Americans are voting with their "lizard brains" and leaning Republican simply out of fear, according to Arianna Huffington. Although challenged by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Friday that the 2008 election of Obama was out of fear, Huffington responded that it was driven by "hope" and that Bush won in 2004 because of fear.
Now Americans are now driven by fear to vote the Republicans into the House and Senate. "This is not a rational election," Huffington complained to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Friday's "Morning Joe."
"People are operating out of fear and anxiety at the moment. And when they operate out of fear and anxiety, they operate out of what they call their 'lizard brains.' And 'lizard brains' are not susceptible to rationality," Huffington explained.
Apparently, our "lizard brains" are our primordial fearful reactions to a dangerous situation. Huffington described it in a 2006 Huffington Post column as when the amygdala – "deep in the brain...an almond-sized region that generates fear" – activates, the "lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode."
Arianna Huffington
The Center for Public Integrity boasts of itself as a "nonpartisan" journalism outfit -- while at the very same time it is absorbing something called the "Huffington Post Investigative Fund," which isn't a brand-name for nonpartisanship. It's a brand name that says trendy-left combo of a little political reporting, some celebrity blogging, celebrity nude/almost-nude photos -- and currently, election-eve Jon Stewart bus-mongering. Keach Hagey of Politico reports that the CPI's board recently approved plans to make the Center's website a revenue-generating high-traffic website (no word if that means sleazy photos of Miley Cyrus or "Glee" stars):
The pile of liberal guests (and guest hosts) on ABC's The View Tuesday led to breathless admiration and excitement all around. Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes noticed that guest host Maria Shriver cooed to comedian Stephen Colbert about the liberal Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on October 30: "My daughter [Christina Schwarzenegger] goes to Georgetown and she's so excited to come to the rally. What should she expect?"
This must thrill liberal hearts, who want something (anything) that fires up liberal young people.
Barbara Walters was feeling warm and fuzzy introducing her good friend Arianna Huffington: "Full disclosure. This is a day when I have two -- with Maria and Arianna, when I have two women I have known forever. We have known each other for 30 years. [Referring to Huffington, and clutching her hand,] I am the godmother to her eldest child. So I'm slightly prejudiced." She waved around the cover of the new Forbes magazine Power Women issue, with Huffington on the cover.
Colbert, that "potent evangelist" for Catholics, was asked about teaching "Sunday school" (which isn't really Catholic terminology), and he joked about teaching about a "loosey-goosey Jesus."
Astroturfing when committed by conservatives -- as contemptible as it gets, according to liberals.
Astroturfing when committed by liberals -- problem, what problem?
In other words, do as we say, not as we do too.
So more government isn’t the answer to all of our problems? For a brief moment, that seemed to be the message Huffington Post editor-in-chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington was conveying.
On CNBC’s Oct. 5 broadcast of “Squawk Box,” Huffington, author of “Third World America” explained what she thought the role of government should be in an American economic system. Now whether she was playing to the CNBC pro-capitalist audience or not remains to be seen, but she did depart with the so-called progressive/liberal view of government’s role in the economy, and criticized the Obama administration.
“[S]o when it comes to the Obama administration’s policies, the problem has been rewarding people for taking excessive risks, which is not at the heart of capitalism,” Huffington said. “You and I have talked about that before. At the heart of capitalism is the assumption that if you take excessive risks and you fail, you’re on your own. The taxpayer is not on the hook. And we still have left the systemic risk in the system despite the financial reform bill that was passed. ‘Too big to fail’ has not ended and that really is the potential problem in the future.”
What – was Janeane Garofalo busy this week? If not, she has some real competition in the "lefty comic making outrageous statements" category.
On HBO’s Oct. 1 “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during the “Overtime” segment available on HBO.com, left-wing comedian David Cross of “Arrested Development” fame appeared to offer his view on issues of the day. This segment of the program is produced generally to answer viewer emailed questions. One of those questions was if people in the media “should be held more legally accountable for presenting false or misleading information.”
The host, Bill Maher likened that scenario to the system in place in the United Kingdom. However in the United States, Americans are protected by the First Amendment and he explained the legal implications of speech in the U.K. compared to the U.S. But in Cross’ estimation, that protected right is somehow wrong. He named two Fox News Channel hosts, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and declared he would like to see them taken off of the airwaves although he wasn’t clear about what “false or misleading information” they may have presented that would warrant this action.
“I think so, absolutely, and I say that as somebody who would like to see Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity off the air, you know,” Cross declared with an approving response from the audience. “So, I think to -- it’s just part of the job. It should be part of the job, you know, if you knowingly do that, then absolutely you should lose your job. We don’t get to, you know, lie and make up things in our jobs, you know. And nobody really does.”
You have to wonder what Diane Sawyer and her team at ABC’s “World News” are thinking. Is the Huffington Post the best they could do when it comes to reaching out to Americans for their ideas on the economy?
In a Sept. 23 post on the Huffington Post, “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer explains to readers that she and her team in search of “innovative ideas that are helping turn the economy around.”
“And so next week a team at World News is heading out to search for innovative ideas that are helping turn the economy around,” Sawyer wrote. “Real change is often born out of a simple act. One ripple can lead to a powerful transformation. So we are starting with our hometowns, looking for resilience in the places we know best. David Muir to Syracuse; Sharyn Alfonsi to Georgetown, South Carolina; Ron Claiborne to Oakland; and Bill Weir to Milwaukee. Taking you to our homes and out with the people we see making a difference.”
It appears that the Huffington Post isn’t just upsetting people for its often uncouth and liberal take on the day’s news. Now people are getting irritated with its willingness to reprint other outlet’s content while offering minimal credit.
And so goes the view of former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., author of “The Rules of the Game.” During his remarks at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at London’s City University on Sept. 22, Downie gave his view of “the new news” and offered a harsh critique of the Huffington Post. He explained operations like HuffPo operate on the cheap.
“This follows, in a way, the model of national Internet news aggregators like Huffington Post,” Downie said. “They confine their costs to minimal staffing necessary to operate the websites and edit content.”
The Huffington Post would like to present itself as an oasis of religious tolerance. When they started their Religion section, Arianna Huffington decried that "all too often, when talking about it, we end up talking at each other instead of with each other." Weeks ago, they published Nida Khan lamenting conservative Islamophobia, as "a vocal minority of extremists to capitalize and advance on their bigotry and xenophobia." The writer cited Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, Rick Lazio and Peter King. That was one of many Huff-Po pieces feeling the pain of American Muslims, victims of vicious midterm politics.
But that same Huffington Post doesn't mind promoting "Rome-o-phobia," vile anti-Catholic screeds from bigoted leftists that just happened to enjoy ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul on national TV. Arianna Huffington published Sinead O'Connor's "An Open Letter to the Pope," carrying flagrantly false statements, such as "not one member of The Vatican has publicly displayed an iota of humility over this issue. Instead each person who has spoken has done so most arrogantly and dismissively."
Here's the latest line from O'Connor in the U.K. Guardian, where the headline says "The Vatican is a nest of devils." Or, to be more precise:
He currently works for one of the most liberal magazines in America while contributing to without a doubt the most liberal news network on television.
As such, it only seems fitting that as many of Newsweek's employees flee the transitioning ship, Howard Fineman would go to the unashamedly far-left leaning Huffington Post.
Makes you wonder if he'll still feign any air of objectivity in his new position reported by the New York Times Sunday:
The PBS NewsHour tried to balance a conservative Republican with a liberal Democrat when it interviewed (on two different Thursdays) Dick Armey and Arianna Huffington. Left-wingers complained to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler that NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff failed to press Armey about the Tea Party's funding from corporate billionaires. The far-left media monitors at FAIR wanted Woodruff to bash Armey as a hypocrite who benefits from government entitlements, like Bill Moyers did.
Getler's response was jaw-dropping. He claimed that PBS had failed to achieve balance, since Armey is conservative and Arianna Huffington is a centrist "and her widely viewed website strike me, as a reader, as an equal-opportunity critic. Armey is not. There are plenty of sharp, critical assessments of the Democratic Party and administration on her site." Doesn't it matter that those critics are banging away that Obama isn't socialist enough?
Worse yet, Getler said this should be "remedied" by bringing on another leftist, author Will Bunch of Media Matters for America, because Arianna was clearly not left-wing enough or critical enough of the Tea Party. Getler lamented that PBS has lost left-wing shows like Now and Bill Moyers Journal that are "not in the safe comfortable center."
Since the financial industry collapse two years ago, dishonest media outlets and their employees have continually blamed George W. Bush for the implosion that occurred in the fall of 2008 as well as the resulting recession.
NewsBusters has regularly pushed back on this historically inaccurate premise specifically pointing to two crucial pieces of legislation signed into law by former President Bill Clinton.
On Wednesday, a contributor to the Huffington Post - who is also the editor of the website TruthDig - published an article confirming what NewsBusters has been claiming, doing so in a fashion that must have shocked the economically ignorant proprietor of this perilously liberal online "news" outlet: