Arianna Huffington

Both have loyal following, but their fans are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

CNBC's Rick Santelli rose to prominence earlier this year when he railed against President Barack Obama's policies on live TV from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He's a hit with conservatives staging tea parties to protest the bailout culture in Washington throughout the country. 

Arianna Huffington, who appeared as a guest host on CNBC's March 31 "Squawk Box" has following of left-wing readers and bloggers, as the editor of the very popular Huffington Post blog. The two faced off on "Squawk Box" about how the housing crisis should be handled. Huffington asked Santelli what his thoughts were on more government assistance for underwater homeowners to prevent another round of foreclosures.

"Well, the whole country is underwater I guess," Santelli replied. "It's just a matter of where you want to point the bailout gun. I would certainly like to see some of those mortgage contracts gone through to find out where the erroneous and inaccurate and illegal contracts and separate those from the rest because I think that a lot of the information on the original mortgage contracts is not accurate and I don't think it would be very fair to put those in the same camp as other foreclosures."

More and more people are starting to take notice of CNBC's dramatic shift to the left and the liberal groups promoting it.

On Fox News Channel's March 27 "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly and Bernard Goldberg, author of "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media" took a look at trends pointing to this shift that started after the feud between "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer and "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.

O'Reilly cited a column written by NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard on March 26 for The Washington Examiner that noted some of the things indicating CNBC's leftward swing.

It's has been in the news a lot lately, and the prospects of a global currency have Max Keiser, Huffington Post blogger and host of BBC World's "The Oracle," giving dire warnings of the consequences if China or other countries were to make a push for it.

Keiser appeared on Al-Jazeera English's March 27 "Inside Story" to discuss the possibilities of a global currency. Host Darren Jordon asked Keiser about the pitfalls of converting to a global currency and Keiser used it as an opportunity to launch into an anti-American diatribe.

"Well, the pitfalls are for the U.S.," Keiser said. "The U.S. has what [former French President Charles] de Gaulle called an extraordinary privilege - they can write checks that they never have to cash. They just print new dollars. This has been going on since Bretton Woods at the end of World War II."

Perhaps this post could be headlined "CNBC Continues to Atone for Its Outspoken Obama Criticism."

As if announcing Democratic National Committee chairman and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean as a "CNBC contributor" weren't enough, CNBC has invited the editor in chief of one of the its biggest critics to guest co-host one of CNBC's most popular shows.

Originally reported in a status update from Arianna Huffington's Facebook page on March 24, and later confirmed by Huffington herself in an e-mail with the Media Research Center, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post will co-host CNBC's "Squawk Box" on March 31.

Time magazine celebrated Arianna Huffington, the new queen of the left-wing blogosphere, as "The Web’s New Oracle." (The Webster's dictionary definition for oracle is ""a person (or a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak," or "a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions." Despite the Huffington Post’s reputation for rabid left-wing celebrity hate speech, left-wing ideology didn’t really appear until paragraph six of Belinda Luscombe’s sugary piece: "The success of her site has allowed Huffington, 58, to reinvent herself again, from Bush-bashing pundit to media mogul and digital pioneer."

Time implied the site isn’t anti-conservative, as much as anti-hypocrite: "’We like to expose hypocrisy,’ says Katharine Zaleski, the site's news editor. The Huffsters see what they do as curating the news: finding the good stuff from other sources and artfully exhibiting it for the enrichment of the more educated, liberal news consumer."It’s even "populist media done better than it's been done before." That’s odd, considering all the slash-and-burn rhetoric from millionaire Hollywood leftists.

On Tuesday, liberal talk radio host Stephanie Miller called Rush Limbaugh's now well-publicized statement about wanting Barack Obama to fail "treasonous," and wondered if he should be executed for saying such a thing.

Miller made this rather provocative comment on CNN's "Larry King Live," and oddly nobody batted an eye or seemed at all put off by it.

Not surprisingly, the topic of discussion between King and his guests -- which other than Miller included the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, conservative talk radio host Lars Larson, and GOP strategist Nancy Pfotenhauer -- was all the brouhaha surrounding Limbaugh (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 1:25, h/t NB reader David Wells):

It’s not even April 1 yet, and Keith Olbermann is already expressing fears that President Obama "is acting disturbingly like President Bush," because of a number of recent decisions by the Obama administration to continue policies similar to those of President Bush, which Olbermann recounted on Monday's Countdown while the words "Four More Years?" displayed at the bottom of the screen. The MSNBC host then introduced his guest for further discussion: "Here to help us tell the two men apart, Arianna Huffington, founder of Huffington Post."

Responding to Huffington’s hope that Obama’s decisions would only be temporary, Olbermann queried that if, "after one of these six-month reviews – renditioning, for instance – continues on or other detentions without legal rights? What happens then?" prompting Huffington to convey her willingness to oppose Obama: "Well, everybody who cares about what are the fundamental American values of fairness and justice and due process needs to vociferously and unambiguously oppose the Obama administration. I don`t think there is any alternative to that."

Recently, Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while moving boxes, and has been relegated to viewing the inauguration ceremonies from a wheelchair. 

In an article from the AP Monday, come details of what caused the injury:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Cheney was helping to move into his new home outside Washington in McLean, Va., when he injured his back.

Those who know the propensity of Arianna Huffington's readers to delve into the vile and disgusting know where this is heading.  One only has to review the commentary provided from the Huffington Post forums when Tony Snow was undergoing an operation to ‘remove a growth' from his lower abdomen, to see the depths of her followers.

Here is a small sampling involving the VP:

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow used the occasion of President George W. Bush's final address to suggest that he was to blame for the destruction of New Orleans as well as the felling of the World Trade Center.

In her Thursday program after the President's farewell to the nation, with a photograph of Bush in the right of the screen that included the disgusting caption "Goodbye, Good Riddance," Maddow continued with the attacks that have made MSNBC a journalistic disgrace for years.

At one point, she even scolded the President for not doing an exit interview with either her or Keith Olbermann (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

On Saturday, NewsBusters asked:

Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine seeing an article at the liberal website the Huffington Post that not only refuted the anthropogenic global warming myth, but also asked Nobel Laureate Al Gore to apologize for the climate hysteria he's caused?

Apparently, neither could the website's founder, as Arianna Huffington has now gone on the record as saying, "It was an error in judgment" publishing Harold Ambler's "Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted." "I would not have posted it." 

So reported the environmental blog Grist Wednesday:

Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine seeing an article at the liberal website the Huffington Post that not only refuted the anthropogenic global warming myth, but also asked Nobel Laureate Al Gore to apologize for the climate hysteria he's caused?

No...neither did I.

Unfortunately, Harold Ambler's "Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted" wasn't featured on HuffPo's home page when it was published late Saturday morning, nor was it included in the site's featured posts. 

Instead, it was buried in the e-zine's Green section well under eight other articles, some published three days earlier. These included climate alarmist Joseph Romm's January 1 post "The Top 10 Global Warming Stories of 2008." 

But, at least it was published:

The MSM has been too reverential towards George W. Bush.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  The only thing more absurd than that assertion was Arianna Huffington's willingness to accept it as a fact in answering a question. Here was the exchange between Huffington and Choire Sicha, writing for the LA Times, in today's "Sunday Conversation" feature [emphasis added]:

CHOIRE SICHA: It was only recently that this spell of reverence for Bush lifted. Why'd it take so long?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think it took so long because there is something about the conventional wisdom that is very addictive to members of the press. They don't want to diverge from it too far.

The conversation later provided another rib-tickler from the HuffPo hostess [emphasis added]:

The humor site The Onion, the offbeat weekly The Chicago Reader, and Time Out Chicago have discovered that some of their articles have appeared in total on Arianna Huffington's mega web outlet The Huffington Post. And they are none too happy about the wholesale lifting of their material, either.

Wired.com has the full story about the Huffington Post's unwelcome lifting saying that Huffington Post is "being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content." And this wholesale stealing of others' work seems strange when the latest news about Huff Post is that it was graced with a $25 million capital infusion by investors. With that kind of cash flow, you'd think they could hire a few out of work MSMers and give them a job, wouldn't you?

Plugging her new book The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, Arianna Huffington appeared on the PBS talk show Tavis Smiley on Tuesday night to receive smiles and affirmations from the host. Smiley told Huffington of his personal joy when the Huff-Post is quoted in tainted crown jewel of New York's Old Media:

SMILEY: Speaking of influencing the course of events, I read a number of papers, as do you, every single day before I get moving, and I always smile when I'm reading The New York Times, especially, and I see The New York Times quoting The Huffington Post and I say, "Arianna's having a good day, The New York Times is quoting her." What do you make of the fact that blogs now are the place where news is broken and that the traditional mainstream media outlets end up quoting the blogosphere?

During a discussion with co-host Maggie Rodriguez on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, liberal blogger Arianna Huffington, remarked that: "The problem with Sarah Palin was not anything to do with her being a woman. It had to do with her antediluvian views on creationism, her lack of curiosity, her lack of interest in the world around her."

The segment was about an open mic gaffe by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who said of Arizona Governor and Obama’s Homeland Security secretary nominee Janet Napolitano: "Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect." Rodriguez turned to Huffington and asked: "So what did you think about Governor Rendell's comment. Did you think it was sexist?" Huffington vigorously defended Napolitano: "I think that is really...an illusion about a woman's life. Like Janet Napolitano has a very rich life. I mean, she plays tennis twice a week and nobody in her staff can interfere with that sacred time. She actually climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. She goes river rafting. She loves movies and the opera."

However, Rodriguez observed: "You talked a lot about perceptions of women, especially women in politics, during the campaign, when Sarah Palin was in the news. And on your blog you openly criticized her." Huffington offered no defense of Palin: "Well, I thought that Sarah Palin, in a way, summed up what happens when you're not curious. When you're not interested in what is going on in the world. Because my problem with her was really her response to Katie Couric, when she was asked 'what do you read?' and she couldn't give an answer."

By definition, projection is revealing of what lurks in a person's heart and mind.  Arianna Huffington projected tonight, and what she revealed wasn't pretty.  So much so, that even her liberal host hastened to diassociate herself from the HuffPo editor.  Huffington, grossly misquoting Grover Norquist's famous line about doing away with government, added an infanticidal twist.

Huffington was a guest on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show. The two shed crocodile tears about the diminished state of the Republican party.  It was in suggesting that, of all things, she and Maddow should head up a Marshall Plan to save the GOP that Huffington engaged in that ugly bit of projection.

If you wanted a better understanding of why conservatives always beat liberals in a debate -- and why Barack Obama won't dare be interviewed by Fox News's Sean Hannity -- you to need to see Chuck Norris wipe the floor with Arianna Huffington.

In what almost turned into a free-for-all on Wednesday's "Larry King Live," Norris demonstrated how little Huffington understands about the Iraq war, while proving that liberal elites like her, because of their position, are allowed to say and write whatever they want, regardless of factual inaccuracy, and do so with total impunity.

With that as pretext, prepare yourself for this well-deserved and truly delicious smackdown of one of the nation's foremost, holier-than-thou, liberal media elites (video embedded right):

The New York Times published an article Monday about the anger some Vietnam veterans feel over the vessel they used to serve on, Swift Boat, now being synonymous with "the nastiest of campaign smears."

In dredging up this issue, Times' writer Kate Zernike not only misrepresented many of the facts surrounding the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but also completely ignored the mainstream media's role in turning the name of this patrol craft into a political pejorative.

In fact, something the Times conveniently chose not to share with its readers was how one of its own columnists, Frank Rich, wrote one of the earliest and most prominent pieces recharacterizing this nautical term as a smear tactic in his August 21, 2005, article "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan."

But before we get there, here's what the Times had to say Monday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Bingo):

Let's take a little time off of more serious matters for some juicy gossip. Over at gawker.com there is a somewhat humorous little tale of an MSNBC photo shoot that saw TV yaker Chris Matthews of "thrill going up my leg" fame storming out after being told he might be required to share the camera frame with blog maven and born again lefty Arianna Huffington. Apparently Chris is still mad at her for supposedly having hired a private investigator to stalk Tim Russert after an unflattering 1994 article written by Russert's wife, Maureen Orth.

Matthews is reported as having said, "I will not be in the same f_ _ _ing picture as Arianna Huffington!! Not a chance of that!"

Wolf Blitzer, on Friday’s "The Situation Room," conducted a softball interview of Arianna Huffington, helping her to promote her new book, "Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe," and asking her for her take on the three presidential candidates. He failed to identify her "Huffington Post" website, "one of the most popular websites," as he put it, as a liberal stomping ground, and basically sucked up to her during the entire segment. "I read ‘Huffington Post.’ I read your blog on Huffington Post all the time." Also, "You've really created an enormous success with HuffingtonPost.com, in part because everyone there seems to be blunt, honest. They don't hedge."

Blitzer’s gentle treatment of Huffington could be put into the context of what happened two days later. The Fishbowl DC blog exposed that on Sunday night, Blitzer himself appeared at Huffington’s "Right Is Wrong" book release party, which major Democratic contributor Beth Dozoretz held at her home [see picture above, via Fishbowl DC].

I'm no medical doctor or psychiatrist, but I believe there's a disturbing condition sweeping the left-wing blogosphere, closely related to the well-documented malady of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Call it Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome if you will, and I will.

What else do you call it when a lib blogger compares the radio talk show host to agitators of Rwandan genocide? From Jeffrey Feldman's May 7 blog over at Huffington Post (emphasis mine; h/t NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez):

The right-wing pundit's 'orders' to his Republican listeners have been clear: vote in the Democratic primaries as a coordinated tactic for sewing [sic] division in the opposition party. The goal of such 'chaos,' Limbaugh has stated explicitly, is to foment hatred between different parts of the Democratic Party leading, ultimately, to street riots during the Denver convention.

The ongoing incident raises a serious question:

Shortly after reporting on her Web site that GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Arianna Huffington continued to denigrate the presumptive Republican nominee before a Washington, D.C., audience.

"Actually, you know what I think - the more I think of it, John McCain should not be allowed to hold sharp scissors," Huffington said. "[Y]ou know he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. He wants bigger corporate tax cuts. You know, it's an endless process. You know it's basically, exactly what this country does not need. It's expanding and deepening the last eight years."

Earlier, Huffington had charged that the media are playing "Pontius Pilate" when dealing with the issue of global warming.

Scott Whitlock mentioned that ABC allowed Arianna Huffington to plug her book Thursday on GMA. But Charlie Gibson failed to perform any self-defense on Huffington’s frontal attack on what she calls in her book "The Pontius Pilate Press." (Is Obama the Christ in this scenario? Conservatives are the crucifiers?) Scott noted Gibson merely began: "You think they've taken on the media as well or taken over the media as well. But, basically, you feel that this country has been captured by the more extreme wing of the Republican Party?" So, ABC’s morning show hasn't interviewed Brent Bozell in this century about liberal bias, but they’re putting up no defense to the charge that ABC is an extreme-right-wing GOP subsidiary.

Huffington is making a very bold claim right now, that the media are addicted to fairness and balance, which is wrong, since liberals are right and the "discredited" Right is wrong, so conservatives should be left on the cutting-room floor. They need to engineer conservative "disappearance from the stage":

On Thursday's "Good Morning America," guest host Charles Gibson featured far-left author and creator of the Huffington Post Web site Arianna Huffington to promote her angry new book about "lunatic fringe" conservatives. Gibson, who was a moderator in the April ABC debate that liberals have decried as unfair to Barack Obama, brought up some of the issues mentioned in the debate, such as the senator's refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin.

Speaking of Republicans, he asserted, "They owned, have owned, the, quote, 'issue of patriotism' for some time now." Taking Gibson's cue, and, at the same time, launching an attack on media outlets that supposedly are unfair to liberals, Huffington used the same qualifier: "But the media have helped them own the, quote, issue of patriotism." And although Gibson did occasionally challenge the conservative-turned liberal, he also let her get away with contradictions. As already noted, Huffington chided the media for focusing on alleged distractions, such as flag pins and Reverend Jeremiah Wright's controversial statements. However, in the same segment she frothed over the "lunatic fringe" who "basically, don't believe in evolution but believe in torture."

Friday's 20/20 aired a piece on liberal columnist Arianna Huffington in which ABC host John Stossel got to challenge Huffington's views on issues like welfare, OSHA regulations, and the "lunatic fringe" of the Republican party. When Stossel took her to task for living in a $7 million home that is "burning more carbon than 100 people in the Third World" even while she is part of the "war on global warming," Huffington responded: "There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes, all those things are a contradiction. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle and lives by candlelight." (Transcript follows)

Thursday's "Good Morning America" featured a group of liberals talking about whether the press favored one liberal over another liberal and several leftist journalists were cited as proof. Specifically, co-host Diane Sawyer continued the program's self flagellation over whether the media is biased in favor of Barack Obama and against Hillary Clinton.

The ABC anchor discussed the issue with Arianna Huffington, editor of the extremely liberal Huffington Post web page. But, in a perfect example of actual bias, the GMA host never mentioned either Ms. Huffington or her site's leftist affiliation. Instead, Sawyer breathlessly worried about the Clinton campaign's charges that the media have been unfair. In an intro, she fretted, "And we turn the tables on ourselves. Have all of us in the media used boxing gloves on Clinton and kid gloves on Obama? Have we been unfair?" Co-host Robin Roberts also teased the segment as a brave example of self examination: "The media. Too tough on Clinton? Not tough enough on Obama? We'll take up that debate."

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington made some irresponsible misrepresentations on Tuesday's "Countdown" of a seemingly innocent statement by Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

At the end of the article, the following question was posed: Does anybody believe Olbermann and/or Huffington will apologize for their erroneous defamation of Giuliani?

Well, sports fans, we now have our answer, for in their own way, Keith and Arianna perfectly demonstrated how liberals apologize when they make a mistake insulting conservatives: continue insulting them.

For instance, on Friday's "Countdown," Olbermann actually did apologize for the error, but then immediately began his "Worst Person in the World" segment giving all three dishonors to Giuliani. I kid you not (portions of LexisNexis transcript follow, video available here):

In a Tuesday online posting on the New York Times website, Katharine Seelye enthused about "Campaign Coverage That Is Raw and Fresh" from two new journalism sites -- staffed almost exclusively by liberals.

"We're taking a look today at two new Web ventures that could help change how politics is covered. One, OffTheBus.net, is all of three months old, which these days makes it practically establishment. The other, Scoop08.com, is so new it hasn't even started yet. It's a national daily online newspaper by and for college and high school students and is preparing to go live on Sunday. That makes it the newest entry in the field and therefore the one with most of its ideals still intact."

But the two sites are staffed almost exclusively by liberal and Democratic activists -- what kind of change is that?

Here's the first clue of the political slant of the new ventures:

On Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show," host Hannah Storm exclaimed that Fred Thompson "has received a lot of criticism...for being underwhelming so far out on the campaign trail." This just hours before Thompson’s participation in his first GOP debate.

The segment began with a report by Nancy Cordes who observed that Thompson’s "...been trying to keep expectations low."Storm then invited on guests Arianna Huffington and Michael Smerconish for political analysis, both of whom bashed Thompson. Smerconish began the attack:

Well, unfortunately, I think the delivery probably matters over substance in this case because he is getting a reputation on the stump so far as being a bit of a dolt. Somebody needs to light a fire under his fanny.

Huffington brought her ususal class to the argument:

And then there are all these stumbles, you know, on the issues too. It wasn't just a matter of being underwhelming in terms of passion and energy...You know, he didn't know much about the Everglades in Florida...he didn't know much about Terri Schiavo. And he thought Hezbollah was in Afghanistan. You know, these are kind of major problems, especially after all these years with George W. Bush. People want a little more competence in the sense of the grasp of the issues.