My pleasure, MinorLiberator.
It is so easy to be misunderstood. It happens to me too often. Attempting to be brief and succinct with the written word, combined with people trying to sift quickly through the sheer bulk, often results in situations usually avoided with elaboration and clarification that would naturally occur with verbal exchanges.

I have read enough of your material as well as woodlema's, to gather context enough to lead me to conclude it was likely simple misunderstanding.

I try to be clear myself, but depend upon benefit of doubt. I am always happy to clarify. :)
Regards,
O.A.

I applaud Ms. Kelly's stance, and am 100% with Ms. Geller. Anything that pokes, prods, inflames, aggravates, or riles the jihadists is OK with me. We need to stop our cowardly appeasement stance and militantly defend our constitutional rights. We also need to back up our defense with firepower if need be. We need to let Obama know that we are Americans, and not a nation of mewling poltroons. We need to let all the media know that anything resembling an apology, is not from us, but from the yellowbellies who somehow got to run the country.
Man! Does this ever piss me off!!

But O'Reilly builds his entire show around provocative speech! What if someone he declares is a 'pinhead' attacks the studio, is he going to stop using 'pinheads and patriots"?

Under O'Reilly's thinking provocative speech is wrong. I guess he also thinks that those who speak provocatively get what they deserve. I wonder if he also believes that women who dress provocatively deserve to be raped. That's what the liberal press seems to be saying when it comes to provocative speech.

Good question, Beav. That is indeed the crux of the matter. As I have posted many times elsewhere, the problem is not ARMING the police. The problem is arming the POLICE.

If one imagines a world where the police represented people we could trust to support our Constitutional rights, then arming them is to our advantage: we get better support. Additionally, per Yamamoto's alleged statement, in addition to a rifle behind every blade of grass (ourselves) we can have an APC behind every tree (police).

I am making a strong point that IF we trusted the police, THEN there would be a totally win-win situation in giving them military gear. This gear would keep them safer whilst they eliminated terrorists, foreign incursions, etc. The underlying theme here is that in order for this to be a good idea, we first have to win a battle of ethics with the police department. The police (who I do not currently trust and whom I try to avoid) are supposed to be the friends our Mommys told us to go to when we were in trouble. They are not. This is a problem.

Right now, I firmly exclude the 'French solution' of disarming the police totally. I am very glad that our police are armed. What I desire is for the police to merit the trust implicit in their being given military level gear. This level of trust does not currently exist, but the problem is not in the gear, it is in the ethics exhibited by the police departments.

Jan

Jan,

At what point are the police armed enough? Would you somehow feel more secure if every cop was toting an M4 Carbine everywhere he went while dressed up in full tactical gear? Perhaps we should put them all in surplus military Hummers to drive up and down the street. Maybe some riot gear for casual Fridays?

My point is that the police are heavily armed as it is, and many of the extreme examples I suggested above are closer to the realm of reality than fantasy. More succinctly put, you point when you said, "What I learned was, "Arm your police." " is poorly thought out at best and just plain stupid at worst.

The last thing I want to see is our police being outfitted to look like a bunch of donut chomping Army commandos. They already get away with murder at an alarming rate as it is, AND they are armed to the teeth already.

I do agree with you that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Garland traffic cop who gunned those two terrorists down, but a simple "Thank You" and maybe a commendation in his service record will do the trick. It is never a good idea to "thank" the cops by giving them even more power to abuse than we already do.

If we do anything related to arming anyone, it should be the further promotion of open carry laws across the country (will pass this legislative session in my home state of Texas) where any law abiding citizen can be seen as a deterrent to violent crime. The fact that a cop was the one to take these two down speaks well for him and his training, but I am very comfortable with the idea that if these two had made it inside, they would have been surrounded by armed security and civilians alike at that event. In short, if you want to see people more heavily armed as a deterrent to violent crime, look to the ordinary citizen, not the cops.

Chris

I started noticing O'Reilly's contradictions early on, and some definite liberal views creeping in (like opposition to "Big Oil"). I guess he's the talking head equivalent of a "mixed economy". I don't know if he's moderated his views at all (I think he may have), but I remember a few years ago he was part of the "if you don't believe 100% in Global Warming and it's threat to the planet, you're an idiot" crowd. That's certainly not a reasonable, objective position, and never was.

And yeah, gas taxes are everywhere, the equivalent of "sin" taxes on booze or cigarettes. And of course the States (or Feds) do nothing to "earn" it, they are counting on the fact that people will keep buying even with the added cost. Which is of course why they choose things to tax that people are possibly addicted to, or can hardly do without.

WHY?

Hello, MinorLiberator,

I would think that O'Reilly is doing his very best, first and foremost, to maximize his program's viewership ratings. Given the level of thoughtfulness of the TV viewers, contradictions, distortions of facts etc. in his expositions do not matter. Neither to him nor to his devotees.

Just my opinion.

I used to watch O'Reilly until his ego and giving Obama his benefit of doubt. I still watch Megan. She's a little Hot looking Tigress who often let's the Left have it.

Point well made!!! The reason one seldom worries about tis type of violence is...christians almost never perpetrate it.

And make dam sure all participating are well armed and ready to go.

Me too!

Thank you for the clarification,, that is why I asked.

I find it so interesting that the States, in particular North Carolina takes 37.5 cents on each gallon of gas...Which is almost 16% and they have almost no expenses in sucking that out.

Government no matter how people want to justify no matter the argument, no matter any perceived "good intentions" are nothing more than looters and thieves.

O'Reilly is sounding more and more like a liberal every day and I have come to really dislike his perceptions. He has some very interesting views that often contradict themselves a lot.

You cannot be for free market then whine about the profit a company makes, you cannot cry for freedom then expect government to control things...Sounds like a psychological condition known as "Dissociative identity disorder."

What I learned was, "Arm your police."

And it works!

Does anyone know the name of the police officer who shot the two terrorists? I would like to post a thank you to him.


Jan

My turn to laugh...

Thanks, O.A. As I said a few minutes ago (not to you, of course), you did not misunderstand me. Apparently "you're lookin' out for me!"

[edit to add sarcasm]

I was an atheist for a while during my 20s.
Had good reason to be due to people memories.
IMO, no religion has anything like the New Testament.
Over time I found I could deny it. I actually became "born again."
I also believe God has watched my back from time to time.
I notice I'm writing time a lot. Eternity is a long time.
If just wrote a sermon, I'm sticking to it.
Works for me. We all free will decide.

Woodlema, apparently I wasn't clear. That the scare quotes were around "obscene" and not profits I thought made clear that I was being sarcastic. Also, as Cavuto was arguing for the oil companies and I pointed out that he "took O'Reilly to the cleaners", I thought also made my own position clear. Sorry if not.

But now that we're on the subject, your post did remind me of the details and that O'Reilly was being particularly moronic in that argument: his rant WAS against the absolute dollar figure of Exxon's profits, say, $20B. "No company should make that much profit!!!" Cavuto's response was, as you say, to the point that "the $20B is only because of their size, the relevant point is that they only made 2% profit." That made no impression on O'Reilly.

As I said, O'Reilly seems smart in some areas (I believe he is always bloviating about being a high school history teacher.), but he obviously missed Econ 101.

Hello woodlema,
I believe you misunderstood MinorLiberator. I understood his comment to be in support of Cavuto who takes O'Reilly to task for his stance against big oil "profits." Did I misunderstand?
Respectfully,
O.A.

You mean as when Obama admitted "we tortured some folks"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2-551mO...

Good one.

Raised Catholic, too. Nuns in grade school, priests/brothers in high school. Oh, and two aunts and one great-aunt who were nuns, and a devout grandmother who had me pegged for the seminary for high school. (Dodged that one.) I guess you can add the 4 years of college at a Jesuit university (I started at an ultra-Left State university, but escaped before I drank too much of the Kool-Aid.)

But they were still teaching Reason at that time, along with religion, which is why I discovered Rand and I'm now a nondenominational atheist.

Apparently O'Reilly came away with different views...

What an extraordinarily well thought out analysis of the O'Reilly class!, (the Acceptability Club). As I was growing up, I always thought rich people got rich by making intelligent decisions, but as I got out into the world, I was astonished, really shocked to find how really dumb some rich folks were and how dependent they were on acceptance by other rich folks. Bill of course got his initial acceptance by somehow getting into and successfully getting out of Harvard, a place that seems like ground zero for the club. Now in my old age, I realize how this bunch is able to suck up power and use that power to hide their own inadequacies and to force their their dumb thoughts on those outside their club.. All humanity suffers!