Someone needs to show the Obama folks how to use a calendar. On October 17th the White House invited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to visit Washington D.C. on October 29th. But that's Republic Day (Cumhuriyet Bayramı), which is basically the Turkish 4th of July.

I would give them a mulligan since not everyone out there is a Turkophile, but this is the second time in two months the Obama folks have selected an incredibly inappropriate day to conduct foreign policy. Anyone remember last month when the White House announced it was scraping the Bush administration's plan to locate ground-based interceptors in Poland on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland? 

All joking aside, it's scary that the Obama folks clearly didn't consult a Turkey expert, or at least pull up a Turkish calendar when they decided to invite Erdogan to Washington.