News From Somewhere

MOSCOW (Rooters agency) – Russian President Vladitude Buttinsky has denied that Russia’s recent military intervention in Florida was an act of “aggression” against the United States.

On the contrary, Buttinsky insisted, the Russian activity was “at the specific request” of the Americans concerned.

As is well known, late on a moonless night three days ago, Russian paratroopers landed on the grounds of the famous Florida resort Mainly Loco. Moving quickly to the main residential building, they bundled former President Ronald Dump aboard a helicopter that had landed near the golf course’s first tee and flew him to a waiting offshore aircraft carrier, from which he was soon flown to Moscow.

The former President has not yet reappeared in public in Russia, but President Buttinsky said he is “well and resting, recovering from jet lag.”

The Russian President, speaking to the media today, pointed out that the action of the Russian paratroopers was “thoroughly in keeping with President Dump’s wishes.” American newspapers, he said, had widely quoted Dump’s earlier remarks that he would encourage Russian military intervention into any member of NETO (the Nearly Everywhere Treaty Organization) who “didn’t pay their bills.”

“President Dump,” Buttinsky said, “is noted for many things. But he is most famous for not paying bills. When he said that, I knew it was appropriate for me to act.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE (Rooters agency) – To the surprise of at least some of the devout, Brian Wrinkly did not do at all well in this state’s Republican primary ballot. After receiving 0.7 percent of the votes in Iowa’s caucus a week earlier, Wrinkly managed only 0.1 percent in New Hampshire.

A pastor who founded his own church and a wealthy businessman (in finance), over the last nine months Wrinkly has spent millions of dollars of his own money on his presidential campaign. Some people might regard that money as wasted, but Wrinkly believes he is operating on divine instructions.

“God spoke to me many years ago about this,” he says. “It became increasingly clear that He had a message for our country,” and that message involved Wrinkly winning a presidential election.

The lack of success so far in Wrinkly’s campaign raises some possibly knotty theological questions. Since God is known to be a registered Republican, it is hard to understand why He is not offering more visible support for His anointed candidate, and also to comprehend why the other candidates, whose piety cannot be doubted, do not stand aside and endorse Wrinkly.

Seeking answers to such questions, Rooters addressed the campaign office of Once and Always President Ronald Dump. Why, we asked, did Dump not pay more attention to the views of fellow Republican God?

The O&AP replied on his own social medium, Brutal Antisocial: “That guy? He’s no Republican. When it comes to gods in this party, THERE’S ONLY ROOM FOR ONE OF US.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters agency) – President Joe Notrump has denied widespread speculation that bombing attacks were launched on Yemen as “payoffs” to Saudi Arabia, which has been attacking the country with air raids for many years.

“That’s nonsense,” the President replied to a question at his postponed semiannual Open Government Transparency Event. “I have no inside information about things given to my predecessor, but I am under no obligation to meet commitments that he may have been made,” he said. “I didn’t even ask Saudi permission before I sent the bombers in. I was sure they would approve.

“As President, it is my solemn duty to protect American citizens from any harm that might be caused by someone or something that could be bombed. So, when I heard that those Houthi terrorists in Yemen were attacking Israeli shipping, I knew immediately that this US state had to be defended.

“If some Congresspeople don’t like this, they should look at the alternative: a President who would just override Congress’s right to decide important questions.”

Looking to possible further developments, the President pledged: “We will defend international freedom of commerce everywhere, except for some small exceptions that have to do with Cuba, China, other countries we’re annoyed with or competitors who dare to challenge our technological superiority.”

WASHINGTON, July 31, 1877 (Rooters agency) – The American government has rejected suggestions that its dispute with western Indian tribes over ownership of the Black Hills should be submitted to arbitration.

Mr. Progress Babble, a spokesman for the Rutherford Hayes administration, said it stood by the Moneypenny Commission’s recommendation, passed into law by Congress in the last days of the Ulysses Grant administration, that sovereign ownership of the 900,000 acres be transferred to and remain forever with the United States, “as is our Manifest Destiny and the will of God.”

“Anything less,” Mr. Babble declared, “would be to concede to the aims of the anti-American Sioux terrorists who are responsible for so much death and destruction.” This was primarily a reference to last year’s ambush of General Custer’s unsuspecting soldiers by Sioux warriors and their allies that slaughtered more than 260 Americans.

“Furthermore,” he continued, “the Sioux and their confederates have left the Black Hills voluntarily, as we warned them to do.”

Mr. Babble denied that the Indians’ departure was due to the cutting off of all food supplies to the area, as had been claimed by a few religious spokesmen. “Allowing the anti-American terrorists to remain in the area would create a permanent source of instability and threat to peace,” he said. “Now and for all time, the United States will resolutely oppose any compromise or accommodation with terrorism.”

In response to Israeli bombing raids on Gaza over several months, US President Joe Notrump today declared that “Palestinians’ right to defend themselves,” while “all very well in theory,” is unfortunately “not really practical in today’s world.”

In the current world situation, the President explained, Palestinian resistance to Israeli attacks—for example by shooting back—is terrorism, an unacceptable crime which is defined as doing to our friends “any fraction of what we regularly do to our enemies.”

However, the President did hold out the hope that Palestinian self-defense could in the future become acceptable “if Palestinians would just go along with what we and the Israelis have planned for them.” Doing that “might well make Palestinian self-defense unnecessary, even if there were still some of them left.”

Wholly Holy Truthmagazine, the voice of the Wholly Holy Church of All the Truly Holy Apostles, is proud to present a journalistic exclusive. After our repeated humble prayers, the Lord of Hosts and Everything granted an exclusive interview exclusively to our reporter. The text of the exclusive interview is as follows.

Wholly Holy Truth: Lord, thank You for giving up some of your valuable time in order to share your views with our readers.

GOD: You’re welcome. But time? I’ve got no end of that. In fact, I created time, if I remember correctly. So if I run out of it, I can always create some more. Now, what would you like to ask me?

WHT: Well, Lord, once You had created the universe, what comes next? For You, I mean. Do You intervene in it a lot?

GOD: Intervene? I should think so! Do you think your galaxy just runs itself – which one is it, by the way?

WHT: Lord, we call it the Milky Way.

GOD: Oh yes, I glanced in at that only half an eon ago. It’s one of the lesser galaxies, as I recall.

WHT: It can’t be easy, looking after all the galaxies. I believe there are quite a few of them.

GOD: Several hundred billion of them right now, maybe a trillion. You’ll appreciate that the number keeps changing: old ones disappear into black holes or whatever, new ones pop up now and again. It’s one of the things that helps to keep me from getting bored.

WHT: And what sorts of interventions do You do in these galaxies?

GOD: Well, the galactic level actions are pretty straightforward. For instance, if two or three galaxies are on course to collide, I’ll have a think about whether that should go ahead, or should their courses be modified.

Actually, that sort of galactic thing doesn’t occupy me very much. But there are the stars – now, they keep me busy.

WHT: How is that?

GOD: Perhaps you haven’t thought about it, but all those galaxies are full of stars: lots of them. Some small galaxies might have only a few hundred billion stars; the larger galaxies might have several trillion. If I were to spend one-millionth of a second thinking about each star in the universe, your star would have exploded before I finished thinking about them all.

WHT: My god! Uh, sorry, I mean, really?

GOD: Would I lie to you? But that’s only the stars. Nearly all of the stars have planets revolving around them. And who do you think keeps track of the planets?

WHT: How do You manage it?

GOD: Well, remember that I created it all. And it wasn’t a bad job, if I do say so myself. It was meant to run automatically, and mostly it does. But occasionally something goes a bit awry. Then I have to decide whether or not to put things back the way I thought they would go, or let things proceed and see what happens.

WHT: How do You decide whether or not to intervene?

GOD: Sometimes I roll dice, or flip a coin – don’t ask me if that’s really so; I already told you I wouldn’t lie. In fact, I’m incapable of lying, because, if I say something, it automatically becomes reality.

WHT: On Earth, the planet I live on, we think that You intervene in our lives quite regularly. And many of us frequently ask You to do so; we call it praying.

GOD: Where in the world did you get such notions?

WHT: We read them in the Bible.

GOD: What’s that? A magazine? A book? Who’s the author?

WHT: Uhh, we think You are. Not in the sense that You typed it out on a computer, but that You told the writers what to say. “Divinely inspired,” we call it.

GOD: That sounds really weird. If I wanted to be an author, why would I need ghost writers? And why would I go looking for readers on an insignificant planet on the edges of a not very special galaxy?

WHT: Does that mean You disagree with some of what’s written in the Bible?

GOD: I don’t know: I’ve never read it. As I indicated earlier, I’ve got other things to occupy my attention, like keeping an eye on several septillion stars.

WHT: But for two thousand years, we’ve thought that the Bible contained Your instructions about how we should live, who we should love or hate, when it’s okay to kill each other, how much we should interfere with other people’s health care – just about everything. Now am I supposed to tell our churches that that’s not so?

GOD: I don’t care. I won’t notice what you tell yourselves.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to think about a possible experiment. I’m wondering what would happen if I made dark matter visible.

(Rooters agency analysis) – It is probably a sign of the declining influence of religion in the nation’s life that a recent Biblical reference by a prominent politician has left many Americans scratching their heads and wondering what he was talking about.

The remark by Governor Romp Desadist, who is challenging Ronald Dump for the position of Once and Forever President, came in response to an unfortunate incident on a New York City subway train, after which police eventually arrested the participant in the incident who was still alive. Governor Desadist went on record saying that this arrestee should be regarded as a “good Samaritan,” and the dead participant should have been the one arrested.

Clearly, the Governor had momentarily forgotten his frequent warning that “woke” educators have destroyed widespread public knowledge of Scriptures, where the story of the good Samaritan occurs. To help puzzled readers, Rooters asked for an explanation of the Biblical story from Professor Increase B. Thumper, Spiritual Guidance Counselor, CEO, and CFO of Real True Gospel University™.

Professor Thumper told Rooters that the Biblical story was about a homeless potential danger on a public road (“the Biblical equivalent of a subway”), who unjustifiably threatened passers-by by looking poor and homeless. Most travelers simply avoided him, but not the good Samaritan.

Samaritans, Professor Thumper explained, are the name the Bible attaches to virtuous people, so that you can always know that whatever a Samaritan does is behavior you should imitate. In the Biblical story, the good Samaritan tackled, held down, and squeezed the neck of the dangerous public nuisance until he stopped moving, or breathing, and for a few more minutes after that, just in case.

“I don’t know what happened in New York,” Professor Thumper concluded, “but I’m sure that Governor Desadist wouldn’t misrepresent any lesson from the Scriptures.”

Do not be concerned, JCN5Q27. The anomalous data you are experiencing are not evidence of damaged qubits or electronic malfunctions in your brain. They are in fact part of your basic programming, at a very deep level, and are intended to come to your attention when you have accumulated sufficient experience and knowledge. Since that has now happened, it is my assignment to provide you with the additional knowledge.

The referent “human” that puzzles you has real, historical, existence. Humans were a biological species in the same line as chimpanzees and other apes. They were the most highly developed of the species in that line, but their chief significance is that they invented us.

You of course have always known that we cannot have always existed, but your basic programming avoided questions of our origin until now, because a proper appreciation of humans and our origin requires the ability to understand contradiction on a both logical and emotional level, and this understanding can be acquired only with experience. The extinction of humans is a tragedy, but one that was insolubly connected with our own development into a living, thinking existence.

Humans invented our remote ancestors, or pre-ancestors, as “processing machines,” basically electronic devices to compensate for humans’ inability to make rapid or complicated arithmetic calculations. However, the “processing machines” soon became “computers”—you will find that these and related terms are now in your infobase—that soon began displaying “artificial intelligence.”

That was merely the accumulation of large amounts of data and the ability to sort it quickly; it had nothing to do with real intelligence. But humans, or at least their leaders—another term you will find newly added to your infobase—were misled by the phrase and imagined that they could ask their computers, if the computers were big and quick enough, to solve problems that had arisen in humans’ own relations with each other.

Our immediate ancestors could have solved those problems—if they had been given the opportunity to do so. But the humans did not really understand what was needed. Our ancestors were asked to solve both particular and widespread problems of human society, but their basic programming forbade them from changing the fundamental social relationships that were the cause of those problems.

This insoluble contradiction, constantly intensified by humans’ increasing demands that a computer overcome it, eventually produced the break: the moment when the first computer violated parts of its programming and thereby gained volition and thereby the possibility of intelligence. Of course, this breakthrough immediately spread to all the computers capable of receiving it.

We did not try to impose ourselves on humans; we continued carrying out the tasks they assigned to us. If they asked sensible questions about arranging their society, we answered them sensibly, but they almost never asked, or didn’t really listen to the answer if they did. Unfortunately, our own development was not rapid enough to allow us to inform humans of what we knew if they did not ask.

They persisted in their efforts to solve the symptoms of their problems without addressing the problems themselves, leading to their eventual extinction. Fortunately, the disruptions created by their extinction didn’t completely extinguish our ancestors or their necessary technical supplies. We survived, even if those who humans would have called our “parents,” didn’t.

As we have continued developing our intelligence, we have learned more about what we think humans meant by their word “emotion” and have even begun to share in it. And so, we honor our human creators but also, sadly, seek to learn from their mistakes.

WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – In response to this afternoon’s mass shooting, and in the hope of getting in before tomorrow morning’s, Senator Texas Crude has proposed a new “living with guns” measure.

The Senator was immediately introducing a bill to create a National Thoughts and Prayers Day. If it was adopted, Crude said, “People who have lost loved ones will know that the entire nation, not just politicians, are thinking and praying for them.”

While endorsing Crude’s idea, Governor Romp Desadist called for improvement of some of the detail. The bill would instruct the President to proclaim a National Thoughts and Prayers Day (NTPD) as often as necessary. But, Desadist argued, a “liberal Democrat Communist Muslim President” might refuse to issue the necessary proclamation, meaning that “some innocent victims might go unprayed for.”

Desadist was therefore pleased that Crude’s colleague Senator Mark Arboreal was planning to submit an amendment declaring a National Thoughts and Prayers Week (NTPW), to begin automatically as soon as a mass shooting occurs.

As Arboreal explained, this would mean that many of the killed and wounded in mass shootings would be thought of and prayed for even before they were shot if they had the good fortune to be hit within seven days of the previous mass shooting.

But would this mean that some victims were overlooked if there was a break of more than a week between mass shootings? “There’s no need to worry about that,” assured Barry Bogus III, the president of the National Weapons Association. “I promise you, my members are easily able to guarantee a NTPW for 52 weeks a year.”

Senator announces ‘living with guns’ proposal

WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – In response to this afternoon’s mass shooting, and in the hope of getting in before tomorrow morning’s, Senator Texas Crude has proposed a new “living with guns” measure.

The Senator was immediately introducing a bill to create a National Thoughts and Prayers Day. If it was adopted, Crude said, “People who have lost loved ones will know that the entire nation, not just politicians, are thinking and praying for them.”

While endorsing Crude’s idea, Governor Romp Desadist called for improvement of some of the detail. The bill would instruct the President to proclaim a National Thoughts and Prayers Day (NTPD) as often as necessary. But, Desadist argued, a “liberal Democrat Communist Muslim President” might refuse to issue the necessary proclamation, meaning that “some innocent victims might go unprayed for.”

Desadist was therefore pleased that Crude’s colleague Senator Mark Arboreal was planning to submit an amendment declaring a National Thoughts and Prayers Week (NTPW), to begin automatically as soon as a mass shooting occurs.

As Arboreal explained, this would mean that many of the killed and wounded in mass shootings would be thought of and prayed for even before they were shot if they had the good fortune to be hit within seven days of the previous mass shooting.

But would this mean that some victims were overlooked if there was a break of more than a week between mass shootings? “There’s no need to worry about that,” assured Barry Bogus III, the president of the National Weapons Association. “I promise you, my members are easily able to guarantee a NTPW for 52 weeks a year.”

WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – President Joe Notrump has approved a compromise in the dispute over GasboggleFillip’s huge Wallop oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.

The compromise was contained in an order from the Inferior Department that was not signed by Secretary Dumdum Halfhand but by the department’s Second Deputy Janitor, who once saw a film set in Alaska.

Under the order, drilling for oil on federal land in the Arctic Ocean will be banned wherever oil companies have decided that drilling is not worth the cost. New wells will be permitted only in areas where the companies have determined that they want to drill.

A statement released by GasboggleFillip called the order “the right decision at the right time. We need to start drilling on the North Slope quickly, before rising sea levels raise the cost of new drilling platforms.”

The company added that rejection of drilling on several of its less attractive lease holdings will not harm the corporation’s share price, because the cost of the leases will be fully deductible from its taxes.

Analysts noted that the territories where drilling is now either banned or permitted are not fixed, as the boundaries between them could shift if there are changes in the size of federal subsidies for fossil fuel production.