Tuesday is Crate and Barrel Day

Well, not really-- but it is World Refugee Day, and while there is no shortage of misery in the world, I think we owe a little bit more to the displaced of Iraq.

So if you remember, pick up the phone on Tuesday and leave a quick message for the President. I'm sure he checks his voicemail. You can either repeat the message below, or just say "crate and barrel!" and hang up. He'll know what you're talking about.

Call on President Bush to fight the world's fastest growing refugee crisis

NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY FOR IRAQI REFUGEES


Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Call the White House at 202-456-1111

Hot Town, Summer in the City

§ Isn't legislating habeas corpus a bit like the NFL decreeing that touchdowns are worth 6 points? (DCEIVER)

§ Memo to Mullah Omar: Swimming Lessons for the Kids. (ABC)

§ I'll see your Kosovo and raise you one Abkhazia and one Kurdistan. (FT)

§ Ken Silverstein blows up the Great Game. (HARPER'S)

Outrage-ometer: IN THE RED

5.45: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick on Vote Caging. This has legs.

7.72: The "50 Years of American Military Presence in Iraq" idea is gaining traction among small clique of mentally disabled policymakers. NOTE TO BUSH: This is why people fly airplanes into our cities. Imperialism is trés 19th Century.

9.01: Global War on Terror in Africa not working out too well, either. Somalia in a state of collapse that is bad even by the tragic standards of Africa's Horn. Anthony Shadid writes about the humanitarian side.

CDC Needs to Isolate this Pandemic, Too

If Mental Illness is a disease, why doesn't the CDC quarantine Pennsylvania Avenue?

The latest outbreak of virulent dementia of the White House, according to Reuters:

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

Joshua Micah Marshall at TPM explains the painfully obvious for those of you who may not have picked up on the fact by now that the President of the United States and the thirty or so concentric circles surrounding him are FUCKING INSANE.

I called the CDC to see if they would consider sending up the guys in the big White Space Suits to shut down the Executive Branch, but they put me on hold.

Dems Pull off Circus-Quality Feats of Contortionism

In high school I once saw a performance by a man known as "Zeldran el Magnifico" who blew me away when he inserted a cable with a tiny light bulb up his nose, into his throat, and out of his mouth. Then, with the tiny lighbulb still poking out of his mouth, Zeldran reached into his pocket and withdrew some kind of lens, showing it to the crowd before holding it up to his mouth and projecting a high-powered spotlight into the audience, which shrieked with delight and nausea.

Until Wednesday, that was the most stunning bit of sideshow contortionism I had ever seen. But the Congressional Dems have outdone Zeldran el Magnifico with their compromise on the War Funding Bill. Still rosy-cheeked from last November's electoral tsunami, the apparently cartilage-free party of Roosevelt has pulled off the remarkable feat of bending over, sticking its head between its knees, and inserting it, neck-deep, up its own asshole.

What's the Statute of Limitations on Bullshit?

Dick Cheney on FOX News:

"We didn't get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party. Our mission is to do everything we can to prevail on what is now, we believe, a global conflict, a fundamental test of the character of the American people, whether or not we're going to be able to prevail against one of the most evil opponents we've ever faced."

Incredible, especially when you consider that no one seems quite sure who this evil opponent is. The closer you look, the murkier it gets. Is it a network of like-minded fundamentalists? A political philosophy? A military tactic? A spiritual movement? A non-state entity? A militia? A gang? An army? A mafia? A pandemic of mental illness? A suicide cult?

Are we checking Shi'a expansionism? Cutting down Wahabbi militarism? Stamping out Ba'athism? Suppressing anti-imperialism? Containing Arab nationalism? Fighting Pashtun revivalism? Flanking Pan-Persianism? Snuffing out terrorism? Securing strategic resources? Protecting sea-lanes? Keeping our friends safe? Exporting democracy? Projecting stability? Heading off genocide? Stopping a civil war?

5 bucks to any journalist who asks the Vice President who, specifically, we are fighting, and what, specifically, we're fighting for. And don't let him say "evil" because that's just bullshit. People only fight evil in comic books.