Bakersfield of dreams

I come from central California, from the aggie capitol called Fresno, a town that gets very little respect from snotty ass urbanites in SF and LA. Well, if SF/LA laughs at us for being farm rubes, what town, you might wonder, does Fresno dare to laugh at, in the Great Pecking Order of Things?

That would be Bakersfield, a haven of hot, sweaty, greasy, lice-riddled, oil-rockin', country music roughnecks 100 miles south of us on Highway 99.

Bakersfield was just about to get all kinds of pub with the election of one of its U.S. House members, Kevin McCarthy, to the not insignificant gig of Speaker of the House, only the third most important gol-dang political job in D.C. Well, as Kevin was getting prepped for his big promotion, it was discovered he has a speech problem. Not a lisp or an impediment of some kind. No, Kev has a rather wacky way of reconstructing or just completely dropping crucial parts of sentences that were making people say, Huh? Say what? and, of course, WTF?

It did not surprise us Fresnans that a guy from Bakersfield would begin gobbling like some poorly wired pumpkinhead when faced with national examination. After all, this was a congressmember whose main legislative deed had been the renaming of a post office after beloved Bakersburg icon Buck Owens. Really. I'm not twisted enough to make this stuff up.

Of course, there's the unmissable irony of a guy getting this close to nailing down the job of Speaker of the House and not being particularly able to, you know, say stuff. That's gonna become a problem real quick-like when you're up there on the podium flopping out so many bloopers, botchings and boners that everybody gets worn out from wincing. I mean, in a week's time, Kevin had committed so many strange verbal goofs and gaffes he was making Dubya look like Winston Friggin Churchill. Then, he had to compound this unfortunate sentence rassling by saying something about the endless Benghazi flapdoodle being a way to hassle Hilary, something that got dangerously close to actual truth. At that point, House Republicans had to then call an E.T.R.O.T.G. (Emergency Total Reassessment Of This Guy) to say “OK, we can deal with him sounding like a ding dong who dropped out of remedial English. We can't deal with him pulling back the curtain. He's Toto toast.”

So buh-bye, Kev. We were just beginning to know you, and it scared the goddamn guacamole out of us. Now, the GOP has to comb the ranks, looking for someone, anyone, who can pass muster with the totally detestable Freedom Caucus (40 execrable fuckheads who desperately need to be dosed with pot brownies from Colorado. By the way, there are no members of the FC from Nevada. Yay for us).

In the meantime, please enjoy the fact that America has a president who's an accomplished public speaker and very comfy using complete sentences. Don't take that for granted!