Those Compassionate Conservatives

Paul Krugman has a great op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he dismantles right-wingers for their disdain for the working poor, the sick, and children. Not that this is new: Ronald "Raygun" spoke on TV in 1964, saying that the estimated 17 million Americans who went to bed hungry "were all on a diet." Right winger Wee Willie Kristol recently thought it was clever to joke about the veto of the children's health insurance bill by saying, "whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea." Interestingly, it was noted in Krugman's article that a study of Dumbya's famous verbal slips shows that they occured when he was trying to sound concerned or compassionate; he was strongest grammatically when he talked about punishing people.