• The Inspector General reported that, contra Eric Holder’s assertions, top Justice officials in Washington *did* have damning knowledge of Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal that has left at least one American law enforcement official, and hundreds of Mexicans, dead.
• Our ambassador to Libya, who was barely guarded, was murdered in Benghazi in a coordinated assault; and our embassy in Cairo was breached in an attack by a mob that we pretty much knew were coming.
  • Despite the warnings we had, which the President didn’t hear since he had skipped so many intelligence briefings, our government insisted it was all caused by a film trailer on YouTube.
• A filmmaker was taken from his home by a cadre of sheriff’s deputies for producing a film that the government didn’t like (please, drop the pretense that the midnight visit, on that day, from that many deputies, surrounded by TV cameras, downtown to answer questions from the FBI, was strictly because of a probation violation).
• Our embassies have come under attack throughout the Middle East and are seeing loud protests in Europe and Asia.
  • While this was happening, the President of the United States was hopping a jet to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, avoiding a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister (he later changed course, after being duly embarrassed publicly), and prepping for an appearance on Letterman.
    • During this appearance the head of the executive branch of the federal government played dumb about the size of he federal debt. He didn’t lie, precisely, when Dave asked if it were around $10 trillion, but “$16 trillion or something like that” or even, “more than that, Dave, and that’s too much,” would have been an acceptable answer.
• Our military has temporarily suspended conducting joint operations with Afghan forces because, well, the Afghanis have this tendency to shoot our guys.
  • Sidenote: more than twice as many Americans have died in Afghanistan in the three-plus years since Obama took office than did in the seven years we were there before he took office.
• We found out that Obamacare will cost 6 million taxpayers an additional $7 billion in taxes in 2016. And it rises to $8 billion the following year.
• A video has emerged that shows Barack Obama committing himself to the idea of wealth redistribution. (Not that this is news, but it bears repeating.)
• Obama held a fundraiser at a place with a $280,000 sculpture constructed with golden champagne bottles worth $300 each. Because nothing serves to underscore your opponent’s out-of-touch richness like raising money next to a stack of golden champagne bottles.
• Emails secured under a FOIA request have proved that officials at the Department of Justice colluded with Media Matters for America to target and discredit journalists who were covering scandals at the DOJ

But none of that appears to be as important as Mitt Romney’s 47% comment.

Now. Romney’s comment has plenty of problems—the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes cannot be uniformly characterized as lazy moochers who will all vote for Obama no matter what. Likewise, the remaining 53% are not all perfectly virtuous, industrious, assured Romney voters.

I’m not defending the comment. It was tin-eared. It was wrong. I wish he hadn’t said it and I wish he didn’t think it. Even if there is some truth to it as well: there is, statistically speaking, about 47% of the voting public that will definitely vote for Obama. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, but right around there. That 47% definitely has some overlap with the 47% who do not pay income taxes, but not perfect coincidence. The task of political campaigns is to identify who is in that group who are unpersuadable and not waste resources on them. So from an electoral perspective he wasn’t wholly wrong: he doesn’t need to worry about them, for good reason. But I still wish he hadn’t said it.

That said, I’m wondering why that comment has been *so* dominant in the news cycle with all these other things going on. Perhaps it’s a rhetorical question. I’m sure some of our august commenters will have ideas.

You got it: the world is burning and I'm yukking it up with Dave and hob-nobbing with Jay-Z and Beyonce!