[Enchante]

"she had been in consultation with Dem party bigwigs even before she met with the President. I bet they advised her to refuse federal help because it might make Washington look good, and now they're all frantically trying to cover their posteriors"

I'll bet if a few 'Rats and Rocks are turned over there will be LOTS of sordid info about the politicization of this catastrophe by GOVERNOR BLANKHEAD. I'll bet she had the Begalas and Deans of the world whispering in her ear, saying don't do anything that would allow the Bush administration to look good!

btw, is anyone on top of why she didn't have the entire LA NG within the state ready to go before, during, and after the storm??? I remember that "Sid Vicious" Blumenthal came out with one of the first Bush-bashing columns, I think it was even before the storm hit, his favorite talking point was that because 3,000 of the NG from LA was over in Iraq the state could not handle the post-hurricane situation..... when in fact the Governor had something like 8,000 other NG available in-state and did not bother to invoke the multi-state compact until nearly a WEEK after she learned of imminent hurricane disaster for her state.... did she fail to cooperate with the feds and put up barriers for political reasons? Would she really put at risk and sacrifice citizens of her state in order to make the Bush administration look bad?????

Do I even need to answer these questions????

[livius]

Do I even need to answer these questions????

Too true. I read that LA has something like 6500 NG, of whom about 3000 are in Iraq. That left her with 3500.

I read that the first group she called up was only about 500 for the entire state, and only 200 of them were assigned to NO. She never actually activated all of the Guard and she did not ask for help from the other states until it was clear that things were totally out of control. Even then, she never gave it all over to the Feds, and dithered on the whole thing, even refusing the requests of the idiot mayor.

[ProudFossil]

Isn't it interesting that the Governor would not allow the Salvation Army and Red Cross relief into the city but anybody with a press badge could come and go as they wished. It seems they wanted to have the whole thing documented from the standpoint of the failure of the federal government.

[combat_boots]

Do you know if a FReeper has put together an FAQ sheet we can ship to local media outlets?

[taildragger]

Subpoena all her phone records, all phones. I want to know who was driving her decisions.