Man, Paul Krugman moves goalposts as if a Pulitzer’s at stake — the Obamacare shill edition

As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April. …

For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too — in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Health care policy analyst John Goodman laughs at Paul Krugman’s latest bit of goalpost–moving. Here is a snippet from Krugman’s most recent column:

Well, the California bids are in — that is, insurers have submitted the prices at which they are willing to offer coverage on the state’s newly created ObamaCare exchange. And the prices, it turns out, are surprisingly low.

“Surprisingly low,” it turns out, is about 60% higher and effectively double what people pay now. And that is just the beginning of Krugman’s many mistakes (or swallowing fanatically, passionately, the latest news of the health care ration). But let’s let Goodman count the ways.