On opening night, PETA members protested the arrival of Ringling Bros.& Barnum Bailey Circus at Charlotte Bobcats Arena. Wearing elephant masks and convict stripes, they stood shackled together displaying their message to hundreds of ticket holders lined out the door.

“Ringling’s history of animal care is riddled with animal death and what we’re doing is bringing that issue to life,” Jason Bayless says, PETA spokesperson and lead circus monitor.

“What we do is follow Ringling around from city to city, and we videotape the elephants during the walk,” Bayless says. “Every time we do that we actually witness some form of abuse.” He explained the animals have to be guided to and from the stage for each four-minute performance while poked, prodded and chained. “Last year, one of the animals had a bloody wound behind its ear during the walk.”

“Elephants are really interesting creatures,” says Penny Nordman, activist. “They have really strong social ties that they never get to be a part of.” One of the PETAphants escaped, but according to PETA circus elephants will never be so lucky.

Here are a few photos. (Photos by Chey Scott)

For more information, visit www.circuses.com.

By John Edwards

You no longer have Johnny Edwards to kick around. I’m bowing out of the presidential race. Going to help the poor and build some Jimmy Carter houses.

Do you realize how little a senator gets paid? Instead of wasting those years as a senator, I could have made boatloads of money suing doctors. But no. I stuck with it because I thought it would help me get elected.

Now I have to wait another four long years — maybe eight if a Democrat wins the general election! Oh man, what if that Democrat serves eight successful years? Then his or her vice president will automatically get the nod to run as president. I could be waiting a long, long time. I need some Chivas Regal. Dangit! I sent my last case to Ted Kennedy.

At least now I can get my $400 haircuts without having everyone bust my stones.

I’m John Edwards, and I hate you all.

News Groper features more than 50 parody blogs by politicians, celebrities, business tycoons, and foreign despots.

Woe is me. Over the last few weeks, I have recently learned that I suffer from post-traumatic slave disorder, am a "coon" and an "Uncle Tom," or I guess the female equivalent, because I am a Hillary Clinton supporter. I did not know that when a black person was running for office, that I automatically had to vote for him, with little information about him. I'll try to remember that in the future.

This willingness of people to blindly follow all nilly-willy and shit, is ridiculous. If you ask why they are supporting Obama, most cannot even state one item on his platform. They have not read it and know nothing about him. This is probably true of most voters, not just Obama supporters. These are the same people that called Bill Clinton the first "black" president and are now calling him a "racist from Arkansas." But I'm the "coon" and "Uncle Tomasina." Vote for Obama for whatever reason that you want, but do not tell me who I must vote for. Which, by the way, is colonial, imperial and paternalistic, sort of like, um, slavery.

• In George W. Bush's State of the Union speech Monday night, the president performed a decent impersonation of a man who commanded the respect of the people he was talking to. It was more than a little surreal.

• Also, this just in from Satan. The Evil One announced today that a special place in hell is being reserved for one Kaye McGarry, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board member. Beelzebub noted that McGarry had earned her new honor when, at the recent school board retreat, she opposed a new CMS policy which aims to protect students from being bullied. The policy, said McGarry, could lead to an "aggressive, pro-homosexual agenda in classrooms."

— Cartoon by Jim Hunt

Everyone, I know, is shocked – shocked! – to learn that Wachovia is giving higher incentives to employees who sell customers a tricky type of mortgage that often turns into a neverending trap.

Since slimeball mortgage practices by banks are one of the main reasons the U.S. economy is tanking, you’d think someone at Wachovia might’ve figured out that dicey loans probably aren’t a good idea right now. After all, Wachovia’s mortgage practices are already in the toilet, with the company having to use up more and more money to cover bad loans in the current terrible housing market.

The Observer’s story about the bank’s practices, although certainly welcome, seemed meek in tone, reflecting that paper’s skittishness about criticizing any of the big banks. Consider this sentence: “Consumer advocates worry that higher incentives could encourage employees to sell loans that are not appropriate for borrowers.”

To which I can only reply: No shit – the country is suffering a national epidemic of banks screwing their customers, and the O frames the story as if there’s something surprising in the fact that our leading “corporate citizens” just maybe, perhaps, might not care quite as much about their customers’ welfare as they pretend to in their commercials.

The daily paper’s Rick Rothacker did a good job of digging up the dicey mortgage incentives information. Let’s hope the O keeps it up. There are plenty of people in Charlotte who’ve been the victims of the big banks’ layoffs and other corporate treacheries – and plenty of citizens who’ve seen their interest rates and payments rise during the current financial gang-rape of the American public. I don’t think readers, listeners and viewers are exactly going to scream bloody murder if the media gets more serious about reporting on the banks’ dangerous, and destructive, misconduct. In fact, we want more of it.