The folks who write Saturday Night Live scripts could not have put a finer point on the political hilarity of Monday Sept. 9th any better than what bore out in real life.
First you have Secretary of State, John Kerry, speaking in London ( <- luckily) early in the day, answering a question, and say mockingly: “if Assad gave up his chemical weapons then we would not strike Syria“.

“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it). “But he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”

This gaffe was jumped on by the Ruskies who said “OK, we’ll take the WMD, Syria will not be able to use it” therefore problem solved.
What happens next is the stuff of SNL legend (watch video)

(more…)

UPDATE(s) – As predicted earlier today: Harry Reid has cancelled Senate vote authorizing President Obama to take military action.   AND President Obama backs off Red Line and says he’s open to “diplomatic tack”.
The reasons WHY are evidenced as they were previously outlined below:

After 10 straight days of pressure from President Obama’s team, the request for congressional authorization is failing miserably.    All intellectually honest DC operatives, pundits et al, are all in agreement any vote in House of Representatives would fail horridly, and passage in the Senate is doubtful at best.
President Obama will not allow a vote call upon either chamber that he knows would fail.  [Unless, of course, the vote failure was to his benefit – that’s not the case on this Syrian authorization].  Harry Reid will not call a vote in the Senate which would embarrass or humiliate President Obama.
That said, now the issue becomes how to get President Obama out from his self inflicted plunge under his own bus.   This phrase, which will eventually come from the mouth of Obama, is what all political efforts are working toward:

“I was never for militarily attacking Syria, I always wanted a peaceful solution”.

Obama needs to position himself as being reluctantly dragged toward conflict now.  He needs to make the case that *HE* did not want to attack Syria, the global demands of humanity were forcing him to threaten Assad.
President Obama needs a soft landing to save face – to find a soft landing you need to receive a ‘soft message’ from your adversary.   Russia knows this.
Russia and Syria know there is no popular support for Obama.  Russia knows from decades of experience inside the U.S. exactly what the internal public opinion does to any administration;  and most importantly Russia knows what is described above as to what POTUS protectors are doing to safety net President Obama.   Hence….   (more…)

Toward the end of this brief video Secretary Kerry says:

…. “I guarantee you if we turn our backs today, the picture we all saw in the paper today and the media of those people shot, that will take place more because more extremists will be attracted to this, because they will be funded as the only alternative in order to take on Assad”….

Accurately Rush Limbaugh opines.   Rush Limbaugh makes a great point regarding John Kerry’s insistence that these Syrian rebels are moderates — yet he referred to American military as murderers who terrorize women and children. (more…)

The vote from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to put Obama’s Syrian resolution before the full Senate is essentially meaningless.    The subsequent vote amid the full Senate to support such a resolution is more politically valuable, but not terribly much.
The vote that counts, to authorize President Obama to use our military and attack Syria, will only come from the House of Representatives – The ‘People’s House’.

With that in mind a couple of recent tracking polls, ABC and Think Progress, are in alignment: (more…)

That’s exactly the same thing Chris Stevens said about the Libyan “rebels” before they dragged him out of his safe room, sodomized him, and then murdered him…
Watch and listen to Kerry in this video from today:

…. would have been nice if one of the congress critters could have asked him: “if what Secretary Kerry says is true, then why are you not there in Syria Mr. Ford”?
Better yet, ask him when was the last time he was there?
It appears he’s been out of Syria since October 2011 (2 years ago) – Heck the entire U.S. Diplomatic Corps left Syria 4 months later, Feb 2012.   No-one has been there for well over a year and a half.

So lets put some facts behind what John Kerry is saying here:

(more…)

Um, scuse me…. pardon me… um, wasn’t there, well, going to be a debate or something…. Seems like they’ve already made up their minds and it’s all just a foregone conclusion at this point.     Someone want to tell me what’s the difference between Republican and Democrat again?

President Barack Obama says he expects to get congressional approval for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“I am,” Obama said when asked if he’s confident the White House will win the upcoming vote in Congress.  Obama spoke before a White House meeting Tuesday morning with key members of the congressional leadership.  (link)
A former US army chief has claimed that Barack Obama is eyeing intervention in Syria that would go beyond a mere deterrent against chemical weapons to damage the military capacity of the Assad regime.  (link)
(more…)

Unacceptable: pic.twitter.com/woN4vSjEpE

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 29, 2013

I’m telling ya, this is de-ja-vu all over again…. As expected, the golfer-in-chief looks into his political 8-ball and says about Syria – pick the course of action that makes me look strong, makes me look good enough, not wanting to be mocked……   Nuf said.    He knows he’s turning this into a win for al-Qaeda, but he needs it to look like he’s magnanimous or something…. 
Remember in Libya, the Golfer even defied his own Office of Legal Council advice, and violated the central restrictions on his own executive power… 

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.  [2012 link]

President Obama ignored them, dispatched them for other advisors who would agree with his own pre-conceived Power/Rice/Clinton/Jarrett agenda.  So essentially, anything goes in his own mind – so long as the politics of it can be steered in his favor…
(Via LA Times)  The apparent poison gas attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians last week is testing President Obama’s views on military intervention, international law and the United Nations as no previous crisis has done. (more…)

Side Question:  How come the media has stopped using the word WMD now that President Obama is in office?   Oh well,…..

Some things are more reflective than others.   A famous person once said: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or something similar.   Well, this is one Obama Administration repetition worth highlighting.

On Wednesday of last week the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the recent chemical attacks being witnessed in Syria.   Those chemical and/or biological attacks have been a great source of international attention and concern.
However, our U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, was conspicuously absent from the Security Council meeting.   The Administration was questioned, and the White House mysteriously avoided answering where she was.   Why was the United States not present during the meeting?   Where was Samantha Power?
Today it is reported she missed the meeting in order to attend a Charlie Chaplin Film Festival.   No joke, this is the real reason.   It sure explains why the White House was dodging the question and refused to answer.
But here comes the historical context. (more…)

As opposed to?…………………  Oh, yeah, those four DEAD Americans.

After all…. (more…)