Bobert:
Joe has a 30" screen now so you can't use that excuse to keep the real facts from getting to the readers of your thread.

You have to refresh your own threads. Nobody else will. What happened to your medigate thread?

Who was responsible for evacuating N.O. before Katrina hit?

Cut and pastes that Bobert does not want you to see:

Questions have also been raised, for example, over the failure of New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin to order the city's fleet of school buses into action to evacuate residents, many of whom live below the poverty line and had no means of fleeing independently, before the storm hit.

Then there is the mystery as to why Kathleen Blanco, the Democrat Louisiana governor who attempted to shift the spotlight from herself to the White House by threatening to punch the President, refused to send in National Guard troops in any significant number to assist the post-flood rescue and evacuation effort. Even now, she still refuses to sign them into federal control so that their contribution can be better co-ordinated.

According to Senator Landrieu, Mayor Nagin's evacuation was the best evacuation I've seen, I've never seen one any better.
It was the Bush administration's fault that hundreds of city school buses weren't dispatched to evacuate the hurricane-battered residents of New Orleans before floods swamped the city.

Asked on why New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin failed to follow the city's evacuation plan and press the buses into service, Landrieu blamed Bush administration cuts in mass transit funding.

Landrieu: "In other words, this administration did not believe in mass transit. They won't even get people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out."

Saying she was unwilling to criticize Louisiana officials, the Louisiana Democrat insisted that Mayor Nagin's evacuation efforts had been a smashing success.

Because the mayor evacuated the city, we had the best evacuation of any evacuation I've seen. I'm 50 years old; I've never seen one any better

When reminded that were a hundred thousand people left in the city, Landrieu once again blamed the White House by saying They did [have] a hundred thousand people left in the city because this federal government won't support cities to evacuate people, whether it's from earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes. And that's the truth.

On August 26 Mayor Nagin advised New Orleanians to keep a close eye on the storm and prepare for evacuation. He made various statements encouraging people to leave without officially calling for an evacuation throughout the 27th, and issued a voluntary evacuation request late in the day. He stressed the potential danger posed by Katrina by saying "This is not a test. This is the real deal." He was hesitant to order a mandatory evacuation because of concerns about the city's liability for closing hotels and other businesses.

The actual plan was here but it has been deleted for some "strange" reason.

Elections for Mayor and City Council members had been schedualed for November 2005, but these were postponed due to the devastation after Katrina and the many New Orleanians still living out of the city. New elections are schedualed for April 22, 2006.


A native of a working-class section of the city's Algiers neighborhood, Mr. Nagin, 49 years old, was a cable-television executive before his election. Although a lifelong Democrat, he was friendly to Republicans, contributing to Mr. Bush's 2000 bid and endorsing Ms. Blanco's Republican opponent in 2003.
After Katrina, Mr. Nagin turned to a cadre of other political newcomers and business leaders who had backed his campaign. Pivotal among them was Joseph Canizaro, a commercial real-estate developer who is personally close to the president and top political adviser Karl Rove.
At that point, he says, he decided he shouldn't rely on the governor or other state officials. "It suddenly dawned on me: What game should I be playing? How do I get this done?"