There was something in this debate that really shocked me about 20 minutes in or so. Stewart was arguing that Bush ran up $10 trillion in debt, and O'Reilly was trying to tell him that that was the total debt from George washington to now, but Stewart was arguing that it wasnt true because we had a surplus under clinton and said that the debt was paid off when Bush took office. I mean, I know I joke that liberals are idiots, but I never thought that someone who is a political comedian actually thought the debt was paid off in 2000 when Bush took office. This makes me wonder how many other liberals also believe this. Liberals that do not know the difference between deficit and debt. This gives me a whole new insight into why liberals hated Bush so much. They are just EXTREMELY ignorant. And these Ignorant people are going to be voting in the next election! <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/A051B-uPopM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
O'Reilly got trounced for most of the debate. Big mistake on O'Reilly's part to try to win against a comedian, by playing his opponents game, on his opponents turf. Other than the first 20-30 minutes O'Reilly got knocked the F**K out. the first part of the debate where they were talking numbers on the economy made me cringe. Two people who are supposedly well informed whiffed on the vast majority of the numbers. For how bad politicians are at getting the numbers right, it appears, based on these videos, that the "talking heads," are even worse.
You've only just learned the difference between deficit and debt yourself, peil, in the past couple of months. Now learn about the difference between paying off debt, rolling over debt, and servicing debt, and maybe you'll stop your fearful crying.
The debate was fun, and as Max said, Stewart beat the crap out of O'Reilly. They could have been a bit more informed regarding deficits and budgets, but what the heck, they're both just entertainers, not experts in anything.
Agree, Bill is out of his league there. Bill has shown himself in the past to be without carefully researched facts in a lot of his discussion. Stewart is frequently without facts, but funny as hell. Funny trumps facts any day of the week.
Peil does have a good point here. I watched a few of the sunday political talk shows and that same argument was made several times by Obama supporters. They all argued that Bush inherited a "debt surplus" and then subsequently added $10T to it, while Obama has only added $6T. The first time I heard that argument I just chuckled at how ignorant the person was. Then I heard it coming from much more informed participants on MSNBC, FOX, and CNN. That was when I realized that people really don't understand. The fact is that Romney was mostly correct in the debate when he said that Obama has increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. My criticism is that he should've put a time qualifier on the statement to make it 100% correct. Obviously $6T < $10T so Obama has not doubled the debt, and I've heard Mitt use a qualifier on that statement before which clarifies the intent of the argument. The factual version of the statement is something like this... If you select a four year term from every president in history, and for 2-term presidents you choose the term with the highest debt accumulation, all of that put together is similar to what Obama has added in his single term. What this means is that with his current economic plan, if he were to get re-elected, we would expect the debt to reach $20-23T by the time he concludes his second term. So yes, the statement could easily be argued as being mostly true, and the fact that most of the Obama defenders don't seem to know the difference between debt and deficit is very troubling.