Veterans are outraged. Now they need to do what they once did best. Lead. Part 1.

There is no doubt Canadian veterans have been treated in the most vile way possible by one of the most ignorant people in the Harper government. Julian Fantino has demonstrated, quite clearly, that he feels a greater duty to his benefactor, Harper, than he does to the armed services veterans his department is mandated to assist. In fact, his recent behaviour demonstrates a total disdain for veterans. He believed he could appear at a time of his choosing and start issuing orders. This to a group who, now no longer in uniform, would loudly tell a serving general where to go if they didn't like what was being said. Fantino forgot, (or perhaps has never understood) who it is he actually works for. Not surprising, actually. Fantino has a long and documented history of being a dangerously stupid person with too much power which he felt was his to abuse and then to attack anyone who shone a light on his activities.

Some people are giving Fantino credit for "sincerely apologizing" to veterans for the spectacle he created. Except that it wasn't a sincere apology and accepting any part of it would be a huge mistake. Professor Stephen Kimber explains why.

Sincerely? In the next breath, Fantino was bitching to his stenographers at the Toronto Sun that the multi-medalled, wheel-chaired vets had been “duped… jacked up” by the union representing public servants who will lose their jobs and who had paid the veterans’ airfare to Ottawa.
When those mindless-dupe vets failed to show Fantino the due deference he required, he told the Sun, “I wasn’t just going to play dead.”

Keeping in mind, of course, that on one of Fantino's previous yap-sessions with those same stenographers he tried to paint himself into the same frame as a combat veteran. That should have told the veterans who attempted to meet with him that such endeavours were likely to fail. Fantino, who does not know how to control his authoritarian impulses, views himself as a hero. A self-styled hero who brooks no protest without his explicit permission.

Fantino clearly does not understand veterans. Worse though, is that he expects veterans to kneel before him and then be grateful for his very existence. His style is to issue orders; not to listen. And he further insults veterans by telling them they have been "duped" by the public service union, PSAC.

Really? Duped by the very union veterans watched like hawks when they were serving? The same union whose collective wage and benefit package formed the basis for the Canadian Forces compensation and benefit negotiations with the Treasury Board? Ya think?!!

If there's been any "duping" going on it's been by Harper and company, Fantino included. They have made a point of positioning themselves as "friends of the forces" and the "protectors of veterans", all without having done much except make loud noises about it. While the Harperites have been diligent in making certain they applied a nice shiny surface paint job, they have been hacking away at personnel, cutting pay and benefits, cancelling equipment acquisition and fighting against veterans attempting to hang on to disability benefits.

Not to mention the biggest duping of all. Harper, on Sunday, 1 March 2009, on CNN in the U.S., (he never says this kind of thing where a Canadian can get at him), told Fareed Zakaria that the war in Afghanistan was futile. And rather than call the Chief of Defence Staff and require that all Canadian troops be withdrawn to a safe area, he continued to knowingly send Canadian kids to their death. That made them cannon fodder and it highlighted Harper as a dangerous sociopath. Fantino too, is a sociopath but with perhaps a more lingering aroma of corruption.

And here ends part 1. 

The right-wingers take aim at a 12-year old. No target is too easy for them.

Chet's absolutely right. They hate you. If something bad happens to you, they hate you.

Two weeks ago, the Democratic radio address was delivered by a 12-year old Maryland boy named Graeme Frost. Graeme told his story of being involved in a severe car accident three years ago, and having received access to medical care because of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

[...]

The smear attack against Graeme has taken firm hold in the right-wing blogosphere. The National Review, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang, Powerline, and the Weekly Standard blog have all launched assaults on the Frost family. The story is slowly working its way into traditional media outlets as well.

Here are the facts that the right-wing distorted in order to attack young Graeme:

1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.

2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.

3) They bought their “lavish house” sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.

4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.

5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.

Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.

At times like this, I always check John Cole at Balloon Juice, just to see if he's noticed anything. By golly, don't you know, John noticed. And he noticed the most vile, racist piece of crap in the right-wing blogosphere - Michelle Malkin.

Citizen journalists, at your doorstep. Maybe she can get some of her flunkies at Hot Air to sit with binoculars and see what they have for dinner. Better not be government cheese, or the SHIT is going to hit the fan.

The Malkin wing of the current Republican party makes me fucking sick.

[...]

You know what grates at me- didn’t she, for one minute, think- “Gee- this is kind of creepy and like that lunatic Mike Stark who stalked O”Reilly. Maybe I should call the Frosts and try to arrange an interview, rather than do drive-bys of their house using information dug up by Freepers?”

Because that is what a normal, sane person would have done. I think I answered my own question.

[...]

Regardless, this is not about the SCHIP program. This is about the base instincts of the modern right, and the attempts to intimidate and smear and label it as “investigating.” I don’t have a problem with opposing SCHIP, I don’t have a problem with opposing legislation by anecdote (which is why I, unlike Michelle, hated the Schiavo legislation). I do have a problem with publishing a desperate family’s financial information, scouring pictures of their kitchen to determine the value of their appliances, and stalking their abode. Even if they were used at a press conference by Democrats.

What Michelle has done here is creepy and weird and wrong.

That's because Michelle Malkin is creepy, weird and usually wrong. She is also willing, using the altar of right-wing purity as a defence, to endanger the lives of others.

She's scum. Bronwyn Lance Chester of the Virginia-Pilot in Norfolk, VA, labeled Malkin quite nicely.

“I think she habitually mistakes shrill for thought-provoking and substitutes screaming for discussion. She’s an Asian Ann Coulter. I also think that, like Coulter, she says outrageous things just to get TV appearances and book deals. She’s the worst of what’s wrong with punditry today. She adds absolutely nothing to genuine political discourse.”

She hates you. They all hate you.