McCain: Lock-step and (oil) barrel

by Janet Ritz

Cross-posted on Reuters, IBS, Huffington Post

In a campaign year where John McCain is seemingly doing everything he can to publicly distance himself from George W. Bush, he's also been emulating the historically unpopular president by walking in lock-step with him along the path to Texas oil.

While Barack Obama was in Illinois shoveling sand in bags to hold back the Bush-neglected infrastructure crumbling around him -- resulting in a multi-state version of Katrina with both an oblivious Republican president and Republican presidential candidate -- John McCain just happened to be on his way to Texas to accept the whoops and cheers (and money) from oil industry insiders for his proclaimed flip-flop on offshore drilling as the answer to America's oil-supply woes.

Want something worse? Aside from the fact that he did it while Senator Obama was showing empathy to those impacted by an unstable climate and deteriorating infrastructure, it turns out that John McCain gave his oil pandering speech CONCURRENT to the release of his new ad-buy proclaiming his independence from the Bush Administration on global warming.

Hypocrisy, they name is McCain.

(Not that he's got support from every state with a governor who relies upon tourism to their oil-free beaches).

Not the first time we've seen this type of double-speak, this insult to our collective intelligence, this proof of the lock-step between all Republicans who have been bought and sold by Big Oil. Bush himself pulled this when he announced his support for the fight against global warming at the same time his administration was cutting NASA's climate monitoring satellite system.

Can't claim problems with the climate if ya can't see it, right?

Well, not exactly.

People wading through the floods in the Midwest, while that may or may not be at effect of climate change, are certainly at effect of the climate. Might have been nice if they'd had some warning.

Oh, wait. THE ENVIRONMENTALIST called that one on March 20th (U.S. Floods a sign of things to come). Too late to rebuild every levee along the Mississippi, but the information had been available for some time -- for an administration that cared to look for it.

Another lock-step. Like all that information that had been available to the Bush Administration prior to Katrina. You know, the day that George W. Bush and John McCain celebrated McCain's birthday on the tarmac in front of Air Force One?

That very same Air Force One that Bush then used shortly thereafter to fly over the devastation?

President Bush knew not to fly over this latest hundred-year flood -- (he landed this time) -- as billions of acres of Heartland crops, the loss of which is destined to add to the world food crisis amid growing inflation, wash away along with people's homes and lives and dreams.

John McCain had not yet made his obligatory visit, though he does say he's coming. But not on the day Barack Obama was filling sandbags. McCain was too busy giving his milquetoast grin with those insecure eyes that speak to his lack of surety at the podium, while he offered the oil industry even more obscene profits than they've been able to speculate through the Enron loophole that his own campaign adviser, Phil Gramm, put through to accommodate Gramm's wife's position on the Enron board (before Gramm went off to lobby for a Swiss bank with energy investments)...

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