Louisiana Governor Blanco Blasts Karl Rove For Katrina Comments In Book

[sabra]

Source: bayou buzz

On Wednesday evening, former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s press secretary Marie DesOrmeaux Centanni, issued an email press release from Governor Blanco. Blanco's statement is in response to media accounts of Karl Rove’s book, “Courage and Consequence”. According to the press release Rove reportedly blames her for the slow federal response following Hurricane Katrina.

According to an AP article, Rove strongly defends President Bush’s handling of Katrina and blames state and local officials particularly Blanco and current New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

Blanco’s statement said, “The White House was late to the game, so they shifted the blame, and it seems Karl Rove is still at it. My actions and those of my administration have been part of the public record from the very beginning, showing we responded immediately and saved lives while he lied and played games, putting lives at risk for the sake of politics. It’s taken him nearly five years to come up with his story, it had better be a good one.”

Centanni said that the Governor has not read the book since it is not available to the public.

Read more: http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/US/Politics/Louisiana_Governor_Blanco_Blasts_Karl_Rove_For_Katrina_Comments_In_Book__10398.asp

[catbyte]

1. Sorry, KKKarl Rove wrote a book called "Courage & Consequence"!?!?

I guess I've been out of the loop...He could have been a little more intellectually honest, calling it something like "Bastards & Bullshit" or "Cowards & Creeps". But then again, who am I kidding?

Courage and Consequence. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

What a tool.

Diane

Anishnabe in MI

[Cha]

2. Good for Kathleen Blanco standing up

to that dick of death whose book should be called "How to Survive as a Merchant of Death".

[thecrow]

3. Wait..... it's not available to the public?

Is it gonna be?
Is it not available because he's afraid people might call him on all the lies*?




*Lies : What emits when a Republican opens its mouth.

[sabra]

5. it hasn't been officially released - just snippets "leaked" to the press...

[EFerrari]

4. In a way, she is wrong. Bush KNEW the levies were breached 24 hours

before anyone else did and they did not advise anyone. Greg Palast reported this in an interview with an engineer at the Hurricane Center who was fired for blowing the whistle on BushCo, iirc.

[Kingofalldems]

6. I remember Rove's DU pal jumped in and also blamed Nagin and Blanco

Appalling, to side with such liars.

[AlbertCat]

7. Karl WHO??????

[SemperEadem]

8. why isn't he in jail?

why is he still running free?

[notadmblnd]

9. I remember this clearly and the admin wanted the Governor to give them

authority over the state. They withheld assistance until public pressure got to be too much for them.

[WriteDown]

10. The people of LA know that Blanco was no gem either....

Failure by everyone involved, but the buck stops at the top.

[No Elephants]

11. The buck started at the top, too.

The Army Corps of Engineers was told the levies had to withstand something like a level 3 hurricane. And I doubt they had the resources for even that. Congress refused again and again to approprate the money, even though the Katrina scenario had been laid out in National Geographic two or three years before it happened. Even the Red Cross had closed its offices there.

This is one of those rare instances where you and I agree, but probably for very different reasons. Blanco, Nagin, Landrieu and Vitter should have been screaming all over the media for years that one good storm would be all it would take to drown New Orleans. They should have yelled and yelled and not stopped until the levies were where they needed to be. Ditto the local board whose job it is to oversee the levies.

Did Blanco do as bad a job as Bush said? No. Did she do as good a job as she claims? I doubt it. Given the National Geographic article, everyone should have been better prepared, including Nagin.

HOWEVER, local people AND those who went from all over the nation to volunteer will tell you FEMA kept everyone out of NOLA and did unbelievable things, like sending water trucks to Massachusetts and paying the drivers overtime to keep the trucks parked there. (Actually, Louisiana folk may not know that one. That one made the Massachusetts papers.) But, folks in Baton Rouge will tell you FEMA trucks made folks trying to get to NOLA there. A friend of mine from Jefferson Parish who fortunately decided to wait out Katrina with a Baton Rouge relative wept as she saw the trucks held there.

Medical personnel will tell you about getting diverted to Houston and sitting in hotel lobbies there, frustrated as hell. You know, Houston--the place Barbara Bush said would look like heaven to those from NOLA. A friend of mine from Arkansas who happened to be in a Houston hotel on a business trip, found a lobby full of them.

Even my friends who work in animal rescue in the Northeast were not allowed to get into NOLA to try to help the stranded animals. They were sent to other parts of the Gulf Coast hit by the storm instead. Much like Bush, who, when he finally got around to doing anything, bypassed NOLA and visited other parts of the Gulf Coast--those with Republican Governors.

Said one Louisiana Republican not long after the storm, "We'd been praying and praying for a solution to New Orleans--and God sent us Katrina."

And that's what I know and I live in Massachusetts and conducted no investigation.

Karl Rove needs to STFU, unless he tells the whole truth. So do all Right Wingers.

[thecrow]

12. Remember Rove? He was the Katrina "Czar" in charge of fixing it!

Karl Rove: Hurricane Katrina Reconstruction "Czar" - SourceWatchKarl Rove, President George W. Bush's "top strategist" and Deputy Chief of Staff, often called "Bush's brain," is the man Republicans say is in charge of ...
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Karl_Rove...Katrina...

Dan Froomkin - Who's in Charge? Karl Rove! - washingtonpost.com Sep 15, 2005 ... All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy is that Karl Rove is leading it. White House decisions regarding ...
www.washingtonpost.com

[warm regards]

13. I thought this blame game was over and forgotten.

Nagin, Blanco and Bush all failed the people of New Orleans.

I find it somewhat amusing that anyone involved with this fiasco would try blame anyone else. Then again, children will be children.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

14. One word: Rovevisionism