Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Malkin Can't Resist Taking the Bait


The New York Times decided to cover the nasty conservative blogger attacks on Graeme Frost and his family. Michelle, who had quit posting attacks on the family, couldn't resist responding.

Her narrative now - it's all the Democrat's fault. They are the ones who used these kids. She is ignoring all the many, many times the GOP has used children and personal examples to illustrate policy points, without anyone smearing them. Presidents like Bush are known for this. Here are a few ad campaigns doing this.

After stalking the Frosts, and seeing their house and talking to neighbors and employees without getting anything, she had expected something juicy and a half-million dollar mansion, she is now reduced to calling for asset tests of SCHIP recipients. It appears the only thing she hasn't been able to find out is if the Frosts have a large amount of equity in their house. I suspect they don't, it has already been tapped.

The Republican politicians are too smart to fight this battle this way, "these kids were in a terrible accident and they don't deserve government to pay for their healthcare," so she has to start attacking them as well. "Some Republicans are too weak in the knees to engage." Make that politicians who have any sense are leaving this fight to the loons. This attack on a lower middle-class family with badly injured kids is wrong and Michelle blames the Democrats for making her do these things.

The NYT:
In a telephone interview, the Frosts said they had recently been rejected by three private insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions. “We stood up in the first place because S-chip really helped our family and we wanted to help other families,” Mrs. Frost said.

“We work hard, we’re honest, we pay our taxes,” Mr. Frost said, adding, “There are hard-working families that really need affordable health insurance.”

Democrats, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have risen to the Frosts’ defense, saying they earn about $45,000 a year and are precisely the type of working-poor Americans that the program was intended to help.

Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday said, “I think it’s really a sad statement about how bankrupt some of these people are in their arguments against S-chip that they would attack a 12-year-old boy.”
Ezra Klein: Something has gone wrong on the Right. Become sick and twisted and tumorous and ugly.

Republican John Cole: I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become.

But the Republican Right is still at it: I see a simpleton and a loser who had more kids than he could afford and doesn't appear to have given up very much in life to deal with that situation. Who knows, maybe Dad figured it out, too and cut him off. What the hell, there's always welfare, right?

Sadly No: I say a lot of nasty things about right-wing crazies such as Dan Riehl. But it would never occur to me to invade his privacy by posting live dispatches about his living conditions from the shrub outside his driveway. What Malkin and her fellow travelers are doing is creepy and immoral, and they don’t seem to give a damn about it one way or another. The idea that these people make up any significant part of our population- even if it’s only 30%- is terrifying to me. Where does this sort of viciousness come from?

The Moderate Voice: Get That School Kid.

Hunter at Daily Kos:
Right now, the Frost's home address is posted on Free Republic. And it's been there for gawd knows how long -- nobody's taking it down. Why would they? The kid is the latest enemy of the entire conservative movement: they want to make him pay.

No, we've been through all this before, and we'll no doubt go through it again; if someone at any point so much as sends Malkin a nasty email, she writes an entire outraged self-ego-humping book about it. Someone calls out O'Reilly for a statement of appalling and unapologetic bigotry, he goes into seizures of anti-entire-planet rage....

It's long past time for people to stop treating Fox-style, Malkin-style, Limbaugh-style conservatism as merely a "political" phenomenon. It may once have been, but it isn't now. As of this millennium, it's nothing but a hate movement with neckties. Protofascism with bright, patriotic logos. Stop treating it with anything but revulsion and disdain. Stop pretending for even a bare moment that they are anything more than thugs.
This is an update to Unhinged Malkin and Next Time Your Kids Are In The Hospital Maybe Right-Wing Idiots Will Attack Your Family.

Still spreading - ABCNews.

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