And NONE of them are Korean...

Clockwise, from bottom:
Mitt Romney, Mrs Romney,
Rick Santorum, the American
electorate, Ron Paul.

If I were to write a serious version of the hit 1990s NBC comedy Third Rock From the Sun, the character of Dick Solomon, the intelligent alien leader who is hopelessly clueless about normal life on Earth, would seem a lot like Mitt Romney.

Outwardly he seems like a normal human being, but if you talk with him just a little bit you can see he's not one of us: his awkward use of descriptive sentences when he doesn't know common words is an indicator that he's a visitor to the world of the common man and isn't familiar with the familiar, while he boasts of engaging in things that most people would find kinda sorta appalling.

Like transporting your dog in a small kennel strapped to the top of the car and insisting that Mitt's mutt loved it. Or expressing glee about firing people. Or bragging of how many personal vehicles one has. You've no doubt heard this list.

The dog thing really seemed cringeworthy (that word does not trigger the spellcheck!) to a lot of people, making them wonder if he's kinda sorta lacking compassion for humans or canines.

The story has legs. Months later, people are still talking about it, and that has prompted the Romney campaign to react by making President Obama seem like an even worse offender in the eyes of people who bought Marley & Me on DVD.

And what could that be? President Barack Hussein Obama, the guy with the funny name whose father was from a strange country and who grew up in a different strange country and attended a madrassa, has eaten dog:

The Romney campaign signaled Tuesday night that they are not about to cede any ground when it comes to a candidate’s odd past with man’s best friend.

And the Obama campaign shot back, with a spokesman suggesting the Romney team was attacking a child, since the Obama act in question took place when he was a kid.

The Daily Caller noted that in President Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” the president recalls being fed dog meat as a young boy in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy),” the president wrote. “Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

After his mother married Soetoro, Obama lived in Indonesia from 1967 until 1971, from roughly the age of 6 through 10.

The discovery that the president had eaten dog meat prompted wise-cracks on twitter (hashtag — #ObamaDogRecipes) and this tweet from Romney strategist Eric Fehrstrom, who re-tweeted Axelrod’s original message with a different take on the picture of the president and Bo.

“@EricFehrn: In hindsight, a chilling photo,” he wrote.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt tweeted in response: “@BenLaBolt What’s the next attack @EricFerhn and the RNC will surface on a 6-10 year old?”

Democrats and supporters of the president’s forcefully took to twitter Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to challenge the notion that Obama as a boy eating food given to him by his stepfather could be compared to actions Romney took as an adult. Republicans pushed back, saying that the dog-eating tale underlines how any discussion of dogs at a time of massive unemployment, with troops in harm’s way, is silly.

I have to agree with the Democratic operatives that there is something ridiculous about comparing Romney's own deliberate acts as an adult to those of a kid being fed something over which he had no control. I mean, one was thirty-seven and the other was seven.

[source]

This reminds me of George W. Bush's felony drunk driving conviction, which he tried to brush off as a "youthful indiscretion" even though he was older than I was. That's right: our actions as an adult tell us a lot more about our impulses, drives, flaws, and convictions much more than what was thrust upon us as children.

Anyway, I wonder if Obama's elementary school eating experiences will gain any traction. Already some are suggesting that it is proof he's not a real American:

I don't know ANY natural born American boy who would ever eat Spot, even if coerced by his mooslim stepfather. Thanks for the further proof that Barry ain't really an American. Eatin' dogs ain't an American value. Hell, he acts like he's proud he did it! Where's the regret?

That's an argument that would hardly hold up in court (right here is a natural born American from Long Island who loves himself some dog meat — as an adult) but it might hold sway in the ballot box. But I think those who already loathe President B. Hussein Obama are the only ones really expressing outrage at a kid being "introduced to dog meat" in another country. Heck, I might go back to Korea and eat some dog meat on principle! (While wearing my hoodie, if that's still a thing.)

Anyway, if this story does take off, the association of some East Asian country with canine cuisine might shift from Korea to Indonesia. Here's hoping.

This one's a keeper.

UPDATE:
Over at the Marmot's Hole (I'm all about K-blog cross-pollination), there's a discussion on the recent discovery of a Mad Cow case in America, which includes mention of Obama's youthful canophagic proclivities, including this video:




...

Kyopo crime story of the day

Western visitors to Korea like to talk about two things: dog consumption and the propensity for South Koreans to say "Fighting!" for just about anything.

So it was only a matter of time before an unscrupulous someone would combine dogs and "Fighting!" to get, um, dogfighting:

Police [in the Philippines] have arrested six South Koreans suspected of running a massive, high-tech dogfighting operation where matches in the Philippines were shown online to overseas bettors, according to police.

About 240 pitbulls were confiscated in the raid late Friday from a secluded compound where the dogs were kept and the matches held, the local police intelligence chief said on Saturday.

"They had an arena enclosed with mirrors. They had videocams, computers and they would show live fights of the pitbulls and it could be seen on their website in Korea," Chief Inspector Romeo Valero said.

He told AFP that Filipino caretakers hired to take care of the animals said the dogfighting operation in a rural area about an hour's drive south of Manila had been going on for over a month, and sometimes dogs would die from their injuries. [AFP]

Sorry about that lame attempt at humor earlier. I'm not trying to make light of this, which is blatant animal cruelty on a large scale. And I'm just pleased as punch that people like this would get shut down.

Apparently, though, they are going with the infamous Poker-8 gang's defense after they were arrested for running "high-stakes" poker from their home and publicizing it on Facebook:

He said the Koreans did not know how to speak English and it was not yet known how long they had been in the country. One Korean claimed they did not know dogfighting was illegal in the Philippines.

They face six months to two years in prison for the dogfighting, but authorities will have difficulty charging them with illegal gambling because the money was managed overseas. One would hope that the Philippine authorities would hand over that part of their investigation to the South Korean authorities, which are in a position to haul these people to jail over the gambling portion of this.

... 

Pets left on Yŏnpyŏng-do being tended by animal welfare groups

I thought this Reuters story was kinda touching:

Hungry dogs and cats roaming the streets of the remote South Korean island shelled by North Korea last week, some of them injured, are being fed and tended to by animal welfare groups. ...

Most of the 1,600 residents of mountainous Yeonpyeong have fled, leaving their pets behind, but animal welfare groups have taken them food and administered first aid.

"We helped dogs with serious cuts from shell splinters," Park So-yeon, a member of Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE), told broadcaster YTN Tuesday.

"We also saved dogs with broken legs and little dogs attacked by other stray dogs."

Television footage showed a dog snapping eagerly at food on a street scattered with shattered glass and lined with damaged buildings. Others ate from bowls set inside doghouses.

Island residents said there were an estimated 200 dogs and cats on the island. Animal welfare workers said they had helped about 50 dogs and 10 cats so far.

"If you abandon dogs, and they produce puppies without peoples' care, they will become wild dogs. Then you will have to cope with a social problem with many stray dogs all around Yeonpyeong," said Jo Hee-kyong, head of the Korean Society for Animal Freedom.

While I have no doubt that some of the dogs on Yŏnpyŏng-do are poorly treated by North American standards (e.g., tied on short leashes, not getting out to walk, or even whacked on the head occasionally by inconsiderate owners), there has been a sea change in terms of attitudes toward pets. The fact that they're trying to rescue cats underscores that very point (not only because the animal rights folks are concerned about cats, but especially that there are people on the island who own them — the traditional folklore about cats sucking up the souls of recently departed people made them to freaky for most people to keep as pets up until recently).

This dog is okay; it's just sunning itself. Seriously.