Check His Countertops

11 year-old kid recites his grandfather's words, conservatives outraged.

He probably has granite in his kitchen. Or marble!!

Time to investigate, Ms. Malkin.

Government Cheese

Is Michelle Malkin supposed to be a patriot for suggesting that millions of Americans are so lazy that they'd rather sit home and live off the public teat rather than work for a living?

Malkin: If you put enough government cheese in front of people they are just going to keep eating it and you're just kicking the can down the road and just to hammer this point about the unemployment benefits extension again it was Larry Katz, who's a chief labor economist under the Clinton labor department who came out with a study and there are a lot of these economists who say this that if you keep extending these "temporary" unemployment benefits you're just going to extend joblessness even more.

Stephanopoulos: I don't know if I follow that though

Malkin: That was a Clinton economist who said it George...

Stephanopoulos: Choosing to take the unemployment benefits when a job is available?

Malkin: Seventy nine weeks already and then they're going to extend it by another thirteen weeks and what happens is according to these economist who have seen it including this Clinton economist is that people will just delay getting a job until the three weeks before the benefits run out.

Tucker: Well, that might be true when there are jobs out there that are available, but there are very few jobs available at the moment so I don't think people are using that unemployment benefit to be lazy instead of going out and searching for jobs...

Malkin: I'm not making a moral judgment, it's an incentive problem.

Tucker: But when businesses advertise the few job openings they have, they'll advertise twenty openings, they have six thousand applicants so I don't think that's the problem...

Hunt: If Starbucks were hiring, suddenly you'll see lines around the block. Anecdotally George, I have a kid who has some friends from college and many of them don't have jobs and boy, they are looking.

Stephanopoulos: And there are other states especially that are hard hit.

So many things wrong with this tableau. First of all, unemployment benefits are not enough to live on, that's probably as good a place to start as any. You'll need the kind of savings most Americans on unemployment don't have to sustain yourself. Second, what exactly does Michelle Malkin do all day that's so vibrant, other than get her husband to write her columns and books that get bought in bulk and pulped? They don't call it wingnut welfare for nothing. Regnery-purchased cheese! Third, the fact that George Steph is confused when he, you know, booked Michelle Malkin on the show and shoudl know what he's getting. Fourth, Malkin bangs the drum for Clinton economist Lawrence Katz throughout the segment, then learns that he actually supports temporary unemployment insurance extensions, and she turns on him like a good little rage addict and quotes the Heritage Foundation. Whither bipartisanship?

Paul Krugman notes that at least Malkin's not alone with this view - it's also expressed by professors at major universities like the University of Chicago.

Shorter Obama/Republicans Stimulus Negotation

"What say a dollar?"



Bonus Michelle Malkin: "This crap sandwich is all yours, Dems. Own it. Embrace it. Swallow it."

That's right, a-holes, own economic recovery!

Republican 419 Schemes, Cont'd

It's pretty hilarious that Michelle Malkin's secret weapon, the candidate who was going to stick it to that traitor and coward Jack Murtha, is one of the useful idiots propping up BMW Direct's Republican thievery project:

Lt. Col. William Russell is a clean-cut Army veteran who served in Iraq, the Gulf War and at the Pentagon on 9/11, according to a campaign Web site.

Malkin claims there's been a "great media wall of silence around Russell's upstart campaign." OK, let's break that silence and take a close look.

In the most recent quarter Russell raised $669,534, almost all from out-of-state donors who presumably are on BMW Direct's list of self-styled conservatives with a good track record of responding to direct-mail fundraising.

At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).

The only expenses that appear to be spent on an actual campaign totaled about $20,000 for Web site design, a low-budget video and a campaign consultant based in Pennsylvania rather than Washington.

He reports having $269,953 in cash on hand. But he also reports debts totaling $242,521 -- almost all for direct mail expenses to BMW Direct and its vendors.

So that leaves him only about $27,431 ahead -- not much for a guy who's raised a total of nearly $1 million this election cycle.

Hilarious. Republicans really do treat their supporters like complete suckers. And they come back over and over again. La Malkin has responded to this with crickets, so far. Wonder if she got any BMW Direct kickbacks for talking up one of their "heroes"?

The Outrage of the Century

You all know I've been a fan of Michelle Malkin for some time - and have touted her strong position in favor of immigration enforcement.

But now, I am calling on all Kossacks to boycott MichelleMalkin.com, HotAir.com, the Seattle Times where she used to work, the book "In Defense of Internment," flecks of spittle, and everything else remotely Malkin-related.

You see, she's clearly a jihadi sympathizer.



Is Malkin's blunder worth boycotting her website over? I'll be interested to hear her take. Hopefully, her choice in hate couture was borne more of ignorance than ideology. But you never know.

The only action Malkin can take to satisfy me is by yanking herself off of the site. I'm pretty sure, given the fact that her husband writes most of the blog anyway, the usual quality of the site will not suffer. But make no mistake, this is offensive. Michelle is within a couple of feet of a red-and-white checked pattern! How am I going to explain this to a child?

If she does in fact leave, it would be refreshing to see an American website show sensitivity to the concerns of those of us opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists and wearers of garments that are somewhat similar. Or having them seated on the backs of chairs. Or whatever.

Anyway, makes me angry.

(h/t Gavin)

The Frosts Speak

Last night on Countdown, the parents of Graeme Frost, that lucky-duckie good who's soaking up all of that glorious free health care after being fortunate enough to be maimed near the point of death in a car accident, spoke out against the attacks from the conservative nutjob machine they've suffered over the past couple weeks, including death threats. You can watch it on Crooks and Liars.

These kids would not have much of a chance if it weren't for the S-CHIP program. It's a staggeringly minor price to pay to ensure the safety and health of our kids. But because it doesn't fit with wingnut ideology, the story of Grame Frost becomes a signal to attack. And now there's a new target. Apparently the 12 year-old was too mature to be trifled with, so this time it's a two year-old with heart trouble that will bear the brunt of criticism.

Meanwhile, we have now the full story on how a top aide to the Senate Minority Leader cheerleaded for the Frost smear, until recognizing that it was based on almost nothing, then tried to retract the cheerlead by doing a reverse cheer at the last minute:

It has been reported already that an email from a McConnell aide went out to reporters telling them of the winger attack. But this appears to be the first time that McConnell's people are publicly acknowledging their role in trying to push mainstream reporters into joining the attack on young Graeme. Stewart acknowledged to the paper that he'd done this as "part of regular conversation with reporters."

What makes this story even better is that after McConnell's aide tried to get reporters to push the story, he quickly realized a few hours later that the whole thing was a big sham and tried to call reporters off.

This is significant, because it shows that McConnell's operation cheerfully urged mainstream reporters to pick up the winger attacks without even bothering to fact-check them first. When Michelle Malkin pointed her finger at the Frosts and started howling, McConnell's staff immediately joined in the fun -- that is, until they realized that they had a big dud on their hands.

Because the instinct is to attack, attack, attack, and the actual facts of the matter are secondary. This really is about as low as you can go, and Michelle Malkin, the poster child for slandering poster children, is not going to recover. I don't think anyone believes that she "quit" Bill O'Reilly's show. Even Fox News understands when to jump off the bus.

Michelle Malkin: Welfare Queen

Our Lady Of The Internment Camps may want to read this post to understand that she is being subsidized by the federal government for her health care, even today.

After ranting about S-CHIP and other government medical programs being socialism or whatever, she crows how wise her government-funded MSA (Medical Savings Account) account was as a 'choice'. Whether the government directly sends funds to insurance companies, or the taxpayer gets a tax deduction to fund a MSA, the government is still paying part or all of the cost. Somehow she can't quite admit to sucking on the same mammary gland as those she denounces.

I will be immediately going over to her house and looking to see if her kitchen surfaces are granite-topped. She's stealin' from hardworking taxpayers like you and me!

(MSAs, by the way, are pretty much health savings accounts, which are tax shelters for those with the available cash to put into a fund for health care. In other words, they're welfare for rich people.)

Sick Thugs

I have to return to the story of Grame Frost, the latest target of Republican smear merchants, who, it should be mentioned, is a sick 12 year-old boy who was in a coma not so long ago. This entire escapade has exposed the right-wing for the heartless, soulless slime that they are. They are so consumed with playing "gotcha" that they fly by the facts, and display a real anger that anyone should be helped by the government whatsoever. At every level the argument breaks down. And I am confounded by understanding what the endgame is here. Is "exposing" the fact that a middle-class small businessman can't afford quality health care, and are drowned under the weight of a major medical catastrophe, really forwarding their argument that the government shouldn't get involved?

So they resort to other arguments. They say that kids shoudn't be used as political "human shields". As if personalized stories have never been part of the political process (and yet nobody on the Democratic side went to this girl's house to see if she was "really" upset):



They say that they're just "asking questions," not stalking and intimidating. Then, after it being thoroughly proven that the Frosts can't afford health care, they outright state that there's no such thing as poor people ("Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor."), and the person they use to do that - wait for it - was on disability in the Canadian healthcare system. It's useless arguing with these people. They've been whipped up into a frenzy where reason no longer matters, where dignity no longer matters, where life is all about "exposing" people, no matter the cost. Michelle Malkin once wrote a post called When The Left Invades Our Privacy (hypocrisy, anyone?). If I thought it would matter, I would write one called When The Right Invades Our Souls.

This has now made The New York Times, by the way.

So when Democrats enlisted 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush’s weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points.

Then, they wasted little time in going after him to score their own.

In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family’s income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits. [...]

The critics accused Graeme’s father, Halsey, a self-employed woodworker, of choosing not to provide insurance for his family of six, even though he owned his own business. They pointed out that Graeme attends an expensive private school. And they asserted that the family’s home had undergone extensive remodeling, and that its market value could exceed $400,000.

One critic, in an e-mail message to Graeme’s mother, Bonnie, warned: “Lie down with dogs, and expect to get fleas.” As it turns out, the Frosts say, Graeme attends the private school on scholarship. The business that the critics said Mr. Frost owned was dissolved in 1999. The family’s home, in the modest Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, was bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000, according to public records. And, for the record, the Frosts say, their kitchen counters are concrete.

Certainly the Frosts are not destitute. They also own a commercial property, valued at about $160,000, that provides rental income. Mr. Frost works intermittently in woodworking and as a welder, while Mrs. Frost has a part-time job at a firm that provides services to publishers of medical journals. Her job does not provide health coverage.

Under the Maryland child health program, a family of six must earn less than $55,220 a year for children to qualify. The program does not require applicants to list their assets, which do not affect eligibility.

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.”

I'm glad the Times wrote about this abomination. This is the face of the modern conservative movement; smear merchants who look at hardworking Americans stuck in our broken healthcare system and sniff "they're too rich to get help." I, for one, would gladly pay my tax dollars to even allow the richest wingnut blogger to get psychiatric help.

UPDATE: Ezra makes a challenge.

"It’s militant leftist bloggers," writes Malkin, "who wouldn’t know a good-faith argument if it bit them in the lip." Let's have a good faith argument. I will debate Michelle Malkin anytime, anywhere, in any forum (save HotAir TV, which she controls), on the particulars of S-CHIP. We can set the debate at a think tank, on BloggingHeads, over IM. Hell, we can set up the podiums in the shrubbery outside my house, since that seems to be the sort of venue she naturally seeks out. And then if Malkin wants an argument, she can have one. We'll talk S-CHIP and nothing but -- nothing of the Frosts, or Congress, or her blog.

My sense has been that Malkin doesn't want an argument. Rather, she wants to feed her readers the steady stream of outrage that keeps her traffic numbers up. But I realized tonight that I could be wrong, and I shouldn't assume Malkin doesn't want a real argument unless I actually ask her.

I expect the answer to be "no." She won't even allow comments on her side, let alone actually sit in a room and rely on trivialities like facts and figures.

A Twelve Year-Old Kid? Sounds Ripe For A Political Smear Job

The right-wing's latest crusade is attacking 12 year-old Graeme Frost, a badly injured child who received medical care through S-CHIP in Maryland, and who delivered the Democratic radio address in support of the program a couple weeks ago. Apparently the wingnuts thought his family wasn't poor enough, and they relied on the faulty assumptions of a Freeper and willful ignorance of obvious facts to make their ideologically driven case. The best rebuttal I've seen of this comes from the great Thers at Whiskey Fire. Here's a sample, but do yourself a favor and go read the whole thing.

"His sister Gemma, also severely injured in the accident, attended the same school prior to the accident meaning the family was able to come up with nearly $40,000 per year for tuition for these 2 grade schoolers."

Wow, that sure sounds like a lot of money. Especially when we read down a bit and find out that the family's income is only $45,000. Presumably the Frosts are making the remaining $5,000 go a long way in meeting their remaining expenses.

Or not. The always eagle-eyed Don Surber speculates "they may be subsidized." Ya think? Hmmm, could be. After all, the freeper's iron-clad proof that they're paying 40K a year for private school tuition contains a link to the school's payment information page, which does indeed explain what tuition costs... and which also explains their financial assistance program:

Park enrolls students based on their talents and capabilities. Families who are unable to meet the full cost of tuition may apply for the Financial Assistance Program, which supplements tuition payments. Financial assistance does not need to be repaid.

In 2007, 18% of Park students in grades 1-12 received over $2 million in financial assistance that ranged from $1,000 per year to full tuition. Tuition remission for children of our faculty brings that total to 25% of the student body.

Because each family's situation is unique, it is impossible to predict the amount of funding awarded based solely on income. For example, the number of children attending tuition-charging institutions is an important factor. As a guide, families with incomes up to $160,000 received financial assistance during this past school year.

If the school is giving assistance to families making $160K, they are offering pretty substantial assistance to those making $45K. I'm just guessing here, but it sure does seem plausible!

It continues in this vein. The nutjobs claimed that the family owned a big home and a building for the father's woodworking business. Except they're clearly financed, meaning that there's even less money out of that $45K annual salary for healthcare (and the house was bought 16 years ago, for $55K, when that section of Baltimore was a bad neighborhood). They crow that the family home was remodeled, conveniently forgetting that the father is a WOODWORKER and undoubtedly did the job himself. One idiot used a "quote engine" to find cheaper insurance, failing to account for the whole "pre-existing condition" thing that typically denies insurance for anyone with catastrophic injuries.

But it continues. Not only have numerous wingers been calling the Frosts and harrassing them by asking for personal information, Michelle Malkin took it a step further by stalking them, visiting their house.

Talked to one of the tenants, Mike Reilly, who is a talented welder. He said he had known the Frosts for 10 years. Business is good, he told me, though he characterized Frost as “struggling.”

That didn't appear to matter to her.

Here's what's going on. The right wing wants to deny a popular program that helps treat sick children on the grounds that it would lead us down the road to socialized medicine (oooh...). So when faced with a case study, they have to smear and harrass the family, to intentionally blind themselves to the reality; this program helps kids, which most people would agree ought to be a priority of any nation. The cognitive dissonance here, where "questioning" crosses the line into baseless slander, is astounding.

Errata

From the reporting I've read, I was unclear that Walter Reed is a military hospital and not a VA hospital, and that there is a crucial difference between the two.

The VA system has made remarkable strides in the past decade, and is now the best hospital system in the nation, beating out such gold standard institutions as the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics. As Phil Longman writes, "A RAND Corporation study published in the The Annals of Internal Medicine concludes that the VA outperforms all other sectors of American health care in 294 measures of quality. In awarding the VA a top prize in 2006 for innovation in government, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government gushed that "While the costs of healthcare continue to soar for most Americans, the VA is reducing costs, reducing errors, and becoming the model for what modern health care management and delivery should look like." The military hospitals, sadly, have not enjoyed the same rennaisance.

Note, also, that the VA hospitals are run by the federal government, while the situation at Walter Reed was exacerbated by privatization. Which, of course, is the exact opposite the the takeaway Michelle Malkin got. Not that this is surprising.