And What A State It Is

The state of the union?
It lies in tatters on the floor. I know this because I watched the Speaker of the House tear it to shreds and leave it there. Okay, to be fair, Nancy Pelosi didn't so much shred the "president's" speech as much as she defiantly rose and methodically ripped each set of papers in front of her in half. I suppose it could be that she was expressing a relief for having put the impeachment behind her and those were the articles that she and her colleagues in the House of Representatives had sent along. But it didn't really have that "all is well" feeling to it.
No. Something is wrong here. America is a tough town, and it's getting tougher. Having been emboldened by his lack of removal, the "president" felt free to spout his special mix of venom and fear into the cold night air. He gave Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom. And if that sounds like a joke or some gesture of sympathy for the cancer in Rush, maybe we should turn our attention instead to the cancer in our nation's capital.
And while the Democrats had enough moxie to impeach this sitting (except when he's golfing) "president," they didn't have enough gas in the tank to push it through to the Senate where he could have been removed from office. So there he stood, without a golf club, rambling on about building a wall as a way of uniting our nation. And he wants to roll back penalties against oil and gas companies, construction crews and other organizations that kill birds “incidentally,” arguing that businesses that accidentally kill birds ought to be able to operate without fear of prosecution. No birds were available for comment after the speech. 
There were a number of empty seats in the chamber as well, where several members of Congress chose to be elsewhere rather than sit through an eighty-two minute version of exactly what they had been fighting for the past several months. That fight is not over. The smoke has not cleared. The House is on fire. So is the Senate, many of them suggesting that what the "president" did was wrong and bad, but not necessarily worth removing him. Why not censure him, the presidential equivalent of sending him to bed without supper.
But don't take away his phone. That would be far too cruel.