Sometimes the best advice is the hardest to take.

Cocteau Twins - Pink Orange Red

The most extraordinary band of all time?

Die, you fucking cunt

It could have been so easy for this utterly hateful, second-rate scum, despite his ignominious failings as a politician and human being, to end his political career on a high note. Even though he was the Prime Minister who presided over the catastrophic voucher privatisation scheme which resulted in a large proportion of the country’s wealth going into the pockets of sharp-eyed, “Harvard educated” sociopath Viktor Kožený, later taught in some Western European universities as a model of how not to privatise, even though his notorious arrogance and bloody-mindedness split his own party in two, even despite his mendacious anti-communist posturing and cheap, cowardly stereotyping of anyone to the left of Hayek as a Stalinist, all this after years of meek collaboration, later followed by deals with an unrepentant communist party in order to get elected president, despite the appalling contempt he showed for his erudite, gentlemanly predecessor and genuine dissident Václav Havel and despite his repugnant political views, president Václav Klaus nevertheless initially had unfathomably high approval ratings in his role as head of state. And since this is, or should be, essentially an apolitical, representative function, not unlike that of the British monarch, he could have quite easily gone out with dignity like a grand old man, forgiven for his mistakes and respected even by many of his opponents, remembered, however wrongly, as a swashbuckling, epoch-making conviction politician who magnificently stepped up to the helm during those confusing, heady post-revolutionary days.

Too late for all that though, the stupid cunt. Like many other recipients of outrageous political luck, and as always it’s impossible to avoid mentioning his idol Thatcher at this point, Klaus evidently feels compelled to test his good fortune against an overwhelming political death wish. All he had to do was to keep his mouth shut. But for Klaus, no enterprise is more inconceivable than that. Instead he’s used his presidency as a vehicle for his gargantuan ego, to fulminate and nitpick on every imaginable topic. Just recently he’s leapt on his party’s annihilation in the local and senate elections in order to kick his successor Mirek Topolánek while he’s down, as if we couldn’t remember just what a roaring success Klaus was as PM and party leader. Sickening though this is, not only for the very few fans of Topolánek who are left, at least it’s confined to domestic politics. Klaus, though, is no man to content himself with mere parochialism but is rather a crusading universalist, whose lightning bolts of insight demand an international stage. Hence a state visit to Ireland presented a golden opportunity, and certainly not one to be squandered by respecting protocol and decorum, thereby running the risk of him not being the centre of attention. The outcome was what the Irish Examiner called “the most embarrassing state visit in recent memory”, and one which looked suspiciously like an attempt to sabotage the Czech Republic’s forthcoming presidency of the EU. Perhaps it was a case of Klaus projecting his guilt, mindful of the fact that his Frankenstein’s monster Kožený, a wanted criminal in his homeland, is now an Irish citizen. Or maybe I should leave out the clumsy amateur psychology bullshit, the notion that Klaus would ever harbour any feelings of guilt is obvious nonsense.

As usual anyone who disagrees with Klaus is a “hypocrite”, who is inevitably likened to a communist, YAWN. The man is clearly mad, and his mania is accelerating at an alarming rate, to the increasing shame and detriment of the Czech Republic. Ah well, nothing to do with me. If I’m to choose between my country of origin and my country of residence, I feel a great deal happier about being represented by Gordon Brown and the Duke of Edinburgh. That’s how much I hate Klaus.

It was probably wise of Obama not to give Joe the Plumber a good pasting before the election, but now that it’s in the bag I hope one of his first acts as president is to lock the criminal bastard up for tax evasion. In the meantime, since I don’t ever intend to run for high office I might as well spit some bile at the twat before he fades into obscurity. I might be guilty here of confusing the man himself for what he represents, but in this case I’m not sure the two can or should be separated. Yes, I know that he’s not really Joe the Plumber, since his name’s not Joe and he’s not actually a licensed plumber. So then this means that he’s not only symptomatic of the hypocrisy (and utter bloody suicidal crassness) of the Republican Party on a party political level, but that as an individual he’s a fucking liar. A liar who complains on national TV about his taxes going up under the Democrats, but doesn’t pay the ones set for him by the party he voted for anyway. A self-centred, self-righteous, whining prick with no conscience, social or otherwise. Apparently he’s now bitter about having been used by the Republicans in their promotion of not paying your taxes as the patriotic American way, of greed and ignorance as the great virtues of the common, salt-of-the-earth American. But in that case he shouldn’t have opened his fat, dishonest mouth.

Initially I expected Sarah Palin to be destined for similar obscurity, but some of the more visionary Republicans are hoping for her to stand in 2012. All I can say is: get in there girl! This hockey milf of the people has the potential to become the Republicans’ answer to Ian Duncan Smith. As the great W once said, Bring it on!

Hello sailors!

Ernst Röhm. Leading member of the Nazi party until the Night of the Long Knives, the last but not the first night of his life to involve penetration by long foreign objects.

Ted Haggard, former family values preacher and head of the National Association of Evangelicals until hit by an unfortunate scandal.

Jörg Haider, former Austrian far-right leader, pictured with his handsome, orange-tanned protégé.

Richard Littejohn, British journalist and purveyor of common sense.

I'm sure there's some kind of correlation between these individuals, but I'm damned if I can work out what it might be.