Snow Takes Over, Gets First Planted Question

So Tony Snow did his first televised press briefing and it finished with the perfect sympathy drawing planted question: why does he wear a "LIVESTRONG" bracelet? Under most circumstances I would consider this an ask him casually afterwards kind of question, but, no, not with this administration. Someone made sure that got asked, and toward the end, too so that the last impression left was Tony emotionally discussing his cancer survival story. Yea, yea, how rude of me. He had cancer, it was scary, he lived, and now he supports efforts to find a cure. Fine, whatever, except for a couple things: this is exactly the kind of crap that Karl Rove does all the time. I have no doubt in my mind that his cancer story was even part of the reason he was chosen for the job (the other being that he was at Fox, and a direct spin pipeline probably simplifies things a bit).

The other thing is the obviousness of the bracelet versus the administration's record on health, well, science in general. One dollar gets you a yellow rubber bracelet. Large donations can get you some tax benefits. Federal funding is out of the question, though. We need that money to pay rich people to invest in the stock market, because God--and therefore our president--knows that they would never invest in the most profitable (legal) investment available without tax incentives. This is the look like you care but don't actually do anything about it politics that was gloriously demonstrated in the state of the union address earlier this year.

Tony may be a great guy (considering his current and former jobs, that is not likely, but it is still possible) but his story is being used to try and get Bush better numbers at the polls. Period. If you don't get that then you haven't been paying attention for the past five plus years.