Memo to Ann Romney, Part Three

By Miss Kubelik

Dear Madam Ambassador:

Since your husband Willard has designated you his official liaison to American women voters, we cats will continue to ask questions that we hope you will answer before November.

Our query today is posed in the wake of this exchange on yesterday's "Meet The Press." Our question to you, ma'am, is this:

Do you agree with your husband's 2008 campaign adviser, Alex Castellanos, that women do not make less than men?

Our phones are open. Call us!

Watch This, And Imagine What the Bushies Would Have Done With It. 'Nuff Said.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

By Baxter

As America rolls into the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, we cats are disgusted at the faux umbrage in the air.

Why shouldn't President Obama take credit for hunting down the September 11 mastermind? Sheesh — isn't that what all the flag decals and the yellow ribbons and the freedom fries were all about?

Especially when we know that if, instead of letting bin Laden slip through his fingers at Tora Bora, the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived had killed him there instead, the Republicans would have immediately repealed the 22nd amendment so he could be President for life.

It's all ridiculous. The Republicans are just furious that Barack Obama has taken the "soft on terrorism" sword out of their hands. And Arianna Huffington? You make us hack up hairballs. We cats HISS at you and dump our dirty litter boxes in your hair.

Helping a Fellow American Who's Down on His Luck

By Zamboni

We cats had (let's think about these things positively) the opportunity yesterday to visit a Chrysler dealer's service department in Plattsburgh, New York. Everyone there was very cheerful and pleasant. Small wonder, since their employer had just announced a record 2012 profit of $1.5 billion.

This would be the same Chrysler, of course, whose butt was saved by the U.S. and Canadian governments back in 2009. We seem to recall that the Republicans were against helping the auto industry. (Had they prevailed, there would have been no Chrysler for Fiat to buy, and the union retiree fund that partnered with Fiat to complete the sale today would be flat freaking broke.)

In short, if people like Willard Mitt Romney were in charge, we would have been stranded in upstate New York this weekend, because those nice people in Plattsburgh would have been out of their jobs. But better that, in the GOP's view, than turn the country over to Barack Obama's radical, Kenyan, un-American socialism.

Record profits? Booming sales? More jobs? Saved jobs? The shame and horror are indescribable.

(PHOTO: We don't know who this PT Cruiser Woody belongs to, even though it looks like ours. But we like its license plate.)

We'd Rather Be Like Reno

By Sniffles

Are you falling for the recent Republican claims — that all Secret Service scandals, and all federal departmental spending sprees, only happen when Democrats are in power?

Well, don't. Because the very conservative (small "c" as well as capital "C") government of Stephen Harper in Canada is dealing with a very GSA-like scandal of its own.

Bev Oda — Stephen Harper's Minister of International Cooperation (and what the hell is that?) — attended a meeting in London last June. The topic was international immunizations — i.e., how to fight disease in developing countries, right? Well, Ms. Oda, who was supposed to have had the welfare of disadvantaged world populations uppermost in her mind, disliked her luxury hotel, and upgraded herself to the Savoy — all to the tune of thousands of dollars of additional expenses, charged to Canadian taxpayers.

In addition to the charges laid by the Savoy, Oda incurred thousands of dollars in limo fees, which could have been avoided had she just stayed put. But — no.

Ya know, we cats remember when Janet Reno was attorney general of the United States, and refused to do anything extravagant or fiscally irresponsible. We can personally testify that she flew coach, because we were on the same flight she was to Omaha once. Janet Reno was a model of the ideal public servant — but of course, since she was, right-wingers and their sympathizers in the media had to find other reasons to criticize her.

We cats think that the world would be a much better place if public servants were more like Janet Reno, and less like Bev Oda or all those jerks at the GSA. The bottom line is that corruption like this knows no political persuasion — but that if you were seeking avatars like Reno, chances are they'd occur more often in the Democratic Party than in the GOP. Just sayin'.

(IMAGE: Portrait of Attorney General Janet Reno, by Dorothy Swain Lewis)

Teabaggery, Canadian Style

By Miss Kubelik

We cats don't know if this is good news or bad news: America isn't the only country with right-wing crazies. Canada has them, too.

Specifically, in the western province of Alberta. It's historically been Tory country. Think of it as the Canadian Texas — lots of oil, swaggering, and, of course, the Calgary Stampede. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may look silly in a cowboy hat, but this is one part of Canada where his Conservative Party reigns supreme.

But in Alberta's provincial election this week, the Tories were in trouble. Why? Because a fringe-y party named Wildrose, headed by a Michele Bachmann knockoff named Danielle Smith, was poised to take over the Albertan government by a double-digit margin.

And then — it didn't. Wildrose went down to defeat by 10 points, and took Bachmann-Smith with it.

What torpedoed them? Well, a proposed provincial pension plan, which it turned out people didn't like, and a sudden questioning of climate change science, which people really didn't like. But another death blow was something the Wildrose folks called "conscience rights."

You'll recognize it. "Conscience rights" legislation would give healthcare providers cover if they don't want to prescribe birth control, and would allow marriage commissioners to turn away same-sex couples — even though marriage equality has been the law of the land since 2005.

As if that weren't enough, some of Bachmann-Smith's supporters didn't help matters by saying gay people will burn in "lakes of fire" and that being white is a good thing.

Gosh, it all sounds so familiar! We cats applaud the voters of Alberta — with whom we suspect we'd otherwise disagree on a lot of issues — for turning these right-wing nutbags away.

Meanwhile, anticipating the next round of elections in 2016, Bachmann-Smith says her party will rethink its more controversial positions. We'll be interested to see how elastic they'll be — or if they'll inflict on the Tories the GOP's dilemma of Romneyesque malleability versus the true believers.

(IMAGE: Danielle Smith: Scary, isn't she? Photo by Jason Franson of The Canadian Press)

Tidbits and Cat Treats — Romney-Wins-More-Primaries-and-Who-Cares Edition

By Baxter

We cats can't find anyone who's excited about tonight's Republican primary results. So between that and the fact that we're spending the week in the True North Strong and Free — and thus are diverted by amusements outside the American political world — there's nothing left for us to do but fall back on a grab bag of feline observations. Here goes.

The USDA has found a case of mad cow disease in California. Note to government-hating teabaggers: If you condemn Democrats for their horrid regulations and trust the private sector to keep you safe and healthy, you might want to change your mind and thank the Department of Agriculture the next time you eat a hamburger.

Gee, this John Edwards trial is embarrassing. (For John Edwards.) The guy has turned out to be a first-rate jerk, and that's saying a lot coming from felines who ardently defended Bill Clinton. (Is this a cosmic lesson in how much worse the Lewinsky affair could have been?) But we have to say that all this garment rending over Bunny Mellon's financial support seems quaint in the wake of Citizens United.

The Republicans are really starting to bore us with their over-the-top language about President Obama, not to mention their out-and-out lies. The President's economic policies have not "made things worse." On the contrary, it is generally agreed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act prevented a second Great Depression.

Finally, this person named "Steve Doocy" is an idiot. He didn't "seem to misquote the President." He made up an imaginary quote, not just out of whole cloth but also out of a complete disrespect for the current occupant of the Oval Office. To this FOX fool and to everyone else who's still exercised over Barack Obama's election, we cats say: Get over it.

Older Straight Guys, Listen Up!

“For months I have watched the rhetoric building. Last October, in an interview with an evangelical blogger, Rick Santorum promised to defund birth control on the grounds that contraception is ‘a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.’ …

"Ron Paul was no better, believing that the birth control pill did not cause immorality but that immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pill. Mitt Romney vowed to see a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“All these years later, I hear echoes of this same ignorance espoused by a new crop of self-appointed arbiters who are determined to oversee our morality. I heard it when Santorum backer Foster Friess said, ‘Back in my day, [women] used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,’ implying that if women held an aspirin between their legs, they wouldn’t open them.

"I heard it when I learned about proposed anti-abortion legislation in Kansas that would protect doctors who conceal vital medical information from pregnant women.

"And I heard it when Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown University law student a ‘slut’ and a ‘prostitute’ after she testified on Capitol Hill about allowing employers to avoid providing contraception for religious reasons.

"Fifty years of sexual freedom vanished in a sound bite.”

—Hugh Hefner, "The GOP's War Against Sex"

The Good Old Days of Watergate

By Zamboni

So: What does it say about you when the headline on your obit in The Washington Post uses the term "dirty tricks," and the first paragraph in your obit in The New York Times employs the word "saboteur"?

It says that you're a Republican with no respect for the Constitution and the rule of law, that's what.

Which is how, back in the day, we cats viewed horrible, despicable, Woodward-Bernstein-and-Redford-outed Nixonian aberrations like Charles Colson. The 37th President brought a boatload of people like Colson to power, and thanks to democracy and a free press, he was made to pay for that, right? That was then, and this is now — right?

Unfortunately, no. At least, not any more.

We're sorry to say that today's Republican Party makes Charles Colson and his Nixon Administration colleagues look like statesmen.

We cats never thought we'd long for the Republican Party of 1974. But we guess we are. How sad is that?

Gasp!

By Sniffles

A revelation: How gay does Marco Rubio look in this photo? Have we cats been out of the loop? We demand answers!

P.S. Come to think of it, Willard doesn't look too manly either.

Curse Of The Chaneys

By Miss Kubelik

We cats are appalled by the Secret Service kerfuffle, not because we're shocked that men frequent prostitutes (please), but because it's alarming to think that the safety of the nation's first African-American President could have been compromised at any point.

(You know, guys, if you want to get crazy and shirk your duties, do it when you're guarding somebody who isn't hated as much, okay?)

But here's something almost as bad: One of the principal agents jerks caught up in the scandal is a guy named Chaney (go figure), who everyone has heard of now because he 'fessed up to ogling the famous quitter from Alaska back in 2008.

We cats couldn't care less about that. What does concern us is this tidbit, reported today in The Washington Post: "No one answered the door when a reporter visited Chaney’s home in Northern Virginia. Parked outside was a silver Ford pickup truck, bearing stickers with a colorful outline of Texas, Chaney’s home state, and the mantra 'SECEDE.'”

So. Why is a guy with a "SECEDE" sticker protecting the President of the United States of America? And drawing a federal paycheck for doing it? (Or, on the other hand, not doing it?)

We cats HISS and dump our dirty litter boxes in this jackass's silver Ford. Is it too late for Lon Chaney to change his name?

It's The Real (Un-Nationalized) Thing

By Baxter

We cats generally don't care to comment on silliness. And we prefer to think that the intemperate, occasionally violent, but always, always stupid ravings from the teabagger crowd fall into that category.

But we can't resist the babbling of one Allen West. Even though, yes, the guy is obviously unhinged (something we've witnessed before).

This time, the wild, wild West has publicly declared that 80 of his colleagues in Congress are members of the Communist Party. This is true, he says, because the same 80 colleagues belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

"There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, socialism," West avers. "It’s about nationalizing production."

We cats say, whoa, right there. West did prattle on a bit about the welfare state and other right-wing bugaboos, but we thought it was significant that the first thing he mentioned was "nationalizing production."

In short, here's the deal: Allen West and his teabagger friends think that Democrats, and by extension, the President of the United States, are socialists. They think Democrats do stuff like nationalizing production. So, if Democrats are socialists, and if they're going to nationalize the private sector, why wouldn't they start with one of the largest, richest, most patriotically American, anti-socialist, private enterprise entities in the universe? Why wouldn't they nationalize........ Koch Industries?

Oh — President Obama has not nationalized Koch Industries? Hm. We cats think the whole Republican meme of Barack Obama as socialist has just been exposed for the fraud that it is.

And as for that other teabagger nut of the day? We'd be very happy to see Ted Nugent in jail. Any time.

Memo to Ann Romney, Part Two

By Zamboni

So it looks like Ann Romney is just as phony as her husband Willard is.

Willard's alleged ambassador to 51-plus percent of Americans has been caught privately gloating to a big-money crowd in Florida that she'd had the opportunity to fake some outrage at Hilary Rosen. Why are we cats not surprised?

Therefore, we think it's appropriate that we continue our list of questions to the wife who, Willard claims, helps him understand the needs, interests and opinions of female voters. But we're not holding our breath for the answers.

• How many cars do you own?
• How many homes do you own?
• How many horses do you own?
• In addition to Seamus, how many companion animals have you owned?
• If you have MS and are a breast cancer survivor, how is your healthcare coverage paid for?
• If you had to rely on your own Social Security benefits in retirement, how much of a Social Security benefit are you personally entitled to? (Not counting your husband's earnings?)
• Have you ever used birth control? Do your sons and daughters-in-law use birth control?
• How many guns does Willard have at home? (In all your homes?) How are they secured when your grandchildren come to visit?
• Have you ever personally faced gender discrimination in the workplace?
• Have you ever personally faced sexual harassment in the workplace?
• What is your opinion of laws designed to protect women from discrimination and harassment in the workplace? Do you support the existing framework of laws? If yes, are there other laws you'd like to see? If no, what specific laws would you abolish?
• Do you support marriage equality? Why or why not?
• Do you support the rights of gay couples to adopt? Why or why not?
• Do you know any gay couples? If yes, should they have the same rights that you and Willard enjoy?

(IMAGE: A nice twist on yesterday's photo, thanks to KayInMaine of White Noise Insanity.)

Memo to Ann Romney, Part One

By Sniffles

Dear Madam Ambassador:

Yes, we cats are addressing you as such, because your husband Willard has designated you his official liaison to 51-plus percent of the American electorate who are female. Seriously. Don't blame us, blame him!

And since any protestation from you will only yield a sheepish admission from him, let us proceed.

We cats have a ton of questions for you. In fact, we have so many, we can't list them all in one post. So we're breaking it up into two parts. Are you ready? Here goes!

• Most of the police officers killed in the line of duty leave a widow behind. What's your position on banning cop-killer bullets?
• What do you say to women who oppose "Stand Your Ground" laws?
• The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: For, or against? No waffles, please.
• The Mississippi "personhood" amendment: For, or against?
• "Transvaginal Bob" McDonnell's invasive ultrasound legislation for women seeking abortions: For, or against?
• Abortion in case of rape and incest: For, or against?
• If a private health plan pays for erectile dysfunction medications, should it also be required to cover birth control? Yes or no?
• Does your husband understand how hormonal birth control works?
• Should the federal government de-fund all Planned Parenthood programs? If not, which Planned Parenthood programs would your husband fund, and which would he de-fund?
• With more than one in four Texas children uninsured, what should be done to get every indigent woman and child in Texas the healthcare coverage they need?

Are you willing to discuss these substantive issues, and not just try to excuse your husband's history of dog abuse? Because your campaign is positioning you as having a serious policy role. Just wondering.

Head's Up, Tim Thomas!

By Miss Kubelik

Tonight is one of those nights in which politics and sports intersect. Or in this case, collide.

You may recall that back in January, Tim Thomas, a teabagger jackass goalie from the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins, refused to be honored by President Obama at the White House. All because — how did he put it? — "government has grown out of control." The team went without him. Ridiculous.

Well, now that the Bruins are playing the Washington Capitals in the Stanley Cup playoffs, it's time for a little payback. Caps fans are wearing Obama masks at tonight's game in the Verizon Center.

We think this is great — not just because it dings Thomas for disrespecting the President, but because it may get into his head a bit. In fact, we may not have seen anything like this since 1996, when a rain of rubber rats from Panther fans drove then-Bruins-goalie Tom Barrasso to take shelter in his net. We cats PURR.

(PHOTO: Stephen Whyno, The Washington Times)

UPDATE: Whoops! Looks like the only Bruin head Caps fans should have tried to get into was hulking Canadien-beating thug Zdeno Chara's. Oh, well!

"I Feel Nothing... I'm Surrounded by Morons"

Is life meaningless? Peut-etre.

A Night To Forget

By Baxter

Here's a fun political game for you Titanic buffs. (With apologies — after this week, we're all a bit saturated, aren't we?)

However, as overloaded as we all might be on the 100th anniversary of history's most famous maritime disaster, we couldn't help wondering what would have happened on the doomed ship had the Republicans been running things that night. So here goes.

If the Republicans were in charge the night the Titanic went down:

It wouldn't have been women and children first, no matter what class you were in. All the rich old white guys — John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, Charles Melville Hays, et. al. — would have been in the first lifeboat. (Except for Isidor Straus, who was Jewish, don'tcha know.)

Any woman with small children would die, but the pregnant Mrs. Astor would have been saved. (As noted, Republicans love fetuses, hate women and children.)

Lifeboats would only have been loaded on the starboard side, naturally.

Eric Cantor would have barred long-serving incumbent Republicans from entering the lifeboats, favoring upstart teabaggers instead.

Passengers would have been encouraged to shoot one another to get to the boats.

James O'Keeffe would have taken undercover video, after which, having stolen a lifeboat seat from a steerage passenger, he would have made selective edits to portray heroes as villains and villains, heroes.

With Chris Christie, Rush Limbaugh and James Sensenbrenner aboard, the ship would have sunk faster.

Clarence Thomas would have been the captain of the Californian: sitting ineptly on the sidelines, twiddling his thumbs, asking no questions — but dooming scads of people all the same.

The most cowardly passenger on board, of course, would have been Darrell Issa-may.

Meanwhile, Here's How Strongly the GOP Protects Moms and Kids (i.e., not much!)

By Zamboni

"More than a million Texas children remain without health insurance, and those kids are not getting the care they need," avers the Associated Press.

You know what? You can debate all the pundithead sound bites you want. But the important stuff is the damage that Republican policies inflict on real people — real moms, real families, real kids.

Unfortunately, it appears that while the GOP loves fetuses, it hates babies. And the women who bear them.

(PHOTO: Dorothea Lange, 1936. Everything old is new again.)

"Raising Children Without Financial Pressure Is Easier Than Having Financial Pressure"

By Sniffles

First, let us cats state that Hilary Rosen was correct. Yes, rearing kids is a difficult task — but we imagine it's a whole lot easier when you're a millionaire with maids, cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs, social secretaries, nannies and, last but not least, garage-elevator operators.

That said, we also are not naifs, and we understand how a statement like Rosen's can cause political complications as the news cycle unfolds.

Let us therefore praise President Obama's response, which started out flawlessly: "There's no tougher job than being a mom. Anybody who would argue otherwise, I think, probably needs to rethink their statement."

However, we must quibble with the President's subsequent assertion that political figures' family members are out of bounds — "civilians."

We understand where Mr. Obama is coming from on this. But goodness gracious — Willard Mitt Romney decided that the way to deal with his horrifying (and well-deserved) gender gap was to make his wife his official ambassador to women voters. The way we see it, if he put her out there, she's subject to comment. What's that old saying about "if you can't stand the heat..."?

But what we most object to is the President's closing remark: "I think me and Governor Romney are going to have more than enough to argue about during the course of this campaign."

Me and Governor Romney??? Mr. President, you cannot use "me" in the subjective sense. You must apologize to all us offended grammarians — immediately!

Freepers On the Trayvon Charges: It Ain't Easy Being White

By Miss Kubelik

We cats haven't looked in on our crazy teabagger friends over at Free Republic for awhile, have we? But with the announcement of second-degree murder charges against George Zimmerman, we couldn't resist any longer.

See, we had to check whether we were right — that the Freeps would say the charges stem from a whipped-up campaign by blacks who hate white people. Guess what: We were!

Here are a few of their classic comments. Read 'em quick, because site creator Jim Robinson is pretty diligent about scrubbing (dare we say whitewashing?) the more egregious examples of Freeper racism.

"The Big Cave! This is what America has become."

"This Cory [sic] lady is totally on Martin’s side...disgusting."

"I wonder what will be racial makeup of the jury."

"Have no doubt they will have a 90% black jury and he will be convicted."

"They want all those racist, Honkey Crackers to think twice before committing the hate crime of RWW (Resisting While White)."

"God help Sanford if it goes to court and Z is acquitted."

"If you live anywhere near the area, be sure your fire insurance is paid up in the event things don't go the mob's way."

"Charged with Self-Defense While White, a felony."

"Zimmerman is Hispanic... and yet to hate him and make it easier to hate him... the black leadership in America and their presstitutes have called him white. Being white and male in America today is a crime punishable by whatever in the **** holder and obama want the punishment to be."

(Yep, it's all Obama's fault, isn't it? We cats HISS.)

Tidbits and Cat Treats — Disaster Edition (Maritime and Otherwise)

By Baxter

We cats have been out and about in Washington all day, attending very important meetings. (Well, maybe not, but they were important to us.)

And while we were sojourning, what to our wondering eyes should appear — on our BlackBerry, of course — but a message telling us that Rick "Don't Google My Name" Santorum had thrown in the towel!

This started us thinking about all the disasters that are front and center in our news sources this week. So without further ado and in no special order of importance, here they are:

Disaster #1: Santorum: Are we surprised that Ricky has, um, pulled out? Mais non! We figured days ago that he wouldn't risk getting clobbered in his home state again. To which we cats say, "Go, Newtie!"

Disaster #2: Ozzie Guillen: Oh God oh God oh God oh God, we cats are so glad we don't live in Miami any more, and therefore don't have to care about this.

Disaster #3: Fat Mike Huckabee: Apparently Willard Mitt Romney isn't the only fakey guy in the Republican Party. Mike Huckabee kicked off his much-touted radio show yesterday with a staged caller.

Disaster #4: The Even Fatter Chris Christie: Who knows couch potatoism better than the two-airplane-seat Governor of New Jersey?

Disaster #5: RMS Titanic: Thanks to media saturation, we're all aware that this weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the fabled ship's sinking. If your only cinematic encounter with the Titanic is the abysmal 1997 James Cameron movie, we cats hope that you will check out the brilliant 1958 film, "A Night to Remember."

In the meantime, please take a quiet moment to appreciate this last view (above) of that magnificent ship. And think about the crew members who valiantly stayed in her boiler rooms on the night she sank, stoking the fires — and keeping the electricity on — as long as they could. Heroes are not always the people we expect, are they?

(PHOTO: Titanic leaves Queenstown, Ireland, her last port of call, on April 11, 1912. You know what happened after that.)

And the Ronnie Goes To...

By Zamboni

Are there Oscars for campaign web videos? If there were, this gem from Taj Clayton, candidate for Congress in the 30th District in Texas, would carry off a bushel of them.

Yes, we cats know Mr. Clayton is running in a May primary against an incumbent Democratic Congresswoman and a third candidate. We're not taking sides in that busy race. But we just want to say this is one of the best campaign spots we've ever seen.

Clayton's video is uplifting, informative, supportive of the President — and, best of all, it doesn't speak ill of his fellow Democrats. Ronald Reagan would be proud.

Just For the Record, A Cat Would Never Be Caught Dead In This

But Happy Easter anyway!

No Food, No Phone, No Pets

By Sniffles

So, who's going to be more successful in November ? A Saul-Alinsky-inspired community organization with boots on the ground — or a bloated, consultant-laden campaign that pulls out of key primary states thinking it can just carpet-bomb them with ads later?

Discuss amongst yourselves. But we cats think we know the answer.

We're sizing up the 2012 campaign with one measuring stick: Would we rather be us than them? In other words, has there yet been any point at which we Democrats have looked at the political landscape and said, gee, we wish we were in the Republicans' position on this, this and this?

Um, no. Not even with the economy and the Super PACS and the voter suppression drives and the nuts on the Supreme Court and all those Obama-haters out there. Still wouldn't trade. We'll let you know if we change our minds.

In the meantime, it's Easter, so let's try to forget the ugliness in the world and think nice thoughts.

"A War On Women? We're Not Waging a War On Women!"

By Miss Kubelik

Isn't it interesting how some goof-up or mishap never fails to follow a Romney primary win? It's positively eerie! But this latest one — the Republican Party's caterpillar kerfuffle — proves just how deeply the GOP has its head in the sand.

It's all over the Internet, of course, but we cats particularly loved this quote from the president of EMILY's List. (It almost — almost — makes up for the screwing-over her organization gave Janet Reno in 2002.)

"Women are not sluts. Or caterpillars. Our concerns are not fictional and your attempts to restrict our rights are not fantasy. We are your mothers, wives, sisters, friends and well over one half of the voting population. And we will be heard this November when we replace these unbearably out-of-touch Republicans with Democratic women who actually believe that we're people."

"A War On Caterpillars"

By Baxter

Gosh, what a relief!

We cats thought that the Republican Party was waging a war on women — dissing equal pay for equal work, opposing access to birth control and reproductive health services, gutting preventive healthcare programs for poor women, and mandating rape by transvaginal probe.

But now, we know it's all just not true. Why? Because Reince Priebus says it isn't! The media made it up!

Well, whew. It must have just been a bad dream. Thanks, Reince!

(IMAGE: Alice in Wonderland, of course. Appropriate, considering the subject. Plus, we cats wonder what Reince Preibus has been smoking.)

"Most People Are Nice, Scout, When You Finally See Them"

By Zamboni

Well, this is one for the history books: President Obama will introduce a 50th-anniversary broadcast of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on USA Network this Saturday.

Yep — in spite of the teabaggers, the birthers, and all the other skeptics of this Administration (and count us among those skeptics occasionally), there's no getting around the fact that when the first African-American President pays tribute to a great American book and film like "Mockingbird," it's pretty special. Heck, even Harper Lee broke her Salinger-like silence to say she was pleased.

There are "Mockingbird"-related items, of course, that we cats feel we must quibble with. For example, we have this nagging feeling that the film's story is supposed to take place in 1932, even though Miss Lee avers in the book that "Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself" — and FDR didn't say that until his Inaugural Address in 1933. But what bothers us most is: If it's so hot in Maycomb, why does Atticus wear that damn sweater all the time?

Not to mention the fact that Robert Duvall, who plays Boo Radley, is a Republican. And that as usual, Hollywood in "Mockingbird" is portraying not black American life, but whites' reactions to black American life — which we suppose can get pretty tiring and eye-rolling for people of color. Sorry, guys.

Still and all, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, it seems clear that justice for black people in this country is even now, just as in "Mockingbird," an ideal rather than a reality. If either the Martin event or the classic Lee novel and Stanley Kramer film help to educate people on this issue, then we cats say, hooray.

As Miss Lee wrote, you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. If George Zimmerman had stood in Trayvon Martin's shoes even for a moment that night in Sanford, Florida, things would be different today.

We cats neither PURR nor HISS, but sit looking out the window, thinking.

Tidbits and Cat Treats — The Origins Of The Specious Edition

By Sniffles

Yes, we cats know we've been offline for a couple of days, but there have been many hairballs to hack up, squirrels to snarl at and home-repair people to hide from. So we only have a moment to make the following observations:

We love the fact that, as he criticized the Republicans' punitive budget, the President invoked the name of a world-famous scientist whose otherwise universally accepted theory of evolution the off-the-cliff GOP rejects.

Speaking of the sorry state of the other side, Republican umbrage at the President's Supreme Court remarks is beyond laughable. They sure stop being huffy about "judicial activism" when it benefits them, don't they?

We generally appreciate the efforts of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But handing out flyers to kids at the White House Egg Roll? That's not going to endear you to the unenlightened, PETA. Find something else.

Finally, we are not going to write about this morning's silly TV face-off because the people involved are unimportant. Our natural selection for morning news programming is NPR anyway.