Obama Channels Spencer Tracy

"There will be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled... [but] the only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other."

Just replace Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton with two gay people, and you get the idea.

Dick Lugar Rails Against the Right

By Baxter

We cats almost weren't going to link to defeated Republican Senator Richard Lugar's primal scream against the state of his political party, because in it, he uses the noun "Democrat" as an adjective. But having pointed that out, we'll continue.

Lugar correctly noted in his concession speech that his party has gone off a cliff with what he terms "an unrelenting partisan mindset," held captive by those "whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it."

He reaffirms his personal identity as a Republican, and defines what he thinks a Republican is. The problem is, his description — "small government, low taxes, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and trade expansion" — bears almost no resemblance to his party's priorities today. Nowhere in his list do the current GOP obsessions against abortion, contraception, women's healthcare, immigration, gay rights, Medicare, science, climate change, taxing the rich, et cetera, appear.

We cats want to know: What took you so long, Dick?

The Republican Party's descent into inflexibility and intolerance did not happen overnight. Lugar could have delivered last night's speech back in 2010 or even in 2008. Why did he wait until he lost to take a stand?

Perhaps one of the problems Lugar (and virtually every other so-called moderate-conservative Republican) has is that they're too full of themselves to have recognized exactly how, to what extent, and how precipitously the political landscape has changed.

Yep, Lugar endorsed his teabagger opponent, but he did it with little enthusiasm and for no positive, forward-looking reasoning — other than wanting Mitch McConnell to be Senate Majority Leader. That's the second tepid Republican endorsement this week (Rick Santorum's of Willard Mitt Romney being the first). That says something.

And where are all the alleged Republican "moderates" in the wake of Lugar's defeat? Where are John Danforth, Christine Todd Whitman, Chuck Hagel, Bill Cohen, Colin Powell, Joe Scarborough, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chafee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Castle, Olympia Snowe, Lamar Alexander, Chris Shays, Robert Bennett, John Warner, Alan Simpson and Warren Rudman?

You know where a lot of them are? Out of office. You'd think that getting booted by a bunch of extremists would embolden them to speak out: They should form a unified chorus against the Kochs, the Norquists and the other GOP hatemongers. But, no. No guts. No party.

We cats HISS.

Maybe They Should Change It to "Inner" Banks

By Miss Kubelik

We cats continue to be struck by the way the previous Administration was able to do stuff in the eyes of the press that the current Administration cannot.

Case in point: The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived disagreed with his Vice President — the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived (If Indeed He Were a Person) — on extending marriage to gay people. The former Vice President (sorry, we're not going to type our name for him again) has a lesbian daughter, and he's been pretty vocal and active about wanting that daughter to enjoy equal rights.

But apparently President Obama and Vice President Biden are not allowed to similarly disagree.

This is puzzling, particularly since although our President falls short of endorsing marriage equality, he isn't relying on a closeted, self-loathing homosexual to help him ride to re-election by demonizing gays.

Believe us, we cats would rather have a Cabinet publicly disagreeing on a domestic policy matter than to have a bunch of lamebrains staying silent while their bosses (and colleagues like this) beat the drums for a trumped-up war.

Meanwhile, North Carolina votes today. We agree with Governor Bev Perdue that a marriage equality ban would damage the state's reputation. We often wonder how employers in ass-backwards states like Kansas or Oklahoma, or in states that legislate hate, like Arizona, manage to recruit any up-and-coming young professionals to live and work there.

And now it looks like North Carolina, the site of our 2012 convention, is about to join their ranks. As they say in heavily Catholic Quebec, where marriage equality has been legal since 2005, tant pis.

"Morning In America": Not Just the GOP's Any More

We cats have very good ears. We can already hear the Republicans whining about Osama bin Laden's cameo in this ad.

Cat Fight! Romney vs. Paul

By Sniffles

We cats have been watching with fascination as the Ron Paul people continue to embarrass the Romney folks at delegate-selecting state party conventions.

Put a check mark next to Maine and Nevada, now. Paul trailed Romney by four points in the Pine Tree State's caucuses on February 11. But this weekend, the libertarian-in-everything-but-abortion whack job from Texas took 21 out of 24 of Maine's delegates to the Republican National Convention in August.

In Nevada, the Paul and Romney people fought tooth and nail yesterday, with two Willard supporters ending up booted from the RNC. Former Governor (!!) Bob List lost his committeeman seat to a Paul guy named James Smack, thus giving a whole new meaning to the term "smackdown."

So, when will the media at large wake up to this story? Don't be afraid guys — it isn't too arcane to explain to laypeople. (Of course, you'll have to put forth a little more effort than usual, but you can do that, right?)

Meanwhile, Ron Paul's steal-the-delegates game is even more proof that the Romneybots are under-organized, overladen with pricey consultants, and don't know what the hell they're doing. We cats PURR.

UPDATE: Aha, it looks like The New York Times has noticed.

"La Greve" Is Getting Grave

By Zamboni

Eh, bien — it's time for us cats to weigh in on the student uprisings in Quebec.

The unrest has been going on for three months now, but since our media believe that anything happening beyond American borders is beneath notice, you probably haven't heard about it.

The provincial government, which is in the hands of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), is imposing a tuition rate hike on what we would call state schools and community colleges here in the U.S. The increase is around $1,600, spread out over either five years (the original plan) or seven years (the government's most recent proposal). The students will have none of it. They've been on strike — refusing to attend class — for the last 12 weeks, and have spent a good deal of their time engaging in manifestations in downtown Montreal.

Some of those demonstrations have turned violent, and some have even been naked (sorry, you'll have to click on the link and see for yourself). So the PLQ moved its party meeting scheduled for this weekend from Montreal to Victoriaville, east of the city. To no avail — the students followed them there, and more trouble ensued.

The province is, to say the least, consumed by this continuing kerfuffle. Montrealers are tired of the disruptions to their daily lives (cars overturned, windows smashed, traffic snarled). After early returns that favored the Liberals on the matter, everybody now is taking a beating in the polls. And in an echo of the Elian Gonzalez controversy that rattled Miami 12 years ago, discussions are getting dicey at work. For example, the SAQ (where Quebecers buy their wine) has banned employees from wearing red squares, the symbol of the student strike, on the job.

We cats believe that neither the students nor Quebec have behaved very well, which at first made us smug that Canadians are apparently just as capable as screwing up governing as Americans are. On the other hand, with our personal memories of Chicago in 1968, we would simply caution Premier Jean Charest: Be careful of "delivering a campaign-style speech while battles rage outside."

(PHOTO: Jacques Boissinot, La Presse)

Woe Is Willard: Dissident Chinese Guy Edition

By Baxter

You know you're really running a bad campaign when you prove Bill Kristol right.

But Willard and the Romneybots couldn't help themselves, could they? They just had to jump in and pronounce the Administration's handling of the Chen Guangcheng situation a "day of shame." Goodness gracious.

Day of shame? We'll tell you what constitutes a day of shame. Abu Ghraib comes to mind. Never finding Saddam Hussein's WMD, too. In fact, let's go way back and cite Bush v. Gore. Gawd, what a day of shame that was.

Meanwhile, while the putative Republican nominee sputtered and fussed, the U.S. and China quietly forged a solution behind closed doors. Doors, we might add, that Willard Mitt Romney currently is not allowed to pass through.

Kristol termed Romney's rush to judgment "foolish." We agree. Willard, you're an idiot. Sit down and shut up.

Woe Is Willard (Resigned Gay Guy Edition)

By Zamboni

We cats love the way the Romneybots are furiously protesting that they thought the Richard Grenell flap had "blown over."

Actually, what's worse? The fact that they muzzled their gay national-security spokesperson on a conference call with the press — or that a campaign aide told Grenell he had to "lay" low for awhile? (It's "lie" low, of course.)

That particular grammatical error really grates on us cats. Other than that, we're highly amused by the rest of the story.

Willard loses all the way around here. We've checked the teabaggers over at Free Republic, and although they already hated Romney like poison, they hate him even worse for hiring an out-of-the-closet adviser in the first place. (Typical of the 467 comments posted there: "Tell me again GOP, how this guy is a winner? Fag-loving, Obamacare pioneer who supported fag marriage in mASSachusettes and is a member of something just above a religious cult?")

On the other side of the fence, the nation's brave little band of openly gay Republicans is crestfallen and, no doubt, feels like the second-class citizens the GOP thinks they are.

The rest of us just look at this debacle and see a weak phony lamebrain who can't stand up to the nut cases who call his party's tune. Blown over? Seriously? Why did Willard and his minions think that after their initial burst of protest, the homophobes and the Christian right would just go away? They would never have gone away, and they still won't — from now to November and probably beyond.

This latest misstep by Team Romney demonstrates a continuing, fundamental misunderstanding of their intractable base. It's another reason that Willard is not in control of his own nomination, and why we'd rather be us than him.

(PHOTO: Jae C. Hong, Associated Press)

UPDATE: We cats are reminded that had this silly controversy erupted around Bush-Cheney 2004, the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived — as well as the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived (If Indeed He Were a Person), who has a gay daughter — would have defended Grenell to the hilt. What an indictment of Willard and his hapless Romneybots.

Lest We Furr-get: Two Speeches, One A Year Later (and Another, Nine Years Ago)

"The American people rightly remember what we as a country accomplished in bringing to justice somebody who killed over 3,000 of our citizens."

—President Obama, May 1, 2012

"They fixed the speech, but not the sign."

—Donald Rumsfeld, on the "Mission Accomplished" speech, May 1, 2003

Willard: The (Non) Organization Man

By Sniffles

Obama-Biden 2012 recently opened a campaign office in Prince William County, Virginia. We cats were impressed. It was good to know that the re-elect effort was solidly up and running in our pretty-red county in our purple battleground state. And even better to know that as of mid-April, Obama already had 13 offices in the Old Dominion.

Romney-Whatever, meanwhile? Well, we can't find a list of Willard's offices in Virginia on his website. Just a page of empty platitudes and endorsements from Transvaginal Bob, Eric the Mean and other reprehensible folk.

We suspect that it's like this in other primary and caucus states. Willard beamed in, did some minor organizing, carpet-bombed his opponents with negative ads, and pulled out completely once the voting was over. Why else would the Obama campaign have been able to rent former Romney office space in Des Moines, Iowa?

But here's how else we know our suspicion is true: Last week, the Romney campaign was embarrassed in a Republican state convention. It happened in Alaska, a solidly Republican state whose post-caucus confab should have been a cakewalk for the March 6 winner. Instead, the meeting was taken over by supporters of third-place finisher Ron Paul.

Now, this is a bit of Inside Baseball, but think about this for a moment. Ron Paul lost Alaska in March, but his people upended the Anchorage GOP in April. This says to us that Willard did not win the caucuses at the grass-roots. He won superficially — by saturating the airwaves and then getting the heck out, leaving no presence behind. The Paul people, on the other hand, never stopped organizing.

Something similar happened when Massachusetts caucused this Saturday. Republicans in the very state Willard used to govern voted to send Ron Paul delegates to Tampa. Willard's own former lieutenant governor lost.

Do party rules require these Bay State delegates to vote for Romney in August? Yes. Will Romney win Alaska, and lose Massachusetts, in November? Sure. But it bodes ill.

Willard isn't in control of his own nomination, and his presence in the field is ephemeral. Meanwhile, Obama, cranked up and working, is opening office after office. Just another reason that, even with our fragile economy and in the wake of Citizens United, we cats are glad to be us and not them.

UPDATE: We cats have been reminded that the most recent Presidential nominees who were not in control of their own nominations were: George H.W. Bush in 1992 (because of Pat Buchanan), Jimmy Carter in 1980 (thanks to Ted Kennedy), Gerald R. Ford in 1976 (due to Ronald Reagan) and Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (because of everything). Hmmmm... What do all four of those nominees have in common?