O'Reilly: "[T]hey still have people in Brazil running around with their little darts, hitting you in the head with the poisoned darts, with the loincloths"
On the July 12 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, during a discussion of the development of ethanol-fueled vehicles in Brazil, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly stated that "they still have people in Brazil running around with their little darts, hitting you in the head with the poisoned darts, with the loincloths." O'Reilly then added, "After they hit you with the poisoned dart, OK, they get into their ethanol vehicle and drive back into the Amazon to do whatever they do there. Eat tapioca, whatever."
From the July 12 edition of The Radio Factor:
O'REILLY: I'm not smart enough to grasp this. And I've asked my friend Mary Anne Marsh , who is my Harvard classmate and very brilliant woman up at Boston, to come in. And she's going to try to help me out, because I need help, I need help. All right? One of my things is I am a big environmentalist. I am a green. OK? I am out there, and I want the cleanest environment possible. I want the government to oversee it. I want the polluters to be punished. I want ethanol. I want fuel cells. I want nuclear. I want all of the energy that doesn't have to do with coal and oil. That's what I want. Does everybody understand what I want?
E.D. HILL (co-host): Um-hmm.
O'REILLY: Then why don't I have it? Thank you. See that, again, is no impulse control. I yell, I scream, I jump. You know, I mean, it's true. What they say about me, it's true. So we don't have any of that, and that's what I don't understand -- why we don't have it. Why Brazil? Brazil, with big anacondas, piranhas, alright, chaos in every city --
HILL: Small bathing suits.
O'REILLY: All, they have ethanol for all of their automobiles. Brazil. I mean, they still have people in Brazil running around with their little darts, hitting you in the head with the poisoned darts, with the loincloths. They still have 'em down there. And they're driving an ethanol vehicle. After they hit you with the poisoned dart, OK, they get into their ethanol vehicle and drive back into the Amazon to do whatever they do there. Eat tapioca, whatever.
But we can't have it here. We don't have it. What we have is oil that we have to pay $3.33 a gallon for. And where does that money go? It goes to Hugo Chavez, OK, who's sitting there in Venezuela figuring out how he can have crooked elections, funding communist insurgencies throughout Central and South America. It goes to oil sheikhs who are sitting there giving it to Al Qaeda so they can blow up babies in India, as they did today.
Lame, lame, lame.
O'REILLY: "I'm not smart enough to grasp this."
Truer words have never been spoken.
Am I missing something? I do know that BO has been one of the few Con voices who have been attacking the oil companies for price gouging.
He has come out against big oil and has laughably taken credit for a brief price reduction in the past, but MMFA is obviously making an issue out of O'Reilly's rightwing, "patriotic" ethnocentricity.
Obviously in your haste to come to Bill O'Reilly's defense, you missed the following bit from the article:
Why Brazil? Brazil, with big anacondas, piranhas, alright, chaos in every city --
HILL: Small bathing suits.
O'REILLY: All, they have ethanol for all of their automobiles. Brazil. I mean, they still have people in Brazil running around with their little darts, hitting you in the head with the poisoned darts, with the loincloths. They still have 'em down there. And they're driving an ethanol vehicle. After they hit you with the poisoned dart, OK, they get into their ethanol vehicle and drive back into the Amazon to do whatever they do there. Eat tapioca, whatever.
Now, I don't know about you, but that is a prime example of STEREOTYPING and it completely undercut any positive arguments he might have made.
and bigotry on display. Instead of having a real discussion about ethanol and how we can emulate the Brazilians who have managed to mass produce and use it he slams the Brazilians as backwards people. The gist of what he is trying to say here is how did those unworthy third worlders manage this and America didn't. What an A-hole.
While I don't agree with the delivery, I agree with the message. The message needs to be heard by his listeners. The sooner America gets off foriegn oil, the better off we will be. Less incentive to muck about in other countries affairs. Also, if we weren't so dependent on the 'juice' then Iran wouldn't have near the leverage they do now in terms of hurting our economy.
completely agree.
however, Brazil is making their ethanol from sugar cane (most efficient crop at the present for ethanol extraction). They are energy independent because the cars/acre of sugar cane ratio is quite low (compared to America). Read an article not long ago, for the US to be energy independent, using corn as the base for ethanol, we would have to triple the acreage of corn in production (not counting what we would require for corn based food products). Can't find the article right at the moment, but I believe the tripling of acreage would exceed the amount of land economically feasible on which to grow corn. Don't know the particulars of sugar cane production as we (US) currently grows a minor amount in Gulf States. We cannot reach energy independence on ethanol alone, but it will be a help as production facilities come on line.
We would have a problem using only ethanol for fuel in the US. It's a good thing that we can also use biodiesal and recovered methane from engineered landfills and solar and wind and tidal forces, etc.
What I don't get is the obsession among repubs for nuclear power. Every time the issue of alternative energy comes up, they have to put nuclear at the top o the list. Why? It is messy, dangerous, not cost effective, and not renewable, and we have to mine for the raw materials. What is it that I am not getting with this issue? Is it that they have to find some way to be different from the renewable energy crowd?
including nuclear, as well as more conservation to make any progress at all. Biodiesel has much the same problem as ethanol, in that we don't have enough farmland to produce all the fuel + take care of food needs. Wind power is not economical without tax incentives. We are on the edge of one of the larger wind projects in the US and let me tell you, wind power will not be accepted in all parts of the US and while the wind blows here (at least where the turbines are located) the majority of the time, there is still a lot of time that I can look out on the turbines and see the blades "parked." Solar, again in economical plant sizes, will not be accepted in certain areas of the US. In the desert SW, probably ok, but transmission costs will be high and inefficient. Methane from landfills is but a drop in the bucket to our energy requirements. Geothermal and hydroelectric are only available in isolated regions of the US. Nuclear has problems, but solutions to waste are being worked on and will probably be available within 5 - 8 years. Higher motor vehicle fuel efficiencies will not gain a lot of ground in areas of the country where people are used to travelling long distances in comfort and at a reasonable speeds (above 55 MPH). There is not a one answer fits all to the fuel/power problems we face.
[link to www.hempcar.org]
I'm not going to add anything to this conversation, but I thought it'd be cool to throw that URL out there as long as we're talking about alternative fuels.
Good point about wind. While it's cool technology, and may become an important part of our energy "portfolio," it will always be limited because wind power, unlike, for example, hydro, cannot be efficiently stored and thus can't be scheduled. Unless we put a turbine in front of O'Reilly. Then we could count on three hours a day of steady wind power.
ethanol can be produced from ANY plant-based matter, and the South doesn't need sugar cane as we have a much more abundant "crop" that grows in the wild--kudzu. Kudzu, for those who don't know, is an ornamental plant that is native to Japan (where it's also used as a foodsource) but was imported to the Southern US decades ago and went wild. The stuff is nigh impossible to eradicate and takes over virtually anything and everything that it comes into contact with (it's similar to ivy in its growth patterns) and covers millions of acres in the South. Most states where it's taken over have simply given up and let it go because it takes too much time and effort (and money) to attempt to eradicate it, but that would change if kudzu is a viable source for biodiesel/ethanol (it would also lessen some concerns that we'd run out of corn for human and animal consumption).
Brazilian cars can run on any combination of ethanol and gasoline. The engines are hybrid. This is great, as consumers can use more of one or the other depending on the price of each product.
You don't need cars that run exclusively on ethanol and hybrid engines are a good way to keep oil producers alert because people can increase the % of ethanol when gasoline prices go up.
And sugar cane (or corn, or whatever) are renewable sources of energy, as opposed to oil. Also, cars fueled by ethanol have lower carbon dioxide emission rates.
Surprisingly, investment in alternative sources of energy in Brazil started during the military government in the 70s. The idea (guess) was to reduce the dependency to oil producing countries, as the government saw energy production as a strategic area of investment.
As to what Bill O'Reilly said, it just shows he knows nothing about Brazil. He thinks he's funny.
...for the US to be energy independent, using corn as the base for ethanol, we would have to triple the acreage of corn in production (not counting what we would require for corn based food products).
We must open ANWR to corn production!
Three hours from OhReally?, four from Shamity, three from RashL, maybe we could reach energy independence with the use of right wing radio/TV after all! And because of "global warming", ANWAR might be the place to grow corn in two or three hundred years, unless nature reverses course as it has in the past and starts cooling the planet again.
for alternative fuels because each of them won't 100% replace our foreign oil requirements.
If each of them replaced 10-15%, we'd have our solution already.
Just like with everything else, the rightwingers can't accept that the US isn't the be-all and end-all of civilization. The US does a lot of great things, but there are things we could learn from other countries.
But try saying that to a right-winger, and they'll immediately start to come up with ways to ridicule it. It's actually a very simple logic: since Murrka is the Greatest Nation On Earth (as every politician of either party who wants to stay or get in office must say in a speech every once in a while, to remain a patriot), every other nation must be definition be worse, and thus can't have anything better than what we have. Ergo, no need to change anything here.
Amazoingly, I agree with O'Reilly here. Wow. :)
BO should start every topic like this and then shut up.
That being said I can understand Bill's questioning if Brazil (by his deranged estimation a primitive society) can do this why can't we? It is a valid question and the reason is Bill your buddies, Bush and Company, are owned by coal and oil. They could care less about national security, the enviroment, or the general welfare of the United States.
And there it is.
I don't know how much "cleaner" ethanol will be in the long run, but at least Brazil is trying to give itself some options. So perhaps this "backwards" nation is more forward thinking than U.S.
I'm trying to find a bright spot here. Maybe O'rielly can appeal to his xenophobic followers who can't bare the knowledge that another country particularly a country like Brazil is more advanced in area we aren't. Maybe they'll demand that we increase the production of ethonol and other alternative sources. Remember the space race, this just might be the spark that sets it off. USA, USA, USA!
first of all, loin cloths aren't worn by the amazons of brazil, though g-strings can be found all around the beaches of brazil. Loin cloths were 1st described by the romans and are most commonly attributed to garments worn by african natives. So once again falafel boy has no clue, but at least he covered his butt when he said "I don't know". Too bad that group of ignoranamouses he preaches to aren't as smart...
I don't really see what the big deal about this is. This actually seems like a pretty LIBERAL position O'Reilly is expressing here. I couldn't imagine Rush Limbaugh ever saying anything like this. This just proves that O'Reilly isn't a right wing ideologue like you guys say he is.
...that he's an ignorant bigot who probably couldn't find Brazil on a map. This xenophobic moron thinks Brazil is a country of savages running around in loinclothes--and you don't see anything wrong with that?
I wasn't talking about what he said about Brazil. That was just an insignificant part in his whole monologue. But by only focusing on what he said about Brazil, you're ignoring the fact that O'Reilly has actually taken a very LIBERAL position on this issue. He even admitted that he's a big environmentalist who wants strict government oversight of large corporations. That doesn't sound like something a true conservative would say.
What you seem to be missing is the point of this item. MMFA posted this to highlight his ignorant comments about Brazil, and my response reflected that. You attempted to gloss over those comments by touting O'Reilly's supposedly "liberal" stance on the ethanol issue. The trouble with that is O'Reilly doesn't actually have a liberal stance on anything, no matter what he says. His claim that he's green is as absurd as his claim that he's against the death penalty. He only says those things because they're issues where he can safely pay some lip service to the left in order to claim his "independent" status. His rants about big oil bolster his "lookin' out for the folks" shtick, but he's done absolutley nothing to back his occasional claims of being "a big environment guy." It's a ridiculous pose.
wholeheartedly ........ He could of just stopped there .
Somebody should tell her that the radio listeners can't see her nodding in agreement. But then again, whenever she opens her mouth, she comes across as a blithering idiot, so just as well....
I haven't been to Brazil, but I doubt the indigenous tribes of the Amazon basin are shooting poison arrow darts, then jumping into their ethanol-fueld cars.
It's "ugly American" comments like those that breed resentment of the U.S. elsewhere in the world ([link to en.wikipedia.org]
Has anyone considered that the actual best source of ethanol is from cannibis oil? The growing season is sixteen weeks to full maturity, and the efficiency and cleanliness of this oil additive is incomparable to any other plant oil on the planet. Oh, right! I forgot. Cannibis is a plant that God does not want us to use! How silly of me.
Billy should be concerned about being hit in the head with poison darts, with that gigantic noggin of his.
So he went to Harvard. That does not translate to smarts. Look Georgie went to Yale..I rest my case. However, will someone take O'liely out of the Stone Age and remind him that the world is made of many colours and cultures, and that he represents only a tiny portion of the White race who are bigots.