Friday Funday: Cuddling Up With A Killer

As usual, today is Friday, and while there is still plenty of political news to discuss - from the hypocritical grilling of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel by Senator John McCain, to the out-of-context and bogus attacks on Hagel by the overzealous freshman political-climber Ted Cruz - we'll leave those kinds of discussions about ethics and politics for another day.

Fairness, however, is a topic we're more than willing to tackle today.

For example, in no way is it fair that when we began gathering content for today's edition, the temperature outside our Lincoln, NE office was bitterly cold, in the single digits, with snow everywhere we could see. Meanwhile, the temperatures outside both our DC and South Florida offices weren't even below freezing.

It was so cold in Lincoln last night, if we'd had a cat in our office, we might have thought about curling up with the little furball for warmth - if we hadn't also recently discovered what kinds of homicidal maniacs cats are.

According to a study released this week in the journal Nature Communications, domesticated cats that either live outdoors, or are allowed to roam outdoors part of the time, kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year. The little buggers also exterminate somewhere between 6.9 and 20.7 billion other small mammals - like mice, moles and voles - annually.

If you happen to be living in a home ruled by cats, these statistics may not exactly surprise you much, especially if you're a good cat servant.

The tendency of cats to pounce, scratch, chomp, pee on, or beat to death anything they decide they don't like - regardless of the desires of the humans they live with - is a common trait of virtually all felines. It's one of the reasons some members of our staff are dog people more than they are cat people.

Another reason is that on a cold day like today, if the cat living with you doesn't want to snuggle up with you, no matter how cold you might be, that creature isn't going to land in your lap. Unless the cat changes its mind and decides to jump from the couch onto you, you're just out of luck.

The rule is, dogs have owners. Cats have staff.

We know our stereotype of the domesticated cat isn't entirely fair.  Some cats are more like dogs in their temperament, and our staff members have been blessed to know a few of those over the years.

Still, science doesn't lie, and that scientific study from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute makes it clear: your little "Furball" may be more of a homicidal maniac than you ever knew.

If we didn't know any better, we'd think cats were perfectly suited to politics.

Wishes And Opportunities

New opportunities often look different before and after you take them on.

Over the years, our staff members have had many different employment opportunities. Some we'd categorize as WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get - some have been better than they initially appeared, and some have been what at least one of our staffers calls a "farbut" opportunity.

For the record, a 'farbut' opportunity is one that looks good from afar, but it's far from good.

Today, there is at least one opportunity we're very happy not to have presented to any of us, the job of U.S. Secretary of State, which John Kerry will officially begin when he is sworn in on Friday.

Senator Kerry, currently of Massachusetts, will be touring his homestate today one final time, in a dual capacity - both as a farewell tour to his constituents and as a kind of warmup tour for what will be the many, many, many miles that he'll travel as U.S. Secretary of State.

While Kerry has long coveted the position, when we look at the challenges facing him, we can't help but wonder if Mr. Kerry is also wondering if this was a farbut opportunity for him.

To start with, America's strongest ally in the Middle East, Egypt, is still going through some unstable growing pains. One of America's other long-time Middle East allies, Israel, appears to have just chosen to pick a fight with it's neighbors in both Lebanon and Syria.

Speaking of Syria, that nation has been embroiled in civil war for two years, and it's also upsetting its neighbors with a seemingly ever-growing wave of escaping refugees, and a bleak outlook for peace anytime soon.

Dealing with nations like these in the Middle East is only one facet of the Secretary of State's job.

Secretary Kerry will also have to deal with less-than-stable future relations in Iran and Argentina, an unpredictable North Korea, a growing China, and a European Union still deeply wounded economically by rampant austerity.

Kerry will also have to deal, back in Washington, with his former colleagues in Congress, some of whom seem intent on letting the brutal and inefficient budget cuts of the Sequester take effect. If that damaging Republican-championed austerity does take effect, you can be sure Secretary Kerry's former colleagues will attack him for not fixing the problems at State that their deep budget cuts will cause.

Still, as many on Capitol Hill have known for years, John Kerry has been wishing for the opportunity to be Secretary of State - and now his wish has finally come true.

All we can say is, be careful what you wish for.

Having The Last Laugh

As President Obama noted in his immigration address on Tuesday, "It’s really important for us to remember our history." The crowd laughed with him, as they did at many points in his speech, though we doubt they were laughing for the same reasons we were.

The President also said more than once, that "The time is now," for immigration reform to pass. These are not new words for him, or a new idea for him to present to the nation. In fact, as Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, President Obama made a nearly identical speech on immigration in May 2011.

Know who else has proposed some of the same general ideas on comprehensive immigration reform already? President George W. Bush, back in 2007 - and again last month in a rare public speech in Dallas.

Yes, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama - as well as the majority of Americans - are all on the same page regarding this issue, mostly for the same reasons: it's the right thing to do and it will help our economy.

Somehow, it's still no surprise though, that some in the Republican Party still think that comprehensive immigration reform is a silly idea.

We're well aware of those Republicans who are still under the delusion that Hispanic voters are a "natural constituency" for the GOP, and of the racists in the GOP like Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA). It's not just some backbench legislators in the Republican Party who are racists, though.

As journalist Nick Baumann discovered recently, two prominent conservatives have been running a PAC - a Political Action Committee - that gave thousands of dollars to "white nationalists." One of the two conservative leaders also has long-standing ties to another racist organization.

It also doesn't change the fact that the one major issue most of those currently in power in Republican and conservative circles fought President George W. Bush on, was comprehensive immigration reform. This is a topic that many in the media just seem to be waking up to now, though our staff members have been openly discussing this fact on Twitter with conservative writers for some time.

That President Bush still supports comprehensive immigration reform, for non-selfish reasons, and President Obama quite obviously supports similar reforms, bodes well for the chances to fix this long-standing and troublesome issue.

The details obviously will be hashed out in the House and Senate over the next few months, though we believe that the proposal President Obama presented yesterday, and the proposal a bipartisan group of Senators presented Monday, are already close enough that compromise should not be as difficult as many feared.

All of these are reasons for hope on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform, and are part of the reason our staff was laughing along with President Obama's speech on Tuesday.

The other major reason we were laughing, though - other than Paul's cartoon - is the simple irony of the situation.

The one name the modern Republican Party runs from like it was the plague is "George W. Bush." Yet, on that one issue - comprehensive immigration reform - President George W. Bush is the one name the Republican Party should have listened to on immigration years ago - and didn't.

Apparently, the current group of Republican "leaders" forgot their recent history.

Now, we all know who's going to have the last laugh on immigration reform after all.