President Bush was actually briefed the day before Hurricane Katrina hit.

A newly leaked video recording of high-level government deliberations the day before Hurricane Katrina hit shows disaster officials emphatically warning President Bush that the storm posed a catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and a grim-faced Bush personally assuring state leaders that his administration was “fully prepared” to help.

The footage, taken of a videoconference of federal and state officials on Aug. 28, offered an unusually vivid glimpse of real-time decision making by an administration that has vigorously guarded its internal deliberations.

Reactions to the tape, which was obtained by the Associated Press, varied widely — reflecting the intense debate that has brewed for six months about who should be held accountable for an initially flaccid government response to the catastrophe.

Democrats said the tape shows Bush being warned in urgent terms of the potential magnitude of the storm, making it less defensible that the administration did not act with more dispatch to be ready.

White House officials said the footage reinforces what they have said to critics: that the president, at his Texas vacation home, was fully engaged from the opening hours of the emergency, while leaving operational decisions to the agencies in charge.

And this is now a shocking cause for alarm because…?

Shay at Booker Rising beat me to the punch on the quote of the day:

So big government – local, state, and federal – was slow at the wheel. What else is new? I’d have been surprised if government had been speedy. The government’s slow response is secondary to the many able-bodied folks – especially in New Orleans – who chose to remain in harm’s way and not do for self, and instead expected big government to save them…so that they would be able to collect their September welfare checks. The government’s slow response was exacerbated by this attitude and sense of entitlement.

Oh, by the way, don’t forget about all those school buses that were all gassed up and ready to go before the —

Oops! I forgot: Ray Nagin wanted plush charter buses to evacuate his entitlement-addicted citizenry just days AFTER the hurricane hit. Why bother with an emergency evacuation plan on the books BEFOREHAND when Big Daddy Government will instantly fly down from the sky and save the day like a comic-book superhero?