George Papandreou

Prime Minister of Greece
by Kate.

When an election takes place during a time of crisis, the primary concern of voters isn’t always hotness.* For example, polls indicate that if the US presidential election were being held tomorrow, a junk shot wearing an American flag pin would win. Sure, a giant mass of shredded tires and golf balls might not be the hottest candidate, but for some reason Americans are really worried about oil spills right now. They’re also worried about the economy, and it would be nice to have a president who could eliminate our national debt by rolling over our creditors and crushing them.**

Given that Greece is teetering on the verge of economic collapse, I can hardly blame them for electing George Papandreou, the only prime ministerial candidate who looked unlikely to borrow billions of dollars and then default on his loan. (As opposed to, say, this guy.) What the Greek people did not count on, however, is that by electing someone who looked stern and fiscally responsible, they might have accidentally elected someone who actually is stern and fiscally responsible.

Shortly after taking office, Prime Minister Papandreou announced his plan to rein in Greece’s massive budget deficit by instituting a series of sensible and well-thought-out austerity measures, including:

• Temporarily halting construction of the Superacropolis.

• Reforming Greece’s nearly bankrupt pension system by piling everyone over the age of 61 into a large, hollow, wooden horse and presenting it as a gift to Turkey. Take that, Turkey!

• Cutting down on expensive parliamentary elections by extending the prime minister term length from 4 years to 80 years.

These proposals have proven wildly unpopular with the Greek people, most of whom support a simpler, two-step plan:

1. Pretend to pass austerity measures to trick the EU into lending them more money.

2. When it is time to pay back the loan, change the name of the country to “Breece” so the EU can’t find them.

When protesters criticized Papandreou’s austerity measures and called for the implementation of the “Breece” plan, the prime minister responded by saying that he had been implementing the Breece plan, and thanks a lot for blowing his cover. He even stayed up all night designing the new Breek flag:

In conclusion, there is a lot of blame to be spread around for the Greek financial crisis. One thing that’s certain, though, is that you can’t blame Greece, any more than you can blame JD and me for taking out a 28.8 million dollar loan so we could purchase the space shuttle Atlantis. (Seriously, how were we supposed to know that loan was a bad idea? We’re not fancy accountants with graphing paper. We’re just regular people who want to live in a space shuttle.)

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*Unless the crisis is an emergency prime minister beauty pageant. Or an impending ice age.

**Plus, it just looks so patriotic wearing that American flag pin. It draws a sharp contrast to our current president, who wears a Kenyan flag pin. (For the record, Obama asserts that this is not because he prefers Kenya to America, but because he prefers the Kenyan flag to the American flag, because it is a lot cooler looking. And, let’s face it, he’s right.)

Mohamed Nasheed

President of the Maldives
by Kate.

Most people are not very worried about their homes sinking into the ocean…but they should be, if they live in Alberta.*

Another place that might sink into the ocean is the Maldives. Only one person has ever heard of the Maldives, so perhaps a brief history lesson is in order.

The Maldives is an island chain that was first settled by a group of British schoolboys who washed ashore after surviving a plane crash. The country is led by the sexy-in-a-nerdy-way President Mohamed Nasheed, who is best known for his trademark eyeglasses, which he stole from a political dissident named Piggy. Until recently, Nasheed’s presidency has centered around boar hunting and neglecting the signal fire, but the imminent danger of his island nation being submerged under water has temporarily diverted his attention.

Dmitry Medvedev

President of Russia
by Kate.

You will be happy to learn that J.D. and I have found a new hobby that is superior in every way to our old hobby of updating our website. We are watching Dallas on DVD.

If you are not already familiar with the wildly popular prime-time television program Dallas that ran from 1978 to 1991, then I am not going to waste my precious Dallas-watching time educating you. But I will say that Dallas is the greatest TV show I have ever seen, unless you count all of the TV shows I used to watch before I decided that a funny thing to do would be to cancel cable and only watch Dallas.

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

King of Bhutan
by Kate.

One question that we get a lot is “Is your website a dating service?”

The answer, of course, is yes. Obviously.

Running a country can be a lot of work.* Some world leaders work as many as 10 or 15 hours a week! Now, that might not sound like a lot to all of you workaholics who are used to putting in 18-hour weeks, but keep in mind that only about half of that time is spent engaging in hand-to-hand combat with challengers to the throne (or, for heads of government, challengers to the regular chair). The rest of the time they are doing data entry, which makes the time pass really slowly. And don’t forget that in countries like Colombia a day is only 22 hours long, because it is so close to the sun.

For the average head of state, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to find a suitable mate. And that’s why we’re here: To find romantic companions for all of the leaders of the world, without them even having to ask us, and then impose our choices upon them, even if they’re already married, or have taken a vow of chastity (I’m looking at you, Pope), or have politely but forcefully declined our repeated advances (I’m looking at you again, Pope.)

Pope Benedict XVI

Sovereign of Vatican City
by Kate.

Just in case God reads this website, I want to make sure it’s clear that JD is the one who doubts the hotness of Pope Benedict XVI. (Although this does beg the question: Can God read?)

The less-damned of us would argue that Pope Benedict XVI is kind of cute, in a scary-undereye-circles way. Like Benicio del Toro. Or a panda. And keep in mind that if he wanted to he could always transubstantiate into a hotter pope, or into a piece of bread. That’s what’s so fun about Catholicism.

Amazing Poll Results

by Kate.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our second official poll. To those of you who didn’t participate… I have nothing more to say to you. Please stop reading this and look out the window so those us of who care about polls and democracy and freedom can have a private conversation.

Dalia Grybauskaitė

President of Lithuania
by Kate.

As you may have noticed (if you’re my travel agent… or my husband… or my boss) I spent last month in Lithuania. Lithuania is a popular vacation destination for those of us who are stalking Alexander Lukashenko but have been banned from Belarus for one reason or another. While there, I managed to land an imaginary interview with Lithuanian president and boyfriend-stealing hussy Dalia Grybauskaite. The transcript follows.

Kate: Dalia Grybauskaite, I have only one question for you today. Are you or are you not romantically involved with Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko?

Dalia: Wait, what? I thought this was going to be an interview about my black belt in karate.

Kate: Yes, I did invite you here under the premise of questioning you about your unfeminine and unbecoming karate skills, but that was just a clever trick.

Dalia: What do you mean “invite me here”? I was walking to my mailbox and you jumped out from behind a bush!

Michaëlle Jean

Governor General of Canada
by Kate and J.D.

Our former #1, Yulia Tymoshenko, might not be the Prime Minister of Ukraine anymore, but she will always be the Prime Minister of Hotness.  Just not on this website.

Earlier this week, Viktor Yanukovich narrowly defeated Tymoshenko in the Ukranian presidential election with 49% of the vote to Tymoshenko’s 45.5%. Political analysts say that it is no coincidence that exactly 45.5% of Ukrainians are hot and 49% are only good-looking. (The remaining 5.5% are bears.*) This election was a classic case of the “hots” versus the “hot-nots,” and it is a textbook example of how a bitter and unsightly proletariat will sometimes rebel against their hot superiors. (Another instance of this was when Martin Luther left the Catholic church.)

Rafael Correa

President of Ecuador
by Kate.

Some people say to me, “Kate, I’ve noticed you often write about world leaders who you have a crush on. I am starting to suspect that this is part of a pathetic fantasy that these world leaders will somehow read what you wrote and be flattered and then run into you and ask you out on a date. Even though they’re married. And you’re married. And you have that unattractive limp.”

To these people, I say “Hey, do you happen to have Rafael Correa’s personal email address? If so, do you think you could send him a link to this website? Because that would really help me out.”

Jens Stoltenberg

Prime Minister of Norway
by Kate.

I don’t know how observant you are, but I’m going to guess not very, based on the fact that so far no one has picked up on the subliminal messages I’ve been inserting into every EIKOOC A EM LIAM one EIKOOC A EM LIAM of my posts EIKOOC A EM LIAM.

So you probably haven’t noticed that our header image now changes, randomly rotating among a small set of obviously airbrushed photos. I don’t know about you, but every time I come to this website, I keep clicking “refresh” until the photo of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg comes up. And then I forget what I was doing and get trapped in his passionate gaze. For hours. Incidentally, this is why our website is updated so infrequently.