Best Sign Of The Day, Paws Down

Yep, A Lot Of People Really Are Offended By Children In Cages

By Baxter

It was 97 in the shade today but the weather didn't appear to keep anyone home. Here are some of our favorite signs and messages from the #FamiliesBelongTogether marches across the country — including, we're happy to say, in Toronto. We cats PURR.

Dear Congresswoman Stefanik: You And Your Party Are Screwing Your District

By Zamboni

There's a lot of traffic across the Quebec-New York border — for shopping, for outings, for work, and for folks who want to fly out of Plattsburgh International Airport. At least, there is when normal people are running things in Washington.

Now, things are getting a little dicey. In fact, now that the Supreme Court has upheld Donald Drumpf's Muslim ban on a close 5-4 vote, Canadians, none too thrilled, may take their business elsewhere.

Take Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed, a lifestyle blogger who says that while the Muslim ban doesn't apply to her per se, she's done going shopping in Plattsburgh. She'll spend her money in the True North instead.

"Not going to the US is my personal protest," she writes in today's Montreal Gazette. "I am offended that Muslims are being portrayed as a security threat... Rather than vacationing south of the border this summer, you can catch me grilling my tandoori chicken here at home."

So we cats say, way to go, Elise Stefanik. Plattsburgh is in her — and our — Congressional district, and we can only assume that Ms. Naqvi-Mohamed's not the only Canadian boycotting us. Since Congresswoman Stefanik is one of those Republican phonies who claims to be "moderate" but who in truth aligns with Trump all the way, we will do everything we can to un-elect her this fall. Plattsburgh's economic health depends on it. We cats HISS.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Brutal Week Edition

By Miss Kubelik

Is it Friday yet? We cats admit it: This week has left us reeling. Temporarily, of course. Being cats, we always land on our feet.

To that end, we have some notes of defiance that we'd like to share before our next nap.

Dear political media, could you please knock off the "Democrats divided" crap? The vast majority of us know that now is not the time to be shy, retiring and polite. And Joe Crowley losing his primary didn't exactly shock us (not after that debate performance he turned in). We are fine — thank you for your "concern."

Although Anthony Kennedy voted to uphold equal rights for our friends and loved ones in the LGBTQ community, and was okay but not great on reproductive rights, he's a conservative. It's not like Trump is replacing Breyer or Ginsburg. But we get it. And we want to see a knock-down, drag-out fight against whatever yahoo the sociopath in the Oval Office nominates.

And oh, yes — per the McConnell rule, after the midterms. Heck, why not after the next Presidential election?

Meanwhile, while we political animals are consumed with SCOTUS and November and all the other hideous headlines filling our furry heads, migrant children are still being detained, and some will have to face deportation proceedings alone. Somehow, under Trump the United States has become a leading human rights abuser. But the Women's March folks aren't taking it lying down (even though they're wearing foil blankets as hundreds of them protest in the Hart Senate Office Building). Good on you, girls! We cats PURR.

"Merrick Garland Says Hi."

By Sniffles

As Mitch McConnell takes a victory lap, the Twitterverse is reminding itself that today's hideous Supreme Court decision on the Muslim ban (and all the other awful decisions we've been hit with this month) wouldn't be happening without Neil Gorsuch on the court.

We still don't understand why President Obama didn't go nuclear on the Merrick Garland nomination. But since he's a Constitutional law professor, maybe someday he'll explain that. One thing you can say about us Democrats: We believe in government and in following the rules, which means the Republicans will get us on that every time.

Meanwhile, the graphic above is a little reminder of how absurd this whole thing is. Add the fact that none of the countries listed under the ban are places Donald Trump does business in, and you find yourself rooting mighty hard for the state attorneys general who are suing him for violating the Emoluments Clause.

As for the other awful decision handed down today, here's a question. If SCOTUS says that "crisis pregnancy centers" don't have to inform women of their abortion options, does that mean we can stand outside and scream the information at them? With civility, of course. We cats HISS.

Highly Illogical.

via GIPHY

By Baxter

The way the Sarah Sanders-Red Hen story is going, it's probably fruitless to comment any further. We'd much rather focus on how Trump's policies are hurting his base — like Harley-Davidson moving to Europe and tariffs denting Wisconsin cheese.

On the other hand, we're still trying to get something clear: A single restaurant owner, wanting to avoid a scene, takes a public servant who lies for a living aside and quietly asks her to leave. That's unacceptable behavior — but a major-party nominee gets a rally of thousands to chant "Lock her up" and to mock, boo and possibly assault journalists covering the event, and that's okay.

Meanwhile, a woman with a dead fetus inside her is denied a prescription drug that will help her miscarry because a (male) pharmacist at Walgreens is offended.

We cats look forward to the day when we can check the news and not feel like hacking up a thousand hairballs. In the meantime, we wait for the Trumpsters to realize their hero is stealing them blind, and we HISS.

We Want To Cry, Too

By Zamboni

How pathetic is it that the Sunday shows (which we cats admit we don't watch) had — with the exception of Congressman Luis Guitierrez — all white guys yammering about immigration and family separation today?

And how come no women? We don't have kittens ourselves, but we're pretty damn sure that across America, moms' stomachs dropped when they first saw this photo of Honduras's most famous two-year-old.

The intrepid photographer who captured that image aside, journalism continues to fail us. The New York Times treated us this morning to an analysis of Trump supporters' stubborn loyalty, while The Washington Post covered a confab of right-wing women in Dallas (and in a particularly blinkered editorial, urged readers to let Trumpsters dine unmolested). We've kinda had it.

What the press is missing is that after last week, outrage has turned a corner. This Administration has proven over and over again that it is not only wrong on every issue from gun violence to climate change. It is blatantly antidemocratic — against due process and the rule of law. The mainstream media simply can't continue to insist that any kind of normalcy remains. It doesn't. Journalists who pretend otherwise are whistling past the graveyard.

So it means booking talking-head guests who don't look like the producers and directors behind the camera, and who maybe have thick accents or don't speak English at all. It means covering not just 2018's candidates but also the groundswell of women all over the country who have been organizing at the grass-roots to stop these monstrous Republicans in their tracks. It means interviewing voters like us about our anger and fear that the country is slipping away. Because it is.

And it means stop with the false equivalencies. But that's a whole 'nuther post — or maybe two or three. We cats don't want to get too riled before our evening naps. So we'll just HISS.

Collaborators

By Miss Kubelik

Should Sarah Huckabee Sanders be served in a restaurant? That's the question consuming the Interwebs today.

Last night's incident at the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, has come hard on the heels of both Kirstjen Nielsen and Stephen Miller getting heckled and hounded at Mexican restaurants in DC. Our first thought on hearing about the Sanders kerfuffle was: What was she doing 190 miles outside of Washington at dinnertime on a Friday night? The White House briefing was canceled — is that because SHS couldn't bear the thought of defending child concentration camps, and needed to get as far from the madding crowd as she could?

If so, it didn't work. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walked into Stephanie Wilkinson's.

It's becoming increasingly clear that this Presidency is such an historic disaster — such an offensive piece of traitorous crap — and will go down in American history as 50 times worse than James Buchanan's, Warren Harding's and Herbert Hoover's — that anyone associated with it will not only be unemployable for the rest of their lives, they'll be paraded through the streets with shaved heads when it's over.

We've been torn today by the various arguments going back and forth on Sanders. But in the end, we have to stand firm on this: Public shaming should be a thing. The migrant children crying for their parents have pushed us over the edge, and every single one of these Trumpsters should be hounded from the public square, where honesty and decency should prevail. November is coming. We cats PURR.

The Things That Make Us See

By Sniffles

The political leaders we cats admire have more faith in the American people than we do. For example, they believe that the recent outrage over migrant family separations is representative of our citizens' innate goodness — their willingness to put their feet down when something horrendous crosses the line.

We hope that these leaders we look up to are right. Except... we don't think they are. "The American people" have never been interested in anything except their own — well, interests.

Whole books have been written about US isolationism, so we won't try to reframe those arguments here. We'll just say that nobody wanted to fight the Nazis until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler was stupid enough to declare war against the United States four days later. From our vantage point today, it all looks so simple and clear — but take it from us, back then the geopolitics were as complicated as they could get.

We're reminded of all this because with the corruption and incompetence of the Trumpsters and the destruction they have wreaked, approval of impeachment currently sits at 42 percent. That sounds impressive until you realize that at the lowest point of his Presidency, just 43 percent of Americans wanted Richard Nixon impeached. Oops.

In short, the majority is never going to be on the right side of history — at least, not while it's happening. It's only later, when outrageously unconstitutional excesses (Nixon) or unparalleled genocide (the Nazis) are revealed that most folks take stock and say, yeah, getting rid of those creeps was the right thing to do.

We cats are not claiming any special clairvoyance about today, or an ability to predict the future. We're just saying that there have been many times that we've said thus-and-such-a-thing — only to be dissed and then validated later, when everyone else has come round to our way of thinking. And right now, we fear that our liberal and accepting attitude toward those who seek asylum at the Golden Door is not shared by very many of our fellow Americans.

Demonizing immigrants is nothing new in American history. Let's just hope that in 2018, with the stories and images that have come out (and with more to come, we hope), the Trumpsters' horrific treatment of migrants at the US-Mexican border will be this hideous Administration's undoing. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

What Was Barack Obama Saying About A Cartoon Presidency?

By Baxter

If you've heard about Melania Trump's "Really Don't Care" jacket, consider this brilliant alternative* shared on Twitter this afternoon. Wish this was in stores. We'd buy several!

*One of the reasons this is so great is that back in 2010, we cats saw many GOP lawn signs in Prince William County, Virginia, that said the same thing. You may recall that the Democrats lost big that year. What goes around comes around! We cats PURR.

Here's The Perfect Answer For The Specious "Their Parents Are Breaking The Law" Argument

Lest We Furr-get: From Dealey Plaza To "Tender Age" Shelters

By Zamboni

Thank goodness we cats are headed for Canada soon. There's so much awful news these days that we can't wait to get away from it all and get high. (We're talking about tuna. Why, what did you think we meant?)

Nevertheless, we've seen a few glimmers of light amid the darkness: Elijah Cummings. The ACLU lawsuit. Governors refusing to send their National Guards to the border (or, if they're already there, calling them back). Protests and demonstrations springing up, with more to come. A young girl shouting "Mr. President? FUCK YOU!" at Trump in the Rotunda today. Kirstjen Nielsen hounded out of a DC Mexican restaurant by activists screaming "SHAME!"

Yup. Nielsen was dining Mexican. Wish we could have been there to throw a whole dulce de leche in her face.

Meanwhile, our journalists continue to disappoint, still pretending they have to give the Trumpsters the respect or deference that a normal (non-Nazi) Administration deserves. Check out this headline from The Washington Post: "President Trump Seems to Be Saying More and More Things that Aren't True."

Why the delicacy? Why not just say, "Is Lying More"? "Lying" is a good, short, to-the-point word. Perfect for headlines.

Today we also caught Newsweek using the word "Democrat" as an adjective. Republican hate speech, twice in two paragraphs.

At least there's Rachel Maddow, who broke down as she tried to read the news that Trump is interning babies in "tender age" camps. One of the most moving moments in live reporting since Walter Cronkite in November 1963. Thanks to Rachel, we PURR as well as HISS.

Can You Get Re-elected When You're Committing Human Rights Abuses?

By Miss Kubelik

Goodness gracious, but Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock of Virginia has had a bad week — starting with last Tuesday's primary.

That day, a fringe-y hater edged out a more establishment-y but still pretty wacko dude for the Republican nomination for Senate against Tim Kaine. Which means that with a racist Johnny Reb-wannabe at the top of the GOP ticket in Virginia this fall, Republicans are frantic that revulsion against him will hurt their Congressional candidates.

That all took place, of course, before the avalanche of outrage that we're seeing over families being separated at the border. Republicans running for re-election across the country who are not rabid racists — at least, not publicly — are petrified. Ensconced in her comfortable, suburban-mom-laden Loudon County, Comstock must be dreading the idea of having to defend cages for crying children. (And it's probably not be the right time for her to haul her old "Aren't I a good mother" campaign spot out of mothballs.)

So Comstock can probably count on all this to depress her vote — or to add a few points to Jennifer Wexton's victory margin — or both.

Yep, we said victory margin. Because today the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed the rating on Comstock's race from "toss up" to "lean Democratic." Like we said, a bad week for Babs.

When the Trumpsters torture children and lie about it, and all the former First Ladies slam your guy in the White House, and even Ted Cruz is forced to look like he cares, it's pretty tough to thread that needle to winning in November. We cats PURR.

The "Mobsters Are Governing America" Truck Hits The Streets Of DC

By Sniffles

Every week under this Administration is hideous, with the most recent one possibly the worst yet. Who knows what the near future will bring? It's only Monday.

So if you're in need of a gentle grin, here is one courtesy of Mad Dog PAC, which has funded a mobile billboard in Washington, DC, every day this week. And at the height of tourist season, too! Mad Dog is going to end up in a lot of home videos and photos on the Face Thing.

Next up: a rolling billboard taking on the evil Trump-Sessions family separation policy.

If you'd like to help fund these billboards and other Mad Dog projects, click here. We cats PURR.

"Can't Happen Here"? Already Is.

"So you believe in Christ the Redeemer?"

...Sophie, with an inanity poised on her tongue and choked with fear, was about to attempt a reply when the doctor said, "You may keep one of your children."

"Bitte?" said Sophie.

"You may keep one of your children," he repeated. "The other one will have to go. Which one will you keep?"

"You mean, I have to choose?"

"You're a Polack, not a Yid. That gives you a privilege — a choice..."

"Mama!" She heard Eva's thin but soaring cry at the instant that she thrust the child away from her and rose from the concrete with a clumsy stumbling motion. "Take the baby!" she called out. "Take my little girl!"

At this point the aide...tugged at Eva's hand and led her away into the waiting legion of the damned. She would forever retain a dim impression that the child had continued to look back, beseeching.

—Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

New York Docks, 1946 v. Tornillo, Texas, 2018: Which Version Of America Do You Prefer?

By Baxter

Gosh, we've just lost another distinguished photojournalist. But we guess that's what happens when you're well into your tenth decade.

Hard on the heels of Art Shay, Clemens Kalischer has died. At 97, he'd seen a lot of life — and not just through the lens of his camera.

Kalischer and his family escaped the Nazis in 1933 and made it to New York after being separated (and reunited) in a series of adventures so unlikely that even in the golden age of Hollywood they'd have been left on the cutting-room floor. Then in 1946, Agence France-Presse recruited him to record the arrivals of refugees from war-torn Europe. The result was affecting images like the one above.

Kalischer's photos of "Displaced Persons," depicting moving reunions of those who made it safely through the Golden Door, have special resonance now — and not in a good way. Because this is the photo that sums up America's treatment of refugees today:

In 1946, Democrat Harry Truman was President. Today, it's a sociopath and wannabe Republican dictator who tears migrant kids from their parents' arms and puts them in concentration camps. We can't help thinking that if Clemens Kalischer hadn't been 97 years old, he would have been down in Tornillo, Texas, this week, recording the suffering of 2018's displaced. We cats are sick about this, and we HISS.

This Is The Cartoon That Got Rob Rogers Fired

Apparently the truth hurts for the new (right-wing) owners of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We cats HISS.

Stalag 2018

By Zamboni

Wow. When even Franklin Graham is slamming you, you've got a problem. Maybe the Trumpsters should rethink their child concentration camps?

Folks on Twitter are already comparing Trump's and Sessions's rip-the-kids-from-their-parents policy at the border to the Holocaust, and we cats can understand why. In fact, we've been thinking quite a bit about World War II these days.

First, that it's a war we never thought we'd have to re-fight. Sure, we often have to be vigilant about protecting hard-fought gains, like women's rights and civil rights. But beating National Socialism? We thought we did that. Now we have Nazis in the streets of Charlottesville, and ICE agents acting like the SS. Incredible.

The United States used to be the place that everyone wanted to go. It was the only country on earth that you could arrive with nothing and be lifted up. We've had our national sins, but in so many ways and for so many years we were seen as a force for good. That's why, when the Third Reich was collapsing in 1945, German soldiers desperately tried to surrender to American troops rather than the Soviets. They knew that our guys would treat them humanely. The Russians, not so much.

You can argue till you're blue in the face that Nazi troops would have deserved everything the Soviets, whose country Hitler invaded, could have dished out — and it still won't matter to us. Stories like that make us proud to be American.

Today, though, we're not proud at all. We're appalled. We're disgusted. We're aghast. And we're not sure we can ever step foot in a Walmart, either. We cats HISS.

Virginia Is For (Republican) Haters

By Miss Kubelik

Once upon a time — not too long ago, in fact — Virginia was touted as a breeding ground for the kind of Republican who could go far: commonsense conservatives who masked their right-wing beliefs behind veneers of pleasant blandness, and thus were able to appeal to folks across party lines in the suburbs. Dudes like George Allen, Jim Gilmore, and of course, the one whom the national GOP seemed most eager to vault to national prominence, "Transvaginal Bob" McDonnell.

Ah, those were the days. Republicans haven't won a statewide race in the Old Dominion in a decade, and last night's primary results just added insult to injury. A white supremacist Trumpster, Corey Stewart, grabbed the GOP nomination for Senate, eking out a win just a point or so over Nick Freitas, who as a state legislator was the more "establishment" candidate.

Virginia Republicans are privately whining to Larry Sabato today, and the media have pretty much summed it up like this: Racist hater Stewart will repulse all the moderate and cross-over voters that the GOP so desperately needs in the fall — not to beat Senator Tim Kaine, which now seems impossible, but to save endangered members of their Congressional delegation, like Barbara Comstock. On top of that, Democrats just nominated a passel of strong candidates. So it sounds like the Virginia GOP is toast.

We cats are tickled about that, but it's not escaped our notice that the punditheads and pontificators, in selling the narrative of the state party versus Stewart, are missing an important part of the story.

Coming in third behind Freitas in the primary was total nutcase E.W. Jackson. (He's not only crazy, he's the Harold Stassen of Virginia's extreme right. He just keeps running, and losing, and running, and losing.)

Anyway, Jackson got 12 percent of the vote. You know what? Add that to Stewart's near-45 percent, and you have a Republican electorate that's 57 percent haters and whackjobs. That's in a primary, kids — not a party convention, which can get way more fringe-y.

With numbers like that, mainline Republicans have to do more than wring their hands. They need to take stock of themselves and figure out exactly how long they're going to allow racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and xenophobia to rule their party. It's going to take courage to snatch the GOP back from the Trumpsters. It may take running the teabaggers out of the party altogether. But they need to do it: Banish the haters back to the shadows where they belong, or face oblivion. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Just in case you're wondering, Stewart is from Minnesota.)

A Better Way To Say It

By Sniffles

We cats are irritated by Robert DeNiro. Not because we disagree with what he said at the Tonys on Sunday night — and not because we're prudes (although we kinda are) — but because it just wasn't clever. You resort to the "F" word when you don't have something more witty to say.

Pierre Trudeau said as much 47 years ago. (That's Pierre, Larry Kudlow, not Justin. No wonder you had that heart attack.) Except in the senior Trudeau's case, it was about the "A" word, plus "SOB," epithets with which Richard Nixon had rudely tagged him. "I've been called much worse things by better men," Pierre sniffed. Game over.

So: Nobody wins in battles of rudeness. Justin has proved that very well.

How so? Through his measured performance at his press conference, after the G7 had concluded and the ever-petulant Donald Trump was wheels-up for Singapore. "Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable," he said. "But we also will not be pushed around." Trump, from his perch as the world's supreme pusher-arounder, was outraged. Trouble ensued.

But did you catch what happened after that? The Canadian House of Commons condemned the Trumpsters' attacks on their Prime Minister. Unanimously. Across party lines.

When was the last time Canadian MPs voted on something without a single dissent? We're glad you asked, because Trump won't like this, either: It was on the anti-Russian Magnitsky Act, in October 2017.

Justin, meanwhile, has lain low while his House of Commons eloquently speaks for an annoyed True North. Which kind of brings us back to DeNiro. If Canada hasn't just said "F you" to Donald Trump and his nightmare Presidency in the most civilized way, call us cats Chihuahuas. And of course we PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Charlevoix Edition

By Baxter

The joint was really jumpin' in Charlevoix on Friday and Saturday, and not in a good way. Donald Drumpf arrived late and left early, insulted our allies, including with hostile body language that said he'd rather be anywhere than there, and threw a tantrum after he left.

In between, Angela Merkel trolled him with a photo that made him look like a toddler who wouldn't use his potty chair.

Before we run and hide under the bed in anticipation of Singapore, here are a few of our own thoughts.

Re Trump's attack on Justin Trudeau: Remember that everything Trump says is projection. So accusing Trudeau of being "weak" is a telling move. Only somebody whose arguments — like his character — are as feeble as Trump's would do everything he could to avoid our allies and then bluster at them in cowardly tweets when they were no longer face-to-face. (P.S. Justin didn't say anything in his post-summit press conference that he hadn't already said to Trump in person.)

Also re Trump's attack on Trudeau: Trump is already in a deep, deep hole with women voters. This is going to drive him deeper — not just because Trudeau is young and handsome but because he's a feminist.

If a "gaffe" is defined as "accidentally telling the truth," we must report that Fox News has described the Singapore confab as a first-time meeting "between the two dictators."

Finally, a chilling reminder of where we're at, from our day trip to Hyde Park yesterday:

In a special exhibit of posters from World War II, the FDR Presidential museum was running the first chapter of Frank Capra's award-winning documentary, "Why We Fight." Capra pointed out that in each of the Axis countries — Germany, Italy and Japan — dictators rose to power in part because their respective legislatures abrogated their responsibility to serve as a check on executive aggression. As we've said before, November can't come soon enough. We cats HISS.

In Search Of A Real President

By Zamboni

Desperate to immerse ourselves in a Presidency with some true leadership, we cats visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum today. (And yes, we'll have plenty to say about today's G7 — oops, G6 — meeting that Donald Drumpf threw a stinkbomb into after he flounced out for Singapore. What a despicable coward he is.)

Anyway, here is the huge portrait that greets you when you walk into the Roosevelt museum. We chose this because we thought the FDR quote that accompanies it could not be more opposed to the dark, hateful spirit of the current Administration.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Hanging on until happy days are here again, we cats PURR.

Willard Is Still The Worst

By Miss Kubelik

On the one hand, we cats need to thank Willard Mitt Romney for handing Democrats a great 2018 campaign ad today. What could drive more of us to the polls more effectively than a prediction that we're in for six more years of Donald Drumpf? (Mia Love, who has a tough re-election fight in her Utah Congressional district, must be furious.)

But Willard is still just a disgusting piece of you-know-what. His behavior lately has reminded us how spot-on we were in 2012 to despise him as a phony and a knave. Even when he was declaring back then that it was Russia that posed the greatest threat to the national security of the United States.

Turns out he was right about that. But we hesitate to give him any credit — because of his silence now.

Drumpf has just announced that he thinks his good buddy Vlad Putin should be let back into the G7. Mind you, the Western democracies kicked Russia out after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. But that doesn't matter to Drumpf: Putin has something on him that makes him do Russia's bidding.

And from the Republicans? Not a peep — not even from Willard.

It is very, very bad for the United States to be isolated from its allies, and very, very good for Russia to have us fighting with them. How fast is Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave? (And how quickly will Drumpf invite the Russian-born captain of the Washington Capitals and his Stanley Cup-winning teammates to the White House?) Until we hear the GOP and, especially, Willard Mitt Romney, speaking out about this — let's just say it — treason, we cats HISS.

Trump: A Portrait Of Idiocy

By Sniffles

On the day we found out that a Republican Congressman tweeted an image of Nazi soldiers to honor D-Day, we also learned that our faux President thinks — well, let us digress for a bit of history.

See this painting? It's one of five copies of a portrait that Gilbert Stuart did of George Washington. The most famous of these five hangs in the East Room of the White House this very day, and overall, it's one of the best-known images of the nation's first President.

The reason the White House is able to display its copy 222 years after it was painted is because First Lady Dolley Madison insisted on saving it before she fled the capital ahead of invasion.

"Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure," Mrs. Madison wrote to her sister that very night, "and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found to be too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safekeeping."

The guys from New York spirited the painting away, Mrs. Madison safely evacuated, and the White House was burned. BY THE BRITISH.

We put that in shouty all-caps because it's been reported that our Dear Leader, Donald Drumpf, told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month that the tariffs he was slapping on the True North were in the interest of national security because "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?"

We have no idea how Justin responded, but we're assuming he set the fool in the Oval Office straight. Perhaps he also reminded Drumpf that in the War of 1812, it was the United States that invaded Canada — not the other way around? We cats HISS.

RFK 50

We cats don't run on beaches — that's for dogs. But this photo is on our minds today because we're dreaming of things that never were and asking, "Why not?"

Make The Great American Songbook Great Again!

By Baxter

We cats are still trying to wrap our heads around the irony that Donald Trump, at a rally he staged to help prove his patriotism, couldn't sing the lyrics to a jingoistic song written by a Russian.

That's right, kids, Irving Berlin — composer of "God Bless America," which we hate him for, "White Christmas," which we're "meh" about, and "What'll I Do?", which we adore — was born Israel Beilin in the Russian Empire in 1888.

Funny, yes? Trump probably couldn't tell you that Berlin wrote Kate Smith's signature tune, let alone the words to it. And surely Trump's limited intellect couldn't grasp that a foreigner could be one of the pillars of the Great American Songbook. But if you look at the list of those venerated composers and lyricists, a number of them were not American by birth.

Frederick "I Could Have Danced All Night" Loewe? German. Jule "Time After Time" Styne? British. Jack "Happy Days Are Here Again" Yellen? Polish. And Vernon "April in Paris" Duke? Like Berlin, a Russky.

Which means that what these guys also had in common was that they were — GASP! — immigrants. And so, so many of their fellow American Songbook masters were the children of immigrants. (Jews, too.)

So that's the disturbing truth behind Trump's ridiculous performance today. Of course he couldn't sing "God Bless America," because every day he and his evil minions do something to destroy its soul. How many future creative artists are — thanks not to actual legislation but to Trump Administration policy — being held in cages at the border tonight? We cats hate to even think about it, and we HISS.

We Find This Decision As Nutty As A Fruitcake (But There's Still Hope)

By Zamboni

There's an awful lot to write about today that's disturbing: looming abuse of Presidential power, ICE ripping children from their parents at the border and Scott Pruitt's strange desire for a used Trump hotel mattress. But instead we're going to focus on cake.

As in, to our friends and loved ones in the gay community: If you want to get a wedding cake, don't order it from one lousy bakery in Colorado. But you'll probably be okay if you have it baked by somebody else.

If not, as the Supreme Court appeared to caution today, they may rule differently next time — because in this single instance, in the eyes of the court the Colorado Civil Rights Commission did not fairly consider the baker's religious views. The justices ruled on the minutiae of this particular case but punted on the larger question of discrimination against LGBTQ customers in the marketplace.

As much as we understand the details of it — we're not lawyers, but we try — we cats are still annoyed with today's decision. Because anything that gives religious freaks cause to celebrate is irritating. But at 7-2, it was not close, and we have resigned ourselves to the fact that these questions linger because we live in a country that was founded in part on the concept of religious freedom. (Unlike Canada, for instance, to which explorers and entrepreneurs flocked to make a buck.)

But it's still Pride Month. You guys can still get married. SCOTUS has not given a green light to businesses to discriminate against gay people, and nobody's going back. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Addendum

By Miss Kubelik

We cats may have posted about the missing Melania just yesterday. But we find ourselves doing it again tonight, even though, let's be honest: We don't really care where she is. We are simply curious about the possibilities.

This weekend it's gotten even curiouser, because practically the entire loathsome Drumpf clan took off for Camp David. But no Melania. (We didn't see Lurch — oops, we mean Barron — either, so maybe he's with Mum? Wherever that may be.)

Our fellow tweeps are speculating madly that Trump punched or hit his wife and that she has gone under wraps with a slow-healing black eye. That could be, but we're doubtful. Trump is 71 and not in great shape, and she's a lithe 48-year-old. She strikes us as being somebody who could easily duck. (Although we know that accidents do happen: See Norman Maine and Vicki Lester, above.)

Well, perhaps sometime soon this mystery will be explained. It won't matter to us one way or the other, unless there's an alarmingly nefarious political angle to it. In the meantime, we're more worried about this Trump sociopath destroying our democracy. The midterms can't come soon enough. We cats HISS.

Melania, The Press, And Why It Matters

By Sniffles

Okay, there are probably more important stories to talk about tonight — but maybe there aren't.

Where is Melania? She hasn't been seen in public in three weeks, and the Interwebs are speculating like crazy. One tweeter has commented interestingly to us: Michael Ian Black, who has pointed out that the media are averting their eyes, demurring questions and coverage as they never have for previous First Ladies.

We cats think that the answer to this behavior lies in part with Black's solution: that Melania is a victim, and the press recognizes her as such. But the other piece of it, in our humble opinion, is that the source of any information about her — her marriage, her son, what she thinks about the White House, her husband's slimy adult children, the media, etc. — would be her closest friends who would be speaking on the record with the DC press.

Which means we cats don't think Melania has any friends. No one surfaced as a Melania advocate or spokeswoman during the campaign. We can only assume that that's a result of her wanting to keep her beautiful-people gal pals away from her adulterous spouse — and said spouse, tempestuous as he is, not wanting her to have any sounding boards he can't control.

But another reason Melania gets away with the eye-averting is that the nature of the White House coverage has changed so much since the old days of Mamie, Jackie and Lady Bird.

Back then, there was an entire press corps dedicated to Washington society. Heck, there was a Washington society, one of the leaders of which was the First Lady. That press corps, like that social scene, no longer exists. There's nobody whose job it is to check in with the East Wing 10 times a day to find out whether the President put Vermont or New York maple syrup on his pancakes that morning, and what color the dinner napkins were at the most recent State Dinner.

We're not saying we pine for those days — but even if the East Wing coverage was always, in the end, just blather, it matters today that we don't know what the story is with Melania and her alleged kidney ailment. Because in the age of Trump, the only truth is that which you believe to be the truth.

Therefore, why shouldn't we be asking after her health, and whether her five-day hospitalization for a routine outpatient procedure was the result of a Norman Maine-type punch or, worse, a beating? And why hasn't she been out in public since? As an alleged crusader against bullying, she should have gone to Santa Fe High with Trump to comfort the school shooting victims and to soften his presence. But she didn't. Inquiring minds want to know why.

As we said, it's not the most important issue hanging over this hideous Administration and the damage it's doing to our democracy. But the nation still deserves to know. We cats HISS.