Judgment Daze

by digby

Naturally, the flagship scumbag of the modern conservative movement throws himself onto the undulating pile of putrid winguttia with this today:

RUSH: I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn’t enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it’s been verified by a “Freeper” at Free Republic. Everybody is writing about this now, since the Freeper posted it over the weekend. This 12-year-old kid that the Democrats used in the Saturday radio address to whine and moan and cry to President Bush about the SCHIP children’s health program, it turns out that the family of this kid sends its kids to “one of Baltimore’s expensive private schools.” This family owns a house in a neighborhood of homes valued in the $400,000 to $500,000 range. This family bought commercial property in 1999 for $160,000.

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What’s the upshot of all this? This is nothing new. The Democrats lie! They have to in order to make their case. What was seductive to them was that this young man and his sister were severely injured in an auto accident, and they didn’t have private insurance. “That’s all we needed. That’s all. Just smear the president. That’s all we needed. We don’t need any other details, because we know that our buddies in the mainstream media are not going to uncover the details, and, if they do uncover ’em, they’re not going to report ’em — and when they do get uncovered a couple weeks later, a day later, the story is already ours. We already own it.”

So the bottom line for me is: They can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. Be it about me, be it about their own voters (such as the Frosts) be it about President Bush, they must lie — and anybody who stands in the way of their succeeding with that lie becomes an enemy, becomes a target. That’s where I and my buddies in talk radio come in. We are a thorn in their side because we represent the truth they are trying to hide, the truth that they are lying about, and they have to do something about it — and they have to do that by lying. The truth will not help ’em. The truth is inconvenient to today’s Democrat Party and today’s left. “Fiction” is their byword. Make it up. Make sure people cry about it. Have a lot of emotion attached to the fiction, and have no guilt about it. “Once you get past the lying, the rest is easy,” is their philosophy. The kid, Graeme Frost, in one of his radio addresses, asked the question: “Why doesn’t President Bush want children to have health care?” They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me. Put lies in the kid’s head or put it on the script that he’s reading. He goes out and reads it. He’s 12-years-old! They will use anybody! They’ll corrupt anybody, to get where they’re headed. That’s who they are, folks.*

Read the whole thing if you can stomach it. As most of us who read blogs know by now, it’s Rush who has just lied his ample ass off. (The true facts are here.) But now millions of half crazed wingnuts will think that this family has been scamming the government when it just isn’t true. The Frost family qualified for the SCHIP program under the government’s rules. They qualified for the program that Bush himself says he supports. (It’s the new money he opposes.)The Frosts support a program that has helped their two kids get medical care after a terrible, life threatening accident and so they spoke out about it, as they have every right to do as Americans. For that they are being lied about and smeared as con artists.

And here’s a real shocker for you. This disgusting smear campaign isn’t just being flogged by the rightwing blogosphere or talk radio.

From ABC news (Via Steve Benen):

According to Senate Democratic aides, some bloggers have made repeated phone calls to the home of 12-year-old Graeme Frost, demanding information about his family’s private life. On Monday, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused GOP leadership aides of “pushing falsehood” in an effort to distract from the political battle over S-CHIP.

“This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. “Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident.”

Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy’s family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley’s charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.

The disgusting purpose of this is to have news organizations digging into every aspect of the Frost’s lives to determine whether the Woodward and Bernsteins of wingnuttia, (Freeper posters and stalker Michele Malkin) are “right.” And then the sanctimonious right wing vultures will determine whether they “deserve” to eat at Applebees once a month with their four kids or whether they are “cheating” the benevolent tax payers by having a television set or a cell phone since their catastrophically injured kids need help from the government. They will say that Mom and Dad should work two jobs or maybe they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place or started their own business. There will be no sense of “there but for the grace of God go I” or no recognition that sometimes life throws you a curve ball and that you need the help of others to get you through.

The Frosts can now expect that they will be bombarded with judgment from smug jackasses who will poke around in their private lives and tell them they are at fault, even though they both work, because their family couldn’t afford to pay the huge premiums for a family of six or the catastrophic costs associated with major injuries and the ongoing care necessary for a special needs child. And when these critics say this about these people they will also be saying it about millions of working poor and middle class families who are crumbling under the burden of the runaway health care costs that are breaking the American economy and the American family. They will all be told they are bad parents, bad citizens, bad people.

Yet it is Americans like the Frosts, who make 45,000 dollars a year trying to run a small business and raise a family who are the backbone of this country. They don’t deserve to be swift-boated or smeared or stalked just because they need some help when their kids are hurt and the costs for caring for them runs into the millions of dollars — or for speaking out about it. This sickening smear campaign against these people is unamerican, unchristian and inhuman, which actually isn’t all that surprising considering the people it’s coming from.

If you would care to help us ensure that Bush’s veto of the SCHIP bill is overridden, these five Democrats could use a call from you. And if you can contribute to Blue America’s telephone campaign to their constituents, we would be grateful. Overriding Dear Leader’s heartless veto and insuring that Americans like the Frosts can continue to care for their sick kid is the only thing that will make this awful ordeal they are undergoing worthwhile.

*Remember, you’re paying for that dishonest swill to be pumped to our soldiers allegedly protecting and fighting for our values overseas. The wingnuts are more than happy to have the US government subsidize that. Medical care for sick kids, not so much. You can do something about that too.

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