He’s scheduled to speak at 4 p.m. ET, just as this post is going live. The poor guy: All he wants to talk about is amnesty, impeachment, and corporate “inversions,” and those darned looters keep throwing him off-message.

A clever take on the national mood:

legendary comma use RT @CBSNews: JUST IN: President Obama to deliver remarks at 4pm ET on the situation in Ferguson, Iraq

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) August 18, 2014

He’s actually not on vacation today but back at the White House for a previously scheduled briefing on Iraq and a hastily scheduled briefing by Holder on the Michael Brown case. I doubt there’ll be much news here: He’ll cast a vote of confidence in Holder’s decision to conduct a DOJ autopsy on Brown’s body and he’ll say something vague but positive-sounding about Jay Nixon’s decision to call out the National Guard, even though that sort of undercuts the anti-militarization point made by police critics lately. And there’ll be the usual on-the-one-hand demand for protesters to act peacefully with the on-the-other-hand demand for the police to use no excessive force. This is still worth watching, though, as the longer the Ferguson drama goes on, the farther Obama will need to stretch to satisfy disparate constituencies. Some black commentators, like Michael Eric “Holder is the new Moses” Dyson, are starting to grumble that O’s been too quiet about how the police treat black men. Other people, media figures among them, are getting fidgety that looting’s still happening more than a week after Brown was killed. Good luck on the tightrope, champ. Don’t look down!

He’ll also say a few words about airstrikes against ISIS, of which there have already been 68 and counting. The next time someone tells you that Republicans reflexively oppose everything O does, show them this poll from Pew. Democrats support the airstrikes 54/35; Republicans support them 71/14. While we wait, for those who haven’t heard it yet, here’s the audio of Dana Loesch’s chat on Friday with “Josie,” a woman purporting to be a friend of the cop who shot and killed Michael Brown and relaying his account of what happened. People are sending me links to Don Lemon talking about this on air today, as if somehow we’re first hearing of “Josie” only now and CNN had discovered her. Not so. Loesch had this posted three days ago. If you don’t have time for the clip, here’s a quickie transcript.