Huffington Post

It’s no secret that the nation is preparing for a GOP tidal wave with significant conservative victories in the Senate and House next Tuesday. The election has essentially focused on domestic economic policy. Conservative candidates have been gaining ground with a popular job growth/lower taxes/revive the economy mantra.

But desperate liberal Democrats have suddenly shifted the focus from the economy to divisive social issues like abortion and gay rights, and the mainstream media have been more than willing to give them a platform. Media personalities like Matt Lauer, Rachel Maddow and Eleanor Clift are loudly voicing concerns over the future of gay marriage and the legal status of abortion.

(Video below the fold)

So what was the reaction at the Huffington Post to the admission  by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, who is now running for a U.S. Senate seat from that state, that he would now oppose ObamaCare despite his earlier support for that same legislation? Brutal scorn as can be seen in the very title of Huffington Post political writer Sam Stein's article, "Joe Manchin Does 180: I Would Have Voted Against Health Care Reform." Stein, as well as the comments from the Huffington Post readers, are now slamming Manchin for blatant political opportunism on this topic. It's not a pretty sight. First Sam Stein weighs in:

Alec Baldwin thinks former Alaska governor Sarah Palin "looks oddly listless and tired on the circuit these days."

In the same Huffington Post piece, the actor actually praised Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as "driven, methodical and philosophically galvanized":

In typical lefty fashion, the Huffington Post is hiding behind a “qualified” author to make a feminist, pro-abortion argument. Reverend Dawn Duval, a minister of social justice (whatever that means) and mother of two, wrote a passionate piece to slam Colorado Amendment 62 and its supporters, while making the misaligned point that in defining a fertilized egg as a person, it removes a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. 

Amendment 62 would apply “the term 'person' … to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” How dare they!

Oooooh!

You're so angry and stupid that...you're GONNA EXPLODE!!!

That sums up the incredibly embarrassing childish critique of Rush Limbaugh by Norman Lear. Not one issue was mentioned. Ironically Lear slammed Limbaugh for being like an uncontrollable kid yet it was Lear himself who lowered himself to using slams that most folks haven't heard since sitting in a grade school cafeteria and hearing the children ragging on each other.  Even for the Huffington Post, Lear's childishness is over the top. The only reason I can think of about why the editor gave his piece a pass is that Lear is a celebrity. And in case you think your humble correspondent has exaggerated about the content-free childishness of Lear's slams against Limbaugh, here is his entire brief schoolboyish mudsling:

Folks, I'm worried about Rush Limbaugh. Has anyone ever exploded, you know, burst apart, like if we humans had seams and they just burst open and guts and shit shot out in every direction?

Has that ever happened to anyone any of you have ever known even in the wildest of election seasons? 'Cause listening to Limbaugh in my car today, carrying on about Obama with less than 2 weeks to the midterms (and I'm someone who's heard him a lot and knows what a screamer he is) how he can carry on like the kid you knew up the block who could stand there and holler dumbness until his face got red as a radish --oh, My God, is that where "redneck" comes from?! -- and today, riding with my car windows down, I thought "This guy is gonna split a gut so bad I better put my car windows up even if I'm in LA and he's broadcasting from Florida.

 

In a surprisingly balanced piece, Huffington Post columnist John Lundberg demonstrated sensitivity to Christians outraged by the sacrilege committed in a controversial poem written to promote stem cell awareness. Tyson Anderson wrote winning verse for the October 13 Stem Cell Awareness Day contest sponsored by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

“This is my body, which is given for you.” These words, found in the New Testament, spoken by Jesus during the first communion among his disciples, were used in Anderson’s poem as the voice of a fetus willingly giving up his or her life for the use of its stem cells. According to the Huffington Post article, CIRM removed the poem from its website.

Astroturfing when committed by conservatives -- as contemptible as it gets, according to liberals.

Astroturfing when committed by liberals -- problem, what problem?

In other words, do as we say, not as we do too.

At times, the Internet can be an information wonderland. At others, it is more like a landfill where people go to dump their poorly crafted opinions labeled as fact. Take this quote for example:

"It's a fact that gay teenagers are about thirty percent more likely than straight teenagers to take their own lives. It's a fact that the vast majority of Christians believe that being gay is a profound moral failing, a foul aberration, a repelling, unnatural offense against God that fully warrants as punishment an eternity spent in hell. Asserting that those two facts have no relationship cannot possibly be anything but intellectually dishonest."

This quote comes from the personal blog of John Shore, contributor to the Huffington Post, which linked to the entry in question. He writes primarily on Christianity and operates under the mantra "Trying God's patience since 1958."

His statements are pretty compelling to the uncritical reader. Unfortunately for Shore, he is the one being "intellectually dishonest." His argument is built upon false premises. Just because two aspects have a common bond does not necessarily translate into a causal relation.

So more government isn’t the answer to all of our problems? For a brief moment, that seemed to be the message Huffington Post editor-in-chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington was conveying. 

On CNBC’s Oct. 5 broadcast of “Squawk Box,” Huffington, author of “Third World America” explained what she thought the role of government should be in an American economic system. Now whether she was playing to the CNBC pro-capitalist audience or not remains to be seen, but she did depart with the so-called progressive/liberal view of government’s role in the economy, and criticized the Obama administration.

“[S]o when it comes to the Obama administration’s policies, the problem has been rewarding people for taking excessive risks, which is not at the heart of capitalism,” Huffington said. “You and I have talked about that before. At the heart of capitalism is the assumption that if you take excessive risks and you fail, you’re on your own. The taxpayer is not on the hook. And we still have left the systemic risk in the system despite the financial reform bill that was passed. ‘Too big to fail’ has not ended and that really is the potential problem in the future.”

What – was Janeane Garofalo busy this week? If not, she has some real competition in the "lefty comic making outrageous statements" category.

On HBO’s Oct. 1 “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during the “Overtime” segment available on HBO.com, left-wing comedian David Cross of “Arrested Development” fame appeared to offer his view on issues of the day. This segment of the program is produced generally to answer viewer emailed questions. One of those questions was if people in the media “should be held more legally accountable for presenting false or misleading information.”

The host, Bill Maher likened that scenario to the system in place in the United Kingdom. However in the United States, Americans are protected by the First Amendment and he explained the legal implications of speech in the U.K. compared to the U.S. But in Cross’ estimation, that protected right is somehow wrong. He named two Fox News Channel hosts, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and declared he would like to see them taken off of the airwaves although he wasn’t clear about what “false or misleading information” they may have presented that would warrant this action.

“I think so, absolutely, and I say that as somebody who would like to see Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity off the air, you know,” Cross declared with an approving response from the audience. “So, I think to -- it’s just part of the job. It should be part of the job, you know, if you knowingly do that, then absolutely you should lose your job. We don’t get to, you know, lie and make up things in our jobs, you know. And nobody really does.”

If Arianna Huffington, an admitted “progressive,” announces she’s offering transportation to individuals that desire to participate in Comedy Central hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “million moderate march,” can it really be described as “moderate?”

On the Sept. 28 broadcast of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Huffington, editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post and author of “Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream,” promoted the rally. She told host Jon Stewart’s audience she was offering busing from her SoHo offices in Manhattan to those wanting to attend the so-called “Rally to Restore Sanity” and “March to Keep Fear Alive” in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 30.

“We are getting a Huff Post bus. If there is anybody unsure how to get there, talk to me,” Huffington said. “[J]ust come to the Huffington Post, 560 Broadway in SoHo. The bus will be there. We’ll take you with us.”

Liberals are never so alive as when they’re speaking out against anachronistic straw men. That’s why, in their estimation, the Tea Parties are racist lynch mobs and conservatives who wonder about President Obama’s ties to anti-American radicals are sinister McCarthyites.

So it’s not surprising that The Huffington Post is making a big deal of “Banned Books Week.” The house organ for the self-important Hollywood left – you know, all those “artists” constantly threatened by censorship – featured a string of articles on various aspects of the banned book topic. The week, according to contributor Jonathon Kim, “celebrates the wonderful freedom of being able to read whatever one likes, and reminding us that it's a freedom that must be fought for constantly.” Kim’s article had to do with a new movie about the 1950s obscenity trial of beat poet Allen Ginsburg’s work, “Howl.” (To their sorrow, an awful lot of English majors know first-hand that Ginsburg won.) Elsewhere, HuffPo linked to a New York Times article that suggested “Ten Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week.” These are for readers to do “with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having ‘the freedom to read.’”Readers can adopt a “challenged” book (one that parents or civic groups have demanded be removed from school or public libraries). They can “create a map of challenges to demonstrate that book bans and challenges are not isolated phenomena, even in the United States.” (In other words, even parents who don’t live in jerkwater conservative areas care what their kids read.)

When the Republican Party launched a new website in October of last year, they had some serious problems with the new site. The media ate it up.

Within a few days, media outlets ranging from Politico to "The Daily Show" to the Huffington Post to the Christian Science Monitor - and, of course, a host of liberal blogs - had weighed in on the website's problems. Their commentaries mostly took the form of mockery.

Last week, the Democratic Party launched a new site of its own. It too had some major bugs in the hours after it went live. The media's response: crickets.

The following clip aired on the Daily Show on October 15, two days after the GOP's site launched:

You have to wonder what Diane Sawyer and her team at ABC’s “World News” are thinking. Is the Huffington Post the best they could do when it comes to reaching out to Americans for their ideas on the economy?

In a Sept. 23 post on the Huffington Post, “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer explains to readers that she and her team in search of “innovative ideas that are helping turn the economy around.”

“And so next week a team at World News is heading out to search for innovative ideas that are helping turn the economy around,” Sawyer wrote. “Real change is often born out of a simple act. One ripple can lead to a powerful transformation. So we are starting with our hometowns, looking for resilience in the places we know best. David Muir to Syracuse; Sharyn Alfonsi to Georgetown, South Carolina; Ron Claiborne to Oakland; and Bill Weir to Milwaukee. Taking you to our homes and out with the people we see making a difference.”

It appears that the Huffington Post isn’t just upsetting people for its often uncouth and liberal take on the day’s news. Now people are getting irritated with its willingness to reprint other outlet’s content while offering minimal credit.

And so goes the view of former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., author of “The Rules of the Game.” During his remarks at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at London’s City University on Sept. 22, Downie gave his view of “the new news” and offered a harsh critique of the Huffington Post. He explained operations like HuffPo operate on the cheap.

“This follows, in a way, the model of national Internet news aggregators like Huffington Post,” Downie said. “They confine their costs to minimal staffing necessary to operate the websites and edit content.”

The Huffington Post would like to present itself as an oasis of religious tolerance. When they started their Religion section, Arianna Huffington decried that "all too often, when talking about it, we end up talking at each other instead of with each other." Weeks ago, they published Nida Khan lamenting conservative Islamophobia, as "a vocal minority of extremists to capitalize and advance on their bigotry and xenophobia." The writer cited Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, Rick Lazio and Peter King. That was one of many Huff-Po pieces feeling the pain of American Muslims, victims of vicious midterm politics.

But that same Huffington Post doesn't mind promoting "Rome-o-phobia," vile anti-Catholic screeds from bigoted leftists that just happened to enjoy ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul on national TV. Arianna Huffington published Sinead O'Connor's "An Open Letter to the Pope," carrying flagrantly false statements, such as "not one member of The Vatican has publicly displayed an iota of humility over this issue. Instead each person who has spoken has done so most arrogantly and dismissively."

Here's the latest line from O'Connor in the U.K. Guardian, where the headline says "The Vatican is a nest of devils." Or, to be more precise:

One of the Left's most esteemed economists, the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research's Dean Baker, claimed Monday the "Second Great Depression," the term given to what many believed the country was heading for if drastic government action wasn't taken in the fall of 2008, was all a fiction created by Wall Street to get bailed out.

In Baker's view published at the unashamedly liberal Huffington Post, the Federal Reserve could have solved all the problems that ailed us at the time, and had some of America's largest banks been allowed to fail, their financial loss would have been "our" gain as their money was magically redistributed to Main Street.

Potentially most hysterical is that Baker never once mentioned how this all occurred weeks before Election Day, and never once mentioned Barack Obama who not only hyped the collapse to seal his ascendancy to the White House, but also continually reminds Americans to this day that his efforts averted the "Second Great Depression":

He currently works for one of the most liberal magazines in America while contributing to without a doubt the most liberal news network on television.

As such, it only seems fitting that as many of Newsweek's employees flee the transitioning ship, Howard Fineman would go to the unashamedly far-left leaning Huffington Post.  

Makes you wonder if he'll still feign any air of objectivity in his new position reported by the New York Times Sunday: 

Sometimes, The Huffington Post just publishes stuff they should know can be objectively disproven. On Thursday, leftist author John Robbins wrote about people falsely accused of "eco-terrorism." But then he had to wrap up by suggesting something verifiably false:  

But apparently there are federal officials who for whatever reason consider the threat posed by "eco-terrorists" to be priority number one. This, even though no act of environmental protest, even those where property has been intentionally damaged, has ever resulted in a single human death.

Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was an eco-terrorist responsible for 23 injuries and three deaths through letter-bombs. Were they not "acts of environmental protest"? That's certainly how Kaczynski intended them.

What a funny but telling title, the sort of question asked only in war zones or when spotting aliens.

Had I received that query in person I would have responded in kind, “Who goes there, friend or foe?”

But in this case I was pretty sure I already knew, given the news outlet from whence the question came. And sure enough, I wasn’t long into reading the HuffPo piece when learning the answer was clearly foe, with malicious intent.

The writer was liberal feminist Peggy Drexler, assistant prof of psychology at Cornell Medical School, who wondered if the Tea Party women will come the liberal feminist way on social issues:

Since the financial industry collapse two years ago, dishonest media outlets and their employees have continually blamed George W. Bush for the implosion that occurred in the fall of 2008 as well as the resulting recession.

NewsBusters has regularly pushed back on this historically inaccurate premise specifically pointing to two crucial pieces of legislation signed into law by former President Bill Clinton.

On Wednesday, a contributor to the Huffington Post - who is also the editor of the website TruthDig - published an article confirming what NewsBusters has been claiming, doing so in a fashion that must have shocked the economically ignorant proprietor of this perilously liberal online "news" outlet:

As NewsBusters has previously reported, liberal Internet publisher Arianna Huffington is breathtakingly ignorant when it comes to basic economic theory.

On Sunday, she proved it again by making an absolute fool of herself on ABC's "This Week."

With the "Roundtable" segment beginning on the subject of the economy, Huffington noted how the failure of the banking bailout to stimulate growth was "proof that the government does not work."

In a stunning display of both idiocy and hypocrisy, she moments later demanded more financial regulations, including a reinstatement of the Depression Era Glass-Steagall Act, to - wait for it! - stimulate the economy.

Adding insult to injury, George Will was available to really make clear what an absolute imbecile Huffington is (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):  

Snatching the proverbial low-hanging fruit off the branch, Arianna Huffington compared the vast majority of Americans who oppose the construction of a mosque close to Ground Zero to the thirty members of a Florida church who plan to burn copies of the Koran on 9/11. Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America" today, the liberal publisher criticized the president for not echoing her logical fallacy.

"I think the point [President Barack Obama] could have made is to connect [Koran burning] with the opposition of the mosque," asserted Huffington, publisher of The Huffington Post. "You can't really completely separate these things."

Huffington then attempted to pass off circular logic as a "teachable moment:"

ABC’s Diane Sawyer gave Arianna Huffington a rare gift on Tuesday night: An entire World News segment devoted to promoting the left-winger’s new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, and her Huffington Post site. Though a matching ABCNews.com posting described Huffington as a “liberal commentator,” no iteration of liberal passed Sawyer’s lips.

As if Huffington’s book does any such thing, Sawyer wondered: “What if we pulled together in one place all the innovative ideas for creating jobs?” The generous on-screen heading beneath Huffington’s picture: “Change Agent.” After highlighting Huffington’s wish to absolve troubled mortgage-holders of much of their responsibility, Sawyer trumpeted:

Arianna Huffington's new book is called Third World America, and on her Web site, she's been gathering innovative solutions to keep that Third World from happening.

The articles posted on the Huffington Post page with “innovative solutions,” a page the ABC segment displayed, sound more like the usual liberal carping: “Work Until You're Dead? That May Be the Only Option for Many Americans,” “Thousands Crowd Atlanta Area Housing Authority for Section 8 WAITING LIST, Fights Break Out,” “The 10 Highest-Paid CEOs Who Laid Off the Most Workers: Institute for Policy Studies” and “Income Inequality: ‘The Most Profound Change In American Society In Your Lifetime.’”

In a post at National Review Online's Battle '10 blog last night, Mytheos Holt commented on a report seen at the Huffington Post:

HuffPo Panics about GOP Sweep of Ohio

Looks like the Huffington Post is buying into the “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation” meme this election cycle, based on a story out today.

The HuffPo item is by Liz Sidoti. But Sidoti is a national politics writer for the Associated Press, and what Holt really read was what AP would like us to believe is a supposedly "objective" analysis of the electoral situation in Ohio right off the wire. Word for word, the item at HuffPo is the same dispatch as found at the AP's main site. The only clue as to its origin, which Holt missed (and it's easy to see how), is the teeny-tiny AP logo where Sidoti's byline appears.

In other words, Sidoti's stridency and Democrat-sympathetic viewpoint are so obvious that she passes the HuffPo zealotry test.

Here are some examples of how Sidoti "successfully" came off as a  budding HuffPo pundit:

Talk about an in-kind contribution.

In a short item about a Democratic Governors Association election complaint about Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, the Associated Press's Julie Carr Smyth showed that she is willfully ignoring Buckeye State reality, or has been living a hermit's existence for the past few months.

In describing Kasich's standing against Democratic incumbent governor Ted Strickland, Smyth claimed that Kasich "is keeping pace with Strickland in polls and fundraising" (a picture of the relevant paragraph is here).

As you can see, that's sort of like a baseball writer claiming that "The Cincinnati Reds are keeping pace with the Chicago Cubs this year":

With any luck, we're going to be seeing a lot more commentary like Jim Garrison's Aug. 31 Huffington Post piece. What's positive about it isn't the apocalyptic hysteria of his descriptions of "climate shock," entertaining as they are. Rather, it's his lamentation that President Obama, Al Gore and the global warming industry missed the perfect opportunity to dismantle the U.S. economy and severely curtail human freedom.

Garrison asserted that "the admixture of Copenhagen, the U.S. Senate Climate Bill, the BP oil spill disaster, and the climate itself" had created a "perfect storm," derailing the warming alarmists' agenda.

Delaware might soon be referred to as "Little Alaska" not only because of its relatively small size in area but, more importantly, because the September 14 Republican senate primary in that state threatens to become a possible repeat of what recently happened in Alaska when little known Tea Party backed candidate, Joe Miller, apparently defeated the establishment incumbent, Senator Lisa Murkowski (absentee ballots still being counted). In the "Little Alaska" state of Delaware, Joe Miller comes in the form of little known Christine O'Donnell who is challenging "moderate" Congressman Mike Castle who has, until now, been considered as the sure victor in that state's primary. However, after what happened in Alaska, the O'Donnell challenge has to be taken more seriously.

Michelle Malkin is now focusing on that election in which anything, after Alaska, now seems possible:

Well, 70-year-old, nine-term House cap-and-taxer GOP Rep. Mike Castle has a challenger. She’s Christine O’Donnell — a young, energetic, fresh-faced conservative activist with a real shot at dislodging the entrenched liberal Republican. She’s been traveling the state of Delaware non-stop and reaching out to conservatives across the country for support. I met her on Saturday at a grass-roots gathering of Moms 4 America in Washington, D.C. Castle refuses to debate her and has resorted to sneaking in and out of local GOP meetings to avoid her. He has bagged out on four scheduled GOP primary debates, most recently one sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The establishment Republican fund-raising organizations are sticking by their big government brother.

CRITICAL UPDATES AT END OF ARTICLE: HuffPo pulls piece, Beck responds, author apologizes. 

A Huffington Post contributor and former editor of the failed liberal radio network Air America is offering $100,000 for a nonexistent sex tape featuring Glenn Beck.

"Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers are happy to throw money at the rising tide of right wing lunacy," wrote Beau Friedlander at HuffPo Monday.

"Breitbart offered $100,000 for JournoList, the email listserve that brought down WaPo blogger Dave Weigel this June," he continued.

"Why did they do it?" he asked.

His answer was as offensive as his despicable offer (h/t @MelissaTweets aka Melissa Clouthier):