Flynn Offers To Testify — Trumpsters React

Seriously, though: We cats are confused. We thought it was Congressional Democrats who had tanked Trumpcare last week. But now, Donald Drumpf is saying it was the House Teabag Caucus. Can it be that Republicans are only united when the enemy is a black guy or a woman? Just wondering. We cats HISS.

Paul Ryan Supports Abortion Rights (Oh, Wait...)

"I want a patient-centered system. I don't want government running healthcare. The government shouldn't tell you what you must do with your life, with your healthcare. We should give people choices."

—Interview on CBS This Morning, Thursday, March 30, 2017

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (But Maybe You Can)

By Baxter

Republicans claim they're going to tackle tax reform next. We're not sure what they're going to be able to accomplish, seeing as how they messed up repealing Obamacare so badly, but you can bet that whatever they'll try to do, it'll involve huge gifts to the Trumpsters' billionaire buddies.

How big will those gifts be? How much? Who knows? Which brings us to our messaging suggestion for the Democrats.

As Trump has proven, accuracy doesn't matter. So the Democrats' job is made that much easier: All they have to say is that under the tax plan endorsed by the White House, Trump and his evil spawn (and all of their corrupt, Russia-loving friends) are guaranteed to benefit to the tune of, oh, say, $3.2 billion.

It's a good number, $3.2 billion. It's not a round number — which gives it more impact, makes it more memorable. While $3 billion is a fantasy, $3.2 billion sounds real. Like someone actually did the math.

And when the White House disputes it, the Democrats should say: Show us your tax returns, and we'll gladly recalculate. Until then, we simply have to rely on Trump's endless and very public boasts about his business success and his wealth.

Democratic Party, what are you waiting for? We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

A Quickie: Told Ya So

We cats predicted that in the wake of the Republicans' big Obamacare Fail, Donald Drumpf would lose a few more points off his historically low approval rating. And he did. PURR!

"Does Anybody See What I See?"

"Still to Russia I say, good night, forever, good night."

Pathetic.

By Miss Kubelik

Is this really possible? Are Republicans so damn dumb that their American Action Network Super PAC forgot to pull a bunch of Obamacare-repeal ads from the NCAA broadcasts Friday night?

Yep. They really are.

The ads showcased a veritable rogues' gallery of GOP House members whom we grateful citizens were supposed to "thank" for kicking 24 million Americans off their insurance — which, as we all know, didn't happen. But we found this one particularly delicious, seeing as it's the execrable Barbara Comstock from here in Northern Virginia.

One of the reasons Comstock is a fraud and a fool is because she built her career as a Congressional staffer, not by mastering policy but by gratuitously slamming everything that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and the Democrats tried to do on healthcare reform. The irony!

So here she is, a Paul Ryan loyalist who waited until the last day to bail on her Fearless Leader. That she was included in this "thank you" ad buy is just more proof of how bad the Republicans' vote counting is.

Congresswoman Comstock, the only thing the voters have to say to you is not gratitude but rather a demand to know this: Why did you run on "Repeal and Replace on Day One" if you can't deliver? Can we see your Obamacare replacement bill? You've been in office for two-plus years — surely that's enough time to come up with something. We cats HISS.

Disconnect.

 By Zamboni

We cats have often said that we Democrats are nicer than Republicans. (That's why they run roughshod over us so often.)

Now, here's perhaps our latest proof: Have we seen any Democrats taunting the GOP about "pulling the plug" on Trumpcare? We've certainly seen the headlines, but no folks from our party rubbing it in.

We're just wondering, because back in 2009-2010, the Republicans from Charles Grassley to Sarah Palin were shameless in their claims about how the Affordable Care Act was going to disconnect Grandma from her respirator. ("Death panels," don'tcha know.) So here's hope that this tug-the-plug allusion adds a little extra measure of pain to the Republicans' shattering Obamacare screw-up.

One thing they probably don't have to worry about, though: Democrats being mean. Because only one side says and does childish and spiteful things — and gets away with it, repeatedly. We cats HISS.

Trumpcare Crashes And Burns... Period.

"We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning."

Trumpcare Crashes And Burns — For Now

By Sniffles

As today's vote on Trumpcare is postponed/canceled, a few thoughts:

When you don't believe in government, you don't govern very well.

What happened to Mr. "Art Of The Deal"? We thought he was the smartest person in the world, and the best businessman in the universe, and could get anybody to do anything.

Imagine how the Republicans would have mocked Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer if they had screwed up like this.

Somehow the Teabag Caucus was less than impressed with "I'm gonna come after you." It appears that without Dick Cheney threatening to put people in cement shoes and toss them in the Potomac, it's harder to get support for a bad bill.

If the week ends with no vote, watch Drumpf's dismal approval rating fall another two to three points. We cats PURR.

What We'd Like To Do, But Can't.

via GIPHY

By Baxter

We cats were going to comment on the absurdity of you-know-who's lawyers targeting a 17-year-old computer programmer for her animated kitten-punching-and-scratching-Donald-Trump website. But we'll let her reaction to Trump's threat speak for itself:

"I was going to just let this go," young Lucy from San Francisco said. "But I think it’s, pardon my French, fucking outrageous that the President of the United States has his team scouring the Internet for sites like mine to send out cease-and-desist [letters] and legal action claims if we don’t shut down."

We cats tried to get to KittenFeed.com so we could enjoy a little punching and scratching for ourselves — but alas, we couldn't connect. We demand an FBI investigation! In the meantime, we HISS.

Wag The Cat

By Miss Kubelik

We cats were just thinking last night: With James Comey laying a criminal investigation at the feet of the villains and mountebanks who currently inhabit the White House, it surely won't be long until the Trumpsters gin up some foreign crisis to fend off their critics and make the nation rally 'round.

Now, this: DHS has announced it is banning passengers from carrying some electronic devices on flights from the Middle East. Terrorism, you see. (Of course, it's a sure bet that Republicans who will gravely support this latest Trump administration move today are the same Republicans who screamed "Monica!" after our African embassies were bombed, and Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes in response.)

In our view, this DHS order is just the first step in the new anti-Comey War of Distraction. The only thing that worries us more is that some adversary like North Korea will take advantage of the chaos and do something for real.

As a good friend has said, we've run out of slurs — the English language is too small to encompass the awfulness of the Trumpster mob, and the abyss into which the United States is descending. We cats HISS.

Where's Willard?

By Zamboni

Remember back in 2012, when Willard Mitt Romney called Russia our nation's "number-one geopolitical foe," and everybody laughed at him? Goodness gracious — even our own Democratic President ridiculed the idea.

So after James Comey's testimony to the House Intelligence Committee today, why isn't Willard taking a victory lap?

Gosh! The director of the FBI has just confirmed that the bureau is actively investigating whether the Trump campaign's colluded with Russia to undermine our democracy. This sounds like treason. Yet the only thing that the Republicans have ever cared about is Hillary Clinton's emails. (Oh, and Benghazi — about which she testified to Congress for 11 hours and those GOP jackasses still couldn't lay a glove on her.)

If there's possible treason here at the behest of the dictatorship that Willard called our greatest foe, why isn't he calling a press conference to say "told ya so"? We cats can only come up with one answer, and it's not pretty: Willard is silent because the fraudulent President at the center of this nightmare is a Republican.

Drumpf is also someone who insulted Romney left and right during the campaign — and then humiliated him with that fake, oh-maybe-I'll-put-you-in-my-Cabinet meeting in November. But affronts to Mitt's manhood apparently pale in comparison with his loyalty to the GOP.

If anybody out there can think of another reason, we're all ears. But we won't hold our breath. It seems clear that Willard Mitt Romney is what we always thought he was: a phony, whiny, party-before-country, cowardly wanker. We cats HISS.

We Are Not Amused.

By Sniffles

Under this nightmarish new administration of misanthropists, knaves and fools, the United States is becoming a very unattractive place.

We cats are already heebie-jeebied about the toppled headstones in Jewish cemeteries, the bomb threats phoned into Jewish community centers, the Indian-Americans mistaken for Muslims and shot, the citizens frisked by US Customs at the Canadian border, and the swastikas, swastikas everywhere.

Now we have a waiter in California telling a table full of Latinas that he needed to see ID before he could serve them. He wanted to make sure they were legal residents, don'tcha know.

The haters are feeling quite bold in the age of Trump, aren't they? But this last one really puzzles us. Does that guy — whoever he is, and he'd better pray his name isn't already on the Internet — not understand tourism? So what if his customers weren't citizens? They were — but they could have been vacationers from abroad, injecting valuable tourist dollars into the American economy.

We can't decide what offends us most: the Trumpsters' hate, or their stupidity. Some days we think it just might be the latter. We cats HISS.

Something To Look Forward To

She's coming back. Let's hope she torches Trump and the Republicans for everything (too many outrages to list here) — but especially for the decimation of the State Department under Secretary Exxon Cipher.

Hmmmmm... How Did They Do It?

By Baxter

Pundit Dana Milbank, whom we cats like much better in print than when he was snarking with Keith Olbermann on cable TV, has reminded us that one of Donald Drumpf's favorite themes on the campaign trail last year was this: "We are led by very, very stupid people."

Yep, we sure are — now.

But what the heck! Let's take Drumpf's argument — that he is the smartest person in the world and that the previous administration, full of government-loving slobs as it was, could not possibly match his superior, private-sector, art-of-the-deal intellect — and ask a question.

How could the dumbest people in the world manage to successfully surveil the world's most brilliant businessman — who, by the way, was also protected (he said) by the greatest security team in history?

We have no idea how Moe, Larry and Curly could have outsmarted that pack of veritable Einsteins over at Trump Tower. Perhaps someone will explain? In the meantime, we cats HISS.

About That "Fine-Tuned Machine"...

By Miss Kubelik

Aside from all the other disturbing aspects of Michael "Benedict Arnold" Flynn taking rubles from the Russians last year...

The other YUGE issue — at least for us cats, because we believe in government — is how this White House could have appointed a national security adviser who was openly on Putin's payroll? Did they know about it and not care? Or was their "extreme vetting" (assuming that they hold their own people to the standards to which they hold immigrants) extremely superficial?

If they didn't know, how could they appoint a guy who was such an unethical cretin that he would hide that information? What do they find appealing about a person like that?

Did he disclose the payments on the paperwork he filled out for the transition? Was there any paperwork for appointees to fill out?

Whatever the answers, this isn't just gross incompetence. It's as treasonous as treason. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Move over, Ben. You're about to be dislodged from your perch.)

A New Threat To National Security, Eh?

By Zamboni

The Bannon Administration has suffered a second major Muslim ban defeat, and we cats are thrilled.

On the other hand, there's this:

"Canadian nurses working at Michigan hospitals were shocked last week when border security officers stopped them from entering the US because of changes to their working visas under new immigration policies.

"Staff at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital heard reports of nurses unable to renew their working visas. Last week, a new Canadian hire at Henry Ford tried to go to work, but was turned away at the Windsor-Detroit border. She was told advanced practice nurses and nurse anesthetists no longer qualify for the working visas because of policy changes under US President Donald Trump...

"Only advanced practice nurses and nurse anesthetists are being rejected. All Canadian nurses working in the US have non-immigrant NAFTA professional (TN) visas.

"An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Canadians work in the US with TN visas, which allow experts in certain fields — like economics and science — a fast track, provided they have a job offer. Henry Ford Hospital alone has hundreds of Canadians on staff, with about 25 advanced practice nurses or nurse anesthetists with TN visas."

You know what? There's a lot of nasty stuff going on — even more than you think. We cats HISS.

Semantics, Or Policy? You Be The Judge.

By Sniffles

We cats lived for a long time in Miami, so we noticed with interest that our former Congresswoman (who's resembling Jabba the Hutt more and more every day) has decided to vote ixnay on Trumpcare. "As written the plan leaves too many from my #SoFla district uninsured," Ileana Ros-Lehtinen tweeted.

All righty, then: There are two things in that short little burst that bode ill for the heartless right-wing free-market ideologue Paul Ryan and his newly minted Republican death panels. And here they are.

1. Who in GOP world said anything about insured/uninsured? That's not what Trumpcare is all about. If you listen carefully to Ryan and Tom Price, that inhumane Human Services Secretary, the plan has absolutely nothing to do with getting everyone insured. The Ryan-Price-and-even-occasionally-Trump-when-he-isn't-blabbing-like-a-fool guarantee is that everyone will have access to coverage — not coverage itself.

Where did Ileana get this "insurance" thing? Is this a case of one of the most senior members of the Republican caucus getting blindsided on her dear leaders' most basic talking point?

2. So, if Ileana is right, and coverage — and not mere access to coverage — is the new metric, then we have to ask Price, Ryan and the rest of the GOP leadership this question: Can you name one Congressional District in the nation in which the number of insured Americans will increase as a result of Trumpcare? Because Representative Ros-Lehtinen seems to think it's important.

Will anyone in the media catch this? We cats wonder. If not, we HISS.

Land Of The Free, Home Of The Dead

"Canadians with cystic fibrosis survive, on average, more than 10 years longer than Americans with the same disease, largely because of differences in the two countries' health insurance systems, a new study suggests...

"The average lifespan for an American with the illness is 37 years. In Canada, it is 49... Overall death rates were 34 percent lower in Canada than in the United States.

"There was no difference in death rates between Canadians and Americans with private health insurance. But Canada provides universal healthcare coverage under a single-payer system, so every Canadian has some kind of health insurance. The Canadian death rate was 44 percent lower than that of Americans without insurance.

"Dr. Anne L. Stephenson, a researcher at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, said... 'It seems people with no insurance have the worst outcomes compared to Canadians. That was the largest difference seen.'"

—"Cystic Fibrosis Survival Rates,"  

The New York Times, March 14, 2017

"Such A Great Country That Allows You To Be Here," Spicer Tells Native New Yorker

By Baxter

You never know who you're going to meet when you shop in Steve Jobs World. For the ever-hapless Sean Spicer, it was a feisty 33-year-old woman who got into his face and demanded answers on Russia.

His response: "Such a great country that allows you to be here."

Did we happen to mention that the woman, Shree Chauhan, is Indian-American? Did we also happen to mention that she's not just Indian-American, but all-the-way American? Wow, Sean — way to look at a woman with skin darker than yours and assume she's one of those nasty immigrants that your boss is always screaming about.

So we're left with a couple of take-aways from this encounter.

Does this administration view people of color as un-American? Or, at the very least, not American?

Since Chauhan was born in New York, does this administration not consider the Empire State to be part of the US? Famous New Yorkers, like Donald Trump himself, might be surprised to hear that.

Was Chauhan impolite? Yeah. Was she fabulous? Absolutely — because she was relentless, and because she used words like "treason." If this administration colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, that's a word we'd use, too.

White House press corps, please take a cue from this. We cats PURR.

"Advocate For Women"? Sorry, That Doesn't Pass The Smell Test

We cats are busy getting ready for the big snowstorm. In the meantime, thank you, "Saturday Night Live" — for calling out the foul odor that follows Ivanka Trump wherever she goes.

Tweet To Preet

By Miss Kubelik

It's not often that the world gets up in arms because a lawyer has been sacked. But the Trumpsters' ham-handed handling of the US attorneys' firings might have gone relatively unnoticed but for the fact that one of those shown the door is a legal superstar.

Good for Preet Bharara for making those miscreant monsters fire him. By refusing to meekly resign, he may yet make Donald Drumpf and that evil dwarf over at the Justice Department regret what they've done.

In the words of a like-minded Democrat we admire, Preet Bharara has been a great and fearless public servant who will be called upon again. In fact, wouldn't he make a great special prosecutor for the Trump-Russia investigation? Who else could save America from the anti-patriots who are handing the country over to Vladimir Putin?

Meanwhile, tell Preet Bharara how much you appreciate him. Send him a tweet. We cats did, and it made us PURR.

Distress Signal

By Zamboni

Okay, we know that the Interwebs have already gone ballistic over Sean Spicer's upside-down flag pin. But we just have to add that we can't imagine that Donald Drumpf is happy about this.

AND, it's Friday night.... prepare for some wild tweets tomorrow morning! Oh, Sean, we hardly knew ye. We cats PURR.

Starr-Crossed Baylor (Or, This Is Why We Hate Republicans — And Football)

By Sniffles

Ahh, Ken Starr: Is there a greater right-wing whackjob than Ken Starr? Sadly, we cats fear that the answer to that question is yes— but we're mesmerized anew by Ken Starr's awfulness, reading the horror stories coming out of Baylor University about six-foot-five football players raping Baylor coeds without fear of retribution.

And yes, dear readers, this all took place under the aegis of former Baylor University President Ken Starr.

Never mind the rapes, the violations, the deaf ear that the university turned to female students' complaints. Ken Starr's justification for sexual assault? "Success in athletics means that all boats rise," he said.

Starr became Baylor's president in 2010, years after he went after Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky for — remember this, now — having consensual sex in the anteroom off the Oval Office. Consensual sex. Big difference between that and 52 rapes committed by 31 Baylor football players from 2011 through 2014.

Fifty-two rapes! How they pale in comparison to a few willing blow jobs. Yet Kenneth Fucking Starr decided that Clinton-Lewinsky rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors — while his Baylor players' sexual assaults were just boys being boys.

This literally makes us cats ill. Almost as ill as we'd be if we heard that Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood but don't want to pay for prenatal care, either. Wait, what? — Oh, goodness gracious, here comes another hairball. We cats HISS.

A Clinton Asks: Will Love Truly Trump Hate?

"The whole history of humankind is basically the definition of who is us and who is them, and the question of whether we should all live under the same set of rules.

"This is a very old story. It's as old as the Holy Land, and much older. Ever since the first people stood up on the East African savannah, ever since the first families and clans, ever since people encountered each other. And it always comes down to two things — are we going to live in an us-and-them world, or a world that we can live in together?"

—President Bill Clinton, in honor of 

the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 

The Brookings Institution, March 9, 2017

Nous Ecrivons Pour Sophie

By Baxter

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau has caused un grand brouhaha by asking people to observe International Women's Day with a nod to feminist men.

"This week, as we mark International Women's Day, let's celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are, who treat girls and women with respect, and who aren't afraid to speak up in front of others," Canada's first lady wrote.

And wow, did some women get mad. "Don't we already celebrate men enough?" one of thousands of commenters asked.

Oh, sigh. We cats wonder: Was Sophie's post really such a bad thing? Politics is horrifying enough these days as it is. Should we really get all umbrage-y when someone whose husband filled 50 percent of his Cabinet posts with women says something positive and affirming?

On the other hand, we get it: "Celebrate" was probably the wrong word. If Sophie had asked us to write her message (and we hear she might be short-staffed), we would have advised her to phrase it differently. How about something like this?

"This week, as we mark International Women's Day, let's be grateful that not all men are as hideous as the Republicans are in the United States. Let's get down on our knees and thank God that not all men are like that sociopath in the White House Donald Trump, who brags about sexual assault, or Dave Brat, the GOP Congressman who complains that women are 'in his grill' because he wants to take away their healthcare, or Nathan Larson, that sicko from Virginia's 31st House District who wants to repeal the 19th Amendment and legalize incestuous marriage, or Corey Lewandowski, who manhandles female reporters, or Representative Kevin Cramer, who doesn't like white pantsuits, or Louie Gohmert, who hides behind Gabby Giffords's skirts when he makes excuses for not holding town halls. Let's celebrate the men who are not like these Republican jackasses, and urge them to join us in the fight to take civilization back from the Trumpian hordes."

Better?

(PHOTO: "Daughters of the Vote" brings 338 young women to the Canadian House of Commons for a day. How many will run for office and gain a seat in Parliament for real? We cats PURR.)

How Do You Say "Be Very Afraid" In Russian?

By Miss Kubelik

As we all continue to connect the dots on the emerging Russia-Trump collusion to steal the 2016 election, our democratic allies abroad are starting to get worried, too.

We cats say, join the party, folks, because this is not over. In fact, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, not only have we not seen the end, we haven't even reached the end of the beginning.

The Netherlands will hold parliamentary elections on (gulp) the Ides of March. They're worried about Russian interference and money pouring in from the American right wing. Canada won't vote nationally for awhile, but already Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Minister, is warning Canadians and other democracies to brace for a Russian assault. (As a person of Ukrainian descent who is currently banned from Moscow, Ms. Freeland knows a thing or two about that.) And who the hell knows what's going to happen in France.

And now Wikileaks has published a trove of secret CIA surveillance methods that will surely compromise the US's ability to figure out what Russia is doing. No doubt the Trumpsters are cheering — even though the repugnant Julian Assange's document dump has probably just hobbled our efforts against ISIS, too.

There is something really scary going on here, and we cats don't like it one bit. It's one thing for the Bushes and the Cheneys to have manipulated a legitimately frightened country into supporting the invasion of Iraq. That's bad enough. But this war between the Trumpsters and the intelligence community over Russia is, no kidding, sending us under the bed. And you know what? The 2018 midterms — the American people's one hope to get some power back — are right around the corner. Think about it. We cats HISS.

What Really Ails The Nation

By Zamboni

We cats have many favorite lines in the movies, but one of the best is Max von Sydow's in "Hannah and Her Sisters": "If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."

Today, the Son of God would be barfing on that Republican hypocrite from Utah, Jason Chaffetz.

You know Chaffetz. Usually he's outraged about "Benghazi" and "emails" and any other stuff that Hillary Clinton or a Democrat does — but can't be bothered to investigate when a hostile foreign power meddles in our election. But that's just one reason to despise him. His new comments about poor people buying iPhones instead of healthcare coverage gives us fresh ammunition.

Chaffetz would deny this to the skies, but his iPhone rant is deeply racist. How do we know? Because we've been avid readers of right-wing nutjobs at sites like Free Republic — and so we've seen, time and again, how convinced they are that inner-city black people were seduced to vote for Barack Obama because his campaign gave them free phones. "Obama phones," they called them. It wasn't poor white voters they were talking about. Take it from us.

In other words, clueless, elitist Republicans think that African Americans have a thing about phones. But when are they going to realize that the folks who benefit the most from the Affordable Care Act — and who will suffer the most if it's taken away — are the low-income-slash-working-class-slash-frightened white people who voted for them? (Maybe when many of them die, and the GOP starts losing elections?)

Chaffetz has blurted out this racist crap right on the heels of remarks by his Republican colleague Roger Marshall, a Kansas obstetrician who, as we recently pointed out, showed similar contempt for Americans who go on Medicaid. (See, if they do that, they're not paying him big bucks to deliver their babies.)

Funny thing about this: All these GOP guys claim to love Jesus. Well, we're pretty sure that Jesus would not love them back. We cats HISS and hack a huge hairball in Jason Chaffetz's underwear drawer.

New White House Leak: Cats Will Be Banned Next

via GIPHY

We're Sikh Of Hate Crimes

By Sniffles

What a difference the 49th Parallel makes. See this guy? He is Harjit Sajjan, and he's Canada's Minister of National Defense. (Or as they would put it, Defence.)

He's a three-time veteran of Afghanistan, for which he's won the Meritorious Service Medal, and the first Sikh to command a Canadian army reserve regiment. As defense minister, he runs the Canadian equivalent of Pentagon, and any deployments for members of the Canadian military across the globe come from him.

In short, he's un grand fromage.

So to all the Trumpian nutcases who are shooting at Sikhs and Indians in the United States — and in some cases, killing them — we cats have some words of warning:

First, get some education. Second, if you don't have a drop of Native American blood in you, you can "get out of our country" yourself. And finally, steer clear of Harjit Sajjan. If you ran into him in a dark alley, he would kick your ass. We cats HISS.

Tap, Tap.

By Baxter

Do you know what it would have taken for Donald Drumpf's phone calls to be wiretapped last year? Not a Presidential whim — an order from the FISA court.

Do you know what it takes to get an order from the FISA court? A request from the National Security Agency, or from the FBI, or from some other storied institution concerned that the country is at risk.

Donald Drumpf is bleating and tweeting that Barack Obama wiretapped him. If he's right about that, he can make the surveillance records public. He's President, after all. But doing that could also force him to reveal that the government — career people, not political appointees — considered him and his campaign a threat to the nation, right?

If Drumpf was wiretapped, there was a good reason for it. But it's easier to scream "McCarthyism" than to let the details come to light. We cats believe strongly that, sooner or later, this Russia story will be the end of Drumpf. But in the meantime, because we love our country and hate to see it in peril, we HISS.

Kansas Doctor Makes Dorothy Ask: Can I Just Change My Mind And Go Back To Oz?

By Miss Kubelik

Can we all just agree that Kansas is one of America's barren wastelands, an uninhabitable, tax-cutting haven only for rich Republicans, but in which all regular people needing good jobs, a solid education and preventive healthcare must abandon all hope and flee? That's the Brownback legacy — and the state's GOP leaders seem to have learned no lessons from it at all.

Which is partly behind the hideousness of Roger Marshall, Republican Congressman from El Dorado, Kansas, an obstetrician who has just questioned society's obligation to care for the poor. (Funny, we thought that was a Jesus-y thing. Maybe we're wrong.) Marshall's commentary is so appalling that we cats feel obligated to quote it in full.

“There is a group of people that just don’t want healthcare and aren’t going to take care of themselves. Just, like, homeless people. I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want healthcare. The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to healthcare are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER."

In case you're wondering? This Republican jackass is also rabidly anti-choice. So explain to us why he's so in favor of all these "Medicaid population" people bringing children into the world — only to deny them health coverage through Obamacare or any other kind of -care, because they are so, in his eyes, so unworthy.

We cats find Roger Marshall's contempt for his patients, let alone for humanity, to be inexplicable and utterly against everything a physician and a healer should be. So we dump our dirty litter boxes on his privileged Republican head, and we HISS.

Saviors Of Democracy?

By Zamboni

At around two o'clock this afternoon, The New Worst Person Who's Ever Lived declared that there was no, absolutely no reason for Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from any investigations of the Drumpf team's collusion with Russia to steal the election.

(Okay, he didn't exactly put it that way, but you know what we mean. NO RECUSAL for Sessions.)

Then, mere hours later, the mendacious little elf called a press conference and did exactly that.

Ooooh! Not a good thing, undercutting your boss — especially a narcissist like Drumpf. Sessions must know there's another shoe out there that's going to drop, and fast, or he wouldn't have risked incurring the wrath of the thinnest-skinned jackass ever to plop down in the Oval Office chair. Just our humble opinion.

So much for the "Presidential speech" afterglow, eh? We cats are grateful that one of our favorite humans, Senator Al Franken, asked the smoking-gun question at the confirmation hearings upon which the evil dwarf proceeded to perjure himself. (Just a reminder: Bill Clinton lost his Arkansas law license for five years for lying under oath, which an allegedly outraged Donald Drumpf constantly screamed about last year.)

Thanks to a canny line of questioning from Franken, and a one-two punch of jaw-dropping scoops from The Washington Post and The New York Times — plus an indignant Seth Meyers, who, by refusing to get on the oh-gosh-maybe-Trump-is-Presidential-after-all train, now looks positively brilliant — 48 hours after "the speech," everything's on its head again and the Republic just might be saved. By comedians, former comedians and the print media, that is. We cats PURR.

Fashion Statement

By Sniffles

We cats have occasionally gotten mad at Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). The first time was when she voted against expanding background checks to gun shows and Internet sales. (Apparently 20 dead six-year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary couldn't convince her.) The second was just recently, when she agreed to meet with the sociopath in the White House about a possible Cabinet post.

But that's all changed now, because North Dakota's lone House member, Republican Kevin "Bad-Looking White Pantsuits" Cramer, might run for Heidi's Senate seat in 2018.

Thanks, Congressman — by insulting not just your Democratic colleagues but Hillary Clinton and every woman who voted for her, you've just guaranteed that we'll send a check to Heidi now. Maybe even a pretty big one. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

(P.S. The white pantsuits were fabulous, by the way.)