Predicting the bottom of a depressed market is said to be impossible. You don’t recognize it until it’s well past. With the historic declines in value and confidence in the market right now, that bottom seems more difficult than ever to discern, even as we desperately long for it. Well, I believe we have incontrovertible evidence of that bottom today. I’m not talking about credit or equity markets. I’m referring to the long-term, precipitous decline in the quality of our political class. Caroline Kennedy’s “listening tour”? Blago’s turning the Governor’s office into a bazaar (if unique only for its frankness and the documented nature of its vulgarity) offering the sale of a senate seat? Al Franken, for the love of —, taking Hubert Humphrey’s seat in the Senate? Where does it end, you ask? Well, I think today we’ve finally finished our descent. The floor has been defined. There’s always a limit, even to absurdity.