The War on Logic

(Thank you to the person who sent me the corrected link.)

Paul Krugman

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.

You'll have to read it to get that connection.

The key to understanding the G.O.P. analysis of health reform is that the party’s leaders are not, in fact, opposed to reform because they believe it will increase the deficit. Nor are they opposed because they seriously believe that it will be “job-killing” (which it won’t be). They’re against reform because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do.

And it’s not about the money. As I tried to explain in my last column, the modern G.O.P. has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs.

I think there's an answer in this as well to Fixer's query about the logic of the right in these 'comments':

The diktat of right wing 'logic' is that it's ideologically immoral to alleviate suffering when the interests of money and power are involved and the checks keep coming.