage. But this split in the culture – this culture war over so-called social issues like gay rights — poses a big problem for Republicans who want to be president.</p>
<p>Conservative Christian organizations don’t care if they look like they’re on the wrong side of history. Being on the right side of the Bible is all that matters to them. But Republicans cannot be seen as the party on the wrong side of history — or they’re finished. Politics is about tomorrow, not yesterday. Republicans don’t want to look like they’re behind the curve. And to many Americans, especially young Americans, that’s just how they do look.</p>
<p>That’s a problem they better deal with – and fast. They don’t need this hanging over them in 2016. By next year, they need this to be old news.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-06T19:41:00ZWas the Bergdahl Swap a Good Deal?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Was-the-Bergdahl-Swap-a-Good-Deal/229715430642836632.html2015-04-01T21:29:00Z2015-04-01T21:29:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Last year, without consulting Congress, President Obama made a controversial deal. He traded one American soldier held by the Taliban for five Taliban commanders who had been held at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>The swap was controversial not only because the President of the United States had just concluded a secret deal with terrorists, but also because the American soldier – Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — was said to be a deserter, a charge made by more than a few soldiers who served with him in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The other day, after months of investigation, the United States Army made it official: It charged Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. If he’s found guilty he could spend the rest of his life in prison.</p>
<p>So, was the swap worth it — one American, a possible deserter, for five high level Taliban terrorists? Last year when he made the deal, President Obama said it was.</p>
<p>“We have a basic principle, we do not leave anybody wearing the American uniform behind,” the president said. “I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back.”</p>
<p>And the other day, when asked if the White House still thought the swap made sense, incoming White House communications advisor Jen Psaki said the swap was “absolutely worth it.”</p>
<p>It is arguably a noble idea that the United States of America does not leave any American in uniform behind, as a matter of principle — no matter what he might have done. But getting an American, even one now charged with desertion out of captivity is one thing; trying to turn him into a heroic figure is something else.</p>
<p>There was the post-swap ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, the president walking arm-in-arm with Bergdahl’s parents, giving the impression that Bowe Bergdahl was some kind of war hero returning home. Was a celebration – on national television — necessary? Was it intended to do anything more than make Mr. Obama look good as he was winding down the war in Afghanistan?</p>
<p>And why did Susan Rice also go on national television to defend the swap, saying Sgt. Bergdahl had “served the United States with honor and distinction.” <em>Honor and distinction</em>? This is the same Susan Rice who misled the American people with a phony story about how a video touched off the massacre in Benghazi. Why should anyone trust anything Ms. Rice says? Why is someone with so little credibility still the president’s National Security Advisor?</p>
<p>In a polarized America, everyone has an opinion about the deal. So, conservatives think the swap is one more piece of evidence that Barack Obama is out of his depth when it comes to handling complex foreign policy matters. Liberals who still adore the president will go along with just about anything he says and does. But for those in the middle, for those without any particular pro or anti-Obama ideology, the deal the president made — given the charges just filed against Sgt. Bergdahl — cannot sit well.</p>
<p>The five Taliban commanders, who are in Qatar under the agreement of their release, will be free men in early June – free to go back to the battlefield and kill Americans.</p>
<p>And they probably will.</p>
<p>Ron Fournier of the National Journal asked an important question on the Fox News program Special Report: “Empty five cells in Guantanamo and fill one in Leavenworth, does that sound like a good deal in hindsight?”</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-04-01T21:29:00ZOn Mandatory VotingBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/On-Mandatory-Voting/525602451630972543.html2015-03-23T20:13:00Z2015-03-23T20:13:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Now, from the man whose greatest policy achievement so far has been mandatory health, comes a new idea: mandatory voting.</p>
<p>At a town hall meeting in Cleveland, President Obama floated the idea as a way to counter the influence of money on elections. “Other countries have mandatory voting,” the president said, citing Australia as one example. “It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything.”</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out why the president would want a law requiring everyone to vote. And he wasn’t shy about admitting what that reason was. “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities…”</p>
<p>Or to put it another way: the people who tend not to vote … ARE DEMOCRATS!</p>
<p>Conservatives were quick to trash the idea, arguing that one of our sacred rights of expression is the right to sit home on Election Day. Yes, but this is lame. <br /><br />Sure, maybe some Republicans are against mandatory voting on highfalutin constitutional free speech grounds, but they’re also against it for less lofty reasons: They know, like the president knows, that if more young, poor and minority Americans were required to vote, that likely would end any chance the GOP would have of ever winning the White House again.</p>
<p>There’s a much better reason to oppose mandatory voting but it’s one that even conservative Republicans don’t have the guts to say – not out loud anyway: Certain Americans should not be encouraged to vote – and in some cases not even allowed to vote – because they’re clueless, which is a nice way of saying they’re too dense to get out of bed in the morning without hurting themselves, which is a nice way of saying they’re really, really stupid.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea: All Americans should have to answer a few simple questions in order to vote. How many states in the United States? If you can’t answer that, you’re out. Who is the current president (when you take the test)? If you don’t know who the president is, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote for president. In what country is the United States Congress located? Anyone who gets that one wrong should not only be barred from voting – but should be deported. Is Nebraska a city, a state or a planet?</p>
<p>And the ACLU has nothing to worry about – there will be no literacy tests or anything like that; no going back to the bad old days where black voters in the Old South might have had to read the Constitution – in Greek in order to vote; or tell the registrar how many jelly beans are in the jar on his desk.</p>
<p>Nope, just simple questions to make sure that only the least qualified among us don’t get to vote — and don’t get to offset votes cast by people who actually pay attention.</p>
<p>This leads me to the feature on Bill O’Reilly’s show – Watters' World — where Jesse Watters goes out and asks America’s Most Clueless real easy questions and gets real dumb answers.</p>
<p>Jesse asked one guy what he thought of the Ebola controversy and got this answer: “Holy boly controversy? … um, it’s nice.”</p>
<p>When asked what he thought about ISIS, another genius responded: “Yeah, that’s the Chinese people….”</p>
<p>To a guy on the ski slopes: “When was George Washington president?” Response: “1983.”</p>
<p>To another whiz kid on the slopes: “Who was President of the United States during World War II?” Reply: “I think it was Bush, am I close?”</p>
<p>Another American who would have to vote under the Obama plan was asked, “What body of water is on the East Coast of the U.S?” Answer: “That would be the Pacific.” Then a pause for reflection, and this answer: The “Red Sea.”</p>
<p>Do we really think any of them should be allowed to hold a pair of scissors let along given a ballot to vote? I mean, don’t we have enough chuckleheads already voting? Yes, we do. How else to explain Nancy Pelosi in Congress? Do we really need more clueless Americans making decisions about things they don’t even vaguely understand?</p>
<p>But Barack Obama thinks a law making voting mandatory would be a good idea. I think a law banning goofballs from voting would be a better idea.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-23T20:13:00ZWould You Like Some Talk About Race in America With Your Latte?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Would-You-Like-Some-Talk-About-Race-in-America-With-Your-Latte/-962709993944551347.html2015-03-18T18:20:00Z2015-03-18T18:20:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Starbucks is an immensely successful company at least in part because they appeal to a supposedly hip customer base that’s willing to pay more for a cup of coffee than a gallon of gasoline – because they figure Starbucks is cool and trendy and if they buy their over-priced coffee they must be cool and trendy too.</p>
<p>I went to a Starbucks once in Moscow and couldn’t figure out how to order a small cup of coffee. No, the menu wasn’t in Russian. It was in Starbucks, where a small was a “tall” and a medium was a “grande” and a large was a “venti.” I went in for coffee and came out with a headache.</p>
<p>Now Starbucks and its founder Howard Schultz have come up with a new cool and trendy idea – an idea, like all their other ideas, that’s designed to show how cool and trendy they are.</p>
<p>They want their baristas (as their servers are called) to engage customers in conversations about … race.</p>
<p>Even if you’re high on a double dose of caffeine you can’t think this is a good idea.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because I’m not cool and trendy (by Starbuck standards anyway) but I suspect there’s really only one conversation about race a cool and trendy company like Starbucks is looking for. The kind of conversation that boils down to “Isn’t it a shame how we treat black people in America.”</p>
<p>I used to be one of those naïve souls who also wanted a conversation about race in America. But at some point I realized that I’d rather have a conversation about manhole covers in America than race. Conversations about race inevitably go nowhere. Neither side really listens to the other side. And I suspect, it’ll be more of the same with the Starbucks initiative.</p>
<p>The problem is the kind of drivel that passes for a serious conversation about race has as much kick as a Cinnamon Dolce Latte, which, in case you’re interested, cost $4.65 for the venti size at Starbucks. The baristas may know how to pour expensive coffee into a cup, but I’m guessing they’re not equipped to deal with anything resembling a no-holds-barred conversation about race.</p>
<p>Here’s the conversation I can envision if the Starbucks guy or gal asked me what I thought about race in America:</p>
<p>“America has a nasty history when it comes to race,” I’d say. “Slavery was downright evil. And I don’t want to hear about how we can’t judge behavior in the 1700s and 1800s by today’s standards. Sometimes you can. Slavery was wrong then and everybody knew it.”</p>
<p>Then I’d say, “Segregation was another stain on our history.”</p>
<p>After that, I’d go where no sensible person should go: to the kind of stuff about race that makes people nervous and is likely to cause cool and trendy millennial baristas to think you’re a hopeless bigot.</p>
<p>“But you know what,” I’d go on against my better judgment, “the slaveholders aren’t coming back to make things right. And the bigots still walking our streets have no interest in making things right. So the victims of slavery and segregation have to take the lead in making things right.”</p>
<p>About now the barista is dialing 911. But I’m not deterred. I’m too stupid for that. So I say, “But too many of African-Americans aren’t taking the lead to make things right. The out-of-wedlock birth rate in black America is over 70 percent. That is unacceptable behavior. Kids born to young girls grow up with the odds stacked against them.”</p>
<p>I get the impression that the barista is wondering why a smart guy like his boss Mr. Schultz ever came up with this crazy idea to engage customers on such a touchy subject as race.</p>
<p>“Too many black kids drop out of high school,” I say. “And they make fun of other black kids who try to do well in school. They say, “You actin’ white.’ Like that’s a bad thing. And too many black kids become criminals and hurt other black kids.”</p>
<p>Then, a shot across the barista bow: “If it makes liberals – (I don’t say “like you” but he knows who I’m talking about) — feel better to trace this back to slavery, wonderful. But that’s not going to help anybody … <em>today</em>!”</p>
<p>I’m on a roll. Why stop now?</p>
<p>“The reason a disproportionate number of African-Americans are not doing well,” I say even though I think at this point I’m talking to myself, “is because of dysfunctional behavior. What do you think about that, Mr. Barista?”</p>
<p>No answer.</p>
<p>Then another thought pops into my head.</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, I’m tired of hearing about how ‘black lives matter,’” I say. “Of course they do. All lives matter. But they matter not only when a white cop shoots a black kid who should not have resisted arrest in the first place. It matters too when black thugs kill innocent black kids. But I don’t see any marches about that. Don’t <em>those</em> black lives matter?”</p>
<p>The people in line behind me aren’t any more amused than the barista. It’s morning and they want their fix. So I wrap it up.</p>
<p>“I can’t go into black neighborhoods and preach the gospel of personal responsibility and good behavior. No one’s going to listen to me, a white guy. But we have a black president who is charismatic. He could do the preaching. But except for a few occasions, he won’t do it.</p>
<p>“Why not? What if nobody listens? What if even the most important man in the free world – a black man – can’t change the behavior? Then he’d look like he failed. And we can’t have that, can we? Better to blame bad cops and bad teachers and bad society in general than to hold people accountable for their behavior.”</p>
<p>At this point, the barista’s eyes are rolling around in his head. I detect foam on his mouth. He looks like he’s about to pass out. Surely he wishes he didn’t show up for work this morning. I think I hear him whisper to himself, “Why couldn’t I have gotten lucky and been hit by a truck on my way to work?” But I could be wrong. He might have said “bus” not”truck.”</p>
<p>I start to order a venti-size Caramel Macchiato, but reconsider. I’m low on gas and I can use the money to buy a couple of gallons. To go to Dunkin’ Donuts.</p>
<p><span>- See more at: http://bernardgoldberg.com/would-you-like-some-talk-about-race-in-america-with-your-latte/?utm_source=BernardGoldberg.com+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f9e1f82a58-NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c1903183b6-f9e1f82a58-298500313#sthash.wumLF0sV.dpuf</span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-18T18:20:00ZBernie Goldberg's 2016 Crystal BallBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernie-Goldbergs-2016-Crystal-Ball/-787399646538626014.html2015-03-13T06:51:00Z2015-03-13T06:51:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I have looked into my 2016 presidential election crystal ball and what I saw is scary.</p>
<p>I saw the so-called mainstream media covering the GOP convention as if it were an anti-abortion rally. And I see them covering Hillary’s campaign like a coronation.</p>
<p>Given the way things go with the media, this makes sense. Hillary told a gala at Emily’s List the other day, “I suppose it’s fair to say, don’t you someday want to see a woman president of the United states of America.”</p>
<p>Understandably Hil got loud applause for that. Emily’s List, after all, is a progressive outfit whose purpose in life is to get liberal women elected to office.</p>
<p>But my crystal ball tells me this is just the beginning and that we’re going to hear a lot of “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” campaign talk before Election Day.</p>
<p>Through the cloudy haze, I can see Republicans going after Mrs. Clinton on Benghazi. And I can see (and hear) James Carville, Paul Begala, Howard Dean, Lanny Davis, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, the New York Times editorial page, and ten thousand other Clinton cronies screaming, “Sexist!”</p>
<p>That’s what we have to look forward to. Every time someone says something the Clinton campaign doesn’t like, her detractors are going to be portrayed as women haters – Neanderthals who think women should know their place … and that place is the kitchen baking cookies for her man and their 15 children.</p>
<p>The crystal ball is telling me that this is going to be the “Here We Go Again Campaign.” Last time around, there was another historic candidate who wanted to be president. And if you didn’t like him, you might be a racist.</p>
<p>This was an actual headline from the liberal online magazine Slate in 2008.</p>
<p><em>If Obama Loses</em></p>
<p><em>Racism is the only reason McCain might beat him</em></p>
<p>My crystal ball says there will be other headlines just like that one. And they will all say the same thing</p>
<p><em>If Hillary Loses</em></p>
<p><em>Sexism is the only reason (fill in the blank) might beat h</em>er</p>
<p>But, you say, the press is going hard on Hillary right now over those emails. Why should we think they’d go easy on her later on?</p>
<p>Because even though the press will send out the invitations to the coronation they’d much prefer a food fight. So if there’s a scandal – emails or almost anything else — they’ll be all over it. Until …</p>
<p>Until there’s an actual, living, breathing Republican opponent. Then they’ll put on their short skirts and pick up their pom poms and go all out for the liberal woman Democrat.</p>
<p>Would the lamestreams prefer that some other liberal Democrat jump in? Absolutely. Even to them, Hillary feels like yesterday’s news. She’s been around since (as Dan Rather might say) Moses was in short pants.</p>
<p>And my faithful crystal ball sees a few others putting a toe or two in the water. But Hillary will survive. So says the ball.</p>
<p>Of course, my crystal ball could be wrong. It did pick the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl. So I guess Hillary can also do something really dumb just before the final gun goes off. And I guess the media could throw its substantial weight behind some right wing conservative Republican and cheer for him all the way to the White House.</p>
<p>I know. I’m a riot.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-13T06:51:00ZAnother Dopey Remark from Dr. Ben CarsonBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Another-Dopey-Remark-from-Dr.-Ben-Carson/703243461334724843.html2015-03-09T23:30:00Z2015-03-09T23:30:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I am never surprised when stupid people say stupid things but am always fascinated when smart people say stupid things. I have Dr. Ben Carson in mind.</p>
<p>The other day, when CNN anchor Chris Cuomo asked Carson if he believed homosexuality was a choice, the doctor replied, “Absolutely.”</p>
<p>There may be a few fringe scientists somewhere on the planet who agree with Carson. And there are more than a few people of faith who believe it. But this only confirms another of my long-held beliefs: Religion has the power to make some people better than they otherwise would be. It may even make some people noble. But it also has the capacity to make people incredibly ignorant, especially when the subject has anything to do with science.</p>
<p>Ben Carson, his substantial medical credentials notwithstanding, is just such a person — a person of deep and abiding faith who at times confuses the Bible for a science book.</p>
<p>Still, how can a doctor of Ben Carson’s stature actually believe homosexuality is a choice? “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight,” he told Cuomo, “and when they come out, they’re gay.”</p>
<p>He really said that. Which prompted Michael Che, one of the fake newsmen on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update to <em>report</em> that, “Dr. Ben Carson went in as a neurosurgeon and came out as a complete idiot.”</p>
<p>And this isn’t the first time the good doctor has put himself in the crosshairs.</p>
<p>He once said that there might not be an election in 2016 because of widespread anarchy. When Chris Wallace asked him about that on Fox, Carson said, “Well, I hope that that’s not going to be the case, but certainly there is the potential. Because you have to recognize that we have a rapidly increasing national debt, a very unstable financial foundation. And you have all these things going on like the ISIS crisis that could very rapidly change things that are going on in our nation. And unless we begin to deal with these things in a comprehensive way, and in a logical way, there is no telling what could happen in just a matter of a couple of years.”</p>
<p>Carson is right about the national debt and ISIS and the need to deal with them as serious threats to America’s wellbeing. But to conclude that anarchy is percolating in America and that we may not be able to hold elections as scheduled in 2016 … is <em>strange</em>. And I’m using that word only out of kindness.</p>
<p>Here’s another gem from Dr. Carson: America is very much like Nazi Germany. He said we’re living “in a Gestapo age,” and when asked to explain, he said:</p>
<p>“I mean, [we are] very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”</p>
<p>So Dr. Carson believes that because some people supposedly are afraid to speak their minds, the United States <em>is like Nazi Germany</em>? Does this man understand <em>anything</em> about the fundamental nature of Nazi Germany?</p>
<p>There’s more. Carson has also said that ObamaCare is “the worst thing that has happened to this nation since slavery.”</p>
<p>I have no doubt that members of the far right of the Republican Party love Ben Carson for saying such things. I’m sure they see him as courageous. But they, like Dr. Carson, spend too much time where the buses don’t run.</p>
<p>When challenged on his odd observations he tries to <em>clarify</em> them with “What I was trying to say but the liberal media distorted my remarks was ….” I’m all for blaming the liberal media for all sorts of things. But you can’t blame them for quoting you accurately.</p>
<p>In his most recent scientifically unsound observation, the one about gays, Carson has apologized. “I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”</p>
<p>Apologizing for dumb remarks is always a good thing. Not saying them … and not thinking them in the first place … is better.</p>
<p>Unlike the suicide wing of the Republican Party, the ideological purists who proudly announce they’ll sit home on Election Day if Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham or anyone else who disagrees with them about almost anything wins the nomination – I will only sit home only if one particular GOP candidate winds up as the party’s standard-bearer.</p>
<p>Take a guess which one.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-09T23:30:00ZWhy is Liberal Opinion Journalism So Breathtakingly Unsuccessful?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-is-Liberal-Opinion-Journalism-So-Breathtakingly-Unsuccessful/-339922246697707899.html2015-03-06T19:51:00Z2015-03-06T19:51:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>In the last six presidential elections, going all the way back to Bill Clinton’s first victory in 1992, the more liberal candidate won <em>in the popular vote</em> five out of the six times.</p>
<p>You would think that with so many Americans opting for a liberal over a more conservative candidate this would bode well for liberals in the media too. But it doesn’t. If MSNBC or liberal talk radio were a presidential candidate, they’d lose almost every time.</p>
<p>So what gives? Why are liberals far more popular in presidential races than in media ratings races?</p>
<p>Bill O’Reilly asked me about that recently, citing numbers showing how bad liberal opinion journalism is doing.</p>
<p>“You may remember Air America radio,” Bill said, “which launched nation-wide in 2004 — and went bankrupt 6 years later, losing at least 40 million dollars in the process.”</p>
<p>So much for wishful thinking in the world of liberal talk radio. What about liberal talk television?</p>
<p>Recently, Bill said, “After Benjamin Netanyahu gave his speech, millions of Americans tuned into the news. But they did not tune in to MSNBC. The ratings for them were catastrophic.”</p>
<p>Not so, for Fox News. At 8pm Eastern Time, O’Reilly had nearly five times as many viewers as the show on MSNBC.</p>
<p>There’s more. O’Reilly told his audience that, “In February the Fox news channel was the number one-rated cable channel in the world in prime time. MSNBC on the other hand, declined an amazing 55 percent in the key primetime advertising age group and 28-percent overall, from year to year.”</p>
<p>A “total collapse of ratings,” O’Reilly concluded, “that were never high to begin with.”</p>
<p>Then he asked me why liberal opinion journalism is failing so spectacularly. I told him there are probably a hundred reasons, but here are three:</p>
<ol>
<li>Opinion media all too often violate the cardinal rule of <em>all</em> media: They fail to entertain. Instead, liberal opinion hosts – in prime time on MSNBC, for example – lecture us. They drone on forever making pedantic arguments. If you could bottle these shows you’d have a cure for insomnia.</li>
</ol>
<p>I went to college and like everybody else sat through lectures; I wasn’t fascinated back then and I’m not fascinated today.</p>
<p>You can love Fox or hate Fox – and there are plenty who do both – but you can’t accuse Fox News of being boring.</p>
<p>Same with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Whatever you think of their politics, they are not dull. And in their own way, they’re entertaining. That’s a big reason each of them won, twice.</p>
<p>Not so with liberal commentators on TV and radio. They’re oh so serious. And oh so dull. Saving the world and all of humanity from those evil conservatives may satisfy the ego of the host or hostess, but it doesn’t make for good radio or TV.</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>People go to opinion journalism not so much for information, but to get their own views validated. But what we’re calling liberal talk TV and radio aren’t liberal as much as they are … far left. So even liberals don’t watch MSNBC or listen to talk radio in big numbers – because the content is further left than the listeners. If they want their liberal views validated, MSNBC and liberal talk radio are not the places to go.</li>
</ol><ol start="3">
<li>There’s pretty much only one place to go to get conservative news and opinion on television – and that’s the Fox News Channel. (There are other small, new conservative stations popping up on cable; but Fox remains the only big one.) But there are plenty of places in the media landscape to get news and opinion that is left-of-center. There are a million places on the Web, and plenty of big city newspapers, and the three broadcast networks that serve up a daily helping of the liberal (or leftist) worldview. No need to watch MSNBC or listen to talk radio if you’re looking for “progressive” info and ideas.</li>
</ol>
<p>Roger Ailes, the visionary who created and runs Fox News, figured it out a long time ago: find a niche and go after that audience. His niche turned out to be half of America. Let’s just say the niche for far left opinion journalism is a <em>tad</em> smaller.</p>
<p>As I say, there are probably a hundred reasons left wing journalism doesn’t register with the American people. Here’s where you, my friends, come in: Give me a few more reasons far left news media are on life support. Keep your ideas short. Funny is good, too.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-06T19:51:00ZWho Do You Believe: Kerry or Clapper?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Who-Do-You-Believe:-Kerry-or-Clapper/131299891044800010.html2015-03-02T22:24:00Z2015-03-02T22:24:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Good news, everybody! We’re safer today than ever before. And by “ever before” I mean anytime since the beginning of time. So relax. Breathe easy. Terrorism isn’t as big a deal as you foolishly thought.</p>
<p>We can thank Secretary of State John Kerry for putting us at ease. The other day he told a House subcommittee that, “It is counterintuitive, but the truth is that notwithstanding the threat of ISIL, notwithstanding people being beheaded publicly and burned publicly and the atrocities that they are perpetrating, and it is a serious, serious challenge to us. Notwithstanding that, there is actually less threat and less probability of people dying in some sort of violent conflict today than at any time in human history.”</p>
<p><em>In human history</em>!</p>
<p>An aide to Kerry <em>clarified</em> his boss’ rosy observation saying he was talking about violent deaths in general, over a very long period of time, not just terrorism in the here and now.</p>
<p>I guess this means there are fewer people being killed today than, say in World War I or World War II or during the Korean War or the Vietnam War – or during the daily savagery of the Dark Ages.</p>
<p>Gee, I feel much better now.</p>
<p>So if things are so much better today, why have so many of us been so anxious about terrorism hitting us right here at home? Maybe, it’s because President Obama recently told us that the media are hyping terrorism because it’s a sexy subject.</p>
<p>In an interview with Vox, Mr. Obama was asked if he thinks the media “sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism” — as opposed to other, longer-term issues, like climate change and epidemic disease.</p>
<p>“Absolutely,” the president responded, saying, “If it bleeds, it leads,” adding that it’s a lot harder to make climate change or cutting infant mortality a “sexy story.”</p>
<p>Besides President Obama had already called ISIS a “JV team” – so how worried should we be about the junior varsity? He also said the Islamic State is not Islamic. Why’s that? Because, the president said, “No religion condones the killing of innocents.”</p>
<p>The only problem with Mr. Obama’s thinking is that when people kill in the name of their religion – whether it was Christians doing the killing hundreds of years ago or Muslims today – they don’t believe their victims are “innocents.”</p>
<p>But now we can better understand why Secretary Kerry believes there is “less threat and less probability of people dying in some sort of violent conflict today than at any time in human history.”</p>
<p>Mr. Kerry is nothing if not loyal. If his boss says terrorism is being hyped, then why shouldn’t his acolyte – who serves at the president’s pleasure — say the same thing?</p>
<p>But every now and then reality intrudes and smacks wishful thinking right in the mouth. Which is what happened just one day after Kerry spoke to the House subcommittee.</p>
<p>That’s when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “when the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled.”</p>
<p>So which is it? Are we safer than ever or not?</p>
<p>I’m opting for “not.” Not because I have access to secret intelligence, but because I have access to newspapers and the evening news where I can read and hear about ISIS killing non-believers over there and encouraging so-called lone wolf sympathizers to do the same here in the United States.</p>
<p>Maybe John Kerry is simply painting by the numbers — and the numbers indicate that despite the decapitations, and the crucifixions, and the bullets to the back of the head, and the burials of living human beings at the hands of Islamic State monsters, we’re still <em>statistically</em> safer today than ever before. But that’s like saying at the height of the lynchings and beatings of black people in the Old South that they were better off than ever before — because, at least, they weren’t slaves. That kind of thinking is not only misguided — it’s disgraceful.</p>
<p>And Kerry can’t actually think that terrorists are just blowing off steam when they make threats against targets in Europe and the Mall of America in Minnesota. He can’t really think the FBI is exaggerating when they say they’re investigating domestic radicals in all 50 states. It sounds like Kerry is reaching a premature conclusion when he tells us things aren’t as bad as we think. How many deaths here in America would it take before his aides offer another <em>clarification</em> of what the secretary really meant when he said there’s less chance any of us will die in a violent conflict than at any time in human history?</p>
<p>Maybe John Kerry knows more than James Clapper. Maybe. But I suspect he knows less. A lot less.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-03-02T22:24:00ZYou Cannot Defeat An Enemy You Do Not Admit ExistsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/You-Cannot-Defeat-An-Enemy-You-Do-Not-Admit-Exists/-766451881561525807.html2015-02-24T19:53:00Z2015-02-24T19:53:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Speaking at the White House conference on “Countering Violent Extremism,” President Obama tried to explain his refusal to make any connections between Islam and terrorism.</p>
<p>“Leading up to this summit there’s been a fair amount of debate in the press and among pundits about the words we use to describe and frame this challenge, so I want to be very clear about how I see it,” the president said. “Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam.”</p>
<p>But “we must never accept the premise that they put forward because it is a lie,” he said. Those who lead the Islamic State and Al Qaeda “are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists.”</p>
<p>There’s something to that. But when just about everyone else, including his allies in the media, are calling Islamic terrorism by its name, the president comes off as weak; his words sound insipid and bland.</p>
<p>And it’s not only his political opponents who find his explanation unconvincing.</p>
<p>“You cannot defeat an enemy that you do not admit exists.” It wasn’t Rush Limbaugh or Ted Cruz who said that. It was Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014.</p>
<p>Flynn told a House hearing that, “I really, really strongly believe that the American public needs and wants moral, intellectual and really strategic clarity and courage on this threat.”</p>
<p>But while the president bends over backwards not to offend moderate Muslims, both here at home and in the Arab world, he’s doing a pretty good job offending a lot of other people.</p>
<p>When a Muslim stormed a kosher market in Paris, telling a local TV station that he was “targeting Jews,” Barack Obama spoke of “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”</p>
<p>But it wasn’t simply “a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” It was Jewish people shopping for the Friday night Sabbath. And they weren’t “randomly shot.” They were targeted because they were Jewish.</p>
<p>And when thugs from the Islamic State cut the heads off of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who went to Libya to find work – and did it on camera — the president’s spokesman, Josh Earnest issued a statement condemning the violence against those Egyptian “citizens.” He couldn’t bring himself to call them Christians – even though that’s why they were murdered. It wasn’t because they were Egyptians. It was because they were “people of the cross,” as one of the Islamic State murderers said.</p>
<p>(Later, after the furor over Earnest’s pathetic description, President Obama in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times stated the obvious – that the beheaded men were Christians.)</p>
<p>What President Obama either doesn’t understand or just won’t say out loud is that they don’t call it the Islamic State for nothing. As a piece in Atlantic magazine put it, “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers … but the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”</p>
<p>So why can’t President Obama walk and chew gum at the same time? Why can’t he hold two distinct thoughts in his head simultaneously? Why can’t he acknowledge that while most Muslims aren’t savages, some Muslims are. And there is something in their reading of Islam that justifies, in their twisted minds, the mayhem they commit.</p>
<p>Islam, whether President Obama likes it or not, is not simply an innocent bystander in all of this.</p>
<p>At some level, the president may know it. But that’s not enough. He also needs to speak it.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-24T19:53:00ZAt the Crossroads of Religion and Politics: Republicans, Proceed With CautionBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/At-the-Crossroads-of-Religion-and-Politics:-Republicans-Proceed-With-Caution/-334008432577237199.html2015-02-16T21:07:00Z2015-02-16T21:07:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>In his new book, <em>Believer</em>, political guru David Axelrod tells us that when his pal Barack Obama was running for president in 2008 he lied, for political reasons, about his position on gay marriage, telling voters he was against it when he really was for it.</p>
<p>According to Axelrod, “Gay marriage was a particularly nagging issue. For as long as we had been working together, Obama had felt a tug between his personal views and the politics of gay marriage,” Axelrod writes. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union.'”</p>
<p>This, even though years earlier, while running for his first term in the Illinois State Senate, Mr. Obama signed a questionnaire saying he “favored legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”</p>
<p>So let’s see if we have this right: Barack Obama is now for gay marriage… but was against it when he first ran for president … even though he was for it before he was against it.</p>
<p>Sure.</p>
<p>After hearing what Axelrod had to say about all this, Mr. Obama told a reporter that his old friend got it wrong; that he really was against it and then changed his mind. Except you know Axelrod got it right.</p>
<p>Why would he make something like that up which makes his friend-the-president look like a run-of-the mill-politician who would say whatever he had to say to get elected?</p>
<p>When religion is involved politicians will twist themselves into pretzels making sure they don’t offend the faithful – especially the faithful who vote in large. Offend them and you bring their wrath down upon your head. In political terms that means they just might sit home on Election Day.</p>
<p>But, as they say in the world of sports, no harm no foul. The president’s acolytes in the news media yawn over revelations like Axelrod’s. The president may be a cynic, but he’s their cynic.</p>
<p>Republicans pander to the faithful, too, of course. But they look worse when they do it – at least when science is involved.</p>
<p>Take Scott Walker. He was in London recently trying to drum up trade for his home state of Wisconsin when an interviewer asked if he believed in the science of evolution.</p>
<p>The simple answer, of course, should have been: “But of course. Don’t you? Instead, Governor Walker ran for cover.</p>
<p>“For me, I’m going to punt on that one,” he said. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or another.”</p>
<p>Why? Because if a Republican politician sins, and says he accepts evolution as science, those who don’t will punish him.</p>
<p>Later, Walker issued a statement to POLITICO, saying: “Both science and my faith dictate my belief that we are created by God. I believe faith and science are compatible, and go hand in hand.”</p>
<p>Sometimes that’s true. We can have faith in God and also believe in science. We can believe it all started with a big bang and also believe that God put the particles there that exploded to become the universe. But faith and science often are at odds. Faith, very often, is what we believe despite what science tells us. Science tells us when you’re dead you’re dead. Faith tells Jesus died and came back to life. Science tells us that we slowly evolved over millions and millions of years. Faith tells us God created us — in his image no less — right from the jump.</p>
<p>I don’t know what Scott Walker really thinks about evolution, but I’m pretty sure he knows what a lot of evangelical Christians think about evolution. They don’t accept it. They believe there was an Adam and an Eve and a Garden of Eden and that God created man and woman in the form we appear today.</p>
<p>If Walker is asked the same question about evolution later in the campaign, and if he “punts” again – or gives his hand in hand answer — it’s a safe bet the press will hammer him.</p>
<p>Other GOP contenders, fearful of making a “wrong” move, might have also “punted” if asked how they felt about evolution. And they may also “punt” – as one already has — if asked how old our planet is, because some conservative Christians incredibly believe it’s only 6,000 years old – not the real number, which is 4.5 billion.</p>
<p>In 2012, when GQ magazine asked Marco Rubio, “How old do you think the Earth is,” he responded: “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”</p>
<p>That response prompted one liberal commentator to write: “The GOP doesn’t just want to roll back the New Deal; it wants to roll back the Enlightenment.” (OK, it was Paul Krugman of the New York Times who said that; the same Paul Krugman who has never met a conservative he doesn’t think is a jerk. But on this, I’m afraid he’s got a point.)</p>
<p>As I say, a progressive like Barack Obama panders too — to the faithful in his tent who vote. But he gets away with it. Republicans won’t.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-16T21:07:00ZThe Man Who Wanted to be Walter Cronkite... and Jay LenoBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Man-Who-Wanted-to-be-Walter-Cronkite...-and-Jay-Leno/-801402357571476655.html2015-02-11T22:25:00Z2015-02-11T22:25:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Brian Williams may just now be finding out the high cost of making things up, but the seeds of his fall from anchorman grace were sown a long time ago.</p>
<p>At this point we don’t know what motivated him to lie about what happened to him in Iraq in 2003. All we know is that the helicopter he was in was not hit by a rocket propelled grenade as he had often claimed.</p>
<p>Maybe he was trying to come off as a heroic war correspondent who was almost killed trying to get the news for his viewers. Maybe other NBC correspondents covering the war were getting more air time – and fame. And maybe Williams thought he had to “embellish” his story to compete. Who knows?</p>
<p>And who knows what other tall tales he might have told. Was he lying about seeing a body float past his hotel while covering Hurricane Katrina? What about when he was a teenager and supposedly was robbed at gunpoint in front of a church in New Jersey while selling Christmas trees? And there are other “What abouts …”</p>
<p>All we know for sure is that he’s been suspended for six months without pay. That’ll cost him $5 million – for now. Another thing we don’t know is if he’ll be back as the anchor of the NBC Nightly News or if he’ll have a job at NBC or any other news organization ever again.</p>
<p>But the reason I say his problems started long ago, is because Brian William, I think, never really knew what he liked more: journalism or celebrity.</p>
<p>You can have both, that’s for sure. In the United States of Entertainment even journalists have to be entertaining. They can’t simply be good looking stiffs in a nice suit reading a teleprompter. And when you reach the heights of anchoring a network newscast, recognizable to millions, celebrity tags along.</p>
<p>Someone who knows Mr. Williams tells me that he always wanted to be Walter Cronkite. But it’s now coming out that he also wanted to be Jay Leno – or at least Jay’s replacement.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times, “About five years ago, as NBC was contemplating who would eventually succeed Jay Leno as host of NBC’s ‘Tonight Show,’ a surprise candidate raised his hand: Mr. Williams.</p>
<p>“Mr. Williams told top NBC executives that he was keen to pursue his ambitions in entertainment and comedy. They called the idea ridiculous, telling him that he was a journalist, not a comedian, and to stick to the news department, according to industry executives with knowledge of the discussions.”</p>
<p>He didn’t get the job, of course, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his entertainment ambitions, hosting “Saturday Night Live,” and doing guest shots on NBC’s “30 Rock” and CBS’s Letterman late night show.</p>
<p>Journalists tell the unvarnished truth, or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Entertainers entertain. They tell stories that are interesting. And if they have to embellish, exaggerate or yes, simply make stuff up, there are no rules forbidding any of that. The only crime is not being interesting.</p>
<p>Williams was trying to fulfill both of his dreams – being a top-tier journalist and a top-tier entertainer. Oil and water don’t mix.</p>
<p>So what happens now? Does he return in six months or is his life as he knew it, finished? My guess is that NBC would like him to return – he was the number one network evening news anchorman, after all. That translates into a lot of money. If all this happened when Brian Williams was the number 3 anchor in a 3-man race, there’d be no suspension. He’d simply be canned.</p>
<p>But if it turns out he’s a serial liar, he’s done. Period!</p>
<p>Really good entertainers have a knack for convincing us they’re telling an honest to God true story even when they’re not. Really good journalists don’t even try to fool us. They just tell us the truth.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-11T22:25:00ZMr. President, Put away the Time Machine: Deal with <em>today's</em> ZealotsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Mr.-President-Put-away-the-Time-Machine:-Deal-with-emtodays/em-Zealots/-216806791296834955.html2015-02-09T19:58:00Z2015-02-09T19:58:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Even though the “Big Three” Broadcast networks didn’t cover it, by now most of us know that in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, President Obama delivered a sermonette of sorts, telling us that radical Muslims don’t have a monopoly on atrocity, that Christians have also done terrible things in the name of their faith.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama said we shouldn’t “get on our high horse” because “During the Crusades and the Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”</p>
<p>He also said, “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”</p>
<p>This riled many Christians and other opponents of the president, some of whom (truth be told) would be riled if Mr. Obama found a cure for cancer.</p>
<p>But the president is right, <em>up to a point</em>. Christians did indeed torture and murder non-believers in the name of their religion. Whether the Crusades and the Inquisition were as horrible as many have come to believe, is not the point. They were horrible enough. No reasonable person should make excuses for what Christians did – as the president pointed out – “in the name of Christ.” Not a thousand years ago and not more recently in America during slavery and Jim Crow.</p>
<p>But the president could have also pointed out that those who fought the hardest against slavery were also Christians. But he didn’t.</p>
<p>He could have told his audience that Christianity went through a reformation – and that moderate Muslims need to lead a reformation too. The President of Egypt has called for just such a reformation. But our president didn’t talk about that at the Prayer Breakfast.</p>
<p>And he could have pointed out that Europe had a Renaissance; that it went from the Dark Ages into the light – and that the Arab world has had no such Renaissance, but desperately needs one. He didn’t do that either.</p>
<p>If Mr. Obama had to reach back so many centuries to make a point, his critics may be excused if they think he was making a case for moral equivalence between what some Christians did centuries ago and what some Muslims are doing today.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget that the president’s sermonette came just days after the Islamic State released that video showing a Jordanian POW locked up in a cage being burned alive. Was last week the best time to dredge up atrocities committed in the name of Christ — <em>in medieval times</em>?</p>
<p>According to the New York Times, “The president wanted to be provocative in his remarks [according to his aides] … urging people to see how the current brutality of the Islamic State … fits in the broader sweep of global history that has often given rise to what he called ‘a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.’”</p>
<p>Thank you, Mr. President, for the history lesson. Thank you for telling us that Christians tortured and killed their enemies a thousand years ago. Now put the time machine back in the garage and come up with a plan to deal with the havoc radical Muslims are causing <em>now.</em></p>
<p>And it’s not terribly useful, or even smart, to judge behavior practiced in the Dark Ages by today’s standards. Or even Jim Crow behavior by today’s standards.</p>
<p>So why do it? I suspect Mr. Obama doesn’t really like the types who attend the Prayer Breakfast. White conservative Christians haven’t exactly been part of his base. And any time this president gets an opportunity to take a shot at those he thinks detest all Muslims for what the fanatics do, he’ll take the shot. That’s what he really did at the Prayer Breakfast.</p>
<p>From here, it looks like he was sending a message to Americans, mainly white, Christian, Republican Americans. A message that says: Don’t be so quick to judge <em>them</em> … Muslims… because <em>you</em> are not so pure, either. You too have in your bloodline “a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort” your faith.</p>
<p>President Obama wanted to provoke. And judging from the reaction his speech got, he did. And I suspect, having no more races to run, he doesn’t care who he offends. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Obama unplugged before he leaves office.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-09T19:58:00ZBlood in the Water, Sharks Circling... and Brian WilliamsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Blood-in-the-Water-Sharks-Circling...-and-Brian-Williams/682320121276811542.html2015-02-06T21:15:00Z2015-02-06T21:15:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Try to imagine that Letterman or Kimmel or Fallon asks me to be a guest on their late night show and the first question is: “What did you do before you went into journalism, Bernie?” Now imagine that I say: “Well, Dave (or Jimmy) I played centerfield for the New York Yankees; I hit 536 home runs before I hung up the spikes and hit just under .300 during my 18 year career.”</p>
<p>Those are Mickey Mantle’s numbers. So that would make me one of two things: delusional – which is a mental disorder – or a liar.</p>
<p>Those are pretty much the two options for Brian Williams regarding his oft-told story that while covering the war in Iraq in 2003, the military helicopter he was in was hit by a rocket propelled grenade.</p>
<p>Wow. That’s dramatic. It takes a courageous newsman, like Brian Williams, to go into a war zone and almost die because the chopper he was on got hit by a rocket.</p>
<p>Except, as we now know, it never happened. And Williams admits it never happened, and has apologized – an apology that came 12 years after the supposed rocket attack and only after soldiers who were there had had enough (Williams had just told the fake story again) and came forward to say he made the whole thing up.</p>
<p>Brian Williams was in a helicopter in Iraq in 2003, but it was never hit by a rocket. (It may have been hit by small arms fire, but even that’s disputed, and Williams in his apology didn’t say anything about small arms fire.) The chopper he was on showed up at the scene of the rocket attack about an hour later. Williams says he doesn’t know how he “conflated” the facts and came up with his make-believe story. So what’s going on?</p>
<p>I guess it’s possible that Brian Williams is nuts, that he’s delusional. But I don’t think so. I’m going with liar.</p>
<p>But I don’t think he was your everyday run-of-the-mill liar. I think he is in a special category: The Celebrity Liar category.</p>
<p>Celebrities go on late night talk shows all the time and tell harmless little stories that aren’t true. (Letterman’s show, by the way, was one of the places Williams told his story about how his helicopter was hit by an RPG.) The celebrities – and the late night hosts and producers – understand that the truth isn’t always entertaining. A lot of times it isn’t even interesting. And since being uninteresting is the biggest sin one can commit in the world of show business, celebrities embellish or flat out lie in order to do what they’re supposed to do in the world of entertainment: entertain!</p>
<p>Big deal. Who cares if some ditzy celebrity says she was walking her dog on Rodeo Drive when a guy dressed up like a giant banana tried to run away with the pooch but was stopped by Sylvester Stallone who just happened to be strolling by at the time? (I just made that up, in case you’re wondering.) It’s only a ditzy celebrity telling a dumb story meant to be … entertaining.</p>
<p>But when the celebrity is also a journalist – and not just a <em>regular</em> reporter but also the anchorman of the NBC Nightly News – making up stuff about things that never happened — in a war zone no less — may be entertaining but it’s also unacceptable. It crosses a very bright line. If he’ll make up a story about being hit by a rocket, the viewer has a right to wonder, what else will he make up?</p>
<p>But when I talked to Bill O’Reilly about this I predicted the story would go nowhere. We live in a culture where outrage is hard to come by. When the Russians, or their thug surrogates, shot down a civilian jetliner over Ukraine … the story faded fast. The other day, the monsters from ISIS burned that Jordanian POW alive … and that story is already old news. That’s why I told O’Reilly that the Brian Williams story would go away “in the blink of an eye.”</p>
<p>I was wrong.</p>
<p>The next morning (today) something happened I didn’t foresee. The New York Times ran the Brian Williams story on page one. And since the Times is the Bible in the world of journalism – the place “lesser” journalists go to get their wisdom, where they go to find out what is and what isn’t newsworthy – this could be the beginning of bad times for Mr. Williams.</p>
<p>There’s also a report in the New York Post that the man Williams replaced in the anchor chair, Tom Brokaw, says it’s time for Williams to go. “Brokaw wants Williams’ head on a platter,” according to a source at NBC that the Post quoted. “He [Brokaw] is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report” the source reportedly told the Post.</p>
<p>And now a report from New Orleans has surfaced, about an interview Williams gave in 2006 about covering Hurricane Katrina a year earlier in New Orleans. Here’s what Williams said: “When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country …”</p>
<p>But the New Orleans Advocate is now reporting this: “But the French Quarter, the original high ground of New Orleans, was not impacted by the floodwaters that overwhelmed the vast majority of the city.”</p>
<p>Blood is in the water. The sharks are circling. As they say on television: Stay tuned.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-06T21:15:00ZMeasles, and the Need for Republicans to Man Up!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Measles-and-the-Need-for-Republicans-to-Man-Up!/-921773975461920175.html2015-02-05T20:18:00Z2015-02-05T20:18:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting more than 100 confirmed cases of measles spread across 14 states, an outbreak that began at Disneyland in California.</p>
<p>Now the outbreak has spread to the 2016 presidential race – or more accurately to what several of the likely Republican candidates think about mandatory vaccinations that would protect children from measles.</p>
<p>When asked what he thought about vaccinations, Chris Christie (at first) sounded like he thought they should be voluntary. He said that his children had been vaccinated, but added: “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”</p>
<p>Then Rand Paul was asked what he thought, and true to his libertarian principles said, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” apparently referring to discredited pseudo scientific “findings” that linked vaccinations to autism. Later, Paul said, vaccines were “a good thing,” but added: “I think the parents should have some input. The state doesn’t own your children. The parents own the children.”</p>
<p>Own? Really?</p>
<p>Later, both politicians “clarified” their remarks, probably because they understood that while there are times when pandering to activist parents might help you as a politician, there are times when it might hurt you – especially when the measles outbreak is still spreading. Christie’s staff put out a statement saying that, “with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” And Paul’s people pointed out that the senator’s children have all been vaccinated, adding that Paul “believes that vaccines have saved lives, and should be administered to children.”</p>
<p>Politicians don’t like offending activists, even when they need offending – or at least straightening out. There is a community of parents with autistic kids out there and they are passionate true believers in the fiction that vaccinations and autism are connected. And, oh yeah, they vote.</p>
<p>The autism-vaccination nexus started with a study published in England in 1998 – a study that was shown to be fraudulent. The doctor involved lost his medical license. But the virus of fear had spread through the population, thanks in part to carriers like <em>celebrity</em> Jenny McCarthy. And politicians weren’t about to tell anti-vaccine parents that they didn’t know what they were talking about. Hence, the political tap dancing we’ve already seen in 2015 on the issue of mandatory vaccinations for all kids who go to public schools</p>
<p>In the past few days two other likely GOP presidential candidates — Ben Carson and Jeb Bush — responded to the vaccination question leaving no wiggle room. Both said all children should be vaccinated to prevent measles and other diseases that can spread quickly and easily. Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, saying that vaccinations are a public safety issue. and that, “Certain vaccines should be required — vaccines that are against communicable diseases that have real consequences for society.”</p>
<p>No pandering there. Now let’s see if that kind of common sense spreads among the rest of the GOP field.</p>
<p>And despite what that noted <em>political scientist</em> Joy Behar, formerly one of the female chatterboxes on “The View,” thinks about what she calls “This Neanderthal [anti-vaccine] thinking on the right that is really scary and dangerous,” Republicans don’t have a monopoly on pandering to anxious parents.</p>
<p>And while we’re at it, despite what the Democratic National Committee says about Senator Paul – that he was “kowtowing to the fringe rhetoric of the anti-vaccination movement” – Democrats were also quite willing to pander to anti-vaccine parents at the height of the autism controversy.</p>
<p>There was candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who said: “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines.” He said the science was “inconclusive.”</p>
<p>There was also Hillary Clinton, who was also running for president in 2008, who responded to a question from an autism activist group saying she was in favor of “making investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environment causes like vaccines.”</p>
<p>By that point the science was not <em>inconclusive</em>, but rather quite <em>conclusive</em>. Numerous scientific studies determined that there was no link between autism and the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine.</p>
<p>And as the Wall Street Journal points out, “Vaccine anxiety is most common in privileged communities of the liberal elite. The California schools with some of the lowest rates of immunization are clustered in the organic-food-and-yoga realms of Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.”</p>
<p>But with the 2016 presidential race already upon us, Republicans need to be especially strong in the face of activism by fringe elements on the right. And they haven’t always been.</p>
<p>When a poll came out (in 2010) saying 31 percent of Republicans thought Barack Obama was a Muslim, Mitch McConnell told David Gregory on “Meet the Press”: “The president says he’s a Christian. I take him at his word.” That was the best he could muster.</p>
<p>And when John Boehner was asked about legislation co-sponsored by 12 Republicans in the House casting doubt about Mr. Obama’s citizenship, all Boehner could come up with was this: “The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That’s good enough for me,” before adding, “It’s the melting pot of America. It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.”</p>
<p>When Republican leaders are afraid to flat-out denounce the craziest among them, that’s a problem.</p>
<p>And if during the 2016 GOP debates, a reporter asks the candidates: “How old do you think the planet Earth is?” — I’m betting no one will answer correctly, “About 4.5 billion years old.” Why? Because that might offend the crazies on the Christian far right who think the planet is only 6,000 years old. I’m also betting the candidates would probably say: “What does my thinking about the age of the planet have anything to do with what I’ll be called upon to do as President of the United States?”</p>
<p>Ok. But would we want to vote for somebody who thinks the Earth is flat? That might not affect the president’s decisions in the Oval Office, either. But anyone who thinks that – or that the planet is a mere 6,000 years old — in my view anyway, is too stupid and too dangerous to be president.</p>
<p>No, Republicans don’t have a monopoly on pandering. It’s a weak gene in the DNA of lots of politicians, regardless of their party affiliation. But that won’t matter to the so-called mainstream media. There’s a good rule of thumb GOP candidates should consider: Liberal journalists salivate more when going after conservative Republicans than liberal Democrats. And if Republicans pander, they’ll find themselves in the MSM’s crosshairs.</p>
<p>So, man up Republicans! Better to offend and even alienate the fringe – than come off looking weak. That will offend and alienate almost everyone else.</p>
<p><span>- See more at: http://bernardgoldberg.com/measles-need-republicans-man/?utm_source=BernardGoldberg.com+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b8f16512fd-NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c1903183b6-b8f16512fd-298500313#sthash.r8e1AbSm.dpuf</span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-05T20:18:00ZIt's Time for the Flat TaxBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Its-Time-for-the-Flat-Tax/-830112145571161607.html2015-02-02T19:19:00Z2015-02-02T19:19:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Here’s a bulletin: President Obama wants wealthy Americans to pay higher taxes. I know: What else is new? The proposed increase is part of the president’s budget that he sends to Congress today, a budget that at least in part tries to deal with income inequality, by taking more from the so-called rich and giving their money to everyone else. But income redistribution is something liberals like to do, not something Republicans who now control both Houses of Congress get giddy about. So, can you say … Dead On Arrival?</p>
<p>It would be helpful if Mr. Obama acknowledged that one reason for the income gap between the extremes – the rich and the poor — is that there are too many fatherless families among poor Americans. Young women having babies with no husband around is a road to poverty. But this isn’t something the president – or liberals in general – like talking about.</p>
<p>Liberals prefer telling the rich to pay their “fair share.” But they won’t tell the poor to stop doing things that make them poor.</p>
<p>Not all poor people are irresponsible, of course. And Americans aren’t against helping them. It’s the clueless we’re tired of.</p>
<p>Then there’s the gap between the rich and the middle class whose incomes have been stagnant for a long time now.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama, of course, never takes responsibility for any of that stagnation even though middle class incomes have dropped during his 6 years in office. It never occurs to him that his tax and spend policies coupled with oppressive regulations on business might have something to do with stagnation and income inequality.</p>
<p>If he could get away with it, I’m guessing the president would simply pass an executive order flat out confiscating money from the rich and sending checks to the middle class – not so much because it’s good economics but because it’s a good way to secure votes for the next Democrat who runs for president – and every other office.</p>
<p>Here’s another way to help the middle class and get the stagnant economy finally going: Push for a flat tax.</p>
<p>I’ve written about this before saying the flat tax was an idea whose time has come. Lower the tax rate – 17 percent sounds good, but I’d leave the actual number to the experts. Make the first $40,000 – again I’d leave that number to the people who crunch numbers – tax-exempt. That way, the middle class doesn’t get hurt.</p>
<p>My flat tax plan would not be revenue neutral. We spend too much as is. So, flat tax revenue should be less than what’s currently collected, forcing everyone in Washington to spend less. Experts believe – yes, mainly right of center experts – that the lower tax rates would kick start the economy. They point to countries in Eastern Europe that instituted the flat tax and saw their economies take off. (In fairness, some of that may be because those countries no longer were part of the old Soviet Union. Kicking communism all by itself encourages investment and raises the standard of living.)</p>
<p>Liberal Democrats, of course, will never go for a flat tax. The idea is way to0 radical for them. Someone earning $10 million a year, they figure, shouldn’t pay the same rate as someone making $50,000 a year – even though 17 percent of $10 million is a lot more than 17% of $50,000 … and that’s before the $40,000 tax exemption.</p>
<p>Remember, back in 2008 when candidate Obama was asked if he would raise the capital gains tax even if it brought in less tax revenue? He said yes, he would. Why? “For purposes of fairness.” Rule of thumb: the liberal view of “fairness” will trump sound economics every time.</p>
<p>But Republicans ought to write up a flat tax bill anyway, which would sail through the House and might even garner enough Democratic support to pass the Senate. Then, let the president veto it. Let him look like the obstructionist for a change.</p>
<p>In 1913, when the federal income tax became the law of the land, the tax code was 400 pages long. In 2008, the year before Mr. Obama became president, it was 67,506 pages long. In 2013 – 100 years after the first income tax was collected – the federal tax code was 73,954 pages long.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea: The GOP candidate for president in 2016 should say enough already. He should run on a simple flat tax platform. Let Hillary defend the current mess – all 73,954 pages of it.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-02-02T19:19:00ZEnd the GOP Civil War; Sign the PledgeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/End-the-GOP-Civil-War;-Sign-the-Pledge/-980475659110393764.html2015-01-26T19:06:00Z2015-01-26T19:06:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>We’re barely into 2015 and the 2016 presidential season has already begun. Lucky us. We get to listen to candidates tell us how wonderful they are for nearly two full years. If waterboarding is illegal, why isn’t this?</p>
<p>A gaggle of potential GOP candidates met in Iowa the other day trying to win the hearts and wallets of the party’s conservative base.</p>
<p>Sarah Palin was there and she told us she’s seriously considering a run for president.</p>
<p>Donald Trump was there too. But then he’s always telling us he’s running for president and never actually does.</p>
<p>Take this to the bank: Neither will run.</p>
<p>You can breathe easy.</p>
<p>Two of the big name moderates – Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney – were no-shows. But one moderate, Chris Christie, was there.</p>
<p>As reported in the New York Times, he “cautioned against requiring a candidate to pass conservative litmus tests.”</p>
<p>“If that’s the standard we hold each other to as a party we will never win another national election,” he told the conservative crowd.</p>
<p>That’s just the kind of thing that riles true-blue conservatives. But he’s right.</p>
<p>Despite what cogent thinkers like Charles Krauthammer believe, the Republicans are indeed fighting a civil war. The ideologically pure wing of the party behaves like bishops who believe it’s their mission to excommunicate non-believers – in this case, that’s anyone to the left of Ted Cruz. I have received emails through this website from people who tell me there’s no difference between the GOP moderates and Hillary Clinton. Based on what they tell me, they’ll sit out the election next year if the candidate is Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or Chris Christie.</p>
<p>They say a moderate can’t win, and point to the last two presidential elections to “prove” their point. But what they haven’t figured out yet is that a big reason John McCain and Mitt Romney lost is because the purists didn’t vote. They sat home on Election Day. That’s why the purist wing of the party is also known as the suicide wing.</p>
<p>Yes, the Democrats are waging their own internal battles – the Hillary wing vs. the Elizabeth Warren wing. But that fight amounts to nothing. Warren isn’t running and her supporters will (if not enthusiastically) turn out for Hillary – unlike GOP purists who say they won’t turn out for anyone they call a RINO.</p>
<p>Governor Christie is right because Republicans can’t win unless they end the Civil War. Each faction needs to reach out to the other and make peace. Republicans need to take a pledge. They need to promise not only to support whoever wins the nomination but to encourage their loyal followers to do the same.</p>
<p>Senator Jeff Flake, the Republican from Arizona, didn’t attend the forum in Iowa but earlier told the Times that, “too many Republicans have for too many years, for too many cycles, tried to appeal to a small group that does not help us in general elections.”</p>
<p>He’s also right.</p>
<p>If the Civil War continues, if the ideologically pure refuse to accept the candidate the voters choose on grounds that he’s not conservative enough, well, I hope they like President Hillary Clinton. It should matter to them that every Republican who runs will be more conservative than Hillary. Every single one.</p>
<p>Sign the pledge.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-26T19:06:00ZWhat if Marilyn Monroe And Albert Einstein Made a Baby ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-if-Marilyn-Monroe-And-Albert-Einstein-Made-a-Baby-.../-402693867438734334.html2015-01-22T22:16:00Z2015-01-22T22:16:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>How’s this for a newsflash: “Rapid progress in genetics is making ‘designer babies’ more likely and society needs to be prepared, leading scientists have told the BBC.”</p>
<p>The subject has long been the stuff of science fiction, and it’s still way off in the future (if it happens at all), but one doctor, a pioneer in cloning, told the BBC that major advances in the past two years means “designer babies” are no longer in H.G. Wells territory.</p>
<p>The whole idea is creepy, right? Scientists in the lab shouldn’t be creating perfect little human beings.</p>
<p>But why not?</p>
<p>The little urchin who was genetically designed would be free of disease; he or she would be intelligent; and attractive, too, if not downright beautiful. And what exactly is wrong with that?</p>
<p>Well, do we really want a bunch of healthy, beautiful blond hair, blue-eyed geniuses who look like they just walked out of a modeling agency in Stockholm in our midst?</p>
<p>And that would be bad, because …?</p>
<div>One reason it might be bad is that since the technology probably wouldn’t come cheap, only rich people would be able to design their babies. You think you’ve heard screaming about <em>income</em> inequality. What kind of place would we inhabit if the top 1 percent were not only rich, but also beautiful and in great shape? With so many less-perfect types walking the streets, things could get ugly.</div>
<p>Still, what parents wouldn’t want their baby to be free of disease? And smart beats the alternative, right? And isn’t good-looking better than just about anything else?</p>
<p>Still, it’s creepy, right?</p>
<p>But I’m still not sure why.</p>
<p>Even if you’re against designer babies in theory, in practice is something else. What if a doctor told you he could produce a disease-free, smart, beautiful child? What would you say?</p>
<p>But then there’s the problem that’s always lurking in the shadows — <em>unintended consequences</em>? We’re not supposed to mess with Mother Nature. What if Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein combined their beauty and intelligence and made a baby together — and the kid inherited Marilyn’s brain and Albert’s looks? Uh-oh!</p>
<p>Or what if we wound up with a bunch of beautiful super confident smart-ass kids who not only thought they were smarter than everybody else, but really were. And they knew they were “superior” kids because their proud parents told little Adam or Nicole from the time they were old enough to read and understand Hamlet – say 2 or 3 years old – that they were <em>special</em>, that Mommy and Daddy paid a guy in a white coat a lot of money to <em>design</em> them for <em>perfection</em>? And that they were healthier than <em>ordinary</em> kids. And better looking than <em>common</em> children.</p>
<p>That’s not creepy. It’s downright scary!</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-22T22:16:00ZReverend Al Goes to HollywoodBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Reverend-Al-Goes-to-Hollywood/203812195846752793.html2015-01-19T19:50:00Z2015-01-19T19:50:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I don’t know about you, but I think Al Sharpton gets a bad rap.</p>
<p>The guy can’t do anything without conservatives jumping all over him. Even when he does something clearly worthwhile, all he gets is grief from Whitey.</p>
<p>Take Sharpton’s latest attempt to make America a better place. He’s called for an “emergency meeting” to deal with the lack of diversity in Hollywood. Everybody knows Hollywood liberals hate black people but apparently Al Sharpton is the only one who has the guts to say it out loud.</p>
<p>The issue is the Academy Awards, where each year beautiful white people get all dressed up and tell each other how wonderful they are. Turns out that all the nominees for best actor this year are white; all the nominees for best actress … white; all the nominees for best director – white again. In the past two decades this has only happened one other time.</p>
<p>As Sharpton – President Obama’s go-to man on race — so elegantly put it: “”The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets.” There are rumors that Sharpton soon will hold another “emergency meeting,” this time in Aspen, to deal with another issue involving diversity. The working title of the meeting is “Why the hell is snow always white?”</p>
<p>Sharpton might have called for an emergency meeting to deal with fatherlessness in Black America, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is north of 70 percent. He might have called for an emergency meeting to deal with the disproportionately high number of black kids who drop out of high school. He might have called an emergency meeting to deal with black crime, whose victims are overwhelmingly black people.</p>
<p>But there are just so many hours in the day, so Al had to prioritize. Memo to Whitey: Lay off the Rev, a man who never lets an opportunity (to stoke racial tensions) go to waste.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-19T19:50:00ZWhat Jon Stewart Didn't Ask Jimmy CarterBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Jon-Stewart-Didnt-Ask-Jimmy-Carter/-429302636527321033.html2015-01-15T19:23:00Z2015-01-15T19:23:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Former President Jimmy Carter was a guest on the Daily Show recently and when the subject turned to Paris and Islamic violence in general, Mr. Carter said this about root causes:</p>
<p>“Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it.”</p>
<p>Maybe it is “one of the origins for it.” But I wonder (because Jon Stewart didn’t ask) how much the “Palestinian problem” and “what’s being done to them” contributed to any of these acts of violence – every single one committed by Muslims:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Shoe Bomber who tried to take down a civilian jetliner en route from Paris to Miami</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Beltway Snipers</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Fort Hood Shooter</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The underwear Bomber who tried to blow up a jet over Detroit</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The attack on the U-S.S. Cole</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Madrid Train Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Bali Nightclub Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The London Subway Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Moscow Theater Terrorists</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Boston Marathon Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Pan-Am flight 103 Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Iranian Embassy Takeover</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Beirut U.S. Embassy Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Benghazi Attack</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Buenos Aires Suicide Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Israeli Olympic Team Murders</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The U.S. Embassy in Kenya Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The first World Trade Center Attack</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Bombay and Mumbai India Attack</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Achille Lauro Cruise Ship Hijacking and Murder</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The Beheadings of innocent civilians</p>
<p>Does Jimmy Carter think that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict went away tomorrow – or for that matter, if Israel magically ceased to exist — Islamic terrorism would stop? I doubt he believes that, despite his constant harping on the Israelis.</p>
<p>I wish Jon Stewart had said to Jimmy Carter, “Mr. President, do you think there’s something in the literature of Islam that seduces a certain kind of Muslim to go out and slaughter innocent people in the name of his God?” I would have liked to hear the former president’s answer. I also wish somebody would ask the current president the same question.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-15T19:23:00ZIslamic Terrorism by Any Other Name ...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Islamic-Terrorism-by-Any-Other-Name-.../-342740915621626148.html2015-01-12T20:16:00Z2015-01-12T20:16:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>More than a million people turned out. More than 40 presidents and prime ministers were there. It was, as the New York Times reported, “the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11 attacks.”</p>
<p>But President Obama did not go to Paris. Neither did Joe Biden. Or John Kerry. Attorney General Eric Holder was in the city but he didn’t go to the rally either.</p>
<p>There is a visceral reaction, of course. What could Barack Obama have been thinking? How could he <em>not</em> go and show support to a friend who had been attacked? The official explanation is that there were concerns about security and how they would distract from the event. But other world leaders showed up and they managed to figure out a way around the security issues.</p>
<p>The (NY) Daily News ran a Front Page headline, sending President Obama a message in type the size of the Eiffel Tower: “You let the world down”</p>
<p>The (UK) Daily Mail headline read, “America snubs historic Paris rally”</p>
<p>Is it unreasonable to wonder if the President was a no-show precisely because it wasn’t a rally against extremism in general, but against Islamic extremism in particular?</p>
<p>Islamic terrorism may be the most challenging issue of our time, but Barack Obama can’t bring himself to utter those two words, side by side. For a while, he wouldn’t even call terrorism … terrorism. Imagine if FDR refused to talk about the Nazi menace but instead tiptoed around the subject and talked instead about “extremism.” Wouldn’t that seem … odd?</p>
<p>This is a president who won’t even acknowledge that the Islamic State is … Islamic. Despite the fact that the stated goal of the ISIS jihadists is to create a caliphate in the Middle East, President Obama said the organization “is not Islamic.” He also said they’re not even part of the Muslim religion.</p>
<p>You have to wonder if Mr. Obama thinks that by not linking the words Islamic and terrorism that somehow Islamic terrorism doesn’t really exist. Howard Dean, another so-called progressive, recently said on MSNBC (where else?) that those that many of us call Muslim terrorists are not really Muslims because Islam is a religion of peace. George Orwell must be smiling.</p>
<p>“These acts were done by specific people with a specific ideology,” Jonha Goldberg said on Fox, “and this White House is still incredibly gun shy, no pun intended, about calling any attention to the fact that the people we’re at war with aren’t just generic extremists off the shelf, but they’re a specific ideology with a specific religious orientation. And President Obama won’t even call ISIS Islamic.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the president is concerned that he would be offending moderate Muslims if he put the name of their religion alongside the word “terrorism.” But if they’re truly moderate, they’re already offended – by the actions of the terrorists.</p>
<p>Or perhaps he’s caving to Muslim civil rights groups in America, or doesn’t want to rile the volatile Arab Street abroad.</p>
<p>Whether the president understands it or not, his attempt to avoid being polarizing is having the opposite effect.</p>
<p>But let’s not think this president doesn’t care about terrorism. He most certainly does. That’s why next month he’s holding a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism” – the purpose of which, according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest is “to highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence, efforts made even more imperative in light of recent, tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris.”</p>
<p>Did you see the words Islamic or Muslim or even terrorism anyplace in that statement?</p>
<p>Words matter. But so does reality, which cannot be changed simply because the leader of the free world refuses to call Islamic terrorism by its name.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-12T20:16:00ZRadical Muslims Attack Paris - and Freedom EverywhereBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Radical-Muslims-Attack-Paris---and-Freedom-Everywhere/776449774099601071.html2015-01-07T20:14:00Z2015-01-07T20:14:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>On September 30, 2005 a newspaper in Denmark <em>Jyllands-Posten</em> published an article under the headline, “The face of Muhammad” – an article that included 12 cartoons of the prophet. Here’s some of what Danish journalist Flemming Rose said in his newspaper:</p>
<p>“Modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where one must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. … We are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why <em>Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten</em> has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him.”</p>
<p>Later, Rose said this to the Washington Post: “The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.”</p>
<p>After the cartoons were published there were riots in many cities around the world. To show that theirs was a religion of peace, Angry Muslims set buildings on fire and vandalized churches, and according to the New York Times more than 200 people were killed – all because the Danish paper violated Muslim law by depicting the image of Mohammad.</p>
<p>On February 7, 2006, the New York Times ran an editorial, explaining why the newspaper of record would not show its readers the cartoons. “The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation’s news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems as reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”</p>
<p>Bull! The Times was afraid of what might happen to its journalist and its property if they published the cartoons. Let’s stipulate that the fear was legitimate. What happened in Paris in January 2015 might have happened at the Times in New York ten years earlier if they had published the Danish cartoons.</p>
<p>By the way, one day later – <em>one day</em>! – the very same New York Times published a story on “the power of imagery” in which it showed a picture of a painting by Chris Ofili called “Holy Virgin Mary,” which depicted Mary covered in elephant dung and little cutouts of pornographic pictures.</p>
<p>On February 7 the Times was concerned about “gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” On February 8 it showed a picture of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant crap. <br /><br /><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-28554" style="float: left; border: 5px solid black; margin: 5px;" src="http://cdn.bernardgoldberg.com/wp-content/uploads/Virgin-Mary1.jpg" alt="Virgin Mary" width="284" height="178" /></p>
<p>Why was it okay to show a piece of art that offends Christians but not a cartoon that offends Muslims? We know the answer, of course. It takes no courage to offend Christian sensibilities. Angry Christians won’t firebomb the Times Building. But let’s be clear: The Times was right when it published “Holy Virgin Mary” since the painting had caused a great deal of controversy. But so did the Danish cartoons. Appeasing radical Muslims doesn’t make them more reasonable. Now we have Paris.</p>
<p>And now we’ll see if the media are still afraid of Muslim extremists. Now the press and television have an opportunity to show courage: Publish the French cartoons that mocked Islamic fanatics on page one of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and every other paper in the country. Run the cartoons on ABC, NBC, CBS and all the cable news outlets.</p>
<p>The attack this time was in Paris. But everyone knows – especially journalists – that it was an attack on American values and democratic values everywhere. What happened in Paris was an attack on every news organization in every country everywhere in the world where people believe in a free press. Let’s see how journalists respond.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-07T20:14:00ZEven Opinion Journalism Needs To Be FairBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Even-Opinion-Journalism-Needs-To-Be-Fair/-377692888936616384.html2015-01-06T19:57:00Z2015-01-06T19:57:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The New York Times editorial began like this: “For most people, Ferguson, Mo., will be remembered for one awful August afternoon, when a white police officer there shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown.</p>
<p>That’s one way to put it. Here’s another:</p>
<p>“For most people, Ferguson, Mo., will be remembered for one awful August afternoon, when a white police officer there shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown who stood 6 foot 5 inches and weighed 289 pounds and who had stolen some merchandise from a convenience store and roughed up the storeowner who was half Mr. Brown’s size before going outside and disobeying a police order to stop walking in the middle of the road which led to a scuffle initiated by Mr. Brown during which he tried to take the officer’s gun which led to Mr. Brown being shot in what the grand jury ruled was self defense.”</p>
<p>The shorthand – white cop kills unarmed black teenager – is technically correct. But the words paint a picture that isn’t even close to what happened. Even opinion journalism needs to be fair. (And it’s not only opinion journalism. I’ve heard more than a few reporters on television say the demonstrators are protesting the shooting of an unarmed black teenager.)</p>
<p>Shorthand works, sometimes, in journalism. But sometimes it only feeds a dangerous and false perception: that white cops are out to get unarmed black kids. Too many liberals, whether they write for the New York Times or simply read the paper and nod in agreement, believe that black men are under siege in America, that they’re the targets of white racist cops who shoot “unarmed” black men who have their “hands up.”</p>
<p>They tell us that black lives matter. And, of course, they’re right. But we rarely hear from these compassionate liberals about how police lives matter too. So consider this from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kent Osband, an author. “While blacks are 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 47% of killings of police. Given a random sample, blacks are 5.6 times as likely as non-blacks to kill a police officer. This likely causes officers to act more defensively with unfamiliar blacks than with unfamiliar non-blacks.”</p>
<p>Don’t look for anything like that in the New York Times.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, the Times, in another editorial, warned us not to connect any dots between anti police street demonstrations and what happened to those two New York City police officers who were shot and killed while they sat in their police car. Proving once again that I’m hopelessly naïve I wrote a letter to the Times, pointing out their journalistic hypocrisy. This is the letter in its entirety:</p>
<p>“Your editorial says the man who killed those New York police officers linked the deaths in Ferguson and Staten Island ‘to his hateful words and unspeakable act, fatally coloring how others will perceive it.’ Forgive those ‘others’ if – unlike the Times – we wonder whether there is indeed a link between demonstrators chanting, ‘What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now’ and the ‘unspeakable act.’</p>
<p>“Yet the Times had a different standard for accountability after the massacre in Tucson in 2011, which left 6 dead and 14 wounded including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Then, a Times editorial noted that while the gunman was mentally ill he was ‘very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance’ in America caused by ‘Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media.’</p>
<p>“Why is it reasonable to put the mayhem in Tucson in the context of supposed right-wing anger and intolerance but not put the New York tragedy in the context of a much more direct left-wing (‘What do we want? Dead cops’) anger and intolerance?”</p>
<p>Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the New York Times chose not to publish the letter.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2015-01-06T19:57:00ZChuck Todd and the Rosetta Stone of Liberal BiasBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Chuck-Todd-and-the-Rosetta-Stone-of-Liberal-Bias/534783024057274179.html2014-12-30T20:39:00Z2014-12-30T20:39:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Chuck Todd, who hosts Meet the Press on NBC, opened his show the way he often does, by introducing his panel of journalists. There was Luke Russert of NBC News, and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, and there was “Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post … and Ken Blackwell, conservative columnist and former Ohio Secretary of State.”</p>
<p>Did you catch it? Eugene Robinson isn’t the <em>liberal</em> columnist of the Washington Post. He’s simply Eugene Robinson <em>of</em> the Washington Post. But Ken Blackwell is identified as a “<em>conservative</em> columnist.”</p>
<p>This may strike members of the so-called mainstream media as one of those “what’s the big deal?” issues — even though it happens all the time both on TV and in print. But if they’re feeling generous and concede that maybe it is somehow, some way, some kind of offense, it’s a misdemeanor of the lowest order. Journalistic jaywalking — at worst.</p>
<p>Sorry, but it is a big deal. A very big deal. One that goes straight to the heart of bias in the media.</p>
<p>Liberals, you see, don’t have to be identified. Liberals, as far as liberal journalists like Chuck Todd are concerned, aren’t controversial. They’re middle of the road. Moderate. Mainstream. Not so with conservatives. They need a warning label.</p>
<p>They put warning labels on packs of cigarettes and pesticides because they can be dangerous to your health. And, as far as many liberals – both in and out of the media — are concerned, conservatives need warning labels because their <em>ideas</em> can be dangerous to your health. I mean, if liberal views are middle of the road, moderate and mainstream, conservative views, being the opposite, must be fringe. And fringe ideas, in the liberal worldview, are most likely racist, homophobic and misogynist ideas, which are … well … dangerous!</p>
<p>So this little tidbit that Chuck Todd unknowingly offered up at the beginning of his program is the Rosetta Stone. It tells us not only how liberal journalists view conservatives, but it also tells us a lot about how liberal journalists see just about everything from politics to all the hot button social issues of the day.</p>
<p>It may be asking too much for Chuck to understand any of this. After all, he’s a bias denier. (I use that word “denier” because that’s the word liberals like to throw at anyone who doesn’t see global warming the same way Al Gore sees it. Liberals don’t own the word, right? )</p>
<p>Chuck has acknowledged a “cultural bias” in the news, but says it’s not because journalists slant the news left to coincide with their liberal politics. Rather, he says, it stems from “the fact that the news media is headquartered in New York City.”</p>
<p>So it’s geographical bias, according to Chuck Todd – not political bias. It’s a New York City bias. And what kind of bias would we find in New York City? Yes, exactly!</p>
<p>If the national news media were headquartered, say, in Tupelo, Mississippi – and almost all the journalists were conservatives instead of liberal as they are now – do you think Chuck would write off bias simply as a geographical issue? Me neither. He’d be yelling <em>conservative bias</em> from the roof of the NBC Building in Rockefeller Center.</p>
<p>No, Chuck Todd’s decision to put a warning label on the conservative columnist but not on the liberal was not an offense worthy of waterboarding. But it wasn’t journalistic jay walking either. It told us a lot about why liberal journalists put warning labels on conservatives. It told us that conservative views, which are held by millions and millions and millions of Americans, are subversive views, because they are not reasonable or mainstream or moderate. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Chuck.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-30T20:39:00ZWhite Liberals and the New RacismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/White-Liberals-and-the-New-Racism/104123657861190374.html2014-12-29T20:35:00Z2014-12-29T20:35:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I attended a forum the other night at a liberal synagogue about “the tragic trend of police shootings of unarmed black men.” Let’s set aside that there is no “trend” and that the “unarmed” black men were also resisting arrest, and in the case of Michael Brown was trying to take the gun away from the police officer who felt he had to shoot him in order to save his own life.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure at least 99 percent of everyone in the room –- not counting me and the 3 co-conspirators I dragged along – were committed liberals who were convinced that the biggest problem plaguing black America is white cops who hate black people and shoot them if they so much as look at the cop funny.</p>
<p>No, they didn’t say so in just that way, but that was certainly the gist of what was said that night.</p>
<p>During the opening remarks, we heard from the panelists — a black activist who didn’t want anyone to be called a “criminal,” and opposed prisons on principle; a member of the ACLU who thought that America was “further away from equality” today than in 1965 when he marched from Selma to Montgomery; a cop who said he believed Michael Brown was trying to take away Officer Darren Wilson’s gun only to “humiliate him,” presumably with no intention of shooting the cop; and a judge who for the most part simply explained how grand juries operate, though she tiptoed into liberal terrain too.</p>
<p>They talked about how cops had to change their behavior in order to stop the “trend” that was killing off “unarmed” black men. But during their presentations, not one of them uttered even one word about what criminal suspects needed to do to avoid being shot by police.</p>
<p>When the moderator asked for questions I was the first one on my feet. I noted that everything said up to that point was about police behavior, and the obligations of white society, and the supposed failure of America’s educational system. I told the libs I found it troubling that no one was holding criminal suspects responsible for their actions. Then I offered up a list of three things people needed to do to avoid trouble with the police.</p>
<ol>
<li>Obey the law.</li>
<li>Don’t resist arrest</li>
<li>Never – NEVER! – try to take a cop’s gun away from him</li>
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<p>If suspects did those things, I said, the number of unarmed black men would go down to near zero. I noted that I said “near zero” because there are some bad cops out there, and I made clear they should not be allowed to wear a badge or carry a gun.</p>
<p>I sensed more than a whiff of unease in the room. Good.</p>
<p>Inside the bubble they inhabit, nobody talks the way I did, even though I didn’t say anything even vaguely controversial. Inside the bubble, they can go for a day, a week, a month, a year, practically an entire lifetime and not run into somebody with a right-of-center point of view. The comfort of the bubble enables them to glide through life believing that it’s not so much that they’re liberal, but more that they’re … <em>reasonable</em>.</p>
<p>Then I dropped a statistic on them. Black police officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings (according to the most current government statistics). But of those they kill, 78 percent were black.</p>
<p>That leads us to one of two conclusions I told the lefties: Either black cops are just as racist as they believe white cops are … or … a lot of black criminal suspects do things that bring about their own demise.</p>
<p>Next question, please, said the moderator.</p>
<p>Afterward, in informal gatherings, one of the libs told me that crime stems from poverty. I responded that 72 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock and that often leads to poverty, which too often leads to crime. Cut down on that kind of behavior, I said, and a lot of the crime problem – and confrontation with cops — goes away.</p>
<p>I must have said something about how liberals would never tell 15-year old black girls to stop having babies because one of the libs told me that it’s not up to white people to tell black people how to raise their families.</p>
<p>Oy! It’s true: There are no limits to white liberal guilt.</p>
<p>It’s comfortable living in a bubble. You never have to defend your positions. All your friends think the way you do. But it’s not healthy to be so cut off from what really amounts to mainstream American thought. And most of all, living in the white liberal bubble doesn’t do young black men, who this group supposedly cared so much about, one bit of good.</p>
<p>Here’s what I didn’t tell the group, though I was tempted. They are the new face of racism in America. They are the kinder, gentler, liberal kind. They are enablers who make it easy for too many black people to see themselves as victims. They are the ones who would never tell black people that the best way to avoid confrontations with cops – yes, some of whom are racists – is to not get into trouble in the first place.</p>
<p>A few days later, with their liberal rubbish still clogging my thoughts, I remembered that old observation by Winston Churchill. “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”</p>
<p>Bingo!</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-29T20:35:00ZHigh Noon in Hollywood...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/High-Noon-in-Hollywood.../-6687874093820243.html2014-12-22T22:37:00Z2014-12-22T22:37:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>For the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about who bothers me more – the little psycho with the $2 haircut who runs North Korea or the liberal weasels in the entertainment industry who don’t have the guts to say, “Hey Kim, bite me! We’re running the movie about you … and if you do not like it too @#$%^ bad! ”</p>
<p>You want to know what a whack job Kim Jong-un is? He committed this great big cyber attack on Sony over a dopey movie starring Seth Rogen and some other guy whose name I already forgot. If Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep were the stars of “The Interview” I might understand what got the Pillsbury Dough Boy in Pyongyang so mad. Memo to dictator with a few screws loose: Lighten up. It’s a comedy!</p>
<p>You know who Kim reminds me of: all those liberal twits on American college campuses who have instituted speech codes and punish offenders for telling jokes that are deemed, by the little sissies, as “inappropriate.”</p>
<p>Which brings us to the crowd who will never be confused with profiles in courage.</p>
<p>Let’s start with those feckless, sniveling crapweasels hiding under your desks at Sony, as Jonah (no relation) Goldberg refers to them. They decided not to premiere their film as planned on Christmas Day, fearing the North Koreans would release even more embarrassing emails if they didn’t deep six the movie.</p>
<p>Then Sony people said they wouldn’t release the movie at all (but have kinda, sorta changed their mind on that) because theater owners refused to show it, after threats were made that there’d be another 9/11 if the movie ever saw the light of day.</p>
<p>The lawyers couldn’t possibly believe that North Korea had that kind of juice. But lawyers being lawyers said, “To hell with freedom of speech and all that crap. We’ll get sued if anything bad happens.”</p>
<p>Let’s be generous and say they have a point. This being the United States of Litigation, you just know there’d be a lawsuit if some moviegoer so much as got a kernel of popcorn stuck between his teeth while watching the film. An actual attack in retaliation for running the movie would cost the theaters gazillions. But as I say, North Korea doesn’t have the juice to set off bombs in movie houses in the United States.</p>
<p>And what about the bigger Hollywood community — you know, the pious Hollywood community that never tires of telling us that by making “courageous” films they’re the ones who keep the torch of freedom burning in America (but would rather drink Drano than work with a conservative) – and who think “edgy” means making fun of right-of-center values.</p>
<p>Well, superstar George Clooney sent a petition around to the Hollywood glitterati asking them to stand strong in the face of extortion and intimidation from North Korea. Here’s part of the petition:</p>
<p><em>“This is not just an attack on Sony. It involves every studio, every network, every business and every individual in this country. That is why we fully support Sony’s decision not to submit to these hackers’ demands. We know that to give in to these criminals now will open the door for any group that would threaten freedom of expression, privacy and personal liberty. We hope these hackers are brought to justice but until they are, we will not stand in fear. We will stand together.”</em></p>
<p>How many signed? Try none. Zero. Clooney was Marshal Kane in High Noon, who couldn’t find even one courageous friend to help him fight the bad guys. Clooney, like Kane, found out that everyone in town was scared – scared not of killer gunslingers, but of a bunch of North Korean nerds who might hack their emails, which would cause more angst when we found what some producer said about some actor. Gasp!</p>
<p>And these are people who genuinely believe they’re brave.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with President Obama often, but I agree with what he said at his news conference about Sony. “I am sympathetic to the concerns they faced, having said all that, yes I think they made a mistake. … We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about.”</p>
<p>Good for President Obama. We needed to hear that from him. Better late than never, I guess. But if he had spoken up earlier, if he had encouraged Sony and the big theater chains not to back down, that probably would have changed the script and Sony and Hollywood wouldn’t look as bad as they do. But that’s the view from the rear view mirror. The question now is, how does the president respond?</p>
<p>He could take the advice of the Wall Street Journal, which said “the U.S. government [should] pay Sony Pictures for the rights to ‘The Interview’ and release the movie for free into the public domain. The comedy about an assassination attempt on Kim Jong-un could then be seen by the world and translated into Korean, loaded on USB sticks, and floated into North Korea by balloons.”</p>
<p>Balloons are okay, but if I were the Secretary of Getting Even in the Obama Administration, here’s what I would do: I’d get the best computer minds in Silicon Valley to figure out a way to run “The Interview” – with all the dialogue dubbed in Korean – on every TV set … <em>in North Korea</em>! And I’d make sure we put enough gizmos in there so Kim and his gang couldn’t stop it.</p>
<p>I know, brilliant. Thank you.</p>
<p>Then I’d put the part where Kim gets vaporized and his head explodes on a loop that goes on for a couple of days. I’d also run a warning in big Korean type over that scene: “Laughing at your psychopathic leader can be dangerous to your health.”</p>
<p>That would be one way America could tell the little creep in Pyongyang to stuff it.</p>
<p>As for the little creeps in Hollywood: Do us a favor. Stay under your desks. Your sanctimony bores us. And your cowardice embarrasses us – at least those of us who live east of the Pacific Coast Highway.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-22T22:37:00ZOn So-Called Torture: "Never Again" Is Not A PolicyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/On-So-Called-Torture:-Never-Again-Is-Not-A-Policy/832101106340931467.html2014-12-12T21:27:00Z2014-12-12T21:27:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Reasonable people may (and do) disagree on the morality of what the CIA calls enhanced interrogation techniques. Just as reasonable people may disagree on what constitutes torture. But there is more than a whiff of moral superiority coming from critics of whatever the CIA did to head off another 9/11. Many of those critics come off as smug – and not especially thoughtful.</p>
<p>I have in mind those who say “never again” when it comes to what they see as torture and the trashing (again in their view) of American values. But “never” is one of those absolutes that don’t leave much room for, well, reality. And “never again” is not a policy; rather it’s an attempt to capture the moral high ground.</p>
<p>A lot of critics see the drama that has unfolded in the wake of the release of the “Torture Report” as a morality play between good and evil. But it’s more complicated than that. Much more. As Peter Wehner, one of America’s most thoughtful writers, puts it in a piece for Commentary Magazine: “It might elevate the public debate a bit if critics of enhanced interrogation techniques wrestled in an intellectually honest and fair-minded way with a set of questions they like to avoid, such as: If you knew using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information that could stop a massive attack on an American city, would you still insist it never be used? Do you oppose the use of waterboarding if it would save a thousand innocent lives? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? What exactly is the point, if any, at which you believe waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques might be justified? I simply don’t accept that those who answer ‘never’ are taking a morally superior stand to those who answer ‘sometimes, in extremely rare circumstances and in very limited cases.’”</p>
<p>And what if it isn’t thousands of lives that are at stake, but only a few? What if 25 children are on a field trip, riding on a yellow bus from school to the museum? What if terrorists are planning to blow up the bus unless some demand is met? Maybe they want all the prisoners released from Guantanamo. What “American values” would we be upholding if we didn’t waterboard a terrorist we had in custody who had details that would save the children’s lives?</p>
<p>And then there’s another prickly question regarding morality: Why is it immoral to waterboard a few terrorists who come out of the ordeal alive but somehow morally acceptable to launch drones on terrorists who wind up dead? That’s a question a lot of people are asking, including James Mitchell, a psychologist known as the architect of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. In an interview with Vice News, he said this: “To me it seems completely insensible that slapping KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] is bad but sending a Hellfire missile into a family’s picnic and killing all the children and killing granny and killing everyone is okay for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is what about that collateral loss of life and the other one is that if you kill them you can’t question them.”</p>
<p>Here’s another question from Peter Wehner: “Are targeted, lethal attacks that kill many more innocent people, including many more innocent children, really that much of a moral improvement from what came before it?”</p>
<p>Critics of the CIA program believe they have taken the moral high ground, a place liberals like to call home whether the issue is enhanced interrogation, race, income inequality or just about anything else. But if this really is about American values, as they like to tell us, then the burden is on them – to explain why America should “never” resort to “torture” no matter how many lives it would save. The burden is on them to explain what great American values they’d be preserving if a few thousand more Americans were killed – when their deaths might have been avoided.</p>
<p>I’m against so-called enhanced interrogation — but only 99 percent of the time. For the 1 percent of the time it would save lives, count me as a supporter. That, to me, is the morally superior position.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-12T21:27:00ZMemo to Liberals: We've Had Enough!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-to-Liberals:-Weve-Had-Enough!/-557579238673617755.html2014-12-08T19:13:00Z2014-12-08T19:13:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>About a week ago, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Georgetown sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson under the headline “Where Do We Go After Ferguson.”</p>
<p>In it, the professor writes about what he sees as “the plague of white cops who kill unarmed black youth.” He writes that the grand jury “failed” to indict Officer Darren Wilson. And he says, “To the police officer and to many whites, Michael Brown was the black menace writ large, the terrorizing phantom that stalks the white imagination.” And then there’s this observation about how, in the professor’s view, whites generally see black males in this country: “Our American culture’s fearful dehumanizing of black men materialized once again when Officer Wilson saw Michael Brown as a demonic force who had to be vanquished in a hail of bullets.”</p>
<p>In other words: blacks = victim, whites = bad. We get it, professor.</p>
<p>That op-ed produced a number of letters to the editor of the Times including one by an emeritus professor of political science at Purdue University. Here’s one sentence from that letter: “I am ‘white,’ so is my wife, so are most of our friends. Not one of us views the events as Mr. Dyson suggests. All of us are horrified by police brutality and the victimization of another young black man. Although a majority of whites may indeed blame the victim, a substantial minority does not.”</p>
<p>There it is: good white, liberal racial manners on display right there in the letters section of the New York Times. What the professor is saying is: Yes, a “majority of whites” are racists who insensitively “blame the victim” but there are some of us – and I am one – who are not racists. We are among the few good white people.”</p>
<p>And by “victim” the good professor is referring to Michael Brown who as we all know robbed a convenience store, pushed around its owner, walked in the middle of the road and mouthed off to a cop who told him to walk on the sidewalk, got into a scuffle with the cop and then tried to take his gun away.” Only after all that was he shot dead.</p>
<p>But to liberals, Michael Brown was a “victim.”</p>
<p>So here’s a bulletin for the erudite professor from Purdue and to all the other liberals who think the way he does:</p>
<p>There are lots of us who were once liberal and are now conservative who care deeply about fair play and equal opportunity and civil rights. Those of us of a certain age were on the side of black people fighting for equality in the 60s. We detested the white cops who beat them simply for marching.</p>
<p>In other words, we are not the bigots you think we are.</p>
<p>And not that you’ll care, professor (and all you other liberals who see yourselves as morally superior) but we’ve had enough. And so have millions of so-called moderate Americans who aren’t bigots either and are tired of being lumped in with George Wallace, Bull Connor and David Duke. We’ve all had enough of being called racists because we don’t think Michael Brown is a victim, let alone a civil rights saint.</p>
<p>We’ve heard enough about how racists used to wear white sheets but now they wear suits (and vote Republican).</p>
<p>We’ve had enough of your “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” demonstrations, which are based on lies.</p>
<p>We’ve had enough of your slogans like “black lives matter.” We know that. Many of us knew that in 1965. But we’re sick of hearing that mantra when you do nothing about the black lives that are taken every weekend in places like Chicago. I guess black lives only matter when a white person is somehow involved in the death.</p>
<p>We’ve had enough of Al Sharpton, though truth be told, we had enough of him a long time ago. But now there’s something new involving the Reverend. Sharpton has become what Martin Luther King, Jr. once was — the leading voice for civil rights in America. Yes, I understand that this is like being the tallest midget. Still it’s pathetic.</p>
<p>But if the absence today of great men in the civil rights establishment has left Sharpton standing atop the mountain – and if a tone deaf President Obama wants to bring Sharpton into the White House for conferences on how to bridge the gap between the races — then it is liberals – not conservatives – who are inflicting great damage to the ideals of liberalism in America regarding race.</p>
<p>Liberals like Professor Dyson and the professor from Purdue and all the others who see America in black and white have hardened decent Americans who hate discrimination. We don’t want to hear about so-called white privilege as a root cause for black problems – not when it comes from people who won’t talk about the dysfunction in parts of black America that lead to chaos and death.</p>
<p>Basically, we’ve had enough about hearing about how bad we are.</p>
<p>And here’s another shocker, my liberal friends: Many of us are not only saddened by the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island but also think that his death should never have happened; that cops need to use better judgment when trying to arrest an unarmed man who whose crime was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes to people who can’t afford more than $10 for a pack. Should Garner have resisted arrest? No! Should he have been treated as brutally as he was? No! Should at least one cop have been indicted? In the view of many of us on the right, Yes!</p>
<p>And you know what? While we think Michael Brown brought about his own demise, we wish that could have ended differently too. Maybe Officer Darren Wilson could have shot him in the legs, or waited for backup. We don’t know.</p>
<p>But we do know that too many liberals don’t care what Michael Brown did that day that brought about his death. All they care about is that Michael Brown was black and Darren Wilson is white. Case closed, right?</p>
<p>We know there are some white racist cops out there who shouldn’t be allowed to wear a badge and carry a gun. But it’s not the “plague” that too many liberals like Professor Dyson tell us it is. We’re tired of hearing that white cops are the problem, when it’s too much black crime that’s the real problem. And black crime is something liberals are not comfortable talking about. Too many white liberals have become apologists for bad behavior among too many African Americans. If liberals truly cared about young black men they would march with signs that scream: Don’t Break the Law … Don’t Resist Arrest … and Never Ever Go for a Cop’s Gun.</p>
<p>We’re not the people too many African Americans and white liberals in and out of academia and the media think we are. But the more important point is that, while it’s been a long time coming, we don’t give a damn what they think about us anymore.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-08T19:13:00ZFerguson ... and the Time Machine to the Glory DaysBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ferguson-...-and-the-Time-Machine-to-the-Glory-Days/956962674865087966.html2014-12-02T02:14:00Z2014-12-02T02:14:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>For all those young, liberal journalists who weren’t around to cover one of the most important stories of our time – the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s – the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer gave them the opportunity to jump into the time machine and do their best to turn Ferguson into Selma.</p>
<p>Except Michael Brown was no civil rights martyr. He wasn’t Emmett Till or Medgar Evers or any other African American murdered in cold blood by white bigots.</p>
<p>Michael Brown was a menacing young man who stood 6 foot four and weighed nearly 300 pounds who before going after a police officer had brazenly taken some merchandise from a convenience store and then pushed aside the frightened store owner who was half Michael Brown’s size.</p>
<p>A few minutes later he mouthed off to officer Darren Wilson, who had told him to walk on the sidewalk, not the middle of the road. There was a scuffle. The officer told the grand jury that Brown went for his gun. Wilson shot Brown several times but it didn’t stop him and when, according to one witness, Brown put his head down and charged the officer like a football player, Wilson fired the fatal shot into Brown’s head. The grand jury believed Wilson who said he feared for his life and ruled the shooting was in self-defense.</p>
<p>It’s a safe bet that if officer Wilson were black or if Michael Brown had been white, there wouldn’t be a journalist outside the immediate area who would have shown the slightest interest in the story. But Wilson is white and Michael Brown is black and that’s all those journalists who weren’t in Selma needed to turn a crime story into something they thought was much more significant – which, of course, was a way to turn themselves into something much more significant.</p>
<p>And the civil rights establishment jumped into the time machine too. They bought into the story that Brown had his hands up in the air and said, “don’t shoot” – a story that turned out to be a lie. They were willing to believe the story that he was shot in the back — except he wasn’t. Over and over we heard that the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman could not be tolerated – because “black lives matter.” Ferguson gave the civil rights establishment an opportunity to relive those glory days, when civil rights heroes marched and protested against real bigotry and for real justice.</p>
<p>And Ferguson also gave thousands of mostly young protestors in dozens of U.S. cities, protestors who weren’t even born when courageous Americans marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on their way to Montgomery, a chance to pretend they were civil rights heroes too.</p>
<p>Except in the old days, Americans of good will marched and demonstrated for the right to vote and the right to sit anyplace on the bus, not only in the back, and the right to eat at the lunch counter and stay at hotels – just like white people.</p>
<p>Now they weren’t marching for basic human rights. They weren’t marching for Till or Evers or Martin Luther King. Now, all the civil rights movement could muster were demonstrations for the likes of Michael Brown, a kid whose thuggish actions brought about his own demise.</p>
<p>Maybe there’s something in all of us that yearns to go back to a time when truly important things were happening and imagine that we could be actors in the drama. Still, no amount of pretending will bring back the glory days. Ferguson will never be Selma. And Michael Brown was never Emmett Till.</p>
<p><span>- See more at: http://bernardgoldberg.com/ferguson-isnt-selma-1965-anymore/?utm_source=BernardGoldberg.com+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8b7812e438-NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c1903183b6-8b7812e438-298500313#sthash.5SvDZMUg.dpuf</span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-12-02T02:14:00ZFerguson!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ferguson!/258034072628180840.html2014-11-26T01:47:00Z2014-11-26T01:47:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Anyone paying attention saw the trouble coming. A white cop kills an unarmed black teenager, shoots him six times. Who didn’t think there would be mayhem in the streets of Ferguson if the cop weren’t indicted?</p>
<p>Those who called for justice had their own handy definition of the word: first, an indictment, then a trial, and then a conviction for murder. That would be justice. Anything else would be injustice.</p>
<p>And so the riots followed a predictable, and depressing, script: the white cop goes free and the <em>aggrieved</em> steal liquor and mobile phones from stores whose windows they bashed in with baseball bats. Yes, we’ve seen this movie before. A tragedy employed as nothing more than a convenient excuse to loot and burn down businesses so the <em>aggrieved</em> can get free stuff.</p>
<p>Still, even the most ardent defender of law and order has to acknowledge that there’s a legacy of mistrust between many black people in America and white people in positions of power, especially white people who carry guns and badges.</p>
<p>I covered hard news for a long time and over the years saw bad cops and bad kids. So I kept an open mind. I don’t know officer Darren Wilson. I had no way of knowing if he was one of those bad ones. But unless the grand jury was rigged, unless witnesses (including African American witnesses) committed perjury, he wasn’t a bad cop. Michael Brown was the bad one this time. He was the one who attacked the police officer who thought his life was in danger and who shot and killed the teenager in self-defense.</p>
<p>We hear all the time, from black civil rights leaders and white liberals, about how young black men have targets on their backs, how they’re victims of a racist white culture that doesn’t value black lives. We’re hearing it now about Michael Brown.</p>
<p>But these same people say next to nothing about the real problem: an inordinate amount of black crime. We hear about white cops who recklessly kill black kids. But not nearly enough about how it’s black thugs with no sense of morality — and not white racist cops — who are murdering most of those young black men.</p>
<p>After the decision not to indict officer Wilson, President Obama called for peace and said, “We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is in too many parts of this country a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country. And this is tragic because nobody needs good policing more than poor communities with higher crime rates. The good news is, we know there are things we can do to help.”</p>
<p>The first thing we can do is try to convince African Americans that white America is not out to get them; that they are not a community of victims; and that if Michael Brown hadn’t attacked the police officer he’d be alive today. Don’t turn him into a civil rights martyr.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-26T01:47:00ZIf You Put Obama's Narcissism Aside ... What Do You Have?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/If-You-Put-Obamas-Narcissism-Aside-...-What-Do-You-Have/431243965480397197.html2014-11-18T21:37:00Z2014-11-18T21:37:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Have you ever met somebody who takes a passionate hard position on some important issue one day, and then when he needs to, takes the opposite position? And pretends nothing just happened? They have a name for that. It’s called Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Let’s take a trip down memory lane.</p>
<p>On July 3, 2008 — the day before Independence Day – candidate Barack Obama told a political rally that raising the debt by $4 trillion as President Bush had done was “unpatriotic.”</p>
<p>“The problem,” Senator Obama said, “is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents –#43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”</p>
<p>Irresponsible? Unpatriotic? Ok, so what words should we use to describe the increase in the national debt since President Obama took over? He added not $4 trillion … but $8 trillion– and counting – “by his lonesome.”</p>
<p>That same year, candidate Obama said: “I take the Constitution very seriously,” explaining that “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”</p>
<p>And just one year ago, on November 25, when a heckler interrupted his speech in San Francisco and said he could stop deportations on his own, the president responded: “If in fact I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress than I would do so. But we’re a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition. The easy way out is to try to yell and pretend I can do something by violating our laws. And what I’m proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic processes to achieve the same goal as you want to achieve. Bit it won’t be as easy as just shouting. It requires us lobbying and getting it done.”</p>
<p>That was then. Any day now – if it hasn’t happened already – President Obama will do an end run around “our democratic process” and “bring more and more power into the “Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all” when he signs an executive order allowing millions of illegal aliens to stay in the country, get a job, and not worry about being deported.</p>
<p>In his 2006 autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope” Barack Obama wrote, “[T]here’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border—a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before.”</p>
<p>The Daily Caller has a piece on this in which it notes that Senator Obama also wrote, “Not all these fears are irrational.”</p>
<p>And there’s this from the book: “The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century. If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole—especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan—it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”</p>
<p>And how about this: “Native-born Americans suspect that it is they, and not the immigrant, who are being forced to adapt” to social changes caused by migration, he said.</p>
<p>“And if I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments,” then Senator Obama wrote. “When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”</p>
<p>Isn’t <em>all of that</em> what conservative critics have been saying all along?</p>
<p>It’s one thing to change your mind – Barack Obama doesn’t have a monopoly on that — but it’s quite another to do it so seamlessly, without so much as a nod to the fact that, well, <em>you changed your mind</em>! It takes a special kind of politician to say the kinds of things Barack Obama says without a hint of embarrassment. Which brings us to one more stop along memory lane. On June 3, 2008, after his final primary battle, Obama told an adoring rally in St. Paul, Minnesota the following:</p>
<p>“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”</p>
<p>His acolytes told him he was the messiah. But he already knew that. And so, if you put his narcissism aside … you have nothing left.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-18T21:37:00ZHow ObamaCare Passed Thanks to "Stupid" AmericansBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-ObamaCare-Passed-Thanks-to-Stupid-Americans/-371361585244153648.html2014-11-12T19:08:00Z2014-11-12T19:08:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Jonathan Gruber is a man of great distinction. He teaches economics at MIT. He has a Ph.d. He was one of the key architects of the Affordable Care Act. He’s also a liar (or something very close to it) and arrogant liberal twit who intentionally misled Americans, whom he believes are stupid, in order to get the law through Congress. Without Jonathan Gruber’s willful deceit, ObamaCare might have bitten the dust a long time ago.</p>
<p>On October 17, 2013, Gruber was on a panel at the University of Pennsylvania and explained how he helped write the Affordable Care Act so that it would pass Congress and become law. A video of that panel discussion has just surfaced. Here’s what Gruber said:</p>
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<p>“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass….Look, I wish … that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”</p>
<p>Translation, as if we need a translation: I’m smarter than you. I know what’s best for you. I took advantage of your inferior intellect – your “stupidity” — because “I’d rather have this law than not.”</p>
<p>If liberal arrogance and conceit were crimes, Jonathan Gruber would be behind bars, preferably at Guantanamo Bay, where he could hang out with other true believers.</p>
<p>As Peter Suderman nicely puts it in Reason.com: “Gruber may believe that American voters are stupid, but he was the one who was dumb enough to say all this on camera.”</p>
<p>Now consider one more thing: Imagine if some conservative Republican had used the same dishonest tricks to get a law most Americans didn’t want through Congress – without even one vote from Democrats. Imagine the banner headline in huge type on page one of the New York Times: Conservative Republican Calls Americans Stupid And Tricks Congress into Passing Historic, Unpopular Law.</p>
<p>Imagine it because that’s the only way you’re going to see it on page one of the New York Times, the place so many other liberal journalists go to find out what’s worth reporting and what’s not.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-12T19:08:00ZIs It Morning in America - Again?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-It-Morning-in-America---Again/286131159757458569.html2014-11-10T19:42:00Z2014-11-10T19:42:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>On election night, Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchorman, was part of a panel on the Charlie Rose show on PBS that was analyzing the tsunami that hit the Democratic Party and President Obama.</p>
<p>Brokaw commented that one of the reasons Barack Obama was damaged goods was … wait for it … Fox News, which along with talk radio Brokaw said, “hammered” him “24/7.”</p>
<p>On the O’Reilly Factor I noted that it was interesting that Brokaw was so concerned about conservative media hammering the president in 2014, but I couldn’t recall the same concern on his part during the 2006 midterms when President Bush was being hammered 24/7 by liberals in the media.</p>
<p>But more importantly, I said Brokaw’s arguments about Fox being a bogeyman was yawn-inducting, and struck me as old and stale and behind the curve. Just as voters in 2014, I said, rejected the phony GOP war on women, and just as they rejected the even more disgraceful phony Republican war on African Americans, they were also rejecting the liberal war on Fox News because by 2014 that also felt old and tired and stale and behind the curve.</p>
<p>If Fox News was such a destructive force in the culture, I said, why did so many Americans tune in to Fox to watch the results coming in on election night? Why did Fox beat everybody in election night ratings if the channel is such a bad influence in America? Maybe the hard left wasn’t watching Fox, but it wasn’t only the hard right that sent FNC’s ratings through the roof.</p>
<p>But there’s a bigger point here that goes beyond phony GOP wars and liberals’ obsession with Fox News. It’s a point about the Democratic Party and liberalism itself.</p>
<p>In a post-election piece for Commentary Magazine, Peter Wehner writes this: “There are plenty of reasons for Republicans to be buoyed. They have very impressive people, including people in their ’30s and ’40s, at every level. Of the two parties, the GOP seems to be the one of greater energy and ideas. The Democratic Party, and liberalism more broadly, seems stale, aging, and exhausted.”</p>
<p>That’s the big news from this election. Not just that Republicans won and Democrats lost. But that the party that has long been seen as old and tired – the Republican Party – is now the party with “greater energy and ideas.” And the party led by not only the most liberal president we’ve ever elected, but also the coolest one, is now the party that “seems stale, aging and exhausted.”</p>
<p>Could it be morning in America — again?</p>
<p>Then there’s the NAACP, once a great civil rights institution in America. After Tim Scott, the African American Republican, won the United States Senate seat in South Carolina, making him the first black senator from the south since Reconstruction, the NAACP said nothing. No congratulations. No “Nice going — even though we don’t agree with you.” Nothing.</p>
<p>And when Mia Love, in Utah, became the first African American Republican woman to be elected to Congress, again, not a peep of good will from the NAACP.</p>
<p>These were historic elections, especially for black Americans. Yet the NAACP was stuck in the past, someplace between Selma and Montgomery, its president issuing a statement saying, “This election was not about who won but rather the citizens who lost the right to participate.”</p>
<p>No wonder critics call it the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Democratic Colored People. The NAACP, once the forceful, energetic engine of change for the good in America, like a lot of other liberal institutions, feels tired and stale.</p>
<p>It’s not a good idea to make bold predictions based on one election. Trends are best determined by looking through the rear view mirror. But when the GOP is the party with “greater energy and ideas” and the Democrats are the ones who seem “stale, aging and exhausted” something potentially big is going on. You might want to take note, President Cool – or else you may go down in history as the best thing that has happened to the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-10T19:42:00ZGOP Wins in a Wave... What Does it Mean?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/GOP-Wins-in-a-Wave...-What-Does-it-Mean/-609876866413488529.html2014-11-05T19:20:00Z2014-11-05T19:20:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Some off-the-beaten track takeaways from the 2014-midterm elections …</p>
<p>We all know that politics isn’t for the faint of heart, that things can get nasty, especially when you’re losing. Especially when you’re desperate.</p>
<p>So Democrats went to their playbook and did what they too often do. They consciously tried to divide Americans – along gender lines (rehashing the so-called GOP war on women) … along racial lines (with despicable ads whose unmistakable message was that a vote for the Republican candidate was a vote for killing black kids) … and along class lines (trying to convince voters that big bad evil businesses didn’t create jobs).</p>
<p>The bad news is this kind of cold-blooded cynicism has worked for Democrats in the past. The good news is it did not work this time around.</p>
<p>Yes, the Democrats had a lot to overcome. The landscape was ruby red this year. Many of the key races were in Red States, making it tough for Democrats who were trying to hang on to their jobs. A vast majority of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. President Obama was immensely unpopular in those Red States (and elsewhere) for way too many reasons to go into in this space. Americans were voting <em>against</em> him – maybe more than they were voting <em>for</em> Republicans.</p>
<p>And Republicans had good candidates this time around. No one said “I am not a witch” or blabbed about “legitimate rape.” This time around the dumb comments came from Democrats.</p>
<p>But just as important is that this year the Democrats’ divide and conquer strategy failed them. Americans said “Enough!” A friend sent me an email on Election Day about how voters have finally pulled back the curtain on liberal politicians and discovered they’ve been running a con game for way too long. “Superficial arguments like the war on women and racism are becoming laughable,” he said, “particularly among young people, which leaves Democrats with very little. If division and identity politics actually start to backfire, it finally exposes liberals for what they truly are.”</p>
<p>But it would be a mistake for Republicans to get too giddy over the midterm results … to look at how many Democrats bit the dust and make premature optimistic projections about 2016. Rush Limbaugh has said that when voters have finally had enough of Democratic policies that don’t work, they vote Republican. But after a while, they go back to the Democrats – because Republicans don’t successfully articulate what they stand for.</p>
<p>I think he’s right. But I think (as I said in a recent column) the GOP also needs a facelift. Good policies won’t be enough to win in two years. The Party needs a new image because the old one isn’t attracting new voters. As I’ve said before, too many Republican leaders who appear on camera look like funeral directors. They look like yesterday. Voters only care about tomorrow.</p>
<p>So, Republicans need a charismatic front man or woman. Someone who is young and articulate and attractive. An African American or Latino would be nice. A conservative George Lopez – who is funny and likeable – would be just fine with me.</p>
<p>Finally, here’s my suggestion for what Republicans should do now that they have control of both Houses of Congress. Vote on every bill that Harry Reid wouldn’t let come to the floor for a vote: the Keystone pipeline, tax reform, and immigration policy that starts with border security. If Democrats vote “No”, fine. Let them become the Party of No. And if Republicans get barely enough support from the other side, but not enough to satisfy the most liberal president in our history, let him veto whatever they send him. Let him use his veto pen until it runs out of ink. And let <em>him</em> become the obstructionist, the one who is standing in the way of getting things done in Washington.</p>
<p>The question is: Will any of that hurt Hillary? Or will voters revert to their comfort zone and once again pick a Democrat for president? I don’t know what I’m having for lunch so I have no clue on what’s going to happen in two years. But here’s something to think about: Every legitimate criticism of the woman who would be the first female U.S. president will be portrayed (by fellow Democrats and her allies in the so-called mainstream media) as an attack on women. But remember, it didn’t work this time around. And it may not work next time around, either. Millions of Americans are saying,”Enough!”</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-05T19:20:00ZHillary Clinton - No Longer "Dead Broke" - Strikes AgainBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Clinton---No-Longer-Dead-Broke---Strikes-Again/24678366587780091.html2014-11-03T08:00:00Z2014-11-03T08:00:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I know that piling on is considered bad form, but I can’t help myself. The other day Hillary Clinton uttered something so breathtakingly stupid, that I’d be remiss if I didn’t do my part in pointing out how breathtakingly stupid her remark was.</p>
<p>By now I’m sure you’ve heard about it. So what? It’s worth repeating since I keep hearing about how she’s the smartest woman on the planet – and maybe the entire solar system. And when a genius like Hillary says something dumb, that’s comment worthy.</p>
<p>Okay, so here’s what she said (at a campaign rally in Massachusetts for the Democrat running for governor): “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs ….” Then she went to trash so-called trickle down economics.</p>
<p>If a kid in kindergarten heard that, little Johnny or Nicole would say: “But I don’t understand Mrs. Clinton. If corporations and businesses don’t create jobs … WHO THE HELL DOES? … THE FREAKING JOB FAIRY???</p>
<p>No, it’s not the dumbest thing Mrs. Clinton might have said. She could have told the crowd that the “Last time I ran for president I visited all 50 states. This time I’m only going to visit 49. Because Pluto, it turns out, is no longer a planet.”</p>
<p>It took three whole days before she and her brain trust realized they had to “clarify” things. So she came up with this: “Let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out — not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas.”</p>
<p>Too late, Hil. The three-<em>second</em> rule applies not just to food dropped on the floor that you plan to stuff into your mouth. Politicians have three seconds – not three <em>days</em> — to say, “Hey, I didn’t mean it to come out that way. Here’s what I was trying to say.”</p>
<p>Besides, she said something really, really dumb and only “clarified” her remarks because she looked really, really dumb.</p>
<p>Hillary was pandering to the same liberal Democrats who thought Barack Obama was Aristotle when he – Obama not Aristotle – said, “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”</p>
<p>Rule of thumb: If you’re a Democrat you will never go wrong trashing capitalism to a bunch of lefty dolts who think business people are evil, greedy bastards – and that government is the entity that creates jobs.</p>
<p>Here’s the bad news: In the United States of Stupid, it usually works.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-11-03T08:00:00ZFamily Feud: The GOP VersionBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Family-Feud:-The-GOP-Version/-454008517922574211.html2014-10-27T19:45:00Z2014-10-27T19:45:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>When I was a kid growing up in the Bronx I was infinitely more interested in the Yankees, the Knicks, the Rangers and the New York Football Giants (as we used to call them) than I was in politics. What 10-year old kid cares about politics? Ten year old kids in the Bronx care about Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, not their congressman who — if my life depended on it — I couldn’t have picked out of a lineup.</p>
<p>Still I knew we were Democrats. My father was a blue-collar worker so that made sense. I also knew that everybody in the neighborhood – and by “everybody” I mean <em>everybody</em> – was a Democrat. Republicans don’t live in tenements in the South Bronx.</p>
<p>And I knew one other thing, a tidbit I picked up from up my father: “Republicans are for rich people,” he told me. He said it with absolutely no malice. He delivered the message as a simple matter of fact. And since we were hardly rich, we were Democrats.</p>
<p>Cut to today, many years from my days growing up in the shadows of Yankee Stadium. How much has really changed? Ask folks whom Republicans care about most and they’ll tell you what my father told me: Republicans are for rich people.</p>
<p>Never mind that it’s not that simple. Never mind that Republicans want everybody to have the opportunity to move up the ladder and accumulate wealth. Never mind, too, that poor people and the middle class haven’t done well under the most liberal Democrat ever to occupy the White House — and almost certainly would have done better if a conservative Republican who understood how business works had been president instead of Barack Obama.</p>
<p>So what’s the take-away? For openers, Republicans need to change their image or they’re doomed. Except they don’t have a clue how to do it – or they would have done it by now.</p>
<p>Republicans need a strong PR firm that specializes in disaster cases to do an image makeover. One example of the GOP problem: Republicans are against raising the minimum wage. That may be good economics – the Congressional Budget Office says a hike to $10.10 and hour would cost the economy 500,000 jobs — but the public is on the Democrats’ side. The Republican position on the minimum wage bolsters the opinion that they only care about rich people.</p>
<p>Quick: Tell me who has made the most convincing case for Republicans that raising the minimum wage is a bad thing for poor people? I don’t know, either.</p>
<p>No matter what happens November 4<sup>th</sup>, Republicans will continue to have a terrible image the next day. Ebola is only slightly less popular than the national Republican Party. So, ditch the political strategists (who are part of the problem) and bring in that smart PR firm loaded with people who have fresh ideas.</p>
<p>The GOP may take control of the Senate in about a week, but the party’s image problem doesn’t bode well for the party in 2016. Whoever the Republicans nominate he (or she) will start out as the underdog. Democrats may be incompetent, but when you promise to take from the rich (with higher taxes) and re-distribute the booty to everyone else, that goes a long way to trump incompetence. That’s one of the reasons Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Pandering to the supposed “have nots” is in their DNA.</p>
<p>Is it a form of bribery – promising (and if you win, actually giving) money in exchange for votes? Sure, but there’s no law against that kind of bribery. There is a name for it though: politics as usual.</p>
<p>So if the Republicans want to win in 2016 they’re going to have to do a few things – now!</p>
<p>First, they need to find a likable, attractive, articulate front man or woman to explain Republican/conservative principles to a nation made up disproportionately of low information voters (which is a nice way of saying “dopes”). Every time I see the Republican leadership in their blue suits, white shirts and red ties, I cringe. Politics is part entertainment and these guys are duds. No one listens to duds.</p>
<p>They need someone who speaks plain English and never (to use one easy example) utters the letters CR (for continuing resolution) when they’re on TV. That’s when MEGO (my eyes glaze over). They need to find someone who is not like Mitch McConnell who is always on TV making the Republican case – but comes off as, humorless, cold and stiff.</p>
<p>The GOP has a few likable men and women who know how to talk. So the party needs to pick one – <em>one</em>! – and let that person make the case. You can’t have 10 different people talking for the party. It waters down the message. Besides, 10 messengers equal no messengers in the world of politics.</p>
<p>So which wing of the party is going to decide whom the spokesperson should be? That gets us to point number two.</p>
<p>The moderate wing and the hard right wing (sometimes called the “suicide wing” of the Republican Party) must – repeat <em>must</em> – make peace. They must figure out a way to unite. The Ted Cruz wing must come to terms with the Jeb Bush and Chris Christie wing. And vice versa. If the Civil War continues – and that’s what it is – the Republicans cannot win. Family Feud is a TV game show that provides a few chuckles. If in 2016 it’s still a Republican reality show, the only ones chuckling will be Democrats.</p>
<p>Barack Obama did not beat John McCain and Mitt Romney. Conservative purists (the aforementioned suicide wing of the party) beat the GOP candidates. How? They sat home. And every one of the four million or so ideologically pure conservatives who refused to vote for a moderate (despite the fact that the moderate was way more conservative than Barack Obama) in effect, voted for … Barack Obama.</p>
<p>I get emails from conservatives who are proud members of the suicide wing. They tell me that there’s “no difference between Chris Christie and Hillary Clinton.” These people are delusional. They tell me if Christie or Bush winds up with the nomination they definitely will not vote. They’re like children who want everything to go their way. And when they don’t, they pout, stomp their feet and storm off to their room. The purists can defeat the Republican nominee in 2016 just as they did in 2008 and 2012.</p>
<p>And, as I say, there’s an obligation on the moderates too. Figure out a way to make peace with the hard right. Make concessions. Both sides need to understand that compromise is not akin to selling out your principles; compromise is not a crime against humanity.</p>
<p>I know: easier said than done. What happens if you’re a Republican who thinks gays should have the same right to marry as heterosexuals? How do you compromise with the religious right that will never consent to that? And how does the religious right compromise on such an important issue to them? Bring in a mediator, for crying out loud. <em>Figure it out</em>. If you don’t you lose.</p>
<p>And if you lose, I hope you like Hillary Clinton — because she is going to be your president for at least four years – and probably eight.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-10-27T19:45:00ZTeaching Monkeys How to Gamble - and Other Ways to Waste Your Tax DollarsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Teaching-Monkeys-How-to-Gamble---and-Other-Ways-to-Waste-Your-Tax-Dollars/-960360098172473057.html2014-10-24T19:08:00Z2014-10-24T19:08:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I know all about the new case of Ebola, the one in New York City. I know that ISIS is still on the move. I know what just happened in Canada. They’re all important. I know that too. But there’s another menace that causes great harm – and this one doesn’t get the attention it deserves.</p>
<p>The enemy is none other than the government of the United States – or more precisely, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington who take our hard-earned tax money … and flush it right down the toilet.</p>
<p>Sure, Islamic terrorists make me mad. But so do the yahoos in our nation’s capital who waste billions every year. This is on my mind at the moment because outgoing Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn has just released his annual “Wastebook” report that, as he puts it “looks at 100 of the most outrageous ways Washington spent your money over the past year.”</p>
<p>He acknowledges that even though the actual dollar amount they waste “cover just a small slice of the federal budget, the waste in these examples alone totals more than $25 billion.”</p>
<p>And wasting that kind of money breeds even more mistrust of government – if that’s even possible. “It comes at a time when few people trust government to tackle the big, important problems. The examples detailed in the report make it easy to see why,” Coburn writes in a piece for NRO.</p>
<p>Here are just a few examples of how your government is spending your money.</p>
<p>The IRS, which was targeting Americans who disagree with the president, gave away $4 billion – ready for this? – to identity thieves who filed bogus tax returns.</p>
<p>“The director of the National Institutes of Health claims that a vaccine for Ebola ‘probably’ would have been developed by now,” writes Coburn, “if not for the stagnant funding for the agency, which has a $30 billion annual budget. Yet NIH found enough money to give Swedish massages to rabbits and to study how much women love their dogs.”</p>
<p>But not all the money was wasted in such a blatant way. Some of it was wasted in more blatant ways than that.</p>
<p>Coburn tells us that the National Science Foundation taught monkeys how to gamble … and trained mountains lions how to use a treadmill.</p>
<p>Thousands of federal workers, some who had committed crimes and others who were involved in various forms of misconduct, weren’t fired, but instead were allowed to simply go home, pretty much do nothing, and still get paid a total of $20 million – of your tax dollars.</p>
<p>The State Department spent money to dispel the perception overseas that Americans are fat and rude – even though too many Americans <em>are</em> fat and rude.</p>
<p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent $1 million in workmen’s compensation to employees who had been cleared to return to work.</p>
<p>What’s next? Paying people to watch grass grow? Well, yes. The Department of the Interior actually paid people to watch grass — to see how quickly it grows.</p>
<p>Not all the money wasted came from tax dollars. But that’s only because the government spends more than it collects from us. That means some of the money thrown down the drain was <em>borrowed</em>. But don’t worry … you won’t have to pay it back. Your kids and their kids will take care of that.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-10-24T19:08:00ZThe Midterm Elections and the Idiot VoteBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Midterm-Elections-and-the-Idiot-Vote/745771328472964536.html2014-10-20T18:08:00Z2014-10-20T18:08:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>November 4th is almost here. And since midterm elections are usually a referendum on the sitting president, 2014 ought to be a good year for Republicans.</p>
<p>Barack Obama really is immensely unpopular these days, especially in those Red States where Democratic senators are desperately trying to hold on to their jobs. And by now you know about Kentucky, a Red State where the Democratic Senate candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes (running against Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell), was asked during a debate if she had voted for Barack Obama in 2012. She refused to answer, claiming a “constitutional right to privacy. That’s how toxic Mr. Obama is in Kentucky (and a lot of other places).</p>
<p>Despite all that, I’m still worried about the GOP’s chances. I’m concerned about three things in particular that can go wrong for Republicans and keep them from taking control of the Senate.</p>
<p>First, it’s still October so there’s still time for an October surprise. What it might be, I can’t say. Maybe something involving ISIS. Or Ebola. Maybe both. Maybe the president has figured out how to infect ISIS terrorists with Ebola and not have to make a decision about ground troops. I don’t know. But the possibility of some kind of stunt emanating from the White House is out there, looming over the midterms and making me nervous.</p>
<p>Second, there’s still plenty of time for some stupid Republican to open his mouth and say something really, really dumb. Again, I don’t know what it might be. But there are so many possibilities. Most of them would involve women, sex, rape, and birth control.</p>
<p>But the third possibility is the one that I’m really concerned about. It’s about the Democrats ground game – their impressive get-out-the-vote machine.</p>
<p>Democrats are really good at getting people to the polls. That’s how they win elections. They know where every registered (and not yet registered) Democrat lives, what time he gets up, his dog’s name and what flavor ice cream he likes the best.</p>
<p>Democratic operatives know where all the single women (who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats) live. They know where all the blacks live, and all the Latinos. They know how to get every sub-set of the electorate that thinks they can’t survive without the federal government giving them stuff out to the polls.</p>
<p>So the Democratic machine sends vans to their houses to pick them up and make sure they vote. The machine knows that a lot of Democrats aren’t revved up, and since Mr. Obama is not on the ballot they probably wouldn’t vote unless someone made it real easy for them. They make sure these voters know which candidate is the Democrat and which one is not. If they could pull the lever (or hit the Democratic icon on the tablet) for them, they would. And probably do, more than we know.</p>
<p>And one of the groups they’ve targeted is a very important part of the Democratic base — young people, who, like the others, were excited enough to vote for Barack Obama in the past but probably wouldn’t vote this time around mainly because he’s not on the ballot – and also because a lot of them aren’t especially interested in politics.</p>
<p>Which brings me to <em>The Idiot Vote: The Democrats’ Core Constituency</em>, the perfectly titled smart and funny e-book by my good friend Harry Stein (available on Amazon for $3.95).</p>
<p>Stein describes the youth vote as an “impressive subset of the idiot vote, possessed of an ignorance both deep and broad.” Which is precisely why they’re a prized voting bloc of the Democratic Party – and why getting them to stop texting for 5 minutes and actually cast a ballot is so important to the Dems.</p>
<p>“Alas,” Stein writes, in the two generations from [passage of the 26<sup>th</sup> Amendment in 1971 which lowered the voting age to 18] to now, the responsibilities of citizenship have come to rest ever more lightly on the shoulders of the young, leaving us with more fresh faced, bright-eyed ignoramuses helping chart the nation’s future than ever. ‘Who commanded our troops in the American Revolution,’ Jay Leno asked one student in his long-running, never-fails-to-startle segment ‘Jay Walking,’ in which he tosses historical and civic softballs to members of the millennial generation. The kid replied with almost cocky assurance: ‘Churchill.’ ‘Have you heard of the Gettysburg Address?’ he asked a young woman. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ she allowed, ‘but I don’t know the <em>exact</em> address.’”</p>
<p>No, not all young men and women are so clueless. But a lot of them are.</p>
<p>“ … and they are also, needless to say, especially easily dazzled by shiny new things,” writes Stein. “In 2008, fully 68 percent of 19 to 29 year olds voted for Barack Obama.</p>
<p>“Let’s face it,” he goes on, “if only they could, the Dems would surely lower the voting age to fifteen. Or – why not? – seven, which would put on the rolls all those second graders in the videos robotically singing “Barack Hussein Obama, Umm umm umm.” Hell, the press would just regard it as another sterling example of social outreach by the party of inclusion.</p>
<p>“For this is pretty much what the Democratic party has come to: getting to the polls the maximum number possible of the least informed and most easily swayed, and constantly trawling for more,” Harry Stein astutely tells us.</p>
<p>Still, given Mr. Obama’s anemic poll numbers, Republicans should do well this November. But even though some in the young, low information crowd vote Republican, the Democrats will win a (much) bigger percentage of that group – as they always do — <em>if they can just get the dolts out to vote.</em> And they’ll be trying very hard to do just that.</p>
<p>You see why I’m worried?</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-10-20T18:08:00ZPolitically Correct JournalismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Politically-Correct-Journalism/362735532742980650.html2014-10-13T20:04:00Z2014-10-13T20:04:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The subject on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” was Ebola, or more precisely how the media have been covering the story.</p>
<p>The show’s host, Brian Stelter, formerly of the New York Times, was talking about the best coverage on television and the worst. And no surprise, since Stelter often sees things through a liberal lens, he found a particular reference on Fox to be especially troubling.</p>
<p>Andrea Tantaros, a regular on the Fox show “Outnumbered,” said something that got Stelter and his guest, PBS science reporter Miles O’Brien, in a huff. Tantaros was talking about possible Ebola carriers coming to the United States from parts of Africa where the disease is rampant.</p>
<p>“In these countries they do not believe in traditional medical care,” she said. “So someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor who practices Santeria. This is a bigger fear. We’re hoping they come to the hospitals in the U.S., but they might not!”</p>
<p>Stelter ran a video clip of those remarks to get O’Brien’s reaction. Here’s how the exchange went:</p>
<p><strong>Stelter: Miles, not much to say here, but witch doctor?</strong></p>
<p><strong>O’Brien: Well, I mean, we could digress into what motivated that and perhaps the racial component of all this, the arrogance, the First World versus Third World statements and implications of just that. It’s offensive on several levels and it reflects, frankly, a level of ignorance, which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse.</strong></p>
<p>Where to begin?</p>
<p>First, O’Brien is right about ignorance — except he’s the one displaying it. Even though he’s a reporter who specializes in science issues and was brought on to talk about Ebola, he doesn’t seem to know, or won’t admit, that Tantaros was raising a real issue. A British Red Cross worker, for instance, who had been treating people with Ebola in West Africa, has said that some Africans “believe the disease is a punishment, or a result of witchcraft.”</p>
<p>It could be a stretch to wonder if Ebola-infected Africans here might seek witch doctors, but Tantaros’s general point is essential to understanding the epidemic.</p>
<p>Why does he raise the possibility that Tantaros is a racist? Because she uttered the words “witch doctor”? What about the Red Cross worker who brought up the word “witchcraft”? Is she a racist, too?</p>
<p>And what does he mean when he says there are certain things “which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse”? Is he suggesting that only politically correct language be allowed in our news coverage and in our conversations? And who does O’Brien want to determine what’s acceptable and what isn’t?</p>
<p>There’s a name for this. It’s called liberal authoritarianism.</p>
<p>After raising the possibility of racism, O’Brien tut-tuts about Tantaros’s supposed arrogance and how she crossed another red line in the (unspecified but apparently unacceptable) things she said in her “First World versus the Third World statements” and their “implications.”</p>
<p>I understand that this may disturb some on the left, but here are a few implications about how the First World and the Third World are very different places – and how one of them is a lot better than the other.</p>
<p>It’s the First World that comes up with drugs to fight Ebola, hoping to save lives in places like Africa. The Third World doesn’t.</p>
<p>It’s the First World that fights AIDS with cutting edge drugs. The Third World doesn’t.</p>
<p>It was scientists in the First World who came up with vaccines for polio.</p>
<p>It is doctors and researchers in the First World who are trying to find a cure for cancer.</p>
<p>It’s creative people in the First World who invent all sorts of things that make all our lives better. There’s not a lot of technological invention going on in the Third World.</p>
<p>Those are just a few of the “implications” that liberals, in and out of the media, don’t like to talk about. And we all know why — but that’s something <em>none of us</em> are supposed to talk about – not out loud anyway.</p>
<p>The Third World is populated by people of color (to use that awkward phrase.) This doesn’t mean that white people are better human beings than anyone else. It doesn’t mean more First World people will make it to heaven than those in the Third World. It doesn’t mean that white people are more noble or loyal or decent. It doesn’t mean that if Third World kids had the same advantages as kids who live in American suburbs they wouldn’t do just as well – who knows, maybe better.</p>
<p>But it does mean that those in the First World are doing more for the planet than are those in the rest of the world. And this is something many liberals cannot bring themselves to acknowledge. And if any of us do … we’re insensitive at best, racist at worst.</p>
<p>Liberals don’t like the suggestions that parts of Africa are backward places. That also sounds racist to them. But parts of Africa <em>are</em> backward places. What should we call it when some Africans think you get Ebola from witchcraft? Backwards sound like a reasonable word to me.</p>
<p>The British Red Cross official explained how “in one tragic case [in Sierra Leone] a family brought three bodies home that had been prepared for burial by the Ministry of Health. They opened one of the body bags to check that no body parts had been removed: all the family now have Ebola.”</p>
<p>Tragic yes. But it is what some people in backward places do.</p>
<p>Miles O’Brien may think certain ideas and concepts should not be allowed “in our media and in our discourse” because they are “ignorant” and “arrogant.” But what he and Brian Stelter, who never challenged O’Brien’s shaky observations, don’t quite understand is how their liberalism both affects and <em>infects</em> their journalism.</p>
<p>Introspection has never been a strong suit of liberal journalists.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-10-13T20:04:00ZHow stupid do they think we are?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-stupid-do-they-think-we-are/-349595830581196201.html2014-10-06T21:12:00Z2014-10-06T21:12:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p><span>Alton Nolen, a 30-year-old recent convert to Islam, had just been fired from his job at a food distribution plant in Moore, Oklahoma. There were reports that for some time he had been trying to convert workers at the plant to Islam, just as he had done. Shortly after his dismissal he walked back into the plant carrying a knife. He spotted one of the women who worked there, a 54 </span>year-old grandmother named Colleen Hufford and put a knife to her throat – a knife he used to cut her head off.</p>
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<p><span>If a manager at the plant had not shot Nolen, who knows how many other heads he would have cut off. He survived and has been charged with murder. </span></p>
<p><span>According to the district attorney, Nolen was uttering “some Arabic terms during the attack.” A local TV station reports that Nolen’s Facebook page had anti-American rants under the name Jah’Keem Yisrael. The station said there were also several photos of Osama bin Laden on the page and a picture of the 9/11 attacks. </span></p>
<p><span>Yes, it sure sounds like workplace violence to me. How about you? </span></p>
<p><span>That’s what the FBI is calling it. The New York Times quoted an unidentified agent as saying, “Beyond being fired, we haven’t found another motive.” </span></p>
<p><span>Let’s see if I understand this. A Muslim man utters Arabic words as he cuts the head off of a grandmother; the man’s Facebook page contains anti- American rants; the man reportedly had been trying, unsuccessfully, to convert fellow workers to Islam; and the man surely knew about the </span>beheadings by Muslim terrorists in Syria given all the news about them ... and the FBI says “Beyond being fired, we haven’t found another motive.”</p>
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<p><span>This raises a question: How damn stupid does the FBI think we are? That very question, in fact, was raised by Joe Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” program on MSNBC. </span></p>
<p><span>“The FBI says there was no indication that [Alton] Nolen was copying ISIS? ... Seriously? How stupid does the FBI really think we are? Who exactly are they afraid of offending? ISIS? Moderate Muslims? Because moderate Muslims are just as scared as moderate Methodists. And is political correctness now so pervasive through our government that the FBI can’t tell Americans the truth of the beheading of a grandmother in the middle of America out of fear of offending Muslims? No, no, trust me — Muslims are offended by this creep’s actions. But if the FBI now is so weakly resorting to political correctness after the beheading on U.S. soil can they really confront the evil that America faces and the threat of copycat killers? I mean, come on.” </span></p>
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<p><span>But it’s not just liberal PC run amok, I suspect. The FBI, which comes </span>under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, which is run by the most political attorney general since John Mitchell and Bobby Kennedy, an attorney general who reports to his good friend the president ... just might be covering for Barack Obama who doesn’t need any domestic terrorism incidents on his watch – especially with the midterm elections just a month away.</p>
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<p><span>The mass murder by another Muslim terrorist – Army Major Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood, Texas in 2009 – was also labeled workplace violence. No one in his right mind believed that, either. But by not calling it by its real name – </span><span>anti-American Islamic terrorism </span><span>– President Obama may think he can convince us that while Muslim fanatics are causing havoc over </span><span>there</span><span>, they are no threat to American citizens over </span><span>here. </span></p>
<p><span>That agents of the FBI allow themselves to be used as political tools is disheartening. We used to have confidence in the FBI. And while we’re on the subject, we may have feared the IRS, but we didn’t think they’d actually go after Americans who disagreed with the president – while he was up for re-election, no less. Obama wasn’t supposed to be Nixon. </span></p>
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<p><span>You get the impression that the people who work for Barack Obama don’t care much about the American people. The president’s press secretaries make Baghad Bob sound like Honest Abe. Their loyalty is to a politician – not us. Same with the head of the IRS who goes before Congress and no matter what he’s asked about scandals at the IRS, says “We’re looking into that” ... but nothing ever happens. The exchange of Al Qaeda commanders for an army sergeant may have been justified but as I write this no one has bothered explaining whether Bowe Bergdahl was a deserter or not. That investigation supposedly is also continuing. Do we know who was responsible for Fast and Furious? How about the VA scandal. They’re still looking into all of that too, I guess. </span></p>
<p><span>Who believes any of this? </span></p>
<p><span>And then there’s the Secret Service, another American institution we used to have confidence in, until we didn’t. They told us that an intruder got through the front door of the White House before he was captured. He got through the front door, all right. But he got a lot further than that. It’s only because of leaks to the Washington Post that we know the real story — that he overpowered a female agent and practically took a tour of the place </span>before being captured.</p>
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<p><span>And when the soon-to-be dumped head of the IRS testified before Congress the other day she had all the passion of a corpse, a zombie on sleeping pills. </span></p>
<p><span>Peggy Noonan brilliantly captured the brazenness of this administration in her latest Wall Street Journal column. “We’re all used to a certain amount of doublespeak and bureaucratese in government hearings,” she writes. “That’s as old as forever. But in the past year of listening to testimony from government officials, there is something different about the boredom and indifference with which government testifiers, skirt, dodge and withhold the truth. They don’t seem furtive or defensive; they are not in the least afraid. They speak always with a certain carefulness – they are lawyered up – but they have no evident fear of looking evasive. They really don’t care what you think of them. They’re running the show and you don’t like it, too bad.” </span></p>
<p><span>She’s right, of course. And Ms. Noonan is also right when she tells us that, “A nation can’t continue to be vibrant and healthy when the government </span>controls more and more, and yet no one trusts a thing the government says. It’s hard to keep going that way.”</p>
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<p><span>Barack Obama promised us idealism but instead he and his acolytes have delivered a truckload of cynicism. How stupid do they think we are? </span></p>
<p><span>We’ll find out on November 4. </span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-10-06T21:12:00ZTerrorists Get to Air Grievances - at an Icon of American CultureBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Terrorists-Get-to-Air-Grievances---at-an-Icon-of-American-Culture/-892638649277784545.html2014-09-30T18:59:00Z2014-09-30T18:59:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>On October 7, 1985 four terrorists from the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt. They held the passengers and crew hostage and demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.</p>
<p>They also wanted the Syrian government to let them dock at the port of Tartus.</p>
<p>The next day, after being refused permission by the Syrians, the hijackers singled out a 69 year-old Jewish man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer. They shot him in the forehead and chest as he sat in his chair, then forced the ship’s barber and waiter to throw his body overboard.</p>
<p>But let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe the terrorists had a grievance. Maybe we should hear their side. Hey, I have an idea: Let’s turn the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man in a wheelchair into an opera.</p>
<p>So in 1991, in Brussels, Belgium an opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer” premiered and over the years has been shown in other cities both in Europe and here in the United States. Now, the prestigious New York Metropolitan Opera plans to put the show on in a few weeks, and as you might imagine, not everyone is happy. Protestors have been out at the Met, saying the show should not go on. The New York Times editorial board disagrees.</p>
<p>“Music critics and opera lovers have found the opera, by John Adams, moving and nuanced in imagining a tragedy that gives voice to all sides … “ the Times wrote.</p>
<p>The opera does allow Mr. Klinghoffer’s character to condemn senseless terrorist violence but is “nuanced” necessarily a good thing? And what about “giving voice to all sides?</p>
<p>I could be wrong but I’m guessing if someone wrote an opera about the death of Martin Luther King that was nuanced (Hey, maybe James Earl Ray had a point) and gave voice to all sides (Even bigots have grievances, don’t they?) the gods who write editorial at the New York Times would not have been so open-minded. And for good reason.</p>
<p>This is not a question of “the principle of artistic freedom,” as the Times suggests in its editorial. Mr. Adams has every right to make any kind of opera he wants. And the Met has every right to put it on.</p>
<p>But some art should be protested – and condemned. “Piss Christ” comes to mind, the 1987 photograph by Andres Serrano that depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine.</p>
<p>And many think “Klinghoffer” should also be protested and condemned. And they’re right. Of course terrorists have grievances. Who doesn’t? The question is: Should the prestigious Metropolitan Opera be a forum for such grievances?</p>
<p>Judea Pearl says no. Mr. Pearl’s son Daniel was beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan on February 1, 2002. He knows about terrorism.</p>
<p>He wrote an elegant letter to the Times, a letter so moving that I think it should be read in its entirety. Here it is:</p>
<p>“In joining protestors of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of ‘The Death of Klinghoffer,’ I echo the silenced voice of our son, Daniel Pearl, and the silenced voices of other victims of terror who were murdered, maimed or left heartbroken by the new menace of our generation, a savagery that the Met has decided to elevate to a normative two-sided status worthy of artistic expression.</p>
<p>“We are told that the composer tried to understand the hijackers, their motivations and their grievances.</p>
<p>“I submit that there has never been a crime in human history lacking grievance and motivation. The 9/11 lunatics had profound motivations, and the murderers of our son, Daniel Pearl, had very compelling ‘grievances.’</p>
<p>“In the last few weeks we have seen with our own eyes that Hamas and the Islamic State have grievances, too. There is nothing more enticing to a would-be terrorist than the prospect of broadcasting his ‘grievances’ in Lincoln Center, the icon of American culture.</p>
<p>“Yet civilized society has learned to protect itself by codifying right from wrong, separating the holy from the profane, distinguishing that which deserves the sound of orchestras from that which commands our unconditional revulsion. The Met has trashed this distinction and thus betrayed its contract with society.</p>
<p>“I submit that choreographing a ‘nuanced’ operatic drama around criminal pathology is not an artistic prerogative, but a blatant betrayal of public trust. We do not state ‘nuanced’ operas for rapists and child molesters, and we do not compose symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS executioners.</p>
<p>“Some coins do not have two sides. And what was done to Leon Klinghoffer has no other side.</p>
<p>“What we are seeing in New York is not an artistic expression that challenges the limits of morality but a moral deformity that challenges the limits of the art.</p>
<p>“This opera is not about the mentality of deranged terrorists, but about the judgment of our arts directors. The Metropolitan Opera has squandered humanity’s greatest treasure: our moral compass, our sense of right and wrong, and most sadly, our reverence for music as a noble expression of the human spirit.</p>
<p>“We might someday be able to forgive the Met for decriminalizing brutality, but we will never forgive it for poisoning our music, for turning our test violins and our iconic concert halls into megaphones for excusing evil.”</p>
<p>Every supposedly open-minded sophisticate should read Judea Pearl’s passionate letter. Why is it so hard for some to understand that some things are right and some are clearly wrong? As Mr. Pearl tells us: “Some coins do not have two sides. And what was done to Leon Klinghoffer has no other side.</p>
<p>That’s something the editorial board of the New York Times might want to think about.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-30T18:59:00ZCareful About What You Say: The Speech Police Are ListeningBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Careful-About-What-You-Say:-The-Speech-Police-Are-Listening/-102019441286610104.html2014-09-24T18:19:00Z2014-09-24T18:19:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>You may have heard about the radio play-by-play man for the San Francisco 49ers who got into trouble for saying things you’re apparently not allowed to say. The broadcaster, Ted Robinson, was a guest on a radio show and uttered these words about football player Ray Rice’s then fiancée (and now wife), who by now the whole world knows was knocked out by Rice in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino:</p>
<p>“How does she marry him after that? How does she go in front of [NFL Commissioner] Goodell [and make a case <em>for</em> Ray Rice]? That’s pathetic to me.”</p>
<p>For this Robinson was suspended for two games. Explaining his decision, the 49ers president, Paraag Marathe, issued this statement: “The comments made by radio broadcaster Ted Robinson … were offensive and in no way reflect the views of the San Francisco 49ers organization. … Our organization stands strongly against domestic violence and will not tolerate comment such as these.”</p>
<p>Score one for the Speech Police who will not tolerate comments they will not tolerate.</p>
<p>I understand how intolerant some people can be in the name of tolerance, still, I’m confused. If a young woman got knocked out by her fiancé and decided to marry him a month later, the woman’s father, mother, sister, brother, best friend and the kid who bags her groceries at the supermarket would ask her the exact same question. <em>How can you marry him after that?</em></p>
<p>It’s a perfectly reasonable question that any reasonable person would ask – even after you factor in the complexities of domestic violence and the mindset of many victims of domestic violence, who often defend the guy who just punched her out.</p>
<p>Still, is this something you should get suspended for?</p>
<p>And while we’re on the subject of suspensions, should Ray Rice have gotten a virtual death penalty for what he did?</p>
<p>If the prosecutor wanted to haul him in front of a jury I would have had no problem with that. If the jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to prison, again, no problem. But taking his livelihood away <em>indefinitely </em>strikes me as excessive.</p>
<p>Even the fans who wore Ray Rice jerseys to the Ravens next home game said what he did was wrong, that he should be punished, but as one fan said, it’s wrong to pretend he no longer exists.</p>
<p>The media, of course, have been showing their moral outrage over domestic violence in the NFL. They might have a tad more credibility (with me, anyway) if they did a few stories about domestic violence in the media. I’ll bet it’s at least as bad as in the NFL after you factor in gender and age. In fact, there’s at least one report that says domestic violence is lower in the NFL than in the young, male population at large.</p>
<p>The New York Times ran a big story about how, in the wake of the Ray Rice story, female sports reporters are finally being heard. Except I haven’t heard any of these supposedly strong, courageous women talk about Hope Solo, the U.S. women’s superstar soccer goalie, who continues to play despite the fact that she is scheduled to go on trial in November for assaulting her sister and nephew at a party.</p>
<p>I understand that women’s soccer isn’t in the same league as the NFL in the United States. And I also understand that a woman, generally speaking, doesn’t inflict as much damage as a man. Still, I get the impression that a lot of this outrage, especially in the liberal media, is really about furthering the agenda of liberal feminists. Or else, when they talk about how bad domestic violence is, they’d say a few words about women who beat men. And it’s not just Hope Solo.</p>
<p>The Centers for Disease Control did a survey a few years back, and guess what: 40 percent of domestic violence victims in the United States … are men.</p>
<p>Maybe those courageous women sports journalists who the New York Times is applauding might want to comment on that.</p>
<p>Finally, let’s be clear: What Ray Rice – and other NFL players have done to women — is both wrong and serious. But what the Word Police are doing is also wrong and serious … and scary and dangerous. But saying that too loudly can get you in a lot of trouble.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-24T18:19:00ZAnything Can Happen Between Now and Election Day - and Probably WillBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Anything-Can-Happen-Between-Now-and-Election-Day---and-Probably-Will/-244399747553981719.html2014-09-22T19:43:00Z2014-09-22T19:43:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>All the polls say it’s going to be a good November for the Republicans. They say the GOP has a better than even chance to take control of the Senate. Some pundits are going even further, looking into their crystal balls and declaring it could be a wave election, a GOP tsunami. If you’re a Republican, happy days are just around the corner.</p>
<p>Unless …</p>
<p>Before we get to the “unless” … let me make clear that if I were betting on the midterm elections right now, I’d put my money on a Republican takeover of the Senate and a pickup of a few seats in the House. So why do I have this nagging feeling that something can go terribly wrong for the GOP between now and Election Day? And that it just may be a self-inflicted wound that does the Republicans in; that it may be the Republicans who take themselves behind the barn and fire the shot that salvages the Senate for Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Here’s one scenario that should keep Republicans from feeling too confident …</p>
<p>Remember the last time the GOP was ready to take over the Senate just two years ago? Remember Congressman Todd Akin who was running against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill in Missouri? Remember how he was leading until he was asked if he believes abortion is justified in cases of rape – and said this: “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”</p>
<p><em>Legitimate rape</em>? Nice going, slick. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.</p>
<p>Then there’s the embarrassment in Indiana involving one Richard Murdock, who had beaten longtime GOP Senator Richard Lugar in the state’s primary. Indiana was a sure win for the GOP until Murdock said this in a debate against his Democratic opponent: “The only exception I have … to have on abortion is in that case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”</p>
<p>Could be, I guess. Unlike some candidates on the religious right, I don’t have insights into God’s thinking on such things. But I do know this: If you’re trying to win a general election, if you’re not simply preaching to the choir, you don’t say that if life results from rape, it “is something that God intended to happen” – however you meant it to come out. Murdock lost.</p>
<p>So, anyone rooting for the GOP has reason to be concerned. History has a way of repeating itself. The good news is that the Republicans have better candidates this time around. No one is declaring, “I am not a witch” in 2014. Not yet anyway.</p>
<p>But there are some things Republicans can’t control, things that go beyond what candidates in their own party might say. What if there’s an October Surprise that has nothing to do with a stupid GOP remark that puts a Senate takeover in jeopardy?</p>
<p>President Obama knows how bad it looks for his team. And he knows how fickle the American electorate can be; how a raid on an ISIS stronghold by an American special operations team would do wonders for his poll numbers, which could trickle down to Democrats running in close races. Imagine if the Navy Seals captured the barbarian who’s been cutting off the heads of innocent Americans and Brits. Imagine if it happens just a few weeks before the elections. I’m not saying the president would use our military to help out Democrats in trouble. But I’m not ruling it out either.</p>
<p>Finally, there’s the public relations arm of the Democratic Party – the so-called mainstream media. As the president’s poll numbers have dropped, so has their slobbering over him. But if a Republican makes an indefensibly stupid comment about rape or anything else, be assured the story will get about the same level of coverage as did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.</p>
<p>And if the president pulls off a surprise in October, there’s an excellent chance his loyal fans in the press will write and broadcast glowing reports about how he got tough when he needed to, how he got his mojo back and how his poll numbers are suddenly going up. The midterms are almost always a referendum on the president, on how he’s doing. So if there is an October Surprise, it would be no surprise if Mr. Obama’s approval ratings go up, which in turn could help Democrats in close races.</p>
<p>Today things look good for Republicans. But I have often quoted a great American intellectual who knows the folly of looking beyond today. “Making predictions is hard,” he said, “especially when they’re about the future.” Thank you, Yogi Berra.</p>
<p>So, Republicans take note. Don’t get too confident. And if you feel the urge to say something stupid, keep your mouth shut until the urge passes.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-22T19:43:00ZA President Trying to Catch Up with His PeopleBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-President-Trying-to-Catch-Up-with-His-People/76039951188532692.html2014-09-12T19:41:00Z2014-09-12T19:41:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Gandhi, of course, was simply being humble. He was a great leader and a man of great courage, a man who freed his people and changed the course of history. They didn’t call him Mahatma for nothing, a word linked only to those who are seen as good, wise and holy.</p>
<p>Barack Obama is also trying to catch up with his people. But he is not a leader motivated by high principle and courage. He is the kind motivated by the necessities of politics.</p>
<p>His speech on national television about defeating the terrorists of the Islamic State just happened to come as his poll numbers were hitting all time lows. It was a speech he could have, and should have, delivered a month ago. But his numbers were higher then.</p>
<p>According to a Fox News poll released just a few days ago, 59 percent of those polled say the United States is less respected than when Mr. Obama took office. Fifty-seven percent see him as “weak and indecisive.” On his handling of foreign policy, only 34 percent approve while 59 percent disapprove. Overall, he gets a 38 percent job approval rating, which matches his all time low.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama saw that the American people were way out ahead of him in their desire to crush ISIS. Two beheadings of innocent Americans will do that. So in his speech, he tried to catch up with the American people – after all, he is our leader, and, oh yeah, the midterm elections are less than two months away.</p>
<p>He said we would defeat ISIS. That’s what we wanted to hear, though it would have been nice if he said it with more passion and conviction. He said there would be no boots on the ground. Wise or not, that’s what the American people want too.</p>
<p>So his poll numbers may go up a bit as a result of leading from behind. But it won’t last. The American people have taken off their blinders. The Barack Obama who captivated more than half of America six years ago has left the building. He squandered his magic. And once the magic is gone, so is the credibility and respect.</p>
<p>After his speech, a commentator on television wondered what would happen if after a month or two the American electorate grew weary of our new war in the Middle East. Would the president go on national television again and pretty much say, never mind?</p>
<p>This is the man who drew a red line in Syria. And then told us he never drew a red line in Syria – the world did. This is the man who told the New Yorker that ISIS was a JV team and then clumsily and unbelievably told us he didn’t quite say it. This is the man who just one month ago told the New York Times that the rebels on the ground in Syria were “essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” but have now, thanks to Mr. Obama, become our boots on the ground in Syria to take on ISIS.</p>
<p>This is the man who just minutes after talking about the beheading of the second American journalist … hit the links – and was caught on camera with a big smile on his face. When questioned, he said he should have been “anticipated the optics.” But it wasn’t optics that was the problem. The problem was that we have a president who one minute can tell us he was near tears when speaking to the journalist’s family and the next minute have fun playing golf. It’s unseemly. Even his supporters knew that.</p>
<p>The American people have looked behind the curtain. They are no longer mesmerized. They know Barack Obama is a great campaigner and a great fundraiser and that he loves to play golf. They also know that he’s not a great leader. Unless you count checking out the polls and then leading from behind.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-12T19:41:00ZBulletin: A NYT Columnist Hears Chants for Blood - from (Gasp!) ConservativesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bulletin:-A-NYT-Columnist-Hears-Chants-for-Blood---from-Gasp!-Conservatives/824932291320933585.html2014-09-08T20:17:00Z2014-09-08T20:17:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The other day, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote that, “ISIS is awful but is not a threat to America’s homeland.”</p>
<p>Let’s hope he’s right, but who thought Al Qaeda was a threat to America’s homeland – until it was?</p>
<p>The fact is that hundreds of Americans and British young men have signed on to fight with ISIS against the United States and Britain and who knows who and what else. They carry passports that allow them easy entry into this country. They might get caught trying to return home after a year or two in Syria, but they might not. And if they don’t, is it really that hard to imagine an American jihadist making a suicide vest and setting it off on a crowded street somewhere in the United States?</p>
<p>That would be a threat to America’s homeland, wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>Another recent column in the New York Times, this one by reliably liberal Charles Blow, runs under the headline: “Obama And the Warmongers.” And who would those bloodthirsty warmongers be? Conservatives! Who else?</p>
<p>After meekly describing ISIS as a “militant group” which the president called “barbaric” Mr. Blows writes that right-wingers are dangerously pushing us to war. There is, he writes, “tremendous political pressure coming from the screeching of war hawks and an anxious and frightened public, weighted most heavily among Republicans and exacerbated by the right-wing media machine.”</p>
<p>Mr. Blow also writes that, “Fear is in the air. The president is trying to take a deliberative approach, but he may be drowned out by the drums of war and the chants for blood.”</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with caution, given how little caution was taken that got us into the mess in Iraq in the first place. And there’s nothing wrong, either, with a liberal columnist taking a liberal view, even one as predictable as blaming conservatives for warmongering.</p>
<p>But even ideological pundits have to play fair. And Mr. Blow doesn’t.</p>
<p>Before Charles Blow wrote his column it wasn’t a conservative who said, “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated.” It was Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Barack Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.</p>
<p>And there was this about how ISIS is an “imminent threat to every interest we have.” No, it didn’t come from Rush Limbaugh. It was Mr. Obama’s Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who issued the warning.</p>
<p>I wonder if Charles Blow thinks they also are warmongers.</p>
<p>And then there was Joe Biden, who told a crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that the United States would track down those who cut the heads off of two American journalists:</p>
<p>“We don’t forget,” Mr. Biden said. “We take care of those who are grieving, and when that’s finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside.”</p>
<p>Yes, the vice president said that after Charles Blow wrote his column about warmongers. But he could always do a follow-up. But he won’t.</p>
<p>And finally, there is Mr. Obama himself who told reporters in Estonia: “The bottom line is this: “Our objective is clear and that is to degrade and destroy ISIL so it is no longer a threat.” Then, a few minutes later, he said: “We can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem.”</p>
<p>As the ABC News website put it: “Obama Suggests ISIS Must Be Destroyed (or Maybe Not)”</p>
<p>Mr. Obama’s dedication to caution and doublespeak aside, I wonder: Is that first part warmongering? How to you destroy ISIS terrorists if you don’t wage war on them?</p>
<p>How do you chase them to the gates of hell if you don’t wage war on them?</p>
<p>How do you defeat barbarians with an “apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision” if you don’t wage war on them?</p>
<p>How do you defeat an enemy that is an “imminent threat to every interest we have” if you don’t wage war on them.</p>
<p>Perhaps, Charles Blow can set his partisan, ideological liberalism aside for a few minutes and play the role of a real journalist and write a column about that.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-08T20:17:00ZA Rare Politician with GutsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Rare-Politician-with-Guts/873781273251182323.html2014-09-02T06:11:00Z2014-09-02T06:11:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>On July 7, 2005 Muslim terrorists attacked London. They set off bombs on buses and trains that left 52 people dead and hundreds more injured.</p>
<p>After the attack the <em>Daily Telegraph</em> conducted a poll of British Muslims, asking about their attitudes toward terrorism, specifically about the bus and train bombings.</p>
<p>While a vast majority – 88 percent – did not justify the bombings, 6 percent did. That may seem like a small number, but it represents about 100,000 Muslims living in Britain. That’s a lot of Muslims who think terrorism is just fine. And who knows how many more felt the same way but weren’t about to share their feelings with some pollster.</p>
<p>Twenty-four percent said even though they didn’t actually condone the bombings, they did sympathize with the motives of the bombers. And 56 percent said they understand why their fellow Muslims might want to set off bombs and kill innocent people.</p>
<p>A year later, in 2006, the Pew Research Center took another poll of Muslim attitudes in Britain. This one showed that while 70 percent said they never support suicide bombings, 24 percent said sometimes they did.</p>
<p>A few weeks after the Pew poll came out, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with key members of Parliament and told them that while government, obviously, had a role in stopping terrorism, law-abiding Muslims had an even bigger role.</p>
<p>Here’s part of what he said:</p>
<p>“My view in the end is you cannot defeat this extremism through whatever a government does. You can only defeat it if there are people inside the [Muslim] community who are going to stand up … and not merely say ‘You are wrong to kill people through terrorism, you are wrong to incite terrorism or extremism’ – but actually, ‘You are wrong about your view about the West, you are wrong about your sense of grievance.’ … The whole sense of grievance and ideology is wrong – <em>profoundly</em> wrong. There may be disagreements that you have with America, with the U.K., with the Western world, but none of it justifies not merely the <em>methods</em>, but the <em>ideas </em>that are far too current in parts of the [Muslim] community. Now my view is that until you challenge that at its root, fundamentally, then you’re always going to be left with a situation where people kind of say … ‘Look we understand why you [terrorists] feel like this and you know we can sympathize with that, but you’re wrong to do these things.’ You’re not going to defeat it like that. You’re only going to defeat if you say: ‘You’re actually wrong if you <em>feel</em> those things.’”</p>
<p>That’s how a leader talks about a problem as big as terrorism.</p>
<p>The other day, Tony Blair’s successor, David Cameron said this about ISIS, the terrorists who want to establish a Muslim caliphate not only in Iraq and Syria, but throughout the entire world:</p>
<p>“This threat [ISIS] can not be solved simply by dealing with the perceived grievances over Western foreign policy. Nor can it be dealt with by addressing poverty, dictatorship, or instability in the region, as important as those are. The root cause of the threat to our security is quite clear. There is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faith and by all faith leaders. It believes in using the most brutal form of terrorism to force people to accept a warped worldview and to live in an almost medieval state.”</p>
<p>To that he added, “What we’re facing in Iraq now with ISIS now is a greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before.”</p>
<p>Contrast that with Barack Obama’s statements one day earlier in Washington when asked about U.S. plans regarding airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. “We don’t have a strategy yet,” the president said.</p>
<p>So let me help. Here’s a strategy you might want to consider, Mr. President. You could make a speech and say that bombs won’t be enough to defeat these monsters. You can say we have to engage Muslim countries to join us in the fight against barbarism. But that won’t be enough, either. What the president needs to do is call on the world’s Muslims to stand up and with one loud unfired voice … be heard.</p>
<p>Tony Blair delivered a no-nonsense commentary on Muslim attitudes toward terrorism. David Cameron spoke forcefully about the problem. Mr. Obama needs to do the same.</p>
<p>There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and if 99 percent of them are not terrorists – an overly generous high-end estimate, I suspect – that means there are well over a billion good, decent Muslims out there who don’t like what the terrorists are doing any more than you and I do.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama should call on them to march on Washington and London and Madrid and Cairo and Islamabad and Riyadh and Amman and Beirut and the capitals of the Arab Gulf States and everyplace else in the world where there are Muslims. He should call on them to tell the terrorists they have no allies among good, decent Muslims.</p>
<p>He should also make clear that he is calling on good, decent Muslims precisely because they are good and decent.</p>
<p>They are not marching, he should tell them, to apologize for being Muslims. They are marching to condemn what the lunatics do in their name.</p>
<p>But first, he would have to say something along the lines of what Tony Blair said. That being against terrorism – while at the same time <em>understanding</em> why some Muslims are terrorists – won’t do. <em>They must not understand any of it.</em> They cannot be against terrorism but <em>sympathize</em> with what motivates the terrorists.</p>
<p>He should make clear that if they understand the motivations of terrorists, if they sympathize with the terrorists, even while they claim to be against terrorism, then they are part of the problem. A big part.</p>
<p>And to show how serious he is, he should deliver his speech in the Arab world, perhaps in Cairo where he spoke right after taking office. In that speech, called a “New Beginning” — which was seen as an attempt to patch up differences between the United States and the Arab world — he never uttered the word “terror” or “terrorism.” Some saw the speech as needlessly apologetic. The new speech should be unambiguous. There should be no room for misunderstanding. This time the “New Beginning” speech would tell the world’s Muslims that they can no longer simply claim to be against terrorism. They must unite, and march, and shout their opposition so the terrorists hear them and know they have no allies anywhere.</p>
<p>That’s what a leader would do.</p>
<p>And if the terrorists don’t listen, at least the rest of the Muslim world will know it did the right thing. That matters.</p>
<p>And Mr. Obama needs to remind everyone – Muslims and non-Muslims — of one more thing: that what happens “there” in Syria and Iraq will happen here if we don’t do something soon. Many of the ISIS killers are from Europe and the United States. They carry passports that allow them easy access into our country. It’s time to come up with a strategy, Mr. President.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-09-02T06:11:00ZLife and Death in Polarized AmericaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Life-and-Death-in-Polarized-America/-202318091650921381.html2014-08-25T07:04:00Z2014-08-25T07:04:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Sooner or later everything becomes polarized in this divided country of ours. It’s against the rules to see the other side’s point of view. That’s like giving ammo to the enemy. Besides, in media circles, where people make a good living dividing Americans, seeing the other guy’s point of view is bad for business.</p>
<p>When he first ran for president Barack Obama promised to unify us. You remember what he said about no Red America or Blue America, just a United States of America.</p>
<p>Instead we got the most polarizing president since Lincoln. I don’t know anybody who’s lukewarm on Mr. Obama. Liberals adore him – or at least have adored him for most of his presidency. And conservatives don’t simply disagree with him; many detest him. If he were caught on video robbing a bank, liberals would find an excuse to exonerate him. “He was just withdrawing money he had deposited, but the bank was closed. What was he supposed to do?” And if he found a cure for cancer, conservatives would condemn him for not finding it sooner. “If he didn’t play so much golf, he’d have found a cure years ago which would have saved the lives of many little children.”</p>
<p>Which brings us to Ferguson, Missouri. Nobody knows what actually happened there, except for the police officer involved – and we haven’t heard from him. Was he justified in shooting an unarmed kid 6 times or did he panic and overreact to some imaginary threat? We don’t know.</p>
<p>But in a polarized America, everybody is an expert. And everybody must take sides. To sit on the sidelines and wait for the facts to come in is a sign of weakness. Warriors don’t sit on the sideline — ever.</p>
<p>So if you’re a liberal who gets what passes for news from MSNBC you know what happened: The racist white cop shot the black kid because he’s a racist white cop.</p>
<p>And if you’re a conservative who gets the lowdown from Fox, you’re pretty sure the cop is getting railroaded. Didn’t Michael Brown bust the cop in the face and fracture his eye socket? That’s what Fox News reported, initially getting its information from a conservative website. The report may be true – or not. But so far no one in authority has confirmed the story. But if you play right field, you’re hoping the story is true because that would confirm what you always knew – that the cop was right and the kid was wrong.</p>
<p>When they’re feeling generous both sides will say, “We have to find out what really happened” right before they tell us what really happened, even though they don’t know what really happened.</p>
<p>On MSNBC, we get contributor Michelle Bernard, a black woman, telling us that what happened in Ferguson amounts to a “war on black boys” that could turn into “genocide.” We get nothing from her about the inconvenient fact that black boys are far more likely to be killed by other black boys than by white cops.</p>
<p>Liberals condemn abusive cops – especially when young black males are involved. Conservatives say the problem isn’t racism, but dysfunction in too many black communities.</p>
<p>I’ve been a reporter long enough to know that there are bad cops out there. And some are racist bad cops. I’ve also seen dysfunction in too many black neighborhoods. But both sides have a problem in polarized America acknowledging that the other side might have a point. And on TV or talk radio or on the Web, it’s simply bad business to see more than one side. People turn to partisan media to get their own biases validated. They don’t want to hear the other side. That might require them to consider some arguments they’d rather not consider.</p>
<p>When the police in Ferguson released the video of Michael Brown stealing some cigars and roughing up the convenient storeowner, liberals said it was a “smear.” Conservatives said – correctly, in my view – that a kid who had just committed a crime might also go after a cop he thought was on to him.</p>
<p>We don’t know.</p>
<p>None of this is a case for wishy-washy even-handedness. We all have deeply held opinions based on our values. There’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, especially when we don’t know the facts, it might be a good idea to keep an open mind. Maybe that cop was one of the bad ones. Who knows? Maybe the kid was a thug who after stealing the cigars instigated a confrontation with the cop that turned deadly. Could be. Hanging on to deeply held principles is one thing. Circling the wagons to protect your side, and your preconceived notions — ahead of the facts — is something else altogether.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-08-25T07:04:00ZThe Elite Liberal Softer Kind of RacismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Elite-Liberal-Softer-Kind-of-Racism/-919505486214770164.html2014-08-18T07:13:00Z2014-08-18T07:13:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I don’t know what happened in Ferguson, Missouri between the cop and the kid. And neither do you. When I covered hard news I saw cops who crossed the line and I saw kids who started trouble. So let’s not jump to conclusions.</p>
<p>But what do you think the reaction in Ferguson would have been if the kid who got shot was black and so was the cop? Or if the kid was white and the cop was black — or white? You think there would have been demonstrations and riots and an onslaught of national media?</p>
<p>I recently wrote a column in this space about the trouble in Gaza and I quoted the conservative thinker Victor Davis Hanson on how the sophisticates in Europe and America wail when Israelis kill Arabs who wage war on them, but are silent when Arabs kill Arabs: “Apparently the West, in racist fashion, assumes that killing one another is what Arabs do best. But when Israelis kill those who wish to kill them, outrage follows.”</p>
<p>It’s pretty much the same when blacks kill blacks, isn’t it? It happens all the time in big cities like Chicago. No one riots because a black kid killed a black kid. National news organizations don’t show up to do live shots day and night. It’s as if we’re saying: “Blacks killing one another is what blacks do best.” How’s that for racism! Not the old fashioned KKK kind. No, this is elite liberal racism, the supposedly softer variety.</p>
<p>And Al Sharpton doesn’t jump on a plane to show up when a black thug kills a white victim. He’s not in business to protest that kind of crime. Some people just can’t get past the bad old days. They need to feel that America is still a simmering racist country. They need to feel that black kids are being hunted down like rabid dogs by modern day Bull Connors. In a perverse way, it makes them feel good – maybe “relevant” is a better word – to think that nothing has changed in America since the March on Selma.</p>
<p>But they are partly right, those who think young black men are in the crosshairs. According to the Justice Department’s latest statistics (2005), although African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, they represent 49 percent of the nation’s homicide victims – and 93 percent of those black victims were killed by other black people.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that all white cops are angels who don’t harbor any racial animus. But when it comes to crime, nasty white cops aren’t what’s plaguing black America.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure if George Zimmerman had been black, we’d never know the name Trayvon Martin. And if 18-year old Michael Brown were white, we probably wouldn’t know his name, either … and neither national news reporters nor the civil rights establishment would even know what state Ferguson is in.</p>
<p>Members of the African-American elite, along with many white liberals, have said we don’t put enough value on the lives of young black men. <em>They</em> certainly don’t. Or they’d have a lot more to say when a black kid gets shot in the street – by another kid who is black.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-08-18T07:13:00ZA Few Words About a Friend Who Changed My LifeBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Few-Words-About-a-Friend-Who-Changed-My-Life/674551728496099584.html2014-08-11T21:26:00Z2014-08-11T21:26:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>On February 8, 1996 I got a phone call that changed the course of my life.</p>
<p>The call was from a fella named Jerry Kelley, a building contractor who was born and raised in Enterprise, Alabama and made Gomer Pyle sound like Laurence Olivier. Jerry had repaired my house in Miami after Hurricane Andrew blew through the area. We became friends, two boys from the South: Jerry from South Alabama, I from the South … Bronx.</p>
<p>As I wrote in <em>Bias</em>, “Jerry Kelley saved my family and me. He repaired the damage the hurricane had done to our house. He was always there when we needed him. And we became friends, a kind of odd couple. We talked often, mostly about politics and current events, which he loved.”</p>
<p>When he called that night he was pretty upset. “Did you see that ‘Reality Check’ story on Dan Rather tonight?” I told him I missed the CBS Evening News and asked what the problem was.</p>
<p>“The problem is that you got too many snippy wise guys doin’ the news, that’s what the problem is.” He asked me to look at a videotape of the show.</p>
<p>The next morning, I looked at the evening newscast that had Jerry so worked up. After I watched the tape, I was as angry as Jerry was. It was a story that shamelessly made fun of GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes and ridiculed his key proposal, the flat tax.</p>
<p>The flat tax? Not exactly a sexy subject but as I wrote in <em>Bias</em>, “… the more I watched the more I saw that this story wasn’t simply about a presidential candidate and a tax plan. It was about something much bigger, something too much of big-time TV journalism had become: a showcase for smart-ass reporters with attitudes, reporters who don’t even pretend to hide their disdain for certain people and certain ideas that they and their sophisticated friends don’t particularly like.”</p>
<p>And Steve Forbes was an easy target. He was a white, male conservative Republican.</p>
<p>I was so fed up with complaining about bias privately at CBS News that I decided to go public. I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about liberal bias in the mainstream media – an op-ed that touched off the media version of World War III.</p>
<p>I had become radioactive at CBS. Colleagues didn’t want to be seen with me, fearing that Dan Rather might see us together. Four years later I quit and wrote <em>Bias</em>.</p>
<p>So you see how that phone call from Jerry Kelley changed the course of my life. If he hadn’t called, I wouldn’t have written <em>Bias, </em>a book that became a #1 national bestseller. I wouldn’t be on Fox, giving my version of the truth about the media and American culture. Jerry changed my life – for the better.</p>
<p>I mention all this now because I just came back from Enterprise, Alabama where I delivered the eulogy at Jerry’s funeral. A few days ago he passed away in his sleep. He was only 71.</p>
<p>I told his friends and family in the chapel that <em>Bias</em> changed the American culture because now even some liberal journalists admit that bias is real and not some delusion of nutty conservatives. And I said, “Let’s be clear: Jerry Kelley, a blue collar guy from Enterprise, Alabama … Jerry Kelley changed the American culture.”</p>
<p>Jerry knew more about bias and fair play than any of those journalistic “geniuses” did who put that piece of garbage about Forbes on the air back in 1996. And Jerry was a building contractor, not a journalist. Still, he saw the bias that the CBS News Washington correspondent who reported the Forbes story didn’t; that his producer didn’t; that the senior producer in Washington didn’t; that the top evening news producers at CBS News in New York didn’t; that the president of CBS News didn’t; and that Dan Rather, the anchorman and managing editor of the broadcast, didn’t.</p>
<p>Jerry Kelley, in no small way, is responsible for holding powerful people accountable.</p>
<p>Ordinary Americans – and I use the word “ordinary” as a high compliment – can make a difference. Jerry did. We all can.</p>
<p>Rest in peace, my friend.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-08-11T21:26:00ZBoth Obama and Palin Rooting for ImpeachmentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Both-Obama-and-Palin-Rooting-for-Impeachment/-981334339174491536.html2014-07-31T19:14:00Z2014-07-31T19:14:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>When John Boehner was asked about impeachment the other day, he said this: “We have no plans to impeach the president. We have no future plans. Listen, it’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House.”</p>
<p>Not exactly, Mr. Speaker.</p>
<p>Boehner’s a busy man so perhaps he didn’t know it was Sarah Palin who just a few weeks ago lit the match that started a firestorm about impeaching the president. In an op-ed for Breitbart she wrote that “It’s time to impeach” Barack Obama.</p>
<p>And she was hardly to first to come up with the idea. Republicans from the ideologically pure wing of the party have thrown the “I” word around for years. And as recently as June 4, former Congressman Allen West wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post making the case that the way the president handled the swap of Guantanamo prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Berghahl was “an impeachable offense.”</p>
<p>So, chatter about impeaching the president was not, in Boehner’s words, “a scam started by Democrats in the White House.” It was a dopey idea started by hardliners in his own party.</p>
<p>But Boehner is on to something. Even as he and other sensible Republicans are saying there are no plans now or in the future to impeach the president, Democrats are doing everything they can to keep impeachment alive. They’d like nothing better than for Republicans in the House to vote to impeach President Obama — especially since they know he’d never be convicted in the Senate.</p>
<p>But mostly they know the American electorate would crucify Republicans in November if the GOP actually tried to impeach the president. Voters may not be happy with the way the president is handling just about anything, but they don’t want to go through another impeachment.</p>
<p>That’s why, I suspect, Barack Obama goes to bed every night praying that the fringe will somehow convince the rest of the Republican Party to vote for impeachment. He and just about everybody but the true believers understand that that’s the Democrats’ only hope for avoiding disaster in November.</p>
<p>All the polls show the GOP picking up seats in the Senate with a better than even chance of taking control. The election is a referendum, mainly, on the president. Republicans around the country will pay for Mr. Obama’s unpopularity. Unless …</p>
<p>Unless, the impossible happens and the crazies have their way. Then, the election is no longer about Barack Obama’s incompetence. It’s about fringe Republicans – and how the lunatics have taken over the asylum.</p>
<p>So Boehner is half right. The Democrats didn’t start it, but they are trying to pull off a scam. They know impeachment is never going to happen, no matter what Barack Obama does. Even if he unilaterally grants asylum to 50,000 Central American kids on our border while Congress is on vacation, the House won’t impeach him. So Democrats have just one hope: keep talking about impeachment and hope voters who aren’t too smart believe it might really happen.</p>
<p>They won’t understand that it’s Democrats and not the vast majority of Republicans who are keeping impeachment on the front burner. Mr. Obama will go to rallies and tell them, “The Republicans are trying to impeach me for doing my job,” and they’ll believe it.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Democrats are raising millions for the midterm campaigns with warnings that if the GOP takes over the Senate in three months, they’ll move to impeach the president.</p>
<p>The only people who want the President of the United States impeached are the crazies on the right – and Democrats. Who would have thunk it: Sarah Palin and Barack Obama on the same team, both rooting for impeachment. Politics really do make strange bedfellows.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-31T19:14:00ZIsrael, Gaza and the Repulsive MoralistsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Israel-Gaza-and-the-Repulsive-Moralists/-53573626848477546.html2014-07-30T21:07:00Z2014-07-30T21:07:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>More than 100,000 Arabs have been killed in the war raging in Syria. How many more Arabs have been killed in Iraq by other Arabs since the U.S. pulled out all its troops? How many Arabs have been killed by other Arabs before and since the Arab Spring? Let’s just say, lots. And what is the reaction here in America and around the world? A great big yawn. If anyone really cares about Arabs killing Arabs, they’re not doing a good job showing it.</p>
<p>Cut to the fighting in Gaza. Israel defends itself against thousands of rocket attacks and leftists in America and Israel-haters around the world, scream “Genocide.” As Victor Davis Hanson nicely put it in a piece for NRO: “Apparently the West, in racist fashion, assumes that killing one another is what Arabs do best. But when Israelis kill those who wish to kill them, outrage follows.”</p>
<p>I have written before that American leftists not only root for the underdog but they also root against power. That’s why so many American leftists hate America as well as Israel. As for the rest of the world, Jews have always been a thorn in their side. Or to put it another way: They hate Jews.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m tired of hearing the cries of anguish from the Israeli and Jew haters. Their sense of morality is repulsive. Here’s all they need to know: One side wants to live in peace; the other side wants to annihilate Israel and kill Jews.</p>
<p>We all are saddened when innocents are killed. But when Israel does it it’s either by mistake or because those innocents were side-by-side with the terrorists. When Hamas does it, it’s no mistake. They aim to kill Israeli civilians, as many as they can.</p>
<p>And the world along with the American leftists couldn’t muster any outrage when those Hamas rockets, day after day, were fired into Israel. When Israel said, “Enough,” the “humanitarians” awoke from their self-induced coma.</p>
<p>Golda Meir, the late Israeli Prime Minister, had it right when she said, “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” That’s a simple concept. But it’s one the Israeli bashers and the Jew bashers never quite understood — or wanted to</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-30T21:07:00ZIsrael in the United Nation's Crosshairs ... AgainBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Israel-in-the-United-Nations-Crosshairs-...-Again/149749206084472783.html2014-07-28T18:34:00Z2014-07-28T18:34:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>There are few certainties in life, but one that you can reliably count on is that the United Nations will condemn Israel every chance it gets.</p>
<p>Between 2006 when the UN’s so-called Human Right Council was established until 2013, the “humanitarians” on the council condemned Israel 45 times. In fact, it passed almost as many resolutions condemning Israel as it did for the rest of the world – combined.</p>
<p>And just the other day the Human Rights Council voted to set up a war crimes inquiry regarding the fighting in Gaza. Technically, the Council will look into crimes on both sides, but who are we kidding?</p>
<p>According to the BBC: “The UN’s top human rights official has condemned Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, saying that war crimes may have been committed.</p>
<p>“Navi Pillay told an emergency debate at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Israel’s military offensive had not done enough to protect civilians.</p>
<p>“She also condemned Hamas for ‘indiscriminate attacks’ on Israel.”</p>
<p>That last line notwithstanding, we know which side will come in for the UN’s condemnation.</p>
<p>Civilian casualties are a tragedy, whether they’re Palestinian or Israeli. But it’s Hamas that hides its weapons among its civilians. Twice in recent days the UN found rockets at UN schools. It’s Hamas that uses civilians as human shields. Fact is, while Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas is rooting for more Palestinian deaths, knowing that the world will turn on Israel – as much of it already has – when they see those pictures of dead Palestinian children, killed by stray Israeli rockets. Israel condemns its murderers. Hamas turns them into heroes and names public squares after them.</p>
<p>And if you watch enough stories about Gaza on TV, you’ll notice a thread weaving through the coverage, a thread about “disproportionate” deaths in the fighting.</p>
<p>Listen and you’ll hear the reporter saying that 500 (or whatever the number is today) Palestinian civilians have been killed, and then after a short pause, the reporter will give the number of Israeli deaths – zero at first, then a slightly higher number after that.</p>
<p>You know they’re aching to scream, “How unfair is that?” but instead they merely imply it. As if decency demands proportional deaths.</p>
<p>There’s an explanation for this journalistic angst. One of the fundamental tenets of liberalism is concern for the underdog. Another is unease with power. What doesn’t occur to these people is that sometimes the underdog is the bad guy. And power, in the right hands, is a plus. After all, the Israelis didn’t invade Gaza until they had had enough of Hamas’ rockets fired at Israeli civilians.</p>
<p>In a column on this website, Dennis Prager made an intelligent argument against Israel’s enemies, and the loss of their moral compass. Here are a few of the points he made:</p>
<p>Hamas openly admits that its reason for being is to annihilate Israel. It “sends missiles to explode in the most populated parts of [Israel] in order to kill as many civilians as possible.” Hamas uses families and individual civilians as human shields to protect its own leaders from attack. Hamas has tortured and killed domestic political opponents. And Israel has many human rights groups dedicated to the welfare of the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>So where is much of the world’s sympathy directed? Not at Israel. Perhaps the most vile observation on the fighting in Gaza came from Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogen, who told CNN International that what’s going on in Gaza is “genocide by Israel,” adding, “What Israel does to Palestine, to Gaza right now, has surpassed what Hitler did to them.” This from a supposed sophisticated leader of a civilized country.</p>
<p>As for the UN, what countries are represented on its Human Rights Council? Well there are sensitive souls from Algeria and China and Cuba and Russia and Saudi Arabia to name just a few of the countries that, as we all know, that are bright, shining beacons of human rights. Unless you offend the people in power.</p>
<p>Now that there’s a good chance the UN Human Rights Commission will find Israel guilty of war crimes, maybe it’s time to implement an old idea I’ve been floating for years: Kick the UN out of New York. Turn that iconic structure into a high-rise, high-end luxury apartment building. And tell the folks who run the UN to move their headquarters someplace else – like Somalia, or Syria or maybe even Gaza, where they can pass all the anti-Israeli resolutions they want.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-28T18:34:00ZWhy Are Nearly Half the Voters Still Slobbering Over Obama?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Are-Nearly-Half-the-Voters-Still-Slobbering-Over-Obama/197891670290543483.html2014-07-21T19:59:00Z2014-07-21T19:59:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I don’t get it. According to Rasmussen, 47 percent of likely voters approve of the job President Obama is doing.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s true that more disapprove – 52 percent. And the breakdown reveals that while only 24 percent “strongly approve” of the job the president is doing, 41 percent “strongly disapprove.”</p>
<p>But I’m fixated on the fact that nearly half the likely voters polled think Mr. Obama is doing just fine — or better.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that a certain percentage of Americans would continue to slobber over this president and say they approve of his job performance even if they had just seen a video of him in Red Square making a deal with Vladimir Putin to sell half the United States west of the Mississippi to Russia for $1.98.</p>
<p>But 47 percent?</p>
<p>They called Ronald Reagan the Teflon president but the title now belongs to Barack Obama. Nothing sticks to him. Not Fast and Furious, not the trouble associated with ObamaCare, not Benghazi, not the IRS scandal, not the deal for Bergdahl, I’m betting not the border crisis and not anything else, including his less than forceful response to Mr. Putin for Russia’s role in the Malaysian plane disaster.</p>
<p>Apparently not the anemic economic recovery, either. Last month, the U.S. registered a gain of 288,000 jobs. Sounds good, right? But here’s the rest of the story: That same month we lost 523,000 <em>full time</em> jobs and gained 799,000 <em>part time</em> jobs. There were only 12,000 new full time jobs created.</p>
<p>Americans know Mr. Obama is not doing well handling the economy — and they give him low marks when pollsters ask. But still, nearly half approve of his job performance. Huh?</p>
<p>A day after four Americans were killed in Benghazi, the president hopped on Air Force One for a fundraiser in Las Vegas. A week or so ago he went to Texas for more fundraisers but didn’t want to take time out to personally see what’s going on at the border. That would have been nothing more than a photo-op, he said. And hours after nearly 300 innocents were shot out of the sky, he went to New York for more fundraisers.</p>
<p>And 47 percent of Americans think he’s doing a good job?!</p>
<p>Either Rasmussen is suddenly a lousy pollster or half the American electorate don’t know enough to qualify even as low information voters.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-21T19:59:00ZWhat's Left of Obama After the MagicBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Whats-Left-of-Obama-After-the-Magic/418081176517505561.html2014-07-14T19:56:00Z2014-07-14T19:56:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I ran into a guy I know at the gym the other day, a card-carrying liberal from Berkeley. He was puzzled. "Why didn't Obama go down to the border?" he wanted to know. When a lefty from lib Mecca is wondering what the heck is going on, you know the president has a problem.</p>
<p>In fairness, the president almost went to the border, but he stopped several hundred miles away where he raised millions from fat cats to help the Democratic Party. Hey, we all have our priorities.</p>
<p>But his failure to visit the kids on the border was such a blatant screw up that it's almost as if he doesn't care what any of us think. He's not running for re-election. He knew that if Americans saw pictures of him with those poor children, they'd blame him for letting it happen (especially when he was warned about the surge in kids heading for the U.S. several years ago). When those pictures got out, he would have owned the crisis. That's not something he wanted.</p>
<p>So he did what the more contemptuous of our politicians do when they're in a mess of their own making. He blamed his critics.</p>
<p>Having tens of thousands of kids in what amounts to refugee camps in the United States of America provides him with an opportunity he never passes on: Blame the Republicans — in this case, for not passing immigration reform. You know what they say in the Obama White House: Never let a crisis go to waste.</p>
<p>But why should Republicans sign on to immigration reform when they don't trust this president. Republicans want the border protected as part of any deal and they have no confidence Mr. Obama has the same level of concern, no matter what he says. A cynic might actually think he wants as many immigrants from Mexico and Central America to come in to the United States, because almost all of them, someday, will vote for Democrats. I don't put anything past this president.</p>
<p>To give his side of it, Mr. Obama said he wasn't going to the border because a trip there would amount to nothing more than a photo-op. This from a man who while running for President of the United States delivered a campaign speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Â You think that might have been a photo-op? Â And remember when he strolled the devastation of super storm Sandy with New Jersey Governor Christie? That photo-op helped the president get re-elected.</p>
<p>And what should we make of  a man who supposedly disdains photo-ops but blasted President Bush for not visiting the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which almost certainly would have been portrayed by Mr. Bush's liberal critics in an out of the media as ... <em>a photo-op</em>? On February 7th, 2008, at Tulane University in New Orleans, candidate Barack Obama said this about President Bush, who flew over the city hit by Katrina instead of visiting the victims on the ground:</p>
<p>"When the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast extended their hand for help, help was not there. When people looked up from the rooftops, for too long they saw an empty sky. When the winds blew and the floodwaters came, we learned that for all of our wealth and our power, something wasn't right with America. We can talk about what happened for a few days in 2005, and we should. We can talk about levees that couldn't hold, about a FEMA that's seen as not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane."</p>
<p>He gets away with this kind of rank hypocrisy because his pals in the media let him get away with it. There's been naïve chatter lately by some media analysts that the press has finally turned on Mr. Obama, that they're finally getting tough on him.</p>
<p>Nonsense!</p>
<p>Like my pal from Berkeley, reporters may wonder out loud why this oh-so-smart president whom they have adored for years wouldn't visit the border. They care because they know it hurts him with the American people. But if they were really starting to behave like real journalists, more of them would plaster his remarks at Tulane on page one and put that sound bite on their evening news — to show how he says one thing and does the opposite, both in the interest of ... himself. Thank God for conservative media. Without them we might not know how two-faced Barack Obama can be.</p>
<p>Magic is a powerful force. And Barack Obama had it. Big time. But when the magic fades, the magician is left just standing there - his incompetence no longer hidden by the fog of lofty rhetoric and a million dollar smile. And all that's left is the pathetic image of a man who told us he would make America a newer, better, different place where old-fashioned politics had no place - looking like the old-fashioned politician that he is and always was.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-14T19:56:00ZWhy Liberals Like Soccer More than ConservativesBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Liberals-Like-Soccer-More-than-Conservatives/-813526690086743984.html2014-07-08T19:51:00Z2014-07-08T19:51:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I’ve always been a big sports fan, which explains why I have absolutely no interest in soccer. The fact is, I’d rather watch my accountant get his toenails clipped than take in a soccer game — and that includes the World Cup final, which I’m sure will be as <em>scintillating</em> as any other soccer game.</p>
<p>In soccer, they spend hours frantically trying to score. That’s not sport. That’s a young guy trying to convince his date that he likes her for her personality. If you could bottle soccer, you’d have a cure for insomnia.</p>
<p>But hey, if you like it, that’s fine with me.</p>
<p>And it’s not just because it’s so dull that I don’t like soccer. Another reason I don’t like it is because of a certain kind of American who does like it. Most of these sports fans — a term I use with no regard for either word, “sports” or “fans” — wouldn’t know a fumble from a first down, a hit-and-run from a double play. But every four years they show up at bars and go wild when the American team ties the Tunisians zero-zero, or nil-nil, as they call it.</p>
<p>I’m not much of a fan of Ann Coulter either (though she’s infinitely more interesting than soccer), but she’s right when she says that soccer is “excruciatingly boring” and that “the reason there are so many fights among spectators at soccer games is to compensate for the tedium.”</p>
<p>Which brings us to how, for many Americans — almost always liberal elite Americans — soccer isn’t really about soccer so much as it’s about proving the superiority of the young over the old, of liberals over conservatives.</p>
<p>Take Peter Beinart, a liberal journalist and professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. Mr. Beinart was with Fareed Zakaria on CNN the other day and had a lot to say about how soccer just might save America — from its narrow-minded, insular self.</p>
<p>Soccer fans in America, he said, show us that “we have a less nativist sports culture and we’re more open — at least some groups in the United States — young people, immigrants, political liberals — are more open to liking the same kinds of things that people in other countries do. Things don’t have to be ours and ours alone.”</p>
<p>Part of the attraction of soccer, Mr. Zakaria says, is that we’re sharing the sport with the rest of the world; we’re following something the rest of the world is following. Yes, Professor Beinart says, but it’s much more than that. Younger Americans, who like soccer more than older Americans, “are far less likely than older Americans to say that American culture is superior or to say that America is the greatest country in the world.”</p>
<p>In case you were wondering, this is a good thing to Mr. Beinart, and I suspect many other liberals. Because “it reflects a more cosmopolitan temperament, more of a recognition that America has things to learn from the rest of the world, and that in fact maybe we have to learn from the rest of the world if we’re going to remain a successful country.”</p>
<p>After taking that in, Mr. Zakaria observes that soccer fans in the United States look a lot like the Obama coalition. To which Beinart replied: “That’s exactly right, and if you look at the states where soccer is most popular, they’re overwhelmingly blue states and the states where soccer is least popular are red states.”</p>
<p>You see: Soccer is much more than a game that puts people like me to sleep. It’s a bunch of guys running up and down a “pitch” in short pants teaching us an important lesson — a lesson about how the tide is turning, about how the same people who embrace soccer embrace the idea that despite all the talk from those old right-wingers, America isn’t so special after all. Or as Peter Beinart explains it: “Younger people are far more likely than older people to say they like the United Nations. There’s a willingness to accept the idea that America is one of many nations. Yes, we have a special affinity for it. But it doesn’t mean in some objective sense [that] us, and everything we do are necessarily better.”</p>
<p>So there you have it. He grants us that as Americans we might have “a special affinity” for our homeland, but thanks to soccer we can learn a lot from the rest of the world. We can learn that we’re not as great as we think we are — or, more precisely, that we’re not as great as old, conservative, red-state Americans think we are.</p>
<p>Turns out that soccer is teaching me a lot more about elite, liberal intellectuals than it’ll ever teach me about the rest of the world. In fact, soccer has already taught me that smug, liberal elites are the single biggest reason I have no use for soccer, and that Ann Coulter isn’t crazy when she says, “Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-08T19:51:00ZThe Supreme Court and the Phony War on WomenBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Supreme-Court-and-the-Phony-War-on-Women/-997011206242159999.html2014-07-01T02:10:00Z2014-07-01T02:10:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Another shot in what liberals like to call the War on Women has just been fired. It came in the form of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that family-owned companies don’t have to pay for contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act if it violates the family’s religious beliefs.</p>
<p>As liberals see it, this is a clear-cut case of Republican misogyny toward women. And they don’t plan to let a decision they don’t like go to waste.</p>
<p>The case was brought by Hobby Lobby, a chain of crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which makes wood cabinets. Both companies are owned by Christian families that faced fines in the millions if they refused coverage.</p>
<p>The Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare requires employers to provide female workers with the kind of coverage that pays for a variety of birth control methods. The companies objected to some of the methods saying they amount to abortion, since they may prevent embryos from implanting in the womb. If they provided coverage for those types of contraception, the companies said, they would be complicit in something that violates their religious values.</p>
<p>The ruling was 5-4. All five Justices in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents while the four voting in the minority were appointed by Democrats.</p>
<p>So the battle lines are drawn: for conservatives the decision came down to upholding a federal law that protected Americans against undue intrusion by the government in matters of religion. For liberals, it was about what they see as women’s rights.</p>
<p>Democrats are already using the Court’s decision to rev up the party’s base in advance of the mid-term elections four months away. They knew they were going to have a voter turnout problem in November, given President Obama’s fading popularity. Now they’re hoping the Supreme Court, while handing down a ruling they don’t like, also handed them a gift.</p>
<p>Within minutes of the ruling, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who heads up the Democratic National Committee said, “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans have gained access to preventive services without out-of-pocket costs, including birth control. However, this decision takes money out of the pockets of women and their families and allows for-profit employers to deny access to certain health care benefits based on their personal beliefs. Nearly sixty percent of women who use birth control do so for more than just family planning.</p>
<p>“It is no surprise that Republicans have sided against women on this issue as they have consistently opposed a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” she added. “Republicans have also blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would bring us closer to the promise of equal pay for women. In the wake of this dangerous precedent set by the Supreme Court, Democrats in Congress will continue to fight on the issues of importance to women and their families.”</p>
<p>It matters, Democrats are saying, who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. It matters what party runs the Senate and gets to vote on those appointments. Too much is at stake for women, so don’t sit home in November, is the message.</p>
<p>The problem for Democrats is that while single women make up one of the fastest growing voter demographics in the United States, comprising about 25 percent of the electorate, young women are less likely to vote in midterm elections – just like everyone else.</p>
<p>As a piece in the National Journal pointed out: “A Supreme Court case doesn’t necessarily change that: Getting young female voters fired up about a decision is one thing; getting them to vote is another.”</p>
<p>Despite the noise surrounding the High Court’s decision, women, of course, can still use contraceptives. (See picture at the top of this column.) They can go out and buy them, using their own money. But that will not stop liberal politicians, rightfully worried about the midterms, from portraying the court’s decision as a declaration of war against women.</p>
<p>Liberals understandably were hoping for a different decision from the Supreme Court, one that put what they see as women’s rights over religious rights. The question now before a different court — the court of public opinion — is whether a decision they don’t like will turn out to be good news for them come November.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-07-01T02:10:00ZWhere Obama's Scandals go to DieBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Where-Obamas-Scandals-go-to-Die/-495858493293532687.html2014-06-26T18:00:00Z2014-06-26T18:00:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Of all the “phony scandals” that have plagued the Obama administration – (there’s not enough space on the worldwide web to list them all) – the worst, I think, is the one about the IRS targeting political opponents of the president. Why that one? How about … <em>because it’s the IRS</em>!</p>
<p>Every agency of the federal government has the ability to make our lives difficult. But the IRS, where American citizens are presumed guilty unless they can convince a G-8 level bureaucrat that they’re not, is especially scary.</p>
<p>Imagine if you were called in for an audit and you told the agent that you lost several years of records because your computer hard drive crashed and you then destroyed it. You think he’d buy that story?</p>
<p>But that’s what the IRS is telling us about Lois Lerner’s emails, two years worth that – <em>poof</em>! – just went bye-bye without a trace. No one with an IQ approaching room temperature could possibly believe that.</p>
<p>Richard Nixon, another president who knew something about scandals – (no one had the nerve to call his “phony”) – had his own version of the missing emails: an 18 ½ minute gap in the secret recordings he made in the Oval Office. No one believed the story about how Rose Mary Woods, his personal assistant, accidentally erased the tapes. Everyone knew there was something really, really, incriminating on those 18 ½ minutes, so the loyal Ms. Woods did what she felt she had to do.</p>
<p>Same with the disappearing emails, except for a few things. Nixon knew the noose was tightening because he lost the support of his own party. No less a figure than Barry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative, looked Nixon in the eye and told him it was time to go. Barack Obama has no Barry Goldwater. He has Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of other acolytes who gulped down the Kool-Aid then said, may I have more, please.</p>
<p>And back in the day, there was something called a free press that understood its role in a free country like ours. It was to keep an eye on government; to make sure it didn’t use its substantial power recklessly; to expose our highest officials if they were corrupt.</p>
<p>Barack Obama need not worry. The toadies in his party echo the “phony scandal” strategy and tell anyone who will listen that Republicans are simply playing partisan politics. According to them, the IRS never went after conservatives. The emails blew up because, well, stuff happens. But at some point common sense matters. That’s why most Americans don’t buy the IRS story.</p>
<p>A long time ago, the great sports writer Red Smith said that Willie Mays’ glove is where triples go to die. Today, it’s the Oval Office where scandals go to die – not because President Obama personally wrote memos telling his IRS lackeys to go after his opponents. Rather, it’s because he picked an Attorney General to run the Justice Department who conjures up memories of Nixon’s pal John Mitchell, another political hack who ran that president’s Justice Department. Eric Holder simply will not take a hard look at what went on at the IRS, because he and his boss (who said there wasn’t a “smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS) don’t want to know.</p>
<p>Then there’s that other loyal ally of the president — a compliant mainstream media that have happily abdicated their role in a democracy. They have too much invested in this president, and his historical significance, to start behaving like real journalists now.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-06-26T18:00:00ZHillary Clinton and Income InequalityBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hillary-Clinton-and-Income-Inequality/126174143284902523.html2014-06-16T20:43:00Z2014-06-16T20:43:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>It looks like we won’t be hearing much about income inequality from Hillary Clinton when she runs for president. And that’s too bad.</p>
<p>Sure, it would be fun to hear Hillary drone on and on the way liberal Democrats do about how unfair it is that the rich have so much and the poor don’t. Fun because this is a woman who reportedly hauls in $200,000 for a one-hour speech and who, along with her husband, is worth at least $100,000,000. If you got dizzy looking at all the zeroes, the number is one …hundred … million!</p>
<p>But the real reason it’s too bad we probably won’t get a serious debate between Mrs. Clinton and her Republican opponent on income inequality is because we desperately need it. And the inconvenient fact – a fact liberals don’t want to acknowledge – is we shouldn’t be targeting rich people for scorn; they’re not the problem. Poor people are.</p>
<p>Two scholars from the University of Arkansas –Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch – have looked into why there’s so much income inequality in America, and what they found, I suspect, won’t please liberals like Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Recently they wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that begins with this:</p>
<p>“Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something—ideology, tobacco money – other than science?</p>
<p>“Yet in the current discussion about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of singe-parent families during the past half century.”</p>
<p>Turns out that the old-fashioned two-parent family is an idea whose time has come and gone. In 1960, the scholars tell us, more than 76 percent of African-Americans and nearly 97 percent of whites were born to married couples.</p>
<p>Today, only about 30 percent of black children are born to married couples and 70 percent for whites.</p>
<p>And here’s why it matters: Kids who grow up in single parent families have a lot more problems than kids who don’t. They are more likely to be abused, more likely to have behavioral problems, more likely to have problems concentrating in school – more problems in general.</p>
<p>And we don’t need Milton Friedman to tell us that they’re not going to make as much money when they grow up. Based on research they’ve culled, Moranto and Crouch report that more than 20 percent of children in single-parent families live in poverty long-term, compared with 2 percent of those raised in two-parent families.</p>
<p>It would be nice if Hillary tries to pass along the same old crummy liberal analysis that we’ve heard over and over again – about how we need to hike taxes on the rich so we can help the poor and all that. It would be even nicer to hear a conservative respond, saying “Mrs. Clinton, that’s what’s wrong with liberals like you: you just don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time” – before telling a hard to swallow truth: The reason we have income inequality is because too many poor people are dysfunctional; too many young girls are having babies who grow up behind the proverbial 8 ball.</p>
<p>And where’s the so-called mainstream media in all of this? Shouldn’t they be telling us the truth about income inequality? Moranto and Crouch write that despite all the facts, despite all the scientific studies, “Mainstream news outlets tended to ignore the … message about family structure, focusing instead on variables with far less statistical impact, such as residential segregation.” Why? Because journalism is a business populated mainly by liberals who share the same values as liberals outside the media, especially liberals in politics — and journalists would rather walk barefoot on broken glass than side with social conservatives.</p>
<p>Then there’s the race factor. The Arkansas scholars write that, “family breakup has hit minorities communities the hardest. So even bringing up the issue risks being charged with racism.”</p>
<p>And who needs that?</p>
<p>The bad news is there’s no easy solution. The good news is change can happen. “The change must come from long-term societal transformation on the subject,” the op-ed concludes, “led by political, educational and entertainment elites, similar to the decades-long movements against racism, sexism – and smoking.”</p>
<p>I don’t think Hillary Clinton – elite as she may be — is up for that task. Taking on dysfunctional behavior is not something liberals like to do, unless, of course, it’s conservatives who are being targeted.</p>
<p>But if Hillary won’t try to make something out of income inequality, let her opponent bring it up. Let the Republican candidate show some guts by telling the truth about it. I get the impression that America is in the mood for a politician who isn’t afraid; one who isn’t constantly taking polls to find out what to say; one who talks about personal responsibility and makes no apologies for it. And if along the way that politician is called a racist, so what? I get the impression the American people are tired of that kind of nonsense too.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-06-16T20:43:00ZWhen Smart People Say and Do Stupid ThingsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-Smart-People-Say-and-Do-Stupid-Things/-488245031123674804.html2014-06-06T00:45:00Z2014-06-06T00:45:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I'm never surprised when stupid people say stupid things. But when smart people say stupid things, I want to know more.</p>
<p>Which brings us to Susan Rice, the president's national security advisor who, based on traditional standards, is a very smart individual. She was a high school valedictorian, a Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford, and a Rhodes scholar.</p>
<p>Not bad, right? So how can someone that bright say such dumb things. Speaking on ABC's Sunday news show "This Week," Ms. Rice said that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who, according to his fellow soldiers may have been a deserter - or worse, "served the United States with honor and distinction."</p>
<p>This is the same Susan Rice who went on Sunday news programs and misled the nation about the slaughter of four Americans in Benghazi, saying it was instigated by an anti-Muslim video.</p>
<p>Smart people learn from their mistakes. Not Susan Rice.</p>
<p>I suspect Ms. Rice checks her intelligence at the door and just says whatever Mr. Obama's people want her to say. She may see this as loyalty to the president — and maybe it is. But she comes off as a dolt.</p>
<p>The president supposedly is pretty smart too, Columbia and Harvard Law would indicate a certain level of smarts. But how could a smart person so mishandle the announcement of Sgt. Bergdahl's release from Taliban captivity?</p>
<p>As we all know, the president brought the soldier's parents to the Rose Garden to make the big announcement — on live TV. There was no mention of Bergdahl's questionable conduct in Afghanistan. How could he say anything about that with the soldiers parents standing next to him?</p>
<p>Perhaps President Obama calculated that when the news got out, his allies in the so-called mainstream media would fall into line and attack conservatives for having the bad manners to question the president's judgment. After all, even if we stipulate that it's the president's duty to bring any American soldier home who's been held in captivity, it's perfectly reasonable to ask if this was a deal he should have made, since it had already been rejected by his top aides several years ago.</p>
<p>Was trading five top Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo ... for a soldier who, according to more than a few of the men who knew him, was a deserter, a smart move? The president said Bergdahl's health was deteriorating and it was now or never. That may or may not turn out to be true.</p>
<p>I get the impression that Mr. Obama thought we'd all swoon over his success in bringing an American soldier home after five years of captivity. A narcissist might think that way. Perhaps he figured if Republicans jumped on him, his loyalists would simply  say they were engaging in detestable partisan politics and the American people would take the president's side. Except no one but the most sycophantic so-called progressive supporters of this president is happy with what has transpired.</p>
<p>How could a smart man have engineered such a public relations disaster?</p>
<p>Maybe Sgt. Bergdahl is not a deserter. Maybe he didn't collaborate with the enemy. Maybe so many of his fellow soldiers got it all wrong. Time will sort out the facts. Still, a smarter president, one not so enamored with himself, would <em>not</em> have held a high-profile ceremony outside the White House. A smarter president would have found a more modest way to tell the nation he was bringing an American soldier home; he would have explained that it was a very difficult decision because of the high price America had to pay. He would have told us that he was not happy about releasing the worst of the worst from Guantanamo. He would have said his decision was made all the more difficult because of reports about Sgt. Bergdahl's behavior in Afghanistan. But in the end, a somber Mr. Obama might have said, "I wanted to get this American out. I hope you understand."</p>
<p>And I think most Americans would have understood.</p>
<p>Instead, as some have said, the president went into the Rose Garden and "spiked the football." He never saw the storm coming. Or perhaps he did - and simply didn't care.</p>
<p>As for Susan Rice, she needs to stay home on Sunday mornings.</p>
<p><span>- See more at: http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/smart-people-say-stupid-things/#sthash.sl74gh66.dpuf</span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-06-06T00:45:00ZDemocrats Care, Republicans Hate YouBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Democrats-Care-Republicans-Hate-You/886513277048171803.html2014-06-01T19:35:00Z2014-06-01T19:35:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Good day, class. Today we’re going to discuss the midterm elections, which are only five months away. Today’s class will be short. The lesson is simple.</p>
<p>This is all you need to know: President Obama and his merry band of Democrats care about you. Republicans don’t. In fact, Republicans hate you. That’s the president’s story and he’s sticking to it.</p>
<p>I can now dismiss class because you now know everything you need to know. But I’ll take just a few more minutes of your time to fill in a few blanks — because if I don’t you’ll just go back to the dorm and smoke something illegal.</p>
<p>Every chance he gets Barack Obama tells voters that he and his Democratic entourage are for raising the minimum wage. He knows most Americans also favor raising the minimum wage. He tells voters Republicans don’t want to raise the minimum wage, which they don’t. This is a potential plus for the Democrats for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>What the president doesn’t tell the American voter is that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has predicted that raising the minimum wage would cost the economy about a half a million jobs. Yes, higher pay would help those who get it. But it will hurt those who don’t get hired in the first place – or those who get fired because the small business owner can’t afford his new costs.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama also tells the voters that he and other Democrats are for equal pay for equal work. Hey, who isn’t? Republicans, he also tells them, are against new legislation that would enshrine the concept into law.</p>
<p>Again, he leaves something out. First, there are laws already on the books that prohibit pay discrimination based on gender. Second, the law would be a jobs act for trial lawyers who would bring tons of lawsuits alleging discrimination when in fact other factors almost certainly would have contributed to the unequal pay. (As I’ve written about a million times: If women really did get paid less for doing the same work, what company would hire men at all?)</p>
<p>Since many Americans fit into the low-information classification of voters – a nice way of saying they don’t know what’s going on about anything that doesn’t have the name Kardashian attached to it – the president’s strategy may work. We’re hard-wired to like people who care. We don’t like people who don’t care.</p>
<p>Besides, the Republicans lack something crucial in the United States of Entertainment: A charismatic, dramatic spokesman to make their case. A dozen different people putting forth conservative arguments can’t compete with one attractive president who comes alive on the campaign trail.</p>
<p>And we know what Republicans are against, but what are they for? Well, they’re for getting to the bottom of the Benghazi mess. That’s a good thing, except for one factor: The American people don’t care all that much about Benghazi.</p>
<p>The IRS scandal is another big deal. You’d think everyone would want to get to the bottom of that one. But, it hasn’t quite turned out that way.</p>
<p>Fast and Furious? Walk down the street and ask some stranger what he or she thinks about it. You’ll get a blank look.</p>
<p>And the president is getting us out of Afghanistan — a war the American people got tired of a long, long time ago.</p>
<p>The GOP may have better ideas on most big issues, but too many Americans just aren’t smart enough to care.</p>
<p>They do care about the Affordable Care Act, because that one hits home. And that could still help Republicans. But the Democratic strategy that says, “Let’s fix it and make it better,” – while unrealistic given the immense complexity of the law – also has appeal to low information voters.</p>
<p>The unknown for Democrats is whether they can get the vote out. If they can, they will avoid a GOP tsunami in November. Mr. Obama has shown that he can not only rev up the base, but also get independents to turn out – but that’s when he is running. But in the fall of 2014, Barack Obama isn’t running for anything. So there’s a good chance Democrats may sit this one out — especially a key contingent of the Democratic base, union workers who aren’t happy with the president’s failure to green-light the XL pipeline, a decision which has cost them good-paying jobs. They’re not happy, either, with the likelihood that their insurance premiums will be going up thanks to the higher costs of ObamaCare (to keep 26 year olds on their parents policies, for example) and the pending tax on gold-plated plans that many union workers enjoy.</p>
<p>No chance Republicans will stay home. If you don’t count drones, there’s nothing they like about this president’s policies.</p>
<p>So that’s what it comes down to, class. Can the president – who campaigns very well but governs very badly – convince enough Americans that he and his fellow Democrats care and Republicans don’t?</p>
<p>I’m sure you all knew that that was the crucial question. But in critical times it’s important to state the obvious. Now go out and enjoy your summer.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-06-01T19:35:00ZA Community Organizer in Way Over His HeadBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Community-Organizer-in-Way-Over-His-Head/-167062419228433225.html2014-05-22T18:48:00Z2014-05-22T18:48:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Let’s see if I have this right: President Obama is constantly in the cross-hairs of hyper-partisan, cheap-shot Republicans who turn everything they can get their hands on into a “scandal” – which are really “phony scandals” as far as President Obama and his acolytes are concerned.</p>
<p>But rest assured the president was mad as hell about all of those scandals, right up until the moment he realized they were only “phony scandals” concocted by the GOP.</p>
<p>On May 13, 2013, the president was outraged to learn that the IRS may have targeted conservatives. Outraged! “I’ve got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it, and we’ll make sure that we find out exactly what happened.”</p>
<p>Two days later, he said, “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it.”</p>
<p>Then it became a “phony scandal” and, oops, he wasn’t all that angry anymore and so he lost all interest in finding out exactly what happened.</p>
<p>Then on October 21, 2013, when the president learned about the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, he was downright furious. “Nobody’s madder than me about the fact that the website isn’t working,” he said. Good to know, Mr. President.</p>
<p>Back in 2011, on October 18, when news about Fast and Furious reached the Oval Office, the president said, “It’s very upsetting to me that somebody showed such bad judgment, that they would allow something like that to happen.” The “something” he was talking about was the discovery that guns supplied by the U.S. government wound up in the hands of Mexican drug thugs and one of those guns was used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent.</p>
<p>I’m sure he was also furious that our ambassador and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi. I know this because the president vowed to get those responsible for the deaths.</p>
<p>Despite his anger, he hasn’t brought anyone to justice. Maybe that’s because Benghazi became one of those “phony scandals,” at least according to the president’s Baghdad Bob, Jay Carney.</p>
<p>Now Mr. Obama is mad yet again — this time about the scandal at the Veterans Administration, which he claims to have learned about from a story on CNN. Actually, he’s not just mad. He is, according to his chief of staff, “madder than hell.”</p>
<p>“If these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable,” he said. “If there is misconduct, it will be punished.”</p>
<p>Whatever you say, Mr. President.</p>
<p>But this time, things may be different. He can’t call this one a “phony scandal” – not when wounded warriors are involved. And he can’t count on support from his fellow Democrats or his pals in the media.</p>
<p>Reporters covered the IRS mess the way the president wanted it covered. Barely. And they downplayed Benghazi and Fast and Furious, too. As for his fellow Democrats, they have repeatedly said Republicans were on a witch-hunting spree, just trying to make the president look bad.</p>
<p>But now we’re talking about Americans who put their lives on the line for their country – vets who can’t get in to see a doctor at more than a few VA hospitals around the country; and some 40 vets actually died in Phoenix alone while waiting for an appointment.</p>
<p>Most Democrats won’t take a bullet for the president on this one. Supporting a politician over wounded and otherwise ill veterans is not a winning strategy. (But Nancy Pelosi has already been out there blaming President Bush for getting us into two wars, which produced lots of wounded vets and overloaded the system.)</p>
<p>And reporters know that they can’t put lipstick on this pig – not without losing what (very) little trust the American people still have for them.</p>
<p>Here’s one example of how tough some reporters have been in covering the VA scandal, albeit it’s an example involving Jake Tapper of CNN, a journalist who is no pushover. He recently grilled White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the president’s role in the VA scandal.</p>
<p>“How many stories like this, how many letters like this, how many dead veterans do you need before somebody asks the question within the White House, maybe this guy [VA chief Eric Shinseki] isn’t the best steward of these veterans?” Tapper asked.</p>
<p>“The question, Jake, is, are we doing everything we can every day to get the veterans the care and the opportunities that they deserve?” McDonough answered.</p>
<p>“But you are not,” Tapper shot back. “This letter [from House Veteran Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, a Republican from Florida alerting the president of a problem] was sent a year ago. And you guys ignored it.”</p>
<p>With no cover from the press, or even from most Democrats, Mr. Obama may really be in trouble this time. If things get bad enough, he’ll throw Shinseki over the side. And that may be enough for low-information voters too dense to understand what’s really going on. Stay tuned.</p>
<p>But whether he gets away with this one like he’s (so far) gotten away with all the other scandals, there is an underlying truth about this president that is inescapable. Peter Wehner put it elegantly the other day in Commentary magazine: “We’ve learned the hard way that Mr. Obama’s skill sets are far more oriented toward community organizing than they are to governing. On every front, he is overmatched by events. It’s painful to watch a man who is so obviously in over his head. And more and more Americans are suffering because of it.”</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-05-22T18:48:00ZBulletin: Most Journalists Are Not Liberal Democrats - Just Ask ThemBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bulletin:-Most-Journalists-Are-Not-Liberal-Democrats---Just-Ask-Them/425483741980402344.html2014-05-13T00:00:00Z2014-05-13T00:00:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Get this: Despite what you thought, most American journalists aren’t liberal Democrats. I know this because that’s what the journalists told two pollsters from the University of Indiana. Turns out that most journalists are independents. And journalists wouldn’t lie, right?</p>
<p>First let me state the obvious: the poll is ridiculous.</p>
<p>It found that in 2013 only 28 percent of journalists said they were Democrats while slightly over 50 percent identified themselves as independents.</p>
<p>Years ago, I predicted this would happen. Journalists know better than to tell the truth and tell the pollsters who they really are. They know that if 85 percent or so said they were Democrats, Americans would say, “See, I knew it. That’s why they’re so biased and so enamored with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”</p>
<p>So instead they say “We’re not partisans, we’re open minded, fair independents.” Sure. If these same reporters were injected with truth serum I’ll bet about 90 percent of them – maybe more — would acknowledge they voted for Barack Obama – twice. After all, these are the same people who slobbered over candidate Obama when he first ran for president. Now we’re supposed to believe that only about one in four votes (or at last self identifies as) Democrat?</p>
<p>It’s worth recalling what Mark Halperin, then of Time magazine said about the media’s coverage of the 2012 presidential race: “The media is very susceptible to doing what the Obama campaign wants …” And that’s from a mainstream journalist.</p>
<p>The poll also notes that back in 1971 more reporters than now said they were Democrats – 35.5 percent. Back then nearly 26 percent identified as Republicans. In 2013 that number was way down to seven percent. In 2002, 36 percent identified as Democrats and 18 percent as Republicans.</p>
<p>In the Washington Post, political columnist Chris Cillizza writes that, “What seems to be happening — at least in the last decade – -is that journalists are leaving both parties, finding themselves more comfortable as unaffiliateds.” He also writes, “The movement toward independent status among reporters is in keeping with a similar move in the broader electorate as they find the two parties increasingly rigid and, therefore, less welcoming.”</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Most journalists – certainly those at America’s most important news organizations — aren’t independents. Everybody knows that. They’re liberal. They vote Democratic. They have not engaged in a change of heart, just a change in public relations tactics.</p>
<p>This poll is worthless. It tells us nothing about how journalists really think. Unlike Chris Matthews, most had more sense to admit what Matthews admitted on television: that they also get a thrill running up their leg when Mr. Obama speaks.</p>
<p>This is why Big Journalism needs to embrace my Big Idea: affirmative action for the smallest minority in the American newsroom – conservative journalists.</p>
<p>Under my plan conservative journalists would be told to check their opinions at the door. Liberals would be told the same. But the affirmative action journalists would bring another perspective to the newsroom – and that would affect how all sorts of stories from race and gender to taxes and foreign policy are covered.</p>
<p>I know: I won’t hold my breath.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-05-13T00:00:00ZRutgers ... and More Evidence of Liberal IntoleranceBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Rutgers-...-and-More-Evidence-of-Liberal-Intolerance/-496149594141624457.html2014-05-07T02:02:00Z2014-05-07T02:02:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Condoleezza Rice was supposed to be the guest speaker this month at the Rutgers University graduation ceremonies in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She won’t be there. Eighty- eight days after she accepted the invitation, she said thanks but no thanks.</p>
<p>When it was announced that she had been chosen to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree, left-wing members of the faculty passed resolutions calling for her to be “disinvited.” About 100 students protested outside the office of the university president, some with signs calling her a “war criminal” because of her role in the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding.</p>
<p>Ms. Rice, the former secretary of state, had had enough.</p>
<p>“Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families,” she noted. “Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”</p>
<p>“I am honored to have served my country. I have defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas. These values are essential to the health of our democracy. But that is not what is at issue here,” she said. “As a professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as (its) former provost and chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.”</p>
<p>Who could blame her?</p>
<p>There’s something especially pathetic when liberal intolerance shows up, of all places, on a college campus. Students who would gladly welcome Hillary Clinton, who as a U.S. senator voted to go to war in Iraq, could not tolerate Ms. Rice. It’s also a safe bet that liberals would have been overjoyed if Barack Obama were invited to speak at their graduation, despite the fact that he – a Nobel Peace Prize winner — has killed more human beings with drones (many, but not all, who deserved it) than anyone in the history of the planet.</p>
<p>The president of Rutgers, Robert Barchi, never wavered in his support of the selection of Ms. Rice, saying it was important for the university to stand up for free speech and academic freedom.</p>
<p>“Whatever your personal feelings or political views about our commencement speaker,” he wrote to the university community in March, “there can be no doubt that Condoleezza Rice is one of the most influential intellectual and political figures of the last 50 years.”</p>
<p>A Muslim terrorist, or some domestic intellectual known for trashing America, would get more respect from the Rutgers faculty and its left wing students than they showed Ms. Rice.</p>
<p>So, for anyone who has followed the illiberal tactics of some liberals on America’s college campuses, the Condi Rice incident isn’t much of a shock. Shouting down speakers with whom they disagree, dis-inviting conservatives, even throwing pies at guest speakers they don’t like, is nothing new. Still, it is troubling that so few supposedly open-minded liberals – on a campus of about 31,000 undergraduates — can make so much noise and manage to get their way.</p>
<p>While President Barchi was on the right side of this travesty, I wish he had gone further. I wish he had told his left wing faculty that their displeasure with Ms. Rice was noted but that we’re all displeased about something or other at some point. “Get over it,” he might have said. And he should have told his students, if any of them disrupted Ms. Rice’s remarks in any way, they would be hauled off and arrested – right there in front of Mommy and Daddy. And if he could legally get away with it, he should also have informed them they would not be getting their degree anytime soon.</p>
<p>In the end, Condi Rice did the right thing. Who needs the hassle? Rutgers, a university that opened its doors in 1766, 10 years before there was a United States of America, has let a relatively few liberals embarrass the entire school. As I say, normally I wouldn’t think this is noteworthy, given how common stuff like this is on college campuses. But Rutgers is my alma mater. I should be proud of my school, a university that has educated young people for nearly 250 years. Today, I’m anything but.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-05-07T02:02:00ZThe Hard Right's Admiration for a Very Stupid ManBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Hard-Rights-Admiration-for-a-Very-Stupid-Man/107511297284431995.html2014-04-24T19:06:00Z2014-04-24T19:06:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Ideologically pure conservatives apparently are so desperate for heroes, so fed up with what they call the overreach of the federal government, that they have turned Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy into an American folk hero – a modern day no-nonsense cowboy who takes no guff; a 2014 version of John Wayne.</p>
<p>Bundy, for those of you who don’t watch Fox News, refuses to pay grazing fees to the federal government because he believes it’s not the federal government’s land. Never mind that it is. Facts don’t mean much to Cliven Bundy.</p>
<p>I mention Fox News because many on the network haven’t covered the Bundy story so much as they have been cheerleaders for Bundy. Interviews aren’t journalistic interrogations; they’re valentines wrapped up in butterfly kisses.</p>
<p>After a confrontation with Bureau of Land Management agents – the agents at one point used a Taser on one of Bundy’s sons – supporters of Bundy showed up from all over the place — more than a few with guns. At least one that I saw on Fox had a semi-automatic weapon. Some also wore bulletproof vests.</p>
<p>The hard right loved it.</p>
<p>But here’s a question for all the true-blue right-wingers whose paranoia over federal “overreach” has consumed them:</p>
<p>What if the lefties from Occupy Wall Street held a rally … and the police moved in to arrest them for some violation … and supporters of the left-wingers showed up with guns and bulletproof vests? How would true-blue conservatives feel about that?</p>
<p>We know how they would feel. They’d start by calling them commies. Then they’d say the police should arrest all of them. They’d say the law is the law and since they broke the law they should all be tossed in jail.</p>
<p>But Bundy also broke the law. Several federal courts have ruled that he owes the government money. Apparently the right-wing law and order crowd only cares about law and order when liberals are breaking the rules.</p>
<p>There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether the federal government should control so much land in the West. And it’s understandable that westerners – especially ranchers who live off the land – would be especially concerned. But Bundy isn’t the final word about what’s right and wrong. And neither are his gun-toting supporters.</p>
<p>And here’s something else for the rancher’s loyal fans to consider. The New York Times has just run a story about the saga of Cliven Bundy and about how he regularly holds court with reporters. He clearly loves the attention he’s getting.</p>
<p>Here’s some of what he recently told reporters about a drive past a public housing project in North Las Vegas:</p>
<p>“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro … and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do</p>
<p>“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”</p>
<p>So, my all ideologically pure, hard right, friends, <em>that</em> is your hero — a man who in 2014 wonders if “Negroes” would be better off as slaves.</p>
<p>No amount of frustration with so-called RINO’s – moderate Republicans – can justify such admiration for such a stupid man.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-04-24T19:06:00ZPresident Obama and Stoking ResentmentsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/President-Obama-and-Stoking-Resentments/953935894325957819.html2014-04-15T19:29:00Z2014-04-15T19:29:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>If there’s one thing Barack Obama and his political pals know how to do, it’s how to stoke resentment.</p>
<p>This was a man who told us “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, There is a United States of America.”</p>
<p>This was a man who spoke eloquently of a new day in America. “The time has come,” he said, “to move beyond the bitterness and anger and pettiness that’s consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that’s been all about division. And instead make it about addition; to build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.”</p>
<p>It’s possible, I guess, that Barack Obama meant every word. But I suspect he meant that we could all achieve this wonderful, post-partisan, can’t-we-all-just-get-along America if – <em>but only if</em> – Republicans saw things the way he does; <em>only if</em> conservatives jumped on his liberal bandwagon and helped him “fundamentally transform the United States of America” — the way he thought it should be transformed.</p>
<p>I guess one more thing is possible: that he is so enamored with himself that he has no idea why he has become one of the most polarizing political figures in American history.</p>
<p>Here are a few reasons …</p>
<p>With the midterm elections approaching, Mr. Obama has been trying to energize his base with some old, often reliable standbys. There’s the supposed Republican war on women, for one. Republicans, we’re told, are against a higher minimum wage and against equal pay for equal work legislation – because, well because, they’re pro-business anti-women.</p>
<p>Never mind that hiking the minimum wage would cost the economy hundreds of thousands of jobs – that according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.</p>
<p>As for the Paycheck Fairness Act, the GOP put out a statement saying it’s already illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, adding that, “This law will not create ‘equal’ pay, but it will make it nearly impossible for employers to tie compensation to work quality, productivity and experience, reduce flexibility in the workplace, and make it far easier to file frivolous lawsuits that line the pockets of trial lawyers.”</p>
<p>And this is what Ruth Marcus, the columnist at the Washington Post wrote about the Democrats’ war on women strategy:</p>
<p>“The level of hyperbole — actually, of demagoguery — that Democrats have engaged in here is revolting. It’s entirely understandable, of course: The Senate is up for grabs. Women account for a majority of voters. They tend to favor Democrats. To the extent that women — and in particular, single women — can be motivated to turn out in a midterm election, waving the bloody shirt of unequal pay is smart politics. Fairness is another matter.”</p>
<p>Ms. Marcus, by the way, is no conservative. When liberals start saying such things, you know Mr. Obama and his party will do just about anything to take the voters’ minds off of other things, like the weak economy and ObamaCare.</p>
<p>And how’s this for trying to unify the country? Mr. Obama once urged Hispanics to “punish their enemies” — not their political opponents; not the other side; their <em>enemies</em>. He said, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.” He said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” And he’s been doing everything but putting mug shots up of those <em>heartless</em> rich Americans who supposedly would rather watch people starve in the street than part with any of their money.</p>
<p>And if it isn’t class or gender warfare, then race is always good to get the base riled up before an election.</p>
<p>Just the other day, his close friend, the Attorney General, Eric Holder stoked more resentment, suggesting that he and the president are treated badly – not because of their politics – but because they’re black. Speaking to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Holder said this:</p>
<p>“Forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee — has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president<strong> </strong>has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”</p>
<p>Holder was referring to a combative exchange with a conservative Republican congressman from Texas, Louis Gohmert, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Gohmert was complaining that his request for certain documents hadn’t been satisfied, suggesting that Holder was playing politics.</p>
<p>Did it occur to Mr. Holder that his intransigence might be the reason he was treated harshly? Did he consider the possibility that the reason Mr. Obama has so many detractors might be his politics – not the color of his skin?</p>
<p>Mr. Obama also spoke to Sharpton’s group, telling them that Republicans want to take their civil rights away. “The stark, simple truth is this,” the president said: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago.” Why? Because those <em>racist</em> Republicans want voter ID laws.</p>
<p>So should we be surprised when even the great Hank Aaron, who broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record 40 years ago, compares Republicans to the Ku Klux Klan?</p>
<p>“Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated,” Aaron told USA Today. “We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.”</p>
<p>Yes, black Americans and white Americans have very different histories that have led to some very different perceptions. A legacy of slavery and segregation does things to the psyche. But Eric Holder playing the race card –<em>to an Al Sharpton crowd, no less</em> — and the president joining in a day later … none of that helps convince African-Americans, or anybody else, that “there is not a black America and a white America” but only “a United States of America.”</p>
<p>He told us he wanted “to end the political strategy that’s been all about division” — that instead he wanted to “make it about addition” and “build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.” As we approach the midterm elections of 2014, that Barack Obama is gone. And I suspect he never really existed.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-04-15T19:29:00ZHope and Change. Really?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Hope-and-Change.-Really/156045398681377201.html2014-04-09T19:34:00Z2014-04-09T19:34:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Let’s start with the premise that all politicians, to one degree or another, are cynical, hypocritical and are not always honest. But Barack Obama makes even the worst of that crowd look like the virtuous Mother Teresa.</p>
<p>When he was running for re-election he did nothing to stop a friendly super PAC from running an ad that suggested that Mitt Romney was responsible for the cancer death of a woman whose husband worked at a steel plant that Romney’s company had shut down.</p>
<p>When the facts came out it was clear that Romney was about as responsible for the woman’s death as the man in the moon was. Still, Barack Obama, the man who promised hope and change, the one who was going to be different and better than the mere pols who came before him, looked the other way.</p>
<p>To pass ObamaCare he misled the American people over and over again, assuring them that if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor, that if they liked their insurance plan they could keep their insurance plan.</p>
<p>This year he pushed for a higher minimum wage even though a non-partisan Congressional Budget Office study concluded it could cost the economy 500,000 jobs. And he emphasized how a higher minimum wage would especially help women – the key demographic Democrats need to win elections, like the ones coming up in seven months.</p>
<p>Now he’s at it again, this time signing two executive orders supposedly designed to close the pay gap between men and women.</p>
<p>“Equal pay is not just an economic issue for millions of Americans and families,” the president said. “It’s also about whether we’re willing to build an economy that works for everybody, and whether we’re going to do our part to make sure our daughters have the same chances to pursue their dreams as our sons,” he said.</p>
<p>How much of this has to do with the midterm elections? Everything.</p>
<p>Since I’ve written about the myth of the pay gap before, I’ll be brief. Men, on average, make more than women because men tend to work longer hours; men tend not to take time off to raise children or care for elderly parents; men, more than women, work in dangerous jobs – in coal mines and oil rigs — that pay premium wages. In 2012, men were victims in 92 percent of all workplace deaths. Higher risk. Higher pay.</p>
<p>So yes, men earn more than women but there are legitimate reasons. If women really did earn less for doing the same work, wouldn’t every employer in the country hire only women? Imagine how much employers would save doing that if women make only 77 cent for every dollar a man earns – or whatever the latest phony number happens to be.</p>
<p>(A quick side note: Turns out that women who work at the White House earn 88 cents on the dollar compared to male staffers. The president didn’t bother mentioning that in his remarks at the White House signing ceremony.)</p>
<p>So what is it with this president who was going to change the nasty tone of politics as usual? There aren’t too many possibilities. Either he’s a liar – (a word I try very hard not to use when talking about any U.S. president) — who will turn Americans against each other simply for political gain, simply to get women mad enough about how they’re supposedly treated in the workplace so they’ll vote for Democrats in November – and take their <em>pretty little minds</em> off of ObamaCare … or he is monumentally incompetent and really thinks that <em>greedy, bottom-line, corporate thugs </em>are paying men more just to keep the gals in their place.</p>
<p>Take your pick. But I’m going with the liar part, which is one reason he ranks as the most polarizing American president ever.</p>
<p>And that, my friends, is what Barack Obama’s version of hope and change looks like.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-04-09T19:34:00ZLiberals Who Have Forgotten How to be LiberalBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Liberals-Who-Have-Forgotten-How-to-be-Liberal/-69107615368641998.html2014-04-06T23:33:00Z2014-04-06T23:33:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Let’s get something straight: Liberals are the smart ones. The tolerant ones. The open-minded ones. I know this because liberals are constantly telling me (and everyone else) how smart and tolerant and open-minded they are.</p>
<p>Except when they’re not.</p>
<p>The other day Brendan Eich, the CEO of the tech company Mozilla, that created the web browser FIrefox, was forced out of his job and out of the whole company by an employee revolt. His crime? In 2008 he contributed $1,000 to a California ballot initiative, Proposition 8, which opposed same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>I have the feeling that if Mozilla had the power to send Eich to a re-education camp, the liberal ayatollahs at the company would have done just that. Lacking that kind of power, forcing him to resign and give up the job he had held for just 11 days would have to suffice.</p>
<p>For the record, no one is suggesting that Brendan Eich treated gay employees differently than anyone else at Mozilla. No one is suggesting he called them names or discriminated against them in any way at all. In fact, in his 15 years at Mozilla there’s no evidence that he ever brought up his personal views about gay marriage.</p>
<p>None of that mattered. Brendan Eich had offended sensibilities at Mozilla, a supposedly progressive company in Silicon Valley. He also offended management at the popular dating website OKCupid, which has both straight and gay clients. OKCupid called on its customers to boycott Firefox — urging them to not use it when going online to OKCupid.</p>
<p>Being opposed to same-sex marriage in the liberal bubble apparently is proof enough of bigotry. Simple as that.</p>
<p>Of course, that would make Barack Obama a homophobe, too, since in 2008 he also was against gay marriage. Call me crazy but I’m betting that 99.9 percent of the lefties who work at Mozilla voted for Mr. Obama, despite his “hateful” views on gays.</p>
<p>After they forced Mr. Eich out of his job, Mozilla issued a statement:</p>
<p>“Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard,” it said, “and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves. We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”</p>
<p>So the employees of Mozilla are “hurt and angry” – and this is because they hold different views from their boss? Does everyone in the company have to hold liberal views on gay marriage? How about national defense? Taxes? Abortion? I thought liberals were the ones who worship at the altar of diversity. Apparently diversity of opinion doesn’t count. “Unacceptable” views at Mozilla must be punished. On the important issues, like gay marriage, employees must march in lock step. This is what liberal intolerance looks like.</p>
<p>But it isn’t only those “hateful” right-wingers who find this whole episode so appalling. Even an icon in gay America — the intellectual father of gay marriage –said the whole episode turns his stomach.</p>
<p>In 1989 Andrew Sullivan, the smart, well-respected, openly gay journalist, wrote the first story advocating gay marriage. If he’s unhappy, the liberals at Mozilla should listen. In a blog post entitled “The Hounding of a Heretic,” Sullivan wrote:</p>
<p>“The guy who had the gall to to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists.</p>
<p>“Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me — as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society.</p>
<p>“If this is the gay rights movement today — hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else — then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.”</p>
<p>And Tammy Bruce, a conservative radio talk show host who is also openly gay, blasted what she called the “gay gestapo” for transforming Mozilla into a “bastion of intolerance and punishment.”</p>
<p>Reasonable people may disagree on gay marriage. I happen to be for it. And no, I do not believe that anyone who opposes gay marriage automatically is a bigot. I do think opponents are on the wrong side of history. But let them make their case. That’s how it’s supposed to work in a free country like ours.</p>
<p>Liberals, of all people, ought to know that, because liberalism supposedly is about keeping an open mind, being tolerant of views you don’t agree with, and letting the other guy have his say without making him fear some kind of punishment – simply for expressing an opinion. But too many liberals today don’t know any of that. Too many have sold out their liberal values. They’ve opted instead for rigid left wing ideology. They are the liberals who have forgotten how to be liberal.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-04-06T23:33:00ZYou Know the Difference Between Genius and Stupidity?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/You-Know-the-Difference-Between-Genius-and-Stupidity/347046719804953674.html2014-03-26T18:06:00Z2014-03-26T18:06:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Sometimes I wonder why pollsters ask the American people about anything. What’s the point? I mean, would Gallup ask someone from Uzbekistan if he thinks Mickey Mantle was a better centerfielder than Willie Mays? Would the NBC/Wall Street Journal polling outfit ask the average man on the street in Kabul if he prefers Canali or Hugo Boss? So why would a pollster ask Americans about almost anything not having to do with Dancing with the Stars?</p>
<p>If you think I’m channeling H.L. Mencken, who believed you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, give yourself a gold star.</p>
<p>Still, we poll Americans on just about everything — even though a lot of folks don’t know much about anything.</p>
<p>Take several recent Rasmussen polls. In one, only 29 percent of likely voters said incumbent members of the House and Senate should be re-elected. That sounds smart, given that we now have more respect for bank robbers than politicians. Except come November, just about everybody in Congress will be re-elected – <em>by these same people who told Rasmussen that that they wanted to kick the bums out.</em></p>
<p>This is from Politico after the 2012 elections: “Despite rock-bottom congressional approval ratings, voters reelected their incumbents at near-banana-republic levels in 2012.” And what were those “near banana republic levels”? Try 90 percent. That’s right, 9 out of 10 members of the House and Senate who sought re-election were re-elected.</p>
<p>So the Rasmussen poll tells us nothing because the people Rasmussen polled are either duplicitous or don’t know what the word “incumbent” means.</p>
<p>Then there was the question about taxes. A whopping 69 percent of the Americans polled said the middle class pays a larger percentage in taxes than do the rich.</p>
<p>Here are the facts: The top one percent pays about 37 percent of all federal income taxes and the top five percent pays almost 60 percent.</p>
<p>So what’s the point, I ask again, in polling people who don’t know what they’re talking about? Are we supposed to learn something from their <em>lack of knowledge</em>?</p>
<p>And then there’s this: despite the fact that most Americans give the president low grades on his handling of the economy; despite the fact that most Americans say they don’t like ObamaCare; despite the fact that according to Rasmussen only 29 percent of likely voters think America is heading in the right direction – <em>despite all of that</em>, about half (49 percent) still approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing, according to Rasmussen. Huh?</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh has a name for Americans who don’t know what’s going on. He calls them “low information” voters. Why in the world would a pollster ask these chuckleheads their opinions, for example, about how the president is handing the crisis in Crimea – a place many of them undoubtedly never heard of or probably think has something to do with crime.</p>
<p>I have long thought that dolts should not be allowed to vote. But that’s a discussion for another time. For now, let’s simply agree that Rasmussen, Gallup, Quinnipiac and all the others who ask low information Americans what they think about complex issues are wasting our time.</p>
<p>But I don’t want to leave any of you with the wrong impression. There most certainly are plenty of smart Americans out there whose opinions matter. And I would never suggest that most Americans are stupid. That would be rude. So I’ll leave the last word to some guy named Albert Einstein, who once said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”</p>
<p>I for one have never heard of this Einstein fellow, who also said that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.</p>
<p>I don’t get it — which makes me a perfect candidate to answer any questions Mr. Gallup or Mr. Rasmussen might have for me.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-03-26T18:06:00ZThe Other B-WordBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/The-Other-B-Word/377831587212919993.html2014-03-12T18:07:00Z2014-03-12T18:07:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece by two very successful women who are not happy with the B-word. No, not that B-word. They don’t like it when girls and women are called “bossy.”</p>
<div>The women are Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating office at Facebook, and Anna Maria Chavez, the CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. Here’s why they find the word “bossy” so harmful:</div>
<p>“Behind the negative connotations lie deep-rooted stereotypes about gender. Boys are expected to be assertive, confident and opinionated, while girls should be kind, nurturing and compassionate. When a little boy takes charge in class or on the playground, nobody is surprised or offended. We <em>expect </em>him to lead. But when a little girl does the same, she is often criticized and disliked.</p>
<p>“How are we supposed to level the playing field for girls and women if we discourage the very traits that get them there?”</p>
<p>Let’s make a deal, girls: I’ll stop using the word “bossy” if you stop being so damn “whiny.”</p>
<p>First, leveling the playing field for girls and women? Bulletin: It’s not the 50s anymore — or the 60s or even the 70s. Girls are doing quite well in America, thank you. This is from a piece by Lisa Wolfe in the Daily Beast: “Girls are outperforming boys in all subjects except math and science, and even there, they’re closing the gap. There has been a steady 25-year decline in boys’ participation in extracurricular activities as girls take over clubs, newspapers, and yearbooks. For every 100 girls with learning disabilities there are 276 boys. For every 100 women graduating college, there are 77 men.”</p>
<p>As for the supposed pay gap we hear so much about, where men supposedly make more than women for doing the same job: Think about it. If that were true why would an employer hire men <em>at all</em>? Why not just hire women for less pay, cutting your labor costs, and enabling you to make more money? Men make more money when they work on oil rigs and in coal mines and other places where they might get killed – and when they work the overnight shift while most women are comfortably asleep at home.</p>
<p>So stop crying about how bad you have it, ladies. (I said ladies because feminists hate that word.)</p>
<p>And you know what they call guys who are bossy? It’s not always “assertive.” Sometimes it’s the p-word that ends with “rick” or the a-hole word.</p>
<p>You don’t hear us writing boo-boo pieces in the Wall Street Journal about that.</p>
<p>Here’s more from these two victims of our <em>oppressive male-dominated culture that likes nothing more than keeping women in their place</em>: “Despite earning the majority of college degrees, women make up just 19% of the U.S. Congress, 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 10% of heads of state. Most leadership positions are held by men, so society continues to expect leadership to look and act male and to react negatively when women lead.”</p>
<p>Some of that may be because of how we see women. But we see men in a certain way too. When young men turn 18, to use just one example, they have to sign up with Selective Service. Young women don’t have to sign up. Yes, they could go fight — but only if they <em>choose</em> to. Or they could go to college and study French literature.</p>
<p>I will gladly admit that it must be hard to dance backwards in high heels, but no one is forcing any woman to dance or wear high heels. (Though there should be a law that requires women to wear high heels on Friday and Saturday nights — at home or outside the house.) But there is a law forcing young men to tell the federal government where they are in case World War III breaks out and the Army needs them to fight.</p>
<p>I don’t hear Sandberg or Chavez complaining about that kind of inequality</p>
<p>If there’s a noise in the house in the middle of the night, a woman might turn to her husband and say, “What was that? Check it out.” Can you imagine a guy turning to his wife and saying, “I think someone may be in the house. Go downstairs and find out what’s going on, it may be a burglar.” I don’t hear Sandberg and Chavez complaining about that, either.</p>
<p>And if Hillary decides she wants to be president, she probably will be. There are plenty of Americans out there who will vote for her – not because she’s ever done anything especially noteworthy … but rather, because she’s a woman.</p>
<p>Sandberg and Chavez have started a “ban bossy” public service campaign. Fine, I promise never to use that word if they promise to stop kvetching. (Look it up.)</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-03-12T18:07:00ZWhy Stop at Refusing to Bake a Cake for a Same-Sex Marriage?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Stop-at-Refusing-to-Bake-a-Cake-for-a-Same-Sex-Marriage/-664679418149698710.html2014-03-03T23:36:00Z2014-03-03T23:36:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Let’s stipulate that reasonable people may disagree on whether business owners should have to serve gays if doing that violates their deeply held religious beliefs. Should a business owner who opens a bakery on Main Street, for example, have to bake a cake for a couple planning a same-sex marriage – or face a lawsuit if he doesn’t?</p>
<p>And let’s also stipulate that if the baker says, “This goes against what I sincerely believe,” maybe the gay couple should simply say, “Fine, we’ll go someplace else.”</p>
<p>My personal beliefs, as many of you by now know, is that once you open a business to the general public you have to serve the general public. I would be open to a “conscientious objector” law that allows business owners to turn away vile customers, like Nazis who might want a caterer to bring in food for their annual hate convention. But when laws are based on deeply held religious beliefs, I get nervous.</p>
<p>Here’s why: Opposition to civil rights laws was also, at least in part, based on deeply held religious beliefs. Segregationists justified their bigotry by saying God was against interracial marriage and so it should be illegal. They didn’t want integration in schools, either, because that also violated their deeply held religious beliefs. They even justified keeping blacks out of “whites only” restaurants because that offended their religious sensibilities.</p>
<p>And make no mistake, these bigots weren’t just yahoos. Many held powerful positions in the Old South. They were men who could make life miserable for black people, and not lose a wink of sleep – because they were only following their deeply held religious beliefs.</p>
<p>In 1959, Judge Leon Bazile ruled against an interracial couple in Virginia that wanted to get married, using religion as the basis for his judgment. Here’s what he said:</p>
<p>“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”</p>
<p>How’s that for a deeply and sincerely held religious belief. The “godless” Supreme Court of the United States saw it differently and declared the Virginia law that barred interracial marriage unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Then there was Mississippi governor (in the 1920s and 30s) and later U.S. Senator (1935-1947) Theodore Bilbo, who once said, “I call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the niggers away from the polls.” Bilbo was another bigot with deeply held religious beliefs.</p>
<p>In a book entitled “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, Bilbo wrote that, “Purity of race is a gift of God . . . . And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed.” He also said that allowing “the blood of the races [to] mix” was a direct attack on the “Divine plan of God.” There “is every reason to believe that miscengenation [sic] and amalgamation are sins of man in direct defiance to the will of God.”</p>
<p>Or how about Bob Jones University? Until the early 1970s, the Christian Bible school would not allow blacks to enroll. Then Bob Jones changed its policy, allowing black students to attend, but only if they were married. In 1975, the policy was changed again, this time to allow unmarried black students to attend. But the school continued to prohibit interracial dating, interracial marriage, or even being “affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage.”</p>
<p>That’s when the “anti-religious” IRS stepped in and revoked the school’s tax-exempt status, saying that it would no longer give tax subsidies to racist schools even if they claimed that their racism was rooted in religious beliefs. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme court ruled in favor of the IRS.</p>
<p>So, as you can see, there is a history of bigots using deeply held religious beliefs to justify their bigotry. That’s why I get nervous when laws allow people to use their interpretation of the Bible to turn away customers from a business that supposedly is open to the general public.</p>
<p>Having said all this, I don’t believe that a baker or a florist or a photographer who doesn’t want to be even a small part of a same-sex marriage is in the same sewer as the bigots of those bad old days. I’m sure many of them are good people. But if deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs can trump well-established civil rights “public accommodation” laws, then anything is possible.</p>
<p>Why stop at refusing to bake a cake or make a floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage? If a business owner believes that homosexuality is a sin – an argument that many of my readers have made in no uncertain terms – why should the law require him to serve gays <em>at all</em>? And while we’re on the subject … or blacks?</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-03-03T23:36:00ZTed Nugent and His Conservative Media EnablersBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ted-Nugent-and-His-Conservative-Media-Enablers/269071972378334433.html2014-02-24T21:04:00Z2014-02-24T21:04:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Ted Nugent, the gun-toting rocker with a big mouth, has done it again. His latest rant, not surprisingly, is about his favorite target, Barack Obama. This is what he recently told guns.com:</p>
<p>Barack Obama is a “Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel” and a “gangster.”</p>
<p>Even if you ignore the communist and gangster rhetoric, Nugent called the president of this country a “subhuman mongrel” – the same language, by the way, that Hitler used on the Jews and that slaveholders used to describe their slaves.</p>
<p>So it’s no surprise that liberals in the media jumped on the remark, noting that Nugent has been out campaigning for likely Republican nominee for governor of Texas, state Attorney General Greg Abbott.</p>
<p>On CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, “Nugent’s presence hit a sour note with a lot of people. They say Texans deserve better than a candidate who would align himself with someone like Nugent who offered a hate-filled assessment of the president. Shockingly, Abbott’s campaign brushed aside the criticism, saying they value Nugent’s commitment to the Second Amendment.”</p>
<p>This prompted Newt Gingrich, who’s also on CNN, to complain about the media double standard. “I always love selective media outrage. As the party of Hollywood, the Democrats have lots of donors and supporters who say truly stupid things. Truly outrageous things.”</p>
<p>Newt is right. There is a double standard. But he left out the most important part: Conservatives in the media are just as guilty.</p>
<p>Here’s how it works: If a conservative like Sarah Palin, is slimed by a liberal like Bill Maher conservatives are outraged and liberals couldn’t care less. But when a liberal, like Barack Obama is slimed as a “subhuman mongrel,” liberals are outraged and conservatives in the media pretty much ignore the story. Rule #1: Don’t hold a member of your team accountable – it might give ammo to the enemy.</p>
<p>So when it comes to moral outrage, forgive me, neither liberals nor conservatives in the media have even an ounce of credibility.</p>
<p>As for Nugent, his latest comments are hardly his first. He once went on stage, decked out in his trademark camouflage, toting two machine guns, and told the crowd: “Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun.” And then this, about another Nugent enemy: “Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these [machine guns] into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”</p>
<p>So how did family values media conservatives respond – those conservatives who tell us they care deeply about civility and decency in our culture? Here’s how: They continued to have him on as their guest. They continued treating him as a good guy. And why not? He’s their pal. He’s a <em>real</em> conservative. And he loves guns, too. What a guy!</p>
<p>And while I’m no fan of Ted Nugent, these media hacks really turn my stomach.</p>
<p>To their credit a few prominent Republicans said Nugent was way off base. Texas Governor Rick Perry said, “I got a problem calling the president a mongrel. I do have a problem with that.”</p>
<p>And Rand Paul, who has presidential aspirations, went further, tweeting, “Ted Nugent’s derogatory description of President Obama is offensive and has no place in politics. He should apologize.”</p>
<p>After that, Nugent did apologize, sort of. “I do apologize–not necessarily to the President–but on behalf of much better men than myself.” He calls the President of the United States a “subhuman mongrel” and apologizes “not necessarily to the president.”</p>
<p>If Ted Nugent is sorry about anything, it’s only that he put Greg Abbott, the conservative Republican who wants to be governor of Texas, in a bad spot. After one of his rallies, Abbot told reporters, “I don’t know what he [Nugent] may have said or done in his background. What I do know is Ted Nugent stands for the Constitution. He stands against the federal government overreaching and doing what they are doing to harm Texas.”</p>
<p>But when he couldn’t put out the fire his pal Ted Nugent started, Abbott changed his tune. “This is not the kind of language I would use or endorse in any way,” he said before adding: “It’s time to move beyond this.”</p>
<p>Greg Abbott may be able to move beyond this and win the election, but no one will confuse him with a profile in courage. And the same goes for Nugent’s pathetic enablers in the conservative media.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-02-24T21:04:00ZHere's an Idea, Mr. President...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Heres-an-Idea-Mr.-President.../-668682249256336851.html2014-02-12T23:24:00Z2014-02-12T23:24:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>As a general rule, I believe that on any give day there’s more wisdom in the Letters to the Editor section of the Wall Street Journal than there is in the entire Obama administration.</p>
<p>For example, Jonathan Lesser from Sandia Park, New Mexico writes: “To argue as White House economist Jason Furman does, that reducing the workforce by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs will empower workers to make better choices is beyond ludicrous. If that’s the case, then perhaps we can achieve complete societal nirvana by eliminating the incentive for anyone, anywhere to work productively.</p>
<p>And this from Deborah McMicking from San Francisco: “Maybe I should quite my job and become a poet or artist and let the next person pay for me. Pretty soon there will be no more ‘other people’ to subsidize all the new artists and poets.”</p>
<p>And apparently what occurred to Chris Zunkel of Des Moines didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west wing. “I worry about Social Security accounts. If you aren’t contributing to Social Security as an earner, doesn’t this lower the amount you get at retirement? Will we be a nation of low-income elderly? Won’t that cause an even harder burden on the generation born in the 2030s to support the Gen-X-ers and Millennials. Do the math.”</p>
<p>Or how about this from Steve Milloy from Potomac, Maryland: “Even Karl Marx would likely be aghast at the left’s view that ObamaCare ‘liberates’ workers from working. At least Marx wasn’t for a ‘slacker’s paradise.’”</p>
<p>And finally, words of wisdom from Richard Brawer who lives in Ocean, New Jersey: “We are truly headed for ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ That didn’t work in Russia and China, and it will eventually be the downfall of the U.S.”</p>
<p>Memo to Potus: Margaret Thatcher once observed that, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].” You might want to consider that before coming up with another big government scheme to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” You might also want to read the Letters to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal before you come up with another of those “great” ideas. And while you’re at it, make your economic team read the letters, too. You, and they, might actually learn something. And even more important, you might save the rest of us from another installment of your idealistic master plan that looks good on paper, but doesn’t work in the real world.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-02-12T23:24:00ZA Look Back on O'Reilly's Interview with the PresidentBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Look-Back-on-OReillys-Interview-with-the-President/-86227930314381312.html2014-02-04T21:58:00Z2014-02-04T21:58:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>The more I think about it the more I figure that Bill O’Reilly should have passed on the opportunity to interview President Obama on Super Bowl Sunday. It was a dog and pony show we could have done without.</p>
<p>I understand why Bill did the interview and what he got out of doing it. First, there’s ego, no small point with O’Reilly or any other TV big shot. Bill got to go one-on-one with the most powerful man in the world – on Super Bowl Sunday no less. The president wasn’t behind a podium emblazoned with the seal of his office. They sat on similar chairs facing each other and actually looked like equals, even though everyone knows they’re not.</p>
<p>And the audience was huge. More than 100 million people tuned in to watch the game and while the number who watched the interview (two hours before kickoff) wasn’t as large, it was large enough. So millions and millions of Americans who don’t normally watch Fox, got to see the network’s biggest star. And who knows – maybe some of them would become converts.</p>
<p>That’s what Bill and Fox got out of the interview.</p>
<p>The president got something out of it too. First, he showed his base that he could sit down with Big Bad Bill and come out of it without a scratch. He got to take his usual shots at Fox, which his base also likes. He got to put doubt about Fox’s legitimacy in the minds of everyone whose minds weren’t already made up. And he came off looking like a regular guy — sitting there, smiling, tieless. All that was missing was the beer and chips.</p>
<p>The problem is no news came out of the interview. And it gave the president the opportunity to give his side of the story, virtually unchallenged. That’s not O’Reilly’s fault. It’s a 10-minute interview. Live. You can only interrupt the President of the United States so many times. And in the end, the president can say whatever he wants.</p>
<p>And he did.</p>
<p>On the matter of the IRS targeting conservative opponents of the president, Mr. Obama said there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in that supposed scandal.</p>
<p>Maybe. But then why did Lois Lerner, the IRS employee who was at the center of the controversy, exercise her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a House hearing on the scandal? Not a “smidgeon of corruption” and she’s afraid of incriminating herself? Really?</p>
<p>On Benghazi, O’Reilly asked if Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who had just learned that the attack in Benghazi was the work of terrorists, passed that information along to the president. The president dodged a direct answer, so we still don’t know why Susan Rice went on all those Sunday news programs to tell a story about an anti-Muslim video causing the trouble that led to the deaths of four Americans. We still don’t know why the president and others on his team misled the American people for several weeks about how a supposedly spontaneous riot got out of hand. The president told his version of events. No reporter can force anyone, let along the president, to answer a question he doesn’t want to answer. And eventually, it was time to move on to the next subject.</p>
<p>In other parts of the interview, Mr. Obama made clear that he wanted to look forward – not back. Looking back is something O’Reilly and Fox could do. “I try to focus not on the fumbles, but on the next play,” the president told the anchorman.</p>
<p>As I say, the president got what he needed and Bill got what he needed. And the rest of us didn’t get much.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama went after Bill and Fox twice during the interview, saying a reason people care about Benghazi and the IRS is because, as the president put it, ”these kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them.”</p>
<p>That’s when Bill should have taken his notes and thrown them in the air. (That would have been a very nice TV moment.) He should have looked the president in the eye and said:</p>
<p>“<em>Mr. President, this is the second time during this brief interview that you’ve gone after Fox News. So let’s set the record straight: Fox News isn’t responsible for the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare. Fox News isn’t the cause of the lax security in Benghazi that contributed to the four American deaths. Fox News didn’t tell the IRS to target your political enemies. You and your administration are responsible for all of those things. So, Mr. President, if you have any specific complaints about Fox News coverage of these matters, this would be a good time to share those complaints with the American people.”</em></p>
<p>Bill told me that there’s value in asking questions even if the president doesn’t really answer them. The people watching can see what’s going on, he said. There’s some truth to that. But I still think there’s not enough upside for any journalist to do the interview. Ten minutes, live, plays into the president’s hands. It’s too easy to run out the clock. And if the reporter jumps in too many times, he looks disrespectful.</p>
<p>Still the interview was a little more interesting than the actual Super Bowl game … but not nearly as entertaining as the Bruno Mars halftime show. But then, it’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-02-04T21:58:00ZHas the NSA Gone Too Far?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Has-the-NSA-Gone-Too-Far/224900175140720979.html2014-01-29T19:38:00Z2014-01-29T19:38:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>I realize that many of you reading this column believe that Edward Snowden is an American hero and that what the National Security Agency is doing to catch terrorists is not only a grotesque threat to our privacy but an obvious violation of the Constitution of the United States of America.</p>
<p>You may be right. And an independent board looking into what the NSA is doing has just agreed with you, saying collecting information about hundreds of millions of Americans is illegal and that the data should be “purged.” President Obama chimed in by first defending what the NSA does and then saying some non-government agency should be in charge of collecting data designed to thwart terrorism. He then threw the matter over to Congress to decide just what that non-governmental entity should be.</p>
<p>And the U.S. Supreme Court someday may also agree with you. But right now, I don’t.</p>
<p>Am I a big fan of the federal government tracking so many of our phone calls and emails? No. But am I more concerned about terrorism than some hypothetical threat to my privacy? Well, yes.</p>
<p>Dan Henninger has a column about all of this in the Wall Street Journal: “Watching too many Hollywood movies like ‘Enemy of the State’ isn’t the healthiest way to think straight about U.S. security. The NSA has not been a rogue intel operation run out of someone’s back pocket. The NSA surveillance program operates under a federal law debated in public and passed by Congress in 1978, then revised by a vote in 2001.”</p>
<p>I understand that this won’t satisfy many on both sides of the political line, conservatives and liberals who, to put it simply, don’t trust government, big or otherwise. But many of these people – and that includes many of you reading this – dwell on what Henninger calls, “the right and left edges of U.S. politics” — and for you the threat coming from terrorists comes in second to the threat of Big Brother taking over our lives.</p>
<p>Maybe those who believe the way I do are naïve. I’ll grant you that possibility. Government is capable of many bad things – especially the government we have at the moment. But maybe the other side – the side that believes the president and his <em>government goons</em> are out to get all of us, the way the IRS was out to get conservatives – maybe that side is a tad paranoid about these things.</p>
<p>I realize that most of you reading this play right field (some of you play deep right field), so let me throw a bone from Henninger’s column, a piece of wisdom that targets the usual suspects on the left. “For liberals, disbelievers in evil, no threat is ever as bad as conservatives say it is, whether Churchill warning about Hitler in the 1930s, Reagan about the need for missile defenses, or U.S. street crime. When Rudolph Giuliani sought to bring New York’s crime wave under control, the left called him Rudolph Mussolini, and they meant it.”</p>
<p>But even though conservatives are usually more realistic than liberals about the nature of evil, and while the two sides agree on just about nothing, on this NSA matter, elements on the hard right and the hard left are ideological soul mates, proof that politics really do make strange bedfellows.</p>
<p>As I said at the top, those of you who believe the NSA has gone way too far and pose a threat to democracy may be right. Just because you’re paranoid – and I’m not saying you are, just that you give that impression at times –doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.</p>
<p>But we have police in cars patrolling our neighborhoods, looking us over, and if we appear suspicious – <em>to them</em>! – they might even stop us to ask a few questions. They have guns and badges and we don’t. They hold all the cards. Still, I don’t expect them to get a warrant first. And between you and me, as long as they don’t walk into my house and go through my stuff absent a warrant, I don’t lose sleep over what they do to protect us from bad guys.</p>
<p>And right now, in the world in which we all currently reside, I worry about terrorist bad guys more than I worry about my government — even the one where Eric Holder is attorney general. I have no doubt many of you will tell me why I am wrong.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-01-29T19:38:00ZI Take Full Responsibility - Now Leave Me Alone!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/I-Take-Full-Responsibility---Now-Leave-Me-Alone!/-311766202217272970.html2014-01-20T20:20:00Z2014-01-20T20:20:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>Now that Benghazi is back in the news with a Senate report saying the deadly attack was “preventable” and blasting the State Department for lax security that led to four Americans being murdered, I’ve been wondering: Where is Hillary Clinton? Why isn’t she out there commenting on the report? It’s like she’s disappeared.</p>
<p>Then it hits me how unfair I am. Why should Hillary have to say anything about the report? She’s already put the matter to rest. Over a year ago she told CNN she takes “full responsibility” for the security failures in Benghazi.</p>
<p>And then she resigned in disgrace. Just kidding. After taking “full responsibility” she did absolutely nothing, just like a lot of other pols who “take full responsibility” and then go about their business as if nothing happened. Taking “full responsibility” and “suffering consequences,” apparently, have nothing to do with each other.</p>
<p>Of all the terms and phrases in the English language, I think, “I take full responsibility” just may be the most meaningless.</p>
<p>When no one could log onto the government website to sign up for ObamaCare, the president courageously took “full responsibility” for making sure the website gets fixed. And what if it doesn’t? What if, as some contend, the site isn’t secure and may be a goldmine for hackers? Will President Obama resign? Just kidding.</p>
<p>So in the goofy world of American politics, saying “I take full responsibility” isn’t the first step to paying a price for the problem. It’s a statement used to avoid paying a price. Orwell must be smiling.</p>
<p>As the scholar Thomas Sowell put it: “Don’t you love it when a politicians says, ‘I take full responsibility’? Translated into plain English, that says, ‘Now that I have admitted it, there is nothing more for me to do (such as resign) and nothing for anyone else to do (such as fire me).’ Saying ‘I take full responsibility” is like a get-out-of-jail-free card in the Monopoly game.’</p>
<p>Not always. Anthony Weiner took “full responsibility” for texting his wiener to young women, but at least he had the decency (sorry, wrong word) to resign from Congress. And right after he resigned he announced he would run for mayor of New York City. But hey, he took “full responsibility” for what he did, right?</p>
<p>Back in 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno took responsibility for what some called the “federal massacre” of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas.</p>
<p>“I’m accountable. The buck stops with me,” she told Ted Koppel on Nightline. But when Koppel told her that in many European countries a Cabinet minister would resign as a way to accept responsibility for a major failure, Reno said: “If that’s what the president wants, I’m happy to do so.” In other words: “Let’s get something straight Bozo, I’m not going anywhere unless someone kicks me out.”</p>
<p>At the time, Mickey Kaus, noting how meaningless her claim to “accountability” was, wrote this: “[S]he made a disastrous decision that resulted in the loss of more than 70 lives. Then she accepted ‘responsibility.’ In a bizarre bit of political alchemy, this somehow protected her from suffering any of the consequences that normally attend disastrously handled responsibilities. Far from restoring accountability, Reno seems to have hit on the formula for avoiding it. Make a dreadful mistake? Go immediately on Nightline. Say the buck stops with you. Recount in moving human terms the agony of your decision. And watch your polls rise.”</p>
<p>When Hillary announces that she’s running for president I hope some journalist reminds her that she took “full responsibility” for the “preventable” debacle in Benghazi and then asks her what consequences she’s prepared to suffer for her mistake. Along the same lines, I also hope I win the lottery.</p>
<p>I tried my best to get everything right in this column but if I didn’t, believe me, I take full responsibility. Now get off my back.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>What does “I take full responsibility” really mean when the words come out of the mouth of a politician? Funny replies wanted.</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-01-20T20:20:00ZWhen Is a Traffic Jam A Greater Threat to Democracy Than an IRS Scandal?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-Is-a-Traffic-Jam-A-Greater-Threat-to-Democracy-Than-an-IRS-Scandal/-123502791976595404.html2014-01-14T22:22:00Z2014-01-14T22:22:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p>It’s good to know that President Obama’s most loyal followers – the so-called mainstream media – have their priorities straight. As reported by the (conservative) Media Research Center:</p>
<p>“In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor’s lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.”</p>
<p>This makes sense, right? All the IRS did was target political opponents of President Obama. A top aide to Governor Christie, on the other hand, caused a traffic jam. Sure it was a massive traffic jam. And sure the aide was both petty and stupid. She put the evidence in emails. But as the Wall Street Journal put it, “ … compared to using the IRS against political opponents during an election campaign, closing traffic lanes for four days is jaywalking.”</p>
<p>But this hasn’t stopped an epidemic of supposed “analysis” speculating about whether Chris Christie is a dead man walking, with some on the left suggesting that no matter what he knew or didn’t know, he was the one who created a culture of corruption which gave his aides the green light to pull their stupid stunt.</p>
<p>This is front page of the New York Daily News: <img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-19614" style="float: right;" src="http://cdn.bernardgoldberg.com/wp-content/uploads/NY-News.jpg" alt="NY News" width="195" height="259" /></p>
<p>But that’s only a tabloid. What did the venerable New York Times, the Bible of American liberalism (but mostly the primer for the swells on the Upper West Side of Manhattan) have to say about Bridge-gate?</p>
<p>The Times concluded its post-news conference editorial with this: “At this point, the governor has zero credibility. His office has abused its power, and only a full and conclusive investigation can restore public trust in his administration.” Zero credibility? Wow, that would be good news for Hillary Clinton who might have to run against Christie. But I’m sure that’s not what the Times meant. Right?</p>
<p>Anyway, it sounds like a federal investigation is in order. And it may be. It took about 10 seconds for Team Obama to leak a tidbit to the media that the United States attorney is investigating the traffic jam as a criminal matter. Good to know that Eric Holder would never do anything political. He’s the Attorney General, after all.</p>
<p>A college pal who lives in New Jersey kept it pithy and got it right. He emailed me this:</p>
<p>“The contrast with Obama is striking. Christie fired the senior person on his staff this morning. Has Obama fired anyone? Has he accepted responsibility for anything at all? Of course not. Everything, everything is someone else’s fault. We are continuously told that ‘we’re looking into it’ on any issue. Nothing happens on Benghazi, on the IRS scandal, on Obamacare, etc., etc., ad infinitum.”</p>
<p>As President Obama might say: Period!</p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-01-14T22:22:00ZWe're as Mad as Hell ... and You Know the RestBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Were-as-Mad-as-Hell-...-and-You-Know-the-Rest/-504115037474890642.html2014-01-07T22:20:00Z2014-01-07T22:20:00Z<div class="page" title="Page 1">
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<p><span>Dick Metcalf was “one of the country’s pre-eminent gun journalists,” as a page one story in the New York Times described him. He wrote the feature column for Guns & Ammo, the popular magazine for gun enthusiasts. He also did a television show. </span></p>
<p><span>Not long ago Metcalf wrote a column under the headline, “Let’s Talk Limits.” about the gun debate. In it he said, “The fact is all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been and need to be.” To many Americans that’s hardly a controversial statement. To many gun people, </span></p>
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<p><span>So after his column was published, the Times tells us that, “readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions. Death threats poured in by mail. His television program was pulled from the air.” </span></p>
<p><span>Turns out that two major gun manufacturers called Metcalf’s editor and told him “in no uncertain terms” they could no longer do business with the company that publishes the magazine and produces the TV show if Metcalf worked there. </span></p>
<p><span>That’s when he was fired. </span></p>
<p><span>Welcome to our brave new world where you can’t even call for a discussion about guns – or a hundred other topics – without the lynch mob coming after you. </span></p>
<p><span>When I read the Times’ story I thought about an issue that keeps popping up in my commentary: The polarization of America. We’re at a point now where neither side in any controversial debate, whether it’s about guns or anything else, wants to hear what the other side has to say. Neither side even likes the other side. So we seal ourselves off from opinions we don’t want to hear. We impose a kind of apartheid based not on skin color but ideology. </span></p>
<p><span>We go to the Internet and cable TV and talk radio to get our already entrenched views validated, not to learn anything. This is not good for America. </span></p>
<p><span>Yes, the two sides, left and right, have deeply held beliefs and legitimate differences, differences about the size and role of government, about our foreign policy, and many other issues. But not every issue is worth going to war over. But more and more that’s what we do. Cable TV, talk radio and the Internet can take a story about littering and blow it up into World War III. </span></p>
<p><span>The Internet, cable TV and talk radio didn’t start the fire. They didn’t create the polarization and nastiness. But they happily provide the battlefield where the two sides can go to war non-stop 24 hours a day. And the result shouldn’t surprise us: more polarization and more anger. That may be good for business but it’s not good for the country. </span></p>
<p><span>Those media platforms, of course, have also done a lot of good. They give outsiders (like me) a seat</span>at the table and let them have a say in the national conversation. The old media – the networks and the big city newspapers – have guards at the door and are careful about who they let in to express an opinion. (My first book Bias, which went after the so-called mainstream media, was the number one book in the country, but no network showed the slightest interest in having me on to talk about it.) And cable and talk radio and the Internet play up the kinds of news stories that the so-called mainstream media either downplay or flat out ignore. They deserve our thanks for that.</p>
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<p><span>But they also give voice to chuckleheads who honestly think Barack Obama is as bad as Hitler, or on what used to be liberal radio, that George Bush was behind the 9/11 attack on America. Thanks to the Internet and talk radio people who couldn’t write a coherent letter to the editor can tear down their “enemies” — using some dopey made up name — with half truths and flat out lies. They can be vulgar. Talk radio doesn’t allow F-bombs, but no one is going to confuse what goes on there with a Mensa meeting. </span></p>
<p><span>The left thinks big business is out to destroy us. The right thinks big government will cause our downfall. Too many Americans feel powerless. That’s when they get angry, and maybe a little paranoid. </span></p>
<p><span>I’m pretty sure a lot of gun people feel powerless. They think the government is out to take their guns away. That’s why they went after Dick Metcalf, the gun journalist. </span></p>
<p><span>That’s also why evangelical Christians went after A&E when they suspended Phil Robertson for what in my view was his needlessly nasty anti-gay rant. Millions and millions of us are as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. </span></p>
<p><span>Sometimes I envy those Americans who don’t care all that much about politics. They’re less polarized and less angry, I suspect, than the folks who are hooked on cable news and talk radio and who surf the hard right or hard left sites on the web. Maybe they’re “low information” voters who don’t know what’s going on. But I’ll bet they’re not perpetually angry. I’ll bet they don’t think much about how polarized we are because that’s not a problem in their lives. And I’m guessing they’re less paranoid too. </span></p>
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</div>Bernie Goldberg2014-01-07T22:20:00ZMemo to Obama: Sooner or Later Reality MattersBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Memo-to-Obama:-Sooner-or-Later-Reality-Matters/357556246428224261.html2014-01-01T00:10:00Z2014-01-01T00:10:00Z<p>Senator Tom Coburn, the Republican from Oklahoma who has more sense than most of his colleagues in Washington, has a guest column in the Wall Street Journal running under the headline, “The Year Washington Fled Reality.”</p>
<p>Here’s his first sentence: “The past year may go down not only as the least productive ever in Washington but as one of the worst for the republic.” I can think of a few years that were worse – the years of the Civil War, the Depression Years, the Vietnam and Watergate years immediately come to mind. But we get the senator’s point.</p>
<p>And there is one part of his column that I think truly captures the sorry state of how business was conducted in 2013 by one particular charismatic politician in Washington. Here’s what Senator Coburn writes:</p>
<p>“The culture that Mr. Obama campaigned against, the old kind of politics, teaches politicians that repetition and ‘message discipline’ — never straying from using the same slogans and talking points — can create reality, regardless of the facts. Message discipline works if the goal is to win an election or achieve a short-term political goal. But saying that something is true doesn’t make it so. When a misleading message ultimately clashes with reality, the result is dissonance and conflict. In a republic, deception is destructive. Without truth there can be no trust. Without trust there can be no consent. And without consent we invite paralysis, if not chaos.”</p>
<p>He’s right, of course. President Obama misled us, at best – and lied to us at worst, in order to get his healthcare reform through Congress. Mr. Obama is a politician who too often confuses campaigning with governing – he’s very good at the former, not so much the latter. You get the impression he says what he has to say to win over the crowd — because he’s confident he can. But, as Senator Coburn says, without truth there can be no trust. So now more Americans distrust Mr. Obama than at any time in his presidency. His deception got his signature piece of legislation through Congress, but he’s paying a price for his “success.”</p>
<p>But President Obama isn’t the only one guilty of “message discipline” – he’s not the only one who seldom strays from slogans and talking points. This is the bane of opinion pundits and commentators too, especially on cable TV and talk radio.</p>
<p>This is how it works: liberals don’t like conservatives, so they find anything and everything to ridicule the enemy, to marginalize and delegitimize the other side, while ignoring their own team’s mistakes. Conservatives are no better. If President Obama picks his nose on the golf course, it gets the same attention on talk radio and on some conservative TV shows as if he personally dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.</p>
<p>Neither side can say a good word about the other side. It’s against the rules. It’s giving aid and comfort to the enemy. No, talk radio and cable TV didn’t create the polarization that is tearing this country apart. But for all the good they do – highlighting news that old media tend to play down, giving voice to people who would have no voice in the so-called mainstream media – opinion radio and TV sure made things worse. They speeded up the process of division. So now, conservatives only want to hear what other conservatives have to say and liberals only want to hear liberals. Neither side really wants to hear opinions that might make them re-think their entrenched views. All we want today is to nod along as someone on radio or TV validates our firmly held biases. It’s “safe” inside the echo chamber.</p>
<p>And the non-stop bashing of the other side, to use Senator Coburn’s words, creates “dissonance and conflict.” It undermines trust. It’s destructive. That may be good for business – and it is! — but it’s not good for America.</p>
<p>President Obama, in 2014, needs to learn the difference between campaigning and governing. It won’t be easy for him. Charisma – especially when deployed to win over “low information” Americans may work for a while. But sooner or later reality matters. And then, all the charisma in the world won’t save a smooth politician who has lost the trust of the people who once adored him.</p>
<p>As for the pundits who think because they have a national audience they must have something important to say: They need to shut up every now and just listen. They might learn something. And that goes for this humble pundit too.</p>
<p>Happy New Year to everyone.</p>Bernie Goldberg2014-01-01T00:10:00ZA Bad Year for Obama May Turn Worse in 2014Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/A-Bad-Year-for-Obama-May-Turn-Worse-in-2014/-944777489942708608.html2013-12-25T00:08:00Z2013-12-25T00:08:00Z<p>If President Obama were a baseball player he would have gone 0 for 2013.</p>
<p>No, it’s not exactly breaking news that 2013 was a bad year for the president. But he may soon look back on the remnants of a bad year and say, “Those were the good old days.”</p>
<p>Mr. Obama’s biggest flop, of course, was also his biggest “accomplishment” (a word I put in quotation marks not by accident). That would be the ironically named Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.</p>
<p>The rollout, he told us, would be as smooth and easy as shopping on Amazon. If Amazon sued the president for slander, I think Amazon would win.</p>
<p>Then there were all those (let’s be nice and call them) misstatements of fact.</p>
<p>If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.</p>
<p>If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.</p>
<p>Premium costs will go down on average $2500.</p>
<p>Okay, let’s just stipulate that so far ObamaCare has been one great big mess. Period! And it’s exacted a toll on the president.</p>
<p>As CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger put it: “People don’t think he’s as competent as they used to think. They don’t think he’s as trustworthy as they used to think.”</p>
<p>But it’s not just the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare. There were also revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency was secretly keeping tabs on all of us. Mr. Obama defended the plan, which caused a split in his liberal base. Turns out they don’t like secret, widespread surveillance anymore than a lot of (but not all my any means) conservatives do.</p>
<p>Liberals were angry, too, that the president continued to use drones to knock off terrorists – and sometimes, innocent bystanders – a program started by the one liberals detest, George W. Bush.</p>
<p>There was also the IRS scandal, which conservatives believe showed that the president’s team was willing to use the agency to punish conservatives and further it’s own liberal agenda –no matter what the law said.</p>
<p>Whether it was Republican obstruction as Mr. Obama believes, or principled GOP opposition, the president got nowhere on a jobs program; nowhere on tax reform; nowhere on immigration reform; no hike in the minimum wage; and no expansion of background checks for gun purchases, even after the Newtown massacre, despite a strong effort by the president.</p>
<p>And a new CNN/ORC International poll shows a drop of 14 percentage points since the beginning of 2013 in President Obama’s approval rating. It’s now down to 41 percent.</p>
<p>Another poll, this one by ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 45 percent of Americans trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy compared to 41 percent for President Obama.</p>
<p>But anyone who thinks that what goes down must at some point go back up, that 2014 has got to be better than 2013, may be engaging in wishful thinking. ObamaCare is still out there, looming over the helpless innocents like a stalking monster in a bad science fiction movie. (Okay, that was over the top. Sorry.)</p>
<p>The healthcare.gov website may be up but it’s still not running like Amazon. For one thing, there’s the issue of security. What happens – and it may – if Americans learn that the personal information they put in when they applied for ObamaCare has been compromised?</p>
<p>So far more than five million Americans had their policies cancelled. Wait until the employer mandate kicks in in 2014. Millions more will lose their insurance — probably tens of millions more.</p>
<p>And wait, too, until people find out they’re not covered even though they thought they were. That’s coming too.</p>
<p>And there are all those people looking for work but can only land a part-time job because employers may not want to hire someone full-time and have to pay for his health insurance under ObamaCare.</p>
<p>And for the president’s plan to just stand a chance of succeeding, young, healthy people have to sign up. Lots and lots and lots of young, healthy people. But why would they want to pay more for insurance, which covers things they didn’t want in the first place? Because they’re good Americans who think it’s reasonable to pay more so older, sicker Americans can pay less? Tell me when to stop laughing.</p>
<p>And finally, the insurance companies may take such a hit thanks to the president, that they’ll have to be bailed out – with millions and millions and millions of YOUR tax dollars.</p>
<p>But for those of us who are not fond of this president’s liberal, big government policies, there may yet be a silver lining around this dark cloud. If enough people get hit with sticker shock; if enough people lose coverage in 2014, coverage they were happy with; if enough people find out first hand what ObamaCare is all out, they may very well take it out on Democrats next November in the midterm elections.</p>
<p>That, I think, would be a good beginning. And then 2014 may indeed be better: not for the president – but for a whole bunch of the rest of us.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-12-25T00:08:00ZDuck Dynasty ... and the God Given Right to be StupidBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Duck-Dynasty-...-and-the-God-Given-Right-to-be-Stupid/-634059983186705374.html2013-12-22T00:07:00Z2013-12-22T00:07:00Z<p>Just when the paranoia over the so-called War on Christmas was cooling down, here comes Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family stirring things up all over again.</p>
<p>By now you know that Phil gave an interview to GQ in which he said some not-so-kind things about gays. A&E, the network that airs Duck Dynasty – the most popular reality show on television – suspended him, proving what we already know: that in Hollywood the gay lobby has a lot more clout than the conservative Christian lobby. However, in that sliver of America between Manhattan and Malibu, it’s the other way around. And so, the backlash kicked in. Conservatives — especially conservative Christians — are mad as hell and they’re telling us they’re not going to take it anymore. They say they’ll boycott A&E if Phil isn’t brought back. (He will be. Tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions, are on the line. Have no fear Duck Dynasty fans: Phil will return.)</p>
<p>All Phil did, many on the right have been telling us, is say what he believed. That seems to be enough for conservatives. If you say what you honestly believe then the thought police should back off. This might be a good time to note that all Martin Bashir did was say what he believes, specifically that Sarah Palin is an idiot and that someone should take a crap and urinate in her mouth.</p>
<p>That was too much even for liberals who normally like Bashir’s far left politics. He lost his job at the most liberal news network on cable TV. I don’t recall conservatives telling us that he was being persecuted for nothing more than saying what he honestly believed.</p>
<p>What both sides understood in the Bashir case is that there are limits. There are lines that no one should cross. Bashir’s vulgar, vile comments crossed more than a few lines and just about no one was sorry to see him go. But bashing gays, if your inspiration is the Bible, is something else altogether, at least as far as conservative Christians are concerned.</p>
<p>So now we hear that Phil Robertson’s constitutional free speech rights are being violated. Sorry. They’re not. No one has a right to be on TV. When Bill O’Reilly asked me what I thought about the brouhaha I said that Phil had every right to say that “gay behavior,” as he put it, might lead to sex with animals. I said he had every right to paraphrase the Bible and say that gays were in the same group as swindlers and slanderers and drunkards and male prostitutes – which is what Paul told the Corinthians 2000 years ago.</p>
<p>After making clear that Phil could say whatever he wants about gays I added that I had the right to say that Phil is an ignoramus. I went on to say that A&E could suspend him, fire him, or do absolutely nothing about his remarks. And for good measure I said that conservative Christians (or anybody else) could watch the show or boycott the show.</p>
<p>And then I added one more thought, the one that was most important to me. I said that too often liberals reflexively defend trash, like Miley Cyrus – and too often conservatives reflexively defend ignorance.</p>
<p>Just because Phil got his ideas about gays from the Holy Bible doesn’t mean they’re not ugly and mean spirited. But to a lot of conservative Christians the Bible can never be ugly or mean spirited or wrong about anything. It’s simply impossible. So I don’t expect my conservative Christian friends to understand when I say that while in many cases religion can make people noble, sometimes it can make people stupid.</p>
<p>I think what Phil Robertson said was just plain ignorant. How might “gay behavior” lead to having sex with a goat anymore than “straight behavior” would lead to the same thing? Why is being gay like being a slanderer or a swindler or a drunkard? Because Paul thought so Christians are supposed to believe this garbage two thousand years later?</p>
<p>I’ve always been honest with you, my readers. We have disagreed over the years but I’ve always respected you enough not to pander. So let me be honest with you again: I’m growing more and more weary of the culture war. I’m growing more and more tired of liberals defending the indefensible and conservatives yelling about double standards because we’re not all circling the wagons for Phil Robertson. I’m getting sick of both sides.</p>
<p>O’Reilly asked me what I would do with Phil if I had been running A&E. I said I would have taken him off the show, but only for a while. I’ve been thinking about that and I’d like to amend my answer. I would not have suspended Phil Robertson. I would not have fired him. Instead, I would have issued a statement saying that in America everyone should have the right to be an ignoramus once in a while.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-12-22T00:07:00ZThis Just In: President Obama's Pants Are on Fire!Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/This-Just-In:-President-Obamas-Pants-Are-on-Fire!/543727985092777801.html2013-12-17T21:02:00Z2013-12-17T21:02:00Z<p>My daughter came home from tennis camp with a trophy when she was just five years old. She walked in the house and immediately dumped it in the garbage. When asked why, she simply said, “They gave one of these to everybody.”</p>
<p>About 12 seconds after he took the oath of office, Barack Obama got a trophy too. It was the Nobel Peace Prize. Even he knew he didn’t deserve it. But he accepted it anyway even though, as my then five-year old daughter understood, it’s embarrassing to accept an award you don’t deserve. But narcissists are rarely embarrassed.</p>
<p>I bring this up because President Obama has just won another major award. But this time he deserves it. For saying, “If you like your health care<strong> </strong>plan, you can keep it,” President Obama has been awarded the Lie of the Year award, handed out by PolitiFact, the organization that monitors the veracity of what public people say.</p>
<p>And unless you’ve either been in a coma or have been visiting your cousin Lenny on Neptune you know that he didn’t just say it once or twice or ten times. We might, if we were feeling especially generous, simply forgive that as a few slips of the tongue. No, Mr. Obama said it over and over and over and over again in one form or another. My personal favorite is when he added the “Period” at the end of the lie. Nice touch, Mr. President.</p>
<p>And when millions of Americans got cancellation notices from their insurance companies telling them that contrary to what Mr. Obama had been telling them, they could <em>not</em> keep their healthcare plan – even if they liked it – then everyone knew he had his fingers crossed behind his back when he said what he said which wasn’t true.</p>
<p>So how did Team Obama respond when he got caught? Here’s how PolitiFact explains it:</p>
<p>“Initially, Obama and his team didn’t budge.</p>
<p>“First, they tried to shift blame to insurers. ‘FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans,’ said Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to Obama, on Oct. 28.</p>
<p>“PolitiFact rated her statement False. The restrictions on grandfathering were part of the law, and they were driving cancellations.</p>
<p>“Then, they tried to change the subject. ‘It’s important to remember both before the ACA was ever even a gleam in anybody’s eye, let alone passed into law, that insurance companies were doing this all the time, especially in the individual market because it was lightly regulated and the incentives were so skewed,’ said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.</p>
<p>“But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, ‘Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.’</p>
<p>“Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profile speech to the American Medical Association in 2009: ‘If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.’”</p>
<p>Eventually, after his most loyal supporters – journalists – turned on him, he confessed, admitting he got it wrong. Thanks, Mr. President.</p>
<p>Most people, if they got caught repeating such a whopper so many times so publicly would do the right thing – get plastic surgery, change their name, and sneak out of the country. Perhaps that’s not a practical solution for the president of the United States, but I never got the impression that he felt that normal human emotion when caught fabricating something important: humiliation. Just a little would have been nice. But Mr. Obama is a man of immense self-confidence. And it’s creepy.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that everybody knows what a mess ObamaCare has become, the president’s courtier in the Senate, Harry Reid, has said that ObamaCare would be a big plus for Democratic senators facing re-election in 2014.</p>
<p>“I think it’s going to be good for them,” Reid told a Las Vegas TV interviewer. “By that time, there will be a lot of people on it that have already signed up. It’ll be fine.”</p>
<p>For this, Senator Reid wins his own award: “Optimist of the Year.” (Just so you know, because I’m a nice guy, I fought the temptation to give Reid the “Doofus of the Year” award.)</p>
<p>And we didn’t even get into “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period!” There’s always next year.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-12-17T21:02:00ZWhen Idealism Gets Mugged by RealityBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/When-Idealism-Gets-Mugged-by-Reality/-564839152730471074.html2013-12-11T17:37:00Z2013-12-11T17:37:00Z<p>I was watching the Fox News Channel the other day when the host asked a young, liberal man who supports President Obama how he could possibly think that other young men would want to buy a health insurance policy that included maternity care just because that kind of coverage was mandated under the so-called Affordable Care Act. “Because,” came the instant reply, “they’ll also get ambulance service if they need to go to the hospital.”</p>
<p>This was a young man loyal to the president. And loyalty, as we can see from his answer, can make a devotee say silly things. Still, loyalty can be a noble trait. But when it’s loyalty to someone you don’t actually know, when it’s loyalty to a politician you only worship from afar, when it’s loyalty to a president who cares more about his legacy than he does about you, then noble isn’t quite the right word. Naive comes a lot closer.</p>
<p>Naive or not, this young, loyal, member of the millennial generation is precisely the kind of idealist Barack Obama desperately needs on his side if ObamaCare is to survive. If millions of young people don’t sign up, the game is over. Mr. Obama’s most important piece of legislation will die a slow, painful death. And no matter how many times he blames Republicans, it won’t matter. His stature and his presidency will be in tatters.</p>
<p>But Mr. Obama’s team has always figured that young people will “do the right thing,” that they’ll sign up for the Affordable Care Act even if it isn’t quite as affordable as they thought. Why? Because they’re young idealists who are, well, idealistic, and care more about the welfare of the country than they care about themselves. President Obama has counted on them to be “good, responsible people” who will sacrifice for the greater good. Mr. Obama was betting the young and healthy would be willing to pay more for their insurance so old people more likely to get sick could pay less. He was betting the millennials would do that even though the fine (or tax) was quite small if they chose not to sign up for ObamaCare. Such was his faith in their idealism, and their liberalism. But mostly, such was his faith in himself — in his ability to sell ice cubes to Eskimos.</p>
<p>But there was another guest on another Fox show the other day who wasn’t buying what the president was selling. This guest was angry because his insurance had just been cancelled and his premiums tripled from $100 a month to $300. And what irked him the most was that with his new policy he had to pay for – ready for this? — pediatric dental care.</p>
<p>It turns out this young man wasn’t married, had no kids and didn’t need or want pediatric dental care. He seemed like a smart, decent guy. But he didn’t feel any great need “to do the right thing” or be “responsible” just to make the president look good.</p>
<p>And he’s hardly alone. A new survey from the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that 56 percent of 18-to-29 year olds disapprove of ObamaCare. A majority believes it will increase costs. And now, only 41 percent approve of the job the president (they once loved and admired) is doing. Does any of this make you think these young Americans just can’t wait to sign up for more expensive insurance plans?</p>
<p>Last spring, before anyone knew what a disaster the ObamaCare rollout would be, a White House official said, “If there’s one thing we know how to do it’s reach young people.” He had reason for optimism. Young people were among Mr. Obama’s biggest supporters. But what Team Obama didn’t factor in is that even young, loyal idealists have their limits. They’ll “do the right thing” until there’s a price to pay. They’re in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy, until <em>they</em> start making money. They’re in favor of affirmative action, until <em>they’re</em> the ones who don’t make the cut. And they were in favor of President Obama and his ironically named Affordable Care Act until it wasn’t so affordable <em>to them</em>. That’s when their loyalty morphed into another trait that has survived through the ages to ensure our well-being. This one is called Looking Out for Number One.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-12-11T17:37:00ZHow Would Liberals Treat a Black Conservative in the White House?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/How-Would-Liberals-Treat-a-Black-Conservative-in-the-White-House/403086984738139592.html2013-12-02T22:28:00Z2013-12-02T22:28:00Z<p>I know it’s been several weeks since Oprah Winfrey told a BBC interviewer in London that President Obama has been a victim of racism. And yes, I know that by now it’s old news. So in the spirit of the holiday season I’ll not only be brief, but polite, civil and kind too.</p>
<p>Ms. Winfrey was asked if President Obama would be treated differently if he were not African American. This is what she said: “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even in many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that, and it’s the kind of thing that nobody ever says but everybody is thinking it.”</p>
<p>Oprah is right that some of the criticism of President Obama is coming from bigots. In a nation of more than 300 million people, there will always some stupid people who can’t get beyond skin color. But it’s a mistake to make generalizations based on a small number of racists.</p>
<p>To bolster her case, Oprah told the BBC interviewer about Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican, who yelled “you lie” during a speech that Mr. Obama delivered to a joint session of Congress in 2009. That kind of disrespect, coming from a white Southerner, in the United States Congress no less, makes African Americans like Oprah Winfrey wonder why the only president in the entire history of this country ever subjected to that kind of nastiness, was a black man. If you were black you might wonder the same thing. But I don’t think Joe Wilson yelled “liar” because Mr. Obama is black. I think he did it because Joe Wilson is a fool.</p>
<p>But let’s move on to the main point Oprah was making: that some or much of what she sees as disrespect – but aside from Wilson’s remark is probably just run-of-the mill political criticism — is the result of racism. Is she on to something?</p>
<p>To find out, let’s imagine that another young, attractive African American with an Ivy League education is president of the United States. Let’s call him President Buckley — and let’s note that he’s very conservative. Let’s say President Buckley used his considerable charisma to rail against the prevalence of food stamps in our culture. Let’s say he wanted lower taxes on corporations and thought the government was spending too much money on too many programs that didn’t work. Who would be criticizing this black president?</p>
<p>If Oprah is right, that too many Americans (conservative Americans is what she meant) don’t like a black man in the White House, then it would be people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who would be yelling the loudest about President Buckley. But they’d be the ones cheering the loudest. They wouldn’t care one bit about the color of President Buckley’s skin. They’d be thrilled that they finally had a conservative in the White House. someone who in the ways that count, resembled Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>So then, who would be leading the opposition to President Buckley? Who would be the ones who before he ever got there refused to vote for this kind of black man? White liberals, that’s who. People like Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. People who write editorials at the New York Times.</p>
<p>Are they bigots? Do they hate black people? No? Then why are they heaping so much criticism on the poor guy? Could it be – duh! – that they would oppose President Buckley <em>because of his conservative politics</em>?</p>
<p>This is so simple I’m a little embarrassed devoting a column, even a short one, making these obvious points — except they’re not obvious to a lot of liberals.</p>
<p>Because I opened this piece saying I’d be polite, civil and kind, I won’t say that white liberals just aren’t that smart when it comes to matters involving race. I won’t say that they’re too busy trying show off their good racial manners, which is to say trying to convince black people that they, unlike most white people, aren’t bigots. And I won’t say, either, that black liberals, perhaps because of slavery and segregation, have become paranoid on matters of race, seeing racism even where it doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>I won’t say any of that — even if it’s true.</p>
<p><span> </span></p>Bernie Goldberg2013-12-02T22:28:00ZWhy Some People Defend The "N" WordBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Why-Some-People-Defend-The-N-Word/-553180259484750121.html2013-11-27T22:12:00Z2013-11-27T22:12:00Z<p><strong>WARNING</strong>: Explicit language is used in this article. </p>
<p><br />Back when I was a correspondent with CBS News I anchored a documentary called, “In Your Face, America” – about the rudeness and vulgarity that was increasingly infecting the nation’s bloodstream.</p>
<p>As part of the program I spent a day in Houston with a rapper who used the n-word over and over all day long. When I sat down with him for an interview, I asked why he used the word “nigger” as often as he did. He looked straight at me and said that he had never used that word. Confused, I told him he had used it a hundred times that day, and asked what the heck he was talking about. Without the slightest hint of humor or irony he said, “I used the word nigga,” emphasizing the last part, making the distinction between “nigger” and nigga.”</p>
<p>At the time, I found the difference foolish — and 20 years later I still do. And even though I did that interview a long time ago, the conversation and debate over the n-word – whether it ends with an “er” or an “a” – is as fresh today as it was way back then.</p>
<div> </div>
<p>I mention this because of a guest column I just read in the New York Times, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at the Atlantic. Mr. Coates is black. Under the headline, “In Defense of a Loaded Word,” Coates says words have context. Your dad’s friends can call him Billy. But you, his son, probably can’t. You can call your wife “baby,” but if your friend called her that, it would be wrong.</p>
<p>He’s right, of course. But this, as you may have already guessed, is only the appetizer. The main course is that as far as Mr. Coates is concerned it’s O.K. to use the word “nigger” – but only if you’re black. Some blacks agree with Coates, some don’t. And the same goes for white people.</p>
<p>Being in that second group, I have no desire to tell black people which words they can use and which ones they can’t. Black people know more about black culture than I do. Their say on the matter is more relevant than mine; their vote carries more weight. But I know more about how whites think than most blacks do. And on that, my vote carries more weight.</p>
<p>If I hear black people using the n-word, I think less of them. If black people have a right to use the word – and of course they do – I have a right to think they’re low class when they do. The word has a vile history attached to it. It conjures up images, none of them good. But it also conjures up “a deep fear of what our use of the word ‘nigger’ communicates to white people,” as Coates points out before quoting Al Sharpton on the matter. “If you call yourself the n-word,” Sharpton said, “you can’t get mad when someone treats you like that.”</p>
<p>On this, the Rev. Sharpton is right. If black people feel empowered by calling their friends “nigger” or “nigga” be my guest. But don’t blame the rest of us for thinking you’re black trash.</p>
<p>So why use the word? On this, Mr. Coates is clear. This is how he ends his column: Nigger is a word, he says, that “tells white people that, for all their guns and all their gold, there will always be places they can never go.”</p>
<p>There it is! The real reason so many African-Americans, especially young black males, feel so comfortable with the n-word, despite the fact that for many of us, black and white, it brings up memories of lynching and beatings and all sorts of other degradation of black people. White people can’t use the word, not unless they want to be seen as racists. So it’s a way for blacks to say, “Whitey may have more money and live better and all that, but here’s one place where we hold the cards; here’s one place where we have the power. We can call each other ‘nigger’ and you can’t.”</p>
<p>Mr. Coates is a bright man. But this is not smart. Jews don’t call each other kikes. Italian-Americans don’t call each other WOPs. Asian Americans don’t call each other gooks. If we feel the need to stick it to those who found us inferior, we find better ways than to demean each other. But blacks can call each other the n-word <em>simply because whites can’t</em>? Yes, words have context. And yes, the word “nigger” means one thing when a black kid uses it and something entirely different when a skinhead uses it. Let’s give Mr. Coates that. But does context really trump everything else?</p>
<p>As a white man my vote doesn’t matter all that much. I do, however, get to think that blacks who use the word, are inviting contempt. Or as Al Sharpton put it: “If you call yourself the n-word, you can’t get mad when someone treats you like that.”</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-11-27T22:12:00ZAsk Not What You Can Do For Your Country...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Ask-Not-What-You-Can-Do-For-Your-Country.../820158058042191845.html2013-11-20T17:24:00Z2013-11-20T17:24:00Z<p>With the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination upon us, the clip of the most memorable line of his Inaugural Address, and probably of his entire presidency, has run over and over again on television. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”</p>
<p>The line has stayed with us for all these years, I think, in part because it is elegant. There is a rhythm to it, a cadence, a symmetry. Like most great observations, it’s brief. It’s easy to grasp. It resonates because, at some level, that’s how most of us back then wanted things to be.</p>
<p>Chris Matthews, who has written a book about JFK, says the line is “a hard Republican-sounding slap at the welfare state.” Yes. And that’s another reason so many Americans were so enthralled by his simple request. That Kennedy was a Democrat gave his plea to the American people even more power and legitimacy.</p>
<p>As I watched that old black and white film, and listened to JFK’s words, it occurred to me that I can’t imagine Barack Obama ever uttering such a message. If anything – and if he thought he could get away with it – he’d make his own simple, elegant, easy to understand plea: “Ask not what you can do for your country – ask what your country can do for you.”</p>
<p>And then he’d offer up a laundry list: Your government can offer you free food stamps, and free unemployment insurance that lasts almost two years, and free disability payments even if you aren’t disabled and applied because your unemployment benefits finally ran out, and free Obama phones, and, of course, free birth control pills.</p>
<p>No, President Obama didn’t come up with those programs (except for the birth control pills), but they all got bigger since he became president.</p>
<p>JFK, despite the fact that he was a Democrat from Massachusetts, was conservative on a lot of issues. He understood that cutting taxes, for instance – even for the wealthiest Americans — was a way to spur economic growth that would benefit everybody. Barack Obama has no such understanding. He once told an interviewer that he would be in favor of raising capital gains taxes – even if that would result in <em>less</em> tax revenues – because it was the “fair” thing to do.</p>
<p>Can you imagine anyone with even a simple grasp of economics saying something so breathtakingly stupid?</p>
<p>In his new book, <em>JFK Conservative</em>, Ira Stoll makes the point that in 1960 “the anti-Communist, anti-big government candidate was John F. Kennedy. The one touting government programs and higher salaries for public employees was Richard Nixon.”</p>
<p>Today, the only ones President Obama calls on “to do” for their country are the wealthy. They’re the ones who enable him to “spread the wealth around” as he told Joe the Plumber. I don’t recall him every calling on anyone else “to do” anything for their country.</p>
<p>Last year, Larry Kudlow wrote that, “Between 2008 and 2011, federal welfare payments have jumped 32 percent. Food stamps have surged, with 71 percent more spending on the program in 2011 compared with 2008. Health payments, principally Medicaid, have climbed 37 percent.</p>
<p>“By the way, it’s not just the deep recession and weak recovery that’s driving up these programs. It’s a substantial <em>eligibility</em> expansion, which started under George W. Bush, but has gone much further under President Obama.”</p>
<p>Kennedy knew that government was there to help those who needed help, <em>temporarily</em>. As Chris Matthews said, JFK’s most famous line was a slap at the welfare state. Barack Obama embraces the welfare state. Kennedy didn’t want government to be our nanny. That may be the biggest difference between JFK and BHO.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-11-20T17:24:00ZHonest: Would You Rather Win with Chris Christie or Lose with Ted Cruz?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Honest:-Would-You-Rather-Win-with-Chris-Christie-or-Lose-with-Ted-Cruz/-730789834314613632.html2013-11-13T17:19:00Z2013-11-13T17:19:00Z<p>Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny. They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, “The Elephant in the Room.” Get it? Elephant. Christie. Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time’s executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way: “Well, he’s obviously a big guy. He’s obviously a big Republican. But he’s also done a really huge thing here this week.”</p>
<p>The “huge thing” wasn’t only winning re-election as New Jersey’s governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state – not just to his conservative base.</p>
<p>But, hey, no harm no foul. Time isn’t even a newsmagazine anymore. It became a liberal journal of opinion a long time ago. So you can just hear those wild and crazy journalists at Time sitting around the conference room table giggling about how they’d get away with their fat joke because, well, in the world of politics, the word “elephant” isn’t a synonym with “fatso.”</p>
<p>But do you think the gang at Time would ever say Barack Obama is a “dark horse.” In the world of politics “dark” doesn’t mean “black,” right?</p>
<p>Time’s cover doesn’t necessarily mean that Chris Christie is the GOP frontrunner for 2016. It’s way too early for that. But it does help make him the flavor of the month. He was also on all the Sunday TV talk shows this week. You don’t get to do that unless you’re the flavor of the month, or at least of the week.</p>
<p>Besides, he’s a favorite of liberal journalists, not only because he’s got a big mouth which makes for some interesting quotes, but also because he’s not the most conservative Republican out there. For the same reasons they despise Ted Cruz, they adore Chris Christie. For now.</p>
<p>But if he becomes a serious threat to one of their all-time favs, Hillary Clinton, the so-called mainstream media will turn on Christie with a vengeance. They hated Goldwater and Reagan while they were alive, painting them as crazy right-wing ideologues. When they were dead, they became good conservatives – to contrast them with every other conservative who was still breathing.</p>
<p>It’s a good bet Christie will run. And if he does, he’s charismatic enough to cause the Democrats some sleepless nights. But Christie’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.</p>
<p>Christie can win in a deep blue state like New Jersey because he’s not a hard right Tea Party type. That means he can win the support of women and minorities – crucial to winning a nationwide election. But the hard right sees him as the latest incarnation of John McCain and Mitt Romney – two moderates who lost.</p>
<p>Chris Christie can attract moderates and independents that would give him a shot in swing states that Republicans must win to take the White House. He could win Florida and Ohio and North Carolina and Colorado and New Hampshire, and maybe even Iowa and New Mexico. But he might not be able to win his party’s nomination because it’s conservatives who make up the majority of primary voters, and they – at least as of now – don’t want a Chris Christie. They want a Ted Cruz or a Rand Paul or some other candidate who can’t win a national election despite what they think.</p>
<p>What the hard right needs to understand is that if they really want change, first they have to win elections. I know it sounds obvious, but it’s one of those obvious facts the Tea Party never seemed able to grasp. They picked a bad candidate in Nevada a few years back when a good candidate might have defeated Harry Reid. And they picked a candidate in Delaware who had to go on TV and tell everyone that she’s not a witch. She also lost. And there have been other Tea Party favorites who appealed to the hard right base, but because that’s never enough, they also lost.</p>
<p>The Tea Party folks are very proud of the fact that they stand on principle. Bulletin: so do less hardline Republicans. But the hard right calls everyone to the left of Ted Cruz a RINO, a Republican in name only. The Tea Party won’t like this, but the real RINOs are the Tea Party people. They’ve been very clear that their allegiance is to pure conservatism, not to the Republican Party. Yes, my right wing friends, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and the others on the far right are the real RINOs.</p>
<p>Because I want Republicans to win, let me offer two pieces of advice. The first to Chris Christie:</p>
<p>Don’t pick a fight with your own base, the conservatives who at the moment don’t really like you. As Ross Douthat puts in his New York Times column: “As a would-be nominee, you have to woo base voters, not run against them, and make them feel respected even when they disagree with you. This doesn’t mean muzzling yourself, or pandering to every right-wing interest group. But it means persuading conservatives that you like them, that you understand them and that as president you’re going to be (mostly) on their side.”</p>
<p>In other words, fight the temptation to go along with liberal journalists who believe the GOP is a party of right-wing morons. Don’t get drawn in by their phony admiration for you.</p>
<p>The second piece of advice is for the Tea Party and other purists on the right. If it looks like Chris Christie can win, jump on his bandwagon. Give him your support. And do you best to be passionate about it. If you don’t, you’ll have up to eight years of Mrs. Clinton. No matter how you feel about Christie, he’s a lot better than another liberal Democrat, right?</p>
<p>The answer to that last question is obviously yes. But true believers sometimes don’t think rationally. I’m cautiously optimistic that Chris Christie could win in 2016 (although cautiously <em>hopeful</em> may come closer to my real feelings). But I’m pessimistic about his chances of winning the support of his own party. Fundamentalists – political, religious or any other kind – don’t like to bend. Sometimes I think they’d rather lose than compromise. Rush Limbaugh, after all, can barely get the word “compromise” out of his mouth without gagging. To him, compromise is caving in. He’s a lot like Barrack Obama in that respect.</p>
<p>And so the real elephants in the room are those purist conservatives who will have to decide how badly they want to win. It’s still early, but I fear too many of them would rather lose with Ted Cruz than win with Chris Christie.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-11-13T17:19:00ZIs Obama Clueless - or Dishonest?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Obama-Clueless---or-Dishonest/-80182673848476251.html2013-11-07T03:21:00Z2013-11-07T03:21:00Z<p>I’m always amused when I hear my liberal friends say that they’re pro choice. What they mean, of course, is they’re pro choice when it comes to abortions. But many of these same liberals support nanny state laws that tell us how much soda we can drink from one cup, or what kind of fats are acceptable for us to eat in restaurants. Those laws restrict our choices. And they’re certainly not pro-choice when it comes to ObamaCare.</p>
<p>Millions of Americans are right now getting cancellation letters from their insurance companies thanks to the unfortunately named Affordable Care Act. The plans, according to the president and other liberals who know what’s best for us, were junk that left us, in the president’s term, “underinsured.”</p>
<p>Maybe they did. Maybe, as Mr. Obama says, we’ll get a “better deal” with the new plans we’ll get from the exchanges, if we can ever get on the exchanges. In any case, whatever happened to “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it – period.”</p>
<p>But as an editorial in the Wall Street Journal put it, “If the federal exchanges really were better, Mr. Obama wouldn’t have needed to outlaw the old product and compel everyone to buy the new, government-approved version.”</p>
<p>And this is from the people who tell us they’re pro choice!</p>
<p>President Obama and his slobbering supporters talk to us the way parents speak to children. “You think you know what’s best, but you don’t,” a mother tells her 10-year old child. This is how people who are smart talk to people who aren’t, how superiors talk to inferiors.</p>
<p>But despite the media attention it’s been getting, the massive failure of the rollout may be the least of the problems with ObamaCare. Liberalism – and its I-know-what’t-best-for-you-because-you’re-not-smart-enough-to-take-care-of yourself—is a much bigger issue. Liberals like to tell us that, unlike conservatives, they’re open-minded. What they really are is authoritarian. And what they practice is liberal paternalism.</p>
<p>Which leads me to a new Gallup poll, which has President Obama’s approval rating at a dismal 40 percent – and his disapproval number at a troubling (for him) 53 percent.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a political genius to know ObamaCare is behind these numbers. The same people who didn’t care about Benghazi or the IRS scandal care about what’s going on with their healthcare. Benghazi and the IRS mess didn’t directly hit them, so they let it slide. ObamaCare is hitting them, directly and hard. They’re the ones getting cancellation letters from their insurance carriers; they’re the ones who are getting sticker shock rate hikes.</p>
<p>But there’s one more element, I think. And that is the belief held by many Americans that the president lied to them, that he knew all along what was coming, but he decided not to tell the truth because the truth might mean an early end to ObamaCare. The truth might also have cost him re-election.</p>
<p>Even the clueless, the low information voters, the ones who barely know how many states there are, don’t like a person who looks them in the eye and lies. And I think the Gallup numbers reflect that. But in fairness to the president, there is another possibility. Maybe he was selling the American people something that even he didn’t understand. After all, his pal Nancy Pelosi did tell us that we’d have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.</p>
<p>So Mr. Obama is either clueless or dishonest. Take your pick.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-11-07T03:21:00ZFraud in the Inducement - and President ObamaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Fraud-in-the-Inducement---and-President-Obama/-675798976496957960.html2013-10-30T16:34:00Z2013-10-30T16:34:00Z<p>Bulletin! This just in!!! Even the so-called mainstream media have caught on. Even they, his most loyal acolytes, have begun pounding Jay Carney, the president’s flack, over the rollout of ObamaCare.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the whole procedure is one great big mess. Even the libs on Saturday Night Live are making fun of it. But hey, Team Obama only had about three years to figure it all out.</p>
<p>The real mystery isn’t why Kathleen Sebelius, whose department is in charge of signing us up for ObamaCare, still has a job. What has me baffled is how she still has her citizenship. If she worked in the real world – the private sector where people are held accountable – she’d be long gone by now. And if she were lucky she might find work in Bangladesh.</p>
<p>But what’s troubling about the media coverage is that it’s been focusing mainly on those “glitches” – the hours and days and weeks it takes to log on to the official ObamaCare Web site. While that’s legitimate news, there’s a bigger story that is getting short shrift in the MSM. And it’s a story about fraud.</p>
<p>Let’s say you make a business deal with someone. But you lie about pertinent facts in the process. This is called “Fraud in the Inducement.” Here’s the definition from a legal dictionary: “the use of deceit or trick to cause someone to act to his/her disadvantage, such as signing an agreement or deeding away real property. The heart of this type of fraud is misleading the other party as to the facts upon which he/she will base his/her decision to act. Example: ‘there will be tax advantages to you if you let me take title to your property,’ or ‘you don’t have to read the rest of the contract–it is just routine legal language.’ but actually includes a balloon payment”</p>
<p>Isn’t this pretty much what President Obama did when he pushed through the so-called Affordable Care Act? He looked us in the eye and with a straight face said (to use just one easy example) that under his new plan we could keep our doctors if we wanted to. But millions of Americans can’t. They’re losing their old coverage and being pushed into the ObamaCare “exchanges” — and a lot of them will have to find new doctors. Surely Mr. Obama knew he wasn’t telling the truth. That’s one of the requirements to prove fraud – that he knew he was misleading us. The alternative is that he wasn’t lying at all, but that he is simply incompetent; that he had no idea what he was actually shoving down our throats. This is a possibility too. But let’s assume he knew what he was saying. Let’s assume he intentionally put a smiley face on his signature program. Why isn’t this “fraud in the inducement”?</p>
<p>He also told us our premiums would go down. For millions of us they’re going up. How is this any different from the example above when one party tells the other: “There will be tax advantages to you if you let me take title to your property.” If that’s a lie then so is the president telling us, “Your premiums won’t go up.” Instead of “tax advantages” he misled us about “premium advantages.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t on the “Repeal ObamaCare” bandwagon. I think the leaders of that movement did Republicans more harm than good. The way you get rid of ObamaCare is by winning elections. I think Ted Cruz and the others made that more difficult for the GOP– but time will tell, as the old saying goes.</p>
<p>But I do know this: If Barack Obama sold any of us a bill of goods based on a pack of lies in the private world of business, he just might find himself trying to explain what happened to a judge.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-10-30T16:34:00ZBernie's Latest Column: The One Promise Mr. Obama Is Trying to KeepBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-The-One-Promise-Mr.-Obama-Is-Trying-to-Keep/-687327693943010109.html2013-10-23T19:06:00Z2013-10-23T19:06:00Z<p>I have written before about that observation by H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore journalist and all-around sourpuss, who said you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the ordinary American. Once again, let’s put that dark remark to the test.</p>
<p>Most Americans tell the pollsters that they don’t like ObamaCare. But they detest Republicans, the very people who unanimously voted against it.</p>
<p>They voted for Mr. Obama because he promised he wasn’t going to play the old polarizing game that politicians have always played. Today he’s the most polarizing president in memory, and thanks to the American people, his approval ratings, though not as high as they once were, are still the kind W would have killed for.</p>
<p>They voted for Barack Obama because he said he would bring us together. Knowing what the American people wanted to hear, he said he would respect the other side’s point of view. During the showdown over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown, Mr. Obama and his acolytes used the language usually reserved for terrorists to describe Republicans. They were hostage takers and people with bombs strapped to their chest, in the words of one of the president’s top political advisors. Or they were like wife beaters, according to Senator Barbara Boxer, one of President Obama’s most loyal allies.</p>
<p>President Obama told us if we passed the Affordable Care Act our premiums would come down. For millions of Americans they’re going up. Way up. And so are their deductibles.</p>
<p>He said we could all keep our doctors under ObamaCare. Some will, many won’t.</p>
<p>He said if we like our insurance plan we could keep it. Again, some will, many won’t.</p>
<p>He told us he’d get to the bottom of the IRS scandal that targeted conservatives. He hasn’t.</p>
<p>He told us those responsible for the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi would be punished. We’re still waiting.</p>
<p>He drew a red line in the sand regarding the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian dictator. Then he said he wasn’t the one who drew a red line, the world did. He not only looked foolish. He looked weak. And the jury is still out on whether the Syrian regime will really turn over its chemical weapons to an international organization.</p>
<p>He told us he cut the deficit in half but forgot to tell us a) that a lot of the reduction was the result of sequestration, which he opposes, and b) that it was half of the biggest deficit in our history, created by him and his fellow Democrats – and about twice as much as the deficit in the last year of the Bush presidency.</p>
<p>He told us that he helped created millions of jobs since he became president but left out the part about how many of them – perhaps most — are part-time jobs since a lot of employers won’t hire full time workers because of the costs associated with ObamaCare.</p>
<p>He told us that Republicans were radical extremists at the same time he was the one who wouldn’t compromise even a little to open up the government a lot sooner.</p>
<p>How does he get away with this kind of duplicity? Could be because Mencken was right. There really are a lot of dolts in the USA – the clueless class of Americans who, if they ever heard of Benghazi or the IRS scandal or Syria or any of the rest of it, have already forgotten all about all of it. And the so-called mainstream media aren’t doing much to refresh their memories.</p>
<p>But liberal journalists almost always favor Democrats over Republicans. Still, this is different. As willing as reporters are to put a thumb on the scale for Democrats, I don’t think Mondale or Dukakis or Gore or Kerry would have gotten such an easy ride. Mr. Obama, of course, is different. If we need to say it, he’s black. And more than that he’s the first African-American president of the United States. And precisely because of that a lot of journalists won’t go after him the way they’d go after other politicians, even those of the Democratic persuasion. They have way too much invested in him.</p>
<p>I understand this is not a new or particularly enlightening observation – not at this late date anyway. But in times of crisis it’s important to state the obvious.</p>
<p>There is one more promise Mr. Obama made to the nation while he was selling himself as The One who came to save us from politics as usual. He told us he would fundamentally transform the United States of America. Finally, a statement we can believe he really meant.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-10-23T19:06:00ZBernie's Latest Column: The Suicide Wing of the GOP vs The RealistsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-The-Suicide-Wing-of-the-GOP-vs-The-Realists/-604053710832122890.html2013-10-16T17:29:00Z2013-10-16T17:29:00Z<p>Here’s the problem for Republicans as we move toward the elections in 2014 and 2016: The majority – sometimes known as the establishment — can’t trust the populist wing of the party – sometimes known as the suicide wing – to do what’s best for the GOP’s prospects … and they can’t nuke them either. It’s never smart to go to war with your base.</p>
<p>According to two new polls, Republicans are taking most of the blame for the partial government shutdown. A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 70 percent of American adults disapprove of the way congressional Republicans are handling budget negotiations. Sixty-one percent disapprove of Democrats. As for President Obama, his approval rating actually went up, to 45 percent, from 41 percent at the end of September.</p>
<p>And in a Pew survey, by a margin of 38 percent to 30 percent respondents said Republicans are more to blame for the shutdown than President Obama.</p>
<p>Yet the suicide wing of the party says “We did the right thing. We stood up for our principles.” That’s usually a good thing. But in politics you have to have a plan. And Senator Ted Cruz and the House populists didn’t. They’re a minority in the GOP, but a loud and at times menacing minority. And so the more moderate (read that “reasonable”) Republicans went along with their silly scheme first to repeal ObamaCare and when that didn’t work, to defund it. Memo to the suicide wing: Don’t go to war without a plan. Don’t enter a conflict without an endgame. Don’t pick a fight you can’t win.</p>
<p>In his New York Times column, Ross Douthat, a thoughtful conservative, acknowledges that politics is a tough business and failure “is normal enough” before launching into a broadside against the populists.</p>
<p>“But there is still something well-nigh unprecedented about how Republicans have conducted themselves of late,” he writes. “It’s not the scale of their mistake, or the kind of damage that it’s caused, but the fact that their strategy was such self-evident folly, so transparently devoid of any method whatsoever.</p>
<p>“Every sensible person, most Republican politicians included, could recognize that the shutdown fever would blow up in the party’s face. Even the shutdown’s ardent champions never advanced a remotely compelling story for how it would deliver its objectives. And everything that’s transpired since, form the party’s polling nose dive to the frantic efforts to save face, was entirely predictable in advance.”</p>
<p>He’s right, of course, but true believers don’t think that way. All they know is that they’re right. And that’s enough for them, even if a majority of American voters don’t quite see it that way.</p>
<p>Still, nobody right now knows how all this will turn out.</p>
<p>The good news scenario for Republicans is that the American people may yet turn on the president. They may at some point see him as uncompromising and obstinate and start to shift blame over to him for the mess in Washington.</p>
<p>The bad news scenario is that this won’t happen, that the GOP brand is so tarnished that the party will continue to take the lion share of the blame and that they’ll stand no chance of taking over the Senate next year. It’s not likely they would lose the House, but if you offend enough voters, anything is possible.</p>
<p>But it could be even worse. If the GOP puts up another moderate like McCain or Romney in 2016, millions of hardline conservatives may very well sit out the election. But if they put up a take-no-prisoners hardliner, millions of more moderate Republicans may stay home.</p>
<p>As I’ve said before: The Republicans need a charismatic conservative who can bring the factions together. They need a conservative with the skills of Barack Obama – yes Barack Obama, my hard right friends — who brought both regular liberals and far lefties together to win two elections.</p>
<p>One more piece of bad news: I don’t see anyone like that on the horizon. Not at the moment anyway.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-10-16T17:29:00ZBernie's Latest Column: A President Who Is More Like Harry Reid than Harry TrumanBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-A-President-Who-Is-More-Like-Harry-Reid-than-Harry-Truman/592085350267096242.html2013-10-08T19:19:00Z2013-10-08T19:19:00Z<p>President Obama says if Republicans fail to increase the debt ceiling they will be responsible for an “economic shutdown.” The Treasury Department says if the U.S. government defaults on its obligations, it would be “catastrophic.”</p>
<p>D-Day is October 17. That’s when the government of the United States technically runs out of money to pay our debts. You’ll be hearing a lot about a U.S. government “default” – the first in our long history — but that’s misleading. There will be enough money to pay bondholders, so there won’t be any real default. Still, the government won’t be able to pay <em>all</em> its bills on time and that could turn out to be serious, especially if the financial markets get spooked and stocks tank while interest rates soar.</p>
<p>Here’s how bad things could get, according to the Obama administration: “In the event that a debt limit impasse were to lead to a default, it could have a catastrophic effect on not just financial markets but also on job creation, consumer spending and economic growth,” according to a report put out by the Treasury Department.</p>
<p>“Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse,” the report added.</p>
<p>Wow! Sounds pretty serious. So what is the President of the United States of America planning to do to make sure Armageddon doesn’t come to pass? The best I can figure, the answer is … nothing.</p>
<p>Republicans want spending cuts tied to increases in the debt ceiling. Mr. Obama says he won’t negotiate. Let’s see if I understand this: President Obama thinks failure to increase the debt ceiling could shutdown our economy and lead to lots of bad stuff, but he won’t compromise to avoid disaster? Is trying to humiliate Republicans so important to him that he would actually stand by and do nothing in the face of an economic crisis? I’m guessing the answer is yes.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama says that raising the debt ceiling won’t add to the national debt. “That’s not what this is about,” he recently said. “It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime. …What it does is allow the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. government to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.”</p>
<p>Technically, the president is right. But continuing to raise the debt ceiling allows Democrats in Congress to keep spending more than the government takes in, knowing that at some point down the road – after they’ve spent a few trillion dollars more than they collect — they’ll again be faced with a crisis that would force them to once again … raise the debt ceiling. Can you say “vicious circle”?</p>
<p>That’s why the Republicans are pretty much saying, “We’ll pass an increase, but help us out Mr. President. Let’s reduce the current levels of spending. We can’t go on like this forever.”</p>
<p>Mr. Obama wants none of it. He’ll talk about spending he says, only <em>after</em> Republicans give him his increase in the debt ceiling. Of course, after the increase takes effect, the GOP will have a lot less negotiating power – which is just how the president and Democrats in Congress want it.</p>
<p>In our system, the president has two roles. He’s the leader of his party, but he’s also the president of <em>all</em> Americans. He has an obligation to do more than score political points for his team. But for quite a while now Mr. Obama has been acting like Harry Reid, not like Harry Truman – or any other president who didn’t consider himself above it all, looking down on the peons from a cloud.</p>
<p>Speaking of Harry Truman, here’s what freshman Senator Barack Obama said back in 2006 when President Bush asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling:</p>
<p>“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here’. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more.</p>
<p>But it was all a mistake, Barack Obama, has since said — a foolish mistake made by a rookie senator who was thinking more about politics than the good of the nation. “I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a senator versus the vantage point of a president,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “When you’re a senator, traditionally what’s happened is, this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit – for the United States by a trillion dollars. As president, you start realizing, you know what, we, we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States. And so that was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.”</p>
<p>That’s one way to put it. Here’s another way: The most partisan American president in a very long time is also the most cynical. He will say and do anything that suits his purpose <em>at the moment</em>.</p>
<p>As I write this most of the blame for the partial shutdown of the government is being put on Republicans. If the president refuses to make a deal on the debt ceiling – just as he’s refused to compromise on the shutdown – the tide may change; the American people may finally wake up and start blaming Barack Obama for being obstinate. They may start to see him as the politician that he is, despite his lofty rhetoric to the contrary. But I’m not betting on it.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-10-08T19:19:00ZBernie's Latest Column: An Open Letter to the AyatollahsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-An-Open-Letter-to-the-Ayatollahs/-446578281206201156.html2013-10-01T19:34:00Z2013-10-01T19:34:00Z<p>No, not the ayatollahs in Tehran. This is a letter to <em>you</em>, the conservative American ayatollahs who demand purity, just like the ones over there. I’m not talking about all of you, of course. But this open letter is for many of you; maybe even most of you – the ones who say you agree with what I write on this Web site and what I say on the O’Reilly Factor almost all of the time, but as soon as I fall out of lock step with you … you vow to never listen or read another word I say or write. You are the ayatollahs this letter is aimed at.</p>
<p>The last two columns I wrote – one about whether Christian small business owners can refuse to do business with gays, the other about the civil war raging in the Republican Party – have drawn a ton of negative reaction. In both cases I wasn’t pure enough for many of you. Let me be clear: dissent is welcome. Unlike many of you, I don’t believe I have a monopoly on Truth. Do I like comments that say, “Bernie, right on, we love you”? Sure. But those of you who disagree are free to state your opinions just as I’m free to state mine.</p>
<p>But what I’ve learned is that while many of you <em>claim</em> to respect people in the public eye who stand up for their views, no matter how unpopular, what you really mean is you respect people in the public eye who stand up for <em>your</em> views. What I’ve learned reading your comments over several years now is that many of you only want your views validated. Nothing else is good enough. You don’t simply disagree with the other guy. You don’t want to even hear the other guy. You want the other guy dead (in some cases, I suspect, literally dead!). So this feel-good nonsense that you spout – that you admire people who stand on principle – is just something you say to make yourself feel good — about yourself. But you don’t mean it. Like the other ayatollahs, reasoned dissent scares you. You talk tough. But you’re weak.</p>
<p>In my particular case, I have never written or uttered a word on TV that I didn’t honestly believe. Those views often offend liberals who read or listen to me. Understood. And every now and then those views rub my hard right friends the wrong way. But despite what you say, you don’t really respect independence. You only want to hear from people who agree with you. You rightly deride liberal colleges for not welcoming diverse opinions. You rightly wonder what they’re afraid of. You, my conservative ayatollahs … are them.</p>
<p>You know how many of you (again, rightly) condemn liberals who attack black conservatives for straying from the liberal plantation? You ayatollahs are no better. You condemn me for straying from the conservative plantation. And even if you agree with me most of the time, one false move and I’m dead to you. Think I’m exaggerating? Try this sampling (with bad spelling and bad grammar left intact) from those of you angry conservatives who are no better than angry closed-minded liberals:</p>
<p>From Leisa: “I can no longer listen to you. How disrespectful and foolish can you be. I will stop watching O’Riley in fear I might possibly see or hear from you again.”</p>
<p>From Wade: “Followed you for years and bought [your] book. Never again Go to Hell.”</p>
<p>From Vicki: “Bernie. you have now lost me. wow. you missed the point entirely. You and O’Reilly are done.”</p>
<p>From Conservative Citizen: I will never watch them [Goldberg and O’Reilly] again. Just like MSNBC.</p>
<p>From Mal<strong>: “</strong>last time I’ll bother reading Bernie!”</p>
<p>From LaMont: “Been a long time follower of yours Bernie, but after seeing youR comments on Ted Cruz and Eric Bolling, it seems that you are just anther Karl Rove ASS KISSER. YOu establishment GOP guys suck – our only chance is if the likes of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Eric Bolling can get rid of you, Rove, McConnell, and Boehner. Go screw Pelosi you traitor – I AM DONE LISTENING TO PHONIES LIKE YOU!”</p>
<p>There are many more just like that.</p>
<p>When I wrote about liberal bias while I was still a CBS News correspondent, conservatives applauded me. But some of my liberal CBS News colleagues called me a “traitor” because I didn’t toe the party line. They were afraid of dissent. Dissent would force them to consider another point of view, and that’s the last thing they wanted to do. Now I’m called a traitor again – this time by you conservative ayatollahs, for expressing a few opinions you don’t want to hear. Once again, you are what you condemn in liberals.</p>
<p>There is little difference between the authoritarians on the hard left and those of you ayatollahs on the hard right. You’re both closed-minded. You both demand ideological purity.</p>
<p>The ayatollahs in Tehran survive because they will not tolerate dissent. This is all the proof you need regarding their insecurity. You, my American ayatollah friends, are no different. You don’t simply dislike opinions that don’t mesh with yours. You don’t ever want to be exposed to them. At some level you see opinions you don’t share as viruses that may do you in. That’s why, like the ayatollahs over there, you too want to shut down dissent. You too are insecure.</p>
<p>I know, as I said at the outset, that some of you reading this – whether you agree with my views on various subjects or not – are open-minded enough to hear me out. That’s all I ask. It would be nice if more of you took on the ayatollahs with strong comments on my Web site, but that’s up to you. As for the right wing authoritarians who have threatened to never read another word I write, or listen to another word I say, do what you have to do.</p>
<p>The good people in Tehran will not miss their ayatollahs when they finally go. And we won’t miss you, either.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-10-01T19:34:00ZBernie's Latest Column: "Real" Conservatives on a Suicide MissionBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-Real-Conservatives-on-a-Suicide-Mission/782255460471579619.html2013-09-26T02:36:00Z2013-09-26T02:36:00Z<p>Here’s how I come to my political opinions these days: I listen very carefully to what Eric Bolling says about a particular issue from his perch at Fox News. And then I take the opposite position.</p>
<p>Bolling is one of those true-blue conservatives who believes the words “moderate Republicans” are nothing more than a nice way of saying “no backbone weasel good-for-nothing Republcians.” He’s not alone, of course. Conservatives on talk radio think the only reason Democrats win the White House is because the GOP puts up moderates who turn off the base.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They want a “real” take-no-prisoners conservative to run next time. Deep down, they keep hoping that Ronald Reagan will rise from the dead and hit the campaign trail in 2016 and beat Hillary. What these hard right pundits never seem to understand is that Ronald Reagan was the <em>only </em>conservative to win the White House in the last 80 years. If being a “real” conservative is so popular, you’d think Reagan wouldn’t be the only one who became president.</p>
<p>But while conservatives in the media do have <em>some</em> clout, they don’t get to actually vote on bills in Congress and pass laws. This is where another “real” true blue conservative comes in.</p>
<div> </div>
<p>Ted Cruz is the rookie U.S. senator from Texas who if he worked at Fox News would be Eric Bolling. Like Bolling, Cruz is on a mission. He wants Republicans to stand up for their conservative principles – and he’ll worry about the consequences later. In Mr. Cruz’s world, charging over the hill and running into the enemy’s bayonets is a noble thing to do. Like Bolling, Cruz has no time for those wishy-washy moderates. But unlike Bolling and other conservatives in the media, Ted Cruz can do some <em>real</em> harm.</p>
<p>Cruz is the one leading the drive to de-fund ObamaCare. That would be great if he could succeed. But he can’t. Cruz had a plan. He would go on TV and make speeches in order to drum up grass roots support across America that would once and for all put a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. But the grass roots – even though they don’t like ObamaCare – never got passionate about de-funding it.</p>
<p>That didn’t stop Cruz who like most zealots won’t change course, no matter what.</p>
<p>So we don’t get too deep into the weeds, here’s a brief summary of what’s going on: The House passed a bill that would de-fund ObamaCare but keep the rest of the government running. The bill has gone to the Senate where it has absolutely no chance of passing – or even being considered. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader, will send the bill back to the House, absent the de-funding language, and then House Republicans will do … who knows what?</p>
<p>I get the impression that Senator Cruz thinks if all this leads to a government shutdown President Obama and the Democrats will be blamed. After all, the thinking goes, Republicans don’t want a government shutdown; they only want to shut down the Affordable Care Act. By refusing to go along, it’s the Democrats who would really be shutting down government, if it comes to that.</p>
<p>It’ll never play out that way. First, President Obama has the bully pulpit. He will blame Republicans for a shutdown and he’ll get away with it, mainly because Mr. Obama’s loyalists in the media will make it a story about GOP intransigence. ObamaCare is the law of the land, they will say, and Republicans, behaving like spoiled brats who detest this president (probably because he’s black), are incapable of accepting that. And if there is a government shutdown, expect lots of sad stories in the media about how our national parks are closed to the public and how veterans who lost their legs fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan can’t get their medical benefits. On top of that, a majority of Americans still like the president personally — and pretty much don’t like the Republicans, who they see as the party that’s always saying no. They may agree with Ted Cruz that ObamaCare is a bad law. But they don’t like him. That matters.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if the president secretly hopes all of this actually does lead to a government shutdown. It’s his best chance, after all, of winning the House in 2014 — the House being the only thing standing in the way of the president passing a lot more of what’s on his liberal wish list than he can now get away with. And if things go south for the GOP, we can thank Mr. Cruz and all the other “real” conservatives for that. Standing up for your principles is one thing. Committing political suicide is something else altogether.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-09-26T02:36:00ZBernie's Latest Column: Obama's Greatest Asset: Clueless AmericansBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-Obamas-Greatest-Asset:-Clueless-Americans/615577187517442699.html2013-09-18T01:02:00Z2013-09-18T01:02:00Z<p>H.L. Mencken made Andy Rooney look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Both gave curmudgeons a bad name. But Andy was shrew; he played to Middle Americans. He would say something like, “Have you ever wondered why we collect string?” – and they would swoon. He was one of them, they thought. I knew Andy. He wasn’t one of them and I suspect he didn’t think much of them. Mencken, on the other hand, made no secret of his disdain for ordinary Americans, whom he saw as hopeless dolts.</p>
<p>Mencken, a Baltimore newspaperman, once said this about his fellow Americans:</p>
<p>“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”</p>
<p>Pretty cold. But given that the great masses of plain people elected Barack Obama twice, maybe H.L. was onto something.</p>
<p>They elected him the first time because he was a historical figure. He wasn’t Mondale or Dukakis or Gore or Kerry. He was young and cool and black and liberal. And Americans wanted to make history.</p>
<p>But the second time around? Unemployment was high, a big majority of Americans thought we were on the wrong track, the economic recovery was anemic, and most Americans had little confidence that things would get better anytime soon.</p>
<p>Yet he won again. So how do we explain it? Yes, you could pin it on a weak Republican candidate, but maybe Mencken was right. Maybe Americans – or enough of them anyway – are just not that smart.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this the past few days as I, along with everyone else, watched how the president has bungled the Syrian situation. First, during his campaign for re-election, he needlessly draws a red line, warning Syria that the use of chemical weapons is something the United States would not tolerate.</p>
<p>So far, there have been no repercussions.</p>
<p>Then, a week or so ago, after the world witnessed gruesome videos of dead children who had been exposed to poison gas, presumably the work of the Syrian regime, Secretary of State John Kerry makes a forceful statement about Bashar al-Assad’s immorality and makes clear that military action is coming.</p>
<p>Twenty-four hours later the president, who said he didn’t need Congressional approval for a military attack, decides he wants Congress in on the decision.The president says he still wants to attack Syria, but that there’s no rush.</p>
<p>John Kerry, mindful that Congress is as war-weary as the American people, explains that any U.S. action would be an “unbelievably small, limited kind of effort,” prompting groans and guffaws from all over the place.</p>
<p>Enter Vladimir Putin, who comes riding to Mr. Obama’s rescue — rescue, that is, from a certain no vote in the House and perhaps another no vote in the Democratically-controlled Senate. Putin pushes the idea – originally put forth, tongue in check, by Secretary of State Kerry — that Russia would work with the Syrian regime to put their chemical arsenal under international control “for subsequent destruction.”</p>
<p>The result of all this is a president who comes off looking like more like a community organizer than a commander-in-chief. I keep waiting for Ted Mack to come out and say: Welcome friends to the latest edition of the Amateur Hour.</p>
<p>At heart, Mr. Obama may or may not be a nice guy. Reasonable people may disagree on that. But when it comes to being president, he’s clearly in way over his head.</p>
<p>In a piece for Commentary that runs under the headline, “The Collapse of the Obama Presidency,” Peter Wehner makes that very point. This is how he puts it:</p>
<p>“How bad has 2013 been for Barack Obama? Let us count the ways.</p>
<p>“In the first year of his second term, the president has failed on virtually every front. He put his prestige on the line to pass federal gun-control legislation–and lost. He made climate change a central part of his inaugural address–and nothing has happened. The president went head-to-head with Republicans on sequestration–and he failed. He’s been forced to delay implementation of the employer mandate, a key feature of the Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare is more unpopular than ever, and it’s turning out to be a ‘train wreck’ (to quote Democratic Senator Max Baucus) in practice. The most recent jobs report was the worst in a year, with the Obama recovery already qualifying as a historically weak one. Immigration reform is going nowhere. And then there’s Syria, which has turned out to be an epic disaster.”</p>
<p>Barack Obama is the man who told us that his candidacy would “ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest.” No wonder his acolytes thought he was the messiah.</p>
<p>So why do I think that if he were constitutionally able to run for a third term, despite everything, there’s a good chance he’d win? Let’s turn again to Mr. Mencken and that observation he made many years ago for an answer.</p>
<p>“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”</p>
<p>Or to put it in a slightly different way: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-09-18T01:02:00ZBernie's Latest Column: Should the U.S. Use Military Force in Syria?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-Should-the-U.S.-Use-Military-Force-in-Syria/43183665602594936.html2013-09-09T22:09:00Z2013-09-09T22:09:00Z<p>Yes, it’s a lot easier being a community organizer than it is commander-in-chief. By now even Barack Obama has figured that out.</p>
<p>By now we know there are no easy answers on Syria. We know there will be consequences no matter what we do. If we attack, Syria and its partners in crime will almost certainly retaliate. If they hit Israel, and Israel hits back, that would lead to a wider war in a neighborhood already on fire. If they blow up something here in America, we would have to respond. But how do we do that? It won’t be the Syrian army that attacks the United States. It will be the same kind of terrorists who killed four Americans in Benghazi a year ago — and we still haven’t brought any of them to justice.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if we do what a majority of Americans say they want and stay out of “their civil war,” what nation anywhere in the world would have confidence in our words and promises? Red lines will have no meaning and brutal dictators will suffer no punishment for using chemical weapons to kill their own people, even their own children. We told the Israelis not to pre-emptively attack Iran in order to knock out its nuclear project; we said the United States would never allow the mullahs to possess a nuclear weapon. How do you say “Really?” in Hebrew?</p>
<p>And President Obama has done his share to take a bad situation and make it worse. After he drew the red line, he did nothing to enforce his threat, even though we believe the Syrians used poison gas not once or twice but 9 or 10 times. One day after he sent John Kerry out to make a forceful case for a limited attack, he backed down and threw the hot potato to Congress without knowing how the vote would come out. If Congress votes no, that leaves the president weakened at home and abroad. How is that good for the United States?</p>
<p>And then there are the political hit squads here at home. Turn on your television and you’ll see plenty of Syria hawks who wanted no part of Iraq and plenty of doves who couldn’t wait to attack Baghdad, who wanted our military to stay there even longer and attacked the president for not sending even more troops into Afghanistan. I detest these unprincipled hacks, left and right.</p>
<p>But there are also legitimate, honestly held reasons for going to quasi war, and good reasons for not getting involved. Can the United States really allow the use of poison gas and do nothing? Is that who we are as a people? But should we get involved in still another Middle East mess when the United States is not under anything even resembling a direct threat? Aren’t we war weary enough?</p>
<p>I’ve gone back and forth a hundred times on what we should or shouldn’t do and I’m still not sure. So now, I’m turning this column over to you. Here’s the question: Should the United States use military force against Syria. Keep your answers tight.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-09-09T22:09:00ZBernie's Latest Column: If President Obama Had a Son He Might Look Like...Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-If-President-Obama-Had-a-Son-He-Might-Look-Like.../-855967259664473496.html2013-08-22T17:25:00Z2013-08-22T17:25:00Z<p>The three teenagers in rural Oklahoma said they were bored. They needed something to do that would be fun. They were sitting on a porch when a jogger ran by. That’s when they got in a car and caught up with him on a country road. When they got close enough, one of the boys, a 16 year old, aimed his gun and shot the jogger in the back. He hit the ground bleeding. And that’s where he died. His name was Chris Lane, a 22-year old Australian who was a college baseball player here on a scholarship.</p>
<p>If Barack Obama had a son he might look like the alleged shooter, Chancey Luna – or maybe the 15 year old, James Edwards who was also in the car. Michael Jones, 17, drove the car; he’s white.</p>
<p><span>But you’ll never hear the president utter those words. It’s one thing to identify with a black teenager shot and killed by a white man (who was actually only half white; his mother is Hispanic). But it’s quite another to link yourself, in any way, to a black kid who killed someone simply because he had nothing better to do.<br /></span></p>
<p>And there’s no reason Barack Obama should say his imaginary son would look like the shooter. But then, there was no good reason for the president to say if he had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin. But he did, needlessly implying that it’s dangerous being a black kid in America when white people with guns are around.</p>
<p>When he heard about the shooting, Jesse Jackson tweeted that this was an example of “senseless violence” that should be “frowned upon.”</p>
<p>Frowned upon? That’s the best that he could come up with? When Trayvon Martin was shot to death Jackson said “blacks are under attack” in America, and “Killing us is big business,” and Trayvon was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante.” Never mind that there was a fight right before Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. Murky details like that didn’t matter to Jackson or other members of the civil rights business. Now we hear that the Oklahoma shooting should be “frowned upon.” Where is the moral outrage Jackson was able to muster for Trayvon Martin? Later, after he came under fire for his lame response to the murder in Oklahoma, Jackson issued a statement calling on all Americans to “resist all forms of violence in our society.” Thanks for not much.</p>
<p>But at least he said something. The rest of the civil rights establishment has been silent. The Missouri NAACP wanted a rodeo clown investigated by the Department of Justice for making fun of President Obama. On the Oklahoma shooting, silence. For black elites to speak out against violence committed by young black men apparently is tantamount to treason.</p>
<p>So far the president has been silent too. The murder in Oklahoma will not get the attention that the Trayvon Martin case received — not from the president and not from the media or the civil rights industry. Why not? Because in Oklahoma the alleged shooter is black and the victim is white. And that makes all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>It’s true that there is no evidence that the teenagers targeted Chris Lane because he was white. But there is a tweet, allegedly sent by the youngest of the three that said:”90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM.”</p>
<p>Imagine if a white kid put out a tweet like that and then was picked up for killing a young black man.</p>
<p>But who knows, maybe they would have shot a black jogger if that’s who was out running that day. Maybe. But there was no evidence either that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin because he was black. That didn’t stop the president from chiming in.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s because Mr. Obama sensed Trayvon was shot because he was “guilty” of walking while black. After all, we got a similar message from the civil rights industry, which painted a picture of an America where white people were out hunting down young black men. White liberal journalists on television listened to this nonsense and didn’t say a word. They played the part of potted plants.</p>
<p>Who knows, maybe the president would have had something to say if the jogger was black and was shot dead by a couple of white thugs who were out for some kicks. Al Sharpton and the rest of the black civil rights industry certainly would have had something to say.</p>
<p>And Sharpton finally did have something to say. “I protest when I’m called in and when there’s an injustice.,” he said on his MSNBC show days after the murder. “The three were arrested, there was nothing to protest. The system worked there, and racial? Not only did the police not say it was racial, one of the three were white,” Sharpton said</p>
<p>But the police in Florida said the Trayvon Martin case wasn’t racial either. But that didn’t stop Sharpton. And one of the three thugs in Oklahoma was white? So what? Zimmerman mentored black kids and that didn’t stop Sharpton from screaming racism.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the president, who still hasn’t chimed in. But there’s still time. And here’s what President Obama still can say. He could use the tragedy to make some long overdue points. Here’s what, in my most optimistic moments, I would like to hear President Obama tell the nation:</p>
<p><em>Recently I talked to the American people about what it’s like being a young black man in this country. I said women clutch their purses on the elevator when a young black man gets on. I said people lock their car doors at a red light when a black kid gets too close. I said young black men are followed when they walk into a store.</em></p>
<p><em>I implied that their only “crime” was being black.</em></p>
<p><em>What I should have added is that there’s a good reason for all of that. People – and not just white people – are suspicious of young black men because young black men give them plenty of reason to be suspicious.</em></p>
<p><em>I did note that black kids commit too much crime. But I should have gone further. Much further. I should have said there’s something very wrong in black America when nearly three out of four black babies won’t have a father around when they’re growing up.</em></p>
<p><em>I should have said public schools are free yet black kids drop out at astronomical rates. I should have said, let’s stop blaming “crumbling schools” and everything else for their failure. If you drop out – it’s your fault. That’s what I should have said. And I should have made very clear that without an education you won’t get a good job. You’ll live in poverty. And too many of you will try to find your manhood in a gun and wind up in prison.</em></p>
<p><em>And please Rev. Sharpton and the other members of the African-American elite … please don’t blame a racist judicial system for any of that. You have been silent – just as I have – about the real problems plaguing black America … for way too long.</em></p>
<p><em>We are all co-conspirators. Almost every murder in New York City is committed by a person “of color.” And how do we respond: We scream about the racist cops who are profiling our poor, innocent black children. </em></p>
<p><em>Enough! </em></p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>Let me say it before you do: I’m delusional. Still, it would be nice to hear something like that from the president. After all, there’s no one in the entire country who could make the case better. But when I told a friend about this he laughed.</p>
<p>Anyone who says anything like that, he told me, would be seen either as a racist – if he’s white — or an Uncle Tom – if he’s black. So no one, he said, will get any traction with that message.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, he’s right.</p>
<p>Then there’s John McWhorter, a black intellectual with guts, who wrote a piece in Time about the Oklahoma shooting. It ran under the headline: Don’t Ignore Race in Christopher Lane’s Murder. “[I]t’s just fake to pretend that the association of young black men with violence comes out of thin air,” he writes. “Young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. If the kinds of things I just mentioned were regularly done by whites, it’d be trumpeted as justification for being scared to death of them.” Black leaders from President Obama on down should take note.</p>
<p>As for the three teenagers in Oklahoma, they’ve all been charged as adults. They may spend the rest of their lives in prison. Let’s hope so.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-08-22T17:25:00ZBernie's Latest Column: Do We Really Want Another Coronation in 2016?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-Do-We-Really-Want-Another-Coronation-in-2016/85701827746910745.html2013-08-20T17:05:00Z2013-08-20T17:05:00Z<p>Maybe you’ve seen the bumper stickers, or at least heard about them – the ones that say “I’m Ready for Hillary.” Surely you know about the CNN documentary about Mrs. Clinton that’s in the works — and the NBC mini-series that’s “in development.” Or how about The New York Times decision that’s already put a reporter on the Hillary beat — full time? Or that Twitter account she just opened. So why waste everybody’s time with that silly question we all know the answer to?</p>
<p>Of course she’ll run in 2016. And when she does, she’ll win the nomination even if some other Democrat is foolish enough to waste his time running against her. The more important question, the only one that really matters, is: Will she win the presidency in 2016?</p>
<p>Predicting the outcome of a presidential election more than three years off is like predicting the weather – 300 years from today. Anything can happen in politics and it usually does. But let’s play Carnac anyway.</p>
<p>Here’s what we know for sure: the so-called mainstream media will be her most loyal base just as they are currently President Obama’s. The media were in charge of making the arrangements for the coronation in 2008 and 2012 and they’ll be just as anxious to put on another one in 2016.</p>
<p>But a slobbering media won’t be enough. Journalists didn’t single-handedly sink John McCain or Mitt Romney – they weren’t great candidates in their own right – and it won’t be enough to ensure a Hillary victory. There are other factors working in her favor.</p>
<p>I recently came across a few in a piece in the Daily Beast by Myra Adams, a self-described “lifelong Republican” which ran under the headline “16 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Will Win in 2016.” I won’t torture my conservative friends with all 16 reasons, but here are a few:</p>
<p>The media, as I’ve said, will be ready to crown a “queen.”</p>
<p>Also noted earlier, she will have no primary opposition, or a symbolic opponent at best.</p>
<p>She has plenty of money.</p>
<p>The black voting bloc along with Hispanics and Asians are hers to lose.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton will be a tremendous asset.</p>
<p>Hillary has the Electoral College working in her favor. Here’s what Ms. Adams writes about that:</p>
<p>“In 2012 the final Electoral College results were 332 for Obama and 206 for Romney. If Romney had won the battleground states of Florida (29 votes), Ohio (18 votes), and Virginia (13 votes), <em>Obama would still have been reelected </em>but by a<em> </em>closer margin of 272 to 266.</p>
<p>“Now, just because Obama won well over 300 electoral votes does not mean Hillary will repeat that achievement. However, the path to 270 is much easier for any Democrat candidate given current and future demographic growth and established voting patterns.”</p>
<p>And then there’s The Great Social Movement argument put forth by Ms. Adams:</p>
<p>“A great social movement to elect the first Madame President is gathering wind and will reach sustained hurricane strength on November 5, 2014—the day after the midterm elections and the ‘official start’ of the 2016 presidential campaign.</p>
<p>“Akin to the movement that elected the first African-American president in 2008, the ‘Madame President movement’ will be propelled by the mainstream media, Hollywood, and social media. Together they will build momentum and coalitions across all platforms, while reveling in their awesome social and cultural significance. You will hear the ‘triumph of the ’60s feminist movement.’ You will hear that you will be ‘voting to make history.’ And you will hear that your vote will be used as a ‘hammer to break through the glass ceiling of the Oval Office.’</p>
<p>“Warning,” Myra Adams tells us, “Prepare for the onslaught, because it is coming your way.”</p>
<p>But can the race really be over before it’s even begun? Conservatives say anyone who thinks Hillary Clinton is invincible has a very short memory. With all her name recognition she still couldn’t beat a virtually unknown senator who hadn’t even served one full term in Washington — so how is she going to beat a real GOP candidate with ideas, especially after 8 years of chronically high unemployment and the onset of ObamaCare?</p>
<p>There’s more. Americans don’t usually elect a candidate from the same party three times in a row. It happens, but only rarely. George H.W. Bush did succeed Ronald Reagan, who served two terms. And FDR won four times in a row — and was succeeded by Harry Truman. But historically, the odds are against another Democrat winning the White House after two terms by fellow Democrat Barack Obama.</p>
<p>But Republicans need to understand that history isn’t destiny. It’s only a rear view mirror.</p>
<p>What about another Republican argument, the one that says when you get right down to it, Hillary has no real record to run on. Name one major (or even minor) accomplishment she’s had while Secretary of State, they ask? And that line about “what difference does it make” how four Americans were killed in Benghazi will come back to haunt her, they predict.</p>
<p>I don’t think so. We live in the United States of Low Information Voters. They don’t care about Hillary’s record. They <em>like</em> her and that’s enough for them. And there are plenty of “them.” Hillary constantly scores high in favorability polls. And don’t forget that Barack Obama had no record to run on either. He won because there were enough fans out there who just plain liked him.</p>
<p>I have no predictions on the outcome of the 2016 race, not this far out anyway. But I will predict this: If Republican true-believers demand ideological purity – if the nominee has to be a rigid, take-no-prisoners conservative on every issue from immigration reform to abortion, and gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research – Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States of America.</p>
<p>“Real conservatives” didn’t like Mitt Romney and about 3 million of them stayed home on Election Day, assuring a second term for Barack Obama. If a hard-right candidate gets the nomination in 2016, a different 3 million Republicans may very well sit home.</p>
<p>This is not an argument in favor of a moderate Republican. I believe what the great Bill Buckley believed. He wanted the most conservative candidate <em>who could actually win the general election</em> to get the nomination. So do I.</p>
<p>But if the GOP insists on having a Civil War instead of a Big Tent, if the hardliners refuse to understand that in politics you don’t always get precisely what you want, then they will get something they not only don’t want, but don’t even want to think about: President Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-08-20T17:05:00ZBernie's Latest Column: Wanna Know What's Wrong With Journalism?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Latest-Column:-Wanna-Know-Whats-Wrong-With-Journalism/-952895945469339195.html2013-08-13T15:06:00Z2013-08-13T15:06:00Z<p>The other day I received an email from a reader named Christine who asked me to write a piece about the dangers of an “elite press.” What got her “riled” – her word – was a story she saw on one of the networks about the Whitey Bulger trial in Boston. According to Christine, the on-air network analyst said she would bet her “Hampton house” that Bulger is found guilty.</p>
<p>Get it? Not her house. Not her house in New York. Her <em>Hampton house</em> – just so we all know that she’s one of the swells who if she lived in another time would probably pal around with Gatsby and his girlfriend Zelda.</p>
<p>Christine was angry, she said, because she figured anyone who would gratuitously slip in that she hung out in the toney Hamptons might have trouble understanding people in the city where Christine lives, Youngstown, Ohio – a place where people are struggling just to get by.</p>
<p>Christine is on to something. Too many journalists (not all) really are out of touch with the America between Manhattan and Malibu. It’s not just that they live in the Hamptons, where no matter how liberal you are you don’t want any poor people around whose very presence could ruin your day, let alone your marvelous summer. It’s that many of the <em>beautiful</em> people don’t understand “ordinary” Americans who live in “flyover country.”</p>
<p>I’ve written that too many elites (again, not all) in the world of journalism think people in the Middle America are hayseeds who commit the unforgiveable sin of eating at Red Lobster and bowling and flying the flag on the Fourth of July. I mean, how corny can you get.</p>
<p>Too many elites don’t share Middle American values and too often their condescension comes out in their journalism. On just about every major social issue the elites who live and work in their media bubble in New York and Washington are far more liberal than the “civilians” who don’t work in journalism.</p>
<p>Politically, America is pretty much split 50-50, give or take a few points. But journalists overwhelmingly support liberal Democrats. My favorite statistic on that comes from the 1972 presidential election, when Nixon carried every state except Massachusetts. Still, 81 percent of journalists voted for George McGovern that year.</p>
<p>In 1980, twice as many journalists voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>In 1984, 58 percent of journalists voted for Walter Mondale, who lost to Ronald Reagan in the biggest landslide in presidential election history.</p>
<p>In 2004 and 2008, journalists swooned over Barack Obama, prompting me to write A Slobbering Love Affair.</p>
<p>The point is that journalists don’t have much in common with the people they cover. And that’s not good for the people they cover, for the journalists, or for our country.</p>
<p>I thought about how out of touch with America so many journalists are after reading a piece in Commentary magazine by one of the most thoughtful writers in America, Peter Wehner. He was writing about a column in the Washington Post by Ruth Marcus, who was bemoaning the sale of her paper to Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Here’s part of what Ms. Marcus wrote:</p>
<p>“Don Graham’s decision to sell The Washington Post was his reverse Sophie’s Choice moment.</p>
<p>She had to decide which cherished child to save and which to send to the gas chamber. Don and the Graham family weren’t forced to make an anguishing choice but did so anyway. They relinquished the newspaper they love in order to protect it.</p>
<p>If the comparison sounds hyperbolic, you don’t know the Grahams.”</p>
<p>I would choose another word over hyperbolic. Grotesque, I think, comes closer to describing the comparison Ms. Marcus makes. The decision to sell a newspaper is akin to the decision by a mother about which of her two children to save and which to give to the Nazis for extermination? In what universe would that be?</p>
<p>Was there no editor at the Washington Post who read the column who might have saved Ruth Marcus from embarrassment? Or did the editor, like Ms. Marcus, see nothing wrong?</p>
<p>Wehner says this about the analogy: “Now I don’t know the Grahams–but yes, the comparison does sound hyperbolic to me. Worse, actually. I for one would feel rather awkward explaining to my children why I’d consider the choice between selling a newspaper and sending one of them to Auschwitz to be a coin flip.”</p>
<p>No, this isn’t quite the same as making sure your audience knows you have a house in the Hamptons. But it is part of the same twisted way of thinking. The TV analyst feels the need to inform her audience that she is special, that she is one of the elite, that she has a house where <em>you</em> don’t. The newspaper columnist feels the need to tell her readers that she doesn’t have a regular job – like <em>you</em>. No, no no. She is a journalist. She has a calling. She is not just different from you. By virtue of her occupation, she is better than you.</p>
<p>Again, Peter Wehner on the subject: “Ms. Marcus illustrates the melodrama and self-importance that some (certainly not all) journalists are afflicted with. They live in a make-believe world in which they fashion themselves as shining knights, truth tellers, exposers of corruption, defenders of the weak.</p>
<p>“Now I happen to like the <em>Post</em> as a newspaper. I’m one of the shrinking number of people in the D.C. area who still subscribe to it. I admire some of its reporters. And they are home to some outstanding columnists. But it is hardly a sacred, flawless, and fearless institution. It is, in fact, liberal in its orientation. It plays favorites. It tends to back down from speaking truth to power when those in power are of the left. And while Don Graham in particular seems like a fine man, the mythic personality some of his employees have created around him and Katherine Graham is a bit creepy.”</p>
<p>There are so many things wrong with modern journalism that there isn’t enough space in cyberspace to take them all into account. So I will borrow one last time from Mr. Wehner, who concludes his piece in Commentary with this elegant observation: “If you want to understand some of what’s gone wrong with modern journalism, you should read Ruth Marcus’s <a href="http://wapo.st/1ctNxMN" target="_blank">column.</a>“</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-08-13T15:06:00ZObama: CNN Finds Benghazi Terrorist Suspect; FBI Doesn'tBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Obama:-CNN-Finds-Benghazi-Terrorist-Suspect;-FBI-Doesnt/-678586578262991735.html2013-08-04T18:47:00Z2013-08-04T18:47:00Z<p>So let’s see if I have this right: A CNN reporter goes to a coffee shop at a well-known hotel in Benghazi and for two hours chit-chats with a man who some believe was the ringleader of the terrorist gang that murdered four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya — and almost a year after the attack the FBI either can’t figure out how to find this guy or has no interest in even trying to find him.</p>
<p>Really? A newsman with nothing more than a tape recorder and a pencil and paper interviews a prime suspect in the September 11, 2012 massacre, but the U.S. government hasn’t gotten around to it yet?</p>
<p>You may recall that after the attack President Obama promised to bring those responsible to justice. So far, no one has been captured, killed or brought to anything even vaguely resembling justice. Benghazi happened a long time ago and you get the impression the president would be happy if no one ever brought the subject up again.</p>
<p>But the other day, CNN reporter Arwa Damon sat down with Ahmed Abu Khattala, who has been described by Libyan and U.S. officials as the leader of Ansar al-Sharia, a militia outfit affiliated with al Qaeda. Was Khattala nervous during the interview? Was he constantly looking over his shoulder? Nope. The CNN reporter says Khattala was fairly relaxed.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, Khattala denies being part of the gang that killed the four Americans. He says he was at the compound the night of the attack, but denies having any connection to the violence. He told CNN that he saw men carrying guns and rocket propelled grenades, but that the gunfire prevented him from entering the compound.</p>
<p>Who knows if he’s telling the truth? Not the U.S. government.</p>
<p>When asked if the American or Libyan authorities tried to talk to him, Khattala reportedly told CNN they had not. “Even the investigative team did not try to contact me,” Khattala told CNN, referring to the FBI.</p>
<p>And when the CNN reporter asked if he would be willing to meet with the FBI, Khattala reportedly said, “Yes, no problem. …But not as an interrogation, as a conversation like the one we are having right now.”</p>
<p>So here’s a question: How did CNN scoop the FBI?</p>
<p>Eight Republicans in Congress are wondering the same thing. They sent a letter to the incoming FBI director asking for some answers, adding that the Obama administration’s investigation of the attack in Benghazi has been “simply unacceptable.”</p>
<p>One of those who initiated the letter, Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah, told reporters that “One of the pertinent questions today is why we have not captured or killed the terrorists who committed these attacks?”</p>
<p>And if “CNN was able to go in and talk to one of the suspected terrorists, how come the military hasn’t been able to get after them and capture or kill the people? How come the FBI isn’t doing this and yet CNN is?”</p>
<p>It’s a question that the president and everyone else in his administration apparently have no interest in answering. Maybe that’s because the answer would be embarrassing. Or maybe it’s because President Obama considers the attack in Benghazi to be one of those “phony scandals” concocted by Republicans to make him look bad.</p>
<p>Memo to POTUS: When a television reporter can sip coffee with the man who may have led the attack that left four Americans dead … and no one in your administration has had the time or interest in talking to this man … then you don’t have to worry about Republicans making you look bad. You’re doing a pretty good job yourself.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-08-04T18:47:00ZObama: Don't Blame Me - Blame Those Phony ScandalsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Obama:-Dont-Blame-Me---Blame-Those-Phony-Scandals/-176718484342409985.html2013-07-30T21:27:00Z2013-07-30T21:27:00Z<p><span>The most disturbing aspect of President Obama’s “phony scandals” broadside is that it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. If it was, we might cut Mr. Obama some slack. Who among us hasn’t said something on the fly and instantly wished we could catch our words in midair and snatch them back?<br /></span></p>
<p>But President Obama wasn’t ad-libbing. He made the “phony scandals” charge not once but three times – within a few days. And Jay Carney, the president’s Baghdad Bob in the White House pressroom, said it too. So no one slipped up here. This was part of a political strategy that had been given some thought.</p>
<p>Which raises a question: What political genius came up with this idea?</p>
<p>Mr. Obama used to blame his predecessor, George Bush, for just about everything from the BP oil spill to the crummy economy which he made sure everyone knew … he “inherited.” After five years, that dog won’t hunt anymore. Even the most loyal followers of the current president are tired of hearing that tune. So now Team Obama comes up with this new catchy phrase – phony scandals – to make sure we know that whatever has gone wrong with the economy still isn’t his fault.</p>
<p>“With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals,” the president said, “Washington has taken its eye off the ball.”</p>
<p>This raises a second question: What phony scandals does the president have in mind?</p>
<p>Was Fast and Furious a phony scandal? You may recall that Fast and Furious was a federal program that allowed the sale of a few thousand guns to suspected thugs tied to Mexican drug gangs. The feds planned to trace the guns into Mexico, but, oops, they didn’t. And eventually two of the guns turned up at the scene of a shootout in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.</p>
<p>How about Benghazi, where four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, were slaughtered? That happened almost a year ago and we still don’t have all the facts. The president said those responsible would be brought to justice. They haven’t even been caught.</p>
<p>Is that a phony scandal?</p>
<p>What about the abuse of power by the IRS that involved the targeting of conservatives, with the possible involvement of a White House political appointee? Back in May, President Obama said this: “”If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous.”</p>
<p>How did we go from outrageous to a phony scandal in just 2 ½ months?</p>
<p>And what should we make of the Justice Department’s decision to spy on journalists at the AP and Fox? Or the NSA program that “mines data” on just about all of us – without, until recently, our knowledge?</p>
<p>Are those the phony scandals concocted by Republicans to thwart the noble Mr. Obama?</p>
<p>This president will say just about anything to shift blame away from himself and onto Republicans for the weakest economic recovery since World War II. None of it could possibly be his fault: Not ObamaCare, which has led employers to turn full-time workers into part-timers to save money; not chronically high unemployment; not the $7 trillion dollars he added to the national debt, with precious little to show for it; and not his obsession with income inequality and spreading the wealth instead of endorsing policies that would actually boost economic growth.</p>
<p>And for a long time he’s gotten away with his sorry performance, thanks in part to clueless Americans who unfortunately are allowed to vote.</p>
<p>But his biggest ally has always been, and still remains, the so-called mainstream media, an institution that is supposed to hold the powerful to account, but has shown little interest in the scandals. They never cared much about Fast and Furious or Benghazi, writing them off as partisan witch hunts. The IRS story caught their interest, but only for a short time before it fell off their radar screen. And you don’t read or hear much anymore from the MSM about spying – on Americans in general or journalists in particular.</p>
<p>Americans are losing faith in government. We can thank Barack Obama for a lot of the disillusionment. As Peggy Noonan put it in her Wall Street Journal column: “This White House is careless with the reputation of government. They are a campaigning organization. Not a governing one.”</p>
<p>And how does President Obama deal with this serious problem. He hits the campaign trail shouting PHONY SCANDALS. This doesn’t even qualify as leading from behind.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-07-30T21:27:00ZWhat President Obama Left Out of His Talk on RaceBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-President-Obama-Left-Out-of-His-Talk-on-Race/403290369770366762.html2013-07-23T21:58:00Z2013-07-23T21:58:00Z<p>Six days after the trial of George Zimmerman ended, President Obama talked to America about why the not guilty verdict caused so much hurt and pain and frustration among black people, especially young black men who are often viewed with suspicion, just as Trayvon Martin was.</p>
<p>He spoke informally, from notes, not from a teleprompter. And he spoke in personal terms, as a black man who has also experienced the humiliation of being taken for someone up to no good. He said that, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”</p>
<p>He talked about how young black men are followed when they walk into a store. He said he was. He talked about how people lock their car doors when young black men come into view. He said it happened to him before he became a U.S. senator. He talked about how women in elevators clutch their purses when a young black man enters.</p>
<p>It must be frustrating when this happens to good, decent African Americans who have no intention to do anything wrong. It must be hurtful. And it also must look like racism. But looks, as we know, can be deceiving.</p>
<p>The president examined humiliation through the eyes of black Americans. What the president did not do is examine these humiliations from the view of the wary shop owner, or the frightened people in the car, or the suspicious woman on the elevator. What they all know is that young black men commit a disproportionate amount of crime in this country. That’s why they’re suspicious of African American males of a certain age. Black people know this too, since they’re the ones most likely to be victimized by young black men.<br /><br />It’s worth repeating Jesse Jackson’s observation of some years back about race. “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”<br /><br />Is Jesse Jackson a racist?<br /><br />The Rev. Jackson knows, as we all do, about the problems of crime committed by young black men. President Obama could have said more than he did — that African Americans are disproportionately victims as well as perpetrators of violence. While that’s true, it doesn’t go far enough. It would have helped if he had explained to black Americans who were hurt by the not guilty verdict that many white people look upon young black men with suspicion <em>for a reason</em>. And the reason usually isn’t racism. It’s reality. It would have helped if he talked about dysfunction in too much of black America and what black young men need to do to change how people view them.<br /><br />In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a congregation in St. Louis. He challenged his black audience in a way that few black leaders, including President Obama, do today.<br /><br />“Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58 percent of its crimes?” he told a congregation. “We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards.”<br /><br />He also said that, “We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”<br /><br />If you’ve been listening to civil rights leaders, black intellectuals and more than a few white liberals since the not guilty verdict came in, you might think that the biggest problem facing black men in America is white guys with guns. This would be laughable were it not pathetic.<br /><br />The biggest problem in black America is that babies are born without fathers (more than 70 percent) and that black kids drop out of high school in epidemic numbers (more than 50 percent in some big cities). These kids might come out okay, but the odds are against them. And too many of them wind up without jobs, in poverty, and sooner or later in prison.<br /><br />No one is saying that raw racism is dead and buried. In a country of more than 300 million people that’s expecting too much. But white racism in 2013 is the least of the problems facing black America. Imagine if President Obama had said that. Imagine if the president would just take a fraction of the time he spends talking about renewable energy and the supposed great things that will come from ObamaCare, and use that precious time instead to echo the words of Martin Luther King. If he did that all Americans would be the better for it – especially young African American men.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-07-23T21:58:00ZZimmerman is Not Guilty - What About the Media?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Zimmerman-is-Not-Guilty---What-About-the-Media/-525501093472323365.html2013-07-16T20:56:00Z2013-07-16T20:56:00Z<p>There are certain things polite people are not supposed to say out loud, and certainly not in public. I thought of this while listening to what passes for television analysis after the George Zimmerman verdict came in.</p>
<p>First, let’s acknowledge that Trayvon Martin’s death is a tragedy. I’ll go so far as to say it was a tragedy that should never have happened. I think George Zimmerman, the “wannabe cop,” was too vigilant that night.</p>
<p>I also think George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin – and profiled him because he was a young black man in a predominantly white neighborhood. But what polite people don’t do in public is talk about <em>why</em> George Zimmerman was suspicious of 17-year old Trayvon Martin.</p>
<p>The morning after the verdict came in, Ben Jealous, who heads the NAACP, told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that, “Too many people in our country use color as grounds for suspicion.”</p>
<p>He’s right. But what he didn’t get into is that they do it for a reason. And Bob Schieffer, a white man from Texas, wasn’t about to press the head of the NAACP about why skin color might be grounds for suspicion.</p>
<p>The sad fact is that while African Americans make up only about 12 or 13 percent of the population, and young black men considerably less than that, they commit a disproportionate amount of crime. This is no secret. Everybody knows it’s true, even anchormen and other white liberals. So when Zimmerman saw this black kid in his mostly white, gated community, he did some quick, reflexive calculations — and thought the boy might be up to no good. Yes, he did use color as a ground for suspicion.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make Trayvon Martin a criminal, of course, but it also doesn’t make George Zimmerman a racist. He had the same thoughts about Trayvon Martin that most of us would have had, whether we admit it or not.</p>
<p>If I were black I wouldn’t like this stereotyping. I’d say Trayvon Martin had as much right to be inside the gates of that community as George Zimmerman did. He shouldn’t have been looked upon as a potential criminal.</p>
<p>But he was looked upon with suspicion because, as painful as it is to acknowledge, he looked like too many other black kids in hoodies who do bad things. Black people know this better than anyone else. They’re the victims of most black crime. Remember what Jesse Jackson said several years back. “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Does that make the Reverend Jackson a racist – or a realist?</p>
<p>Television host Tavis Smiley, who also is black, was also on television Sunday morning. He told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, “For many Americans [the verdict] is another piece of evidence of the incontrovertible contempt that this nation often shows and displays for black men.”</p>
<p>Stephanopoulos, being a polite white liberal man, of course didn’t say, “Black men are doing a pretty good job of showing incontrovertible contempt for each other in our nation. Have you checked the crime statistics for Chicago on any given weekend? The Ku Klux Klan isn’t killing those young black men. Black thugs are.”</p>
<p>So-called civil rights leaders, like Al Sharpton, painted a picture of a black teenager walking home and being attacked by a white vigilante for absolutely no reason except that the boy was black – and, of course, because the shooter was sort of white. If Sharpton and the others talked about the fight that immediately led up to the shooting, I missed it. Instead, they preferred to peddle a fairy tale version of what happened. They left out the ugly stuff – that there was plenty of reason to believe Trayvon Martin was on top of George Zimmerman pummeling his head into the concrete sidewalk right before Zimmerman fired his gun. And, of course, none of the mostly white, mostly liberal anchors, said, “Hold on, you’re leaving something very important out of your story.”</p>
<p>This is what is known as showing good racial manners. It’s how white people behave to show that they’re not bigots like all those other white people. Never mind that treating black people like delicate flowers is a kind of soft bigotry all by itself. All that matters is that white people – white liberals, mostly – feel better … about themselves.</p>
<p>Another recurring theme coming from liberal analysts, black and white, after the verdict was that in America we don’t put the same value on black lives as we do on white lives. That’s certainly true when it comes to the liberal media.</p>
<p>Every weekend in big cities across America numerous black kids shoot and often kill each other. None of these stories get very much national media attention and none of them get wall-to-wall TV coverage the way the Zimmerman trial did. Is this because liberal white journalists don’t put the same value on black lives as they do on white lives? It sure looks that way.</p>
<p>Let’s end by stating the obvious: The single biggest reason the trial got so much attention is because it played into a narrative, a false one to be sure, but one that many blacks and many white liberals love to perpetuate. It’s the Great American Drama about how white people get away with not only oppressing black people, but even get away with killing them. Isn’t that what Tavis Smiley meant when he said, ““For many Americans [the verdict] is another piece of evidence of the incontrovertible contempt that this nation often shows and displays for black men.”</p>
<p>Someone needs to tell Mr. Smiley, the Reverend Sharpton, the civil rights establishment and white liberals both in and out of the media that we are no longer living in 1955 Mississippi. If there is a crime involving two races today, the victim is most likely going to be white and the criminal is most likely going to be black – not the other way around. That may be one more thing polite people aren’t supposed to say out loud – and certainly not in public.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-07-16T20:56:00ZShould We Ever Punish Journalists for Publishing Secret Information?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Should-We-Ever-Punish-Journalists-for-Publishing-Secret-Information/444540897401386663.html2013-07-09T18:42:00Z2013-07-09T18:42:00Z<p>Let’s say you break into somebody’s house and steal a TV set. Then you call a friend and ask if he wants it – for free. You make him aware of how you got the TV and he says, “Sure, I’ll take it.” If the authorities find you, you and your friend are both guilty of a crime. Never mind that he didn’t break into anyone’s house. He’s still guilty for knowingly accepting the stolen property.</p>
<p>Now let’s go to a different scenario. Let’s say you work for the United States government and have top-secret clearance. Your agency collects data – phone numbers, e-mails, and who knows what else — on just about everybody who lives in the United States. It’s being done, you’re told, to catch terrorists.</p>
<p>Let’s say you think the government has gone too far. You think this is a violation of the United States Constitution. You are enraged because you think the U.S. government is way too nosy and you want the public to know what’s going on in secret. So you get your hands on the material, transfer it to a flash drive and offer it to a journalist who shares your opinion about the government over-reach.</p>
<p>In this case only the person who pilfered secret material will be prosecuted. The government has made clear that it will not prosecute journalists for publishing stolen information. Here’s how Attorney General Eric Holder put it to a Senate committee: “The Department has not prosecuted, and as long as I’m attorney general, will not prosecute any reporter for doing his or her job.”</p>
<p>Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Burglars don’t have First Amendment protection and journalists do. So this is not a prelude to an argument about punishing journalists who publish information the government wants to keep secret.</p>
<p>In fact, if the decision were mine, I would not prosecute Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who published the National Security Agency information about “data-mining” — secret information that was leaked to him by Edward Snowden. Nor would I attempt to punish James Rosen of Fox News who reported secret information about North Korea presumably leaked to him by a federal employee. And I would not punish the New York Times journalists, either, for publishing secret information that might have helped terrorists during the George W. Bush administration.</p>
<p>I think, as does just about every other journalist, that even if reporters wind up giving the bad guys a heads up about what the U.S. government is doing to catch them, we have to give the press a lot of leeway. In the long run, we figure, we’ll all be better off if the news media can keep the public informed, even if the government wants to keep us in the dark. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter put it this way: ”Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to an end of achieving a free society.” Dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes, after all, are the ones who jail reporters for exposing government secrets.</p>
<p>But let’s go to one more scenario. What happens if the next government employee with top-secret clearance learns that the CIA, under orders from the President of the United States, is on the ground, in secret of course, trying to destabilize a country whose government we don’t like?</p>
<p>And what happens if that U.S. government employee thinks this is wrong and wants the world to know? What happens if he leaks his information to a friendly journalist?</p>
<p>If it gets out that CIA agents are on the ground in this unfriendly country they may very well be killed. Most responsible journalists, I think, would not publish the information – even if they thought the underlying story was newsworthy. Most journalists would not put American agents in mortal danger for a scoop. (I know that some on the hard right think this is naïve. Let’s just say reasonable people may disagree.)</p>
<p>But in a world of mass information, of a million Web sites and blogs, there’s a good chance that <em>someone</em> would publish the secrets and possibly cause the deaths of those American undercover agents.</p>
<p>So what do we do then? The leaker, of course, would be prosecuted — but what about the journalist? Remember, the attorney general said he would not prosecute a journalist “for doing his or her job.”</p>
<p>Okay, I grant you this is not only a hypothetical, but perhaps it’s a wild one at that. But journalists take it as an attack on nothing less than the Constitution of the United States, motherhood and apple pie, if someone so much as brings up a question about the role of the press in the matter of publishing secret information – except to say freedom of the press guarantees their independence.</p>
<p>So if the next Edward Snowden happens to be the one who leaks secrets about CIA agents we’ll then find out what the American people think about the independence of journalists – and about the limits of the First Amendment.</p>
<p>After all, if the leaker has caused serious harm to our country by single-handedly de-classifying secret information, why aren’t journalists also causing serious harm by disseminating that information? And if they are, what should the country do about it?</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-07-09T18:42:00ZWhat Would Jesus Say About Adam and Steve?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/What-Would-Jesus-Say-About-Adam-and-Steve/77161624799018558.html2013-07-02T20:12:00Z2013-07-02T20:12:00Z<p>There’s something about gays that bothers a lot of conservatives. They may deny it but that something is that they’re gay. And we can thank the Bible for that.</p>
<p>I thought about this after the recent Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage, which, you may have noted, did not go over well with many conservatives.</p>
<p>Let’s first acknowledge that reasonable people may disagree on gay marriage. So supporters of same sex marriage need to be careful not to throw the word “bigot” around too loosely. After all, if opponents of gay marriage are automatically bigots then President Obama was a bigot. Remember, he was against same sex marriage until he was for it. And the same goes for Bill Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law — a law that effectively deemed the only marriage recognized by the federal government is between a man and a woman.</p>
<p>But let’s get back to my conservative friends, many of whom say the real debate is not about gay marriage so much as it is about states’ rights. They don’t want to federal government deciding matters that should be left to the people in the states. I’m all for states’ rights, but not in all cases. We didn’t let the states of the Deep South decide if blacks should be able to vote. States can decide how much sales tax they can levy. They can’t decide who can sit at the lunch counter and who can’t based on skin color. Nothing is exactly the same as race in America, but to me, civil rights for gays is in the same ballpark as civil rights for blacks.</p>
<p>Another argument I’ve heard over and over again since the Supreme Court decisions is that gays should not be allowed to marry because the main purpose of marriage is pro-creation. Frankly, I can’t understand how anyone with a modicum of intelligence can make this argument. Have they thought about the heterosexual couples who are allowed to marry even though they don’t want to have children? Have they thought about the young couples who are unable to have kids? How about older men and women who want to marry but can no longer have children? Should we also put all of them into a special group that is not allowed to marry?</p>
<p>Then there’s the slippery slope argument. If we allow gay marriage, this argument goes, then we’ll have to accept all sorts of other marriages. What if Lenny wants to marry a goat? All I can say is I’ll worry about that later.</p>
<p>Perhaps conservatives should consider the conservative argument for same sex marriage. Yes, one exists. Aren’t conservatives always telling us they favor commitment over random hook-ups? So let gays marry and be committed to each other. Conservatives tell us they like personal responsibility. So let gays marry and be responsible for each other, especially in times of need. Let’s say a gay man is sick and the hospital costs are mounting. Who do conservatives want to pay the bill – the marriage partner or the federal government, which they usually despise?</p>
<p>But for most conservative opponents of gay marriage these arguments don’t amount to much; they’re all distractions. Because whether they acknowledge it or not, they’re against gay marriage for just one reason: religion.</p>
<p>The Bible tells them that homosexuality is wrong and that’s enough for the true believers. But no one is suggesting that the church perform, or in any way accept, gay marriage. Why not let the state recognize same-sex marriage and let the church do whatever it wants?</p>
<p>Or better yet, why not drastically change the way we all look at marriage. Let the government acknowledge <em>only</em> civil unions, for gays <em>and</em> straight couples. And let the church or the synagogue or the mosque sanction only the kind of marriage they want. If a particular religion believes homosexuality is a sin, that religion should not sanction homosexual marriage. Pretty simple.</p>
<p>But religious conservatives will never accept this, because to them marriage is a holy sacrament and homosexuality is an abomination. The two can never co-exist. God, they believe, would never approve of any plan that puts gays and straights on the same legal footing.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of good to be said about religion. People of faith do a lot of good things for poor people and others who need help. But I’m afraid religion can also make people closed-minded; it can keep them locked in their old ways as the world around them moves forward. It can make them forget that it was Jesus who aligned himself with those society shunned? It was Jesus who was on the side of the “outcast.” I wonder how Jesus would feel about a marriage between Adam and Steve.</p>
<p>The polls show that more and more younger people are accepting gay marriage and also rejecting religion (for many reasons besides same-sex marriage). The Church knows this but won’t compromise on its principles. Neither will the supporters of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>On this issue, religious conservatives are on the wrong side of a very powerful force. They are on the wrong side of history. The French writer Victor Hugo said it best: “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”</p>
<span><span>- See more at: http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/what-would-jesus-say-about-adam-and-steve/#sthash.jVCEK2hI.dpuf</span><br /></span>Bernie Goldberg2013-07-02T20:12:00ZRe-Defining Racial Discrimination in AmericaBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Re-Defining-Racial-Discrimination-in-America/881870031633811580.html2013-06-24T17:41:00Z2013-06-24T17:41:00ZSuppose you own a business and put out an ad for people who want a job. Many apply. You run background checks, including criminal checks, which are perfectly legal. You learn that some of the prospective employees have criminal records. And you decide you’d rather not have a convicted thief working the cash register at your business or you think it’s better that you don’t hire someone with a violent past, fearing he might hit a customer or fellow worker who looks at him the wrong way. Or maybe you figure, you just don’t want convicted criminals in your company.
<p>Question: If you choose not to hire ex-cons are you a bigot? Before you answer, consider a case you probably have heard nothing about – the case of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, against BMW (USA) and Dollar General.</p>
<p>The EEOC is suing those companies for allegedly violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The EEOC has employed a strange new legal theory essentially arguing that criminal background checks are racist – or at least may be.</p>
<p>There is nothing in the 1964 Civil Rights Act that covers ex-cons. But it does, of course, cover matters involving racial discrimination. Here’s where the strange legal theory comes in: Since blacks are convicted of crimes at much higher rates than whites, and since BMW and Dollar General rejected more blacks than whites for jobs because of their criminal convictions, the companies are, in the strange logic of the EEOC, guilty of racial discrimination.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: The EECO found no memos showing racial bias by the companies. It found no incriminating e-mails. No voicemails. No current employee came forward and said he heard conversations among the managers indicating they didn’t want to hire black people.</p>
<p>None of this mattered to the liberals at the EEOC. They were too busy playing a numbers game, a game that is part of the Obama administration’s efforts to re-define the meaning of racism in America.</p>
<p>They even have a name for what they are doing: It’s a theory called “disparate impact.” Here’s an example of how it works: If 20 whites and 20 blacks apply for a promotion in the police or fire department and none or “too few” of the blacks get high enough grades for the promotion, that, according to the theory, shows a disparate impact — and is proof of racial discrimination. That’s the same thinking behind the lawsuits against BMW and Dollar General.</p>
<p>It is true that BMW and Dollar General did discriminate. But anyone with an ounce of common sense would figure out that they discriminated <em>against convicted criminals</em>, regardless of race or anything else. Yes, some white workers with criminal records were also turned down.</p>
<p>This is not what Martin Luther King fought for. This is not why so many good Americans, black and white, marched from Selma, Alabama and were beaten — simply for demanding the same rights for black Americans that white Americans already had. None of them fought, and in some cases died, so that the federal government could force employers to hire convicted criminals – who happen to be black. This is not a lawsuit for civil rights. It’s a perversion of the real meaning of civil rights.</p>
<p>In fairness, the EEOC makes a reasonable argument when it says employers need to treat all these cases individually. Not all convicted criminals are alike, after all. The ex-con should have the right to make his case to the boss, the EEOC says, and explain why, despite his criminal conviction, he’d be a good worker.</p>
<p>That sounds fair enough. We all deserve second and even third chances. And in some cases the companies probably did reject good people who paid their debt to society and have turned their lives around. But does this really constitute racial discrimination — especially when whites who may have also turned their lives around were also rejected? And what about the rights of the companies? Shouldn’t BMW and Dollar General be the ones to decide if they want to take the risk and hire a convicted criminal — instead of the decision coming from a bunch of political appointees in Washington?</p>
<p>If the EEOC wins its case the new rules would apply to other companies in America. So what would happen then if an ex-con hits a customer – after the company hired him knowing full well that he had a violent past? I’m not at all sure that “the EEOC made me do it” defense would spare that business massive damages.</p>
<p>While millions of Americans are focusing on the news about how the federal government is “data-mining” our phone and e-mail records, this case is flying below the radar. But this one is also about a massive federal government intruding into our lives.</p>
<p>Racial discrimination is already against the law, and that’s how it should be. But this is not what they had in mind when they passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Not even close.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-06-24T17:41:00ZFreedom in an Age of TerrorismBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Freedom-in-an-Age-of-Terrorism/-859747967571850659.html2013-06-16T18:36:00Z2013-06-16T18:36:00Z<p>Now that we’ve determined that you’re not (necessarily) paranoid if you don’t trust the federal government, and are (understandably) worried about possible abuses tied to government snooping on your phone and e-mail records (see my most recent column for examples of lies and deception by Obama underlings), let’s move on to whether we’re better off or worse off when a top secret branch of the government keeps tabs on just about all of us.</p>
<p>To those who think that massive National Security Agency surveillance has created a police state here in America, let me respectfully suggest that you get a grip. We’re not living in a police state. Not even close. In a police state, the government listens in on your conversations, reads your e-mails, turns your neighbors into deputy government agents, plants listening devices in your bedroom, and then if they don’t like what they hear, they throw you in jail. If there’s a trial first, it’s rigged.</p>
<p>The very fact that we’re debating the issue of government surveillance – and openly criticizing the government — pretty much proves that we’re not a police state.</p>
<p>How about the argument that mining data on our phone records and e-mails is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? No on that one too.</p>
<p>The Fourth Amendment restricts unreasonable searches on individuals. But the NSA isn’t targeting you or me as individuals. It’s looking for patterns of behavior that might threaten our security. Why, for example, did this person call Yemen 17 times last week? Look at it this way: When we see a police car patrolling our neighborhoods, we don’t think our constitutional rights are being violated. The cops inside the car aren’t targeting us. They’re looking for suspicious behavior. We feel safer. That’s pretty much what the NSA is doing.</p>
<p>Remember, this is about fighting terrorism. We’re trying to catch people who want to blow us up as we commute to work on a train or as we go about our business in an office building or as we walk down the street chatting with a friend. President Obama is right: we can’t have complete privacy and security with no inconvenience.</p>
<p>But, yes, we have reason to be concerned that either a rogue bureaucrat or a much higher-up with bad motives may break the law and use the information the government is collecting for political purposes. Can you say IRS? If that happens, throw the book at the abuser. Put him or her away for a long, long time. But right now I’m more worried about terrorists, and the harm they certainly <em>would</em> do to us — which is significantly different from the harm our government <em>might</em> do to us.</p>
<p>Some of you are worried about the slippery slope. If the government can keep records on who we call and when and how many times we do it, where can this kind of intrusion lead? Fair enough. But anti-terror measures, as the legal scholar Phillip Bobbitt has written, need to be “measured not only against the liberties these practices constrict, but also with respect to the liberties they may protect.”</p>
<p>Imagine what might happen if we get hit again. Let’s say it happens next time in New York. Will the authorities shut the city down the way they shut Boston down? Will they tell everyone to stay at home so the police can conduct door-to-door searches? Will they order all buses and trains to stop running? That’s also a loss of freedom. That also curtails our liberties. And so I’m willing to let the federal government collect phone numbers to avoid all that.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-06-16T18:36:00ZWhich is More Honest: Roller Derby or the Obama Administration?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Which-is-More-Honest:-Roller-Derby-or-the-Obama-Administration/-920496752398789944.html2013-06-12T20:46:00Z2013-06-12T20:46:00Z<p>Jay Leno had a good line the other night. ““We wanted a president that listens to all Americans – now we have one.”</p>
<p>“They closed the gift shop at the White House today,” he said, “and opened a Verizon store.”</p>
<p>For those of you who have been in a coma or too busy keeping up with the Kardashians, Leno was talking about how the National Security Agency is spying on our phone records (and e-mail accounts). “This has caused a panic among civil libertarians, constitutional scholars and cheating husbands everywhere.” Rim shot!</p>
<p>“I mean what’s going on?” Leno wondered. “The White House has looked into our phone records, checking our computers, monitoring our e-mails. When did the government suddenly become our psycho ex-girlfriend? When did that happen?”</p>
<p>And the big finish: “You know, I’ll tell you, if Obama wants to put this snooping thing to good use, how about spying on the IRS next time they throw a $4 million party. Why don’t you do that one?”</p>
<p>Jokes aside, despite the fact that I don’t want the government spying on us without a good reason, I’m not getting all worked up over this. The NSA is keeping watch on 3 billion of our phone calls – a day. The civil libertarian in me says I should be worried. But I checked my blood pressure and it’s not rising. Fighting terrorism, after all, isn’t like going after litterbugs. The government has to balance security with privacy. President Obama is right: You can’t have 100 percent of both with no inconvenience. So if they’re snooping on us, I”m not thrilled, but I’ll figure out a way to survive.</p>
<p>And the president is also right when he says it’s about trust, about how we have to trust that our government is looking out for us, that it’s only concern is going after the bad guys. Trust is important. Telling the truth matters. Now we get to the part that really makes me nervous.</p>
<p>Consider this:</p>
<p>In testimony to Congress, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that the agency is not targeting Tea Party-related groups for their politics.</p>
<p>That’s not true.</p>
<p>Under oath, Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee: “In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material: This is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”</p>
<p>Really? This is the same Eric Holder who personally signed a petition for a warrant against Fox News reporter James Rosen, saying he might be a “co-conspirator” in violation of the Espionage Act.</p>
<p>Susan Rice went on five Sunday news programs and said an anti-Muslim video was behind the mayhem in Benghazi.</p>
<p>I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Then Jay Carney said the White House had nothing to do with scrubbing terrorism from the Benghazi talking points. Later it came out that the White House had a lot to do with it.</p>
<p>And at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12 of this year, Senator Ron Wyden asked this question of James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: ”Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper responded: “No, sir.”</p>
<p>Roller derby is more honest than this administration.</p>
<p>I don’t think the National Security Agency needs to see hundreds of millions of phone records and e-mails to catch terrorists. But, as I say, you can’t have total privacy in a world occupied by people who want to blow us up.</p>
<p>So I have no problem if the NSA takes a close look at the guy who is making 17 phone calls a week to the al Qaeda Boys Club in Yemen. But I’m worried that our government may also be spying on the American who makes “too many” phone calls to the Republican National Committee.</p>
<p>Paranoid? Let’s give Jay Leno the final say on that:</p>
<p>“Actually, President Obama clarified the situation today. He said no one is listening to your phone calls. The president said it’s not what the program is all about. You know, like the IRS isn’t about targeting certain political groups. That’s not what it’s about!”</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-06-12T20:46:00ZBernie's Column: Did Eric Holder Lie to Congress?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Did-Eric-Holder-Lie-to-Congress/-313681536183631266.html2013-05-28T22:33:00Z2013-05-28T22:33:00Z<p>On May 15, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee and said this about the Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks to journalists.</p>
<p>“In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material: This is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”</p>
<p>Except it turns out that Holder not only <em>heard</em> about the potential prosecution of the press, he personally <em>approved </em>it. After he testified NBC News broke the story that Holder had personally signed off on a search warrant to go after the phone and email records of James Rosen, the Fox news reporter. The warrant accused Rosen of conspiring to publish classified material that allegedly was leaked to him for a story about North Korea.</p>
<p>So what should we make of Eric Holder’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee? Did he simply forget that he was the one who approved the request for a warrant to check Rosen’s phone records and personal emails? Did he sign off on the warrant request but wasn’t really paying attention to what he was signing?</p>
<p>Anything, I guess, is possible – including this, which I think is much more likely: Eric Holder lied to Congress, which is a federal offense. He certainly didn’t tell the truth.</p>
<p>And since the president himself has said, “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” the obvious question arises: Will Eric Holder be forced to resign?<br /><br /></p>
<p>I’m saying, don’t bet on it.</p>
<p>For a scandal to take off and have serious political consequences it has to enter the bloodstream of the general population. It can’t simply be something that news junkies and political partisans in Congress care about.</p>
<p>So Holder will need to become a running gag on late night comedy shows. He will have to be a recurring theme on Jon Stewart’s show. And the question of whether the Attorney General of the United States – the highest-ranking legal officer in America – lied to Congress will need to become a running story on the network evening newscasts, where some 20 million people get their news.</p>
<p>Only then will it truly become a scandal with political consequences. And if all of that happens Eric Holder will have to go.</p>
<p>But what if this current outrage by reporters who see Holder’s actions as a threat to press freedom turns out to be nothing more than a lover’s spat between the press and the Obama administration — and soon goes away? What if the storyline changes from “Attorney General threatens First Amendment” to “Republicans use so-called press scandal to score political points”?</p>
<p>Remember, too many journalists are still too cozy with this president, whom they genuinely like and respect and in whom they have so much invested. His values are their values. His liberalism is their liberalism. As Rush Limbaugh says, they are one in the same.</p>
<p>One more thing: How much did the Obama administrations war on Fox News play into Eric Holder’s decision to go after James Rosen? The president and his political cronies have tried their best to convince the American people that Fox is not a legitimate news organization; that’s it’s nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of the national Republican Party.</p>
<p>I possess no smoking gun memo from the president that says, “Go after Rosen and bring down Fox News.” That’s not how politics works in the post-Watergate era. But is it such a leap to connect a few dots and come to the conclusion that if the president, who is especially thin-skinned, detests Fox … that his attorney general might try to hurt one of its top reporters? Even accuse him of espionage?</p>
<p>Just because it’s crazy doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-05-28T22:33:00ZBernie's Column: When Is a Scandal Not A Scandal?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-When-Is-a-Scandal-Not-A-Scandal/-677514326849058571.html2013-05-17T01:35:00Z2013-05-17T01:35:00Z<div><span>I don’t like reading the New York Times in the morning because I’m always afraid my head will explode and that would make it difficult to go through the rest of the day. My aforementioned head almost did explode when I read this headline on page one:</span></div>
<div>
<p><strong>I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives</strong></p>
<p><strong>Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On</strong></p>
<p>Get it? The real story isn’t that the IRS abused its considerable power by giving special scrutiny to groups with the name “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their title … or that they actually went far beyond those keywords and took aim at groups seeking to “make America a better place to live” or those who would “criticize how the country is being run.” No, the real story is that this gives Republican an issue to seize on.</p>
<p>Aren’t Democrats interested in seizing on this despicable behavior by one of the most powerful agencies of the federal government? The New York Times, I’m guessing, never thought about that.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem, as succinctly summarized on Hot Air:</p>
<p>“If it’s a scandal involving Republicans, the story is the scandal. If it’s a scandal involving Democrats, the story — or at least a significant part of it — is whether and how Republicans will ‘politicize’ the scandal for their advantage.</p>
<p>Bingo!</p>
<p>It’s the same with Benghazi. Liberal journalists are more concerned with how Republicans will use the apparent cover-up to hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances in 2016 than they are with finding out what really went wrong and who tried to mislead the American people about it.</p>
<p>Here’s Exhibit A, a headline in the Los Angeles Times: ““Partisan politics dominates House Benghazi hearing” … as if this is Washington politics as usual and we’re not going to learn anything from the witnesses who swore to tell the truth.</p>
<p>Too many Washington journalists see everything through a prism of politics. Benghazi isn’t about the death of four Americans … it’s about the future of Hillary Clinton. The IRS scandal isn’t about the abusive use of federal government power … it’s about how the GOP will use it to score political points.</p>
<p>But even if you play by these rules, why isn’t the story on page one of the New York Times about how Democrats in the Obama administration may have been going after conservative groups … for political gain?</p>
<p>Why isn’t the Benghazi story framed in a way that questions Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s political spin? Is she trying to stay out of trouble precisely because she wants to run for president? Was Mr. Obama more concerned about winning re-election, running in part on the phony premise that he had al-Qaeda on the run, than he was in admitting early on that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack in Benghazi? Is he now more concerned about his reputation than … well, than anything else?</p>
<p>There has been a subtle shift in how Mr. Obama’s most loyal base, the so-called mainstream media, are treating him. When ABC News revealed the emails about Benghazi and their many re-writes to scrub any reference to terrorism (instead blaming a dopey video for the attacks) that gave mainstream journalists permission to question the president in a way they hadn’t before. If Fox came up with those emails the mainstream media response would have been a giant yawn.</p>
<p>There may be a new, less adoring relationship between the slobbering media and their hero, the president – especially after it came out that his justice department got a secret court order to go through phone records of journalists at the Associated Press. Now that's something they can really get worked up over. Benghazi? Who cares! IRS? Big deal. But when you go after journalists, they'll turn that into Watergate, the sequel.</p>
<p>But if there is a new tougher relationship between the press and the president, I’m guessing it won’t last long.</p>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2013-05-17T01:35:00ZBernie's Column: Jodi Arias, Cable TV, and a Nation Fascinated by Shiny ObjectsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Jodi-Arias-Cable-TV-and-a-Nation-Fascinated-by-Shiny-Objects/528662919217040161.html2013-05-09T18:51:00Z2013-05-09T18:51:00Z<p>There are times, not many thankfully, when I get depressed, brought down by the sorry evidence that we live in a country fixated on shiny objects. This is one of those times.</p>
<p>A jury in Phoenix has found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. That’s not what gets me down. What I find so depressing is our collective fascination with trivia, with anything that we can follow without having to actually think.</p>
<p>No one ever heard of Jodi Arias until cable TV made her famous. No one ever heard of the boyfriend she killed, you know, what’s his name. The Arias murder trial tells us nothing about anything bigger than Jodi Arias. She wasn’t famous like O.J. Simpson before she was arrested. This wasn’t Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Those trials had implications. The Arias trial had none.</p>
<p>When it became known that the jury had reached a verdict, cable news went wall-to-wall with Jodi Arias. It would be 90 minutes before the verdict was announced in court, so anchors and pundits spent the time saying nothing – nothing that mattered anyway. But this is a small point. Saying nothing about Jodi Arias gets you more viewers than saying something about the national debt.</p>
<p>But you can’t blame cable TV news, not entirely anyway, because television is a business that gives the people what they want. And if they want Jodi, TV executives will give them Jodi for hours on end. Hell, if she had been found not guilty they might have even given her a show.</p>
<p>In Phoenix, hundreds of locals dropped whatever they were doing when they heard the verdict would soon be coming down and raced to the courthouse so they could be close by when the verdict, which had no effect on them or their families, was read out loud inside the courtroom.</p>
<p>Why the interest? Sex. That’s it. The trial was filled with tidbits about the sex life of Ms. Arias and the boyfriend she killed by stabbing him 27 times and cutting his throat. Sorry, I’m wrong — it was about more than sex. It was about sex and violence. Of course if Jodi Arias weighed 350 pounds and had crooked teeth, we wouldn’t be nearly as interested (which is another way of saying we wouldn’t be interested at all, and neither would cable TV).</p>
<p>The Arias verdict came down on the same day the House held hearings to determine what really happened last September 11 in Benghazi and to try to find out why four Americans were killed at the U.S. consulate there. Did then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will likely run for president in 2016, make big mistakes that led to their deaths? Hey, who cares about insignificant crap like that?</p>
<p>Mike Huckabee, the Fox News host, said that the Benghazi hearings would lead to the downfall of Barack Obama, that when the facts came out Mr. Obama would not be able to finish his presidency. That is nothing but wishful thinking masquerading as political analysis. Americans don’t care about Benghazi. Not all Americans, of course, just most Americans.</p>
<p>But they care about Jodi Arias because shallow people like shiny objects. That’s why they love to follow car chases on TV, even when the culprit is only some doofus who stole a piece of gum from a 7-11. The chase can go on for hours. They’ll keep watching. Car chases are more interesting than real news any day.</p>
<p>So is the life and death drama of a woman who dressed up like the librarian in glasses who lets her hair down and goes wild on New Year’s Eve. The national debt is a crisis that may some day take us all down. But until then, we can have a grand old time following shiny objects.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-05-09T18:51:00ZBernie's Column: Global Warming May Lead to Sex -- for MoneyBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Global-Warming-May-Lead-to-Sex----for-Money/194865909662757553.html2013-04-30T18:44:00Z2013-04-30T18:44:00Z<p>You heard the old joke about how the New York Times would headline a story about a giant meteor heading toward earth with a deadly force that would cause massive worldwide devastation?</p>
<p><strong>Killer Asteroid Heading Toward Earth</strong></p>
<p><strong>Women and Minorities at Risk</strong></p>
<p>Or how about this one:</p>
<p><strong>Global Warming May Turn Women into Hookers</strong></p>
<p>Hang on to your hats, my friends, that one is real. Not the headline, I made it up. But that’s exactly what a bunch of liberal Democrats in Congress are saying.</p>
<p>According to The Hill, about a dozen Democrats in the House, led by Barbara Lee of California, have come up with a resolution calling on Congress to acknowledge that global warming (or climate change or whatever they’re calling it this week) will hurt women more than men and could drive poor women to “transactional sex” for their very survival.</p>
<p>Transactional sex is a nice way of saying prostitution.</p>
<p>Here’s how it would work according to Ms. Lee and the others: Global warming can lead to drought and drought can lead to reduced agricultural output which can lead to less food which can lead to hungry women selling sex for money or bartering sex for a sandwich.</p>
<p>The resolution, which hasn’t been taken up by the House yet says, "[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health."</p>
<p>The resolution also says that climate change could add "workload and stresses" on female farmers, who we’re told produce most of the food in developing countries.</p>
<p>I knew Mitt Romney and those Neanderthal conservatives were waging a war on women but I had no idea Mother Nature was in on the act.</p>
<p>But is anything really new here? Isn’t transactional sex the oldest profession? Why drag global warming into the discussion? Women – (<em>some</em> women, not <em>all</em> women, my PC Police friends who are patrolling this Web site) were turning tricks for money long before anybody ever heard of Al Gore and his global warming horror stories. Maybe we should all just chill. Sorry. I couldn’t resist.</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-04-30T18:44:00ZBernie's Column: The Boston Marathon Bombings and the Importance of Getting the Story RightBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-The-Boston-Marathon-Bombings-and-the-Importance-of-Getting-the-Story-Right/-627800713958405847.html2013-04-23T21:13:00Z2013-04-23T21:13:00Z<span>I don’t like second guessing journalists who are covering breaking news, especially on live television. It’s not easy. Early on the story is changing by the second and it’s hard to stay on top of each new development. So mistakes are going to be made. And in the Boston Marathon bombing story, journalists got an awful lot wrong.<br /><br />Important mainstream news organizations reported that more than two bombs were found. The venerable Associated Press citing a “senior in U.S. intelligence official” said, “Two more explosive devices have been found near the scene of the Boston marathon where two bombs detonated earlier.” The Wall Street Journal put the number at 5. </span>Wrong. <span><br /></span><br /><br /><span>CNN, where America supposedly goes for news when something big happens, said a suspect was in custody. </span>Wrong. <span><br /></span><br /><span>To make matters worse, CNN said he was “a dark-skinned individual.” Wrong.<br /><br /></span> <span> </span> <span>The New York Post said there were “at least” 12 people dead. Wrong.</span> <span> <br /><br /></span> <span>The same paper put the picture of two innocent young men on its front page under a headline that read “Bag Men.” Wrong.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>They said a Saudi national was a person of interest. Wrong.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof couldn’t resist the temptation to inject his liberal politics into the story. On Twitter he wrote: “Explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment.”</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>He later apologized, saying it was a “low blow and I take it back.”</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>In the fog of war – and two bombs going off with the intent to kill and maim innocent civilians is a kind of war — journalists will get things wrong. So those of us who were watching from the comfort of our living rooms, shouldn’t be too harsh. But reporters need to be called on their many mistakes – because their self-inflicted wounds hurt all of us.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>Every reporter wants to get the big scoop, they all understandably want to be first with an important break in the story. But there’s a price to pay for such ambition: Your audience will stop believing you. I did.</span> <br /><br /><span>Remember that stick up at the 7-11, supposedly pulled off by the brothers? I still don’t know if that really happened. You heard the story about how they hijacked an SUV and confessed to the driver that they were the bombers? Did they really confess or did the press get that one wrong too?</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>After a while whenever a TV reporter went on the air to report something new I said to myself, “Yeah, sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.” This is not good for an American institution whose credibility rating is somewhere around that of used car dealers. In a free country we need a mainstream media that we trust.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>But there’s another group that has gotten off way too easy: those supposedly reliable, credible, highly placed sources. Journalists didn’t make up their false information. They didn’t concoct a single “fact” to boost their ratings or their personal reputations. Every piece of incorrect information came from those reliable, credible, highly places sources – in law enforcement.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>Let’s go behind the curtain to see how this could happen.</span> <span> <br /><br /></span> <span>FBI sources on the scene, the ones who knew the most, clammed up early. They weren’t sharing what they knew with the media. So reporters had to depend on other sources who wanted to be in the loop, even though they weren’t. These incredible sources needed to feel like they were in on the action so they passed along whatever they had –rumors, gossip, unreliable stuff they picked up on the grapevine — to journalists anxious for any crumb they could get.</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>When something terrible happens, television is where most of us (who aren’t following the “news” on Twitter) go to find out what’s going on. And television did a good job a lot of the time. They let us in on the action as it was unfolding. To me, the TV coverage in Boston was like a reality show: when something wild was going on it was fascinating; when nothing was going on – which was most of the time – it was painful in a way that watching paint dry can be painful. How many times can you watch the first bomb going off before you scream, “ENOUGH!”</span> <span> </span> <br /><br /><span>Journalists should learn from their mistakes, but what’s a reporter to do when a supposedly credible law enforcement official tells a journalist he has information that is accurate? What’s the reporter supposed to do when he gets the same wrong information from more than one “credible” source?</span> <span> <br /><br /></span> <span>So the next time something terrible happens journalists will want to be first with the big scoop all over again. That’s how it should be. It’s in their DNA. Reporters will want to believe what their sources tell them. And there’s a 100 percent chance a lot of the information will be dead wrong, again. And a crucially important American institution will lose yet more of its precious credibility while the unreliable sources get off easy.</span>Bernie Goldberg2013-04-23T21:13:00ZBernie's Column: Media Ignore Mass Murder TrialBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Media-Ignore-Mass-Murder-Trial/-212497256012534596.html2013-04-16T14:57:00Z2013-04-16T14:57:00Z<p>Remember all the attention the media gave to the O.J. Simpson murder trial? How could they resist, especially TV, since cameras were allowed in the courtroom? A super star football player, who’s black, is charged with killing his wife and the young man who was with her, both of whom are white. Never mind what the trial said about race. All the suits in the front office cared about is what the trial said about ratings.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But you don’t have to be famous or a player in some big social issue for the media to fall in love with you. Who ever heard of Jodi Arias before she went on trial for murdering her boyfriend? Now she’s on TV all the time. More people know all about Ms. Arias then they know about Benghazi, which makes sense since their eyes glaze over when they hear the word Benghazi and they salivate when they hear the word sex, a word that comes up a lot at the trial of Ms. Arias, a young, semi-pretty woman who allegedly slit her boyfriend’s throat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Before that, it was Casey Anthony, another shiny object the media couldn’t get enough of. She was charged with killing her baby, and who could resist a story about someone who would kill a baby?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well …</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you don’t watch the Fox News Channel there’s a good chance you don’t know the name Kermit Gosnell. Why would you? The media by and large have shown just about zero interest in Doctor Gosnell, who is on trial in Philadelphia for mass murder.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Given the details of his case you’d think the media would be falling all over themselves covering his trial. Dr. Gosnell is charged with 7 counts of murder, and everyone one of them was horrifying almost beyond belief.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Prosecutors say he beheaded victims, that he put their cut off feet in jars, that he snipped their spinal cords to make sure they were all dead.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh yeah, all the victims were newborn babies who survived Dr. Gosnells’s abortions. Or to put it another way, they were born alive — or about to be born — until Gosnell killed them, allegedly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He says he’s innocent. He admits performing the late term abortions, but his lawyer claims the babies were dead when they left the womb. Witnesses who worked in Dr. Gosnell’s clinics disagree. One said former Dr. Gosnell “snipped the spinal cords of babies,” another testified that Gosnell showed her his “snipping” technique to use on infants born alive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here’s part of what the grand jury found: “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is not a column about abortion, late term, partial birth or otherwise. It’s a column about how far too many journalists will go to protect their interests. How could the same journalists who put Mitt Romney on Page One for allegedly using a scissors to snip off one lock of a high school classmate’s hair — 50 years ago — be deaf dumb and blind to a story about a doctor who allegedly used a scissors to snip the spinal cords of babies?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For openers, survey after survey show that most reporters are far more liberal than the American population at large and far more likely to support abortion rights. Yes, we all know that professional journalists shouldn’t let their personal views intrude on their judgment, but who’s kidding whom? The only abortion story that interests these high-minded journalists is a story about some right-winger trying to limit abortion rights.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then there’s the part about how liberals in general and journalists in particular never gave much credence to the partial birth abortion argument. It was, they figured, just one more right-wing delusion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But as Kirsten Powers put it in a piece for USA Today, “Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was ‘highly unusual.’ The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Recently in Florida, a woman representing the state’s Planned Parenthood organizations, testified against a bill that would require abortionists to provide medical care to babies who survive attempted abortions. She was asked: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” The woman from Planned Parenthood replied: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family and the physician.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And this brings us to another reason the so-called mainstream media have shown virtually no interest in the story: President Obama shares that woman’s view on partial birth abortion, a term I’m sure he would not use.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he was an Illinois state senator he said the issue should be left to women. But he went even further, voting against a bill that would have protected babies born alive after botched abortions, claiming (many say falsely) that there were already laws on the book to cover that possibility.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On February 29 2012, National Review Online published a piece by Patrick Brennan that came to this conclusion:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Obama’s record as a state senator was not merely pro-choice, but radically pro-abortion. His voting record indicates that he does not believe infants deserve protection even once they have emerged from the womb if they are deemed to be below the age of viability, and he did in fact, three times, vote to keep a form of infanticide legal.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As I say this is not a column about abortion. Reasonable people may disagree on abortion, though I suspect, each side sees the other side as anything but reasonable. This is a column about how corrupt the mainstream media have become. This is a piece about journalistic malpractice.</p>
<p> </p>Bernie Goldberg2013-04-16T14:57:00ZBernie's Column: Obama Compliments a Woman; Feminists OffendedBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Obama-Compliments-a-Woman;-Feminists-Offended/-890124341881831835.html2013-04-09T21:32:00Z2013-04-09T21:32:00Z<div>Perhaps you've heard about the incredibly insensitive remark President Obama made the other day - the one that not only showed how indecent men can be, including even a progressive man like the president, but how words can be used as weapons to inflict great pain.</div>
<div><br />
<div>I'm referring to the ugly comment the president made about women. The comment he had to apologize for. Yes that comment: He said the attorney general of California - one Kamala Harris - was attractive.</div>
<br />
<div>Oh, the humanity!!!</div>
<br />
<div>The president was at his millionth fundraiser outside San Francisco when he said Ms. Harris was "the best-looking attorney general in the country." What, in God's name, was this brute thinking?</div>
<br />
<div>Never mind that it's true, that she is the best-looking attorney general in the country, or that he had already said that Ms. Harris was "brilliant" and that "she is dedicated and she is tough" before saying she was also attractive. Never mind that he did not say, "The girl is smokin'" or "That babe is hot."</div>
<br />
<div>What he did say was enough - enough, that is, to get liberal feminist panties in a knot.</div>
<br />
<div>Mika Brzezinski, for one, on MSNBC was not pleased. On Morning Joe she said, "It just divides women and it just divides people up to separate them by looks and probably was a little ham-fisted. I just think the whole thing, the whole dynamic about women and their looks puts women under a lot of stress that they don't need."</div>
<br />
<div>This, we should note, is coming from a woman who is a television host precisely because of her looks. It certainly isn't because of her depth. And if you don't believe me, just listen to her for two seconds.</div>
<br />
<div>Columnist Robin Abcarian wrote on the Web site of The Los Angeles Times that the comment was "more wolfish than sexist," and "may be a little problem he needs to work on."</div>
<br />
<div>Great idea! Maybe he could "work on" his "little problem" in between trying to finally get the economy up and running after more than 4 years in office and dealing with the North Korean whack job who keeps promising to blow us up with one of his nuclear weapons.</div>
<br />
<div>Joan Walsh, a left-wing member of the chattering class who if she wore pants would be Chris Mathews wrote on Salon that "my stomach turned over" when she heard about the comment. "Those of us who've fought to make sure that women are seen as more than ornamental ? and that includes the president ? should know better than to rely on flattering the looks of someone as formidable as Harris," she said.</div>
<br />
<div>None of this particularly interests me. I, like many of you, have come to understand how shallow liberal feminists can be; how they derive power by either being hurt or by faking it; how they love to wallow in their perceived victimhood. They see themselves as strong women. In fact, they're just the opposite, offended by every little slight, real or imagined. If a guy behaved that way he'd be called a sissy.</div>
<br />
<div>What does interest me is the president's apology, which was made for cowardly political reasons. Liberal Democrats count on the support of liberal women. So if even a few liberal women are upset, instead of telling them to Man Up - (wouldn't that be great?) - you apologize and to hell with your manhood.</div>
<br />
<div>Take a good look at the New Man, who really isn't that new anymore. He came out of the feminist movement, a movement that did a lot of good not just for women and girls, but for all of us. But it also turned more than a few men, who wanted to show just how down with the cause they were, into pandering wimps.</div>
<br />
<div>Memo to POTUS: Here's what a "real man" - the kind you'll find on Mad Men - would have said when the feminists started in with their predictable whining, over a compliment no less: "SHUT. UP."</div>
<br />
<div>And before any of those fragile women breaks down in tears, he might have added this: "Kamala Harris isn't complaining. And you know why? Because every woman in America - and 99 percent of the men - like it when someone says, 'Hey, you're attractive.' That's how we humans are wired. There's nothing wrong with complimenting a woman on her good looks, even if she is an attorney general or has any other job outside the house."</div>
<br />
<div>Instead, the president calls Ms. Harris and apologizes ? for paying her a compliment. Frankly, I worry more about the fate of the nation because of New Men like that than I worry about what the aforementioned whack job in North Korea might do to us.</div>
<br />
<div>As for Mika and the other gals: If they don't like compliments on their looks, fine, we'll never say you look nice ever again. Happy? Now do us one small favor: Shut. Up.</div>
</div>Bernie Goldberg2013-04-09T21:32:00ZBernie's Column: Conservatives Behaving Like LiberalsBernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Bernies-Column:-Conservatives-Behaving-Like-Liberals/-141690770251961824.html2013-04-02T23:55:00Z2013-04-02T23:55:00Z<p>There was a time when I was invited by a well-known conservative magazine to speak on cruises that the magazine organized. Conservatives from all over America paid good money to visit far away places and listen to the likes of me talk about how corrupt the liberal media had become. But one evening, while cruising the Caribbean, I said there was also a problem with conservative bias in the media. The crowd literally hissed and booed and I was never invited on another cruise.</p>
<p>There was also a time when I was a regular at a yearly conference of conservatives at a fancy hotel in Florida. When I talked about the excesses of liberalism the crowd cheered. But one time I talked about the insanity of the “Birthers,” those geniuses who think Barack Obama was born someplace outside the United States. Turns out a “Birther,” who was a big contributor to this conservative conclave, was in the audience. I never got invited back.</p>
<p>When I’m on the O’Reilly show I get two kinds of reaction from my conservative friends: love emails and hate emails. When I talk about liberal dopiness I get the love kind. When I say conservatives at times can be just as bad as the lefties, I get hate mail.</p>
<p>Let me be very clear … conservative groups can invite anyone they want to be part of their events. I have no constitutional right to speak to people who don’t want to hear what I have to say. And truth be told, I was never comfortable being in the same place at the same time with so many like-minded people. And people who watch Fox can like me or hate me. That comes with the territory.</p>
<p>Conservatives complain about liberal orthodoxy all the time. When liberals call some black conservative an Uncle Tom, we bristle and say liberals can’t stand it when a black man “strays from the liberal plantation.” We talk about how close-minded liberals can be.<br /><br /></p>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>Well, my friends, conservatives can be, and too often are, just as orthodox — and it’s starting to really annoy me.</p>
<p>As some of you may know I used to be a liberal Democrat. I grew up in a blue-collar family so the Democrat part was a given. The liberal part came with age. Most young people are liberals.</p>
<p>Then when I got older I realized how crazy liberals had gotten. Being for civil rights wasn’t good enough. You had to also be for affirmative action, even if the kid getting the advantage was the son or daughter of a well-to-do black professional. How was that fair to poor white kids, I wondered. Did a white coal miner’s kid have more advantages that the son of a black lawyer?</p>
<p>And being a supporter of women’s rights wasn’t enough, either. You also had to support a woman’s right to be a firefighter even if she wasn’t strong enough to carry a man out of burning building.</p>
<p>And abortion? Being pro-choice is one thing; supporting late term abortion in the name of “choice” is something else all together.</p>
<p>So I moved right. Or more accurately, the left moved so far left that they left me, not the other way around.</p>
<p>Now I find myself more and more uncomfortable on the other side. I don’t like conservative orthodoxy any more than I like liberal orthodoxy. I’m no fan of President Obama, but the constant, non-stop bashing from conservatives in the media is getting downright boring. I’ve never been a fan of one-note sambas.</p>
<p>I mean, is Mr. Obama really responsible for what some left-wing minister says about social conservatives on Easter Sunday … just because the president was in his church at the time?</p>
<p>There are those on the Right, as Peter Wehner describes them in a piece for Commentary magazine, who seem “to be in a near-constant state of agitation, ever alert to identify and excommunicate from the ranks those they perceive as apostates. One day it is Chris Christie; the next day it is Bob McDonnell, or Jeb Bush, or Mitch Daniels, or Eric Cantor, or Lindsay Graham, or Mitch McConnell, or someone somewhere who has gone crosswise of those who view themselves as prefects of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”</p>
<p>That kind of conservatism leaves me cold. But if I sit home on Election Day because I’ve had it with the right-wing purists, I’m in effect voting for the Democrats … and I can’t do that, not as long as they think we don’t have a spending problem and taxing the “rich” is a sensible policy.</p>
<p>So what to do? I’m not sure at this point. But if conservatives demand purity, if they don’t want to hear from anyone who doesn’t toe the conservative line, if they see social moderates as wimps or sell-outs, they will lose election after election and they will have only themselves to blame.</p>
<p>That’s one more thing the purists on the right don’t want to hear.</p>
</div>
<div class="adsense-336x280"> </div>Bernie Goldberg2013-04-02T23:55:00ZIs Gay Marriage an Idea Whose Time Has Come?Bernie Goldberghttp://www.BillOReilly.com/b/Is-Gay-Marriage-an-Idea-Whose-Time-Has-Come/29784526901640065.html2013-03-29T23:00:00Z2013-03-29T23:00:00Z<p>Now that the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of same sex marriage, it might be a good time to consider this tidbit that should make even the most ardent opponent of gay marriage feel uneasy: In the United States of America a convicted felon in prison for robbery, rape, murder or a whole bunch of other crimes is allowed to marry -- but, except for a handful of states, gays can’t. </p>
<p>To many of us, this makes absolutely no sense. Neither does the argument that if the court rules that gay marriage is legal it would re-define the meaning of marriage. Yes it would. And?</p>
<p>Another argument, this one made by Charles Cooper, the lawyer representing the anti gay marriage side at the Supreme Court, makes even less sense.</p>
<p>At one point Justice Elena Kagan said this to Cooper: “It seems as though your principal argument is that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated because opposite-sex couples can procreate, same-sex couples cannot, and the State's principal interest in marriage is in regulating procreation. Is that basically correct?”</p>
<p>Cooper replied, “That's the essential thrust of position, yes.”</p>
<p>So does that mean couples in their 50s and 60s not to mention 70s and 80s can’t marry – because marriage, after all, is for having children and there aren’t a lot of 75 year old women having babies these days?</p>
<p>The argument is beyond absurd. And they’re all canards, masking the real source of opposition to gay marriage – which, in a word, is the Bible.</p>
<p>As my pal Bill O’Reilly, poignantly put it on The Factor: “The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument is. ‘We’re Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.' That’s a compelling argument. And to deny that, you have to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”</p>
<p>Conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh, are arguing that gay marriage should be left to the states – not to nine men and women in robes in Washington. And there’s something to that. The Supreme Court handed down their ruling on abortion in Roe v. Wade 40 years ago and we’re still fighting over it. The decision on gay marriage, Limbaugh and other conservatives say, should be the result of “the will of the people” -- not the edict of a court.</p>
<p>But what would the will of the people have been back when black people were fighting for their civil rights. Does anyone really think the people – or the state legislatures – in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi would have voted to let black people vote,or eat at lunch counter, or drink out of water fountains reserved for “whites only,” or stay at hotels, or go to public school with white kids? </p>
<p>Not likely. After all, these are the same people who voted for segregationists like George Wallace to make sure those “Negroes” knew their place.</p>
<p>I’m all for letting the people decide. That’s the best way to go. But do we really want to put civil rights up for a vote?</p>
<p>Opponents of gay marriage say this isn’t about civil rights. The same thing was said back in 1967 when a mixed race couple – Richard and Mildred Loving -- was arrested in Virginia, simply for being an interracial married couple living in Virginia where that kind of thing was against the law.</p>
<p>The trial judge in the case, one Leon M. Bazile, suspended a one-year sentence on condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and promise not to come back for 25 years. And at their sentencing the judge also said this:</p>
<p>“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”</p>
<p>Remember, this was in 1967, which in the big scheme of things wasn’t that long ago. When the case got to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, Virginia’s law was unanimously shot down. In the court’s ruling, Chief Justice Earl Warren said:</p>
<p>“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”</p>
<p>Now the question is not about race but about sex. We may all be better off if the states decide the issue one by one. But on principle, banning same sex marriage is just as wrong as banning interracial marriage. Chief Justice Warren was right: Marriage is a basic civil right. Besides, if convicted felons can marry, do we really want to deny that basic civil right to gay Americans, who have committed no crime?</p>Bernie Goldberg2013-03-29T23:00:00Z