So...... is O'Reilly now a sage friend or the same old populist fool he's always been? Blowhard Pinhead or Honest Confessor? An enquiring public wants to know.........

Same old pinhead. He can't compute batting averages, either.

Obviously O'Reilly is mathematically challenged. I think the world was better off with him anchoring Inside Edition.

I don't think this is a reasonable way to go about things, but can we at least get our math right? If you think the surge was a good idea then Mcain was correct about 2 things and incorrect about one. Thats .666. Likewise Obama thought the war was fought ineptly too so if he was wrong about the surge then he was right about 2 things and incorrect about one. Thats also .666. This is all a very dumb way of looking at the world. Obama thinks Iraq is a distraction, McCain thinks it is central. Moreover whether the surge was a good idea depends on whether you agree with McCain or Obama.  

I think the real story here is that O'Reilly acknowledged that Obama was right to oppose the war before it started. Even to credit him that much is a big leap for Bill-O.

Either Bill-O is getting ready to drop his intellectual dishonesty/schill schtick before the McCain bandwagon derails, or he's trying to set Obama up to take a fall for something that didn't happen. Since the incident itself contains an element of obvious intellectual dishonesty, I have to wonder what ploy he's rolling out now...

Ah, "make up your metrics Wednesday" with the big BOR.  Got a hand it to him, at least he didn't say "Obama thought the war plan was executed swimingly".  So one can probably assume that Obama thinks the war hasn't been executed well either.  That puts Obama correct on two, whiff on one, McCain correct on two, whiff on one.  And puts them both at the big BOR's .750, or TNR readers .666 or 667 however baseball reports it.

Also agreed with rozenson's point about the big BOR's admission on Obama's Iraq war position.

"other than that, Mrs. Liincoln, how was the play?"

Was that Bill O'Reilly or Yogi Berra?

2 of 3 ain't 750, it's 666.

And didn't Obama ALSO think "that the war was fought ineptly for years?"  Wasn't that John Kerry's position in 2004, a position openly supported by Barack Obama?  That means Obama's also two for three.  And is being wrong about the initial invasion really of comparable magnitude to being wrong about the surge?

I know, I'm wasting my breath.  Everyone here understands this things already.  Sometimes though this kind of illogic is like having a big old zit right on the end of your nose.  You gotta pop it to get some relief.

Micey wins.

I'm so stumped by this latest stupidity that I am drawing a blank on commenting.  Let me make up for it - while we are on stupid points - by highlighting the latest McCain WebAd, juxtaposing Obama and Fidel.  Yeah.  Fidel Castro - the Almost-Dead former dictator of a small and poor plantation island off the coast of Florida.  McCain definitely does not live in this century.  And, of course, with gas prices, unemployment, recession, the War and ... This looks like Fidel-ing while Rome burnt.

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../mccain-campaign-running-o_n_114657.html

Well, a baseball team has two goals in a game: Score more runs than your opponent, and prevent your opponent from scoring more runs than you. And the average score of a baseball game is 5-4. So although my beloved Washington Nationals are only scoring an average of 3.8 runs per game, they are succeeding in holding their opponents to less than 5 runs per game. So that's .500 baseball, right?

Anyway, what I don't get is the notion that if you think something is a bad idea, that you would then turn around and award credit for doing the bad thing well. "Yes, you honor. We find that the defendant did shoot the sheriff. But it was a very clean killing, so we find the defendant not guilty."

.667, if one rounds up.  But anyway, leaving aside The Big 0's bad math, it is shocking that he allows that the Iraq war was a mistake.  Expect him to retract or contradict that any day now.  And yes, Olbermann's head must be exploding.

Rhubs...

At least you know the average runs allowed by your home team. I stopped watching the Rockies, yet again,  after the slow slide into third behind the friggin' D-backs. Not only does living on the East coast and DC in particular guarantee no coverage of the Rocks w/out a seat at the ESPN zone (who's got time for that?) and I'm forced to watch teams I've never had much spirit for so I've resigned myself to watching the American Van de Velde try to podium in the Tour de France this month.

As to why some one would award credit for doing a bad thing well, that's the Bush credo. The bar set so low, the goal posts moved so often that just showing up on the field is considered  a crowning achievement. As it stands anyone who says the surge works and think it's a great strategy are in complete denial and willful amnesia about how we got into Iraq and why we needed the surge to begin with.  It's not even claiming credit that the killing was clean.

It's more like "Your honor, my client wasn't expecting the owner of the store to still be there when he decided to break in and steal goods. Once he found out the owner wasn't going to turn over the goods without a fight he decided to shoot him but shoot him real dead. Is 1 bullet enough? Sure it is. But you go in with the marksmanship you have not the marksmanship you want so my client had to put 25 bullets into the shop owner. At this point, I think we should just forget that he broke into the shop."

For argument's sake, let's accept Bill-O's assertion that the surge was successful and represents a McCain hit and an Obama out.  What, then, to make of the question of what to do now?

Given the success of the surge, the fact that the Maliki government wants the troops out and that reinforcements are needed in Afghanistan, McCain would nevertheless maintain a large troop presence in Iraq, whereas Obama favors a drawdown.  Give this one to Obama.

By my math, Obama is batting .750, McCain is at .500.

Decision to invade - Obama at 1.000, McCain at .000

Conduct of the war - Obama at 1.000, McCain at .500

Success of the surge - Obama at .667, McCain at .667

Withdrawal of troops - Obama at ..750, McCain at .500

And keep in mind that this is McCain's strongest suit.  Add in the economy, health care, etc., and Obama's in the All-Star Game. McCain's struggling down in Single-A ball.

Hey give Bill-O a break I'm having a hard time myself calibrating an appropriate ratio of TDs to INTs to stand as a metaphor for the candidates' stand on the trade gap. What say yea Obama 10-3 McCain 6-4? Also I'm a little worried about Obama's high Goals Against average when it comes to school vouchers.

Regarding the castro ad mentioned by icarusr -- I agree. Who the hell is thinking about Cuba as a threat anymore? (when was the last time anybody thought of Cuba as a threat? Thirty years ago?) The average 40-something "bitter" voter? The twenty something Obama cultist? Ads like this are just gonna baffle them.

Where's this new scary wunderkind McCain supposedly hired? What's the point of him if he doesn't pull McCain out of 1973 into 2008?

I have to admit , even though I'm not as worried as some over the closeness of the polls, the more I see McCain and his inept campaign in action, the more puzzled I am that he's continuing to do so well.

Bill O'Reilly is batting .000 on sexual harrassment lawsuits; batting 1.000 on confusions between loofahs and Middle Eastern cuisines.

Does anyone really expect a conservative commentator to observe that McCain's batting average is that of the Beast? Now, I'm surprised he didn't find a way to subtly assign Obama .666....

literatehobo, that's not the Beast's batting average, it's his jersey number...

literatehobo -

Technically it's .66666666666666666666666.....

It's only the mark of the Beast if you round to 3 decimal places.

Lemme get this straight. Both candidates are half right (and thus half wrong), but McCain's average is .750 and Obama's is .500? Jeez. I guess O'Reilly is is using "the" math that Karl Rove uses. What partisan, tendentious, wonders the definite article "the" brings to arithematic.

Barnacle: Btw, falafels can be used in showers. The only shortcoming is that the break up and can't be reused. However, O'Relly's romantic fantasy regarding falafels has one major advantage over loofahs: They are infinitely romantic. What woman isn't enamored of a guy who, not only says he'd drink her dirty bathwater (or in O'Reilly's case, shower runoff), but is willing to use said adulterated water to wash down the crumbled pita bread and water-logged, soapy fava beans he used to scrub her body?  :-D

I think O'Reilly's on the right track. However, he's using arithmetic when he should be using algebra--unlike arithmetic's integers, not all of the variables he cites should be weighted equally. Also, he hasn't listed all the variables.

Still, any reason-based analysis from O'Reilly (or anyone else, for that matter) at this point is a cause for celebration, in my opinion.