O'Donnell was a guest on Martha Stewart's Halloween program and was ostensibly dressed as Queen Elizabeth I, who presided over a fledgling Royal Navy that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. Their ships were fashioned of wood then, probably because fire didn't always melt steel.

What's with going for Queen Elizabeth, though? Some hidden message about "View" co-star Elisabeth Hasselbeck? And given her volatile personality, the antagonism between Queens Mary and Elizabeth, and the ghost fable by the same name, wouldn't "Bloody Mary" have been a better choice?

Leave your captions, but don't be too mean or I'm shooting a Koosh ball at you.

Sure, Rosie O'Donnell's a 9-11 conspiracy nut. But she's also a big-time liberal and ardent Republican critic. That makes her our 9-11 conspiracy nut. So let's literally [see screencap] turn the page on her lunacy.

That seemed to be Mika Brzezinski's operative logic on today's "Morning Joe." During the opening 6 AM schmoozefest, talk turned to the confrontation between Rosie and an "O'Reilly Factor" staffer [identified by NewsBuster Ian Schwartz as likely being producer Jesse Watters] that recently occured at an O'Donnell book-signing. Rosie had apparently declined to return phone calls from the "Factor" inviting her on, so Bill dispatched a producer to offer the invitation in person. "Morning Joe" rolled a clip of the incident in which the "Factor" producer invited Rosie to recant her 9-11 conspiracy theory.

View video here.

One of O'Reilly's staffers confronted Rosie O'Donnell during a book signing last Friday night. The person appeared to be Jesse Watters, longtime "Factor" producer who is known to track down celebrities and news makers who refuse to appear on O'Reilly's show. Watters wanted to know why Rosie would not respond to numerous requests for her to come on the "Factor." Rosie told Watters that if O'Reilly wants her on his show, he should personally call her.

When asked about her controversial views of 9/11, Rosie denied saying the terror attack was an "inside job." Rosie decided it was time to throw out Mr. Watters when he wanted to know her thoughts on WTC Building 7. Watters was removed from the book store at that point. Click here to view the video.

Following in Bill Maher's footsteps, former President Bill Clinton told off some 9/11 truthers that were heckling him during a 50-minute speech he was giving at a fundraiser for his wife in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tuesday.

Sadly, he didn't say anything about Rosie O'Donnell.

However, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, what the former President did say -- as shouts came from the crowd about 9/11 being an inside job -- was rather delicious (video available here, emphasis added, h/t NB reader Don Deskins):

To commemorate the Media Research Center’s 20th anniversary this month, we’ve just published a special expanded edition of our ‘Notable Quotables’ newsletter with more than 100 of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes we’ve uncovered over the past 20 years. Earlier this week, I presented quotes showing the media’s hostility towards Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, and sycophantic coverage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Today’s installment: America the Awful. On Monday, I recounted how many journalists offered sympathetic coverage of totalitarian communist regimes. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, too many journalists opted to take a harsher approach with their own country. In a commencement address at the State University of New York at New Paltz back on May 21, 2006, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., exposed his extreme left-wing agenda as he railed against everything he saw as wrong with America:

Video (0:52): Windows (1.64 MB), plus MP3 audio (261 kB).

This has GOT to be some horrible mistake. Rosie O'Donnell (at right in file photo) in the Forbes Top Ten Pundits list?! (h/t Allahpundit at HotAir):

No. 6: Rosie O'Donnell

Politics

Appeal points (out of 100): 29

Awareness level: 92%

Total points: 26.7

Public describes her as: Rude, Aggressive, Kooky/Wacky

• Ken Shepherd's blog
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Update below

Heavens no
Say it ain't so
She's bloggin' yet again
Ms. Rosie O., aka Ro
On Dan Rather, her tragic friend:

yes
it has to shift
dan rather
saying there is a man behind the curtain
that he will not pretend
at one time being a journalist meant something
when we had a free press in this country

when we didnt try to dumb down
america
fast food
crap

it will kill u
in the end

Sometimes I wonder if, when she left "The View," Rosie O'Donnell ever looked in the mirror and borrowed from the 37th President of the United States. "You won't have Rosie to kick around anymore!" Of Course, Richard Nixon never had a blog, Rosie does, and when she's not showing videos of her kids or writing stream-of-consciousness poetry, she's sharing her favorite 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Joy of joys.

Here's the latest:

On Tuesday’s "Morning Joe," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mocked the very concept of CNN’s upcoming specials on Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremism. Anticipating the possible moral relativism that the Christiane Amanpour-hosted series may take, Scarborough sarcastically observed, "They’re going to study Muslim extremism, then Christian extremism, because we know Christians have, have slaughtered thousands of people across the globe in bombings..."

Comparing the CNN anchor to a liberal talk show host, an incredulous Scarborough added, "Is this Rosie O'Donnell or is this Christine Amanpour?" (In 2006, O’Donnell famously claimed that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam...") Returning to the subject later in the 7am hour, Scarborough derided the cable network again. He complained, "But to say, as CNN appears to be saying, that Muslim extremism and Jewish extremism and Christian extremism, sort of, is equal, that there is moral equivalence...between those three, that’s just ridiculous."

Barbara Walters announced that comedian, actress, and liberal activist Whoopi Goldberg will take Rosie O'Donnell's place as the moderator on "The View." Barbara Walters made the announcement.

"Today is the day we have been waiting for.  You are about to meet the new moderator of 'The View' and we are thrilled. She is brilliant. She is funny. She's an enormous talent. She's an Oscar winning actress, a Broadway superstar. And we have her. Please join us in welcoming Whoopi Goldberg."      

Although she will likely be less controversial than Rosie she does have a history of left wing remarks.

Most recently, as a guest co-host of her new show, Whoopi railed that "nobody as a right to burn [their own Dixie Chicks CD's]" and "burning them in public brings on 1933."

Yale law professor Ian Ayres raised a very interesting question Tuesday: Is ABC possibly committing sexual discrimination by only hiring women as hosts on the daily coffee klatch "The View?"

Great question, wouldn't you agree?

In an article posted at Balkanization blog (h/t Ann Althouse via Glenn Reynolds), Ayres began his analysis of this issue by first looking at the recent announcement that comedian Drew Carey would be the new host of the "The Price is Right."

His concern was raised when former "Price" host Bob Barker said the following last month:

Put down your coffee mugs before you continue, sports fans, for conservative columnist Ann Coulter wrote a review of Monday's Democrat presidential debate, and your computer is in grave jeopardy if fluids are nearby.

In a column entitled "Obama Hails a Unicorn," Coulter first skewered the junior senator from Illinois' claim that "he couldn't get a cab in New York because he's black" (emphasis added throughout):

Last year, a black writer in the [New York Times] pointed out how things had changed in New York in the 10 years since he had been out of the country. Not only did he have no trouble getting a cab, but he cited statistics from taxi sting operations that showed a 96 percent compliance rate among cabbies in picking up blacks.

However, her best shot was taken at the junior senator from New York:

She may no longer be spreading wild 9-11 conspiracy theories on ABC's The View, but Rosie O'Donnell's still using her blog to push wildly inaccurate theories, like this amazing one under the headline "scary plus":

Bush Outlaws All War Protest In United States

In one of his most chilling moves to date against his own citizens, the American War Leader has issued a sweeping order this week outlawing all forms of protest against the Iraq war.

Say what? On July 17, President Bush issued an Executive Order with the legalese title of "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization in Iraq." (A bit more rhetorical finesse might have been in order on the headline.) It's meant to try and stop "charitable" aid to Iraqi terrorists. But on Rosie's blog, the commenters are crazed, with lots of "WTF" and "Holy S---" ranting about the end of democracy as we know it. This one's priceless:

Well, sports fans, Rosie O’Donnell is at it again.

On her well-publicized cruise for gay and lesbian families, Ro decided it was time to unbury the hatchet, and stick it right in her former “View” co-host’s back – in front of a rather large audience, no less.

As reported Wednesday by Us magazine (h/t Hot Air):

The comedian, 45, laid into Elisabeth Hasselbeck -- her former friend and cohost -- in front of a 1,500-person audience on her cruise (from NYC to a private island in the Bahamas) for gay and lesbian families.

Readers are hereby warned that Ro's comments included vulgarity (emphasis added throughout):

Why would Rosie O'Donnell, a woman known for her wild-eyed rants against firearms, the war on terror, and the military, dress her child in a camo shirt, camo bandana and a bandolier of bullets and then post that picture on her own website? I certainly can't answer that stunner and neither can the denizens of her nutroots website who seem shocked and utterly unable to assist me in finding out what is going on with this business.

Yet, there it is, for all to see on her Web site; exactly the photo described above.

TV Newser has a speculative piece that Rosie O'Donnell may be headed to NBC/MSNBC as part of a daytime/night-time deal that will allow the former co-host of The View to play nice during the day with a celebrity-focused show and then spew her liberal rants, ala Keith Olbermann, in the evenings. The following is the article inspired by FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman.

Rosie: Proud As A Peacock?

FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman "guesses" Rosie O'Donnell is going to NBC/MSNBC.

In the June 25 edition of People magazine, Ozzy Osbourne's wife Sharon takes part in a "Q&A" surrounding her new job as a judge on NBC's "America's Got Talent." People poured some gasoline with a Rosie question, and Mrs. Osbourne lit a match:

PEOPLE: As an ex-talk show host, thoughts on the The View's Rosie O'Donnell-Elisabeth Hasselbeck feud?

OSBOURNE: Elisabeth needs a lobotomy! How can she defend the Bush administration? Being pregant doesn't [screw] with your head that much.

That's funny. How can a woman married to crazy Ozzy Osbourne attack defenders of George Bush as defending the indefensible? AP's Erin Carlson suggested Sharon Osbourne could be Rosie's replacement on The View. But the oddest part of that story is Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker, who thinks Joy "Republicans Cause Cerebral Hemorrhages, Don't They?" Behar is a voice of reason:

Barbara Walters, who plays an objective journalist on TV, loves to offer her ringing endorsements for left wing films. About a year ago, in June of 2006, Walters, upon interviewing Al Gore, asserted "it’s very important to see [‘An Inconvenient Truth’]." On the June 19, 2007 edition of "The View" Walters spoke with Michael Moore and again endorsed his new socialist advocating film "Sicko."

"A lot of the film is about, is about the insurance companies and the condemnation of them. I just have to say, I don't usually give opinions, but whatever you're Republican or Democrat or whatever you are, this is an amazing film. I thought it was -- I think everybody should see it. When it premiered last night, you got a standing ovation. That's unusual for you. Everybody loved you."

UPDATE 6-20; Joe cites NewsBusters: At 6:07 am EDT on June 20, Joe Scarborough cited NewsBusters as the blog that had criticized Mika Brzezinski as a snob for her comments about Rosie. He added that yesterday the blog had called Mika on her "half-a--ed" apology.

View video here of Joe discussing NB's criticism of Mika.

Yesterday, in Mika's Snobby Sneer, we reported on the elitist swipe that Mika Brzezinski took at Rosie O'Donnell. The MSNBC newsreader had poo-poohed the idea of the erstwhile "View" co-host taking over "The Price is Right" from the retiring Bob Barker. Said Brzezinski: "The problem is she's going to look like the people who run down the aisle all excited."

We had also observed that a running theme of the banter between Mika and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough is the latter's teasing of the former over her privileged upbringing as the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's former National Security Advisor.

So how did Joe open this morning's show at 6 am EDT?

MSNBC HOST JOE SCARBOROUGH: You know, you hang out with the elites, day in and . . . Your mother raised you right yet you go around making fun. I looked at the blogs yesterday, I read the blogs all the time.

MSNBC'S MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I can't.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, you should. They kind of went after you yesterday.

A staple of "Morning Joe" banter is the eponymous Joe Scarborough's teasing of newsreader-cum-co-host Mika Brzezinski over her fancy upbringing as the daughter of former Carter NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski. Defending herself against the elitist charge on the MSNBC show this morning, Mika twice referred to herself as having grown up among "Polish hillbillies."

But when it came to commenting on popular culture, Brzezinski condescended to both Rosie O'Donnell and average Americans in a way worthy of the high-browest [neologism] of snobs.

At 6:57 am EDT, Scarborough made reference to retiring game show host Bob Barker's recommendation for his replacement.

MSNBC HOST JOE SCARBOROUGH: Bob Barker [said] Rosie O'Donnell would be a great replacement for him on "The Price is Right."

MSNBC'S MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The problem is she's going to look like the people who run down the aisle all excited.

Imagine if your stomach will let you the following: As the final contestants are about to give their bids during the Showcase Showdown, the host says, “So, did you know that President Bush was involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on 9/11?”

That’ll surely help ratings, won’t it?

Well, if game-show host Bob Barker gets his way, that’s what fans of “The Price is Right” could be seeing on a television near you weekday afternoons.

As reported by the Associated Press Saturday (emphasis added throughout):

"View" co-host Joy Behar appeared on "The Tonight Show" to discuss the show, and predictably host Jay Leno brought up the fight between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. However, when Leno asked about a potential replacement, Behar responded likewise.

"We had a lot of fun. She raised the game. She was very controversial. We were thinking -- I think they're thinking maybe this time we’ll put someone a little less controversial in there, like Jack Kevorkian."

Leno also asked Behar how "wacky" it is at "The View" and Behar noted her past mental hospital employment prepared her for the show.

 

It seems that Rosie did more on “The View” than lame Donald Trump imitations, belittle Elisabeth Hasselbeck (as well as Republicans in general) and advance ridiculous conspiracy theories that defy logic, not to mention physics. Rosie also controlled the issues discussed on the “The View,” and while she was on the show, certain issues were off limits...like heterosexual sex.

According to the TV Guide, during a June 13 appearance on the popular LA-based radio show “On-Air with Ryan Seacrest,” Barbara Walters revealed the control that Rosie wielded over the show's daily discussions. From the TV Guide (bold mine throughout):

An interesting discussion ensued on Tuesday’s “Scarborough Country” surrounding ABC’s “The View” and some of the anti-Catholic positions taken by the various co-hosts.

MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams, sitting in for Joe Scarborough, had Catholic League president Bill Donohue on to discuss his ad placed in Tuesday’s New York Times complaining about the behavior of folks like Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar while pointing a finger at Barbara Walters for allowing such antics on her program.

After an introduction, Donohue stated (video available here):