Noem No More

 

By Baxter

We cats were already feeling pretty good this morning about everybody who showed up for Tuesday's primary in Texas. "Democratic turnout reached record levels, as more voters participated in the party’s primary than in the Republican one," CNN reported. Turnout was strong in North Carolina, too. Excellent!

And then Benedict Donald proved the interwebs rumors right and fired puppy killer Kristi Noem. Fun!

What's even better is that Noem seems to think that "Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas," which Trump totally made up when he sacked her, is a real job. "Thank you, POTUS!" she tweeted. Donald promised to provide more details about the "shield" soon, but considering his erratic behavior, we think there's a non-zero chance that that announcement never comes.

It's also pretty amusing, if in a grim way, that the media and the tweeters and observers are treating Noem's firing as a Donald decision. Trump is in such bad shape, both physically and mentally, that Stephen Miller is running the joint like no one has since Edith Wilson back in 1919. Gossip has it that Miller highly disapproved of Noem's extramarital nookies with Corey Lewandowski — which is hilarious when you consider who he works for. And Miller no doubt didn't appreciate Noem's stumble back in January, when she said, "Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the President and Stephen."

(Speaking of adultery, how long, do you think, before the Noems land in divorce court? "Bryon" can't have been pleased to be a prop at yesterday's House hearing, even though he left before members started asking his wife about fucking Lewandowski on the plane.)

Markwayne Mullin, meanwhile, is a subject for another post. We're holding off because there's also a non-zero chance that his "nomination," if you can call a post on Truth Social that, eventually crumbles. But although the world is better without Noem at DHS, she's done a ton of damage that has to be repaired. And the tragedy is that Trump didn't remove her for her many failures and outrages — he fired her for making him look bad on television. We cats HISS.

Elsie Can Read A Poll

By Baxter

Is it possible that Elise "Elsie" Stefanik is out of our lives now? She just dropped out of the race for New York Governor and says she won't run for re-election to Congress, either. Neat!

Elsie waited until nearly 5 PM on a Friday — and, on this particular Friday, right after the DOJ partially released the Epstein files — to break the news. She kept hanging her decision on the political landscape in New York State, but we cats call litter-box leavings on that.

Sure, Stefanik was trailing Kathy Hochul by 20 points. But it wasn't that long ago that she was calling Bruce Blakeman, her Republican primary opponent, a loser. And now she's saying it's going to be too tough a fight? Stefanik is obviously reading the writing on the wall: Under Benedict Donald, her party is going to get wiped out everywhere, and Trump might not appreciate it that she's acknowledging that.

And hey — what does Congressman Mike Lawler think, since Ed Cox and the New York Republican Party muscled him out of the governor's race for Elsie's benefit? What about all those state legislators who endorsed her? Stefanik has just hung them all out to dry. Sad!

There's got to be more to this story than that tired cliché of wanting to spend time with her family. We're looking forward to the details. In the meantime, what else is there to say but: Poor Elsie! How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful! We cats PURR.

The Elise Pounding Continues

The Lincoln Project has taken aim at the corporate donors still supporting Stefanik the Despicable. Make your consumer choices accordingly. We cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: The Power Of Love

By Zamboni

We cats are now willing to show our age. We would like to comment on the California Parole Board's decision to recommend RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan for release.

It's hard for us to approach this story without emotion. Robert Kennedy, for all his faults, was on the road to clinching the Democratic nomination for President in 1968 when he was killed — and if he had beaten Richard Nixon in November, the country would be a much different place than it is today. Just think: a withdrawal from Vietnam, no bombing of Cambodia and Laos, no Watergate. The mind reels.

Most of Kennedy's surviving children have issued a statement opposing Sirhan's parole. "Sirhan Sirhan committed a crime against our nation and its people. He took our father from our family, and he took him from America," they said. Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy Jr., who is already a nut on vaccines, appears to differ. We don't care.

Why? Because the majority of Bobby's kids got it right. Sirhan robbed us of an RFK presidency. In the tumult that was 1968, RFK was the only one who understood where America's identity was. Here's what he said on the night Martin Luther King was assassinated.

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are Black — considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization — Black people amongst Black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

"Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

"For those of you who are Black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.

"I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'

"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."

Robert Kennedy spoke these words in Indianapolis that night. While multiple cities erupted into violence in the wake of the King assassination, Indianapolis was quiet. We cats PURR.

"Senator John Kennedy, You're No John Kennedy"

By Sniffles

We cats recently had a chat with a nonpolitical acquaintance, who said that his co-workers have been pretty mean to each other lately. He gingerly wondered if politics was the reason.

He brought it up, not us. And of course, we emphatically agreed.

People are treating each other like sh*t? Trump's to blame. Even for folks who don't scarf up political news like Kitten Chow, or who don't give a moment's thought to who's President for weeks on end, Benedict Donald has been an intrusive, unwelcome, poisonous presence. His insulting, infantile behavior breaks through, forcing people to deal with it. It's wearying.

Surely that's one of the reasons support for impeachment skyrocketed so fast after the Ukraine news broke. If Trump hadn't been so awful for the last three years, voters would be much more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Americans are exhausted. Impeach and convict.

We're seeing it with other Trumpsters, too. Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy is feeling the heat today for calling Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi "dumb" at a Trump rally in Louisiana last night. You might think that a Senator who sees a doofus staring back at him every time he looks in the mirror might refrain from comments like that. "I didn't mean it as disrespectful at all," he bleated today. Hm.

There's some consolation in the fact that Kennedy is getting pushback on this. But in the meantime, you know that all the vitriol and disrespect is seeping down, down, down into people's hearts and minds. Ugh.

It's another grave misdeed that we must lay not just at the feet of Trump but of the whole Republican Party, which, for the sake of a tax cut for the One Percent and a slew of conservative judges, has refused to stand up for decency. Here's how former GOP Congressman David Jolly described his erstwhile Republican colleagues: "Spineless politicians, rotten to the core, without virtue, without any level of human integrity, devoid of self-respect, self-reflection, without courage and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence."

We cats couldn't agree more, and we HISS.

P.S. Headline credit goes to that brilliant tweeter, Preet Bharara.

Scare-dy Cats

By Zamboni

Uncommitted (and squishily committed) delegates to the Republican National Convention are starting to complain that Trump supporters are sending them mean emails.

"Think before you take a step down the wrong path," warned one message that Kyle Babcock, a delegate from Indiana, says he received. "These type [sic] of threats have no place in politics," Babcock sniffed.

We checked on the Trump adorers at Free Republic to see how they were reacting to these allegations. Answer: They weren't. They had nothing to say about anything except to repeat their rock-solid conviction that the question is moot because their hero will win outright. "Trump will have more than 1,237 by time the convention starts. There won’t be a second ballot to worry about," said one.

Which tells us that for our friends the Freepers (and for who knows how many other nutcases who make up the base of the GOP), sending convention delegates notes that mention "burials" is par for the political course.

Kind of hilarious. Republicans are feeling threatened? Like they're being watched? Do they have to look over their shoulders, be wary of opening packages, and check underneath before they start their cars? Now they know how abortion providers feel. We cats HISS.

We Couldn't Agree More

By Baxter

This tweet was not written by a Democrat, but by a member of the Virginia Republican Party's state governing board. Fun!

Goodness gracious, but Republicans in the Old Dominion fight like cats. They are truly vicious about one another. But we still wonder why Jo Thoburn, whose day job is head of the Fairfax Christian School, would tweet that former GOP Congressman Tom Davis's wife is a "slut."

Unless she's been talking to Ethan Czahor lately. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Lest We Furr-get: Willard's Still Trying To Check Off That Last Item On His Bain To-Do List

By Miss Kubelik

We cats have written ample posts in the past about how self-entitled the Romneys are. Now, as we all edge toward the Presidential race of 2016, it's good to know that people don't change.

Ann Romney — who, like her husband Mr. Forty-Seven Percent, loves to talk about her fellow Americans in terms like "you people" — has reportedly changed her mind about another race, and decided that Willard owes it to his country to run again.

Our broad Cheshire-cat grins — which were not unlike President Obama's when he was asked about Romney III — were quickly supplanted by an eye-roll and a shake of our furry heads once we came across this little nugget in The New York Times:

"When Dennis King, an old friend of Mr. Romney's, attended a California fund-raiser during the 2008 race, he asked Mrs. Romney why her husband was subjecting himself to the indignities of modern political campaigning.

"'That's what God wanted him to do,' Mr. King said she had responded."

So there you have it, folks: In one small anecdote, a vivid illustration of the Romneys' contempt — "subjecting himself," "indignities" — and the convenient cloaking of their self-entitlement in the will of God.

What more do you need to know? We cats HISS and dump our dirty litter boxes in the Romneys' magic-underwear drawer.

(IMAGE: Jack Ohman, The Sacramento Bee. Purr-fect!)

Elizabeth Lauten, Prize Turkey

By Sniffles

Well, Democrats may have gotten wiped out in last month's midterms, but one Republican on Capitol Hill is unexpectedly out of a job. "Elizabeth Lauten," formerly communications director for GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, has resigned her job after posting on Facebook a perversely unprovoked holiday-season attack on Sasha and Malia Obama.

Clearly, this Lauten person thought that after the Republicans' triumph on November 4, there was no line that could not be crossed. After four days of firestorms, she's found out otherwise.

As for us cats, we are pleased to know that Lauten will no longer be drawing a government paycheck. Because, quite frankly, she's an idiot. How is it possible that someone who was supposed to be one of the GOP's bright-light social media mavens doesn't understand how social media work?

Not only did Lauten not anticipate how badly her remarks about the Obama girls would go over, she also plainly didn't have a clue that it could get so out of control. (Welcome to the world.) And this isn't the first time that Lauten's been caught screwing up online. Back in August, she posted on her boss's official Twitter account a personal comment that used a British term for the F word.

Using social media well requires one important trait that Lauten doesn't have: good judgment. But why should we cats complain? To tell you the truth, we're thrilled to know that Republicans are relying on fools like Elizabeth Lauten to navigate the scary world of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. The very thought makes us PURR.

(PHOTO: "Spot at the bar"? What does that even mean?)

Chin Up, California Chrome: Jeb! Stinks Up The Joint In Texas

By Baxter

News flash from the Clown Car Racecourse: Ted Cruz has won the Republican convention straw poll in Texas.

We cats should modify that to say: Ted Cruz demolished the competition in today's Texas poll of 5,266 rabid Republican goofballs. A whackjob neuro doc who wasn't even there came in a waybackbackback second — and then Rand "I Want To Trade Hillary To The Taliban" Paul — and then Rick Perry.

Gosh. Rick Perry isn't screwy enough for these people. He comes in fourth.

But the big headline of the night is this: Jeb! Bush — he of the Lone Star State Bushes, he whose son is on the Texas ballot come November, he who is supposed to be the GOP establishment's savior in 2016 — came in fifth, like California Chrome, with 3.3 percent.

Embarrassing. And a hell of an early-birthday present for Momma "Rhymes With Rich" Barbara. We cats PURR.

Tidbits and Cat Treats: Selfie Thursday Edition

By Sniffles

As you can see, we cats have a way to go before we perfect our selfie skills. But if the President and the Vice President can do it, we can, too! So we'll keep practicing.

Meanwhile, though we're in Canada, developments from South of the Border continue to grab our attention. Here are a few of them.

Since the Jeb! 2016 boomlet is still rolling along, Mom Barbara's comment from a year ago that "We've had enough Bushes" seems, in retrospect, a little strange. We wonder if it was rooted in a mother's trepidation that a certain customs-criminal daughter-in-law still might not be ready for prime time.

This doesn't happen often, but it looks like we were wrong: Vance McAllister is still in office. We honestly don't know what he's doing there. Surely anybody who ran for office as a "godly" man who would "defend our Christian way of life" has got to go.

Speaking of Republican hypocrisy, check out their new emphasis on populism. We could make an endless list as to why this is hilarious. First because of the Kochs, of course. But get a load of what Republican Governor Mary Fallin just did in Oklahoma: Outlawed raising the minimum wage. Some populism!

Finally, here's some exciting news: Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Michelle Nunn and Alison Lundergan Grimes all outraised their expected general-election GOP opponents in the first quarter. Hm — despite the best efforts of the Washington media to hand all four of those races to the Republicans, it appears that they're still competitive. We cats PURR.

Mean Republicans Suck

By Miss Kubelik

The e-mails from Chris Christie's gang of thugs keep coming. Little by little, messages between Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein and Bill Stepian and Bill Baroni — and the other bright lights who were in positions of authority, thanks to the media darling who was never going to be nominated by the Republican Party in 2016 anyway — are dribbling out.

Here are some of the the deathless words of the folks who fomented the greatest disregard for public safety since The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived ignored the Presidential daily brief of August 6, 2001:

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."
"Is it wrong that I am smiling?"
"They are the children of Buono voters."
"[Rabbi Mendy Carlebach] has officially pissed me off."
"He is the Jewish Cid Wilson."
"We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?"
"Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed."
"Holy [expletive], who does [Pat Foye] think he is, Captain America?"
"Bad guy. Welcome to our world."

Other details are slowly emerging — like the involvement of the Port Authority Police Department — but what strikes us most about these e-mails is their sheer hatefulness. Just endless, endless snark.

Now, we cats can snark along with the best of 'em — that's part of the fun of politics. But that's not all there is. There's policy, and law, and the public interest, and governance, and all the interesting aspects of democracy that makes it so continuously compelling — the stuff you're entrusted with if you're lucky enough to be, or work for, an elected official.

These Christie hooligans will have none of that. All they care about is power — with which they were once endowed and which, as the little, little people they are, they thoroughly abused.

Just like their boss? Of course. We cats know about birds of a feather. And if the Romneys drank, we would buy them cocktails until they spilled the real reasons they didn't pick Pufferfish for V.P. We bet there's an earful. And we PURR.

A New Primer On Ryan And Rand

By Zamboni

Okay, boys and girls: We cats have decided that this whole Todd Akin explosion has provided us with an important teachable moment. So, here goes.

1. Under the "personhood" amendment that Paul Ryan co-sponsors, the rape victims about whom Akin has spoken so compassionately (not) would have to bear their rapists' children.

2. Many of those children would then either die for lack of obstetric care — because Mitt Romney and the Republicans would defund Planned Parenthood and myriad accessible forms of female reproductive health services — or, postpartum, would starve to death for lack of food stamps, housing assistance and other human-service initiatives that Republicans call cruel government interference in the free market.

3. Ayn Rand, while rooting for the abortion, would approve of the poor, postpartum life of the rapist's child.

Any questions? And no, you can't ask the obvious one, as in, "Why do Republicans have their heads up their butts?"

Time To Cut And Run, Jean Schmidt

By Sniffles

Gloriosky! We cats have been awash in work and have just noticed that Republican Congresswoman Jean "I Agree With You, Birther Lady" Schmidt from Ohio was defeated in her primary yesterday.

Who beat her? Who cares? Okay, well, it was a guy named Brad Wenstrup. We're sure that while he'll be "meh" (he's a Republican, after all), he'll be a definite improvement over Schmidt, both behaviorally and, um, sartorially. And oh, he should plan on kissing President Obama at the next State of the Union address.

Somewhere, John Murtha is smiling. We cats PURR.

Calling Roger Ailes

By Sniffles

Is it possible that people can still be driven from polite society in shame? That stupid blonde cleavage-flasher with the anti-Asian YouTube rant says she's leaving UCLA. Although the university has chosen not to discipline her, Alexandra Wallace claims the post-video harassment she's endured is making life at school impossible.

While Ms. Wallace (what an apt last name!) apparently has apologized for her racist tirade against people who currently are suffering beyond imagination, we cats find it hard to feel sorry for her. Mainly because we're certain that FOX will offer her a show next week, on which she'll spend most of her time whining about political correctness and free speech and the liberal media and blood libel.

You heard it here first.

Everything Old is New Again

By Baxter

We cats are grateful to our friends over at The Huffington Post, who — in commenting on a recent Newsweek cover featuring the famous quitter from Alaska — have directed us to the immortal H.L. Mencken's obituary for William Jennings Bryan.

This dusty historical reference, we're sorry to say, continues to be relevant today. Because charlatans and frauds who cloak themselves in religion or righteousness are, alas, always with us. Newsweek's cover girl is just the latest example.

It becomes crystal clear when you take a key paragraph from Mencken's Bryan obit; then, substitute "Palin" for "Bryan," and the present tense for the past:

"Palin is a vulgar and common woman... She is ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. Her career has brought her into contact with the first men of her time... It's hard to believe that she has been received in civilized societies as a high officer of state. She seems only a poor clod... deluded by childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. She is a peasant come home to the dung-pile...

"The job before democracy is to get rid of such canaille. If it fails, they will devour it."

We cats PURR. We rarely post directly on Palin because we don't consider her worth our time. But this, we couldn't resist.

(IMAGE: "Inherit the Wind," United Artists, 1960)

Cat Fight! Carly Fiorina vs. Barbara Boxer's Hair

By Zamboni

We cats have a little advice for Republican Senate candidate Carly "Butch" Fiorina: When you have appearance issues yourself, it's not wise to attack your opponent's look.

We could continue in this vein, but if we did, we'd be sinking to Fiorina's level.

Yes, it's truly amazing that one of the GOP's rising female "stars" was able to wound herself so effectively, so quickly. But what really strikes us cats is how darn nasty Republicans are. Taking a page from the famous quitter from Alaska, Fiorina is clearly staking out her territory as the Grand Old Party's newest mean girl.

And we understand anew why Fiorina was fired by Hewlett-Packard. She not only drove the company into the ground — she didn't work and play well with others.