"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.