Tony Snow exits in style

Tony Snow isn't the first man to jump the rapidly sinking Bush administration. Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove announced he was stepping down to "spend more time with his family". Alberto "I don't recall" Gonzalez resigned in disgrace after realizing -- 6 months after everyone else -- that his presence was unproductive. But no one, I believe, has ever come up with as good of an excuse as Tony Snow for why they had to leave. The NYTimes lays it out:

Mr. Snow, 52, said two weeks ago that he would not stay on until the end of the Bush presidency, and that he was leaving because of financial pressures. The father of three, Mr. Snow earned $168,000 a year as an assistant to the president...

Someone explain this to me. This guy is making $168,000, and he is leaving because he is making too little?! Please, NYTimes, give me some context:

...much less than he made as a conservative pundit and talk-show host on Fox Radio who occasionally criticized President Bush.

Now I hate to be the first one to point this out -- and I've been watching TV news all day so I'm pretty sure I actually am the first person to point this out -- but isn't the fact that he used to have a much higher paying job a reason why he should be able to stay? I mean, presumably Tony Snow did save some of the million he earned as a pundit, radio, and TV host over the years before taking his oh-so-drastic pay cut to $168,000 a year. And it is not like the guy doesn't have a ready made excuse: he does have cancer, after all.

(Anyone who wants to discuss the irony of this administration's hesitance to raise the minimum wage is free to insert their sarcastic remarks here)

Ah well. Take care Tony. You will be missed. Not as much as Ari Fleischer, but far more than Scott McClellan.

The long eye of the law

The BBC is reporting that prison guards, in defiance of court orders, have walked out on their jobs as part of a pay dispute. (Dear UAW: taking notes?). Among the numerous disturbances, fires, and kinks in the prisoners' feeding schedules that the BBC lists in its impact section is the following:

Cardiff prison where inmates locked in their cells have taunted a picket line in the car park with shouts of "You're breaking the law"

British prisoners: you officially win.

Take it off, Mr. President!

Well, I didn't meet Anderson Cooper on my vacations, but thanks to M and GoogleNews, I have found the perfect news story to welcome me back. M sent me this article from the India-based TimesNow.
Yep. Vladimir Putin without his shirt on.

Now that is pretty sexy, but let's leave it to the U.S. media to really provide the classy context that we the people need to fully understand this important news item. First things first: no partial shots. Give me the full body shot of Vladdy P:
But wait. Barak Obama is from Hawai'i. We must have at least one shot of him in a sexy bathing suit:
And to be fair and balanced, if there is one of a sexy liberal politician who campaigns on the theme of hope, we need one of a picture of an evil conservative fatty who nearly destroyed the world. (Yeah. I went there during election season):
And, of course, what discussion of sexy world leaders would be complete without the mac daddy himself, the Pimp in Chief, the Man, the Legend, William Jefferson Clinton:
Hmm. Actually, he looks a bit flabby in that 1993 shot of him. A bit Reagan-esque if I may (that's twice, for those counting my Reagan baching). But wait. He is still The Comeback Kid:
OH YOU SEXY BEAST! Nineteen-Ninety-Eight is your year boy. And Hildog is showing off her future Presidential aspirations here as well. (As an aside, the scary part is that it was just suggested to me that Hillary could pull off a one-piece if the current contenders held a bathing suit contest.)

So there you have it. ABC wins the most ridiculous news analysis of the --

--wait, I'm sorry. I'm getting late word (courtesy of M) that a new contender has won the title. Hit me with your best shot AP/Pravda:

Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that women who visited its Web site posted comments on Putin's "vigorous torso" and said they "were screaming with delight and showering (him) with compliments."

Russian gay chat rooms and blogs were particularly intrigued by the photos: Some claimed that Putin, by stripping to his waist, was somehow pleading for more tolerance of homosexuality in Russia - where gays and lesbians are for the most part forced to remain closeted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!

Special Vacation Update

The travel blog will get an update sometime soon. El Salvador's slow internet speeds is currently preventing me from posting photos. So, I thought I would do an emergency Vacation edition of the News blog. What could bring me out of my vacation shell, you ask:

This: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/07/penhaul.iraq/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Apparently, the United States, completely unfamiliar with the term blowback and lacking any sense of irony, has decide to start funding nationalist guerrillas, including Saddam Hussein loyalists. The reason, as explained in the article is that:

"a result of the deepening divisions among Iraqi insurgent factions, was on display earlier this week at a highway intersection in the town of Tahrir. There, a group of some 15 insurgents publicly chanted: 'Death to al Qaeda.'"

OK. So the U.S. Army has suddenly discovered what people like Juan Cole -- not to mention myself -- have been saying for quite sometime now. But how did they ever get such a brilliant idea?

"U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Multi-National Division North, believes U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam and Latin America offer precedents for the strategy he is now pushing in this region of Iraq.

'We've seen this in previous counterinsurgency operations, using local nationals, arming them and forming them into scouts,' he told CNN. 'That's the primary role we want to use them in. They know the territory. They know the enemy.'"

Oh this is just great. Apparently the model for Iraq is either Vietnam or Latin America. Two shining examples of US foreign policy. Guess it's not too long until we start hearing about massive civilian casualties, torture, and death squads. Oh wait...

On Vacation

NewsBlues is on vacation through mid-August. Jonah is busy running into cardboard cutouts of Anderson Cooper. To find out if he actually meets Anderson Cooper check out the travel blog! Don't know the URL? Email me.

Republican Redux

So I know it is a bit late for a post on the GOP debate in South Carolina. By now, probably everybody has seen this little testy exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Libertarian Ron Paul. (As an aside, the audience was asked to not applaud until after the debate, but somehow found time to applaud several times including after Rudy's response.)

Guess what the news networks were talking about the next day. Most expressed the expected outrage against Paul's analysis that 9/11/01 was blowback from US operations in the mideast. Of course, leave it to FoxNews's John Gibson to go off the deep end on a guy who has gone off the deep end.


Um, Mr. Gibson. Ron Paul was not making the same argument as the "9/11 Truth" types. They say that September 11th was a conspiracy by the government in order to lead a war for profit. Ron Paul does not. He believes this is the result of US interventionist foreign policies.

Look, my problem is not that Ron Paul is not being taken seriously. He certainly has a point, even if that point is wrapped up in a world view which depends on the incomprehensible "irrationality of US politics." But no, I do not expect US news to be sophisticated enough to discuss the ideological and empirical underpinnings of his argument.

But is it too much to expect the news to get the facts right? I mean, you are the news. He is not in line with the 9/11 Truth types. In fact, he is directly contradicting them. Can we please, please, please try to get our facts right?! YOU ARE THE NEWS, DAMNIT!

Speaking of "damnit," the absolute best moment of the debate was this one. The following question dominated the debate, taking up by far more time than any other question asked:

MR. HUME: Welcome back to the Koger Center for the Arts on the campus of the University of South Carolina.

The questions in this round will be premised on a fictional, but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it. Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time.

First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

Yes, the most discussed question of the night dealt with a hypothetical terrorist attack on the nation. This is what we have come to. Every other candidate had responded quite seriously to this absurd hypothetical. Fortunately, Tom Tancredo knew exactly what to do:

REP. TANCREDO: Well, let me just say that it's almost unbelievable to listen to this in a way. We're talking about -- we're talking about it in such a theoretical fashion. You say that -- that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we're wondering about whether waterboarding would be a -- a bad thing to do? I'm looking for "Jack Bauer" at that time, let me tell you. (Laughter, applause.)

Tom Tancredo: you the man. Call in Jack. This man is ready to lead in a way that Bush and Logan never were! Way to call the absurdity of the moderators. Unfortunately, he then kept on talking:

And -- and there is -- there is nothing -- if you are talking about -- I mean, we are the last best hope of Western civilization. And so all of the theories that go behind our activities subsequent to these nuclear attacks going off in the United States, they go out the window because when -- when we go under, Western civilization goes under. So you better take that into account, and you better do every single thing you can as president of the United States to make sure, number one, it doesn't happen -- that's right -- but number two, you better respond in a way that makes them fearful of you because otherwise you guarantee something like this will happen.

Stupidity leads to arrogance. Arrogance leads to foolishness. Foolishness leads to suffering.

OK so Tom Tancredo is a bit of an arrogant fool. But at the end of the day, he was the only one to call Hume on the absurdity of his question, and he invoked Jack Bauer in doing so. Therefore, until further notice, Tom Tancredo has the official endorsement of this blog.

CNN vs. BBC

<--I do not envy this man

So yesterday, President Bush named Lt. Gen. Lute to be the US's new war czar, apparently because our drug czar had been doing so damned well that we needed to keep going with this whole czar thing.

What, exactly, is a war czar, you no doubt ask. CNN explains:

In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general.

Still not clear on it? Well, the BBC got you back:

Correspondents say it is unclear exactly what General Lute will do, and whether the job will involve settling turf wars between the Pentagon and the state department.

He will serve as an adviser to the president but will also keep his military position and three-star ranking, reports said.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the new appointee would speak for the president concerning developments in the conflict areas and smooth over differences between rival departments.

So we actually have no clue what a war czar is, but we do know that he will surely speak to the President. Do we really need to hire new people, just to speak to the President? But how did they choose this guy anyway? CNN, I'll give you first shot again:

It was a difficult job to fill, given the unpopularity of the war, now in its fifth year, and uncertainty about the clout the war coordinator would have. The search was complicated by demands from Congress to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and scant public support for the war. The White House tried for weeks to fill the position and approached numerous candidates before settling on Lute.

A difficult position to fill, eh? BBC, can you give us some more tantalizing detail?

Gen Lute was appointed after a lengthy search in which several candidates apparently turned down the position. He must be confirmed by the US Senate.

So let me get this straight: the government made a new position, forgot to figure out what that position actually does, and then found the only guy who wanted it to fill it. Victory is right around the corner.

(PS. Anyone else catch the Republican Debate last night: I hope to have a blog post about how Tom Tancredo gets my official endorsement for President up late tonight or tomorrow)