Don’t you think a picture of her testifying about being involved in the Abramoff scandal is kind of poisoning the well?

Can’t the idiocy of her argument stand on its own, without you pointing out the fact that it’s made by a person of obviously low respect for the law, morality, and general human decency?

Sure, but why not embrace teh overkill?

The Abramoff mess was all about the already privileged pigging out at the public (and private) trough.

I don’t care if she did no more than fetch coffee for everybody – it belongs.

Lack of a God, I hate these smug-ass, callous, cowardly motherfucking sacks of shit.

Pish on public charity. The Frosts should embezzle and steal, like Ridenour’s pals.

Ridenour has been involved in a lot more than the Abramoff scandal, btw. Long and astonishing career as a Republican dirty-tricks operative.

They just don’t seem to mind looking like assholes. Apart from their vileness, it’s quite amazing. The Baltimore Sun printed some of the more flavorful comments about the Frosts from RedState. The more exposure, the better. Maybe some will even be skeptical when O’Reilly calls Daily Kos the #1 hate site.

Just stuff a fucking porkchop in her pie-hole, cover her head with a burlap bag, shove in a bag of pepper and pass out the broom handles.

This huge collection of gristle, wrapped in public graft, theft and good ol’ American bribery has the nerve to pen her screed.

It’s getting harder and harder to adhere to my Gandhi-Jesus-peace-loving principles and not smack the shit out of people who are so bereft of conscience, so lacking in decency.

Actually, I still love a good bar brawl, so maybe I’m not a DFH after all.

What atheist said.

Do none of the people on the right understand that there is, in fact, a government agency who the Frosts had to provide an accounting of their finances to in order to gain the financial benefits of the SCHIP program?
Are they all Megan McArdle, thinking that this program means the gubberment wanders the children’s ward of hospitals giving out Tony Soprano style fat envelopes to anyone who looks needy?

They just don’t seem to mind looking like assholes.

Well, until very recently, looking like assholes was a political benefit to them. Sadly, even now the jury’s still out on whether it’s actually become a liability.

Speaking of spreading the risk, just how many chairs is she sitting on?

Gavin. Small request.

Two Words:

Photoshop.

Sammich.

Umm, unless you just don’t have the stones…

mikey

She should be serving lunch in a school cafeteria somewhere …

Photoshop.

Sammich.

Hell yeah! Samm-MICH, samm- MICH

What they would like to do is use this example to not only defeat teh expansion of the SCHIP bill, but also to roll back the original program, under which the Frosts benefitted (not to mention saved the lives of their kids. Let’s do our best not to mention that the SCHIP program saved the lives of two children in this case, shall we?) because it is ‘too generous’.

Obviously too generous if it benefits someone whil allowing them to maintain their dignity while even possibly using the aid to improve their lives. You need to grovel if you benefit from Gov largesse.

Unless , of course, you are already rich or a large corporation. In which case government largesse is your due and to be expected.

The ugliness and hatred and inhumanity the Right is displaying is breathtaking.

Are you sure this woman doesn’t live in Toronto?

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/shaidle/poet2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/shaidle/web.htm&h=132&w=100&sz=6&hl=en&start=17&um=1&tbnid=BpHXwV5hUyXdFM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=70&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dshaidle%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

Umm, unless you just don’t have the stones…

Well, dinner hour approacheth, and I have to do something with this chicken.

But then, then cometh Sammich time…

Ridenour: “Do people on the dole have a reasonable expectation of privacy vis-à-vis their financial affairs?” “No.”

The “dole?” Is Ridenour from Ireland? Does she want us to imagine the Frost parents as a pair of dossers, leaving the bairns with nothing but a wee potato and a tilly of milk in the bottle, while they spend their nights getting buckled at the pub until they’re skinned?

I bet she thinks “dole” sounds worse than being on the SChip program. I guess she also thinks that folks receiving Social Security and Medicare should prepare to be stalked by whomever.

It’s too bad that members of the Bush administration being investigated for criminal activities not only expect complete privacy through executive privilege, but also receive it.

She has a blog.

Alternative image here.

She should be serving lunch in a school cafeteria somewhere …

Ethical lapses re: misappropriation of resources would still arise …

I think it’s ludicrous to talk about ‘privacy’ for any family of beggars that chooses to depend on this public charity.

I realize this is a paraphrase, but it’s consistent with what a lot of the Free-Marketards have been saying lately. I’ve gotten really sick of the beating the word “choose” has taken from Libertarian/rightie types, usually in ultrasmug contexts like “simply choose to vote with one’s dollars”.

It’s getting to be as obnoxious as the pooing-on that’s happened to the words “freedom” and “life”.

We demand a Kathy Shaidle/Amy Ridenour Sammich-off!!!

Or a hows about a nice round of Share Teh Sammich?

And what diffbrad said: the Frosts already don’t have privacy vis-a-vis their finances FROM THOSE PEOPLE WHO DETERMINED THEY QUALIFIED FOR THE PROGRAM IN THE FIRST PLACE. They do have a reasonable expectation of financial privacy in regards to random nuts like Ridenour, Malkin et alia. WTF is wrong with these people?

Anyone who receives Government benefits should be forced to live in a clear plexiglass cage on public land.

Here’s an unrelated post title from her blog:

“Being PC More Important Than Welfare of Children”

Wow, she was talking about England but she may have well looked down the barrel of the conservatards’ bazooka and foretold the future. Fuck being PC with kids. Let’s smear the shit out of them. Epsecially the injured ones.

I don’t think you guys are seeing the bigger picture.

The political right in this country is using the same strategy here that they used with the Minimum Wage increase. They’re trying to move the center by overloading the fringe.

Remember when the Democrats wanted to raise the minimum wage by, what, a $1.20? The D’s came out and said “we want to raise the minimum wage by $1.20 so that it’s closer to a living wage”.

What was the Republican response? It wasn’t compromise (“only raise it by $0.60”) and it wasn’t even obstructionism. (“don’t raise it at all”) No, they got a few select pundits to come forward and state flat-out that they thought the minimum wage should be zero.

Our idiot media love the “finding the middle ground” narrative, and the R’s know it. So when one side says “maybe the minimum wage should be raised from $5.25 to $7.45”, and the other side says “the minimum wage should be $0.00”, they whip out their little calculators and run a story with the headline “Ideal compromise on Minimum Wage should be $3.75!”, and the equally idiotic electorate (not the 30%-ers, but the other 21% that pulled the red lever in ’04) says “yeah, why can’t the Democrats compromise? They’re so partisan! The minimum wage should be $3.75!”, neatly missing the whole point.

The same con game is being played here. Democrats say “S-CHIP should be given more money to help more children”. Republicans counter with “S-CHIP should be abolished & dismantled!!!111!”

And the idiotic “Unity-08/middle-ground/bi-partisanship” bullshit picks up the ball and runs with “well, maybe we shouldn’t destroy it, but I don’t think it’s a good compromise to add more money either! Let’s work in a spirit of reaching across the isle to leave this program as-is.”

…and then six months later the Republican spin doctors crow about how Democrats couldn’t get anything accomplished.

Actually, this is a good development. I think they hated listening to Bush drool on about “Compassionate Conservatism” and “Clean Air” “Healthy Forests” “No Child Left Behind”, all that shit. They and we hated it for the same reason: it was a bunch of bullshit wrapped up in ludicrous language to fool the public.

They don’t want to hide behind that. They, like Col. Jessup, are contemptuous of the ‘sheeple’ because they know we can’t handle the truth. They fancy themselves ubermench, tougher, smarter, more hardcore than you — worthy of more than you get.

Ever since they subsumed the meaning of language during the Nixon age by using thinly-veiled code words like “Law and Order” the conservative id has been, by and large, hidden from view for public consumption. Instead, they’ve had to use dog-whistles, secret handshakes, fucking flag pins, plausible deniability, subterfuge, insinuations and Orwellian formulations employed by a series of smiling idiots so they could con some of the gullible voters while still telling “The Base” what they really meant.

For 40 YEARS, post-Bircher, post-McCarthy, they’ve had to demean themselves with an elaborate ritual of having to communicate in a complicated, obtuse way using metaphorical foot tapping, stall trolling and a rhetorical wide stance to get what they wanted.

But now, dwindled to the core 28 percent, they literally have no one left to con, so, finally, the mask comes off. They no longer have to pretend they give a shit about the middle class. Or that they really are trying to help the Muslim Iraqis. Or that they are in favor of immigration, so long as the Mexicans come in legally.

They WANT us to know they are as morally stunted as we always thought they were. They are happy to get out of that closet of tolerance and decency.

I don’t think you guys are seeing the bigger picture.

Sammich! BIGGER PICTURE!eleven11!!

the Government is going to help spread out the risk for Americans’ health care

though the lady could practice a little preventive health care – more carrots, fewer burgers – i’d still assume the risk of her bloat (that’s heading for bypass surgery and lots of aftercare).

Off topic but a palate cleanser from the General’s place.

Lookis–oh, fuck that daft bloated cunt with Dafyyd ab Huge’s sandwich.

Wow – that really was essentially what she was saying. I’m speechless.

I also like the idea that, in fact, when you boil down SCHIP to its essence, it is a program that forces the poor to pay for middle-class childrens’ healthcare, while they (the poor) go without.

P.S. It must be Halloween… SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!!!!!

The really infuriating thing is, Harridanour actually makes one potentially reasonable point in her column: that taxing ciggies to pay for a SCHIP expansion winds up being a regressive tax, hitting lower-income, higher-smoking people worse than higher-income, lower-smoking folks. (Plus, there’s the logical-extreme question: What happens if, as a result of all the anti-smoking campaigns and added tobacky taxes, people stop smoking altogether? Where does the money come from then?) In my view, this just means that the source for expanded SCHIP funding should be somewhere else, like maybe rolling back some of the tax cuts for the uberwealthy, or trimming corporate welfare.

But the point is, there are good opportunities for real discussion on the SCHIP issue. But instead of actually, you know, discussing them, the wingnuts would rather harass and spy on a 7th grader and justify it on the grounds that he had the temerity to express a viewpoint contra their own. And that he’s “on the dole,” so he has no expectation of privacy. (I mean seriously. What. The. Fuck???)

I think Ezra Klein should offer to debate EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has jumped onto the Frost “investigation” bandwagon, serially or in parallel, and show up the entire “conservative pundit” crowd for what it is: an intellectually and morally bankrupt nest of vipers.

RodeoBob-

You’re talking about the Overton Window.

It is the full-on bending of subjective reality.

I think KKKarl Rover was particularly good at manipulating his henchmen to push radical theories so the Overton Window of Modern Politics would move to the right.

This would explain why the ‘Center’ in Beltway Politics is far to the right of 70% of this country. There is a sort of ‘Capitol Red Shift’ in DC that makes everyone feel much further left than they actually are. So in order to appear ‘Centrist’, they feel they must advocate right-leaning policies.

I also like the idea that, in fact, when you boil down SCHIP to its essence, it is a program that forces the poor to pay for middle-class childrens’ healthcare, while they (the poor) go without.

If SCHIP were really like that, Adam, Lou Dobbs would be purple with rage that there wasn’t a constitutional amendment requiring it.

Does anyone have any hard data on the income distribution of people who spend money on cigarettes? My WAG is that there may be a higher percentage of poor people who are smokers, but that on a gross basis, many more cigarettes are purchased by the people above the poverty line.

[…] I’ve put a link to this article here […]

When I see someone attacking a 12 year old, I immediately think that person is pro-life…

Private health care: Kill patients, increase profits, receive award:

Disgraced seniors home operator receives business award
Ernst and Young names Retirement Concepts as B.C. Entrepreneur of the Year
The company that ran a seniors retirement home in Victoria that’s been investigated for abusing its residents has received an award from a prominent accounting firm.

Ernest and Young named Retirement Concepts, the operators of the Beacon Hill Villa, its B.C. Entrepreneur of the Year in the business-to-consumer products and services category on Tuesday.

Last Thursday, the provincial New Democratic Party released documents obtained through an access-to-information request showing the facility had been investigated 12 times over the past five years for allegations of abuse, neglect and lack of proper care.

Case documents reported seniors not being bathed for 11 days, others left in the dark for hours and one woman who died after falling from her wheelchair. She was found with the wheelchair’s seatbelt around her neck.

A public administrator was appointed last Friday by the Vancouver Island Health Authority to take over the operations of the 80-bed Beacon Hill Villa.

On the same day, the NDP released more documents showing the Williams Lake Seniors’ Village, also operated by Retirement Concepts, did not meet the legally required minimum standards of care, including staffing levels, during inspections in 2004. Other concerns were raised about the company’s facility in Nanaimo, as well.

The Ernst and Young judges might not have known of the problems surrounding Retirement Concepts when they issued the award, but it’s still troubling that the company won, B.C. NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.

“Given the severity of the report done on Retirement Concepts at Beacon Hill Villa, the issues in Nanaimo, the issues in Williams Lake and the general problems that have forced, reluctantly, the Vancouver Island Health Authority to intervene and appoint an administrator, it is clearly not an award that is merited,” Dix said Wednesday.

Nancy Hardman’s mother has been a resident at the Beacon Hill Villa for three years. She’s now trying to move her mother out, and she is not impressed by the award.

“I guess you can get an award from anybody for anything these days,” Hardman said Wednesday. “They certainly didn’t come anywhere near the families here at Beacon Hill Villa to ask what we thought of it all. ”

Ernst and Young staff are standing by their decision to recognize the disgraced company as B.C.’s Entrepreneur of the Year. In a press release, the accounting firm states it is proud of its awards and that any further inquiries should be directed to the winners.

A statement issued on behalf of Retirement Concepts said the judges used a wide range of criteria to select the winners and the award is a testament to the hard work and dedication of employees.

The statement went on to say that the company believes the situation at Beacon Hill Villa is an anomaly and that it is committed to fixing it.

This is where Canada’s health care is going…private care. It isn’t working. It sucks. It’s evil. Award-winning evil.

How appropriate a disgraced Bush official/groupie gets a column at ClownHall.

Can’t think of a better place for her.

Amy Ridenour, like Kathy Shaidle, is a chickenshit blogger. No comments. (few right wing bloggers have unscreened comments, gutless wonders that they are).

forcing people to give up their constitutional rights to participate in a government program is so conservative! Party of Lincoln indeed.

Let’s see. If I’m a Canadian, the most I would contribute to my public health insurance plan every month is $75. For that I am eligible for a semi-private room in hospital, unlimited visits to the doc of my choice, lab work, emergency care, all non-cosmetic surgeries, and 80% of my prescriptions paid for (with a $60 annual deductible).

Geewillikers though! That means I’m carrying everybody else and they’re carrying me.

If I move to the States, I get to pay between $500-$1200 a month, have a huge deductible, BUT…I’m not carrying the rest of the population. It’s just me, baby. I may or may not get prescriptions filled, I may or may not get chemo if I need it, I may or may not get surgery, I may or may not get… Oh never mind. It’s not socialized medicine right so…Wadda deal!

Annual expense Canada: $420-$900
Annual expense US: $6000 – $14,400

There’s just no question as to where I’m going to live.

That $420 is what I pay. I pay $35 a month. I have never worried about my health. I don’t think twice about going to the doc. I am never asked for a credit card or money, except when I pay for prescriptions (20% of the cost).

Well, yes, Lesley, but you don’t get to bask under the awesome protection of our nuclear umbrella! And aircraft carriers! We have a dozen of them! You guys have, what, zero? Losers.

Ridenour’s story came out when Abramoff’s deal unraveled. Frank Foer wrote a nice takedown in the New Republic, but it’s behind their firewall. Jane quotes Digby quoting it, here:

Amy has long been jack, ralph and grover’s personal bitch. From Frank Foers great piece about the College Republicans:

Back in 1981, Abramoff and his campaign manager, Norquist, promised their leading competitor, Amy Moritz, the job of crnc executive director if she dropped out of the race. Moritz took the bait, but it turned out that Abramoff had made the promise with his fingers crossed. Norquist took the executive director job and named Moritz his deputy. That demotion didn’t last long, either. After discovering the talented Ralph Reed, Norquist handed the Christian Coalition godfather Moritz’s responsibilities and her office space. They placed all of Moritz’s belongings in a box labeled “amy’s desk.” Even 25 years later, she hasn’t shed her role as College Republican doormat. Abramoff used her think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to funnel nearly $1 million into a phony direct-mail firm with an address identical to his own.

Poor Amy. Never cool enough for the real Ratfuckers. While the three little pigs were making millions, she was still doing college republican level dirty tricks: Bilking old people.

“Do people on the dole have a reasonable expectation of privacy vis-à-vis their financial affairs?” “No.”

Isn’t there a teensy weensy bit of difference between a recipient having to disclose financial information to the agency distributing the air, and allowing any and all individuals who happen to be interested access to someone’s financial information?

Canada’s a partner in NORAD so we get to stand under the atomic brolly (quit shovin’) and we once had something called the Bonaventure until the DFH Trudeau sold it to a Taiwanese scrapyard.

So you’re right. Zero. But really, dude, how do you bask under an umbrella?

I really like a leisure suit jacket in that particular shade of blue.

It’d look even better with a print blouse underneath, Amy (hint, hint).

Wow,
She looks like she et a family of roughly the Frost’s composition–a mom, a dad, and four kids of various sizes and sexes. In one sitting.

Whoops.
I can just never resist those cheap fatty-fatso jokes! They go down as smooth as a half-gallon on premium ice cream.
And, a dozen cupcakes.
And, a shank-portion ham.
And, a few cans of refried beans.
And…

Do people on the dole have a reasonable expectation of privacy vis-à-vis their financial affairs?

Quite apart from the blatant hypocrisy here, vis-à-vis agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare, anyone using the words “vis-à-vis” deserves to be beaten to death with large socks of custard for offenses against meaningful communication.
Ouch, ouch, ouch.

[…] by heliograph at Digby, on the sheer viciousness being shown by the Right against the idea of healthcare for poor […]

Her Doktor: A startlingly apropos comment…

“Family of beggars”? What does she think she is, a villainness in a Dickens novel?

Anyone her size ought to be sympathetic to the problems of securing adequate, affordable health insurance. I am not trying to hit below the belt here, but in terms of insurability being based not only on financial health but physical, i feel it is entirely relevant and fair to raise the subject.

Priceless quote:

“Reid and Pelosi aren’t telling the full truth about the price tag of their big baby, either. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, $35 billion is the price tag for extra spending for just five years. As the Journal put it, “come 2012 Congress will either have to pass new spending or kick kids off the rolls. The chances of the latter happening are approximately zero…”

“35 Billion for just five years”? Sounds like a pittance.

!!I won’t even bring up the shameless lying compelled by the BushCo over their scandalous Medicare Part D expansion—designed to line the pockets of Big Pharma with tax dollars—-that was misrepresented as a “mere” $400 billion program—when it was known by the White House that the tag would be well over $700 billion.

Let’s just discuss the fact that $35 billion represents about 4 months in Iraq, shall we?

I’m sick of these do-nothing people being protected by the US Military (who, as you know, sank the Iraq Invasion Fleet off the coast of South Carolina) AT MY EXPENSE. I mean, why should I have to pay a share of the combat pay health benefits payday loan interest payments salary of soldiers to support some SOCIALIZED MILITARY when there are thousands of well-trained mercenaries available and competing in the Free Marketplace of Freedom?

EJ Dionne points out that SCHIP is a voucher program for insurance. I await the inevitable groundswell of Republican support.

I love those 501(c)(3) ‘non-partisan’ orgs the right wing is always throwing together for educational purposes. Mrs dimpled elbows tax free org, must have a considerable sammich expense.

She also has three 2nd graders- wonder how they paid for that in vitro fertilization? Mind if we pry? How are we sure you’re not secretly on the dole or cheating us out of taxes?

…and sammiches! Loads and loads of sammiches!! PB&J! Egg salad! Braunschweiger! Roast beef, au jus! Bologna! You name it–it’s all good.

Even olive loaf!