I'm not going to go back and listen to the story, but the way you've worded things, I hope you're getting the thing about FEMA not urging New Orleans to evacuate from the story and not from me. What I wrote above the link is what I thought before I listened to that story. So, I said that, not (as I remember off top of my head) the story.

I didn't know Bush called Blanco urging to evacuate. And, I didn't spell this out in the quick post. But, what I've been wondering is if New Orleans just didn't have the shelters to evacuate all those people to. I'm sure Blanco or Nagin could have called whoever's the mayor of the Astrodome in Houston, but just seems like FEMA would be in a better position to have the contacts to get as many shelters as possible.

Not that lack of shelters would have excused what happened with the evacuation. New Orleans was in no way prepared. I basically think it's probably just been a long running joke amongst politicos in New Orleans for a long time when they thought a hurricane like that would never hit. The joke being: "Can you imagine being the sorry guy who's mayor when that hurricane ever hits? hahaha!"