Huffington’s new bag: Investigative Journalism?

Here is the announcement from her site. I’ve added some editorials along the way.

I’m delighted that today we [and by ‘we’ I mean my flunkys] are launching a new venture — The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. This nonprofit Fund [which, fortunately, doesn’t mean we can’t make money, it just means we don’t pay income taxes] will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism [well, within an ideological framework, of course] created by both [crack] staff reporters and [flaky] freelance writers. As the newspaper industry continues to contract [that sounds nicer than “deep six,” don’t you think?], one of the most commonly voiced fears [of the Left] is that investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback [is that even a word, oh well, it is now]. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams [so I hope to be able to hire them for peanuts]. Yet, given the multiple crises we are living through [caused all by, oh, I can’t even say his name…Bush], investigative journalism is all the more important [in assisting Democrats’ attainment of absolute power]. As a result, all who recognize the indispensable role good journalism [read: Left leaning] plays in our democracy [snicker] are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media [or at least until Nancy figures out a way to bail them out]. For too long [since Fox news and that deplorable Sean Hannity], whether it’s coverage of the war in Iraq or the economic meltdown, we’ve had too many autopsies and not enough biopsies [no, I’m not sure what that means either, but it sounds intelligent]. The HuffFund [I made that up, isn’t it wonderful? I mean, it just came to me in the middle of the night, like, like it was handed to me by an angel] is our attempt to change this [so hand over your wallet you cheap bastard, Geithner won’t let me use TARP funds for this – even after all I’ve done for His Highness, and I won’t dare risk my own money].

Read Full Post »

There is hope yet for Arianna Huffington!

Luke Skywalker believed in there was good in his father. Oh, he and Vader fought, but Luke’s belief kept him from killing the fearsome, dark Jedi Knight. Near the end of the final Star Wars movie, Darth Vader has had a change of heart regarding his evil ways, and dying in Luke’s arms (sniff!), he admits that Luke had been right about him all along. That may be stretching this literary instrument a bit, but I have had my first glimpse at the Right in Arianna Huffington’s Leftist heart. The AIG boondoggle has shaken her faith in Government (link).

While she misses a couple of points, and stops short of logical extension, her frustration with the Senate’s inability to discover who “removed” Chris Dodd’s anti-bonus amendment from the Stimulus Bill has got her asking some tough questions.

Think about that for a second. We live in a country where one of the 100 most powerful people in government, the cosponsor of the amendment in question, has no clue how it got removed in the Senate-House conference committee — or if it was taken out of the legislation even before it made it into conference.

And, so far, no one in the administration of a president who promised that transparency would be a “touchstone” of his presidency has demanded that whoever killed the provision step forward and own up to it.

Arrgghh! Arianna, follow through! If this happens on one tiny amendment, what else is in, or has been left out of, the Bill. The Stimulus Bill requires entire forests to be leveled just to print it (not to mention all that nasty, carbon based ink)! For that matter, how can you trust a government this inept? By extention, how can you trust government? She meanders a bit before coming to another, startlingly lucid thought regarding “Change”:

Have you noticed how, whenever there is a serious effort to put an end to business-as-usual, we are warned by insiders like Paulson and Summers that the result will be the end of civilization?

That is how we got here! Conservatives were absolutely jumping up and down trying to stop bailout after bailout, then the Stimulus, then the Omnibus. There needs to be an open debate over all of this. So perhaps you and I can agree not to ramrod through Obama’s Budget Proposal before anyone has had a chance to read and debate it? Will you support that?

[listen to me, like Arianna Huffington is actually going to read my little blog]

Moving on:

“This lack of transparency — and the lack of accountability that results — is one of the most significant threats to our democracy,” Wyden told me. “This is not at all how the civics books tell us the system is suppose to work. What we have here is a prime example of Washington deny, defer, delay.”

He’s right. We deserve better. Let’s make this D.C. mystery the cause célèbre it deserves to be. Let’s demand that the White House live up to its vows of transparency.

Demanding transparency is not the answer you seek Arianna. The answer is that government is not to be trusted – ever, with anything. That is one of the cornerstones of Conservative thought. So, Arianna, there just may be some Right in you after all.

Read Full Post »