Ladies and Michelle Malkin, We Have a Winner
I can’t tear my eyes away from the six-figure, nationally syndicated train wreck that is Michelle Malkin. Apologies. You all will have to vert your gaze upon her once more, as well. I’m selfish like that.
Anyhoo, while others may blog about heads of state and assorted matters of grave international import, I like to aim my arrow at loftier targets, mainly lonely wingnuts who comment favorably about the ravings of insane typists on crack. So here’s what we find in the comment thread on the latest from Her Rabidness, the Marchioness of Spittle-upon-Stalk:
On October 12th, 2007 at 11:02 pm, Jim M. said:
Take a look at some rough numbers vis-à-vis the Frosts’.
And for purposes of the analysis, we’ll use some very conservative numbers.
Let’s assume that the $45,000 per year figure is net income. And further that the private school tuition is free.
Let us also assume that their $1200 monthly mortgage on their residence includes property taxes.
Yearly mortgage payments on the residence come to $14,400. Let’s call it $14,000. Subtracting the mortgage payments from their annual net income leaves $31,000.
Let’s assume that the property taxes due on the commercial property are $500 per month (probably on the low side for that area). The annual property taxes for the commercial property would come to $6000 per year. Subtracting the property taxes on the commercial property of $6000 from the remaining net income leaves $25,000.
Next,, let’s further assume that the utilities on both the commercial property and the residence (all utilities including phone) comes to $600 per month for the residence (3000 square feet) and $200 per month for the business property. That is $9,600 a year. Call it $9000. Taking $9000 off the remaining net income now leaves $14,000.
The Frosts have 3 relatively new vehicles. For insurance purposes. we will assume that their rates were not seriously impacted by the accident. Insuring those vehicles in that area would run, say, $3000 per year. So after factoring in car insurance, there is $11,000 of net income left.
Let’s assume that the Frosts own one of those vehicles, and lease or finance the two others. And we will assume the leases or loans are long term, and further assume a down payment of about 10% of the vehicle costs was made at the time of purchase or lease. So we will figure that the combined car financing/lease expense is in the neighborhood of $350 per month per vehicle. So annual car finance expenses run at $8400 per year. Call it $8000. When applied against the remaining $11,000 of net income, the Frosts have $3000.
Let’s also assume they drive those cars, and that they put gas in them. But we’ll assume they do not drive much, and only spend $100 per month on gas, and since they take great care of their cars, their monthly car maintenance expenses for all 3 cars are $50 per month. That is another $1800 in annual expense, that we’ll call $1500, just to be conservative. Well, that now leaves the Frost’s $1500 – annually.
$1500 a year breaks out to $125 per month. Or a little over $30 per week for clothing, food and other essentials for a family of 4 ($8.00 per person).
And the left does not understand why people have a problem with this?
To which one can only say, ‘Bravo!’ sir — but while you, Jim M., may have proven conclusively by numbers pulled out of your ass that the Frosts are currently boiling their belts for dinner, we fear you’ve left out some important data. To wit:
Let’s also assume that the Frosts have a 10,000 ringgit-per-month lien on their state-of-the art Flux Zammerplaffen. But we’ll assume that it’s the Blammfenjab model and not the more expensive Klax Flappenmab Mach 2 edition. So that leaves the Frosts’ses’s with just Eleventy-five minus-a-gazillion Hooters Bux — annually.
Now let’s assume that an enormous Burmese python escaped from the Baltimore Zoo and took up residence in their attic. This takes care of their rodent problem, but just to be conservative, let’s say that the widowed aunt of a Tin Pan Alley lyricist prefers lima beans to Chopin. So now their monthly zoot suit bill amounts to a monkey sitting on an elephant. Let’s call it camel flapjacks, barstool.
42 cents breaks out to shave-and-a-haircut-two bits. Anyone for Slinky Meringue? Fiddlepoppers with tequila backs ($Pluto equals Clakkafrazz).
And the left does not understand why people have a problem with this?
Gavin adds: That’s a lot of quatloos!
Jim M’s post is so insane I am tempted to think it is a plant.
DA, you had me at “Flux Zammerplaffen”.
Um, what is Jim M arguing, exactly? His calculations make it sound like the Frosts are extremely poor and not only need health insurance, but other financial assistance as well.
Mandos – that’s what I understood too. I think Kathleen is right that it’s a plant.
I’ll have to look into that Burmese python thing, though – we’ve got mice again.
It must be a plant, even in wing-nut-o-sphere this wouldn’t fly
On one level, I kinda have to admire the fact that some wingnut actually tried to sit down and work the numbers to arrive at a reasoned conclusion. Unfortunately, the fact that the numbers were pulled directly out of his rectal canal, and involve so many false and flimsy assumptions pretty much reduces this to the kind of admiration I feel when a baboon at the zoo manages to fling his feces from one end of the cage to the other.
Bravo! Bravissimo!
It was heartening this week to hear a coupla formerly reliable Republicans look down in shame and admit that they really can’t stomach anything about Malkin and her crew of screechy dimwits anymore these days, that she’s become an embarassment to the GOP and they wish that she just shuthefuckup before she does any more damage.
From a certain perspective then, I kinda hope she keeps on churning out the absurd, hateful crap that we have all grown so accustomed to seeing. On the other hand, I hope her & her crew of soulless fucktards grow tired of raping this poor family and move on to the next issue that they feel compelled to sully the GOP’s image over…
I’m pretty sure it’s real. That Jim M. guy appears in lots of her comment threads. He’s not usually quite this obsessively insane, but he’s always a real schmuck.
I particularly like his opening.:
And for purposes of the analysis, we’ll use some very conservative numbers.
Let’s assume that the $45,000 per year figure is net income.
Because if the $45,000 is gross it will spoil his conclusion.
Hey Jimbo, to “assume” makes an ass out of u and me. But mostly you.
Actually, I’m going to take that back, I went over there and read the comment, hells bells, have those people no shame. However it is funny to read the wailing a gnashing of teeth!
Shorter MM: Waaaaaaaaa
Shorter MM commenter: Liberal lies, waaaaaaaaaaaaaa
holy fuck that guy is a shade dumber than most people, ain’t he?
Oh, he’s for real. Here he is back at comment #16:
Let’s be realistic here – the goal on the health care issue has nothing to do with the best interests of children. That is merely the heart-tugging cover for government control of medical care.
He seems to be upset that the Frosts are not living up to their earnings potential. I’m starting to think this is what it is all about to him and Malkin. That we will lose our will to make money if we are covered under a govt. plan.
I think it’s real, because he’s so dumb, he’s just proved that, using his own very conservative, very crazy numbers, it would be almost impossible for the Frosts to afford health insurance for their children.
Wingnuttia… has lapped itself.
This guy’s abilty to pull numbers out of his ass is being waisted on Malkin’s site. This sort of skill should be used by the administration to argue for a Flat Tax, Privitization of Social Security or how a bomb that kills 100 in Iraq is proof that things are improving there.
Let’s also assume that the Frosts have a 10,000 ringgit-per-month lien on their state-of-the art Flux Zammerplaffen. But we’ll assume that it’s the Blammfenjab model and not the more expensive Klax Flappenmab Mach 2 edition. So that leaves the Frosts’ses’s with just Elevnty-five minus-gazillion Hooters Bux – annually.
” Now let’s assume that an enormous Burmese python escaped from the Baltimore Zoo and took up residence in their attic. This takes care of their rodent problem, but just to be conservative, let’s say that the widowed aunt of a Tin Pan Alley lyricist prefers lima beans to Chopin. So now their monthly zoot suit bill amounts to a monkey sitting on an elephant. Let’s call it camel flapjacks, barstool.
42 cents breaks out to shave-and-a-haircut-two bits. Anyone for Slinky Meringue? Fiddlepoppers with tequila backs ($Pluto equals Clakkafrazz).
And the left does not understand why people have a problem with this?”I peed myself,I literally peed myself.But I believe people tend to boil their shoes for dinner Sir.Fillet of Sole ala Chaplin if you will.
These two take the cake
I realize Malkin’s a total douchebag who attracts these clowns but do you think she’d agree to meet any of them in person without a body guard and pepper spray?
Just to reinforce — the wingnuts have been arguing for a week now that this family can too! afford health insurance, and this genius just… shredded that.
They’re just barking mad.
Guy makes the case for why $45 on its own is hard to live on for two people, let alone 6, rounds down to the tune of a grand, and it all adds up to people not deserving help?
Chreebus.
let’s also assume that this kid is a fucking moron. try to fed a family of four for $30 a week and to be sure it really works in, do it for say 4-6 weeks then report on your pilagra and scurvy.
that’s under a dollar a day, with a single 8 ounces of tuna fish running at $0.85 plus. so this kid thinks that since the family eats the monetary equivalent of 8 ounces of tuna a day something is more than the cuisine is fishy?
you can’t even practice to be that stupid
Call an ambulance, wingnut hysteria out of control:
Hey, the comments over there are surprisingly entertaining. They’re desperately trying to maintain the bluster while it’s dawning on them how thoroughly they’ve humiliated themselves on this one. They’re obsessing over the $45,000 number like if they twist it around enough it’ll save them from having shit the bed.
30 dollars a week for food and clothing?! Oh and power, water, heating, etc…
WHAT. THE. FUCK?!
Seriously. Fuck the right wing. They disgust me.
“i have it rough and make sacrifices, they should have it rough too, even though I know squat about whether they have it rough, it’ll never be as rough as it is for me and my dog has insurnance!###$@$%$^%$”
It’s the neoconservative version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.
Tory Boy perfectly represents the Malkin fan.
D. Aristophanes,
Somewhere, S.J. Perelman is smiling upon you.
The fact is that the Frosts are a handful of people who cheat America, and who have been screwing us for a long time.
For one thing, the father is a woodworker and those individuals disclose their real income rarely.
The investigative media of the right is exposing these people as frauds and phonies, and is a message that is resonating through America. The Democrat SCHIP plan is one that the Americans will hate more more and as they discover the TRUTH about it
Again.
Very sloppy deductive and mathematical work. This would be a C in high school.
And not the least of which because their results blatantly contradict their hypothesis.
As Lesley noted, he assumed $45k/yr as net, not gross. Since we’re playing in the land of make-believe, let’s say that post-tax (Yes, because I’m sure the Frosts are not magically immune from paying those) that’s $35k net.
Which almost doubles the assumed $13k/yr for vehicle expenses.
Which leaves them at -$8500 a year annual net income.
Oops.
Well, the only real obvious “luxury” on that hypothetical is the three vehicles, so let’s say they only use one car that one for the two adults and 4 children. And let’s say they use an older, less safe model, which might have meant that the two kids would have died rather then been injured, but okay, they do that.
$13K/3x = $4.3k/yr for the one car, and we’ll ignore the decrease on insurance premiums and lack of buy/lease payments, and assume the increase of cost for maintenance balances that out nicely.
So the newfound extra $8997 goes into that net yearly income and leaves them wiiiith: $167. Per year.
So, yeah, I don’t get why these fuckers didn’t buy insurance for themselves and their four kids. Besides, Redneck McGee got insurance for his dog (!), which couldn’t possible go for less then that would cost!
So, Gary. You can’t trust those shifty immigrants. They lie and cheat and fraud the public. And you can’t trust Americans. They lie and cheat and fraud.. well, themselves.
So who can you trust? Hmm?
Are they trying to prove that the Frosts are too rich too need help, or too poor to deserve help? They really can’t seem to make up their minds. Maybe now they are arguing that with the money they make it was irresponsible to have four kids? Whereas yesterday they were arguing that they were swimming in money with their private school payouts?
It’s funny to see wingnuts congratulate themselves on their “journalism”, which everyone else recognizes as “making shit up.” The best was some donk plugging the family ages into a website and coming back with a teaser rate as definitive proof that health care is cheap.
LEAVE MICHELLE ALONE!
Malkin’s commenter seems to be trying to prove that the Frosts’ income MUST be more than $45K per year, not prove that they’re boiling their belts for dinner. You see, “the Left” must be lying because, by “conservative estimate”, the Frosts could not possibly be surviving on their reported income.
“Jim M” has proven to his own entire satisfaction that libruls lie. It’s a rigorous, mathematical proof based on numbers he trusts, having made them up himself. Why, he even rounds his calculations in the direction of giving libruls the benefit of the doubt!
So it’s irrefutable: there cannot possibly be a family of 6 living in Baltimore on a measly $45K per year. The Frosts must have a secret bank account in the Caymans, like everybody else.
— TP
I am a little surprised that no one here has realized what he is saying.
Jim M. is saying that the Frosts are lying about their annual income. The evidence he will cite is that they refused to show their income tax returns to the Baltimore Sun, which, combined with his back-of-the-envelope calculations, proves conclusively that they are really much wealthier than they are claiming to be.
You see? In wingnut land, projection is an epidemic. They assume that because they lie to defend their views, then everyone else must lie, too. I’ll bet if you search hard enough, you’ll find some rightwing tool who questions the legitimacy of the kids’ injuries.
Heh, get out of my head Tony P
Definitely not a plant. The wingnut’s point is that they should probably sell a couple of their cars, and the husband should get get a better paying job.
I know, it’s just so fucking easy to make it all work out like that, but that is what I believe the moron was trying to ‘say’.
I’m one upping you Psycheout:
Imagine Ezra Klein debating this.
Or a little over $30 per week for clothing, food and other essentials for a family of 4 ($8.00 per person).
I think there’s more ass play than you realize, because, in addition to all he pulled out of his ass, he also stuffed two of the kids up there, shrinking the family to 4.
You take the Suburban. I’ll take the Volvo. Somebody’s gotta save those poor kids!
He also left out of his equations:
– $20/yr subscription to The Nation
– $5,000 athletic shoes for each of the kids so they won’t be tortured at the private school.
– $6000/yr rubbers and morning after pills (peer pressure’s tough at those parochials)
– $2,500/mo for Afghani indica provided by their Taliban connection
– $100/mo for Zig-Zags
– $2/yr for woodcrafting tool replacements, from WalMart
– $50/mo for homosexual recruitment posters & flyers.
–
For one thing, the father is a woodworker and those individuals disclose their real income rarely.
Do you know who else was a woodworker? Jesus. Why do you hate Jesus, Gary?
I had enough forsight to buy insurnace on my DOG….and they were buying new cars while their kids were without health insurance….!!!!
Okay, unproven assertions and totally not-getting-the-point aside…
As you may know but almost certainly don’t care, my cat has developed lymphoma. We’ve had insurance on her for about seven years, and it’s come out to about a thousand bucks a year, they increase the premiums as she gets older. We’d never submitted a claim before the lymphoma.
We finally got our claims back. Of the six thousand we’ve spent on the lymphoma, they have reimbursed us a grand total of… 600 bucks. No shit. I’m rounding up, too.
And that’s nothing compared to a brain damaged kid in a coma. Two kids with catastrophic injuries, can you begin to imagine what their out of pocket expenses would have been even with insurance? They’d still be broke. They’d be on welfare, and the best case scenario is bankruptcy. They probably couldn’t get a bankruptcy, in fact, without selling their home and their cars and everything else they own to pay off medical bills anyway.
Jesus Christ, those toads suck. Have none of them ever gotten an insurance claim denied? Do they really not understand that the job of an insurance company is to deny payment on as much as possible? Of course the only rational conclusion that would lead you to is government-administered single-payer health care, but hey, better dead of pancreatitis than commie, right?
I have said this before and I will keep saying it until everyone in the world agrees with me. It has nothing about making sense. It has to do with stifling dissent.
They are proving that they will do anything to smear and slime you if you disagree with them. It doesn’t matter if some of the arguments make no sense to any sane person. What matters is that they hit you. And that their friends hit you. And that eventually you will stop talking if they keep hitting you because you just want the hitting to stop.
Does anyone find these tactics reminiscent of anything?
42 cents breaks out to shave-and-a-haircut-two bits. Anyone for Slinky Meringue? Fiddlepoppers with tequila backs
So they’ve got a Dominican merengue band playing hambone in their attack, which has been converted into a Mexican speakeasy. Indisputable proof they’re making more money than what they claim!
I’m a liberal. I don’t understand why Malkin and company are wasting their time trying to disqualify a family that’s already qualified for S-CHIP.
Are they trying to roll back the existing program, to add more uninsured to the 47 million Americans already without healthcare?
Are they proposing a new bill to make assets like cars get counted against eligibility?
I’m really confused what the message is they’re really trying to send here.
Since I support a national program that ensures health coverage for all citizens, expanding this program to cover 4 million more children seems like a reasonable place to start.
I don’t think most Americans know who most of these people even are. But the polls show 2 out of 3 Americans want universal coverage for Americans. I should think a mandate like that is something our public servants should respond to.
It’s really as basic as that.
But Rob’s right, mostly. It’s about stifling dissent. It’s also about the fact that the odds favor no overturn of the veto. So they want to claim how effective they were to win this thing because that makes them feel important.
There’s a 3rd reason: traffic hits = higher ad rates. They can win that, too. Just as long as sick and injured kids don’t win. That would drive them utterly …. no, they’re there already.
What always gets me about these little Gauleiters is that they are much more likely to one day find themselves in straits similar to the Frost’s than among the billionaire boyz clubs who do their utmost to deny them decent incomes, health insurance, or participation in the benefits of their own productivity.
Because I don’t have my glasses handy, I read this as
And the left does not understand why people have a problem with tits?
Which actually made more sense than the rest of the idiocy.
Lesley – give that Kraut kid a break, it almost certainly was Microsoft Windows he was “using” so who can blame him for getting upset.
D. Sidhe: These are the very questions I’ve been wondering about. Is it possible these rabid wingnutoids (or at least one of their friends or loved ones, should such persons exist) have never been ill? Never had a serious injury? In short, never had any experience with the health-insurance/medical industrial complex, while simultaneously battling disease or trying to get through physical therapy or just keep their lives together? (Yes, I know whereof I speak.) Because there is simply no way, no way, for a human being to go through that form of hell on earth—even if one has any sort of health insurance—and not support universal health insurance. That means, health care for everyone. None of this degrading analysis of what one earns or whether one has ever had a yeast infection or a hangnail in the past or how many cars the family has or how much their monthly gas bill is or whatever. There is no excuse for it.
I don’t want anyone to go without medical care because they don’t have enough money to pay for it. I want a humane system of health care for everyone. There. I said it.
And that would go double for dogs and cats, by the way.
Gary Ruppert wrote:
Woodworkers are sinister, shadowy figures, infamous for concealing their vast financial resources behind veils of secrecy. They slink by night into their hidden underground workrooms, ceaselessly lathing, carving, and varnishing as they plot and scheme.
You don’t understand! They didn’t even choose to get insurance for the Burmese python in their attic!!
And it fixed their rodent problem!!
These are evil people you are supporting, people. Deport them! Deport you! Deport everybody but me!!
Look, homeboy said he was using conservative numbers. Said it right up front. Just like Dick “Cakewalk” Cheney used conservative intelligence in making the case for WMD. What more do you want? These brown-shirts declared war on reality when they impeached a president over a semen stain in the name of conservative values.
TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR WINGNUTTIA 2000 (from Wingnuttia 2000 for Dummies, 2004).
LOGIC FAILURE
Remove four screws in the cover plate (fig. 1). Pry plate using edge of screwdriver (fig. 2). Lift locking latch on logic processer (fig. 3). Processer should disengage (fig. 3A). Remove any foreign materials that may have become lodged in the unit (fig. 4).
Hey, here’s the problem–there’s a piece of corn stuck in it.
Woodworkers are sinister, shadowy figures, infamous for concealing their vast financial resources behind veils of secrecy. They slink by night into their hidden underground workrooms, ceaselessly lathing, carving, and varnishing as they plot and scheme.
I say we nail them to a couple of boards.
What rob in toronto and Kevin H said … this isn’t about making sense … it’s about hammering down the people who dare to speak up.
I was writing about how this is all about squashing dissent, but I realize that it really isn’t dissent, per se. The wingnuts will be accusing us of treason and disloyalty right up to the point that a Democrat is elected President, upon which they’ll turn on a dime and we’ll be back to the black helicopters and the blue helmets. Then they’ll be freedom fighters.
I think what motivates the wingnuts is that they like to see suffering. Particularly in other people. It’s a genuine lack of empathy. Not even a lack, really, but a total absence. They literally cannot picture themselves in someone else’s shoes. Everything is about them. Which is why getting a $400 tax break each year is totally worth destroying the national budget.
“That’s a lot of quatloos!”
Perhaps Mr. Frost picks up some extra scratch playing in illegal fizzbin tournaments.
Yeah, and another thing: This whole horseshit argument about “not choosing” to have health insurance. Perhaps wingnuttia is unaware that in order to maximize profits and minimize having to pay for claims and all that other capitalistic voodoo that profit-based industries do, insurance companies LOOK FOR WAYS to DENY COVERAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE for private policyholders. This means that even if you are considered eligible—i.e., you’ve never coughed or bled in your life—your premiums will likely be so high you can’t afford them anyway.
I’d guess that even if the Frost family had had private health insurance, two children hospitalized for five months would have more than bankrupted them. Policies usually have catastrophic limits of a hundred thousand or so, maybe somewhat more. A single surgery, two nights in the hospital, and a few weeks of radiation or other therapy will max that out in nothing flat. I’d bet the medical bills resulting from that one accident had to have been more than $1 million. All residents of wingnuttia have “chosen” to have that kind of cash lyin’ around the house, have they? And why has no one gone there — asking for a ballpark figure of what those medical expenses were for the Frost children? Because no one wants to know. It’s too obscene. We can’t stand to acknowledge how fucking expensive health care is, and that it can happen, and at some point will most likely happen, to everyone. Except wingnuts, apparently. I guess Jeesus loves them better.
Sorry. This whole thing just rattles my cage somethin’ fierce.
`
A guy called Patton trolls an Ezra thread:
On one hand, he claims the Frosts cannot afford to pay for their insurance, BUT on the other hand he claims we collectively can afford their insurance.
It just gets worse from there.
” $100/mo for Zig-Zags”
Are they using that time machine to buy their papers?
I’d like to add some squishy common sense into this discussion. These soulless wingnuts are imploding and the more they shriek, the better. I know a family, dad has his own business, mom is home with the kids, works some part time. The kids are covered through the state’s version of S-CHIP. So, think about how the wingnuts’ argument (*spits*) is going to fly with them. Or with anyone else who is in the same situation, or anyone who knows someone who is in the same situation …
On October 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm, MrVIBEMAN said:
I’m so tired of hearing about the 50 million people who don’t have health insurance.
Yeah! And I’m so tired of hearing about libtards always whining about wages for labor, protecting the poor and the powerless, preserving a healthy environment, and building a better world for our children. Sheesh. Will yous guys just shut up already and let us get on with the business of devolving into warrior ape-people. Sheesh.
It’s a very strange comment all right. Jim M even corrects himself by acknowledging that there are actually 8 people, not 6, living on $30/week.
Amazing. Leaving aside the insanity of assuming the mortgage payments include taxes, I have trouble believing that a college (or, for that matter, elementary school) graduate came up with this
If she’s going to continue writing about economics, someone’s going to have to explain to her husband how rounding works.
“Do you know who else was a woodworker? Jesus. Why do you hate Jesus, Gary?”
To be fair, JC consistently underreported.
I think my favorite meme (of so, so many winners) is the “why doesn’t dad go get a better paying job with health insurance” one. Let’s see, he’s been a woodworker for a while, this is what he is trained to do and in which he is experienced. He probably has a base of clients and contacts he’s built up over the years. What he needs to do is present himself at some big corporation and demand a high-paying job with insurance, a job for which he likely has no qualifications? And they’ll just, like, give it to him? Really?
Or he’s supposed to take on a second job that offers insurance. Since few companies offer coverage to part-timers, he needs to get a second full-time job. Which means he is effectively an absentee father. Isn’t that the worstest thing in the world in Wingnuttia?
MzNicky,
Try a couple of million.
In the Boston area, acute hospital room and board is over $1000 a day. An ICU bed is about triple that. And keep in mind that charge is just for the bed (and food if your kid is able to eat). Also keep in mind that traumatic brain injuries usually mean long ICU stays. Baltimore is probably cheaper, but not by much.
Every single test, medication, procedure, machine, device and professional service costs plenty on top of room and board. So, if your child has an implanted brain pressure sensor, there is an hourly or daily fee for that. If the neurologist in the ward calls in a neurosurgeon for a consult, there is a fee for the consult. Hourly neuro checks? Billed for each one — that’s 24 each day. Heart monitor? Billed hourly or daily. IV? Billed by the hour or day. Medications? Billed by the milliliter or milligram. Respirator? Billed hourly or daily. And so on.
Granted, rehab hospitals charge a fraction of that which an acute hospital charges, but usually when people say their kid was ‘hospitalized’, it means in an acute care hospital. Then it becomes, “my kid was in rehab for x number of months”.
I am making lots of assumptions here, but each of those kids – who are said to have spent 5 months apiece in the hospital – easily racked up a million dollars in charges. Easily.
Ew.
… this isn’t about making sense … it’s about hammering down the people who dare to speak up.
Well, that, but it’s also about plain old thick-headed stubbornness. Look, their default setting is the knee-jerk reaction and their SOP is to stick with it no matter what (just like their dear leader). The evidence suggests that Malkin and others genuinely didn’t understand the original argument or its context (that Graeme Frost was simply pointing out that SCHIP is a good program, it worked for his family, and it should work for even more families who need it) — primarily because they didn’t listen to it. But having fired all their torpedoes at it in a blaze of stupid, and having been smacked down for their cruelty and misapprehension, the only option they see for response is to crank it up to 11.
Because there is simply no way, no way, for a human being to go through that form of hell on earth—even if one has any sort of health insurance—and not support universal health insurance
Sadly, I disagree. The way one can go through a health-and-money nightmare and still come out opposed to universal coverage is if one’s angry, bitter heart screams “I suffered, dammit, and so should everyone else!” These are the same commenters who like to post about how “My dear old dad taught me to suck it up, walk it off, be a man.”
I forgot to mention that I agree with Rob and Kevin H that the screeching from wingnuttia about this issue is really about suppression of free speech.
I just wanted to share my experience with modern medical costs to put the Frost’s tragedy into financial perspective.
Not to dignify these “figures”, still reeking as they are from being schlupped directly out of Jim’s own ass, but isn’t that a little high for a house purchased in 1990 for 55k?
I pay about 1200 a month on a 119K mortgage,fixed rate,30yr from 10 yrs ago. The asshat most likely is basing the mortgage “estimate”on the value of the house now,but even that isn’t right. A friend of ours is paying about a bit more than 2K a month on his house,which he bought a couple yrs ago for a little more than 200K.
Are you saying Jim’s numbers are absolutely worthless?
Let’s assume that the 45K is NET???
Jeebus. While we’re assuming, let’s assume I got my current gig three years ago instead of three months and have three years of … oh, yeah, three years assumed as NET … three years of cash in my pocket and let’s assume no taxes, and let’s assume that the cash I had to lay out over those interminable years of scraping by is also back in my pocket.
Wild frakking cheers. Now I can buy health insurance too.
Well, Jim’s got a winning formula, so why not use it? If the Topic of The Week was the federal government’s WIC nutrition program, our buddy Jim would have a rundown of the Frost’s situation, except he would add in $1200 a month (“lessee, that’s $14400 a year”) for health insurance, and at the end he would triumphantly come up with the fact that they made a bad choice to pay for private health insurance instead of depending on the taxpayers surplus milk and cheese to feed their children.
If they were victims of the housing/lending crisis, his ledger would prove that they made a bad choice if they didn’t have PMI and lost their home because they instead chose to insured their kids and feed them.
So Jim can win whatever the topic is.
HAHAHAHA!!!!
Yeah, claiming that this plan is bad because even American children whose families have mortgages will be covered is a surefire way to defeat it! Everyone knows the magical scientific 3rd law of Wingnut Dynamics. Put it simply, it states that the more people likely a person is to be covered by a healthcare plan, the more their penis will shrink forcing them to howl in indignation at the idea of their children not dying from leukemia.
I think I’m missing something.
If his point was that the family had so much cash that they didn’t need government assistance on health insurance, shouldn’t he have included health insurance in his run-down of yearly expenses?
Mortgage on home. Mortgage on business. Property tax. Utilities. Car insurance. Car loan. Gas….
Nope – still uninsured with catastrophic health issues. Guess that $1500 will have to stretch.
$1500 a year breaks out to $125 per month. Or a little over $30 per week for clothing, food and other essentials for a family of 4 ($8.00 per person).
And the left does not understand why people have a problem with this?
Mon dieu! He’s right! There’s no way their income could be so low, because we all know that there are no processes by which people can borrow money, even month after month, to pay for the basic necessities of survival. Like all Americans, the Frosts certainly cannot be living beyond their means. That’s unpossible!
Seriously, though. Not only has he rhetorically derailed the argument that Malkin et al have been meticulously meretriciously constructing over the last week or so, but he’s also managed to demonstrate as a bonus that a reasonably middle-class family can be driven into debt by their expenses, even while receiving some degree of government aid. Own goal, I believe that is.
Damn it all!
Strikes delMy hilarious and witty joke with ‘meticulous’ and ‘meretricious’ was defeated by the post filter. I could have sworn that the S tag worked in the past. Damn you, Gavin! Damn you to hell!!!!
Are there any republicans on the SCHIP program? Why don’t we see any of them talking about how much they were helped? I think it would be effective to have these rabid dogs of the right attacking the “family values” families like they were lazy, loony lefties.
“Let’s call it camel flapjacks, barstool”
*wipes tears from eyes* I really shouldn’t read this blog at work. I always end up giggling and snorting uncontrollably and it makes it rather hard to do my job.
If any of you ever happen to call a hotel in St. Paul and find that the switchboard operator can barely breathe for laughing while she directs your call, you’ll know that that is me and that I am reading Sadly, No!
I bet that guy didn’t really buy insurance for his dog.
I don’t understand this attack on Michelle’s comment section. In the Al Gore-Nobel Prize post, the commenters were simultaneously debunking Global Warming and Evolution with one brain tied behind their backs. It was the most breathtaking display of rhetorical brilliance in the history of blog comments. Sheesh, you guys are just jealous.
W/ all due respeck!
I don’t think this and similar displays of soulless smearing and attacks are designed to stifle dissent. It’s cruder than that.
I think this “dickhead” and those like him get off on indignation. That’s what’s left on the right now that W and his failures and etc. have scared off anyone remotely honest. It’s Indignation Nation they’re in, dig?
It’s what Hannity and Limbaugh fluff in their fans. Everyone comes away, not only angry, but *righteously* angry. Stupid, self-defeating, and all, yes. But still.
I bet that guy didn’t really buy insurance for his dog.
What’s worse, that dog just lies around the whole damn day, sponging off the rest of productive society. Parasite.
So this guy tries really hard to crunch the number and comes to the conclusion that they are really poor, which then proves they must actually be rich and lying?!
How does that even make sense?
So the basic narrative is:
-They make 45k a year!! that is so much money! they don’t need help!
-Actually, on only 45k a year, they are quite poor and do need help…
-Oh, then that number must be lie! We CAN’T be wrong, so they MUST be lying!
In short, they have decided on a conclusion already and are willing to distort any fact to reach that conclusion, no matter how illogical.
I bet that guy didn’t really buy insurance for his dog.
I kinda hope he did. He may eventually learn about “set reimbursement costs” and “market-competitive charges” and “pre-existing conditions” and “uncovered charges” and “elective treatments” (That would be the blood transfusion, believe it or not.).
We just dropped another two hundred on the cat this morning for some vitamin shots, blood tests, x-rays, and prescriptions for an appetite stimulant and steroids and chemo drugs. I’m not even bothering to send in the receipts. We’re canceling the insurance Monday. This probably makes me irresponsible and means I am making Bad Choices, huh.
Malkin is truly insane. Getting crazier by the moment. No doubt.
As this story unfolds, I do begin to question whether there are other families on SCHIP that fall into the questionable category. I won’t pass judgment about the Frosts online..they’ve gotten enough punishment already. I can’t help but question some of their thinking considering some of the things coming out.
One thing is for certain. I told my husband point blank if he ever suggests putting one of our children in front of the cameras on behalf of a political cause, the only favor he is going to get in return are standard divorce papers.
We spent, all told, some $3000 on Kotsie in the year before he died – all little by little, a blood test here, some meds there, a vet visit here. How do you say no? we were pretty clear to draw the line at putting him – a 14 year old dog – under general anesthesia for surgery, but on the fair side of that line, it still gets hard. Do you say, no, don’t test his liver enzymes, that’s too much money? Yet it was some $600 all told, just for that test and a followup.
Wait,m the father is a WOODWORKER?!!? How do we know his kids are even real? Maybe they’re puppets like in that Disney movie… How do we know the kid is even a real boy!!!!
Hey, Jesus was a woodworker, too.
I’m surprised Jim M. didn’t include line items for wetsuits, dildos, and condoms.
tb wrote: “Not to dignify these “figures”, still reeking as they are from being schlupped directly out of Jim’s own ass, but isn’t that a little high for a house purchased in 1990 for 55k?”
I think I recall reading that the house was mortgaged recently, perhaps to pay for the remodeling required after the accident (wider doors, new handicapped bathroom fixtures, that kind of thing?)
OMG! They’re TOO FUCKIN POOR to be real!
Poor people can’t find a way to scrape by. Not really poor people.
They would have died years ago.
The Frosts must be fucking MILLIONAIRES because nobody could live like that.
Let’s see their Cayman Islands accounts, dammit…
mikey
Quelles douches.
“Jim” has achieved the nearly impossible decafecta: at least TEN errors in his “reasoning”!
we will assume that their rates were not seriously impacted by the accident.
Yes, let’s do that. My wife hit some black ice and rolled a cargo van down the side of a mountain in Utah, walked away from it, but got bandaged in an ER. Our insurance dinged us for Major Damage and Medical, and our rates went from $2400 to $9800 per year. Fuck, any insurance company is going to raise your rates if there’s even a suggestion of a claim.
the combined car financing/lease expense is in the neighborhood of $350 per month per vehicle.
Good thinkaging. Christ on a pony, the monthly on my Prius (little car, a little over $30 per week for clothing, food and other essentials for a family of 4 ($8.00 per person).
You can’t even feed a family of 4 (or 6 or 8, whatever) badly on $8/week. Empty carbs, government excess fat calories, zero fiber and Grade-D Chinese corn syrup (now with 8% less lead!) — not even close.
Hell, I can’t go on. “War of Ideas”, indeed. These pathetic douchewads would find a way to lose the War on Darkness in a fucking light bulb factory.
I made bad typings in previous post. Please to excuse. Palsy from eating Chinese Barbie doll.
Susan B, I don’t really get your point. Questionable category? What is the question? As the Malkin commenter illustrated, someone with income of $45,000 could not pay $1000 a month for private health care, and that health care would not even be available in any family member had a chronic health problem. So what’s the question.
In terms of questioning the Frost’s thinking, I am pretty sure you could question some of my thinking over the years, and I could question yours. That’s really not the point. Circumstances sometimes put us in a place where we need help, and most of use believe that society should provide that kind of safety net, particularly where you’re talking about kids, who shouldn’t be penalized by their parents’ “questionable thinking” in any event.
Finally, the idea that you’d kill your husband if he allowed your children to be photographed kind of reinforces the right wing “they asked for it” meme, don’t you think? I would like my son to understand the importance of speaking out for what he believes in — not that he should quake in fear that some slime mob will attack him if he expresses his view. The way to deal with the slime mob is the way our side has reacted in the last week. Michelle might be a little more reluctant to do a drive by next time. You don’t deal with it by refusing to speak out. If you refused to speak out the terrorist — er malkinites — win.
Perhaps wingnuttia is unaware that in order to maximize profits and minimize having to pay for claims and all that other capitalistic voodoo that profit-based industries do, insurance companies LOOK FOR WAYS to DENY COVERAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE for private policyholders.
ahem, cough, sputter, wheeze
and this item is enough to make any humane person vomit
You know, it’s not like any of this stuff is a secret.
MCHP
* Countable Income under 200% of the federal poverty level.
MCHP Premium
* Countable income between 200-300% of the federal poverty level. You pay a small premium for the health insurance.
The “countable income” is the gross income minus certain “disregards.”
For a pregnant or postpartum woman, the gross income is all income of the woman and of her spouse and children under 21 who live with her.
For a child, the gross income is all income of the parents and of siblings if the parents choose to include them.
And if you look at the actual application, page 3 asks for gross income, earned and unearned.
OMG! They’re TOO FUCKIN POOR to be real!
Poor people can’t find a way to scrape by. Not really poor people.
some wingnuts have the exact opposite take on poor people. Kathy Shaidle, for example:
Kathy suffers from a wacking huge case of denial about many things, including her experience with poverty. Even though she has been poor most of her life – and lived four years on welfare benefits – she distinguishes herself. She is not like all the other poor on welfare. She is poor and she despises the poor. It’s the only way she can maintain her friendships with people like Mark Steyn.
He keeps giving what he calls “conservative” figures – that improve HIS calcualtions. (Can someone tell him he looks like a dumbass, please?) And he still comes up with “($8.00 per person)” for a week of eating. They couldn’t afford to eat a cheap Christmas tree every week.
And here’s Jim M. in a post that Malkin highlights from a week ago:
Oh.
Dear.
Jimmy? Jimmy? Please take off the helmet and come out of the basement, Jimmy. Mommy’s got PBJs!
On that income how did the manage to get the credit for what they had?
Well, you can understand his perfectly reasonable problem with sexual aids, can’t you?
I mean, they’re not biodegradable fer cryin out loud!
I’m certain good ol’ Jim has NO problem with that fact that they are gay, they are getting more sex and having more fun then him, and it brings out his perfectly understandable eliminationist instincts. Perish the thought.
But the fact that these, these, PEOPLE are threatening the future of the environment with their environmentally unfriendly devices is simply unacceptable.
And they wonder why we call them hypocrites.
Next thing you know, ol’ Jim will be crying out over the lack of gay rights in Iran!!
mikey
I think that Jim M. showed that he is indeed semi-numerate, and after such a brilliant display perhaps he will find employment in the declining months of Bush Administration or in a think tank. Keep up with good work, Jim!
As someone who “does numbers for living”, I have that problem every day: the numbers “do not add up”. Usually it means that something was left out. In this case, a lot of expenses that Jim quite plausibly lists are the cost of doing bussiness. Payments on a commercial property, insurance, amortization and fuel for the pickup truck. Since he calculated together with non-commercial property, it is a bit hard to tell what HIS estimate was, but the home was reportedly purchased a long time ago rather cheaply, so it is probably paid down, consequently mortgage estimate would go to commercial property. Thus the commercial expenses were ca. 20k. If you have a money-making bussiness, the cost do not count to income, so these 20k should be outside the net income.
Once you add 20k to the disposable income, it seems that Frosts can survive if they live frugally. Mrs. Frost stays at home, so she probably cooks, and perhaps makes lunches for her husband. They may buy they cloths at Walmart and other discount places. Mr. Frost can make their furniture. So they indeed can live with less cash than an everage metrosexual.
Lastly, a person with useful skill living in suburbs indeed has opportunities to make some extra money that are not taxed. But I suspect that it cannot be much. In my area, a handyman gets 10 dollars per hour, lawn mowing with own lawn mower, 20-30 dollars. I suspect that Frosts may have several thousands per year of extra income from some irregular opportunities. But it is not like Mr. Frost can hide his consulting income, or capital gains on trading collectible art pieces.
Thorn: 8 dollars per week per person for food???
I think that some peple in this country spend no more than that. In a trading post next to Navaho Indian Reservation I noticed the following food staples: corn flour in 50 lb bags and pinto beans in 25 lb bags. If you also have a little garden with vegetables and some sheep, you can live on less that 1 dollar per day, and I think that this is exactly what they do.
Douche Baggins, you are every bit as hilarious on matters of domestic politics as you are on the far more pressing issues to which you devote the bulk of your commenting energy. Unless you’re not the same guy from HCwDB, in which case you’re BOTH awesome.
And by pressing I mean boobies.
I read somewhere that most Americans, when polled, misstated their relative position on the wealth ladder (I mean, they thought they were in a higher percentile), misstated how many people were truly wealthy (put far too many people in higher earnings bands) and believe they will themselves become rich. This drives wingnuts on: they may not be rich now, but they believe they will be, so they must fight to keep liebruls from stealing all the riches they are yet to have. The crazy thing is, most of the crackers who post comments to Malkin’s drivel would probably benefit much more from the liebrul theft than they ever will from supporting the wealthy’s selfishness.
Well, most Americans also routinely overestimate the amount they pay in taxes, as a real number, as a percentage of their income, and as compared to the rest of the country. Which is why “FREELOADERZ!!!!1111!!!” gets them all riled up.
I can’t quite imagine why they don’t just pretend that their tax dollars are going exclusively to the programs they like (which, since it often includes the Iraq War is very likely indeed) and that the bleeding heart liberals are paying for the social programs. It’s what I do. In reverse, I mean, and there’s really very little chance that at least some of our taxes aren’t going to this stupid war.
Here’s where our taxes go (U.S.).
Note the size of the Defense Dept relative to Health and Human Services…
I can picture Michelle Malkin playing Tilda Swanson’s character in Michael Clayton in real life.
Tilda Swinton, and I can see Malkin playing Tilda Swinton’s White Witch, which was an amazing portrayal of an evil narcissist.
D. Sidhe, I am so sorry to hear about your sick cat.
As someone who worked in the veterinary division of a major pharma, I was always told that veterinary insurance, as currently constituted, is not worth the money, as the company will seldom pay what they say they will, if they will pay at all. These pet insurance schemes seem to be seen as straight-out business opportunities, and there is some confusion as to whether the companies who offer them are subject to any sort of regulation at all. Certainly, I know of no one who paid for the insurance and got any reasonable percentage of their pet’s expensive care paid for.
I don’t have insurance on Ganesh Bengal Cat, and his various health emergencies involving a chronic condition have often forced me to live for a while on tea and peanut butter crackers to afford his meds and overnight stays, procedures and anethesia, etc. He informs me that he is worth it. i have informed him that he is a hybrid car. Not a large one, or a fancy one, but yes, he represents the hybrid car that I will never own now. 😉
I shall hope for the best for your cat, and will include thoughts of her in my offering to Kwan Yin tonight.
I will also be making offering for these right wing tools who are being used for evil (with or without their being aware of this), and are damaging their own souls in the process. I hope they will come to know Her Mercy soon, since they are obviously suffering.
With Mercy and Compassion, Beloved Kuan Yin
Melt away this anger, and let me love again
Melt away this fear, and let me love again
Om Namah Shiva, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
What’s worse, that dog just lies around the whole damn day, sponging off the rest of productive society. Parasite.
yeah, he should gt a job, in fact I’m sure I saw a “Dogs with Jobs” program the other day, or was it a dream
i have informed him that he is a hybrid car.
lol! The things we won’t do for our furry friends. In part this is why I’m amazed at this “they’re freeloading off the state” crap. Does anyone really think this family wouldn’t gladly pay any money they had to take care of their kids? As it is it sounds like they’re deeply in debt, and if they’d lost their home they’d be in real trouble as very few apartments are genuinely accessible to people with serious disabilities.
(And yes, believe me I know there are families that treat their kids like shit and wouldn’t give a fuck if they needed medical care, but I have to believe they’re rare, and it doesn’t sound like that’s the case here.)
I wonder, though, how many of the people whining about this have seen elderly family members shelter assets so that degenerative long-term-care-requiring diseases like Alzheimer’s don’t leave them having to move in with one of the whiners before they’re eligible for some state assistance. I’m sure that’s different, though. Gotta protect that inheritance. (Personally, I think that’s not unreasonable too, at least in terms of not bankrupting a surviving spouse. The inheritance can go hang, but if the state can help people not be homeless after a medical emergency, call me a dirty commie and sign me up to help.)
Cypress seems to be doing okay, thank you. She doesn’t, they tell me, have tumors on her heart “as of yet”, which didn’t make me all that happy since I hadn’t been aware I needed to worry about it. But she’s put on half a pound in the last week, so she’s probably doing well enough that she could get some treatment for her low hematocrit next week if she needs it.
Fortunately, my partner makes pretty good money, and doesn’t begrudge my cat either time or cash. We’ve told the mooching housemate that we can’t afford her and the cat, though, and since the cat actually likes us, if she’s not out by the end of the year we’re taking the housemate to the vet to be put down. 🙂 She was not amused, but I care so little at this point. She’s had three years of free room and board to get her act together (another case of medical emergency contributing to home- and job-lessness), and the stress has contributed to the cat’s problems.
Really, in my experience most people don’t go to the state first. They try to deal with it themselves and then turn to family and friends. But sometimes your family and friends aren’t much better off than you, and how does it do society any good to have one medical emergency cause serious money problems for more than one family?
Pet Ganesh for me. He sounds well worth it, yes. There was a lovely apparently bengal cat at the vet today who a couple weeks ago donated blood for Cypress. He loves my SO, and if we could remotely afford two cats with major medical issues (he got hit by a car and lost, apparently, quite a bit of intestine and one eye and requires daily injections of something), and if Cypress didn’t hate him, we’d have taken him home by now, too.
Hey, you know who else was a woodworker? Harrison Ford! And you know he’s worth millions, right? Clearly, those awful Frost people are pulling a fast one. I mean, you don’t see Han Solo sucking the government tit, do you?
As Bill Hicks used to say, “Case.Fucking.Closed.”
she could get some treatment for her low hematocrit next week if she needs it.
If I were not previously awash with sympathy for Cypress, I would be sympathising now.
Hey folks, how about we consider a hypothetical instance of a medical crisis afflicting a family. Let’s consider one family’s private hell and see if we can get some chuckles rippling through this thread. Sound like fun?
To start, let’s assume that your mother suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 40+ years (I can hear that wingnut tittering already!). Let’s further assume that one fine January morning three years ago her heart failed. Your father elects to keep her heart going with medication, something you’re not happy about but about which you can do nothing (under Texas law, anyway). Let’s also assume that she then has a stroke, placing her in what one of her doctors refers to as “a vegetative state.” But your father is adamant about “keeping her going,” presumably because he can’t stand the thought of being 70 years old and alone. Let’s also assume that she ends up completely bedridden, with a tracheostomy tube (rendering her unable to talk), a feeding tube, and two urinary catheters.
Let’s say that after spending $5000 dollars to renovate his (rather modest) dwelling to accommodate her, your father brings her home. Since she requires round-the-clock care to make sure she doesn’t choke to death (she requires periodic cleaning of the canula in the trache tube), you decide to get nursing help.
Go ahead, wingnuts. Call a nursing service and see what “skilled” nursing help costs. I dare you.
Let’s say that since Medicare will not pay for that, and since it is beyond the financial reach of most anyone outside the Trump tax bracket, you decide to get unskilled help and train them yourself. You still wind up paying $2500 a month for ONE assistant, who is there seven hours a day. Let’s further stipulate that the bill for medical supplies (Jevity, sterile water, peroxide, a wide assortment of Chinese medical plastic, etc.) brings your total medical expenses to around $70,000 a year, NOT including what Medicare covers (hospital stays, physical therapy, etc.).
Does anyone want to up the ante on my story? Who still wants to play with my story?
Okay, one guy. That’s enough to continue the bit…
Let’s say your 70-ish father burns through the remains of his health (none too good to begin with) trying to cover all of the hours that the nurse is not there (pulling 48-hours shifts is hard on an elderly guy, as you might imagine). Further assume that your father winds up in the hospital himself, with a partially collapsed lung. Now, into our incredibly realistic simulation of a medical crisis, let’s throw in a terminal diagnosis of COPD for your father (a 50-year veteran of the smoking wars). Now he requires his own medication and treatment, and you now have to hire round-the-clock assistance, bringing your monthly bill for “unskilled nursing help” to $7500. Let’s assume that your mother has been in this condition for three years, and your father for the last 6 months or so. Let’s also say that there are also all of the usual expenses to deal with; a mortgage on a 1400 sq. ft. home, plus insurance, gas, and maintenance on two cars (one a wheelchair-lift van). [Michelle will be pleased to know, though, that these vehicles are NOT expensive Frostmobiles, being 10 and 13 years old, respectively. They are, in fact, exactly the sort of shit she would approve of. No need to cruise OUR neighborhood, Michelle! (Although she would probably have something to say about the new siding on the house)]
Let’s further assume…wait a minute…
Assume?
This is the REALITY I’ve been living with for the last three years.
No, I’m not going to add it all up. I’m too drunk, and I know Michelle’s people will do all the accounting for me for free, anyway. You know, to make sure that we’re not cheating, and all. I’ll be happy to send them the bills. All of them. Three years worth. (You up for this, you fuckers? Gary? You warming up your calculator?)
But wait, we ARE cheating. My father gets $10,000 a month through a mineral trust, courtesy of an inheritance. He also has $480K in trust, which he unfortunately can’t touch for medical expenses, but he can occasionally beg a few thousand for emergencies, like the time when what remained of my mother’s detention was rotting in her head, and had to be surgically removed. I’m sure that Michelle would conclude from this that my parents are too well-to-do to be benefiting from the socialist nightmare known as Medicare (“And your father shouldn’t have smoked all those years. HAW HAW HAW HAW!”…Love, Michelle).
I think, though, that the rational conclusion is that we would have been screwed even WITHOUT Medicare, and that people who live on a “normal” income would be completely…um, what’s the word?
Oh yeah, fucked. But that’s not the conclusion that they will likely draw, is it?
But wait, there’s more!
I don’t actually live with my parents. I go to graduate school in a town 110 miles away. Nearly every fucking weekend I’ve made the trip, though, because they’re my Mom and Dad. So all of this time I’ve been suffering Thesis Interruptus, not to mention running up my student loan tally (something I’m trying REAL hard not to think about). And now I have a car payment, since I had to put my old one down after putting 100K miles on it in two years (and no, it wasn’t an SUV). And the icing on the cake is my professor looking like she wants to kick me in the nuts every time she sees me.
Gary, buddy, I’m here to tell you, you only think the way you do because it hasn’t happened to you yet. But see all that you have to look forward to, when nature finally kicks your ass?
And I don’t recommend calling an ambulance for the wingnuts unless they’re insured. A ride in the meat wagon costs $1500.
Oh, and in case you haven’t drawn the obvious conclusion from this, I think Malkin and her minions are cunts. Michelle is hereby invited to go fuck herself with one of those cheese-grater style dildos. What’s that? They don’t exist? Well, I’ll invent one, just for her.
[Sorry this is long; I just HAD to get it out of my system. And apologies to the ghost of Hicks, without whom I would not have survived the last three years]
I’m finding it difficult to argue with any part of Moxie’s comment. That may make me a bad feminist, or it may just make me genuinely bitter over the whole Frost affair.
Rufus said, October 13, 2007 at 18:32
I don’t understand this attack on Michelle’s comment section. In the Al Gore-Nobel Prize post, the commenters were simultaneously debunking Global Warming and Evolution with one brain tied behind their backs. It was the most breathtaking display of rhetorical brilliance in the history of blog comments. Sheesh, you guys are just jealous.
Given that brain is in short supply in that fetid swamp, I daresay you’re referring to the lot of them sharing a single organ. Okay, two at most.
Moxie, your story is mind-bogglingly painful. I thank whatever lucky stars shone on my parents’ birth that they elected to remain in our small socialist-medicine-practising nation instead of moving here with, or shortly after, me. Now that they need the care, they are getting it without paying a penny. Mum’s a diabetic with a bad heart, Parkinson’s, and mobility and continence problems. She has 24/7 nursing care in a private home with a private room that she shares with my Dad, who has hypertension, a leaky heart, and a perforated eardrum (he’s deef as a post). The nice ladies at the home feed my mother when she can’t get her fingers around the implements. I pay the nursing home bills, the government pays for everything else. Every time I visit, her geriatrician schedules an hour or two for me to meet with her oncologist, dietitian, physical therapist, nursing supervisor, mental health practitioner, and social welfare case worker. I pay nothing at all for her transportation, prescriptions, surgery, hospital stay, and any pluses she needs, like nurses, anesthesia, consultants, braces, glasses, dentures. Socialised medicine is what keeps us all alive. If not for that, they would both have killed themselves, and I would be dead of despair or suicide.
I am a feminist as well, and I have no problem calling Malkin a cunt; it’s what the word was invented for.
Moxie, gradual school is bad enough as it is, but having this stress on top of it is truly worse than a nightmare. I don’t know what else to say.
Thepolitical cat, are you by chance a Canadian? Just asking; I’m thinking about immigrating to that northern land, especially since we’ll be able to grow mangoes in Calgary in a few more decades.
Yeah, the dildo thing was probably over the top. But then again, so was the Inquisition. That’s the worst thing about wingnut hate, it helps bring out the id in the rest of us.
And I really, really hate these people. I know that’s not “nice,” but they have absolutely no clue about the people and situations they are passing judgement on. I’m thinking about rewriting the above and posting it on every wingnut forum that is discussing this issue, complete with the challenge. I’m thinking a good subject line would be “Taste of Reality.” I’m also thinking, though, that it would be a waste of time. Because they’ll never get it. Until, as I said, it happens to THEM.
And after I get through this (and Jeebus, it CAN’T last forever! Right? Jeebus? You there?) I hope I don’t turn into one of those “I did it, so you just suck it up!” types. I can’t imagine not being able to at least *sympathize* with someone who’s dealing with anything like this. But then again, I’m not a Malkinoid.
But…how many quatloos to the ningy?
bravo to the truly absurd non sequiter
they aint easy to write
Thanx Gavin–you can never have too many quatloo references!