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Volume XI
Issue 10
October 2008

Copyboy's Note: Good news. The Globe-Guardian, on Nov. 15, successfully restored its ailing Windows 95-based PEEKING™ system and was able to retrieve all virtual reporters stranded in the future. Bad news. Due to a dire lack of nourishment during the month that reporters' bodies were tethered to the PEEKING suite, no information about the possible development of the Blimp Spotters Brigade was obtained. Good news. One especially hardy reporter was able to return with a fascinating glimpse of a possible new American political system.

President Taunts President
By Diane Donaldson
National Correspondent

(Austin, Texas., Jan. 7, 2002) -- President George W. Bush opened his work week by taking another jab at President Al Gore, as the former United States of America entered its second year as a double nation.

"I could kick Al Gore's butt on celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Bush declared from the former Texas governor's mansion, now known as the Off-White House, from which he serves as chief executive of the Republican Confederation of American States. "If he doesn't want to do that, he could just concede for the good of the nation."

As he has done on countless previous occasions, Gore, president of the Democratic Union of American States, did not respond directly to Bush's challenge, deferring comment to Vice-President Joseph Lieberman.

"I do think this latest empty challenge threatens the credibility and legitimacy of the ultimate indecision of electors in this country," Leiberman said. "It threatens to undermine the compromise that brought us to our twin nation status and threatens plunge us back into a constitutional crisis."

Beyond preventing a constitutional crisis, the Compromise of 2001 is credited by most political experts as diverting the United States from fighting Civil War II. Bush had rejected the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that all votes rejected for mechanical faults must be counted in the Florida total. He had continued his preparations to assume the presidency until blocked by federal troops at the White House front gate.

Amid reports that Texas and the other states which had awarded their Electoral College votes to Bush were preparing to secede from the United States, Congress, backed by the Supreme Court and American public desire to "just get the damn election over with," hastily enacted a measure creating a second presidential office. Each state was authorized to decide, via popular vote or legislative action, which President it would call its own.

The state decisions followed precisely along the Gore-Bush lines of the popular vote. After a half-dozen recounts, Florida's vote on the Confederation-Union Referendum remained too close to call. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris finally called a halt to the process and declared that Florida would remain unaffiliated. She immediately drew criticism from both sides for wearing too much makeup. Bush stopped returning her phone calls.

"The President is, of course, more than up to any intellectual challenge offered by Mr. Bush," Lieberman said. "He offers the alternative of competing on a near-future edition of celebrity Jeopardy. No lifelines, and all the gray matter cells will be counted.''

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