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.

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.

Democracy On The Edge

By Sniffles

Today was President Biden's big voting-rights speech in Philadelphia, and we cats have some thoughts.

Although he never said the word filibuster, Biden had a message for Senate Democrats: Get the John Lewis Act done, whatever it takes. So all we're hearing from the TV talking heads is "Manchin-and-Sinema, Manchin-and-Sinema, Manchin-and-Sinema." We get it: Senate Democrats need all 50 of their caucus to back the act — plus one (the Vice President). But when it comes to the filibuster, why focus exclusively on the Democrats? Why do the media never talk about the 50 white supremacists on the other side of the aisle?

For example, why is Tim Scott in favor of suppressing Black Americans' votes? Why aren't Roy Blunt and Pat Toomey backing their constituents' most sacred right? They're not running for re-election — what have they got to lose? Why doesn't Lisa Murkowski show more courage? She's already got a Trump-endorsed primary challenger, so what is there to fear? Why doesn't anyone ask Susan Collins, who's not up for re-election in five-and-a-half years, if she's on the side of Joseph McCarthy or Margaret Chase Smith?

This drives us crazy.

It's all heightened by the excerpt The Washington Post ran today from the a book by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, about Trump World on Election Night. Even though you know the 2020 outcome, you still get the heebie-jeebies, reading it. The Trump war room set up on federal property — the White House and the Executive Office Building — because Benedict Donald refused to submit to DC coronavirus restrictions at his Pennsylvania Avenue hotel. Rudy Giuliani running around drunk and screaming, "Just say you won." General Mark Milley getting creepy phone calls at home: "Your loyalty is to the Constitution. You represent the stability of this republic." Karl Rove, tapped to talk Trump down. Trump's head exploding when FOX called Arizona for Biden. "I can't lose to this f---- guy!" Such class.

Which is why Biden's words today were so perfect: "In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You don’t call facts 'fake' and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy."

You know what's funny? Joe Biden doesn't really know what it's like to lose a general election. The only races he's lost were Presidential primaries. Is anybody on Team Trump smart enough to point that out? We doubt it. We cats PURR.

Torn About Trump

By Zamboni

So all these anti-choicers marched in Washington today and basically justified a speech by the highly morally compromised Donald Trump by citing his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to a stolen seat on the Supreme Court. "I give him credit for appointing a conservative justice," one marcher said.

But others in the crowd seemed a little uncomfortable. To them, Trump's speech was "an unfortunate distraction."

Gee, we cats wonder why. Could it be because Trump is the most-hated President in his first year ever? And that, thanks to him, the government is careening toward a shutdown? Or is it because he's the guy who apparently paid off a porn star to keep quiet about a sexual relationship that started when his third wife was nursing his latest son? Hm. Maybe it was just because he didn't know the difference between "torn" and "born." Inquiring minds want to know.

In the meantime, goodness gracious — could the pro-life crowd have fallen any farther? At any time in the last 40+ years, did they picture themselves marching for babies and listening to a man whose mistresses have probably had multiple terminated pregnancies (even if he didn't pay for them, since he's famous for being a scofflaw)? They must have been standing there wondering why they couldn't just have had that nice Nazi man from Indiana with the religious freedom law, and skipped the porn-star-screwing guy. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

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.

Red Wave

By Zamboni

So let's get one thing straight: In Canada, red versus blue is reversed. The color of the Liberal Party is red, and the Conservative Party is blue. So when you see a lot of red on tonight's election map, it's a good thing.

And since the media and the punditocracy have now called a Liberal government — minority or majority — the most exciting comment we cats have seen on the CBC blog is this: "Netanyahu will be truly sorry to see Stephen Harper go."

This makes us cats very happy. Not just because Benjamin Netanyahu is (next to Vladimir Putin) the world's biggest pain in the ass, but because Netanyahu, like Harper, is one of those disgusting politicians who is willing to take a page from the Lee Atwater Playbook and divide people in order to win.

From everything we've seen, with the exception of Quebec (and it's always "with the exception of Quebec"), Canadians have rejected the anti-Muslim crap that Harperman dished out in the final weeks of the campaign to drive haters to the polls. Which means that Justin Trudeau will be moving back into 24 Sussex Drive — the home that he knew as a child and which happens to be the Prime Minister's official residence in Ottawa. Amazing, isn't it? We cats are thrilled, and we PURR.

Polls Are Almost Open! (Um, In Canada)

By Sniffles

Hello, America! Did you know that there's an election in Canada tomorrow? Of course you didn't. It never fails to amaze us cats how blind the US media are when it comes to anything that happens above the 49th parallel. (Except maybe for hockey, and possibly not even then.)

Anyway, you can count on two things about Monday's vote: Despite consistent polls showing a Liberal Party lead, prognosticators are saying that, basically, anything can happen. Oh, and Justin Trudeau will be seen somewhere with a baby.

We're not really surprised by the latter, since Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a doting if late-in-life father, and clearly passed an appreciation for small humans to his sons.

But what did puzzle us was the punditocracy's insistence that there could still be a "Conservative surprise," despite the fact that the Liberals have led in 17 consecutive polls, nearly all outside the margin of error. What was it, we wondered, about the ever-unappealing Stephen Harper that made observers refuse to count him out?

And then we realized that the answer is: the niqab. Never underestimate the power of teabaggy hate — personified by Harper's scaremongering about veiled Muslim women taking the oath of Canadian citizenship — to drive white, male, immature, Rob Ford types to the polls. (We cats realize that Ford metaphor is probably way too redundant.)

In polite terms, this phenomenon is known as "shy Tories." Originating with David Cameron's unexpected win in the UK this spring, the concept refers to voters who are too embarrassed to self-identify as Conservatives to pollsters. However, once in the voting booth, they succumb to Tory tactics and indulge their inner xenophobes.

We cats sincerely hope that all the strategic voting sites, the early-voting ballot shortages, and the continued popularity of "Harperman" all spell doom for the worst Prime Minister that Canada has ever had. We'll have to wait to see what happens, but that would make us PURR.

Divided, Not United?

By Baxter

We cats have been screaming so long about how Stephen Harper and his "Progressive Conservatives" are the Canadian version of George W. Bush/Dick Cheney/Karl Rove/Ari Fleischer that we're sure you faithful readers are tired of it. But the Tories keep proving our point!

Not only is Harper singling out niqab-wearing immigrant women as a yooooooooge issue in this month's federal election — now he's oh-so-conveniently revoked the citizenship of a Jordanian who was long ago hauled off to the hoosegow for a 2006 terrorist plot.

That is, Harper has taken away the guy's Canadian half, because Hoosegow Harry held dual citizenship — as so many immigrants in Canada do. This has all happened thanks to a repulsive new law known as C-24, which targets dual citizens who do nasty things, and which the Tory government conveniently pushed through (and exercised) in this highly charged political year.

Gosh! Raising the specter of terrorism to win an election? Who would do that?!?

Thankfully, the media and Harper's electoral opponents have cried foul on all this. Dual-citizenship holders say they feel like second-class Canadians. Pundits point out that citizenship is a right, not a privilege. And the most memorable sound bite so far is Justin Trudeau's. The Supreme Court may decide if the Charter of Rights and Freedoms cancels out any divisive law that Stephen Harper wants to exploit for his political gain.

But will Canadians let him? We cats have bad memories of Americans succumbing to fearmongering like this. We hope that they'll see through Harper's attempts to divide and conquer, and toss him and the Tories out on their butts in two weeks. That would make us PURR.

Peace, Not Apartheid

By Zamboni

So now that we cats are up in Canada, having endured no hassles crossing into the country yesterday, we're wondering what kind of reception the latest Republican idea is getting in the halls of 24 Sussex Drive.

Specifically, that idea would be from the cross-eyed college dropout from Wisconsin, GOP candidate for President, who thinks we should have a 5.525-mile wall on the US-Canadian border. "That's a legitimate issue for us to look at," said Scott Walker, asked about it today on Meet the Press.

We cats have been convinced for years that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has Karl Rove, et. al. on direct-dial. So we're wondering if anyone in the Canadian press will ask him what he thinks of his friends in the Republican Party now. We cats HISS.

Harper's Not Doing What?

By Baxter

We cats are in Canada for a short spell, and since the country is deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs, it's an interesting time to be here. Is there anything else happening in the True North besides hockey? Well, there's balancing the federal budget. Oh, and a harassment case against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (Nope, not Dudley Do-Right.)

But we cats think the only item on the Canadian agenda right now should be climate change, and nothing but climate change. Because we recently came across some pretty alarming news about what global warming will mean for this country if it isn't stopped in its tracks, like, yesterday: No glaciers, no permafrost, no polar bears, no maple syrup, no cranberries... shall we go on?

We cats don't understand why Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn't in Washington every single month, getting into the faces of the Congressional Republicans who are standing in the way of US action on climate change. Because if something isn't done, come the turn of the next century there won't be any ice for the NHL to play on.

But — oh! We forgot. Harper is the Canadian equivalent of a Republican himself. We still think he has a hotline to Karl Rove — which makes us want to dump our dirty litter boxes over his head. And HISS.

"Nutty You Who" Joins The Clown Car

By Miss Kubelik

We cats are wondering if all those right-right-right-right wingers in Israel are feeling had right now. They hauled ass to the polls on Tuesday — alarmed that Arab Israelis were "voting in droves," and excited by racist panderer Benjamin Nutty You Who's vow that there would be no two-state solution while he was Prime Minister.

Now, after voting their hearts out for Likud, they've basically been told: Oops, never mind.

We're still searching from some reaction from the ultra-ultra-ultra side of Israeli politics. But for the rest of us in the meantime — pop quiz!

Did Prime Minister Benjamin Nutty You Who walk back his "no two-state-solution" campaign pledge because:

A. John Kerry read him the riot act?
B. The US said it would stop backing Israel in the UN Security Council?
C. He's a liar and a phony?
D. All of the above?

Yes! The answer is "D," of course. And we might even want to add a fourth option: Benjamin Nutty You Who is, at heart, a Republican who tries to rewrite history. Because right now, he's denying he ever flip-flopped on the Palestinian state in the first place.

Remind you of anybody? We're hearing Boehner, McConnell and all the passengers of the 2016 clown car, insisting there's no GOP war on women. Or that Republicans don't hate gays. Or that they're not racists, even while they're trying to deny people of color their voting rights. That the economy is doing better because of them. That Obamacare is a disaster even though it's not.

Welcome to the clown car, Benjamin Nutty You Who! You fit right in. We cats HISS.

False Witness

By Sniffles

While we're all waiting for election returns from Israel, let's return to the very strange subject of Missouri auditor Thomas Schweich's alleged suicide.

We say "alleged" because this whole story seems mighty fishy. You don't shoot yourself because some Republican lamebrain is going around saying you're an M.O.T. (Well, maybe in Missouri you do. We cats don't exactly have a favorable impression of the Show Me State these days.)

So we're thinking, maybe somebody offed him. Who knows? Let's find a prominent Republican to pin it on, a la Vince Foster.

In the meantime, though, we cats are most offended by the eulogy former GOP Senator John Danforth delivered at Schweich's funeral. First, because it was Danforth who gave it. He may be spending his post-Senate time in the Episcopal pulpit, but to us he will forever remain the jackass who helped saddle the nation with Clarence Thomas.

But what's bugging us most is the way Danforth spoke of "politics...gone so hideously wrong." It's that old false equivalency again — when the Schweich thing was a Republican whisper campaign going on in Republican circles about an expected Republican candidate. Amazing! As if today's politics of personal destruction weren't dreamed up in the first place by former RNC chair Lee Atwater (who is now, by the way, burning in hell because God punished him with a brain tumor).

"If this is what politics has become," Danforth whined, "what decent person would want to get into it?" This makes us ill. Danforth should call up Rancid Pieface, and Karl Rove, and Rush Limbaugh, and Ken Mehlman, and Cliven Bundy, and Steve Scalise, and Donald Trump, and Brian Fischer, and all the other right-wing, so-called Christian evangelical nutcases, and ask them that question. We cats HISS.

As Aaron Schock Would Say, "Haters Gotta Hate"

By Sniffles

As the world now knows, former RNC chair and Republican campaign mastermind Ken Mehlman is gay.

That would be the same Ken Mehlman who helped craft the successful anti-gay fear-mongering Presidential campaign of 2004, for which he has now apologized.

We cats have never been impressed with Mehlman's attempts to wipe his very dirty slate clean, and we're even less impressed with Republicans who try to hold Mehlman up as proof that the party has evolved from its well-established, platform-embedded homophobia.

But just when you think that the GOP's whitewash is going to be successful, something like Alabama happens. The state's in an uproar, thanks to "Mr. Ten Commandments" and his anti-gay-marriage defiance of Alabama's US District Court (not to mention SCOTUS) — and now, itty-bitty US Senator Jeff Sessions is weighing in. And as you'd expect, not on the side of equality.

"While a number of courts have held the way [the] Alabama court has," tiny little Jeff Sessions said, "others have not, and to me this line of cases…represents an activist judiciary." (Oh, that term "activist." Right wingers trot it out whenever a court does something they don't like.)

So our questions are these: When he was RNC campaign pooh-bah-in-chief, did Ken Mehlman ever bundle contributions for Mr. Sessions? Did he ever contribute money himself to Mr. Sessions? Did he ever meet with Mr. Sessions or with his political team when the GOP's gay-bashing amendment was on the Alabama ballot? In short, what does Ken "Mr. Republican" Mehlman have to say about all this?

The handful of Republicans who have flip-flopped on marriage equality — like Mehlman, Rob Portman and Susan Collins — and who are being used by current RNC chair Rancid Pieface and other GOP political hacks to show that Republicans don't hate, need to be asked to comment on Jeff Sessions and every one of the party's George Wallace wannabes. Until they are, we cats HISS.

Jerk!

By Zamboni

Okay, we cats realize we can't write every post about "Transvaginal Bob" McDonnell, as tempting as that might be. So let's take a moment to consider "Jeb!" Bush.

Little Jebbie Fatface (our real nickname for him is unprintable here) has been resigning from boards like crazy lately, trying to make himself look "moderate" enough for general election voters in 2016. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that Jeb! must first try to appeal to the right-wing, whacko, crazy-eyed jackasses who vote in Republican primaries. And those voters are having no truck with him.

One big reason is Terri Schiavo — or, as they call her, Terri Schindler-Schiavo. (Or just Terri Schindler. Wipe Michael Schiavo out of the record books if you can, folks.)

See, while the rest of America (the normal part) thinks that the Republicans' and George and Jeb! Bush's behavior in the Schiavo drama 10 years ago was repellent — a sizable contingent of the GOP's teabag wing thinks so, too: for the opposite reason. In their view, the Bushes let Terri Schiavo die!!

Want proof? Here are just a few choice comments from our favorite wingnut friends over at Free Republic:

"If Jeb Bush gets the GOP nomination for president in 2016, I will probably write in Terri Schindler in November."

"Jeb (Killer) Bush actually had state troopers on the way to rescue her and turned them back for some perverse reason...I heard the air hissing out of the Republicans’ balloon upon the killing of Terri Schiavo. Terri is when the Republicans doomed themselves."

"I'm sorry, but I take character into account when I vote for a candidate, and Jeb Bush is wanting in this department."

"Jeb Bush could have saved her. He didn’t. Instead, he pretended to stall until it was too late."

So excuse us, Pundit World — but with these nutbags running the base of the Republican Party, Jeb! Bush is going to get the 2016 nomination exactly... how? We cats wonder. And of course we PURR.

Voter Suppression, Canadian Style

By Zamboni

We cats have frequently averred that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has, for years, taken multiple pages from the Karl Rove book of Screw Your Enemies. In fact, we've always suspected that Harper has a direct-dial line from his offices on Parliament Hill to Rove, to the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, and to all the repulsive reprobates of the Cheney-Bush Administration.

But now we know he does. What more proof do you need than the "Citizen Voting Act" — which would force Canadians living overseas to vote absentee solely in the riding (district) they last lived in, no matter how long ago that was, and which requires new levels of ID to "prove who they are, where they live"?

Gee, sound familiar? From allowing his fellow countrymen living abroad to simply prove that they are Canadian, Harper and his Tories have decided to put them through hoops that only an American of color, intending to vote for Barack Obama, would have to jump through.

This is a Tory attack on Canadians on active military duty. And on career diplomats and Canadians in the foreign service. And on those who choose to work for an NGO like the Red Cross. In fact, it's an affront to uber-patriot Don Cherry, who like all right wingers champions the Canadian armed forces every chance he gets.

Will Mulcair and Trudeau call Harper on this? That would make us PURR. In the meantime, Canadian Conservative (and American conservative) attacks on voting rights continue to be attacks on the essence of democracy. Which make us HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: Republican Lawlessness

By Baxter

We cats were traveling yesterday and only caught the last few minutes of President Obama's address on immigration. But it wasn't long after that that we switched off the cable news talking heads in disgust.

We were already fed up that they offered no recap — why inform when you can go straight to arguing? But when MSNBC brought on a little twerp from the RNC who started his comments with "I'm not a constitutional lawyer" (when the entire Republican argument is based on constitutionality)... well, let's just say we hacked up the world's biggest hairball.

But back to that GOP talking point. We wondered: If what Obama is doing is illegal and lawless, then wasn't it unconstitutional when:

• Nixon bombed Laos?
• Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras?
• Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby outed CIA agent Valerie Plame?
• The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived invaded Iraq, killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, all on a credit card, and all for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist?

We're not equating last night's executive orders with those horrendous Republican acts. We're just saying that as always, the hypocritical GOP is silent on such crimes, but invents others for Presidents they don't like. And to make matters worse, the media give them a pass. All of which makes us HISS.

Disenfranchisement By Robocall

By Sniffles

We cats love any opportunity to use the word "hoosegow," and the Conservative Party up in Canada has just given us another chance. Today a little Tory creep named Michael Sona learned that he'll be hauled off to the you-know-what: He was sentenced to nine months in jail and additional 12 months' probation for election fraud.

Yep, fraud. We cats don't know what else to call it when you robocall Liberal Party voters in the 2011 federal election with false alarms that their polling places had changed. It's perverting the election process and a subversion of citizens' most cherished right. Sona actually deserves the maximum — five years — but we'll take what he got, thank you.

Funny how this sort of thing always seems to happen on the conservative side of the spectrum. As we know, here in the land of E Pluribus Unum voter suppression is a cause celebre of the Republican Party, and robocalling is just one weapon in their arsenal. Proof: A flunky for former GOP Governor Robert Ehrlich's campaign was convicted in 2011 for precisely the same thing (except those robocalls were aimed at predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Maryland's Baltimore and Prince George's counties).

What a coincidence! That direct line between Stephen Harper and Karl Rove was busy, yes? But messing with the vote makes us sick. So we cats hack up a hairball and dump our dirty litter boxes over Michael Sona's head. Enjoy the hoosegow, Mikey!

(IMAGE: What a lovely couple!)

UPDATE: Is it just us, or is Michael Sona a dead ringer for Adam Lanza?

Lest We Furr-get: Chinless Ducks His Resume

By Miss Kubelik

We cats promised we'd opine some more on the political ramifications of the Supreme Court's "inactivism" (sorry, Ted Cruz) on marriage equality. Here's today's installment.

Last night, Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) debated Chinless Ed Gillespie, the Republican who is going to lose to him on November 4. And since the Old Dominion was one of the five states immediately affected by the Supremes' non-decision on marriage-ban smiting, debate moderator Chuck Todd responsibly asked about it.

Chinless tried to waffle his way through — saying on the one hand that he disagreed with marriage equality but that, on the other hand, it was now the law in Virginia and that, yes, as chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2004, he'd "stood for the RNC platform" against gay rights. But, oh! As a businessperson, he's never discriminated against light-in-loafer folks. Honest!

Todd didn't follow up on that, but he should have pressed Chinless on stuff beyond "the RNC platform." Because 10 years ago exactly, the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived and his minions — like Chinless and the then-closeted Ken Mehlman — were busily turning out right-wing and evangelical voters in a Presidential campaign based on hate.

We cats have long memories even if journalists don't. Meanwhile, congratulations to Mark Warner for hitting Chinless on this. As for Chinless himself, anybody who uses the term "sexual preference" is not qualified for anything, let alone the US Senate. We cats PURR and HISS at the same time.

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.

Lest We Furr-get: Grooming

By Sniffles

We cats have decided that it's official: The Republican Powers That Be have hereby given up on Chris Christie 2016.

Why else would we be seeing stories in, for example, The New York Times about Jeb! as the "intellectual" Bush (as if there were such a thing), searching... searching... searching.... and never coming up with a non-conservative thought his entire sorry life?

We cats say, ridiculous. Let us all remember that Jeb! belongs to a party for which his and his brother's outrageous interference in one family's personal medical decisions was still not enough for the GOP's extreme teabaggy base — who thought that Jebbie should have sent the FDLE into Terri Schiavo's hospice with guns blazing, to spirit her away to a paradise in which all vegetative patients are kept in a state of blissful, well, vegetativeness.

But Pundit World has forgotten all that. We cats are only too happy to remind them that the teabags and the Freepers and the right-wing crazy people have — um — not.

What this current Jeb! puffery reminds us of most is the pre-2000 media groundwork that Karl Rove pulled off for The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived — positioning him as the "compassionate conservative" who could "unite" everybody after all that alleged Clinton Fatigue. Remember that?

No, of course Pundit World doesn't remember that. It was 16 years ago — Chris Cillizza was in high school! But we cats, who know a thing or two about grooming, remember it well.

The Jeb! fluffing is the latest proof that the Republican Party — which gleefully claims that the Democrats boast nobody besides Hillary — has a mighty, mighty thin bench. Christie is fat and tainted, Jeb! is to laugh, and everybody else is either a whackjob or a buffoon. Welcome to the world, GOP! We cats PURR.