We Kid You Not

By Zamboni

This is not a sports blog, but since we cats are mighty unhappy with what's going on in Quebec politics these days, we figured we'd salute a Canadian feel-good story: nearly 100,000 fans turning out for exhibition baseball (and a salute to Gary Carter) in Montreal this weekend.

Gary, may he rest in peace, was probably a Republican. But when we cats were kittens, he gave us a lot of joy. (Let's go, Mets!) So let's remember Gary today — and hope for major league baseball in Montreal tomorrow. We cats PURR.

Tidbits and Cat Treats: Going Out Like 7 Million Lambs Edition

By Sniffles

Today is the last day to enroll in Obamacare. (Yes, we know there's an extension for folks who have started to enroll but who have encountered technical difficulties.) If you need health coverage, click here. If not, sit back, relax, and consider the news stories that are grabbing our attention this final day of March.

We cats have snarled an awful lot about the Obama Administration's failure to sell the Affordable Care Act after it passed. And we're not taking back a single word. So on this enrollment deadline day, we urge the White House to celebrate the numbers, promote the success stories, and generally Not Let Up. Because the Republicans surely won't.

Does anyone besides us think that Chris Christie's gaffe about the "occupied territories" is just more proof of his inability to think of others beside himself? A thoughtful politician would have considered the world view of his audience before he spoke. As we well know, Chris Christie is not thoughtful.

Finally, we cats have heard a lot of desperate Republican chatter about Jeb! in 2016. We say desperate because while the Establishment seems to kinda like him (accent on "kinda"), the base positively loathes him. But what strikes us most is Pundit World's assertion that a Jeb! nomination would take away the GOP's "Hillary Is Old Hat" argument.

Hm. Only men would say that. In fact, yes, they were all men. Because how could the first woman to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office be "old hat"? We cats give these boy pundits the Randy Mastro Sexism Award, and we HISS.

Let's Put On A Show!

By Baxter

Two elaborate spectacles are taking place in different worlds this week — sports and politics — but they're more alike than you might think.

Dan Snyder, the Washington football team owner who, as a minority himself, should know better, has launched a ridiculous "foundation" to support Native Americans so that he can weasel out of changing his club's ethnic slur of a name. Two problems: Not only does the "foundation" do nothing to correct the outrage of a moniker that many news organizations now refuse to use, but Snyder's managed to hire a crook to run it.

Meanwhile, up the road a piece in New Jersey, Chris Christie — desperate to reboot before he gets on a plane to go kiss Sheldon Adelson's ring — is touting an exculpatory "investigation" into the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge. Again, two problems: The "investigators" (i.e., Christie's legal team) didn't talk to any of the principal players in the scandal, and they succeeded in making Bridget Kelly, Bill Stepian and, we presume, David Wildstein very very mad.

Will either of these transparently self-serving campaigns work? Maybe with the folks who populate the insular realms that Snyder and Christie live in: the moneybags and minions, corporate sponsors, credulous reporters, Bill Kristol and FOX "News." But with everyone else? We don't think so. 

Nevertheless, the shows go on. Depending on whom they're amusing or enraging, we can debate whether they're comedy or drama. But each one, in its own way, is surely a farce.

Another Example of "Bad Foresight"

By Miss Kubelik

And now let us pause for a bit of political Inside Baseball: The Virginia Republican Party is nearly broke.

They have less than $70,000 in the bank, a former Governor brought up on 14 felony counts — so, no sugar daddy to help raise emergency funds — and a nominating convention to put on (and pay for) this summer. Hm. Sounds dire.

Now, we cats know that nobody but geeks and insiders care about stuff like this, right? But as long as the 2012 Republican nominee, Willard Mitt Romney, is in his blame-everybody-for-everything mode — and by implication, exonerating himself — let's lay this impoverished state GOP at his feet, shall we?

Because we can, you know. See, if the Romney goon squad hadn't helped shut Gingrich, Santorum, Huntsman and Perry out of the Virginia Presidential primary in 2012 — leaving only Willard and Ron Paul on the ballot — there would have been a real nominating race in the Old Dominion. Which would have meant real organizing, real party building, and real relationship building, in what everyone agrees is an important battleground state.

Instead, the Romney team greedily staged a faux two-person primary — which not only helped Willard lose Virginia in November, but also squandered a key opportunity to build a stronger state organization for the future.

Actions have consequences. For a short-term power grab, Willard helped cripple his party in the long run. We cats don't understand how Republicans, who are supposed to be so good at business, keep making this mistake over and over again. But it makes us PURR.

(IMAGE: Willard at work. He looks like a good businessman. But he just... isn't.)

Lest We Furr-get: Stopping The Clock

By Zamboni

Everyone in Pundit World is clucking over the latest extension for folks to finish enrolling in Obamacare. An extra two weeks! This is an outrage!

We cats say, big woo. We don't understand why the whole world seems to have adopted the Republican line of thinking: That it's a terrible, terrible thing to give people more time to get health coverage.

Wait — we do understand. It's because we Democrats are wusses. Why don't we ever push back on this stuff?

After all, Republicans are equally guilty of breaking the rules when it comes to healthcare. Remember Medicare Part D, when they left the vote open on the House floor for three hours so they could round up support they didn't have? One Republican — yes, Republican — called it "the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress."

So let's all just grab our fans and smelling salts — and remember that, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans will be able to live better lives. Which, according to the GOP's Hobbesian playbook, just can't be allowed. We cats HISS.

Bad Behavior

By Sniffles

We cats feel surrounded by buffoonish conduct lately. For example, is it just us, or is it really tacky to parachute off the World Trade Center? Why would anyone want to do that, after dozens of people fell or leaped to their deaths from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001?

But as usual, nobody can top the Republicans when it comes to being vile. Take Donald Rumsfeld, who on top of his myriad other offenses now has exposed himself as a clumsy racist by calling our first black President less capable than a — well, you know what he said.

We cats say: There are knowns and there are unknowns. The known known: Donald Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense in the postwar era. The unknown unknown: Since he already long ago disqualified himself from any serious foreign policy discussions by insisting there were WMDs in Iraq, why does anyone listen to him now? It's a mystery that only FOX "News" can answer.

Then there's Joni Ernst, a GOP lamebrain from Iowa — adored by the Koch brothers, by the way — who in a cringeworthy TV ad compares what she wants to do in Washington to what she used to do back on the farm. (Some unhappy pigs are involved. We cats are detecting a real Republican animal motif here.) And finally, let's not forget the Kochs themselves, who are busy trying to buy a county election in northern Wisconsin, so they can destroy its unspoiled beauty with a 22-mile-long iron-ore mine.

Yep. We can see how the Republicans have sensitized their message and behavior, and how the negative environment in Washington is all Obama's fault. Not. We cats HISS.

Willard, Projecting Again

By Baxter

So Willard Mitt Romney, in full hissy-fit mode, goes on the attack just as President Obama boards Air Force One for Europe to meet with our allies on nukes, Russia and the Ukraine.

These Republicans are hilarious. Can you imagine their reaction if they had the White House and Democrats violated the old "stop criticizing the President at the water's edge" rule? They'd go insane. (Of course, that rule would never apply to The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, since he and his Vice President couldn't cross the water's edge without being arrested for war crimes.)

But back to Willard. He's so upset, you see, because he thinks the President has been "naive" about Vlad Pootie and didn't have the "foresight" to know that Vlad would snatch Crimea.

How ironic! Willard is the same guy who was — shall we say? — "naive" enough to believe the Republican pollsters who said he was going to win. And who didn't have the — what's the word? — "foresight" to prepare a concession speech on Election Night. But we're supposed to listen to him on foreign policy?

We cats would HISS if we weren't laughing so hard.

Gardner The Great

By Miss Kubelik

Three cheers for Alfonso Gardner, the Paul Ryan constituent in Wisconsin who stood up at the failed 2012 VP nominee's recent town hall meeting and pushed back.

It takes a lot of guts to do what Gardner did: Confront a leading Republican on his party's incessant racial dog whistles — and do it calmly, thoughtfully and unswervingly. Ryan continued his charade of insisting that when he disparaged "inner-city" Americans for "not working" and "not even thinking about working," his statements had "nothing to do with race." To which Gardner replied, “If you didn’t mean this, you wouldn’t have said it, OK? People don’t say something that they don’t mean.”

The only regrettable thing was that Gardner wasn't given the chance to ask Ryan why he prefaced his "inner city" remarks by referencing a white supremacist named Charles Murray — who spends his career at the American Enterprise Institute arguing that science proves blacks and Hispanics genetically inferior.

Murray apparently is a role model for lots of Republicans — like that "Southern Avenger" guy Rand Paul was forced to fire, or Jason Richwine, who wrote the Heritage Foundation's laughable "immigration study." Birds of a feather and all that, you know?

We cats can't look inside Paul Ryan's heart and mind. So we can't say whether he's actually a racist. But he sure talks like one.

Voices Of Reason

By Zamboni

We cats know that The Washington Post is a sad shadow of its former self, but every now and then it makes us realize that anew by publishing a column that would never have made it past the paper's editors of old.

Latest example: Metro columnist Petula Dvorak, tsk-tsking over the Voice of Choice website, which has published a list of antiabortion bullies who target providers, patients and others in personal and potentially threatening ways. Voice of Choice uses the bullies list not to infringe on First Amendment rights, but to stage counter-protests and to stand up to zealots before things get out of control.

Yet Dvorak hand-wrings: Is this bullies list fair? Wouldn't it be better if anti-choicers focused their energies on lobbying lawmakers? Shouldn't they "just leave women, doctors, nurses and their families alone"?

Oh, yeah, that'll happen.

In the name of George Tiller, what rock have you been living under, Ms. Dvorak? We cats have rarely seen such a naive piece in a (formerly) great metropolitan newspaper. It is perfectly legitimate for Voice of Choice to shed light on harassers and to buy some space, and peace, for women who are attempting to control their reproductive destinies — as the Supreme Court said they have the right to do.

We cats are sick of the nutcases, the gun lovers, the religious whackjobs and the haters always getting to set the terms of the debate — and so we are thrilled when organizations like Voice of Choice push back. In fact, we might send Voice of Choice a few dollars today. If you do the same, you'll make us PURR.

(PHOTO: Dr. George Tiller's body is removed from his church, where he was murdered.)

We're Glad You're Dead, You Rascal, You

By Sniffles

A real jackass died today. We cats will not give him further publicity by mentioning his name, but Champagne bottles are surely being popped across America. There is not a wet eye in the house.

Of course, it always was ridiculous to say that God killed American soldiers because of you-know-what. American soldiers were killed because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Tenet and a bunch of other war criminals invaded a country that didn't attack us. Duh!

So, how to explain Mr. Jackass's unrelenting anger and hate? We think we spotted clue in an obit just now. "One of his grandsons was propositioned at Topeka’s Gage Park, which he called a gay cruising spot." Hm. And the grandson was in Gage Park why? We cats PURR.

P.S. While we're on the subject of hatemongering, we'd like to know how Mr. Jackass was any different from this loser. Our phones are open!

Wasted Resources

By Baxter

There must be a women's clinic near our local hospital in Virginia — one that political has-been Ken Cuccinelli has failed to close. Because every time we cats drive by there, we see a small group of people — who are almost always men — waving their anti-abortion signs and praying the rosary. We haven't been able to determine whether their vigil has impeded traffic at the healthcare center in any significant way.

But it makes us wonder: How much money and effort has the anti-choice movement spent on meaningless demonstrations like theirs? How much cash have they wasted on flyers, posters, signs, hand warmers, doughnuts and coffee, bullhorns, candles and rosary beads? — not to mention First Amendment lawsuits, criminal assault and trespass lawsuits, and transportation to Washington, DC every January 22?

Wouldn't it be great if, instead, they devoted all those resources to:

• Reproductive health education in schools, community centers and places of worship?
• Genuine access to low-cost, no-hassle birth control?
• Maternal health and nutrition assistance for poor women?
• Child nutrition and parenting classes for teen moms?
• Legal assistance for women who have been impregnated by rape?
• Addiction treatment for women who have been forced to trade sex for alcohol or drugs?
• On-the-job training, job counseling and workforce training for women needing a leg up on the career ladder?
• Scholarships for women at two- and four-year community colleges, to help them break the cycle of poverty and dependency?

We're not talking about diverting what's left of meager social service budgets to underwrite religious organizations and programs. We're talking about real community efforts — administered by people who may be pro-life, but who are qualified by something more authentic than a Bible and a flyer of a bloody fetus Photoshopped into an open garbage can. And who feel motivated to address the question of unplanned pregnancies, which is the true crux of the problem.

When the anti-choice forces want to engage in programs like that, then we'll talk. Until then, we'll drive by your pathetic little vigils with disgust and contempt. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Person without a uterus, demonstrating against reproductive choice. Typical!)

Overplaying Their Hand

By Miss Kubelik

Here we go again: Something good happens for the Republicans, and they inflate it into earth-shattering significance — aided and abetted by lazy punditheads engaging in their usual hyperbole.

Last week, Democrats lost a close special election in Florida, after which the GOP hopped on their anti-Obamacare horses and kicked off a stampede. Karl Rove and Rancid Pieface have both gone on record predicting doom for anyone with a "D" after their names this fall. And Beltway commentators, lemming-like, have followed suit.

Meanwhile, Obamacare just celebrated its 5 millionth enrollee — and we still haven't a clue, four years after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, how the Republicans are going to take that coverage away. Or how they're going to revoke the rule on pre-existing conditions, or on young adults staying on their parents' health plans, or on any of the other myriad benefits that the law bestows. Hm.

Long story short, expect this narrative to change a million times between now and November. And sadly, expect everyone to have forgotten this month's GOP glee by then — first, because we'll all be deep into our new predictions, and second, because this happens all the time, and nobody ever pays a price for it.

Really! Remember when Rove said Republicans would win big back in 2006? Or when Peggy Noonan and George F. Will said Willard Mitt Romney would beat President Obama? Their reasoning: "It feels like it." Will even predicted Willard would rack up 321 electoral votes. Whoops.

We cats will stick with Nate Silver, thank you, who yesterday skewered the Noonans and Wills of the world anew when he said, "My chief problem with [opinion journalism] is that it doesn’t seem to abide by the standards of either journalistic or scientific objectivity. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to abide by any standard at all."

When Nate tells us to worry, then we'll worry. In the meantime, we cats will focus on getting Democrats to the polls in November. That will make us PURR.

No, Wait Again — We'll Have A Guinness!

We cats will get back to "real" posting soon (after we shovel our St. Patrick's Day snow). In the meantime, we're celebrating Guinness USA's withdrawal of its Paddy Day parade sponsorship in New York.

Ford Motor Company: Your move!

(IMAGE: BostInno)

A Note To The LGBT Community On Fred Phelps's Impending Death

We'll Have a Sam Adams! No, Wait — We'll Have a Heineken!

By Zamboni

How can we cats choose, when both Sam Adams and Heineken have withdrawn their sponsorships from Boston's and New York's silly St. Patrick's Day parades? See, Sam and Heiny don't like folks who hate on gays. And if parade organizers don't let LGBT groups march, they're haters. We cats say, blessed are the beer makers!

Of course, our right-wing friends at Free Republic are very upset about this. And homophobes that they are, they're swearing off beer this minute. But get a load of this comment from the unsuspecting Freeper handled "Zulu," who pledges never to have a Sammy again.

The problem? "Zulu" says, "I’ll stick with Guinness Stout or Heineken."

Have any fellow Freepers broken the news to this clueless bigot that Heineken is a gay-loving company, too? In fact, that a Heineken USA spokeswoman said, "We believe in equality for all"?

That equality thing's a bitch, isn't it, Freeps? Too often, it includes people who are different from you. Which is as it should be. We cats PURR.

Tidbits and Cat Treats: The "Everything's Terrible" Edition

By Sniffles

Feel like we Democrats are having a rough week? Well, it happens to us, too, you know. It's just that our bad spells don't seem to be nearly as awful as the Republicans'. Anyway, here are some appalling news items that have gotten our attention today.

Want to know why the Florida special election wasn't a referendum on Obamacare? Because it was about turnout. Sadly for us, a textbook example of what happens when you don't get your voters to the polls. Shame on you, Alex Sink.

However, allow us to take one more opportunity to box Team Obama's ears for not selling that freaking healthcare law earlier — and thus making themselves vulnerable to all the lies, innuendo and mendacity that the Republicans are dishing out. HISS and SNARL to all of you.

Gosh, it seems like everybody's jumping on Hillary Clinton for saying that Vlad Pootie barging into Crimea is like Hitler. We cats disagree. Yes, the Nazi comparisons have generally been overdone — but we, too, think of Hitler whenever we hear the word "annexation." We've all seen "The Sound of Music."

Paul Ryan's really been embarrassing himself lately — making racist comments about "inner-city" folks "not even thinking about working," and criticizing parents who don't pack their kids a brown bag lunch. But please — this is nothing new. Ryan's showing as much understanding and compassion as when he washed clean dishes in a soup kitchen.

Finally, Fat Mike Huckabee says that denying women's reproductive rights is a sure way for the Republicans to win elections. We cats say: What are you waiting for, GOP? Nominate him! That would make us PURR — big time.

Unlucky 13

By Baxter

We cats are tempted to discuss Bridgegate again, thanks to yesterday's court appearance of a haggard and unsmiling Bridget Kelly. But we have a few things to say about the special election for Florida's 13th Congressional district.

Was it a bellwether? Meh. The district is Republican, and the results were much too close to give Republicans the breathing room they'd prefer. The 13th is a former GOP bastion now split almost completely down the middle, which is encouraging. Still, we're getting awfully tired of Alex Sink's inability to win.

But we have to hang this one not only on Sink but around the neck of the entire Democratic establishment. A perfectly good candidate, Jessica Ehrlich, was chased from this special election to make room for Florida's almost-Democratic Governor.

In retrospect, one has to wonder why. Ehrlich, who is from St. Petersburg, ran for the seat in 2012 and lost. But that was against Bill Young — his last re-election before checking out last October. There's nothing like running for Congress once when it comes to laying a solid foundation for running again. Which Jessica was all set to do until the Democrats decided on Sink.

Unnecessary self-inflicted wounds like this drive us cats crazy. But before we HISS and dump a dirty litter box on somebody, we want to say that we hope Ehrlich runs against David Jolly in the fall. In fact, if she sends us a fundraising e-mail today, we'll shoot her a couple of bucks.

Preet-y Exciting!

By Miss Kubelik

Isn't it fun how Chris Christie's "Bridgegate" scandal keeps mushrooming? We cats are quite amused. The latest news flash is that the feds are subpoenaing Christie crony David Samson, who for some time now appears to have been treating the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a personal cash register.

This is a pretty big deal. Not only is US attorney Preet Bharara not somebody whose cross-hairs you want to be in (just ask Wall Street), but we suspect that earlier stories about Samson's conflicts of interest were discreetly leaked to set the stage for these subpoenas. After all, that's how Christie operated when he was US attorney in New Jersey.

The timing of today's news is similarly interesting. Had the subpoenas surfaced on Friday — right after Christie made what was deemed an acceptable appearance at CPAC — the Republicans would have screamed that Bharara was playing politics. So it seems to us that somebody in the Southern District of New York knows what they're doing.

So, good! We cats are looking forward to further developments in this never-ending Christie cauchemar. In the meantime, though, we're wondering how it's possible that a guy implicated in a "traffic study" that imperiled public safety on the 12th anniversary of 9/11 could be represented by a former Secretary of Homeland Security. We cats HISS and dump a dirty litter box on Michael Chertoff's head.

(PHOTO: The official Bridgegate clown college: Baroni, Christie, Wildstein and Samson.)

The Age Of Ignorance

By Zamboni

So, CPAC has wrapped up and surprise, surprise — the forces of Paul have once again managed to pack the house and win the meaningless straw poll. Sadly for the Republicans, however, CPAC's love was spread too thin among too many candidates to achieve any sort of consensus.

We cats like our GOP that way: disagreeing, and disagreeably at that. One teabag-adored speaker managed to be rude enough about a former Republican nominee that another former Republican nominee has called for an apology. (Yeah, that'll happen.)

But those fireworks aside, what continues to fascinate us is why any woman would attend a lamebrain, angry-white-male confab like this. As observant journalists have pointed out, Republicans' most prominent females are cartoons who will never be seriously considered for high office. And with policy positions so hostile to their rights and their lives, the GOP offers no reason for clear-thinking American women to vote for them or work for them.

As for the ever-smaller percentage of women who doggedly toe the Republican line election to election, we cats have no clue. We can only suppose that, to paraphrase Edith Wharton, there's no use trying to emancipate a woman who hasn't the dimmest notion she's not free.

(IMAGE: Sarah Palin can read?)

Not A Pretty Picture

By Sniffles

A day after New Jersey's scandal-tarred "Puffer Fish" took the stage at the circus known as CPAC, staff e-mails about "Transvaginal Bob" McDonnell's squeezing, wrenching, grasping cheerleader wife have surfaced in The Washington Post.

You remember the McDonnells: They were recently indicted on 14 counts of accepting illegal gifts and loans and Rolexes and $15,000 New York shopping sprees. Now, with these previously unknown e-mails coming to light, and L'Affaire McDonnell washing over us anew, we cats have a few additional thoughts. Specifically:

1. You know what's amazing? How the Republicans' two shining stars of 2009 have not only gotten embroiled in stupid, avoidable scandals — they've both run offices that were mostly, or totally, dysfunctional and out of control.

2. As we head toward 2016, and Rancid Pieface and his GOP cohorts scream about how we should all remember Hillary the Harpy of the East Wing, let's take a moment to think about Maureen McDonnell and her slimy little Anatabloc friend.

3. Once again, Transvaginal Bob is totally MIA in these e-mails. In fact, his staff bemoans his absence. “We were begging for help, [but]... as soon as he had to go back and do his job, things went downhill again," one sighs. We cats wonder why Bob wasn't there for his Biblical helpmeet, inspiring her to befriend a sleazy tobacco hustler instead.

4. There is no greater sense of entitlement than that felt by the wife of a Republican politician. Perhaps instead of harassing SNAP recipients, we need to start asking GOP wives to pass a drug test before they can receive First Lady benefits. Just a thought.

(IMAGE: "Hey, Bob! This portrait makes me look 40 pounds thinner!")

Barbs, Slaps And Slurs

By Baxter

In the olden days, people avenged insults by fighting duels. Today, they don't even get that far, because we have talking head TV shows and social media.

The Republicans should know this better than anyone lately. Insulting others is their stock in trade, whether through their economic and social policies — which demonize the poor and say women are incapable of making their own medical decisions — or by their conduct at, say, Congressional committee hearings.

Darrell Issa, whose checkered past already makes him vulnerable to plenty of insults himself, has had to apologize to Congressman Elijah Cummings, whom Issa gifted with a priceless "I paid for this microphone!" moment that, to the Democrats' glee, will surely haunt Issa forever.

But the GOP insulter-in-chief has got to be Ted Cruz, mainly because we cats love it when Republicans train the abuse on one another. Speaking at the clown confab that is CPAC yesterday, Cruz jabbed three of his party's former standard bearers as "President Dole, President McCain and President Romney."

Whoa. In a hierarchical organization like the GOP, a young whipper-snapper zapping the old guys who have gone the distance will surely raise some eyebrows. (Even we devoted Democrats twitched our whiskers a bit.)

The CPACkers, of course — nutjobs that they are — lapped up Cruz's speech like kittens with a bowl of milk. But we caution our teabagger friends: Watch out for unintended consequences. Like... Bob and Elizabeth Dole endorsing Hillary in 2016. We cats PURR.

If God Hated, He Would Hate Haters

By Miss Kubelik

We cats think it's hilarious when homophobes get their panties in a twist because someone has called them out for what they are. Gosh, they really don't like that!

The current 'phobe in question is Virginia's own Loudon County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, who is just beside himself that his stupid anti-civil-rights organization, "Public Advocate of the United States," has merited hate-group status courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As his lawyer whines, "Almost every article written about Supervisor Delgaudio mentions the designation of Public Advocate as a hate group." Awww! Like his compatriots in the Tea Party and the Minutemen, Delgaudio squirms and bleats every time he's tagged with the very label he personifies.

Well, allow us cats to set the record straight. We have visited Public Advocate, and we can report that the website proudly displays the following anti-gay "Testimonial" from "Wayne B." in Michigan:

"We sing from the same page in hatred for this lifestyle." (Emphasis ours.)

There it is! The H-word! In all its glory, enshrined in their "God bless you" messages of support for all the world to see.

Heck, even the nutjobs over at Free Republic moderate their comments. This guy Delgaudio is an idiot who doesn't deserve clear-thinking Americans' time of day. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Fred Phelps's merry band of — wait, "God hates Jews"? What???)

Not-So-Random Harvest

By Zamboni

Stephen Harper must be frustrated. He's tried even harder than President Obama to box Vlad Pootie's ears — not only putting the brakes on the G-8, but recalling his ambassador to Russia and flying the Ukrainian flag on Parliament Hill. Still, nobody seems to be noticing.

But no matter, because Canada is, alas, used to being eclipsed by its giant neighbor to the south. Besides, Harper has his mind on other things — like politics. Specifically, using a recent, official, invitation-only event with the Aga Khan to harvest the e-mail addresses of potential Conservative supporters. Hm.

Now, far be it for us cats to be offended by promotional data mining. Goodness knows, we've received plenty of e-mails asking us to wish the President, Mrs. Obama, President Clinton, and other Democratic luminaries a "happy birthday!" — and we know that if we do, we'll get a fundraising appeal down the road. We also are not shocked that anyone sending congratulations to Justin and Sophie Trudeau on the birth of their new baby would land in the Liberal Party's database. (Harper himself, in fact, has asked Tory supporters to wish wifey Laureen a happy Mother's Day... same result.)

But placing the livestream of an official event on the Conservative Party website and restricting it to those who sign up with a name and e-mail address? That just doesn't pass the smell test. And we cats have very good noses. Which makes us HISS.

Republicans: "We Are All Hypocrites Now"

By Sniffles

When we cats were kittens, we learned in political science class that in times of foreign policy crisis the American political world rallies around the President. Boy, has that ever changed.

John McCain — who has forever disqualified himself from substantive discourse with his 2008 Vice Presidential pick — Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani are just a few of the lamebrains screaming about how wonderful Vladimir Putin is (and by contrast, how... you get the idea).

We cats have learned to swat Lady Lindsey away like the irritating feather toy he is. He has a primary challenge from the right, and so he's frantically bleating away, hoping to survive that. But McCain and Giuliani, has-beens that they are, have no excuse.

McCain, Graham and Giuliani comprise just the tip of a repulsive iceberg: Republicans raining down abuse on a Democratic President over the Ukraine when they had nothing to say about their own commander-in-chief back in 2008, when Pootie invaded Georgia.

We're not saying that American foreign policy should never be questioned at home. But the GOP's ever-heightening hypocrisy when it comes to cutting slack for The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived versus piling on the thoughtful, careful, non-knee-jerk Obama makes us want to dump a whole bunch of litter boxes on people's heads.

What's next? Swift-boating John Kerry's trip to Kiev? We cats wouldn't be surprised. And we HISS.

(IMAGE: Rudy Giuliani, otherwise known as Vladimir Putin's new best friend. Think Vlad knows?)

Mean Tweeters Suck, Too

By Baxter

This is not an entertainment blog — but as long as we're on the subject of snark, we cats just want to say screw all those people who tweeted nastily about Kim Novak last night.

See, this is one of the reasons we cats avoid Twitter like the plague. Not only is it a huge time-suck, it encourages ignorant and obnoxious behavior — the exact opposite of the grown-up deference that Matthew McConaughey showed his fellow Oscar presenter.

(Thank goodness the Twitterverse didn't subject the equally elderly Sidney Poitier to the same treatment — unless we missed it somewhere. Isn't it disgusting that it's the female, and not the male, Hollywood legend who gets snarked about?)

To all those lamebrains who have no sense of history, here is the woman you were mocking last night. You'd better all be Republicans, because you make us cats HISS.

Mean Republicans Suck

By Miss Kubelik

The e-mails from Chris Christie's gang of thugs keep coming. Little by little, messages between Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein and Bill Stepian and Bill Baroni — and the other bright lights who were in positions of authority, thanks to the media darling who was never going to be nominated by the Republican Party in 2016 anyway — are dribbling out.

Here are some of the the deathless words of the folks who fomented the greatest disregard for public safety since The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived ignored the Presidential daily brief of August 6, 2001:

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."
"Is it wrong that I am smiling?"
"They are the children of Buono voters."
"[Rabbi Mendy Carlebach] has officially pissed me off."
"He is the Jewish Cid Wilson."
"We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?"
"Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed."
"Holy [expletive], who does [Pat Foye] think he is, Captain America?"
"Bad guy. Welcome to our world."

Other details are slowly emerging — like the involvement of the Port Authority Police Department — but what strikes us most about these e-mails is their sheer hatefulness. Just endless, endless snark.

Now, we cats can snark along with the best of 'em — that's part of the fun of politics. But that's not all there is. There's policy, and law, and the public interest, and governance, and all the interesting aspects of democracy that makes it so continuously compelling — the stuff you're entrusted with if you're lucky enough to be, or work for, an elected official.

These Christie hooligans will have none of that. All they care about is power — with which they were once endowed and which, as the little, little people they are, they thoroughly abused.

Just like their boss? Of course. We cats know about birds of a feather. And if the Romneys drank, we would buy them cocktails until they spilled the real reasons they didn't pick Pufferfish for V.P. We bet there's an earful. And we PURR.