Less than a week until Election Day, and so many stories to follow. Here are a few we've noticed.
A new New York Times/Siena poll has Democrat Peggy Flanagan leading Republican Michele Tafoya in the Minnesota Senate race, 54 percent to 40 percent. This got a lot of attention today, because it's far better for Flanagan than previous polls have been. Hmmm: Trump's approval rating in Minnesota is 35 percent — but Flanagan is associated with what is either a scandal-plagued or witch-hunted state government, depending on your point of view. But Tafoya can't outperform Trump's number by more than five? Sad!
Speaking of the Times, there's something really odd about its Mary Peltola article today. Peltola's former campaign manager, who was fired several months ago and was a source for the story, contacted the newspaper and said she wanted to take back everything she told them. "I am not willing to be a source for any story in any capacity," she said. Weird! Meanwhile, the article should have no bearing on the DOJ suit against the state of Alaska — the wording on the ballot is crystal clear (even though Trump thinks Alaska voters are too stupid to know what the term "incumbent" means).
PS: The GOP's hands are very, very dirty when it comes to running fake or "ghost" candidates. They've done it in Florida (of course), and this year in New York, they've recruited spoilers to run on ballot lines for smaller political parties, like Working Families. Pot, meet kettle.
Roll Call has published its lists of vulnerable Senators and House members. Of the 10 on the House list, eight are Republicans, while seven of the eight on the Senate list are. (And #8 is really a stretch, because it's Jon Ossoff. Jon Husted in Ohio is #1, and Susan Collins in Maine is #2.) But tell us again how all the polls are wrong, GOP.
Nobody seems to know what's going to happen with the election in Israel (although Benjamin Netanyahu has already accused the Arab-Israeli parties of "stealing" it). And after failed presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro said he would never leave Brazil, he skipped town and landed in Miami today. "I'm the leader of Brazil!" he bleated. God, we cats are so sick of these Trumpy right-wing crybabies. Is there not a man among them? They make us hack up hairballs, and we HISS.
Preacher of the House Mikey Johnson is the quintessential guy who never should have had his current job in the first place. Honestly, there's never been a time when he wasn't in over his head.
Recently, he daydreamed about going back to Louisiana and opening a lawn-care business if/when he loses his gavel. Now, he's telling pretend journalist Laura Ingraham that all the polls are wrong.
All of them. All. Never mind that in the last two midterm elections, 2022 and 2018, polling was spot on.
Ingraham didn't ask about this, of course, because she's a stupid, hateful fraud, but what happened to the 26 Congressional districts that the Republicans were once so confidently targeting, including ones they added because of their nefarious mid-decade gerrymandering?
A well-informed (and actual) journalist could ask:
(PHOTO: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
The more time that passes, the clearer it becomes that she was right about everything. We cats PURR.
Pop the champagne, kids! Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva has won the presidential election in Brazil. Wow!
Before tonight, clan Bolsonaro seemed like that bad rash that a topical ointment just can't cure. We cats were braced for Flávio to win and for the planet to die, because a Bolsonaro victory would have spelled doom for the Amazon rainforest. And it would have been something Benedict Donald could boast about (when he's not talking about Jon Husted's ass). Whew, what a pick-me-up. Obrigado, Brazil!
But that's not all, folks. Serbia has also turned out its right-wing strongman, Aleksandar Vučić. "The long-serving leader of Serbia has conceded defeat," The Guardian reported, "ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that saw the increasingly authoritarian leader pitted against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government."
This is all so great. Not just because the results are terrific in each of these countries, but because we've got a couple of really important other elections still coming up: Israel's on Tuesday, October 27, and — of course — our own midterms on Tuesday, November 3.
As with our midterms, the consensus is that Israel's election is the most pivotal in its history. Will Israelis reject the government that has turned the world against them, or stick with the war criminal Netanyahu? (We cats don't call him that with pleasure. It actually makes us sick that the entire world was on Israel's side after October 7 and that Netanyahu threw it all away — not unlike George W. Bush after 9/11.)
Hey, speaking of Bush — where the hell is he? Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have come out swinging on the campaign trail, but Smirky is nowhere to be seen. What a pathetic POS. We cats HISS.
Lots of news related to the midterms today. Here are some stories that are getting our attention.
The Cook Political Report has changed its rating of the Ohio gubernatorial race from "Toss-Up" to "Lean Democratic." Gee, wonder why? The notorious Vivek Ramaswamy ad is not only repulsive in and of itself, but Donna Arthur — Amy Acton's mom — is, too. She was convicted of animal cruelty back in 2021. We won't share the details, because they're upsetting, but they involve kittens. Pile child sexual abuse, plus passing some bad checks, on top of that, and you've got the perfect person for Republicans to clutch to their bosoms.
Trump is dropping certain tariffs on Canada to try to help Susan Collins. So what does Troy Jackson say now? Easy-peasy: "This just shows how impotent Susan Collins is. She couldn't prevent the tariffs in the first place, and now Trump comes in less than two weeks before Election Day with a Hail Mary pass? Please. There's also no guarantee that the day after the election — no matter what the outcome — that Trump won't reimpose the tariffs." (Mainers, take note.)
By the way, weren't the Trumpsters just stamping their feet about supposed Canadian interference in the US election? The irony!
Impeachable offense #28,936: Benedict Donald states that he ordered the Justice Department to challenge the Alaska Senate results if Dan Sullivan loses. (We don't favor impeachment speculation at the moment, but Democrats should consider this if/when we get Congress back. The Alaska ballot clearly indicates who the incumbent is.)Speaking of impeachment, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is at the top of our list — for so many reasons. But let's do it because he and his inept staffers broke Dwight Eisenhower's globe.
Reporters should stop tolerating Trump's verbal abuse.
Finally, to the voters of Mississippi: You really need to elect Scott Colom to the Senate. Not just because Cindy Hyde-Smith has been bad at her job, but to send a message to Trumpsters and cop-apologists that killing a one-year-old is unacceptable. The mom was suspected of shoplifting diapers. Do you know what Pope Leo (or Jesus) would say? It would be: "Do you need formula to go with that, ma'am?" Because, really, has anyone read Les Misérables? Come on, people. We cats HISS.
If we cats were New York City residents, Zohran Mamdani would not have been our first choice as mayor (we'd probably have voted for Brad Lander). But with only a couple of stumbles — his 9/11 statement being one — Mamdani's been very impressive since taking office. He's made changes that matter deeply to New Yorkers in their daily lives, and has filled a bunch of potholes at the same time. It's the Jon Ossoff model of public service: Be there for your people when they need you.
Now, Mamdani has managed to pull off something that's been needed for years: banning horse-drawn carriages. Yep, it's going to cost some jobs. Yes, it'll put "Ghostbusters" and "Seinfeld" farther back in the Gotham historical timeline. And having a carriage clip-clop past you is charming. But horses have suffered and been abused, and it needs to stop. (Humans have died, too, just for the record.)
Mamdani is catching up to Montréal, which banned calèches in the historic part of the city at the end of 2019. As part-time Montréal residents, we thought we would miss the atmospherics, but we don't. It's much better to know that horses are not navigating the heat, traffic, and cobblestones of Montréal for people's ephemeral amusement. Same with New York. Thank you/merci, Zohran. We cats PURR.
The Vivek Ramaswamy controversy in Ohio continues. Today, Benedict Donald, the adjudicated rapist, came out in favor of the Ramaswamy ad that practically everyone else is condemning. Not much of a surprise there, although we Democrats are grateful that Trump is doing his part to keep the story at the top of the news cycle.
Meanwhile, after days of silence, current Republican Governor Mike DeWine finally came out and blasted the ad. Late to the party, Gov! Growing up, Mike clearly wanted to be the 43rd man on the moon. (Extra points to you Peanuts fans who recognize that as a Linus-ism.)
Like Linus waiting in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night, we cats are standing by to see how the Ramaswamy ad is playing out in the real world of the Buckeye State. But the political pundits are pretty much united that it was a colossal mistake, an own goal that will cost Vivek an election that he was already losing. What is pleasing in the meantime is that Republicans in Ohio are busy fighting each other over it. They obviously deeply resent that Vivek has put them in this awful position so close to Election Day. Who can blame them? And who can't help but feel a ton of schadenfreude at the same time?
The other fun fact? Now Trump has attacked DeWine for attacking the ad. This is so great. Make a note on your calendar to check how much money Amy Acton has raised in the wake of all this. She's already the second-highest trending campaign on ActBlue, and M.K. Pritzker, wife of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritker, just sent a cool $500,000 Acton's way. We cats love all this, and we PURR.
Social media wags are in countdown mode again because Benedict Donald is even more incoherent than usual at the hate rally for Darline Graham Nordone in South Carolina tonight.
"Trump has been gaffing, slurring, and rambling for his entire speech," one, a behaviorist, reports. "Whatever he used to take for focus, presumed to be Adderall, no longer works as well. Also, the neuron firings in his brain and his speech center appear to now be ill-timed with one another. As such, he cannot complete a sentence, and oftentimes, can barely complete a thought." So why are his handlers letting him do these events? Especially late in the day? It's a mystery.
(Gay Trump is back, too, as he compliments Nordone's husband's looks, which is probably better than admiring Jon Husted's butt. Nobody anticipated this, but dementia is a curious thing.)
There's no transparency about Trump's health, despite the fact that MAGA (and the media) screamed bloody murder about Joe Biden's. So the nation is in the dark about how much Donald is teetering over the brink, and whether his brain will go before his circulatory system does. But it would be interesting to take a poll of how many Americans have champagne on ice for the precise moment it happens.
Trump's also been interrupted by hecklers about a dozen times. In South Carolina! We cats admire the protesters' moxie, and we PURR.
