We Kid You Not

By Zamboni

This is not a sports blog, but since we cats are mighty unhappy with what's going on in Quebec politics these days, we figured we'd salute a Canadian feel-good story: nearly 100,000 fans turning out for exhibition baseball (and a salute to Gary Carter) in Montreal this weekend.

Gary, may he rest in peace, was probably a Republican. But when we cats were kittens, he gave us a lot of joy. (Let's go, Mets!) So let's remember Gary today — and hope for major league baseball in Montreal tomorrow. We cats PURR.

Tidbits and Cat Treats: Going Out Like 7 Million Lambs Edition

By Sniffles

Today is the last day to enroll in Obamacare. (Yes, we know there's an extension for folks who have started to enroll but who have encountered technical difficulties.) If you need health coverage, click here. If not, sit back, relax, and consider the news stories that are grabbing our attention this final day of March.

We cats have snarled an awful lot about the Obama Administration's failure to sell the Affordable Care Act after it passed. And we're not taking back a single word. So on this enrollment deadline day, we urge the White House to celebrate the numbers, promote the success stories, and generally Not Let Up. Because the Republicans surely won't.

Does anyone besides us think that Chris Christie's gaffe about the "occupied territories" is just more proof of his inability to think of others beside himself? A thoughtful politician would have considered the world view of his audience before he spoke. As we well know, Chris Christie is not thoughtful.

Finally, we cats have heard a lot of desperate Republican chatter about Jeb! in 2016. We say desperate because while the Establishment seems to kinda like him (accent on "kinda"), the base positively loathes him. But what strikes us most is Pundit World's assertion that a Jeb! nomination would take away the GOP's "Hillary Is Old Hat" argument.

Hm. Only men would say that. In fact, yes, they were all men. Because how could the first woman to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office be "old hat"? We cats give these boy pundits the Randy Mastro Sexism Award, and we HISS.

Let's Put On A Show!

By Baxter

Two elaborate spectacles are taking place in different worlds this week — sports and politics — but they're more alike than you might think.

Dan Snyder, the Washington football team owner who, as a minority himself, should know better, has launched a ridiculous "foundation" to support Native Americans so that he can weasel out of changing his club's ethnic slur of a name. Two problems: Not only does the "foundation" do nothing to correct the outrage of a moniker that many news organizations now refuse to use, but Snyder's managed to hire a crook to run it.

Meanwhile, up the road a piece in New Jersey, Chris Christie — desperate to reboot before he gets on a plane to go kiss Sheldon Adelson's ring — is touting an exculpatory "investigation" into the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge. Again, two problems: The "investigators" (i.e., Christie's legal team) didn't talk to any of the principal players in the scandal, and they succeeded in making Bridget Kelly, Bill Stepian and, we presume, David Wildstein very very mad.

Will either of these transparently self-serving campaigns work? Maybe with the folks who populate the insular realms that Snyder and Christie live in: the moneybags and minions, corporate sponsors, credulous reporters, Bill Kristol and FOX "News." But with everyone else? We don't think so. 

Nevertheless, the shows go on. Depending on whom they're amusing or enraging, we can debate whether they're comedy or drama. But each one, in its own way, is surely a farce.

Another Example of "Bad Foresight"

By Miss Kubelik

And now let us pause for a bit of political Inside Baseball: The Virginia Republican Party is nearly broke.

They have less than $70,000 in the bank, a former Governor brought up on 14 felony counts — so, no sugar daddy to help raise emergency funds — and a nominating convention to put on (and pay for) this summer. Hm. Sounds dire.

Now, we cats know that nobody but geeks and insiders care about stuff like this, right? But as long as the 2012 Republican nominee, Willard Mitt Romney, is in his blame-everybody-for-everything mode — and by implication, exonerating himself — let's lay this impoverished state GOP at his feet, shall we?

Because we can, you know. See, if the Romney goon squad hadn't helped shut Gingrich, Santorum, Huntsman and Perry out of the Virginia Presidential primary in 2012 — leaving only Willard and Ron Paul on the ballot — there would have been a real nominating race in the Old Dominion. Which would have meant real organizing, real party building, and real relationship building, in what everyone agrees is an important battleground state.

Instead, the Romney team greedily staged a faux two-person primary — which not only helped Willard lose Virginia in November, but also squandered a key opportunity to build a stronger state organization for the future.

Actions have consequences. For a short-term power grab, Willard helped cripple his party in the long run. We cats don't understand how Republicans, who are supposed to be so good at business, keep making this mistake over and over again. But it makes us PURR.

(IMAGE: Willard at work. He looks like a good businessman. But he just... isn't.)

Lest We Furr-get: Stopping The Clock

By Zamboni

Everyone in Pundit World is clucking over the latest extension for folks to finish enrolling in Obamacare. An extra two weeks! This is an outrage!

We cats say, big woo. We don't understand why the whole world seems to have adopted the Republican line of thinking: That it's a terrible, terrible thing to give people more time to get health coverage.

Wait — we do understand. It's because we Democrats are wusses. Why don't we ever push back on this stuff?

After all, Republicans are equally guilty of breaking the rules when it comes to healthcare. Remember Medicare Part D, when they left the vote open on the House floor for three hours so they could round up support they didn't have? One Republican — yes, Republican — called it "the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress."

So let's all just grab our fans and smelling salts — and remember that, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans will be able to live better lives. Which, according to the GOP's Hobbesian playbook, just can't be allowed. We cats HISS.

Bad Behavior

By Sniffles

We cats feel surrounded by buffoonish conduct lately. For example, is it just us, or is it really tacky to parachute off the World Trade Center? Why would anyone want to do that, after dozens of people fell or leaped to their deaths from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001?

But as usual, nobody can top the Republicans when it comes to being vile. Take Donald Rumsfeld, who on top of his myriad other offenses now has exposed himself as a clumsy racist by calling our first black President less capable than a — well, you know what he said.

We cats say: There are knowns and there are unknowns. The known known: Donald Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense in the postwar era. The unknown unknown: Since he already long ago disqualified himself from any serious foreign policy discussions by insisting there were WMDs in Iraq, why does anyone listen to him now? It's a mystery that only FOX "News" can answer.

Then there's Joni Ernst, a GOP lamebrain from Iowa — adored by the Koch brothers, by the way — who in a cringeworthy TV ad compares what she wants to do in Washington to what she used to do back on the farm. (Some unhappy pigs are involved. We cats are detecting a real Republican animal motif here.) And finally, let's not forget the Kochs themselves, who are busy trying to buy a county election in northern Wisconsin, so they can destroy its unspoiled beauty with a 22-mile-long iron-ore mine.

Yep. We can see how the Republicans have sensitized their message and behavior, and how the negative environment in Washington is all Obama's fault. Not. We cats HISS.

Willard, Projecting Again

By Baxter

So Willard Mitt Romney, in full hissy-fit mode, goes on the attack just as President Obama boards Air Force One for Europe to meet with our allies on nukes, Russia and the Ukraine.

These Republicans are hilarious. Can you imagine their reaction if they had the White House and Democrats violated the old "stop criticizing the President at the water's edge" rule? They'd go insane. (Of course, that rule would never apply to The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, since he and his Vice President couldn't cross the water's edge without being arrested for war crimes.)

But back to Willard. He's so upset, you see, because he thinks the President has been "naive" about Vlad Pootie and didn't have the "foresight" to know that Vlad would snatch Crimea.

How ironic! Willard is the same guy who was — shall we say? — "naive" enough to believe the Republican pollsters who said he was going to win. And who didn't have the — what's the word? — "foresight" to prepare a concession speech on Election Night. But we're supposed to listen to him on foreign policy?

We cats would HISS if we weren't laughing so hard.

Gardner The Great

By Miss Kubelik

Three cheers for Alfonso Gardner, the Paul Ryan constituent in Wisconsin who stood up at the failed 2012 VP nominee's recent town hall meeting and pushed back.

It takes a lot of guts to do what Gardner did: Confront a leading Republican on his party's incessant racial dog whistles — and do it calmly, thoughtfully and unswervingly. Ryan continued his charade of insisting that when he disparaged "inner-city" Americans for "not working" and "not even thinking about working," his statements had "nothing to do with race." To which Gardner replied, “If you didn’t mean this, you wouldn’t have said it, OK? People don’t say something that they don’t mean.”

The only regrettable thing was that Gardner wasn't given the chance to ask Ryan why he prefaced his "inner city" remarks by referencing a white supremacist named Charles Murray — who spends his career at the American Enterprise Institute arguing that science proves blacks and Hispanics genetically inferior.

Murray apparently is a role model for lots of Republicans — like that "Southern Avenger" guy Rand Paul was forced to fire, or Jason Richwine, who wrote the Heritage Foundation's laughable "immigration study." Birds of a feather and all that, you know?

We cats can't look inside Paul Ryan's heart and mind. So we can't say whether he's actually a racist. But he sure talks like one.

Voices Of Reason

By Zamboni

We cats know that The Washington Post is a sad shadow of its former self, but every now and then it makes us realize that anew by publishing a column that would never have made it past the paper's editors of old.

Latest example: Metro columnist Petula Dvorak, tsk-tsking over the Voice of Choice website, which has published a list of antiabortion bullies who target providers, patients and others in personal and potentially threatening ways. Voice of Choice uses the bullies list not to infringe on First Amendment rights, but to stage counter-protests and to stand up to zealots before things get out of control.

Yet Dvorak hand-wrings: Is this bullies list fair? Wouldn't it be better if anti-choicers focused their energies on lobbying lawmakers? Shouldn't they "just leave women, doctors, nurses and their families alone"?

Oh, yeah, that'll happen.

In the name of George Tiller, what rock have you been living under, Ms. Dvorak? We cats have rarely seen such a naive piece in a (formerly) great metropolitan newspaper. It is perfectly legitimate for Voice of Choice to shed light on harassers and to buy some space, and peace, for women who are attempting to control their reproductive destinies — as the Supreme Court said they have the right to do.

We cats are sick of the nutcases, the gun lovers, the religious whackjobs and the haters always getting to set the terms of the debate — and so we are thrilled when organizations like Voice of Choice push back. In fact, we might send Voice of Choice a few dollars today. If you do the same, you'll make us PURR.

(PHOTO: Dr. George Tiller's body is removed from his church, where he was murdered.)

We're Glad You're Dead, You Rascal, You

By Sniffles

A real jackass died today. We cats will not give him further publicity by mentioning his name, but Champagne bottles are surely being popped across America. There is not a wet eye in the house.

Of course, it always was ridiculous to say that God killed American soldiers because of you-know-what. American soldiers were killed because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Tenet and a bunch of other war criminals invaded a country that didn't attack us. Duh!

So, how to explain Mr. Jackass's unrelenting anger and hate? We think we spotted clue in an obit just now. "One of his grandsons was propositioned at Topeka’s Gage Park, which he called a gay cruising spot." Hm. And the grandson was in Gage Park why? We cats PURR.

P.S. While we're on the subject of hatemongering, we'd like to know how Mr. Jackass was any different from this loser. Our phones are open!