"Weather permitting, we would sit on the Truman Balcony, enjoying the weather and a martini (or two), with delicious hors d'oeuvres prepared by their extraordinary chefs; they used to make the most delicious, mini open-faced BLTs with a hit of sugar."

Writes Valerie Jarrett in her new memoir, quoted at The Daily Mail.

Jarrett says she loved the movie theaters at the White House and Camp David with their 'very comfortable chairs' that came with a blanket, pillow and a footrest in the front row. Obama's favorite movies had complicated plot lines that involved suffering and ended with everyone dying. 'I think the contrast to real life made him feel better', she writes....

In Saudi Arabia, they stayed at King Abdullah's ranch where she found a large gift box in her villa that contained a huge, green leather briefcase made from reptile skin and filled with emeralds and diamonds, a necklace, earrings, a ring, two watches, a bejeweled pen....

A whirlwind trip to four countries in five days and sleeping all but two nights on Air Force One that wasn't as plush as Valerie had imagined....

Jarrett said on the night of the 2016 elections, she was with the Obamas watching the Marvel superhero movie Doctor Strange. When exit polls started to come in and the outlook did not seem good for Hillary, Michelle went to bed. Valerie decided to leave Barack alone. The next morning, 'the election outcome was soul crushing. We were all clearly shattered.'

The diamonds and emeralds were handed over to the State Department. Gifts like that are accepted but not kept.

"I’m trying to talk about Iran! I’m trying to talk about Valerie Jarrett about the Iran deal! That’s what my tweet was about! I thought the bitch was white, goddammit! I thought the bitch was white! Fuck!"

Via Page Six, which is just telling us what Roseanne Barr put up on on her own YouTube page. The explanation at the YouTube page is: "Roseanne, like always, cuts through the bullshit and gets the heart of the matter."

I note the replica of the Venus of Willendorf in the lower right corner of the screen.

From Jarrett's Wikipedia page, you see her connection to Iran:

Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, during the Pahlavi dynasty, to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara T. Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz in 1956 as part of a program where American physicians and agricultural experts sought to help in the health and farming efforts of developing countries. When she was five years old, the family moved to London for a year, later moving to Chicago in 1963.

It is believable that someone would assume Jarrett had Iranian ancestry. But:

Her parents are both of European and African-American descent. On the television series Finding Your Roots, DNA testing indicated that Jarrett is of 49% European, 46% African, and 5% Native American descent. Among her European roots, she was found to have French and Scottish ancestry....

So, Jarrett was born in Iran but not of Iranian ancestry. I'll leave it to you to think about whether Iranian people are properly referred to as "white."

A more promising topic: The get-Roseanne movement had little to do with real concern about racism. But was it more about suppressing criticism of the Iran deal (and protecting Obama) or more about using whatever was most convenient to make a pariah out of this conspicuous Trump supporter?

"While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of" Ambien.

Tweets the manufacturer of Ambien, quoted in "Sanofi, the company that makes Ambien, rebuffed the assertion Wednesday on Twitter."

But "racism" is an abstraction, a label applied to what Roseanne did — which was to tweet "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj" in reference to Valerie Jarrett.

We don't know what motivated those words. Perhaps it was real racism, but it could also have been a wild, reckless urge to outrage or a confused angry silliness. What was Roseanne's emotional state at the time of the tweet, and does it have any relation to any of the known side effects of Ambien?

The American Addiction Centers website discusses the possible cognitive impairment that Ambien users have experienced, and I'll just excerpt some of the things that could be related to a stupid expression like Roseanne's:

Difficulty concentrating
Disorientation to place or time
Loss of emotional affect...
Excessive sedation
Confusion and disorientation...
Hallucinations
Impaired judgment
Aggression

Sanofi's snark is first rate, but it doesn't exclude the possibility that Ambien was Roseanne's problem. That said, blaming Ambien sounds lame — and yet, ironically, making a lame excuse could be caused by Ambien. Lame excuse-making could be the result of confusion or disorientation or impaired judgment.

ADDED: The NYT addresses the question whether Ambien could caused the severe lapse in judgment or break from reality that could explain Roseanne's tweet?

So-called working memory — the mental scratchpad where the brain manipulates numbers, names and images — may shrink temporarily.... Yet these effects, taken together, have much more in common with sleep deprivation than with Tourette-like outbursts of insults and epithets. Tourette’s episodes typically arrive as a deluge and generally have no rational connection to the person’s usual behavior....

Many people have reported hallucinations while taking Ambien... daydreams so vivid they are like waking dreams — before the person snaps back into the here and now. Sleep scientists suspect that at least some of these reactions represent “mixed states,” when mental processes of the slumbering brain leak into the patient’s waking hours...

AND: Roseanne's offense is chiefly to have violated a particular well-known social norm against any suggestion that a black person looks like an ape. Looking at a human face and seeing likeness to an animal is very common. We often think someone has a "horse face" or looks like a chicken or — in the case of Mitch McConnell — a turtle. Apes have the most resemblance to humans, so this common way of seeing animal faces in humans is most likely to happen with apes. Donald Trump was famously called the son of an orangutan, and George Bush was often pictured as a chimpanzee. I had a colleague at the University of Wisconsin Law School who posted on her office door a set of pictures of George Bush and chimpanzees making various faces. It was stock humor at the time. But everyone is supposed to know that you just do not do that with black people.

Roseanne transgressed that social norm. Had she forgotten about it? I doubt it, but comedy often involves an outrageous transgression. What's one thing you absolutely should not say? That's a question you might use to brainstorm a comic routine. Shock the bourgeoisie is the old artist's credo. But the bourgeoisie shocks back. You get the consequences. Some jokes won't be taken. "Roseanne" is/was a network sitcom.

But the question here is: Could Ambien have caused it? And I'm saying that the only cause needed was the destructive impulse to violate a strong social norm that has to do with race. I do understand the argument that the racial idea had to be in her head before it could have exerted pressure to leap out, but if she'd kept the idea to herself, like so many other people who are aware of the strong social norm, she wouldn't be in any trouble at all.

"ABC cancels ‘Roseanne’ after its star, Roseanne Barr, went on a vitriolic and racist Twitter rant."

WaPo reports.

Barr appeared to take aim late Monday at Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Obama, in a tweet that identified the administration official by her initials: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."...

The social-media rant wasn’t exactly a surprise performance by Barr, who regularly delights supporters of President Trump with her retweets of conservative memes and stories..... But even by her own standards, this latest round of tweets were particularly vitriolic. She started by spreading the false rumor that Chelsea Clinton is married to the nephew of billionaire liberal Democratic donor George Soros, who is a lightning rod for false conservative theories....

Barr later corrected herself, but added another insult. “CORRECTION: CHELSEA CLINTON IS NOT MARRIED TO A SOROS NEPHEW. HER HUSBAND IS THE SON OF A CORRUPT SENATOR, SO SORRY!” the comedian tweeted. (Fact check: Clinton’s father-in-law was convicted of financial fraud, but he was a member of the House, not the Senate.)...

A lot of people work on a show like that. It's sad that everyone can be sent packing when one nutty actor mouths off. Wasn't it the most popular sitcom on TV? Will it move to some other channel?

I feel sorry for Sara Gilbert:

Gilbert, who played Darlene on "Roseanne" and had been largely credited with spearheading the relaunch of the sitcom, tweeted that Barr's statements "do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show."

"I am disappointed in her actions to say the least," Gilbert continued. "This is incredibly sad and difficult for all of us, as we’ve created a show that we believe in, are proud of, and that audiences love -- one that is separate and apart from the opinions and words of one cast member."

I'll say what Gilbert is not saying: She just got her good work and her rising career shot to hell.

ADDED: "Darlene Is the Best Reason to Watch the New Rosanne."

"Many people do not realize that yoga... is intended to be more than a series of exercises coupled with deliberative breathing and meditation."

"It is a mind and body practice developed under Hinduism, the goal of which is spiritual purification that will lead to a higher level of understanding and eventually union with the divine. Although the Catholic Church teaches that much good can be found in other religions, Catholics believe it is only brought to fullness in Christ... It is for these reasons that Catholics are alerted to the dangers of the practice of yoga and are encouraged to look for other exercise alternatives that do not incorporate a spiritual dimension."

Said Rev. John Riley, chancellor of Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas, explaining the new policy removing the word "yoga" from the names of classes that teach yoga or I guess one should say yoga-based exercises. The term "lifestyle fitness" is the replacement.

This makes me wonder where a Catholic analysis of the idea "lifestyle" would go. I actually agree with Riley that "yoga" is a Hindu practice that someone who wants to be strictly Christian ought to think carefully about, and I would add that there is a problem of cultural appropriation, especially when you take the part you like and strip away the deeper part. What if nonChristians wanted to use some of the mannerisms of communion in serving wine and bread?

But the new term "lifestyle" is a word I avoid using. I asked out loud to Meade "What do you think of the word 'lifestyle'?" and he said "I try to avoid it."

Some elitists look down on those who use it. It's one of those words that those who eschew them claim are not a word. But the OED has it, dating back to 1915. The definition is: "A style or way of living (associated with an individual person, a society, etc.); esp. the characteristic manner in which a person lives (or chooses to live) his or her life." (I'd like to hear a Catholic analysis of whether a Catholic college should be teaching an individual style or way of living other than a Catholic way.)

The OED's 1915 example of "lifestyle" is "This spirit of expediency..excludes any possibility of peace or rest in unity with the universe. The author applies to it, as the ‘life-style’ of our age, the term Impressionism." Those quotes give a sense that people were saying "life-style" back then.

I searched the NYT archive and saw that the word really took off in 1968 and 1969, which corresponds to my perception that it's a Baby-Boomer/ counterculture/ hippie word. Here's Ada Louise Huxtable writing about architecture in 1969 in "The Case for Chaos":

I don't think I've ever used the word "lifestyle" on this blog except in a quote. (And I'm not using the word in this post (if you observe the use/mention distinction). Oh, no, wait. I did use it once. I'm checking again with a hyphen, and found this from 2008:

Can singlehood be portrayed as good but only good enough to reduce the number of bad marriages and not good enough to attract the kind of staunch adherents who advocate marriage as a way of life? Is DePaulo's book a nice, reassuring middle-of-the road sort of a thing, designed to take the edge off the predicament of not having a spouse? Or is she really promoting singlehood at the expense of marriage? If she is, you see the problem. That's the basis of my punchline: "The pleasures of singlehood must be kept hush-hush. It's not a legitimate life style, you hear?" I want to be single, and maybe so does DePaulo, but we might live to regret promoting this simple, free, self-indulgent life-style.

Whoa! That's really funny, considering the absolutely direct connection between Bella DePaulo's book and my marriage to Meade in the following year.

So funny the things that crash and connect when you're living the blogging lifestyle.

ADDED: In the blog archive,  I see that "lifestyle" is a word for which Dan Quayle and Valerie Jarrett caught grief.

Quayle:

Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong... Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

Jarrett:

"These are good people. They were aware that their son was gay; they embraced him, they loved him, they supported his lifestyle choice. But when he left the home and went to school, he was tortured by his classmates."

Valerie Jarrett is said to have moved in with the Obamas... and it's all political.

I always think SEX first, but according to The Daily Mail:

Barack Obama is turning his new home in the posh Kalorama section of the nation's capital - just two miles away from the White House - into the nerve center of the mounting insurgency against his successor, President Donald J. Trump.

Obama's goal, according to a close family friend, is to oust Trump from the presidency either by forcing his resignation or through his impeachment.

And Obama is being aided in his political crusade by his longtime consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, who has moved into the 8,200-square-foot, $5.3-million Kaloroma mansion with the former president and Michelle Obama, long time best friend...

Do Democrats really benefit from Obama's help? Looking at the last 8 years, I'd think they be screaming Stop helping us. Maybe he's not even trying to help the party that fell to pieces and shrunk to next to nothing during his leadership. If he wanted to help, he should withdraw from the scene, in classic ex-President style, and give other stars in his party a chance to rise.

As the "close family friend" reportedly said, the idea is not to rebuild the Democratic Party at all, but to undermine the current President. I can't believe a former President thinks that's a dignified role for himself.

It's interesting to hear this so soon after Trump's well-received address to Congress. Trump turned to the light (from the "dark" inaugural speech). Who can forget the old Obama credo "When they go low, we go high"? If Trump has finally gotten people other than his core supporters to see him as going high, are the Obamas now going to go low and seek to undercut him at every turn?

The effort to associate Trump with disorder — craziness and abnormality — is failing. I don't think it will work out well for Democratic Party to shift from fretting and scaring us about disorder to working to increase disorder by disrupting a presidency that people see as a force for order.

"Is Obama taking Hillary out?"

Monica Crowley's conspiracy theory is seeming more and more plausible, no?

[Hillary] tried to get her dirty tricks consigliere, Sidney Blumenthal, a top position in the State Department, which Mr. Obama pointedly denied. So she hired him anyway through the Clinton Foundation. Through Mr. Blumenthal, she was fed all kinds of intelligence on global hotpots such as Libya, much of it inaccurate, as she circumvented traditional government communication chains via her private email server. 

She didn't trust Obama, the theory goes, and Obama didn't trust her.

In a recently disclosed email, Mrs. Clinton complained that she heard “on the radio” that there was a “Cabinet meeting” that morning and wondered if she could attend. The secretary of state — fourth in line to the presidency — was frozen out, so she set up her own fiefdom.

Obama wants someone he can trust in charge of preserving his legacy, and that would be Joe Biden, Crowley says.

So here’s the likely plan: Mr. Biden will announce that he is running for president (the reported dying wish of his late son, Beau). After a respectable amount of time, Mr. Obama will announce that while he admires all of the Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden has earned his particular loyalty. Following his presidential endorsement, Mr. Obama will then support Mr. Biden with the full weight of the White House, including the sophisticated technical infrastructure his campaigns used to win in 2008 and 2012. For years, Mrs. Clinton has begged Mr. Obama to turn it over to her, and he refused. He’s been saving it for someone else. Mr. Obama will also use his considerable influence with black and Latino voters to support Mr. Biden, which may be enough to help him significantly....

Crowley connects her theory to the recent, weird New York Times story that "two inspectors general from [Obama's] administration recommended that the Justice Department open a 'criminal' inquiry into [Hillary's] handling of classified material." There's reason to think that the leak came from "Mr. Obama’s own consigliere, Valerie Jarrett."

The Times walked back some of the details, but the damage was done. If Mr. Obama did not want a DOJ criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton to go forward, he would not have let it go this far. He wants the investigation, wants her nailed, wants her out. And he’s doing it, slowly, steadily.

So says Monica Crowley, who should not be confused with that other Crowley, Candy Crowley, the woman who threw the last election (according to another conspiracy theory).

"President Barack Obama's top adviser, Valerie Jarrett, went around the table and kissed reporters before an interview this morning on MNSBC's Morning Joe."

"The moment was briefly captured on live television before the network cut away to a commercial break."

Bill Clinton supposedly said: "The Obamas are out to get us any way they can."

Quoted in a NY Post article titled "Obama adviser behind leak of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal." The author, Edward Klein, cites sources inside "Bill Clinton’s camp" as having informed him that it was Valerie Jarrett, acting through others, who leaked details that made Hillary Clinton's email into a big issue. Klein also reports that "at Jarrett’s behest, the State Department" has begun "[s]ix separate probes," including Hillary's "use of her expense account, the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders and her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation." Klein says: "the e-mail scandal was timed to come out just as Hillary was on the verge of formally announcing that she was running for president — and that there’s more to come." We're told Bill Clinton is "furious."

Klein offers this quote as supposedly coming from Bill: "My contacts and friends in newspapers and TV tell me that they’ve been contacted by the White House and offered all kinds of negative stories about us... The Obamas are behind the e-mail story, and they’re spreading rumors that I’ve been with women, that Hillary promoted people at the State Department who’d done favors for our foundation, that John Kerry had to clean up diplomatic messes Hillary left behind."

They’re spreading rumors that I’ve been with women...

It's so underhanded to make up the very stories people would be inclined to believe.

According to Klein, Obama/Jarrett's real objection to Hillary is that she's not liberal enough to preserve Obama's legacy:

“With Obama’s approval,” this source continued, “Valerie has been holding secret meetings with Martin O’Malley [the former Democratic governor of Maryland] and [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren. She’s promised O’Malley and Warren the full support of the White House if they will challenge Hillary for the presidential nomination.”

"SCENE: Murdoch sitting with Valerie Jarrett gushing over Jeb, immigration..."

Drudge teaser, linking the NYT "As in 2012, Romney Can Do No Right in Murdoch’s Eyes."

This scene is most helpful to the reputation of...

Valerie Jarrett

Rupert Murdoch

Jeb Bush

Mitt Romney

 

pollcode.com free polls

This scene is least helpful to the reputation of...

Valerie Jarrett

Rupert Murdoch

Jeb Bush

Mitt Romney

 

pollcode.com free polls

The NYT was well aware of whose reputation was hurt and helped by its description of this scene.

Absolutely.

Maybe.

Probably not.

 

pollcode.com free polls

MEADE: "I just watched a movie called 'Valerie.' Starring Anita Ekberg. What rock star was she married to?"

ME: No. No. No. You're thinking of Britt Ekland.

MEADE: It had everything: betrayal, justice, frontier justice...

ME: The telephone rang, it would not stop, it was President Kennedy calling me up. He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?" I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren."

(I was quoting Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Free," and Meade knew it.)

ME: Britt Ekland was married to Rod Stewart.

MEADE: Yeah, so the movie is called "Valerie."

ME: Did you watch the whole thing? You never watch movies.

MEADE: It's only an hour long. The theme is: War on Women.

ME: Why did you start watching that?

MEADE: Because Valerie Jarrett.

(We'd both seen the Politico article "Fire Valerie Jarrett" and had talked about it, so I didn't need more info about how the search got started.)

MEADE: And on YouTube, I saw this movie "Valerie," and I just got drawn in. It's very cheesy, but it's also very good for its time. And then the other thing that got me is: It has Italian subtitles, and some of the Italian words were great. Like a guy says "yeah," and it's "sim," not "si." It also had a theme of xenophobia. It's a Hollywood movie made after World War II and a lot of people were still dealing with their fear of foreigners.

ME: Yeah, but what was War on Women about it?

MEADE: The husband was an evil man. He hits her, he tries to drug her, he rapes her on the wedding night, and when he finds out she's pregnant, he basically tries to cause an abortion by whipping the horses, and that doesn't work. He's a hard drinker. And he tortures her. He has this whole evil plan.... And there's a scene where he literally gives her the back of his hand. Remember when Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz said that about... who did she say that about?

ME: Scott Walker!

MEADE: So, anyway, there's a trial, and you get 3 testimonies.

ME: Like "Rashomon"!

MEADE: And the final testimony is Valerie's, so that's the true testimony. The truth is revealed. It ends very abruptly. 

Democrats tire of Debbie Wasserman Schultz — especially her efforts to get them to pay for her clothes.

Politico reports.

Wasserman Schultz is a high-profile national figure who helped raise millions of dollars and served as a Democratic messenger to female voters during a presidential election in which Obama needed to exploit the gender gap to win, but November’s already difficult midterms are looming.

One example that sources point to as particularly troubling: Wasserman Schultz repeatedly trying to get the DNC to cover the costs of her wardrobe. In 2012, Wasserman Schultz attempted to get the DNC to pay for her clothing at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, multiple sources say, but was blocked by staff in the committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters and at President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago.

She asked again around Obama’s inauguration in 2013, pushing so hard that Obama senior adviser — and one-time Wasserman Schultz booster — Valerie Jarrett had to call her directly to get her to stop....  One more time, according to independent sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, she tried again, asking for the DNC to buy clothing for the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Wasserman Schultz denies it. But what's going on here? Who are these sources that have it in for Debbie? She served their gender-based interests in 2012, and that's not the thing this year, so they launch a gender-based attack on her? It is a gender-based attack, don't you think? Is a woman behind this attack? The only name I see named is Valerie Jarrett. What's up with the Democratic Party? If you make women your stock in trade, you'd better watch out for women against women.

"It's downright appalling that the Obama administration would give in to right-wing obstruction and nominate ... an anti-choice, anti-equality candidate for the federal bench."

"Putting forward a right-wing candidate that would make George W. Bush think twice for a lifetime judicial appointment isn't horse-trading; it's caving on core progressive values, period."

ADDED: A week ago, I blogged about the Congressional Black Caucus meeting with Valerie Jarret about this and one member complaining: "Do you think George Bush would have been able to do this, or any white president would have been able to do this? No.... This is a terrible mistake, history will record it as such.... And it breaks my heart that it’s a black president."

"Do you think George Bush would have been able to do this, or any white president would have been able to do this? No."

Said Georgia Rep. David Scott, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, complaining to Valerie Jarrett about 2 of Obama's judicial nominees...

... one who once supported a state bill to keep the Confederate battle emblem a part of Georgia’s flag, and another who led the defense of the state’s photo ID law, which Scott claims is a statute designed “to keep black folks, as much as possible, from voting.”

“I asked her specifically that they should be [withdrawn]. She just didn’t say anything.... The president should have said, ‘There’s absolutely no way I want to go down in history as putting these kinds of people into federal court nominations against my own African-American [people]’ ... It’s a tragedy.... This is a terrible mistake, history will record it as such.... And it breaks my heart that it’s a black president.”

"Perhaps because poverty strips people of happiness in the short term, it forces them to take the long view..."

"... to focus on the relationships they have with their children, their gods, and their friends, which become more meaningful over time."

From a piece in The New Yorker titled "Do the Poor Have More Meaningful Lives?" The phrase "long view" resonated with something in that much-talked-about New Yorker piece about Barack Obama. "The Long View" is the title of section 2 of the 10-part article:

While we were waiting for Obama to speak to the group, I asked [Valerie] Jarrett whether the health-care rollout had been the worst political fiasco Obama had confronted so far.

“I really don’t think so,” she said. Like all Obama advisers, she was convinced that the problems would get “fixed”—just as Social Security was fixed after a balky start, in 1937—and the memory of the botched rollout would recede. That was the hope and that was the spin. And then she said something that I’ve come to think of as the Administration’s mantra: “The President always takes the long view.”

That appeal to patience and historical reckoning, an appeal that risks a maddening high-mindedness, is something that everyone around Obama trots out to combat the hysterias of any given moment. “He has learned through those vicissitudes that every day is Election Day in Washington and everyone is writing history in ten-minute intervals,” Axelrod told me. “But the truth is that history is written over a long period of time—and he will be judged in the long term.”

What I'm hearing in the resonance between the 2 articles is: Settle down and stop expecting anything anytime soon. It's really not important that you be satisfied now, with your life or with the leaders who you might imagine should be helping you with your immediate problems. It's all for the best. Trust me. It will all make sense in the end.

"Aboard Air Force One, former President Bush shows photos of his paintings to... First Lady Michelle Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..."

"... Valerie Jarrett, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, Attorney General Eric Holder and former First Lady Laura Bush, Dec. 9, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)"

Floaters... a post inspired by the Chris Matthews statement that Obama's "got floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around."

See the the previous post for the context and analysis of the quote. This is a more light-hearted exploration of "floaters."

1. "Float On," by The Floaters... a hit song from 1977. Lyrics here. Each Floater — Ralph, Charles, Paul, Larry — has his own verse in which he begins by announcing his astrological sign and proceeds to tell use what kind of women he likes. Ralph, the Aquarius, likes "a woman who loves her freedom," etc.

2. "Float On," by Modest Mouse, is a completely different song. It's about not worrying about your problems: "Even if things get heavy, we'll all float on/Alright already, we'll all float on alright."

3. The top definition for "floater" at Urban Dictionary is: "a social mastermind who wavers between members of one particular clique or between multiple cliques in general, pitting people against one another and leeching out information without seeming like a threat." Definitions #2, #3, and #5 refer to buoyant fecal matter. Definition #4 refers to those bits in your eyes, and #6 is "A dead body found in the water."

4. In Adelaide, they eat a comfort food called a "pie floater." "Anthony Bourdain, Joe Cocker, Billy Connolly, Nigel Mansell, Shane Warne and Angus Young are high profile fans of the pie floater."

5. Bob Dylan has a song called "Floater (Too Much To Ask)." The word "floater" does not appear in the song, though Bob appears in a boat in verse #3 fishing for bullheads, and in verse #12, there's a reference to "rebel rivers," which include the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee.

Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chris Matthews daintily allude to Obama's masculinity deficit.

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," Tom Brokaw said it was "just inexplicable" that the Obamacare website "suddenly landed the way that it did, in utter chaos." The President should have pressured "Kathy Sebelius and other people" about the "rollout" which was "going to be our big play for the second term."

"Big play" picks up on that football metaphor Obama used 4 times in his November 14th remarks. "We fumbled," he said, though in real football, it's an individual player who fumbles. But here was this "big play," and somebody fumbled. Was it "Kathy"?

The moderator David Gregory, immediately steps up to frame the next question in macho terms: "Who's got the muscle?" The manly (though 50-years-dead) JFK somehow shoulders his way into the conversation. Gregory turns to Chris Matthews and says:

You were making the point to me this week about, you know, where's his Bobby Kennedy? Who's got the muscle? When the president says, and he did say, "The user experience of this website is everything," who had the muscle in the White House to get it done and make sure the president gets what he wants?

Muscle, muscle, muscle. If a right-winger had phrased the question that way, somebody would call this misogyny. These 3 men — Brokaw, Gregory, and Matthews — are hankering for a muscular man who can nail the big play. He depended on a Kathy when he needed a Bobby. And here's what Chrissy Matthews said:

Everybody goes to their battle stations when there's chaos. 

I'll see you your football metaphor, and raise you a military metaphor.

You always go to where you've been arguing before. But I've always been arguing this president doesn't have a chain of command, a very clear line of authority and unique responsibility. I remember Sebelius, who I like of course, most people do like her, she's a public servant. 

She's liked. Kathy's likeable enough. She's a good servant.

But when she was asked, "Who's in charge?" in that committee, under oath, she started to talk about someone, the head of C.M.S., who handles Medicare and Medicaid. Among 30 or 40 other responsibilities, this person had the rollout responsibilities.

And was "this person" male or female? Female. Marilyn Tavenner. Can you say her name without vaulting back in time to your old macho icons Jack and Bobby? They knew what "responsibilities" to give their Marilyn.

Matthews reaches even further back, to an even manlier man:

Look at Japan, the occupation of Japan, it simple: Put one guy in charge, Doug MacArthur. 

Put one guy in charge. Doug. Call him Doug, not Douglas. Not — in the style of "Kathy" — Dougy. He's Doug. And there was a guy! Put one guy in charge.

You put somebody in charge and they're uniquely responsible for its success or failure. Obama doesn't do things that way. He's got floaters, like Valerie Jarett, floating around. 

Floaters. Like Valerie Jarrett. The disrespect! They can't even spell her name right in the transcript. Floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around. Matthews being a good Democrat somehow feels secure that the double meaning of "floaters" won't bring on the accusations of racism that would surely have burst forth if a Republican had talked about Jarrett like that.

He doesn't want to have a real chief of staff, like a Jim Baker.

He's saying — it's hardly subtle — that Jarrett's not a real man. You need a man. A man like Bobby or Doug or Jim.

He doesn't want to give authority to people, and I think it's been a real problem.

So what does this say about Obama, not wanting to bring in real men, who take charge, who make the play, who exert authority? He's not man enough to work alongside real men? He needs to play with the ladies, ladies who don't know their place — who dither and float?

"A White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community..."

"... with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years."

2 years!

The Daily Beast preserved the tweets of Jofi Joseph, AKA natsecwonk, which included crap like:

“I'm a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me.”

“Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Wiener? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers and Cass Sunstein ...”

“So when will someone do us the favor of getting rid of Sarah Palin and the rest of her white trash family? What utter useless garbage....” 

2 years! What does this say about national security?

(I know. It's Samantha Power (not Powers) and Anthony Weiner (not Wiener).)

"'Genocide,' one eulogist called it, lamenting that guns had 'become part of our wardrobe.'"

"Another exhorted the politicians in the pews, 'Don’t give us lip service.'"

In the pews were Michelle Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, Pat Quinn, and  Jesse Jackson. In the casket was Hadiya Pendleton, who lived to the age of 15.