Obama Bitch-Slaps House GOP

By Baxter

We cats were just wondering once again why we should care about football — seeing as how on Super Bowl Sunday we're supposed to watch anti-choice T.V. spots but not ads for gay dating services — when suddenly we were captivated by a much more compelling television event: President Obama's Q&A this afternoon with the House Republican caucus.

Honestly, we can't remember a more remarkable smackdown in our entire nine lives. Hard on the heels of scolding the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address, the President today took the House GOP to task for about an hour and a half — exposing their hypocrisies and pushing back on their lies — on live national TV, no less. We know he must have done a fabulous job, because now the Republicans are saying they regret letting the cameras in.

We happily envision about a half-dozen Democratic 2010 campaign ads with choice bits from today's event. Our only question at the moment: When is it the Senate Republicans' turn?

Just a Quickie Before the Speech

By Zamboni

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama will call for an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in his State of the Union address tonight. Gee — we cats wonder how many Republicans will yell at him this time?

UPDATE: Well, nobody heckled the President of the United States. Good. Maybe next time we can work on the whole sitting-on-their-butts-and-not-applauding-the-bank-tax thing.

UPDATE II: Goodness gracious. We cats didn't notice the Sammy Alito version of "you lie" on C-SPAN last night — but we never dreamed we'd encounter a member of the SCOTUS who could make Clarence Thomas seem like a grownup.

The disrespect shown to this President is unbelievable.

Paging George Santayana

By Sniffles

Republicans never learn, do they? Either that, or we cats are having a tremendous attack of deja vu, because we could have sworn we've seen screaming headlines about some pimply GOP activist trying to bug Mary Landrieu's phones.

(We cats have been buried in work these last couple of days, so we could be mistaken. But we don't think we are.)

Okay, so James O'Keefe — the pustule-ridden youth who's been charged in this crime — is only 25, so he wasn't born yet when Richard Nixon resigned. But, still. O'Keefe is the guy who orchestrated last year's conservative sting on ACORN, so one would assume he might be smarter than this. And Watergate was kind of a big deal. They even made an Oscar-winning movie about it.

Even worse, Senator Landrieu's office isn't in some hotel complex, vulnerable to capering Cubans in the middle of the night. It's in a federal building. Isn't that a little disrespectful? (Not that Republicans care — they seem to have scant regard for government. And the Oval Office was certainly bugged in Nixon's time.)

Well, we cats say, let's all throw the book at the acne-addled Mr. O'Keefe. And while he's in jail, he may want to read up on how those who can't remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Abuse of Power

By Baxter

Considering the mess that Congress currently is in, clear-thinking Americans might be forgiven if they feel a little jealous of Canadians, whose legislature is currently shut down.

But Canadians aren't happy at all. Yesterday, thousands of them turned out for rallies across the country to protest Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament until early March. Like the prorogation Harper requested (and was granted) to avoid a no-confidence vote in 2008, this current suspension of Parliament was accomplished with, shall we say, suspicious political motives.

Harper must have thought that since it was the dead of winter and Canada was gearing up for next month's Olympic games, no one would notice the prorogation or really care. He guessed wrong. When The Globe & Mail editorialized that "The Prime Minister is misusing the power to shut down Parliament, and in the process destabilizing Canada's democracy," it expressed the sentiments of many of yesterday's demonstrators.

But although Harper has precipitated a tug-of-war that will long fascinate constitutional scholars, we cats believe that most Canadians who hit the streets yesterday just want their government back at work because, well, stuff needs to get done.

To us here in the United States, this all feels pretty Bushian. We cats always assumed that the ever-unappealing Stephen Harper always had a direct phone line to Karl Rove in the White House. It appears now that Harper has not disconnected that line since last January but, rather, merely re-routed it to Texas. Which, on behalf of the Canadian troops who are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, makes us want to HISS.

(PHOTO: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen)

At Sarah's "Beck" and Call?

By Zamboni

Ooh, George Clooney is on! Yum, yum! We cats won't tear our fellow Democrats away from the Hope for Haiti telethon, except to expound a tiny bit more on our theory that Sarah Palin is none too happy about the naked guy winning in Massachusetts.

Why wouldn't the famous quitter from Alaska be afraid she's yesterday news? After all, the naked guy is so handsome! And he has a great-looking family, and a truck! And they're already talking about him for President or Vice President!

But it's not just all that. We cats are intrigued that Glenn Beck took it upon himself to gratuitously trash the naked guy just one day after the Bay State's special disaster — oops, we mean, election. Beck did this after his fawning interview with Palin last week, in which he read the following to her from his alleged journal: "She's one of the ony people that [sic] I can see that [sic] can possibly lead us out of where we are."

Yes, that "journal" nonsense was creepy, but it doesn't stop us cats from thinking that the famous quitter and the fat FOXter are in 2012 cahoots. We'll be looking for more clues in the weeks and months to come.

In the meantime — and on a more uplifting note — let's heed the calls of the talented people who are lending their time to tonight's telethon. Call 1-877-99-HAITI or visit www.hopeforhaitinow.org.

Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off!

By Sniffles

Holy smoke! We cats can't remember such a bad week for Democrats since we first started this blog. Thank God it's almost Friday, because:

Ted Kennedy's Senate seat went to a naked guy who will vote against everything Teddy ever stood for. (One bright spot: We think Sarah Palin is real unhappy to have such unexpected competition in the New GOP Star Department.)

Nancy Pelosi says the Senate version of the health care bill is unacceptable to the House. (Why are we Democrats always shooting ourselves in the paws?)

The Supreme Court made a totally boneheaded decision today. (Consolation: Our guy gets to appoint the next Justice, and we won't need 60 Senators to confirm.)

Air America is shutting down. (But on the other hand, Al Franken's in the Senate, and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are on MSNBC.)

All in all, though, the week's been pretty awful. At least we know things can only go up from here, right? State of the Union, anyone?

Train Wreck

By Baxter

Now that the unthinkable has happened and Massachusetts has filled Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with a naked guy who thinks a curling iron should be shoved up Martha Coakley's butt, we cats have a few things on our minds.

First, as the paw-pointing has begun (in fact, it began yesterday), we don't really care to add to it, because that's never productive. However, we'd be remiss if we didn't say to our fellow Democrats that when it comes to Massachusetts, everyone's at fault: the White House, the DNC, the DSCC, and Martha Coakley, who ran an inexcusably bad campaign.

(Oh, and let's not forget Organizing for America, the Obama campaign machine that, to our utter bafflement, folded into silence once the 2008 election was won. Last night we received the first proactive e-mail from OFA in a year: an invitation for a "conference call" to debrief on the Bay State disaster. Too late, guys. Way, way too late.)

But while we're on the subject, can anyone convince Howard Dean to come back and run the DNC? We miss him.

Okay, enough of the self-flagellation. We'd also not be doing our jobs if we didn't exhort Democrats to get over ourselves and resolve to take back this frickin' Kennedy seat in a couple of years. In the meantime, expect this naked guy, Brown, to end up with Marco Rubio on the Republicans' vice-presidential short list in 2012.

And a couple of other notes...

One: We feel sorry for Harry Reid. This is amazing, because Harry's never been our favorite person. But here he went through all this hard work to hammer out a health care bill, and now look.

Two: That homemade GOP rally sign that said "It OUR turn for a 'change'" was so depressing — not just because of yesterday's results but because it perfectly captured how polarized our country continues to be. We cats don't know how to fix that. We also don't know how to make people understand that the only reason the 60th Senate vote matters is because the Republicans have decided to march in mindless lockstep against the change that Americans voted for so decisively in 2008.

Three: In the end, though, we know we have a smart guy sitting in the Oval Office — a guy who may be going through a trial by fire like the one Bill Clinton found himself in back in 1994. The good news is that Clinton rebounded from that debacle when the Republicans overreached. The even better news is that unless we've completely misjudged Barack and Michelle, there is no Monica Lewinsky in Obama's future.

Finally, the President is also a guy who, one year ago today, said this:

"[I]n this winter of our hardship... With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said... that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter."

In short, Democrats, let's suck it up, and move forward.

"I See Lots of Elephants, Fighting With Each Other..."

By Zamboni

We cats refuse to predict the outcome of today's special election for Senate in Massachusetts. Not because we think Scott Brown will win (although it would be terrible if he did), but because there's no basis for predicting who's going to actually vote. The only thing we know right now is that turnout is high.

However, we have found one possible silver lining should the Republicans take the seat. Since the race has been rightly or wrongly (we suspect wrongly) cast as a referendum on President Obama's efforts to reform health care — and, indeed, on his entire first year in office — a loss for the Democrats tonight may embolden a whole slew of nutbags in the Republican Party to consider running for President in 2012. Nothing as stimulating as blood in the water!

Oh, just think of them all: Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mark Sanford (well, okay, not Sanford), John Thune, Jim DeMint, Bob McDonnell, Mitch Daniels, John McCain (no kidding), Rick Perry, Lindsay Graham, James Inhofe, Sam Brownback, George "Macaca" Allen, Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum, Meg Whitman if she wins the Governor's race in California... heck, even Michael Steele. (Why not? He certainly wouldn't be shy about throwing his name into the mix.)

Why is this good? Because it could mean that by the time Iowa and South Carolina roll around, what would have merely been a street brawl could turn into a Republican riot of epic proportions.

Naturally, we cats hope that Martha Coakley pulls it out in Massachusetts today. But if not, the thought of Republicans out-slugging one another to go farther and farther and farther to the right in 2012 kind of makes us PURR.

UPDATE: Senator Al Franken (D-MN) says that no matter what happens today, health care legislation will pass one way or the other. As he is a veteran of a crazy election campaign himself, we take the good Senator at his word.

UPDATE II: We forgot to add Mike Huckabee to the list of Republican nutbags. Sorry, Fat Mike!

Somehow, This Quote Seems Especially Apppropriate Today

“The slaves and the freedmen who rode an underground railroad, seeking the light of justice under the cover of night — they weathered a hard winter. The seamstress whose feet were tired, the pastor whose voice echoes through the ages — they weathered some hard winters. Yet, each season, the frost melts, the cold recedes, the sun reappears. So it was for earlier generations, and so it will be for us.”

—President Obama, in remarks at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, Sunday, January 17

Lack of Enthusiasm

By Sniffles

Was it just us, or did the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived seem particularly unmotivated in his White House appearance yesterday?

His weary delivery, his lackluster tone of voice, and his all-too-evident reading of a prepared statement made it nearly possible to see the invisible gun held to his head. We cats expected him at any moment to say that at least the Haiti earthquake has decreased the surplus population.

If there was another instance yesterday in which George W. Bush appeared interested and engaged, we cats missed it. In the meantime — and to paraphrase Dickens — we'd just caution Bush that in the sight of Heaven, he may be more worthless and less fit to live than millions like those poor suffering Haitians.