Irony, Anyone?

Today's news is all about the freeing of Ingrid Betancourt in Columbia, along with several American hostages, all of whom have been held for years by the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, a terrorist group. This is great news. Betancourt was a candidate for president in Columbia when she was abducted six year ago. For me, the most poignant moment was the mother of two embracing her 19 year old son and 22 year old daughter. Just think, these young adults were 13 and 16 when their mother was kidnapped, still children.

Anyway, apparently McCain is big buddies with the president of Columbia. And while this daring rescue attempt has been in the works for a long while—the Columbian defense department had people infiltrating the terrorist group to pull this off for years now—it seems singularly ironic that McCain, and his lapdogs Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, were on hand in Columbia the day the rescue was completed. Fox News, of course, tried to spin it like McCain had some hand in freeing these people, which makes the network seem like an even bigger farce than they usually appear to be.

Meanwhile, McCain has shaken up his campaign staff and seems to be leaning even more in the direction of Bush-land by having Karl Rove's top disciple, Steve Schmidt, leading the campaign and two of Rove's other former advisors have also been named as a part of McCain's camp. WTF? If McCain doesn't want to come off as the second coming of Dubya, this is SO not the way to go. Any idiot can see that. But what puzzles me even more is why Mac would think that Bush still has the winning ticket for the presidency. His approval ratings continue to inch southward and today the latest figures came out on jobs and we have lost even more jobs than they initially believed for the months of April and May. So far this year, the country has lost 438,000 jobs, an average of 73,000 a month. DAMN. The Mac camp's response? We need to stick with the economic agenda of the last eight years. Why you may ask? Because "The American people cannot afford an economic agenda that will take our country in the wrong direction and cost jobs." Hello! Are they even paying attention???