hmmm Is that read or read? When a Corporation buys out a somewhat progressive site, the propaganda will gradually over time change to shape the news for mass consumption.

btw I am an immigrant from HP. Waves at everyone.

AOL + Huffington Post = lame. If Huffington Post wasn’t lame enough all by itself, it will soon be the lamest of the lamiest lamers once it becomes an integral piece of AOL.

David I am with you that this can be a showing of the progressive flag. But I am a cockeyed optimist. My guess is HyffPo’s good reporting staff will not stay if they experience pressure to corporatize their perspectives.

I probably have a very unusual view of things, but pretty much everything I read on Huffington Post comes from their original reporting wing,

Uh, not so unusual, unless I miss my guess. I’ve been doing same for ages, & appreciating the solid doses of original content, as I try to tolerate the apparently helpful, albeit often annoyingly in-yer-face “fluff”, for its drawing power. sigh.

But I be’s a mere retired subsistence farmer/hausfrau. oh. wait. retired??? NOT!

This sounds like a big dose of good news.

says she with a tentative “WHOOP!” of hopeful thots…

Sounds like STFU to me.

Welcome JamesR.

I enjoy reading HuffPo but I gave up trying to comment there long ago– they never published a single one of my comments.

But I think they get the message out to a much broader audience than the more hard core liberal blogs like Fire Dog Lake, Digby and Eschaton. And you can just skip the stores about Snooki, so I have no problem with the lame articles.

this can be a showing of the progressive flag

Have you ever read any comments on AOL? This drives a stake into the heart of HuffPo, which was getting lamer by the day anyway.

It’s good for progressive media in general to see a business model thriving, and while there are concerns about a general flattening of the online space that’s already happening, and this at least plants a flag on the left side. I expect them only to expand and wish them the best of luck.

Dude, they were paying the like of Bob Cesca before this happened. Within six months, Bob Cesca is about as far left as will be tolerated.

For all it’s flaws, at least there were few worthwhile things on HuffPo. Now all of that is going away. Off my bookmarks, methinks.

Oh yeah, and another thing I like about HuffPo is they occasionally cater to the anti-vaccine nutballs and that always brings out the whack jobs in the comments. I really like reading those– I guess because it makes me feel superior.

Wouldn’t exactly call Howard Fineman solid doses of “original content”. ;)

oops! sorry David & JamesR. please see fit to trade quips ‘n quotes at will. Lame, we’re not, so-&-so szie-squat, beggin’ yer pardon. *pfft*

It always seemed to me that HP was aimed at the People Magazine demographic, and that any progressive content was just a fluke.

I don’t think the change will make it much worse than it already is.

It’s a helluva lot of money…methinks someone wants to control content and manipulate opinion.

Thank you Rieze. Tips hat. Agree with the “TMZ like” content.

Well, I never read HuffPoo before & I certainly won’t one. One more corp media. Just what we need. /s

oooh You are a fiesty one eh?

Nope! No more than you. Let’s join hands and work towards perfection, whilst never never never claiming to have achieved same.

p. e. a. c. e.

Turning a $1 million investment into a $315 million payoff in six years isn’t too shabby.

about as feisty as you are cute. phew.

Awwww And snarky too. We should get along just fine.

You’ve got fail!

snicker I think so.

Hi eCAHN! Wouldn’t you at least admit using their link to click twd an original product of interest, once in a long while? Gimme a break. NYT doesn’t require cookies if I dance over that-a-way directly from the Lake. I’m just lazy enuf to like that.

And yes, I do keep a wary eye out for scam/humbuggers. Always! I’m not too shy to use someone else’s muscle to help move molehills into better alignment so-as to learn more about my world.

It goes to show you how firm Arianna stands on her work and views.

She will jiggle, wiggle, and melt if enough money is thrown at her.

Dave, thanks very much for the analysis.

Does this mean we no longer have to listen to Arianna bloviate on talk shows? I hope she disappears with her millions.

Whatever happened to her ex-husband BTW?

Ding, ding, and a ding.

He probably ran away as fast as he could.

yeah! We gots a pretty decent fugue going already…

Theme 1, CHECK

Theme 2, CHECK

Variations? anyone?

oh well….

skip a few pages n’ we’ll get back to that.

So will this deal make the “moderator” policy more aggressive, less aggressive, or will it have no major effect? It’s already pretty much out of control, but I’m sure it could get worse…

Mostly, I just read at HuffPost and at FDL. The political reporters at HuffPost, who are mentored by Dan Froomkin (who was let go by the Washington Post), are pretty darn good.

And the thinking and critical analysis at FDL suits me, as well.

Occasionally, I stop by Salon or TPM, but not as often as I once did.

Of course, if AOL changes HuffPost to more propaganda-like reading, then I’ll have to rethink where I will get my news.

Here ya go…

I think the only time I’ve ever been on Huff is when there’s a link from FDL to a story of interest. Sometimes SD links to their animal pics of the week, but I don’t even do that most of the time.

It’s like going to a discount store. Too disgusting and time consuming to sift thru piles of dreck to find something worthwhile.

I could understand her trying to link up with something bigger, but a sell out and then calling it partnership to AOL is certainly not standing your ground.

But then again, Ariannia sways back and forth like tree branches in a storm.

translation: you’re jealous?!?

Not at all. I don’t give a rat’s ass what she does or gets. Just saying, she showed her hand.

Thanks. (I think.) *g*

She’s great friends with Breitbart. Enough said. She’s a wiener partayer who pretends to be progressive..ex-Repub…her “blog” makes the wealthy think they are being activists…Ugh.

smirk Do they have a fave button here? heh

The site has had some decent coverage on the bank criminals, including carrying pieces by William Black, etal. Given the amount of traffic, I see that as a good thing. Let’s hope that sort of coverage continues, even expands. I want to see some bankers frog-marching, and the only possibility of that happening (however slight) is by enough people getting pissed off about the wreckage they’ve caused. More traffic, more people.

Right. Like I said, she swings like branches in the storm. She can stand by center right and far right when it furthers her need. She has no scruples and rarely stands firm for beliefs of her followers online.

You must be new here at the Lake. Do you think we should have fav buttons?

How many clicks do those stories get vs. the dreck stories?

You are probably right. I have loathed AOL since I got that first CD in the mail. Just trying to start out the week with a modicum of optimism. :-)

Let’s face it. AOL kills everything it touches, but Huffington Post was already on a down hill slide, becoming more and more like an online tabloid with increasing levels of political censorship. I’m all against people being abusive on line, but that’s different than censoring political views you or some moderator doesn’t like. I think there will be a lot of people like me migrating to other sites where the dialogue and discussion are more open and free.

Agree.

It was sarcasm. Did I “fail”?

One man’s garbage is another man’s treasures. Oh, yeah. Only those of us at the bottom of the barrel say that. I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable.

No, you didn’t fail…;)

Also don’t hesitate to ask the money question, Who Made Bank On The Huffington Post Acquisition ? (links to “Here’s Who Made Bank On The Huffington Post Acquisition,”
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Feb. 7, 2011, 9:12 AM):

The obvious first answer is Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, co-founders of the company.

But there were also plenty of investors in the company, including:

* Huffington, Lerer, friends and family, who provided the company’s $3 million seed round.

* Softbank Capital, Greycroft Partners and Bob Pittman, who put in $10 million over two rounds of VC. Softbank is a big venture firm that was an early investor in Yahoo and invests in social media companies like Paper.li. Softbank Partner Eric Hippeau went on to become Huffington Post’s CEO up until the acquisition. Greycroft was founded by private equity god Alan Patricof. And Bob Pittman founded MTV and invests in plenty of media companies.

* Oak Investment Partners led the company’s last round, $25 million at a reported $100 million post-money valuation. That means Oak owned around 25% of the company and did a quick 3X on their money — not bad. Interestingly, Oak was also a big investor in another huge and sometimes controversial online media company, Demand Media.

Because we don’t know the valuations of the earlier rounds, and how Huffington and Lerer split the pie, it’s hard to know exactly who made what. But with four rounds of financing it’s probably safe to say investors collectively owned over half of the company with the rest split between employees and early founders.

Also, just to hit the highlights, no one I knew that could use Kermit ever want to pay to use an oversized Bulletin Board called AOL especially with the constant overselling of services s.t. users could not get the dial-in access. This was a constant source of class action suits. Ans who enjoyed being data-mined by them over in Dulles?

I don’t believe I’ve seen this theory floated yet this morning. I heard rumor that Keith Olberman was going to start some sort of Hufftypepost blog. Maybe he is. That would allow for Arianna to move more to the Puff Post. Thoughts?

Emptywheel has a fresh cross-post up: Hillary Can’t Decide Whether to Impose Democracy or Not

“early founders”? Where have I recently heard that?

Yeah, I was there off and on since 2005. It was exciting at the beginning, but became progressively worse as the advertising content went up as well as the moderation. It will soon become even more so, if that’s possible.

Interesting thought.

Yeah. HuffPo’s science and medicine coverage is highly, shall we be kind, ‘flawed’. Full of pseudoscience and woo, signifying nothing, but misleading many low-information readers. I suspect ‘Entertainment Tonight’ has better science coverage.

I agree with you most of the way. I’ve never bothered with the HP comment threads, either to read or to add. At HP, I absolutely do NOT care one whit what the readers think. At the Lake, I DO. That’s where I pay attention to the residents.

I find the chaff at HP, annoying as it can be, is fairly easy to pass through without much effort. I also don’t use most of the links.

But HP is truly handy for allowing me to slide right into NYT and other sometimes haltingly accessible sites w/o cookies, and for cutting right to original content for a bunch of things I might not spot, would have missed. Whether it be news out of the San Diego Zoo, or Alexandria or Karo off across the big ponds. In essence, I use the big HP net to make sure I didn’t become sidetracked too quickly and miss something on my daily trip to the Lake.

Yes. The Lake itself is harder for me to navigate now than it used to be. But it’s so valuable! the insight and wisdom shared here is incredibly compelling, but much more complicated in its multilevel approaches to coping with today’s world.

Because of that, I find HP more useful now than I used to, by using it as a “location” beacon. Does that make any sense?

Carry on!

I thought so too, why I mentioned it. Ha. Aren’t I being humble this am?
Thanks, LS. Weather’s gorgeous here today, I might have to go look for some wild flowers to photograph. Wish you were here and in the pix. How’s life at the ranch?

I rarely read HuffPuff, albeit there is some good reporting there. I stay far away from the comments as I find them pretty useless. Comments on AOL, however, make the comments on HuffPuff look erudite, witty, sophisticated, thoughtful and informed.

Hence, my expectation is a further downward slide for HuffPuff. I cannot imagine the corporate overlords, having bought off Huffington for her site, will *permit* it to regularly post decent articles that are actually, oh I don’t know, truthful and somewhat more left of center than what’s “acceptable” to the elites.

Just saying…

so sorry. i tease too much. hope you’re not grievously wounded. *hanging head in shame*

Hey demi!

cool. stay tuned, I guess. ;->

Dreck = One Gazillion. Important stories = Approximately seven, give or take a few.

Oh for dawG’s sake, Mary Cheney (see “AOL hires daughter of VP Cheney,” CNET.com, Oct. 25, 2005) worked there folks. { an amusing search } Besides of note is AOL’s crappy track record with employees.

This means there will an exponentially greater amount of ‘stories’ that feature the quitter and her kin folk. josh marshall will have to double down on posts devoted to her. Two places to avoid.

Yesterday was in the 70′s! We went out driving in the Hill Country and ate out at a nice outdoor cafe…ah…it has been so long..cabin fever, but the ranch is great and stuff is coming up..Spring is almost here..maybe it actually is here…:)

LOL

Hey, Adiegirl. Still up to your ways, are ya? Hope all is well.

Hey. I’m on antihistamines as we speak. *g* And, vaht I vond to know is dis. Vy, oh Vy, must ve have de vinds vehn der’s so much pollen?

I can’t stand wind…good thing you don’t get cedar fever…the trees here literally explode with pollen. I used to get ze allergies in the autumn, but nose more.

I expect them only to expand and wish them the best of luck.

Really? Despite the fact that everything AOL has ever touched has turned to crap? Well I guess everybody’s entitled to unjustified optimism at times.

I vas trying to sound like Arianna, Dahling. Did I?
It’s funny how we can grow in to and out of allergies.

Yes you did daaahling!

:)

Anybody else get gigantic letters on the comments of EW’s Clinton post?

I am baffled that AOL is still even in business. What service is it that they actually provide again?

Right? It’s like paying twice to access the internet. Do people even still use dial up?

Maybe they are gonna make people pay to access Huffpo.

…but you can get updates for the writers there that you like. I get them for Dan Froomkin, Sam Stein, and Ryan Grim, all political reporters, as well as Nashirien Nasiripour, a business reporter.

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Can you imagine putting up a paywall for Huffington Post? Yeah. I’m sure that will be at least as successful as a peanut butter tennis shoe.

OT– DDay you’ve probably already seen this:

“Coming Soon: A 300-Percent Increase in Foreclosures,” (Tim Cavanaugh, February 3, 2011)

“The revolution in Tunisia first; now Egypt and soon in Serbia are not about religion or dictators or police states“ (Feb. 7, 2011)

I’ve never heard that one before. But, if there are chocolate laces, it might not be such a bad thing after all.

thot of that. if they do, then i won’t. i’ll have company.

That’s because I just made it up and indeed, they would be a much more successful snack than sports wear. :)

Hello Firedoglake users! I am an escapee from Huffington post now that Arianna Huffington has sold out. Thanks to Firedoglake for a new home.

Destroying every company and good idea that they touch, that’s what “service” they provide.

I’ve been posting on HP for years and get into some pretty good stuff over there. this merger leaves me cold however.
The “moderation” had gotten so extreme already my best comment were always banned before they were put up, or, they’d put them up once they were so far down in the queue nobody read them. You have to be VERY careful not to criticize Dear Leader over there too.
It’s just a step to riiiiiiighhht.
I noticed at first during the Egyptian protest any body could post then, everything was moderated. It got very frustrating over the last year.
So, I’m sorry Arianna went for the dough instead of the glow. but I doubt I’ll be going there much anymore. I’ve come to prefer Alternet and, of course here much more as these sites reflect my leanings.
Arianna: once a republican, always a republican

Agreed. Giving folks such as the dubious Dr. Mercola a platform is serving the public poorly, to say the least.

what WOULD the Lake do without our scintillating minds?!

hope you’re doing well also.

don’t talk chocolate. i just lost another lb. today, but still not skinny.

must go do exercises with our puddy cat. he does his own pushups & ab crunches, flopping around like… the sleek 18 lb. monster he’s become. we both could use the work, groan…

Wek-come!

This comment from over at Steve Benen’s made me smile!

Let’s see: marry a far right wingnut millionaire, push him to run for congress so you can hobnob with Newt and Dick Armey and Tom Delay, divorce him when he loses and take his money, recast yourself as a liberal so you don’t have to compete with Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham as designated blond bomb-thrower, use ex-hubby’s money to start a website copied after DKos and TPM and then sell out to corporate media. Am I being too cynical here?
Posted by: Th on February 7, 2011 at 8:46 AM

Followed by another commenter:

Let’s see: marry a far right wingnut millionaire, push him to run for congress…

*furiously takes notes*

–Posted by: Todd for VT House on February 7, 2011 at 9:39 AM

I am inclined to agree. This was the last straw for me and HP,

Nice to to see another HP escapee. This merger was the last straw.

I think AOL is latching onto HP becasue they are a sinking ship…but they’re going to take HP down with them.Who uses AOL anymore?
They must have spent their last cookies on the merger

Welcome. Good for you!

Hahahaha

Thanks!

You are well come. :)

Zsa-zsa on steroids.

Thank you. I have no intention of posting on a mega-corp owned “progressive” blog. HP has been going down hill for some time, and this is the final blow. If AOL bought HP based on their current readership, they are in for a real shock. Expect defections in droves.

Yep. I didn’t know they had 315 million. Musta been left over from the Time Warner settlement.

Especially now that she has $300 plus million to play the part with, courtesy of selling her readers down the river. Never trust a “former” Republican.

A few today already…

Well, I was sort of dividing my time between the sites anyway so I knew where to go. It got so in the last year that I’d have to check other sources for everything HP put out and many times found a lot of it was very poorly written, slanted or otherwise had things left out.
The addition of the Poltico crew to the moderating staff really changed things about a year or so ago.
Plus the badges were so chintzy. and the fan thing…but the badges really turned me off

The Exodus has begun! ;)

LOL!

That’s just something us poor people say :(

Once a…always a……

Yeah, but it REALLY sucks to be poor AND miserable

Welcome sysaphean and JamesR!!

The “moderation” had gotten so extreme already my best comment were always banned before they were put up, or, they’d put them up once they were so far down in the queue nobody read them. You have to be VERY careful not to criticize Dear Leader over there too.
It’s just a step to riiiiiiighhht.

Yep. There is no rational pattern whatsoever to the “moderation” over there which made me stop commenting there in December of 2009. Those stupid badges seem to be an end unto themselves and the user moderator system is biased and ripe for abuse. Couple that with the fact that there are only two kinds of commentators who are welcome there and they are either extreme teabaggers or veal pen cheerleaders and the whole site is just out of control as far as comments go. I can’t imagine a merger with AOL making any of that better. The content has gone downhill too. They focus on slow motion train wrecks to the exclusion of almost everything else. When was the last day they didn’t have several items on Palin and their celebrity trainwreck de jour?

Well, I guess it depends on what makes you miserable.

Should make Deepak Chopra Democrats devotees happy.

Thanks MsMolly.

I have already noticed this. HP was getting too lame anyway, and had been going down hill with “fluff” stories for a while.

HuffPo refugees will find here that the moderation system is evenly and fairly applied and they actually adhere to the written policy. FDL moderators are the best I’ve found on the web anywhere.
On edit: Plus there is the handy edit system here that let’s one fix one’s typos. :)

Seconded…without a doubt!

Agreed. I was given a moderator 1 badge (big deal). But those with Mod 2 badges, who could delete posts, not just flag them, abused their authority regularly. Always thought the “badge” think was stupid. Now I am free of HP nonsense! And it is a freeing feeling, believe me.

Expect it to grow to a flood. HP had been going downhill a while, and this was the last straw. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Indeed.

But those with Mod 2 badges, who could delete posts, not just flag them, abused their authority regularly.

And nothing ever happens to them for abusing it. Criticism of moderators is just not allowed there. At all. Ever. It’s bullshit and I got tired of trying to figure out how to comment so whatever I said didn’t automatically go into moderation. Let the right wing trolls have it. It will give the yahoo trolls some variety.
(Oh yeah, we can say stuff like “bullshit” here too)

Thank you.

Badges?! We don’t need no steenking badges!

Three things the mawds at hp censored me for today.

1. I hope you got your money up front daahling. Remember what happened to Ted Turner and CNN.

2. Doctor?….Doctor?………….Doctor!!

Dr. JamesR.(looks at watch) “Time of death. 12:01am February seventh, two thousand eleven”.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEqUyNaSdvg

Geez, talk about thin skinned.

Agreed. It often irritated me that HP so heavily moderated comments that it made any meaningful debate impossible.

LMAO! It was only a matter of time… XD

Now that I have fled HP, I too am relieved to not have those ridiculous badges and bozo buttons next to my posts.

I almost sought out a youtube but thought better of it.

Well, I guess we now know how AOL will accomplish their plan for “[the number of] ‘pieces of content’ per month to rise to 55,000 from 33,000; and cost per piece to fall to $84 from $99;”….

…buy a company that doesn’t pay it’s content-producers anything! Brilliant!

From a business standpoint, I guess it makes sense. But, damn if this doesn’t solidify HP as the China of media empire employers.

Well, welcome. No bozo buttons here. Although most of us ARE bozos.

B ul l sh it? Really? tehe

From a business standpoint, I guess it makes sense. But, damn if this doesn’t solidify HP as the China of media empire employers.

HuffPo China™ has a nice ring… I think because it contains lead.

They don’t want debate. They want sycophantic head nodding on one side and venomous, eliminationist rhetoric from the other side. They’re only interested in argument, not discussion.

But you shouldn’t say fuck, fuck no!

Those were some of the most irritating posts that were often heavily moderated to the point of the ridiculous. Particularly articles from nefarious Dr. Mercola, a complete quack.

It’s much easier to post without resorting to that kind of bullshit either. Well come indeed JamesR.

Thanks.

Wasn’t that a South Park song? “…we shouldn’t say fuck, fuck no….”

Yes. Again, I resisted seeking out a youtube for it.

Agreed. Tired of being used by HP to increase their ad revenues. AOL just bought a white elephant. HP’s readership will plummet, I have no doubt.

Not to mention 30 percent more carcinogens…

I find myself wondering how many of the 400 who contributed their work to HP for free will share in any of the bounty Aol paid for the site?

my take? Sell out.

It’s the American Way.

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I don’t mind looking for it. And here it is!

Read HuffPo™! It’s like smoking a cigarette, but even LESS enjoyable!

Add an NSFW to that bad boy.

Hadn’t seen this in the comments yet, but isn’t Jane good friends with Arianna?

Yes, welcome to you both. There are also expats from Dkos too.

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

That’d be the best way to asphyxiate I can think of, short of wrapping duct tape around your face and head.

Funny moment I recall from the earliest days of the Colbert Report. AH was the guest and inviting Stephen to blog on HP.

AH: “Join us, Stephen. Come into the light.” She puts her hand on Stephen’s.

SC: “Your touch burns me.”

Arianna Huffington is as phony as her Zsa Zsa Gabor accent.

Yep. Personally I’m an Americablog ex pat but as that happened so very long ago, it’s really pretty meaningless now.

Much obliged dosiso.

Gets a bit huffy. Thank you! ;)

Hey, that’s DosiDO, as in doe a deer, a female deer. As in dough, what drives AH to do what she does…:P

Oops! Yep, you’re right. My 144 isn’t safe for work!

If Huffpo’s numbers were as good as claimed, why did they sell now?

I read they claimed to be on track for $100 mill in revenue in 2012.

I smell a rat.

Badges…how corny is that…Do they make people pledge allegiance to bullshit?

How much of Huffpo does Arianna actually own? Wasn’t the original owner some dude? I don’t think that she bought him out.

fa, as is a long long way to run….> runs

My aplogies dosiDo.

This looks like a sellout in every sense.

Ellen Brown also wrote a very good article on the economic roots of the protests in Tunisia and Egypt:

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/egyptian_tinderbox.php

Bwahahaha. Arianna Huffington shows her true corporate colors once again! She jumped on the prog/lib bandwagon when Bush was Prez because she saw that you could make money at it. That’s the bottom line with that gold digger and her “Oh my look at these boobs” website featuring the latest info on Jennifer Anniston and Michelle Obama’s fashion of the week. Just think, now she’ll have even more time to hear herself sound knowledgeable on the MSM!!

Just hearing the acronym “AOL” makes me cringe.

Would expect comments to degrade from over-moderated nonsense to “A/S/L???” chatroom nonsense.

Ah well.

M’eh. Like I said. Let the right wingers have it. They can spend the tie congratulating each other and turning it into another Town Hall.

Goodbye Huffington Post, hello firedoglake!

-Former regular hp reader

Welcome!

And who doesn’t love the Gorillaz?

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
George Washington

You are welcome. :)

You lucky thing. Yesterday, I was shoveling snow so deep, I am beginning to think I live in a walled city.

Yeah! Another HP refugee. Welcome. I just signed up here today after being on HP for years. So long HP !

And even fewer “former” Republicans can resist the call of filthy lucre.

I didn’t even know AOL had that kind of cash on hand. I guess someone on the right wanted HP pretty darn bad, and that’s too bad.

Well, my bookmark for HP has been replaced by FDL, and here’s where most of the people I know from HP are coming so howdy all!

I’m very disappointed in Ms. Huffington.

I’m very disappointed in Ms. Huffington.

I’m not. Her governing philosophy has always been money and profit. To be disappointed, I would have had to expect better things from her.

Hello and Welcome, from one HP refugee to another. Just deleted my account and said so long to my HP friends and fans and urged them to do the same.

Let’s see, Arianna Huffington dated Jerry Brown in the 70′s. He wouldn’t marry her so she embraced the Reagan era and befriended Ann Getty, who introduced her to Michael Huffington, a closet-case from Texas. Ann offered to pay for Arianna’s wedding dinner, thinking that the cost would be somewhere in the order of $10,000. Arianna racked up a bill for $100,000 and had it sent to Ann. Needless to say they did not talk for years.

Then Arianna wrote(2)biographies that earn her praise. One on soprano Maria Callas and one on Pablo Picasso. She quietly settles, out of court, two major plagarism lawsuits, when it turns out that she garnerd most if not all of her information from 2 academics who were in the process of writing their own books on the subjects.

Arianna spends the entire 1990′s shilling for the right on shows like the now defunct “Politically Incorrect”, and with a straight face tells everyone, who will listen, that the country in 1996 must elect Bob Dole.

She and her husband divorce when he comes out, and she gets a $25million settlement. She then, in 2000 decides to throw her support behind then-retired Senator Bill Bradley, then the king, soon to be usurped in this category by Obama, as the King of campaign contribution “bundling” and does nothing but disparage Al Gore in his run.

She then licked her finger and felt the tide winds of dissent during the GW Bush years and re-packages herself as a “progressive”, a descriptive never before used by us die-hard FDR liberals, but is the cover used by Libertarians who have now infiltrated the Democratic brand.

Anyone who was old enough and had the sense of a potted plant knew it was never about anything other than what would get Arianna ahead!

OK. I’m going out on a limb here…..but this merger happened so fast after the Egyptian protests when people were quoting Al Jazeera ( and other sources) and exposing the lies of the corporate media.
I’d notice the TEEVEE coverage was changing day to day as people were getting hip to what was really going on.
Just sayin’
Gotta go

More in “Okay, Here’s The Deal With The AOL-Huffington Post Deal…,” (Henry Blodget, Feb. 7, 2011, 11:45 AM) plus comments by Max Keiser.

Thanks!

I think Serbia is a tip off to watch Eastern Europe more closely. See “Ukraine: corruption festers,”
February 7, 2011, 10:42 am, by Roman Olearchyk) and Moldavia.

“Moldovan women fear entrapment in sex trade – 07 Feb 09” (Al Jazeera English)

I assume it’s already begun. It took me about two minutes to kill my user account.

I figure it gives me more time to spend at FDL!

Well, Kassandra, mergers DO take time to pull together. They usually involve very long discussions about terms, due diligence procedures and a bunch of other stuff I know nothing about. So yeah, you are out on a limb there, sorry to say.

As much as I love to bash AH, I do have to give her some credit for helping the blogging community establish itself. Not full credit, but some.

I closed my account at huffpo this morning after having one there since 05. Huffpo changed dramatically over the years and made it a shear waste of time searching for liberal/progressive viewpoints. I opened an account here at FDL the summer of 09, when I discovered the quality of news concerning the HCR debate and the quality of comments from FDL members. Huffpo is so heavily moderated now and is so infested with trolls that it is barely tolerable. FDL is where I’ll be visiting for my news fix from now on!

Marcos needs to learn from this: if you whore yourself to the oligarchy, get paid! Or at least get a cush job like Nate Silver.

No. They had to have already negotiated this by Q4 2010. When the mass or consumer markets (that’s us in the eyes of the US lame_steam media [a public face of the banksters]) get wind of it’s a done deal down to the operational level. The transition team had already been deployed to make sure.

Watch when key staff do things like leave (see “Whoa: Glenn Beck Hires Former Huffington Post CEO,” January 5, 2011 – Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck Radio Program) … tells you somethings’ in the works. Also, corporate identifies such people as assets and trades them like baseball cards. Once an asset is black-marked, no more corporate jobs for them. It’s also prudent to look for blackmail or “control fraud” issues regarding the assets still retained. So, yeah, “corporate” is not your friend.

“Technologic” by Daft Punk

As someone who had the misfortune to live in Michael Huffington’s District and had my own personal brush with Arianna before he even announced he was running—-What eurogirl said!
The only thing to add is that Arianna was happy to be a conservative while Bill Maher had Politically Incorrect and put her on the air constantly. When he was kicked off for being politically incorrect, she found that the conservatives wouldn’t put her on television, she reinvented herself as a liberal and created Huffington Post.
Arianna is an opportunist-end of story!

When some commenters bemoaned the lousy aim of the bombers who tried to nail Cheney in Afghanistan, Ariana couldn’t get to a mic fast enough to tell everyone who would listen that the comments had been deleted. That’s when she tipped her hand – in every forum that would let her do so.

She had a perfect right to do that, of course; I had a perfect right to unsubscribe, never post there again, and (except for following links) quit visiting the site – which I promptly did.

She simply found another way to exploit idealistic progressives – and vastly increase her fortune thereby.

{ Mod-zilla many thanks with virtual offering of Quality Collection Shinsei eiju }

Hi guys.

I guess this will now be my new home.
Between the totalitarian(ish) moderators and now this AOL deal, it looks as if there is a systematic attempt to silence the left.

Well, until the Koch Brothers decide to buy this place, i’ll be posting here for the duration.

AOL + HuffPo = ALPO

HuffPo is down…No more posts that don’t toe the party line. No more criticizing corporate America…bye HuffPo…we hardly knew ya!

Can you imagine putting up a paywall for Huffington Post? Yeah. I’m sure that will be at least as successful as a peanut butter tennis shoe.

Peg, you missed your calling. Shoulda come to Hollywood and been a joke writer for Carson, Leno, etc.

must go do exercises with our puddy cat

Hey, it’s puddy tat.

Now, get back to those ab crunches.

AOL + HuffPo = ALPO

That’s good work. A new internet acronym is born.

It will wave nothing progressive. HuffPo’s original news reporting wasn’t always that progressive. Besides (and ultimate note on this to David) what’s so progressive about hiring a bunch of serfs? Incidentally, that’s exactly why AOL wanted HuffPost — a bunch of serf writers to help grind out the MASSIVE SEO-gaming spree that’s just around the corner. http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2011/02/aol-buying-huffpost-for-315m-ugh.html

This will be a death dive for HP. They are driving themselves into the ditch. Posting takes soooooooooooooooooooo long on HP that they are killing your post either way. It used to be bang on and you could carry on a debate of sorts…not anymore.Its not what it was[HP] and now she[Huffington] is taking on more issues with red neck ass holes at AOL. Lots have dived into the dumpster already because of the sale. Once you forget what got you where you are at[core values]your done.