Tidbits And Cat Treats: Cinco De Mayo Edition

By Zamboni

Or is that Cinco de Meow? Whatever you call it, we hope you're having a wonderful weekend. Here are some news items that are getting our attention this Battle of Puebla Day.

You have to wonder how the dog killer from South Dakota can defend her "book," in which she not only says she executed her pet but also claimed to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Now she's saying the part about Kim was all a mistake that she had no idea was even in there. But there's a catch: Noem read the audio version of the book herself. Don't worry, she's not crazy — she's just a liar.

(But you know what? Maybe she is crazy. She came out in favor of killing Biden's dog Commander today. Who's advising this woman?)

This may not have risen to the level of national coverage, but social media is consumed with JP Staples, the idiot at the University of Mississippi who made ape noises at a Black woman during a campus protest the other day. Unsurprising, since he's apparently a fan of Nick Fuentes. But he's become too much for his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, which has kicked him out. (Good, but expect him to run for office as a Republican someday — and, in Mississippi, probably win.) 

A new poll by ABC News has President Biden leading Benedict Donald by four points with likely voters. It's come on the heels of a poll by NPR/Marist that showed Biden ahead by five with the same demographic. Moral of the story: Every time you see a poll, ask if it surveyed all adults, registered voters, or likely voters. Very few polls are breaking out respondents that way right now. "As people move from being a registered voter to likely voter to actual voter, and are faced with pulling that lever for MAGA, Trump and Republicans lose ground," Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg explains. 

One of our favorite Democrats, Howard Dean, may run for Governor of Vermont again. No decision yet, but he says he's motivated by the state's current fiscal situation. It wouldn't surprise us if he's also thinking that even a popular Republican incumbent like Phil Scott would be vulnerable this fall with Trump at the top of his national ticket.

Finally, tomorrow Vice President Kamala Harris heads off to Detroit on the latest leg of her Economic Opportunity Tour. This is on top of her travels across the country to campaign for the restoration of reproductive rights. And after his silly parade of alleged VP candidates at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, where will Benedict Donald be? Back in criminal court, of course. We cats PURR.

Elsie's Bad Night

By Miss Kubelik

Yesterday's shenanigans on the House floor were so astounding and embarrassing that Nikki Haley must be grateful they happened on the same day that she came in second to "None Of The Above" in Nevada. 

Maybe pundits won't pay her loss much mind, she must have hoped — particularly when they had utter Capitol Hill chaos to focus on and the spectacle of a bruised and stung Mike Johnson running far, far away from reporters at a speed that rivaled Josh Hawley's. (Sorry, Nikki, but it turns out they did notice Nevada after all.)

Benedict Donald mocked her humiliation, as is his wont — but rubbing Haley's nose in the dirt seemed to take on additional meaning this time, bolstering the contention of many that her veep chances are zero. Why should he pick her when he has so many other bowing and scraping sycophants to choose from?

One particularly pleasing bit of fallout from the Alejandro Mayorkas debacle will surely be the denting of Elise "Elsie" Stefanik as "possible running mate" material. Benedict Donald doesn't like what the entire Republican House leadership looked like — losers. (Never mind that Trump is one of the all-time most accomplished losers himself.) Elsie had stood at the lectern to proudly predict an imminently impeached Mayorkas, only to be proven embarrassingly wrong hours later.

Ohio freshman Senator and slavering right-wing nutjob JD Vance, who has been busy licking Trump's boots on TV (and getting tossed off one show because of it), must have been thrilled. To Elsie, we simply say: "Ma'am — we don't know about this whole veep thing, but please find some clothes that fit you." We cats HISS.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

By Hubie and Bertie

Although Republicans seem hell-bent on nominating him, you sometimes have to wonder if Benedict Donald is even going to make it to November. He's been rambling and gaffe-ing an awful lot lately. Even folks in the news media are starting to take note. Confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi got a lot of people's attention.

And Team Trump must be worried about it — because they sent out super-MAGA surrogate Elise "Elsie" Stefanik to try to refute the Haley-Pelosi slip. Au contraire, it was intentional, Stefanik insisted. Nikki Haley, she claimed, is "relying on Democrats just like Nancy Pelosi to try to have a desperate showing in New York." (Then she caught herself and quickly said "in New Hampshire," LOL.)

Wow, that's thin. So thin that Haley doesn't strike us as the one who's desperate (although she may be). This was straw-grasping beyond belief — even more pathetic than Tim Scott's recent engagement photo. But then, both Elsie and Scott want the world to think that they're Vice Presidential material, so they'll do what they can (never mind the fact that Mike Pence's tenure in the job significantly lowered the bar for any aspiring Republican successors).

Look, Elsie can pander and grovel and toady all she wants. But we're convinced that if Trump picks a female running mate, it won't be a Blue State Girl like Stefanik, or a Red State Girl like Kristi Noem or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Haley or Marjorie Taylor Greene. First, except for Noem, they're not good-looking enough for Trump. Second, it's going to be Kari Lake. Physically (at least, with that camera filter she uses), she's "his type." And he needs purple-state Arizona. We cats HISS.

Elsie Must Be A Wreck Tonight

By Baxter

With the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and the late news that George Santos will face federal charges, Elise Stefanik has had one hell of a bad day.

"Elsie" endorsed, raised money and campaigned for Slippery Santos, so we hope that as soon as the charges become clear, journalists stampede to her office, chase her in Capitol Hill hallways, and shove microphones in her face at every opportunity to get her to comment. They'll have to be dogged about it, because Elsie is a coward who avoids unscripted events like the plague — even in her own district, NY-21.

And in the Carroll v. Trump saga, Elsie faces more than just the embarrassment of having thrown in her lot with a sexual abuser. As it happens, the now-infamous Joe Tacopina, who browbeat Carroll on Trump's behalf during her gutsy testimony, is also involved in a home-district court case that Stefanik has been quite vocal about. He's defending a man who's been accused of causing the deaths of 20 people in a horrific limousine accident in Schoharie, New York, in October 2018.

You read that right — 20 people. Seventeen friends who had hired the limo for a birthday trip to a brewery, the limo's driver, and two bystanders all died when the vehicle's brakes failed on a steep hill. The limousine company's shady manager, Nauman Hussain, is on trial for manslaughter, accused of failing to keep the vehicle off the road, after a judge scuttled a previous plea deal that called for no jail time.

Tacopina has been too busy with the Carroll trial to show up in Schoharie yet, but he's expected tomorrow or Friday. Elsie has been very vocal about Hussein and his even shadier dad, who owns the limo company his son managed. A sometime FBI informant who's been home in Pakistan since before the accident, the elder Hussain hasn't bothered to come back to the US to support his son. And Elsie's been haranguing Christopher Wray about whether the Bureau has been protecting the Hussains because, you know, Deep State and all.

So, how does Elsie feel about her hero Trump's bully lawyer heading upstate to lead the Hussein defense? Will anyone ask her? We cats switch our tails and wait, and we also HISS.

Donald And The Girls

By Miss Kubelik

With the new Congress convening tomorrow, the January 6 Committee spent the last few days of the year engaging in an enormous document dump — not just its final report and executive summary, but pages and pages of testimony from various folks who didn't make it into the committee hearings themselves.

It makes you think that if the House had stayed Democratic, the committee could have held several more hearings, starring the likes of Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks and Ginni Thomas. Conway and Hicks might have been willing to testify live, but Thomas probably not. Her testimony is still mind-blowingly nutty. The woman is a perfidious loose cannon, and if John Roberts doesn't get control of her and her "best friend," his Court will never repair its already-in-the-toilet reputation.

Like others, Conway's testimony transcript contains sudden white space, which appears for no apparent reason — no potty breaks or decision to go off the record. The only possible explanation: It's testimony that relates directly to the DOJ investigation, which is not public yet. We think various Trumpsters should fear the white space.

As for Hicks, Benedict Donald must be through with her, because she testified willingly and was unflattering to him. That doesn't make her any kind of a heroine. Remember that as the Capitol was under attack, the only thing she worried about was that no one would hire her after the Administration. Top-level aides take oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. Seems like Hicks forgot about hers.

Trump must have liked her because she was attractive, though. Which brings us, in closing, to our theory about Elise Stefanik. The New York Times's enormous expose of the ultra-MAGA Elsie, published right before Congressional Republicans duke it out over leadership roles, has a devastating final paragraph: "News stories about [2024] still mention Stefanik as a rising star who might join a Trump ticket...but within the president's inner circle, stories casting her as a potential running mate are regarded as clumsy plants by her own team, and inspire bemusement and mockery. Trump liked her, they said, and liked watching her defend him. But even he didn't trust her."

And take it from us, he doesn't think she's hot enough. We cats HISS.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Survival Of Democracy Edition

By Zamboni

Ah, Friday night! We can all relax — except for those humans who have to work tomorrow, and for cats, who never work. But it's the end of a busy week, so we have some thoughts. Here they are.

Right wingers up in Canada are bitching about a snap election that cost $600 million to produce similar results to the election in 2019. First, if Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives had won, they wouldn't be saying a word. Second, do you know how much the Cyber Ninjas' "audit" of Arizona cost? And how many more Republican-controlled states are rushing to uselessly spend money doing the same? Please.

We don't know about you, but we love waking up to headlines that Trump lost...again. How many times is it now — 78? We've lost count.

We would comment on Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest shenanigans, except she's been removed from all committees and marginalized, so we're not going to give oxygen to her otherwise. If you love her so much, you can look her up on the Google machine.

By the way, on the subject of self-determination, it's worth noting that the Quebec National Assembly — which styles itself as a "national assembly" even though it's the legislature of a Canadian provincial government, and which has traditionally gone against the status quo for that very reason — has just unanimously passed a bill outlawing anti-COVID-vaccine demonstrations within 50 meters of a hospital, school, or healthcare or vaccination clinic. So there.

Finally, why can nobody on the other side in the US (the other side being anti-democracy, un-American autocrats) spell? Lauren Boebert tweeted today that she wanted to "imeach" Biden. Gee, nobody proofreads any more, do they? We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: The Irony Of Palin

By Miss Kubelik

Watching the new multi-episode HBO documentary about President Obama is eye-opening in a lot of ways. How young and thin everyone looked in 2004 and 2008! (Except for Joe Biden, who since then has gotten more slender and fit.)

You also see and hear stuff that might not have struck you back then, but that sure resonates now. Take this little nugget of campaign-trail wisdom from Sarah Palin, who at the time was deeply into her bogus "Obama is palling around with terrorists" attack mode:

"Turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times...was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the US Capitol.' Wow."

"Wow," indeed! Who would want to pal around with anyone who would attack the Capitol? We cats HISS.

Cat Fight! Brianna Keilar vs. Mercedes Schlapp

By Hubie and Bertie

Mercedes and Matt Schlapp are the most irritating — and, on the husband's side, closeted — couple since Michele and Marcus Bachmann.

It's a wonder that any respectable news organization would have either of them on at all. But at least when CNN booked Mercedes for Brianna Keilar's early-afternoon show, Keilar was not letting her get off easily. When Schlapp tried the now-tired GOP saw that voting by mail is rife with fraud, Keilar gave her the heave-ho with, "This is pointless. I get it, you’re just saying a bunch of crap! Okay. You’re saying a bunch of crap...very nice to have you."

Schlapp must have been smarting from that, because to retaliate, she went after Keilar's husband on Twitter — but got the wrong guy. Oops.

You know, it's just the latest, albeit small, example of how bad the Trumpsters are at all this. We had just been musing about why they let Jonathan Swan's Axios interview sit in the can for an entire week without even attempting to get out ahead of it. They knew how bad Benedict Donald had been. Why didn't they try a little pre-emptive damage control? Trot out some Trumpy healthcare statisticians to talk about how important deaths-per-cases is, for example? They're not shy about having their trade representative talk about medical matters, so what stopped them?

So why wasn't Mercedes Schlapp smart enough to tweet correctly about Brianna Keilar's husband? Because she couldn't pass a cognitive test? Had to pay someone to take her SATs? We cats wonder, and we HISS.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: People Really Care About Healthcare Edition

By Sniffles

Pretty eventful primary day in Florida yesterday. Also, the McCain Marathon continues, plus more. Here are a few of our hump-day observations.

We cats have three words for the Democrats who are squabbling on Twitter about Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum: CUT. IT. OUT. Fact: Andrew Gillum was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. Fact: Andrew Gillum was a delegate for Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic Convention. Fact: Andrew Gillum bridges both worlds. It's a good thing.

Sarah Palin is not invited to John McCain's funeral. Because she would misbehave? Bring her hideous family? Perhaps it's because Palin, probably the most unqualified running mate in history, is a reminder that McCain's "Country First" slogan was just an empty lie.

So letting nearly 3,000 Americans die is doing "a fantastic job"? What would letting 6,000 American die be? "Outstanding"? "Sensational"? It is simply amazing that nobody is in trouble for this. Which means we've got to have that Blue Wave this fall.

Speaking of which, while we Democrats have an abundance of campaign talking points to hammer on in the midterms, there's only one in which we should be in lockstep: With John McCain gone, and with the Governor of Arizona pledging to replace him with a fellow Trumpster, the Affordable Care Act is officially dead in the Senate. The only way we stop Republicans from ripping health coverage away is by winning back the House. (The Senate would be nice, too, of course.)

Democrats: Polls have consistently shown that Americans want to keep their Obamacare. So speak of nothing else, and you'll cruise to victory in November. That would make us cats PURR.

Enemies At The Gaetz

By Sniffles

Is Matt Gaetz an overt racist, or just one of the dumbest guys ever to darken the halls of Congress?

In the news already for a wily Democrat's billboard against him, Gaetz is now under fire for inviting an avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist to the State of the Union. (And with a Holocaust denier about to get the Republican nomination for an Illinois House seat, we cats are sensing a GOP pattern here.)

Gaetz at first claimed he had no idea who Charles Johnson was. (Yeah, we get it — you totally invite people to the SOTU without knowing them.) Now he's claiming "poor vetting" and vowing not to do it again.

We hope that someone in the media has already put in a FOIA request for any and all correspondence between Gaetz and Johnson about the speech. It should make for interesting reading. We cats HISS.

Objections, Please.

By Baxter

Who will be the first Republican not named McCain or Graham to scream about Donald Drumpf's lovefest with Vladimir "I Kill My Political Enemies and Invade Other Countries" Putin?

We cats are waiting breathlessly. After all, for most of our nine lives the GOP has been so rabidly anti-Communist and anti-Russian and anti-everything-anti-American that surely they will not put up with their Vulgarian President knuckling under to Putin. Will they?

Or... will they?

The most logical Republican to squeal foul on the Drumpf-Putin romance would be Baby Marco, of course. For decades, the Soviet Union (and then Russia) has propped up Rubio's hated Castro regime. Yet do we hear any objections from Baby Marco's corner about his Republican President's Putin crush? Hm, we think not.

Jeff Flake is a bit of a mini-maverick, so we're wondering if he'll step up to the plate. Bob "Harold, Call Me" Corker should probably say something, seeing how he chairs the Foreign Relations Committee and all. Rafael Cruz, Jr. has been stringently anti-Communist throughout his political life (although there's debate as to whether Vlad is a true Commie). So where is Rafael on this?

But in our book, Lisa Murkowski is the GOPer who should be most vocal and ballsy on this love-Putin crap. After all, she can see Russia from her house — right?

Sadly, we don't expect any of these Republican hypocrites to grow a spine and speak up. Which leaves us Democrats to take up the baton. Who has the guts — beside our most dependable man with moxie — to call 'em like he/she sees 'em?

We cats wait, and in the meantime, we HISS.

La Desaparecida

By Sniffles

President Obama says he can trace the rise of Donald Trump in 2016 back to John McCain's gravest sin — the selection of the Famous Quitter from Alaska as his running mate in 2008.

"I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump," the President told New York magazine, citing a "shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party."

Gosh, what a coincidence. We cats were just thinking of Sarah Palin the other day. As in, where the heck is Sarah Palin?

Just a few weeks ago, her boy Trump was riding high! (Um — kind of. Sort of. For a little while. Not so much any more.) And remember when she endorsed him, wearing that strangely dominatrix-y outfit and belching forth her usual word salad? That was way back in January. Then she vanished. She didn't go to the convention. She hasn't been on the campaign trail. What gives?

We have several theories. The first is that with an idiot like Trump around, Palin seems redundant. So maybe the Trumpsters have told her that if she lies low and they win, there will be nice plum job waiting for her in the government she hates so much. And if they lose, there will still be a nice plum job waiting for her — but this time, at the Trump/Ailes Network.

Or, they could be saving her for a final two-week campaign blitz. At the rate things are going, though, that blitz — should it happen — will not be to battlegrounds states the Republicans hope to steal from Hillary Clinton. Instead, they'll have to ship Palin off to conservative enclaves in places like Iowa, North Carolina, southwestern Virginia and northern Florida. We cats PURR.

Like A Lead Balloon

By Zamboni

Reports are that Little Donnie Drumpf is feeling kind of deflated because his VP announcement fell flat. So to gin up excitement, he's thinking of announcing his Cabinet. Oooh! We hope he does it. More fodder.

What the Drumpf forces should be worrying about instead is all the stuff that can go wrong this week in Cleveland. So much already has — why should it stop now?

Here's just some of the mayhem that we're rooting for over the next few days:

Another attempted coup in a key foreign ally, giving Drumpfmania 2016, at best, a split screen on cable TV.

Delegates shout out misogynistic and racist obscenities whenever Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's names are mentioned. (As we know, this is totally possible.)

A reporter, ideally from Telemundo or Univision, gets roughed up on the floor. (Again, as we know, this has happened before.)

Ted Cruz goes all Pat Buchanan on them.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell get booed when they speak.

An outraged Sarah Palin tweets "WTF? Alaska's not too far!"

Delegates constantly shout out "BUILD THE WALL!" A Democratic ad custom-made for states like Arizona, no?

There's delegate-on-delegate violence. Colorado would a perfect venue: It's a Cruz-heavy delegation that Trump has accused of being "rigged."

Pence's speech bombs. Ms. Moose-and-Squirrel's speech bombs. Trump's speech bombs.

People start leaving, and the cameras pan rows of empty seats.

And of course, the balloons don't drop. We cats PURR.

Going Full Palin

By Baxter

Once again, Donald Drumpf proves himself to be the master of detail, not.

Remember back in 2008, when Katie Couric asked the famous quitter from Alaska what Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with? And no fair citing Roe v. Wade. The famous quitter, who by then was running to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, whiffed. "I'll try to find ya some and I'll bring 'em to ya."

The 2016 version of the famous quitter is the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Drumpf. Before heading off to Scotland to look over his golf courses (thus losing a further two days of organizing and fund raising), Drumpf gave an interview to Lester Holt, and immediately starting screaming about how Hillary Clinton's private email server had been hacked.

Holt asked how Drumpf knew that. Whoops.

"I think I read that and I heard it and somebody that also gave me that information," Drumpf stammered. When Holt asked for the proof, Drumpf said, "I will report back to you. I'll give it to you."

(We hope Holt starts a countdown clock to hold Drumpf to this promise. NBC News could put a little graphic in the lower right-hand corner of the screen: "X days since Donald Trump promised evidence of Hillary getting hacked.")

We all should have known eight years ago that Sarah Palin was just the first of her kind. What we didn't expect was that the whole Republican establishment would be stupid enough to let another Palin steal their party out from under them. Although we cats are not sad that it portends sure disaster for the GOP, we still HISS.

Obama Shines, Palin Bombs

By Miss Kubelik

As the nation gears up to observe another Memorial Day, let us consider the fact that as President Obama visited Hiroshima yesterday, reflected on the nature of war and urged the world to strive to avoid it, an aide carrying the "nuclear football" stood nearby — as always.

(The famous quitter from Alaska, of course, vomited a word salad all over attendees at a California Trump rally, accusing Obama of apologizing for dropping the bomb. As all of us know, this is completely untrue, but that kind of thing never matters in Palin-Trump World.)

Anyway, chalk up another profound and mesmerizing speech by Barack Obama. And as the putative Republican nominee continues to foozle the simple mechanics of a Presidential campaign, think about that nuclear football being a few steps away from Donald Drumpf. We cats HISS.

IMAGE: The President hugs Shigeaki Mori, an atomic survivor who has made it his life's work to memorialize the American POWs held in Hiroshima and killed in the nuclear blast on August 6, 1945.

Contested Delegates, Contested Convention?

By Miss Kubelik

Somebody buy Donald Trump a guide to English grammar! He's fussing about how, despite his win in the Louisiana primary, he's getting "less" delegates than Rafael Cruz, Jr.

Well, okay, we're not really surprised that he's challenged that way. Trump's speech patterns are the weirdest we've heard since the Famous Quitter from Alaska and her word salads burst onto the national scene back in 2008.

But there's another thing Trump apparently isn't good at, which will we think will badly bite him in the butt: He's come late to the delegate selection party. Caught short by the Louisiana situation, he first threatened to sue (his favorite thing) but now seems to be willing to merely contest. He is shocked at the "unfair" allocation process!

We hate to break it to Trump, but what's going on in terms of how delegates are selected is nothing new. They are arcane levels set by state parties or state law. In fact, we saw battles like this back in 1960 and 1980 (with the Democrats) and 1964 and 1976 (with the Republicans). There's even a movie — remember Cliff Robertson picking off delegates in The Best Man? (One of our favorites.)

So here's what we don't understand: Donald Trump, in the words of Donald Trump himself, possesses the world's best brain. He's old enough to remember the elections we just cited. He has his pick of political advisers (not that he needs them, of course, because he's a genius). So how can he claim to be a victim of this tried and true tactic? It is all silly, like the Republican race itself. We cats HISS — but if it all leads to a yuuuuuugge fight in Cleveland, then we PURR.

Days Of Destruction

By Miss Kubelik

As long as we cats were taking a stroll through the wacky world of Free Republic, we decided to check their reactions to this recent analysis by The New York Times about the pickle the Republican Party finds itself in.

From our side of the political spectrum — opposite of the Freeps', of course — we thought the article was fascinating. Not because it told us any particularly new news, but because it 1) tied the GOP's current dilemma into a neat little package, and 2) succinctly portrayed the so-called "Establishment Republicans" as what they are: clueless. We could picture the expressions on their older, white male faces: classic George W. Bush, learning for the first time that the World Trade Center was under attack.

This kind of amazed us, until we remembered the famed Republican sense of entitlement (currently personified by Jeb! Bush). The GOP elite thought they could pander to the worst instincts of the hard right — and then stiff them on the issues they hold near and dear — and pay no political price, forever. Now, that's arrogant. 

Thanks to the miracle of the Interwebs, however, we've seen the Freeper rage building for years now — so we're not exactly reaching for the smelling salts. As one Freeper said of the New York Times piece: "We’ve been split for the last two Presidential elections. Took them a while to figure this out." We cats couldn't agree more. After all, we've seen countless comments that were anti-John McCain, anti-Mitt Romney, anti-Mitch McConnell, anti-John Boehner, anti-Paul Ryan, and anti-anti-anti-nearly everybody inside the Beltway with an "R" after his name since we started this blog back in 2008.

The teabags feel wronged over everything they think the Republican Party has failed to do. Some of it is imaginary ("They never stood up to Obama!"), some of it is real (the Bush Administration did expand Medicare and wasted trillions in Iraq), and some of it was just kinda out of the GOP's control (marriage equality). And they never take comfort in the fact that an abortion is a lot damned harder to get than it used to be, that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, that guns are everywhere, or that the Republicans currently control the House, the Senate and most of the states — everything but the White House. All of this scares us to death — but the Freepers are just wet-cat mad, because in their view, nothing is ever enough.

We can tell those deer-in-the-headlights Republican elites when it all started going off the rails for them. It was when John McCain, then a 71-year-old cancer survivor, plucked a crazy former Alaskan mayor out of obscurity and lifted her to national prominence by nominating her for a job she was completely unqualified for. To us cats, it was a grave disservice to the country that nearly bordered on treason. But for the GOP, the rise of Sarah Palin — even though she later became a cartoon — is the point at which the frustrated and restive haters who make up the party base became the awakened giant, filled with a terrible resolve.

Does John McCain feel any responsibility for all this? We doubt it. Which would usually make us HISS at his idiocy — but since we love watching the travails of the GOP, it makes us PURR.

Jade Helm Had Nothing On This

By Baxter

To live your life as a dedicated teabag and faithful commenter on Free Republic, you must spend all your energy on the belief that the Republican Party is out to get your guy (or gal). In their view, Rancid Pieface, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the GOP establishment will use every trick in the book to minimize, discredit and undermine teabag heroes from Sarah Palin to Ted Cruz to — now — Donald Trump.

Oh, and did we mention that the media are complicit? They are. (Jake Tapper, take a bow.)

We know this conspiracy mindset is still raging because we checked on the Freepers this morning. We wanted to see their reactions to the negative coverage The Donald earned at last night's clown-car debate.

"Trump takes a hit"? No way! insist the Freeps. "Who needs Candy Crowley when you can sic 10 Republicans on Trump and they eagerly comply?" screams one. "Except for Trump, [they] reeked the normal political speech and was [sic] so fake," bleated another. Observed a third, "One can’t help noticing that Time magazine — not exactly a conservative bastion — has 67% believing that Trump won."

And Carly Fiorina, the debate's alleged big winner? Simply the latest tool of the establishment GOP to take The Donald down. "Three hours of smug, stink eye from Fiorina," fulminate the Freeps. "She has no humor is pushy and a self promoter." "She looks like she is angry all the time." "She reminds me of every bad, overbearing, cruel female boss I’ve ever worked for." (Ouch!)

Sometime in the coming days we want someone to explain that bizarre baby-on-the-table story that Fiorina told. In the meantime, rest assured that last night's shenanigans did nothing to either lift Jeb! Bush's fortunes or unite the party with the haters it keeps trying to coddle. As one Freeper rather ungrammatically put it: "These debates are a joke. The GOP doesn't want to solve any issues just to get what they want: control of who will be the nominee. DO NOT SUPPORT THE GOP OR DONATE TO THEM." We cats PURR.

There Will Be Blood

By Zamboni

For the second time, a prominent Republican has gotten into hot water over a comment about blood.

Remember? Back in 2011, the famous quitter from Alaska landed herself into a peck of trouble after the Gabby Giffords shooting. Never mind that her stupid Face Thing page had used a cross-hairs icon to indicate Giffords's CD as a swing district — anybody who called attention to that was guilty of "blood libel."

What the famous quitter didn't realize, of course, was the underlying meaning of the blood libel term — which we cats are sure gets bandied about in her synapse-drained evangelical circles without a hint of understanding of its nuances. Anyway, suffice to say that trouble ensued.

That's all kinda hard to remember now because the famous quitter from Alaska is yesterday's news. Today, we have GOP clowns like Rafael Cruz, Jr., Rand Paul, Baby Marco Rubio, Fat Mike Huckabee, crazy Ben Carson and the cross-eyed college dropout from Wisconsin to kick around. An embarrassment of clown riches! The famous quitter seems so dated by comparison.

Nevertheless, we thought about her when Donald Trump, the Supreme GOP Clown of All, stepped in it with his recent comments about Megyn Kelly. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," he said — following up by blaming anyone who thought he was talking about — well, you know. Such dirty minds you people have!

We cats don't care what blood was coming out of what orifice of Megyn Kelly's. We refused to turn on Thursday night's debate because we don't ever want FOX "News" broadcasting in our house. But we agree with Hillary Rodham Clinton that the Trump remark was far from the only offensive statement on the debate stage that night.

Meanwhile, here's our favorite quote of all. And it goes to Carly Fiorina. Donald Trump's remarks about Megyn Kelly "were completely inappropriate and offensive comments, period." (Emphasis ours.) We cats PURR.

(IMAGE: This is either a still from a Daniel Day-Lewis movie, the Republican primary process going up in flames. Take your pick!)

John McCain Is A DumbDumb, Too

By Baxter

John McCain has lashed out at the execrable Rafael Cruz, Jr. for calling Mitch McConnell a liar the other day. “Let’s even assume that [Cruz was] right, which he wasn’t, you still don’t do that,” McCain sniffed.

But does John McCain realize that he's responsible for Ted Cruz?

Cruz was going nowhere in his 2012 Texas Senate race until the Famous Quitter from Alaska — before a canceled TV show and a failed web channel and a second bastard grandchild all hit — endorsed him.

And of course the Famous Quitter would have been Nowheresville in the first place had John McCain not plucked her from deserved obscurity to be his running mate in 2008. (We cats still think that nomination was tantamount to treason.)

So now Rafael Jr. is rubbing McCain and all those Republican Senators the wrong way? As with Donald Trump, they have only themselves to blame. We cats HISS.