Canadians Had Better Watch What They Sing

By Miss Kubelik

This amusing anti-Stephen Harper protest song was written and performed this summer by an Environment Canada scientist who sings in his spare time. And it's gotten him suspended from his job.

Seems like "Harperman's" Tory government believes that Tony Turner's performance has now compromised his "ability to impartially study migratory birds" (what?!).

And so, like the post-9/11 doomsday warning to Americans from Ari Fleischer, it appears that Canadians had better watch out, too. Funny how Stephen Harper keeps reminding us of the Bushies (and every other right-wing Republican he worships). We cats HISS.

(P.S.: "Who puts the 'rogue' in 'prorogue'"? Love it! We wish we'd written these lyrics. They make us PURR.)

EXCITING UPDATE: Canadians are invited to defy the Tory clampdown and join in a cross-country sing-along of "Harperman" on Thursday, September 17! Visit Turner's website for more information!

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.

Earl Grey, Hot

 We cats can't wait to get to Canada tomorrow — because the True North is embroiled in a federal election just now. We expect to see a lot of TV ads for Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May. Plus tons of posters for Parliamentary candidates across Montreal. Fun!

What we didn't expect was a cat running for Prime Minister, on the incredibly worthy platform of updating Canada's animal cruelty laws.

Now, we are torn: Will Earl Grey of the Tuxedo Party irrevocably split the anti-Harper vote and send the Tories back to power? Or will he only tip the results in Halifax, Nova Scotia, his home riding? We promise and investigation and a full report. Until then, we cats PURR.

These Are The Only Folks With The Right To Say "Get Out Of My Country"

One consolation: This clip will become part of countless Democratic campaign ads in the months to come.

Gone God

By Baxter

We cats have only one reaction to the news that a portrait of Jesus Christ was finally removed from a public school in Kansas: Thank God.

Yep, J.C. is pretty hunky (and mighty Caucasian) in this famous piece of kitsch. And we invite devout Christians across America to hang it in their trailers homes. But it has no place in a public institution.

"We have the right to keep our picture up," one of the local yokels said. No, Mr. Yokel, you don't. We cats PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Dread Of Donald (And Jivin' For Joe?) Edition

By Sniffles

Oh, darn, we thought maybe we were past the problems of the stock market now. Because two political news stories have caught our attention.

The rash of Republican state parties — including Virginia's — that don't want to let any candidates on the ballot unless they pledge to support the eventual nominee reminds us that when we talk about today's GOP, we are not discussing reasonable people. After all, these are the folks whose rules in 2012 made it impossible for anyone to compete in the Old Dominion's primary except Willard Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

So while we're no fans of Donald Trump (although we are fans of the tight knots he's tying the Republicans into), this latest move to limit the primary ballot to those who pledge fealty is unsavory. After all, this is the party that's been hell-bound on rolling back early voting and on passing numerous laws to make voting more difficult for people they don't like. So this latest anti-Trump move is the latest example of the anti-democratic mud pit in which today's GOP has chosen to wallow. Incredible.

Meanwhile, on our side of the aisle, the Joe Biden 2016 speculation continues. This analysis of eight reasons a run might be a bad idea was particularly interesting to us. Here are a few thoughts:

Number 3, the "gaffes," doesn't really impress us. Knowing the Vice President as we do, we cats have long thought that his reputation for verbal goofs is more media-manufactured than actual. He says what's in his heart. If we were advising him for 2016, we'd tell him to collect a bunch of the more harmless blurts and run them proactively as a funny commercial. People are interested in anti-Establishment politicians, and Biden's resume is as Establishment as they come. Gaffes help de-Establish him.

Number 4, getting humiliated, is huge. We could be wrong, but we don't think he wants to end his political career as a three-time loser. Just sayin'.

Otherwise, the other six are pretty much right on the money. And we'd add two. First: If Biden can't beat Hillary, will he want to spend the next 10 years raising money to retire his inevitable campaign debt? Second: Joe Biden's best, most passionate, most articulate and most available campaign surrogate died earlier this year. Who can replace the number of voter touches Beau Biden could have made on the trail? On that note, we cats continue to send our sympathies, and we PURR.

In Case You Missed It

Here is President Carter's entire press conference from Thursday, August 20, 2015. If you have ever been worried about a medical diagnosis, please watch this. You will feel better. We cats, who have nine lives, PURR.

It's Easy Being Mean

By Miss Kubelik

The rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party and the havoc he's wreaked have been mostly fun to watch. But it's also been disturbing. Trump appeals to people's base, uneducated instincts, and sadly, there are a lot of haters in the world. But at the same time, we were hoping Americans won't vote for a Republican next year for that very reason: Surely most of our fellow citizens are decent folks who are turned off by all the nastiness and the venom.

And then we saw Rafael Cruz, Jr. and the Fat Tub from New Jersey slamming Jimmy Carter — even after Carter's graceful announcement of his cancer diagnosis. Politically, it seemed ridiculous. Nobody under 35 today was alive when Carter was President, so they have no memory of what the two clowns are talking about. (And we'd like to see Cruz and the Tub craft a Middle East peace agreement that's lasted for decades. Try that, suckers.)

Voters aren't going to like that kind of vitriol, are they? Going after a now-universally-revered 90-year-old with melanoma? But Jimmy can handle it; we're not worried about him. What does concern us is all this "anchor-baby" hate, and the unfathomable discussion of ending birthright citizenship. We can't believe the 2016 clown car has gotten that far over the right-wing cliff, and that they're pulling Rancid Pieface and the rest of the hapless RNC with them.

Here's some food for thought: The humans who claim to be our owners — for nobody really owns a cat — are an American family founded by two Scottish immigrants who lived in the United States for years without becoming citizens. (They eventually moved to Canada.) If birthright citizenship is revoked the way Republicans want, the immigrants' two sons — members of the Greatest Generation who were born in the US and served in World War II and Korea — would have to leave. Including all of their descendants. After all, Donald Trump believes in "keeping families together," doesn't he?

There are millions of Americans with histories like this. So let's start that conversation. Do Trump and the GOP, screaming about ending birthright citizenship, want to deport the children of all immigrants, even white Northern Europeans? Somehow, we doubt that they do. They save their hate for people of color, and we cats HISS.

(IMAGE: Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Take a lesson, GOP.)

Couples

By Zamboni

So today we have two couples in the news, and their situations could not be more different. See if you can guess which two couples we're talking about.

One couple has been married for 69 years, has worked tirelessly for decades to eradicate horrible diseases that afflict the world's poorest people, and are joined at the hip by endless devotion. This morning, one half of the couple announced a cancer diagnosis by saying, "I was surprisingly at ease — much more so than my wife was."

The other couple was recently convicted of greedily accepting gifts from a slimy businessman, were sentenced to prison, and have been throwing whiny tantrums ever since. Yesterday, one half of the couple told a federal court that she shouldn't be hauled off to the hoosegow even if her husband is. (And it's increasingly looking like he will be.)

Both couples are supposed to be Christians. Which one do you think actually is? And which one do you think is happier, even with melanoma and radiation and all that other awful stuff hanging over their heads? We cats know, and we PURR.

Taylorism, Meet Bezosism

By Baxter

We cats were captivated by the New York Times take-down of Amazon this past weekend. Mostly because, like billions of other people in the world, we have ordered stuff from them — but also because we: 1) have an inherent interest in quality workplaces, and 2) continue to wonder what effect Jeff Bezos's ownership will have on the shadow-of-its-former-self Washington Post.

We can't answer the second question, except to say that the Post continues to fall short of our expectations (and yes, we are longtime subscribers to the print edition, so shut up, Martin Baron).

The first question, however, leaves us a little unsettled. We are not sure how contemporary American workplaces are providing employees with meaningful career opportunities if they are increasingly unable to unionize, and if their performances are being constantly monitored in real time by data and metrics — "a phase in which technology mediates our experience of the physical world," as New York magazine aptly put it.

This is disturbing. Why? Because back around the turn of the 20th century, Frederick Taylor introduced a scientific concept of management by instituting systems in which productivity would be taken out of the hands of the workers and put under the control of the bosses. It was the first time that measurable results were used to gauge worker performance. The problem was that it effectively disarmed the employees whose productivity was being measured.

So we cats are sorry to say that we see no difference between the present-day Amazon of Jeff Bezos and the early-20th-century Taylorist factory floor managers — who monitored assembly line workers for how many widgets they screwed into place per hour, and how many minutes they took for a bathroom break. The methods of measurement are different, that's all. The pressure to perform — without the ability to control one's environment — are, sadly, all too similar.

We would be pleased to have "Amazonians" (a term we have to say we frankly despise) dispute our impressions of their workplace. But until we do, we cats will have reservations about patronizing Amazon — and you can be sure that we'll be keeping an extra eye on The Washington Post. Not that it could get much worse — but if the Jeff Bezos who was portrayed in The New York Times is at all accurate, we cats believe it could. So we HISS.