Still Kinda The Worst Person

By Zamboni

In case you were wondering whether George W. Bush is still terrible, the answer is yes.

Years ago, we cats dubbed Bush "The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived." He deserved it — aside from PEPFAR, his African AIDS relief initiative, he was singularly destructive: ending stem cell research, brushing off a pre-9/11 PDB about bin Laden, lying the US into the war in Iraq, appointing cretins to the Supreme Court, bungling Hurricane Katrina, etc. The list goes on and on. And then Donald Trump came along and knocked him off his Worst-Person perch. Who'da thunk it?

Bush has faded into an uneventful and generally meaningless retirement. Occasionally he'll show up at events like the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, hamming it up with Michelle Obama (who for some reason seems to genuinely like him). But as his Republican Party has become Trumpier and Trumpier — and more and more fascistic — Bush has stayed silent.

This is despicable, especially today, when Dr. Anthony Fauci — who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 — had to sit and endure insults and accusations from GOP members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The hearing was a ridiculous outrage. Go ahead and read about it if you must, but a good summation of it is that Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, Bernie Moreno and the rest all acted like embarrassing dipshits. 

Has George W. Bush ever firmly pushed back against his fellow Republicans on Fauci? Will he come out and say that their abusive behavior today was offensive to all Americans whose lives Fauci helped save during the COVID pandemic? Dream on.

Bush has, to our knowledge, never said boo about any of the damage the Trumpsters are doing. He hasn't seriously protested the cuts to PEPFAR, objected to the platforming of open racists, or opposed the Gestapo-like tactics of ICE (an insult to all the Hispanics who voted for him in 2000 and 2004). He's been quiet about the trashing of the White House and the death blow that Trump recently delivered to his Texas pal John Cornyn. He didn't even get in Trump's face when Donald abused his kid brother back in the 2016 campaign.

What's he afraid of? Is the political future of hapless nephew George P. Bush really that important? How pathetic. We cats HISS.

Dick At Rest

By Sniffles

There was an interesting turnout at Dick Cheney's Washington Cathedral funeral today. By now, we all know that Benedict Donald and Couch Enthusiast JD Vance were pointedly not invited. (Yay, Cheney family.) The folks who did attend were a mix of Republicans and Democrats, former Presidents and Vice Presidents, and other blasts from the past. Here are a few observations from our corner of the litter box:

It's awfully good to know that George W. Bush (The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, until Trump came along) is not suffering from any kind of laryngitis or dementia or other impairment, since he gave one of the eulogies. But that also means we can't figure out why he's been so mind-blowingly silent on the perfidies of Team Trump. Does his nephew's worthless political career really need that much protection?

Any reflection on Cheney's life and career must include a no-holds-barred indictment of his and Bush's prosecution of the unnecessary and stupid Iraq War. Simply put, we attacked a country that didn't attack us. (But yesterday in the tarted-up Oval Office, Trump proudly hosted the prince of the country that spawned 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers. How big a hairball can we hack up?)

It was appropriate (and smart) that Democratic House leaders showed up, since Cheney once was a Congressman from Wyoming: Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, plus Jamie Raskin and Bennie Thompson, who served with Liz Cheney on the January 6th Committee. And we hope that the Cheneys had an acceptable red wine for John Boehner at the post-funeral reception.

Oh, and Rachel Maddow was there, too.

So, should we join the party, and try to say something nice about Dick Cheney? After all, he endorsed Kamala Harris last year — but it's still a tough assignment. Perhaps the best thing we can come up with is that if he were still alive and hosting a podcast, he would choose not to platform Nick Fuentes. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Hairball-Inducing

By Miss Kubelik

We cats welcome everyone to the cause of defending democracy against Benedict Donald and the MAGAts. We refuse to bicker about policy differences (because what will they matter if our democratic form of government is destroyed?), and we will not take converts to task on social media with messages of "What took you so long?" Sure, it's tempting. But this is an emergency.

Still and all, we have to make some observations about Nicolle Wallace's plea today to George W. Bush to publicly endorse Vice President Harris. What a reminder that before Trump, we used to call Bush the younger the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived. He sent thousands of Americans to die in a phony, trumped-up war, abandoned thousands of others during and after Hurricane Katrina, and plunged the country into an economic freefall in 2008 — all of which took us years to recover from.

In fact, with those three acts, George W. Bush paved the way for Trumpism. Matt Bai in The Washington Post (from which we unsubscribed, by the way) recently observed this.

Those facts alone make us cats want to hack up a hairball. But Wallace's reference to Bush's 2004 declaration that they should "leave everything on the field" as a justification for her argument really makes us sick. Do you remember what that entailed 20 years ago? Republicans demonizing gay people in battleground states, led by Karl Rove and (the, of course, very gay) Ken Mehlman — banking on voters' fear of "the other" to gain support in advance of terrifying concepts like marriage equality.

That said, why did Wallace do this?

Was it a public plea because her private entreaties weren't being heard, or were rejected outright? Did she do it because of Trump's recent comments on Liz Cheney? Did Barbara the daughter (who's endorsed Harris), or Laura, or someone else close to Smirky, tell her he would listen if she went public? Did she want to strengthen the platform for former Republicans on MSNBC during a Harris Administration? Or did she just want to give cover to other GOP late endorsers? We think the backstory on this is hugely complex — and maybe someday we'll find out the details. Meanwhile, we cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Silence Is Not Golden

By Baxter

Shutting down the vote count in the state of Florida in 2000 handed the White House to George W. Bush. (Remember him? The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived? Of course, that was before Benedict Donald.)

Now, Miami-Dade County has restricted Amanda Gorman's poetry in its public schools on the basis of a complaint by a single parent — who has turned out to be an anti-Semite with ties to white supremacist groups. But that's Florida under the helm of Ron DeSantis. In short, the state that gave Bush the Presidency is on a right-wing roll, curtailing freedoms, suppressing the vote, denying body autonomy, and basically rigging everything so that Ron can run for President without having to disclose his expenses or step away from the governorship. Ugh.

But this Nazi-ish book banning made us wonder: When Bush II was in the White House, America's First Lady spent her time championing libraries, literacy, and language. As someone who earned a degree in library science, Laura Bush couldn't stop talking about how important it was for kids to read and to learn. Books, how she loved them.

So where is Laura the Librarian now? Why doesn't she speak up about what's going on in the state that put her at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? The state that elected her brother-in-law governor twice?

Republicans are such cowards. While we dearly hope they will finally destroy themselves over Benedict Donald in the next couple of years, it would be nice if some of them would call out the fascism that the GOP is fomenting across the country. We cats are frustrated, and we HISS.

Alito Is A Pill

By Hubie and Bertie

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is making a very strong bid for The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived.

Many of you loyal readers may recall that, back in the day (that is, when we first started blogging), George W. Bush was the WPWEL, followed closely by Dick Cheney, who was the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived If Indeed He Were a Person. That was because together, they ginned up a bogus invasion of Iraq and killed some 4,000-plus American service members, plus God knows how many Iraqis.

But since then, Benedict Donald has got Bush beat. Trump killed hundreds of thousands of Americans via his mismanagement of the COVID pandemic — and then, of course, you have to add everybody in Afghanistan who died because he and Mike Pompeo cozied up to the Taliban. And then there are the casualties of January 6.

Now, we have to add to Trump's tally women across America who die from botched abortions, or — more likely — from miscarriages and other medical mishaps that their healthcare providers can't treat without running afoul of the Republicans in whatever state capital we're talking about. Because it was Donald Trump — who's paid for, what? how many abortions in his lifetime? — who, with the help of Mitch McConnell, packed the Supreme Court with an anti-choice, anti-Roe majority.

And that SCOTUS has been wreaking havoc ever since. Although tonight, they wreaked a little bit less: By a vote of 7-2, they stayed a lower court's ruling on restricting medication abortion. Alito and the scandal-ridden Clarence Thomas dissented.

For you legal beagles in the audience, it appears that Alito's dissent is particularly whiny and aggrieved. "Completely unbefitting a Supreme Court justice," declares Joyce Vance. Are we surprised? Alito is the kind of scold who is constantly resentful that most of his fellow countrymen don't believe in living the narrow, bleak, constricted lives he thinks they should. So it's unsurprising that he believes those godless liberals in the Biden Administration wouldn't follow what he tells them to do anyway. "You darn kids don't know what's good for you!"

Who nominated this psychopath to the Supreme Court to begin with? Funny you should ask. It was George W. Bush, who, before Trump, was — and, maybe, still is — the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived. We cats have come full circle, and we HISS.

It Is Time For Them To Go-Go

By Zamboni

As our headline paraphrases Al Gore at the 1992 Democratic convention, let's observe that execrable Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should remember what happened to a couple of politicians from around that same time: George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.

Democratic nominee Dukakis torched a 17-point lead in 1988 by, among other things, donning a helmet and riding around in a tank. You've all seen the photo. It invited ridicule — the death knell of all Presidential wannabes. (And yes, Bernard Shaw's rape-death-penalty question in that one debate didn't help. But Shaw is dead now, and Dukakis is still alive and at large.)

Four years later, Hurricane Andrew tore through South Florida, and the administration of then-President Bush Senior didn't, um, perform very well. We don't remember Bush showing up anywhere in white boots, but he seemed inattentive, and FEMA was slow and clunky. (And that was before Bush Junior screwed up Katrina.) Anyway, Bush Senior lost re-election to Bill Clinton a few months later. 

So here is Ron DeSantis in 2022, five weeks out from a match-up with former Governor Charlie Crist, and Presidential ambitions galore. And his disastrous post-Ian appearance in Fort Myers Beach strutting in his pristine booties may have just landed him in Dukakis territory.

Funny, you'd think that reports about a bad recovery response, and the fact that DeSantis paused aid from going to hurricane victims so he could get his white-boot photo op, would sink him faster. But whatever. Charlie Crist, the ball's in your court. We cats PURR.

"We Have Awakened A Sleeping Giant"

By Zamboni

In the latest installment of Hillary Clinton Was Right About Everything, a leaked draft opinion by the detestable Samuel Alito set all of our TVs and social media on fire last night. And in a wild coincidence, the "Word.A.Day" that landed in our email inbox this morning was "omnishambles." (See "Court, Supreme." See also "Roberts, John.")

Yep, the SCOTUS leak is a stunner all right. This has never happened in history, and the explosion you just heard came from First Street, NE, right across from the Capitol building. Our theory: The culprit is a hard-right clerk or assistant to Clarence Thomas, Amy Coathanger or Biff, blabbing to POLITICO in the hope it would energize Republican voters to elect the Trumpiest candidates in this month's primary elections. (Of course, that would set the GOP up for a wipeout in November, but remember, they don't believe that.)

As for the upcoming decision itself, lots of blame to go around. Let's go back to Bush v. Gore, which happened thanks to idiots who voted for Ralph Nader — enough to tip the balance in Florida. Their objection? Al Gore was too orange (before it became fashionable in Republican circles) and sighed too much in a debate. On such trivia the rights — and lives — of American women can rest.

It also may be fair to criticize Barack Obama, for presiding over the statehouse disasters of 2010 and 2014, and for not fighting harder for Merrick Garland's nomination. And of course all the Bernie Bros and liberal losers who sat on their hands in November 2016 because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary.

But okay, enough of that. Let's accentuate the positive instead. None of us want Roe to go, but if it has to — and given the makeup of this Court, you know it will — it's good that it happened this way. Instead of a bombshell detonating at the end of June and driving everyone into the streets in protest, it's blown up in early May. That gives us two extra months to mobilize and organize for the midterms.

Sadly, no matter what the January 6 Committee hearings reveal this summer, it's not a given that Americans will feel urgently enough about protecting democracy to vote Democratic this year. The workings of government can seem removed from their daily experience. But outlawing abortion, and after that, contraception, privacy, interracial marriage and marriage equality? That people can understand. So let's get going, folks: We have a busy six months ahead of us. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Lest We Furr-get: The Big Blot

By Zamboni

It's too bad that the country lost a prominent anti-Trump Republican voice today. Benedict Donald is so destructive, and the GOP has descended into such madness, that we Democrats have even welcomed guys like former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh to our side (imagine!). So we long ago were pleased to see Colin Powell training his verbal guns on Trump and Trumpism. 

But for us, the defining image of Colin Powell is this one. Back in 2003, he sat before the United Nations and lied us into the Iraq War. Although he later admitted it was a mistake and claimed that he had warned George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2002 about breaking and owning stuff, we were never impressed — particularly when Powell stood by as the administration he worked for smeared a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran so the GOP could pick up his Georgia Senate seat that year.

So yes, appreciate Powell's disdain for Trump, his support for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for President, and his head-butting with Cheney. But never forget that his 76 minutes before the UN helped send us into a ridiculous war that killed more than 4,400 US servicemen. Maybe that pales next to the hundreds of thousands Trump murdered with COVID, but it's troubling nevertheless. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: From Bush To Trump

By Hubie and Bertie

Ah, the good old days: When George W. "Smirky" Bush, whom we called The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, resided in the White House thanks to a 5-4 vote by a politicized Supreme Court, and our fondest wish was to see Karl Rove hauled off to the hoosegow for helping to out a CIA operative. 

How innocent we were then! That was all before the utter disaster known as Donald Trump, who has done more damage to our country than anyone else in history. Team Bush committed a slew of outrages — the needless and costly Iraq War, torture, Hurricane Katrina, and the financial meltdown, to name a few. But Benedict Donald fomented an insurrection against the United States and, nine months later, is still going at it — with a lot of scary help from the Republican Party.

Which means that Trump has overtaken Smirky in the Worst Person Ever category, and there are many, many more of his henchmen who should be languishing in jail cells formerly earmarked for the likes of Rove, "Scooter" Libby, "Dick" Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al. Principally among them: Steve Bannon.

While Mark Meadows and Kashyap Patel are apparently "engaging" — which we guess means cooperating, at least somewhat — with subpoenas from the Select Committee on January 6, Bannon is not. (The status of the fourth Trumpster served in that group, Dan Scavino, is unclear at this moment. Stay tuned.) Therefore, the House will vote on holding Bannon in criminal contempt when it reconvenes on Tuesday.

This is normal Congressional procedure, so don't assume that Bannon will get away with anything — unless he flees the country between now and then. So while you won't see the frog-march for a while, we promise you that the Trumpsters' time will come. As President Biden likes to say, never bet against the United States of America. We cats PURR.

Even After Trump, Still The Worst Ever.

By Miss Kubelik

Did you know that you can draw a straight line from George W. and Jeb Bush directly to our current inability to sacrifice for one another in the fight against COVID?

This dawned on us when we heard a conversation this week on the Morning Schmoes — which is what we call Joe Scarborough's weekday show on MSNBC — about how the nation has lost its "connective tissue." Now, we get impatient with the Schmoes, because six years ago they were dedicated enablers of Donald Trump, the most destructive force in modern American history (perhaps all of American history). But every now and then we beam in to see what they're saying, because they tend to set the daily conversation inside the Beltway.

Anyway, Team Schmoe was claiming that the nation's so-called connective tissue has clearly been lost because even in a crisis like COVID, we haven't rallied together to defeat a common enemy. The "sleeping giant" that awakened to beat the Axis powers in World War II is gone. But what they didn't mention that there was one moment — since the war, and before the pandemic — in which America did come together. One moment when the nation was ready to join up and do something, anything, to sacrifice and help. It was 9/11, of course.

And the Bushes turned that desire away. "Go shopping," said President George W. "Go to Disney World," said Florida Governor Jeb.

We cats have loathed all Bushes for as long as we can remember, but that refusal to call Americans to national service after September 11 is probably the thing we'll never forgive them for. (Well, okay, Clarence Thomas is pretty bad, too. And so was Iraq. And the financial meltdown.) Dismissing Americans' zeal to serve was the epitome of the tragically missed opportunity. And then the very next year, Team Bush and the Republicans turned voters' anxiety about 9/11 into a political weapon, smearing Democrats like war hero Max Cleland and comparing them to Osama bin Laden to steal Congressional seats.

Who was in that Republican crowd? Joe Scarborough, elected to Congress in 1994 (the Gingrich class). Who didn't leave the GOP until 2017 — after helping to vault Trump to power by giving him hours and hours of free airtime? Joe again.

So, Mr. Scarborough, don't sit there and bemoan the nation's loss of connective tissue. Not when your former party and its disgusting Bushes are the ones who worked so hard to destroy it. We cats HISS.

Military Madness, Still Killing The Country

By Zamboni

We cats were underwhelmed by General James Mattis's appearance at the Al Smith Dinner last night. Har har, what a lot of guffawing over the idiot in the White House: "Bone spurs," "overrated," "Meryl Streep." Sorry, General, but the time for jokes is over. Don't yuk it up or try to sell more of your stupid books: TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW.

We were similarly unimpressed by Admiral William McRaven's op-ed in The New York Times. It was way too much Fort Bragg parade ground, too little Trump. And he lost us when he reported that a general grabbed his arm and said, "I don't like the Democrats, but..."

Don't like the Democrats? What an excellent reason to stop reading. First, we are the sane alternative to Benedict Donald and the craven, cowardly party that's allowed him to hijack them. Second, it rankles to hear that from a military guy — even though it's been 17 years since the Bushies stole a triple-amputee Democratic war hero's Senate seat by linking him to Osama bin Laden, and 15 years since we nominated a distinguished Vietnam veteran whose service Republican acolytes brutally trashed. We cats, like elephants, never forget.

Meanwhile, it's clear that rank-and-file military members are seething with an anger at Trump that their leaders are incapable of expressing. Who hasn't read the reports of troops who are furious to be deserting the Kurds? "I am ashamed for the first time in my career," said one. Bet these guys will have a lot of PTSD from being forced to turn tail.

America needs a leader in the Armed Forces to speak up for those who serve — and for the rest of us. Yes, we know that in the United States, civilians, not the military, are in charge. But these are no ordinary times. So until we see a dude (or dudette) sporting not just brass but balls, we cats HISS.

We Had The Bullhorn. Where's The Bully Pulpit?

By Sniffles

It's "only" been 18 years, but how things have changed since the Twin Towers first fell.

Osama bin Laden is dead (thanks, President Obama), a new tower has risen, and calming fountains fill the old towers' footprints. On the other hand, a few things are the same. We're still in Afghanistan, for example.

But the biggest change is in the Republican Party. Having once demanded fealty to the heroes of 9/11, they now couldn't care less.

How do we know? Today, Republicans in the North Carolina State Legislature promised their Democratic colleagues that no important votes would be taken during a September 11 memorial event. And then, once the Democrats had trooped off to commemorate, they promptly overrode the Democratic Governor's veto of the state budget.

In short, the hell with honoring the victims of 9/11! We must slash money for schools behind the Democrats' backs!

Decent people everywhere have expressed outrage at this. But you know who it would be especially nice to hear from? George W. Bush. That's right, the former Worst Person Who's Ever Lived — at least until Benedict Donald came along — needs to say something.

It was Bush who stood on the rubble pile with that stupid bullhorn, pledging to hunt down the 9/11 perpetrators and to always remember the dead. Sure, he was a hypocrite about a lot of it — invading a country that didn't attack us, for example. But we sure would appreciate it if he could tear himself away from his third-rate artist's easel for five minutes and condemn this. Until he does, we cats HISS.

We Want 9/11 Back

By Hubie and Bertie

It didn't take the Republicans very long to hijack the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. By Friday, September 14, we cats had taken down the American flag from our house (we'd been the first in the neighborhood to put one up), because Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the attacks on gays and abortion providers — and the White House refused to repudiate them.

That same day, as we recall, George W. Bush — formerly the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, but who worked mighty hard to live up to that moniker when he was President — quelled concerns about his lack of leadership during the crisis by standing on a pile of rubble in Lower Manhattan and blustering through a bullhorn. And America forgave him. (Somehow we think the same would not have happened to the rightful winner of the 2000 election, President Gore.)

Thus began a milking of 9/11 that Bush, Cheney and the Republicans used to question people's patriotism, destroy American heroes in the 2002 midterms, and justify a disastrous invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us (Iraq). The Bushies were so protective of this that they were even willing to unmask a dedicated CIA officer and put in danger American assets abroad. So, lest you be tempted to think that Donald Trump's current hideousness has wiped out the badness of the Bushies — well, think again.

Today, though, the perfidy and hypocrisy of the Republicans' abuse of and disdain for 9/11 became abundantly clear: Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah stopped the 9/11 first responders' compensation fund dead in its tracks. These are dudes who profess concern about national debt but who had no problem voting for Trump's ruinous tax cut for the 1 percent.

The GOP has apparently decided that its special brand of 9/11 exploitation is paying no more political dividends — so who cares what happens to the guys who worked the pile for months, and the journalists who covered them?

The Republican Party's transgressions over the last 40 years have been many, but one of the worst was the appropriation of a national tragedy for their political gain. Now, people are saying that Trump will self-destruct and take the party with him. We cats cannot wait for that day. In the meantime, we Democrats are taking 9/11 back from the Republicans' soiled hands. And we HISS.

Cat Fight! Barbara Bush Vs. Nancy Reagan

By Sniffles

If there's a Washington title more ridiculous than "First Lady," it's the awkward and condescending "Second Lady," right? So stupid. But we cats are highly amused by the upcoming biography, The Matriarch, by Susan Page, particularly the juicy bits about how much the "Ladies" — the First (Nancy Reagan) and Second (Barbara Bush) — hated each other.

Boy, if there's ever a fight you don't want to pick a side in because both parties are despicable, this is one. The first was a third-rate actress and imperious phony, while the second was a self-entitled patrician who styled herself as a tart-but-lovable grandmother because was white-haired and stout. Oh, and as it turns out, she made a habit of compromising her beliefs.

So Nancy kept crossing George and Bar off her White House party lists? Horrors! That must have really hurt in 1985, when our Nation's Capital went batsh*t crazy for the visiting Prince and Princess of Wales. (We know, we were there.) We wish Bar had gotten quite as upset over her and her husband's knuckling under to anti-choice nutbags in the Republican Party. She had believed that women's reproductive decisions were "personal" — "but after her husband joined Ronald Reagan's anti-abortion ticket in 1980, she kept her views to herself."

Pathetic.

As for Bar's horror at Donald Trump? We'd bet money that it had nothing to do with a disgust at Trump's general odiousness and everything to do with the fact that he belittled (and beat) her adored and equally self-entitled son "Jeb" in the primaries. And you can draw a straight line from George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, with its Willie Horton race-baiting, to the rise of Benedict Donald and his build-the-wall hate.

Finally, although not as important as the enabling the rise of the GOP's new fascism, there's this: An anonymous member of the "Bushes' inner circle" confirms to Page that GHWB had a long-running extramarital affair. (Ugh.) Remembering how aghast the Bushes were in 1992, not just to have lost the White House after only one term but to lose to someone they saw as a lesser man than Poppy, we just have to say that Republicans' hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. We cats HISS.

State Of The Lyin'

By Hubie and Bertie

Wow, another State of the Union coming up. We cats won't be watching (we can't stomach Benedict Donald), but we're curious as to how the Speaker of the House will handle sitting behind him.

Will she signal her caucus — perhaps with a white handkerchief to her forehead, a la "Darkest Hour" — whenever Trump lies? If so, that hanky will be fluttering without pause.

It almost makes us nostalgic for SOTUs of years past.

Take, for example, George W. Bush (who once held the title of The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, before being toppled by Trump) — and that whopper he told about Saddam Hussein, Niger and yellowcake. That was debunked pretty quickly by Joseph Wilson in The New York Times. And what was the Administration's response? They outed Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

How quaint it all seems now. Because while Bush may have told one big lie in that SOTU, Trump's speech on Tuesday will be so jam-packed with falsehoods it will beggar description. But what concerns us most is that not just that we're becoming inured to fibs by Commanders-in-Chief — but that the Bush-Cheney crowd will be getting a pass by comparison.

That, folks, can never happen. This Trump Administration is the stuff of nightmares, but that doesn't make the crimes of the Bushies any less awful. They should all rot in hell, and we cats HISS.

(IMAGE: SOTU, 2003. Check it out: Two war criminals and a child molester. Just sayin'.)

Before He Was With Her

By Zamboni

You know what your mother said: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." So we cats have tried to be restrained about the death of George H.W. Bush, because we wanted to see how it would all play out. And it's still playing out. But we can't resist chiming in with a few observations:

It is pathetic that a middling President like Bush would, according to pundits, attain an aura of greatness merely because he was nowhere near as bad as Donald Trump.

It is difficult to favorably eulogize the man who is responsible for Clarence Thomas's presence on the Supreme Court.

Unlike some, we're not moved to declare that Bush Sr. had "class." We well remember how he said he'd "kicked a little ass" after his VP debate with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. That's about as far from classy as you can get.

Similarly, Barbara Bush called Ferraro a bitch and was never forced to admit it. Gee, what was it about Geraldine that made the Bushes' well-masked awfulness come out?

It is also similarly difficult to favorably eulogize the man who fathered George W. Bush, a war criminal who cannot travel to countries where he would be arrested for invading Iraq on a lie.

And it's tough to admire the guy who ran in 1988 on Willie Horton — the racist ad that paved the way for all other Republican racist ads. We assume that Bush Senior will have lots of notes to compare with Lee Atwater when he meets Atwater in hell.

So the best thing about the Bush news? That Trump will have to endure hours and days in which he will not be the center of attention. Our hopes that a eulogizer — like, say, Bill Clinton — would throw shade have been dashed, since Bill is not among the odd selection of speakers. But Trump will have to sit there knowing that the predecessor being honored cast the last Presidential vote of his life for Hillary Rodham Clinton. That makes us cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: That Trip To Estonia

By Sniffles

When Woodrow Wilson died in 1924, the Senate deputized Henry Cabot Lodge to represent them at the former President's funeral. Learning this, Edith Wilson took quick action. "Realizing that your presence would be embarrassing to you and unwelcome to me," she wrote the Senate architect of the defeat of the League of Nations, "I write to request that you do not attend." (Lodge didn't.)

We cats can't come up with another historic parallel to this Wilson-Lodge battle royal until now, with the family of Senator John McCain pre-disinviting Donald Trump to McCain's funeral.

Well, now McCain has died, and the funeral will soon be upon us. Because we appreciate pomp and political spectacle, we cats are marveling at who will be there, and who won't.

A few months back, in fact, McCain and his family asked both George W. Bush and Barack Obama not just to attend, but to deliver eulogies.

So let's get this straight: The guy who beat McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary by spreading racist rumors about McCain's adopted daughter will speak. The guy who defeated McCain in 2008 and snatched his dream of the Presidency forever will speak. The current President of the United States is not welcome to walk in the door.

What an incredible indictment of Benedict Donald. And you know what? If the McCain family wanted to throw some additional shade Trump's way, they could invite the Senator's Estonia vodka-drinking buddy to say a few words, too. That would make us cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: The Real Witch Hunt

By Baxter

Wow, we're hitting rock bottom again. We cats have just read Jill McCabe's op-ed in The Washington Post — about the destruction of her husband Andrew's FBI career and the persecution of her family — and it doesn't seem possible that things could get any worse. It's scary to realize that they probably will.

Time to back up a bit and see how we got here.

The only place to lay blame for the toxicity of today's politics is directly at the feet of the Republican Party. (Okay, with a supporting role by the media, but never mind that now.) We've been furious about this for years — around 25 of them, in fact. That was when the GOP really revved up what had already been a noxious attack machine — the repulsive legacy of Lee Atwater, who started it all with the Willie Horton ad and who deservedly died of a brain tumor in 1991.

Back then, we naively thought we'd seen the worst of the politics of personal destruction. But then Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992, and FOX "News" was born a few years after that. And things have just gone so far downhill since that now we're all in the abyss.

Even after September 11, 2001, when we were all supposed to be E pluribus unum, Republicans never strayed from demonizing Democrats. (We'll never get over what they did to Vietnam vet and triple-amputee Senator Max Cleland.) We all know now how Barack Obama's victory in 2008 drove them to new levels of birtherism, obstructionism and delusion. Today, with voter suppression, the GOP is undermining democracy, but that's not all: With Donald Trump and the Russians, they're willfully committing what in our book is treason.

Jill McCabe's story of harassment and persecution by Trump and his GOP enablers is the latest chilling chapter in this awful, awful story. "Nothing can prepare you for what happens when your life is turned upside down by current events," she writes. "Nothing prepares you for conversations you have to have with your teenage children. Nothing prepares you for the news crews staking out your house, your back yard, your place of business. Nothing prepares you for the fear you feel every time you receive a package from a stranger."

Did anyone just notice that she just compared Trump and his gangsters to the Austin bomber? We did. Politics simply cannot be like this, and the only way to fix it is to kick these Republicans' asses out of office — not just in the 2018 midterms, but for good. We cats will do everything we can to make that happen. In the meantime, we HISS.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: The Sunday Before Hillary Edition

By Baxter

We cats are looking forward to seeing Hillary Clinton tomorrow night as she brings her What Happened book tour to Montreal. Meanwhile, we have some bite-sized thoughts and observations on the news of the day.

It's been a couple of weeks since the Harvey Weinstein nightmare broke. A lot of Republican opportunists have jumped on the blame-the-left bandwagon and demanded that prominent Democrats disavow Weinsten and even return his money. Well! We cats just have one question for the Tucker Carlsons (and other hypocrites) of the world: Why is it taking you so long to condemn Bill O'Reilly and FOX "News"?

Did you know that today is the second anniversary of Secretary Clinton's marathon 11-hour testimony to Congress on Benghazi? History will record that Shiny Trey Gowdy and his merry band of hapless conspiracy-mongers were unable to lay a glove on her. But gee... was it that that made them realize they'd need Vladimir Putin's help to defeat her? Or did the treason start even before then?

Speaking of Benghazi, we'd just like to point out that while Niger casualty and latest American hero La David Johnson was laid to rest in South Florida yesterday, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was at the services — and Trump was golfing.

Finally, wow — did you see the five former Presidents at the hurricane fundraiser this weekend? We aren't so sure about the condition of Bush Senior, and George W. couldn't seem to refrain from smirking even during the national anthem. (Waiting for Trump to furiously tweet about that.) But gosh — our Democratic former Presidents are looking fantastic! Especially Jimmy Carter, who at 93 seems destined to reach his cherished goal of outliving the last guinea worm. We cats PURR.

#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.