The Thursday ‘BushWhack’ing

One more day… one more day…

• Still months away from Election Day and Sen. McCain is shaking up his campaign staff due to what they call “unforced errors in the campaign”… in other words; people were saying things they shouldn’t have been saying. As of now, senior adviser Steve Schmidt will be taking over day-to-day operations of the campaign, essentially replacing current campaign manager Rick Davis, who is being blamed, behind the scenes, as allowing the campaign to become unfocused and muddled. (While making changes within a campaign this late in the game isn’t new, it does illicit questions and murmurs about how the campaign will act in the long months ahead. Stay tuned…)
• While McCain was shaking up his campaign, Sen. Obama was outlining his plan to create volunteer and service opportunities to help with some of the nation's most pressing issues such as expanding AmeriCorps and doubling the size of the Peace Corps, integrating service-learning programs into schools and universities and expanding service initiatives. (Interesting plan by Obama, and one that should help ease the pains some Uber-progressives have been feeling in recent days about some of his announced plans that resemble gop talking points)
• During his trade talks with Colombia, McCain apparently got advance word about the raid that rescued hostages being held by FARC. (Um, is that diplomatically sound? Why would a presidential candidate get advanced word and not, gosh I don’t know, the president… and Lieberman’s spew about him receiving advanced warning of the raid signaling a vote of confidence by foreign leaders is bullshit… I have a feeling that if Obama were there, he would have gotten the advanced warning. I would say this is more of a signal of how foreign leaders feel about our current Commander-in-Chief that the candidate… but then again, I have free use of my brain…)
• “President” Bush admitted yesterday that it’s been a “tough month” in Afghanistan… (wow, way to go out on a limb there… perhaps if you hadn’t gone on your personal crusade in Iraq, our forces wouldn’t be facing the Taliban again in Afghanistan… but in re-focusing the war effort in Iraq and in essence forgetting Afghanistan, the Taliban were allowed to regroup and gain strength…)
• The monthly jobs report was released by the Department of Labor this morning and the news isn’t good as “payrolls dropped by 62,000” and unemployment held steady at 5.5%, marking the sixth month in a row that the economy has lost jobs… but we’re not in a recession and the economy is still good and the economic stimulus checks will righted the ship… I have one response to that; fail!
• And have we mentioned? That the US isn’t doing squat to address global warming? Well, I’m sure you already knew that, but now we have confirmation in the form of a G8 Climate Scorecards that shows the US has “done the least among the world’s eight biggest economies to address global warming.” Granted, the study also found that none of the G8 nations has taken enough steps to prevent catastrophic temperature changes, but don’t you feel good that the US has done the least while other countries have done something… I know I do.