"Reality has a Well-Known Liberal Bias."

This little quip or the Mythbuster, Adam Savage's, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" seem to sum up both McCain's run for president, and the right wing mentality that had gripped out nation for the last 8 years.

When confronted with data, if it didn't fit their world view, they rejected it. This was true from war planning, scientific funding, climate issues, tax policy, and about anything else.

Today on Meet the Press we see two very fine examples of this denial in action. First we hear McCain denounce Bush and his policies, again declaring that "I (McCain) am not Bush". This bold statement leaves one to ask; If he is not Bush, and if Bush's policies are so bad, why did he support them over 90% of the time. Why did the self declared 'Maverick' not fight against them, push back and work to block or change them? And more importantly, now that the election is upon us, if Bush's policies are so bad, why does McCain embrace and want to extend so many of them?

The Bush economy is a disaster, this is not questioned by anyone. The cornerstone of Buhs's economic policy are most clearly expressed by 2 key initiatives, tax cuts for the richest Americans funded by increasing our debt, and removal of corporate regulation.

These are also key points in McCain's plan. McCain wants to continue the Bush tax cuts for the hyper rich, and in the last 48 hours has called for a reduction in government regulation of industry (This worked so well on Wall Street, I can see what he liked the idea). My question to McCain is, if you are different from Bush, why are your policies so alike.

The second moment of McCain denying reality was when he was asked about the polling covering both the election overall and the various issues people are interested in. In every area Obama was favored, often by massive margins. When confronted by the facts of what the polls were saying, McCain did not try to modify his message, did not try to argue that despite these results, his ideas were unpopular but right, he tried to deny the validity of the polls, except for the single national election poll showing him just a few points down.

To fix any problem the first thing that you have to do is be able to understand it. If you refuse to accept reality and insist on trying to substitute your own, the problem will not get solved and very likely will simply get worse.

This has been the operational pattern we have seen the last 8 years, can we afford 4-8 more years of willful ignorance.


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