Political Humor Tap Won't Run Dry Any Time Soon

Late-night TV comics won't run out of fresh material for the next few weeks. Politics has renewed its promises to be the gift that keeps on giving: just look at the sagas of accused "bad boy" Timothy Gaithner, "good guy" Governor Blagojevich's Illinois impeachment, or the 250 "nice guys" earmarked to become homeless Gitmo detainees.

Gaithner might turn out to be the nighttime gagsters' biggest savior yet. Nominated as Treasury Secretary by President Obama, Gaithner admits to a rather spotty past as a federal income taxpayer. There are several lessons here.

As Treasury Secretary, he will enjoy the authority of printing all the money we need--a "guesstimate" of anywhere from one to four trillion dollars, and still adding zeros, between now and 2012.

More important, he'll be top gun at the IRS, the very same tax-collection agency Gaithner's been thumbing his nose at. This will mean--if's he's OK'd by the U.S. Senate--we have a clear precedent to cite when the IRS does a double-take on our own tax declaration. It helps that Gaithner is a Democrat; if he were a Republican, he'd already be Tennessee road kill.

One positive: whether or not Gaithner is eventually confirmed by the Senate, 69,990 pages of the currently unintelligible 70,000-page U.S. tax code will have to be deleted.

The biggest mystery in the Gaithner case is that bipartisan fans claim he's the only guy that can save us from economic Armageddon. One of the early business school lessons we learn, though, is that no one is irreplaceable. Gaither could fall in front of a speeding bus tomorrow. Bear in mind, Gaithner was also one of about 50 super-economists to patch together the initial bailout, for what it's worth.

The latest twist in the Blago epic is that he depicts himself as John Wayne on a big white stallion, riding into town to save the local bank vault from the "bad guys." Someday Hollywood will surely star Blago in a remake of "Blazing Saddles."

Oh, and it'll be OK to string him up from the nearest tall oak tree, just as long as he gets a fair trial first. That's the story he's spreading around New York TV studios this week, and he's sticking with it.

President Obama wants the Gitmo prison camp closed by the end of this year. He claims the move will improve America's image abroad. Who cares? Ever think of putting America first? Promptly cut off financial aid to any ally or rogue country that dares to question the way we handle enemy combatants.

The problem remains, though. What on Earth do we do with the 250 prisoners made homeless by the new president's bleary-eyed executive order? European or Asian countries may accept a few more. We have the option of re-opening the offshore Alcatraz prison fortress, but that might be a more expensive and legal challenge than keeping the Gitmo sunshine resort a going facility.

We don't have all that many maximum-security federal prisons in the continental U.S. And certainly none where the inmates are free to dump their urine and feces cocktails on unsuspecting prison guards. Gitmo's guards are getting used to the treatment, however; they now don Hazmat protection gear when they're within spitting range of the cells.

Flaky U.S. Congressman Jack Murtha (bleeding heart liberal Dem, natch), says all the Gitmo nasties would be welcome to prisons in his Pennsylvania district. "No different from any other detainees, " he claims. He hasn't been listening very closely to his constituents; almost universally, they don't want any Islamic hair ball roaming their back yards, let alone their court houses.

Maybe Murtha's voters don't hear well, either, or he might have been voted out of Congress long ago. He was himself the hair ball who famously labeled most of his constituents "hair balls" in the heat of last year's election campaign. He's still in Washington, though!

And, if we need more, there's always an original sin coming out of Illinois. Two of their ex-governors are already locked up.