Bill O'Reilly's beguiling goosestepping

From last night's "Talking Points Memo," here's Bill O'Reilly's contribution to Socratic dialogue:

There is no question the country is worse off today ... than when President Obama took office. And if you're speaking to someone who disputes that, immediately terminate the conversation because that person is irrational, a Kool-Aid drinker.

Watch the video. It gets even better. Much better. For instance Bill informs his rational audience that while the federal budget deficit for FY '11 was $1.2 trillion, President Bush's last deficit came in at only $458 billion. That was for FY '08. Makes sense, doesn't it? But of course Bill neglected to inform his rational audience that the last federal deficit for which Bush was directly responsible--FY '09--came in at $1.4 trillion.

I don't monitor Fox News or its quotidian quackers of doom. When I feel like watching some quality GOP propaganda, I just slip a copy of "Triumph of the Will" into the DVD player. But I'm no longer sure about this. Leni Riefenstahl has some real competition airing on Fox. Perhaps I should reconsider.

Comments

[japa21]

And keep in mind that the 2008 budget did not include two wars, which the Bush administration funded outside the budget.

[janicket]

Beat me to it, japa21! Just imagine how much better the budget would look if this administration was using all the sleight-of-hand tricks the last one did.

[Robert Lipscomb]

At least, Leni Reifenstahl had talent.

[Turgidson]

BillO's rants sound like the last throes of an ideology that knows it's going down in defeat.

But I thought that in 2008 too, and those bastards rode a platform of, well, basically, mendacity and treason, all the way back to the House majority.

So I no longer dabble in the predictions game. But these huffy fact-free denouncements from BillO and his comrades do sound, at the least, desperate.

They're wrong about damn near everything and a cancer on our societal fabric, but they're not total fools - they wouldn't dare say it out loud in front of a Fox camera, but they know that Day 1 of the DNC outshined the entire RNC about 5 times over, and we haven't even heard from Bubba, Biden or Obama yet.