Cloud Surfing

Bill O’Reilly has begun a campaign to get MSNBC to fire Keith Olbermann and reinstate Phil Donahue. redheadedwoman reported it on dailykos, including the text of the petition:

February 22, 2006
Chairman Robert Wright
National Broadcasting Company
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10112

Dear Chairman Wright:

We, the undersigned, are becoming increasingly concerned about the well-being of MSNBC and, in particular, note the continuing ratings failure of the program currently airing weeknights on that network at 8:00 PM EST.

It is now apparent to everyone that a grave injustice has been done to the previous host for that time slot, Phil Donahue, whose ratings, at the time of his show’s cancellation three years ago, were demonstrably stronger than those of the current host.

Therefore, in an effort to rescue MSNBC from the ratings basement and to restore the honor and dignity of Mr. Donahue, who was ignobly removed as host three years ago, we ask that you immediately bring Phil Donahue’s show back at 8:00 PM EST before any more damage is done.

This is a transparently self-serving campaign couched entirely in altruistic terms, putatively for the good of his competitor. In other words, the present-day Republican Party in a single sentence.

Olbermann’s response, courtesy of Crooks & Liars, is a delight.

I signed the petition as “Hugh R. Kidding-Wright,” joining a slew of others who signed in something other than dead earnest. A friend grabbed some sample signatures from the site before they changed the code to stop displaying the 100 most recent signatures:

She’s A Witch! .. Burn Her! -1
J Jonah Jamison .. Daily Bugle -1
Keith is great !. Shut Up Bill GA
Republicans_hate_science E. Darwin RI
Only I speak the Truth .. http://www.outfoxed.org/ -1
Rightwing_idiots_love_oil Q. Exxon SD
Keith_is_the_Best !. Shut_Up_Bill AR
joseph_goebbels B. Berlin AS
Bwahahahahaha_Billy_about_to_get_canned! H.
maggots_look_better_than_Bill OH
ima n. fauxnews/pravda TX
Are You Going to Talk About us .. On Your little TV “show”? -1
Fire Bill .. Please Fire Bill -1
Keith_is_Great !. Faloofah MT
Fire Bill .. Please Fire Bill -1
Bwahahaha !. Rotfalafel UT
AndreaMackris R. HasYourCash PW
YOU ARE A .. WORTHLESS HUMAN BEING -1
I_Love_Keith ‘. Fire_O;Lielly WI
blotchyskin o. falafelscrub VI
For the Love of God .. Please Fire Bill -1
OLielly_is_a_Fool i. Shut_Up OR
what_a_little_baby_you_are y. please_kill_yourself OH
ORielly_is_a_Crybaby i. Big_Pussy TN
Look At My R. Ratings Drop! NC

From morons.org

South Dakota recently passed a bill outlawing most abortions. Now of course such a bill is almost certainly unconstitutional according to court precedent from Roe vs Wade, and the bill is likely to be immediately challenged and prevented from taking effect.

But that’s the idea.

See the same people who whine and complain about black-robe-wearing judicial activist judges who legislate from the bench are the very people who want to get their law in front of a sufficient number of black-robe-wearing judicial activist judges who they hope will legislate from the bench in their favor. Right-wing anti-choice conservatives have picked this fight in South Dakota because they’re hoping that from that district they will find judges who are sympathetic to their cause. What they’re doing is basically judge shopping.

They’ve picked this fight because they’re hoping to get their law challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, where they hope that the now-conservative-slanted court will uphold the law rather than overturn it. Or better still, they’d love to see the Supreme Court uphold their law and reverse the Roe vs Wade decision.

zorca:

… the bottom line is that cheney’s behaviors during quailgate only serve to exemplify his much greater sins of greed, callousness, power-mongering, and secrecy. if these larger sins aren’t what is at the heart of media discussions about the event, if there is no attempt to shine a light on the larger discrepancies, then all this blather about whether or not he sat by a bed or valentine-fucked some woman other than his wife will serve as nothing but a cheap little side show.

It’s a great rant. Read it all.
And here’s Josh Marshall:

Even if Dick Cheney is blameless in this matter in any deep moral sense, let’s not forget that his immediate reaction was to send out his surrogates to publicly blame what happened on the victim.

Actually, that may afford him too much credit since it wasn’t actually his ‘immediate’ reaction. It was his considered reaction after the 24 hour cooling off period he gave himself between the shooting and when he chose to make it public.

By my count, he continued to have his public surrogates blame Whittington for fully three days. He only relented and took responsibility himself when the public and no doubt private political clamor became too much to sustain.