Newsweek Has an Original Idea For a Cover! (Or Not!)

(We kitties have loooong memories...)

Givin' em hell, Barry style

I had no particular desire to add my bit to the torrent of commentary on the State of the Union address, but I understand a certain over-coiffed Portuguese water dog thinks I'm not up to the blogging challenge, so here goes.
Obama's style of dishing out the hellfire is based on the Harvard-educated, I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you-jackasses model. This tends to infuriate the rubes, especially because it is basically true that O. is the smartest man in the room. Unfortunately, it is not such a great way to get the people on your side. Instead of playing stand-up comedian to Congress with that line about the bank bailouts having been like a root canal, Obama should have told the American people, "We had to save the banks so that we didn"t end up with half the country standing in bread lines. But tonight I ask Congress to make sure the greed-heads who nearly ruined our country never get to enjoy their ill-gotten gains, and are barred by law from ever restarting their games if three-card monte. Any member of Congress who attempts to block or water down these essential reforms can be assumed to be the bankers' hired gun."
And for a man who was supposedly elected for his soaring rhetoric, Obama seemed curiously unable or unwilling to articulate a vision of where this country should go. When he said he would not forget the uninsured, that was just the barest hint of what he could have said--that we will get America out of the awful mess that the untrammeled greed and heartlessness of the last thirty years have gotten us into, and we will build a more just society.
But I'm only dreaming... Over to you, pooch.

A Dispatch From The Supreme Court of the Near Future

Today in the Verizon® Supreme Court Building, the Coca-Cola® Justices filed in early for a hearing on the Nike® Death Penalty. The Frito-Lay's™ Chief  Justice, John Roberts, was first on the Sony® bench, where he winked and smirked at a pretty female reporter from the Rupert Murdoch New York Times®. Then he smoothed down his judicial robes from The Gap®, smoothed some Pantene Gel® into his silvery hair, making sure the TV cameras caught the logo on the container first, and declined on behalf of the Verizon® Court to hear the appeal of the defendant, Joey Jimson, a second-grader convicted of violating the Sam's Club Elementary School® rule against bringing in lunch boxes sold at Costco™.
"But Your Honor, what about justice?" pleaded Jenny Jermine, Jimson's defense attorney, who was representing him pro bono since the Verizon® Court's landmark ruling earlier this year that public defender programs violate the Home Depot® Constitution.
"Justice? Oh, the rights on that were sold last week to Google®" Roberts smirked. "Court adjourned. Wake up, Domino's® Scalia. Time to go get some Lunchables.™
(The foregoing is a complete transcript of a nightmare I had during my after-dinner nap last night. I knew there was something wrong with that catnip!)

Orange-striped dinosaurs?

I don't know about you, but I find this artist's depiction of orange-striped "sinosauropteryxes" doing what looks like the Funky Chicken immensely disturbing. Call me conservative, but I like my dinosaurs green, toothy and 65 million years extinct. On the other hand, we do have the Republican response to the State of the Union address coming up tonight...

The Political Education of Shimmie the Orange Kitty: Part 1

So I was lying around by the picture window catching some rays when somebody reached down from the perch and swatted me right on the nose. I opened one eye and looked around for the offender, and of course it was Shimmie, The White-Pawed Menace. I growled at him but he ignored me and said cheerfully, "Big brother, I need help understanding something."

"Oh yeah? I thought you already understood everything."

The sarcasm washed right over him. "I've been reading the paper and I just don't understand the administration's Middle East policy."

I sighed. "Why don't you ask something easier, like how come we're not allowed to eat chicken off the table but only from our food bowls?"

"Nah, I understand that. It's because the humans want to keep the tastier chicken for themselves. The poor things, they have so much aggravation in their lives, I say let 'em have their little pleasures. But Obama's Middle East policy, I just don't get. I thought Israel was America's friend and Iran was its enemy, but Obama acts like it's the other way around. Why is that?"

I yawned and stretched. "Okay, little brother. Here's what you're gonna do. Go over there to the TV cabinet, get the DVD marked 'Blazing Saddles' and pop it in the drive." You would not believe what we cats get up to while you humans are out scurrying around like particularly witless mice. But again, I digress.

So we watched Mel Brooks' masterpiece about a black guy played by Cleavon Little who is made sheriff of a 19th century Western town by a crooked state attorney general who hopes to scare off all the white townspeople so that the railroad can come in and knock down the town and he can get a cut. There's a scene in which the townspeople look like they're going to lynch Little, and the elderly white preacher stops them by holding up a Bible and hollering to the crowd, "Remember what this good book says!" And then adds, in an aside to Little, "Son, you're on your own."

"Okay," I yawned at that point. "You can stop the DVD now."

"But we haven't even got to the farting scene yet!"

"Yeah, I know that's your favorite. But I just made my point, okay? Only it's the white preacher who's Obama, not Cleavon Little."

Shimmie looked puzzled, so I left him to work it out for himself. But not before I said softly, "I may look like I'm going back to sleep. But remember, Shimmie. Big Brother is watching you."

Wow! The President Reads The Election Returns

It is a truism of American politics first stated by David Ross Locke, writing as Petroleum V. Nasby, that "the Supreme Court reads the election returns." Of course, sometimes the Court is a little slow on the uptake, which accounts for all that unpleasantness back in 1937 about FDR's "court-packing scheme." (My mother told me about that when she was suckling me in an alley. Hey, there's not a lot to do in the Robert F. Byrd National Monument, otherwise known as the State of West Virginia, okay?)

Still, the justices have the excuse of serving for life. How come an elected official doesn't get it until the good people of Massacusetts whack him over the head with a two-by-four? Oh, I see it now: AP reports the O-man has "offered help for people struggling to pay bills and care for their families, appealing to a middle-class he says has been 'under assault for a long time.'" (The poor ye shall always have with you, and since they don't have money they don't have free speech and probably aren't actually people, if I understand the Supremes' latest ruling correctly. But I digress.)

Kind of like how I had to meow, and meow again, and again, and again this morning until Baldy brought me my food. Let's hope, to mix a metaphor, that the voters don't need to take a dump outside the litter box for Obama to descend from Olympus and actually do something people can see and understand.

Changing Your Stripes

My friend Joey the Portuguese water dog's human wants to know what I think about the Senate race in Pennsylvania. (He is a Republican Portuguese water dog, breaking the Kennedy/Obama tradition). Well, what I think is that everyone hates Specter. Dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats like Martin's parents (who belong to my friend Avram the white kitty) can't stand him but have nowhere else to go. But Pennsylvania is quite a conservative state outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and Specter may well lose in November given the kind of anti-incumbent mood that's developing. You can't change your stripes twice--twice!--the way Specter has, and expect to retain loyal supporters.

But I told Joey that if I were a Republican like him, I wouldn't get too complacent. Opposing everything Obama does is not a policy, and they need one to win in November, even if it is a ripe piece of guff like Gingrich's "Contract With America."