Idiots: useful and not

Workout notes I had to attend graduation exercises so I ran early; I did my 5.2-5.3 mile course in 51:07. It was breezy, clear and 29 F. The first mile (10:20) was the slowest. My last mile was 9:50 (ok, these “miles” are slightly long). Still, while this was hardly a race effort, it was an effort and that is probably because I am not quite recovered yet.

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The President talks about the Iraq draw-down.

More on Hitchens

Some might find this tribute article to be a bit harsh as it is written in a “roast” style, but it has a “dang, I loved the mean old bastard” quality to it.

Idiots: useful and not
Ron Wyden
Paul Krugman doesn’t think much of Ron Wyden’s collusion with Paul Ryan to end Medicare as we know it:

Sen. Ron Wyden did indeed do a bad, bad thing in his joint proposal with Paul Ryan. Ezra Klein explains why; and the devil isn’t in the details.

What Wyden did was to give cover to the fundamental fallacy of right-wing attempts to dismantle Medicare: the claim that market competition is the key to reducing health care costs. We have overwhelming evidence on this — and it just isn’t true. Looking both within the United States and across countries, if you ask which systems are best at cost control, the ranking looks like this:

Government provision as well as financing (socialized medicine) > single payer > market competition.

Krugman points out that the health care reform bill that he backed passing was indeed a private insurance bill, but that was because that was the best we could get, given this political climate. So why retreat from the public plan we have in place now?

Not Useful: Michelle Bachmann
Michelle Bachmann got her feelings hurt that Newt Gingrich called her out for “getting her facts wrong”; see at about 2:20 or so:

So, does Poltifact back her up? Check out the screen shot:

As you can see, many of her public claims are false. Of course, this is nothing new; she was well known for getting even basic stuff wrong. Here she talks about the “Hoot-Smalley” act that was “signed into law by President Roosevelt” (it was the Smoot-Hawley act that was signed into law by President Hoover)

Here you can see more of her more famous ridiculous assertions.

She reminds me of the C or D student who thinks that you are being unfair when you assign them the grade that they earned. She is a living example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

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