Posted on 09/06/2005 3:38:52 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
BATON ROUGE - Even as teams of engineers worked to patch ruptured levees in New Orleans, a political breach opened between Gov. Kathleen Blanco and President Bush over who is in charge of the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.
One flashpoint came over the weekend, when Blanco said she rebuffed an attempt by the White House to seize control of the mounting military presence in Louisiana, including thousands of state National Guard forces under her authority. Then Bush made an unusual return visit to the state Monday, just days after surveying the damage - a trip that members of Blanco's staff said caught them by surprise and caused a certain level of consternation.
"We had no idea the president was coming," said Blanco's communications director, Robert Mann, adding that the governor was forced to cancel a trip to visit evacuees in Houston so she could meet with Bush.
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In the game of political maneuvering for control between Blanco, a Democrat, and Bush, a Republican, the biggest chess pieces are the 13,268 National Guard troops from 29 states under the governor's command - with another 7,845 on the way - and the 7,000 active-duty troops who began arriving Monday under command of the regular Army and the president.
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Blanco said that when the plain-spoken, cigar-chomping Honore showed up in New Orleans late last week, she thought that her worries about a lack of federal troops and resource were over. Honore quickly became a media darling and the take-charge face of the federal government in New Orleans, barking out orders to surprised National Guards members who aren't even under his control.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
"The federal effort was JUST a little slow in coming, I can't uderstand why? Those are the questions that are yet to be answered. WE are the people who put order into chaos".
sw
Nagin complains that she said she needed 24 hours before she could make a decision during her meeting with the President.
Blanco says Nagin wasn't even there.
According to a partial transcript I read last night (of an interview w/ Nagin), the meeting took place on AF-1, Bush talked to Blanco in another part of the plane, & Bush returned & told Nagin that Blanco said she needed '24 hours' to make a decision. This occured on the President's first trip to LA.
It's all about her. Was she some kind of non-beauty queen or something? The vanity of that woman is amazing.
Excuse me? This from the woman who loudly proclaimed orders to 'shoot to kill' for looters? Of course, none were, so I guess that explains her more recent attitudes.
Also, I didn't see any food or water brought to either the Superdome, Convention Center, or those folks on the I-610 bridge until the military showed up.
Darn rights! NOLA freepers, get on it!
Her simple answer simply isn't working.
Really? I thought the first contracts went to a recently formed company owned by Blanco/Nagin.
As Bill Krystal said during the election campaigns.
"There are people who hate Bush more than they love America."
It can now be paraphrased to read:
"There are people that hate Bush more than they care about the lives of people in New Orleans."
Not soon enough. This slack-jawed idiot only got into to office because her husband has been a high-profile politico for years and years. We could have had Bobbi Jindal, a great guy and congressman. Instead we got this fool. Many people regret having voted for her.
This is what you get when people vote like ignorant sheeple because all their democrat relative told them to. This is a prevalent attitude in Louisiana.
competence--thats all I value and care about. I bet that the calls for a Katrina investigation will become muted within a week as all those involved seek the CYA route.
That makes sense. Did he ever get that trash can off his head?
more about the "she didn't know the President of the United States of America was coming to LA....no matter that it had been 'adverstised' on Fox for days" crap.
Search for Mena, Arkansas, CIA, Drugs.
Guess she thinks she's the plantation owner, and those are her slaves.
How Perry is going to put up with her is beyond me.
Something tells me that was a mistatement. If Blank-O is to shift blame to the federal government, she can't let it become widely known that the NG works for her.
On a side note, I heard yesterday that those levees that were suposedly substandard and the Feds cut the budget to improve were NOT what failed in NO. The portions that failed were not on the list of proposed improvements. Any truth to this?
I've read in a couple of different places that the 17th Street canal levee was struck by either one or two barges that had come unmoored and that was the reason it failed. Have also read that that section had recently been upgraded.
As an aside, I read that the Dutch used different power sources for different pump stations...diesel and electric, in the ZuiderZee Works Project. If one power source is interrupted, all is not lost. Doesn't appear that such was the case in NO but I don't know that for sure.
Actually, the navy boys did, they rode out the hurricane in the gulf, and were ready to come asore as soon as katrina passed.
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