Krugman’s Illogical War on the War on Logic Revealed.
Abstract: Krugman of the New York Times tautologically stresses his wobbly notion of logic to show that Republicans twist the most wonderful parts of leftist legislation. Deftly comparing melons to mush, he defeats the right-wing with a sterling sleight of hand by doing a little switch and bait on the reader. Using a classic propagandistic deception he finds some problem in one statement and uses that as a general case to attack other statements by the same person or allies of that person [not connected to the first] where he buries the authentic intent of his screed. He attacks the new House Speaker for saying that “our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal,” which it is if you add in business costs and taxes that bring this food to your table. His case is trickily worded and festooned with its own numerous and deliberate faults, including relying on the experts at the CBO for confirmation, that, conveniently, escapes the attention of the average liberal and must now be looked upon as a perceptive tenet in the crumbling pantheon of Liberal Logic. The above-average liberal just nods in panting consent to this logical abjuration as part of the heroic and glorious crusade against capitalism.
How to best read my blogs:
[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]
The screed launches:
“My wife and I were thinking of going out for an inexpensive dinner tonight. But John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says that no matter how cheap the meal may seem, it will cost thousands of dollars once you take our monthly mortgage payments into account.
Wait a minute, you may say. How can our mortgage payments be a cost of going out to eat, when we’ll have to make the same payments even if we stay home? But Mr. Boehner is adamant: our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal, and to say otherwise is just a budget gimmick.”[1]--The War on Logic By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published:
This is a side-step popular in propaganda constructions whereby the real topic is disguised but sanctioned by revealing an absurdity in the target thought cited in the first paragraph. Such techniques are honed to perfection by screed conjurers culled from the far left-oriented writers at the near-bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers.[2][3] From these two comments by the opposition appearing in the same structured political piece, we must assume that they are related. That stream of reason is sloppy even in its own arena, but is good fare for liberals. Hence the arguments against the first comment logically follow for the second and all that follows after that! Yes, to liberals who utilization of logic is limited in many ways this is a quantum leap in political criticism. Gee, if idea A is false and idea B follows A from the same person then both are naturally false. This is about as far as ‘reason’ can take us when reading political polemics by skilled propagandists. This is skillfully contrived.
Statement A by Boehner is obviously true since our government [foolishly] subsidizes mortgage payments [Fannie Mae and her idiot brother Fredo] to achieve ‘affordable housing’ for millions of potential voters including millions of illegal aliens (also potential or actual voters) and that foolish practice hikes deficits, raises costs, the government debt and debt service--all appearing in taxes and fees thus requiring businesses to raise prices. This applies to restaurants too. Illinois[4][5] leads the world now in potential and real taxes (adding in the Federal take and red tape of course), with the possible exception of California, in anti-business mentality, so a cheap dinner will have cost increases built in thus forcing the meal to cost more. Was that too hard? The hidden point here is that perhaps Paul Krugman’s mortgage payments will not increase in absolute dollars because of flat monthly mortgage payment in his particular isolated case. On average, the costs are spread around to burden everybody who gets a new mortgage because some of this cost [mostly as federal debt, red tape, threats from government agencies, etc.] is figured in business plans and balance sheets and P&L statements. This is a meaningless technical loophole in a bed of twisted semantics, but a resource that means a lot to liberals because they can claim to have said something truthful by correcting the right wing. This is a nifty springboard to attack larger problems created by the right as they strive to produce more ‘poor’ and subjugate them. That ‘correction’ allows them broad license to find more.
That essay supra is just fluff as the real goal here is to warp the little minds of the polis so that illogical and bankrupting projects like ObamaCare can prosper and grow like a tumor and give solace and jobs to liberals. Our massive deficit has raised costs on everything.
Here we go………
“O.K., the speaker hasn’t actually weighed in on our plans for the evening [their dinner ed]. But he and his G.O.P. colleagues have lately been making exactly the nonsensical argument I’ve just described — not about tonight’s dinner, but about health care reform. And the nonsense wasn’t a slip of the tongue; it’s the official party position, laid out in charts and figures.” --The War on Logic By Paul Krugman
The connection is made! Here is where the missing connection is cemented into the discussion. Boehner didn’t say something on this particular topic, but he and his cabal are planning to do so (or something). It is difficult to follow the discourse of many liberals because they make incoherent statements that seem to serve as the canonical glue that binds their essays and offers some coherent texture.
Back on socialism. Krugman goes on here:
“So, about that nonsense: this week the House is expected to pass H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act — its actual name.[6][7] But Republicans have a small problem: they claim to care about budget deficits, yet the Congressional Budget Office says that repealing last year’s health reform would increase the deficit. So what, other than dismissing the nonpartisan budget office’s verdict as “their opinion” — as Mr. Boehner has — can the G.O.P. do?” --The War on Logic By Paul Krugman
Here, the logical loop is closed off and insulated against assault. Convincingly, at least in the tortured mind of the author, this follows from the advice of ‘experts’ from the CBO.’[8] But, then Krugman is an ‘expert’ (at least according to himself) and the peace-loving Swedes[9]. The CBO is a disgrace [see next paragraph]. Krugman argues in the insignificant case where since
The CBO has a horrible history of predicting numbers.
“"The Congressional Budget Office’s consistent forecasting errors arose not from any partisan bias, but from its methods of projection. In analyzing initiatives meant to save money, it helps to be able to refer to similar initiatives in the past that saved money. When there aren’t enough good historical examples to go by, the estimated savings based on past experience is essentially considered to be unknown. Too often, “unknown” becomes zero — even though zero is not a logical estimate.”"[11]--
So, armed with a speck of truth having several caveats and interlocking conditions, we surge forth to convince the polis that socialism is good and socialized medicine is even better, cost effective and liberal.
Krugman focuses in on a single point to prove his conviction in a general way:
“First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.” What’s that?” --The War on Logic By Paul Krugman
Krugman introduces some minor point that will be used a lever to dislodge all else that follows:
“Well, in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. The formula was, however, flawed; it would lead to payments so low that doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients. Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes. And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform.
But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform. So the G.O.P. argument here is exactly like claiming that my mortgage payments, which I’ll have to make no matter what we do tonight, are a cost of going out for dinner.” --The War on Logic By Paul Krugman
This is slightly different from what Boehner said: “…our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal.“ Boldly, our brave knight steps forth to spear the Demon that Congress hatched! He avoids the salient point that IF there were no phony Medicare then this government cost would have never existed. His tiny point that “the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform” fails to be a factor if we drop government HC subsidizes entirely, as we should.
Krugman winds up his screed with an argument he has with himself in some distant mirror:
“Given that their minds were made up from the beginning, top Republicans weren’t interested in and didn’t need any real policy analysis — in fact, they’re basically contemptuous of such analysis, something that shines through in their health care report. All they ever needed or wanted were some numbers and charts to wave at the press, fooling some people into believing that we’re having some kind of rational discussion. We aren’t.” --The War on Logic By Paul Krugman
The ‘we’ here refers to Krugman and his several images that must be reflected in his personal mirror, some creation of his id or worse. Krugman’s stogy advocacy is well known: Krugman recites his own litanies in these links:[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]
Predictably, Krugman offers nothing else other than tax and spend and never a tax cut to create real jobs in the private sector. Thus, we can follow his logic along and ask: is his “mind were made up from the beginning?” Having never argued for a tax cut [see references below] we have a weighty raft of evidence that it is. And the Propaganda Wheel just turns on and on.
Toot1 for new taxes and then blast off a hearty Toot2 for more spending or reverse the theme order with retoots.[49]
rycK
Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com
[1]The War on Logic By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
[2] The Babbling Brooks of the
[3] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the
“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the
[4] “
[5] Swimming in debt,
[6] How clever!!
[9] “If socialism is so very good then why would those citizens who were raised in that system want to change it? It must be because the current mechanism of socialism has failed in several aspects. We can count the number of stable socialist states on one hand and most have some unique source of funding such as the Swedes who dealt in the dirty gun and explosive business for 150 years while offering to be brokers of peace and entertaining tourists or perhaps the Swiss who readily squirrel away vast sums of money from criminals, despots and tyrants and keep those accounts secret and free of taxes.”
Debt Might Drive Us away from Democracy? Socialism is Responsible for Most of this Debt.”
[10] “
Inefficiency in
[11] http://www.examiner.com/healthcare-reform-in-national/cbo-has-poor-history-with-healthcare-estimates
[13] Another Leftist Bondage Scheme for the Bond Gods. Krugman Speaks of the Evils of the Austerians
http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-leftist-bondage-scheme-for-bond.html
[14] Krugman Ignores the Fact that Obama has Trashed the
http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/08/krugman-ignores-fact-that-obama-has.html
[15] US Economics Sink into Oblivion but Mystagogues like Krugman Recite the Same Old Runes.
Krugman Traps Himself in his Trappy Claptrap over EU Funny Money
[17] Krugman Searches for His Own Truth in an Irish Mirror. He Reflects upon the Mirror and Finds Himself as Originator of the Eternal Solution. Tax and Spend.
[18] Krugman Offers an Essay on Misdirecting Political Power. We can Control the Banks and prevent the Next Crises, but No Details, Just give us Power.
[19] Krugman UnMakes a Euromess and Recommends a California-style Mess. Bigger Government is Always the Solution http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/02/15/krugman_unmakes_a_euromess_and_recommends_a_california-style_mess_bigger_government_is_always_the_solution.thtml
[21] Krugman Unlearns for Us by Distorting Learnings about
[22] Krugman Calls for More Stimulus. What Else is New?? More Debt and Bigger Government and a Bigger Depression!
[23] Krugman Calls to Pass Bills and We can Merely Unpass Them Later.
[24] Krugman Offers Us Naïve Fairy Tales about Financial Disasters and the Lessons We Should Learn from them.
[25] Krugman Can Afford to Talk About Affordable Truths Because Talk is Still Cheap and So Is Your Tax Monies for Liberals.
[26] Krugman of the
[27] Krugman Exhausts His Vocabulary by Monotonously Reciting the Only Two Words He Understands In Economics: Tax and Spend. Let’s Tax the Stock Markets!!
[28] Krugman Menaces the Fear of Phantoms and Questions Obama with his Menacing Quips. Tax and Spend and Damn the Inflation.
[29] Paul Krugman Juggles Apples and
[30] Paul Krugman Clarifies the Outcome of the NJ Gubernatorial Race for Us: Spend More! Spend More! Spend More!
[31] Paul Krugman Mumbles about Misguided Monetary Mentalities and Offers Other Hokums about our Currency
[32] Krugman Confuses Bacchus, Baucus and Baloney with the Threshold for Healthcare. Not Enough Big Government in the Latest Episode
[33] Averting the Worst in Liberalism as Contrasted by Paul Krugman. Tax and Spend our way to Prosperity.
[36] Krugman Boils a Pot Boiler about Boiling Frogs. Another Propaganda Exercise Example. Tax Alert!
[38] Krugman Offers a World-Wide Trade War as He Argues for Cap and Trade.
[39] Krugman Scares Us with His Big Inflation Scare Screed. We Will Rapidly Inflate and He Knows This.
[40] Krugman Talks of Paralysis in
[43] Krugman Bores us with Boring Banking Histories and Praises Islamic Banking. A New Grab for Power is in the Offering.
[44] Krugman of the
[45] Krugman of the
[46] Krugman of the
[47] Battling Nostrums at The
[48] Krugman of the
[49] Krugman Exhausts His Vocabulary by Monotonously Reciting the Only Two Words He Understands In Economics: Tax And Spend. Let’s Tax the Stock Markets!!
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