Geez, this just is NOT my week. Found another bloody workaround for this issue in this other workaround, but this is getting ridiculous.
So apparently, MSDAINITIALIZE and some other components need some security tweaking in order to run the OLE DB ODBC MySQL driver out of process. I found this great article outlining all the steps in detail.
But low and behold, another hurdle I ran into while walking through this. Just ain't my week. It seems that out-of-the-box, Windows 2008 r2 locks down all the security configuration of the components needed to be modified, which isn't mentioned in the article above resulting in a brick wall. There's a workaround which involves taking Administrator ownership of the reg key back to the Administrators group. This thread outlines the same process while solving a different problem:
I still have to finish the security tweaks, but I wanted to document the 2008 r2 issue before I finish. Once I'm done I'll post the outcome of my efforts.