Lefty, Shorty, and SOTU

Last evening Lefty and Shorty just came on at midnight for the graveyard shift at the Gulf Station.   Rain was falling from the heavens at an accelerating pace, cold air was rolling in and cars were not.  Shorty- Why do we stay open all night?  Lefty- So that you and I can discuss President Biden’s State of the Union(SOTU) Address.

Lefty sat to the left of Shorty.  Imagine that.  Shorty sat on the shorter of the two “halves” of the 55-gallon drum.  Imagine that.  Each was cut down to size and retrofitted with a soft cushion top.

Lefty-Surely you watched it?   Shorty- Nope.  Lefty- Well, you missed a 75-minute ramble. Shorty- What did our Prez have to say?  Lefty- He said we’ll only need oil and gas for ten more years.  Shorty- Then what?  Lefty- It will all be electric. Shorty- I guess we’ll be known as the fossils of fuel then.

Lefty- Maybe the government will retrain us, but shouldn’t all Americans have a right to choose?  Shorty- Women do.  Lefty- Not that kind of choice, the choice between electric and gas.  Shorty- My car, your choice.  My body, my choice.  My vax, your choice.

Shorty- Will they at least wave the non-compete clause in our contract?  Lefty- He said he was going to get that done for the fast food workers. Shorty- He said that?   Lefty-Yep.  Shorty- What did the Republicans say about that? Lefty- They laughed.

A peaceful pause. Then.

Shorty- Did Biden address the cows? Lefty- No. But he did say “make no mistake, if you try anything to raise the cost of agmananpklmagathpolcod, I will veto it.” Cows? Shorty– Easy for him to say.  Yes, are they done for too due to their bloated gassy emissions.  And, Bill Gates is buying up all of the farmland.

Lefty-This took a wrong turn.  Shorty- Bill Gates has the right to choose. Lefty- Choose what?  Shorty-Choose how he identifies.  Lefty- Um, ok, I’ll bite.  Why?  Shorty- He looks a good bit like a bloated gassy cow himself these days. Maybe his new pronouns are how, now, brown, and cow. Lefty- Lord. Shorty- Kamala said the root cause of that spare tire he carries around might be the 43 fossil-fueled jet trips he took to Epstien’s island just to have those dinners with Jeffrey that he doesn’t regret.

Lefty- Ok, moving on.  Shorty- Did he attack gas-burning stoves?  Lefty- I don’t think…  Shorty- We won’t need them anyway if there are no more farms or red meat.

A not so peaceful pause.  Then.

Lefty- Well, do you want to know how the bipartisan evening ended?  Shorty- Let me guess.  Viewers from the western tip of Alaska to the southeast Atlantic Coast watched it go poof into the night much like the Chinese Spy Balloon.

Lefty- No, well, maybe, but Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave the Republican rebuttal.  Shorty- So she shot it down?  Lefty- Um.  Shorty- Are rebuttals gassy, too? Lefty- She said that we have a choice between normal and crazy and at this moment I can surely relate.

A long pause.  Then.

Lefty- I’m going to refill the soda machines.  Shorty- Need help?  Lefty- Yes, you do.

 

Ironing, Washing, and Exercise

Super Bowl viewing isn’t for everyone.   In today’s world alternative suggestions to occupy your time while others soak up every minute are plentiful.  Likewise, the State of the Union (SOTU) addresses aren’t for everyone either.  Several alternatives were suggested before and during the speech last evening.  Rather than recap the SOTU, let’s look at the alternatives suggested, acted upon, and even some others that could have been.

Hillary Clinton suggested that you spend the hour ensuring that your voter registration was up to date and ask two others to do the same.  Patriotic!  She also could have rifled through a ton of old emails and filed the keepers and tossed the rest.  Wait, BBR is being told that she’s up to date.  Well, maybe she could have caught up on some ironing.  You know, so many pantsuits, so little time.

Hillary’s Pinterest friend Monica Lewinsky skipped the address as well.  She decided to catch up on some wash, she said.   Hillary had a suggestion.  Shout®. has the stain-fighting ingredients to break up and remove tough stains—so you can live in the moment, and clean up later.

Alexandria Octavio Cortez had a great seat but boycotted the event.  She said, “None of this is normal and I will not legitimize it.”  Dramatic.  That’s the way to drop the hammer AOC.  AOC suggested that M.C. Hammer had it all wrong many moons ago when he sang “Too Legit. Too Legit to Quit.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D) from Michigan walked out midway through the speech.  She tweeted, “…the shameless bragging about taking away food stamps that people depend on to live-it was all beneath the dignity of the office he occupies.”  She walked straight to her favorite restaurant in such disgust that she could barely sit through the entire meal.  One suggestion going forward is to call food stamps by their proper name.  SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is the program formerly known as food stamps.  Saying “food stamps” is beneath the dignity of the office she occupies.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) on Tuesday night brought a Ukrainian flag with him to the address to show that Democrats stood with an “ally he tried to extort.”  During the speech he walked out saying “I can’t stand a liar.”  Perhaps the 83-year-old Pascrell, who no one has ever heard of, should have stayed.  Everyone is famous for 15 minutes.  Why shortchange yourself?

A small group of Dems didn’t stand (Ilhan Omar among them) while all others did three separate times to honor 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee.  Even McGee at 100 stood all three times, and they were honoring him!  Maybe some need to hit the U.S. government provided gym for some much-needed exercise rather than sit in those comfy leather chairs all evening.  Up. Down.

Adam Schiff sat through the entire evening right next to Jerry Nadler.  Kudos to him.  Schiff, eyes bulging, looked like he could barely breathe though.  Understandable.  One suggestion to him might be- don’t sit next to Nadler next time.

Congressman Tim Ryan (D) from Ohio also walked out.  He tweeted, “I’ve had enough.  It’s like watching professional wrestling.  It’s all fake.”  We hope Ryan soldiered on and watched the balance of the address on CNN.

President Trump reaffirmed that America is going to participate in the Trillion Tree Initiative “an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world.”  That’s a good thing for the environment and the paper industry.

Paper will be so plentiful it’ll be growing in trees.   Paper is what kept Nancy Pelosi in her seat shuffling hers until the very end.  She seemed torn though.

May we suggest a House led investigation into possible Russian interference in the Iowa Democratic Primary to get her mind off of all of that pesky paperwork?