Paul Krugman

Trump Played Chicken with Science and Lost

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With Donald Trump making misleading (okay lying) about the state of the Coronavirus and his Administrations reaction to it over the last two months (including just yesterday, March 29, when he lied to reporters from PBS and CNN saying he did not make comments recorded on video the preceding Friday,) some of his most devoted … Read more

The Double Edged Sword Surrounding Senator Warren’s Medicare for All Plan.

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Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren released the details on how she would pay for her Medicare for All Plan. Her plan presents a double-edged sword for Democratic candidates and the supporters they want to vote for them in 2020. While all Democrats agree that the Republican approach (embraced by Arizona’s Republican Senator and Representatives) to … Read more

Greek Financial Crisis: The Cruelty of Austerity & The Warning for US

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austerityAusterity means that people is [sic] expulsed of their homes. Austerity means that the social services don’t work anymore. Austerity means that public schools have not the elements, the means to develop their activity. Austerity means that the countries have not sovereignty anymore, and we became a colony of the financial powers and a colony of Germany. Austerity probably means the end of democracy. I think if we don’t have democratic control of economy, we don’t have democracy. It’s impossible to separate economy and democracy, in my opinion.
– Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, Spain’s grassroots anti-austerity movement

Austerity is a lie. It is a cruel economic policy that starves economies, puts people out of work, privatizes public services, closes public facilities, eliminates benefits for the needy, and crushes governments with unsustainable debt. And as Iglesias says above, austerity diminishes democracy because the banks hold the economic power– not the people and the governments they elected.

Greece has been suffering under austerity imposed by the European banks since 2010. Instead of growing the Greek economy, austerity has starved it.

Does this sound familiar? Arizonans should pay close attention to the Greek financial crisis because Governor Doug Ducey is leading us down the same road to ruin.

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Paul, honey, we pro-choicers could have told you this 30 years ago

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krugman

Paul Krugman’s Monday NYT column is a sharp observation of how the American Right is untethered from evidence on a wide variety of policy issues.

Of course not. Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.

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Thucky and the Gish Gallop

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Frequent commenter Thucydides, who is affectionately known as Thucky around these parts and who may or may not be Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, has a familiar arguing style. DailyKos diarist AmBush referred to it after the first Presidential debate in 2012, where Mitt Romney “won” by spewing out a barrage of lies and distortions of his own positions. The technique is known as the Gish Gallop.

The Urban Dictionary defines the Gish Gallop thusly:

Named for the debate tactic created by creationist shill Duane Gish, a Gish Gallop involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more ‘talking points’ that has a tiny core of truth to it, making the person rebutting it spend even more time debunking it in order to explain that, yes, it’s not totally false but the Galloper is distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. A true Gish Gallop generally has two traits.

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