Sometimes this just makes me feel better. O’Reilly has another brilliant diatribe written up, and like pretty much everything he’s ever written, said, or thought, it proves that no responsible person should ever take what he says seriously. This might take a moment, so let’s go bit by bit.

Emboldened by the Democrat victory earlier this month, the far left is rising like Dracula at midnight. Just days after the vote, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to ban Junior ROTC in the city’s high schools, tossing more than 1,600 students out of those clubs.

Ouch, that’s not right. They dumped the JROTC? Boy that shows that they really do hate the military, doesn’t it? Well no, not really. The reason stated was that, as per the military’s rules, not allowing openly gay members violated the school’s policy of equal rights for homosexuals. Do I agree with that? Not necessarily, but it’s certainly not proof of being anti-military. Next bit:

The Massachusetts legislature refused to allow a vote on gay marriage even though more than 170,000 Bay State voters signed a petition demanding to be heard on the subject,

Similar situation. Technically true, but misleading. The MA legislature called for recess by a majority vote before voting on whether or not to allow a vote on whether or not to ban gay marriage in 2008. The law states that they would need 25% of the legislature to support putting it on the ballot.

I’m biased in this case because I support gay marriage. It’s interesting to note, though, that all 170,000 of those demanding to be heard were demanding to be heard about how much they hate gay marriage. This wasn’t an across-the-spectrum group of people angry about the debacle that flew in the face of process (since nothing illegal happened), it was a bunch of people who wanted to ban gay marriage mad about not being able to do so.

So 170,000 people are mad that they weren’t allowed to vote to trample on the rights of people who aren’t harming them? Boy, how terrible. Though it’s 2 for 2 with O’Reilly complaining about issues involving gay rights. Odd. Anyway, next:

…and a Vermont press group honored Judge Edward Cashman, the guy who sentenced a brutal child molester to 60 days in jail.

This is just stupid. I’m not going to get into the Cashman issue itself because frankly I’m tired of hearing about it, but the point is the word “honored”. First off, a press group can’t honor anyone. It’s not like he got “judge of the year”. He was just interviewed on television in order to defend what he did. Apparently Bill-O is a fan of just tearing people a new one without giving them a chance to defend themselves. Granted, that’s probably obvious.

All right, moving on. After some stupid “secular progressive” rambling, Bill rips this one out:

I coined the term “San Francisco values” and well understand they have little to do with democracy. How nutty is the San Francisco Board of Ed? We’re fighting a lethal worldwide terror movement, and these people are telling high school students the U.S. military is bad, that’s how nutty.

Number one? No he didn’t coin that term. He first used it this October and it’s been around for over a decade. But making crap up on the fly isn’t news for him. And as for the second point, refer to earlier in this article. No, Bill, that wasn’t why that happened the way it did. If you’d bothered to actually read any article on the subject you’d know that.

I’d like to take this moment to highlight how funny it is that Bill-O, like so many others, doesn’t source anything. In fact that’s what a complaint was in a review of his book (which I already wrote about). Bill just says things and doesn’t give his readers a way to check back. Can you imagine how little credibility I’d have if I never linked to anything? Read this article again and imagine if there were no links. Onto the next part, now:

The far left in Massachusetts is almost as bad. Gay marriage was imposed in the Commonwealth by three judges who found a loophole in the state constitution. Marriage was not expressly defined as between a man and a woman. Presto, traditional marriage has company.

Here Bill is all over the map with his idiocy. He’s referring to Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. What he refers to as a “loophole” is the following:

In ruling that the Commonwealth could not [deny those protections, benefits, and obligations to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry], the court observed that the Massachusetts Constitution “affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals,” and “forbids the creation of second-class citizens.” It reaches its conclusion, the court said, giving “full deference to the arguments made by the Commonwealth.” The Commonwealth, the court ruled, “has failed to identify any constitutionality adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.”

Ponder that if you will. There is nothing in the Massachusetts Constitution that would support a ban of gay marriage, and O’Reilly is accusing the judges who ruled on that of being “far-left”. The fact that the judges who would vote FOR a gay-marriage ban despite there being no basis for such in the Constitution would easily be considered activists instead of justices seems to elude him.

To use an analogy: it would be as if I sued Bill-O because I think he’s a moron and the judges shot me down because there’s no law saying Bill can’t be as stupid as he jolly well pleases, then I accuse the judges of having an agenda. Of course, this all seems to be far too nuanced for O’Reilly, which is why I will file my lawsuit after the New Year.

But my question is this: If marriage is a constitutional right, which it is not, why can’t polygamists get legal? How about triads? Why can’t you marry your mom?

Bill’s actually right, here. It’s not a constitutional right. Which begs the question of why anyone’s allowed to get married. And more importantly, it begs the question of why Bill thinks people should be allowed to define marriage as only between certain groups of consenting adults rather than all of them. It seems to be the “icky” ruling. Whatever Bill and his friends find “icky” has to be illegal.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re an adult and there’s no evidence that what you’re going to do will hurt anyone, go ahead. Probably shouldn’t marry your mother, though. I have a feeling those kids would grow up rather… odd.

But the secular-progressive movement doesn’t care about the Constitution. It wants a brand-new America where the people don’t call the shots — the “enlightened” minority sets the agenda.

So get ready for more of this kind of thing. The state of Vermont has already left the building. It elected Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, as junior senator. Compared to Sanders, Patrick Leahy, the other Vermont senator, is Dick Cheney.

Point one is another eye-roller. Us crazy S-Ps are the ones fighting that Bush has been violating the Constitution all this time, we’re the ones arguing about fraud in the vote counting. Bill’s the one getting mad that MA judges made a perfectly reasonable ruling based on the letter of the law.

As for Bernie Sanders, take a look at his voting record for yourself before you get caught up in titles. And there’s something to be said for the fact that Bill is accusing Massachusetts of not wanting to allow people to vote for stuff, then goes on the attack on the senators the people democratically elected. I’m not sure what that is exactly, but it’s not good.

We wrap up with this:

Let’s recap: no tolerance for the military, no voting on controversial issues, and let’s ease up on those adults sexually brutalizing children. Welcome to the land of the secular-progressive. Have a nice day.

Already covered the first two, but let’s have another bit of fun. Our friend Marlin Morris was sentenced to 15-18 years in prison for raping a 13 year old girl back in 2004 (though he ran away, he’s been caught again and as far as I know the secular Massachusetts hasn’t dropped the charges). For a more recent story there’s Jeffrey Belmore, sentenced to 3-4 years for having sex with a 14 year old girl he was supposed to give guitar lessons to.

Sorry for the abbreviated link there, it was the best I had for an “official” story. There are tons of stories of child molesters being given fair sentences in Massachusetts, O’Reilly focuses on one bad one. As for Cashman? He retired in September.

Let’s recap: O’Reilly confuses adherence to the law with activism, lies about coining a term, and overblows an isolated incident while ignoring everything else, all in order to launch a completely disjointed attack on the left. Have a nice day.

This one popped up in the comments and I found it very clever. Simple premise, but it fits: send a copy of 1984 to every Congressman who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. A focused site (which makes it a good read), I think they definitely deserve our donations.

The Ministry of Love announces its fourth-quarter plan to gather 315 separate copies of George Orwell’s landmark novel 1984, from proles and party comrades alike, all across our brave homeland.

Once collected, all 315 copies will be mailed separately to each Member of Congress who voted YEA on the Military Commissions Act (a.k.a. The Torture Bill) on September 28th and 29th, in the sixth year of our glorious leader’s regime. These shipments will occur with great fanfare, and hopefully, a television news crew on hand to capture the momentous occasion for inclusion in the Ministry of Truth’s ever-growing archives.

Come, comrades, and join in the effort.

In today’s “I didn’t need you to tell me that” section, we find this article about a USA Today piece examining the Iraq War from the beginning. Most importantly in the article, it shows the folly of the blame-shifting that seems to be going on:

To blame administration bungling exclusively for the Iraq debacle, however, is to learn the wrong lesson. It’s true that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged from the outset. By failing to guard massive munitions stockpiles, the administration helped arm the insurgency. And by disbanding the Iraqi army, it gave the insurgency men to use those arms. But the mistakes began with the decision to go war itself, a naive and arrogant exercise in wishful thinking that the nation can’t afford to repeat.

…

U.S. policymakers would have benefited from more time reading history and less concocting rosy scenarios. In the 1920s, the British similarly believed that democracy could be imposed on a tribal culture accustomed to rule by strongmen. After a few massacres, the British learned their lesson, installed a king and retreated.

…

It’s important not to buy the new self-serving line from the neoconservatives, some of whom are already beating the drums for a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Recovering the international goodwill squandered in Iraq, and dealing wisely with the threats from Iran and North Korea, requires facing the mistakes squarely.

I couldn’t agree more, and I apologize for the big excerpt.

What we’ve seen in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, the aftermath of the midterms is the tendency of far-right neocons to shift the blame elsewhere and ignore that it was they who caused the situation. Bush did not act alone in the war. He was staunchly supported by those far more to the right than he who also were more preoccupied with overly optimistic results than the path to them and the justification for getting started.

I’ve been saying it for almost as long as I’ve had this site: the Iraq War was based on the presumption that everything will go awesome because we want it to and once that happens all of the other problems will iron themselves out. That’s not reality, and unless people start acknowledging it we’re going to do it time and time again until the United States actually has a real threat to deal with.