"Although Vice President Kamala Harris recently acknowledged that Iran is a 'destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East'..."

"... the Biden-Harris administration’s dealings with the regime in Tehran have been marked by inadequate military action, ineffective diplomacy and inconsistent sanctions enforcement, enabling Iran to continue funding terrorism, attack U.S. interests and threaten Israel’s survival. In contrast, the Trump administration’s 'maximum pressure' policy showed that well-enforced sanctions could cripple Iran’s economy and significantly weaken its malign activities — without harming American consumers or triggering a spike in global oil prices. The next president should restore that policy...."

Write Jeb Bush and Claire Jungman in The Washington Post — "Why we should return to ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran/The Trump administration policy showed that well-enforced sanctions could cripple Iran’s economy."

"Although Harris acknowledges the Iranian threat, her reluctance to back a stronger stance is puzzling. If Iran is truly the United States’ greatest adversary, avoiding a comprehensive strategy that could neutralize the threat is illogical — particularly when Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are weakened, and Israel, our key ally, is fighting for survival."

"Are we just alternating between weird and normal — perceptions of weird and normal? If so, then 2024 is Trump's turn again."

That's the last line of a post I wrote on May 23, 2023 — "DeSantis uses Warren G. Harding's word, 'normalcy': 'We must return normalcy to our communities.'"

That was back when DeSantis was endeavoring to replace Trump by being essentially Trump minus the weirdness. Yes, there was talk of weird-versus-normal just like there is today. I said:

I myself am hungry for normality, but I don't trust people who keep saying "normal." I always think of Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in "Lolita" — "It's great to see a normal face, 'cause I'm a normal guy. Be great for two normal guys to get together and talk about world events, in a normal way...."

"Declaring this week that defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion was not a vital interest for the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida cemented a Republican shift..."

"... away from hawkish foreign policy that has played out over the past decade and accelerated with Donald J. Trump’s political rise. Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis — whose combined support makes up more than 75 percent of Republican primary voters in the nascent 2024 presidential contest — are now largely aligned on Ukraine, signaling a sharp break from the interventionist approach that drove former President George W. Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."

From "DeSantis, Backing Away From Ukraine, Angers G.O.P. Hawks/The Florida governor, who joined Donald Trump in declaring that defending Ukraine from Russia was not a vital interest, drew swift condemnations from establishment Republicans" (NYT).

DeSantis called the Ukraine/Russia war a “territorial dispute,” and thus, in the words of the NYT, "dismissed the argument that Mr. Putin’s aggression threatened the postwar international order" and "unequivocally rejected the idea that the conflict is a war to defend 'freedom.'"

Is the NY Post just missing the humor?

I'm reading "Gen Zers insist on wearing sexy clubbing outfits to the office: ‘Like who’s going to stop me?’"

In a recent TikTok video, Dani Klarić, a young interior decorator/creative director, gleefully shared her workday outfit: a white miniskirt, a short-sleeve shirt worn totally unbuttoned to reveal a lacy yellow bra and a pair of sheer yellow thigh-high socks. "If I had a corporate job this is how I would go dressed to work," the TikToker says confidently in the post, which has garnered more than 200,000 likes. "Like who’s going to stop me?"

Key word: "If." She has a job: It's making TikToks that get likes. And the Post is scampering to show — what? — that it can keep up with what's in social media? But it can't! And it even said the word that exemplifies dull, trudging Jebbishness: "garner."

Now, to be fair, this article does quote somebody at Rent the Runway who has such a cool name that I almost feel like believing her: Suzanne Smallshaw:

I'm trying to read this Slate article about Greg Gutfeld, but I can't get past the performative garnering.

There's one word I've been following ever since Jeb Bush low-energied his way to defeat, and that word is "garner." There's an upstart word on my radar. I've been talking about it since last Saturday. That word is "performative."

This morning Meade sends me the link to "A Fox News Host’s Strange Backstory Shows How Liberals Lost Comedy/Conservatives now have one of the most popular shows in late night" — and I run into this:

Gutfeld has long demonstrated an obvious knack for garnering attention through what would now be described as trolling. Developing a highly performative, occasionally over-the-top style of comedic presentation....

Speaking of trolling... I don't want to be paranoid... but I feel... summoned. Who does a garner/performative one-two like that?

Anyway, here's a passage from the article, in case you're hankering for the substantive:

Psaki's "circle back" tic is funny, but just her way of saying "get back."

 

"I'll have to circle back to you" is really no different from "I'll have to get back to you," a common thing for a press secretary to say. But it does stick out and seem goofy. And the connotation is evasive, because of the idea of circling around a subject or being circuitous. 

I think her "circle back" is like Jeb Bush's "garner," which I've been making fun of for years. Jeb said the word "garner" way too much. The first time I blogged about that, I wrote:

He simpers and nods to the point where Meade and I just laugh at him. It's an in-joke for us that he keeps saying the word "garner."... The only reason to say "garner" is if you think there's something wrong with a very common word that normal people just go ahead and say all the time without thinking they need to rise above it. The word is: "get."

I believe the same thing is going on with Psaki. She thinks there's something wrong with the word "get." That's why she's not just saying "I'll have to get back to you" like most English-speaking Americans. 

"I like Ivanka... look, anybody can decide to run if they want to. I mean I'm not entitled to anything and so forth. I've got to earn my way forward."

Said Marco Rubio, on Fox News Sunday, when Chris Wallace asked him about the possibility that Ivanka Trump will primary him when he runs for reelection Florida in 2022. 

Wallace wanted to know "How seriously do you take Ivanka Trump as a potential opponent?" But Rubio ignored the opportunity to slight Ivanka and say that somehow she's not serious.

Anyway, Rubio is up for reelection in 2022. Six years before that, he had to do his reelection campaign while also running for the Republican nomination for President. Remember how Jeb Bush — in a last-ditch effort to make something of his own badly failing presidential campaign — criticized Rubio for not staying in Washington and doing his senatorial work? That happened in October 2015, when it was clear that Rubio was the best hope to get a moderate Republican candidate instead of Trump. Here's my blog post about that. I thought Jeb should have withdrawn and endorsed Rubio instead of attacking him on a very fake issue.

"You have, then, the calm conservatism of George H. W. Bush and the fevered conservatism of Patrick Buchanan; the balm of Jeb Bush and..."

"... the bluntness of Donald Trump; the moderation of Theresa May and the flamboyance of Boris Johnson; of Angela Merkel, perhaps the most properly conservative of our contemporary leaders, against the radical outliers of reactionary German nationalism. Fawcett sees this as the core conflict within the right, always present, forever waxing or waning, and central to the future of Western democracy."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in a NYT review of "CONSERVATISM/The Fight for a Tradition" by Edmund Fawcett. Fawcett calls himself "a left-wing liberal."

The quote I cherry-picked has Sullivan contrasting the conservatism of Edmund Burke — who "believed in pluralism, modest but necessary reform and the dispersal of power" — with the conservatism of Joseph de Maistre — "who found adaptation to modernity to be indistinguishable from surrender" and "saw decline everywhere and always, enemies within and without."

I'm struck by the silliness of the phrase "the balm of Jeb Bush." 

Sullivan makes the contrast between moderates and radicals sound like a matter of physical heat. And the best people are the ones whose nature is to remain cool. This distaste for "flamboyance," "bluntness," and "fever" is openly elitist — as we see in the last paragraph:

Moderate conservatism is a vital counterbalance to liberalism, as the Trump years have shown. For it to disappear into a populist cult, hostile to democratic norms, contemptuous of all elites, captured by delusions and sustained by hatred and ressentiment, would not be completely unprecedented. But, unchallenged by moderate conservatism, populist or “hard right” conservatism will be deeply destructive. In that sense, the battle for moderate conservatism is now inextricable from a battle for liberal democracy itself. 

IN THE COMMENTS: hawkeyedjb says:

Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth. Just one example out of many that comes down to the same thing: all Republicans, of any stripe, are Hitler in the end. So why not be Trump?

That's a different perspective on what — to use Sullivan's phrase — "the Trump years have shown."

"When I first came to Washington, I was surprised at how few Democrats had taken their argument for the merit of paid leave to their colleagues across the aisle."

"So it really was starting from the beginning and talking about this policy and framing it in different terms.... We proposed the first ever bipartisan, bicameral plan.... [T]he president has made very clear he thinks that this is critical policy. And now we are working with members on both sides of the aisle to see who has the right policy to move forward and to be able to garner the votes to pass this into law....  I think the option that has been put out there by the Democrats without even opining on the policy of it, it has sat there since 2012, has never been scored, has never received the endorsement of a president, including President Obama, and has never received bipartisan support from colleagues in the Senate. So the way I look at it is that the debate had grown stale...."

Said Ivanka Trump on "Face the Nation."



The interviewer, Margaret Brennan, tries to bring a little edge.

First, she brings up the fact that Ivanka, in her own private business, did not initially have a paid family leave policy in place. Ivanka's answer is that the first pregnant person in her company was the fourth person hired, indeed, she was pregnant at the time of hiring, and they put a policy in place at the point.

Second, Brennan introduces the topic of family separation and immigration, which she is kindly enough to observe that Ivanka was "vocal" in opposing and called "a low point." Brennan asks if Ivanka is still "engaged" on the subject of family separation. Ivanka answers and quickly turns the subject to human trafficking:

"What's the chaos?," I say, reading the headline "Bloomberg Injects New Uncertainty Into Chaotic Dem Race."

At Real Clear Politics (where the link goes through to The Hill and the headline is "Democrats on edge as Iowa points to chaotic race").

Meade answers my question: "Apparently, you're not Democratic enough to feel the chaos. Remember, Jeb Bush called Donald Trump 'the chaos candidate.' Oh, Jeb, that hurts so bad calling me the chaos candidate."

Okay, now what do I want to read first — The Hill's angsting about chaos now or Jeb's old warning? I go with Jeb:



I blog from a perspective I call "cruel neutrality," and much as I love calm and order — perhaps because I love calm and order — I don't take the cue to see a "chaos!" narrative. You know, it's only when you have the luxury of living without chaos that you can indulge yourself imagining chaos. When real chaos comes, no one will be writing "Chaos!!!" essays.

All right. Here's Jonathan Easley at The Hill with his "Chaos!!!" essay:

Democrats are on edge less than three months out from the Iowa caucuses...

Oh! It's only 3 months... Panic time!

... as a four-candidate pile-up...

4!!! 4... all piled up! What a massive tangle of barely distinguishable humanity!

... and Michael Bloomberg’s potential candidacy injects a new level of uncertainty into an already chaotic race....

Oh, no!! There could be 5!! Not merely 4, but 5!!!! Have you ever seen such a complicated crowd?

It appeared for a while that Warren might run away with the nomination, but her national poll numbers have dipped in recent weeks amid sustained attacks from Biden and Buttigieg and new scrutiny of her "Medicare for All" plan.

This isn't chaos. This is just people not particularly liking any of the candidates. The "chaos" — fake news chaos — is only the prospect of more Trump, more "chaos President" — to quote Jeb again — because none of the Democrats are shaping up into good enough competition for Trump. Maybe it seems as though people don't particularly like Trump either, but he will be the candidate — although we're being nudged to think he'll go away via impeachment though we pretty much know he won't. And we pretty much anticipate that — whether we vote for him or just stand back and let others cast the votes — he's going to win a second term. This doesn't feel chaotic to me. It's very ordinary. Trump himself is not ordinary, but the old idea that he's just too weird to be President is part of what's normal in America now. Don't normalize him! Too late for that.

According to "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty" by USA Today reporter Susan Page, Barbara Bush blamed Trump for what she called her "heart attack."

I'm reading "Barbara Bush said ‘angst’ over Trump led to heart issue, according to new book" (WaPo).

“It wasn’t technically a heart attack, though she called it that. It was a crisis in her long battle with congestive heart failure and chronic pulmonary disease that hit her like a sledgehammer one day in June 2016,” Page wrote in USA Today. But, Page added: “The tumultuous presidential campaign in general and Trump’s ridicule of son Jeb Bush in particular had riled her. 'Angst,’ she told me.”...

Bush was so concerned about Trump that after first expressing hesitancy about her son Jeb running for president, she ultimately gave in — and even campaigned for him, according to Page.

Is she blaming Trump or blaming Jeb? Jeb was a terrible candidate, and his early accumulation of money hampered other candidates who might have been more competitive. I'm sure it hurt to see her son battered about, but that's what a campaign is. Everyone gets ridiculed, and I think Jeb ridiculed Trump too. Trump just came up with effective attacks, but, if I remember correctly, Trump specialized in fighting back when he was attacked.

ADDED: From February 2016, "The 17 saddest moments of Jeb Bush’s very sad campaign" (Vox).

"Why are the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas and Melania smiling so broadly at a funeral?"

Asks a columnist at The Guardian.

The picture is not sombre, even though this is a funeral. Obama and Bill Clinton are smiling broadly; W has that lopsided grin that suggests he’s cracked one of his fratboy jokes. They seem relaxed. And the source of that relaxation? Could it possibly be their collective relief that Trump is not there?

Oh! The snark never ends. Consider the possibility that these people are smiling because they believe in their professed religion.

At the funeral, Jeb Bush said that the last time he saw his mother, she said, "Jeb, I believe in Jesus and he is my savior. I don't want to leave your dad but I know I'll be in a beautiful place."

Goodbye to Barbara Bush.

Statement by the Office of @GeorgeHWBush on the passing of Barbara Pierce Bush this evening at the age of 92. pic.twitter.com/c6JU0xy6Vc

— Jim McGrath (@jgm41) April 17, 2018

ADDED: By giving this post a tag, I was able to click and see what I have said about Barbara Bush in the 14+ years of this blog.

First, January 23, 2016, I commented on this ad for Jeb Bush, which had Barbara Bush saying:

Jeb has been a very good father. A wonderful son. A hard worker; his heart is big.When push comes to shove people are going to realize Jeb has real solutions, rather than talking about how popular they are, how great they are. He's doing it because he sees a huge need and it's not being filled by anybody. Of all the people running, he seems to be the one who could solve the problems. I think he'll be a great president.

I said:

[This is] a pleasant enough ad for Jeb. Question who it works on. Trump's tweeted response is: "Just watched Jeb's ad where he desperately needed mommy to help him. Jeb --- mom can't help you with ISIS, the Chinese or with Putin." That will work on some people.

And, back in November 15, 2014, I had this:

From George W. Bush's book "41: A Portrait of My Father." George W., college age, driving drunk, hits a garbage can and zooms into his parents' driveway:

I had trouble understanding the Washington Post headline "Inside Scott Walker’s comeback strategy."

Scott Walker needs a comeback strategy? I'm here in Wisconsin, and to me, it looks as though there's no chance he could lose. But to the Washington Post (and the readers it visualizes), I guess Scott Walker is the guy who ran for President, seemed very strong but then had to drop out.

I may be wrong, but I thought that story was about the difficulty of fundraising when Jeb Bush was so far ahead in money terms. When it comes being the governor of Wisconsin, Walker is secure. But WaPo's James Hohmann frames the story as Walker "claw[ing] his way back."

I was confused — clawing his way back from what? — until I eventually remember the old presidential race, the one where Jeb Bush prevented all the non-weird candidates from getting any traction. That was the one thing Jeb could do, stand there seeming like the normal guy and until the rival dull people drifted away.

But in Wisconsin, we like dull, normal people. I know I voted for him in 2010 (when he first ran for governor) because of the impression he made in this ad. And, actually, the WaPo article with the headline that puzzled me is really more of an effort to explain midwestern style to WaPo readers.

The governor.... eats ham and cheese sandwiches from a brown paper bag for lunch most days. This is part of his political identity. He routinely tweets pictures of the simple meal....

[At a tailgate party across the street from Lambeau Field] it was dipping below 30 degrees... Walker, in jeans, already had four layers on to keep warm, including a Packers jacket. “Now I’ll have another layer,” he exclaimed. Midwesterners talk a lot about layers, especially this time of year.

As he mingled, posing for selfies and talking about tapping beer kegs, his go-to small talk was about cold-weather gear. “I really like your gloves,” Walker told one gentleman. “I’ve got an extra pair if you need some,” the man replied earnestly. (This is also a very Midwestern thing to offer.)

By the way, who's running against Walker? I've been feeling that he's destined to win because the Democrats have no one. WaPo says Democrats are "lining up" to run against Walker:

The head of the state firefighter’s union announced on Monday. He joins a field with no clear front-runner that includes the state schools superintendent, a Milwaukee businessman, a state representative from Eau Claire and a former state Democratic Party chairman.

WaPo sure isn't helping the folks in that line gain name recognition. It names none of the Democratic Party candidates, but it does name some party spokeswoman who offers what I regard as lame spin: “A year ago, people were saying that Democrats didn’t have any candidates. Now they are saying we have too many. We are very happy to have so many quality candidates in the race. It shows that Walker is vulnerable.”

ADDED: I proofread this post by reading it out loud to Meade. When I got to the last line — "It shows that Walker is vulnerable" — Meade said, "He's vulnerable. And sensitive. That's what women love about him."

Ex-Prez HW Bush accused of ass-grabbing: #MeToo overload or the beginning of the end of Old Man Privilege?

I'm reading The Daily Mail: "Former US president George HW Bush apologises after actress claims he 'sexually assaulted' her from his WHEELCHAIR in this photograph - with his wife Barbara standing by his side/Actress Heather Lind made allegations Tuesday claiming when she met former President George H.W. Bush, 93, he 'sexually assaulted' her from his wheelchair/She claimed the 'assault' happened during a photo-op with wife Barbara Bush standing by his side, and claims his wife saw the incident unfold/The now 34-year-old actress also claimed that afterwards Bush's security detail told her she shouldn't have stood next to the former president for the photo-op/Lind says this happened four years ago while she was promoting a movie/In a statement to DailyMail.com the former president has apologized for the incident saying it was an 'attempt at humor' and not meant to offend Lind."

Now, I said "#MeToo overload" when a woman accused Elie Wiesel of taking the same advantage in a photo op and getting his hand onto the ass of the woman who stood next to him. People do line up and crowd together tightly in photographs, and one often accepts/endures the waist-grabbing that seems excusable in the interest of getting us all into the picture frame. How far down from the waist can a person go before the other person knows he's taking advantage? For the photo subject who's enjoying the contact, just the touching of the sides of the arms may be a thrill. For the one who does not want contact, even that may be repugnant.*

I think most contact-seekers in that situation stick to a hand at waist-level pulling the other person closer, and even that can be offensive to the one who doesn't want contact, but the would-be contact-avoider will probably put up with it, and the contact-seeker has deniability. Then what about the hand on the top of the hip? That can seem deniable too. And the fingers on the outside of the middle of the hip? Can that work? Once the contact-seeker has his fingers at the right latitude, the heel of his hand can reach the desired longitude on the globe that is the ass.

But an older man may think he has Old Man Privilege and that it's cool for him to show he's still got some life in him and everyone will think it's just fine if he forthrightly gropes the ass. HW Bush's apology calls it an "attempt at humor."

I remember something Jeb Bush said back in July 2015, when his father was in the hospital: "[My] dad gets in the hospital kind of pretty regularly at 91, he's a little frail. But when he starts telling semi-dirty jokes to the nurse, we know he's on the rebound." I quoted that in a post titled "Jeb Bush has a tin ear for sexism" and said:

Apparently, Jeb thinks the old sexy nurse trope works today. The audience warmly chuckles, and Jeb thinks he's cute, because his dad is so old and sweet. But that doesn't play with me or, I suspect, with many modern women. Old men in the hospital leering at the nurses. Ugh!

I want to stress the importance — as we're fired up about sexual harassment — of not wrongly lumping things together. I wouldn't rake the dead Elie Wiesel over the coals for a 3-decade-old ass-grope (even if that happened). And I wish ancient HW well. But there is something I'm going to call Old Man Privilege that needs to be seen and rejected. It's not cute. It should not be endured as routine. A mentally incompetent old person should be treated with empathy, but women should not be expected to smile and indulge groping. HW should know better, and Jeb should certainly know better.

Donald Trump was rightly excoriated for saying, "And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

Similarly, we need to reject the idea And when you’re an old man, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the ass. You can do anything.

________________________

* I myself dropped out of participating in a certain significant law school activity because it involved sitting in small, locked together chairs in a way that forced me to accept over an hour of thigh-to-thigh contact with a colleague on either side of me. No one was groping me, but I couldn't accept being seated like that. Similarly, some people won't fly on airplanes because of the risk of being forced into thigh or arm contact with another person. I avoid almost all flying for a number of reasons, and that is certainly one of them. It's awful if you have the feeling that the other person is getting a kick out of it!

"We don't want your tiny hands/Anywhere near our underpants/We don't want your tiny hands/Anywhere near our underpants..."

A very minimal anti-Trump song by Fiona Apple gets an article of its own in The New York Times.

ADDED: I was glad to have a chance once again to use my underpants tag.  I hadn't used it since March 1st of last year. Oddly enough, the post was about Trump. I was linking to something in the NYT, something tragically titled "Inside the Clinton Team’s Plan to Defeat Donald Trump":

“They’ll flip their top, and they’ll flip their panties...” read the subject line of a recent news release from Emily’s List, a group that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. The quote came from comments Mr. Trump made about women on “The Howard Stern Show” in the 1990s, unearthed by BuzzFeed last month.

Those types of comments, spoken by Mr. Trump over the years as he served as a tabloid regular and reality TV star, could help Mrs. Clinton excite suburban women and young women who have been ambivalent or antagonistic toward her candidacy....

The excited suburban and young women will need to content themselves with the women's march. Apple's tiny-hands-underpants song is intended to be chanted by the marching women.

Before that, there was a Jeb Bush interview in February 2015:

When Hannity said he had one more question, Jeb said "boxers." (Bill Clinton's answer to the famously inappropriate question, by the way, was "Usually briefs. I can't believe she did that." Obama's answer was:  "I don't answer those humiliating questions. But whichever one it is, I look good in 'em.")

And remember that sculpture of a man stumbling about in his underpants that disturbed the women of Wellesley College?

And all the posts about Anthony Weiner's underpants? And references to the underpants gnomes? There was the underpants bomber.

And there was the time The Gatsby Project — should I bring back The Gatsby Project? — got to a sentence with underpants:

The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back.

And "Hey, look! It's my giant underpants!"



ALSO: I do want to give Fiona Apple credit for inventing a new chant. "We don't want your tiny hands/Anywhere near our underpants" really is chantable. I'd like to see marches with new chants. I'm really tired of the continual repurposing of: 1. "What do we want?/X!/When do we want it?/Now!" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho/X has got to go." (The Wisconsin protests of 2011 were notable for their distinctive chants: "What's Disgusting?/Union busting" and "This is what democracy looks like.")

"Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate. Under her leadership..."

"... we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families."

Said Trump, appointing DeVos as Secretary of Education.

ADDED: From Chad Livengood, Jonathan Oosting and Michael Gerstein in The Detroit News:

In 2000, Betsy and Dick DeVos funded an unsuccessful statewide ballot initiative to amend the state Constitution to allow tax dollars to be used for private school tuition through education vouchers. They have since advocated for school vouchers in other states.

In 2012, Dick DeVos led the charge in getting the Legislature to make Michigan a right-to-work state, eliminating work rules that made financial support of unions a condition of employment for teachers in public schools.... 

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also praised DeVos as an “outstanding pick for Secretary of Education.” Bush said “she has a long and distinguished history championing the right of all parents to choose schools that best ensure their children’s success. Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next.”...

"Misty K. Snow is the first transgender nominee from a major party to run for a U.S. Senate seat and she shares the distinction of being the first transgender person to run for Congress."

"Misty Plowright, a transgender woman, claimed the Democratic nomination in Colorado's conservative 5th House District on Tuesday."

Reports The Salt Lake Tribune, confusing me on first read. I was thinking why did the last name switch from Snow to Plowright? Eventually, it dawned on me that there are 2 Mistys, one in Utah, nominated for the Senate, named Snow, and one in Colorado, nominated for the House, named Plowright.

Transgender people are choosing their own names, but is there some reason why Misty would be a popular name for someone making a distinct, personal statement of a desire to be seen as female? "Misty" is most notable to me as the great song. Look at me....



Johnny Mathis is still alive. I'm reading the awkwardly written Wikipedia article about him...

Mathis was misquoted [sic] in a 1982 Us Magazine article, where he was quoted as having said, "Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to." However, he made no further comments on this, and Us Magazine later retracted the statement. In 2006, Mathis revealed that his silence had been because of death threats he received as a result of that 1982 article. On April 13, 2006, Mathis granted a podcast interview with The Strip in which he talked about the subject once again, and how some of his reluctance to speak on the subject was partially generational.

Johnny Mathis is 80. I hope he's doing well.

I doubt if the modern-day Mistys, Snow and Plowright, chose their name because of the beautiful old song. I'm thinking it was more likely the influence of Misty May-Treanor, the volleyball star, or Misty Copeland, the ballerina. It could have been the pornographic Mistys, Rain and Stone. There are so many Mistys....



ADDED: The song "Misty" was written by Erroll Garner, who played it in an ultra-schmaltzy style that's quite enjoyable....



Johnny Mathis heard him play it and said if it had words, he'd sing it, and that's how we got all that "kitten up a tree... puppet on a string..." business.

And speaking of names, Garner is a fine last name, but don't let me catch you using "garner" as an ordinary verb as if you think "get" isn't a real word, in sentences like "He's playing you guys like a fiddle, the press, by saying outrageous things, and garnering attention," which is something Jeb Bush said about Donald Trump. Donald Trump will never say "garner" for "get," and it's interesting to think of Trump playing the fiddle with his famously short fingers, and I was just thinking about Trump's short fingers as I watched Erroll Garner play the piano so gloriously with what are startlingly short fingers.

The ancient notion that Hillary Clinton must become personal and purpose driven.

My standard checking of Drudge this morning got me over The Smoking Gun to read an article titled "DNC Financial Records Stolen By 'Guccifer 2.0'/Hacker swiped personal info on thousands of party backers." Scroll down a bit and you'll get to:

In a 2015 document, a branding expert recruited by the Clinton campaign advised that the candidate needed to employ “new authentic language that gets personal.” The memo notes that, “HRC...must move from Policy and Political to Personal and Purpose driven,” adding that the pivot represents the “start of the new ‘Personal and Purpose Driven’ phase of our messaging.” The document then lists an assortment of suggested speech passages.

Then, I was looking at my new photos, taken with a camera that had the date mistakenly set at 2015, so I ended up in photos from last June. For some reason, I'd taken a few photos of the computer monitor in mid-June of last year. There's one of Jeb Bush announcing that he's running for President. (Who could have imagined what a disaster that would turn out to be? Not only did he never get anywhere, he sucked up all the money, depriving others of a chance to get going, and then he spent it all in a way that was worse than if he'd just burned it.) And here's one of Hillary:



Ah, yes! Hillary started off as if she were following a branding expert's advice to use new authentic language that gets personal. (I love that word "authentic." If you can fake that, you've got it made.) Remember all the autobiographical material about her relationship with her mother? She was trying to be personal and "purpose driven" a year ago, but then the very same idea was reprocessed by a hired branding experts into what she needed to do for a pivot.

And what's with "purpose driven"? I associate that with Rick Warren and "The Purpose Driven Life." So 2008! Remember when the 2008 candidates — including Hillary — sat down for a long interview with Rick Warren at something called the "Compassion Forum"? And she was all:

"You know, I have, ever since I've been a little girl, felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has, for me, been incredibly sustaining. But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God and I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey. It didn't have to be a hard time. You know, it could be taking a walk in the woods. It could be watching a sunset. You know, I am someone who has [been] talked a lot about my life. You know more about my life than you know about nearly anybody else's, about 60 books worth... some of which are, you know, frankly, a little bit off-base. But I don't think that I could have made my life's journey without being anchored in God's grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love. And I am not going to point to one or another matter. I mean, some of my struggles and challenges have been extremely public. And I have talked about how I have been both guided and supported through those, trying to find my own way through, because, for me, my faith has given me the confidence to make decisions that were right for me, whether anybody else agreed with me or not. And it is just such a part of who I am and what I have lived through for so many years that trying to pull out and say, oh, I remember, I was sitting right there when I felt, you know, God's love embrace me, would be, I think, trivializing what has been an extraordinary sense of support and possibility that I have had with me my entire life."

"Please clap" in the previous post caused me to uncover "The 17 saddest moments of Jeb Bush’s very sad campaign."

In Vox. To me, the saddest — if by, sad, we mean funny-sad — is: "15) The moment when Jeb was so excited to hear that he might have won a guy's vote that he ran over to hug him (February 4)."