Cheap Blogging Crutch 8.8

John Edwards Affair With Rielle Hunter: Admits Infidelity, Interview With Hunter
The human blur wisely drops his baggage at the start of the Olympics. In so much as I only care about affairs as potential targets of derision and hypocrisy, thank 9 lb. 5 oz. baby Jesus that he didn't get the nomination. I might have put a gun in my mouth if I was seriously looking at the all but certain prospects of a McCain Presidency. I think it is safe to say we can scratch Edwards off the potential VP list.

Changing Lanes
New Yorker article on the popularity of offshore drilling, McCain's dishonesty about it, and just how ineffective it will be. Key graf: The Department of Energy estimates that there are eighteen billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in offshore areas of the continental United States that are now closed to drilling. This sounds like a lot, until you consider that oil is a globally traded commodity and that, at current rates of consumption, eighteen billion barrels would satisfy less than seven months of global demand. A D.O.E. report issued last year predicted that it would take two decades for drilling in restricted areas to have a noticeable effect on domestic production, and that, even then, “because oil prices are determined on the international market,” the impact on fuel costs would be “insignificant.”

Study Cautions Against Strike on Iran's Nuclear Facilities
The Institute for Science and International Security put together a study on the repercussions of military strikes on Iran, design to cripple their nuclear development. Their conclusion, it'll stop them momentarily until they mobilize an underground 'crash' nuclear program that will be easy to set up and see them attain nuclear weapons. Plus they'll be waaay pissed and their populace sufficiently natioalistic to start doing bad stuff. But this report was written by former UN inspector David Albright, who had the misfortune of being right about Iraq, thus relegating him to 'don't listen to' pile by our media and foreign policy elite.

Cannibalistic Attack on Greyhound Bus Prompts Ad
Reason 1,001 why if I ever decide vegetarianism is the way to go, I will still eat steaks and kick squirrels just to spite PETA. They take the example of the man who got his head cut off by that crazy guy on the bus and make the logical conclusion that is exactly the moral equivalent of eating meat. And take out ads promoting it. It isn't you opportunistic cretins, it really isn't. I'm all for reducing animal cruelty, but at the end of the day I still need them to be dead and on a grill. Some guy getting his head lopped off by a psychotic isn't in the same ballpark as a factory farm. Humans are higher up the ladder than animals. Even the really shitty humans when they're put up against the really cute animals. We meat eaters call it the Cheney/puppy conundrum. Stick to the sexist ads PETA. Maybe this year tits will sell radishes.

Chavez Gets Russian Fighters, Warns U.S. Navy
Just a normal story about Venezuela buying an air force. I just wanted to link it for this quote by Chavez: "Any gringo ship that sails into brown waters will itself turn brown and go to the bottom, because they'll not get through." Say what you will about the man, but he knows how to make a jingoistic threat.