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Posted on 06/24/2010 6:18:38 AM PDT by Libloather
John Stossel: ‘Thuggish Chicago Shakedown’ Of BP Is ‘Not Democracy’
by Frances Martel
7:50 am, June 23rd, 2010
It seems that every time someone in the GOP expresses some radical libertarian idea, the rest of the party scatters as far from the person as possible. And like a brave firefighter to a burning building, John Stossel rushes in to save the embers of his beloved philosophy. He arrived on the O’Reilly Factor tonight with fistfuls of red-hot free market capitalism, calling the $20 billion BP escrow account a “thuggish Chicago shakedown,” by “Vladimir Obama.”
While Stossel didn’t defend BP CEO Tony Hayward, calling him and his corporation “despicable,” he was equally appalled by the fact that the Obama administration made BP agree to save $20 billion in an escrow account specifically for claims. “I disagree with you,” he told Bill O’Reilly, “that Obama was right to say we go in there with a machine gun. We have rules in America!”
Stossel affirmed that he believed the deal was a “shakedown”– no, a “thuggish Chicago Shakedown”– and despite disapproval from O’Reilly, who had no problem with BP officials being “roughed up,” Stossel was worried that it was a slippery slope. “What if next time, Fox News is evil, and O’Reilly is evil,” he argued, and Fox News was taken off the air? O’Reilly basically responded that he’d cross that bridge when we get to it, and that he didn’t believe the federal government would ever take him off the air. Stossel didn’t buy the argument and concluded that this type of deal “is like Venezuela, it’s thuggish, it’s not democracy,” and called O’Reilly a member of the “liberal media.”
Video from The Factor below:
Stossel is the best reporter in America!
It would have been nice to allow Stossel to talk a bit more. Blow-hard O’Reilly took the majority of the segment telling Stossel he was stupid and wrong.
BOR is trying to get liberal approval and an invite to a WH dinner. He’s a jerk.
It’s good that his guests are questioning his motivation.
BOR doesn’t understand the rule of law OR simple human decency. Apparently he’s never heard of the Golden Rule. He seems to think it’s OK for Obama’s thugs to intimidate and steal from others, because BOR doesn’t think they’ll come for him. The Golden Rule teaches us to treat rich or poor alike, as we would like to be treated. What kind of society would we have if our leaders simply did whatever was popular? Apparently that consideration hasn’t crossed BOR’s mind.
BOR is concerned with one thing - ratings. Everything else is puffery. He’s not a moral compass, he’s not a voice for good... he’s a business man. Ratings = money.
I never forget when some jerk like BOR screws with good people like he did with the Swift Boat people. From that moment on I’ve never paid any attention to him.
O’Reilly is an idiot. He is as conservative as he is Catholic -both in name only and even then clueless at best...
A conservative libertarian perhaps?
Did Stossel have an alternative suggestion?
I haven’t watched one minute of Bill O’Riley since I saw his interview of obama (the candidate). It was a pathetic joke.
You would have thought bill had a crush on barack.
When he screwed with FR , it was like when somebody screwed with the Cartwrights as far as I am concerned . I may only be Hop Sing , but I would run his @$$ through the laundry .
O’Reilly is a supercilious p**ck who has a way-too-high opinion of himself. He has little philosophical base and would do well to listen more and talk less.
Stossel's one of the best minds our side's got - he's called this one right.
Who cares about labels, Stossel is dead-on.
Strange. That's so unlike BOR[e]. We have a "conservative" radio talk show host here in Phoenix that does the same thing when listeners call in who are more conservative than he is. He talks over the top of them and adopts this condescending uber-sweet voice like he's talking to a mental defective, and debunks a distorted version of whatever they said.
I assume what Stossel was objecting to was that Obama seemed to be trying to get control of the disbursement of the money, in other words to use it as a patronage slush fund for unions and other political allies. That, and the coercive way in which Obama dictated a special policy when there's already a legal framework in place to make those whole who were hurt by the leak.
And you can turn out the whitest O’Reilly’s with the sharpest creases of anyone on the ranch!
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