I hate to diss the folks at Pajamas TV, who were nice enough to let me come on recently to promote our worst predictions list, but sending Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher to cover the war in Gaza seems like a questionable decision:

Mr Wurzelbacher, 34, says he will spend 10 days covering the fighting in Gaza and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He told WNWO-TV in Toledo, Ohio, that he wants "go over there and let their 'Average Joes' share their story".

If you're a little fuzzy on Joe's foreign policy views, just recall that he agreed with a voter on the campaign trail that a vote for Barack Obama was equivalent to a vote for the death of Israel.

Meanwhile, the Internet is still anxiously awaiting Joe the Blogger's debut. Joe the merchandiser is going strong though.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Best Defense blogger Tom Ricks recently found out that Steven Metz, chairman of the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College and Best Defense commenter, was sending e-mails to colleagues in 2005 telling them to "avoid Tom like the plague" because of his coverage of the war in Iraq. Then just last year, Metz asked Ricks to blurb his new book.

Good thing Ricks has a blog now. (Incidentally, he also has by far the most bad-ass author photo on the Internet.)

Update: Metz responds.

Maybe I've just had Web design on my mind, but the placement of this pop-up ad on the Haaretz Website yesterday was pretty unfortunate given the rest of the stories on the page:

Somehow I don't think there are too many opportunities for white water rafting in Gaza right now.

Obviously, no one who works in the media can help but be disturbed by the economic troubles of the Tribune Company and its dark implications for the venerable American newspapers the company owns.

Reading the latest headlines from the Rod Blagojevich scandal, David Carr sees the danger a downsized Chicago Tribune poses to American politics:

In a city and state where corruption is knit into the political fabric, a solvent daily paper would seem to be a civic necessity. But if another governor goes bad in Illinois — a likely circumstance given the current investigation and the fact that the last governor, George Ryan, is serving six and a half years on corruption charges — what if the local paper were too diminished to do the job?

Good question. Here's another one: What if thousands were being killed in an armed conflict that directly impacted U.S. security, and no U.S. reporters were there to cover it?

While much of the U.S. media and political establishment has been ignoring the ongoing drug violence in Mexico that has claimed almost 7,000 lives, severely weakend the Mexican state, and involved 50,000 troops, reporters from the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times have largely been driving the story.

The turmoil in Mexico is already not getting the coverage it deserves. Without steady paychecks for Times reporters like Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, the full-scale war being waged just across the border might not be noticed at all.

Photo: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images

Al-Baghdadia, the satellite channel that employs Muntather al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush today, is calling for his release in a video posted on its Web site.

Meanwhile, Zaidi is probably on his way to becoming a folk hero in the Arab world. A headline on Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper gives you some of the flavor, "Double Shoe-Strike Almost Hit Bush in His Face: This Is the Iraqis' Farewell Kiss, Dog."

If you haven't yet seen the video of the incident, check it out here:

Die Welt reports from Baghdad:

An Iraqi reporter called visiting U.S. President George W. Bush a "dog" in Arabic on Sunday and threw his shoes at him during a news conference in Baghdad. Iraqi security officers and U.S. secret service agents leapt at the man and dragged him struggling and screaming out of the room where Bush was giving a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

At least Helen Thomas stuck with questions, for the most part.

When asked about the incident shortly after, Bush made light of it. "I didn't feel the least threatened by it," he said.

In Arab culture, hitting someone with a shoe is considered a grave insult.

More photos:

Photos: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Steven Lee Meyers has more:

[Bush's] appearance at a news conference here was interrupted by a man, apparently a journalist, who leaped to his feet and threw one shoe at the president, who ducked and narrowly missed being struck. Chaos ensued. He threw a second shoe, which also narrowly missed Mr. Bush. The man was roughly 12 feet from the lecturn in the center of two rows of chairs, about two feet from a pool of reporters. A scrum of security agents descended on the man and wrestled him, first to the floor and then out of the ornate room where the news conference was taking place. 

Apparently, the full insult was, "This is a farewell kiss, dog." Guess the Iraqi press has a ways to go.

UPDATE: The BBC has the video:

According to McClatchy's Adam Ashton, the man's name is Muthathar al Zaidi and works for an Iraqi satellite television station:

Friends said he covered the U.S. bombing of Baghdad's Sadr City area earlier this year and had been "emotionally influenced" by the destruction he'd seen. They also said he'd been kidnapped in 2007 and held for three days by Shiite Muslim gunmen.

I just noticed that the Jerusalem Post has a top-level link on its Web site called "Iranian Threat":

Kind of unusual for a newspaper, no?

Haaretz, in contrast, plays it straight:

UPDATE: A journo friend in Beirut writes in:

I am loving the Foreign Policy blog as always, but I am curious exactly how Haaretz "plays it straight" with sections titled "Diplomacy" and "Defense"?

I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't really notice this myself until I'd been reading Haaretz for months. It's still the best source I've come across for Israel-Palestine related news.

We love our friends upstairs at the Council on Foreign Relations. But I think it's time to use a new word for "challenge":

I suppose "Obama's Middle East Cluster****" wouldn't quite fly, though.

The editors at MaxPlanckForschung, flagship journal of Germany's Max Planck Institute, got a little more than they bargained for with an example of "classical" Chinese calligraphy they used on the cover of their latest issue. The idea was to evoke an image of China, which was the focus of the issue. But instead of arousing interest in cutting-edge science, Chinese readers discovered the calligraphy was titillating in other ways. A translation:

With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.

Despite having consulted a "German sinologist" about the text, no one seems to have caught the two glaring letter K's - I would think a dead give-away things aren't so "classical," even if you fail to comprehend the other characters. Maybe that's just in hindsight, though.

If only the content in science journals was so exciting.

As Jerome reported in yesterday's This Week in China, the Chinese government criticized French President Nicolas Sarkozy for hurting "the feelings of the Chinese people" by meeting with the Dalai Lama. This is a favorite phrase of Chinese officialdom, as James Fallows notes.

One Chinese blogger took it upon himself to comb through the People's Daily archives to rank the countries and organizations that have hurt Chinese feelings the most. The superb China media blog Danwei.org shares the results:

1. Japan: 47 times, starting in 1985
2. USA: 23 times, starting in 1980, when Los Angeles flew the ROC flag
3. NATO: 10 times, mostly relating to the 1999 Belgrade embassy bombing
4. India: 7 times, starting in 1986 and mostly relating to border issues
5. France: 5 times, starting in 1989
6. Nobel Committee: 4 times
7. Germany: 3 times, starting with a meeting with the D?l?i L?m? in 1990
8. Vatican City: 3 times, starting in 2000
9. EU: 2 times, starting in 1996
10. Guatemala: 2 times, both in 1997
11. Indonesia: in 1959, when a newspaper inflamed anti-Chinese sentiment
12. Albania: in 1978, for criticism of Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party
13. Vietnam: in 1979, for a high official's slander of China
14. UK: in 1994, over the Taiwan issue
15. The Netherlands: in 1980, over the government authorizing a company to provide submarines to Taiwan
16. Iceland: in 1997, for allowing Lien Chan to visit
17. Jordan: in 1998, for allowing Lien Chan to visit
18. Nicaragua: in 1995, for supporting Taiwan's bid to join the UN
19. South Africa: in 1996, for proposing a two-China policy

Have you ever hurt China's feelings?

The Economist's Democracy in America blog defends the editorial on Kenya's election that earned the magazine a spot on our worst predictions list, saying it was "not a prediction nor was it a conclusion."

You can read it here to judge for yourself.

This week's map comes from our benevolent overlords at WashingtonPost.com. The TimeSpace map, which you can find on the Post's "World" page, is an interesting new way to visualize the day's news from the post's reporters around the globe. You can adjust the timeframe of the stories you see on the slider at the bottom of the map:

If you zoom in on Washington D.C, you can see the latest Passport posts. You may even be able to find the post you're reading right now, though that risks opening up an Escher-like metaphysical vortex with Large Hadron Collider-like destructive powers. If this happens, the Washington Post Company will not be held responsible for the consequences.

Jonathan Mummolo reports for the Washington Post:

Customs officials searching the bags of an African man who flew into Dulles International Airport on Friday discovered three charred monkeys in his luggage, as well as pounds of deer meat and dried beef, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said today.

What seems like conventional wisdom one day, can be turned on its head pretty quickly. A first-term senator with an exotic-sounding name can defeat the biggest brand in Democratic politics. Decades of unprecedented economic growth can end with a bang. A multi-billion dollar industry can find itself at the mercy of a ragtag group of pirates on inflatable rafts. The 10 wannabe Nostradamuses on our list of the “Ten Worst Predictions for 2008” went out on a limb by forecasting the events of a dramatic year, and came crashing dramatically down to Earth.

And if you haven't checked it out yet, our list of the "Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008" is also live.

There was more to the monumental changes of 2008 than meets the eye.

As the world debated a new president's foreign policy vision, a key component of his platform was already being implemented.

As the United States watched to see how an emerging China would react under the spotlight of the Olympic Games, a U.S. company was selling its authoritarian government the tools it would need to crush dissent.

As renewed tension between Russia and the West provoked fears of a new Cold War, some of Russia's most aggressive international moves were taking place far from the Caucasus or Eastern Europe in the oil fields of Central Africa.

And as "green" became the year’s biggest buzzword, scientists discovered that environmentalists' favorite power source might be even more harmful than the fossil fuels it was designed to replace.

FP's "Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2008" features the page A14 stories that reveal as much about what happened in 2008 as those on page A1. More importantly, they may be clues to what the lead headlines will be in 2009.

Check it out.

There are directly appropriated US government spending on the TARP. Then there's Fed lending, which is different. Then there are various loan guarantees and agreements to backstop questionable assets. These are all very different kinds of expenditures and some of them don't even really count as 'spending' in the ordinary sense we understand the term.

Exhibit A: This chart, which has been making the rounds in the blogosphere:

Bloomberg News kicked off the frenzy with this story -- which has mysteriously disappeared after getting top billing on the Drudge Report and dozens of other Web sites and blogs -- tallying the cost of the bailout at well over $7 trillion. Then, finance blogger Barry Ritholtz posted this teaser for his upcoming book, Bailout Nation:

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.

People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context.

The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Now, I am pretty sure that Ritholtz, a finance whiz, understands full well that the $4.6 or $7.7 trillion isn't all "outlays." As Zachary Roth explains, only "some of these commitments -- for instance, the Treasury's bailout program -- represent actual spending":

We could see a return on these investments, of course, depending on how the companies that we've taken on fare going forward, but there are by no means any guarantees.

Others, meanwhile, represent loans backed by collateral, meaning the government would have had to have badly miscalculated for us not to be paid back in full, probably with interest. And some are simply loan guarantees.

So putting an exact figure on exactly how much we've put up doesn't tell us much.

But not everyone knows this. Witness Cory Doctorow's misleading headline on Boing Boing: "Bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*!" Is it any wonder people are so upset?

A brilliant innovation or a sad day for journalism? On Deadline reports, you decide:

Germany's Bild newspaper plans to partner with a supermarket chain to distribute $89 cameras that readers can use to take pictures and shoot videos for use in the publication's print and web editions.

"We can't cover everything," Michael Paustian, an editor at the paper, tells AP. "We think it is an advance for journalism."

I don't go to church on Sundays, but I do watch Meet the Press. So I am pleased to see that the venerable NBC talk show is finally going to get a permanent host to replace the late Tim Russert.

Herewith, some unsolicited advice for the new guy, former White House reporter David Gregory:

1. Bring on subject-matter experts more often. Chuck Todd and Paul Begala are great political commentators, but they should not be your go-to guys on, say, what to do about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai or the wisdom of airstrikes on Iran. There are plenty of smart wonks out there who know how to make a splash on television, so don't just go to the usual suspects. Having more genuine experts on TV before the Iraq war might have brought some inconvienent truths to light and saved us all a lot of trouble.
2. Stop using boring senators such as Claire McCaskill as proxies for Barack Obama. You are only going to get bland talking points because they will be too afraid of making a mistake. Powerful committee chairs, on the other hand, can often make news on the program.
3. Score more exclusives. Meet the Press would be a great venue to launch things like Bob Graham's terrifying WMD report.
4. Be yourself, but don't be a jerk. Bring the same love of politics and spirit of bonhomie that Russert brought to the game, but avoid overly cosy relationships with some guests. Save the how's-your-marriage banter with James Carville and Mary Matalin for the green room.
5. Ask tough follow-up questions. Don't let your interview subjects wriggle away as Tom Brokaw does, but don't rely as heavily on trying to nail them with predictable "flip-flop" gambits like Tim Russert did. If the damning quotes are recent and relevant, go for it. But remember that a foolish consistency in the face of shifting evidence is no virtue.
6. Make Joe Biden a weekly panelist.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet The Press

Tom Gross, a former Middle East correspondent for Britain's Sunday Telegraph, moots a drearily familiar argument in the Wall Street Journal:

What is the motivation of journalists in trying to mangle language -- such as going out of their way to refer to terrorists as "militants," as one Mumbai story on yesterday's Times of London Web site seemed to do? Do they somehow wish to express sympathy for these murderers, or perhaps make their crimes seem almost acceptable? How are we going to effectively confront terrorists when we can't even identify them as such?

Elsewhere in the piece, Gross does manage to cite some egregious examples of media figures seeming to go out of their way to avoid using the word "terrorist," but I must confess that I simply do not understand the obsession some press critics have with the word "militant."

It's a perfectly accurate description of people who shoot innocent civilians, and it can also be applied to people who attack police officials and soldiers. It can accurately describe leaders of terrorist groups who may not be personally involved in conducting attacks, but are nonetheless "militant." I don't see the word having any positive connotations whatsoever. Do you?

Think Progress catches this unfortunate graphic from CNN yesterday:

Susan Rice was, of course, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

(Hat tip: Ta-Nehisi Coates)