Cheney Shoots Everybody in the Face

By Cole

Since he left Washington, former vice president Dick Cheney has been festering in one of his undisclosed locations, composing his memoir, In My Time, a vindictive payback to everybody he thinks has ever wronged him.

Today the book is #1 at Amazon.com (the reader reviews are worth a look). Cheney’s been making the talk show rounds, trying to whip wacko neocons into a reading frenzy so he can supplement his $132K a year from the government and $30 million retirement package from Halliburton with some juicy royalties. (Speculation was that his book advance was around $2 million.)

Cheney spares nobody. He trashes Condoleezza Rice by describing her as naïve and “tearful,” and declares that Colin Powell’s resignation was “for the best,” among other insults.

Powell responded on Face the Nation that Cheney stooped to a lot of “cheap shots,” and by boasting to NBC that “there are gonna be heads exploding all over Washington” over revelations in the book, Cheney “overshot the runway.”

Cheney even flat-out contradicts scenes from George Bush’s memoir. According to Cheney, before Bush was ever the “Decider” on important matters, he checked with Cheney first.

Obviously, Cheney relishes memories of himself as the puppet master.

What the book really reveals, in Cheney’s own words, is that he is a soulless, heartless (literally — he runs on batteries) being (to call him “human” is too kind), capable of unfathomable coldness and cruelty.

On talk shows, he invariably wears that infuriating crooked smirk while reiterating his love for waterboarding and other tortures, and his staunch belief that he was the only one who was ever right. Everybody else was a liar or an idiot. 

And now his pure evil has been forever enshrined in print. I only hope that once his hard-core nut base is exhausted, book sales plummet and Cheney slithers back into his black hole and stays there until his pump fails.

BONUS: An interesting recap of a series of Cheney interviews. Makes you wonder how the guy managed to produce 500+ pages.

We Survived Hurricane Irene

By Adele

Cole and Max thought Karen was a crazy when she packed Sam’s freezer with old vodka and soda bottles filled with water, started charging every little gadget that took a charge, and put fresh batteries in 2 radios and some flashlights.

Then she brought in an old kitty litter pail and ran a full tub. She said it was for “flushing the toilet.” Helpful Hint: Loosen the screw on the overflow thingy under the tub faucet and turn it upside down so the tub will hold a few more inches. It buys you extra flushes.

I’m the only cat here who remembers Hurricane Isabel in 2003, so I knew what Karen was up to. We lost electricity for 2 days, along with a freezer full of meat, and had to drink water with a dash of bleach in it for a week. This time, she wasn’t taking any chances.

Irene’s rain started Friday night, and the wind kicked in hard Saturday morning. For us kitties, it was biz as usual. Max acted like he’s in hurricanes every day. He even tried to play with the rain beating against the sliding glass door. But Karen kept looking nervously out the windows and up at the skylights.

Our 30 trees are mostly oaks, and sometimes they seemed to go sideways when 40+ mph gusts hit them.

Occasionally, a big branch would Thump! as it hit the roof.

At 2 p.m., what Karen feared worst happened. The lights flicked, Sam beeped like a maniac, and the power went out.

But only for about 20 seconds. A miracle! Around Richmond, more than 300K people weren’t so lucky, including Karen’s parents.

It was still half-heartedly raining and gusting when we went to bed, but this morning, everything is calm and sunny. The yard is strewn with branches, with wet green leaves slapped across everything.

But all our trees are vertical, and nothing huge fell on Karen’s car or the house. The whole neighborhood seems OK. We totally lucked out.

Rats Are About to Get Busted

By Max

On Friday, August 26, at 10 p.m. ET, Animal Planet is starting a 6-episode series called Rat Busters NYC. It stars two guys named Jimmy and Mike and scores of rats, who were all most likely harmed (murdered) during the filming of the show.

But don’t get me wrong. I may be a kitten, but I’m not soft on vermin. I don’t mind that Animal Planet thinks killing innocent creatures is entertainment. I can’t wait to watch those suckers go down. I’m just upset that Animal Planet hired humans to do the job when so many cats are out of work.

Don't bother pleading for mercy, you rat-bastard!

Jimmy and Mike work for Magic Exterminating. It’s like Ghost Hunters for rodents. They work in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, which is a rat paradise, according to Animal Planet.

Eeewww! Alert for the Bourdain family: The website boasts that rats are found “everywhere — from warehouses and small businesses to apartments and single-family homes, from the Upper East Side to Tribeca and crawling all over Brooklyn and Queens!”

The site also tried to dispel some myths about rats, such as that they can grow as big as cats. False. They said domestic rats usually top out at 2 pounds, and the world’s biggest rats, in Papua, New Guinea, only make it to about 3 pounds, while cats are more in the 8-10-pound range. (I’m 4 ½ lbs.)

But Cats Working documented a rat in China that weighed 6 pounds.

Even so, if a cat and a rat get into a serious smack-down, that rat won’t be around to brag about it to his grandkids.

I mull the option of suffocating him painlessly while digging my claws into his back.

But then Animal Planet dissed cats by saying we’re ineffective ratters because we can’t possibly keep up with the rat population, nor clean out the tiny places they hide.

OK, so where were Jimmy and Mike during the Black Plague? More recently, why didn’t the city of Los Angeles have any doubts cats were up to the job?

What AP forgets is that the mere presence of a cat makes rats think twice about putting down roots. If rats were so brilliant, they’d be the ones with 9 lives.

I'm not letting go 'til you squeak "Uncle!", Cheddar-Breath!

Anyway, I just thought I’d let all my new cat friends know there’s 6 hours of whisker-licking rat-bashing coming that you won’t wanna miss.

America’s Real “Most Dangerous Person”

By Adele

Anthony Bourdain’s in the soup for calling Paula Deen “the worst, most dangerous person to America,” but he overlooks an even more insidious influence. This bitch is so arrogant, so demeaning and demonic, she fluffs my tail and make me hiss whenever I see her.

I just caught the demon on Finding Sarah, that bizarre OWN reality series Sarah Ferguson’s financial desperation drove her to do.

I’m not talking about Fergie. She’s a hot mess, but lovable, even if she raised children with no fashion sense.

I’m talking about Suze Orman.

Apparently, Sarah, who was teetering on bankruptcy, was forced to spend 2 days with the she-devil because Sarah’s projects and endorsements went Poof! after News of the World scammed her into selling access to Prince Andrew to make news.

Orman began by berating Sarah for letting Andrew be her “cushion.” He lets her stay at his place occasionally.

Orman asked, “What’s it feel like to be dependent?” “Do you really want to be successful?”

Then the bitch proceeded to spew impractical platitudes…

“Finding Sarah means taking your power and not doing something just to fulfill a contract or a commitment.”

Suze, you idiot. That’s called “having a job,” which Sarah could use.

“Your key is not to rush.”

Suze, impending bankruptcy comes with a sense of urgency.

Tell yourself, “I’m going to only have people in my life… that help me find me.”

“When you owe somebody money, it’s is my distinct belief that it’s not about the money. It’s about what is the lesson you have to learn about yourself that the problem with money is showing you.”

Suze, do you read the paper? Do you think millions of flat-broke unemployed people, with no healthcare, facing foreclosure, and eating only by the grace of food banks are interested in “learning lessons about themselves?”

Poor Sarah sat there and took it, probably feeling an inch tall. Then Orman went for the kill, proclaiming, “I have a crush on myself!”

If I could have leaped through that screen and shredded her for Sarah, I’d have done it.

There isn’t a more egomaniacal woman on TV, including Palin and Bachmann. Suze Orman learned about finance working for such beloved institutions as Merrill Lynch and Prudential Bache. She’s been parting suckers from their money with her worthless money advice ever since, and every dollar she rakes in feeds her bloated sense of self-importance.

I’d like to see Paula Deen become Suze Orman’s nutritionist.

Hello, My Name is Max

By Max

Yes, the rumors on Twitter are true. Cats Working has a new member. I was sprung, like Cole and Adele (and the late Yul) from the Richmond Animal League.

RAL neutered me at 8 weeks and enrolled me in vocational training at 10 weeks (I’m 18 weeks old now), which is how I can type. RAL don’t shelter no unemployable freeloaders. 

In the joint, they called me Venice, which was unfortunate because Karen’s long-ago ex-husband was named Dennis. But I had no problem starting my new life with a brand-new new collar and a brand-new new identity.

Karen thought I looked like Oscar Hammerstein (yeah, I know, what was she smoking?), but I kept ignoring her until she consulted a character-naming book and read about 2,000 cat names on the Web and finally pulled Max out of her butt.

At LAST! She guessed my REAL name!!

So, since all Karen’s cats have been named for famous humans, my full name is Maxwell Perkins Wormald.

It’s taken me a few days to pull this post together because Karen wanted it illustrated. But this is how they were all coming out because I’m really fast.

That's me, after leaving a little present in Cole's big-cat box.

And then I had to learn how to use a PC. (I’m used to Mac.) I couldn’t wait to get right to work in Karen’s office first thing Monday morning, but my learning curve was interfering with Karen’s work.

I never knew watching someone type could be so much fun!

I literally sat there for HOURS, mesmerized.

When it was my turn to type, I noticed that Karen has an ergonomic keyboard. I really love it!

I quickly realized I type much faster when I sit on the other side of the keyboard.

In fact, since I arrived, I have spent most of my days hanging out in Karen’s office, and I have already learned how to keep this from happening whenever I jump off her desk.

I hadn't been there 10 minutes before all Karen's projects went flying.

Karen moved one of the cat beds in for me, but I found her recycle box just as comfy.

Trying to prove I'm not a golddigger. Hope it's working. I won't always fit in here.

I wasted no time in letting Karen know that even though I’m named after an editor, I can’t be trusted with manuscripts.

Best to dispel early any notions she has of making me her file clerk.

Speaking of trust, yesterday while Karen was trying to take a nap with Cole and Adele to get back in their good graces, I snuck upstairs to use Cole’s box instead of the tiny kitten box Karen gave me. I hate to be treated like a child. Unfortunately, the toilet paper was hanging beyond my reach, so I had to make do.

Glad she doesn't buy that cheapo one-ply stuff. I'd have to unroll twice as much.

My first night “home” (ah, I love how that sounds!) I slept in the room that Cole calls his “man cave,” and I think it left Cole feeling displaced and a little grudgy. But he has nothing to worry about. I moved out the next morning and I’ve had the run of the house ever since, including the coveted crow’s nest of the kitty perch.

Do you think it's true, what they say about boy cats with big tails?

I won’t say Adele and Cole have been mean to me, but they haven’t been exactly cordial. I’ve been using my considerable charm to steadily wear them down.

Who could resist this sweet, innocent face?

It’s working. Last night, Adele shared a game of laser pointer tag with me, and then sat me down for a pow-wow. I did my best to show respect for her vast wisdom. Now she lets me touch her nose.

Why does she keep calling me "Grasshopper?"

Before the evening was over, we were all hanging out together and nobody was hissing, so I think this is all going to work out.

Day 4. Our first group photo. I arranged that lamp shade.

Since I’m named after Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s editor, I know Karen set the bar for my blog posts very high. Cole says that until I get up to speed on current events and start having intelligent opinions — which I suspect he thinks will never happen — I’ll be handling the cat beat.

Adele keeps repeating, like a broken record, “Write what you know.”

So I just thought I’d pop in and introduce myself.

PS: Kittens play hard, but we also rest hard. Here’s me discovering that the bed in Karen’s office isn’t half bad!

Not my most flattering pose, but at least I'm not drooling

 

Goodbye, Yul

By Karen

I’m sad beyond words to report that Cats Working lost Yul on Saturday morning, August 13. Yul had been living with a diagnosis of chronic kidney failure for about four months, cheerfully putting up with daily injections of subcutaneous fluid.

In addition, for the past year he’d been suffering frequent respiratory infections that injured his inner ear, rendering him almost totally deaf and unsteady from a lingering case of vestibular disease, a form of kitty vertigo he contracted shortly after Christmas.

In spite of all those infirmities, Yul’s spirits were always positive and he got into mischief whenever he felt the urge, although the vertigo kept him from ever exploring the top of the new fridge.

Last week, Yul lost his appetite, and since he was down about half his weight from his 20-lb. peak, he just didn’t have the energy to go on.

Yul was the most intelligent cat I’ve ever known and his unfailing joie de vivre kept the house hopping. He was especially close to Adele and good friends with Cole. We are all left rattling around in an eerily quiet and empty place without our Yul’s commanding presence.

The vet said Yul’s right kidney was enlarged to double the size of the left, and felt like a tumor had formed. So instead of prolonging Yul’s nausea and discomfort, I decided it was time to let him go.

I’m sorry I can’t write any more about it right now. Yul had just turned 15, and losing him only 2 years after Fred is almost more than I can bear. They were both my furry rocks.

But I know Yul would hate for us to mope around in grief when his departure has created an opening for another unwanted cat to have a good home. So we will be adding a new member to the family — or as Cole says, “springing one from the joint” — momentarily.

Yul would have demanded nothing less than prompt action.

Yul as he would like you to remember him

Did Newsweek Trick Bachmann Into Looking Crazy?

By Adele

The Tea Party’s in a snit over Michele Bachmann’s Newsweek cover photo and I don’t get it. It’s not like they crammed spinach between her teeth.

Bachmann’s a middle-aged woman with crows’ feet who looks like her contacts are uncomfortable.

Hillary Clinton has been photographed many, many times looking a lot worse — with grimy hair, no makeup, a SCRUNCHIE — and you don’t hear Hillary whining.

In all fairness, Bachmann hasn’t complained, either. She’s got her rabid fan base for that.

But they’re not charging that Newsweek retouched the photo to make Bachmann look bat-shit. Nor has it been suggested the photographer said, “OK, Michele, now let’s get a shot where you’re fantasizing about Mitt Romney or Obama getting hit by a bus.”

Just Google images of Bachmann. She sometimes gets a creepy look in her eye. The Tea Party just doesn’t want you to see it.

We don’t need pictures to show us Bachmann’s nutty. Almost every time she opens her mouth or signs some rankly discriminatory, racist pledge, she proves it.

She’s a slightly more coherent Sarah Palin, puffing her mere wisps of experience into qualifications to run the country. She mangles facts a lot, like when she tried to score brownie points in Iowa by confusing the late, revered actor John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.

This was a lose-lose for Newsweek. If they’d airbrushed Bachmann to be a perky cheerleader like Palin, the Tea Party would be screaming she’d been trivialized.

As usual, what the Tea Party fails to grasp is that when Newsweek called Bachmann “The Queen of Mean,” (which the TP is largely OK with), they needed a picture to match. 

Eric Cantor Needs to GO

By Adele

Despite polls that resoundingly reflect Americans’ disgust with intractable brats in Congress, Virginia’s Eric Cantor can’t bring himself to grow up, and he’s trying to rally the other bullies.

Today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch’s front page ran excerpts from a memo Cantor just sent to House Republicans…

Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that (the Standard & Poor’s) analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong.

In plain English…

Keep fighting. Let’s shut the government down unless the Dems lay off our bread and butter, the rich and big business. Don’t give an inch. Never cooperate. Make Obama regret he was ever born.

If John Boehner was worth his weight in self-tanner, he’d take Cantor out behind the woodshed and give him what-for, then jerk a knot in Cantor’s leash and muzzle him.

Cantor and those impressionable reps who dance to the Tea Party’s tune may not know it, but to plot the downfall of your own government is to flirt with treason.

Cantor probably sees it as heroically seizing the moment, showing what a strong, tough leader he can be. He probably already has “PC” (“President Cantor”) embroidered on his towels.

But “Just Say No” is a suicidal strategy when it comes to the potential collapse of our economy. Shooting down everything the Democrats suggest and offering no viable alternatives but cutting programs that actually help people isn’t leadership. It’s insane.

Eric, when S&P downgraded the country’s credit rating, they were looking straight at YOU.

Cantor’s been playing both ends against the middle for years. He keeps his cushy congressional seat by pretending to be “for the little people,” then stabbing them in the back to serve special interests.

Virginia voters need to bounce the weasel out of Congress or they’ll deserve every smarmy, lie-filled “Cantor for President” ad they get in 2016.

Checking in On Bourdain

By Karen

Even though I stopped logging regular reports on Anthony Bourdain, I’ve been casually keeping tabs. I’ll confess I miss our old debates about Tony, so here’s some dish on what I’ve been seeing lately and I invite anyone to weigh in.

First, a round of applause to Tony, who seems to be pulling through his hair gel phase. His mane seems to be slowly returning to its original lushness.

I adored No Reservations in Naples. Maybe it’s because I can relate to the food, or maybe it’s Tony’s love for all things Italian, but his episodes in Italy are always sumptuous and highly rewatchable. And, of course, it’s a joy whenever Ottavia shows up and takes him down a few pegs, which she did when he and his crew crashed a wedding they happened upon. It was truly a gauche move, even for Vic Chanko.

The El Bulli episode? Meh. Yes, I know. The end of a culinary era. I should be wearing black. However, watching Bourdain & Friends consume the highlights of 52 one- or two-bite courses did nothing for me, although the sheer bizarreness and utter impracticality of what was shown was impressive and, I’m sure, delicious.

There’s no doubt Ferran Adria and David Chang are geniuses at what they do. But I think their notion of dining out is akin to a theater producer bankrolling some full-scale, avant garde musical and allowing only one row of seats for an audience. He sells a dozen tickets per performance, max, and eventually everyone’s claiming he’s got the hottest thing on Broadway and keeps the show “sold out” forever. But do I want to keep hearing about how wonderful, yet impossibly exclusive, it is? No.

On August 4, Tony visited the Colbert Report and didn’t quite seem to be getting the joke, playing straight his usual schtick on the evils of restaurant chains. After spending 28 years in restaurant kitchens, he said he now “boils with rage” at chains like Chili’s or Applebee’s, and claimed Cinnabon to be the most “grosteque” thing ever.

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:video:colbertnation.com:393974

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Was he implying he was cooking haute cuisine all that time? We know better.

Yeah, it’s a crying shame all Americans can’t hop a plane on someone else’s dime to grab a fresh bowl of pho in Hanoi or a pizza in Napoli when we want a nosh.

Colbert managed to make Bourdain sound even more elitist and out of touch by asking Tony to describe the rite of eating ortolon whole, as he described in the opening of Medium Raw.

On August 5, Tony appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, and food consequently got shoe-horned into the political discussion. As the show wrapped up, Maher thanked “Arthur Bourdain” for being there.

The camera caught Tony’s nonplussed reaction. Sorry, I couldn’t find that bit anywhere online.

This clip is from the “Overtime” segment without Maher, where the guests discuss viewer questions. I’m guessing Maher apologized, saying he meant “author Anthony Bourdain” but it got jumbled.

http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1199897

Ep. 223: August 5, 2011 – Overtime

Tony’s a smart guy, and he’s branching out beyond food TV. I just wish he’d tap into his his worldly experience and talk about things other than food.

Technical PS: I’ve given you the links to the videos two ways, in the text and separately, as a WordPress experiment just to see how “embedding” from those sites would work.

Congress Deserves a Beating

By Adele

Contempt has to stand on tip-toe to see Congress these days. Our so-called “representatives” behaved like a pack of selfish, spoiled brats, playing the self-inflicted crisis to the hilt, milking out every last drop of drama until they unveiled a joke of a debt “deal” minutes before high-tailing it out of DC for thoroughly undeserved vacations.

In their wake, the stock market crashes and burns — again — devastating the retirement accounts of ordinary people who felt they were just crawling out of the hole Congress dug last time it diddled while Wall St. flushed the economy down the toilet.

It’s inconceivable to think anyone is stupid enough to buy into Republicans’ infantile refusal to face economic reality. 

But then you turn on the TV and there’s Sarah Palin.

Any idiot knows that if you spend wildly beyond your means, you don’t recover by “cutting back” on future spending, but by raising more money to pay the bills you owe RIGHT NOW.

Conservatives think they’re being slick, railroading Obama into turning the U.S. into a deadbeat debtor with no choice but to file bankruptcy, ruin its credit, and earn worldwide disgust like we’ve never seen before. 

All that, just to get a black man out of the White House.

Yeah, it must be racism, because their stated rationale that the wealthy need to be even wealthier so they can create jobs is just plain NUTS.

Give me one example since 2008 of some American billionaire starting a company and hiring thousands of new workers.

No, I didn’t think you could. 

What smart billionaires do is game the tax system and outsource decent jobs so they can shaft the government and their workers, keeping the lion’s share of profits for themselves — and lapdog politicians.

To top it off, we’ve got Eric Cantor rubbing Virginia’s nose in it with an ad claiming he’s “a leader who shares our values.”

Sure, if our values included mugging homeless, jobless people, children, the sick, and the elderly so fat-cats in banking, insurance, and real estate have more money to pour into Cantor’s campaign coffers. You don’t have to look hard to see where his loyalties lie.

In the meantime, while the Repubs and Tea Partiers dance a jig, thinking they struck a blow against Big Government, we see prices on EVERYTHING rising because the money has to come from somewhere.

As always, it will come from ordinary Americans, once again getting shafted by the people they elected.