It was announced today that the United States of America, also known as the U.S., U.S.A. and the U.S. of A., died during the last week of August 2011 after an excruciating battle with ideologues, incompetents and idiots, more commonly known as the "III Syndrome." The disease, which strikes with unusually ample warning, has been responsible for the death or disabling of countless other national and political entities, including Greece, Italy, and the Kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth.
America leaves behind 300 million grieving, economically and socially divided citizens, many of whom believed until the very end that no one in his right mind would pinch the oxygen line to a patient hovering between life and death. When it became evident that roughly 88 individuals who were out of their right minds had been permitted into the operating theater, it was too late.
During its storied life, America garnered worldwide plaudits for its vision and heart. As one foreign leader put it sometime prior to the 1980 presidential election, "America is what every other country wants to be: a nation with the common sense not to let politics or orthodoxy distort democracy. We can't figure out how they do it, but we believe it may be something in the water."
Notwithstanding the widespread praise lavished upon the country over the course of its 235 year history, America was not without its problems. Its wars included a long and bloody internal conflict over the issue of slavery; a protracted war at the turn of the twentieth century, triggered by someone throwing a pie in the face of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria while he was in Sarajevo hoping to buy Winter Olympics tickets 70 years early; and a fierce, almost decade-long battle in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the hearts and minds of people who, as it turned out, didn't want anyone messing with their hearts and minds.
America's significant contributions to the advancement of science and mankind are too numerous to mention. They include a host of ingenious inventions and innovations such as Benjamin Franklin's wooden swim fins (1717), Levi Spear Parmly's dental floss (1815), George Crum's potato chip (1853), and the atomic bomb, for which no was willing to take credit (humility was also an American invention).
Informed sources say that an Amtrak funeral train bearing scorched earth from beneath the desks of Congresspersons Michelle Bachmann, Eric Cantor and Ron Paul will depart at 10AM or 1PM or 4:50 PM on approximately August 14. Upon arrival, the remains will be carried on the backs of America's poor and unemployed from the World Bank Headquarters to the Capitol, where they will lie in state until the day set for foreclosure by the Bank of China.
President Obama and his aides are said to be considering a request to House Speaker John Boehner to be permitted to send a sympathy card.