It's August, which means Congress is on recess and Mitch McConnell has shimmied back into the ocean to seek a mate.

Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, okay? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it "The No Fact Zone.

Cynicism is an enormous problem. I'm actually a hopeful person. But the way to stay hopeful is to acknowledge and to not accept what is absolutely amoral, mentally ill behavior as normal.

I believe that people, more often than not, act with the best possible intentions. And when they don't, that's funny to me. That's why comedy ends up seeming cynical, because you're talking about the gap between what people say and what they do.

And we didn't have cell phones. If you made plans to meet someone in a snow storm, and they didn't show up, you just had to assume they were devoured by wolves and go on with your life.

If I ever succumbed to the demon on my shoulder going, "You should get something special because you're famous," that is the moment that my behavior will be caught on social media for all time. I'm even afraid to use it to get a reservation. This is the person who will tweet, "Can you believe what this a-hole did?"

Odyssey Dawn? That's not a military operation. That's a Carnival Cruise ship.