If you were a comedian, Pakistan would be a troubling place. What kind of joke could you make up about a country that’s beyond parody? From the Associated Press story “Bombing Kills 35 at Pakistan Funeral“:

Iqbal, the deputy police chief of the Lakki Marwat district, and his driver were killed in a roadside bomb Friday morning. By the time his body was brought to his hometown of Mingora for the funeral, night had fallen.

“Because it was dark, the suicide bomber was able to mingle among the people easily,” said Shahbuddin, an assistant inspector of police who was at the funeral.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, protesters responded in… er… incendiary fashion:

© Reuters. Run from that fire, guys! Run so fast it’ll never catch you!

Part of Reuters’ caption for the above:

Activists from the Sunni Action Committee run for safety after they caught fire while burning an effigy during a protest in Karachi February 29, 2008. Protesters in Pakistan called on Friday for ties with Denmark to be severed over the republication of one of several cartoons…

While suicide bombers murder Pakistani civilians, Pakistani civilians burn effigies of Denmark — because Danish papers reprinted cartoons mocking Islamic terrorists. The audacity of those Danes!

Speaking of audacity, let’s consider for a second Barack Obama’s stated position on Pakistan (or as Obama would say it, Pah-kee-stahn). The Iraq war is a mistake, a distraction, and a failure of diplomacy, but boy – if there are terrorists in Pakistan, a President Barack would send in the guns. What would he do after that, when Islamist nutbags came pouring in from every direction, as they have in Iraq? Apologize for the inconvenience and begin work on a diplomatic resolution?

My plan will cover everyone, and it will be affordable.

Amazing. The Democratic debate is an argument over whose enormous socialist health care scheme is more enormous. With the goal, apparently, being maximized socialist enormity.

And now Senator Clinton is comparing Obama’s plan to Social Security or Medicare being voluntary. Voluntary Social Security?! Voluntary Medicare!? Don’t say the V-word too much, Senator, you’re scaring your demographic!

Aaaand Clinton just quoted last Saturday’s SNL skit about how the debates have been an Obama love-fest. Wow.

I bother writing about politics as often as I do because it’s so easy to get jaded and refuse to participate, and I think this is due to the focus on the trees over the forest when it comes to politicians and “the issues.” News coverage – and online chatter in response to or in spite of it – is about getting there first, to the point that before you can finish a thought it feels like everyone’s moved on to another subject. Because Senate votes and adviser selections are only current news for a couple of days, you’re lucky to hear about them before the next big story crashes in & drowns them out.

A political culture that glosses over where a candidate stands in the rush to nitpick how he stands there makes for boring reading. That in mind, I thought I’d get down specifics on why Barack Obama would make a terrible president… before he comes to OSU tomorrow and clogs up my parking lot and clouds my delicate judgment.

The American Conservative Union assigns Congressional ratings based on how a member votes in comparison to the ACU’s position on 25 issues each year. In 2006, Obama received an 8 out of 100 rating from the ACU, which means he voted with them 2 out of 25 times. But what, you ask, are the issues? Surely a higher ACU score is an indication of oil baron fat-cattery and Bush cronyism! Let’s see:

• On 2/14/2006 the Senate passed a motion to extend the alternative minimum tax exemption, as well as cuts on dividends and capital gains. Obama voted against.
• On 3/14/2006 the Senate defeated a rule change to require a 60-vote majority for future tax cuts. Obama voted in favor of the change.
• On 3/14/2006 the Senate shot down an amendment to increase the discretionary limit on some energy-related programs, to be offset by $7.2 billion in new taxes. Obama voted for the spending and tax increase.
• On 5/11/2006 the Senate extended Bush’s $70 billion in tax cuts through 2010, which included the reduction to the capital gains tax. Obama voted against.
• Obama voted to kill an amendment that would have prevented illegal immigrants from receiving Social Security for work done prior to receiving a Social Security Number (5/18/2006).
• Obama voted for amnesty for illegal immigrants on 5/25/2006.
• Obama voted in support of a filibuster against repealing the death tax (6/8/2006).
• Obama voted against sanctioning foreign governments and companies with more than $20 million invested in Iran’s energy sector (6/15/2006).
• Obama voted against increased fencing along our border with Mexico (7/13/2006).
• Obama voted in favor of using federal funds for embryonic stem cell research (7/18/2006).
• Obama voted against making it a federal crime to take a minor across state lines in order to avoid state abortion laws with regard to parental consent and notification (7/25/2006).

Yeah — my problem with Obama is not that he’s inexperienced, although that’s certainly true. My problem is what his slim record shows us. Barack Obama is a terrible candidate if you want lower taxes. He’s a terrible candidate if you want secured borders, or assertive opposition to Iran, or stricter abortion laws. Far from being a prudent, moderate Democrat, Barack Obama is a liberal extremist who believes your money is best spent by the Federal government – and the less of it on national defense, the better.

Obama ’08: Disaster You Can Believe In.

Weekend Update on SNL tonight featured a joke about McCain claiming frontrunner status for himself following his Wisconsin victory, despite the fact that Mike Huckabee remains in the race. Seth Myers introduced Mike Huckabee to discuss the issue, and I thought “wonder who they’ll have impersonating Huckabee.” Well – they didn’t have anybody impersonating him. Gov. Huckabee came out and the audience applauded (even more than they did when Tina Fey made a cranky joke defending the “intelligent, qualified” Clintons!) and a funny little interchange followed. Huckabee played dumb about victory being mathematically impossible, mentioned superdelegates (which don’t exist in the Republican primary), and sat on camera far too long after some line about knowing when it was time to leave.

The question is… does he? Because it made for a good skit, but Huckabee didn’t mention any particular reason why he’s still in the race. I’d have thought, as a candidate for President of the United States, you could squeeze in a mention of whatever you’re trying to accomplish by waiting to bow out. Yet he did not. I’m on board with the assumption that he’s now running for VP, and I suppose his SNL appearance supports that theory more than anything else!

As a footnote: SNL has its moments, but Joel McHale is hilarious.

Not too much to update everyone with today.  I’ll leave the politics to my partner, he knows much more about those sorts of things.  Our comic idea is coming along, even though there have been several unforseen issues with certain aspects of its creation.  We are hoping to have a finished product sooner or later.

Bad news today on the HD DVD front.  Toshiba has officially called it quits, making the evil Sony Blu-ray the only format available for high definition DVD media.  It is good for the consumer in the long run I suppose, but I just can’t ever picture myself purchasing a DVD player over $200.  Hopefully the prices will reduce soon – not that I have plans to buy a player – but it would be nice for everyone to be able to experience HD movies at a reasonable price.

College football teams are beginning spring practices , which is good news for fans.  Having been involved in these practices before, I can say that it is not good news for certain people involved with the team.  Spring practices make for some long days, but I suppose that is the nature of the sport – practice, film, team meal, meetings, practice and repeat.  The Buckeyes are ranked #3 in the most recent preseason poll at ESPN.com.  We’ll see how spring practice goes, but I am hopeful for what looks to be another successful season.

Enough rambling for now, I should get back to cartooning.

Ben & Jerry’s founders endorse Obama

I guess it’s a slow news day, between Fidel Castro resigning, Pakistan’s election results, Wal-Mart posting an increase in profits, and Toshiba dropping HD DVD.

On the bright side, it sounds like Pakistan held a peaceful, relatively democratic election. Less brightly, the least-bad option for American interests got thoroughly whipped. From The New York Times:

Politicians and party workers from Mr. Musharraf’s party said the vote was a protest against government policies and the rise in terrorism here, in particular against Mr. Musharraf’s heavy-handed way of dealing with militancy and his use of the army against tribesmen in the border areas, and against militants in a siege at the Red Mosque here in the capital last summer that left more than 100 people dead.

As usual, both “militants” and “tribesmen” are euphemisms for “extremist Muslims.” I can understand that some percentage of Pakistani voters would rather their government treat the looniest of their coreligionists with kid gloves than cater to American requests, but that doesn’t make it any less disastrous.

Many educated Pakistanis said they were irritated that the Bush administration chose to ignore Mr. Musharraf’s dismissal in November of the Supreme Court chief justice.

And Americans are irritated that so few Pakistani leaders show any willingness to fight the assclowns training and seeking harbor within Pakistan’s borders. Between their West-hating electorate and our surveillance-hating Democrats, things are certainly not getting any safer. Hey there, would-be martyrs! Want to plot the destruction of America? Just buy yourself a cell phone in the U.S. of A., hitch a flight to Pakistan, and chat it on up with your fellow “tribesmen”!

Upstanding Islamic Jihad commander Ayman al-Fayed was, in a cruel twist of fate, killed in an explosion today.

Islamic Jihad and witnesses blamed the explosion on an Israeli missile strike, but the Israeli military denied involvement.

Those doggone Israelis, blowing up/maybe not blowing up/facilitating the blowing up of another psycho killer (qu’est que c’est?) whose life’s goal is to murder Israeli civilians.

In other news, the top United Nations humanitarian affairs official, John Holmes, visited Gaza Friday and says he was shocked by the misery he says has been caused by Israel’s closure of the border. He is calling for the crossings to be opened so the people of Gaza can get food, power and other essential supplies.

useful idiot

- noun

1. John Holmes

see also, “The overwhelming majority of United Nations humanitarian affairs officials.”

Who’s to blame for the Palestinian territories being a flaming wreck? Hamas? Fatah? Islamic Jihad? Oh, that’s right… Israel.

When a terrorist a-splodes, nothing but respect and equal time from the BBC:

“Syria, which condemns this cowardly terrorist act, expresses condolences to the martyr family and to the Lebanese people,” Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majeed said in a statement.

Imagine that – Syria condemning a cowardly terrorist attack.

Iran also condemned the killing, praising Mughniyeh as a martyr and describing the attack as “yet another brazen example of organised state terrorism by the Zionist regime”.

Wait, Iran is against brazen examples of organized state terrorism?

Hezbollah was founded in 1982 by a group of Shia Muslim clerics after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It has emerged in recent years as a major political and military force in Lebanon, after military successes against Israel.

The BBC does two things in this story that would be pretty startling if they weren’t standard procedure. They quote American, Israeli, Syrian, and Iranian officials in a tonally neutral fashion. And then, after quoting the whiny officials of flagrantly terror-supporting nations, they describe what Hezbollah does as “military successes.” I guess in some circles, hating Israel just never goes out of style.

I saw a story last week about the Archbishop of Canterbury, head honcho of the Anglican Church, making some scary comments regarding Islamic sharia law. Then I saw the guy’s picture:

Rowan Williams, © Agence France Press. Yikes.

What do you know, he looks like a raving lunatic. But what did he actually say? For one thing:

There needs to be access to recognised authority acting for a religious group: there is already, of course, an Islamic Shari’a Council, much in demand for rulings on marital questions in the UK; and if we were to see more latitude given in law to rights and scruples rooted in religious identity, we should need a much enhanced and quite sophisticated version of such a body, with increased resource and a high degree of community recognition, so that ‘vexatious’ claims could be summarily dealt with.

Church, meet State.

[...] where the dominant legal culture is non-Islamic, but there is a level of serious recognition of the corporate reality and rights of the umma, there can be no assumption that outside the umma the goal of any other jurisdiction is its destruction. Once again, there has to be a recognition that difference of conviction is not automatically a lethal threat.

Difference of conviction isn’t a lethal threat? We’ll see what it’s done to British culture another twenty or thirty years hence. Rowan Williams is not blindly advocating creation of a parallel court system for Muslim citizens, but he’s certainly not singing the praises of English heritage, either. It’s kind of amazing that a leader of the nation’s Church finds it necessary to carry water for a rapidly growing immigrant group that, rather than make any effort to assimilate to the traditions of their country of choice, lobbies for ever increasing concessions.