The White Obama of The Rat Pope is a mammoth, orderly nation, ruled by Rat with an iron fist, and remarkable for its public floggings, state-planned economy, and stringent health and safety legislation. The cynical, devout population of 8.817 billion Retireds are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The enormous, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government prioritizes Spirituality, although Welfare, Education, and Healthcare are also considered important, while Law & Order receives no funds. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Ireland. The average income tax rate is 68.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but sluggish Rat Popean economy, worth 268 trillion Crosses a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a slick, highly efficient, quite specialized black market in Retail, Book Publishing, Furniture Restoration, and Cheese Exports. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 30,492 Crosses, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.6 times as much as the poorest.

Priests roam the streets with child-catcher nets, the nation's new religious police burn blasphemers on bonfires of their own books, Retireds believe a soft answer turneth away wrath but punitive punishment is much more fun, and unwary hikers climbing the bluffs of Mount Ireland make great practice for foreign snipers. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, despite the fact that it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many laws. The Rat Pope's national animal is the Rat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Annihilation of the Self.

The Rat Pope is ranked 323,736^th in the world and 1^st in Rat Haven for Largest Manufacturing Sector, scoring zero on the Gooback-Jerbs Productivity Index.