Another Harbinger Of A Blue Wave

By Sniffles

Gee, from the look of the coverage, Republicans didn't even get a moment to go "Yay!" about their victory last night in Tennessee Seven. All the headlines were gloom and doom. That's what a 15-point swing to Democrats in a deep-red, gerrymandered district will get you.

Preacher of the House Mikey Johnson had to fly out there and appear on Monday with candidate Matt Van Epps and a bunch of other GOP pooh-bahs, accepting a call from Benedict Donald, who is no longer capable of doing his many road "shows" and therefore literally had to phone it in. That was a lot of firepower for what should have been a slam-dunk win for them. Hence the hand-wringing this morning.

We Democrats, meanwhile, are feeling pretty good. Here's why:

Turnout was at eye-poppingly midterm levels — 179,634 (just shy of 181,822 in 2022). This is amazing for a "special" right after Thanksgiving. That means we got our vote out, bigly. Let's do it again in 2026.

What kind of money and resources were the Republicans forced to spend on TN-07 in a panic? We're guessing a lot. It could mean less for other elections down the road, since politics, like economics, is the allocation of scarce resources among competing choices.

Aftyn Behn was a terrific candidate with a great future, and she should run again. In fact, she's thinking about it. Yippee!

Finally, will Benedict Donald have the energy next year to campaign for every House Republican in a district that's less than plus-16 GOP? Will he even be alive then? Hmm! We cats PURR.

New Randy Rainbow!

That journey from cradle to tomb? Trump wants to make sure it isn't that long a stay. We cats HISS at him but PURR at Randy Rainbow.

JD Flunks The Test

By Hubie and Bertie

It's pretty amazing when one of the stupidest people around — RFK, Jr., who has said that he couldn't get decent grades unless he was doing heroin — stumps couch enthusiast JD Vance on the eight Presidents who hailed from (or had ties to) Ohio.

Kennedy was hosting a "Make America Healthy Again" confab that Vance attended, so the subject was unexpected. Still and all, Vance fell down on the job. In case you're wondering, the Buckeye Presidents were (in order of appearance): William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. Vance could only come up with Grant and Hayes.

Several questions spring to mind:

Why wasn't Vance able to rattle off his home-state Presidents immediately? As a former Ohio Senator with White House ambitions, he should be able to do that at a moment's notice. Betcha Tim Kaine and Mark Warner know who the dudes from Virginia were.

Why did Vance feel he could get away with dissing the Presidents he wasn't able to name? He said they came from a "black hole" (jeez!). He slings insults like this pretty constantly — the last time was when he spoke to the troops on Thanksgiving and said nobody likes turkey.

Why wasn't Vance able to cite Big Bill Taft, whose name is storied in Ohio and who was the only President who also served as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court? For shame.

And why, oh why, since Benedict Donald has expressed such admiration for William "King of the Tariffs" McKinley, was Vance unable to ID him? Particularly since, um, McKinley's assassination elevated his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, to the White House? Double shame.

Just because you've written a book, that doesn't make you smart. What a fraud Vance is. We cats HISS.

Is Pete Sunk?

By Miss Kubelik

We cats sensed a hint of throw-Hegseth-overboard in Benedict Donald's comments to the press about the Venezuelan boat bombings today.

(These would be the same boat bombings that members of Congress from both parties say they want investigated, because despite what our cringeworthy Defense Secretary thinks, killing people like that is not part of a manly warrior ethos but just plain, unadulterated murder.)

Anyhoo, Kegseth is now denying that he ordered our military to "kill them all," which means that someone has told him that his silly tweets could someday be Exhibit A in his upcoming war crimes trial.

And although Donald expressed support for Pete as he flew back from Florida this afternoon, he also told reporters he "wouldn't have wanted...a second strike." Translation: There is still a member of the White House staff who understands, and who has told Trump, that to take out survivors clinging to what was left of their bombed boat was an illegal act at best and a war crime at worst, and Donald is distancing himself. (Can't help wondering, though: Will that person's badge still work when he or she tries to clock in tomorrow?)

We agree with Senator Mark Kelly, whose profile the Trumpsters have raised by threatening to court-martial him. "We have a President who doesn’t understand the Constitution, who installed an unqualified Secretary of Defense," Kelly said. "I cannot think of a Secretary of Defense in the history of our country who is less qualified than Pete Hegseth. He should not be in this position. He should have been fired after Signalgate. Now, he should be fired for this." We cats PURR.

Thanksgiving 2025: Who Looks Better?

It's astounding that after all the uproar in the media last year about Joe Biden's health, reporters aren't asking more about Trump's obvious decline. We can all see it. What's going on, journalists? We cats HISS.

Want To Shop? Think Small.

 

Now that we've all had a lovely Thanksgiving, here's your handy reminder that we're in the thick of the We Ain't Buying It boycott of major retailers that are helping enable the Terrible Trumpsters.

From now through Cyber Monday (December 1), please don't buy any merchandise from:

Target — To punish them for caving to Benedict Donald's attacks on DEI,

Home Depot — Because they keep letting ICE kidnap innocent day laborers and others from their stores, and

Amazon — To protest Jeff Bezos's dollar contributions to Trump's outrages (not to mention Bezos's destruction of the once-respected Washington Post). 

Shop instead at your local small businesses, or support minority-owned businesses online or in your community. For more information and to sign the We Ain't Buying It pledge, click here. We cats PURR.

Republicans In Disarray

By Zamboni

A lot of Republican House members are heading home for Thanksgiving not knowing what the future holds. Will they still be in office come January 2027? If so, will they still be in the majority?

Will they even lose the majority before the midterms because so many members of their caucus are heading for the door?

That's the scuttlebutt that's been flying around ever since Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her January 5, 2026 resignation. GOP members of the House are fed up with Benedict Donald and the Trump staffers who have treated them "like garbage," one angry (and anonymous) Republican leader told Punchbowl News.  

"The arrogance of this White House team is off-putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened," the House leader said. "More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinderbox. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out." Wow! Pretty brutal.

If Republicans do step down early (or decline to run again), the only question is their timing. Will the results of the special election in TN-07 on December 2 be scary enough to make them quit right away? Or will they wait until after the holidays, and blame their decision on the beatings they received from their angry constituents? (Reminder that thanks to Republican malfeasance and incompetence, health insurance costs are set to explode on January 1, so voter anger will only rise.)

Long story short, if you're planning to ask Santa for some schadenfreude for Christmas, you could be in luck. We cats PURR.

Yes, Virginia GOP, That's What You Are

By Baxter

Things are not going great in Trump World. In New York, MAGAts are reeling from Benedict Donald's rapturous reception of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Friday. And Elise "Elsie" Stefanik has been forced to double-down on her "jihadist" Mamdani comment after Trump brushed it aside. How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful!

Over the weekend, Trump even started dressing like Zohran. Or, as an interwebs wag tweeted, like an old gay man who owns an art gallery on the Upper West Side. (Don't tell Donald. He'll be furious.)

Meanwhile, down in Virginia, the Republicans are imploding.

It's been interesting to watch the repercussions from Election Day 2025 as they spread through the world of politics. After the initial big shock, the little shocks keep coming — mostly culminating in name-calling and paw-pointing (we cats don't have fingers).

Right now the Virginia GOP is doing all of the above, skewering outgoing Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin for endorsing such a weak candidate to succeed him, and flattening fundraising by his ham-handed handling of the John Reid affair. Party chairs at the county level have issued blistering criticisms of campaign communications and the lack of logistical support at the grass roots. You love to see it.

You can try to say Virginia wasn't a true bellwether because of the large numbers of federal employees who live there. But the problem for the Republicans is that the Democratic wave happened everywhere else on November 4, too: in New Jersey, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and even Mississippi. Democrats captured a whole boatload of school-board seats across the country as well. People are not happy with Trump.

Donald and the GOP have only about 11 months to try to turn everything around. It doesn't look good for them. We cats PURR.

Checking In On Mikey Johnson Like...

MTG resigning? Well, it's not as if anything important is happening in the House of Representatives these days. We cats PURR.

Dick At Rest

By Sniffles

There was an interesting turnout at Dick Cheney's Washington Cathedral funeral today. By now, we all know that Benedict Donald and Couch Enthusiast JD Vance were pointedly not invited. (Yay, Cheney family.) The folks who did attend were a mix of Republicans and Democrats, former Presidents and Vice Presidents, and other blasts from the past. Here are a few observations from our corner of the litter box:

It's awfully good to know that George W. Bush (The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, until Trump came along) is not suffering from any kind of laryngitis or dementia or other impairment, since he gave one of the eulogies. But that also means we can't figure out why he's been so mind-blowingly silent on the perfidies of Team Trump. Does his nephew's worthless political career really need that much protection?

Any reflection on Cheney's life and career must include a no-holds-barred indictment of his and Bush's prosecution of the unnecessary and stupid Iraq War. Simply put, we attacked a country that didn't attack us. (But yesterday in the tarted-up Oval Office, Trump proudly hosted the prince of the country that spawned 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers. How big a hairball can we hack up?)

It was appropriate (and smart) that Democratic House leaders showed up, since Cheney once was a Congressman from Wyoming: Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, plus Jamie Raskin and Bennie Thompson, who served with Liz Cheney on the January 6th Committee. And we hope that the Cheneys had an acceptable red wine for John Boehner at the post-funeral reception.

Oh, and Rachel Maddow was there, too.

So, should we join the party, and try to say something nice about Dick Cheney? After all, he endorsed Kamala Harris last year — but it's still a tough assignment. Perhaps the best thing we can come up with is that if he were still alive and hosting a podcast, he would choose not to platform Nick Fuentes. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Texas, Hold On

By Hubie and Bertie

The Epstein Files dominated the headlines today, but there was potentially bigger news for all of us who care about democracy — a three-judge panel blocked Texas Republicans' mid-decade Congressional district map, saying the state must use its 2021 map in 2026.

The judge who authored the ruling was, HAHAHAHA, a Trump appointee. He wrote, "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map, but it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map." The Trumpsters, as you'd expect, are screaming and crying to SCOTUS. But there could be snags.

The deadline for candidates to file for the 2026 Congressional primaries is Monday, December 8. Voters head for the polls on March 3.

Which means uncertainty abounds. Will the Supreme Court take up the Republicans' appeal? If so, will they rule quickly enough for this super-tight time frame? We're already 10 days into the filing period. 

"[Today's] ruling has set off a cascade of political maneuvering among members of both parties who had been operating under the notion that the Republican map would stick," The Texas Tribune explains. "Democrats, rather than facing retirement or primaries against fellow incumbents, are now freed up to run in their current districts. The bevy of Republican candidates who had signed up to run in districts newly drawn to favor them will now have to hope for an intervention from the Supreme Court or face far less favorable election prospects."

Kind of a mess, yes?

Republicans absolutely deserve all this. Instead of racing to obey Dear Leader and tearing up maps on their own, they should have asked the voters to approve their redistricting plan. Gee, who just did that very thing? California! Just imagine if the Texas map is blocked next year, but California's under Prop 50 isn't. We cats PURR.

The Proverbial Thousand Words

By Miss Kubelik

Every now and then, someone gets a photo that's symbolic beyond its immediate circumstances. The shot of Trump standing immobilized as his staff tended to a fainting person was a recent example.

Now we have this one. Here's Benedict Donald, looking like hell. (When will he learn to blend his makeup?) Here's the American flag touching the ground. Kind of says it all for the state of the nation these days.

Some Trump fan on social media furiously assured everyone that the White House grounds crew was taking the flag down as a safety precaution due to high winds. That's possible, but it's not the point.

For the photographer to have captured this very specific moment, with the sagging flag and the shambling Trump, was not just a journalistic coup. It's more evidence that Donald's luck — his ability to survive almost anything that's thrown at him — may have just run out. (Reminder: Epstein vote in the House today.) We cats PURR.

Epstein Vote Tomorrow

 

Everyone in politics and the media understands that a House vote on releasing the Epstein files is not needed, right? Benedict Donald could just tell Pam Bondi to do it. So his "turnaround" is merely performative (like everything else he does when he's in trouble). We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Jesse Duquette)

Epstein Survivors' PSA

 

"Thomas Massie says Jeffrey Epstein would lure girls as young as 14 with quick-cash 'massage' offers, only for it to turn sexual, and then he’d use shame and fear to keep them coming back on command.

"Girls were pushed into recruiting another girl just to escape the abuse, locking them into a cycle that left them feeling guilty, responsible, and scared to ever speak. Once they hit the age of consent, Epstein handed them off to powerful, wealthy men, who could bury police reports, buy off judges, or pay families to keep quiet.

"And today, those same men can destroy anyone who speaks out with defamation lawsuits designed to bankrupt them.

"Massie says that’s the real reason the silence continues and why Epstein’s full network is still hidden."

The Fall Of Fetterman

By Zamboni

After the Epstein stuff came out last week, we cats wondered if Democrats had been clever enough to have purposefully engineered a shutdown resolution — via eight Senators who either weren't up for re-election until 2028, or who were already retiring — to pull off such a fabulous reveal. The jury's still out.

Still and all, it was quite a feat. It threw the GOP into a tizzy, put Preacher of the House Mikey Johnson on the defensive, and set up a vote this coming week on the release of the Epstein files. Nicely done, fellow Dems, whether you meant it or not. We'll take the win.

On the other hand, the end of the shutdown ginned up a whole lot of liberal screaming on social media about how Democrats who didn't sufficiently toe the line should be primaried. This, we do not love. It's not great to have our party split into generational factions, especially when we're in a national emergency. The enemy is Trump — so let's please not fight among ourselves. Our party has room for everybody.

In fact, there's a situation right now that shows how fruitless it is to hold our fellow Democrats to standards of purity that the Republicans would never dream of imposing upon themselves. It involves someone we cats supported in the 2022 general election: John Fetterman.

Fetterman won the Pennsylvania Senate primary and went on to defeat carpetbagger (and Republican idiot) Mehmet Oz in the general. Of course we were going to do everything we could to pull Fetterman over the finish line in November. But if we had been voting in Pennsylvania in the primary, we would have supported the so-called "establishment" candidate, Conor Lamb. Just our personal preference.

Since then, of course, we all know that Fetterman suffered a stroke, went on to win election to the Senate anyway, and has proven to be, um, not great on matters of party unity since then. People have been mad. And recently, he's had another medical incident that makes you wonder about his fitness for office going forward.

Fetterman was the anti-establishment candidate in the 2022 primary, but things haven't worked out so well since then. In addition to his medical issues, he's been a real disappointment to progressive supporters who have been aghast at his willingness to cozy up to the Trumpsters. We agree, but the election three years ago is now water under the bridge, right? So what can we do going forward?

We cats have a suggestion: In light of recent developments, Fetterman should resign his seat to take care of himself and his family, who surely must feel the strain of worrying about him. That would allow Governor Josh Shapiro to appoint someone to take his place — say, Conor Lamb.

Need we state the obvious? Conor turns out to have been the better choice. The "establishment" candidate is not always awful, and the "progressive" candidate is not always right. Let's be mindful of this going into 2026, please. That would make us cats PURR.

Trump's Latest Epstein Gambit Won't Work

Trump and Bondi can try to "open an investigation" into a matter that just months ago they said didn't exist and didn't matter. But everyone can see this is a desperate maneuver. And when is it ever appropriate for the DOJ to pursue an investigation at the President's order anyway? They're stuck, and they know it. We cats HISS.

But His Emails

By Baxter

It was pretty shocking yesterday how quickly the Trumpsters leaped to identify the girl with whom Jeffrey Epstein said Benedict Donald "spent hours at my house" as Virginia Giuffre. Presumably they named her because she had previously said she hadn't seen Trump doing anything inappropriate — a statement one assumes she made under duress. (She wrote in her book that she was worried if she named names, the Epstein cabal would wreak vengeance on her family.)

Do we need any more proof that Preacher of the House Mikey Johnson's pious claim that Republicans are trying to "protect Epstein's victims" is bullshit? You can't say you won't release the Epstein files because you want to shield these young women, and then throw the most prominent of them under the bus when it suits you. Conveniently for them, Giuffre is not around to argue. She killed herself in April.

The other tidbit that got our attention in the Epstein tsunami was Epstein's skullduggery in the run-up to Trump's disastrous 2018 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. "I think you might suggest to Putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov can get insight on talking to me," L'il Jeffy wrote to the then-head of the Council of Europe. In other words, if the Russians wanted to know Trump's weak spots, Jeffy could help. Wow, who is the bigger shithead here — the über-compromised Donald, or the sex-trafficker-turned-fink-for-Russia Epstein?

The Epstein revelations are far from over, of course. You can tell, because Republicans are racing around like headless chickens, trying to figure out how to get ahead of the awfulness that's to come. And it's not just them — because Epstein's reach into the worlds of business, law, banking, media, and tech are eye-popping and jaw-dropping. How many powerful men are panicking right now behind closed doors? 

We have no idea, but one thing's for certain: That sound you hear is the Founders who owned enslaved people, breathing a sigh of relief in the afterlife that maybe Trump has surpassed their many sins. That's how big we cats think this scandal is, and we HISS.

(IMAGE: The Globe & Mail)

Venezuela Must Be On High Alert Tonight

 

"It's worth repeating today that Trump's single greatest fear, [which is the] same for every malignant narcissist, is not just losing, not just accountability, it's humiliation. It's the unraveling of his lifelong false constructs revealing embarrassing truths to the world that, once exposed, renders him forever false, creating a House of Cards.

"This has always explained his fixation on the Epstein files, his frantic effort to continue their concealment, and his flailing behavior to distract and deflect from them."

—The Shallow State, on Twitter

Barack Boldly Goes Where Donald Fears To Tread

 

Surprise! — 44 greeted a planeload of veterans arriving in Washington, DC on an Honor Flight for Veterans Day. Funny... he didn't call any of them "suckers" or "losers." That's the difference between a real President and what we've sadly got today. Since Trump won't say it, we will: Thank you, vets, for your service. We cats PURR.

Hate Sure Makes You Ugly

By Sniffles

Excellent news from the Supreme Court today. Wait, did we really just write that, and about this court?

But miracles do happen. Without comment, SCOTUS refused former county clerk Kim Davis's request to revisit its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized marriage equality across the country. Yay!

Davis is a truly awful person who, despite Obergefell, continued to deny marriage licenses to gay couples in Kentucky. Now she owes about $350,000 in damages and legal fees, which she's desperate not to pay. But even Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito are apparently not interested in disrupting a million families just because Clarence Thomas wants them to. So it looks like Kim is stuck with her bills.

The haters and the homophobes will no doubt try again. They must be searching right now for a plaintiff who isn't as off-putting as Davis — say, someone who doesn't commit a "fashion don't" each time they walk out the door. But for now, Obergefell is safe. We cats PURR.

So Many Nazis, So Little Time

By Hubie and Bertie

This isn't to say we aren't annoyed, but we cats are going to sit out the current brouhaha on Capitol Hill for now. We want to see where things go from here before we jump into the blame game. For example, if Mike Johnson finally reconvenes the House, what happens? Adelita Grijalva will be right there, ready to be sworn in and cast the last necessary vote to release the Epstein Files. Mikey can't stall her forever.

It'll be interesting to watch. Meanwhile, if you have the chance, grab three hours and settle in for the new Nuremberg movie. Our first thought on seeing it this weekend was that Russell Crowe must have watched Gary Oldman win an Oscar under all that Churchill makeup in Darkest Hour and said, "Hold my beer." (Crowe plays Reichsmarschall Hermann Göering. There might be nothing he can't do.)

Donald Trump and his minions will probably hate Nuremberg, which is the story of the Army psychiatrist who analyzed the first group of Nazi defendants tried for war crimes after World War II. Dr. Douglas Kelley was trying to figure out not just if Göering and his pals were competent to stand trial, but also whether they were singularly predisposed to commit evil acts — and not representative of humanity as a whole.

Well, you can guess what he decided. "Kelley argued that the defendants were simply opportunists," Smithsonian magazine reports, "people 'who exist in every country of the world,' as he said during a lecture in the fall of 1946, 'who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the public if they could gain control of the other half.' 

"Kelley likened white supremacists in the US to Hitler and his followers, emphasizing their use of 'racism as a method of obtaining power, political aggrandizement or individual wealth.'

"Without checks on the antidemocratic ideologies he'd witnessed in America, such as placing restrictions on voting rights and perpetuating anti-minority feeling,' the psychiatrist believed that the US could easily transform into a Nazi-like state."

Douglas Kelley could point to precedent in making his argument: Just a few years earlier, the German American Bund had held a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. Still, his warnings fell on deaf ears. Americans had just won the war, and were in no mood to be told their country could be a breeding ground for fascists.

But it was, and it is. Famously, a second Nazi rally starring Donald Trump and Stephen Miller was held at Madison Square Garden in 2024. And now those guys are the ones in charge. We cats HISS.

Queen!

We couldn't let this excellent week come to a close without a lovey-dovey ankle rub for Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas, who has made it her personal mission to annoy GOP Governor "Fleecy Vest" Youngkin for the past four years, and who posted this after Winsome Earle-Sears's crushing loss to Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Why be gracious? Please — these are Trumpsters we're talking about. We cats PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: A Deli-icious Week Edition

By Miss Kubelik

Well, everyone, we cats hope you will kick back for at least a few hours this weekend and enjoy the afterglow of the last few days. The chinks in MAGA's armor are becoming so pronounced that even pundits in Canada are saying it's reverberating for the Conservative Party up there. Is the end of Trumpism near? Only if we keep working. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to replicate Tuesday's wide winning margins in the midterms next year. So rest up and energize! Meanwhile, here are some additional news items that have gotten our attention:

DC Sandwich Guy was acquitted yesterday in a gloriously unanimous jury verdict. What an embarrassment for Judge Box o' Wine and the DOJ. And now the Democratic Party has a new star (or hero, as everyone's been saying). Since some of our longtime Democratic leaders are starting to head for the exits (see: Pelosi, Nancy, who has earned her rest and relaxation), perhaps DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, should also retire and we should run Sandwich Guy in her place.

It's pretty neat that the Democratic candidate for Attorney General in Virginia was able to overcome a maddening double standard and not only survive his "violent texts scandal" but also win by a comfortable six points. Even better that the Republican member who leaked the texts lost her seat in the House of Delegates on Tuesday.

Senate Democrats have just proposed a reasonable solution to the government shutdown: Extend the ACA subsidies for a year, and use that time to hammer out longer-term healthcare fixes. The Republicans are poised to reject it. We don't know what they're thinking, and why they don't understand that 1) Americans blame them and Trump for the shutdown, and 2) the optics on everything they're doing are simply terrible. Perhaps some former Republican can explain it to us?

(Hmmm, maybe they have suddenly grasped at least some of the optics. Rumor has it that the Administration is seeking to comply with court orders and pay November SNAP benefits in full after all. The idea of empty plates at Thanksgiving may have been too much, even for the GOP. But we'll believe it when it happens.)

Republicans still have to deal with a lot of other bad optics, though — especially this one from yesterday, when someone at an Oval Office event fainted, and Trump just stood there like the sociopath he is:

This was after he fell asleep in his chair during the speeches, that is. Will reporters ever ask about his mental and physical state, or just continue to ignore what everyone can see? We cats HISS.

(UPDATE: Heedless of the optics after all, Team Trump went crying to SCOTUS yesterday about SNAP. Sadly for them, it landed with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose administrative stay, say observers, is probably the best way to get SNAP payments out the door fast.)

From The Guardian

 

"New York will remain a city of immigrants. A city built by immigrants, a city powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, a city led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us."

—Zohran Mamdani, November 4, 2025

Floating On Air

By Zamboni

Democrats, it's been a rough year for us, and then some. If you're feeling good today — and you should — you deserve to. Be sure to enjoy it, because the midterms are next and we have work to do.

But first, a couple more thoughts about yesterday.

Preacher of the House Mike Johnson, who is making Kevin McCarthy look like an accomplished statesman these days, is trying to brush off the 2025 election as just "blue states and blue cities" voting blue.

Nice try, Mikey. Pennsylvania is a blue state? We thought it went for Benedict Donald last year. Georgia isn't red? Democrats ousted Republican PSC incumbents by double digits there. The famously "blue" Mississippi saw the GOP lose its supermajority in the state legislature. And every single county in Virginia — which elected a Republican governor in 2021 — shifted to the Democrats. Every. Single. County.

Meanwhile, up in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney's minority government is trying to get a budget deal done. If they can't, it's possible that Canadians could be looking at another snap election, which nobody wants — except maybe for Tory leader Pierre Poilievre (and we don't know why... to get his ass kicked again?). Members of the Conservative caucus may be seeing the writing on the wall: One MP from Nova Scotia crossed the floor (as they say) yesterday to caucus with the Liberals. He hinted there may be more to come. "I would suggest that there probably are those that are in the same boat," he said.

One down. Just two to go, and Carney's got a majority. We cats have our paws crossed, and we PURR.

(IMAGE: Detail from The Madhouse, by Kent Monkman)

Wipeout.

By Baxter

If she was even considering it, maybe Usha Vance should NOT convert to Christianity now. Not only did her awful hubby and Benedict Donald get repudiated across the country last night, but hubby's half-brother was squished in the Cincinnati mayoral race by 56 points! (The winner, incumbent Democrat Aftab Pureval, is of Tibetan descent, and let's just say he doesn't go to Mass on Sunday.)

And should Elise "Elsie" Stefanik rethink her run for New York Governor? Yes, New York City isn't the rest of the state. But Stefanik's nemesis, Governor Kathy Hochul, handled her endorsement of Mayor-to-be Zohran Mamdani like a political pro, looking like a winner this morning. And oh, by the way — Democrats swept our town races here in little old Wilton. Saratoga County is definitely Upstate.

Republicans must be cowering. Democrats won by huge margins: Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey by plus-13, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia by plus-16, and Yes on Prop 50 in California by 64 to 36 percent. Mainers turned away a voter-suppression ballot measure by 28 points, and Pennsylvanians retained their three State Supreme Court justices by 61 to 39. Mamdani broke 50 percent in NYC's three-way race. And in Georgia — Georgia — Democrats took two Public Service Commission races by 26 points. No wonder Marjorie Taylor Greene has been furiously backpedaling away from Trump and MAGA lately.

For us, though, the election's big story is Virginia, and not just because we used to live there. Spanberger's huge win pulled off a trifecta in the top three races, and helped Democrats swell their House of Delegates majority from 51 seats to at least 64. This is insane. Expect the Commonwealth to redraw their maps if the GOP's Trumpy gerrymandering continues. And we can't wait for Larry Sabato's take on it all. (He must be writing furiously as we speak.) We cats PURR.

Hot News From The Old Dominion

By Sniffles

Well, it looks like Abigail Spanberger has managed to win the Virginia Governorship without those crucial votes from Kentucky. Whew! The only questions now are: 1) the size of her margin, 2) whether she'll be able to drag Attorney General candidate Jay Jones over the finish line, and 3) how many seats in the House of Delegates she'll help flip.

Fun fact: Abigail Spanberger was the Democrat who beat Dave Brat for his seat in Congress back in 2018. And of course you'll recall that Brat was the dude who stunned everyone by ousting the supremely entitled Eric "Young Guns" Cantor four years earlier in the Republican primary. It all seems like such a long time ago, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, State Senator Ghazala Hashmi has been elected Virginia's next Lt. Governor, beating that very weird, Nazi-porn-loving talk show host, John Reid. Polls had tightened recently, but as of right now Hashmi has a comfortable eight-point margin. She'll be the first Muslim woman in the country to win a statewide election. (Handy reminder to check the results in New York City when voting ends there at 9.)

We cats are also keeping our eyes on New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and — of course — Prop 50 in California. But for the moment, we're toasting Spanberger and Hashmi, and pondering the potential symbolism of the death of Dick Cheney. Finding out on a good-news Election Day that Cheney had checked out feels about right. He and George W. Bush only won in 2000 by 537 suspicious votes ("Jews for Buchanan!"), and because, as we all know, SCOTUS stopped the Florida vote count. It's heartbreaking to think how different our lives could be if that Presidential election had gone the other way. We cats HISS.

Somebody Tell The Trumpsters: This Is What The Great Gatsby Was About

"About five o'clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate — first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin.

"As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with the owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marveling over Gatsby's books in the library one night three months before.

"I'd never seen him since then. I don't know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby's grave.

"I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur 'Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,' and then the owl-eyed man said 'Amen to that' in a brave voice.

"We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.

"'I couldn't get to the house,' he remarked.

"'Neither could anybody else.'

"'Go on!' He started. 'Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.'

"He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.

"'The poor son-of-a-bitch,' he said."

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Trailing Donald Is Off The Trail

By Hubie and Bertie

The corporate media may or may not be noticing (we don't watch or listen anymore), but in our book, it's very strange for a sitting President to be doing just that — sitting — instead of hitting the hustings for his party's candidates in the final hours before Election Day.

Lots of reasons for that, no doubt. Benedict Donald is bottom-of-the-barrel unpopular, underwater by double digits in all the major polls released on Friday. He'd probably be doing Republicans more harm than good if he deigned to appear with them right now. The government shutdown is affecting people's lives in big ways — pay-wise, benefit-wise and food-wise. And of course there's always the question of whether Trump could handle any appearances, cognitively speaking. (Probably physically, too.) His meandering (and maddening) appearance on 60 Minutes last night is the latest proof of that.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama campaigned over the weekend for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, cut a commercial in support of Prop 50 in California, and dialed up Zohran Mamdani with words of praise for his mayoral run in New York City. You know, all jokes aside, if Obama could run for President again in 2028, he'd probably win. (Lots of Trumpsters have died since 2016.)

Which is our way of saying that we cats think tomorrow will be a good day for Democrats. We have about 36 hours left to GOTV in our crucial races — and thanks to the interwebs, we can help from anywhere in the country. Links below! We cats PURR.

• To volunteer for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, click here.

• To volunteer for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, click here.

• To make calls to California voters for Prop 50, click here.

Worst Halloween Costume Idea Since Prince Harry's Nazi Afrika Korps Uniform

"Unknown to her, the clothes Mrs. Kennedy wore into the bright midday glare of Dallas lie in an attic not far from 3017 N Street...Those closest to her had vowed that from the moment she shed them, she would never see them again.

"She hasn't. Yet they are still there, in one of two long brown paper cartons thrust between roof rafters.

"The block-printed label...is 'Worn by Jackie, November 22, 1963.' Were the box to be opened by an intruder from some land so remote that the name, the date, and photographs of the ensemble had not been published and republished until they have been graven upon his memory, he might conclude that these were merely stylish garments which had passed out of fashion and which, because they were associated with some pleasant occasion, had not been discarded.

"If the trespasser looked closer, however, he would be momentarily baffled. The memento of a happy time would be cleaned before storing. Obviously this costume has not been.

"There are ugly splotches along the front and hem of the skirt. The handbag's leather and the inside of each shoe are caked dark red. And the stockings are quite odd. Once the same substance streaked them in mad scribbly patterns, but time and the sheerness of the fabric have altered it. The rusty clots have flaked off; they lie in tiny brittle grains on the nap of the towel.

"Examining them closely, the intruder would see his error. This clothing, he would perceive, had not been kept out of sentiment. He would realize that it had been worn by a slender young woman who had met with some dreadful accident. He might ponder whether she had survived. He might even wonder who had been to blame."

—William Manchester, The Death of a President, 1967

And The Memes Have Gone Wild

Ugh. As if Benedict Donald's silly bathroom reno wasn't bad enough, this hairball-inducing photo (and various angles of it) is everywhere on the interwebs. Some folks have even predicted that the ever-detestable JD Vance will dump Usha and the kids and hitch up with Adventuress Erika for 2028. (Usha's brown and not Christian, ya know.) But wait — did they say 2028? What does Donald have to say about that? We cats HISS.

Happy Halloween!

By Miss Kubelik

In the spirit of the day — and if you believe in friendly ghosts and spirits — perhaps a mishap suffered by Republican gubernatorial candidate and Christian nationalist hater Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia will convince you that you're right.

Earle-Sears's campaign bus caught on fire yesterday while it was en route to an event. Hmm! Considering that right-wing Christian maniacs like Earle-Sears used to burn suspected witches (and anyone who deviated from their beliefs), perhaps this bus fire is symbolic? Inquiring minds want to know, but the Earle-Sears campaign isn't saying.

No one was injured, which is a good thing. But if Earle-Sears is consistent, wouldn't she take this incident as some kind of sign from God? Oh, who cares. Virginians, ignore all this culture-wars bullshit. Just get the vote out from now until Tuesday for Abigail Spanberger and the rest of the Democratic ticket. We cats PURR.

Bordering On The Outrageous

By Zamboni

It looks like Republicans in the Senate are in a bit of a mood this week to brush back Benedict Donald on his silly trade wars. Yesterday, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell all voted to end Trump's 35 percent tariff on Canada. (The Kentucky bourbon industry is definitely feeling the chill.) That was on top of a vote on Tuesday to end the 50 percent tariff on Brazil.

The good news? Cracks are forming in the Trumpian foundation. The bad news: Neither Senate bill will get a vote in the House, which as we all know is still on its pedo-protecting, Jeffrey Epstein vacation.

It's also pathetic that every single Republican representing a border state in the Senate should have pushed back on Benedict Donald about the tariff on Canada — but they didn't. We're thinking Ron Johnson in Wisconsin or Alaska's other Senator, Dan Sullivan. Hoeven and Cramer from North Dakota. And given the importance of Canadian tourism to Florida... oh, never mind. They are all gutless cowards. We cats HISS.

Donnie Hates Ronnie, Part Deux

By Baxter

It's almost Halloween, but still — it's kinda scary to say that we cats agree with something Ontario Premier Doug Ford said: Benedict Donald would have blown up trade talks with Canada anyway.

Trump's hissy-fit reaction to the province's Reaganesque ad on the idiocy of tariffs was "not about the ad," Ford said. "It's about finding every excuse in the world to not get a deal."

Yup. Why people don't understand Trump's crazy playbook after 10 years is beyond us. Meanwhile, here's video of Ford from yesterday, commenting on the kerfuffle some more. (Bonus: Gavin Newsom makes a cameo appearance about five minutes in.) We cats PURR.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding

By Sniffles

If you saw this visitor on your Ring Cam, you'd open the door, right? Of course you would! It could be something very important!

But right now it's political canvassing season, so you never know what hijinks could ensue. Especially if you're a local candidate who admits to liking Benedict Donald.

A Republican-endorsed, Conservative-party legislator from Schenectady County, Josh Cuomo — sorry, but that's his name — was asked by a voter whose door he knocked if he supported Trump. He told her he did, and let's just say that the conversation deteriorated from there. "If you ever come back, I'm going to get a gun and shoot you," the woman said.

(What do you think she was most upset about? Her health insurance costs exploding? The end of her SNAP benefits? Jimmy Kimmel? The East Wing? The possibilities are endless.)

Anyway, Cuomo went screaming to the police, and the woman was arrested. This makes no sense to us. Don't right wingers and Republicans want everybody to have a gun? Why wasn't he thrilled that she was on the verge of exercising her Second Amendment rights? It seems illogical.

"To have this kind of political violence and hate in the world right now is not what we need here," Cuomo said later. Gee. Maybe he should check out the malevolent bilge that Donald spewed at the Charlie Kirk memorial, and direct his comments to the White House. We cats HISS.

Look Who's Really Waging The War On Christmas

By Hubie and Bertie

From the Every Accusation Is a Confession Department, it looks like Benedict Donald and the Republicans have managed to cancel Christmas in the upstate New York hamlet of Rhinebeck. Here's the headline we woke up to in the Albany Times-Union this morning:

Trump Tariffs Force Cancellation of Beloved Christmas Festival

"A long-running Christmas celebration has ben canceled due in part to rising costs related to President Donald Trump's tariffs, organizers said.

"The organizing committee of Rhinebeck's Sinterklaas celebration said they had decided to cancel this year's festivities due to financial difficulties, including rising prices for items sold to raise funds. Those items — stars made in India and lights made in China — had nearly tripled in price, making them 'unaffordable for most families,' festival coordinator Jeanne Fleming said.

"Rhinebeck's Sinterklaas festival began several decades ago...held on the first Saturday of December to informally mark the feast of St. Nicholas. [It] culminated with a children's starlight parade in which participants marched with large illuminated stars."

Welp, Republicans have already managed to cancel Thanksgiving for a lot of American families — what with the announcement that SNAP benefits will end on November 1 and no resolution to the GOP government shutdown in sight. Why not pile on, and cancel Christmas, too? We cats are disgusted, and we HISS.

Context

By Miss Kubelik

We cats have taken refuge from the awfulness of the daily news in music, cooking, exercise, and reading.

On that last note, here's a book that we're currently into and which we're really enjoying — and not just because it offers escapism. In fact, far from it. Which is the surprising part.

In this history of the Scopes trial, Brenda Wineapple's Keeping the Faith sets the stage by describing the America of a century ago. And guess what? Things were almost as fucked up then as they are now. The KKK ascendant, an Attorney General out of control, free speech suppressed, oligarchs leaning toward fascism, Black people lynched, fundamentalists alarmed at the alleged licentiousness of society... it all seems incredibly familiar.

We survived then... maybe we'll survive now. Maybe. We cats PURR.

Brittlestar Explains The World Series To Americans

 

We cats are actually okay with either the Jays or the Dodgers winning the World Series, since Benedict Donald has insulted Los Angeles so badly by deploying the Guard. But this video makes us PURR.

Donnie Hates Ronnie

By Zamboni

This is the anti-tariff TV commercial from Doug Ford's Ontario that got Benedict Donald's knickers in a twist.

Honestly, we never thought we'd post something featuring Ronald Fucking Reagan on our blog. We are Carter partisans, after all. But that's how far the Republican Party has strayed from its collective identity in the last 40 years. Where they used to be virulently anti-Communist and anti-Russian, they now embrace (or tolerate) Vladimir Putin. And where they used to champion free trade, they now kowtow to the farthest-right fringes of their party. We have absolutely no idea why Reagan-era Republicans don't call their party to account on these (or other) issues. Are they all dead — or frightened? Somebody let us know.

It's also not clear why Ontario Premier Doug Ford felt it necessary to air this ad beyond an interest to bolster his own profile. (Do not doubt that Ford, a Conservative, has national ambitions.) Anyway, Trump apparently called off US-Canada trade talks because of it, and Ford pulled the ad — maybe at Prime Minister Mark Carney's request. But the internet is forever. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

We Are The Superheroes

By Baxter

It's become pretty clear over the last 10 months that no one is coming to save us. The Founders never envisioned a situation in which the Article I branch of government completely abrogated its responsibility and turned everything over to the executive. And while the lower courts have, by and large, performed generally admirably in curbing Benedict Donald, the Supreme Court is 6-3 Trumpy. That's life.

So we can take to the streets, like we've been doing with No Kings, and we can vote. (Yes, Republicans are trying to gerrymander us all to death and make voting more difficult. But they're not there yet.)

Last weekend's No Kings rallies were terrific — so much so that they obviously drove Trump into a rage. Now, the anti-Trump forces are using this time between rallies to coalesce all the groups that turned out on October 18 into one massive organization. These efforts will bring us closer and closer to the 3.5 percent needed to topple this Administration. Considering Donald's behavior in just the last week, reaching that threshold could very happen before next November.

Meanwhile, we have elections next month. Here in New York, Early Voting begins tomorrow. It's also the deadline for New Yorkers to register to vote for the general election and to request an Early Mail or Absentee ballot. After the Sex Pest was officially endorsed by Mr. Corruption in the New York Mayor's race, we hope that voters in the city know the schedule to register or early vote. (For our part, we intend to turn out for Democrats in our own municipal elections upstate.)

Wherever you're registered, the point is, make your voice heard early so that campaigns can focus on lower-propensity voters between now and November 4. As we said, we are the only ones who can save us. (Or, as Barack Obama quoted — and for which he got mocked by the corporate media — we are the ones we've been waiting for.) We cats PURR.

Now Everybody's Mad.

By Sniffles

We cats were so upset by Benedict Donald's East Wing wrecking ball today that we wrote a ton of extra postcards to voters in New Jersey and Virginia, and a whole bunch of additional letters to California voters about Prop 50. We highly recommend this. Taking an action, no matter how small, helps alleviate anger and anxiety.

So if you'd like to write some Postcards to Voters, click here.

If you'd like to write letters to Californians about Prop 50, click here.

We also suggest you read Jamelle Bouie's column in today's New York Times, about why Trump is unnerved by No Kings. "Despite what might appear to be true in the maps we use to illustrate election results, it is not possible to divide the United States into red and blue teams," Bouie writes. "For as much as Americans are polarized around party affiliation, they do not actually exist in separate societies or civilizations. Wish as we might otherwise, we rise, and fall, together."

Bouie is right. Trump may hope to just cancel "Democrat" programs, but everybody benefits from the policies our party has championed since the New Deal. And today, in our neck of the woods, Trump supporters are lining up with Harris voters at local food banks. MAGA folks are in the next exam room at our doctor's office — getting care, but without enough money to pay for it. Since Donald ultimately can't shield them from the adverse effects of his actions, sooner or later they will feel the pain. (If they aren't feeling it already.)

We suspect that more and more casual Trump voters will be joining us at No Kings rallies. They'll be welcome. And meanwhile, here are some more signs from Saturday to inspire everyone. We cats PURR.

ICE Out! NICE In!

From last night's episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. They need to do this in Montreal next. And then all over Canada! We cats PURR.

Just Posting This For No Particular Reason.

"During the War of 1812 between the United States and England, British troops entered Washington, DC, and burned the White House and the US Capitol building in retaliation for the American attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, the year before.

"President James Madison asked his wife Dolley to gather important state papers and be prepared to abandon the White House at any moment. Dolley decided to leave the couple's personal belongings behind, and instead gave the order to save a copy that Gilbert Stuart had painted of his full-length portrait of George Washington.

"Stuart's most famous replica of his Washington portrait has hung in the East Room of the White House since 1800."

—History.com and Wikipedia