O Say Can You See?

From the Stone Ages until about 20 years ago we were politically incorrect as a society.  But, like a spy balloon or three, political correctness floated across the nation as century 20 turned to century 21.  And, we were better for it, weren’t we?

Some disagreed.  They started calling those that they felt were over the top “woke.”  Then “woke” was deemed offensive by the politically correct.

If you watched the Super Bowl you might have a new question down this rabbit hole.  As of last evening has “woke” given way to “joke?”

As the San Francisco City Council debates raising money for reparations, the NFL raised eyebrows with the inclusion of the Black National Anthem leading up to the National Anthem(no color or race assigned) that led up to kickoff.

Joe Biden said he would unify our country if elected.  He even hired the (her words) “first openly lesbian black female press secretary.” That she cannot construct a sentence aside, that’s progress.  Don’t get us started on the luggage bandit.  You can only do so much in a short two years.

Does having two anthems unify, or does it segregate?  Unify means to come together as one.  Having two anthems sounds like one more than one.

If you are an Asian American do you feel left out?  Well, if you feel like the national anthem covers your need to feel wanted, you don’t.  If you don’t feel that way then we might need a third anthem.

But, don’t stop now.  Make it four.  Hispanic Americans need an anthem.

Who else?  What about Lesbians? Gays? Bi? Trans?

Do even those who question who they are need one?  “O Say Can You Question?”

Oh, so you think that all LGBTQ peeps identify as one race or another so they would not need one?  Only the close-minded would stop at race when composing and singing anthems.

The Naval flyover as the National Anthem was ending showed historic progress on the diversity, equality, and inclusion front as well.  For the first time in flyover history, it was an all-female pilot team.

Navy Lt. Catie Perkowski was one of them, and she doesn’t seem as impressed.  “What it boils down to is that we trained to do this job together,” she said. “I didn’t join the Navy to be a female fighter pilot. I joined the Navy to be a fighter pilot, so to me, it makes no difference.”

She’s entitled to her opinion, especially since Elon Musk reinstituted free speech.  But, surely men everywhere are offended.  Alas, there is still work to be done.

And, what about changing the name of the area where the pilots sit?

Cockpit?

Not yesterday. At least we think not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Trial Balloon

The story doesn’t end when the air went pssst from the Chinese Spy Balloon(CSB) late Saturday afternoon.  The story behind the story is really the story.  And, it has just begun.

Journalism 101 teaches that four questions must be answered along the way.  Who?  What?  When?  Where?  It also teaches us that two other questions should be answered as well.  Why?  How?

The American public has few answers.  The American public still has many questions.

First, we pose some serious ones.

Why wasn’t the CSB shot out of the air as it first entered American air space?  Was it for the safety of those below due to the debris field?  The balloon traversed over Alaska first. It doesn’t get much more uninhabited than for long empty stretches of Alaska.

When did American intelligence first know about it?  If it was launched from China’s mainland as was floated(pardon the pun) yesterday then was it close to two weeks ago?

When was President Biden first informed of the CSB?  He was braggadocious telling the eager press yesterday that he “ordered” the military on Wednesday to take it out as soon as they felt it was safe.  How long did it take for him to decide?  And, why?

Would this all have been kept hush-hush until citizens in Montana spotted it and local TV ran with it?  Only Karine Jean Claude Van Damme Pepe Le Pugh Pierre knows and we’re guessing she’ll “have to circle back with us on that.”

Why was it strategically steered to avoid Russia?  This one is easy.  It would have been shot down immediately with the one bullet Putin has left from the war in Ukraine.

Why was it steered to avoid Ukraine?  This one is easy, too.  It would have been shot down immediately by Zelenskyy with one of the millions of bullets we paid for in the war with Russia.

Was the apparatus equipped with transmitting devices?   Did it capture everything it needed by the time it left the South Carolina coast yesterday?  Of course, it was.  And, of course, it did.

Why did we use a missile to obliterate the CSB?  Wouldn’t it be better if the parts weren’t smashed to smithereens and scattered over a seven-mile debris field 45 feet under salt water?

Why cancel Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip this week to China?  We blinked.  Sending him over to go face-to-face is stronger than folding your cards.

And, now a few not-so-serious ones.

Would Biden have acted sooner if he knew the balloon was unvaccinated?  Maybe he would have ordered multiple shots.  Boosters too.

Is this the first time in two years that Biden has paid any attention to inflation?

Is Border Czar VP Kamala Harris headed to China to find out the root cause of this border breach?

Did we fear that it was a modern-day Trojan Horse and thousands of Chinese soldiers with parachutes would drop out and invade?

Did the one military general who jokingly suggested that it might be a giant pinata get sent directly to diversity, inclusion, and equality training?

Did the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, endorse the hot air balloon as clean energy travel?  Or, did he call the balloon “racist infrastructure” due to its lily-white color?

Did we even get a chance to learn what pronouns the balloon goes by before it went bye-bye?

It’s better for the mind and the soul to poke fun at this when we take seven days to poke a hole in a spy balloon.

But, seriously, how does China feel about the end result of the trial balloon it floated to test Biden’s strength and resolve?  Mission accomplished.

But, write this down.  On Tuesday, during his State of the Union address, Biden (aka the Big Guy) will take credit for his swift action and strong stance against China.  And, 200-plus members of Congress will stand, cheer, and clap fervently.

It’s all a bunch of hot air.

 

 

 

 

Full Tilt

Is it safe to say that three of the top 6-8 quarterbacks in the NFL are in the conference championship games this weekend?

We’re talking about Hurts, Burrow, and Mahomes of course.  Purdy has been a pretty good surprise, but the resume is quite light at this point.

That the AFC has two great QBs in the final two while the NFC has only one is no surprise either.  When you run down from great to not so regardless of the conference affiliation you’ll find that the AFC is stacked and the NFC is wanting.

Mahomes, Burrow, Allen, Jackson, and Herbert are a strong top five for the AFC.  Throw in Lawrence, Tagovailoa, Watson, Jones, and Pickett as emerging upside types and the top ten is relatively equally as impressive.

Notice that absent from this AFC list are Wilson and Carr.

Wilson is a Super Bowl winner and a nine-time Pro Bowl selection who has thrown for over 40k yards.  He had a bad year and might be past his prime and then some, however.

Carr is a three-time Pro Bowler and amassed 35k passing yards.  He’s done being a Raider and might be headed to the NFC.

Ah, the NFC.

Any NFC list would start with Brady and Rodgers arguably the two best in the last 15 years regardless of the conference (sorry Drew Brees).

But, is Brady done with football?  Is Rodgers done with Green Bay?  Is Green Bay done with Rodgers?  Let’s go with no, yes, and yes for the sake of the following argument.

What if Brady replaced Carr in Vegas?  Whether you view Brady’s glass as half empty or half full it’s still better than half of the quarterbacks in the entire league.

What if Rodgers went to, say, the New York J-E-T-S?  Jets, Jets, Jets.   He’s still easily a top-ten NFL quarterback.

Those what if’s would tilt the AFC position of dominance at the most important position in football to an unprecedented level.

Compare all of the above to the NFC’s Hurts, Prescott, Cousins, Stafford, and Jones and you’ll see the tilt lite light up like the old 1970s pinball machines.

Throw in the next five who throw for NFC teams.  Goff, Wilson, Murray, Marietta, and, well, and, umm Geno Smith?  Jeez.

If you want to jump deeper into the imbalance fast forward to the NFL Draft this Spring.  The Houston Texans and the Indianapolis Colts, both AFC teams with picks # 2 and #4 respectively, will almost certainly draft high Round One QBs.

Bryce Young and CJ Stoud very likely will hear Roger Goodell announce that their immediate future will be in the AFC.

Super Bowls are won far more often with great quarterbacking than with complimentary quarterbacking.

The AFC is loaded with “win because of’s.”  The NFC is loaded with “win with and win in spite of’s.”

Jalen Hurts and Philly might put a hurting on the AFC in a few weeks.

After that, it looks like the AFC will put a hurting on the NFC for a few years.

 

 

The Devil & the Deep Red/Blue State

One needs to be underinformed, a conspiracy theorist, savvy, dumb, smart, jaded, or all of the above to believe what is swirling around us these days.

After all, how deep is the red or blue deep state?  It might depend on how deep you look.

If black lives matter, why aren’t the media and the White House condemning the ultraviolent white terror group that just attacked a predominantly black Atlanta city and its police force?  Only the funder and founder of ANTIFA really know.  Take solace in the fact that the protests were mostly peaceful.

Concerned with the now Republican-controlled House, President Biden assured Americans yesterday, “I have no intention of letting the Republicans wreck our economy.”  Nuff said we suppose.

The President’s son keeps popping up as a possible beneficiary of his rental home(his dad’s), the storage location of classified docs(his dad’s), and his last name (his dad’s).  “Hunter was obviously fed detailed information on Ukraine so he could show Burisma why he was worth millions of dollars,” said Senator Ron Johnson(R) of Wisconsin.  Johnson continued, “Was this classified information? Did Joe Biden know about this?”  The $49,910 monthly rent seems excessive at a minimum even in these transitory inflationary times.

Hiding classified documents seems to be as popular as posting a dumb video on TikTok these days.  Vegas will give you +250 that Mike Pence thinks TikTok is the sound emanating from the old Cuckoo clock in his Indiana home’s comfy den.

At least Hunter’s dad is concerned about the health of the commoners.  One of his mouthpieces fed the frenetic folks yesterday.  Busy Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host of Morning Joe, the lapdog of wife Mika Brzezinski, and water carrier for the Democratic Party, who already got three covid shots and just got a bad case of covid, said yesterday on air he should have gotten his fourth booster to stop this from happening.

Mika sat next to him and scolded him sentence by sentence.  You can’t get enough of these free shots that aren’t free you know?

Meanwhile, if you enter “how do I reverse the effects of spike proteins?” in the Google search bar you’ll get “About 8,790,000 results (0.45 seconds).”  There seems to be some interest there.

Conspiracy theorists on Twitter believe Damar Hamlin should have used the google search bar. They contend he isn’t alive because he has yet to show his face & the NFL allegedly used a stunt double at the game to cover themselves & boost ratings.  This one seems a bit of a reach unless you are a Saints fan still healing from the no PI call four years ago in the NFC Championship Game.

Maybe help is on the distant horizon.  Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) introduced a constitutional amendment yesterday to impose term limits on members of Congress.  This is Cruz’s third attempt after 2019 and 2021 attempts were as effective as Scarborough’s first three jabs.

The bill would limit Senators to 2 six-year terms and House members to 3 two-year terms.  A 2/3rds majority in both houses and 3/4ths of all state senates would need to vote yes to ratify it into the Constitution as an Amendment.  Such an amendment would have put Joe Biden out into the private sector about 24 years prior to his successful run from the basement for Prez in 2020.

Maybe help isn’t on the horizon.  Biden will soon announce that he is running again in 2024.

The orange-faced one who truly believes in the deep blue state has already announced that he is seeking the red side’s nomination for 2024.

Color us jaded.

 

 

 

Changing Times

That was then.  This is now.

During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem to show solidarity with oppressed Black people worldwide.  Forty-five years ago it was outrageous behavior to act out for a cause.

Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov refused to wear a rainbow jersey during warm-ups for the team’s Pride Night for LGBTQ inclusion on Tuesday, citing his religious beliefs.  It’s now outrageous to act out against a cause.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos helped black people in San Fransisco even if it took almost half a century.

The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee has proposed paying each Black longtime resident $5 million and granting total debt forgiveness due to the decades of “systematic repression” faced by the local Black community.  This is not for slavery as California was never a slave state.  Can anyone who so chooses identify as black?

Ronald Reagan was the last Republican governor in Cali (The Terminator aside) since 1980.  Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic governor in Georgia since 1980.  Cali loses 100s of thousands of residents a year (even with border migration) while Georgia and Florida gain like numbers.

We’ve gone from social gatherings to social media which makes us anti-social.  Who the hell is that ringing our doorbell?

Peace, love, and sit-ins were plentiful to protest the war we had no business being in-Vietnam.

Now we print money that we don’t have to fund the war that we have no business funding-Ukraine.  But if you say that out loud you’re outed as a lover of Russia.

And right on cue, Zolenskyy asked for more funding last evening.  There is no way that any of this money is making its way back to America for any reason is there?

Horses and buggies used to bring representatives to Washington so they could vote and go right back home to tend to their business (likely farming).  Now representatives make a career out of the position and get quite rich doing so thanks to outside interests lining their pockets.

The representatives used to vote for what they felt was right for their constituents.  Now they vote almost always along party lines.  Why?  Money, power, reelection party funding, and committee positions.

Budgets once existed to balance what you wanted with what you could afford.

Tomorrow the national debt ceiling is reached without additional approved funding.  The Dems say this is no time to negotiate any spending reductions.  It was only three weeks ago that they(and enough Republicans) jammed a $1.7 trillion dollar Omnibus Bill through before year-end.  There was little time then as well presumably.

An omnibus bill is a law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics in case you wondered.  It’s like going to a buffet.  Take as much of anything as you want.

Free speech was once free.  Elon is trying to get it back that way.

Oh, and as a reminder vaccines are free today as are boosters.  Except they’re not free as the government is paying for them, which means you are.

Crime didn’t pay.  Today it does.  Daily not-so-fine folks walk out of fine stores with thousands and thousands of dollars of merchandise with no repercussions.

The war on drugs sounded promising.  The “Just Say No” campaign sounded promising.   Now we want to release criminals early immediately for nonviolent crimes such as selling drugs.

Maybe the only thing constant is change.  Take the climate for example.  It has always been changing.  Sedona Arizona’s mountains were once hundreds and hundreds of feet below sea level for example.  Today they stand thousands of feet above the dry ground.

But guru Al Gore went on an unhinged rant and told an esteemed group gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday that climate change will “boil the oceans.”

That sounds like one hell of a seafood feast.   Take as much of anything as you want.

 

 

 

 

 

Ten(+5) Piece Nuggets

Happy MLK Day.  There are 15 nuggets on your plate this AM.

  1. We wonder what Martin Luther King would say about the latest statue unveiled yesterday in Boston in his honor.  “I had a dream that all statutes aren’t created equally!”  Well, it’s art.
  2. Little did we know that during the 2020 election cycle, Joe Biden was maybe hiding more than himself in his posh Wilmington house’s basement.
  3. He claims to have no idea of the content of the documents.  Possible?  With him, yes it is.  One who would know, Barrack Obama is said to have once said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f… things up.”
  4. Is there a chain of command for these Top Secret documents?  We would hope.  If so, let’s see it.
  5. Do you remember those dumb weird car rallies he held in the midst of the Covid hysteria?  Would they have not been better if he rode up in the Corvette that he’s so proud of and honked back? Maybe the Corvette was unavailable helping to provide cover for the documents in the “locked” garage.
  6. Does it make any difference if the garage was locked or not?  No.  Does it make it any less of a mess because “he’s fully cooperating with the National Archives peeps?”  He’ll say yes, but the answer is no.
  7. How in the world does the search for all(or more) get to be conducted by his lawyers?  Aren’t the documents, classified as Top Secret, also off limits to personal lawyers?
  8. WH Press Secretary Karine Jean Claude Van Damme Pepe Le Pew Pierre told a feisty group of journalists Friday that all of the documents were now safe and sound.  On Saturday Biden’s lawyers found another batch.  As she often laments, “I’ll need to circle back with you.”
  9. Should Biden have “vacationed” this past weekend in the very house where a few troves of said documents were found and in the process of being found?  The optics are worse than his Ray Bans on a cloudy day.
  10. How much time did Hunter Biden spend at Wilmington home where the classified documents were kept?  He provides that address and also claims he owns it on a background screening app in 2018. On that same questionnaire, he claims to be paying $49,910 a month in rent.  Which is it?
  11. There’s no way that the $49,910 rent is connected to the “10% for the big guy” reference on the email he exchanged with a few of his Ukraine-based Burisma business associates, is there?
  12. That laptop was labeled a non-story by most major media outlets for years.  Maybe it’s a story now?
  13.  MLK had a dream that “all men were created equal.”  Biden gave a speech at King’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Sunday on what would have been the slain civil rights icon’s 94th birthday.  “Let’s lay one thing to rest. I may be a practicing Catholic(except for his stance on abortion we assume), but [I] used to go to 7:30 Mass every morning in high school and then in college before I went to the Black church,” Biden said. “Not a joke!”
  14. And, there you have it.  Biden and his family are just like all of us.  “Not a joke!”  Praise the Lord!
  15. Speaking of all of us, NY Mayor Eric Adams says that his city has no more room for migrants.  Old School: We are a sanctuary city.  New school: Don’t come here!

Some nuggets are harder to digest than others at times.

And, We’re Off!

If you’re like most you probably needed this past weekend to decompress from the stress of reliving the pain and suffering brought about by the anniversary of Insurrection Day last Friday.

Hopefully, on Monday you weren’t cheering for TCU.  If you were, by Tuesday morning you must have felt like anyone who fought Iron Mike Tyson in the mid to late 80s.  Wait, we are being told as we write that Georgia just scored again.

And then it all hit the fan Wednesday.

First, news broke that Joe Biden, unbeknownst to him he says, stashed away a few classified top secret documents discovered in a locked closet at an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center.  Thank goodness the closet was locked.  Typing “Biden” and “think tank” in the same sentence seems odd.

Meanwhile, the entire nation’s air travel was shut down.   The Federal Aviation Administration’s preliminary investigation points to a “damaged database file” in a key system. The agency is still working to determine the root cause of the outage in NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards.  One can hope that they get to the root cause quicker than VP Harris has been able to determine the root cause of the illegal migration problem.

Of course, that problem may be overstated.  Footage shown of Prez Biden walking the border in El Paso Sunday showed not a single illegal in sight.  Weird?  Probably not says WH Press Secretary Karine Jean Claude Van Damme Pierre Toulouse.  She called the lack of traffic “a coincidence.”

The lack of air traffic yesterday probably did not sit well with the Biden Administration’s former Department of Energy official, gender fluid thief Sam Brinton.  No flights mean no moving carrousels.  No moving carrousels mean no incoming luggage to roll out with.

Midday brought the announcement that The University of Southern California’s School of Social Work will no longer use the word “field.” They will replace it with “practicum.”  “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ maybe have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign,” the statement read.

At least our government is looking out, as always, for our health.  The US Consumer Product Safety Commission says a ban on gas stoves is on the table as they emit harmful pollutants.

Who knew?  AOC knew.  She tweeted, “Did you know that ongoing exposure to NO2 from gas stoves is linked to reduced cognitive performance?”  Actually, we added the question mark for her.  She may have forgotten it due to reduced cognitive performance.

Speaking of thieves and reduced cognitive performance, Oh Joy Behar defended Biden on The View yesterday.  She said, “We know Donald Trump is a liar and a thief.  We give Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt.”  Fair and balanced.

She may have spoken too soon as she often does.  Biden’s legal team found yet another batch of classified government records in a different location last evening. No worries, they were very likely under lock and key as well.  That the first batch was discovered just weeks before the November midterms and yet kept quiet was probably another one of those coincidences, but we digress.

Will the Feds obtain a search warrant for the White House?

Will Biden ask that we remove the word “White” from “White House?” He might be in his think tank pondering the thought.  USC would be all in.

By nightfall, the FCC put all of the planes on ground halt again.  Surely Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will get to the bottom of this.  He always does.

Hey, we did get Congress seated.

And misinformation was so 2022.

Twelve days into 2023 we are off and running, just not flying.

 

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets

Git yersef sum.

  1. President Biden visited the border in El Paso yesterday and not a single homeless camp nor any illegals were trying to cross.  It’s amazing what he can accomplish when he puts his mind to it.  He actually said he needs the Republicans to help solve the situation as well.  Oh, yes he did.
  2.  Who possibly buys into this?  A CBS poll said 47% of Americans are “hopeful” for America with Biden as president as they see the country today.  That’s who we guess. “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics,” said Mark Twain.
  3. All of that said, the Biden camp is dropping hints that he is gearing up for an April announcement to run in 2024.  A recent Rasmussen Reports survey taken during the last week of the year found that only 33 percent of likely voters in the United States want to see Biden run for a second term in 2024.  As Don king used to say, “Only in America.”
  4. The Mars candy company said Thursday it will debut all-female M&M’s packages for a limited time to honor women.  The company’s feminist-themed candy wrappers will feature only its female characters.  Isn’t that moving?

  5. 4. Virginia Tech denied any wrongdoing but settled with soccer player Kiersten Hening for 100k.  Hening claimed she was removed from her starting position and pressured to leave the team after she declined to kneel during a reading of a “unity statement” before a game against UVA on Sept. 12, 2020, during the height of the BLM movement.  Good for her.

  6. Speaking of BLM, can anyone, and we mean anyone, tell us what the organization did in any community to better it with the money that poured in from Johnny-come-lately, suddenly for the cause companies?  We’ll look in the comments section for the answers.
  7. Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin ran his streak to 16 seasons of .500-or-better as the man.  It is the longest in NFL history to begin a coaching career.  The Steelers’ winning organization is the epitome of stability in the NFL.
  8. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Houston Texans fired HC Lovie Smith after just one season.  This comes after they fired David Culley last year after just one season as their leader.  If you count Romeo Crennel, who was the interim for 12 games in 2020 after Bill O’Brien was fired, the next coach the Texans hire will be their fifth in four seasons.
  9. Mattress Mack is at it again.   His customers who buy mattresses ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 or so will get double their money back if TCU wins Monday night’s championship game.  McIngvale hedged the promo with a $1.5 million bet on the TCU moneyline +370 at DraftKings – a wager that would net $5.55 million in profit if the Horned Frogs win.
  10. Vegas is begging you to take that bloated TCU +13.5 line.  Makes one think that the game won’t be close.  TCU has confounded the “experts” all year though.  We’ll take the plunge along with Mack.

It’s the first five-day work week of the year for everyone but Joe Biden.  Enjoy!

A House Divided

Today is day two.  Yesterday was day one- the First Session of the 118th United States Congress commenced with Members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives in attendance.

Like going back to school, everything was new.  Pencils are long and freshly sharpened.  Notebooks have nothing but white pages and the spiral is still binding.  You can clearly read the words “on” and “off” on the on/off button of your TI 30 calculator.  Chewed bubble gum stuck under the desks is but a thought for the future.  Hope filled the chambers.

It was business as usual in the Senate.  But in the House, a few malcontents on the new majority side want this session to be anything but business as usual.  They took out their erasers.

Nearly two hundred of their Republican colleagues voted not once but thrice to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. But, led by Rep (R) Matt Gaetz of Florida nearly 20 voted present, which means “I’m here, but I not supporting McCarthy until he gives us a more conservative approach to include what we want in this year’s agenda.”

Gaetz said, “if you want to drain the swamp you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge!”

So “nothing got done in the House” on day one.

Is that a bad thing?  Maybe less government is a good thing?  Didn’t the House with the help of 18 or so turncoat Republican Senators pass a $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill late in December to keep us running ever so smoothly into the new year?

That was so 2022.  What have you done for me lately?  Already, do we need more pork, committees, investigations, Covid boosts, and Trump tax returns?

Those tax returns were a big fat greasy nothing burger, weren’t they? We digress.

The timing is dripping with irony (or planning).  President Joe Biden and the biggest RINO of all, Mitch McConnell, are taking a victory lap across a bridge together in Kentucky today celebrating the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill passed in 2021.

New house Minority leader (D) Hakeem Jeffries thinks yesterday’s vote, and vote, and vote was a bad thing.  He tweeted “it’s day one and we Democrats have our House in order and are ready to go to work. The Republicans aren’t.”

He got every vote of the 212 cast by Dems to be the Speaker.  Of course, he did.  And, therein lies the lie.  If the Dems were ready to go to work WITH the other side, surely one of them would have seen fit to vote for McCarthy?  Or, maybe could one find a way to vote present?

One?  Just one?

Of course, they won’t.  Dems never divide.  It’s one of their strengths.  But, this time their strength isn’t in enough numbers.  Jeffries is seven votes shy of the 219 needed.  He’ll never get there.

That the Republicans take time to get their house in order is such a big deal.  It’s a failure.  It’s the end of the world.  Except it isn’t.

See what they did there?  Every one of them voted against McCarthy.  But, heaven forbid that 19 or so Elephants essentially did as well.  They actually partially agreed with the Donkeys about McCarthy and they get chastised for it.

“A house divided cannot stand,” said one Abraham Lincoln.  Except this House divided can stand.  It has.  And, it will.

Is Jim Jordan the bridge to get the Republicans all on one side?

Time and politics will tell.

Meanwhile, today it’s time for two septuagenarians savvy at politics to tell us how great Mitch’s bridge to get Mitch’s vote will be.

Wink. Wink.