On the Contrary

John McMean (McCain has become Mr. What can I say nasty about Barrack next, hence McMean) has made some statements lately that ought to get major media attention which he is craving with Obama in the Middle East and Europe doing what John challenged him to do.  The trouble is the media is basically looking the other way, maybe because they are embarrassed or maybe because they are biased.  The result of all this is that if you liked your father’s view of the world your going to get it if you vote for Senator McMean.  The problem will be that your father’s world isn’t the one we are living in any more.  Hear is a sampling:

➢    “George Bush removed the ban on drilling offshore and prices went down by $10” (note there is an implied cause and effect relationship here that doesn’t exist) and Barack Obama has voted against off shore drilling and is the reason oil prices are so high.  No I am not kidding.  This is what he said.  I guess that means if President Moron proposes drilling in the Artic, we will be back to pre-war prices.  Oh, I forgot, he already did.  This of course ignores that Senator McMean was also against drilling but now he has seen the alleged cause and effect relationship and is now a proponent.  I guess that is why he switched from being against the Bush tax cuts to being for them.  He has seen the wonderful impact these tax cuts have had on our “fundamentally sound” economy.  Or said another way you see the world as you need to see it to uphold your false belief system.  It is old man thinking.
➢    “John McMean would rather lose the election than lose the war”.  No actually he would rather continue down the path he has chosen than adjust to changing circumstances.  Note he is implying that Barrack wants to lose the war which is another gross lie.  John just can’t get his arms around a timeline that even the Iraqis see as beneficial to their long term political future.  Now he can’t shift his position with shifting realities on the ground.  What does that say about a flexible leader who can take advantage of changing circumstances in the future?
➢    “The surge is working and we are winning”.  I am with the New York Times on this one: define winning.  If we have a police force in Iraq that ties up our whole military, lets al-Qaeda grow and return to the threat it was before 9/11, has Afghanistan descending into chaos, is that “winning”.  Iraq may survive and their political forces may, with us doing their job for them, finally take charge of their nation, but the religious civil war has not gone away and will not be solved for many years to come.  In the meantime, while we are reducing the violence in Iraq so they can run in place, we are losing the real war on al-Qaeda.  There is another twist here.  If the Iraqi political structure does take charge, they will by necessity throw us out in order to stay in power and be legitimate.  I wonder if John McMean understands this?  Of course he doesn’t.
➢    Probably most disturbing is the CBS interview with Katie Couric and John McMean where CBS edited out several answers that were historically incorrect and spliced in another answer.  First let’s look at what it says about John McMean, and then let’s look at what it says about our media.  John confused when the “awakening” (Sunni’s throwing out al-Qaeda and co-operating with the U.S.) occurred and said it was a result of the surge.  It actually it started about a year before the surge and the cause and effect of the reduction in violence and the surge is muddled by whether the awakening was really the catalyst for the reduction in violence.  Now none of this is really critical unless you realize the John recreates reality to meet his view of the world.  He also said, which was cut out of the CBS interview, that ‘Iraq was the first major conflict since 9/11”.  I guess Afghanistan doesn’t count and in his mind it doesn’t.  This is very similar to his “misstatements” on Iran helping al-Qaeda (they have not, they are Shiites, al-Qaeda is Sunni), and saying the problem in Iraq is al-Qaeda and not the religious conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.  Do we need another leader who has a preconceived notion of reality and selectively screens his “facts” to support that view?

So what we are seeing is your conservative father’s view of the world and our approach to our economy that is basically more of the same that has got us to where we are today.  What is most disturbing is John McMean’s factual deficit and the press’s refusal to start holding him accountable for these untruths.  These are not lapses of an old man, they are a reflection of a mindset that does not react to reality and redefines it to meet preconceived views.  CBS’s altering of the interview was not just normal editing, but was explicit changing of the content and the news world should be up in arms.  The only ones I have seen carrying this story are MSNBC and Media Matters.  I have yet to see an interview with the “straight talk express” that holds John McMean accountable for these miss statements and in not doing that they are failing as journalists and doing a great disservice to the country.  We don’t need another President Moron.

We have another problem in that we have “celebrity” news reporting.  Only the anchors can do the interview because they are the “star” and they do not have the in depth knowledge of most subjects to challenge falsehoods or “facts” stated by the interviewee.  They just allow most of these untruths or misstatements to flow by while they go on to their next question to highlight their “tough questioning”.  Thus unsubstantiated and erroneous claims go unchallenged and we live in a world of saying it is so makes it so.  John McMean is thriving on this culture of either ignorance, lack of professionalism, or malfeasance in our media and we may just get what we deserve in the next election if we don’t have the intellectual integrity to really look at his policies and beliefs in depth.