UPDATED: Myths about McCain? How about myths about Democrats??

As much as I appreciate and am very flattered when more influential bloggers than me (i.e. anyone) takes the time to visit my backwoods blog, and even takes the effort to respond seriously to a post of mine, I have to do my best to treat everyone equally…

That being said, I take major exception to this post by Cernig, who appears to be temporarily posting at Crooks and Liars while John Amato is at the ObamaFest (I never noticed him before anyways, and C&L is one of my daily reads).  He also has a blog I’m less familiar with, but have visited a couple of times (not enough to establish an opinion), called Newshoggers.

Anyways, now that the introduction is out of the way, I have to lay down my pre-emptive apologies:

1. I do not think the issues I am complaining about are at all exclusive to Cernig or this post; they’re actually rampant, which is why I have such an issue with them;
2. I absolutely hope that Cernig rips me back in turn.  I do honestly look at this blog as an attempt at regaining some writing and analytical skill I believe I once possessed, so would welcome the constructive criticism;
3. I really hope no one takes this post personally though.  As with all my non-Yale-bashing criticism, I think as hard as we bloggers are on the MSM, we really have to keep our own house in order and look out for each other when we fail (by way of providing the impetus to hone our craft).
4. Yes, I am a hypocrite.  And yes, I’m working on it.

So we’re all friends now? Good.

So Cernig posts fairly extensively about an article in The Glasgow Herald about the shocking parity in the race between McCain and Obama (like me, the author seemed to think Obama would have a large lead by now).

I don’t think it’s fair to say that “the investment houses… finance the Republican party” as Iain McWhirter states in the past tense.  As Michael Shedlock notes, as I recall, numerous times, principal figures in the investment industry are major supports of Barack Obama, particularly hedge funds.  Here is one example pulled up by Mish of a Goldman Sachs banker whose contributions heavily favour Obama (I know one example does not make my point, however I’m sure I read a recent post from Mish that argued the major players in the financial industry were spreading their contributions in a manner to insure favourable treatment regardless who becomes the next President).  The idea that only Republicans take corporate money to launder into larger sums of taxpayer money to be paid back to the corporations is naive.  Both parties are massively guilty on that count (see my previous post on Joe Biden).

Another issue is the summary provided in the closing paragraphs by Cernig, which I frankly did not see in the original article (perhaps just an issue of misinterpretation on my part).

“That’s basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia and China.”

THAT is a tremendous jump in logic and perhaps an intentionally sarcastic manner of phrasing Robert Kagan’s belligerence, or perhaps LIBERAL fear-mongering (yes, Liberals do it too) of the worst order.  I am not saying John “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” McCain isn’t some sort of war nut, but that really wasn’t what Kagan was saying.  Kagan was stressing the military threat of Russia and China, which seems odd considering China’s economic leverage over the USA is far more impressive, but it was not “basically an admission” that McCain would be throwing bags of flaming poop on either nation’s doorstep.  It was only an expression of something between paranoia and slightly-misdirected vigilance (China’s large but practically obsolete Army consists of me and four friends).  At least not based on the article’s contents.  Let’s wait until he actually says it before we accuse him of it.  Probably won’t have to wait too long.

The whole post seems to be largely a reiteration of the denigrating points (not to say they are not legitimate) in regards to John McCain’s latest run for the presidency.  I feel that none of that information is likely to be of any value to a C&L reader, as those points are liberally sprinkled across every post since John McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee.  The inclusion of those points merely reinforce the (I’d imagine) largely like-minded readers of C&L.  When a blog creates this rah-rah environment, they drive away those that don’t agree entirely (I’ve been driven away by one unnamed major Liberal blog for that reason, despite its formidable ability to generate activism) and pretty soon the comments look like… well… the comments at C&L.  Every comment I see on some posts is a pat-on-the-back, I-hate-McCain-too comment, and no one benefits from that.

At its best, it’s groupthink and onanism of opinion.  At worst, it’s party-shilling.

(I apologize if this post was messy.  My motorcycle is calling me)

UPDATE: I could not find the post from Mish (if I remember correctly) discussing the financial sector’s contributions to both McCain and Obama, however here is an article from muckraker Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone fame, containing this key measurement, and much more:

“Overall, Obama is flat-out kicking McCain’s ass when it comes to Wall Street contributions, raking in nearly $9 million from securities and investment executives, compared to $6.2 million for McCain.”

… and the cow goes moo