Bush's response: it gets worse

It's actually worse than we thought. Bush didn't know about the scope of the damage in New Orleans until Friday because he doesn't watch TV (or read newspapers). In fact, he doesn't even live in reality. As the President Of The United States he has chosen not just to refuse acknowledging bad news, but to never even find out about it in the first place. So adverse is he to bad news his staff had to have a meeting to decide who would tell him as Newsweek reports:

Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States.....The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him.

So how did he find out about the situation on the ground?

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

Friday!? Bush didn't know the scope of the damage until Friday?! The same Friday that people had had gone four days without food?!

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.