Puke Along With Us To Fed Nominee Stephen Moore's Five Foulest 'Writings' Oh My Sweet Jesus For Real

You didn't need to keep your breakfast.

Donald Trump's hopes of filling the Federal Reserve with idiots who "agree" with him on economic policy -- whatever it is on any given day -- hit a couple of big bumps yesterday. Herman Cain withdrew his name from consideration, and Stephen Moore, the other Trump pick waiting to be formally nominated, is facing scrutiny over wildly misogynist stuf f he wrote in the National Review between 2000 and 2004. Moore's defense, however, is airtight: He was just joking! Don't you people know a joke when you see it?

Moore had already faced some skepticism over his personalexpertise in finance, since the IRS placed a lien against him for $75,000 in unpaid income taxes , and he was held in contempt of court after failing to pay his ex-wife more than $300,000 he owed her as part of a divorce settlement. On top of that, there's also his basic incompetence as an economist, not that Republicans would have held a minor problem like that against him.

But yesterday, CNN looked closely at some of Moore's columns from the National Review from the turn of the century, and found a guy who sounded like he might have fit in quite well with gentlemanly thinkers from the turn of the previous century. Consider his very amusing 2002 observations on how college basketball could be improved, mostly by getting rid of slimy girls. He was very sad about certain "un-American" developments in sportsball that needed fixing:

No Women.How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a men's NCAA game. [sic] Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity. The NCAA has been touting this as example of how progressive they are. I see it as an obscenity. Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What's next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they've done that already.) Why can't women ref he women's games and men the men's games. [sic]

I can't wait to see the first lady ref have a run in with Bobby Knight.

Moore went on and on about the crisis of the "feminization of basketball generally," bemoaning the very existence of women's basketball on ESPN at all, and the horrifying statistic that USA Today devotes "almost half" of its NCAA coverage to women's basketball, as if it were even a sport! He lamented America "being force fed lady hoops," even though it is a fact no one actually likes or even watches women's basketball. (Let's also note right here that he was mostly mining a 2001 joke from "Futurama, " but went on for multiple paragraphs.) He went on to sigh about women thinking they should be able to play informally against men, despite being girls! Sure, as a middle-aged dude, he can't dunk, but if he could, he certainly would take "no joy" in "dunking over someone named Tina." Haha, ladies even have silly names. And so he offered rule changes to save America, and his boner:

No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, [sic] no women anything. There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.

2.Bonnie Bernstein should wear a halter top.This is a no-brainer, CBS. What in the world are you waiting for? To quote the immortal Wayne of Wayne's World , "If Bonnie were president of the United States, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln.

This was a decade after that movie came out, and he thought that was a nifty joke. Sexism aside, he cannot be allowed to hold a position of public responsibility.

Mind you, Moore explained to CNN, "  This was a spoof. I have a sense of humor." Oh dear, Rebecca has fired us all and hired Stephen Moore instead : (

Moore -- at the time, the head of the Club For Growth, so a very serious economics thinkerer -- also went all Bobby Rigg in a column from 2000, explaining that ladies simply don't "get" economics, cursed with tiny little lady brains as they are:

The women tennis pros don't really want equal pay for equal work. They want equal pay for inferior work [...]

If there is an injustice in tennis, it's that women like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles make millions of dollars a year, even though there are hundreds of men at the collegiate level (assuming their schools haven't dropped the sport) who could beat them handily.

While this column doesn't have any leering comments about halter tops, it's also stronger evidence Moore shouldn't be allowed anywhere near economic policy, since he explicitly links women athletes' supposed inferiority to all issues of pay equity, because after all, that's a fake issue made up by whiny feminists and liberals Let the market decide, because sexism is all a figment of the liberal imagination. Gross.

The New York Times   chimed in with additional evidence that Moore is actually the Dabney Coleman character in 9 to 5 (now there's a timely movie reference). Not just in his writing, but in his 2010 divorce. Here's hoping his ex, Allison Moore, is called to testify if he gets as far as a confirmation hearing.

According to filings, in 2010 Mr. Moore started a sexual relationship with a woman he met through an online dating service. His wife found bills that showed Mr. Moore pumping gas in the morning near the home of the other woman and buying an airplane ticket in her name. At their son's graduation ceremony, Mr. Moore said to his children, in earshot of Ms. Moore, "I have two women, and what's really bad is when they fight over you."

Oh look, there are more columns, too! In 2000, Moore cried that his dumb wife "voted against every candidate that I voted for," even though she surely knew that his livelihood as a conservative pundit and think-tanker depended on George W. Bush winning the presidency. The silly woman said she changed her mind in the Virginia governor's race because of a campaign commercial. Why are women even allowed to vote, fellas, am I right?

The poor, exasperated man wrote, "Women are sooo malleable! No wonder there's a gender gap," and fretted that his entire ballot was offset by his irrational wife's irrational votes for "parks" and "school bonds" and other wasteful stuff that means higher taxes. Thank heavens, he noted, he could rely on his two sons to vote for Republicans -- at least once they became old enough in 2012, ha ha -- so his family could really make an electoral impact for good.

The Times also found a whole bunch of other times when Moore used his National Review column to mock the little woman, all in good fun, christ, get a sense of humor, ladies!

Before the divorce, Mr. Moore frequently teased his ex-wife in his National Review columns. In 2001, he wrote that "she's been acting as if it's her patriotic duty to single-handedly revive the American economy with her frenetic pace of consumer spending." In 2003, he wrote that "Allison consumes but she still doesn't produce." In 2004, he wrote, "Here's the best news of all: For once, Allison isn't pregnant."

Well then. Guess he really IS the perfect choice for a Trump appointment.

[ CNN / NYT ]

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