The Magic Bus

The National Guard is welcomed to New Orleans:

"Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!"

"We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy said. "I say burn this whole ... city down."

The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid blistering criticism from the mayor and others who said the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.

"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows."

The only way the city management of New Orleans can avoid being lynched at noon on Rue Burbon is to keep blaming the President, loud and often.

It will work, too.

This doesn't help:

A fed-up Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned the lawbreakers that extra troops have already arrived in the city, and others are on the way -- and "they're locked and loaded."

She said Thursday night that 300 soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard had arrived -- "fresh back from Iraq."

"These are some of the 40,000 extra troops that I have demanded," Blanco said. "They have M-16s, and they're locked and loaded ... I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will."

During the 2003 Governor's race...

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin crossed party lines Monday and endorsed Republican Bobby Jindal for governor.

"Bobby Jindal understands that all of Louisiana benefits from and needs a strong New Orleans," Nagin said. With Jindal as governor, "New Orleans and the rest of the state will be partners, not adversaries - which is critical because we can only move this state forward together."

So no hard feelings, we're sure.

The original CNN report of the above quote from Governor Blanco has been removed from their web site. You can still see the quote on Google. A Mirror of the post is here, complete with a link to the now-modified original story.

The replacement story at the same CNN link has a very different point-of-view:

Convoys bring relief to New Orleans
Refugees cheer convoys; Bush meets with mayor, governor
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- On the day President Bush visited this devastated city, thousands of tired and angry people stranded at the convention center welcomed National Guard troops and trucks carrying food, water and medicine with cheers and tears of joy.

"The crowd erupted," said Tishia Walters, a woman in the convention center crowd told CNN by telephone.

"Flags went flying, people shouting and waving. There's like 7,000 people out here in dying conditions," she added.

Walters said she was outside of the center when she saw the National Guard and police arrive.

"It's amazing. They've come in full force," she said.

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore was directing the deployment of National Guard troops -- expected to number 1,000 -- from a New Orleans street corner.

Honore said getting food and water to the people at the convention center was difficult. "If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I'm talking about," the general said. "If it was easy, it would have been done already."

CNN's Barbara Starr, who is traveling with the three-star general, said Honore is "very determined to keep this looking like a humanitarian relief operation."

"A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,' " Starr reported.