The Way Jeb Bush Is F*cking Up, You'd Think He Was Already Running For President

• Jeb Bush -- who has got to be tired by now of being laughingly referred to as "the smart one," but screw him, let's never stop doing that, he IS supposed to be the smart one, isn't he? -- has had a lot of campaign problems for a guy who hasn't officially launched his presidential campaign yet. Here's his latest:  

  Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said it was a mistake for one of his foreign policy advisers to go speak at the left-leaning Israel policy group J Street. The adviser, James Baker, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on seeming to change his position on a two-state solution. [...]

  "I did not believe that it was appropriate to go speak to J Street, a group that basically has anti-Israeli sentiments," Bush said Thursday during a radio interview with Brian Kilmeade. "But I have a vast array of people advising me and I'm honored that Jim Baker was doing so. The fact that I have people that I might not agree with me on every subject advising me shows leadership, frankly."

  That would be former Secretary of State James Baker, who served under President Daddy Bush and and also advised President Dubya Bush, back before Republicans thought it was cool to pander to The Jews by saying "I heart Israel!!!" in every speech. His record of not exactly hearting Israel, or The Jews, is a long one. But then so is the Bush family's. So Protip to Jeb Bush: If you really wanna make nice with The Jews, you should reconsider having that rotted soulless sack of skin James Baker advising you. Even if he has been a close personal family friend all these years. Because if you think you're embarrassed now, just wait until the kids these days start Googling all James Baker's greatest hits. Then you're really going to have some problems.

• Apparently, people are still asking Mitt Romney what he thinks about stuff:

  Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Thursday that he wouldn’t have traded five prisoners for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged with desertion on Wednesday.

  "I don’t think I would have made the trade," he said on NBC’s “Today Show.”

  Guess you shoulda won that presidential election then, huh, Mitt?

• Sorry for getting caught doing racism. We cool now, brah?

  A former University of Oklahoma student captured on video leading a racist chant apologized Wednesday, saying he was sorry for his role in the incident and ashamed that he participated.

  The words in the chant “were mean, hateful and racist,” said the former student, Levi Pettit, who was surrounded by African-American community leaders at the Fairview Missionary Baptist Church here.

  “Some have wondered why I hadn’t spoken out publicly,” Mr. Pettit said. “The truth is I have had a mix of pain, shame, sorrow and fear over the consequences of my actions. I did not want to apologize to the press or to the whole country until I first came to apologize to those most directly impacted.”

  “The truth is what was said in that chant is disgusting,” Mr. Pettit said, “and after meeting with these people, I’ve learned these words should never be repeated.”

•  Not all bloggers:  

  You are probably aware, after a decade-plus of exposure to the idea of blogging, that bloggers live in their parents' basements. There are rarely exceptions to this in popular culture; unlike hackers, who extort and steal secrets and money from behind screens that project code onto their faces, bloggers are weaselly youngsters in tattered Primus t-shirts who call upstairs for more Doritos and Mountain Dew.

  The data, however, refute that stereotype. And who better to present that exculpatory evidence than a blogger, who happens to be writing this from his mother's house but 1) not from the basement and 2) only because I am here visiting.

• Some sad, though not surprising, news. Turns out the Beastie Boys can, will, and did stop:  

  In interviews with The Daily Beast and GQ, Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock, has confirmed the Beastie Boys are indeed done making music following the 2012 death of Adam "MCA" Yauch.

  "Adam started the band, so it’s done," Horovitz told The Daily Beast. "I'm in transition right now. I'm transitioning. It's an interesting time, I guess. I certainly knew that the Beastie Boys weren't going to be the same thing forever, but I certainly hoped that we would just stop doing it for a while, Adam would make movies, and we'd just be friends for a while. So I don't know what I’m supposed to do."

• By now, you've no doubt heard thatThe X-Filesis making a comeback. Our friends at Happy Nice Time People propose some other TV comebacks, likeMy Mother The Car:

  One of the most famous TV lemons of all time, Jerry Van Dyke buys a dilapidated 1928 convertible only to discover the car is the reincarnation of his dead mother, who can talk to him through the radio. The brief-lived sitcom was actually a failed knockoff of Mr. Ed , which was popular at the time. But a car isn’t a horse, of course, of course, and everyone in North America unanimously hated it.

  Why would anyone want to resurrect this clunker? Because the show was lightyears ahead of its time (and not just for the engine backfire/fart joke that censors demanded they remove). TV in the 1960s wasn’t ready to explore the twisted metaphysical implications of the show’s central conceit, but today’s audiences are all-too-willing to embrace the darkness.

• Wanna see a woolly mammoth? 

  The idea of bringing extinct animals back to life continues to reside in the realm of science fiction. But scientists have taken a small step closer to that goal, by inserting the DNA of a woolly mammoth into lab-grown elephant cells. [...]

  Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) have been extinct for millennia, with the last of the species dying out about 3,600 years ago. But scientists say it may be possible to bring these and other species back from the grave, through a process known as de-extinction.