McCain, Palin and New Orleans

McCain on Katrina

' Forty Senators and 100 members of Congress visited New Orleans before he [McCain] 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.'

McCain's False FEMA promise:

'In the Senate, he consistently voted against more funds for FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], against making it an independent agency as it had been in the 1990s, and even against the creation of a commission to investigate how the government failed after Katrina. That indifference to learning from experience and adjusting accordingly is a central characteristic of movement conservatism.'

McCain's initial response to Katrina was not exactly frantic.

"While looking at historical records, [Kerry Emmanuel,] the atmospheric physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the total power released by storms had drastically increased -- more than doubling in the Atlantic Ocean in the past 30 years."

Carbon emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are increasingly thought by scientists to be implicated in greater frequency and power of hurricanes, though weather is complex and other causes are also operating.

It is certainly the case that global warming will cause flooding of low-lying coastal areas, since warm water takes up more space than cold water and melting of the ice at the poles will raise levels, as well.

Sarah Palin does not think global warming is man-made! But then she thinks we should indoctrinate our children in the theory that Jesus rode a small dinosaur into Jerusalem, as well.

And, she is in favor of drilling pristine lands in Alaska (her husband works for British Petroleum):



McCain wants to spew more carbon into the atmosphere, by "drilling, right here, right now."

McCain falsely claimed that oil rigs can withstand hurricanes.