Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.05

Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy
Juan Cole runs down the problems facing the Obama Administration in Afghanistan. They are not limited to killing schoolchildren a few too many times, enraging the Afghan public, provoking a student protest movement, double agents betraying us, the Afghan army not effectively existing/being dependable/not showing up to anything important/taking potshots at US troops, and the fact that the Afghan government barely functions if at all. But on the bright side, the law of averages states that a sometime somewhere something in that country has to go right and if we stick around long enough the chances are that it'll be a big and important thing. So... fingers crossed.

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
That's right, the CIA is using spy satellites and specialized sensors to collect advanced data and assess "hidden complexities" in climate change in collaboration with scientists and universities. In addition they've been waterboarding polar bears three at a time to get them to spill the beans on glacier melting and they've rendered a few arctic foxes to Egypt for some "enhanced interrogation" about temperature data. Finally we're putting some government hardasses on the climate change front. A few targeted assassinations, a few rigged elections and we might finally get this problem licked.

New scanners break child porn laws
In the aftermath of the flight 253 flaming underwear bombing there have been renewed calls for the use of full body optical scanners to ferret out bombs, knives, and average genitalia size of your bog standard air passenger. But instead of merely whining about personal freedoms, police states, encroaching fascism, or civil liberties, opponents in the UK have opted for a different track: they say if you use it on a kid it's legally defined as child pornography. It seems all the civil liberties people have finally learned how to do battle. When it's security vs. civil liberties, civil liberties always gets handcuffed, beat up, and tased. But security vs. child pornography? That's a whole new ballgame. Who says hippies can't learn?

Hell Freezes Over: Rush Limbaugh Loves Union Hospitals and Socialized Medicine
Among the many thing that were hilarious about Rush Limbaugh's heart almost exploding were the fact that his heart nearly exploded, he was treated in the hospital at the center of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy, and that after months of railing against socialism, unions, and health care, he was subjected to all three and liked them without understanding that the hospital was the evil hotbed of socialism, unions, and Kenyan birth certificate fraud that it was. I know, I know "Rush Limbaugh doesn't understand something, gets facts wrong" isn't as much of a headline as it is a fact of daily existence. But it did give the SEIU a nice chance to tee off on him. Plus, as I've previously mentioned: his heart almost exploded. We're getting closer and closer to the day when the rotten fuck finally shuffles off this mortal coil.

Knut Haugland, Sailor on Kon-Tiki, Dies at 92
An obituary worth reading. Know that you will never accomplish anything this great or worthwhile or heroic or manly if you were given two lifetimes. A tip of the cap and raise of the glass to Mr. Knut Haugland.