Take a good look at the photo above from today's Washington Post. The Post says this is a picture of McCain and Mayor Palin getting a briefing on Hurricane Gustav from the Emergency Operations Center in Jackson, Mississippi.
But look at the television screens in the background. The one to the right of Palin has an image of the hurricane warning zones on the gulf coast.
But look at the one to the left, between Palin and McCain: there's a picture in picture that is clearly showing a tennis match from the U.S. Open in New York. So maybe McCain didn't ask to watch the tennis, but those Mississippi officials yucking it up with the candidates obviously aren't too concerned.
Which raises the question: why did McCain go to Jackson, Mississippi, instead of Lousiana? Sounds like something Bush would do (indeed, he's in Texas today). The answer is that the governor of Mississippi is Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican Party, so these are all his people. Plus, they aren't all that worried--they're watching tennis for goodness sakes--so they can afford to interrupt what they're doing with a politically motivated photo op.
Whereas if McCain and his highly experienced Veep were to go to Louisiana, they'd encounter Governor Bobby Jindal, who albeit a Republican, is actually busy dealing with a real problem.
(Aside: Jindal was raised as a Hindu; he converted to Catholocism as a teenager. You don't see the a-holes on Faux News going after him, questioning his religious convictions and accusing him of secretly being an agent of India.)
1 comment:
So, are you saying that he should have been glued to the TV, watching the hurricane come ever closer? If you notice, the placement of the eye on that screen is somewhere NW of Cuba. At that time, there are days to go before landfall. I notice that nobody is actually turned TOWARDS either TV. It seems that attention is being paid to a speaker, not the TV. Trying to turn this picture into a supposed gaffe is just weak. Since Palin is shaking hands, it appears as if they have just arrived. Smiling, while a hurricane is days away is allowed....
McCain went to Jackson instead of LA because that's where FEMA has set up. And he knows that Bobby Jindal doesn't need a dog and pony show getting in his way.
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