disagreements and school busses

A friend of mine who is as liberal as they come has emailed me challenging the assertion on the timing of Governor Blanco's State of Emergency. According to the Governor's Website, she declared the SOE on FRIDAY EVENING. If this were the case, her SOE was declared while the hurricane was still in Florida and nobody had any idea that it was even going to hit Lousiana, but OK, assuming we give her that, where was her National Guard? She has 6000+ Lousiana National Guard troops under her command. If in her prescient declaration she knew that the hurricane was going to hit, why did she not order the troos into the states largest city to begin evacuation preparations?

In a related story:

Ray Nagin: School Buses Not Good Enough

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin garnered a ton of publicity with a profanity-laced interview he gave to WWL radio last Thursday, where he blasted President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not coming to rescue his city in time.

However, Nagin's most newsworthy comments - where he explained why he didn't use hundreds of city school buses to evacuate his city's flood victims - went almost unnoticed.

Turns out, Nagin turned his nose up at the yellow buses, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead.

"I need 500 buses, man," he told WWL. "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here."

Nagin described his response:

"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable.

from NewsMax.com

I think Zaa Zaa Gabor said it best... "I'd rather die than fly coach."