Why do I bother explaining things to you guys when Jon Stewart always explains it on his show in a far superior manner the night after I post? Here. Learn everything you never wanted to know about Yemen.

Yeah, yeah, I stole that headline from the New York Post (you guys stay classy!), but I just came back from holiday break. My brain’s a little slow, and I’ve got to clear up this whole thing with a guy named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who tried to use his underwear to blow up a plane.  (Get the great balls of fire joke now? Yeah, you laughed. Come on.) All I expected was to talk about Afghanistan and catch you all up on Peeps You Should Know Around Washington (segment name pending). And now this? This? Really, universe? Explosive underwear? Fine. Let’s go over the basics with Jon Stewart:

Of course, Jon’s only got a certain amount of time, which means he doesn’t get to give us the full details of the story, so here are some extra take-home notes:

1. This guy got on a plane in the Netherlands. Let me repeat this one more time. He got on a plane in the Netherlands. I know, as Americans, we are prepared to believe that the world revolves around us, but in this case it was actually Dutch, not American security, that let Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab get on a plane.
2. If there’s something you would like to blame on the Americans, let’s look at the fact that Abdulmutallab was on our “No Fly List”, and yet he got through anyway. The reason he got through anyway? Because that No Fly List is completely insane and out of control. For example: also on the No Fly List was late Senator Ted Kennedy, who could not have been a less likely candidate for having a reason not to hop on a plane. So yeah, it’s  maybe America’s fault that the Dutch didn’t look too closely at this No Fly List thing because it’s generally a load of crap. Then again, the British had him on their No Fly List too, so… maybe not.
3. The person in charge of improving the No Fly List would be the head of the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration). Currently we don’t have one because Senate Republicans are holding up Obama’s nominee. This is because, according to people like leading Republican Senator Jim DeMint (and I cannot make this up if I tried), Obama’s current nominee would support letting baggage handlers unionize, and that is a bigger threat to America than terrorism. Oh, how I wish I were making this up.
4. The reason you’re hearing so much about Yemen is because there’s a large amount of terrorist activity going on there, and Abdulmutallab trained and thought up this plot with the division of al-Qaeda in Yemen. And yes, American intelligence and security forces have known about this for a long time, and yes, we’re bombing al-Qaeda headquarters there. But of course, it’s all insanely complicated to the point where even I don’t feel I understand it very well.  NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel was on the Rachel Maddow Show last week and gave what I thought was a great interview that really explained the situation. The transcript of the show can be found here, and you can find the relevant bit without crazy scrolling by using the find function (control+f if you’re on a PC, apple+f if you’re on a Mac) for the name “Richard Engel”. It’s worth it.