I’ve been meaning to write this up for a couple days after I first noticed it. Now of course I hope it goes without saying Barack Obama shouldn’t be using Hurricane Gustav as a marketing or press opportunity.
But still, how events like this are dealt with in a presidential campaign still shapes the public’s perceptions. And Obama is way behind John McCain in something that should be stupid simple.
Now I am not suggesting that Obama hop on a plane to New Orleans and get photographed on a levee. But what I am suggesting is that the party that let Katrina happen and the terrible state of New Orleans three years later, shouldn’t appear to be out in front on Gustav.
I mean don’t we have somebody in the Democratic party smart enough to present Obama’s stance on New Orleans and Gustav in a dignified manner, showing both his deep concern and involvement (which I am sure are is true)? Well it would appear they don’t.
As of noon on Sunday (8/31) Obama’s official website was still promoting his convention acceptance speech, with no mention of Gustav on the front page. Then by the morning of Monday (9/1) his site looked like the below screen capture. No personal message from Obama, just a link to the Red Cross.
Now take a look at McCain’s site, which has been this way since the early afternoon on Sunday (8/31).
And we wonder why we keep losing elections. Whoever fell asleep at the wheel on this issue at the Obama campaign needs to be looking for another.
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) visited an oil rig just off the coast of Louisiana in order “to highlight his support for increased domestic offshore drilling.” On Fox Noise this morning Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) promoted McCain’s oil rig visit.
In the interview Jindal oddly “emphasize that drilling alone is not enough” to address America’s energy needs. Whoops, guess he got all those various lies talking points mixed up.
This is McCain’s second attempt for a photo-op on an oil rig to drill home (sorry for the pun) his plan to open-up more offshore drilling leases. His last scheduled event was canned after a barge spilled more than 419,000 gallons of fuel oil into the Mississippi forming a slick 12 miles long slick.
There are a number of problems with McCain’s energy plan of expanded drilling. The first is he likes to say it is totally safe, as McCain did again on this visit. He and other Republicans like to point to the lie that no damage was done by Hurricane Katrina and Rita, which just isn’t true. The EPA called the spills cause by Katrina and Rita “worse than the worst-case scenario.”
Plus, we are already drilling and there just isn’t enough oil. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site in 1998 Louisiana produced 11,269,000 barrels of oil a month. Now it is just 6,293,000 barrels. Almost half as much. It isn’t cause of lack of production, it is cause of lack of oil.
It is also not accurate to say we’re not opening up more areas to drilling. In fact:
McCain’s visit came a day ahead of the Minerals Management Service’s lease sale in New Orleans to auction off 18 million acres of the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. The tracts could potentially yield as much as 400 million barrels of oil, but that amount would only meet the nation’s oil needs for about 19 days, and it would be at least seven to 10 years until oil started flowing.
Yes you read that correctly. It will take 7-10 years to get to the oil and 18 million acres of land will only give us enough oil for 19 days. This is nothing but election year politics and somebody on our “Traditional Media” ought to call them on this shit
In an effort to garner some positive press coverage while Obama tours the world, the McCain campaign came up with the idea for a photo-op by having him give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, right off the Louisiana coast.
But just an hour after the photo-op was finalized and the media was alerted, the event was canceled. The reason the campaign cited was bad weather caused by Hurricane Dolly.
But was the weather the real reason for the cancellation? Maybe the McCain “mind trust” didn’t want to visit the rig if the reporters on hand might notice the smell of diesel wafting through the French Quarter.
The Coast Guard closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River at New Orleans after a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided Wednesday, breaking the barge in half.
Nobody was injured, but more than 419,000 gallons of heavy, almost tar-like fuel oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long, said Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. […]
The double-hulled tanker Tintomara was loaded with about 4.2 million gallons of biodiesel and nearly 1.3 million gallons of styrene, but was not leaking, said Michael Wilson, president of ship management company Laurin Maritime (America) Inc. in Houston.
The collision occurred about 1:30 a.m. CDT just upriver from the Crescent City Connection, a pair of bridges between New Orleans’ east and west banks. A smell which many people thought was diesel was noticeable in the French Quarter and parts of New Orleans’ central business district.
This maybe the only smart decision the McCain camp make this week. Nothing says we can “drill safely” like an oil spill that closes 29 miles of the Mississippi River.
For some reason, while I was researching various blog posts I got interested the differences between McCain’s and Obama’s websites, and in particular the policy information they make available. I think it started when I decided to check out reports that McCain had no energy policy. It turned out that you could find bits of one, if you were prepared to slog through his various speeches, but at the time, his Issues page did not have an entry for energy. (Now it does.) I then noticed that, as I said earlier, it doesn’t have an entry for foreign policy either. (It still doesn’t, though there is a page on Iraq.) I started poking around, and the contrast between McCain’s and Obama’s Issues pages is really striking.
Here’s a list of issues that Obama has a page on and McCain doesn’t: Civil Rights, Disabilities, Faith, Family, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Poverty, Service, Seniors and Social Security, Technology, Urban Policy, Women. That’s a pretty striking list. Moreover, he has a page called ‘Additional Issues‘ with links to plans on Arts, Child Advocacy, Katrina, Science, Sportsmen, and Transportation. Of these, only Sportsmen has a counterpart on McCain’s site. Finally, under ‘People’, you can find separate policy pages on issues relevant to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (one-pagers in six languages, a longer version in English), First Americans, Labor, Latinos, and LGBT.
Since I have been hitting McCain pretty hard over his response, or lack thereof to the floods in my home state and all around it, I spent some time looking around on his site for any response. This two sentence press release about was all I could locate. Guess he is busy.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those impacted by the flooding throughout the Midwest. Cindy and I would like to extend our sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones, and stand ready to help those in the Midwest to recover and rebuild.
This is just a flat out smack down from Daily Kos related to the differences between how McCain and Obama have responded to the floods that are devastating communities all around me:
Disaster struck the midwest last week as flood waters shattered previous records, drowning crops and putting tens of thousands of people out of their homes. The full effects of the flood will be felt nationwide as gas prices could increase another 15% and food prices could increase another 25-30%. No doubt, this would be a serious issue for an aspiring presidential candidate. Obama answered the call this weekend, touring the hard hit areas, rolling up his sleeves to fill sandbags, and taking action with local leaders.
Obama’s camp also began putting out an urgent, nationwide plea to help flood victims—making it the front page headline on his website:
And how did John McCain react? He was busy rolling up his sleeves—filling up moneybags at a California “finance event.” For all the talk about Republicans disliking California and “west coast values”, they sure do spend a lot of time at California fundraisers. You may recall that while New Orleans drowned, GWB and McCain were miles away, sharing a little cake between friends. In a sad case of deja vu, McCain is once again nowhere to be found. What was featured on John McCain’s website over the weekend? John McCain, of course. So, how about today? Is there a serious focus on the growing tragedy of the floods? Nope, back to the alleged former Clinton supporter on the front page. A small flood donation button does appear, after scrolling a bit, right after the plea for McCain donations and the request that you add five “friends” for McCain. Apparently, adding more names to McCain’s fundraising email list takes priority over a flooded midwest and a country about to be smacked with even higher prices on everything from gas to milk and bread. And despite the fact that McCain’s team has thus far tried to mimic every aspect of Obama’s website and logo, they don’t feel the need to mimic his compassion and leadership in a time of dire need.
And even now, as the midwest continues to flood, McCain is hopping back and forth between Texas fundraisers. Mr. Moneybags doesn’t seem to have time for flood victims in the next few days. According to his campaign schedule, McCain is going to be very busy getting to know GWB’s oil and energy friends in Texas.
Actions and pass performance often are powerful factors in determing future actions. We ought to all keep the above in mind when we vote in November.
The Republican nominee-in-waiting plans to draw contrasts with Obama on a range of issues and argue that the Democrat offers the wrong kind of change while he offers the right kind. An advertising campaign is expected to reinforce that message in the coming weeks.
Many have commented about the obnoxious message and the equally unpleasant manner in which McCain delivered that message. Some have also pointed out how the episode highlights McCain’s lack of judgment; it was an act of hybris to ask voters to compare his own negative and ad hominem speech to Obama’s gracious and positive one on the very day the latter clinched his party’s nomination.
The cringe-worthy material is so abundant however that few have noted the stunning hypocrisy on McCain’s part. John McCain has a stark record of ignoring NOLA and opposing substantive disaster-relief legislation for two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina – right up until the spring of this year. And yet it is New Orleans that he chooses to use as his backdrop when he wishes to portray himself as the true candidate of “change”.
The fact that McCain is traveling to the Gulf Coast in an attempt to portray himself as an agent of change is a mark of how little he can actually point to in that regard. Where else could he possibly camp out to connect himself to ‘change’? On the front lawn of one of the handful of his lobbyist/campaign staffers whom he dumped in haste when reporters started asking about illegal activities?
Who can forget McCain’s indifference to the disaster as it unfolded? Appearing on Face the Nation the day before Katrina struck, he said nothing about the looming emergency. Then McCain yucked it up with Bush in Arizona even while the Gulf Coast was getting lashed. When he did get around to commenting, three days later, his office issued a tepid press release.
For the next half year, as Jonathan Stein documented, McCain was either absent from or in active opposition to substantive efforts to aid Katrina victims.
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.
During that period McCain wasn’t just failing to show leadership on the issue. Along with most other Republicans, he dug his heels in against spending serious money to help Americans in desperate need (contrast that with his free-spending ways on Iraq). McCain voted against extending unemployment benefits to Katrina victims up to 52 weeks, and against extending Medicaid benefits up to five months. He even voted twice against establishing an independent commission to examine the governmental response to Katrina. In May of 2006, little over a month after visiting NOLA for the first time, McCain also voted against the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill that had $28 billion for hurricane relief.
With a speech that failed on just about every level, on the facts, on the visuals, and even on the reaction from the media arm of the Republican Party (that would be FOX Noise), it almost seems like there is nothing left to mock about Tuesday’s speech by John McCain (R-AZ), but there is one little thing worth mentioning.
McCain began by saying:
Good evening from the great city of New Orleans.
Uhhh, no not so much. McCain’s speech was giving from Kenner, a city about 15 miles outside of New Orleans. Admittedly this is a minor mistake, compared to for instance, not knowing the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, and it didn’t seem to bother his electrified crowd of a couple dozen. It would be like me being in the Hilton in Gaithersburg, Maryland and saying I was speaking to you from the “great city of Washington, DC.
If you are going to use New Orleans and Hurricane as a “political prop” then at least get some of the most basic facts right, like what fucking city you are in.
After opposing Everglades restoration legislation Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tomorrow will visit the Everglades in an attempt to boost his environmental street cred. But as Think Progress and the Wonk Room outline, a year ago, McCain aligned himself with President Bush and opposed “spending $2 billion on restoring the national park.”
The problem is that isn’t close to true. During a press conference today in Baton Rouge, John McCain (R-AZ) declared in strong terms that he’s voted for every investigation related to Hurricane Katrina. But there is a problem (as often is the case with McCain’s statements), he voted twice against Democratic proposals to investigate the levee failures (i.e., the Federal Flood).
After a local reporter at the press conference asked why he voted against forming a commission to investigate the levee failures in New Orleans, McCain said that he supported every investigation—and added that he was “not familiar” with what the reporter was talking about:
McCain voted against establishing a commission to investigate the levee failures, in a September 2005 party-line vote in which all Republicans voted against the Democratic proposal. He then repeated that party-line vote against a similar Democratic proposal in February 2006.
Update #1: McCain’s actual record on Katrina points to the fact he must have had another “senior moment”:
McCain Voted Twice Against Establishing A Commission To Study The Response To Hurricane Katrina. [9/14/2005 & 2/2/2006]
McCain Opposed Granting Financial Relief To Those Affected By Hurricane Katrina. [9/15/2005]
McCain Voted Against Five Months of Medicaid For Hurricane Katrina Victims. [11/3/2005]
McCain Voted Against Emergency Funding Bill, Including $28 Billion for Hurricane Relief. [5/4/2006]
Update#2: McCain spokesman Brian Rogers has now said:
It doesn’t bode well for Senator Obama’s pledges to run a campaign of hope and change when on the first day of the general election he’s launching the same tired negative attacks that the American people are so sick and tired of. As Sen. McCain said, he wasn’t familiar with the specific votes the questioner was asking about. Instead he was speaking to his strong support for the Homeland Security Committee’s comprehensive, bipartisan investigation of Hurricane Katrina, which was already fully underway when these other proposals were suggested.
In an effort to garner some positive press coverage while Obama tours the world, the McCain campaign 
Who can forget McCain’s indifference to the disaster as it unfolded? Appearing on Face the Nation the day before Katrina struck, 
The problem is that isn’t close to true. During a press conference today in Baton Rouge, John McCain (R-AZ) 
