Quote of the day: You won't believe the answer to today's QOTD Quiz (well, actually, you will, but that's what makes it so funny)

We wanted to know who said today's QOTD:

For too long, the culture of corruption has undercut development and good governance and bred criminality and mistrust around the world. High-level corruption by senior government officials, or kleptocracy, is a grave and corrosive abuse of power and represents the most invidious type of public corruption. It threatens our national interest and violates our values.

Even if you hadn't heard about this story, you probably guessed the trick and went with the least probable answer, and the choices included the absolute least probable source you could imagine for these sentiments.

No, it wasn't Al Gore, or Ralph Nader, or former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham," or Sen. "Holy Joe" Lieberman. The answer, of course, is (e) President Bush, calling for an inter-agency "international initiative to combat kleptocracy"--or, to give it its proper handle, "The President's International Initiative to Combat Kleptocracy."

By which you might think that our Chimpy means to invite assistance from abroad to purge our government, on the theory that it clearly can't be trusted to police itself. But no, we gather that he means to go after foreign officials, presumably those whose kleptocratic practices don't measure up to American standards.


AFTERTHOUGHT--Say, is Maxwell Smart involved in this?

After we posted this item, we were looking at that International Initiative to Combat Kleptocracy, and we couldn't stop giggling. There's just something inescapably fizzy about the alliteration of "combating kleptocracy." Then we noticed that the acronym would be IICK. (That's without the "president" part, but hey, we're all in favor of doing without the president.)

IICK?

We have to believe that somewhere in there--maybe huddled with Karl Rove under the Cone of Silence?--you'll find Max Smart burbling the motto of the Bush administration, "Missed it by that much."