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Republican strategist Jack Burkman on Thursday asserted that the 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans were "much worse" than the original attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people because of "the level of how things were ignored."

In an panel segment on Current TV, host Michael Shure asked Burkman if he agreed that the Republican obsession with Benghazi was "totally about politics."

"Well, it's about both," Burkman explained. "This thing could turn into a Watergate. I don't think you realize how bad this is. Obama -- all of this -- why did any of this happen? This happened because Obama is so afraid. He didn't want to defend the embassy because he didn't want to offend Islam. Then he didn't want to call it an act of terrorism because he didn't want to offend Islam. That's fundamentally what it's about."

"There are reasonable ways to disagree on this, but to say he didn't want to defend the embassy because he didn't want to defend Islam... I'll give you political advice too, stay away from that one," Shure advised.

"But the evidence shows that," Burkman insisted. "Strip aside all the politics and the theory. The evidence shows -- take [U.S. diplomat] Gregory Hicks, these guys were trying to get through at 2 in the morning, they were trying to warn, they made so many repeated calls and contacts. What other conclusions can you draw? They were systemically ignored. I mean, I've just never seen or heard of anything like this."

"Well, how about 9/11?" Shure noted. "Talk about systemically ignored."

"I would say, oh, sure, 9/11 is much worse in terms of in terms of what happened," Burkman opined. "But this is much worse in terms of the level of how things were ignored. It's almost unfathomable."

From Cenk's crew over at The Young Turks, it's a pretty sad day when someone manages to make one of the talking heads over at Fox look rational, but that's exactly what we got from wingnut NRA head Wayne LaPierre this weekend on Fox News Sunday. I was listening to Randi Rhodes this Monday and she made some of the same points about the DMV and the "bureaucratic nightmare" that LaPierre was complaining about during his interview with Wallace.

Here's more from TYT's You Tube channel and warning for the clip above, it's not safe for work: NRA's LaPierre Makes Fox News Look Reasonable:

"On Fox News Sunday, following the segment featuring Mark Kelly, Chris Wallace interviewed National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre about various issues surrounding gun control — ranging from background checks to mental health concerns to armed security at schools. Pressing LaPierre on his arguments, Wallace challenged him on some of his opposition to gun control.

Wallace began with background checks, citing the 1.7 million people who've been denied because of the checks — but LaPierre argued that most of those people weren't prosecuted, and we can't say they "were stopped from getting a gun at all."*

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News. There, he argued that universal checks and registries would only be a "bureaucratic nightmare." No word on if Lapierre has ever been to the DMV or any other government regulating office. Jimmy Dore (The Jimmy Dore Show), Michael Shure (Current TV Political Correspondent), and Brian Unger (How the States Got Their Shapes) discuss.

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur weighs in on Romney's tax plan -- what would happen if we're unfortunate enough actually find ourselves with him as president after the upcoming election. It isn't pretty: Mitt Romney wants the middle class to pay $500 more in taxes so the rich can get richer:

President Obama has claimed that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would give benefits to the rich at the expense of the middle class. “Is it true?” Cenk asks. “Absolutely.” Under Mitt Romney’s plan, US citizens makes less that $200 thousand a year would pay about $500 more in income tax. Cenk says, “This is redistributing the wealth from the bottom to the top.”

Here's more from Think Progress: New Analysis Shows Romney Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes On Middle Class Families By More Than $2,000:

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has been promising that he will cut taxes “across the board,” while also instituting tax reform that will not add to the nation’s deficit. But a new report from the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution shows that this is much easier said than done.

In fact, if Romney were to actually implement his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans — will see their taxes increase. And this result occurs even assuming that Romney would eliminate tax deductions so as to make the tax as progressive as possible:

To estimate how average household tax burdens among different income groups would change as a result of this shift, we assume that the available tax expenditures are curtailed “from the top down” in order to make the tax plan as progressive as possible…Even after eliminating all available tax expenditures for households earning more than $200,000, this group still faces a net tax break. Americans making over $1 million would see an increase in after-tax income of 4.1 percent (an $87,000 tax cut), those making between $500,000 and $1 million would see an increase of 3.2 percent (a $17,000 tax cut), and those making between $200,000 and $500,000 would see an increase of 0.8 percent (a $1,800 tax cut).

Because taxpayers above $200,000 as a group have received a net tax cut, revenue neutrality requires that taxpayers below $200,000—about 95 percent of the population—experience a tax increase.

[...] Again, this analysis assumes that deductions are eliminated in a way that would make the tax code as progressive as possible, so its likely that, in practice, Romney’s plan would look even worse. To this point, Romney has refused to specify which deductions he would limit or eliminate.

On several occasions, Romney has denied that his tax plan would provide a big tax break to the wealthy. But as this analysis shows, even giving him all of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to eliminating deductions, the plan is still a massive tax break for the rich.

And here's more from TPM on Romney trying to pretend that the study was biased and just ignoring how wonderfully those trickle-down economics he's advocating for are going to work if recent history is any guide: Romney Aide: ‘Biased’ Tax Study Ignores The Coming Romney Boom.

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Cenk and his panel -- Michael Shure, Ana Kasparian and Stephanie Miller -- tear into CNN's Wolf Blitzer for bullying Hilary Rosen into apologizing to Ann Romney for a second time after she'd already apologized to her earlier that same day.

They also weighed in on whether the Obama administration surrogates were too quick to throw Rosen under the bus or whether they should have stood up for her and the point she was trying to make. And they discussed The Catholic League's Bill Donahue and his disgusting attack on Rosen which we covered at this site, but has been completely ignored by the rest of the media. I did not see any other show cover it other than The Young Turks here.

They also brought up the woman who called into Stephanie Miller's show earlier that day who claimed to be Ann Romney's nanny and who told Miller that Hilary Rosen was right about Ann Romney never having worked a day in her life. They thought she might have sounded legit but there's been no confirmation that the woman that called in ever actually worked for Ann Romney. While I don't doubt that may very well be the case since she grew up rich and married a rich man, I don't know how her childhood nanny would be qualified to weigh in on whether she ever "worked" or not as an adult.

I think the one thing we can be sure of is that she lived in households that were wealthy enough to afford domestic help both as a child and as an adult, which is not the type of lifestyle most typical Americans have experienced, and the point that ought to be driven home if Mitt Romney wants to continue to hold his wife out there as some representative of average American women and their concerns.

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From this Monday's The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur and his "Power Panel" of our own managing editor, Tina Dupuy, Michael Shure and Ben Mankiewicz discuss whether the Obama administration made a genius move putting Republicans in a box on the issue of contraception or if they're fumbling their way through and giving too much deference to the Catholic bishops and the likes of Chris Matthews and E.J. Dionne.