"Jolen cream bleach turns the mustache on your upper lip to the exact color of Richard Gephardt's hair, which is better than its looking like Frida Kahlo's mustache, but it's still slightly hairier than you mean it to be."

Wrote Nora Ephron, a while back.

I'm finding that this morning, because Dick Gephardt is in the news today, blogged here, where William asked "How did Gephardt spend so many years in public life without being relentlessly mocked for his orange hair. I guess back then people were more tolerant of orange hair...."

Also, Bob Shrum, in "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," describes a Dukakis ad (in 1988) that mocked Gephardt by showing a "gymnast with comically dyed orange hair dressed in a suit... trampolining and tumbling forward and back and forward and back again" with the voice-over describing Gephardt's various flip-flops.

So orange hair got mocked, even in the old days. It's not just something invented recently to attack Trump. I certainly remember Reagan's hair getting mocked, especially since he denied dyeing it. The much-repeated joke attributed to Gerald Ford was: "Ronald Reagan doesn't dye his hair, he's just prematurely orange."

"Consultant Raised Cash for Hillary Clinton, Used Access to Seek Meeting for Coal Giant, Emails Reveal."

Reports The Intercept.

The "Coal Giant" is Peabody Energy.  The political consultant is Joyce Aboussie, who wrote to Huma Abedin:

“Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months,” Aboussie wrote. “It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s,” she added.

Dick is Dick Gephardt, who was House Majority Leader from June 6, 1989 to January 3, 1995 and House Minority Leader from January 3, 1995 to January 3, 2003. That is, he led the Democrats in the House of Representatives during the entire Bill Clinton administration. Gephardt started a lobbying firm in January 2006, the month he left office.

Gephardt ran for President in 1988 and 2004, and he was considered a strong candidate for VP in 2004. There was even a New York Post cover saying that John Kerry had picked him:



(Kerry picked the now-disgraced John Edwards, who had better hair.)

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said:

“It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s,” she added.

Huma must have rolled her exotic eyes and thought "what kind of amateurish influence peddler so consciously violates the rules of pay to play omertà?"

I imagined her rolling her eyes over something else — the illiteracy of "to Dick and I" and "the Clinton's." In my hypothetical scenario, she's saying:

How stupid is Peabody to pay big money to a guy who can't avoid making rank grammatical errors and sending them to me? To me! It's one thing to be married to a man who impulsively sends dick pics to skanky women, but to craft to-Dick-and-I email and send it to me! Ugh!

"I bet Barack Obama yearns for the days when he was only *running* for President."

"That's what he was good at. He'll have to reach much deeper into himself to find leadership, if it's there, and not just the idea, the mirage of it. It's scary and funny to see him so shaken by trying to ride the jackass bronc of Congressional Democrats and the mad bull elephant of House Republicans. Now we're getting somewhere. I don't think he'll completely fail, but it will be an unnerving while until he finds his seat."

***

Obama is giving soooooo much raw material to his opponents, who have — from Day 1 — been trying to frame him as a miserable failure — which exactly what Bush's opponents did to Bush.

You know what's really funny? That term — "miserable failure" — that was pinned on Bush so relentlessly? Do you remember who started that meme?

Tom Daschle!

Karma.

ADDED: Upon the suggestion, in the comments, that Richard Gephardt called Bush a "miserable failure" before Tom Daschle, I did a methodical search and found this from December 9th 2002:

"Their trickle-down economic theories have been a miserable failure, and this is an admission of that miserable failure," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle told CNN.

The earliest Gephardt example was from January 21, 2003. To be accurate, I did find this earlier quote:

The absolutely miserable failure of this administration on economics is what brings us to this point.

That's from November 7, 1991. It's about Bush all right. Bush I.