"The Most Unconquerable Place on Earth"

I was talking with a friend today about Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Somehow I just cannot work up the energy to be angry, because it seems more laughable than anything. Really, if Genghis Khan couldn't conquer this place, what makes us think that we can? Maybe tanks, drones and machine guns aren't such game-changers after all. And perhaps Obama should have had an historian or two--or John Oliver--join his team to decide a course of action in Afghanistan.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Unwinnable War in Afghanistan
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The Dream Research Job

I've always wondered how The Daily Show always managed to dig up such great clips, often showing political figures contradicting themselves. Who figured out that Cheney, who now says the polls on the public's views on Iraq don't matter, cited public opinion polls 3 years ago to support the war? It turns out that digging up these clips is a full-time job at the show.

The Washington Post profiled the show's researcher, Adam Chodikoff, in today's paper. One of the show's writers commented that Chodikoff "spots patterns, trends, the forces of history." Chodikoff just comes into work in the morning and starts pouring through news stories to pick out interesting bits. Sounds kind of like what I do...except the final product of his research is a whole lot funnier than mine.