One of the most noteworthy aspects of the path toward the apocalypse is how garish and jarring the signposts are. Before you kill your infant through neglect, for instance, you spend her Pampers money on drugs. See how this works? In the case of Pakistan’s dramatically steep national descent, for instance, the milemarker comes with neon illumination, and it reads Asif Ali Zardari. As in: ohhhhh fiddlesticks, this guy again?

For the uninitiated, Zardari is Benazir Bhutto’s widower, and his penchant for the finer things in life majorly damaged her career several times over. In Pakistan he was so corrupt he was known as "Mr. Ten Percent" for the cut he would take out of the national trough. (Zardari is also gangster enough to blame Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus for the nickname.) Now the dude is back as Bhutto’s Pakistani Peoples Party nominee to replace Musharraf. And — LOLerskates — he’s already alienating PPP coalition partners through his disinclination to reinstate ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, whose shitcanning started the entire dump-Musharraf movement, because keeping Chaudhry on ice is, um, an imperative of Zardari’s legacy:

Mr. Zardari fears that Mr. Chaudhry, if reinstated, might undo an amnesty agreement that absolved Mr. Zardari of corruption charges. The amnesty was part of a package arranged by Mr. Musharraf when Mr. Zardari returned to Pakistan after his wife, Ms. Bhutto, was assassinated in December.

Off-ramp! Off-ramp! Someone get the drunk away from the wheel, at least!