Don't Blow This One...

or, Hey, he did tip us off to the Boston, pressure-cooker killers...

Today's NYT reports on the good cop/bad cop drama playing out domesti-politically, with President Obama and Sen's. Kerry and McCain in the lead roles, respectively. (Know your roles, gentlemen.)

“Putin knows that everyone wants an out, so he’s providing one,” said Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence officer and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “It seems like a bold idea that will get everyone, including Obama, out of a bind that they don’t want to be in.”

Plus, if I was soon to play host to a worldwide party of young healthy people, the last thing I'd want  is to be making promises on which I wasn't willing to deliver...

“It just adds to the uncertainty and makes a vote soon a little more difficult,” said Howard Berman, a Democrat and former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It just gets dragged out and causes the Congress to say let’s wait to see what happens with this before they vote.”

Difficult? Try impossible, Mr. Representative...
and that was before an alternative resolution was placed on the table.

All of which had White House speechwriters revising their drafts before Mr. Obama addresses the nation Tuesday night in what is shaping up as one of the most challenging moments of his presidency. 

I strongly believe this is also a turning point for the country as a whole.  Plan to break that out in a separate essay later; please stay tuned...

The twists and turns in the Syria debate have whipsawed the nation’s capital and by some accounts imperiled Mr. Obama’s presidency. Democrats are mystified and in some cases livid with Mr. Obama for asking Congress to decide the matter instead of simply ordering one or two days of strikes and getting it over with.

There is none so blind as he who cannot see... this was the best move of the whole ordeal:

If there's any hope of blasting open the logjam that's built up in Congress, ripping the wheelchair out from underneath each of them, our political servants, and forcing them to stand on still functional legs, this is that moment.

It only works though, if we get back to the beginning...  The power in this country is to be held by our  people -- not our monied interests, not our patrician superiors.

 No, I'm not predicting an invasion of buckskin in the halls of Congress, worn by those capped with camoflauge Happy Happy, Happy  hats.  But  we all know Davy Crockett's story, if we know our history, and the point is:  the whole system is set up to go to those ideas most popularly accepted by the majority, short of robbing others of their personal rights...

We could do worse than to have the majority of the people's voices listened to more often...

Although Mr. Obama’s decision to ask for a Congressional vote has come to be seen as a strategic mistake, White House officials consider that hypocritical second-guessing from lawmakers who want to have it both ways. “One of the things we heard with near unanimity was a desire by Congress to have its voice heard and its vote counted,” said Antony Blinken, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama.

Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was more cautious. “If this thing is real, I think we should look at it,” he said. “But the question is this: Do you trust Assad, and do you trust the Russians?”

Hey, he (Putin) did tip us off to the Boston, pressure-cooker killers... too bad we didn't trust him and listen in on that one, eh?