We enjoyed the tasty new blood that was Sarah Palin's, but now her blood is just as vile as the old blood we were drinking.

Everybody at Arianna Huffington's blood-swilling party is sick of Sarah Palin now, says the hostess, reapplying her lipstick.


Photo by 96dpi.

"Why are the major Democratic presidential candidates standing on the sidelines when it comes to ending the war and zero tolerance for torture?"

Asks Arianna Huffington in a column titled "Dems Are Addicted to Backing Down."

She excludes the possibility that the Democrats might actually be supporting the policies they believe are best or at least acting politically by choosing policies they think the majority of voters want. No, for Arianna, since she doesn't like what they are doing, she perceives a mental disorder:

It's like AA — they first need to admit they have a severe problem, do a serious and fearless political inventory, and then commit to making a change.

Memo to Oprah: while you're on the campaign trail, maybe you can facilitate an intervention. How about you and Dr. Phil show up at the next debate and haul the Democratic frontrunners and the Congressional leadership off to spinal rehab.

Because you just can't imagine that the spine they have is used to stand up to you.

"What most people do when they see a law being broken: go get a cop."

That's a line from a piece by Arianna Huffington, which complains about the sting that got Larry Craig arrested in an airport men's room.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not wild about walking into a public restroom and seeing a couple using the a stall for something other than, as Sgt. Dave Karsnia, the arresting officer in the Craig case put it, "its intended use."

But that is not what Larry Craig did. If he had, someone in the restroom could have done what most people do when they see a law being broken: go get a cop.

So -- in Arianna's world -- if you have an airport bathroom that's become a notorious place for gay sex, you don't need to station an undercover cop inside to catch anybody and deter the behavior, you can just hang back and wait for the bathroom-goers to see the sexual beharior and to do what "most people do." These busy travelers will officiously run around the airport looking for a cop. That doesn't sound to me like the way "most people" react to sleazy quality-of-life crimes. I think most people would be disgusted, immediately leave the bathroom and plan to avoid that bathroom -- and maybe that airport -- in the future.

Even assuming that men going to the Minneapolis airport bathroom would go searching for a cop, the cops in the airport should be a paying attention to other things, not dealing with a very particular problem that has nothing to do with airport security. Yet Arianna says:

And as it happens, since Craig was arrested in an airport, presumably there were plenty of law enforcement officers nearby looking for, you know, real threats -- like explosives or folks on a Watch List.

And you want to take them off that task to go after some guys having sex in the bathroom (who'd probably be gone by the time he arrived)? How on earth is that better than using a police officer like Karsnia who is trained for a specialized task?

But Huffington thinks Karsnia's job is simply ridiculous:

It's unsettling that more people here in the land of the free aren't at all discomfited at leaving it up to the prognostication skills of Sgt. Karsnia and his crack team of B-men to determine what crimes people might have committed if not for the mind-reading and daring-do [sic] of Minneapolis' Special Forces Bathroom Unit.

What other public servants with difficult jobs -- imagine training to be a cop and then getting assigned to sit on a toilet all day -- does the imperious Arianna Huffington think deserving of her mockery?

Is sending Sgt. Karsnia into the men's room to spend all day trying to get other men to look at him and tap his foot really the best way to use our limited law enforcement resources?

And just how much money is Minneapolis/St. Paul spending on sting operations like this one? Just since May, 40 men have been arrested on allegations of illegal sexual activity at the same airport. And how much taxpayer money in total is being allocated across the country by local police to protect us from people whom the Sgt. Karsnias of the world think might, at some point, commit a crime?

I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that the sting is cost effective. One police officer, carrying out very few arrests, ruins the reputation of this bathroom as a place for sex encounters. That bathroom is in the state's most important airport, a hub of commercial activity. Minnesotans have a huge interest in maintaining the quality of their international airport, and travelers have endless opportunities to choose other routes when they dislike an airport. I would speculate that Karsnia's work probably produced a large net benefit to taxpayers.

"I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago."

HuffPo has a piece about Bloggingheads.tv — including the news that C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans is putting money into it:

Rosencrans said he was instantly charmed by Bloggingheads TV when longtime friend Wright introduced him to it last November. "It got better and better as I watched it, and seemed like something really unique," said Rosencrans...

Though contributors will continue to vlog for free, [Bob] Wright says he hopes to someday be able to pay them (and points out that he himself draws no salary, and has invested his own capital.) So far Heads like Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, our own Arianna Huffington, Spencer Ackerman, Jonathan Chait, Joshua Marshall, Glenn Reynolds and the Alts — Eric Alterman, Ann Althouse and Jonathan Alter — don't seem to mind, nor does the still-ubiquitous and generously-browed [Mickey] Kaus.

The Alts!

Though obviously enthusiastic about the venture, Rosencrans said he has no plans to meddle in its success. "Bob has control - it's important that it's done based on his integrity and his vision," he said. "I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago — let it run, let it develop and the right people will take it on. Their integrity is the key to developing a very solid business." Also reminiscent of C-SPAN is its emphasis on substance over flash: "I love the civility of the discussion," he said. "That's unique on television." (That could just be because it's very difficult to imagine yelling at the mild-mannered and highly-respected Wright.)

I guess he didn't see the one with Byron York and David Corn. And I think Mickey kind of yells at Bob sometimes, doesn't he? It's not all that mild-mannered -- at least not all the time, isn't it? And there's some flash. Like that time Bob put a pencil in his ear.

The "bipartisan love-in" Bill Clinton's "been engaged in over the last several years has resulted in jack-squat."

Says Arianna Huffington interposing deep thoughts for what might otherwise be "popping champagne corks" after Clinton's performance on "Fox New Sunday."

Huh?

Okay, I've got my bearings. You see, Clinton fans thought Clinton ruled. He stuck it to Fox News, you know. They're celebrating. And Arianna's the nerd at the party who wants everyone to sit down and have a serious conversation about what it all means. She begins with the assumption that Bill's been in a "bipartisan love-in," which I take to mean that he's been circumspect and presidential.

I'm glad the Chris Wallace interview is flying all over the internet, but I really hope that one person who will watch it over and over again is Bill Clinton. And that on the fifth or sixth viewing it might occur to him that the more cover he gives Bush and his cronies, the more they're able to increase and entrench their power.

Isn't it disturbing to picture Clinton watching himself on TV over and over again and becoming more and more convinced that he played it just right? Arianna assumes he lacks the intellectual complexity to see in it what people who aren't predisposed to love him find offputting, even shocking. He'd just replay and replay and chortle I rule.

Now that I've seen the reaction on the left, I'm convinced that Clinton went on the show planning to act the way he did. It wasn't Chris Wallace's specific question that set him off. He decided in advance to go on Fox News and unleash an attack on Fox News as soon as when he saw an opening. But he jumped too eagerly at what wasn't really an opening and he jumped weirdly. That he thought he was doing well suggests that he has surrounded himself with people who are pulling him out of the calm, rational center -- what Arianna mocks as a "bipartisan love-in."

But this country is full of people who aren't hotly partisan, who are put off by that strong stuff, and who need to see a demonstration of calm rationality. Now his over-the-top performance is being praised by those people who crowd around him -- that's the real love-in -- and he may succumb to their fawning inducements to hardcore partisanship.

And where is Hillary in all of this? Will she fall into the open arms of the hot partisans too? I'd like to think she's less susceptible to seduction. But it won't help in the long run if her husband inanely cozies up to the kind of people who watched him on Fox News and thought he was just great.

What could be more personal?

Let's check out The Huffington Post again. There's Arianna, tucked away, as usual in the upper left hand corner. She's effusing:

One of the things I’m loving about our inaugural week is the variety of subject matter and tone that we’re getting from our bloggers. From the unabashedly political to the deeply personal -- such as the new postings by Bruce Cohen and Cheryl Saban (after all, what could be more personal than witnessing your daughter give birth, then blogging about it?).

What could be more personal than witnessing your daughter give birth, then blogging about it?

How about: witnessing your daughter give birth and not blogging about it.

Watching my baby have her baby was like being a sous chef for GOD -- there was nothing I could do but observe in humility and awe.

Fabulous metaphor! Because you know how a sous chef just does nothing but stand there.

[ADDED: Yes, it's a simile, not a metaphor....]

I scrolled through all the current blog posts just now. Nothing caught my eye. Just a lot of dreary pedestrian blather. Laurie David's concerned about global warming. Gary Hart is concerned about security, not just "traditional military security" but "security of livelihood, security of community, security of the environment, security of energy, and the security of thoughtful politics."

And don't forget the security of knowing you don't really need to click over to the HuffPo, because it's going to be boooorrrrriiinnggggggg.

It's so much more fun over here.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear is making fun of the eminently risible HuffPo User Service Agreement. That and their refusal to join the Ecosystem. And show us their Site Meter.

"Cool, creative stuff"?

Here is a "featured post" on The Huffington Post today:

The grave urgencies facing us do not simply lie in fighting terrorism abroad but also in ensuring that our children - all of our children - can grow strong, talented, and hopeful in this land that we love.

That garbled syntax, that graduation-speech glop, is a front page teaser that's supposed to get you to click for more. And there's Arianna, permanently parked in the upper left hand corner, chirping: "There is some cool, creative stuff showing up on The Blog."

I wonder what it would take for me to start feeling sorry for her.

UPDATE: Hey, this is pretty funny. I can't get a permalink for the post I want you to read but it's called "I Got Here Before That Bitch Winer." So just scroll down. MORE: Here's the link.

Arriving on the computer blog site of the Internet blogosphere.

Walter Cronkite is posting:

Arianna Huffington has exercised her renowned wisdom to give journalism another boost along the ever busier Internet. Her blog site promises to be an interesting challenge for those of us lucky enough to be invited to participate with our occasional contributions. Hopefully the product will be at least as interesting.

I'll launch my first contribution right here: Arianna, I offer this first editorial opinion that you settle for "interesting" and recognize that it is not a synonym for "entertaining."

And, moreover, I offer this addendum as well to this my first editorial opinion, Arianna, to be merged into your already formidable wisdom, wisdom celebrated across the continents, that you recognize that by "interesting" I mean insufferably tedious.

The big, foaming mass-o'-celebrities blog.

Arianna Huffington thinks she's discovered something new in blogging: the group blog with famous people, a lot of famous people. If you've got 250 people -- famous people -- able to post on one big, foaming mass-o'-celebrities blog, that's got to be exciting, right?

When I think of blogging and celebrities, I think of bloggers tweaking and slamming celebrities. When I think of a big mass of celebrities, I think of pretty people murmuring self-congratulatory banalities -- like at the Oscars -- barely able to say anything interesting to go with the pretty pictures.

Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

Well, now my picture isn't so pretty. But they'll be writing, so it doesn't really matter that they are not really telegenic. Of course, if they're writing, how do we know it's really them and not some assistant or P.R. person or joke-writer?

UPDATE: This post was talked about on an MSNBC TV segment today. Political Teen has the video clip here.

Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who does the segment, pronounces my name funny. It's "alt" as in "salt" without the "s," and then "house" as in "house" -- just plain old "house is not a home" "house." It means: old house.

Unrelated observation: The "v" key on my keyboard suddenly only works if I hit it twice. What could possibly cause that? This problem just started when I first tried to type MSNBC TV. Do you think I should hold Bill Gates responsible?

"She asks excitedly."

David Wallace-Wells (in Slate) quotes me like this:

"Celebrity-suckling gadfly and Bill Maher Thursday hump Arianna Huffington to launch political web site," writes hard-to-please Jeff Goldstein at protein wisdom. At NIF, Virginia-based TJ thinks the move shows Huffington has "more dollars than sense." At first, the news turned off law professor Ann Althouse, as well. "But then I noticed Larry David was on the list, and I was interested. Is he really going to blog?" she asks excitedly. "I mean really blog?"

Maybe I need to blog with emoticons. "Skeptically" would have been the right adverb. To really blog means a lot more -- to me -- than to just to set up a page in blog form. Hmmm... I wonder how Jerry Brown's blog is doing? Ten posts in a month and a half. Maybe that's a website, but it's not a blog. I say excitedly.

Larry David blogging?

This is the sort of thing I read about and instantly hope fails:

In a move unlikely only because it's taken this long to happen, pundit-about-town Arianna Huffington is extending her hosting largess to the blogosphere.

This month the wannabe California governor is launching a Slate-like Web site where a cast of bigwigs, including Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), David Geffen, Barry Diller, Larry David, Tom Freston, Ari Emanuel, Jim Wiatt Tina Brown and Harold Evans will each have their own blog from which to spout Big Thoughts about politics.

Huffington wouldn't comment, but it was confirmed that a soft-launch of the Huffington Report would be up and running before the end of April.

But then I noticed Larry David was on the list, and I was interested. Is he really going to blog? I mean really blog?