Monday Reads -- Of Lice and Men

-- Here's Paul Krugman on the right-wing's "lousy" efforts to correlate poor health with the use of Medicaid (!):

O.K., you know what to do: Google “spurious correlation health.” You are immediately led to the tale of certain Pacific Islanders who long believed that having lice made you healthy, because they observed that people with lice were, typically, healthier than those without. They were, of course, mixing up cause and effect: lice tend to infest the healthy, so they were a consequence, not a cause, of good health.

The application to Medicaid should be obvious. Sick people are likely to have low incomes; more generally, low-income Americans who qualify for Medicaid just tend in general to have poor health. So pointing to a correlation between Medicaid and poor health as evidence that Medicaid actually hurts its recipients is as foolish as claiming that lice make you healthy. It is, as I said, a lousy argument.

And the reliance on such arguments is itself deeply revealing, because it illustrates the right’s intellectual decline. I mean, this is the best argument their so-called experts can come up with for their policy priorities?

Living in a bubble is one thing, but purposefully throwing as much crap as you can against the wall to see if anything sticks -- all to deny people health insurance -- means you get a special wing in Hell all to yourself.

Speaking of Hell and crap,

-- Here's a story about a twitter account dedicated to naming conservative bands (Ted "Crap Pants Fever" Nugent, are you catching this?).  A sampling:  "Screw U2" and "Very Dire Straits."

Happy reading!