President Obama Hospitalized with Testicular Elephantiasis

GOP, Tea Party, and Congressional Democrats in Disarray

Washington DC - This morning President Obama was admitted to a local area hospital with a severe case of testicular elephantiasis. It is unclear at this time if this is a temporary condition. Representatives of the President are optimistic that Obama will now be able to perform his presidential duties given the enlarged size of his scrotum.

Doctors, party leaders, members of Obama's staff, and Michelle Obama have not determined the cause of President Obama's condition. As late as yesterday, there was no change in the president's testicular fortitude. His doctors say that people close to the president have noticed a general jaundice condition around his midsection. Doctors speculate that the weakening of the president's knees around the Tea Party and GOP, and constant prone position may have caused blood to pool in his testicles.

Democratic National Committee President Tim Kaine told reporters during an early morning press conference about President Obama's condition, "We are saddened that it has come to this but we are confident the president will use this to the advantage of the country."

Strangely, there are reports that the White House carpenter is making a wheel barrow that will allow the president free motion while still inflicted. When completed, he will have full range of motion through both hips, allowing his legs to swing freely and forcefully forward, even when his foot is flexed.

Democratic strategists have been spotted in the cafeteria of the hospital. Unconfirmed reports and rumors of conversations about torture trials, appropriate taxation of the rich, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, considering single payer, implementing universal health care, and troop departures are streaming out of the hospital.

Many congressional Democrats seem fearful that the president's condition will not improve and it will affect their ability to continue to digitally pleasure the GOP and pass off responsibility to the minority party.

Though no one will confirm publically, anonymous congressional sources told the press, "It has been customary that when the GOP threaten to forcefully orally copulate on legislation, we offer a different, more palatable solution that usually involves us folded at a ninety degree angle. It has worked well in the last two years to get mediocre legislation passed. President Obama's infliction has thrown the party into turmoil. We have been at a right angle for so long, we aren't certain we can straighten out."

GOP and Tea Party leaders and strategists have not answered phone calls but reports are flooding in that they are checking in to Bohemian Grove in California with rulers and fishing weights.

First Published: Nov 12, 2010

Ant Invaders - A Natural Army?

Ants are tiny foreign invaders who rely on the hammer of military formations to enter our homes and consume our precious table scraps. If ants abandoned their military first policy, would we be as bothered by their visits to carry off our leftovers, or is their goose-stepping lines of workers what really ticks us off. Ants march into our homes like platoons of plundering, starving soldiers. They take our culinary treasure, consume our crumbs and pillage our pantries. Undeterred by geography or gravity they disregard our homestead boundaries, pouring over our scraps, entering at will in highly organized legions to overtake our kitchen work spaces.

Anyone who lives near dirt knows the dread of finding one ant scout. The insect explorer unto itself (as long as it is not one of the more vicious forms of ant, such as carpenter or fire ant) is as harmless as they are small. It is their meaning that most people take offense to. One itty-bitty, tiny-weeny ant will follow their scent track back to the colony and inform every ant they encounter along the way and inside of the bounty waiting on a counter or in a garbage can. Together, following the battle plan map of scent markings, they trudge along their way, in perfect rows and seemingly unfettered by physics, along the path set by the scout to consume, conquer or carry any speck of food that is less that 200 percent of their body weight.

Ants have long been a paramilitary antagonist. Their almost unnatural militarism has resonated so fundamentally, we teach our younguns to recognize the characteristics of these critters of combat. How many children have learned the almost hypnotic "The Ants Go Marching." My sister and I used to sing "The ants go marching one by one. Hurrah! Hurrah! The ants go marching one by one. Hurrah! Hurrah! The ants go marching one by one. The little one stops to suck his thumb...and they all go marching down to the ground, to get out of the rain. Bum...Bum...Bum." We were indoctrinating ourselves, training our brains to instinctively react to future brigades of bugs. Aside from the bit of anthropomorphizing the "little one", the rhyme offers more than a bit of truth about the martial nature of these well aligned critters.

Ants damage their reputation by using armed forces tactics when guerrilla warfare would be of a bigger benefit. Unfortunately for these well trained insect operatives and the people who loathe them, it will be several hundred million generations before ants evolved primate military strategy.

Imagine for a moment, tiny little harmless bugs scampering quickly across the floor, waiting in the dark until you've turned away to grab a morsel and shying away before you turn back. Would you miss the crumbs? If it did not mean a troop of ants would follow, I theorize the average kitchen defender who saw an ant would find the compulsion hunt it down and smash it with their thumb considerably lessened.

Since diplomacy probably will not be an evolutionary adaptation of ants anytime soon, we have to fend off the hoards of invaders. We must stand at the ready for the first ant, the scout, the messenger of crumb topography and end the insect incursion before it begins. It is a shame such aggression is necessary because if they did not act like a full on military invasion, they wouldn't bother me as much.