Torture, yes! Principles, no!

John McCain: He was against waterboarding before he was for it.

"Mac" voted no today on the Intelligence Authorization Bill that requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.

Looks like he's going to make a great "conservative" presedential candidate after all!

Mitt Romney suspends campaign

Upon receiving word that his campaign was arrested early Thursday morning on misdemeanor possession of alcohol by a minor, Mitt has suspended his campaign indefinitely. In a statement released earlier today, Mitt says that he has "already had a long talk about the incident with my campaign, and believe that my campaign is remorseful and will take the needed steps to reinstate itself into the Mitt team. I also believe that there are additional details at play that will come out eventually, so please don't read too much into the events of this morning until everything comes to light."

There is widespread Internet blogosphere speculation on the Googles that Johnny's campaign actually purchased the alcohol using a fake ID, and might have planted it in Mitt campaign's dorm room. Attempts to contact Johnny's campaign have been unsuccessful.

Mike's campaign, however, had this to say during an interview with Wolf Blitzer this morning: "This just further emphasizes the need for a return to true conservative values in America. Here we have two prominent national campaigns acting without regard for their candidates, teammates, and the laws of this country. I plan to send several text messages to my young, male page this afternoon, assuring him that Mike's campaign still believes in returning moral values to the youth of America, and to see if he wants to meet at my pad over in Georgetown tonight for some martinis and ............"

Feuling the anti-animal agenda

I am writing this as a plea to my friends in the animal kingdom, particularly to the donkeys and elephants who seem to be particularly hated anymore. Please, please be careful of your actions, so as not to incite the animal-haters to even more disturbing heights of animal hatred. I can only imagine the dollar signs that cross Tim Bedore's eyes when he hears a story like the one I'm about to tell you, as he likely knows it's only a matter of time before he becomes the humanitalistic mouthpiece to compliment that nationalistic mouthpiece, Lou Dobbs. Can you even imagine this country without the elephants and the illegals? It would be a country not worth loving.

Here's what happened, according to the vast liberal media: an American human was walking around Wild Elephant Valley in the Xishuangbanna region of the Yunnan province in China, near dusk. The man, Jeremy Allen McGill, is an English teacher in Wuhan. According to reports, the elephant picked the man up using his considerable trunk, and tossed him to the ground. This resulted in fractured ribs, stomach injuries, and a fear of elephants.

Here's what the liberal media won't tell you: an American human was walking around Wild Elephant Valley in the Xishuangbanna region of the Yunnan province in China, near dusk. The man, Jeremy Allen McGill, is an English teacher in Wuhan. He was carrying with him an "English for Dummies" book, and attempting to teach the elephant his native tongue. When the elephant was unable, he proceeded to taunt the elephant with insults such as "how are you gonna take over the world, when you can't even learn English?," and "if elephants have such great memories, why doesn't that affect my frustration about your inability to remember how to effectively use the words affect and effect?," and "don't raise your trunk at me ... you do not want to raise that trunk at me ... did you hear me? Are you deaf? Holy crap ................ NOOOOOOOOOO ...... PUT ME DOOOOWWN ........ I'll be NIIIICE!!!!"

THUMP.

Click for a location map of the festivities

As is usually the case, this is another example of an elephant being verbally assaulted, reacting as any of us would, and then being made out by the vast liberal media to be an animal because of it. If you humans learn anything from this, it's to let elephants be elephants. Don't try to Americanize them, and by all means never taunt their inability to capture the exceeding complexities of the English language.

Things I've learned at the zoo

As I mentioned in a previous dictation, the local zoo here has a family of African elephants. As it happens, one must pass by the giraffe licking exhibit, the meerkats, and maybe a few other animals that nobody remembers, before making it back to where the elephants reside. By this point, I'm usually so worn out from retrieving the three-year-old that I just meld into the hippopotamus benches, while everyone else watches the elephants being elephants.

All this is to say that the local African elephants are actually African Bush Elephants (Loxodonta africana). The more I think about it, the more grateful I am that our zoo opted to acquire these elephants - because of their street cred.

I think most people are familiar with Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), also known as "Indian elephants," or "not African elephants." You simply take one look at them - the rounded backs, the smallish facial features (you call those ears?), the oddly abundant toes, the inability to sustain eye contact, the freakish single trunk-finger, the weird gray skin color, the inability to both drive a car and focus on driving a car simulaneously, the males' much smaller trunks, the girls that usually don't even have tusks. To say the least, Asian elephants are inferior in every way to their African cousins.

What most don't know, even many in the industry, is that the African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is a fraud, too. The slang term is "halfsie". Let me learn you on this topic, so you'll know what I know, because I know all about it.

You see, one day a very large bull African Bush Elephant (3.85m tall at the shoulder) caught a flight to some south Asian island. He was chillin' on the beach, hanging with some of his righteous cattle peeps, when a little cow Asian elephant sauntered by on her moped. She certainly caught Big Al's eye, with her little boom boom, tusklessness, and big, blue eyes. He was so intrigued by her that he trumpeted the climax of the 1812 Overture in her direction while he stomped his big elephant feet and crashed his big African elephant ear cymbals in time. This is the ultimate elephant pick-up line. Long story short, they got married, hooked up, had a little boy, got divorced, and Big Al moved back in with his parents.

Big Al celebrates his score

So the little boy, we'll call him "Ele-Bama", lives his whole life feeling very much like an African elephant. Compared to all of his contemparies, his ears are bigger, his trunk is two-fingered, even his trumpeting has a little more rhythm and a deeper, more bellowing sound to it. This serves him well as he travels around the world growing up, learning about different cultures and religions, meeting a diverse company of animals, attending the best schools, and becoming a prominent elephant attorney. Before long, he finds his way into regional and ultimately national elephant contests, and is even thrust into the race to see who is going to be the elephant of elephants (Asian category).

Then one day, an elephant pundit from Mumbai makes a startling observation. "Ele-Bama," he says, "is not a real African elephant. He has no legitimate African elephant credibility." And, the pundit was spot-on in his criticism. Compared to African Bush Elephants, Ele-Bama had a weird, gray skin tone. He had rounder, slightly smaller ears. He had those weird extra toes. He had straight, pink-tinged, downward-angled tusks. He was even smaller than a typical African Bush Elephant. And, perhaps most importantly, his family never experienced the radical treatment that has beset African elephants historically in all of Asia, particularly south Asia.

An introspective Ele-Bama reflects during a campaign stop

So now, not only did Ele-Bama have to deal with the inherant racial bias that all African and partially African elephants face in portions of south Asia, but he also had to deal with claims that he was not a "legitimate" African elephant. And, frankly, he wasn't.

Now you know the origins of the African Forest Elephant: thought by many to be a real African elephant, but really just the bastard offspring of a horny African Bush Elephant and his temporary Asian lover.