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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by nononono
Ty, according to that transcript of Nagin, Blanco couldn't or wouldn't make a decision when she had the president right in front of her offering options. Granted, the transcript doesn't say what the Pres. offered, but if it is true she needed 24 hours to make a decision, then she truly has no business being in charge of anything.

I think that's referring to these two paragraphs from the WaPo article you posted earlier:

• Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
  
  The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

Stop and think about this for just a second. The conservatives here -- well, Penske mostly -- are busy blaming state officials for not doing their job. Now we're supposed to believe that their failure was in not turning over the whole operation to the federal government? Um, right. And the federal screw-ups were pretty clear before the episode described above.