Video: Michelle discusses the New York City apartment fire on O’Reilly
posted at 10:08 pm on March 12, 2007 by Allahpundit
Eleven people dead, ten of them children, from a fire in a four-story house last week in the Bronx. Did NYC’s see-no-evil policy towards its immigrants result in a case of not-so-benign neglect here? Maybe — although O’R, surprisingly, seems to be the one who’s most adamant about it. Shouldn’t the policy be different, he wonders. That’s what the policy is, replies KP.
Not her finest hour.
Blowback
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I really wish someone would find video of Bill’s meltdown over this last week in his top story segment. I’ve never seen him break down over a story before, you can tell this one hit home.
fusionaddict on March 12, 2007 at 10:11 PM
How can a guy with 2 wives and 17 kids afford to live in New York City?
lorien1973 on March 12, 2007 at 10:27 PM
The one with Geraldo?
Connie on March 12, 2007 at 10:29 PM
Thanks for posting the video as I missed most of the segment on the show. This goes back to O’Reilly’s interview with Linda Chavez. She is a landlord and believes in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. That is just wrong. She is undermining our system and our laws just as much as the illegals themselves. Certainly there needs to be a more stringent building code policy in NYC and other cities, but Bill is right. No one is checking these buildings and families out.
Connie on March 12, 2007 at 10:40 PM
Not sure if this is the video you were looking for, but this is a pretty big meltdown (about 1:25 left in the clip)!
NATRAPS on March 12, 2007 at 10:49 PM
Bill: You got this one exactly right.
Kirsten: What? How can you argue this as anything other than what it is?
Michelle: Total Class act, all the way. Excellent and thoughtful analysis of the issues.
Lawrence on March 12, 2007 at 11:10 PM
What, no “POWERS!” clip?
RightWinged on March 12, 2007 at 11:42 PM
My prayers to the children…… but I think O’Reilly and Michelle have a point.
Here in California, our jails are full of illegal aliens, but what you don’t hear after the intial crime, are the victims.
Scores of dead, raped, robbed, beaten, mugged, shot, molested United States Citizens, and no one who has taken the “Oath” to “Protect and DEFEND” the Constitution of the United States, against enemies both foriegn and domestic…..” speak up against the orders they are given, by the politicos who take the same oath, to turn a blind eye.
God forbid anyone actually enforce immigration law, and maybe cause the “hell holes” that these people are trying to flee can’t export pissed off human beings, causing their population to actually fight for their own rights, and freedom………….
Noooooooooo, that’s only America’s job, and we will protest her all the way to the bank.
Pathetic….
PinkyBigglesworth on March 13, 2007 at 12:02 AM
Michelle looked a really upset at the begining. Just the ‘horribleness’ of the story itself or maybe is O’reilly talking dirty again?
LegendHasIt on March 13, 2007 at 12:03 AM
Powers is right; this is about poverty, not illegality. Either pseudo-immigration hawks like O’Reilly drop the focus on illegality and focus on the nature and size of our immigration, legal and otherwise, or it’ll be too late, having wasted time and media juice focusing on legality rather than the fact that we need to stop importing poor people period.
The thing is, like 99% of mainstream rightwing media attention to immigration, this is peripheral at best. Yes, our immigration policy imports and maintains poverty. Poverty leads to tragedies like this. But this could have happened to legal poor people as well. This could have happened to native-born poor people. It’s not ironic that Michelle is softer here, it’s that she has a better handle on immigration than the shallow O’Reilly. Powers is just refusing to think about it in any depth at all, like almost all liberals (and most conservatives).
O’Reilly has just gotten hot about this because he was savaged for instinctively touching on the immigration angle and now he wants to justify it. He has endorsed a policy that would enshrine exactly this situation (“guest” workers), except that it would be legal, not illegal. If he’s serious about this, he wouldn’t get into stupid spats like this, he’d reduce poor immigration.
Alex K on March 13, 2007 at 12:12 AM
Have to agree with KP on this one. Nobody wants social services knocking on every door to “see what the conditions are.” Big Brother is already too big, who needs nonsense like that.
Maxx on March 13, 2007 at 12:24 AM
lol…. Why didn’t KP just shout-down B/O like she did
Ann Coulter on H&C?
I think the question that needs to be asked is; Craptastic building code aside, would social services came-a-calling if this wasn’t an illegal alien situation?
liquidflorian on March 13, 2007 at 12:35 AM
I happened upon this, live, and the segment was not good.
Bernard Lewis, a genius, on C-Span this past weekend said that a Muslim friend of his said to him “We allowed you to be monogomous when we ruled you; why can’t you allow us to be polygamous, now that you do?” – paraphrasing…
Entelechy on March 13, 2007 at 12:41 AM
KP should have smacked O’Reilly and told him to quit acting like a hysterical ninny. If code violations were the cause, then the city should have enforced them. The immigration status of the building occupants would not have mattered because of the sanctuary policy.
What’s next, hip hop’s “no snitchin’” policy was the cause?
rw on March 13, 2007 at 12:45 AM
The problem is that logic is backwards. KP is arguing that governemnt should be checking everybodys house to make sure it is safe and there should be no distinction or difference if there is something illegal at that address. That is bigger government then investigating known illegal situations where there are not responsible citizens living there.
Resolute on March 13, 2007 at 12:49 AM
Uuuuuuuuhhhhhh, Nice try boys……
The reality of the situation goes far beyond KP’s “it’s not a crime”, “there was no infraction”, etc., etc.
By your standards, that child molester from Utah all he needed to do, was to move to the “The Bronx”, paint himself black, and take as many wives, fill his dwelling with 100 children, and everything would be OK.
As long as there wasn’t a fire…… “but there is nothing wrong with that”…..
You know, I would hope that some of you on the left would see the “cause” of the problem and not just the resulting mess that we all have to deal with and try to clean up.
The horrific result is that we have children dead. Children that could have brought songs, laughter, and light into our lives, but have been cut short.
Their parents made a decision, and no one in authority stopped them from making a bad one…… until it was too late.
I don’t question your humanity, just don’t let politics and lack of law enforcement get in the way…….
PinkyBigglesworth on March 13, 2007 at 12:58 AM
I didn’t agree with O’Reilly in this situation. I thought his case was weak and too hypothetical. Neverthless, I have two points:
(1) Plenty of people do, in fact, die as a direct result of New York City’s and other cities’ sanctuary policies.
(2) Illegal aliens are far more likely to be living in the manner described in this segment than are American citizens. We are basically importing the Third World, with all that means, into our backyards with our current immigration system. Fires can certainly spread, and having more illegal aliens around puts all of us at greater risk of becoming a victim of the sort of tragedy that killed these eleven people.
tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 1:12 AM
I think KP is right, and O’Reilly is on his usual illogical bent.
Dusty on March 13, 2007 at 1:13 AM
Let me put this another way………
1.) We have immigration laws into this country to protect United States Citizens against those that would do us harm, to “Naturalize” our new citizens to ensure that the “United States” still exists, and that your children in public schools don’t get a third world disease that we wiped out a decade ago……..
2.) We have “Housing and Code Enforcement Laws”, also known as CC&R’s, which for the common good, tell us all, “keep up your house and yard, don’t turn it into a garbage dump, fire trap, or a place that will poison the local well water”…
and finally,.
3.) If your illegal, call your local “La Raza” office or ACLU, take as many wives as possible, let your children sleep with rats, sign them all up for public assistance, and the most important….. Vote Democrat!
Clear enough? Don’t think it is real? Answer this… “What percentage of the prison population, local, state, and federal, are illegal aliens?”
And if you ask them, if they could vote, who would they vote for?
PinkyBigglesworth on March 13, 2007 at 1:51 AM
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights applies only to legal citizens of the US of A.
Crying about illegal searches is BS.
Try to understand this, those children were likely all US citizens because they were born here.
Their parents, however, are not.
As to how a man can have two wives and an unknown number of children and “still live in NYC” — simple enough, you stack 22 people in one building with only two bathrooms.
Rudy G. would have found a way. Maybe use the Health Dept. for the initial inspections.
.
The Machine on March 13, 2007 at 1:54 AM
To add to what PinkyBigglesworth, The Machine, Michelle, and Bill O were saying. . . in any other neighborhood the cops would notice that kids are not in school and investigate, or the teacher would call someone when the children talk about where/how they live if they were in school, not to mention any number of red flags. But this idea of “Oh that’s how those people are” has got to stop.
- The Cat
MirCat on March 13, 2007 at 2:10 AM
Alex K – please tell me how we’re supposed to control the income level of immigrants if we don’t control the border and we let people who cross live here without naturalization?
I think we have to focus on legality BEFORE we could do what you want to do!
Merovign on March 13, 2007 at 3:09 AM
The Machine:
Uh, no, it doesn’t say that.
To everyone else:
This was a tragedy and like virtually all tragedies it cannot be traced to one single cause. Immigration may or may not have been a factor. It’s simply speculation on O’Reilly’s part.
The fire was started by a cheap electrical extension cord. Cheap cords cause many fires in this country every year. I don’t know why states or the federal government don’t mandate that all such cords sold have some kind of fuse or breaker to prevent the cord from overheating. Most of Europe has such requirements. We should have them too.
NPP on March 13, 2007 at 3:41 AM
I saw those people at the service bowing down. I know of only one religion that does that. And the landlord has 2 wives. Gee, what are they tiptoeing across here?
Kirstin don’t live in Bedford Stuy.
Coronagold on March 13, 2007 at 7:22 AM
Yup, that’s the one.
fusionaddict on March 13, 2007 at 7:43 AM
Well I feel sorry for KP on this one. I agree with Michelle (and even Bill) all the way but I fail to see why Bill had to turn it into what seems to be a hit job on poor KP. That’s basically what he did, he turned it into a hit on her by pretending she was saying something that she wasn’t saying and not letting her get another word it edgeways. Shame on Bill and to what purpose??
Sure scary to see all those Muslims. When I first saw the photo of the funeral I though “no this can’t be NY”, this is somewhere in islamic Africa. The invasion is not in Iraq, the invasion is in the US and it’s over, lol.
Aylios on March 13, 2007 at 8:24 AM
Well, at least Bill didn’t take KP to task for not referring to human fetuses as “parasites”, a term that Amanda “Godbags” Marcotte absolutely loves.
http://pandagon.net/2006/10/22/how-many-minutes-of-endless-tsk-tsking-can-you-stand/
fusionaddict on March 13, 2007 at 8:57 AM
In the old days, immigrants came from all over the world because they were escaping their homes- war, disease, starvation or stifling of initiative. They left that all behind because the American culture was attractive to them. They gave up everything and most never had a chance to return , even if they wanted to – it was ONE WAY to the USA. Many people didn’t go, they couldn’t make that break or were afraid of the risks. So America got the risk-takers and forward movers of every society.
Now, it’s very very easy for people to move in without making that critical break. If a guy had two wives and was stuffing a house with his kids, he has brought in the old customs – the ones that made his homeland deary and non-productive, and has no intention of adopting American culture. Illegal – in many ways, entering illegally, and practicing polygamy, and hiding it all, for he knows he’s breaking the law. How many of the liberals who snif that OReilly is being emotional understand that those wives and those children are the man’s property? He eats first, the others wait, no matter how small. He had a house full of children who were being taught habits that are in direct opposition to traditional American Culture. OReilly was right. If that man was from West Africa, a Muslim, practicing polygamy with piles of kids jammed into a cruddy place, it is not a stretch that a couple of those very kids may have been slaves, rather than kin. The Fulani, Hal Pulaar and the Hausa, all black, tribal groups, primarily Muslim, do own slaves. If American wants to survive as a beacon , a lamp, then it must maintain the standards that made the country great.
naliaka on March 13, 2007 at 10:49 AM
Why do they even put KP in the same segment with MM? They are not even in the same ballpark. MM is the sane voice of reason. KP is a liberal screecher. I never understood this.
The solution is simple: arrest and deport all criminal aliens, build the fence and wall, fine businesses that knowingly hire criminal aliens, and stop this insanity.
Rosie just said Dick Cheney’s daughter is immoral. Not that her behavior is immoral, but that SHE is immoral. I have to go throw a brick through my tv now.
PoliticallyIncorrectSandy on March 13, 2007 at 11:16 AM
Kirsten and Bill disagreed on the cause of these children’s deaths.
If no deaths had occurred this would be a non story and the children would not have been in harms way were it not for sanctuary city madness.
Everyone agrees that law and order must prevail and that alone would have most likely saved these children’s lives.
When I was kid America was such a united people that if any child got out of line (or needed help) you could expect the nearest adult to immediately do some correcting and that child’s parent would appreciate the help.
Thanks to liberalism that safety net of American unity is dead.
Speakup on March 13, 2007 at 11:50 AM
I think KP’s point is that a crappy building with US citizens or legal aliens in it could have killed them just the same as it did the illegals. Therefore the immigration status of the residents isn’t really relevant.
What is relevant is whether that status influenced the behavior of the authorities responsible for performing building inspections.
The Monster on March 13, 2007 at 11:51 AM
And that’s exactly the illegal immigration angle that both Michelle and Bill were referring to – and exactly why they are right on this issue.
Thos who want to make this an issue about “those poor, poor people” are demonstrating why the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
thirteen28 on March 13, 2007 at 12:51 PM
I agree with Dusty wayyyyy back in the comments. O’Reilly’s idea of havibng people investigated for suspicious behavior for the sake of “the children” is akin to saying, you cook with butter and trans fats and we need to get the children out of there and investigate you. The building didn’t violate building code. Waht goes on behind closed doors among consenting (and yeah, that might be questionable) adults is nobody’s business.
Ennuipundit on March 13, 2007 at 1:38 PM
…and help the Latin American countries improve their economies so their citizens won’t try to emigrate in the
first place.
aengus on March 13, 2007 at 2:52 PM
Pinky.. I think you might have read a little more into what I said… than what I actually said. I am against so called sanctuary states and/or cities. And of course it was tragic what happened to this family, very sad indeed.
Maxx on March 13, 2007 at 10:53 PM
Agreed!
PinkyBigglesworth on March 14, 2007 at 2:20 AM