As our political leadership prepares to lead us into the economic abyss with the imminent passing of that much-maligned “stimulus” bill, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford provided a temporary moment of lucidity during a recent interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.

My favorite part:

Tell the truth to the American public, which is that there is gonna be pain.  Politicians seem to have perfected this notion that we’re about preventing all pain.

I’ve developed an extreme distaste for Bill Kristol over the years.  This is largely due to his constant and inexplicable attempts to turn bird droppings into hand lotion when it comes to all things conservative.  That being said, he does occasionally write something that is either not entirely absurd or is actually kinda funny.  Evidence of the latter was a recent quote that I heard attributed to him: “Tom Daschle is a limousine liberal who doesn’t even pay taxes on his limousine.”  Hehe.  Atta boy, Billy!

Now, I admittedly know very little about Tom Daschle.  From what I’ve read, he sounds like a perfectly nice and capable guy.  However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t understand his nomination to head up the Department of Health and Human Services in the first place.  The guy has no formal training or real experience in the space outside of a book he co-wrote on nationalizing health care.  Oh, and the lobbying he did on behalf of certain health care companies, but Obama promised that he wouldn’t allow lobbyists to infiltrate his White House.  Thusly, Daschle couldn’t be a lob…wait, what the?

In any event, the dude really didn’t seem to bring much to the table from what I could tell.  And to be honest, I would’ve eliminated him from consideration on the basis of those ridiculous red-rimmed glasses alone.  But that’s just me.  And while I can sympathize with his tax oversights (I, for one, have no idea how accurate my returns are since I leave them to the professionals to handle), I can’t help but chuckle at the irony of it all.  I mean, here you have yet another Democratic politician getting into trouble for not paying his or her taxes….after having left public office to take a fat cat lobbying gig.  Not only does it provide a wonderful opening for Republicans to make statements like, “Now I know why Democrats love raising taxes so much; it’s because they don’t pay them!”, but it also just seems so perfect that Daschle’s rather large tax bill stemmed from the services provided by his personal chauffeur.  Obviously, this plays perfectly into the hands of those decrying all things political elite, and to those Republicans determined to point out inconsistencies between how Democrats choose to live and how they choose to govern.  As the Wall Street Journal sarcastically said, it “could’ve happened to anyone.”

And I just can’t help but revel in the glorious comedy provided by revisiting this old Daschle commercial:

And by this Daschle quote from several years back:

Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.

You gotta give it up.  It’s all pretty funny when you think about it!

President Obama wants New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg to serve as his Commerce Secretary.  New Hampshire’s governor is a Democrat.  As we saw with the Blago affair, governors have the right (for now) to appoint someone to take over a vacated senate seat.  Assuming things proceed in usual fashion and a Democrat appoints a Democrat, and assuming Al Franken wins that contested seat in Minnesota, the Dems would get their 60 seats in the Senate.  That makes for a filibuster-proof super majority, which would basically mean the Dems could do whatever they wanted and the Republicans would essentially be relegated to serving as part of the Senate chamber furniture.  This would be a negative development, in my view, but I must say that this would also prove quite the shrewd political move on the part of the Obama team.

To continue my Blago slamjob, I thought it would be fun to share the clip below.  Keith Olbermann and his team over at MSNBC put together a fun collection of Blago’s finest moments, most of which came courtesy of the late night comedy shows.  Now that Blago has officially been impeached by the Illinios state senate, it would appear that our favorite political doormat will fade from the public eye, at least until he makes another shameless attempt at publicity, like writing a book or something.  At least we know he’ll be missed in some circles, as I’m sure Conan O’Brien and his counterparts will mourn the loss of one of their easiest targets since….well…I guess the days of W.

As my distaste for the global political class grows exponentially by the day, I’ve decided to introduce a new feature to Eddyfication that focuses on all things maddening in the world of political corruption.  As part of this endeavor, I’ve coined a new word that I believe aptly captures the depressing nature of the problem: kleptoridiculosity.  The word is a combination of kleptocracy and ridiculosity – one word that exists and one word that doesn’t but should.  Yes, I’ve invented a word by combining a real word with a fake word, violating all manner of rules in the world of grammar.  Nonetheless, I’m going to proceed under the assumption that, as with most things in life, two wrongs make a right.

Merriam-Webster defines kleptocracy as “government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed.”  Meanwhile, our friends at Urban Dictionary have multiple takes on the definition of ridiculosity, the most appropriate of which is “complete ridiculousness; foolishness beyond belief and reason.”  Put those together and you’ve got a word that comes closest to capturing the essence of those politicians who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, insist that they are right and everyone else is wrong.  And that they have the right to go to extraordinary lengths to further their own selfish ends, often at the expense of their electorate.

Now that the grammatical stage has been set, I’m happy (is that the word for it?) to introduce two standouts whose recent machinations have earned them the dubious distinction of being part of this kleptoridiculosity inauguration:  Robert Mugabe and Rod Blagojevich.  Both are douchebags of the highest order, though I admit that their slime wreaks havoc of wildly different proportion.  One allows his egomania to result in the death and destruction of an entire country, whereas the other one simply allows his corruption to reveal what an amazing moron his really is, all the while inviting a light to be shone upon the common political practice of quid pro quo.

Let’s revisit the wonderful work Mugabe has done during his iron-fisted and incredibly incompetent rule of Zimbabwe.  He has destroyed the economy of what was once known as the breadbasket of Africa, instituting racist and ill-intentioned programs that resulted in backsliding of historic magnitude.  As a result, the country’s GDP today is near what it was in 1954.  For reference, were the U.S. to find itself in a similar situation, our country’s economic output would equal roughly $1.5 trillion versus the $14 trillion or so it is in reality (though that number is certainly in for a dip).  According to CIA statistics, Zimbabwe’s GDP per capita is just USD $200, putting it at or near the bottom in world rankings.  Unemployment now hovers near 90% and a similar proportion of the population lives under the poverty line.  Inflation has reached super-hyper-stratospheric territory, with the official number gauging it at over 230 million percent in July.  Independent estimates are far greater and, sadly, more realistic.  The most recent estimate I’ve seen was 87 sextillion percent(!) by the Cato Institute.  For those wondering, that’s 87 followed by twenty-one zeroes.  Such runaway inflation is causing the country’s printing presses to work on overdrive to allow for the issuance of new notes that can stand in for those that prove worthless by the end of the day they were issued.  Indeed, the latest news suggested that issuance of a $50 trillion note was imminent.  Think about that for a moment.  Meanwhile, according to a recent United Nations survey, 70% of Zimbabweans are eating either zero or one meal per 48-hour period.  This might help explain why life expectancy has decreased from 65 when the country gained independence from the Brits in 1980 to just around 35 today.  And to top it all off, it’s become clear the country’s sanitation systems are breaking down, as it is currently in the midst of a cholera outbreak that has already infected more than 16,000 people and has the potential to put half of the country’s 12 million people at risk.  Despite the very clear suffering of his people, Mugabe and his minions have lived in the lap of relative luxury, bestowing upon themselves ridiculous pay increases and throwing lavish birthday parties for their benefactor while his wife, whose nickname is Gucci Grace, routinely went on lavish European shopping sprees (until, of course, her travel was limited by international authorities who finally put a stop to the madness, though she was recently said to have withdrawn approximately USD $100,000 from the country’s federal reserve bank to fund a vacation trip to Malaysia).  In a move that would run counter to any inkling of rationality or compassion, Mugabe refuses to yield power, tightening his grip on power through force and intimidation while blaming his country’s travails on the meddling of Western governments hellbent on undermining black rule in Zimbabwe.  And I say “good day, sir!”.

Then there’s Rod Blagojevich, aka Blago.  Clearly, his trespasses pale in comparison to those of Mugabe, though I do find humor in some of Blago’s declarations that appear to channel the Zimbabwean dictator (“I will fight, I will fight, I will fight…to my very last breath”).  What amazes me about this moron is not necessarily the fact that he was caught attempting to sell the vacated Senate seat of Barack Obama.  Let’s be honest, this type of corrupt shit is par for the course among most if not all politicians.  What really cranks up the wow factor with this one – besides his helmet hair – is the fact that Blago has the gall to deny that he’s done anything wrong, this despite actually being caught on tape cursing to high heaven as he wrangles to have his back scratched in exchange for making an appointment.  The guy is on tape, clear as day, soliciting favors in exchange for an appointment to Obama’s senate seat.  I mean, you can’t get anymore obvious than that.  Yet he expects us to buy the bullshit he is selling when he says that he has done nothing wrong, which I assume he means in a legal sense since he never actually received favors in exchange for the appointment thanks to the premature reveal done by Pat Fitzgerald.  So it seems Blago is truly capable of believing the bile that comes out of his mouth because he has convinced himself that he violated no laws per se (though I think he did by solicitation alone), allowing him to make peace with himself by using the crutch of legal technicality rather than anything resembling moral fortitude.  Can you imagine the circles he tried to run around his parents when little Blago was caught with his hand in the cookie jar?  After all, having been caught…with his hand in the cookie jar…little Blago was unable to complete the actual act of sneaking a cookie; therefore, he did nothing wrong since, alas, he took no cookie.  This resembles the pile of stink he is trying to sell the people of Illinois as well as the American public (via his tour of the NYC publicity circuit this past week; by the way, who paid for that trip?  As someone who pays Illinois taxes, I’d like to know).  By the way, during his media blitz last week, he repeatedly said that he hadn’t heard the tapes that have now been made infamous.  How stupid does this guy think we are?  You cannot possibly convince me that this little worm didn’t listen to those tapes.  That would be akin to me being caught on video cheering for USC then trying to convince my Irish friends that it wasn’t me, all the while making the acenine assertion that I hadn’t actually seen the tape.  There is no way in hell I wouldn’t want to see that tape…especially if I knew it to be false or misleading!  In any event, while he’s up on his perch preaching his own innocence, he fuels the media fixation with him by invoking Pearl Harbor, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi while reciting poetry and lessons of justice from the Old West.  And the guy is so obsessed with his horrendous hairdo that he has nicknamed his hairbrush “the football” in a play on the briefcase that holds the nuclear codes that is always kept close to the president.  This guy is better than fiction.  Seriously, could he have made himself anymore of a caricature of the corrupt, oblivious, self-obsessed politician?

So there you have it, my friends.  Your first living, breathing examples of kleptoridiculosity.  I look forward to unveiling further examples in the months to come.