Part I, Accountability Defined

I don't know about all of you, but I have been feeling better for the past few days. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's being back in school, or maybe it's the new feeling of a new year. I'm sure those all might have something to do with it, but I think the biggest reason I'm feeling better is the change we are witnessing in Washington. Yes, we are only a few days in and already I can feel the difference, can't you? People said not to expect much, that change would be slow, but already this administration is moving to change the climate of politics in our nation's capital. On his first day, President Obama took steps to limit the scope of lobbying and introduce vital reforms to a corrupt system. On his second day, Obama ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay, enacted policies banning torture and ordering a review of methods condoned by the Bush administration in dealing with detainees, and just today President Obama repealed a ban on funding for abortion and abortion counseling services. There's a lot to get to, and I plan to delve into each of these actions today, but I've decided that I would like to end on a high note for once, so I'll get the ugly shit out of the way first.


For the past few weeks, I've been having a conversation on one of the forums I'm registered at with a certain individual. Our conversation started out as a small argument over semantics, and has since grown very bitter. Rude things were said by both sides, some deserved and some not. That is not the point anymore, and neither is the point that we were originally arguing. In fact, I wouldn't even be arguing anymore if not for the way that the argument has proceeded recently. Let me be a little more clear, we were arguing about a story plot when insults were exchanged. After our volley of insults was over, we continued to argue about the plot. The other poster's argument became this, "I believe things happened this way, and you can't argue against me because that's my opinion and I'm entitled to it." This is what I take exception to. Yes, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Yes, in the case of our argument there could be no concrete winner because we were theorizing on if the lack of concrete facts is an unexplainable oversight or an intentional omission. What I disagree with is the poster's saying I cannot argue against his opinion, and his saying that when I based my argument on factual evidence and extrapolation on gaps in plot that it was nothing more than opinion.



Now, why bring this up here, you ask. I'll tell you why, accountability. This is an isolated incident, but it is not the only one. To be perfectly honest, I don't have many similar experiences on a personal level, but I do see this type of behavior very often. I'll get to that in a minute, but first I'll elaborate upon my views on accountability. Like I said, I was basing my opinion on facts and logical thinking that is based upon those facts, and yet my opponent tried to reduce what I was saying to opinion. My opponent did not act in an expository manner and expected his opinion to be taken seriously because, well, it's his opinion, we all have to respect it, right?



This is my issue. Everybody is entitled to an opinion, but that does not mean everybody else has a responsibility to take it seriously. This is what I see very often, the leap from the sovereignty of one's opinion to the validity of one's opinion. Here in our society, the former is accepted to be inherent, a natural truth if you will, and I don't disagree. The issue here is free will, and I won't argue against that. The latter, though, is not a matter of free will. It is a matter of exposition, validity, and accountability. Every individual is free to have an opinion, but every other individual is just as free to reject that opinion's validity. Does that, then, mean we should accept or reject an opinion's validity on our own whims? Of course not, that's the very definition of anarchy. Should we accept validity based on the fact that someone took the time to state their opinion? No, that's idiotic. In the words of the great Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." No, we judge validity based on a set of universal standards. Do we have facts to back up our opinions? Can we make a reasonable argument based on those facts? Are we able to exhibit sound logic? These are the factors that determine accountability. Accountability is not subjective nor is it self-evident.


So then how does one make the leap from the sovereignty of their opinion to the validity of their opinion without taking accountability into account? This is the penultimate question. I don't have a penultimate answer, but I don't think I will go my whole life without answering. I believe the answers are out there if we try to look for them, and we already have some very good answers to this question. For the first, I will go to one of the most ancient thinkers we know of, Socrates. Now, first and foremost, I am not, at this point, interested at all in the Socratic Problem. Plato, Socrates, who said it is not pertinent to this discussion, the fact that an intelligent philosopher said it at one point in time is. Socrates and Plato lived in ancient Athens, a technically democratic society. While the democracy was layered and did not provide for an equal say in all matters by every class, it was, nonetheless, a democratic institution. Socrates, according to the Republic, did not believe in a true democracy. He rather believed in a society ruled by so-called philosopher kings, men who valued philosophy and higher knowledge above political ambition. He believed that a society could not survive if it was to operate based on the whims of the people. Now, the Republic is largely an operational theory on the nature and workings of government, one which I am not interested in discussing right now. What I am interested in discussing are the values behind these views. Was Socrates right? Is democracy subject to the whims of a majority consensus? Can a majority be wrong? Yes. The question now is can the fallibility of the majority have a major impact on the workings of a society? The most commonly accepted answer in our society, I believe, is no. We accept this fallibility, we acknowledge it, and we even acknowledge that it can have great consequences. What I don't believe most people accept is that this fallibility can lead to a large-scale breakdown of society, possibly even democracy itself. Whatever happens, Democrat or Republican, whatever choices they make, our system and our way of life is still safe, right?


Let us assume, for right now, that the answer is yes, our way of life will remain intact. Whatever decisions that are made, then, are trivial in comparison, right? Here's where it gets tricky. You see, "our way of life," is a bit of a misnomer. Our way of life varies from person to person, family to family, subculture to subculture. What I should really have said is that the hegemonic order is safe, things will always stay constant for the most part, for better or worse. So then, if you fall into the hegemonic order your way of life is indeed safeguarded. If you do not fit, however, you have no such guarantees. The decisions that are made are not trivial, not to you. Now we're getting to the real meat of the matter, but we must first take one more detour: the nature of democratic politics.


Democracy is born, in most cases, out of inequality. There are one or more groups of people who feel mistreated, and they demand equal representation and opportunity. Out of this is born my theory, the nature of democracy is not derived from democracy at all. Democracy is born out of conflict, out of one group trying to further its own means, and indeed this trend continues. Let's look not to democracy, but to values and behavior. Look at organized crime: it is born out of economic inequality. Cosa Nostra has its roots in Italian ghettos in America, and used to be made up of people who saw their status in society as unfair, a veritable band of Robin Hoods. What they became, however, is far less romantic than our notions of a noble-minded English bandit. Today they are famous for murdering, extortion, gambling rings, fraudulent business activities, hijacking, drug trafficking, among other things. And who gets the profit from these activities? While most bosses are said to be community-minded to some degree, the distribution of wealth often resembles that of medieval society, with the bosses taking most of the money, the perpetrators taking a hefty cut, and the rest distributed as the bosses see fit. Perhaps an even better example would be that of the American gang. In his in-depth study of a real-life American gang, Gang Leader for a Day (Which I highly recommend) Sudhir Vankatesh witnessed the every day workings of a gang first hand. He noticed how, although many communities leaders, including but not limited to gang leaders, often talked about equality and being of service to the community, every one of them showed no hesitation when taking their cut. Police, building supervisors, gang leaders, all made themselves their first priority, all the while defending their actions on the basis of community importance.


This is what I'm getting at, democracy is born out of conflict and continues to operate out of conflict. How many politicians would be such vehement defenders of democracy if they were not able to manipulate it to further their own economic means? How many of them would defend it if it were used to create an unprecedented level of economic equality? Now, I am not taking a Social Darwinist viewpoint here. I am not saying it is survival of the fittest, nor that it is right to vie only for your own benefit, just that it happens, and very frequently. Even further, this IS the failing of democracy that Socrates, Plato, who-the-fuck-ever was talking about. If everyone is fighting only to further their own means, then how do you determine who is right and who is wrong? Our answer, you don't. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, no opinion is invalid. And just like before, pulling a trick out of Socrates bag and using a small-scale causality to determine a proportional one, this notion is idiotic. It signals a complete breakdown of democracy, that hegemony is the ultimate rule of law, not equality. If no one is wrong, what's the point of arguing? Well, no agreement can be reached, and we have accepted the necessity of our co-existence, so we must argue in order to reach an agreement, but no one is wrong, so how can you argue? It's an insane cycle, broken only by the anarchy of operating based on whims, which leads not to agreement but to arbitrary change, which sets the stage for a beginning of a new insane cycle. This is the futility of the democratic argument. By saying that everyone has an equal say in the operation of society is to say no one's argument can be wrong, because how can one argument be wrong if it supposedly equal? This is the failing of democracy, the juxtaposition of the equality of people with the equality of their arguments. This is the jump in logic I was previously describing, from sovereignty to validity. Not everyone's arguments are valid, they must be held to a certain standard.


And we are back to accountability. It is vital in the smooth operation of a democracy. If we allow democracy to operate based on the decisions of those without accountability, we lose it. This is why accountability is vital, why we need to more deeply instill it into the hearts of our younger generations. I see a lack of accountability everyday. I see it every time I hear the word, "elitist," every time I hear accusations of universal media bias. On one of the Chicago public TV stations, there's a weekly airing of a conservative radio talk show. I watch occasionally because they do tend to focus on issues rather than just throwing around unsubstantiated crap like a few talk shows do, and because they always have a liberal contributor who is very knowledgeable and presents liberal opinions in a good manner. That doesn't mean, however, that there isn't a good share of baseless accusations. I was watching one program and my least favorite contributor, a hardcore backlash conservative, started going on about how society had lost its morals. Eventually his rant came to Bill Ayers and how a society could allow a terrorist like him to have a job and be a respected professor, and how he should rot in jail [cue eye roll]. Mark this point, I will come back to it, but for now I want to focus still on accountability. WHY do you say, sir, that Bill Ayers is a terrorist and WHY do you feel he should be treated as a criminal? There's no answer to that, the answer should be self-evident in the contributor's opinion. He did this and this, he's a terrorist, case closed. Ah, now we get to the real point, the term, "terrorist." His use of the term is a subjective application. He's not providing any evidence to back what he says up, he just applies because he believes it fits. Well, let's look at if it really fits. Webster's defines terrorism as the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion. Let's look at what Bill Ayers did. Did he use the threat of death or injury to manipulate people to do what he wanted? No. Did he actively threaten anybody? No. Did he ever intentionally harm anybody or put them in harm's way? Only if you don't believe him about the Greenwich Village explosion, and only then by accident. Even if you believe he was the mastermind of that project, his actions still never went past intent. At any rate, the federal government decided not to charge him and he is not actively participating in any terrorist activities. He has earned his degree, earned his place at the university, and is a functional member of this society, so why does this man think Bill Ayers should be subject to constant ridicule at best and arbitrarily imprisoned at worst? Feeling. Emotion. This man feels threatened by what Ayers represents, and he responds to this feeling with a typical fear response: posturing. Before we move on, let's just make this one point clear: this attitude can only be described in one way, anarchy. We have a system of laws that is agreed upon in one way or another. We lose that if we start going around imprisoning people based solely on our emotions. That's a complete circumvention of our laws, that's basing laws on nothing standard or factual, that's anarchy, period. In my opinion, if this is the type of crap you're going to go around spewing then you should not be given the platform to do it on a public level.

Back to posturing and on to politics, how 'bout that Republican party? Look, I don't always agree with Republicans, in fact I almost never do, but that doesn't mean I necessarily hate them, that I will never listen to what they have to say, and that I can't respect them if they conduct themselves in a manner worthy of respect. What they have been doing lately is NOT worthy of respect. Say whatever crazy thing you want. Be like the crazy idiot I talked to who thinks you can have a totally anarchistic society with an economy based on the gold standard. Be like Sarah Palin who thinks planned parenthood is evil and hunting endangered species should be a natural right. The least, and I mean the absolute least you can say about these people is that at least they're consistent. You can't even say that about the Republicans. Once it became evident that Barack Obama was going to win the national election, the word you heard coming from the right the most was partisanship. We can't have one party dominating, the thing this country needs most right now is unity, we need to cross party lines, blah, blah, blah. Where is that now? John McCain, Mr. reaches across party lines, declined to attend a White House Superbowl party on the grounds that he wasn't going to negotiate on the stimulus package. When President Obama (Man, that feels good!) called a meeting between Republican and Democratic leaders to discuss the bill, Republicans leaders told their cohorts to vote no on the bill before the meeting ever started. How's that for bipartisanship? Oh wait, did you mean bipartisanship as in getting together in a meeting and ironing out certain differences in order to reach a consensus? Oh, I'm sorry, we Republicans took that to mean we're going to pout and not budge on any issues because we're angry that the American people voted us into a rather substantial minority. This is a slap in the face. Earlier this week, Republican cabinet nominee Judd Greg resigned as a member of Obama's cabinet due to, "irresolvable conflicts," with Obama. Pardon me for asking, but isn't the whole point of bipartisanship to resolve conflicts?

This is posturing, plain and simple. The cold hard fact is that President Obama has shown an unprecedented degree of bipartisanship in selecting his cabinet members and reaching out to Republican leaders. Republicans say they're worried about not having enough influence in Washington, that they won't have direct access to the President. Well here, have these cabinet positions and that will solve the problem. Well, screw you, I don't wanna. They complain about not being involved in decision making. Well here, come to this meeting so that we can resolve our differences. Well, screw you, we don't wanna listen to what you have to say. This is the definition of partisanship. This is what the Republicans were going red in the face arguing against in the elections, and now they're the biggest perpetrators. Did Regan ever ask for Democratic cooperation, or did either Bush? Didn't Clinton fight tooth and nail with Congress to get his legislation passed? Didn't Bush Junior veto almost everything the Democratic-led congress sent to his desk? And now the Republicans are the ones crying partisanship, all the while refusing to acknowledge almost any Democratic positions? This is what I'm talking about with a lack of accountability. If you're going to play partisan, play partisan, but don't act in a partisan manner and then go around crying partisanship every time you need to shore up some votes to stay in office.

Let's go this economic stimulus bill that the Republicans have been fighting so hard against, to no avail. There's pork in the bill they say, some even say it's almost all pork. Here we go again with the sensationalistic rhetoric. By definition, there's no pork. There are no earmarks, there are no pet projects, nothing of the sort and a good deal of effort was put into making sure this was the case. But yet they keep crying pork, and why? Oh, there's spending in the bill and that's pork, right? I heard a sound clip on the radio today of the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying that the only thing in the bill is spending. Let me see, what word am I searching for, ummm...DUH! They keep saying it's not a stimulus bill, it's a spending bill. Tell me please, how do you stimulate the economy without spending? Oy, head explosion is imminent. Yes, that's exactly what we're doing, we're spending because if we don't then where do you expect the money to rejuvenate the economy to come from?

During the election, the Republicans talked a lot about creating American jobs. Now with the spending bill one of their biggest arguments is that a spending provision to purchase electric cars for public and government institutions is frivolous spending. Well, let's see now, the company that manufactures the cars is based in the U.S. Hmmmm...that means that the spending will create jobs for this company and provide them with money for them to expand their operation through the profit they make. I also believe the company is part of the Daimler-Chrysler family, and there's been a lot of talk about keeping American car manufactureres in business, so this would help with that. Oh, but that's frivilous spending, right?

Well, what's the Republican answer then? That's my biggest problem with all this shit, they don't have one. Tax cuts, lots and lots of tax cuts. Guess what geniuses, tax cuts are a form of spending. You're taking money out of government and putting it back into the taxpayers' pockets. The only difference between tax cuts and government programs is who the money goes to. With government spending, and specifically with this bill, the money is going to those who need it the most, it's going to create jobs, it's going to keep people in their homes. Where do tax cuts got to? Well, first off to the people to whom you give them, which according to Republicans should be the upper class. So all these CEO's pulling down upwards of half a mil a year get tax breaks, the same people receiving government bailouts for their companies. But apparantly we're still supposed to expect that the trickle-down theory works. The same people whose companies are faltering, who are asking and receiving taxpayer money to stay alive, they're supposed to get tax cuts and we're supposed to expect that eventually we'll see some of that, right?

But that's not all tax cuts do. Tax cuts also benefit the welathy substantially more than they benefit the poor. If you're reading this blog, I'm assuming you're familiar with progressive taxation. If you cut taxes, even if you do it across the board, the money gained by tax cuts pales in comparison lost by the middle and lower classes by way of the operation of the system. So, in an economic recession you want to offer no aid, no spending, because that's pork. Instead you want to cut taxes, which benfits the upper class more than anybody. The same upper class who have become increasingly wealthy during the last two centuries by way of political influence, the same upper class who are begging and begging for government money, the same upper class that constitutes, what, 8% of the population? If you want to increase economic spending, wouldn't it make sense to give more benefits to not only the largest portion of the population, but the portion that spends more money per person in the local economy?

Not according to Republicans. Apparantly, they still think free market politics work. For almost thirty years this country has operated under free market politics. Greenspan economics, Reganomics, lassiez-faire, free market, all the same things, and even under Clinton things didn't change largely. So for twenty-nine years we've operated under the same economic policies, we've pursued de-regulation, we've given tax breaks, we've repealed so-called liberal agenda programs, and now we're in the worst recession ever. What caused it? Was it the eight years of Clinton? Are we all saying that 12 previous uninterrupted years of Republican policy before Clinton, 6 years before that with a one-term Republican break between Ford and Regan, and eight concurrent terms of Junior could not prevent the damage that was done in those three Democratic terms? In the past forty years only twelve have seen a Democrat in the White House, and both of those Presidents had diminished power. Now, please tell me whose fault this recession is. Does this go back to Johnson and Kennedy? All those damned civil rights agendas crippled our eceonomy, but not until more than fourty years later, and absolutely no one saw it coming, correct? Or does this go back further? That damn cripple and his New Deal. You see, you give workers fair treatment and wages and close to eighty years later it comes back to bite you in the ass. Please, the fact is that we handed our economy over to free market thinkers for twenty-nine years. Those thinkers have to take their responsibility for their part in this recession, and they have. Alan Greenspan admitted that expecting markets and companies to self-regulate was naive. This hasn't stopped Republicans from getting behind free market policy once again, though. This is what is going to save our economy, huh? The same exact thing we've been doing for he past three decades? That notion is ridiculous, and if Repbulicans can't wake up and realize what is going on around them then they are going to be left behind, and I say good riddance.

Before I get to value issues, I'll touch on one thing. Something I hear said a lot is that irresponsible people got us into this mess. People shouldn't be lending to people with bad credit, people with bad credit shouldn't be taking loans. Let me ask one thing, what is the American dream? To own a house, raise a family in that house, correct? But people with bad credit shouldn't be lent to. Not only that, people who don't have the assets to back up a home loan shouldn't be lent to, correct? Then to whom is it acceptable to loan money to? People who already have money? People who have the assets to back up their loans? What's the point of loans then? What about those people who work their whole lives in order to afford a home and can only attain one through low-interest financing? Should we just not loan to them anymore? Suddenly the American dream starts to become just that, a dream. If that really is the American way, if that is really what makes our country great, shouldn't we continue to try to extend credit to those who need it most to attain that dream, or is it acceptable that this dream is unattainable to many no matter how hard they work? It's easy to live in a bubble, say you earned your place in society, say people who haven't made it as far as you just haven't earned it. That's far from the truth, though. The truth is that most everyone in this country works hard, that many are subject to the whims of those who are better off than them, and that no amount of hard work is a garuntee of success. The problem is not that we lend too frivolously, the problem is that when things start going bad the people who are affected the most are the ones who owe money, who are subject to the people who control their loans. When those loans get called in, people have to cut back on spending. When people cut back on spending, businesses lose money. When businesses lose money, stock goes down. When stock goes down, consumer trust goes down. When consumer trust goes down, people cut back on spending even more. Then come job cuts, which causes less spending, which causes more uncertainty and less trust in the market, and now you're in a tailspin.

The problem is not just irresponsible lendees, the problem is that lenders were left unregulated and unchecked. They could do whatever they wanted with loans when things went bad, and when people couldn't pay they could collect without repercussion. This is not just people spending beyond their means, this is also a matter of the reality of meritocracy. If we want meritocracy, we have to be more open to redistribution of wealth, to tighter controls that benefit the consumer, to pay and bonus caps for executives, and to a society that does not cater to the wealthy. If we want Aristocracy, free market is the best way to get there, but if we want real democracy then we need to assure economic stability for everybody.

Lastly, values. I'll just touch on this first point, but in debates concerning the stimulus bill the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, wanted to remove language from the bill that prohibited the funds from being used to benefit religious organizations. Thank god his proposal was shot down, but this is an example of exaclty what does not belong in American politics. This is an idea that has been included in the very first language detailing our country, seperation of church and state. This has been integral to our country from its inception, yet there are still a good many politicians who feel it is their duty to carry out religious agendas through their positions. This, frankly, is bullshit. You are a publicly elected official, you are supposed to represent the entirety of your portion of the population that you represent, not just the people with whom you identify and not just your base. This is America, we are supposed to show equal treatment to people from all walks of life. What I think some religious people don't get is that freedom of religion is extended to people with all types of beliefs. It's not religious freedom for us because we were persecuted in Europe way back when, it's not religious freedom for those whose beliefs we can tolerate if not accept, it's not religious freedom for all but we're still going to fight to supress those who are different from us. It's religous freedom, period, get used to it.

Speaking of religous nuts, guess who's bacik in the news? That's right, Caribou Barbie herself, Sarah Palin. I had quite a laugh the other day when I Wikipedia'd Caribou Barbie and got redirected right to her page, no interruptions (just tried it again, there's now a redirect=-(. Anyways, back to the matter at hand, she is now sponsoring the systematic killing of Alsakan wolves. Well, it's hunting for sport, an American passtime, right? WRONG! The most common practice is killing wolves with high powered rifles from helicopters, and indiscriminately I might add. There's no discretion to if they're killing a pack leader or a member on whom the pack might depend. It's just go up into the air, spot a wolf, fire. Carl Spackler would be so proud.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. No, it is now a state-approved practice to go into wolves' dens and slaughter young pups, and I'm just positive this is done in the most humane way possible. There are also stories of capturing pups so they yelp to their parents, then killing the parents on arrival. Doesn't this just scream good, old-fashioned, Christian values?

Now, here's the kicker. Caribou Barbie, or, if you don't like that, the [con] artist formerly known as Sarah Palin, is publicly defending herself. The reason they're killing off wolves systematically, well those darned things are killing innocent caribou, we gotta do something galdarnit! But C.B., why do you care about the caribou, you don't care about living things, unless of course you're talking about living things that aren't necessarily classified as living things, then it's a federal emergency, but these caribou are actual living things that have been born, what's the deal with the sympathy? Well, you see, tourists who come to Alaska to hunt can't kill the caribou because they might diminish their numbers to an unsafe level. So it's those damn wolves who are the problem. Ungrateful mongrols, killing caribou in order to survive. Don't they know that nothing should ever be killed for any reason except sport, and in that case humans have first dibs! I don't care who was here first, we called it! I don't care if the evolution of you brain doesn't allow you to comprehend our language or communicate with us in a way we can instantly understand, we called it first!

Ah, but I digress. Yes, the wolves, who kill for survival, do not take precedence over tourists, who kill for sport. In addition, they're not killing select sickly wolves, they're killing whatever unlucky mutt happens to come across their path that day. At least the wolves have a tendency to kill the weakest prey first allowing for survival of the fittest, what Palin is authorizing can only be described as slaughter.

But there is some proof that the whole world has not gone insane. Contributions and support for both animal rights groups and planned parenthood advocates have gone up since Palin's media exposure. In fact, some of these groups have sent thank you notes to her for her contributions to the rise in support of organizations that oppose her. More proof that Sarah Palin's a bigger boon to her opposition than to the side she's on. Anyways, she's pretty frustrated about this. She publicly asked them to stop sending her these notes, saying the joke has gone far enough. It's no joke, Barbie. You're an idiot, people realize that you're an idiot, and when they do, they do all they can to make sure your idiocy won't spread. Besides, you wanted national exposure, you got it, welcome to the American press!

Speaking of media exposure, here we go again. The evil liberal media, controlled by Hitler's brain and intent on destroying all that is good is at it again! Hold on a second while I dispose of my previous meal in a most unpleasant manner. President Barack Obama, at a press conference, called on a member of the Huffington Post, a liberal online news site. The journalist called on asked a question that was critical of the Bush administration. Now every conservative news outlet is going apeshit over this. There's a liberal bias, they're trying to supress conservative media, everyone is out to get me, ahhh! It's times like this that make me want to punch Bill O'Reilly in the face, although that is a recurring urge. Speaking of the madman himself, O'Reilly had, in the past, criticized the Post for allowing members to post what he called hateful comments in their comments section. First off, these hateful comments were comments aimed at the Bush administration's efforts in Iraq, human rights violations, and other perceived abuses of power. There was also some criticism of Nancy Regan's politics when she fell and was admitted to a hospital. Let's not focus on the fact that most of these comments were not hateful, that hateful comments were moderated, and that the Post didn't condone these comments. When considering the validity of a statement, look first at the source.

When has Mr. O'Reilly ever been hateful? Oh, well there's his treatment of Cindy Sheehan, ridiculing her for vocing her opinion on the war and being distraught over the loss of her son. There's him verbally abusing Jeremy Glick, a 9/11 survivor, for asking O'Reilly to stop using the event as propoganda to further his own purposes. There's his fabrication of a story about homosexual gangs that try to force people into becoming homosexuals. There's the time he said that Stockholm Syndrome doesn't exist, and that a kidnapped child who had developed it really only hated his parents. There's his insinuation that African-Americans don't value education. There's the time he used the term, "lynching party," when discussing Michelle Obama. There's the time that O'Reilly told a Jewish caller that, "If you're offended by Christmas then you've gotta go to Isreal." Yeah, O'Reilly's really in a position to criticize other people for being offenseive. Here's a man who invokes the Holocaust at will for any reason he feels like, talks about African-Americans as though they were thugs, insults people for voicing certain opinions, among other things, and he has the audacity to not only accuse others of being offenseive, but he tries to discredit them by going around yelling media bias because one liberal publication was called on once? Bill O'Reilly, there's a time and a place to be offensive. Acting in the manner you do in front of the audeince you do is neither the time nor the place for that. The time and the place for being offensive is in situations like right now when people like me tell people like you to blow it out your ass.

That's all I got for right now. Stay tuned for the thrilling conlcusion!