McCain's History On Katrina Doesn't Match Campaign Rhetoric
By Bill W. Thursday Apr 24, 2008 1:30pmMcCain Then and Now:
On Thursday, John McCain toured areas of New Orleans that are still damaged from Hurricane Katrina and tried to explain how he would have done things differently had he been President.
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John McCain: Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled. Never again.
Dana Bash: John McCain used these vivid reminders of a stained Bush legacy to try to distance himself. President Bush famously flew over New Orleans in the days after Katrina, a mistake McCain said he would not have made.
John McCain: In all candor if I had been President of the United States I'd have ordered the plane landed at the nearest Air Force base and I'd have been over here.
Yep, John McCain would have hopped off of that plane and done what exactly? He didn't say, so we're left to guess whether he would have used Air Force One to rescue evacuees (and if so, why didn't he hop on his private jet and do so at the time? just sayin') or is it more likely he would have simply held a photo-op presser like he did yesterday and the day Hurricane Katrina hit.
Now, I guess it's asking a lot to let something like Katrina spoil his birthday plans, but if he really would have done things so differently had he been President, honestly, then why didn't he at least say something along the lines of: 'I'm flattered you still thought enough to come, Mr. President, but don't you have something more important you should be attending to?' and wouldn't he at least have exercised better judgment than to participate in a laugh-filled photo-op with the President for the historical record that fateful day?
Despite all the talk at yesterday's campaign photo-op, John McCain's actions then and since could not be more stark in contrast:
The fact is, McCain has a history of denying the Gulf Coast aid when it needs it most and a record of outrageous votes to show for it. Instead of helping the area rebuild after Hurricane Katrina and the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast get back on their feet, McCain actually voted to deny emergency funding to the area, and he voted against giving victims of Katrina access to Medicaid and unemployment benefits.
As if it wasn't already baffling enough that McCain would even dare mention Katrina with a record like that, it's especially so right now seeing as how just this past Tues the radical pastor John Hagee once again reminded the world that he's a nut who literally believes that Katrina occurred because God damned America, or at least the gulf coast of it. Hagee has been saying as much for years in his sermons, but McCain has yet to comment on Hagee’s offensive beliefs about Hurricane Katrina and just this past Sun McCain reiterated that he's "glad to have" Hagee's endorsement
I haven't seen a worse staged photo-op belied of the facts since, well ...
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McShame is even more phonier than the giggling lying murderer Bush.
I don't know if he's evil or just senile, but either way - Grampa Simpson is unfit to be President.
Y'all trying to make me as bald as Howie Mandell?
Everyone keeps using the term rhetoric like that to where I want to pull my hair out.
I'd probably end up looking more like him:
http://www.rickey.org/blog/images/2006/08/boy-george-01-2006-8-16.jpg
Let him eat ShitCake
1 motorfingaz Says: McShame is even more phonier than the giggling lying murderer Bush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9vhxj5pUMI
Who cares about any of this? A shark has attacked a person in the water, where sharks live and people do not! This shocking story requires wall to wall coverage on all of the cable news networks!
Is this video going to be aired anywhere? If not it really should.
What the heck happened?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yZLOtcUXq_k
I just can not wrap my mind around this countries cruelty sometimes, but I am beginning to quickly.
McCain sat down with his advisors and decided that the best tactic to prevent hurricaine damage is not to build better levees and preserve buffering forests and wetlands. No, he listened to Hagee and agreed to relocate all the homosexuals farther north and put Pat Robertson in charge of FEMA so he can pray to god and have the weather redirected.
Dana Bash wets her pants for bush and mcsame.
Speaking as someone from down here, the chance of it happening again are good and we know not to expect any real assistance if a Republican is in office. But it is alright, we will get assistance from France.
http://dirtycoast.com
Whose wounds are these so full of blood.
Their house was in the N'awlins flood;
They will not see him stopping here
To watch them shovel endless mud.
Their SUV is stocked with gear
They need stop 'n get more beer
And though we know the man a snake
He makes the terrorists disappear.
He gives harshness to lungs that ache
Concede they must to their mistake.
The only other sound's the Veep
A sleazy constitutional fake.
The wounds thereof so stark from sheep
The blood of misled yet to weep
And wars to start from guarded keep,
And wars to start from guarded keep.
-with apologies to Mr Frost
I think he would photo-op, just like the shrub.
McCain speaks one thing yet is actualy doing another. So if you listen he is being straight out of one side of his mouth and crooked out the other side.
Embraces Hagee who condemns LA. for sin and God's wrath smited them. As tornados smite the midwest for their sins. I guess jobs leaving the U.S. is God's smiting as well.
So he now says the obvious that Bush Adm was wrong in some things as responding to Katrina. And he would do it differently.
Yet, McCain's own GOP would not correct the Bush Adm. McCain as one of them.
McCain's own GOP defies him by running a smear ad in North Coarolina of Obama in the Dem Primary. McCain trying to look as if he is keeping his elitist word of running a clean campaign. Can't or doesn't have the influence to control the GOP when he told them not to run it.
Now I understand the John Senator wanting to look as though he is telling them no and they are defying him.
-Does McCain have the pwer and influence to tell his GOP not to mess like that in his Campaign? And make them adhere?
This should be news of McCains weakness and lack of influence with his GOP.
A president McCain will be controlled by these same people and he is a hollow voice as much as Bush....................
Please! Yes! Let's have more f***tards in office who get everything HORRIBLY WRONG THE FIRST TIME promising that, yeah, this time they will really, really get it right!!!
Yeah!!! Let's run our government like a business, all the sh*t-head right wingers used to say!
Let's promote everybody who ever disastrously ran the company into the ground as the new CEO because their horrible failure the first time proves their excellent qualifications to lead?
Sounds great!
Hey, let's get the neurosurgery ward led by the guy who has the highest proportion of negligent malpractice suits on his hands -- since obviously he's the most learned of us all on how terrible that negligent malpractice is???
here we go
mccain condemns the ads being run in sc....while basically parroting those same ads
will america ever wake up?
will the msm call bs...bs??
will the msm ever call mcfeeble on his empty rhetoric?
who really is getting the free ride here, and why does the liberal press want mcasshat to be our next prez?
13 humidhaney Says: Speaking as someone from down here, the chance of it happening again are good and we know not to expect any real assistance if a Republican is in office. But it is alright, we will get assistance from France.
Escargot (garden slugs) cigarettes, armpit scented loaves of bread and 'tude?
Wasn't the Internet supposed to be the catalyst that would mobilize people to act for change?
Or was I being incredibly naive?
Incredibly Naive
If McCain wanted to impress anyone he would have said as president he would put the guy in charge of FEMA who Clinton had in charge. For the life of me this moment I cannot remember his name but he honestly did a great job.
I can't think right now because I have the dumbest SOB in the world here from the cable company trying to fix my cable reception. This is the second guy they have sent out in a week and I swear they get more stupid as we go on. I've tried to tell them what was the reason we had this problem before and how it was corrected but they just won't fu*king listen. So I wait and wait while this guy fools around and tries to act like he knows what the hell he's doing.
I got it now. It was James Lee Whitt. He ran FEMA under Clinton
I remember wondering as I watched the tape of bodies - AMERICAN bodies - floating face down in NO why Our Glorious Leader didn't just go down there, put out the call to every redneck with a bass boat to go out there and start picking the victims up. He would have been a real leader then.
Of course "never again" McFraud...all the colored's are gone. What bullshit. Nutty Johnny should have made that ignorant speech at Jackson square. And Conservatives call Obama an "empty suit"...McWar's is full of shit.
This election I really get the feeling that the DNC is finally paying attention to what the other side's candidate is actually saying. There's a gold mine of verbal gaffes and hypocrisy and downright absurdities (i.e. economics, taxes) coming from Old John on a near daily basis, be it in Ohio, Appalachia and now New Orleans. And I think there's a series of TV Ads being prepared and stored away for the right time (i.e. when our primary finally ENDS!!! - Please, Indiana voters, just one vote victory margin for Obama....). And we won't even need to play the Slime Game either.
Had John McSame been the president he would have stopped at the nearest air force base and then ridden his water modified Jazzy straight to the Ninth Ward! When he got there he could tell the people on the rooftops to "suck it up, there'll be no big-government program to lift you up out of your wretchedness!".
The biggest criminal in this country is the idiot from Crawford.
His negligence following Katrina, is equalled by his complete negligence in every other facet of his dispicable administration. Thank the MS corporate media for getting this aristocratc, stupid, american hating POS elected to the highest office in the land.
I now fully expect them to pull-out every concievable trick to get McInsane elected next.
28 NoGWBpolicyleftinplace Says: The biggest criminal in this country is the idiot from Crawford.
Joan?
I really wish the media would stop fellating this geezer. Good grief. Does anyone need any more proof how much in the pocket the media are for repugs?
ysbaddaden @ 3:
What exactly is your problem with people using the term rhetoric like that? Do you often look in the dictionary and want to yank your hair out?
Don't forget that McCain's BFF, Lie-berman, stonewalled any Congressional effort to investigate the Katrina response...
Must be yellowcake.
knifewrench @ 32:
Actually, and I really hate to defend him at all, but Lie bermann voted Yea each time for the Katrina Commission to investigate the Katrina response. Every Republican voted against it every time though, including McCain.
September 14, 2005 and February 2, 2006
Pure republican propoganda from CNN. McCain will be our next president because the media is clearly on his side.
31 Bill W.
Dictionaries also include terms like Nanoo-nanoo, shazbot and D'oh!
But I wouldn't put them in any formal papers.
NOBODY'S history or actions match their campaign rhetoric anymore. Why should McWarmonger be any different?
Besides which dictionary definitions don't always set the definition, but explain how a word is being currently used.
Additionally, the sections you boldfaced are several down from the most used definitions, and when noted in someone's speech and writing, they're described as logical fallacies and questionable precepts thus hurting the communicant's message.
Don't get me started about the band Rush either, I've always hated their music.
"I can pretend to care too!"
ysbaddaden @ 38:
Your replies, to quote Plato, are but more "mere rhetoric"
And I love Rush. I still have all of their albums through Permanent Waves on LP (but nothing to play them on anymore lol), and have every one of their cds.
I wonder if Obama owns a private plane like that elite McCain does?
You can't see it in the picture, but Bush is prolongedly goosing Johnny, which is why they are both laughing with delight.
I saw it, we all saw it, buty it's down the memory hole in the media, Bush at McSame's birthday party cutting the cake while thousands suffered and died in norleans.
If I could get away with it, I would dump my concentrated morning piss on their heads.
Don't worry feds, I will never ever attend an event that honored Bush or McCain.
I'm much younger than them so I'll save my piss until I pay a visit to their graves. I'm making a retirement grave piss tour list, before 2000 Ronnie was the only name on it, man it's huge now, maybe I should start stockpiling gas for the trip.
Way to rub salt on the wounds, McMorton.
I'd like to see how hot he feels if a tornado destroyed all 8 of his homes, and then FEMA provides a trailer which contains formaldehyde.
Didn't he also say yesterday that the 9th Ward should be rebuilt, torn down, and I don't know?
Yeah, that's wonderful, schmuck! Telling people rebuilding their homes that they should be torn down.
40 Bill W.
I noticed you didn't use any citations or links.
Last night I did one of my favorite things and reviewed both of Plato's dialogues Gorgias and the Phaedrus while listening to my collection of the Ramones.
The only short quotes I could find from Plato is, "Rhetoric is the art of ruling men's minds," which makes him sound like an ancient Lamont Cranston.
There were several major forms of rhetoric, a pre-Socratic style from around 600 BCE, championed by the Sophists and then the Plato style. It can fall under celebratory, deliberative, and dogmatic styles.
Plato connected rhetoric to poetry and thus to a greater Truth. His famous debate between himself and Protagoras of Abdera was because of Protagoras's Sophist tendency to see truth as relative, limited by one's background and world-view and not transcedent. Plato saw that as not having any Truth at all, or an incomplete truth without dialectics, which is more like what we call relativistic morality. This approach could also be compared to the debate between science and pseudo-science today.
It's not that there's a false-rhetoric, but a misuse of rhetoric, and only the latter is synonymous with rhetoric as political bs.
However, in today's milieu, Protagoras seems to have won. His comments were echoed by John Locke's, "Je nais sais qua." (sp?), which seems to have more of a sense of humility.
To yesbad@45 You went to far back in history, try 1920s Al Capone "You can get more with a smile and a pistol than you can with just a smile". No one should be mislead, these fuckers murderd people in New Orleans, by doing nothing and its more than likley they caused the flooding, ie... many reports of explosions at some levees, and just like 911 you only saw news reports one or two times before being pulled forever off the media. Fema stopped water and other supplies from being taken to the victims as well as other things that slowed or stopped aid to victims! Mccains wife comes from a long line of criminals, mccaine is a war criminal who gave info to the VC while being "a hero" getting caught and put into pow camp. Your are not a hero if you were in a pow camp, you just lived through it thats all, big fucken deal, If thats the case every killer who gets out of prison is a hero. Lets let charlie manson out and call him a hero, He is a lot less a criminal than mcdick and family and is one hell of a lot brighter and younger nor does he look as crazy!
Video doesn't work...
Went down the line.
It's official.
Not one video on the front page of this site works (except Youtube links).
Not one.
Get it together C&L...
46 CEO,citizens,eyes,open
If the electorate was more knowledgable about the elements of rhetoric as well as propaganda, maybe such people wouldn't be elected in the first place.
After thinking about it, campaign rhetoric may be the proper use for rhetoric, if by which you are trying to convince the polity to vote for you or your candidate.
I object to any hint that rhetoric means lies.
But the article above makes it clear that the McCain campaign is acting in a way belieing their rhetoric, not that the rhetoric itself is misleading.
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