Danger, Will Robinson!
Michelle Malkin, last week:
Update 1:00pm Eastern. Snort-worthy blue-on-blue spat of the day: ThinkProgress vs. CNN.Snort-worthy reverse conspiracy theorizing of the day: ThinkProgress in a tizzy over a McConnell aide’s e-mail to reporters about blogger coverage of Harry Reid’s poster child abuse, which the left-wing group touts as proof! proof! that McConnell was “involved in the right-wing campaign to smear Graeme Frost and his family.” He’s no more “involved” in the “right-wing smear” than CNN or any of the other MSM outlets trailing behind and finally asking hard-headed questions about the story behind the story.
Update 1:10pm Eastern 10/10. Snort-worthy conspiracy theory of the day…The tinfoil hatters at ThinkProgress actually believes conservative bloggers were in cahoots with Mitch McConnell, whom I lambasted below. The unreality-based community really does live in a different galaxy.
Interesting.
The Horses Mouth brings us this story:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s spokesman acknowledged yesterday that he alerted reporters last week to questions bloggers raised about the financial circumstances of a 12-year-old boy Democrats had used to urge passage of an expanded children’s health insurance program.But Don Stewart, the Kentucky Republican’s communications director, said he also wrote a follow-up e-mail later the same day that said a blogger he respected had determined that there was no story and that “the family is legit.”
Personally, I would call that ‘proof! proof!’
I believe that would make the current score in the Frost affair:
Tin-Hat Nutroots Leftard Members of the Unreality Based Community from Another Galaxy: 11833
Citizen Journalist Michelle Malkin: 0
Seriously. Is there any aspect of this story our intrepid ‘reporter’ has gotten right? The Frost’s aren’t rich. They aren’t paying for expensive schools. They don’t run a lucrative business. They don’t live in a mansion. They were not claiming they would be hurt by this veto.
And most important of all, they don’t have marble counters.
Dreggas
She thrusts her fists against the post and still insists she sees the ghost…
pharniel
College at work says we should bring back stoning.
only with very little rocks.
it’d be helpfull if this showed up in the MSM for realz how badly the general public would take it, it’d hopefully cut out this right wing bullshit a thon.
but y’know how i knwo there’s no liberal media conspiracy? if there was then this would have been front page on everything.
rawshark
Does she even have to be right? Is that even nescessary in her theatre?
She thrusts her fists against the post and still insists she sees the ghost…
Now I feel haunted. That line always gives me the creeps.
Dreggas
rawshark,
I know what you mean but it’s very apropos is it not?
Mike
And McConnell’s office admits to using “independent, citizen journalist” bloggers to do their dirty work.
jcricket
Aha! I knew you leftards would get it wrong. I said granite countertops. This invalidates your entire theory about our baseless smears. And I didn’t smear anyone, do you see any of them covered with jam? oil? mud? No? Not a smear.
/nut
Dave
Glad to see a US Senator’s office considers the rantings of an anonymous blogger from a whack-job site like Free Republic as the basis for a policy decision. Egads.
Peter Johnson
And this memo is a smear exactly how?
Show me where the smear is in this email and I’ll shut up.
Davebo
Why on earth do you think anyone would want you to shut up?
Heck I’d love to see you on national TV!
jcricket
Don’t you get minus points for being so completely, thoroughly and utterly wrong?
Andrew
I can’t decide whether Peter Johnson is a particularly stupid troll or a really good Darrell impersonation.
Punchy
Anyone know if the Frosts voted Republican or Democratic? I’m going to out on a very long limb and predict that I know what party they and probably many of their freinds and neighbors will vote for in ‘08.
But it would really stick it to Shelly Malks if this fam was Republican.
Incertus (Brian)
Don’t you get minus points for being so completely, thoroughly and utterly wrong?
Only on Jeopardy, sadly.
Peter Johnson
So now it’s a smear to say kids go to private schools and the Dad owns a business? You guys really do hate private enterprise. I thought that was just a myth.
You learn something new about the left every day.
Zuzu
I love Stewart’s last little bon mot in the article, that only “left wing” bloggers seem to still be interested in flogging the story.
Google is evidently beyond him.
Doubting Thomas
A very poor Darrell impersonation, if you ask me. Darrell was the master debater after all. Whatever happened to him? I can’t believe he just gave up, so does anyone know??
demimondian
Ah, Peter, it’s good to see the Right is still proud of its ability to engage in argumentum ad innuendo.
Oddly, none of my rhetoric teachers ever qualified that as a valid form of argument…guess that the whole “argument has to do with truth” stuff went out the window on 9/11.
Zifnab
Is “unreality” a word?
Bubblegum Tate
But it would really stick it to Shelly Malks if this fam was Republican.
Well, as John pointed out in another post, the Frosts are basically everything Republicans claim to glorify:
In short, they are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter.
The problem, of course, is that 1-20-09 sticker that Stalkin’ Malkin saw. Clearly, the Frosts are America-hating, terrorist-loving islamocommienazis. SO yeah, it would stick it to Stalkin’ Malkin if this family were Republican, but I think it already sticks in her craw that this family, to her, should be Republican but isn’t.
Andrew
You learn something new about the left every day.
Don’t worry scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.
Zifnab
rolls eyes
Now someone’s been drinking the kool-aid a bit hard.
Yes, all Stalkin’ Malkin was doing when she pawed through the Frost Family’s hedges was giving them a compliment on their fine success in life. The screeching about $20k / kid educations? That wasn’t gross inaccuracy doctored up as a smear, it was an encouraging slap on the back for the Frosts who disapproved of public education. All that talk about the father quiting his private business to get a job with family insurance coverage? You must have misread it.
jenniebee
Peter, you’re caught between a rock and a hard place here. Either there was, as you claim, no “smear” intended or effected by baselessly asserting that the Frosts were accepting government assistance despite a well-above-average net worth and directing reporters to bloggers who baselessly asserted much more than that; or else the whole Frost Job is only Sound and Fury, signifying nothing. In which case, McConnell, Malkin, Riehl and the rest who told this tale are pretty clearly idiots. Decisions, decisions…
Krista
And most important of all, they don’t have marble counters.
Michelle’s just jealous that she doesn’t have a marble counter. But then again, you probably have to have your marbles before bothering to have them counted.
sparky
If MM doesn’t untie the knot in her knickers she may flunk the No Blogger Left Behind exam.
Oh. Nevermind.
Peter Johnson
What are you trying to say? Are you trying to call me a tard? If so, what do you think that might accomplish? I know the left has trouble with cause and effect (such as lower taxes = stronger economy), but still I’m puzzled.
Peter Johnson
So now it’s a smear to say someone has above average net worth? Is being successful a crime now?
Pb
Do I know you?
Tractarian
I think with one question, we can resolve the issue of whether Peter Johnson is a spoof:
Is your middle name Willie?
Krista
When the context of your statement means that you are baselessly accusing someone of fraud, then yes…it’s a smear.
Or do you honestly think that the speculations about the Frosts’ net worth, income, assets and freaking countertops existed solely in a vaccuum, with absolutely no meaning or implications to be drawn from those statements whatsoever?
In other words, if you publicly claimed to be a virgin, and I drove by your house and then publicized the following statements, “Well gee…maybe we should be asking questions, as Peter DOES have a king-sized bed, and the sheets look AWFULLY rumpled. And are those…scented candles on the nightstand?” Would it be a smear for me to say you’ve got a big bed with rumpled sheets and some candles? Or is it a smear because of what I’m implying with my statement—a statement that then leads to countless others making wild speculations about your sex life?
Peter Johnson
Speculate all you want to, honey.
The Other Andrew
Peter, you seem to think that BJ commenters are all part of “the left.” You know that isn’t true, right?
Also, you may want to hold off on that “lower taxes = strong economy” thing for a while. There are a whole bunch of us in the almost-middle class who have just barely survived Bush’s economic utopia.
Watts
Peter: seriously, what are you trying to prove here? If you establish that the Frosts were by some measures middle-class, does that somehow prove that they weren’t benefited by SCHIP? No, of course it doesn’t.
You’re trotting out a whole lot of the saddest, oldest anti-liberal tropes: that liberals don’t understand anything about economics (never mind that under Clinton we zeroed the national deficit, slashed government spending, and ended entitlement programs, each of which Bush has done the exact opposite of), that we hate success (never mind that “blue” states tend to have substantially higher wages and stronger economies than red states, which undermines that a wee bit). C’mon. I don’t mind seeing good debate from conservatives, but this ain’t it.
Look. Attacking the Frosts is a lost cause—all you’re doing is feeding the saddest, oldest anti-conservative tropes: that your hatred of welfare programs is ultimately born of a venal selfishness rather than a consistent political philosophy, and that you’d rather attack the messenger than engage with their points.
Krista
Don’t flatter yourself, angelcakes. I was originally going to use your mom, not you, as an example. But I thought that might be a bit declassé.
Peter Johnson
He was the lucky recipient of Reagan’s reformist legacy. The boom began in 84 and went right through Clinton’s first 6 or so years…until Rubinomics finally killed it.
Jane Galt has a good summary:
When Reagan came into office, top marginal tax rates were, IIRC, around 70%. Only no one actually paid 70%, except for poor people unfortunate enough to win cars on The Price is Right, because the tax code had more loopholes than a sneaker factory. The Effective Tax Rate, otherwise known as What People Actually Pay, wasn’t really much different from what it is now.
This was an enormous waste, for every time you add another loophole, you add another host of people spending time and money chasing that loophole.
Let’s say that there’s a tax loophole that’s worth $1,000 to you, and you have an hourly pay rate of $20 an hour. How much time and/or money will you spend chasing that loophole? Rationally, up to $999, or 50 hours of your time, or some combination thereof that sums to a combined value of $999. That’s time and money that could have been spent inventing a cure for cancer, or a really good low-calorie ice cream, or just kicking back somewhere you enjoy a lot more than the accountant’s office.
Now multiply this by thousands of loopholes and millions of citizens, and you get some idea of how much valuable time and money we threw away trying to provide a tax break for every man, woman and housepet in the nation.
And actually, the problem was even worse than that, because there’s an entire large, expensive lobbying industry devoted to generating more loopholes. And the more there are, the easier it is for lobbyists to get a few more passed . . . they just fade into the vast thicket of rules that’s already there.
These loopholes reduced the transparency of the tax code, induced huge amounts of wasteful tax-avoiding activity, and increased risk, because it was harder and harder to know what was legal and what wasn’t. And in 1986, the Reagan administration waded into that thicket of red tape with a pair of turbo-charged pruning shears. We ended up with a tax code where the ostensible marginal tax rate was much closer to the effective tax rate of most people, and people were able, nay required, to spend more time earning money and less time trying to keep a hold of it once they had. This was an Unqualified Good Thing.
chopper
if you can’t see spreading unfounded rumors alleging someone to be a cheat as smearing them, you’re either stupid or insane.
chopper
ah, the old ‘everything a dem does right was really done by a gooper, and everything a gooper does wrong was really done by a dem’ theory. i love that one.
Gus
Okay, I finally get it. Peter Johnson is a spoof. I should have figured it out from the double phallic name, but what finally clued me in was in the last couple of days he has cited the National Review, Townhall, Howie Kurtz, and now Jane Galt to back up his assertions. I salute you sir or ma’am, you are in the same league as Blogs 4 Brownback.
Gay Orbit » Graeme Frost
[...] Triple heh. [...]
Zifnab
Does that mean the stock market crash of 1987 never happened? I’m confused.
Mr. M'Choakumchild
In defense of marble counters, if Mr. Frost is a carpenter I am sure he could have found them as scrap somewhere and installed them. Many carpenters I know have all sorts of great details, even if their homes are perpetually half-finished.
Bruce Moomaw
Well, since Mr. Johnson wants to know where the smear was in McConnell’s aide’s comment, he can start with Hilzoy’s Oct. 9 analysis at “Obsidian Wings” (“When Wingnuts Attack”)—in which she points out that the Frosts’ attackers didn’t ask tiny little questions such as (1) did their kids get into that school on a scholarship; and (2) did they own that house on a mortgage? Which, of course, is exactly why McConnell and Co. hastily backed away from attacking the Frosts after somebody DID bother to ask those questions.
As for his quoting Megan McArdle in defense of Reagan: it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that what she’s actualy defending in that passage is his CLOSING OF LOOPHOLES —NOT his lowering of the top tax rate. Indeed, she explicitly denies in her first sentence that she’s defending his lowering of the top tax rate. And no liberal questions that his 1986 attack on loopholes was a good thing; see Jonathan Chait’s and Bradford Plumer’s articles on it in the 1-10-05 and 9-12-06 New Republic Online.
Chait: “[T]he Tax Reform Act of 1986…was an almost shockingly beneficent piece of legislation, lauded by economists and political scientists across the ideological spectrum…It has become difficult to find Bush supporters who even approve of Reagan’s tax reform, let alone harbor any desire to repeat it. In a recent National Review article, Ramesh Ponnuru explicated the current conservative position. The 1986 tax reform was ‘a major setback for conservatives,” he wrote. “Congress adopted the liberal definition of tax reform, and broadened the tax base to include things it should not have included…. For most of the subsequent two decades, conservatives have been trying to undo the policy damages wrought by those two changes.’ ”
Plumer: “In 1986, the Reagan administration was trying to shepherd a surprisingly progressive tax-reform bill through Congress. Although the bill would have reduced the tax rate on the top income bracket, it also raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and simplified the tax code by closing about $300 billion worth of corporate loopholes. More importantly, the bill effectively eliminated federal income taxes for those under the poverty line. At the time, liberals cheered, while right-wingers in the Reagan administration were furious. William Niskanen, the president’s acting chief economic adviser, reportedly said of the bill, ‘Walter Mondale would have been proud.’ ”
That’s the bill that McArdle approves of. Which, of course, means that the next question is: how much would just eliminating those loopholes—as opposed to also lowering the top tax rate on the wealthy—have stimulated the economy?
RareSanity
Ah…misdirection, I like it.
Here we see how Peter (and his ilk) always respond and refute the “Clinton was good for the economy” statements but, never respond or refute the “Bush has grown government more than any President since Roosevelt” statements…
You see Peter the essence of “conservatism” is not just lowering taxes. Conservatism is small government, fiscal responsibility and the end to entitlements.
So if you support Bush, which I’m sure you do, he has grown government, added entitlements, then cut taxes which is fiscally irresponsible. So Bush likes big government and entitlements, which by definition makes him a leftist, which makes you a leftist and a self hater…I pity you. :-(
Pb
Now that’s comedy. Remember, George H. W. Bush wasn’t so lucky.
Bruce Moomaw
Which, of course, was what got Clinton elected in the first place.
Bubblegum Tate
Which then led directly to 9/11. Known Truth, moonbat.
RareSanity
shakes head in disappointment
And they hate us for our freedom??
Amirite?? Give me a high five you showed those unreality-based moonbats a thing or two!!
Tsulagi
LOL I’d try to give you a clue, but it’s more fun not to. Especially after this…
Classy, dipshit. I’m sure after you visit someone’s house you always get a return invitation, right?
That’s the 11th Commandment chiseled in stone in the tablet handed down from Mount Known Truth.
Closely followed by #12 for the Party of No Responsibility or Accountability:
Clinton did it too!
Blue Jean
It is a baseless smear to speculate that Peter’s middle name is Willie. It’s actually “Long Dong Silver”. Right, Clarence?
r€nato
Has it ever occurred to wingnuts that if Jesus were born today, his parents would have qualified for S-CHIP? I can see the attack ad now:
(ominous-sounding music up)
“Democrats say the government should pay for baby Jesus’ health care. But how was baby Jesus conceived? Not by Mary’s husband, Joseph. And where did Mary choose to give birth to her child? In a stable! And what did Mary and Joseph do with the gold they received as a baby shower gift? Couldn’t they have used that to buy health care for baby Jesus?
“The facts are clear. Democrats want to spend your tax money on irresponsible parents who have children out-of-wedlock!”
chopper
spending tax dollars on out-of-wedlock jewish babies? you monsters!
Balloon Juice
[...] I was naively about to cite the Graeme Frost affair as an example what happens when conservabloggers give ad libbing a try. My bad! Even their category nine stupidquakes right at the top. [...]