The Day The Levees Broke: McCain’s Birthday More Important to Bush

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Sen. John McCain visited the lower 9th ward of New Orleans this week, claiming that he would do a better job of handling natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina than George W. Bush.  Katrina response ‘disgraceful,’ McCain says | www.azstarnet.com ®  McCain declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed at the nearest Air Force base, drawing a sharp contrast to President Bush’s handling of the tragedy.

McCain’s use of some hypothetical future natural disaster to try to get separation between himself and George Bush does not explain the actual failure of McCain and Bush to act during the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.  For an excellent time line of events, the good folks at Think Progress have done the homework for you.  http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

Jonathan Stein blogs at Mother Jones, "John McCain’s Miserable Record on Hurricane Katrina" MotherJones.com | News. Mr. Stein reports that "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."

While floods ravaged New Orleans in August 2005, Bush and McCain celebrated McCain’s birthday in Arizona. Susan Walsh / AP

Question for Sen. McCain: When George Bush came to celebrate your birthday with you at the very moment that New Orleans was being destroyed and people were suffering the terrifying death of drowning in their homes, did you advise Bush to do what you claim you will do?  Did you ever give Bush some of your mythical "straight talk" and tell him "what the hell’s the matter with you boy! What are you doing here?  Get your dumb ass back on that plane and get to New Orleans.  A great American city is being destroyed, and the citizens of New Orleans need to know that their president and their government is coming to their rescue!"  Based upon the photo above, it doesn’t appear that either one of them had New Orleans on their mind.

Mr. Stein continues: 

"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."

[Mc]Cain 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.

McCain may talk sympathetically about New Orleans’ recovery this week, but the record shows that when it mattered most, McCain failed to act."

And what did Sen. McCain come to tell the residents of the lower 9th ward who have been waiting for their city to be rebuilt for the better part of three years?  McCain told reporters he was not sure if he would rebuild the lower 9th ward as president.

"That is why we need to go back is to have a conversation about what to do – rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is,” he said.

"Whatever?"  Sounds as if McCain is McSame, willing to continue Bush’s neglect of the citizens of New Orleans.