QOTD: Contempt

“If you live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don’t want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or, you know, these armpits of America.”--  Republican ninny Stephen Moore, Trump nominee to the Federal Reserve Board, in a 2014 speech to the right- wing Heritage Foundation.  The quote is from a must- read op/ ed by Paul Krugman, in which he contrasts the victim- blaming and contempt right- wingers have for people in the "heartland" with progressive proposals to deal with the problems those Americans face.

The 50- plus years of lies, misdirection, and gaslighting of people in rural America by Republicans has certainly paid off.  If you polled a sample, most of them would likely see "coastal elites," "left- wing libruls," "gun grabbers," and other boogeymen crafted by years of constant drilling by hate radio, Fox "News" and other Republican fronts as their mortal enemies.  Krugman notes it's a hard stereotype to fight, but it's long past time we turned the tables on the liars.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

We're doing a Mueller report- free- zone for your Monday reading, since you can look at many other sites for takes, hot and not.

Eliza Newlin Carney reminds us all why Republicans are so afraid of voter turnout:

Recent findings that voter turnout broke a century-old record last year and could cause another “100-year storm of voters” in 2020 must play on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s worst fears.

Not only did the annual America Goes to the Polls report, put out by Nonprofit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project, show historic jumps in Latino and youth voter turnout. The report also found that voter-friendly policies, such as same-day and automatic voter registration, are vastly boosting turnout. The top ten states with the highest turnout—averaging 61 percent—were also the ones that made it easiest for voters to cast ballots. By contrast, the ten lowest-ranking states had turnout averaging in the low forties.

This is one of the leading reasons McConnell is so hostile to HR 1, the package of democracy reforms that House Democrats recently approved unanimously, with nary a GOP vote. The legislation does far more than facilitate voting, of course. It also sets out to overhaul the political money, ethics and lobbying rules, among other changes. But a big part of the so-called For the People Act is about removing barriers to the polls.

Again, Democrats are walking and chewing gum at the same time, contrary to what you might read about investigations into the Trump crime family taking too much attention and time away from "real legislatin'."

Meanwhile, the selling off of America continues unabated. Lance Williams at the Center for Investigative Reporting:

Gathered for a private meeting at a beachside Ritz–Carlton in Southern California, the oil executives were celebrating a colleague’s sudden rise. David Bernhardt, their former lawyer, had been appointed by President Donald Trump to the powerful No. 2 spot at the Department of the Interior. [snip]

Dan Naatz, the association’s political director, told the conference room audience of about 100 executives that Bernhardt’s new role meant their priorities would be heard at the highest levels of Interior.

“We know him very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues,” Naatz said, according to an hourlong recording of the June 2017 event in Laguna Niguel provided to Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The recording gives a rare look behind the curtain of an influential oil industry lobbying group that spends more than $1 million per year to push its agenda in Congress and federal regulatory agencies. The previous eight years had been dispiriting for the industry: As IPAA vice president Jeff Eshelman told the group, it had seemed as though the Obama administration and environmental groups had put together “their target list of everything that they wanted done to shut down the oil and gas industry.” But now, the oil executives were almost giddy at the prospect of high-level executive branch access of the sort they hadn’t enjoyed since Dick Cheney, a fellow oilman, was vice president. (our emphasis)

As has become his practice, the Very Stable Genius (a.k.a., Individual 1) is nominating a fellow dolt to an important position.  Here's Jon Chait:

Stephen Moore’s career as an economic analyst has been a decades-long continuous procession of error and hackery. It is not despite but precisely because of these errors that Moore now finds himself in the astonishing position of having been offered a position on the Federal Reserve board by President Trump.

Moore’s primary area of pseudo-expertise — he is not an economist — is fiscal policy. He is a dedicated advocate of supply-side economics, relentlessly promoting his fanatical hatred of redistribution and belief that lower taxes for the rich can and will unleash wondrous prosperity. Like nearly all supply-siders, he has clung to this dogma in the face of repeated, spectacular failures.

Moore is likely to face stiff opposition for confirmation, but expecting the supine Republican Senate not to go along with Individual 1's pick is hard to imagine.

Finally, you can find plenty of non- Mueller- report topics over at Infidel 753's blog round- up to engage your mind.  As always, a visit is highly recommended.

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."