Posted on 10/12/2007 6:58:46 AM PDT by kristinn
Two weeks ago, the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address was delivered by a 12-year-old, Graeme Frost.
SNIP
What followed should serve as a teaching moment.
SNIP
Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).
You might be tempted to say that bloggers make unfounded accusations all the time. But we’re not talking about some obscure fringe. The charge was led by Michelle Malkin...
SNIP
All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.
Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.
SNIP
I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship)”
I read they were PARTLY on scholarship.
“I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period.”
They already do, moron. The S-CHIP program already exists...Bush vetoed an EXPANSION to include “kids” up to age 25.
Gawd, the left is unbearable.
>I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period.
I guess the author of the piece has never heard of Medicaid.
Where is poor Max Cleland? I expect to see him carrying a sign that says, “Bush Hates Kids”.
Having seen Krugman cited by so many leftwingnuts of various stripes over the years, I’m very familiar with his ‘prognostications’ since 2000.
When somebody can point out one that turned out to be true, ping me. Til then, he remains a waste of oxygen.
Maybe Krugman should ask why these Baltimore Democrats send their kids to private schools.
And no one asks the questions of how ALL 4 children got private school scholarships.
Point is, this family has not made health care insurance their main priority...so why should society make it for them?
The liberal journalists have certainly picked up their talking points from the DNC.
“If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re ‘phony soldiers’” Moron, the people he refered to were never service members or even if, liars about their service.
“if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms;” that was never the claim, the claim was he stopped taking his meds so his symptoms were worse to elicit an emotional response from people. He admitted he did this.
“if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.” he made the case against it - it’s a program for poor people and he’s not poor. the fraud was the deceptive depiction of his families’ circumstances. Kind of like Jennifer Bush:
Hillary Clinton, who helped turn Jennifer into a national political prop for health care reform in 1994, must be very grateful that we’ve all forgotten the poor little girl from Coral Springs.
Dropped by the family’s health insurer, out of a job, and in allegedly dire financial straits, Mrs. Bush poignantly appealed for government relief from the burden of Jennifer’s mysterious illness.
But who was strangling whom? Several years before Hillary deified Mrs. Bush and elevated Jennifer to poster-child stardom, suspicious medical professionals had already begun questioning the mother’s role in making her “beautiful little angel” sick. Nurses complained that Mrs. Bush was force-feeding her child with unnecessary seizure drugs that made her vomit.
Independent specialists conducted extensive tests on Jennifer and found no evidence of digestive disorders. When Jennifer was separated from her mother for treatment at a Cincinnati hospital, the starved child feasted mightily on pizza, hot dogs, and chocolate bars. Meanwhile, authorities discovered that while the Bush family claimed poverty because of Jennifer’s health problems, they had splurged on trips to the Bahamas and Disney World, house remodeling, and a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Dr. Eli Newberger, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, concluded that nothing in Jennifer’s extensive records indicated “that the child has any underlying illness except the suffering she has had to endure as a result of efforts to portray her as needing urgent care.” Jennifer was removed from her family in 1996 and has been healthy ever since.
And now the final piece of the story that didn’t make it onto the front page of USA Today or into the First Lady’s talking points: Last week, Kathleen Bush – Hillary Clinton’s once-proud and loud sister in arms — was sentenced to five years in prison on two counts of aggravated child abuse and one count of fraud. She also pled guilty to a separate count of welfare fraud for misrepresenting $60,000 in assets on Medicaid forms. “There was probably more abuse in this single case,” lead prosecutor Bob Nichols noted, “than in all of the child-abuse cases I’ve prosecuted in my life combined.”
Mrs. Bush’s behavior is an extreme example of the Nanny State opportunism to which Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life. It’s enough to make you sick.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin020400.asp
A family with rental property & a net worth that is more than 75% of Americans can get free health care and abrogate their responsibilites for protecting the financial well-being of the family.
All because they want to be part-timers in the work force.
The same goes for his speculation that all four children have 100% scholarships. (If Krugman has any children, they probably are not entrusted to public schools. If so, he knows that private schools give almost no 100% scholarships to anyone.)
What Michelle Malkin has already written demonstrates that what Paul Krugman has written here is beneath contempt. Not only should his article never been published, he should be fired for even presenting for publication an article so biased and incompetent.
Congressman Billybob
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Of course the Left will not mention that fact that Frost and his family are a complete fraud. A manufactured media creation to demagogue an indefeasible Democrat position on Schip. Seems now days the Left, especially that portion in the Left in the failed Media, find it objectionable when someone does THEIR job for them and shines the light of truth on political fraud.
Looks like the left is attacking the messenger AGAIN.
20k to exercise choice. if they got vouchers they could use the money for their healthcare. wouldn’t want to raise that issue now would we?
See Paul you aren't so caring after all using little children to further your own skewed interests.
Outstanding grades in kindergarten, and high scores on the elementary school entrance exams. Joking aside, it would be interesting to know exatly what they mean by a scholorship. What was the criteria?
“because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).”
He must be the worst businessman ever since public records show that he purchased the building for his business in the same year. Who’s lying here?
Because the public schools in Baltimore are a nightmare?
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