Lately a lot of people have started to get worried that Mike Huckabee, suddenly the dark horse candidate for the Republican nominee for President of the United States, is going to win the nomination and then the Presidency because he actually manages to seem occasionally human and warm-blooded, and exudes “I would love to have a beer with him”-ness. (Which, incidentally, is not something any other country ever thinks about. Seriously, I voted for Jean Chretien’s Liberals on multiple occasions and I’m pretty sure Chretien himself would be kind of a pain in the ass to have a drink with. Also, he would probably strangle me.)

However, I am not going let you fret, my friends, because I am going to tell you something. Mike Huckabee will never, ever, ever be elected President of the United States. And you know why?

Because his last name is “Huckabee.”

Just say it to yourself for a moment. “President Huckabee.” It sounds like some cheap joke in a bad movie, like something Rob Reiner might direct ever since Rob Reiner started to really suck. It sounds like a name that might go with a local ice-cream magnate, or a charming local sheriff who can’t manage to catch plucky outlaws. It is the sort of last name that the screenwriters of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium rejected for the name character as “too undignified.” And it’s not simply that it’s not a standard, blandly American sort of last name like Jones or Smith or, yes, Bush. Barack Obama doesn’t have this problem, because his last name, while relatively exotic to the American character, still retains a powerful, stentorian character. “Huckabee,” on the other hand, just sounds downright silly.

(In fairness, Mike Huckabee is far from the first politician to have this problem. Paul Tsongas should never have run for President. Ditto Dick Gephardt, whose name manages to be both hard to figure out how to say and vaguely obscene-sounding once you say it, so of course he ran for President, what, twelve times? And let us not forget that Michael Dukakis’ name was so bad that he nearly lost the nomination to Jesse Jackson, of all people.)

Seriously, America: if you elect a man named “Huckabee” president, speaking for the entire rest of the world? We’re all going to be snickering at you.

Now, I know some people might say that this will only galvanize the right wing into electing him, but that’s not quite right. See, when the attitudes of the rest of the world usually stoke the nativist fires that breed inside certain types of Americans, it’s mostly because American actions, rightly or wrongly, are pissing off a lot of the rest of the world. Or because America is (or was) big and rich and powerful and other nations were envious. And that was fine by America, and well that it was, because so what if Spitting Image made fun of Reagan all the time? He still ended Communism! Or so people say.

But electing Mike Huckabee isn’t going to piss anybody off, and it’s definitely not going to make anybody envious. We’re just going to laugh. “Huckabee” will become a punchline without a joke. You know how you got sick of people saying “shag” after they saw Austin Powers because they thought it was funny? Well, “Huckabee” is going to be like that except twenty times worse and universal across the entire world. And you know it, and so does every other American, even if they don’t want to admit it, and nobody wants to be the butt of the world’s joke.

And that is why Mike Huckabee will never be President.

He’d just like you to buy into this brand called Barack Obama, which the presidency may enrich, but which may ultimately be more important to him than the presidency itself.

The presidency may be the single most powerful position on the planet, but Barack Obama sees it just as a stepping-stone to Emperorship of all the world, possibly establishing himself as the second coming of Christ and/or Galactic Star-Pope in the bargain.

Specifically, Canada is totally getting the shaft when it comes to mobile phone costs. Check out those graphs. We’re worse than Rwanda, for crissake.

This is just another example of how Canadian politicians’ rhetoric about wanting to make Canadian industry competitive are all too often just empty rhetoric. See also: Canada’s continuing paucity of funding for scientific research, especially at the university level. It really annoys the shit out of me no end.

Barack Obama’s technology and open-government policy proposals are honestly some of the most inspiring things I have seen in years – commonsense use of available technology to decloak government operation and legislative debate as much as humanly possible. The fact that this sort of thing is practically revolutionary is kind of sad, but revolutionary it nonetheless is: keeping the wireless spectrum open, aggressive government support of broadband, fifty billion dollars for clean technology research, network neutrality – you name an idea supported by the technogeeks, Obama is pushing for it.

I understand that some of you may have reservations or not understand the implications thereof, so let me put it this way. Here is Anthrax and Public Enemy performing “Bring The Noise.”

Barack Obama wants you to be able to see that in even better definition using solar power forever. I trust you see why this is a great set of policy proposals now.

(I also neglected to write a while back about Obama’s emissions cap plan. Long story short: it is good, better than just about anything offered yet in America and indeed most of the world for that matter.)

(Oh, I actually don’t have anything to write about Ron Paul particularly. I just figure if I say something bad about Ron Paul, it will give me a lot of extra traffic.)

Let me be plain as possible before I start giving you links:

The WGA writers’ strike is practically the definition of a just strike. This is a battle over corporations earning billions of dollars and unfairly refusing to give those most responsible for the creation of the content which mandates their profits their proper due.

Most screenwriters aren’t rich. Yes, the average salary of a Hollywood screenwriter is $200,000. However, that figure is overinflated by the high end of rich screenwriters, the tiny minority who make millions per picture, the Tina Feys and the Steve Carells. (Both of whom, I might add, are striking.) The median salary for a screenwriter is about twenty thousand dollars. So this isn’t a battle between “billionaires and millionaires,” much like the last actors’ strike, where everybody focused on Leonardo DiCaprio’s salary and ignored the fact that most actors, stunningly enough, are not Leonardo DiCaprio.

So, links:

– John August explains the basics.
– John Rogers lays out some excellent metaphor (“that tiger went tiger“) and some mild prediction.
– Ken Levine provides some perspective.
– Rick Schimpf quotes Micah Wright’s now-infamous “Screwed Over For Spongebob” post and adds some commentary. Also, he provides a link to this informative Youtube.
– An account of what happened at the eleventh-hour negotiations.
– Chris Kelly explains residuals.
– Related to the previous item: Mark Evanier explains why residuals aren’t just fair but also encourage writers to perform better.
– Brian K. Vaughn weighs in.
– And finally, Craig Newmark asks the pressing question on everybody’s minds.

In all the hubbub that’s crossed the blogosphere about Pakistan in the last couple of days, I’ve been noticing a common thread, especially prevalent in North American writers but hardly quiet in many a writer from elsewhere in the first world, and that’s the assumption that the choice that exists to be made is between Pervez “I Am A Stereotypical Brutal Dictator” Musharraf and a million howlin’-mad Muslims who want everybody in the whole wide world to wear a veil and not eat pork.

It’s worth remembering that the disruption that “forced” Musharraf’s hand came as a result of his arrogant disregard for the country’s laws and his endemic corruption. Viewing images of the protests last month, I was struck by one image: hundreds of lawyers, all in suits, marching in protest. Not a one of them would look out of place in a Western court. Pakistan is a country where, despite all expectations, the public holds their constitution and legal system in high esteem. (There are certainly fundamentalists who want to change it, often dramatically so, but the key is that they also want to change it from within.)

None of this is to say that Pakistan, were Musharraf to disappear tomorrow, would suddenly turn into a landbound version of Malaysia or the like. But it’s a country with a large, intelligent professional class and an interest in political stability, neither of which are inherently in conflict with the Islamic character any longterm, stable, sorta-democratic Pakistan would have. Yes, I think we can all agree an Islamic government in Pakistan would probably mean less rights for women and religious minorities there (for starters), but I’d argue that a stable albeit limited democracy is superior to a bunch of tribal lords feuding with each other, particularly when the country in question has nuclear weapons available.

A final note, quoting Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings:

Religious people in Pakistan are not all fundamentalists or Islamists or extremists. Many of them are committed to both their faith and to democracy, just as many American Christians are. (Not in just the same way, as though culture were irrelevant; but: committed to both.) Democratic institutions are not nearly strong enough, and there aren’t nearly enough really inspiring leaders, but the last thing Pakistan needs is a military dictatorship that prevents these sorts of institutions from growing and learning.

Well said.

Remember how everybody was all “oh, let’s be reasonable, the Tories aren’t going to try and instill their backwards right-wing values on Canada while only in charge of a minority government?”

Well, ha ha.

If you’ve been looking for a good summary of scholarly opinion on the political future of Iraq, you could do a lot worse than this post by Marc Lynch.

Warning: the conclusions derived are, for the most part, not good. But they’re thorough and well-written.

UPDATE: Also, this thorough explanation of whywaterboarding is torture and therefore both immoral and useless should be considered required reading.

Your daily “life is getting more like Paranoia all the damn time” link of the day:

FEMA sets up fake press conference where all the “reporters” were in fact FEMA staffers asking pre-planned questions.

(I’m not even kidding a little. This is exactly the sort of thing you would expect to find in a Paranoia supplement, except that there it would’ve been played up as a joke. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.)

No, seriously: Turkey invading Kurdish Iraq is very, very, very bad.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it is Bad. It is a recipe for Bad Sandwich, preceded by Bad Salad and finishing with Bad Cobbler. It’s not Strong Bad, it’s just Bad Bad. It’s Baddosity-level is plus-twelve. Cinematically speaking, this is a Gigli-equivalent level of Bad.

It’s not good, is what I’m saying.

Via several sources, one discovers that anonymous emails are circulating out of South Carolina accusing Barack Obama of being a secret undercover Muslim.

Future email you may see in your inbox:

Dear friend, my name is Dennis Kucinich and I am the Congress-individual for these United States of Cleveland. I have recently come into a large sum of money from AMERICAN BUDGTET and require aid to disberse these funds to the good people of Cleveland. If you send me your banking information, I can assure you of a commission for your help in helping me to help the good people of Cleveland…

(Would not “Undercover Muslim” make an awesome cartoon? Imagine, every week he’d have to come up with a clever excuse to not eat pork.)

Torontoist had me liveblog the Ontario general election last night, and it may be of interest to some of you. Or not.

Getting away from legislative reform for a moment and just looking at the actual boring election, this poll is just amazing. Liberal support at 42 percent, with the Conservatives at 27 percent (and dropping).

For those who don’t follow Ontario politics, which is a lot of you: you have to understand that going into this election, everybody figured that a Conservative victory was likely – either a majority or at least a minority. Dalton McGuinty is quite possibly the least popular provincial leader in Canada right now, and Howard Hampton both lacks personal charisma and leads the NDP, who provincially are still suffering the aftereffects of Bob Rae’s disastrous premiership of the early 90s. The Tories were slightly ahead of the Liberals and everybody thought it was a done deal.

Then John Tory decided to make public funding of religious schools into a campaign issue.

Now, Tory’s position isn’t senseless, because Ontario funds Catholic schools publicly. (For those of you wondering how this is so, it’s a quirk of early Canadian constitutional law that has survived to the present day; back when Canada was formed, educational protection for certain linguistic and religious minorities was written into the Constitution. However, many of these constitutional guarantees have since been repealed.) And any basic concept of fairness to all considered would allow one to argue for equal treatment for Jews, Muslims, et cetera.

Unfortunately, John Tory didn’t read the electorate even remotely wisely in this instance. It turns out that the majority of Ontarians, once they actually remembered “hey, wait, we fund Catholic schools,” remembered that they didn’t like that. Now we’re seeing polling data with seventy percent of Ontarians wanting funding for Catholic schools eliminated.

On top of that, elements of Tory’s core conservative support didn’t like it either! Why? Because there are those who vote Conservative (and, to be fair, those who vote for other parties) who are distinctly uneasy about the potential for public funding of Islamic madrassas – and Tory explicitly promised at the beginning of his campaign that Muslim schools would be paid for under his plan. Tory candidates started publicly stating they would not vote in favour of religious school funding – and not just Tories running in tough ridings, but those with relatively safe seats.

But wait, it gets better! In the last week and a half, John Tory has been backpedaling desperately, promising a free vote in the legislature on the religious school funding issue. (For those unfamiliar with parliamentary politics, that’s a vote where the party doesn’t bind the vote of the individual members.) Thus, John Tory managed, in essence, to break a promise before actually being elected. Worse, he did it and nobody believed him, because the Jewish school lobby that had been campaigning so hard for equal funding for religious schools kept telling anybody who would listen that a vote for the Conservatives was a vote for religious school funding – so now John Tory was just an out-and-out liar, or at least perceived as one.

And now John Tory is one day away from what’s possibly the worst electoral flameout since the federal Tory collapse of 1993. (Which, as others have mentioned, was a campaign in which John Tory was deeply involved.) The odds are strong that Tory will actually not even win his own seat, as he bravely chose to run in traditionally leftish Toronto against Kathleen Wynne, a popular minister in the current Liberal government, and she’s leading him in riding polls.

It’s a shame, because John Tory is, honestly, a reasonable individual – the exemplar of “welcome opposition,” a shrewd and personable technocrat who honestly enjoys writing public policy with an eye towards fixing things (from his admittedly biased perspective). But that’s how a life in politics goes, sometimes.

For those of you wanting a cold-as-ice pessimistic geopolitical and economic analysis of current U.S. economic policy – and I’m sure there’s ever so many of you! – I would direct you to this screed the Cunning Realist posted last week. Well worth reading. Also, somewhat depressing.