Happy Birthday, Mr. President

"America has changed over the years. But these values my grandparents taught me — they haven't gone anywhere. They're as strong as ever, still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. 

"They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what's in here.

"And that's why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That's why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That's why our military can look the way it does — every shade of humanity, forged into common service.

"That's why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end."

—Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Republican Troubles Edition

By Baxter

We've had our usual firehose of news these last few days. Here are a few items to help us all sort through the chaos.

How many pundits smugly said not too long ago that the 2026 Senate map was way too big a climb for the Democrats? All of them, right? Well, now we're seeing language like this: "Senate Republicans say they see Trump as a growing political liability as they try to hang on to control of the Senate in the 2026 midterm elections" (emphasis ours). The list of seats the GOP is worried about is a fun read — it includes Alaska, Ohio, Maine, and even Nebraska. Wow! What a difference 18 months of Donald Disasters make.

Former Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) has finally crossed the Rainbow Bridge. She's the House member who didn't show up for votes for ages and whose staff ultimately admitted was in an ALF memory care unit — presciently similar to Tom Kean Jr.'s and Mitch McConnell's recent disappearing acts. We know this is a broken record, but can you imagine if a Democrat tried to pull that off?

Looks like Congressman Max Miller isn't the only abusive personality on the Republican side of the aisle. The House Ethics Committee lowered the boom today on Chuck Edwards of North Carolina for creating a hostile and harassing work environment. "A member of Congress should not single out a staffer and isolate them from other staff, make frequent comments regarding that person’s appearance and weight, send messages in the middle of the night, text staff deeply personal and seemingly romantic thoughts, intrude on personal occasions without invitation, pay for personal vacations, and spend thousands of dollars on gifts," the committee said. Ew. (The good news is that Sabato's Crystal Ball has moved Edwards's race from "Leans Republican" to "Toss-Up.")

Finally, it's not clear why Jeanine Pirro left a White House meeting dragging a white box this afternoon. Joke of the day: That's a pretty big box of wine (but maybe not for her). We cats PURR.

Cat Fight! Miller Versus Moreno(s)

By Sniffles

Wow, Max Miller is such a creep. He launched a video on Twitter today after his former father-in-law, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, said he should resign from Congress. But if Max thought the video would tamp down the allegations that he's a serial abuser, hoo-boy.

No way you can watch and not see a guy who throws boiling water at you, holds a gun to your head, and breaks your toddler's collarbone. (He also suffers from Michele Bachmann Syndrome — a baffling inability to look straight into the camera.) It's skin-crawl time.

But somebody said, "Great job, Max, let's post it." And the interwebs promptly blew up. "This is classic abuser tactic." "Was the point to make him look even more guilty? If so, mission accomplished." "All I heard was 'Why did you make me hurt you?'" "The video will be used in Social Work/Family Violence seminars to establish what a perpetrator of domestic violence looks and sounds like." And on and on.

Jeez. At least Ted Bundy was charming.

So here we are, with Miller and Bernie Moreno trading insults on social media, and Ohio Republicans caught in a bind. They have until Wednesday, August 5 to replace Miller on the ballot, but Miller vows to stay in. Good. We cats would like nothing more than to have this repulsive dude asking for Ohioans' votes in a district that Democrats are targeting — and for him to be publicly feuding with Bernie Moreno all the way to November 3. (When Moreno's not busy F-bombing Tony Fauci, that is.) We cats PURR.

Okay, Not That We Should Get More Freaked Out, But...

By Hubie and Bertie

We all know that the climate emergency is upon us, right? We don't need to link to any doomsday sites to drive the point home... correct?

Because, OMG — these headlines we're seeing are off-the-charts freaky. Yet we in the United States are consumed with constitutional violations to the extent that we won't be able to address the climate change issues until will after we get the White House back in 2029... right? Gosh, sounds awful.

Climate change is upon us. It's not something in the distant future, it's now. Just look at the high temperatures and the fires in Europe, and you know. Maybe you don't live in France, but you drink French wine, so — there you go. Consider yourself affected.

Many difficult decisions await us. Because the Trumpsters have insisted on indulging in denial, we can only assume that the next Democratic administration will need to address them — and get punished at the polls for doing so. OMG, is there no scenario under which we can solve these problems? We cats fear maybe not, and we HISS.

Down Days For Donald

By Miss Kubelik

Benedict Donald and his merry band of haters and traitors seem to be crumbling. Nothing is going right for them. The economy just slowed again in the second quarter. The pointlessly stupid war in Iran continues to get bigger. The egregious SAVE Act is stalled. And the Todd Blanche nomination is hitting Cornyn- and Tillis-sized speed bumps. Trump has burned too many bridges with Republicans who, unbelievably, have just recently figured out that he doesn't care about them.

If he did care, he wouldn't do stupid things like announce an early end to the Biden-era Medicare Part D subsidies. This is going to drive up medication costs for millions of seniors — but not until after the midterms. No problemo for the GOP, then, right? Wrong.

Insurers in most states will have to notify beneficiaries well before Election Day about their rate increases for next year, to give them time to shop for better plans, if they can find them. Open Enrollment begins on Thursday, October 15. 

Whoops! Sorry, Republicans. Your team in the White House just isn't very smart. (And Democrats, start messaging about this immediately.) We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Still Kinda The Worst Person

By Zamboni

In case you were wondering whether George W. Bush is still terrible, the answer is yes.

Years ago, we cats dubbed Bush "The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived." He deserved it — aside from PEPFAR, his African AIDS relief initiative, he was singularly destructive: ending stem cell research, brushing off a pre-9/11 PDB about bin Laden, lying the US into the war in Iraq, appointing cretins to the Supreme Court, bungling Hurricane Katrina, etc. The list goes on and on. And then Donald Trump came along and knocked him off his Worst-Person perch. Who'da thunk it?

Bush has faded into an uneventful and generally meaningless retirement. Occasionally he'll show up at events like the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, hamming it up with Michelle Obama (who for some reason seems to genuinely like him). But as his Republican Party has become Trumpier and Trumpier — and more and more fascistic — Bush has stayed silent.

This is despicable, especially today, when Dr. Anthony Fauci — who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 — had to sit and endure insults and accusations from GOP members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The hearing was a ridiculous outrage. Go ahead and read about it if you must, but a good summation of it is that Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, Bernie Moreno and the rest all acted like embarrassing dipshits. 

Has George W. Bush ever firmly pushed back against his fellow Republicans on Fauci? Will he come out and say that their abusive behavior today was offensive to all Americans whose lives Fauci helped save during the COVID pandemic? Dream on.

Bush has, to our knowledge, never said boo about any of the damage the Trumpsters are doing. He hasn't seriously protested the cuts to PEPFAR, objected to the platforming of open racists, or opposed the Gestapo-like tactics of ICE (an insult to all the Hispanics who voted for him in 2000 and 2004). He's been quiet about the trashing of the White House and the death blow that Trump recently delivered to his Texas pal John Cornyn. He didn't even get in Trump's face when Donald abused his kid brother back in the 2016 campaign.

What's he afraid of? Is the political future of hapless nephew George P. Bush really that important? How pathetic. We cats HISS.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Counting The Wins Edition

By Baxter

It might be time to tally up a few recent victories. So put your feet up, pop a cool one and read on.

Lawyer and independent journalist Katie Phang is making life difficult for the Trump DOJ and for Todd Blanche in particular. Phang filed a lawsuit claiming that Blanche's non-cooperation with the Epstein Transparency Act impeded her professional ability to report the news. She's trying to get the courts to force Blanche to comply with the law, and the judge on the case, Emmet Sullivan, seems sympathetic to her cause. He agreed she had standing, and he ordered Blanche to produce the redacted files or explain why he cannot, no later than 3 PM Eastern time on Thursday, July 30. Great job, Katie!

The Warner Bros.-Paramount Skydance merger may not happen. Wouldn't that be loverly?

Republicans in Florida have been desperately trying to push extreme right-wing nutcase James Fishback off the ballot for the gubernatorial primary on August 18. Welp, too bad for them: A circuit court judge has ruled that candidate Jay Collins's claims that Fishback doesn't meet residency requirements were unproven. Fishback stays on. Gee, Trumpsters can't succeed anywhere in court, can they?

Lots of reassuring stories are surfacing about people rescuing cats, dogs, horses, and even hedgehogs from the fires in France and Spain. And aid workers are, believe it or not, finding pets who survived the Venezuelan earthquake, a whole month later. Those amazing animals!

Finally, Benedict Donald tried to rally what's left of the campaign faithful in Michigan today. From the coverage, it looks like his performance was weak, his speech rambling, and the crowd tepid. As if that weren't special enough, some fabulous dude shouted "Pedophile protector!" at him. We cats love it, and we PURR.

All Fouled Up

By Sniffles

When we look back on the nightmare that was Trump 2.0, we'll be grateful for their incompetence.

There are too many examples of Trump ineptitude to cite, so let's just focus on the one from this past Thursday, when federal prosecutors were embarrassed into withdrawing the subpoenas they inflicted on three New York Times reporters for writing about Trump's Air Force One clusterfuck. Here's hoping that the attorneys involved get referred for disciplinary action and/or disbarment.

The Trumpsters also are still hell-bent on bringing ridiculous charges like the ones against David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It's idiotic — the Sandwich Guy case all over again. Are we really doing this? Yes, apparently we are.

We can also be thankful that the White House staff was stupid enough to advise Benedict Donald to speak at last night's White House Correspondents Dinner, which its organizers really need to rethink, by the way. The event has long outlived its usefulness — but in the meantime, how cringey was it that Trump tried to joke his way through a mean-spirited and pointless hour-long speech to dead silence? The attendees should have stood up and walked out, but making Donald endure endless minutes of flop-sweat does have its appeal.

Nevertheless, the hell with all of them: Trump, the worst person to have ever walked the face of the earth, and the inside-the-Beltway journalists who enable him. They are equally despicable. We cats HISS.

Making America Explode In Diarrhea

By Hubie and Bertie

In case you were poised to celebrate the "IT'S FINALLY HAPPENED" event — and you all know what that means — please be informed that the video of Benedict Donald collapsing at the open door of the Presidential limo today is AI. Sorry, kids. (And if you think "IT'S FINALLY HAPPENED" referred to LeBron James: He just signed with the Philadelphia 76ers. Josh Shapiro is very happy.)

This is how the news unrolls these days. You really have to be on your toes when it comes to discerning real from fake. Sadly, in a time when most people fail a basic citizenship test, we don't have a lot of confidence that consumers of current events can tell the truth from lies. Still, the Democrats have an 11-point lead on the general Congressional ballot, so things can't be all bad, right?

On the bad side, the Trumpsters have clearly destroyed public health. Or at least they're working at it. Measles cases are the highest they've been since 2000, and the cyclosporiasis outbreak keeps getting worse. It's expanded to nine states, and even though New York is not one of them, we cats are avoiding salads for the foreseeable future. What we don't like is that Taylor Farms, a likely cyclosporiasis source whose CEO is a big Trump donor, reportedly begged the White House for a delay in implementing a recall. Are we surprised? Will anyone tell the Trumpsters? Because Fox News won't.

This administration doesn't give a damn about you and your family — not your grocery bills or the price you pay at the pump, but also, and most importantly, your health. They've driven the cost of coverage into the stratosphere, and have cut back on the regulations that protect us from malign actors like Taylor Farms. There's a reason we Democrats are in favor of keeping government on the backs of corporations — it's because we support the well-being of the American public. We cats HISS.

Oliver! 1934-2026

By Hubie and Bertie

This is not a music blog, but we cats would be remiss if we didn't note the passing today of the great Oliver Jones, Montreal jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

He was taught piano by Oscar Peterson's sister. And he learned it well — Jones's touch on the keyboard was so delicate and beautiful that it was recognizable to those with a sensitive ear. We flatter ourselves that we could pick him out on a jazz recording, if we didn't already know.

Jones was born in Montreal's Little Burgundy neighborhood. Murals honoring him already abound there. We hope that city flags fly at half-staff, and that the lights at Place des Arts and other downtown locations dim in his honor. It's the least Montreal can do. We cats PURR.