Premature Ejaculations

By Baxter

Was teabagger Congresswoman Jean Schmidt talking to FOX "News" on her cellphone yesterday when she screamed with joy outside the Supreme Court? We cats wouldn't be surprised. Of course, a few minutes later she and other Obama haters had to come to terms with the fact that the Supremes upheld the Affordable Care Act. What fun!

While we cats could watch this video endlessly, unsurprisingly, FOX "News" had a shameless excuse for their early, false report. "Our job is to share the news as we learn it," they said. "You don't have to wait until the conclusion of the Yankees game to give the score."

Nonsense. First, it's belittling to compare a SCOTUS decision on important public policy to a baseball game (despite John Roberts' famous pledge to, as Chief Justice, simply call balls and strikes). Even worse, though, FOX's statement is an expression of pride in reporting information that is partial and wrong. Perhaps their naked desire to see President Obama suffer defeat just got the better of them.

Whatever the reason or reasons, we can only imagine how FOX would have covered the following stories. Enjoy!

"South Secedes, United States Only Lasts 80 Years"

"France Falls, Nazis Win World War II"

"Nixon Beats Kennedy in First Televised Debate"

"Edsel, New Coke Big Hits with Consumers"

And, ironically, the most obvious one:

"Gore Wins Florida, Will Become 43rd President"

Memo to Rick Scott: Get Off Your Duff

By Zamboni

We cats were hacking up hairballs yesterday when we heard Republican Rick Scott — known in some circles as Florida's first Martian governor — express total confidence on NPR that the Supreme Court would overturn the Affordable Care Act today.

Well, nanny nanny boo-boo to you, Mr. Former For-Profit Hospital Executive. You were wrong, wrong, wrong, and arrogant, arrogant, arrogant. Find a paper bag and wear it over your ugly head, quick.

In the meantime, though, we'd like to demand an accounting as to exactly where the State of Florida, which has nearly 4 million uninsured citizens, stands on implementing the ACA.

Oops! Wait — we think we know. As USA Today has reported, "Florida has rejected or declined to pursue more than $106 million [of federal implementation money] and has returned $4.5 million...The state has not implemented an [insurance] exchange that would meet the requirements of the federal law."

Ricky, we cats think you should stop harassing public hospitals and get to work on setting up those exchanges. After all, time's a wastin', and Justice John Roberts has spoken.

Freepers Say, "Kill the Ump!"

By Miss Kubelik

The Supreme Court's verdict on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is so momentous, we cats find we must cast our net beyond Free Republic for idiotic reactions. Believe us, it wasn't hard.

Example: You've probably heard by now about how CNN and FOX screwed this up. However, we really can't be hard on everyone who got it so, so wrong. Because it was worth it see the video that "Hardball" showed — of Jean Schmidt screaming in joy outside the Court before she learned the truth. (That's a bit of payback for how we felt when they took Florida away from Al Gore in 2000. Take that, Jean!)

Then there are these morons, who apparently are so mad, they're going to move to Canada. Hm.

But we cats are true to our Freeper friends above all, so we return to them for the best of the best:

"Based on his past 2 descisions [sic], Roberts is a liberal. Wouldn’t be surprised if he constantly voted with the other libs from now on. Thanks, W. Great job in vetting this clown."

A Quickie: World Saved

By Sniffles

We cats will weigh in some more on the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Healthcare Act, but here are some preliminary reactions:

The right wing's early spiking of the football was embarrassing and silly. They should all be ashamed of themselves, and walk around with paper bags over their heads.

How is Willard Mitt Romney going to parse this decision when A) he himself supported the individual mandate, and B) he was just one day ago accusing the Administration of having wasted the country's time on healthcare reform?
 
Apparently John Roberts decided he wasn't going to let Antonin Scalia sever his manhood. Or else he was just feeling bad about screwing up the Presidential oath of office.

Somewhere, Ted Kennedy is smiling.

Shadow of Dickie

By Baxter

Just in case you were wondering, The Big Handshake today was in large part about this guy.

We cats were disgusted that the CBS Evening News tonight didn't even bother to mention Lord Louis Mountbatten, First Earl Mountbatten of Burma, semi-royal who knew everybody there was to know, "Uncle Dickie" to Prince Philip, last Viceroy of India, and the guy who probably would have made damn sure Charles didn't marry Diana — had he lived. 'Cuz see, Lord Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA as he sailed in his yacht Shadow V in 1979.

(Oh, and his sexy wife Edwina probably had an affair with Jawaharlal Nehru, but never mind.)

We cats feel compelled to post about Uncle Dickie tonight because — at least, based on CBS's inadequate coverage — we're concerned that journalism's institutional memory is fading. Therefore, please know that if Philip took pains to avoid Martin McGuinness today, Dickie is why.

Still and all, we think that the man who oversaw the transfer of power from the Brits to the Indians and Pakistanis in 1947 would have loved the symbolism of Liz and Phil's triumphant visit to Belfast.

Bonne Fete (One Day Late)

By Zamboni

We Americans are so US-centric, we cats didn't want readers to think we had missed St. Jean Baptiste Day.

So — Happy Fete Nationale! It appears to have been celebrated by 100,000 people in Montreal, without incident.

Maybe that's because, tuition rates aside, these are citizens who already enjoy universal healthcare. Therefore, they don't have to demonstrate about that. We cats wonder what it's like to have all your healthcare expenses taken care of, without question. (Sigh.)

(PHOTO: David Boily, Archives La Presse)

Color Us (Un)Constitutional

By Miss Kubelik

Well! The Supreme Court has spoken on Arizona's reprehensible immigration law — and, unlike Mitt Romney, we cats think we should say something about it.

First, allow us cats to state that Constitutional law was never our strong suit. We went into that college class all fired up and ready to go, and then found to our dismay that we were plunged into an eye-glazing, mind-numbing discussion of — gah— interstate commerce. Those first few weeks just ruined the whole course for us. We escaped, mercifully, with a grade of C.

But that was a hundred years ago, and we've lived many cat lives since.

Therefore, our first impression of the mixed message from SCOTUS today is an overarching one: That, no matter how heated these issues get in the political arena, their constitutionality is usually determined on the incredibly boring, Inside-Baseball principles of things like the aforementioned interstate commerce (healthcare reform, sometime this week) or separation of powers (immigration, today).

Which is why we cats find it intensely interesting that on immigration, by and large the Supreme Court came down on the side of the federal government. Sure, cops in Arizona can ask for somebody's papers if they get pulled over for speeding. But then what? We think, probably nothing — because SCOTUS gutted the rest of the law. But perhaps someone like Jeffrey Toobin can enlighten us further.

And what does this mean, if anything, for healthcare? Perhaps nothing. But, perhaps something. In other words, maybe the jackasses in the GOP who have been getting ready to spike the football on healthcare reform may want to reconsider their plans. (That is, if they're sane, reasonable people, which assuredly they are not.)

After all, if the right wingers on the Court weren't worried about Congress asserting its power over the states, why would Antonin Scalia have dissented so vigorously today?

P.S. The politics of all this, meanwhile, is a horse of a different color. More on that later.

UPDATE: The right-wing haters over at Free Republic are unhappy. We cats have barely begun to surf their comments, but we already love this one: "Un freaken believable! Like the fall of Rome, the will to defend our own boarders [sic] isn’t even there anymore. Sick!"

Blankenhorn Freaks Out the Freeps (And It's All Romney's Fault)

By Baxter

We cats thought we'd check in on our right-wing nutjob friends over at Free Republic to see how they were feeling about Willard Mitt Romney's Casper Milquetoast speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Well, their disgust — remember, they love "Herb" Cain and his electrified border fence — was predictable and, ultimately, kinda boring.

But then, luckily, we got sidetracked by a really swell story — that of laughable Prop 8 "expert witness" David Blankenhorn and his recent one-eighty on marriage equality. Now, Mr. Blankenhorn says, "Legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness."

Cue the Freepers. Boy, are they upset and mad! And even Willard does not emerge unscathed. So without further ado, here are some of their choicer comments. Enjoy!

"A direct line of causality can be drawn to the nomination of Mitt Romney, the father of Gay Marriage in America."

"The best that can be said about these turncoats is that they are cowards of the lowest order!"

"It is so very, very strange that Blankenhorn has suddenly announced his reversal on this issue. Someone got to him. But how?"

"Is 'David Blakenhorn' Mitt Romney’s pseudonym?"

"Whenever I read about a high-profile 'conservative' who lives and works in New York City, I always wonder if he's just a latent homosexual waiting for the right opportunity to come out of the closet. I swear, that place is a breeding ground for stunted misfits."*

*(Yep, we cats saved the best for last. We'd bet money that this final commenter wept copiously for New York's sufferings on 9/11, hailed Gotham's police and firefighters as the bravest in the world, slapped a "Never Forget" sticker on his car, and vowed bloodthirsty revenge. Ironic, no?)

Specs By Hillary

Not content to rest on her laurels as Blog-Inspirer-In-Chief, Hillary Clinton popped on a pair of cat's eye sunglasses at a State Department swearing-in yesterday. We (real) cats PURR, Madam Secretary!

Comfort Zone

By Sniffles

So in the wake of all the recent vitriol that's been tossed President Obama's way with nary a peep from the media, POLITICO has suddenly suspended a reporter for tweeting that Willard Mitt Romney is "only comfortable around white people."

We're sorry — we must have missed all those rallies where Romney basks in African-American adulation. See, the only photos and videos we've come across show crowds that look like this (above). A picture of diversity, no?

And we're sure that Romney has scores of black advisers on his campaign staff — yes?

Sure. With desks right next to all those gay people.

Sticker Schlock

By Zamboni

We cats were out running errands this afternoon (you didn't know we could drive, did you?), and we saw a bumper sticker with this famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil

is for good men to do nothing."

An admirable sentiment. But since the car in question also sported a "George Allen for Senate" sticker and other Republican stuff, we cats think we know who the driver thought "Evil" was. (If the driver were in Arizona, for example, he might listen to this lamebrain on the radio.)

We have a suggestion. Since both sides of the political debate like to appropriate the alleged Burke quote when they're out of office, perhaps — in the best interest of lowering everybody's blood pressure — it could be retired.

And only used by people who live in, say, Myanmar.

A Right, Or A Privilege?

By Miss Kubelik

On the eve (or thereabouts) of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, here are two candidates' takes on healthcare in America today.

Indiana teabagger and Republican Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock thinks that employers should have the right to exempt from their insurance plans not just coverage they personally object to, but any condition that jacks up costs — like cancer.

North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, a breast cancer survivor, is running for Senate as a supporter of healthcare reform. "I would never vote to take away a senior's healthcare or limit anyone's care," she says.

So. Who would you rather have representing your interests in Washington? Yep, we thought so.

Savior Shortage

By Baxter

With nothing else to do between now and the conventions, the lazy media assigned to the Presidential campaign are rolling out fawning, fluffy features and unsubstantiated speculation.

Like this ridiculous valentine to Baby Marco Rubio from Susan Page at USA Today. Once again, a credulous member of the press — who should know better, by the way — is peddling the quick-fix-for-the-GOP's-problem-with-Hispanics line.

Why should Page know better? Because she's been around long enough to have some institutional memory. How many "quick fixes" has the Republican Party touted for the minority groups it's hostile to over the years?

Remember Mel Martinez? That lamebrain quit the Senate before his term was up. Remember George W. Bush? He was supposed to "get it" as far as the Latino vote was concernbed, but he did nothing on immigration for eight years. Remember Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and J.C. Watts? All were supposed to be GOP saviors, official Republican ambassadors to their respective racial and ethnic enclaves. Yeah, that worked out.

How many saviors does a political party need? Why not just dump the racism and the window dressing and concentrate on good policy instead?

And now it appears that the Baby Marco veep hype may be just a wee bit overblown. (Then again, if the Romneybots aren't vetting him, maybe it means they are considering him.)

Lest We Furr-get: History's Finest Footnote

By Sniffles

Happy Watergate Break-in Day. Forty years ago today, security guard Frank Wills noticed duct tape on a door near the offices of the Democratic National Committee, and a little over two years later, Richard Nixon resigned.

Those of us who care about the abuse of power and the rule of law owe a big debt to Mr. Wills, who unfortunately is no longer around to collect it. But we take comfort in the knowledge that only in America can a black man working the $80-a-week graveyard shift end up bringing down an entire Republican administration.

Mr. Wills didn't do that himself, of course. He had a lot of help from Woodward and Bernstein, The Washington Post, Mark Felt, John Dean, Alexander Butterworth and Nixon himself. But if Mr. Wills had been unobservant or too careless to call the police that night, who knows what else Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Colson could have gotten away with?

We cats are sure you'll be treated to a ton of Watergate retrospectives over the coming months, but today belongs to Frank. So we PURR in his direction, and say thanks for doing what Richard Nixon swore to but never did — preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.

The Prerogative of Power

By Zamboni

So, just when we cats were about ready to comment on the Democrats' fainthearted reactions to the dynamics of the election, along comes the President with an important announcement on immigration policy.

We cats are the first to admit that this is a policy rather than a political matter. But it surely has political implications. And we're reminded, in case we should all doubt it, that the Obama team still has — and exercises — the ability to dictate the debate. Welcome to Campaign 2012, Republicans!

In short, the President's announcement today is a big "up yours" to the Republican Party — from its hating teabagger base to the remnants of its "JEB!" fringes (including those Marco-Rubio-Idiot fellow travelers in Florida). Other GOP victims include Willard's hapless head of "Hispanic outreach" and any Republican who ever "dreamed" (pun intended) of attracting Latin American voters to the Grand Old Party this November. Give it up, guys: Your untrammeled prejudice against Spanish speakers is topped only by your deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the President's policy move today. You are toast.

We cats are wondering if the media will take back their breathless coverage of whether Willard could break Obama's 40-point approval margin among Hispanics. If that approval rating goes up to 45, what will that mean for the Romneybots? If this policy decision affects pending races in Florida, Arizona and Texas, how will the media cover it? Has Willard recorded his Sunday talk show appearances yet? If not, what havoc will this announcement wreak on his talking points?

Today's events prove that the President and his team — for all the criticism they've been taking from both their own side and from the non-FOX media — still know how to change the conversation better than anyone. "Soft bigotry of low expectations," anyone?

P.S. We cats are purposely declining to discuss the jackass who interrupted the President at his Rose Garden appearance today — except to say that we completely understand the lack of respect that African Americans have had to deal with for decades, and we wonder how they've managed to put up with it without their heads exploding.

Bob Marshall's Bad Week

By Miss Kubelik

Just because the Republican Presidential primaries are over, don't think that the GOP clown car has stopped rolling.

For one, we cats can claim our own Prince William County, Virginia, as proud home of one of the Republican Party's most clownish clowns, Delegate Robert Marshall. This right-wing nutjob has had a really tough last few days, and we invite all of you to send him crying towels.

First, on Tuesday little Bobbie lost Virginia's Republican Senate primary to George "Macaca" Allen, by an utterly squishworthy margin. Allen — the man who publicly insulted a dark-skinned campaign operative on (oops!) that operative's home video, and who subsequently was booted from the Senate by Virginians who don't like their politicians mean — took 65 percent of a rain-drenched, low-turnout vote, while poor little Bobbie only got 7 percent.

Now, the Richmond Circuit Court has appointed to the district bench Tracy Thorne-Begland, an openly gay prosecutor whose nomination little Bobbie helped scuttle in the Virginia legislature last month. Sure, it's a temporary appointment, up for grabs as of the start of the next legislative session — but we cats can't think of a bolder political "nanny nanny boo boo" (unless it's the White House's move on immigration today, ha).

And what of poor little Bobbie? He's been left sputtering. In fact, one comment particularly caught our eye. Speaking of Mr. Thorne-Begland, Marshall said, "He's guilty of a felony. Sodomy is still a felony under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, today, as we speak."

Um — he is? If so, how can little Bobbie be so sure? Seems like kind of a personal piece of information, that. We cats think that little Bobbie is not telling us everything he knows — but not about Mr. Thorne-Begland. About himself.

Positively Palinesque

By Baxter

Every time we cats think we've seen it all, we haven't. Marco Rubio, the baby Senator from Florida, is quoted in POLITICO today, telling a whopper that we can't believe no one noticed.

Referring to "Jeb!" Bush — who recently roiled the GOP with some less-than-flattering comments about the state of the party — little Marco said that Bush "was particularly struck by the poison and the kind of venom that he, quite frankly, wasn't used to when he served in the Florida legislature."

Just for the record, "Jeb!" Bush never served in the Florida legislature. He was Secretary of Commerce in the Bob Martinez administration a hundred years ago. Then he ran for Governor and lost, and ran for Governor and won. Serving in the state legislature was something that would have been so, so, so beneath Battleaxe Barbara's precious boy — but Marco Rubio apparently hasn't a clue.

Will anyone in journalism call him on it? POLITICO certainly didn't.

In the meantime, it seems that some Republicans would like to nominate a Vice Presidential candidate who's stupider than the last one they had.

The True North (Dakota)

By Sniffles

What an interesting primary day it was yesterday in.... North Dakota.

We cats kid you not. Now that the June 12 elections are history — and we're thrilled of course with the stomping that Ron Barber gave that teabagger for Gabby Giffords's House seat — we're most fascinated with three results that rolled in from the Peace Garden State.

North Dakota, you say? Really? A state where nobody lives, and where we think everybody outside of an Indian reservation is white? The state whose Senate seat the Democrats are in danger of losing because Byron Dorgan is tossing in the towel and, well, it's North Dakota?

Yep. And here's why. In just 24 hours, North Dakotans:

Rejected Measure 2, which would have ended all state property taxes. In fact, it went down in flames, with 78 percent voting no. We cats can only imagine that Flickertail Staters had no faith that, should the Missouri River overflow its banks, Sheldon Adelson would rush in a few billion for flood relief.

Scrapped Measure 3, an execrably worded proposal that purported to "protect religious freedom" but that was really a coded prohibition of — you guessed it — abortion. Again, this was not a close vote: 65 percent against, 35 percent in favor.

Instructed the University of North Dakota to retire its "Fighting Sioux" nickname, by a whopping 68 percent. (We cats hope that all such obsolete team names soon go into the proverbial dustbin. Cat-inspired monikers, though, are fine.)

Three enlightened votes in one day — wow! What is happening in Roughrider Country? We cats have no immediate answers. But since turnout was the biggest the state has enjoyed for more than 50 years, we'd like to think that the torch is being passed to a new generation of North Dakotans — and they're not people who look, think and live like Willard Mitt Romney.

Uncivil Union

By Zamboni

Hot on the heels of the rude and cruel Karl Rove-American Crossroads tweet about Commerce Secretary John Bryson comes a study called "Civility in America 2012."

You guessed it: Politeness and respect are in short supply in the land of E Pluribus Unum, the study concludes. We "many" are not feeling much like "one."

But that's only part of the story. As the Republicans' and the teabaggers' and the Rove-Breitbart-Nugent-West-Wilson-idiots' behavior has gotten worse and worse and worse — and the one grownup in the room continues to be President Obama — we cats were interested to see how the President fared against other political figures.

Surprise! (Or, not.) Mr. Obama does quite well. In fact, he has the best scores of any politician or political group named. His "civil" rating is 26 points higher than Congressional Republicans', 25 points higher than the teabaggers' and — interestingly — 11 points higher than Willard Mitt Romney's.

We're not quite sure how to explain a low civility score for Willard, since he's supposed to be able to Etch-A-Sketch the stain of the Republican primaries away. But remembering how calm, reasonable and reassuring Barack Obama appeared to America in 2008, if this study is any indication of the country's feelings, Romney has some work to do.

"Attempted Levity," Our Aunt Fanny

By Miss Kubelik

We cats aren't aware that Commerce Secretary John Bryson has ever been a fierce partisan warrior in the tradition of, say, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Andrew Breitbart or the entire FOX "News" gang. In fact, before joining the Obama Cabinet he was, like many Commerce secretaries before him, a respected business leader.

How sad, then, that when Mr. Bryson suffered a seizure while driving this weekend, all Rove and the Republicans could think to do was to tweet gleefully about how he had to have been drunk.

This makes us cats ill. Add to that Rove's utterly inadequate "apology" and we feel multiple hairballs coming up.

Have they no sense of decency? Can't they just stop? And can we get Karl Rove arrested simply for being a hideous person?

UPDATE: One of our more sympathetic correspondents has pointed out a delicious and disgusting irony: That Karl Rove was the political operative who helped put into the White House a First Lady who was a vehicular manslaughterer, and that he similarly helped land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a man who was an admitted drunk until he was 40, and whose "bimbo eruption" late in the election of 2000 was not a mistress but a DUI arrest.

Clearly Rove is counting on America, and especially the press, not to have a sense of A) history and B) proportion. But we cats think that in light of all this, if Rove crawled naked over a football field of broken glass to apologize to Bryson, it still would not be enough.

The Passing of Patriotism

By Baxter

We cats have been lapping up the latest installment of Robert Caro's enormous biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, like a saucer of warm milk. It's seriously interfered with the other items on our "to do" list.

The book takes Johnson from about 1958 to 1964, and we're struck by all the things we thought we knew about the Kennedy Administration, which Johnson served as Vice President, but didn't. We admire JFK a lot, but unless you take the time to read someone like Caro you don't realize how much the Camelot legend has obscured the turbulence of his brief Presidency and the ugliness of the era's domestic political scene.

Think things are bad now? Well, yes, they are. As the recent Pew Research study has confirmed, our country is bitterly divided along partisan lines, more so than by race, class or ethnicity. But Caro reminds us that in 1963 police in Birmingham, Alabama were turning fire hoses and German shepherds on American citizens, and the Senate was being held hostage by a bloc of openly racist southerners led by Georgia's  Richard Russell.

Within a few years, the South would bolt from the Democratic Party after Johnson became President and pushed civil rights through Congress. So make no mistake, Americans were divided then as they are now. (And Vietnam was just around the corner.)

What bothers us, though, is that even in the Senate of Richard Russell, LBJ was able to get not just the Civil Rights Act but huge social programs like Medicare passed. It was partly because of his outsize personality, his Capitol Hill expertise, and his canny casting of legislation in JFK's memory. But it was also because despite Congress's divisions, in both parties there was still room — and an appetite — for political compromise.

If we cats could sigh, we would. If you want to wax nostalgic about the not-so-lovely days of Lyndon Baines Johnson, wax nostalgic over that.

A Bad Spell of Spelling

By Sniffles

We cats feel surrounded by spelling errors today. In the space of just a few hours, we've been exposed to the following examples of idiocy:

Prince George's County, Maryland recently issued high school diplomas with the word "program" as "progam," and will have to replace them.

The Romney campaign famously goofed up the name of the country we all love (above). Now, they've done the same to the President whom Republicans love even more.

A Manassas, Virginia white supremacist who threatened President Obama and who has been arrested on weapons charges once commented online that he needed an illegal AK-47 "to protect micelf [sic] and my wife from rioting neeegroes [sic].... Now I’m not advocating violence against [Obama], I’m just saying there are White folks out there that are none to [sic] happy with his ‘election.’"

So... okay. The white supremacist clearly has an IQ of about 30 and may be the victim of home schooling. Prince George's County needs a proofreader. And maybe the Romney folks do, too — but it's kind of disturbing to imagine how sloppily they'd run the country if they were given the chance.

We cats think that if someone has the time, it might be amusing to comb through the following documents for typos: 1) materials promoting the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, 2) Bain Capital's SEC filings from Willard's tenure, 3) every official proclamation issued by the Governor of Massachusetts, 2003-2007, and 4) all Willard campaign propaganda from 2008.

The Smell of Napalm in Wisconsin

By Zamboni

As if Willard Romney's unmerciful dismantling of Newt Gingrich wasn't proof enough, last night's Wisconsin recall results have confirmed it: Carpet bombing works.

Yep, let's all congratulate the Koch brothers. They are the proud buyers of a shiny, new, Badger State election, having outspent the anti-Scott-Walker forces 20 to 1.

(Of course, the Democrats helped, with their stupid, divisive primary. How they could have initiated a recall and not have their candidate settled in advance, we cats just haven't a clue.)

But before Rancid Pieface and his pals at the RNC celebrate too much, here's a small bit of good news: Democrats have taken back the state senate. Unless some Republican elections supervisor suddenly "discovers" 5,000 uncounted GOP votes somewhere.

If There's No Republican War on Women....

Why wasn't this Taliban-loving Republican woman hater fired by his female GOP boss? Why did he have to resign?

On behalf of the American people, we cats demand an answer.

Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

By Miss Kubelik

Yes, we cats know that we've been curiously silent on the subject of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee — but it's only because we've been traveling and have been otherwise occupied.

Therefore, better late than never. We'd like to offer our best wishes, Ma'am, and to say that in today's 140-character world, sticking to anything for 60 years is an impressive feat.

(P.S. What better proof is there of the Queen's paradoxical flexibility-in-the-face-of-tradition, than the fact that she's sharing her flotilla-reviewing stage with the Duchess of Cornwall? To those of us in the know, the image above says it all.)

Another One Bites the Dust

By Baxter

Well, it appears from the news today that the GOP had it right back in 2004 when it claimed "vote Democratic and die."

They just were wrong on who would die. See ya later, Abu Yayah al-Libi.

We cats look forward to history's take on the Bush-Cheney Administration's "war on terror" versus the Obama Administration's war on terror. It should be very satisfying reading.

Tidbits and Cat Treats — Back To Reality Edition

By Sniffles

Time to hit the road again for the land of E Pluribus Unum. We cats have enjoyed Quebec, and feel sorry for any tourists who canceled their trips here because of the student protests. (We've yet to see one.) In the meantime, here are some news items that made us appreciate being offline for awhile.

What's going to happen in Wisconsin? We cats have seen lots of polls. How can they be reliable? We ask because we're not sure how one polls for a type of election that's never been held there before. There's no turnout model for a recall, so we're not confident that anyone can accurately gauge likely Badger State voters over registered Badger State voters. Therefore, despite premature Republican victory laps, we'll bide our time and see what actually happens.

Let's make sure we have this right: Thaddeus McCotter is too stupid to get a measly 1,000 signatures to qualify for his Congressional re-election campaign, but he thought he was smart enough to be President?

Whoops, we cats think that "Transvaginal Bob" McDonnell just dropped off the Willard veep list due to a sudden attack of Cory Booker Disease.

The only jerk masquerading as a person whom we cats will miss less than John Edwards is Tim Thomas. (Assuming, of course, that both of them do the right thing and disappear from our sight forever.)

Last but not least, now that the Republicans seem to have embraced the inevitability of Willard's nomination, we cats are looking back at what was probably the worst primary in political history and mulling over Questions That The Media Didn't Ask. The first one that pops into our heads is for Rick Perry: Governor, when did the Perry family farm, which has been passed down from generation to generation, first get electricity? Was it thanks to the federal government? And if so, will you pay Washington back with interest?

The Great Montreal Panda Mystery

By Zamboni

It was raining cats (of course) and dogs (but mostly cats) in Montreal today. But the weather didn't keep protesters from marching against the provincial government's proposed tuition rate hike.

We cats avoided it all by getting the heck out of town and foraging for gourmet goodies in the Lanaudiere region just north of the city.

However, we have a question: Why do we always see photos of this Panda Man at the protests? Sometimes he's in full costume; other times — perhaps when it rains? — he just shows up in the head. Who is this person, and what does it all mean? Our phones are open!

A Quickie: Wyoming's Next Senator

By Miss Kubelik

The talks to end the Quebec student strike have collapsed, and we cats suspect we'll soon run into some casserole-ing in the streets of Montreal. (By the way, we'd be happy to see the striking students make good on their threat to disrupt the Grand Prix. NASCAR, ugh.)

In the meantime, south of the border, we've noticed that the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived (If Indeed He Were a Person) was the only Bush Administration pooh-bah to be a no-show at yesterday's hanging (if only) of you-know-who.

Why? It's obvious. Liz Cheney is going to run for Senate/Vice President/President in the not-too-distant future, and daddy didn't want to enrage the whacko Republican base by attending.

Participating in an amicable gathering graciously hosted by President Obama will do that, you know.

(IMAGE: Okay, it's not really them, but it's close.)