Was the Bear loose today? If Valerie Jarrett wanted to get a hashtag going for the president, #smh might have worked. Shep wasn’t the only one baffled by the White House’s insistence on pretending today was a day for the normal shake run and spin.

Via the Free Beacon, first ABC notes that the president seemed blindsided by Israel’s starting ground operations in Gaza today. Jonathan Karl cites the President’s and State Department’s optimism just hours earlier that a ceasefire would happen.

Second, Gen. Barry McCaffrey wonders aloud to Brian Williams on NBC why State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki seems utterly useless and uninformed on a matter of this importance:

Those were the networks. Then there was this:

President Obama massively dropped the ball just now. 23 Americans killed and he says 'it looks like a terrible tragedy' then back to jokes?

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 17, 2014

Let me help, Mr President – it IS a terrible tragedy, and it's more probably mass murder of your citizens & many other nations' citizens.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 17, 2014

And, to round out our array of flabbergasty, Charles Krauthammer— a more expected source of this sentiment, but as always, communicating it so well:

Juan Williams, for the record, thinks Obama’s reaction is hunky dory because cell phones.