brutal, but true.


www.theleftcoaster.com/
by Steve Soto



He's A Lying Old Man

I give Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz credit this morning for covering an issue that needs more attention: Do John McCain's repeated misstatements deserve more coverage than they are getting? MSNBC's Dan Abrams to his credit has been all over this issue of late as well. Still, few in the media have understood what's behind the recent right wing pushback narrative that Obama gets too much positive coverage: this is really nothing more than a typical Rovian preemptive attack to hide McCain's mistakes and ensure better coverage for his smear campaign. Rove is simply attacking from McCain's position of weakness once again, namely McCain's years of favorable uncritical coverage.

Several commentators note correctly that if Barack Obama had made the Sunni-Shia, Czechoslovakia, and Iraq/Pakistan border slip-ups, the right wing and mainstream media would be hammering him for his inexperience. Until recently, McCain was getting a free pass on these blunders, and in the case of the whitewashing "CBS News with Katie Couric", McCain was aided by the network's editing out yesterday of his lie that the surge led to the Sunni Awakening.

McCain supporters strangely rally to defend him by saying of course he has the knowledge to know these things, based on his alleged experience. But to buy that argument, and I don't, it means that McCain knows better when he utters these mistakes and outright lies, but either because of age or mendacity or both he says this crap anyway. All of which makes him a lying old man. As for his alleged experience, McCain has never been known as a foreign policy expert in the Senate, having served a long time on Armed Services and never on Foreign Relations. His claim to being experienced is that he was a POW and Navy flyer, honorable things to be sure but not things in and of themselves that recommend him over others who have better brains and are strategic thinkers.

Candidates will make mistakes, as evidenced by Obama's slip-up yesterday, simply because the demands of campaigning produce gaffes. That isn't the same thing as repeating lies and misstatements, even after being corrected on them more than once. To do what McCain is doing represents a lack of integrity and a willingness to say anything to win the office even at the expense of the truth, which is another reason why McCain is simply Bush's third term.

He's worse than a doddering imbecile. He's revealing himself to be a lying old man who knows exactly what he is doing and is unfit for the office. It's about time the media got off the bus, avoided the BBQs, and noticed.



The Lying Old Man Strikes Again

McCain is still insisting that he is correct and everyone else is wrong about the surge creating the Anbar Awakening.

"McCain asserted he knew that and didn't commit a gaffe. "A surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. ... I'm not sure people understand that `surge' is part of a counterinsurgency."
Speaking on CBS Tuesday of a Sunni sheik who approached Col. MacFarland, McCain said, "Because of the surge, we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening." "

For the record, the Sunni awakenings began in the Summer of 2006, six months before Bush announced the escalation in Iraq over the objections of the Iraqis and the military brass in January 2007. The military officer McCain references didn't even meet the leader of the Awakening until after it was already under way in August 2006, months before the troop escalation was even discussed at the White House.

Lastly, Petraeus didn't even show up in Iraq as chief commander until early 2007, and he didn't even authorize American support for the Sunni groups across Iraq until June 2007, four months after the escalation was even announced and authorized. So how could Petraeus's counterinsurgency have been underway and creating the Awakening in 2006 when he wasn't there or even supporting it until almost a year later?




Say Something Else Stupid John

Even though new offshore drilling won't generate any new domestic oil supplies for years if not decades, John McCain said with a straight face this morning that Bush's lifting of the ban is the reason why oil prices have dropped $10 a barrel, a claim that not even the White House makes.

He's right, he doesn't know anything about the economy. He's simply playing to the polls and the base. He also intentionally ignores the fact that by talking directly with the Iranians, the Bush Administration reduced some of the regional tension that was driving up prices. But since this doesn't fit into the McCain narrative, his intellectually-bankrupt default position is to spew this drivel.

So John, who gets the "credit" when oil resumes its upward climb?