Irony: Woman Who Didn't Pay Bloggers Elected to Committee to Protect Journalists

Seems like some people have extremely short memories.

When The Huffington Post announced earlier this week that it was being acquired by AOL for $315 million in cash and stock, one group felt slighted: a set of unpaid bloggers for the site, identifying by the Twitter hashtag #huffpuff, which claims that The Huffington Post has “built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists.”

Some analyses in the mainstream media have echoed these sentiments. “To grasp The Huffington Post’s business model,” wrote the Los Angeles Times’s Tim Rutten, “picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.”

That was back in February.

Fast forward to today.

Arianna Huffington's controversial standing among journalism's old guard didn't hamper her appointment to the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists last week.

Despite some industry snickering that an aggregator of journalists' work was now in the position of protecting them, CPJ sources mostly told us that the pros of adding Huffington to the board outweighed the cons.

Who Knew Hate Cost So Much?

Honestly, I didn't even realized AOL was still in business. Now they've purchased the hate site Huffington Post in a quest to spread lies an misinformation to a wider audience.

The deal “will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said in a statement announcing the deal early Monday.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. AOL will pay $300 million of the purchase price in cash.

Arianna Huffington will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, MapQuest, Patch and more.

You'll now get voice-activated directions from MapQuest. It'll sound strangely like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Angry Flyer to Blabbermouth Huffington: 'Hey, Lady! Don't You Speak English?'

Short answer: No, she speaks Zsa Zsa.

Lefty newshound Arianna Huffington was a bit too liberal -- with her BlackBerry use -- aboard a commercial jet to La Guardia over the weekend, authorities say.

Huffington, 60 -- a noted author and columnist who runs the online Huffington Post -- was about to take off from Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, when she defied the United Airlines captain's command for passengers to turn off their electronic devices, prompting an angry man to get up from his seat in protest of her continued chatting and texting, sources told The Post.

The ensuing battle resulted in Huffington and the other flier, identified as Ellis Belodoff, 53, of Plainview, LI, being hauled off the plane for questioning once it landed. Both were released without being charged.

Law-enforcement sources said the face-off began at 10:10 p.m. as the flight was taking off and Belodoff "advised [Huffington] to turn BlackBerry off. [She] was slow in complying."

The man repeatedly ignored warnings to stay in his seat as he leaped up to complain, sources said.

"She wouldn't turn off her BlackBerry, even when we pushed back from the gate," one passenger told the Web site Valleywag.

"We took off, and it became apparent that the phone was still on, which very much upset her neighbor."

"Hey, lady! Don't you speak English?" the man allegedly heckled Huffington.

Huffington later admitted to cops, "I may have turned [my BlackBerry] on too early," sources said.

How can she be turning on her phone early when they were backing away from the gate?

Considering this was Saturday evening and the kook left was in the midst of their Sarah Palin-bashing orgasmic frenzy, she probably couldn't resist keeping up on the latest "developents" as they were.

If she's unable to comply with the desires of the captain, she needs to find another mode of transportation. Or, using the left's new logic, she's obviously a danger to other passengers and should be put on a no-fly list.

'We Have to Stop Demonizing Anyone We Disagree With'

So says Arianna Huffington, seen here at an event Thursday with a disheveled Sean Penn, a guy who's never demonized anyone. He just wants them imprisoned if he disagrees with them. Anyway, the Huffster, who enjoys speaking out of all three sides of her mouth, uttered the fantastically laughable line while discussing her bus caravan to the "non-political" Smugapalooza in DC today.

Millionaire blogger Arianna Huffington is picking up the bus fare for more than 10,000 New Yorkers headed Saturday to Comedy Central's "Rally to Restore Sanity."

"It was a moment of irrational exuberance," Huffington joked in an interview with the Daily News, admitting she never expected so many people to take her up on the offer.

Now, about 250 buses later, Huffington, founder of the popular Huffington Post - the left-leaning news and opinion website - is believed to be forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars to drive New Yorkers to Washington and back home again.

She declined to say how much she's ponying up for the trip.

Dubbed by Huffington "the Sanity Bus," Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, is the staging ground for today's 6 a.m. departure.

Huffington also handed out free "flipcams" to 200 riders who wrote one-line sentences saying what they would do "to restore sanity" in America.

"Taking a stand for sanity is not a partisan position. It's neither right nor left. It's reasonable. We have to stop demonizing anyone we disagree with," Huffington said.

Well, that's nice. Maybe she should start with her own cesspool, where a front page story has the inmates up in arms this morning as they smear Andrew Breitbart as a bigot.

Or you can scroll down a bit and watch the "millionaire blogger" yuk it up with Keith Olbermann, a man of journalistic virtue and integrity who never would demonize anyone, right?

Also appearing on her front page is Feisal Abdul Rauf, the guy who's bringing us the Ground Zero Mosque. His stock in trade is calling anyone who disagrees with him extremist bigot.

Each of us wants more for our children then we want for ourselves. It is up to all of us to work together to help break the cycle of fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, and violence that threatens the peace and stability of the entire world.

Leaving the world a better place than we found it by reversing this downward spiral hatred and ignorance for our children and our grandchildren is truly the "Game Changer" that we all need to strive for.

So yes, I agree with "millionaire blogger" Arianna Huffington. Let's stop demonizing anyone we disagree with. You first, sweetie. We're just sure whenever a Republican is demonized today she'll be the first to intervene and chastise the offending party.

Update: We eagerly await the denunciation from the "millionaire blogger" about the signs displayed today by the people at the rally she bused people to. Thanks for commenter Hucbald for reminding us of this gem from Spicoli.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

Stay Classy, Arianna

It's bad enough these hacks slander anyone who disagrees with them, but to trash a man on his deathbed?

The venomous personal attacks on Dennis Hopper that erupted on The Huffington Post after the cancer-stricken star filed for divorce from Victoria Duffy are said to be motivated by politics. "Arianna Huffington has indoctrinated Duffy, a naive former restaurant hostess, in her ultraliberal ideology," a family confidant tells Page Six. Huffington's site reported Hopper was mentally incompetent from cancer drugs and trying to impoverish his wife. A turning point in the marriage came when Hopper refused to join Duffy in hosting a fund-raiser for presidential candidate John Edwards. Hopper's first wife, Brooke Hayward, daughter of Hollywood's Leland Hayward and Margaret Sullavan, says, "The sinister, baseless and malicious allegations" about Hopper "are coming from the direction of rabid, left-wing would-be pundits who seem dismayed that his politics have become more conservative over the years."

Seems Hopper has very reasonable grounds for his actions.

Esteemed Foreign Policy Adviser Calls for Biden's Resignation

Who knows, maybe this ditz is angling for the job herself.

File this one under the you've got to be kidding me file.

I have no doubt that Joe Biden is a loyal guy -- the question is who deserves his loyalty most? His "team" isn't the White House, but the whole country. And if it becomes clear in the coming days that his loyalty to these two teams is in conflict, he should do the right thing. And quit.

Obama may be no drama, but Biden loves drama. And what could more dramatic than resigning the vice presidency on principle? And what principle could be more honorable than refusing to go along with a policy of unnecessarily risking American blood and treasure -- and America's national security? Now that would be a Whisky Tango Foxtrot moment for the McChrystal crowd -- one that would be a lot more significant than some lame, after-the-fact apology delivered in a too-late-to-matter book.

One silver lining in all this nonsense: We finally know how the doyenne of the far left believes in women's right.

The Sharia Personal Status Law, signed by Karzai, became operational in July. Among its provisions: custody rights are granted to fathers and grandfathers, women can work only with the permission of their husbands, and husbands can withhold food from wives who don't want to have sex with them. On the plus side, if a man rapes a mentally ill woman or child, he must pay a fine.

Just imagine if Rush Limbaugh said that.

Craven Media Whore Puts Best Spin on Van Jones Resignation

Leave it to this dunce to try and put a good spin on Communist Truther Van Jones' exit from the White House.

Thank you, Glenn Beck. By helping force the resignation of Van Jones, you have done a great service to your country. But in the exact opposite way than what you intended.

Your vile and vicious smear campaign has helped reverse one of the worst examples of miscasting since John Wayne took on the role of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

Don't get me wrong: Van Jones was the best person for the job he just gave up. But the job was not the best use of Van Jones.

Contrary to the media caricature, the real Van Jones is a thoughtful leader who knows how to use words to move people to action. To stick him behind a desk, working out the details of tax credits for green jobs -- incredibly important though the job is -- was never the best use of his unique and abundant skills.

This is not an attempt to put a positive spin on an ugly episode. I've actually been feeling this way ever since Van told me he was taking this job.

Of course she provides no evidence she really thought this way, but hey, the left never had any shame in making things up as they go along to fit their needs.

Read the rest of the drivel if you can stomach it. The way he's painted, it's a wonder this thug Jones isn't already on Mount Rushmore.

One other thing: She claims there is a media caricature of Jones. Yet until he resigned there was virtually no media reporting on Jones, so how exactly was this caricature created?

Cloying Hag to Launch 'Nonpartisan' Investigative Journalism Venture

Sure, this annoying wretch will be throwing around millions to get the dirt on Democrats.

The Huffington Post said Sunday that it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation's economy.

The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said.

My question is, will each story produced have to be adorned with photos of her?

The Huffington Post skews liberal, but its founder promised that the work done by the investigative fund would be nonpartisan. The group would be discredited quickly if it puts out faulty information, said Nick Penniman, the fund's executive director.

"We care about democracy, not Democrats," he said.

Sure. Considering the Huffington Post has put out faulty information and is already discredited, that's pretty much redundant.

Predictable: Huffington's Stint as Newspaper Guest Editor Turns Into Ego-fest

What happens when you invite the most self-absorbed "blogger" in the universe to be a guest editor of your fledgling newspaper? Well, just make sure you have enough space available to plaster her mug all over the place.

How's this for self worship?

Maybe it would have been more fitting if yesterday's issue of Metro New York was called Metro Huffington.

The free daily newspaper's experiment to have Arianna Huffington, the woman behind the Huffington Post Web site, serve as guest editor only reminded us of why having a guest editor is rarely a good idea.

Rather than using her brief stint as a newspaper editor to help shape the news coverage, Huffington used the opportunity to remind everyone what she looked like: No fewer than seven photos of the blog queen five of which feature her dressed in a black, sheer top graced the pages of the paper no small feat given yesterday's issue was just 24 pages.

If that wasn't enough, Huffington's mug was accompanied by story commentary something that's generally forbidden in newspapers, but perhaps done to keep her amused, given her blogging roots.

Mercifully, it was a one-day gig, something to be thankful for, obviously.

Ace links. Thanks!

'I Was One of the First People to Start Writing That Bush Should Be Imprisoned'

Incurable BDS

John Cusack, second-rate actor, proud to be a massive tool.

Bush Derangement Syndrome: There is no cure.

Arianna Huffington arrived with her constant companion, John Cusack, who was quick to note, "I was one of the first people to start writing that Bush should be imprisoned."

A shame nobody noticed.

Is HuffPost Worth Only $2 Million?

There was a story pushed by the New York Times last year claiming the leftwing House Organ of Hate was somehow worth $200 million, but that seemed to be wildly over-inflated.

Well, just like their visits are plummeting, so has the value, according to this report.

What if the privately held Huffington Post is worth not $200 million -- a cracked-out number floated last year -- or even $100 million, but, say, $2 mil?

This is not entirely an academic question, given that in December HuffPo astonished media watchers by securing $25 million in additional funding from Oak Investment Partners, a Palo Alto, Calif., venture-capital firm. The timing was particularly amazing, given that the lefty uber-blog's traffic has lately been plummeting -- a possibility my colleague Nat Ives examined way back in October. At the time Arianna Huffington insisted to Nat that the "Huffington Post is no longer as dependent on politics," and so she wasn't particular worried about the usual post-election readership swoon of politically-focused publications.

Sure, maybe it's not so dependent on politics and has now moved to ripping off material from others.

That $200 million figure first appeared in a Brian Stelter piece in The New York Times last spring. "According to one person who was briefed on discussions but was not permitted to speak for attribution," Stelter wrote, "the company has at least looked at the value of the site if it were put up for sale, and a figure around $200 million was used."

Amazingly, that number actually gained currency, though anybody with basic math skills and a halfway-decent bullshit detector knew the figure was nonsense, even before the economy melted down. Consider, for starters, HuffPo's revenue. As Nat reported, from January through August of last year -- the site's most-trafficked year -- "the site collected just $302,000 in ad revenue, according to an estimate from TNS Media Intelligence."

Read the rest. While the estimate of $200 million is no doubt wildly overstated, I think the $2 million seems to be a bit low. But it would puncture the overinflated ego of Arianna Huffington, to say the least.

'The Most Ruthless, Opportunistic Person I've Ever Encountered'

Now who is this ruthless, opportunistic person?

None other than the High Priestess of Hate herself, the vile and loathsome Arianna Huffington.

Interesting item in the New York Daily News today chronicling a long-running feud with Tim Russert and his wife Maureen Orth.

Russert and his wife, Maureen Orth, said Huffington was the one with a vendetta. They contended that her spleen was payback for a 1994 Vanity Fair exposé Orth did on her former husband, Michael Huffington. Orth also claimed in a 2004 speech that Huffington was "the most ruthless, opportunistic person I've ever encountered." As evidence, she pointed to Republican political consultant Ed Rollins' memoir, in which he claimed Huffington hired a detective to snoop on Orth.

Huffington vigorously denied that claim, but clearly, the world's best private eye wouldn't have found any love lost between her and Russert.

Speaking of the Huffington Post, today they have yet another anti-American screed from the terrorist-loving hack Andy Worthington.

Worthington latches on to a dubious McClatchy study of alleged treatment of guests at Club Gitmo. I'm not sure who has less credibility, Worthington or the floundering McClatchy crew, who note how former detainees are easy recruits for al Qaeda. Which begs the question: Wasn't it a good idea to detain them?

Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

Can you believe their gullibility? He had no clear ties, but does that mean he had none at all? He ran kidnapping and extortion rackets, so when we went into Afghanistan, wasn't it a good idea that we clear out guys like him?

And just when he happens to return, he manages to climb the ladder overnight to a Taliban leader?

The idiocy boggles the mind.

Update: Thanks to Hot Air for the link.

Also, a related Orth-Huffington item here.

Where are the 'Progressives'?

Pelousi? Shrillary? Harriet Reid? Schmuck Schumer? NOW?

Prague journalist Parnaz Azima is under virtual house arrest with no end in sight.

In late January, Azima traveled to Iran to visit her gravely ill mother. Upon arrival, her passport was seized. As the months fall away, the best efforts of U.S. diplomats, human rights lobbyists and the family’s lawyers to get that crucial document back have thus far come up empty.

“She’s being, in effect, held inside the country against her will,” says Jeffrey Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). He calls her situation “a kind of house arrest.”

The radio station, based in downtown Prague, pairs with Voice of America to produce Radio Farda.

Gedmin calls the tactics of the Iranian authorities “psychological warfare.”

Parnaz Azima is a valued employee of Radio Farda/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Voice of America. In 'progressive' group-think, that means she works for the Bushchimphitler/Jooooish Conspiracy. Therefore, she is eeeeevil.

Last seen, Barbara Boxer and Harriet Reid were busy preparing to solicit bribes host a fundraiser.

Organizers expect hundreds of people - each paying at least $100 - at the fund raiser for Boxer, a Rancho Mirage Democrat who is not up for re-election until 2010. Guests who want a photo with the two senators must kick in $500.

That's all, 100 to 500 bucks for a meet 'n' greet with Boxer & Reid??? This is in the area where Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca, Merv Griffin and others have homes. Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra called Rancho Mirage their home. 100 to 500 bucks???

The night ends with a more intimate cocktail party in Palm Springs in honor of Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

A cocktail party for Harry Reid. The irony of it all.

Tickets to that fund raiser, hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, are going for $2,500 each.

Sounds like a target-rich environment for DUI checks.

HuffPo Debates: Fairly Unbalanced

Much has been made of the cowardly Democrats and their infantile decision to boycott Fox News debates. So now it appears they'll be happy participate in debates involving the Huffington Post, home of the far-left fringe.

The 2008 presidential contenders may soon be slugging it out in cyberspace, with pioneering online-only debates being planned for early next fall, a new media partnership says.

The political blog Huffington Post, online portal Yahoo and Slate Magazine will host the debates — one for Democratic candidates, one for Republicans — sometime after Labor Day, with PBS host Charlie Rose serving as moderator, the sponsors planned to announce Monday.

Voters will be invited to submit questions, and can blog in real time to share their opinions on the candidates' answers.

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, said the idea for online debates was hatched earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which bloggers and citizen journalists had been invited to cover.

Frankly, any Republicans who enter into something like this do so at their own peril, as you can almost guarantee an ambush. Seems to me this will be a fiasco and it's just another way for the gasbag Arianna Huffington to stick her beak into the political process and puff up her already over-inflated ego.