Donald Trump: “I do the weave. I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
My weave:
Bud Hulsey. State representative. How can you figure this guy? I read that he plans to introduce a bill to make it easier for felons to get their voting rights restored in Tennessee and I think, like, that’s a great idea. How did he come up with that?
After all, Republicans typically want fewer people to vote, not more. So does this make Hulsey a RINO?
And then I read – hat tip to Sam Stockard, of the Tennessee Lookout – that Hulsey also plans to revive his effort to pass a bill allowing Tennessee to “nullify” federal edicts the state deems unacceptable, which is a numskull idea I’ve written about before. So, Hulsey’s definitively a Republican.
About Sam Stockard: He calls his column “Stockard on the Stump.” Why?
It’s alliterative, yeah, but “on the stump” means traveling around campaigning for political office, and Stockard isn’t doing that, so I wonder.
Like I wonder about why it’s so hard to find chicken on the bone at the grocery store these days. Breasts, thighs … if you’re grilling it’s better for the taste if you have bones, right?
That’s what cooking people say, brilliant people, people who cook for a living. And yet all the chicken parts my grocery store sells are bone free. Except maybe wings. Which I don’t eat.
It’s confusing. Like, the other day, I was at the doctor’s office and the woman taking my blood pressure told me to uncross my legs because somehow crossed legs do something about blood and yet when they took blood from me later they didn’t mention anything about crossed legs and yet it’s still blood, right? A mystery.
Another mystery: When your back itches, why does it always itch in the hardest to reach places? Nobody can reach those places. A contortionist couldn’t reach those places that itch. Why doesn’t anybody ever explain that? They don’t.
They might ask, though, who your favorite singer is. It happens. My favorite singer – female singer – is Linda Ronstadt. Brilliant singer. Beautiful singer.
She doesn’t sing anymore, though. Parkinson’s disease. It steals people’s muscle control. Sad.
Hulsey, though, he doesn’t care that even the state attorney general has said nullification is a non-starter. A waste of time. Hulsey just pooh-poohs that reasoning as the kind of thing “law school boys” say, and Hulsey is not a law school boy, no sir. He’s a retired cop who got an education degree from Bob Jones University, which is named for an old-school evangelist who believed in segregation.
Odd fact: I have a niece and a nephew who graduated from Bob Jones High School. Different Bob Jones, though. Thank goodness.
To go with Linda Ronstadt: Raul Malo, my favorite male singer. Raul Malo. Beautiful voice, like you wouldn’t believe. He and the Mavericks put on what may have been the best show I’ve ever seen at the Ryman, and I’ve seen the Everly Brothers and John Prine there.
But, Bud Hulsey. Might he be related to Adm. “Bull” Halsey? Just a letter off. Has anybody ever asked him that? Sounds interesting. So, Hulsey – Halsey? – last session, he introduced a bill that would have made it illegal for anyone to refuse cash for a payment.
And that makes sense, right?
How could you refuse cash? Cash is, like, money. And everybody wants
money, right? And to be able to spend it?
And yet Bull Hulsey couldn’t even get his bill to legalize money out of the subcommittee in the House. So what chance does he have to get felons – very bad people, some felons, but not all of them – the right to vote again, if they’ve paid their debt to society?
Wait, I think I know what’s going on. ILLEGAL-IMMIGRANT SCIENTISTS
ARE BREEDING BONELESS CHICKENS IN LABORATORIES.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]