The Parliament of Ghosts

We’ve done it, America. We’ve reached a deal to extend the debt ceiling. As a member of the OVERSEER corps, these long hard days of bipartisan compromise have finally come to fruition and I can now present to you the details of this unprecedented legislation:

• Two trillion dollars of government spending will be cut – These cuts will largely come in the form of simple waste elimination. For example, do we really need a Department of Education and a Department of Justice? Instead, efficiency will be created by consolidating all departments into the Department of Departments, which, since they would have to change the least amount of stationary, will be run by the Department of Defense, who will be trusted to impartially distribute the money they get to whatever they want.

The Aggro Crag's existence is actually mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Look it up!

• Medicare and Social Security will not be cut – However, there is a ‘trigger’ provision wherein a special deficit reduction committee will be formed and the programs will be cut if they fail to make it through a series of increasingly difficult physical challenges that finally culminates in an attempt to scale the formidable Aggro Crag.

• Medicare and Social Security will be cut – On the condition that Republicans feel like they should be cut.

• There will be no cuts to any other important social programs – However, there is another ‘trigger’ provision in the bill where if the Democrats and Republicans fail to reach a deal by November to cut conservative programs or raise taxes, then the cuts will all come from important social programs the Democrats like.

• Obama’s signature health care reform will not be repealed – Because the Republicans forgot to ask for that.

If you find yourself satisfied with this compromise for even a moment, a puppy much like this one will die.

• Nobody will be happy with the results of this bill – This is not a projection, but an actual part of the deal as it exists. Both sides agree that they hate everything about this compromise: the Democrats hate that they had to agree to cuts to everything important to them, and the Republicans hate that Democrats still exist. The President hates that he had to make all the cuts he wanted to from the beginning of the negotiations, and the Tea Party hates that BLACK PEOPLE. In the event that anyone, anywhere, is discovered to be pleased by the outcome of these negotiations, they will be given a puppy, that will then be taken from them and drowned in front of them. In the event that this does not cause the person to suffer but instead gives them an erection, they will automatically win re-election to Congress.

• The debt ceiling will be raised by over two trillion dollars – Everyone is unsure how this provision got into the bill. The most popular theory is that somebody used an old sheet of paper when printing out the bill that had this on the back of it, but at this point somebody would have to run to Office Depot to get a new thing of toner and, well, it’s just as simple to leave it in.

So those of you who were following Spacklecube at all are, at this point, almost certainly not doing so any longer, because I may have accidentally stopped updating for a couple of weeks. I am not trying to say that I am the only person on Spacklecube anyone follows, I am simply saying that I was one of the few updating fairly regularly each week, and also I am the best. Humility aside, I have a very good excuse for my sudden absence, and like most of the problems with our country, it’s Barack Obama’s fault.

See, I was a pretty fervent supporter of Obama back when he was lying to everyone about the things he would do if he became president, and I ended up signing a lot of petitions and fake birth certificates and naturalization forms for Kenyans and what-have-you, and I guess that, at some point down the line, I must have checked a box I shouldn’t because suddenly I find a black bag over my head and next thing I know I’m in a dingy basement manacled to a desk with some paper in front of me. Turns out that the EULA for one of the many grassroots sites devoted to spreading the important message that Obama was running a grassroots campaign using iPhone apps or whatever legally obligated me to be drafted into a private force at the command of POTUS. I kinda figured that technically he ran the military, but whatever–that’s not the point.

The point is, I had inadvertently signed up for part of Obama’s Volunteer Emergency Reserves for Supervising Executive Espionage on Republicans, which was apparently designed to figure out who should be put in his massive socialist re-education camps, but was now being used to fill out minor bureaucratic positions when most of the executive branch was devoted to working on the president’s re-election campaign, which has apparently been the case since Februrary 2009.

Anyway, I had been drafted into the OVERSEER corps to negotiate on behalf of the White House for these debt ceiling negotiations that have been going on. Apparently, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will all be killed by Alan Greenspan’s vengeful ghost or something? I don’t know, and, more importantly, I didn’t have to know, because, for the brief moment I saw David Axelrod before he went back to raising money from Goldman Sachs executives to finance commercials about how grassroots Obama’s campaign is, I was given a flowchart and told that if I deviated from it I would be executed. I complained, but when I read the EULA I had agreed to by visiting the Obama 2008 campaign website, I realized I had given them that right.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks, negotiating with various officials on behalf of the White House in an attempt to raise the debt ceiling. Since that hasn’t given me much time to work on Spacklecube, I figure I can just post the flowchart I was given and use that as an update. After writing a 500+ word introduction.

I’m not very good at saving myself work.

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It’s been a little while since I last updated with anything that wasn’t one of my cool videos.  In fact, Spacklecube as a whole has been kind of dead, with only David’s truly insane dreamworld and Alex’s incredibly banal dreamworld breaking up the boredom.  For my part, I’ve been busy, and unlike some people, I don’t have a cushy office job where I can just sit around all day and not update Spacklecube.  No, I do the work of a real man: trying to justify my existence to myself.  Well I have managed to stop doing that for almost TWO WHOLE HOURS and now I can present you with some of that brand new Spacklecube content you have all come to know and love with:

10 Amendments in the Renewed USA PATRIOT Act You Might Not Have Known About

could you honestly say you would give a shit if these things got waterboarded

1. The Sessions-Baucus Amendment legally redefines terrorists from “enemy combatants” to “a fairly persistent species of spider,” which means they no longer have human rights. Bush Lawyer John Yoo long pushed for this provision, now embraced by the Obama administration. His legal basis for the argument was that, “nobody cares about what happens to spiders, because they are fucking terrifying.”

2. After a difficult weeks-long procedural battle the Paul-Sanders Amendment was adopted. This amendment specifies that provisions of the PATRIOT Act can only be used on suspected terrorists.

3. After a 3-minute meeting in the White House between Lindsay Graham, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid, a rider was added to the Paul-Sanders Amendment defining a “terrorist” as “an individual who has done something that may or may not be bad anywhere, ever,” and “suspected” as “literally anyone.” After meeting with Chuck Schumer, the subclause, “who makes less than $1,000,000 in pre-tax revenue per year” was added to the provision. The amendment was passed while Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders were waiting at the park behind the Capitol Building where they had been told that pretty girl they have a crush on wanted to talk to them.

seriously, fuck this guy

4. The Feinstein-McConnell amendment adds provisions on leaking classified information. The Subversive Nationals Implicated in Trafficking Classified or Harmful Executive Secrets Get Secret Trials, Interment, Two in the Chest, and Hospital Emergency Services Amendment prescribes harsh penalties for anyone accused of leaking classified information. When asked about the SNITCHES Get STITCHES Amendment, Sen. Feinstein said, “Bitches best watch who they talk to, ‘fore they find themselves in solitary confinement six feet deep.”

5. The Lieberman Amendment requires that somebody, anybody, pay attention to this sad little sack of pig excrement.

6. The Default Classification Amendment now instantly classifies all use of the English language by government employees. Any use of the English language in a building where “government business is conducted” is immediately classified as SECRET/NOFORN. Any conversations with the President or White House Press Conferences are classified as TOP SECRET.  The sponsors of this bill are unknown, as their sponsorship was retroactively classified by the passage of the bill.

a FOIA request can be filed to read the constitution but unfortunately FOIA is also classified now

7. A rider added by Sen. Inhofe expands the Default Classification Amendment to include the constitution.  All public versions of the Constitution now read “We the people, [REDACTED].” Citation of the Constitution in open session of congress can now be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

8. The Look Out Behind You Amendment specifies that the American public be informed if the calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

9. The Huge Subsidies to Bribe Senators Who Pretend to be Principled Amendment, also known as the Lincoln-Nelson Amendment, specifies that Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson be allowed to “back up a truck to Fort Knox and take whatever they want as long as they stop talking to the media right now.”

10. The Internet List-Based Comedy Amendment specifies that “lists of items intended for either comedic effect, the provocation of discussion, or both” are “incredibly fucking lazy” and that anyone who produces one “should just fucking kill themselves.” A rider was added noting that, “if Google would change their algorithm so suicide increased a site’s page rank, we could solve this problem overnight.”

For some time now, Spacklecube has been one of Wikileaks’ “media partners.”  This is due to a combination of a dyslexic wikileaks staffer, my brief ownership of the domain gaurdian.co.uk a couple of years ago, and my uncanny ability to fake a British accent through email.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take advantage of this special relationship because I really need my paypal account, UNCIEF@paypal.com, to continue working.  However, thanks to the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate (which Ozzie has a thorough dissection of over at his Muggsy Bogues fansite), nobody is paying a single bit of attention to Wikileaks, so I can release whatever documents I want without having to worry about Joe Lieberman calling up Reginald J. Paypal and shutting down my only source of cash.

Unfortunately, by the time I emailed Wikileaks to get in on some of this sweet Gitmo Files action, they had given out all the good memos (your pathological liars, your Khalid Sheik Mohameds, your mentally disabled senior citizens) to their other media partners.  Fortunately, after a bit of whining, they found a file they had forgotten to send to anyone: ISN 1242, which concerned a detainee identified only as Ahmed.  So it is with great pleasure I present to you, the Spacklecube readers, a Spacklecube exclusive: Gitmo File US9AF-0001242DP

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If one views the human condition as a giant prisoner’s dilemma, then politics is the means through which the deal is offered. It is through politics, the act of making people make choices about exactly how much they value their own rights (a lot) in comparison to other people’s rights (not so much) that we can really delve into the way the human mind works.

The adoption of the Parliament of Ghosts was meant to change this, but, in practice, very little changed. In fact, things arguably became worse. What if the only certain path to immortality was through an election? What lies would people tell, if the reward was never to die? Interestingly enough, the Parliament’s founders seem to have cared little for this possibility; instead they simply hid themselves away as the inaugural members of a new, immortal ruling class of minds in a machine, free to deliberate upon the matters of the day in a sea of pure thought.

Of course, a government is powerless without he consent of the people it governs. Therefore, the citizenry must be given the ability to affect this august body through elections. Otherwise, it would be impossible for each new generation to accept the legitimacy of a government their parents created. So the Parliament gains two new members every year, elected from the populace after a year of difficult campaigning that begins the day after the previous year’s elections. Two people, selected by their peers, represent the influence of the newest generation upon the giant machine that houses the minds of all those elected since the Parliament’s inception.

Some argue that the Parliament is inherently unfair, as mathematics would seem to hold out that each subsequent election has less influence on the composition of the Parliament than the previous, but older members seem surprisingly flexible, and an proposition that was one year denied by the parliament will be taken up after the following year’s overwhelming public response in favor, generally defined by the election of a candidate who makes the issue the core of his campaign. In this manner, the Parliament more resembles direct democracy than most governmental systems. Each election is more of a referendum on the issues of the day, as embodied by the candidates, than a traditional election. Of course, there are some issues that rarely come up, particularly issues regarding the regulation of corporate interests. Running a huge, national campaign requires a great deal of money, and the donors still keep certain things from the general dialogue during the campaign. Still, corruption is not considered an issue–what influence can money have on someone who does not need to worry about re-election?

One interesting provision within the constitution of the Parliament is that a citizen cannot again run for the Parliament if he or she has already run and lost. It is unsure why this provision was constituted, as it only raises the stakes for the candidate to nearly unreasonable levels. If you spent your entire life working towards immortality, and you only had one shot, how cautious would you be? Losing candidates often totally retire from public life, many of them going into the Church: one life of immortality denied, they move their investment from a certain eternity to an uncertain one. And the connections accrued from a lifetime of service are valuable even after a failed bit for the Parliament, so the Church’s forgiveness extends quite a bit beyond the usual limits when a former candidate offers to join.

With the rules of the Parliament and the election of its members such as they are, imagine, if you will, a candidate who has spent his whole life working towards this goal, and who has finally achieved it. Imagine the party he throws, the balloons that drop, the enthralled supporters who have made a difference by getting this politician elected. Imagine him hugging his wife and children, tearfully, knowing he will outlive them, but knowing that he goes to a higher calling, an eternal life of servitude to the people. Imagine the inauguration day, when he delivers his speech along with the other member of his Parliamentary class, when he makes promises and looks forward to helping those brave citizens who worked so hard to get him elected. Imagine his awe as he is ushered into the Chamber of Parliament, a vast white room dominated by a silent monolith with blinking lights and panels and all sorts of technological-looking devices, the purposes of which are beyond him. Imagine his pleasant surprise when the executive of one of his chief donors is there to meet him. And imagine his unpleasant surprise when he and his fellow classmate are both executed by the Steward of the Parliament, who takes their bodies and throws them in the furnace behind the false front of machinery, to make them eternal members of the Parliament of Ghosts.