Mega-Jerk

By Zamboni

Did you know that creepy Joel Osteen and his wife are worth more than $55 million? We cats are having a hard time wrapping our heads around that figure. After all, one of Jesus's most compelling commandments was "Give everything you have to the poor, and follow me." Seems that creepy Joel and his wife kinda forgot the first part of that.

And now creepy Joel Osteen has been shamed into opening his huge, HUGE megachurch (it's called "mega" for a reason) to Harvey refugees.

It wasn't until social media erupted about Osteen's closed doors and the media spotlight shone harshly that the "church" — the former (read: spacious) home of the Houston Rockets — stocked supplies of air mattresses, cots, diapers and more, and grudgingly admitted Texans fleeing from the storm. Of course, that was after their story changed several times: They tried to say it wasn't safe, or that the city hadn't asked them to pitch in, or — oh, God, who knows what else? Everything they said was flailing and lame.

We cats don't pretend to be experts on the New Testament, or even particularly observant. (After all, we don't need to be. We're gods ourselves, aren't we?) But this much we know: True Christians would not even hesitate to help. Their reactions would be instantaneous, unthinking — like first responders. And if Jesus were around, he'd be working right alongside them.

So, screw Joel Osteen. He is a charlatan, a grifter and a fraud. And we know where he's going after he dies. We cats HISS.

Harvey Heroes (And Non-Heroes)

By Sniffles

Rafael Cruz, Jr. is still insisting on his lie: that he voted against Superstorm Sandy aid in 2013 because the bill was "two-thirds pork."

Political observers we respect have marveled at Cruz's behavior. Why doesn't he just admit he was wrong about the Sandy bill, and thank his fellow Americans for coming to Texans' rescue?

Because Ted Cruz is an asshole, that's why. And everybody hates him. We cats know. Al Franken told us.

Meanwhile, a few Harvey observations:

1. The right wingers who hate government so much sure seem to think that government should be around to help them in disasters, don't they? We're waiting to hear them publicly thank Jimmy Carter for creating the Federal Emergency Management Administration in the first place. (But we're not holding our breath.)

2. Somebody from FEMA should have had the guts to stand up to Donald Drumpf yesterday on his no-empathy tour and protested his coming budget cuts. That person not only would have spoken truth to power, but he would have instantly become the nation's newest superstar — whether or not he was subsequently fired.

3. Finally, the best Harvey comment we've seen so far on Twitter concerns this soon-to-be-classic photo (above). And it's this: Howzabout replacing all those stupid Confederate statues with Sheriff's Deputy Rick Johnson? He represents America at its best. We cats PURR.

Crickets.

By Baxter

As the city of Houston continues to drown, it's worth remembering that many, many Republicans insisted on budget offsets for Superstorm Sandy relief back in 2013.

That's because Superstorm Sandy hit a bunch of godless blue northeastern states, and you know how the GOP feels about them. But — too bad, right? If you're going to be a fiscally responsible Republican, you're going to demand offsets for every emergency, right?

Some northeastern members of Congress aren't waiting for that answer: They're reminding the world that scads of Republicans voted against Sandy aid or carped about offsets. While we're happy that they're refreshing all our memories, we cats are still waiting for a Republican to offer to forego a military base, highway or airport funding, or a border security operation in Texas later in exchange for Harvey assistance now.

Hello? Hello? Why aren't we hearing any Republicans saying that? Hello? We cats HISS.

Prisoner Of The Presidency

By Miss Kubelik

The pardon of Joe Arpaio is an outrage on every level. But here's a possible silver lining: The pardon, and all of Donald Trump's clumsy and hateful meddlings, are bound to further unsettle Arizona's already roiled politics. Who knows? Ripple effects from the pardon could help Democrats snatch Jeff Flake's Senate seat, or shift a couple of Congressional districts in our direction.

Meanwhile, we're sure that Trump is ensconced in the Catoctin Mountains this weekend, preening about the fabulous thing he's done. We picture him basking in the great power he thinks he has. Yes, the Presidency carries with it certain powers. But because Trump is an ignoramus, he doesn't understand that what the framers created was an executive who is checked from all sides.

So one of these days, Trump will have his Constitutional comeuppance. Somebody will check him, and he won't like it, but he won't be able to do anything about it. We don't know what form this comeuppance will take, but as deep believers in the American experiment, we have faith that it will happen — somehow, some way. We cats are waiting for it, and we PURR.

Yes — Constitutionally, We're In The Twilight Zone

By Zamboni

We cats aren't sure that the 25th amendment is "hooey" or that it provides for Jonathan Turley's "impulse buy" removals of Presidents. By our read, sufficient hurdles exist in the 25th to keep the US from changing out chief executives willy-nilly. (And oh, by the way, the amendment also tells us what to do when the Vice Presidency becomes vacant. We remember that happening back in 1973 — so it came in handy.)

But we'll grant that the 25th or even impeachment are pretty unrealistic right now. Republicans control Congress, hence the hooey. But even if Democrats were in control, we'd still end up with a Drumpf Administration — i.e., President Pence (ugh!), which is something that Americans, by more than three million, voted against last year.

The sad truth is that there is simply no Constitutional remedy for a Presidential election corrupted by a hostile foreign power and a willing posse of Quisling Republican collaborators. There just isn't. Instead, the remedy lies in beating these monsters at the ballot box — in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

Which means it's up to the people. (Well, up to you. We are cats.)

So, what are you guys waiting for? Get to work! We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

We Think We Know Who The "Worst Enemy" Is

By Sniffles

When is Meghan McCain going to leave the Republican Party? Or at least repudiate its leaders, who are too scared to cut loose its hate-filled, bigoted, Nazi-Trumpian base?

We cats are sorry to be impatient with Meghan at a time when her family is stressed. Brain cancer is not fun, as two of our leading Democratic families know.

But goodness gracious — some jackass in a "Make America Great Again" hat (and black crew socks with shorts, we couldn't help noticing) screamed "McCain needs to die now!" at anti-Trump protesters in Phoenix, and Meghan responded... well, pretty lamely, in our humble opinion.

Meghan McCain needs to stop saying she wouldn't wish such sentiments on her "worst enemy" and start calling out the GOP and cowards like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and, most especially, Donald Trump. When she does that, we'll take her out for a glass of wine and let her cry on our furry shoulders. (Yep, we have shoulders.) In the meantime, we cats HISS.

Suspicious.

Is it just us, or does that "Blacks For Trump" sign look like something that only a white person would make? As in, "Here, African-American-guy-we-need-to-stand-behind-Trump, hold this." Well, maybe, maybe not: There's quite a backstory to Michael Symonette. We cats HISS.

Eclipse Day Proved: Some People Are Smart Enough To Follow Directions...

...while others aren't.

Once Again, Canada Eclipses The US

"With the quiet dignity of its 'Diversity Is Strength' campaign, the Canadian Football League has shown...there's no need for a sports league to climb up on a soapbox and berate its fans: Better to take a quiet stance and simply ask people to think."

—Jack Todd, The Montreal Gazette, August 21, 2017

Trump Can't Lead, So The People Of Boston Stepped Up And Did It Instead

By Baxter

We cats agree with our favorite pundit: We are essentially a country without a President right now. (And yes, Favorite Pundit, Boston fulfilled your prediction that America would rise to the occasion. Phoenix, you're up next.)

Every one of yesterday's counterdemonstrators deserves the title of President more than that racist know-nothing from Queens. We cats salute them, and we PURR.

Nazis Are Everywhere. Let's Celebrate Their Enemies (Part III)

via GIPHY

At his Tuesday press conference, Donald Trump took sides against Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen! Meanwhile, for some real-life anti-Nazi heroes, check out what's going on in Boston today.

Nazis Are Everywhere. Let's Celebrate Their Enemies (Part II)

via GIPHY

Next up: Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca." The beginning of a beautiful friendship. We cats PURR.

Nazis Are Everywhere. Let's Celebrate Their Enemies

via GIPHY

In a week in which Donald Drumpf appears to have committed political suicide, raise a glass to some anti-Nazi movie heroes. First up: Christopher Plummer in "The Sound of Music."

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Maybe There's Hope After All Edition

By Sniffles

Forgive us if we're not impressed with Bob Corker. Up until this week, he was one of the chorus of Republicans who were cutting Donald Trump slack because he was "new at this" or needed time to "grow into the job." These are the same Republicans who vowed to oppose Barack Obama from Day One. And during a national emergency yet!

Okay, hissy fit over. Meanwhile, the way people are talking, the whole Corker thing feels like Floodgate City to us. Kind of like Bishop Alfred Blunt in 1936, who criticized King Edward VIII for not attending church more and ended up unleashing a media frenzy over Mrs. Simpson. We don't know if Corker knows that something is about to happen, or if he's providing cover for someone, or what — but it's interesting to remember that after Blunt, less than two weeks later England had a new king.

We don't want Trump to resign. (Mike Pence, ugh.) But a few other tidbitty thoughts are racing around our furry heads. And they're hopeful:

1) Don't look now, but Canada is quietly renaming buildings and removing statues of guys who wiped out and otherwise abused indigenous people. Gee. Maybe someday we can work our way toward not just acknowledging the US's history of African slavery but our own crimes against Native Americans as well.

2) A statue of Roger Taney came down in Annapolis last night. Good. As the Supreme Court dude (and slavery supporter) who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott opinion, Taney never rated a statue in the first place. "We deserve to celebrate the heroes of Maryland, not the villains of history," said one onlooker.

3) The American Red Cross, The Cleveland Clinic and the American Friends of Magen David Odom have all canceled plans to hold fundraisers at Mar-A-Berchtesgaden. (Our question: What were they doing there in the first place? But, okay.) We're still waiting for Susan B. Komen to do the same. (Not holding our breath.)

4) Heather Heyer's mother, who's been kind of busy this week and didn't see Trump's Tuesday press conference in real time, has caught up on things now and says she won't talk to him. (We can't wait for the inevitable tweet: "I wasn't going to call her anyway!") Good for you, Mom. Speaking to Trump would just serve to legitimize him.

5) Finally, we agree with Micah and Tadrint Washington, two sisters whose car was rammed by that Nazi killer in Charlottesville on Saturday. The women weren't officially attending the counter-protest and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But before the crash they were amazed at the whiteness of the pro-Black-Lives-Matter crowd. "It was something to look at, so many white people, more than our race, out there, trying to protest, fighting for us," Tadrint Washington said.

That's the silver lining: Although it seems like America under Trump is trying like hell to throw itself back to the 1950s, it isn't. Our country is better than it was — and that racist pig in the White House can't change that. We cats PURR.

UPDATE: We cats can exhale now — and we're always willing to run a correction. Susan B. Komen and The Salvation Army (another one of our non-favorites) have both canceled plans to hold events at Mar-A-Berchtesgaden. Hit him where it hurts, fellas! We PURR again.

"I Am Spartacus"

By Miss Kubelik

True confession here: We cats had no idea how many Confederate statues and monuments there were in these victorious United States. Mind you, the alleged glories of the Old South don't really weigh on our minds much — except when we indulge ourselves in a re-viewing of "Gone With The Wind." (Our favorite line of Scarlett's, when she's told that Lincoln has called for volunteers and it's war: "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, don't you men think of anything important?")

But yes, they're apparently everywhere. Heck, there was even a Jefferson Davis plaque on the Hudson's Bay store in Montreal! (The store was built on the site of a house Davis lived in after the war.) That plaque is now gone.

What a surprising turn of events: The Confederacy is right in our furry faces, thanks to the Charlottesville haters and their Supporter-in-Chief, Donald Trump. The good news is that Trump and his merry band o' losers — hey, we didn't say it, Steve Bannon did — have inadvertently spurred the quick removal of the very statues they're screaming about, which as we all now know were erected to intimidate black people long after the end of the Civil War.

We're cheering, for a lot of reasons. First because it looks as if — at long last — the North is going to win the peace as well as the war. Second, because even when Confederate statues are torn down illegally, people are eager to take responsibility for it — like these folks in Durham, North Carolina (above). Civil disobedience lives! We cats PURR.

Burning Bright

By Zamboni

We cats are looking forward to seeing the Gallup tracking poll tomorrow. It should have the first Presidential-performance results since Donald Drumpf ripped off his KKK hood at Trump Tower yesterday (with two Jewish guys and a woman of color standing on either side of him, we might add).

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is in crisis. Their cynical Southern Strategy has been outed for good — ruined by a guy from Queens who has just destroyed their ability to wink-wink at haters, extremists and losers in the name of economics and not get thrown up on by the whole world. And Confederate statues are coming down all over the place, too! Gosh, they must be furious.

Oh, how our liberal hearts bleed for these jerks. To every Republican talking head on TV, wringing hands and excoriating Trump, we say this: It's your party, not ours. You allowed him. You nominated him. Sure, the media coverage of Hillary was horrible and the voters are at fault, too. But Trump wouldn't have been on the November ballot if you guys hadn't anointed him in the first place.

Republicans thought they would be able to ride the tiger and not end up inside. A word of warning for them: We know tigers. Tigers are relatives of ours. And tigers always get their meals. We cats PURR.

How We Feel.

Scary Clown

By Baxter

We cats are relieved that the White Supremacist Sympathizer-in-Chief gave his trainwreck of a news conference today in the vulgar confines of the Trump Dump in New York City and not at the White House. His comments would have seemed so much worse in front of the dignified backdrop of, say, the Diplomatic Reception Room. So, whew.

But otherwise — ugh, are we hacking up multiple hairballs, or what? We don't mean to sound flip about the hideousness and horribleness of this man, but we are so appalled that it's hard to think of any other way to describe how we feel.

By Trump's reasoning (if he is even capable of such a thing), the French Resistance, the Dutch Underground, the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and anyone else who took up arms against the Nazis were as much to blame for World War II's carnage in Europe as the Nazis themselves.

(And Trump's winery comment? Incredible. A young woman was just murdered ISIS-style in Charlottesville, Virginia — but, his winery.)

We can only do three things in response to this nightmarish clown show:

1) Wonder if John Kelly will continue to stick around. (After his Colbert performance last night, Anthony Scaramucci is clearly auditioning for the Chief of Staff job he wanted all along.)

2) Wonder how many more CEOs will resign from Trump's silly business advisory council.

3) Run to YouTube and watch the No Man's Land scene from "Wonder Woman" again. We need a hero, even if she's only make-believe. We cats HISS.

Unwelcome

The people of Gotham let the White Supremacist Sympathizer-in-Chief know exactly how they felt about his return home this evening. We cats 💓 New York. And we PURR.

We Don't Know If This Is Real, But We Sure Like It

Her Name Was Heather

"We are all indebted to Heather Heyer, who gave her life resisting white supremacy. The President won't say it or her name. So we all must."

—Atul Gawande, August 13, 2017

Identification, Please

By Sniffles

We cats are sure that the FBI and the US Attorney's office investigating the killing in Charlottesville on Saturday will lay it all at the feet of the Nazis. (It certainly wasn't a police riot. The cops pretty much just stood by.) Meanwhile, we're waiting for Donald Trump to tell Mayor Michael Signer that yesterday will be a terrific boost to Charlottesville tourism.

Here's something to cheer us up, though. Folks on our side are figuring out who the white supremacist demonstrators are, and are outing them on the Interwebs. They're being identified by name, by home town, and in one case, by school. We've even seen them beaming in old photos as they pose with Trump or their Congressman or their Senator. (Hello, Dean Heller! You've got another problem on your hands.)

No one should feel ambivalent about fingering these assholes. As we said yesterday on the Twitter thing, free speech is a responsibility as well as a right. It has consequences. The Tiki Torch Brigade needs to own their racist views — or wear their hoods next time. We cats HISS.

(PHOTO: Yep, that's the Charlottesville killer on the near left. And who are the other guys?)

Here's What A Real President Says

So, When Is Corey Stewart Going To Show Up?

By Miss Kubelik

"The cornerstone of what makes our commonwealth a wonderful place to live is all that we share in common, not the things that set us apart. The community of Charlottesville has been asked twice now in recent months to defend our values of openness, diversity and inclusion against an ideology of hatred and bigotry — no community should have to bear that burden in 2017.

"White supremacists have descended upon Charlottesville again to evoke a reaction as ugly and violent as their beliefs — just as they did before, I am urging Virginians to deny them that satisfaction."

—Statement by Ralph Northam, MD, 

Democratic Candidate for Virginia Governor, August 12, 2017

(PHOTO: Tiki torches, guys? Really?)

Shiny Object

By Zamboni

Is there any object shinier than an exploding nuclear bomb? Well, maybe Trey Gowdy's face. Anyhoo, we cats are sure now that our state attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, is bringing indictments in his Trump RICO case — if not today, then soon — and the raving lunatic in the White House knows it. Why else would he be tweeting like that other swaggering draft dodger of note, John Wayne? Distraction, distraction! (Hurry, Eric.) We cats HISS.

Waaahhhhh!

By Baxter

Did we cats mention "irony" in our last post? Jeez, we had no idea. Get a load of what a white supremacist in Virginia said when he was harrumphing about his upcoming we-are-so-aggrieved "free speech" rally encountering resistance in Charlottesville.

(Context: Airbnb has cancelled a number of accounts that booked stays for Saturday's hatefest, and the city, citing safety concerns, is reluctant to issue permits for the bigots' park of choice. So this guy, the event organizer, is feeling even more aggrieved than usual.)

"There is just an incredible amount of discrimination from the city government and other elements of the community to keep people from eating at the restaurants they want to eat at, to keep people from renting," he whined.

LOL!! Has this dope ever heard of redlining? Whites-only lunch counters? Driving trips that African-Americans couldn't take because there were no hotels that would have them and no restrooms they could use along the way?

We don't know what bothers us more: the hate or the ignorance. We cats HISS.

Ironically, Today Is National Peacekeepers' Day

Sick of the psychopath in the White House fomenting nuclear war? Here's a little sanity from north of the 49th Parallel:
 
"Today, we recognize the women and men in Canada’s military and police forces who work to create peace and stability around the world.

"Over the years, Canadian peacekeepers have helped monitor ceasefires, protect the most vulnerable from the ravages of war and build the foundations of peace. Peacekeepers often endanger their own lives to help those most affected by violent conflict, in particular women and girls. They work tirelessly to protect human rights, and to ensure the voices of the most vulnerable are represented in peace processes.

"On behalf of the Government of Canada, I thank all of our country’s peacekeepers — past and present — for their courageous efforts to build lasting peace around the world. They represent the best of Canada. We will continue to work with the UN and other organizations to create a safer, more secure world for all."

—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Another One Of The Gazillion Things Donald Trump Doesn't Understand

By Sniffles

Donald Trump convened a commission a few weeks ago to study the opioid crisis in America and make recommendations about what he should do. Their advice: Declare a state of emergency and get addicts help before they all OD in their cars with their children in the back seat.

Today, Trump interrupted the 17-day vacation he swore he'd never take and basically said, nah, not doing that emergency declaration thing.

"The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place," he opined. "If they don’t start, they won’t have a problem."

Ummm... He does know that the cat is out of the bag — the horse has left the barn — or whatever animal-related metaphor you want to come up with... right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe he didn't understand what his commission meant when it reported that the opioid scourge — which has its seeds in pharmaceutical companies' greed and doctors overprescribing the drugs back in the '90s — was now logging a death toll of "a September 11 every three weeks." Maybe Trump doesn't actually know how many people died on September 11. Or anything about anything.

Well, look on the bright side: If we have a nuclear war with North Korea, none of us will have to worry about opioid addiction any more. We cats HISS.

And Now, A Little Education For People Not Of Color

This online spot by Procter & Gamble is terrific. It does everything a good commercial should: Grab your attention, make the people in it real and relatable, and cause you to think. We cats are sorry that lowlifes like Stephen Miller keep making ads like this necessary. But in the meantime, we applaud P&G, and we PURR.

Purity Is For Milk, Not For Politics

By Miss Kubelik

In addition to Sinclair Media, "Trump TV" and voter suppression — all vile, anti-American efforts to freeze Republicans' hold on power — the right wing is trying to gin up fights within the Democratic Party.

These are dangerous times, and we cats urge our fellow Democrats not to fall for it.

Example: The Daily Caller and other righties are stirring the pot about Senator Kamala Harris. Sure, she was a prosecutor, and yes, some folks on the left are hesitant about her. A very, very small group of folks on the left. Our party has had more serious disputes before, about things a lot more important than one Senator's CV. Like, oh, the Vietnam War.

So let's keep our perspective and not fall prey to, in the words of one of our favorite pundits, whining. Because you know what? That's what Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, Kris Kobach and all the other clowns in this hideous administration want us to do.

We're reminded of the day in 2009 when then-Governor David Paterson of New York announced that he would appoint US Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. Hey! — hadn't upstater Gillibrand been endorsed by the NRA? Rumblings and grousing ensued.

We cats loathe and despise the NRA. But you know what? Nobody has cast more "NO" votes against Trump's House of Horrors nominees than Kirsten Gillibrand. That makes her aces in our book.

So let's all take note of where most of this is coming from. And remember what we Democrats have always believed: Political fights should always be about what's good for the country, not us. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Not Impressed.

By Zamboni

So Jeff Flake made the rounds of the Sunday shows today to hawk the silly book that he wrote as his Hail Mary pass to try to get re-elected Senator from Arizona next year.

It appears he's in a spot of polling trouble and he's trying to grab some of the mavericky pixie dust that his colleague the senior Arizona Senator is famous for. Flake seems to be thinking that he'll look all buck-the-party brave if he swats at things like birtherism and makes unflattering comments about the short-fingered vulgarian his party so cynically enables and coddles, future of the country be damned.

Sorry, Senator. This is August, 2017 — not 2016. Your timing's way off.

Not only that, but complaining about birtherism looks a whole lot less courageous and a whole lot more opportunistic when someone votes to confirm a birther-y blogger from Kentucky to the US Court of Appeals — as Flake just has.

So, like all Republicans who try to pass for reasonable, acceptable people but who are in reality heartless, soulless, Ayn-Rand-loving hypocrites who have nothing but contempt for most of their fellow Americans, Jeff Flake is a fake. And his protestations today are falling on deaf kitty-cat ears. We cats HISS.

#ObamaDay

By Baxter

So this will drive the short-fingered vulgarian crazy: Somebody on Twitter decided that today should be national #ObamaDay, and the tweets are steadily mounting. Not just to wish 44 a happy 56th birthday, but to throw major shade at Donald Trump.

We cats are taking the day as an opportunity to laugh every time Trump claims he inherited a mess. Mess, what mess? You want mess — check out what was facing Obama when he took office in 2009. Thanks to the Bush 2 crowd, we were facing another Great Depression. Obama knew that he needed a superstar to handle foreign policy so he could focus on stuff at home. And he knew whom to ask.

Can you picture Donald Trump, with his narcissism and fragile ego and insatiable neediness, to be confident enough to do that? Nope, we can't either. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Bad Timing.

Robert Mueller convenes a grand jury and issues subpoenas — The Washington Post publishes transcripts of phone calls that show Donald Trump for the idiot he is — the Republican Congress is going home with no legislation to brag about — four Senators are introducing legislation to keep Trump from firing Mueller — and West Virginia Governor Jim Justice picks today to switch to the GOP? We cats GRIN.

UPDATE: By the way, since Justice insists on using the noun "Democrat" as an adjective — a grammatically incorrect, Republican pejorative — we cats say, good riddance.

We Love Leaks

By Sniffles

We cats disagree with the folks who are clutching their pearls over the leak of Trump-Turnbull-Peña-Nieto transcripts. Au contraire: Thank God for leaks like this — it's the only way any of us would ever know how bad things really are.

And while we're at it, a few other reasons:

1. Donald Trump lies. Constantly and without remorse or hesitation. Any time he's caught in a lie, he screams that it's "fake news." So leakers have a patriotic responsibility to put the truth on the record.

2. No matter how we voted for President, we all need to be reminded how utterly unprepared and colossally unsuited Trump is for the job.

3. Anything that forces elected Republicans to answer for Trump's failings is good for America.

4. Any news that makes it even a little bit harder for talking heads and pundits to treat both parties with a false sense of equivalence is good and appropriate news.

5. It's not the leaks that are unpatriotic. It's the Republican Party knuckling under and nominating this Trump clown in the first place. Everything else just pales in comparison. We cats HISS.

Stephen Miller Versus The Statue Of Liberty (Spoiler: Liberty Will Win)

By Miss Kubelik

We cats just want to state here and now that we will never post a picture of Stephen Miller on this blog. So many of the Trumpsters are physically repulsive — but Miller, ICK. That guy makes us hack up a hairball and scurry under the bed.

So you'll just have to imagine (or find elsewhere online) the exchange that Miller had with CNN's Jim Acosta today about the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus. You know Emma: the poet who wrote about "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"? Miller said the poem was "meaningless" and that Lady Liberty stood for other things. We assume French President Macron will call him up and rip him a new one.

But what's really foolish about the Trumpsters dissing Emma's sentiments is that keeping people out of the United States is terrible for the economy. So say nearly 90 percent of economists surveyed by The Washington Post. Slicing immigration in half, they predict, would result in a long (and we presume painful) recession.

And the English-ability requirement is dumb, dumb, dumb. Like their clueless colleagues on the alt-right, the Trumpsters constantly portray English as under siege — when in reality, with a billion-plus people speaking it around the world, English rules. It's the language of international business and culture, and — Donald Trump being the exception — anyone wanting to be successful has to learn it. (Just ask all those ambitious kids in China.) Heck, when humans shot Voyager into space, seeking new life and new civilizations, the probe contained 55 languages, but its primary message of greeting was in English. 'Nuff said.

So we advise the knaves and fools in the White House not to pick a fight with Lady Liberty. She has fierce claws and sharp little teeth, and will come back to bite them in the end. We cats PURR.

Another Huckabee Sanders "Fashion Don't"

Ruffles on the shoulders? Pearls? Hey, Sarah — big girls like you can't pull that poofy stuff off. Plus, Mooch is gone, so you can stop trying now. We cats MEOW.

Unholy Policy

By Zamboni

No state legislature has fought the Affordable Care Act more fiercely than Texas's. No two US Senators have kicked and screamed harder to save their constituents from the evils of Obamacare. And now, it looks like Texas is about to lose a passel of rural hospitals.

It's due to a combination of factors — like, there are huge stretches of the Lone Star State in which nobody lives — but one reason is the rate of the uninsured. Oh, and the fact that the Republicans running the state refused to accept the ACA's Medicaid expansion, despite the fact that Washington would be footing the bill. So with all the other pressures bearing down on rural healthcare providers, shouldering uncompensated care can simply push them past the breaking point.

Like the hospital in tiny Trinity, north of Houston. It's closing this month, wiping out dozens of jobs and forcing residents to go 20 extra miles for emergency and other care. You know, if you're having a heart attack or a stroke, a lot of bad things can happen during those 20 miles.

And when a report by Texas A&M suggests that telemedicine might be one answer to rural residents' plight, it bears remembering that one of the projects that President Obama's 2009 stimulus package proposed was to fund broadband expansion into rural areas. Of course, the Republicans fought that tooth and nail as Communistic and un-American. So, never mind.

Oh, well! At least the Republican Governor and the GOP state legislators are protecting the right of Texans to be free from the tyranny of Obamacare, right? Losing a Trinity cardiac patient who could have been saved at a closer hospital is just one small result of their political courage. How inspiring (NOT). We cats HISS.