Happy Birthday John McCain (flashback)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

August 29th is John McCain’s birthday – he is 72 years old today. This is how President Bush celebrated John McCain’s 69th birthday in 2005 – he brought him a birthday cake.  How sweet.

What more notable event was occurring at the very moment that this photo was taken?  The residents of the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans were trapped and drowning in their own homes after the levees broke in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

John McCain has said that he would have handled the Katrina disaster differently if he were president.  Really?  Did John McCain tell Clueless George to get his sorry ass back on Air Force One and fly back to Louisiana and Mississippi and act like a president?  No he did not.  He was just as indifferent as George W. Bush.

McCain’s first post-hurricane visit to the region was in March 2006. His trip, according to those in attendance, was a full-day affair touring all aspects of the storm’s destruction. It came, it should be noted, after pining by local officials for more federal attention including, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu insisting that any politician serious about a presidential run would have to, at the very least, get a first hand account of the hurricane’s destruction.

In the year that followed McCain did not return to New Orleans. huffingtonpost.com

In July 2007, he ventured back to the Gulf Coast, but, while he held an open news conference, the purpose of the trip was officially a private fundraiser. huffingtonpost.com

During the 2008 primary campaign, John McCain’s "Time for Action" tour arrived in New Orleans… where McCain toured the hurricane-damaged 9th Ward and criticized both the Bush Administration and Congress for its handling of the disaster. Lamenting the pace of recovery, McCain said, "I want to assure you it will never happen again in this country. You have my commitment and my promise." John McCain’s Miserable Record on Hurricane Katrina

But McCain’s record on Hurricane Katrina suggests that he was part of the problem, not the solution.

McCain was on Face the Nation on August 28, 2005, as Katrina gathered in the Gulf Coast. He said nothing about it. One day later, when Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, McCain was on a tarmac at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, greeting President Bush with a cake in celebration of McCain’s 69th birthday. Three days later, with the levees already breached and New Orleans filling with water, McCain’s office released a three-sentence statement urging Americans to support the victims of the hurricane.

Though McCain issued a statement the next week calling on Congress to make sacrifices in order to fund recovery efforts, he was quoted in The New Leader on September 1 cautioning against over-spending in support of Katrina’s victims. "We also have to be concerned about future generations of Americans," he said. "We’re going to end up with the highest deficit, probably, in the history of this country."

That attitude was borne out in McCain’s actions and votes. Forty Senators and 100 members of Congress visited New Orleans before he did; he finally got there in March 2006. He voted against establishing a Congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local responses to Katrina in med-September 2005. He repeated that vote in 2006. He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief.

Shortly after the disaster in New Orleans, McCain did introduce a bill that sought to improve communications mechanisms for first-responders and authorities. The bill failed to go anywhere, and McCain later voted against other bills that had similar provisions.

To learn more about how McCain has lied about his votes, see FactCheck.org: Katrina Kerfuffle.

It appears that Karma may be coming around.  The National Hurricane Center is currently predicting that Hurricane Gustav is expected to strengthen into a powerful hurricane in the Caribbean and make landfall between the Florida panhandle and Texas, i.e., Louisiana and Mississippi, sometime next Tuesday – during the Republican National Convention. 

For Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina. A new major storm along the Gulf Coast would renew memories of one of the low points of the Bush administration, while pulling public attention away from McCain’s formal coronation as the GOP presidential nominee. GOP Considers Delaying Convention

Staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge for either political party. But GOP officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the Bush administration’s bungling of Katrina and its aftermath in 2005.

A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico could also cast unwelcome attention on the offshore oil rigs that McCain has championed as a solution to rising gasoline prices — they are now being evacuated in the face of the coming storm.

One senior GOP official said he does not anticipate a convention delay at this point, but he said the event would have to be reorganized if a large storm hit a major city on the coast.

"You would have to dramatically change the nature of what you do. Much less partisan. Much less political," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because internal discussions are ongoing. He added that all the speakers would have to retool their addresses to reflect the storm and its impact. "Otherwise, it’s the elephant in the room."

"The Republicans can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather," said Karl Rove, a former Bush adviser, on Fox News yesterday."  Well Karl, take it up with Dr. James Dobson and Stuart Shepard at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, CO, who asked "Christians" to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver.  Focus on the Family pulls plea for rain at Obama speech  Doesn’t sound very Christian to me.  Perhaps God was not amused as well.