On this day of April 1st, 2013, I’m pleased to announce that MPAA Chairman Former Senator Chris Dodd is now a member of the US Pirate Party, and we will be running him for President in 2016. Now, he’s not aware of this, and he’s finding it out right now just like the rest of you. But in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to draft people into political parties and presidential candidacies without their knowledge or consent.

MPAA Chairman Former Senator Chris Dodd — who by Official Pirate Unbreakable Law may never, ever be referred to simply as “MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd” — has long been a proponent of copyright maximalism, of draconian anti-piracy measures that violate privacy and break the Internet, and of demonizing everyone who has ever watched a movie at a friend’s house as a “thief.” During his career in public office, one of Dodd’s top campaign contributors has been General Electric, the parent company of MPAA member NBC Universal.

On this historic April 1st of 2013, Former Senator Dodd has had a change of heart. He is now a full-blown, bleeding-heart blackbeard, not only supporting a complete abolition of all copyright, patent, and trademark laws, but demanding that Hollywood refund the American people for every dime they spent on the filmography of director Michael Bay. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon was a national tragedy on par with slavery,” he said in a statement this morning. “It is our moral duty to begin paying reparations to each and every American citizen lured into cinemas by that piece of garbage.”

The former senator may deny this change of heart or these statements, but don’t believe him.

Dodd has also announced his choice of Althing member Birgitta Jónsdóttir as his vice presidential running mate. As an Icelandic-born non-US citizen, you’d think Birgitta would be ineligible for the US vice presidency. But in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to run and elect a vice presidential candidate who was not born in the US.

Unlike other third parties, the Pirate Party is in this presidential race to win it. Rick Falkvinge has announced that he will be pulling a full half of his Bitcoin savings out of his secret underground lair, and donating them to the campaign. Instead of using these Bitcoins for traditional campaign techniques like advertising, we’re just going to straight up give them to people in exchange for a vote for Dodd. Because in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to accept unlimited foreign donations and use them to literally bribe voters.

We’ve also recruited hacktivists who’ve been involved in Wikileaks, Anonymous, and LulzSec to assist with, um, “election monitoring.” I mean, hell, in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to hack into electronic voting machines around the country to tilt the outcome of the election in our favor.

This is some of the most exciting news that the Pirate Party has ever been able to announce. We believe that today — April 1st, 2013 — will be a day that goes down in the history books as the day that the Pirate Party truly became a force to be reckoned with in the United States. Remember that date: the first of April. Chances are, we’ll all be celebrating this date for years and years to come.