As tipster “Geoff” notes, the economy is much worse than we’d thought. [HuffPo]

Here’s some happy news: Fired WashingtonPost.com columnist Dan Froomkin has been hired by the Huffington Post to run the monster-blog’s new DC bureau. Now mean old neocon Charles Krauthammer and his faux-liberal enablers at the Washington Post can’t get Froomkin fired ever again, ha ha. Something makes us think Froomkin’s page views will go way up now that he’ll be promoted on the HuffPo front page rather than buried in the unloved online ghetto of the corrupt, dying Washington Post. Eat a bag of rat dicks, WaPo! [Andrew Sullivan]

• HER LOSS: LANDRIEU DEFINITELY NOT AT BRITNEY CONCERT: The Huffington Post has run with this “gossip blog”’s reported confirmed life-defining economy-saving news report about Eric Cantor going to see old Britney Spears sing last night, and they have gotten confirmation from Sen. Landrieu’s office that she was not, as it happens, there with Eric Cantor, as his office (and other parts of the Republican Apparatus, dare we mention) told us earlier today. [HuffPo]

SEXY NEW WINGNUTS!: The readers of the Huffington Post have selected this young man, the 27-year-old Aaron Schock of Peoria, Illinois, as the “hottest freshman” in Congress this year. Sorry ladies, he’s a Republican! His prize will be 45 minutes alone with Arianna in the “Printing Presses Through the Centuries” section of the Newseum. [HuffPo]

Usually as we’re going through our “All New Items” tab on Google Reader and come to a batch of HuffPo articles, we scroll down as fast as possible for about 10 seconds while closing our eyes and clutching our loved ones, hoping that afterwards we may have finally broken through the hurling asteroid cluster of things like, “Alec Baldwin: UN Trade Envoy Could Talk Up Long-Term Interest Rates” or “Arianna Huffington: This Is Actually Another Publication’s Article That We’ve Copied Wholesale Onto Our Website So As To Get Top Google News Placement.” But today we came across this one called “Terrance Heath: America’s Mountaintop Moment,” and we’ve been trying to scroll through it for seven hours with no end in sight! It is about HMM GUESS WHO, and it’s generative enough for a fun game! MORE »

We’ll put this nicely since we don’t wish to become victims of Gawker-style HuffPo blogroll revenge: GIVE THE POOR DUO A CHANCE, FAIREST ARIANNA! She writes in this column of hers, “It’s a Nora Ephron romantic comedy. When Hillary Met Barack. Sleepless in Chappaqua. You’ve Got Fundraising Email. Two intensely driven politicians cross paths, each seeking the highest office in the land — talk about a cute meet!” Just… gahh… hmm… we see the writerly device here and it’s trite vapid plagiarism of Maureen Dowd not very edifying. Look. This selection process has been the most drama-free thing a Clinton has ever done. Celebrate! [HuffPo]

• WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?: Your Wonkette will now link you to a Huffington Post page that excerpts a New York Times article about the Recession possibly celebrating its first birthday now, according to math and economists. Rather than link directly to the New York Times article, we wanted to ask you, the reader, to figure out why the Huffington Post illustrated this story with an AP picture of a polar bear in a zoo staring at an enormous wooden advent candle. Is it… “bear market?” Ben Bernanke is a bear? Oh, ha!…?? In any event, happy birthday, you brutal cycle of deleveraging, you. [HuffPo]

Oh yes my friends, there is definitely a “JohnMcCain.com/Joe” site up and running now, and it’s a contest. How do you like that logo? It’s styled after a traditional blue collar name tag, for perhaps a set of overalls — a cute throwback to the 1950s, which was the last time America actually had blue collar jobs. MORE »

Oh no, the Huffington Post is using a late-90s software that writes its e-mail text in Latin! We knew this all along — they have been plagiarizing Augustus Caesar, the first black president (according to Toni Morrison). Thank you to 900 people who forwarded this! Who knew that so many people subscribed to the Huffington Post’s “Off The Bus” newsletter?

We told you how Paris Hilton’s grandfather and dad were furious about John McCain’s idiot commercial comparing Barack Obama to white party girls, which was the horrible stunt that finally brought RACE into America’s colorblind politics. But now Paris’ own mom, Kathy Hilton, has published her terse tirade against the campaign her ultra-rich family once supported — she put it right there on Huffington Post, which is Rich America’s version of Twitter. MORE »

Here’s the magic secret to throwing a good free party: Have an open bar that will pour actual booze instead of just beer and wine, serve good food, and make sure the attractive people show up. This last hurdle can be pretty difficult to overcome at a blogger party, which was why the geniuses at the Huffington Post and GQ made sure their Netroots Nation party would feature little Zooey Deschanel-lookalike nymphet waitresses and a healthy smattering of cute boys in slim-cut suits straight out of Mad Men. Of course everybody got wasted. MORE »