MCCAIN SAYS THE DARNDEST THINGS …

That’s a clip of John McCain claiming that he has voted in favor of every investigation into the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. The only trouble is, it’s not true. Here’s one investigation he voted against; here’s another. (H/t)

McCain seems to be doing this a lot. Recently, McCain said, about the Lieberman/Warner climate change bill, “I hope that it will be passed and I hope that the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the president of the United States would sign it”, and then, two weeks later, came out against it, but announced he’d skip the vote entirely.

But I’ve been saving the best for last.

As I was researching this, I found a quote from one of the Republican debates that I missed entirely at the time, but that might just steal the title of “most astonishingly clueless McCain remark ever” away from McCain’s claim that we need a stimulus package, but we have to get spending down first. It’s about a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, which McCain supports, but apparently does not understand:

“Russert: Senator McCain, you are in favor of mandatory caps.

McCain: No, I’m in favor of cap-and-trade. And Joe Lieberman and I, one of my favorite Democrats and I, have proposed that — and we did the same thing with acid rain. They’re doing it in Europe now, although not very well.

And all we are saying is, “Look, if you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, you earn a credit. If somebody else is going to increase theirs, you can sell it to them.” And, meanwhile, we have a gradual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

To paraphrase David Roberts, I wonder: why does McCain think they call it cap and trade? Also: why does he think that anyone would care about having enough credits if they did not have — have — to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or else use credits to offset them? That’s what a cap and trade system is.

Bring those debates on.