It's pretty hard to get 85 percent of folks to agree on anything these days, but it appears that Joe Biden has done just that. Approval of his speech to Congress last night is through the roof. So is optimism. Here are a few takeaways from us cats.
The TV talking heads couldn't shut up about how a crowd of just 200 was "weird." Frankly, it was a relief. It was so much more pleasant not to have 1,600 pairs of hands punctuating everything POTUS said with goofy applause, and Biden's friendly, retail-politics-style exit following the speech was cordial and calming. And bonus: No annoying guests in the gallery! Let that irritating practice lapse, please — Ronald Reagan started it with Lenny Skutnik in 1982, and it hit rock-bottom with Rush Limbaugh last year. Never bring it back.
That said, gallery guest and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was très adorable with his blown kisses and hand-over-heart gesture to our Vice President. Emhoff can stay.
We did not know that the flowers embroidered on First Lady Jill Biden's dress represented all the states and territories in the US, plus DC. Fab! (And speaking of fashion choices, we noted that Liz Cheney wore blue.)
Best moment was probably Biden's acknowledgement of the two powerful women seated behind him. We loved it, and just hope that now, everyone understands that there is no "e" on the end of "Madam."
Finally, it was hilarious that the GOP, which has only three Black Congress members, decided to trot out one of them to declare that America isn't a racist country. (But perhaps by making Tim Scott say it, the Republicans are a racist party?) Vice President Harris refused to fall into that semantic trap this morning with this great response. We'll let her have the last word:
"No. I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today. I applaud the President for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it." We cats PURR.
Meanwhile, we're wondering how Tim Scott is going to explain why Republicans are against cutting child poverty in half and guaranteeing people access to clean water. We cats PURR.
As we all prepare for President Joe Biden's first address to Congress, let's take a quick look at the current state of the Republican Party. Two words: a mess.
Or three words: a pathetic mess. And it appears they'll remain so until they can free themselves of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, with new polling out and an eventful first 100 days behind them, Team Biden looks confident and agile. And all the Republicans have to fight them is a bunch of lies.
The biggest lie — that voter fraud in 2020 was rampant — is exacting some damage across the country, with multiple red-state legislatures passing racist laws to keep people of color from the ballot box. But other lies they're pushing are just clown-car-level ridiculous.
Have you heard the one about Joe banning burgers? That lasted about a day or two. The brouhaha over "liberals canceling Dr. Seuss" hung around longer, until responsible journalists pointed out that only a few books would cease publication and it was the Seuss Foundation's decision. And of course, there's that old chestnut that's been around since Bill O'Reilly was on the air (and sexually harassing female employees off it) — the war on Christmas!
The most recent canard pushed by the right is that the government footed the bill for every migrant kid to receive a welcome kit with a copy of Vice President Kamala Harris's 2018 children's book, Superheroes Are Everywhere. The story was cooked up by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, quickly fell apart after it was published, and the reporter they forced to write it has since resigned. (Which she could have done earlier, by the way.) It is all absurd — but then, has anyone damaged this country as much as Rupert Murdoch has?
The GOP's got nothin', as Jon Stewart would say. It will be interesting to see which members show up to the socially distanced Congressional address tonight, and how they'll behave. Will they be reduced to shouting "You lie" again? If so, they should be tossed out on their asses, and never allowed to return. We cats HISS.
Rick Santorum has offended us so much, in so many ways, and over so many years, that we really didn't think he could top (or lower) himself. But never underestimate a Republican's ability to be 50 times worse than you ever thought possible.
Santorum decided to wax eloquent on the origin of the United States in a speech before the (ugh) Young America's Foundation. And he wasted no time letting his inner racist emerge.
"We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here," he declared. "I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture. It was born of the people who came here pursuing religious liberty to practice their faith. To live as they ought to live."
WTF is he talking about? "Nothing here"? There were zillions of indigenous people, whom Europeans and their American descendants wiped out — or if they didn't wipe them out, they marched them as brutally as the Japanese marched American GIs on Bataan 80 years ago, then herded them onto reservations and destroyed their cultures. Santorum hasn't noticed, but it's the primary reason there's a movement today to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill. Hello, Rick, hello!
It's disturbing how blithely white folks tend to erase whole civilizations of people who don't look like them. Santorum is one of the hate-iest of the haters, and CNN, which employs him as a talking head, needs to fire his ass, now. We cats HISS.
On the subject of being tickled that the Bidens are in the White House, here is a photograph.
Perhaps you remember the West Virginia official who called Michelle Obama "a [sic] ape in heels," and who was later hauled off to the hoosegow for embezzling nearly $20,000 from FEMA? She lost her job for her Obama slur, which she posted on the Face Thing after Benedict Donald's election. "It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House," she wrote.
Well, Moose & Squirrel turned out to be no great shakes, ripping up the Rose Garden and sporting tacky jackets that showed her lack of humanity. Now, she's banished to Mar-a-Lago, while the elegant Dr. Biden strolls the Colonnade from the residence to the West Wing. And in fabulous red shoes. We cats could not be happier, and we PURR.
P.S. Happy 87th birthday to the brilliant Shirley MacLaine, the original Miss Kubelik! We cats PURR again.
A hundred political years ago, before Benedict Donald self-destructed over COVID-19, we cats remember reading an assessment of the Joe Biden Presidential candidacy and feeling nervous. Ugh, he had so many vulnerabilities: his age, his gaffes, Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, his middle-of-the-road-ism. Plus, he had passed on a run in 2016 due to family matters. So how would voters in 2020 ever embrace the guy?
As we all know, James Clyburn changed the trajectory of the Democratic primaries, and the coronavirus pandemic changed everything else. And now President Joe Biden, age 78, is ensconced in the White House and enjoying high approval ratings. Here's a recent one that caught our eye: 63 percent of college students, a record.
"You knew he kind of had the same values, but he shares much more of your values that you might have thought before," Harvard Kennedy School's polling director said. "Certainly in the way he thinks about government and America...people are responding to how quickly he's been able to instill some of his values in the practice of government."
It's the "Boy Next Door" effect, they say — on a second glance, you see qualities that weren't apparent before.
To us, it's just more proof that Joe Biden, after a long and sometimes rocky political career, has found his moment. We're not just grateful that he and Kamala booted out Benedict Donald and Mike Pence. We're thrilled that they're seizing the day — to start a whole new, post-Reagan chapter in American history, in which the government is a powerful force for good in lifting people's lives. We cats PURR.
Really satisfying news today: In its continuing reversals of ignorant, hateful, gratuitously cruel, or just plain stupid Trump policies, the Biden Administration has decreed that yes, US embassies can indeed fly the Pride flag if they so choose. Hooray! Now, can our diplomatic corps get back to dealing with serious international issues — instead of being forced to hate on LGBTQ folks?
As if that weren't enough, though, this delicious story about a January 6 insurrectionist will have us laughing all through the weekend. It seems that one of the Trumpy rioters, feeling lusty after storming the Capitol, bragged about his exploits to a woman on the dating app Bumbler. "I made it all the way into Statuary Hall!" Robert Chapman told his potential date, and went on to boast about the media interviews he did.
The woman replied, "We are not a match." And then she called police. When the FBI identified him on video from Insurrection Day, they closed in. Chapman goes on trial May 19.
We love this so much. Sure, you can laugh about how stupid the guy was to brag on a dating app, and to put a Capitol riot photo on his Face Thing profile, et cetera. But what truly impresses us is the swift precision with which the woman extricated herself from the conversation. It was so brutal that Chapman was left with nothing to say except "I suppose not."
Words are powerful — and when you use just a few at a time, straight to the point, they can really cut. Or, in this case, castrate a clueless Trumpster. We cats PURR.
This is what happens when you do your homework before a Senate hearing — and when you don't.
In the first category, Georgia voting rights activist and all-around goddess Stacey Abrams. In the second, doofus Republican Senator from Louisiana, John Neely Kennedy.
Stacey just embarrasses Kennedy here. Our only complaint is that someone in her home studio should have powdered her fabulous face.
And how soon will Chuck Todd accuse her of being overprepared? If the last four years have taught us anything, it's the cost of people in charge not knowing what the hell they're doing. Plus, we cats loathe men who discount or dismiss smart, ultra-competent women. And we HISS.
Many stories are pouring in about what a great guy former Vice President Walter Mondale was. We cats agree. We might also add that he was funny. At a reunion of Carter Administration folks in 1997, the Carters and the Mondales were all so hilarious that we were amazed. Who knew they were such comedians?
One of the more interesting anecdotes today has come from Joe Trippi, a veteran of many Democratic campaigns. In 1984, he was one of the few veterans of the quixotic 1980 Kennedy crusade who was on board the Mondale train. He told Mondale that he and his father had been estranged for a few years over career differences. Months later, Mondale brought Trippi and his dad together at a campaign victory party for a surprise reconciliation. "Your son is in an honorable profession," he told the elder Trippi before going down to make his speech. "He's fighting for people who are down and hurting. He's making a difference."
That's so Mondalian. And can you imagine any former staffers telling compelling and warmhearted stories like that about Donald Trump? We almost can't wait for Trump to die so we can hear them all (*sarcasm*). We cats HISS.
It looks like Maxine Waters may not have helped things in the Derek Chauvin trial when she told reporters this weekend that she wanted a "guilty, guilty, guilty" verdict — better yet, one of first-degree murder — and that people should get confrontational in the streets if Chauvin gets off. (Regrettably, murder in the first degree is not what Chauvin is charged with.) Prompted by a complaint from Chauvin's defense attorney, the judge went a little bats about Waters today. Thankfully, the jury had already left the courtroom to deliberate.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has rushed to censure Waters. Yep, that Kevin McCarthy — the same guy who can't be bothered to take any action against Matt Gaetz, who still sits on the Judiciary Committee despite the DOJ's current investigation of him. And of course, nobody on the Republican side ever really stood up to Donald Trump for his many incitements of violence. But, whatev.
Our first thought when we heard about Waters was, oh no, don't let this screw up the trial. Our next thought was, after George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Adam Toledo, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Eric Garner — and countless others — we should think twice before lecturing Black people about the words they use.
Derek Chauvin is white. His defense attorney is white. Judge Peter Cahill is white. Kevin McCarthy is white. All the Republicans screaming about Waters are white. (Marjorie Taylor Greene has already made a video on the Capitol steps.) For that matter, nearly all of the insurrectionists on January 6 were white. None of them have to worry the way Black people do if they get pulled over by police.
As best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi has eloquently pointed out, police violence against people of color in America is a natural descendant of slavery: absolute obedience expected, but mercy not always granted even to those who comply. "Black and brown people’s defiance is not the problem," he says. "Our compliance is not the solution. Police defiance of our humanity is the problem." So yeah, do we wish Maxine hadn't said what she said? Yep. But after this horrible, ugly year, we can't blame her. We cats decline to HISS.
Maybe people weren't expecting it, but the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh was strikingly elegant in its simplicity and small size. We cats approve. A few thoughts have stuck with us:
After months of pandemic-enforced casualness, in sweats and leggings and crocs, it was refreshing to see people so beautifully dressed — even if they were all in black. Fabulous hats, custom masks, stiletto heels, and oh, yes, that long coat of Princess Anne's. Perfection! (We're not sure anyone looked better than the Duchess of Cambridge, though.)
As for "the boys," all the excitement about cousin Peter Phillips walking between them was nonsense — a lame attempt by the media to gin up negativity. After all, Charles Spencer walked between them behind Diana's casket. And while Bald William is clearly all Windsor, after seeing Harry with his head bent in prayer, we have bad news: He's going to lose his lovely Hewitt head of hair, too. Count on it.
We also liked the Land Rover. More Philip-y than a Bentley, and probably nearly as expensive.
Although we haven't seen much of the Duke in these last few years, we still have a feeling we're going to miss him. Or maybe we just miss the idea of him — a manly man playing willing second fiddle to his wife for 73 years. We should all be so lucky. We cats PURR.
We can't stop looking at Justin Trudeau's home office. Here he is, talking to the Premiers of Newfoundland & Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia — all of whom have handled the coronavirus pandemic better than Doug Ford — about how they can pitch in to help Ontario, which is in pretty dire straits.
A super-serious topic. But other things are on our minds.
What's the story behind the Star Wars spaceship on his corner shelf, and the football and the cowboy hats at the top? And what about that folded American flag in a display case on the bottom shelf of the table behind him? Why does he have two Kleenex boxes, and what's in the Tupperware container on his desk? Froot Loops?
It's unclear whether answers to such pressing questions will be available any time soon. But in the meantime, we give the Prime Minister a 10 on Room Rater. And we're glad to see that unlike the Liberal MP from Quebec on Zoom the other day, he's wearing clothes. Very professional. We cats PURR.
Joe and Jill Biden, can you please restore this garden to something America can be proud of?
There was a time last year when Canadians lectured Americans on social media about how they needed to get their COVID act together. We agreed. We needed a new sheriff in town — and we got one. Now, as a Presidential administration that understands logistics is getting shots in American arms, it's Canada that's struggling. Big time.
This makes us very sad, because we want to go back to Canada as soon as possible. But it seems that the problem this time lies on the northern side of the border.
We thought Quebec was doing poorly until we saw what was going on in Ontario. We'll never understand why Ontarians tend to electorally indulge fat white men named Ford — either as Mayor of Toronto (Rob) or as Premier of the province (Doug) — but this is clearly a bad habit that they need to stop.
COVID cases are spiking, and a new lockdown looms after Ford, who was positively DeSantis-y in his pandemic approach before, has now decided he needs to restrict outdoor gatherings, halt nonessential construction, forbid large religious gatherings, and — GASP! — close the border with Quebec. This is what happens when you refuse to lead on masks and social distancing: Fate comes back to bite you.
After some initial glitches, Ottawa has been working its ass off trying to get more COVID vaccine, signing a deal with Pfizer for millions of doses. But as in the United States, the vaccination effort in Canada is only as effective as its provincial (state) governments. And while Francois Legault in Quebec is no great shakes, he's been positively brilliant compared to Doug Ford. (For the moment, Quebec's vaccine rollout is nosing out Ontario's by about four percentage points — a significant difference considering that Quebec is notorious for being contrarian about anything and everything.)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has offered Ford the services of the Canadian Red Cross to ramp up Ontario vaccination sites. But Ford has turned that down. Did he say no because he didn't want to appear like he, as a Conservative premier, was cooperating with the Liberal government for the good of the people? In other words, is he acting like a Republican? We cats HISS.
It's pretty easy to be depressed about the pandemic when you see stories like these: 43 percent of Republicans who say they won't get the vaccine, hospitalizations going up, and Canada maybe not opening the border until September because their vaccine rollout has been so mal. But we still have some favorite things that, once this awful time has ended, we'll look back on with a grin. Here are a few.
The White House Correspondents' Dinner has been canceled — again!
Folks drove less, and the air was cleaner. And lots of pets got adopted.
If meetings didn't have to be held on Zoom, members of the Canadian Parliament would never have seen their fellow MP naked.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were able to enjoy a quiet last year together at Windsor.
For every coronavirus death that you're upset about — like Bucky Pizzarelli, Terrence McNally or Ellis Marsalis — there are probably a dozen Trumpsters who called it a hoax, flouted mask rules, didn't practice social distancing, and paid the ultimate price.
And last but not least, how glorious to hear Maxine Waters tell Gym Jordan "shut your mouth" today. Sure, considering that 550,000 Americans are dead, Dr. Fauci missed a great opportunity for a Joseph Welch "have you no decency" moment — but Maxine saved the day. She spoke for all of America, and we love her. We cats PURR.
Finally, a cop-getting-off outcome we can feel good about: no charges for the Capitol police officer who fatally shot the the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who was breaking into the Speaker's Lobby on January 6. (Trumpsters are very upset.)
The MAGA crowd may have stormed Capitol Hill, but they're probably pretty clueless about the latest doings in the race to keep or regain majorities there. The Democrats' margins are tight, no doubt about it. And Republican governors' foot-dragging on calling special elections to fill the seats of HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge and the late Alcee Hastings aren't helping. But the GOP just gained another expensive Congressional primary in the red state of Texas.
GOP Representative Kevin Brady is retiring. He's term-limited as the ranking member on Ways & Means, and gosh, once you've guided Benedict Donald's deficit-busting tax cuts to passage, what else is there to do? On the other hand, a 14th term in the minority could be pretty bleak. Hmmm... have any reporters asked Brady if he thinks the Republicans won't take the House in 2022?
Or maybe Brady's afraid that even with Republicans in charge of redistricting, the demographic changes in urban and suburban Texas are so far-reaching that his re-election in a redrawn district wouldn't be a slam dunk. Then again, perhaps he wants to clear the decks to become Treasury Secretary when Trump runs and wins again in 2024 (đŸ˜‚).
One other possibility: Kevin Brady is a pedophile. The Republican Party sure has a lot of them, don't they? We cats HISS.
It's already one of those weeks: People everywhere are making us mad. Here's some of what's getting under our skin.
Looks like John "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" Boehner is making the cable news rounds today. Ugh. The guy was one of the worst Speakers of the House (although at least — we think — not a child molester), and he continues to be lazy and terrible, only calling out Benedict Donald when there's money to be made from it. Here's hoping his stupid book falls into the remainder bin right quick.
One of our favorite local restaurants (where we had every intention of returning once the pandemic allowed) has recently decided to hang a "Blue Lives Matter" flag in its front window. So scratch that place off our list for good.
Why? Because with the Derek Chauvin trial, and now this horrific killing of Daunte Wright, we are so, so tired of seeing these snuff films. We're also tired of not seeing any consequences for cops when they murder, maim, abuse and all-around fatally screw up. Maybe the officer who killed Wright really did mean to draw her taser and not her gun, but she should still be charged with manslaughter. And the other officers should be fired forthwith for bungling the arrest.
Finally, journalists' enabling of the craven knee-benders-to-Trump in the Republican Party continue to irritate. Columnist Jennifer Rubin said it best: "[Reporters] do not grill Republicans on why they still kiss the ring of the man who set off a riot that resulted in multiple deaths and scores of injuries. They do not interrogate them as to how they can denounce violence but celebrate the man who crows about January 6."
But they can definitely ask Jen Psaki if the White House is going to "change its tone" about voter suppression in Georgia. This drives us cats crazy, and we HISS.
Who knew that racists were organizing on an encrypted app to stage "White Lives Matter" protests across the country today? If you don't exist in their angry, shadowy world, you were probably going about your Sunday in blissful ignorance. Which is fine, because as it turns out, hardly any "white lives" boosters showed up.
This was the scene in Fort Worth, as one lone "white lives" protester (left) faced off against a crowd of anti-racist onlookers. It was the same scene in Raleigh, North Carolina, Philadelphia, Albuquerque, and in front of Trump Tower in New York. (The head racist spent the weekend, as usual, in Palm Beach.)
Word is that the "white lives" folks weren't very adept at using their app. But we'd like to chalk it up to something else: Despite all the media coverage, and the huge megaphone Trump has given them, maybe there are a lot fewer of them than we think. We cats PURR.
Cancel this June's 100th-birthday party for His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. Even with our nine lives, we cats have known no other British monarch except Elizabeth II, and now she's flying solo.
Prince Philip left behind a long life for the obit writers to comb through. And they're recalling his many intemperate comments about people who, let's just politely say, didn't look like him. Was he a racist? If so, it was the classic racism practiced by an outsider against fellow outsiders. (Philip came from an itinerant line of European royals who fell on hard times. To London snobs, he was a "penniless Greek.")
And we won't bother to repeat one of Philip's most infamous observations, made to a young subject who was studying in Beijing — there's enough anti-Asian hate out there these days. But you can bet the palace hired a new Director of Royal Small Talk after that.
We'll just choose to remember Philip another way: as the dashing fortysomething prince who represented the UK at Jack Kennedy's funeral, and used his sword as a walking stick on the hilly terrain of Arlington. As the Queen Mother once said, "That was a very long time ago." We cats PURR.
UPDATE: Want to know how connected to history Philip Mountbatten was? Not only was he on the deck of the USS Missouri when the Japanese surrendered in World War II — but when scientists needed DNA to ID the bones of Czar Nicholas and the Romanov family, he graciously obliged. Wow! We cats PURR again.
Before we get to the subject of tonight's post, we just want to say that broadband is infrastructure. And Joe Biden's attempts to boost it in unconnected, rural areas is a gift to Donald Trump voters, not his own.
Okay — that out of the way, let's all rub our paws together with glee that Trump Administration veterans are getting a cold shoulder from corporate boards. Isn't it delicious? "Roughly half of the S&P 500 companies have filed their 2021 investor disclosure reports, listing a total of 108 new or prospective board members," The Washington Post reports. "No Trump Cabinet officials who served in the final quarter of his term are among those nominated."
Former pooh-bahs in the second Bush Administration, as awful as it was, didn't run into such shunning — even though they had lied the country into a disastrous Iraq War and driven the economy into the ditch. But after Former Guy incited an insurrection against the government of the United States on January 6, Team Trump is bereft of offers. Elaine Chao, Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo are all feeling the pinch.
Boards and companies are clearly feeling skittish about the public's heightened awareness of whom they choose to associate with, and the economic fallout that can ensue from boycotts and protests. Republicans would call this "cancel culture," as we all know. They're currently outraged that Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, and American and United Airlines have joined the chorus against voter suppression laws. (Pretty rich coming from staunch supporters of Citizens United.)
But what's really being canceled is people's votes, by the GOP. If citizens are barred from the ballot box, one of the last weapons they have is the force of their pocketbooks. We cats say, more power to them. And we PURR.
It's the three-month anniversary of the Trump insurrection against the US Capitol. The FBI is working its way through the mob and arresting them — but slowly, sad to say. Every day there are more pleas to help identify rioters from fuzzy screen and video grabs. We want them all ID'd and hauled off to the hoosegow: Lock them up!
Meanwhile, the lawsuits against Benedict Donald are piling up. The NAACP is adding 10 new plaintiffs to its original complaint, brought on behalf of Congressmen Bennie Thompson and Eric Swalwell. Two Capitol police officers are suing Trump for the injuries they sustained from the mob he inspired. And surely Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic aren't yet finished with their brilliant, billion-dollar defamation filings against Sidney Powell and the Giuliani clown car. Legal beagles are waiting for Trump himself to be their next target.
We'd like to get in on this game. Are there any Americans out there who would like to join a class-action suit against Trump, for the pain, suffering and trauma he inflicted on those of us who care deeply about the integrity of our democracy? If so, we're in.
Watching that assault on the Capitol was a distressful watershed moment for us. Any Republican who is silent on it, let alone complicit in or supportive of it, is a traitor in our book. Any future candidate, for whatever office — national, state or local — who doesn't condemn it strongly enough will never get our vote. And it'll be the first question to any political hopeful who dials our phone or shows up on our doorstep. In the meantime, let's sue! We cats HISS.
The raging bonfire over the awful transgender legislation in Arkansas reminds us cats of the abortion debate: If Republicans are so against government interference in people's lives, why do they insist on politicians butting into personal decisions? We can't think of anything more private than trans kids' treatments for gender dysphoria or a woman's right to choose.
Governor Asa Hutchinson didn't make this comparison himself (he's wildly anti-choice). But in a surprise move, he vetoed the state legislature's ban on gender-affirming medical care today. Chances are his veto will be overridden — but trans rights leaders are thrilled. "This is a powerful rebuke of this nightmare legislation," said one.
Who got to Hutchinson, and convinced him to do the right thing? Or maybe the better question is, what company?
You've probably noticed that big business isn't being particularly shy about criticizing the draconian legislation that Republicans are enacting across the country. (The GOP has declared war on so many sports leagues, airlines and beverage manufacturers that you wonder if they'll have anything left to cheer for, fly on or drink.) So it's easy to imagine Walmart, Tyson Foods, Arkansas-based healthcare providers, or any one of the state's 25 largest employers contacting Hutchinson and saying, "Asa, we still need to recruit talented people to come live and work here. You sign this bill, you'd be making it very tough."
Maybe the Republicans will wake up someday to the fact that hate, suppression and cruelty are hard sells to most clear-thinking Americans, and make no economic sense. If that happens, the shame will be that it will be their love of the almighty dollar — not simple decency — that will carry the day. We cats HISS.
Has the guy on the right been retired? Because he's super-creepy. (The guy on the left is already gone, thank God.) Let's hope the Bidens trot out a different bunny tomorrow. We cats PURR.
UPDATE (below): Well, at least the damn bunny was masked.
There's a grimly hilarious story in today's New York Times about how the Trump campaign fleeced their supporters online at WinRed and ended up making $122 million in refunds —including to a guy who was in hospice care and whom they snookered out of $3,000. When he realized what was going on, he spent his last days on earth trying to get the money back. He ended up living long enough to see Joe Biden sworn in.
Long story short, the Trumpsters conned people into making recurring contributions with nefarious pre-checked recurring-donation boxes and additional-contribution "money bombs." Their language became more and more opaque and the pre-checked boxes more numerous as Election Day neared and Team Biden outraised them.
Should anyone feel sorry for the duped donors? Of course not. But this disgusting fraud will have negative ramifications for 2022 and beyond. The Republicans thought that WinRed would be their answer to ActBlue, the breathtakingly user-friendly contribution platform that the Democrats use. Instead, WinRed has surely burned donors who will never give again. And with the usurious rates that WinRed is charging campaigns to use it, expect more GOP candidates to refuse to play next time. We cats PURR.
We cats are torn. On the one hand, we know that Democrats with souls more pure than ours (Jimmy Carter, Samantha Power, Howard Dean) will insist that we pay homage to Bob Dole in his waning days. On the other hand, we remember Dole for the ferocious piece of shit he was.
Bob Dole destroyed a brilliant candidate for Senate, Dr. Bill Roy, over abortion, in an extraordinarily close Senate election in 1974. Bill Roy could have been a great Senator. But Dole played on voters' fear of women's empowerment to defeat him — and we predict that someday soon, this will be a great TV movie.
Bob Dole introduced the notion of "Democrat" as an adjective, in the Vice Presidential debate of 1976, in which he talked about "Democrat wars." For this alone, we cannot forgive him.
The Republican Party is so bad today that they would disavow and/or exile Bob Dole. Okay, fine — but that doesn't mean that, just because he's close to death, we need to embrace him. We cats HISS.
A tale of two Cabinets: What are the differences between President Joe Biden's in 2021 (top) and Lyndon B. Johnson's in 1967?
Correct! No masks, no social distancing, no pandemic back then. And OMG, 54 years ago — look at all the white guys!
When the second photo was taken, the Voting Rights Act was two years old. Now, thanks to John Roberts and Trumpy Republicans, voting is under assault again — especially in the state of Georgia, as we all know. But at least the GOP's being made to suffer for it: Major League Baseball just announced they're moving this summer's All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest.
This has more teeth than statements by corporations like Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, which didn't bother to bestir themselves until after the pernicious voter suppression law had passed. Georgia is losing a ton of money on this game. May they lose more as the protest grows, because in the end, sometimes money is the only thing that matters.
So in a week that brought us the upsetting Derek Chauvin trial, let's focus on that and on other good news today. There are some pleasing headlines out there: Virginia has expanded voting rights. Nearly 102 million Americans have been vaccinated. Biden's gonna fund trains!
And, of course, there's Gaetzgate. Or Watergaetz. Whatever — we cats soon will opine on that. In the meantime, we PURR.
