Winning the Future! With Cookies.

I know that each and every one of my readers is a civic-minded and politically engaged individual who watched the State of the Union (SotU) address last night. The theme of which was "Winning the Future." The acronym of which is "WTF." Wonky giggling.

Want a way to make sure the fun never ends? Do as Sarah and Shirley, two of our office fellows did, and make the experience a gastronomic one!

You see, working with three of the AAUW fellows, the young women who work at our organization developing public policy and government relations experience, I wrote up a "Making the State of the Union Interactive" sort of blog post for our org. The post listed a bunch of ways to enrich the SotU viewing experience, from a thinly-veiled drinking game (non-alcoholic punch, I promise) to wordclouding the speeches -- the president's as well as the official Republican response from Rep. Paul Ryan. And, I suppose, the officially crazy response from Michele Bachmann (if I lose readers over THAT comment, then I am sad).

The fellows were instrumental in making the post quite food oriented, and among their best ideas was the following. Behold: the Bipartisan cookies!

All that remained.

Note the different themes. Some are solid blue and solid red side by side, reflecting the way in which the two parties normally sit to hear the president's annual address. One is a ying-yang, which is crazy, because if there's ANYTHING that is truly unbalanced it's the U.S. Congress.

Others are red and blue spotted, which reflects the way the parties mingled last night at the suggestion of Third Way, a silly organization that thinks everyone should try to get along. Where's the fun in that?

Finally, I particularly like the closest cookie, which reflects the emotional state of our lawmakers as they were forced to sit next to one another and be civil throughout the proceedings.