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)

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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…)

*Updated Congressional Vote Counts*   You can see how your congressional  House and Senate representatives are planning to vote:
Via ABC News Congressional Whip Polling:
OPPOSE MILITARY ACTION IN SYRIA: 75
LIKELY TO OPPOSE: 150                                        Total Oppose 225
SUPPORT MILITARY ACTION IN SYRIA: 19
LIKELY TO SUPPORT: 25                                       Total Support 44
UNDECIDED: 140
UNKNOWN: 23                                                          Total Undecided 163 (link)
The Huffington Post/Think Progress Polling: (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…)

No longer willing to be a codependent enabler to stupid leadership decisions espoused on my behalf, and despite the structure around the pretext that failing to support them makes me unpatriotic, I’m furious with our President on this Syrian fiasco.
This is not a zero sum game, and I do not accept the presentation as such.   I also hold a principle that history holds value.
A failure to support President Obama’s personal opinion is not equivalent to supporting Assad or Iran.   The missing context is the application of freedom principles and history.  It is not unpatriotic to support freedom – It WAS unpatriotic of President Obama to draw a “red line” in our national sand without seeking permission of forethought. (more…)

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Keep a close eye on U.S. Media as to “how” they report on President Obama’s isolation.
(Via AFP)  World leaders arrived Thursday for a dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin where they would discuss the crisis in Syria, with US President Barack Obama showing up alone and well after the main group.

The main group of leaders led by Putin arrived together at the historic Peterhof palace outside Saint Petersburg, with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande seen talking animatedly at the back of the pack.
But Obama was nowhere to be seen and only arrived at the palace a good half an hour after the rest. (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:

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