Monday, January 04, 2016

Why We Don't Have Nice Things



Longtime readers will be familiar with Stephen Moore, yet another serially-disgraced Conservative hack
In a 2014 Kansas City Star opinion piece entitled "What's the matter with Paul Krugman?" Moore responded to Krugman's opinion piece entitled "Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas."[11][12] In his piece, Moore claimed that job creation had been superior in low-taxation states during the five years following the recession ending June 2009. After substantial factual errors were uncovered in Moore's opinion piece, the Kansas City Star indicated that it would no longer print Moore's work without "thorough factchecking."[13]
who is (surprise!) also a full-bird colonel in the Koch Brother's Army of Darkness:
Moore founded the Club for Growth in 1999. Moore was ousted by the group's board in December 2004, and subsequently announced his resignation.[8] After his ouster from the Club for Growth, Moore founded the 501(c)(4) Free Enterprise Fund with other former Club for Growth members including Arthur Laffer and Mallory Factor.[8] In 2005, Moore left the Free Enterprise Fund to serve on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.[7] Moore is a partner in the econometrics firm Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics.[9] On January 21, 2014, the Heritage Foundation announced that Moore would rejoin the think tank as chief economist.[10] Moore is a contributing editor for National Review.[9]
Being a resourceful huckster, Mr. Moore always has his finger in the wind, trying to divine the most efficient way to profit from whichever way the rage and paranoia of the Right is blowing on any given day. These days, for example, the cleverest wingnut prospectors have hiked up Mount Trump to mine a rich vein of "Whatever You Think Of Trump, It's All Obummer's Fault Anyway [Because Isn't Everything Always Obummer's Fault?])".

Here is Mr. Moore, "economic adviser at Freedom Works and a Fox News contributor",  in the Moonie Times a couple of weeks ago (no link to spare you the pain):
The ‘Fascist’ left in America
After Trump’s call for a Muslim moratorium the name-calling began

...
The left might want to engage in some introspection and ask why so many millions of Americans — many of whom enthusiastically voted for Obama — now agree with Mr. Trump. Are these suddenly terrible people? Have they been duped by a charismatic leader? More likely the answer is that an ever-shrinking number of Americans trust Mr. Obama to keep the dangerous Muslims out. People want above all right now to keep their families safe, and since Mr. Obama has no interest in real and effective terrorist screening, many Americans say best to keep them all out for now.

If middle class American voters are so afraid, so angry, so distrustful of Washington, and feeling so economically marginalized that millions would throw their support behind a man routinely denounced as a dangerous Nazi/fascist, maybe the left might want to ask: who made things so bad that it has come to this? Without Barack Obama’s full slate of failures and his eight years of polarizing politics, there could be no Donald Trump.
Got that?  It's not merely that the Kenyan Usurper is to blame for the rise of Il Douche.  It is that, according the the serially-disgraced Mr. Moore, "many" of those who "enthusiastically voted for Obama" are now out-and-proud "Chumps for Trump!"  Another wild and ludicrous lie pooped out in the pages of the poor man's Wall Street Journal in order to makes Crazy Uncle Liberty feel smug and secure in his Fortress of Derpitude.

But here's the thing.

While on paper (well, pixels), even the few remaining professionals at, say, MSNBC clearly understand that Mr. Moore is not a man to be trusted --
Being discredited is not always a barrier to success

By Steve Benen

...
I can appreciate the fact that Art Laffer and Stephen Moore aren’t household names, so the fact that they’re having conversations with national GOP candidates probably won’t raise a lot of eyebrows with the American mainstream. But these chats nevertheless touch on an important point about Republican politics: being discredited is not a barrier to success.

Take Stephen Moore, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist. Earlier this year, after Moore published a bizarre piece criticizing the Affordable Care Act, Paul Krugman described the conservative as “a guy who has a troubled relationship with facts.”

Krugman added at the time, “I don’t mean that he’s a slick dissembler; I mean that [Moore] seems more or less unable to publish an article without filling it with howlers … in a way that ends up doing his cause a disservice.”
-- just one year ago today, as the nation writhed in the grip of "Jeb!Mania!", who did MSNBC's own Steve "Chuck Todd-lite" Kornacki turn to for sage political wisdom but:



If the Left would like to make some genuine progress, then as a movement we need to stop worrying about the agenda and tactics of our political enemies on the Right.  Yes, as always, organize and votevotevote to oppose their agenda, but their their motives, tactics and goals are plain and clear and can be met and defeated head-on if...

...in this year of 2016, the Left as a movement focused on making the Both Siderist/Centrist/Beltway media pay dearly every single fucking time they enable the batshit Right.

Leave the Center intact, and nothing will change.

Take out the Center and the Right will fall.

11 comments:

bowtiejack said...

"Take out the Center and the Right will fall."

Nailed it.

Robt said...

So many GOP operatives, cable pundits and internet Cons. (not to mention the GOP's own Reince Priebus.
Have all too often repeated blather about in certain isolated moments of GOPer's public statements.
The GOP needs to "MODERATE THEIR MESSAGE"..................
Trump churns the message by saying, "he doesn't have time for political correctness (PC). So when he is vulgar, uncouth, a racist, womanizer. It is for expediency to get something done. But he is in a format of words and ideas and not actually doing anything at this time.
So in Trump terms (and other GOP'ers) He should be able to say "Nigger" when speaking about Blacks because,
Afrocan-American has too many vowels and syllables that require extra effort and time to pronounce.
Most of all, Trump and his GoPers believe that in doing this, they should never have to "hear" any iota of opposition for being crass and crude and insulting and openly using their bigotry.
Their should be no consequences for them doing so.
Yet, Trump and the Right wing altogether will demand apologies from Hillary for making statements about Trump being used in terrorist recruiting vids.
Not having time for PC must make for a vulgar Christmas dinner with the family.
Just saying........

Neo Tuxedo said...

Leave the Center intact, and nothing will change.

Take out the Center and the Right will fall.


Or, as a certain Doctor of Journalism once scribbled on a cocktail napkin:

KILL THE BODY AND THE HEAD WILL DIE

DrBB said...

Re "eight years of polarizing politics": Obama has been playing the race card from the moment he took office! By being president while black.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

The only way I can think of to harm the Media, Crazy Rightist and Non-Crazy Rightist (aka "Centrist") Media alike, would be to refuse to buy the products of their sponsors--and how many Leftists buy pecker pills and scammy reverse mortgages, anyway?

Unknown said...

Moore is always high on my list of Most Punchable Faces. He is an enthusiastic liar.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Am I the only one who can't read between the lines here? Has Driftglass been dropping hints on how to "Take out the Center", and I'm the only one here too dense to pick them up?

Because unless there is some way to disrupt the Center's business model, I don't know how to "take out the Center".

Driftglass and others have been diligently recording the lies, half-truths, and omitted truths of the Center for years, but that alone does not seem to have bothered its cash flow.

I feel like I'm derping out here. :P

Robt said...

Folks,
There shall always be a center.
The problem is that the right go farther right. While doing so loudly point to the left and how far left they are.
You have heard the "moving the Goal Posts" analogy.
As the Right move the 50 yard line all the time.
Like I said, the farther right they go, the louder they say the left has gone way far left of the 60 Y.L..
The right requires the center just as the left does. Both need the land line connection with the center. They must call home now and then.

The right accuses every Dem as being, "the most Liberal". Franklin Roosevelt, JFK, Carter, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Sen Warren, Pelosi, 4 Supreme Court Justices, Jon Stewart, and now that corporations are people, CNN and MSNBC.
If you ask me, Trump is the most liberal GOP candidate running in the GOP right now. It would be fantastic if only the media would refer to the GOPers when they speak reasonable as being Liberal.
Only in a science fiction action thriller can the center be "taken out".
Let us leave the purity purging to the right wingers.
They are so good at doing it to themselves, aren't they??

I say breed a right winger predator wasp. Release them in Red states. Once the wasps extinguish their right winged prey. They will die off and the right winged population will be under control.

I believe it is called insect population suppression.

Have a large tick problem. Wild Turkeys naturally eat an enormous amount of ticks daily in their for their Wild Turkey diet.

Got the idea?

Kevin Holsinger said...

Good morning, Mr. Glass.

Ah, so you did go with "Chumps for Trump." Good. Sounded like the kind of expression you'd use.

Be seeing you.

Davis said...

Yes, one can be the chief economist at a conservative think tank with an M.A. from George Mason.

wagonjak said...

Kornaki was never anything but a lightweight, even when he took over UP from Chris Hayes. He's now decided he wants to be one of the "Big Boys" like little Chuckie Todd. He's become their go-to guy for neutral facts about the presidential candidates and state's polling about the race, and avoids like poison ever looking like he's critical of anyone, even the outright bigoted clown Trump...a real practicer of both siderism. Just pathetic.