Friday, May 19, 2006

Idiot Bill O'Reilly again

I wonder how much of what Bill O'Reilly says is rooted in any kind of fact. He clearly makes stuff up as he goes along.

Wednesday night on his "O'Reilly Factor" TV show, he threatened Mexico with a boycott if they dared to file any lawsuits over the National Guard taking over the Mexican border. And, to back up his threat, O'Reilly pointed to the success of the boycott he had off France and how much they suffered.

Suffered? U.S. exports to France have never been higher. Plus, they have climbed ever since O'Reilly announced his boycott! He cited evidence from the Paris Business Review indicating that the boycott had an impact. Problem is, there is no such publication. Talk about pulling stuff out of a part of one's anatomy!

The same day on his radio show, O'Reilly claimed that since Sweden allowed for same sex marriages, their social structure has plummeted. Most children are now born out of wedlock, he claimed, and the divorce rate is over 60%.

Let's introduce a couple of facts.

1) The marriage rate in Sweden has been climbing in this decade, after three decades of decline. In 2002, there were slightly under 80,000 new Swedish marriages and about 42,000 new Swedish divorces (according to Statistics Sweden). In 2005, there were 89,000 new Swedish marriages and 39,000 new Swedish divorces.

2) The trend to cohabitation occurred well before Swedish legislation legitimizing gay unions, and is most prevalent among people in their 20s. Most cohabiting couples either break up or marry within 5 years.

3) The U.S. has the world's biggest problem with single-parent households for children 15 or younger.

I will have more on Sweden in another post.

But, I would love to have a job where I could make up things as I went along.

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