Morning Reads - Hack and Bush

Paul Krugman on Heritage Foundation hack Stephen Moore's problem with facts, most recently Moore's ridiculous Wall Street Journal op/ed on the Affordable Care Act:

[T]his is a guy who has a troubled relationship with facts. I don’t mean that he’s a slick dissembler; I mean that he seems more or less unable to publish an article without filling it with howlers — true, all erring in the direction he wants — in a way that ends up doing his cause a disservice. For example, his attempt to refute something I wrote about Kansas ended up being mainly a story about why Stephen can’t count, which presumably wasn’t his intention. 

But here’s the mystery: evidently Moore has had a successful career. Why? 

Think about Heritage: It’s immensely wealthy, and could surely afford to hire a technically competent right-wing hack. The Wall Street Journal, similarly, could have attracted someone much less likely to trip over his own intellectual shoelaces. Again, the problem isn’t even that Moore got the macroeconomics of recent years all wrong, although he did; it’s the inability to write without making embarrassing mistakes.

Moore and all the other hacks on wingnut welfare aren't particularly concerned with the facts because they know their audience isn't going to research what they wrote.  They get paid, handsomely, to feed b.s. to the angry and perpetually misinformed (more about the overall scam here).

Dana Milbank on "own man" John Ellis "J.E.B." Bush's carrying on the Bush family traditions:

When he addressed the Chicago Council on Global Affairs luncheon at the Fairmont, he combined his father’s awkward oratory with his brother’s mangled syntax and malapropisms. Like his brother, he said “nucular” instead of “nuclear,” and he hunched over the lectern with both hands on it — but instead of exuding folksiness, as his brother does, he oozed discomfort. 

A top priority, he explained, is “reforming a broken immigration system and turning it into an economic — a catalytic converter for sustained economic growth.” 

Presumably he was reaching for “catalyst” but instead came up with an automotive emissions-control device. 

There's lots, lots more where that came from, all in one speech.  And, remember:  he's supposed to be the "smart Bush."