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.

Ivy League Professor and HuffPost Blogger Charged With Incest

Naturally, he's a very popular guy with the beautiful people.

A popular Columbia professor was charged Thursday with incest - accused of a sick sex relationship with a female relative, prosecutors said.

Political science Prof. David Epstein, 46, bedded the young woman over a three-year period ending last year, according to court papers.

He was arraigned before a Manhattan judge on a single felony incest count.

"We ask that everyone remember that he is innocent until proven otherwise and that these allegations are nothing more than allegations," said Epstein's defense lawyer Matthew Galluzzo.

University spokesman Robert Hornsby said that Epstein "is now on administrative leave and will not be teaching students."

Epstein, who specializes in American politics and voting rights, has taught at Harvard and Stanford and often is quoted by news organizations. He also has blogged on The Huffington Post.

Epstein recently debated Peter Schiff and presented a slideshow on "How Obama's Policies Are Saving the Economy."

He's very fond of Obama.

President Obama was elected because he was smart, good on policy, and would bring hope to a dispirited country. He's performed exactly as advertised, with the single exception of his banking policy, which has been far more timid than circumstances warrant. But on the stimulus plan, the budget plan, his attack on health care, the environment and other issues, Obama has been forthright, substantive, and probably more politically savvy than would have been anticipated.

To no surprise he's an Obama donor.

Some legal background here.

Epstein has already gone down the memory hole at Columbia, although this page hasn't.

David Epstein

Epstein’s expertise covers democracy studies as well as political economy, or how economic systems generate resources through production and trade, both domestically and internationally, and how political systems allocate and reallocate these goods. He has consulted for the World Bank and sits on the federal government's Political Instability Task Force. His recent writings include "Democratic Transitions" and The Future of the Voting Rights Act. Along with colleague Sharyn O’Halloran, he received the 2005 Decade of Behavior Research Award in recognition of their work on the impact of racial redistricting on the democratic process.

Expertise: Political economy; American politics; redistricting

More of his history at Columbia can be found here.

NewsBusters has more.

HuffPoster: Democrat Primary Ad is Racist or Something

Well, not out and out racist, but racially-tinged, whatever that means. The focus of the story is about jobs being outsourced to India, so using some Indians in an ad is supposed to be off-limits.

The already racially-tinged attacks being launched against Lt. Gov Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic primary race took a turn for the worse on Thursday evening. An independent group heavily involved in the race released a mailer written in what appears to be either Hindi or Sanskrit, accusing Halter of outsourcing jobs to Indian [sic].

The group, Americans for Jobs Security, previously attacked the Democratic primary candidate with television spots featuring Indian actors thanking him shipping jobs to Bangalore. The mailer may be even seedier.

Halter's opponent, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), denounced the group's television spots and said she would support taking the spots off the air. But the Senator has played a similar card as well, sending out mailers of her own with pictures of the Taj Mahal and charges that Halter supported outsourcing.

So we have a Democrat food fight and this clown HuffPoster whips out the race card, but the funniest part is the idiotic commenters who see race and immediately start calling Republicans racist when they have nothing to do with any of this.

Clowns.

HUFFPOST SUPER USER

hagagaga 13 minutes ago (12:29 PM) 13 Fans Follow
Typical racist Republicans...

HUFFPOST SUPER USER

IsyFleur 1 hour ago (11:29 AM) 111 Fans
As any Arizona Republican will tell you, Republicans are neither racist nor xenophobic.

Meanwhile, for sheer comedy gold, another HuffPoster beclowns himself by calling for a Department of Information.

The federal government should create a Department of Information whose responsibility it is to determine the facts behind any decision that confronts our country.
...
Here's the next part of my proposal. Anytime there is a factual dispute, the Department of Information would render a decision on what the facts are. Those parties who come out on the short end of those decisions would not be allowed to use their "facts" any longer (just like having potentially dangerous drugs or products taken off the shelf). If they do, there would be fines levied to punish the transgressors. This system would not only make clear what the facts are and empower those who want the facts to be known, but it would also discredit the lunatic fringe and reduce the influence of their views on the majority of people.

If we had a Department of Information the Huffington Post would cease to exist.

Latest Palin Non-Scandal: Grabbing Too Much Swag or Something

It doesn't matter whether any of these gossip reports are true. It's all about a raging case of full-blown Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Sarah Palin and her entourage descended "like locusts" on the Oscar swag suite, scarfing up freebies in a binge that "practically cleaned the place out," celebrity gossips reported Thursday.

The former Alaska Gov's Wednesday pigout included jewels from Pascal Mouawad, watches by Skagen and a fancy new hairdo for her daughter Willow. The new coiffure came courtesy of Erick Orellana, Jennifer Aniston's longtime hairstylist, witnesses said.

The Los Angeles Times reported Palin was supposed to donate all of her gift items back to the Silver Spoon Oscar Suite for auction, as well as $1,700 of her own cash, in support of Red Cross efforts in Haiti and Chile.

But E! Online insisted, "we can assure you she did not give up any of her swag."

The entertainment news outlet quoted an unnamed vendor who said that as many as 20 people from the Palin camp swarmed the event.

"They were like locusts," he said.

News of Palin's grabfest ignited the blogosphere.

Of course it did. They'd rather obsess on her instead of talking about all the corrupt Democrats falling by the wayside in recent days. A Congressman hitting on a male staffer? Who cares! Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee up to his neck in scandal? Who cares! Willow Palin got a free haircut!

Such a horrible woman accepting all that free swag.

The PuffHost is agog over this new scandal. I imagine Arianna herself never took a freebie before.

Update: Thanks to Hot Air and Big Hollywood for the links.

The LA Times story is here and it contradicts the gossip outlets apparently just making up stories.

I'm told the oft-parodied politico donated all of her gift items back to the Silver Spoon for auction, as well as about $1,700 of her own cash, in support of multiple Red Cross efforts, including those in Haiti and Chile.

Speaking of making things up, Media Bistro says Palin "looted" the gift suite.

How kind of them. You suppose if the Obamas helped themselves to a couple of freebies the term "looted" would be used?

HuffPost Now Doing PR for Club Gitmo Guests

The basic tone of this nonsense is Newt Gingrich is bad, the Chinese Uighurs are just poor misunderstood chaps who mysteriously wound up at Club Gitmo.

Here all this time I thought the inmates at Guantanamo Bay were subject to harsh treatment (every news story says so) and living under inhumane conditions? Apparently not. According to the Huffington Post these guys chat often with relatives in the United States and Europe.

You know, pretty soo I might start thinking the left's propaganada about what goes on down there has been, um, misleading.

Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, detained for more than six years and counting at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, are firing back at Newt Gingrich, who has accused them of terrorist ties and says that releasing them into the United States would endanger the country.

The seventeen Uighurs told their translator, Rushan Abbas, how they felt when they heard Gingrich's remarks. Abbas has been working with them in Guantanamo since 2002, initially contracted by the Department of Defense. The Uighurs' rejoinder to Gingrich is the first quasi-interview with detainees still imprisoned in Guantanamo.

The Bush administration has cleared the Uighurs for release; five have already been released to third countries. If returned to China, there is a high probability they'd be tortured. A vibrant Uighur community in Northern Virginia has offered to take them in, but Gingrich and others are objecting.

"Why is that our problem?" Gingrich wondered in a recent TV interview. "Why are we protecting these guys? Why does it become an American problem?"

Gingrich pushed further in an op-ed, claiming that '[b]y their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al Qaeda-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S law."

No, they have never admitted that, says Abbas, adding that the Uighurs call the claim "baseless, factless slander against them." Abbas returned from Guantanamo Monday. She now works with the Uighurs' defense attorneys, but said that her comments to the Huffington Post were not intended as advocacy on their behalf.

The Uighurs call relatives in the United States and Europe often, she says, so stay up on the news. They were surprised to hear the accusation from the former Speaker of the House.

I guess Gingrich isn't entitled to his opinion.

Meanwhile, it's apparently escaped noticed of the esteemed journalists at the HuffPost that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also doesn't want these people on our soil.

QUESTION: If the United States -- if the United States thinks that these people should be held, why shouldn’t they be held in the United States? Why shouldn’t the U.S. take those risks, the attendant risk of holding them, since it’s the one that says they should be held?

REID: I think there’s a general feeling, as I’ve already said, that the American people, and certainly the Senate, overwhelmingly doesn’t want terrorists to be released in the United States. And I think we’re going to stick with that.

QUESTION: What about in imprisoned in the United States?

REID: If you’re...

(CROSSTALK)

REID: If people are -- if terrorists are released in the United States, part of what we don’t want is them be put in prisons in the United States. We don’t want them around the United States.

Of course trusting Dingy Harry isn't always wise, and in fact he's probably just reading his latest poll numbers, which, to put it kindly, are abysmal.

Weird But True: HuffPoster Offers Defense of Somali Pirates

Seems after the hostage standoff ended yesterday most of the civilized world is applauding the daring rescue of Captain Richard Phillips.

But leave it to the Huffington Post to give voice to a Somali defending piracy.

Seriously. You see, this piracy isn't about just robbing people to enrich themselves.

It's about the environment!

In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry our nation's death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice.

As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

Naturally, this kind of nuttery brings out the best in the HuffPost comments.

Helzapoppin

People need to be reminded that during the American Revolution, we hired pirates to attack and loot foreign ships along the coast because we had no Navy. Not so different.

Thank you very much for this article. I have been aghast at the adolescent, abominable cheering going on over the killing of some of the "pirates" in the recent hostage situation - as if each head shot were nothing more than of a 3-pointer from mid-court.

I'm glad someone is willing to explore and explain WHY this all started in the first place.

If I were forced into those conditions, I would likely resort to "piracy" as well.

ini

I'm glad someone is telling the truth about this situation. You'll never hear it from CNN and Faux News that's for sure.

Ace links. Thanks!

Obama Looks to Bypass Slavish White House Press Corps for Even More Sycophantic Media Outlets

Look for the White House to grant more access to bootlickers from MSNBC, the HuffPost and moonbat radio hosts like Ed Schultz. Apparently they're not satisfied with the Washington press corps that is trying to regain credibility by actually reporting the truth about this disastrous presidency.

Consider this a call for useful idiots.

At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.

The highest-profile moments in the new approach have been well-noted, such as the president giving an interview to progressive radio host Ed Schultz and Obama calling on a reporter from the liberal-leaning Huffington Post at his first news conference.

But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more sympathetic to the president’s agenda — and one in which much of the work is being done by Obama’s top advisers.

On the day Obama released his ambitious spending plan, the administration put White House budget director Peter Orszag on a conference call with liberal-leaning writers. Senior administration aides have followed up by promoting the budget to local radio talk shows during morning drive time.

Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser and a favorite of the labor-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, also held a conference call with friendly reporters.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has done conference calls with black and Hispanic media outlets.

If they think this approach will work, all power to them. The only problem with this strategy is they'll be passing along their propaganda into the unquestioning echo chamber.

Good luck with that.

Maybe some day these folks will grow up and realize the campaign is over.

Aww: HuffPoster Terribly Offended by NY Post Chimp Cartoon

These liberal wackos are always looking for hidden messages. Clearly unable to understand what satire is, except of course when they rush to use the satire defense themselves. Here's Obama water-carrier Sam Stein, a nutroots blogger who magically found himself seated in the front row at the Obama press conference last week, so you know he's in the back pocket of the administration.

A cartoon likening the author of the stimulus bill, perhaps President Barack Obama, with a rabid chimpanzee graced the pages of the New York Post on Wednesday.

The drawing, from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones. In it, two befuddled-looking police officers holding guns look over the dead and bleeding chimpanzee that attacked a woman in Stamford, Connecticut.

"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," reads the caption.

Racial undertones? In case Stein isn't aware, that chimpanzee story is big news in the New York area. Was the left using racial undertones when they called George Bush a chimp for eight year? Or was that simply satire?

These idiotic racist liberals are always the first to see racism where it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, never one to miss an opportunity to demagogue, racist huckster Al Sharpton chimes in.

"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys." He said the Post should clarify what point the cartoon was making.

He did. It's a parody.

besides, didn't Nancy Pelosi write the porkulus bill?

Commenters at the Daily Kos are already calling for his career to be terminated.

Such tolerance.

Update: Some leftwing douchebag with a bad case of projection decided to link. Figured you folks could use a good laugh.

But Jammie Wearing Fool will generally say what you think he would say. His pseudonym suggests a self-awareness for which no other evidence has been found. We imagine him as a disheveled, feety smelling man of 5′6″ or so and a silhouette like a fireplug, drinking endless cups of bad coffee as talk radio yells and chatters around him in an endless blare, like the radio in Bad Lieutenant. We like him and think of him in a way as a friend, as our hypothetical Everynut.

Gee, they're on to me. Only off by nine inches. And, well, everything else. I doubt they're bright enough to figure out the genesis of the name, either, so let's just let small minds wander.

Idiots.

Obama Snubs Black Media: 'We Were Nothing More Than Window Dressing'

Considering Barack Obama allowed an obscure radio host named Ed Schultz and a "reporter" from the far-left website Huffington Post prime access at his primetime ego massage Monday night, it's worth noting how actual credentialed media felt, in this case black members of the media.

After the first black president completed his first prime-time press conference, the black press was red hot.

"We were window dressing," said Hazel Edney, a reporter with the National Newspaper Publishers Association, also known as the Black Press of America. "We were nothing more than window dressing."

As the media filed into the stately White House East Room on Monday night, the reporter was shocked to find herself in the front row. Alongside her were the top news agencies, Associated Press, Reuters; also up front, 86-year-old Helen Thomas, who started covering presidents 50 years ago.

Alongside the most prominent journalists in America was Tiffany Cross from Black Entertainment Television. Like Miss Edney, she didn't know why she was in first-class while all the television networks - every single one - was exiled to the steerage compartment.

"I really don't know why I'm up here," Miss Cross said with a shy smile.

While most on the front row got to pose a question to President Obama, the two reporters from the black press did not. Nor did any other black-press reporter, for that matter.

"This was like Reagan, when he'd put all the blacks up front," said another prominent but visibly peeved black-press reporter who asked to remain anonymous. "He oughta' be ashamed."

Nice cheapshot at Reagan. Can't we move on? They shouldn't feel so bad. Obama is still playing like a child with his treatment of Fox News.

While the two wires were up front, Bloomberg News, which travels in every tight pool alongside AP and Reuters, was stationed in the second row. Of the networks, only CBS made that row. All but one of the others - ABC, CNN and NBC were in the third (while Fox News' Major Garrett was dispatched to the fourth row, far to the right of the presidential podium).

Seated in that prime front row, though, were some newcomers. Along with reporters from NNPA and BET were Sam Stein of the archly liberal Huffington Post and Ed Schultz, star of the "Ed Schultz Radio Show," an unabashedly liberal talk-show host, who boasts 3 million listeners dubbed "Ed Heads."

I'd be stunned if that putz Schultz had 300,000, never mind 3 million. Then again, as the old saying goes, keep your friends close and your boot-lickers closer.

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.

'Israel Is Once Again Using Air Strikes to Target Journalists'

You can't fix stupid, and this one is about as dumb as they come.

Still, recent press freedom within Gaza is restricted and dangerous.

Parts of the strip have been declared "closed military zones," most notably of which is the Gaza strip's northern boundary with Israel, which extends two miles into Israeli territory. As a result, journalists are restricted from entering the area to report on what's happening.

A more frightening assault on press freedom is repeat behavior from Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon; Israel is once again using air strikes to target journalists.

On Sunday, the Gaza City headquarters of the Hamas-operated Al-Aqsa TV were bombed by Israeli Defense Forces.

Rockets raining down on innocent civilians in Israel apparently isn't frightening to this idiot. Bombing a terrorist television outlet is, however.

Coverage of this latest Israeli incursion in to Gaza has been pitifully poor and making the outrageous claim that Israel is deliberately targeting the media is just absurd.

Naturally, this piece elicits this genius from a reader.

Israel makes Gaza a huge concentration camp of 1.5 million people but America has made all of Iraq a concentration camp of 25 million people. They even have the same play book. Shoot independent journalists, bomb sewage works, blockade medical supplies, food and anything to fix the water treatment facilities to create deadly water born diseases. America has murdered more iraqis than there are Palestinians in Gaza to begin with.

I give props in the genocide stakes to the Zionists for the sheer longevity of their reign of terror but when it comes to scale the Americans death camps are second to no monsters.

At least one commenter isn't buying this BS.

Why no mention about some of the real reasons your colleagues are kept away?

Maybe its because some of them have this bad habit of having to participate in faking or exaggerating events instead of just reporting them.

Remember Reuters suspending one of their stringers for doctoring photos?

Or the faked BBC story where the reporter used one structure in a tight shot to deliberately misrepresented the extent of the damage. She led the viewer to believe it was an entire block of buildings that were bombed when it was only one. If she had pulled the camera back, it would have been obvious she was lying.

The press, especially the foreign press were absolutely in the tank for Hezbollah and I don't expect much has changed. CNN is already referring to the 350 dead as a "holocaust" and the operation itself as "barbaric". I couldn't help think of the 34,000 Jews shot dead at Babi Yar over a two day period and wonder how CNN would have described that ?

Does the name Muhammed al Dura ring a bell?

Ha Ha Ha! Moonbat HuffPost College Professor Who Bragged of Tearing Down McCain Sign Forced to Resign

D'oh!

A visiting St. Olaf instructor who wrote an online essay about stealing John McCain lawn signs -- "like a ninja under the cover of cloudy Minnesota night" -- has resigned, the Northfield college announced.

Philip Busse, a journalist and political activist from Portland, Ore. who taught a media studies course, also will be charged with misdemeanor theft. He could face up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, according to the Rice County Sheriff's Office.

After learning of Busse's essay, "Confessions of a Lawn Sign Stealer," St. Olaf denounced his actions, saying they "were in direct conflict with the college's values and mission."

On Monday, it issued a statement that "Mr. Busse has tendered his resignation and is no longer affiliated with St. Olaf College."

In Busse's essay, published on the political Huffington Post website last week, Busse used data, news articles and first-hand accounts to explore the impact of political lawn-sign theft, as well as its legal and ethical implications. He wrote:

"Sure, I understand that stealing a sign will not change anyone's mind, and, most likely, will only embolden McCain supporters' disdain for liberals. Even so, yanking out the signs and running like a scared rabbit back to my idling car was one of the single most exhilarating and empowering political acts that I have ever done."

Later, he writes: "Mature? No. Illegal? Yes. Satisfying? Definitely."

Here's his HuffPost piece.

I reached the sign and, for the first time, recognized its sublime size. It stood as tall as me. I grabbed one of the steel rods holding the signs; but unlike the smaller signs, it did not yield. I wrapped my hands tighter around the stake as if I were a Little Leaguer stepping to bat for the first time, and I squatted, thrusting my legs. The post resisted for a strained, frozen moment and then released. I considered running away right then, leaving the sign crippled but still there. But my Midwest morals insisted that I finish the job. I grabbed the other post and yanked, dragging the sign behind me as I ran. I drove away with the hatchback yawning wide open, and the sign hanging out over the back bumper.

I drive by the house on a near daily basis. For a week afterwards, I had that particular thrill which must draw criminals back to the scene of the crime. The empty lawn -- its silence -- seemed like a small victory that I had scored for my side.

But now, a month later, the homeowners have again decorated their front yard with a more modest wicker sign that announces, "Family for McCain." I was surprisingly happy to see the new sign. In many ways, it felt like it was directed straight at me, the invisible hand that had removed and silenced their first sign.

I had said my piece, and they responded with theirs.

And now you're out of a job, you idiot.

Update: Minnesota resident Ed Morrissey has some thoughts.

'If She Were a Democrat, It Would Be Banner Headlines Every Day'

While I realize the left resides mostly in an alternate universe, one would hope they at least stay in touch with the news on a regular basis. Here we have yet another totally out-of-touch Huffington Post screed essentially blaming every societal ill on John McCain while also working in the ritual trashing of Sarah Palin.

John McCain and the Republican Party simply hate regulation. Hate government oversight. Hate government protections. And what they've done has pushed America towards its ruin.

But it's not the economy or other regulation-free disasters you might think. Not Katrina, not collapsing bridges, not lead poisoning, Gitmo or wiretapping Americans. No, all these are all just symptoms of a larger lack of oversight, just precursors to something worse.

You see, when you've spent your entire life fighting regulation and oversight, in the end it can only lead to one ultimate disaster.

Sarah Palin.

First of all, it was McCain, among others who were calling for oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, only to be rebuffed by Democrats every step of the way. Second, how much longer do we need to hear about Hurricane Katrina? Now, since the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last summer, has another bridge collapsed anywhere in this country? Lead poisoning? Hello, this isn't China. And, of course, he has to work in Club Gitmo and the horrors of wiretapping terrorists.

But this author save his real hatred for Sarah Palin, naturally.

When John McCain recklessly nominates someone he doesn't know and doesn't care about checking into, the only possible result is yet another shiny package on the surface, but crisis underneath waiting to collapse.

You get someone who attended a convention to secede from the United States! Whose personal life is a disaster on almost every level. If she were a Democrat, it would be banner headlines every day.

Soak that part in: If she were a Democrat, it would be banner headlines every day.

Really? She's not headlines all day, every day right now? What planet did this guy just arrive from? It can't possibly have escaped him that she's been ripped to shreds in virtually every media outlet known to man around the globe. But if she were a Democrat it would be worse? Huh?

Palin isn't the one with terrorist friends. Palin isn't the one who sat blindly in a racist church for 20 years. A certain Democrat is. And funny, it wasn't until just this week that the name William Ayers started making headlines, though they're not exactly banner headlines.

Naturally, with everyone who trashes Palin, we find out how dangerous she is.

You get someone who is dangerously without any qualifications to be a heartbeat from becoming leader of the free world. And anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you or themselves.

And John McCain didn't care about any of this. He chose to put his country at risk. All the while knowing his age and his serious case of cancerous melanoma - for the sake of winning an election. Regardless of his noble past, this is an act of scathing dishonor.

Even the most heroic can fall from grace. So has John McCain fallen.

In three months, Sarah Palin could be sworn in as President of the United States.

Not the worst idea in the world, considering she's far more qualified than ACORN's community organizer.

But this is what happens when you're John McCain and don't care about oversight, due diligence or regulation. Don't fully investigate your choice to be vice president. Don't allow the press to fully question every, last detail of the person who could be a heartbeat from the presidency. Don't allow Americans to make a fully-informed choice about who to put in charge of their national security, their economy, their future. Don't let your full medical records be investigated. To hell with the country, you just want to win an election.

And you end up with Sarah Palin.

Nobody has given us every last detail of Sarah Palin?

Again, I ask, what planet did this guy just come in from?

The I realize, this must be satire. Just check his bio.

Born in Chicago, he attended Northwestern University and received his MFA from UCLA, where he was twice awarded the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting.

Problem is, this guy isn't funny.

HuffPosters Suffering From 'McCain/Palin Sleep Disorder'

Polls have you feeling down, the market tanking making you a little depressed? Well, whenever you're feeling blue, always know there's someone out there so off the rails, it'll certainly pick up your spirits and give you a few chuckles.

And where else would you go but the the Internet chamber of horrors, the Huffington Post?

A couple of weeks ago we thought Naomi Wolf's psychotic rant about the coming McCain/Palin police state locked up the award for most unhinged rant of the election season, but we may have a new leader in the form of this desperate cry for help from someone named Daniel Chun.

Three weeks ago, I met with a therapist for the first time in my life. I'm a very happy guy -- great family, great job, great girlfriend, tons of Facebook friends -- no problems that a glass of scotch couldn't fix. But ever since the beginning of September, I've gone 100% batshit crazy. Why? Because come next year, John McCain and Sarah Palin might be running this country. I can't concentrate at work. I can't hold a normal conversation about anything besides politics. At night, I'm afraid to go to sleep because I know that Sarah Palin is waiting for me in Dreamland, like Freddy Krueger but dumber and more evil.

How about a few more glasses of scotch, you idiot?

Just try and figure this clown out. Great job, family, girlfriend and -- most important -- tons of Facebook friends, and he's flipping out because his guy might lose an election? WTF is wrong with these people? Doesn't he know the media has declared the election over and the polls have Obama with huge leads everywhere you look? And he chooses to embarrass himself on a major website by admitting he can't sleep becasue of the evil Sarah Palin?

Palin may be a lot of things, and we've all heard every allegation, but evil just doesn't come to mind.

So I got more involved. I made phone calls to voters in my hometown in Pennsylvania. I donated. I signed up to canvass in Nevada. I set up a fundraising page on Obama's website with two friends. We set an ambitious goal of $10,000. After two weeks of bugging and pleading with our friends, family, co-workers, and bosses, we had raised $26,000.

But as satisfying as all those things are, I'm still crazy. And the more I think about it, the more I think that everyone should be crazy. Consider all the meaningless shit that we become obsessed about -- ex-girlfriends, neighbors' dogs, celebrities' vaginas -- and now think about this: a 72-year old liar with anger problems might become the most powerful person in the world. And if he dies, he'd be replaced by a babbling, evolution-doubting, Supreme-Court-case-not-knowing woman whose knowledge about the world comes from a 3-week cram session. This deserves one month of your obsession.

Come to think of it, the sadistic side in me is enjoying seeing Chun and his ilk coming unglued. Maybe they'll all fall into a deep state of sleep, say, right around November 4, and wake up to their worst nightmare: Freddie Krueger with a beehive and a hick accent.

The contrast between Obama and McCain could not be greater. This is like choosing between an orgasm and a punch in the throat. The fact this is a close race is a terrifying outrage, and every single person should be doing everything they can about it. Stop clicking refresh on Mark Halperin's The Page. Go knock on some doors. Make some phone calls. Make a donation. Recruit your friends. You only have to do it for a month. This shit makes a difference, and with the country in such a bad way, the stakes could not be higher. If you aren't going crazy, there's something wrong with you.

Time to go back and visit your therapist, Danny. And get a prescription for some sleeping pills while you're there.

The commenters, naturally, share Chun's disorder.

blackbird1974

I too consider myself crazy. I am in a family of all republicans and the tension is driving me nuts. I keep wondering, at night, when I should be sleeping, how did I get into this family, they all hate the democrats and blame everything, from the bright lights on top of school buses for safety reasons (that they think is stupid) to anything they believe is unworthing of having been thought of or done. I used to joke about leaving the US, and all I have to say is Mexico is looking good, a few weeks drinking the water and I'll be fine and used to it. I sit up worrying about Palin and what she might do in office. As a woman, I feel as though this glass ceiling is getting thicker and thicker because of her. I can stop obsessing and I'm doing what I can, but it's just getting worse. Less than a month, and I'll know what I'm in for.

Good grief. How pathetic are these people? It's a damn election people. If you lose, work at getting your candidate elected next time. But no, we instead face a country filled with sleep-deprived zombies if the Messiah isn't elected.

Sheesh.

whit4brains

I'm another crazy. I suffer from MPSD (McCain/Palin Sleep Disorder). My DVR is full of my regular shows that I never seem to watch because I can't turn off the news. I wake up every morning and the first thing I do is check fivethirtyeight.com. I live in a 'red' neighborhood and feel sick as I walk my dog every night and have to see all the M/P yard signs.

I've donated as much as I can and have been trying to educate as many people as I can about how important this election is. I am so amazed at how some people think it doesn't matter either way. Hello...The Supreme Court! It matters so much.

I really don't know what I will do if O doesn't win. I am sure if they don't there will be a surge in the number of people on anti-depressants.

That should help with pharmaceutical stocks, I suppose.

damosa

I, too, am having nightmares about McCain/Palin. I thought it was just me. So, let's work to make sure it does not happen.

Shieldmaiden

I've been having panic attacks over this election and I go into full paper-bag-over-mouth-and-nose mode on debate nights or during convention speeches. My TV is always on MSNBC or CNN and I'm sure I haven't seen any TV shows that don't involve politics. I freak out whether we're up in the polls or down in the polls because I'm convinced Americans are really that stupid. And I pray every single night. I haven't prayed consistently for many years but I pray every night just in case. I think I'm going to need a lot of medication when this is all over.

Well, at least someone has found religion. Maybe watching CNN and MessNBC all the time is part of the problem. I know I'd be nuts if those were my sole sources of information.

Need some more laughs? There are seven pages of comments like this.

H/T to venjanz on the LGF links.

Maybe this clip will cause some more insomnia. Pay attention at the very end.



Gateway Pundit has more, including an illiterate commenter issuing threats of violence.

Bruce said...

Sarah Palin really angers me.

On another note: If you guys try to steel this election there will be chaos on the streets. There are a lot of Obama supporters out there who are trained and ready if this comes down to physical confrontation. We're not going to put up with this anymore. It's time for real change, not John McSame.

I wonder if 'Bruce' know what an IP address is?

Here's another little something to cause some sleeplessness.

Hot Air and Suitably Flip link. Thanks!

And since this HuffPost chucklehead has Freddie Krueger on the brain, I may as well shamelessly lift this one from Flip.


I don't know about you, but it sort of turns me on.

AP Sulks Because McCain Campaign Hasn't Ground to a Complete Halt

As evidence how pathetic this item is, they're using the Huffington Post as a source. My head hurts just trying to grasp that. Of course, they're too incompetent to even link the story, and my brain started melting trying to find it over there.

Anyway, since John McCain decided to put the nation's best interest in front of personal ambition, I guess the Internet sleuths decided to call around to see if every single McCain campaign employee was in a state of suspended animation.

Better they should ask why Howard Dean and his brother thought today was a good time to run an ad suggesting McCain is thisclose to death.

Still, the funniest part of this amateur attempt at gotcha is the non-bylined story calling the Huffington Post left-leaning. Yeah, so was Joe Stalin.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain vowed Wednesday to suspend his campaign to focus on the nation's financial crisis, but there were plenty of signs of activity Thursday — including an apparently live fundraising link on the campaign's Web site.

On Wednesday, McCain said: "Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Sen. Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me."

He offered no details, but senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt later told reporters: "We're just not going to engage right now in the back and forth of the campaign," adding that meant appearances, rallies and TV advertising would be canceled. In an e-mail to reporters, spokesman Brian Rogers added that fundraising would be halted, too.

McCain appeared that evening in an interview on CBS' newscast, but canceled a planned appearance on David Letterman's "Late Show." His vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made a highly visible visit to ground zero in New York on Thursday morning. McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace appeared on NBC's "Today" show.

The campaign sought to pull television ads off the air, but halting ads isn't like turning off a light switch because of the many broadcast stations must be contacted through middlemen. But Schmidt, speaking to reporters Thursday evening, said: "All of our television advertising at this hour is down."
...
E-mail messages continued to trickle out from the campaign, but at a far slower rate than normal. And the Huffington Post, a left-leaning Web site, said it had called 15 McCain campaign offices in battleground states, and none said it was suspending operations.

Al Gore's Fashion Consultant Announces the Arrival of the Sarah Palin Police State

For all the insane rants against Sarah Palin since she was announced as John McCain's running mate, this should definitely earn top honors as the most loony, paranoid rant of them all.

No small irony it's coming from the nitwit who advised Al Gore to wear earth tones.

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you have freedom.

Did she mention Palin is affable but weak?

First of all, the Evita Peron comparison is absurd on its face. Peron married into power. Palin is the power in her family, sweetie, if case you haven't noticed. No slight against The First Dude, but he isn't running for office.

Well, at least she realizes Palin is affable.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Style concerns coming from the woman who tried to dress up the Wooden Indian. Oh, savor the irony.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

I realize what I'm seeing is a public nervous breakdown.

Does Arianna Huffington allow this crap to be published so she can secretly laugh at these people? Really, this is mental illness on display.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Got all that? So to summarize, John McCain is going to die soon because reputable dermatologists told her so, we won't have any elections after this year, the Cheney-Rove cabal will run our lives and, oh, by the way, did we mention they murdered 4000 soldiers?

She almost makes Matt Damon sound lucid.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state...

The lunacy continues. She's delusional to the point where she believes people are infiltrating her bank accounts, reading her email and stealing her kid's reports cards. This woman is in serious need of psychiatric evaluation. If anything, she should face punishment for the egregious overuse of the word cabal.

Ms. Wolf, the doctor will see you now.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

Thanks also to Hot Air for the link.

Odious Leftist Character Assassin Targets Gay McCain Staffer

Naturally, this gutter trash Mike Rogers gets a platform at the Huffington Post, where they can never go low enough. So puerile and childish, the aim is to destroy a man just because he works for John McCain and because McCain doesn't adhere to the radical gay agenda.

These people really are vicious.

Six weeks to election day. Just imagine how low they'll sink.

Thanks to The Anchoress for the link.

HuffPost Moron: Palin's Email Getting Hacked Gives Her Cover to Delete Incriminating Information

Yes, they're that stupid. Forget invasion of privacy, federal crimes, little things like that.

It's good for her, you see. This kind of stupid doesn't grow on trees, folks.

The truly troubling part of this episode is that both of Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail accounts were deleted this morning - not just the compromised one, but also the other personal Yahoo account that Palin acknowledged using for public business (gov.sarah@yahoo.com).

Has this hacking incident given Palin a convenient way to dodge the eventual release of whatever else she had hidden in her Yahoo e-mail accounts?

By the way, this idiot might want to know posting those screen shots also constitutes a federal crime. Not only are a lot of people scrambling to change email passwords today, but you can be sure a lot of blog posts will be going down the memory hole.

Gateway Pundit and Sister Toldjah link. Thanks!

Update: The FBI and Secret Service are investigating. Good. I hope the punks who did this are crapping their pants (via Hot Air).

Update: Michelle Malkin notes how it all went down. To quote from the hacker:

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family
...
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

And now you'll just get to sit there in a comatose state in a federal penitentiary, dipshit.

Somehow I doubt this HuffPo turd will retract his idiocy.

HuffPoster Declares All Is Lost, Blames Media

Two months out and the meltdown is on. After ten days of a vicious assault on Sarah Palin that has now burned the left so badly you need dental records to identify them, some joker named Adam McKay has pinpointed the culprit for the massive surge by John McCain: the media.

You can't make this stuff up.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.

Alas, the beleaguered McKay still offers advice.

Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."

Just what we need, more cliches. Besides, I've already heard that mantra in various incarnations for years now.

This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists.

Uh, Adam, community organizer is two words, dipshit.

This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.

Go back to sleep, Adam.

High Comedy: Indignant Hilton Responds to McCain at HuffPost

It's the ad that keeps on giving. I haven't seen this much hysteria over a single political ad since Willie Horton.

Sure, Hillary took a beating over the 3 a.m. spot, but I can't recall an ad during a recent presidential cycle that has been so devastatingly effective while simultaneously driving the left nuts.

What's hysterical is many ominously warn that McCain screwed up here, but the polls say otherwise.

Now it's come to this, the mother of a celebutard seen in the ad angrily responds.

I've been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs.

She manages to blurt out one more sentence.

Then the idiots take over.

Cos1 See Profile I'm a Fan of Cos1

Guess McCain's judgement on putting this ad out there wasn't a good one. Nice to hear the other side for a change. The media have seemed to side with McCain on this and want to know why Obama is saying he's not like other presidential candidates. Big whoop, he's not like the others. Saying it first does not make him put race on the table. It's a statement of fact we all know. How can the public not know Obama yet he's one of 3 biggest celebrities in the world according to the media and McCain? McCain's cries for attention have been answered overwhelmingly by the press. He got just what he wanted, more Obama bashing for free from the media.

tony2008

If i were Paris' dad, I would be outraged. How dare some politician would make your family a pawn for his political advantage. This is exploitation of ordinary citizen for political benefit.

Yup, like Paris Hilton isn't the biggest example of self-exploitation in modern history.

Good grief, people, get a grip.

Here's someone who really likes exclamation points!

ldsraphaI would be furious to if I donated $4,600 to someone's campaign for them to publicly insult my daughter and insult the American's intelligence! Good response! Of course, I would call and demand they refund my contribution!

Great comment!

It's really pathetic the response we're seeing to this ad. If the Democrats are screeching over this being "negative," just wait until the heavy artillery comes out.

Update: Apparently a blog post at the web;s home office for hate merits an AP dispatch.

Interesting if you look at Mrs. Hilton's campaign contributions in her name you have donations to John McCain, Hillary Clinton and (surprise!) Michael Huffington.