While granted the interviewer was quite respectful (as opposed to say - Rush or Sean) Arianna was so incredibly articulate and on message. Impressive.

She has a great blog, www.huffingtonpost.com .

Arianna is a truth seeker.

With thanks (and apologies) to the orignal, here.

sorry, typo-- original

VG, cool graphic.

Thanks for posting!

Woah, cool, VG. Did you do that with Torqued's CA editor?

Amen! It's terrific to know that someone who stands for Freedom of Speech as staunchly as Arianna Huffington can so clearly and articulately state what language ought to be scrutinized. It's rare in this country to find someone who can so unbiasedly approach this subject. It just gauls me that members of the media, as well as elected or appointed officials in these United States have the nerve to use language in any way other than proscribed by the Constitution.

Kira #7

Yes, but I had to get it into an URL first... pointers thanks to Brad's "not-so-secret weapon"... who told me about Photobucket.com

What's wrong with a "Liberal Agenda?"

From the transcript (and emblazoned across the bottom of the snapshot of the CNN Arianna interview) --

KURTZ: Dana Milbank, when Sheehan talks about impeaching Bush, or Israel, or she's not going to pay her taxes, or aligns herself with MoveOn, does she undercut her status as a Gold Star mother, or do journalists not really care that she has a very liberal agenda?

Geez. Anybody who isn't pro-war (according to the media and the 'Cons) IS A LIBERAL AND HAS A LIBERAL AGENDA. There are Republicans who think of themselves as Conservatives, who are against this war.

I think the media looks awfully complicit to WH propaganda by even putting that question on the bottom of the screen.

So --- Cindy Sheehan [wonder how she would actually define her political stance or "agenda?"] has a "Liberal agenda" & is the bu$h "Radical agenda." Because --- bu$h doesn't have a Conservative agenda. He's a member of the Radical Party.

Thanks for the pointer, VG! I'll have to try it. Way coool!

Ratz. Left out a word:

Cindy Sheehan has a "Liberal agenda" & is attacking the bu$h "Radical agenda."

Maybe it's not a "radical agenda".... more like a "right-wing extremist agenda"???

Bernie Sanders interview --("Independent Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Odds on Favorite to Succeed Independent Jim Jeffords in the Senate in 2006")

snippet------

Congressman Sanders: You have the most secretive Administration probably in the history of this country, an Administration which claims to be "conservative," but in fact is right-wing extremist.

more at link-----

Great job by Arianna.

Knock them flat, Arianna....And take Diebold with it!!!!

Knock those Likud bastards down on their ass....

Doug E.

OMG - Bernie Sanders is one of my heroes, right up there with Ray McGovern!!!

Ok --- right-wing extremists works for me.

I think I need a nap! LOL. What was I trying to say in that paragraph, anyway? That's what I get for trying to edit in this little comment box.

I'll try again:

The media is putting labels on people ... indiscriminately. Is Cindy Sheehan a Liberal?

CNN puts the big banner "Liberal Agenda" at the bottom of the screen. But (according to the polls) almost half of the Republicans are against this war!!!

I'm writing CNN to tell them that!

Kira good point! They're all against the war now!!

And CNN also did an unbelievable documentary called ""Dead Wrong"". Everyone must watch it at least three times. Its not perfect no, but it sure is a big beginning to getting underneath the war lies!!!

Doug E.

We have to not rest, but yes I think that Sanders can easily win. I hope we can find a congress person up to Sanders/Jeffords/Leahy standards (I have been a strong Sanders supporter since I first voted for him for mayor)! I am pleased that Dean has endorsed Sanders. For the longest time he has been saying he likes Sanders, but as DNC chairman he cannot endorse a candidate that is not democratic. This endorsment means that the Democratic party is not intending to mount a meaningful candidate against Sanders. There is no meaningful republican opposition. Even our current republican governor only won because the democrats and progressives split the liberal vote.

Funny how little old Vermont (and truth be known my city of Burlington) has been such a thorn in the side of this administration. Makes a fellow proud.

#18 Charles in Vermont

You have a right to be proud!

I hope every one takes a minute or two to read the full interview with Sanders... very enlightening from someone who actually listens to ordinary people.

Huffington Shows Her True Colors and Scripts an Escape Clause for Rove-
And the Ultra Conservative neocon rag -National Review runs with it:

August 1, 2005

Arianna Judges Judy
Could Judy Miller have been the White House’s source?

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: Arianna Huffington has a point.

She reports in the July 27 edition of "The Huffington Post" that in the halls of the New York Times, among the colleagues of imprisoned reporter Judy Miller, a theory is being debated. It boils down to this: Perhaps after Joseph Wilson's notorious op-ed appeared in the Times, Judy called a source (or two) in the intelligence community to find out how and why Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium.

Perhaps her source(s) told her that Wilson got the assignment thanks to his wife, Valerie Plame, who works at CIA HQ in Langley.

Now further suppose that Miller is trying to develop this into a larger story on Wilson and the controversy over the Bush administration's arguments for regime change in Iraq. So she calls people in the White House, Karl Rove, maybe, or Dick Cheney deputy Scooter Libby or someone. (Newsday identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 — two days after Wilson's op-ed appeared, with an "unnamed" government official.)

Judy perhaps says: "My sources tell me that Wilson's wife works at the CIA and that she was the one who recommended that he get the Africa assignment. How does that square with Wilson's claim that Cheney sent him to Niger, and that Cheney received his report and ignored it?"

At this point, whoever in the White House Miller talked with would know about Plame — but not based on their access to classified information.

And he (or she or they) still would not necessarily know that Plame had some sort of undercover status. Judy's source(s) might not have told her that. Indeed, the source(s) might not have known. The source(s) may have become acquainted with Plame at CIA HQ in Langley. Presumably, Plame would not have told such colleagues that she occasionally worked undercover. They'd have no "need to know."

Rove, Libby, or others might have passed on what they learned from Judy to Bob Novak or Matt Cooper or other reporters. Why not? They'd want to tell the truth, to rebut Wilson's false spin that Cheney had sent him to Africa and then had ignored his conclusive report.

They would not be revealing to reporters any facts derived from their access to classified information. And they still wouldn't have any idea they were discussing a CIA secret (or sometimes-sort-of-secret) agent rather than a run-of-the-mill agency analyst.
cont
http://www.nationalrevie.../may/may200508010813.asp

I am really disappointed that the left chose to ignore this -this is a major deal when it comes to seeing justice in our country!

How soon folks forget where her money came from...
check out where the "family's" money goes:
http://tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=253

"With her access to the media, Huffington is putting arguments for change out there. That’s good. But there’s a danger, too. Pro-status quo media are always looking to pad their center-right debates with acceptable alternatives to real progressives. Who is more acceptable than a conservative with lefty support like Huffington?"
http://www.commondreams.org/views/042000-105.htm

if you really want to know more on her-find the book she doesn't want you to read
Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You

Charles in Vermont #18

I have some good friends who live in Burlington! Perchance do you know the Maddison family?

Kira

I looked up the Maddison's, and no I don't know them, but I should. They live about a 1/4 mile from me, and in a neighborhood where I have a number of good friends. (In fact, I think their neighborhood is one of the most pleasant places to live in our area --- after my own neighborhood of course)

Arianna rocks. Kurtz was acting like "hannity lite", interrupting her periodically with "you have no proof of that" comments but she deflected his attempts to sidetrack her and she used the opportunity to drive her point home even more clearly. And she points out that the European press gives a more realistic view of what is really happening in Iraq, which I can confirm, because I spend about half my time in Spain, even CNN International gives a completely different report on Iraq and the world.

That's funny Charles in VT! It's really a small world, isn't it.

I haven't kept up with these folks in too many years, but we were really good friends when we lived close to each other.

I don't know what their political leaning is, but I just can't imagine they could be behind bush --- they've always been so spiritually motivated.

If you want to email me, you could send your email address to Brad & I'll email you back. I need to touch base with them anyway! Thanks for reminding me!!

Arianna rocks????!!!!! Yikes!

Why don't you try and figure out why the National Review is saying Huffington is correct about Rove-then come back and tell us she is so righteous.
Just because she says she supports the antiwar movement, doesn't make her a democrat or a liberal -well..maybe a liberal as in the traditional sense- as in Milton Friedman- or John Roger of the cult of MSIA.
I think her defense of Rove is far too indefensible to let her slide on- just cuz she had a good anti war spin on cnn.
If Rove gets away with this crime, and Arianna had anything to do with it...
*sigh*

How soon people forget...
TIME Domestic
October 3, 1994 Volume 144, No. 14

PUBLIC EYE

SHOULD THE HUFFINGTONS BE STOPPED?

BY MARGARET CARLSON
...
More troubling are criticisms of Arianna's past involvement with John-Roger, a cult operator whose credibility has been challenged by an investigative series in the Los Angeles Times and charges by staff members who have left in disgust. In 1974 she began a spiritual quest that led her to Roger Hinkins, a former schoolteacher who assumed the name John-Roger in the early '70s after the "Mystical Traveler Consciousness" entered him after a kidney-stone operation. The Cult Awareness Network classifies John-Roger's Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness as "destructive," its most damning category. Author Peter McWilliams, a former colleague of John-Roger's, has detailed in his investigative book about cults, several instances of John-Roger's taking sexual advantage of teenage male acolytes, harassing followers who quit and using tax-exempt church donations to live luxuriously. Through a spokesperson John-Roger refused to comment. Arianna became a "Minister of Light" in MSIA, whose followers accept John-Roger as a personal savior. She says the charges all stem from disgruntled employees and have yet to be proved in court. She also says she has not actively participated for eight years, or given money. But MSIA records show that she has given $35,000 since 1990. Huffington denied in a radio interview that his wife was ever a minister. Arianna calmly admits to the connection. "John-Roger is my friend, and he is only one of many people whose philosophies I have studied." But her latest book, The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul, is filled with his New Age bromides, well meaning, probably harmless, but not the stuff of governing.

She describes as "hit pieces" articles about her ministering to affluent John-Roger believers in Beverly Hills, and she doesn't think she should have to answer questions about her private life. In the next breath, however, she says the Clintons' reluctance to turn over all their records suggests "they have something to hide." At the same time, the Huffingtons stubbornly refuse to release their own tax returns.

more here:
http://web.archive.org/w...03/941003.publiceye.html

There's a lot more dirt where that came from.

What rocks is that Arianna was interviewed and made some very excellent points about the failure of the media to call attention to the lies & sping from bush & cabinet members.

That's the important thing right now to me.

typo - spin // not sping.

Personally, I would prefer to see the criminals locked up rather than some good anti war "spin" ...
If someone (namely Huffington) from the left says that Rove might actually be victim of Judith Miller- rather than the other way around...doesn't leave much room for the left to demand justice.

Funny thing happened on my Judy/Arianna googling...
found a completely conservative site give some interesting history on Miller.

The future Arianna Huffington also became a disciple of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose cult practiced open sexual intercourse among its members, and with its leader, as a central sacrament of their faith.

This cult later moved to America’s West Coast and attempted to take over an Oregon town. Bhagwan devotees were directed to purchase what eventually became 139 white Rolls Royces for their leader. As Judith Miller and two other New York Times investigative reporters recounted in their 2001 book Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (Simon & Schuster), the Rajneesh cult spread potentially-lethal Salmonella bacteria in this town. Rajneesh cult members did this as a way of infecting and incapacitating town residents on election day so that cult voters could win control of the local government. The Bhagwan died in 1990.

“It was like knowing there was another dimension to life and that I wanted to experience it, knowing that nothing else mattered as much,” Huffington later told Stephanie Mansfield of the Washington Post about this time of her life. “It took me over completely.”

But -alas...that was some silly little neocon ramble-I had to see was this true???!!

Sure enough- Judith Miller did write a rather inflammatory book on biological weapons-and she along with her co-authors did cover the Rajneesh's election day poisoning:

NARRATOR: In fact, small-scale biological attacks are the only ones that have worked so far.

RICHARD ENGELBERG: In our book research, we discovered exactly one terrorist group, uh, the Rajneeshis who carried out a successful terrorist attack using germs in Oregon.

JACK MCGEORGE: They were the followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. There was quite a lot of them. It was over 10,000 of these folks had gathered together and settled on a ranch that they had purchased. Their goal was to take and incorporate the ranch as a city. They could count votes ahead of time, as well as any politician, and it didn't look good for them apparently.

NARRATOR: Afraid they would lose the election, some Rajneeshees tried to make townspeople too sick to vote against them.

MA ANAND SHEELA: If they want to show that bigotry, they're going to pay for it.

STEPHEN ENGELBERG: They used Salmonella to poison a salad bar and got seven hundred people sick, which is pretty good. I mean if they had used a worse germ, they would have gotten people dead.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/...pts/2815bioterror60.html

But that doesn't necessarily prove that Arianna had a vendetta against Miller.

So- I looked to see was it true that she was involved in the cult of the Bhagwan Rajneesh as well?

Well- to my surprise the only real legitimate sources that I could locate were obituaries for Bernard Levin.
It seems that like her ex-husband Michael, Arianna lured Levin into the MSIA cult-but not before doing a stint with the Rajneesh.
read Levin's Obit for yourself:
http://politics.guardian...y/0,1441,1279859,00.html

In defense of Rove for the honor of the Rajneesh -could it really be?
Strange bedfellows!

Too bad the left is so easily beguiled.

Torqued,

This is a present for you.

All,

Arianna had some pieces involving Cindy Sheehan. There were some people posting comments who said she was wrong, had no right to speak out . . . [blah, blah].

Well, I did some checking on the background of one of the posters who were condemning Cindy on Arianna's site. Short story: Those who condemn Cindy are hypocrites. Here's one example.

do you guys get paid to push "huffington's post" here?
i hear there is boucoup dinero there (aol time warner $$)
if you're not yet on their payroll, you should make them an offer- they have plenty to spread around.
or why not have them buy some ads here so at least they will support those that have worked their own way up.

found a wickedly sarcastic LA Weekly article on aol's Ken Lerer and Drudge's webmaster working behind the scenes of Huffington Post
here

who woulda thunk it-drudge's own pulling the strings of huffington's domain.

Yay, JAKDJIL, that's life. Gotta learn to separate the wheat from the chaff (i.e. pick the truth out of any place you can find it.) That's called being smart.