The Real Thing.

By Sniffles

It's pretty remarkable that aside from visiting that stupid rocket launch yesterday, Benedict Donald has been skittish about his public appearances lately. For example, he held a so-called press conference in the Rose Garden last week, but didn't mention Minneapolis or the protests, and walked off without taking questions. (See, in a "press conference," journalists usually get to say things.)

He's been tweeting away, however, outrageously and offensively — sowing division instead of bringing Americans together. Typical Trump. But it's had an unintended consequence: Instead of "MAGA Night at the White House" — whatever that was supposed to be — 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue went into lockdown.

And the protests continue.

Meanwhile, just up the road from Washington, Joe Biden visited the site of last night's Black Lives Matter demonstration in Wilmington, Delaware. He also issued the kind of statement you'd expect from a Commander-in-Chief: "We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. As President, I will help lead this conversation — and more importantly, I will listen."

In the words of one our favorite Democrats: "This is what real leaders of all colors need to be doing. Going to the communities and walking among hurting people. Not tweeting racist crap from the office." That's telling them, Howard. We cats PURR.

Stuff To Do.

By Hubie and Bertie

Appalled by the state of the country and longing for change? Tired of avoiding the news because it makes you feel suicidal? Vowing to live the rest of your life never looking at Donald Trump's face or hearing his voice again? Take action!

Here's how. It's important, it's easy, and you don't even have to leave your house or wear a mask.

REGISTER TO VOTE. You can view registration deadlines, sign up, confirm your registration, and even watch a video for the first-time voter (if that's you) by clicking here.

Then, on a regular basis, check that your registration is still in force and is accurate. This is especially crucial if you live in a battleground state that the Republicans have to win for four more years of Trump: Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But no matter where you live, keep checking. The GOP will do anything to cheat, and remember, they have help from the Russians. Click here to check your voter registration status.

In addition to registering and checking, make sure your family and friends are registered and up to date. Tell them how to do it, and share these links. Don't wait — start now.

Also, vote in every election you can, not just the Presidential. Change happens at the grass roots, in your city, county and state governments.

That's our best advice after an awful, awful week. We cats PURR.

Okay, Maybe There's Hope

Kansas City, yesterday.

Happy 103, 35

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

—John F. Kennedy

Lest We Furr-get: April 4, 1968

By Miss Kubelik

After three-plus years of total Trump craziness, we're well aware that there have probably been plenty of times we've said, "Wow, the Administration is really going off the rails today." But we have to say: Tonight it seems like a total unraveling.

Crowds are gathering outside the White House, throughout DC and across the country, protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Donald Trump's despicable reaction to it. (He's stoking the race war the white supremacists always wanted.) In the midst of this, plus a pandemic that they've mismanaged to the tune of 100,000 American deaths and Depression-era levels of unemployment, the Trumpsters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have gone into lockdown.

The people's house is in lockdown. Let that sink in, as they say.

We cats were in the Carter Administration, and we're the first to admit that we were not exactly popular when we left office. (As opposed to now, when thousands of Carter groupies descend on Plains every year.) But good God — we never had to put the White House in lockdown.

Joe Biden has already addressed the nation, but he should think about doing it again. America needs it. Perhaps he can consult Robert F. Kennedy's speech in Indiana the night Martin Luther King was killed:

"What we need in the United States is not division, what we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

"We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence, it is not the end of lawlessness, it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

"This Is No Time For Incendiary Tweets"

By Zamboni

It's been another brutal week in America, in which none of us, really, could breathe. Not if we had COVID-19 — or if we were a black man under the knee of a racist white cop — or if we were just witnessing it all. Add in Benedict Donald's calls to violence, and we cats are exhausted and disgusted.

But at least, waiting in the wings is a real President.

Joe Biden spoke to George Floyd's family today — and then he spoke to the rest of us, like a true Commander-in-Chief of a beleaguered nation would. In six months, we can make this official, and Trump will be history. Let's do it. We cats PURR.

"Partisanship Has Grown Deadly"

By Baxter

There were already many reasons to like and admire Democratic State Representative Brian Sims of Pennsylvania, because he's such a champion of issues we care about. But now, this video... well, let's just say that if we cats wore socks, they'd be knocked off.

Back story: After relentlessly pushing to reopen the Keystone State (presumably so Donald Trump can get re-elected), majority Republicans in Harrisburg just revealed that one of their members had tested positive for COVID-19 — and they didn't tell their Democratic colleagues. Now, four Democrats have also tested positive. Others are left in limbo, not knowing if they have the virus or have passed it on to their unsuspecting families.

Sims's fury in this video is so epic, we can't add to it or improve it. But a couple of things stand out:

• His point about gerrymandering is huge. If you don't believe it just by looking at Pennsylvania, check out Wisconsin. Or Michigan. Or Ohio.

• Even though Sims — a kidney donor, it turns out — is apoplectic with rage, he still speaks in full paragraphs. Amazing! (And yes, his language is colorful, but otherwise his vocabulary is so much bigger than Donald Trump's.)

We cats are disgusted with the Pennsylvania GOP, and we HISS. But we are smitten with Brian Sims, and we PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Social Media Odds & Ends Edition

By Sniffles

There are certain fights on Twitter that we cats choose not to get involved in. Well, many fights, actually. Having once been swarmed by obnoxious users, we quickly realized that life was too short for such nonsense. (That applies to Bernie Bros as well as Trumpsters.)

It doesn't mean, though, that we don't scroll through and shake our furry heads at the craziness there. Here are a few.

The birdwatching black guy whom the now-famous-and-universally-reviled Amy Cooper screamed at in Central Park seems very classy. "I’m not interested in repercussions," Christian Cooper (yep, Cooper) said. “I don’t need to see anything else happen to her." Like him and the Twitterverse, we just wish that people would follow simple rules — wearing masks, yes, but in this case, leash laws. So we don't care if Amy Cooper loses her job or not. But since she's also a dog-dragger, we're glad the animal shelter took it back. Let's hope it finds a nicer human.

Speaking of rules, it appears that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is not going to enforce his own company's standards and take down Benedict Donald's tweets about the dead woman who worked for Joe Scarborough. Pretty craven of him. But it just gives the Morning Schmoes and everyone else reason to continually remind Americans what kind of cretin lives in the White House. And voters are already peeling away from Trump like mad. Has he managed to expand his support beyond anyone but Wall Street and his crazy MAGA base? No, and he's literally killing a lot of the people he has left.

Now Benedict Donald is tweeting away about ripping the Republican convention out of North Carolina. We're seeing a lot of Democratic responses along the lines of: "DOOOOO EEEEET."

Obviously, Trump needs his adoring-crowd fix and is scheming to find a way to make money off it, so two birds with one stone, right? But he'll also lose money in the end. One of the attractions of Charlotte is/was that a convention city's host committee pledges to help the party raise funds to stage the event, and Charlotte has a lot of big employers with headquarters and/or major operations. So how is the RNC going to make up the difference if they move? Just take a big chunk of change off their fundraising advantage over Joe Biden and the Democrats. That would make us cats PURR.

Welcome To Sterling, Virginia (NOT)

Who's going to tell Benedict Donald how much America hates him?

Read All About It

This is tomorrow's front page. One thousand names — just 1% of all COVID deaths. Meanwhile, Benedict Donald golfed today. We cats HISS.

Not-So-Blind Faith?

By Hubie and Bertie

Here is the Obama family, going to church in 2012. Have you ever seen a photo of the Drumpf family doing the same?

Probably not. Yet for some reason (think: abortion, controlling women), American evangelicals have been staunch supporters of Benedict Donald. But maybe that's about to end. Or at least, fray.

"A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his re-election campaign, where top aides have long banked on expanding the President’s evangelical base as a key part of their strategy for victory this November," POLITICO reports.

Therefore, witness Trump's desperate appeal today to have churches reopened for Memorial Day weekend Sunday. This, of course, is an empty gesture, since Trump has absolutely no sway over what churches in the US do, and never goes to services himself.

For our part, we prefer a country whose history rests on economic rather than religious freedom. But we'll just point out that if evangelicals are thinking twice about their support for a man who has raped, cheated, stolen and lied, it's about effing time. We cats HISS.

Reade-ing The Tea Leaves

By Miss Kubelik

Can we all agree that it's clear? Tara Reade is a con artist. Not because any Democrat said so — but because her funded-by-Trump lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, has dumped her.

That kinda happens when you realize people may have wrongfully gone to jail thanks to "expert witness" testimony Reade gave, in which she may have lied under oath. What did she lie about? Well, that she had a degree from Antioch College (she didn't). And that she was a legislative assistant in Joe Biden's Senate office (she opened the mail).

"I’m always concerned when an expert witness testifies falsely, and we are looking into filing a petition for habeas corpus," said the attorney for one of the imprisoned defendants.

Wow! No wonder Wigdor cut and ran.

So, Tara Reade is hogwash personified. We cats did a big eyeroll when she conveniently appeared on the scene, changing her story and refusing to be interviewed by legitimate journalists. But at least we didn't go to jail on her word. That makes us sick, and we HISS.

Oxford Comments.

By Zamboni

As we head into a strange holiday weekend to kick off what will be an equally strange summer, here's some fun news from Oxford Economics — "the leader in global forecasting and quantitative analysis."

Benedict Donald, they say, will lose in a landslide in November. Thanks to his inaction on the coronavirus — which has led to 100,000 American deaths and a wrecked US economy — Trump will only win 35 percent of the popular vote and will lose states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Missouri. They also think he will lose Ohio. We cats love this map, but we have a few thoughts about it.

• Flipping Missouri and Ohio is a bit of a reach. It's less of a reach if Joe Biden enjoys a national 10-point blowout.

• It's hard to see how this loss could be called a "landslide" if Trump wins both Texas and Florida. We think chances are better that Trump loses one of those states than he loses Missouri.

• We also are amazed at their prediction for Arizona. Biden will be riding Mark Kelly's coattails at this point.

But the bottom line is not the specifics of the map. It's the overall trend: that Biden has increasingly more paths to 270 electoral votes and Trump has fewer and fewer. Which means there's no good news for Benedict Donald here.

Meanwhile, predictions like this will help with Democratic fundraising if nothing else. People like to throw money at somebody who looks like a winner. We cats PURR.

Countdown To Cutoff

By Baxter

Appointed GOP lamebrain Martha McSally is so far behind astronaut Mark Kelly in the race for her Arizona Senate seat that she's even getting hammered in traditionally Republican Maricopa County.

That's super-bad news for her. Not just because she's behind in Maricopa 54 to 36 percent (astounding), but because the Phoenix media market is the most expensive in the state. Kelly is also beating her in fundraising, so where is McSally going to get the money to compete in Maricopa?

Sure, Mitch McConnell has "reserved" $9 million in airtime in the fall to help. But having a reservation Chez Mitch does not mean one actually gets a table. Things are looking dicey enough for Republicans in the Senate that McConnell may need to spend his McSally money elsewhere: Iowa, say, or North Carolina. Or maybe — Kentucky?

Who's the first Republican Senator Moscow Mitch will be forced to write off? McSally? Or Cory Gardner in Colorado? Susan Collins in Maine?

CNN should put a little countdown clock in the lower right-hand corner of their screen. In the meantime, we cats PURR.

Rainbow Does It Again!

Randy Rainbow scratches out another pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck — or even a sweat. We cats PURR.

Feeling Expansive

By Sniffles

We cats really couldn't care less if Benedict Donald is taking hydroxycholoroquine or not, but we sure are having fun with Speaker Pelosi calling him "morbidly obese" on CNN tonight. Oooh, that's gonna make him mad.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Let's talk about the 2020 election.

Presuming that Vladimir Putin and the Republicans don't subvert democracy (and there's still a big chance of that), the situation is looking pretty good for Democrats so far. Yes, that's a lot of ifs we just threw in there. But think of it this way: As an incumbent, Trump and his campaign should be talking about comfortably expanding the map for the GOP right now. Instead, it's Joe Biden who's doing that. "I am certain that states will be battleground states that haven’t been battleground states before," his campaign manager said.

Most tantalizing for Biden and Harris/Demings/Abrams/Rice/whoever he picks for VP are: Michigan and Pennsylvania, plus Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. And we haven't even mentioned Wisconsin (admittedly, a real trainwreck these days), and even Texas and Georgia, which, incredibly, are neck-and-neck.

Sure, November is five and a half months away, and things can change. (Also: See caveats above.) But it's great that the punditheads are recognizing the states that are moving Biden's way. It's so much more reassuring than Democrats' narrow-path-to-271 strategy of campaigns past. We'll take it. We cats PURR.

Things We're Grateful For (And Not)

By Baxter

Sunday evening can be a time of reflection. We cats have had several breakfasts, some play time, a lot of naps, and two big dishes of minced turkey. It's all so pleasant, that we're lying around now, thinking good thoughts. Here are a few things that are making us happy tonight.

Justin Amash has decided that he won't run for President. Isn't that swell? Not that we thought he'd make a super-serious dent in the vote come November, but come on — now's not the time for third-party vanity campaigns. We're in a national emergency. Heck, it was a national emergency before the coronavirus pandemic.

President Obama's commencement addresses last night really got under Benedict Donald's skin, causing him to go on a Hector-Projector rant today that was more intense than usual. Can we make a recommendation? Trump should spend the next six months doing exactly this: slamming a hugely popular former Democratic President (and watching his numbers sink more).

New York's Capital Region's been given the go-ahead to start reopening. That's our area of the state which, until recently, hadn't met all seven of Governor Cuomo's metrics to qualify. Yes, we know that life won't be snapping back to what we knew before. But come to think of it, who cares? We're strictly indoor cats anyway.

There's one story that definitely doesn't thrill us, though: Joseph LaLima, a barber just south of us in Kingston, defied New York's "on pause" order and continued to give secret haircuts in his apartment behind his shop. You guessed it: He came down with the coronavirus and ended up in the hospital for four days.

How many clients did he infect? Nobody knows. But all this jackass cares about is money he thinks he's owed. "Is Cuomo going to pay me? Is he going to pay my taxes? Is he going to pay my heat and electric? Is he going to feed my family?" he bleated.

Hm. We cats have a few money questions of our own. As in, as a small business owner, does LaLima have health insurance? If so, how much of his hospital stay — easily avoided if he'd obeyed the law — will it cover? And if not, are we New York taxpayers going to get stuck with the bill? Just sayin'. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Governor Cuomo took a coronavirus test at his briefing in Albany today. We're not showing you the photo with the giant swab up his nose, sorry. It makes us feel ew-y.)

We Did It Before, And We Can Do It Again

By Sniffles

President Barack Obama addressed 2020 graduates tonight, in a virtual ceremony that was forced by Benedict Donald's screwy mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic. Wow, what a breath of fresh air — to hear a President talk to Americans intelligently about their hopes, ambitions, concerns and fears.

Yep, fears. The pandemic, Obama said, has "fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they're doing. A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge." And he urged the next generation of Americans to, essentially, have at it.

This speech was not only completely beyond the capabilities of Trump but was balm to the American soul. It linked the challenges of the current generation — COVID-19, climate change, threats to our democracy — to the challenges faced by earlier generations, like depression and war.

As we listened to Obama, we thought about a remarkable obituary we read in The New York Times today. Jerzy Glowszewski died at 97 of the coronavirus in Manhattan. He was a Polish RAF fighter pilot who flew 100 missions against the Nazis during World War II. This amazing photo of him captures the anti-Nazi spirit of the Allies, who were on their heels at the time — but who went on to a great victory against the forces of darkness.

It's no exaggeration to say that emboldened by Trump, those dark forces are alive in America today. And we hope that young people like Jerzy are ready to rise up and take back our democracy this November. They won't be flying Spitfires or shooting bullets — but they'll be braving the coronavirus at the ballot box. We'll be there with them. We cats PURR.

Welcome To Pennsylvania!

We cats missed posting yesterday thanks to a thunderstorm that knocked our power out. It sure was nice this morning to wake up to restored electricity and.... this. More later! We cats PURR.

"Both Sides"? NOW?

By Hubie and Bertie

We cats are pretty annoyed at how the news media allow the Trumpsters to frame the narrative on the coronavirus. Heck, we've been mad at how the news media frame narratives for a long time now. This is just the latest iteration.

Today, we've been triggered by a piece in Axios that sums up America's pandemicky situation and — thanks to the incompetence and mismanagement of Benedict Donald and nearly all of the GOP — how messed up we are. It was a pretty depressing read, leavened by just a few bright spots — mostly, about the progress some states (some states) are making to deal with the virus and try to rescue their crashed economies.

And then they close with this: "An existential threat — like war or natural disaster — usually brings people together to set a course of action in response. Somehow, we've let this one drive us apart."

As the old joke goes, "Who is this 'we,' Kemo Sabe?"

Will the media ever let bothsidesism go? Nearly 85,000 dead Americans apparently haven't convinced them it's time. Not even hours of lying rants and billions of rage-tweets from Benedict Donald, streams of falsehoods by Mike Pence, Press Secretary Blondie, and every hostage who's been dragged to the White House lectern as a prop, throngs of gun-toting know-nothings storming state capitols, threats to cancel the 2020 election, and conspiracy theories and bad propaganda vomited out of the mouths of FOX, OAN and Trump sycophants... none of it can deter the media from blaming everyone equally — Republicans, Democrats, the American people.

It's getting harder and harder to see our way out of this, and the failings of journalism are playing a big part in that. We cats HISS.

Teamwork

By Miss Kubelik

The best thing about yesterday's repugnant (and self-destructive) Donald Trump press conference in the Rose Garden was the fact that journalists 1) talked back and 2) had each other's backs.

After Trump insulted CBS reporter Weijia Jiang with the racist comment, "Ask China that question," Jiang asked, "Why are you saying that to me, specifically"? When Trump tried to wiggle away by calling on CNN's Kaitlin Collins, Collins tossed the question back to Jiang, after which Yamiche Alcindor of PBS deferred to Collins. Cornered, Trump ended the session and stormed away.

More, please. We cats PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Big Fail Edition

By Baxter

Everywhere you look tonight, people are embarrassing themselves with terrible performances and/or bad behavior: Benedict Donald acting like a toddler. Or MAGAts misspelling death threats against Governor Gretchen Whitmer on the Face Thing. As if those weren't bad enough, here are a few more egregious examples.

Perhaps you heard about the restaurant in Crystal Rock, Colorado, that violated public health orders and reopened with dine-in service yesterday. We don't really know why a place called "C&C Coffee & Kitchen" is Coloradans' idea of the perfect Mothers Day treat, but patrons crowded in, with no social distancing and nobody wearing masks. On the bright side, the state has indefinitely suspended the restaurant's license. Justice, if not dinner, is served.

On the same note, whoops! Remember that protest at Wisconsin's state capitol on April 24? Fifteen hundred unmasked teabag types railing against the tyranny of a haircut-less, tattoo-less life? Well, 72 of them have tested positive for the coronavirus. There will be more, of course. It's not that we're worried about a mass infection of the right-wing world, but we do feel sorry for the healthcare providers who will have to risk their own lives to treat them.

Meanwhile, does anyone know what "Obamagate" is? And is Trump flailing around and bleating because the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about his taxes tomorrow?

Finally, the one exception to our "big fail" theme today: The Biden campaign and the DNC jointly raised more than $60 million in April (average donation: $32.63). Think of it: Everybody's losing their jobs in the worst meltdown since the Great Depression, but they're sending money to Joe. If that isn't a measure of how badly America wants Donald Trump gone, we don't know what is. We cats PURR.

Sinking Ship

By Sniffles

Like their handling of the pandemic across the country, the Trumpsters are royally screwing up their own little outbreak in the West Wing. It's clear from press coverage that they're at high risk in close quarters (White House offices are not spacious), they don't understand what they should do to prevent infections (staying home, social distancing, wearing masks) and they definitely don't understand tests.

Trump is portrayed as being paranoid and peevish, "spooked" that a personal aide had tested positive and "growing irritated with people who get too close to him." At first, Mike Pence, with an aide who now has COVID-19, said he would stay home tomorrow. Then he reversed himself and said he would go in. He seems to think that getting tested every day means he can't have it, so there's no harm in being at work.

Goodness gracious, but these people are a clown show. And this new backgrounder on the Rick Bright whistleblower complaint is just the latest chapter in the sorry saga. Meanwhile, reputable journalists report that the White House infection rate is not only higher than they're willing to talk about, but that someone "very high-ranking" is affected.

To once again cite Barack Obama, it's the entire repulsive Trump Presidency that's an absolute chaotic disaster. The pandemic is just throwing that into higher relief. So, hang onto your hats: The week is already wild, and it's only going to get worse. We cats HISS.

Hotspot

We just want to say that when we worked in the damn White House, we never would have let it become a petri dish for a freaking novel coronavirus. Barack Obama is right: Trump's handling of COVID-19 has been "an absolute chaotic disaster." We cats are disgusted, and we HISS.

Snow, Snow, Snow

So, okay — it's not going to be like this, but we're still supposed to get some snow tomorrow. And because it's quite cold and windy already, we have the Jøtul fireplace going. At the very least, tomorrow may keep people inside, which is a good thing in these pandemicky times. We cats have never minded cold weather, and we PURR.

Surveying The Senate

By Hubie and Bertie

Happy V-E Day. It's hard to believe that 75 years after the Allies defeated the Nazis, America is fighting dudes toting swastikas at home. Which means it's time to talk about V-R Day: Victory over the Republicans this November.

Specifically, the Senate. With unemployment at Great Depression levels, and Americans scared to return to public spaces — all thanks to Benedict Donald's hamfisted handling of the coronavirus — the field has opened up for Democrats. If things hold, we have an excellent chance of sending Moscow Mitch and his merry band of traitors into the minority.

To make things easy, we've grouped vulnerable GOP seats into the following tiers — with the top tier as most likely to flip to the Democrats, and so on. As you survey the list, think about which Senate candidate you'd like to support, and if you can, send a few dollars his or her way. Maybe use some of that coronavirus stimulus check that Benedict Donald was bragging so much about.

First Tier
Arizona — Former astronaut and husband of Gabrielle Giffords Mark Kelly is leading his Republican hack opponent, appointed idiot Martha McSally, by nine points. McSally is such a clown, you can just picture John McCain rooting for Kelly, wherever John McCain is. This one really does seem out of reach for the GOP.

Second Tier
Maine — House speaker Sara Gideon leads the ever-irritating, Kavanaugh-and-Trump enabler Susan Collins by four points. It's a closer race than in Arizona, but take it from us: Collins would much rather be ahead. We'll re-evaluate this after the Democratic primary.

Colorado — This race also bears re-evaluating after the Democratic primary, but at the moment, goodness gracious: John Hickenlooper leads Cory Gardner, 54 percent to 36 percent. Make that a 20-point spread and we cats will vault it into Tier #1.

Third Tier
North Carolina — Democrat Cal Cunningham is the candidate Thom Tillis did not want to face, but too bad for him. Cunningham outraised him in the first quarter, too, so people are excited. We're keeping this in Tier #3 for now, because Tillis has a pretty big war chest and he's not the truly despicable POS Richard Burr. But we're hoping that some North Carolinians will get confused and think he is.

Montana — Democrats are benefiting from a good candidate in Steve Bullock, a surprise addition to the race. This guy is going places. Maybe even beyond the Senate someday.

Iowa — Again, we'll re-evaulate this after the Democratic primary, but butch dwarf Joni Ernst's previous lead has vanished into a coronavirus haze. She leads Democrat Theresa Greenfield by just one point.

Fourth Tier
South Carolina — Can Lady Lindsey pull it off, after all his Trump-hugging and lackluster fundraising? Maybe not. The Democrats have an excellent candidate in Jaime Harrison, who's only behind by four percent. Those are sad-sack numbers for a veteran incumbent like Graham.

The rest of the races — in Texas, Kentucky (yes, Kentucky), Georgia and Mississippi — are worth a separate blog post, but suffice to say they're all enticing and technically should be completely out of Democrats' reach this year. The fact that Moscow Mitch and his GOP minions can't take them off the table speaks volumes. We cats PURR.

Rules Are Good.

By Miss Kubelik

We cats are lucky to live in a blue state in which the coronavirus parameters have been pretty clear — both for shutting things down and for our (eventual) reopening. Local folks appear to be across-the-board compliant with face masks and social distancing. We haven't run into any crazies outside the pharmacy or grocery store.

But in other states (i.e., Trumpy ones with GOP governors), the situation is more fraught. With no Cuomo-esque guidance on how to reopen, individual business owners will have to shoulder the burden of whether they believe it's safe — for their employees, their customers and themselves. (This is unfair, but that's Republicans for you.) We have the sneaking suspicion that customer turnout will be low. And it could vanish in an instant if infections spike again — which they will.

We haven't even touched on the subject of schools yet. Since society can't remotely consider getting back to "normal" until school is back in, don't expect any progress on all this until the fall, if then. You know, just when the second wave of COVID-19 could be cranking up.

In the meantime: Let's be careful out there. Idiots abound. Two McDonald's employees were shot the other day by customers who were mad they couldn't dine in. A Family Dollar security guard was killed for barring his store to an unmasked person. And maybe you've seen this charming video of a maskless Trumpster screaming obscenities outside a Miami Beach Publix? We fully expected him to draw a gun.

Thanks to the repugnant Second Amendment, we have to worry about our fellow Americans carrying more than just a virus. We cats HISS.

Staffing The Biden War Room

By Zamboni

The newest Monmouth University poll has Joe Biden leading Benedict Donald nationally by nine points. Biden has added two points to his lead from the last Monmouth poll in April — which is interesting because Justin Amash is thinking of running as a Libertarian and the poll was taken after Putin admirer Tara Reade floated her assault allegations (which, in our view, have fallen apart).

But despite the good polls, or because of them, Team Biden needs to get its War Room into high gear. Amash and Reade are just the beginning. The Trumpsters will throw absolutely everything at Joe because they're desperate and they have to make something stick.

Biden certainly already has a group of hardened War Roomers, hailing from both the Clinton and Obama days and ready to rebut. Ron Klain, for example, is already on board — and as an Ebola veteran he should put in extra time on responding to the Trumpsters' pandemic screw-ups. Here are a few suggestions for who else should be there:

• Andy Slavitt — A healthcare policy expert, for when Ron Klain needs a break.
• Val Demings — Just because we need someone who brings a gun to a knife fight.
• Jennifer Rubin — We find ourselves agreeing more with Our Jen these days than with WaPo's liberal-guy columnists like Eugene Robinson and Dana Milbank, who are starting to wear thin. We want Rubin for messaging. She's razor-sharp.
• Stacey Abrams — If she's not on the ticket, she needs to be in the room 24/7 wearing her anti-voter-suppression combat boots.
• The Obama Davids — We're not too crazy about Axelrod, but we'll take Plouffe.

Who are we missing? Our list is by no means complete. But meanwhile, here's our point: The polls are great for us right now. So Biden must expect the worst from the Trump campaign — nothing will be too outlandish for them to try — and be ready to blow them right back out of the water. That will make us cats PURR.

There's Always A Time Cover

Mourning In America

So many reasons to be disgusted today: Benedict Donald visits a mask-making factory without wearing a mask. He's going to wind down the coronavirus task force (we guess he got bored). A Family Dollar security officer was shot to death after telling a customer she needed to wear a mask, and a black jogger was senselessly murdered in Georgia. The world has gone mad — but here's a little dose of sanity from some former Republicans at The Lincoln Project. We're sharing it because it's driving Trump crazy. We cats PURR.

American Carnage, Indeed.

By Baxter

We cats hit a wall today, furious about the new estimates of coronavirus-related deaths. We don't understand why 135,000 people have to die by this August because 62 million Americans were stupid enough to vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

And of course there will be many more than a "mere" 135,000 checking out, because this virus will be with us for a long time and people are dying (and have died) without being diagnosed. We shudder to think what the true number will be.

But at least it's not just a scourge of the blue states, like Trump and his merry band of ghouls have tried to claim. After hitting New York, New Jersey and Connecticut hard, COVID-19 is spreading into cities and counties that Trump carried in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. And in addition to the health and economic chaos it's causing, it's also shaking up the political world.

As we all know, last week Trump ripped his campaign manager a new one for showing him polls that had him losing to Joe Biden in the key battleground states. And that's only part of the story: The GOP-controlled Senate's in danger, too. Arizona, Colorado and Maine are slipping through Mitch McConnell's fingers. North Carolina might not be far behind. And now comes news that even Kansas and Iowa could lose their Republican seats. Gosh!

Yes, it's May, and the election isn't until November. But we're not seeing the Trumpsters able to stop either the coronavirus or the economic catastrophe that America is plunging into. So these numbers have a chance to get irrevocably baked in. If American voters — that is, the ones who are still alive in the fall — are as angry as we are today, they'll send Trump and his vile GOP enablers packing, for years to come. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

A Quickie: Things Donald Trump Doesn't Know

• 1.1 million is greater than 15. 
• What masks are for.
• The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
• What "spread globally" means.
• "Democrat" is not an adjective.
• A virus is not a germ.
• Lincoln was shot.

The Trumpsters Are Trying. It's Not Working.

By Sniffles

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, Benedict Donald and his merry band of traitors decided that they needed to torpedo Joe Biden as a possible Democratic nominee. Because Biden was the opponent they feared most.

Just a day or so after Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill, Trump — feeling exonerated (although he wasn't, not really) — called up the President of Ukraine and tried to bribe him to dig up nonexistent dirt on Biden and his son.

We all know what happened: A whistleblower outed Trump's perfidy, and the House of Representatives impeached him. Even though Moscow Mitch's Senate acquitted him, the stain remained. But the Trumpsters were hopeful that the Democrats would nominate someone eminently beatable, like Bernie Sanders.

Then, South Carolina happened. That was late February — which, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, seems like a hundred years ago.

So today, here's Donald Trump, screwing up the pandemic response, and watching the economy implode, with Biden heading for the nomination and beating him in a number of battleground states. What's a beleaguered, grifting, criminal President to do?

Answer: Try to hit Biden where he's strongest: His decency as a human being. (Because God knows Donald Trump is anything but decent. He's barely a human being.) Stymied on the Ukraine front, they've tried China, and now they're trying #MeToo. But none of it's working.

Biden's previous verbal missteps seem minor compared to Trump's suggestion that people drink bleach. Tara Reade's accusations are falling apart, reminding people that the allegations against Trump are not. China connections are the ultimate example of Trump projection (see Ivanka trademarks). But more than all of this is the American longing for an end to the chaos — for a feeling of stability, reason and hope.

That's what's going to defeat this monster in November — provided our election is free and fair. We must fight for that, fellow citizens. If we do, we'll have a new President in January. We cats PURR.

Quick On The Draw

By Hubie and Bertie

You probably didn't notice because we're all consumed with COVID-19, but there was a mass shooting in Nova Scotia a couple of weeks ago. A guy who made dentures for a living (when he wasn't going on murderous rampages) killed 22 people over 13 hours by impersonating a police officer and using illegally purchased semiautomatic weapons. He easily surpassed the death toll at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

And just like that, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has banned assault weapons in Canada. Effective immediately.

"These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time," he said. "There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada."

It's just the latest example of a world leader taking swift action to ban guns after a mass killing. New Zealand, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, did the same thing after 51 people were murdered at mosques in Christchurch last year.

Feeling jealous? We don't blame you. It's depressing to see our friends and allies acting sensibly — especially a mere day after Trumpy anti-stay-at-home protesters stormed the Michigan state capitol with assault weapons and called for Governor Gretchen Whitmer's execution. Canadians on social media are mystified. Why would someone be allowed to bring a semiautomatic weapon onto government property?

We're baffled, too. But the images from Lansing yesterday aren't going to boost Donald Trump's or any other Republican's fortunes in November. Not just because the protesters were repulsive, but because most Americans think they're wrong. We cats PURR.