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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

A Cheap Shot


I know, I know, dear reader (singular). It is too easy….but I CAN’T resist…when two articles like this run back to back, you just have to take the shot. Even though you know they’ll do it better on the Daily Show, or Stephanie Miller later on today.

Anyway….

Yesterday’s big story from the Animal Kingdom concerned Happy, the Bronx Zoo Elephant who may have made history by becoming one of the few biological organisms shown to capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror.

Scientists have considered this ability a sign of “higher intelligence” and, to date, the phenomenon was observed only in humans, chimpanzees, and perhaps dolphins.

A sign of hope, eh?

Well, not quite.

Because that other great elephant, George W. Bush, was in Texas yesterday and told the huge, safely conservative crowd: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses".

Now, call me crazy, but with a mounting monthly toll of American dead, a dwindling list of allies, an Afghanistan slipping out of control, and a North Korea reportedly straining to turn its nuclear pop-guns on the West Coast of the United States, I just can’t follow his argument.

After all, the Republicans are solidly in power now, and it would seem that the terrorists are having a pretty good game. Bush keeps looking into the mirror of failure, but failing to recognize himself.

Oh well, perhaps that is only to be expected. After all, according to the Associated Press article, the other two elephants in the test displayed only mixed results when it came to being able to identify themselves in the mirror.

It could be that some elephants are more advanced than others.

Perhaps, Happy is simply a superior type of Republica…..oops, I mean elephant, after all.

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