De Adder Du Jour

There are some days — and this is one of them — that we don't know what we would do without Michael de Adder. We cats PURR.

Joe's Juneteenth

By Sniffles

So, okay — things are really bad at the White House. Benedict Donald is paving over the Rose Garden and erecting car-dealership-sized flags on the North and South Lawns. (Will inflatable tube men be far behind?) And he's threatening to build a ballroom. (Where?) We can't even. So we've decided to ignore it all until a Democratic — or, even, a sane — President can come in and set things right. (Please, God.)

During these dark days, we need to grasp for all the decency we can. Since Trump decided to pointedly ignore Juneteenth yesterday, let's note that former President Joe Biden traveled to Galveston to observe it. (Flying commercial, by the way. How Jimmy Carter-esque.)

Biden, of course, was the American President who first officially recognized Juneteenth as a national holiday. And Galveston was the city to which Union General Gordon Granger traveled in 1865 to inform enslaved people there that the Emancipation Proclamation had set them free. (Communications were slower, then. No social media. If there had been, though, Black Twitter would have been lit.)

Maybe the media you consume chose not to cover Biden's trip to Texas, so in case it didn't, here it is. We have a few thoughts. First, that Joe looks pretty good for someone with Jake-Tapper-level cancer. Second, that the base of the Democratic Party has always loved him — with good reason — and always will. We're with them. We cats PURR.

The Green Mountain State's Not Seeing A Lot Of Green These Days

By Hubie and Bertie

It's Juneteenth — a national holiday for which, as we all know, racist Benedict Donald has no use. But Trump's terrible second term is also bad news for Americans who are, um, not of color. Let's see how his policies have affected one of the whitest states in the union, Vermont.

Trump's offensive "51st state" bluster against Canada and his ruinous tariff threats are battering the state from top to bottom.

In Vermont's northernmost counties, businesses that depend on Canadian visitors are seeing their tourist traffic take a nosedive. Only four percent of Quebecers, for example, tell the Canadian Automobile Association that they have plans to vacation in the US this summer. That's down from 12 percent who said they'd visit last year — back when Joe Biden, a sane person who didn't insult them, was President.

In the south, sportswear and outdoor gear retailer Orvis, based in Manchester Center, just announced they're laying off at least 50 employees in the coming months. "Tariffs disrupted our business model in ways we haven’t faced before," the company's president said. Why? Because so much of Orvis's clothes and other products are made in Asia. (We cats have noticed this because our humans are big Orvis fans.)

It makes you wonder what Republican Governor Phil Scott is going to do about all this. Vermonters should ask him. Even though Scott has said for years that he wouldn't vote for Trump, that doesn't let him off the hook. We cats HISS.

Adding Iinsult To Narcissistic Injury

By Miss Kubelik

Benedict Donald's abrupt exit from the G7 yesterday was not unexpected. Some actually speculated days ahead of the summit that Trump would find an excuse to leave. It ended up being events in the Middle East (or so the White House said), but the true reason was that Trump is a sociopath who had just suffered a lot of humiliation:

Eleven million (and still counting) Americans turned out on No Kings Day to protest Trump's Administration and his policies. And, quite simply, to tell the world that they hate his guts.

His birthday "perade" on Saturday was a bust. Nobody came who didn't have to. He didn't even try to look like he was enjoying it.

At the G7, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney shut down his press avail once Donald started blabbing about "Democrat-run cities." Somebody also apparently cut off Trump's mic. Sad!

Soon after Donald sat down at the G7 meeting table, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had a whispered conversation that ended in a spectacular eye-roll from Meloni (and a fabulous internet meme for the rest of us).

Trump appeared to fall asleep at the table, giving us all another priceless Mark Carney reaction shot.

Donald tried to announce a trade deal with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but dropped the documents they had just signed. He also confused the UK with the EU. (Yes, this is a broken record, but just imagine if Joe Biden had done something like this.)

After Trump left Kananaskis, Carney greeted Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the summit — two leaders Trump undoubtedly wanted to avoid. Throwing a delicious bit of shade, Carney gave Zelenskyy Trump's seat at the table.

The Trump-less end-of-the-G7 group photo was something to see.

We don't really know what's going to happen with this Israel-Iran thing (although Donald is trying very hard to play catch-up to Netanyahu — not very convincingly, either). But we can all enjoy this schadenfreude in the meantime, right? By the way, maybe the real reason Trump fled the summit was his health — or lack thereof. His limitations are finally getting noticed (no thanks to the corporate media). We cats wish for more of the same, and we HISS and PURR at the same time.

An Email To The Staff Of Senator Mike Lee

"I knew Melissa Hortman. Many people in this office did.

"She was a longtime friend of Senator Smith's, who had seen her hours before she was murdered. So you'll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief.

"It is important for your office to know how much additional pain you've caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend. I am not sure what compelled you or your boss to say any of those things, which, in addition to being unconscionable, also may very well be untrue.

"But that is not the point. Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people's grief? Is this how your team measures success? Using the office of a US Senator to post not just one byt a series of jokes about an assassination — is that a successful day of work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?

"Let's recap Saturday so you fully understand what Minnesota was going through. Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered. Senator Hoffman and his wife were shot numerous times and remain hospitalized. By the grace of God, it appears they will survive.

"Senators are discovered to be on a hit list of an armed man on the run — Senator Lee's colleagues. And the decision of the office of Senator Mike Lee was not to publicly condemn the violence or to express condolences to her shattered children — it was to intimate that Melissa and Mark somehow deserved this? By making jokes? Do you have any consideration for the survivors in her family? For the Hoffmans in the hospital? For their families?

"You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweets? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?

"I pray to God that none of you ever go through anything like this. I pray that Senator Lee and your office beging to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings. And I pray that if God forbid, you ever find yourselves having to deal with anything similar, you find yourselves on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster.

"Lastly, I suggest you take a few minutes today to read about Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. They were remarkable people...She was a force. And a human being. And I beg of you to exercise some restraint on social media as we continue to grieve."

—Ed Shelleby, Office of Senator Tina Smith (D-MN)

Lack Of Logistics

By Zamboni

People have been arguing about the appropriateness of a military parade in America. Yesterday's sad spectacle in Washington made it pretty clear that Russian-style processions that celebrating war and weaponry just aren't in our country's DNA. (Thank goodness.)

But beyond that, Benedict Donald's organizers proved something else: They just didn't nail down the necessary details.

Check out this report from The Guardian:

"Although the Army's marching went smoothly, the larger public event seemed less than well-planned. The garbage cans, few and far between, were overflowing. There weren’t enough exits. The only food source for thousands of people was a handful of food trucks with lines of 40 or 50 people waiting at each. Because the parade closed down blocks and blocks and there was a dearth of signs with clear directions, it was also extraordinarily difficult to find one’s way in or out.

"A Secret Service officer, trying to explain the general confusion, just sighed. 'Nobody knows what’s going on.'

"A little over an hour into the parade, which was still going strong, the crowd was beginning to show some signs of restlessness. Even a few people in MAGA hats appeared to be packing up their things and heading home. The first wave of hundreds of people slowly funneled through the gates, and past entrepreneurs hawking MAGA gear and baseball caps with ICE written on them.

"A young man, asked what he thought of the parade, remarked that he was not impressed. He felt that Trump’s close association with the celebration had politicized it and 'made a mockery' of the Army, though it wasn’t the Army’s fault.

"More to the point, he added, the event was 'just kind of…lame.'"

We cats PURR.

One Last Thought For "No Kings" Day

We cats will have more to say about the fabulous anti-Trump, pro-democracy events we've witnessed today. Until then, let's just give a nod to the interwebs influencers who have proclaimed today "Obama Appreciation Day." That's terrific, but we'd suggest amending it to a day for Obama-Biden Appreciation. Because those two guys make MAGA equally infuriated. That's good in our book. We cats PURR.

Sorry, It's This

Are we really going to pretend that this pathetic asshole has any power or influence at all? Asking journalists across America. We cats HISS.

No, Wait — THIS Is L'Image Du Jour!

Perfect. Thank you. We cats PURR.

L'Image Du Jour

What can we say? We cats PURR.