Nicely done, O’Reilly! And to the boss too, for smoking this story out and staying with it to the finish.

One thing about this annoys me, though. O’Reilly applauds JetBlue’s decision to step back from the Kos “Screw them” precipice as he should, but then says he’ll highlight right-wing hate later on in this show. He did, and it turned out to be Rev. Fred Phelps. Who, I’ll point out one more time, is a Democrat who supported Gore in 1988 and ran for office as a Democrat multiple times. The guy was pro-Saddam long before it became fashionable among the leftwingers like Jim McDermott and the mixed bowl of nutroots who think Scott Ritter is worth listening to. Phelps is on the right? Right-leaning presidential candidates visit the YearlyPhelps convention? Phelps exercises message discipline among the right’s blogger shock troops?

No. Fred Phelps is fringe nutbar, politically all over the place, and with absolutely no influence on the blogs of the right whatsoever (or on the left either). There simply is no parallel between DailyKos, which gets 14 million hits a month, does have presidential candidates attending its convention (with her internet chairman posting the announcement directly on DailyKos) and which does exercise message discipline among leftwing bloggers, and space cadet lunatic Fred Phelps. None. Zip. Nada. The Factor really needs to set the record straight on this.

Oh, and there’s this: JetBlue’s logo is still on the YearlyKos page as a sponsor. Have they really backed out of the YK, or did they just make up a story to get O’Reilly off their backs?

Update: JetBlue may yet be JetKos.

In short, that dynamic duo (O’Reilly and Michelle) triumphantly claimed that O’Reilly — the most powerful man in the universe in his own mind — forced airline carrier JetBlue to pull its sponsorship of the YearlyKos conference.

But go to the YearlyKos convention website, and you’ll note the JetBlue logo is still there, on the home page. And I’ve confirmed that yes, indeed, JetBlue isn’t going anywhere. They don’t plan on caving to pressure from the neanderthals at Fox News.

Remember, this fight is about Fox News’ hurt feelings. They wanted Democrats to legitimize their propaganda operation and we squashed those efforts like a bug. This is their way of lashing back, yet no one seems to give a shit. The Dodd and Hillary campaigns used the opportunity to slam Bill O’Reilly and his usual band of misfits. And despite their premature crowing, JetBlue — the chief target of their ire — isn’t going anywhere.

Now, it’s true that JetBlue’s logo has been moved down into the “In-Kind Sponsors” category. But here’s an interesting bit. If you click on that logo on the YK page, you get taken to a JetBlue reservations page. Check out the URL.

It’s the “source=yearlykos” part that intrigues me. The site obviously is tracking who comes to the JetBlue reservations page via YearlyKos. The question is, does that tracking URL work like Amazon’s does and put a cut of the revenue that the link generates into an account for the YearlyKos? If it does, then JetBlue is more than just an in-kind sponsor, dontcha think?

Update: The logo is now gone from the YK site. Bu-bye. The Kossack chieftain is not amused. So unamused was he that he wrote an intemperate post on the subject and then apparently deleted said post. Quoted down in the comments, here’s part of what it said.

JetBlue is embarrassed to be associated with you. They are afraid to be seen with you. They don’t want to have anything to do with you. They would rather be seen with Fox News — whose TV programs they broadcast on their planes, than with you.

Of course, if JetBlue is embarrassed to be seen with me, I have no choice but to cut them off. My recommendation to the YearlyKos organization was to return the 10 tickets. I certainly will never fly them again.

It looks like it’s a bad day to be Kos.

Update: Psst. JetBlue. Over here–one more logo to kill.

Update: It’s official, from the chieftain himself–“JetBlue caved.”