Page A-friggin' 18!

We bomb Somalia, possibly killing "an unknown number of villagers" and the Washington Post chooses to report it on A18? A friggin' 18? Is this where we are right now? Oh, and by the way, Walter Pincus continuing his excellent reporting on pre-war dissent in the CIA. This one on page A8.

Bring Back Ben Bradlee!









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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.

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend we visited Yorktown, Virginia, site of the Revolutionary War's decisive battle. I felt some shame at my own ignorance of the early years of the Republic, so I picked up a copy of David McCullough's "1776."

It's a great read, and so far, I haven't regretted the $18.00 I spent on it *(after all, that's only like five gallons of gas at this point).

I came across this passage about George Washington on page 48:

"Stories were told of extraordinary feats of strength-- how, for example, Washington had thrown a stone from the bed of a stream to the top of Viginia's famous Natural Bridge, a height of 215 feet."

This apparently from Washington's own journal. Is this possible? I know that a professional Center Fielder can fire baseballs in to the catcher on a hop, usually from around 300 feet. But straight up in the air for 215? Without the cream and the clear?

In any case, the passage immediately made me think of comical, musical, and artistic genius Brad Neely's tribute to our first President.

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.

ROUNDUP: Jeff's Clarifications of the Week

∞ Paul Theroux is not English.

∞ Ravens are not Crows. (This I learned from Wikipedia to be not true-- and Wikipedia never lies. Jeff, if you're reading this, Ravens are a type of Crow!)

∞ America is not well.

Gonzalez Aide Shrieking and Crapping Everywhere

Monica Goodling is cute, except when she pulls your hair and throws feces at you from her cage.