"The Response To Darkness Is To Reach Out"

Because America didn't have a national leader who was capable of expressing how we're all feeling on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we have decided to look elsewhere for inspiration. We cats salute Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and we PURR.

Going Viral

  

By Miss Kubelik

Trump didn't seem to be in a very good mood after his two-day emotional support rally in Dallas. Here he is yelling at (yep) another female reporter, Rachel Scott of ABC News, who dared to ask him about why he was pledging (illegal) $5,000 payouts to voters when the national debt is already at $40 trillion. Or, the photo of him emerging from a meeting with Ireland's president, Catherine Connolly, which didn't appear to go too well.

Trump always seems to be the focus of viral photos that one would think would damn him to universal condemnation and/or electoral defeat. But they never seem to do it. He falls asleep at 9/11 ceremonies, stands immobile in the Oval while someone suffers a medical emergency, or returns from a Tulsa rally looking like he's been through the wringer — and none of it appears to make any difference.

We'd give him credit for surviving all these slings and arrows, except for the fact that we know the corporate media is responsible. As Michelle Wolf told the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2018, "You love him." Because all the clicks and likes and outrage pay their bills.

Observers have theorized that Trumpism will outlast Trump. We're hoping that it doesn't, for the mere fact that we can't imagine the press giving JD Vance or Ron DeSantis or even Donald Jr. the pass Donald does — they just won't generate the traffic that Trump Senior will.

Well, to be honest, we don't know. The so-called legacy media have bent the knee so much that we have to search for a silver lining to this particular cloud. We can only hope that the media landscape will have changed enough by the next one or two Presidential elections that it won't matter. Which would make us cats PURR.

Who's Missing?

We all know who. The person who must not be named was at the Pentagon, dozing off, with his face drooping and Moose & Squirrel looking morose beside him. (Guess he paid her extra to be there.) We'll never understand why the press gives a free ride to a clan that refuses to behave like a First Family of the United States. We cats HISS.

The Shawinigan Handshake, Part Deux

 

By Zamboni

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien spoke today at the 9/11 commemoration in Gander, Newfoundland, and at the end of his remarks, he had a special message for the US. Watch and enjoy.

(He went on to say, "Never, never mistake our tolerance for lack of determination. And never, never mistake our kindness for softness." Make a note — you don't want to meet this guy in a dark alley.)

After all the controversy about Trump's obnoxious ambassador to Canada attending today, it's pretty nifty that he had to sit there and take it — from a tough 92-year-old, no less. We cats PURR.

Return Of The Towers / The Faces Of United 93

 

These are both excellent ideas. We cats PURR.

Clearing The Air

By Baxter

Has Grindr crashed in Dallas yet?

Maybe not, because from what we can tell, there are a lot of empty seats at the Trumpy "mini-convention" that kicked off tonight. Which means that a smattering of the MAGA faithful will revel in an anodyne video from Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, leaving the rest of us to fulminate on social media.

We cats choose not to engage. Fetterman clearly has suffered some major damage from his 2022 stroke, and we hope that he reassesses his life choices, steps away from the Senate, and gets further help. Maybe he could even resign his seat now and let Josh Shapiro appoint a successor. But that's all we have to say about that.

Meanwhile, we are just back in the country from two weeks away, and from the headlines we've been scanning, the most despicable development has been the manufactured brouhaha over Mayor Zohran Mamdani's attendance at Friday's 9/11 memorial event. What ridiculous performative bullshit this is.

Mamdani is the duly elected mayor of New York City. He will be at the memorial, and the bigots can just suck it up.

But Rudy Giuliani? Maybe he should take a pass. It seems pretty clear that Rudy, the MAGAts, and Trumpsters are pissed that Mamdani released all those documents that showed how New Yorkers were misled about their air quality after the attacks. Surely that's the reason the Republicans have all gone big-time Islamaphobe these last few days. But whatever their motivation, it is despicable. Let's toss all these awful people out of office, shall we? We cats PURR.

Embrace Me, My Sweet Embraceable You

By Sniffles

Speaking of feeling worried about the upcoming midterms, we cats ran across a possible solution: Go to a Democratic rally and ask the candidate or featured speaker for a hug.

"At stop after stop on his latest Southern swing over Labor Day weekend, Governor Gavin Newsom leaned into the anxiety and exhaustion Democrats have been carrying through the Trump era," POLITICO reports. "In North Charleston, a young woman in the front row held up a sign reading HOLD ME! Newsom walked over mid-speech and obliged."

An interesting approach to mental distress. We'd particularly like to try this at a Jon Ossoff event. We cats PURR.

Let The Games Begin

By Hubie and Bertie

Well, it's Labor Day! The official end to summer and beginning of the fall campaign season. But as all of us know, electioneering for the midterms has been in full swing for some time now. Yard signs are out, debates are being booked or ducked, and polls are coming thick and fast. (A word to the wise: Treat many of the polls you see with healthy skepticism. Lots of bogus ones are floating around. Maybe stick to analysis by seasoned pros like Larry Sabato and Charlie Cook.)

We've also had a dicey incident recently at the Canfield Fair outside of Youngstown, Ohio: An armed man rushed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, injuring several bystanders. (Acton is fine.) It turns out that the suspect is the brother of a big Vivek Ramaswamy donor, who had to resign a previous job with GOP Senator John Husted's campaign when journalists surfaced his criminal history of — you guessed it — sexual misconduct with a minor.

(JFC, these Republican pedophiles are everywhere. All those QAnon accusations against Democrats were pure projection.)

Before all this happened, Acton chatted up Democratic activist Simon Rosenberg at a Democratic fundraising event in Washington last week. "Simon," she told him, "I think there is something happening out there with people that goes beyond their economic struggles and higher costs. People are crying at my events, breaking down and crying in public. Sherrod Brown tells me he's never seen so many people cry at events as he is seeing this year."

We cats have a theory about that. Voters know that these midterms are our last chance to save our democracy, and it's damn scary. The best antidote that we can think of is to just to keep our noses to the grindstone and get as many people to the polls as we possibly can. Taking action is a good remedy for anxiety. We cats PURR.

Spotted In Seattle

"The biggest story on planet Earth, this day and every day, is that the President of the United States is seriously unwell and allowed to continue in office — unfit, untethered, and unchecked." (Until November 3rd, that is.)

Welcome The Stranger (And The Strange)

By Miss Kubelik

More than 260,000 Canadians have signed a petition to Parliament to send Donald Trump's US ambassador Pete Hoekstra back to the US, never to return. In the meantime, though, Canada is kinda stuck. Hoekstra is where he is, and sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

Meaning, invite the cretin to something you'd rather not have him anywhere near, like the 25th anniversary September 11 commemoration ceremony in Gander, Newfoundland. Ugh.

The town known worldwide for its graciousness, decency, and above-and-beyond friendliness on 9/11 will have its character tested by hosting someone who's completely ungracious, Trumpily indecent, and openly hostile. "The Town of Gander says its invitation to Hoekstra was protocol, not an endorsement," CTV reports. But internet wags have suggested a sequel to the hit musical "Come From Away," in which the residents of Gander throw Hoekstra's ass out.

We'll keep an eye on this story for you, because Benedict Donald will be sucking up all the oxygen in the American media's coverage of the anniversary. But less than a week out, we have to just say that Canadians are sick of Team Trump's insults — maybe madder about those than all the ridiculous tariffs in the world.

They're sick of the annexation "jokes," the lake renaming, the mocking of Canadian military cadets, and the "nasty" accusations. Prime Minister Mark Carney, with three recent Liberal by-election victories and his Parliamentary majority strengthened, made it clear: The Americans, he said have to "stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious," he said. We cats PURR.