NY Times:
A senior Obama administration official said Friday that the United States was encouraged by the initial inventory that the Syrian government had submitted of its chemical weapons arsenal.
We were pleasantly surprised by the completeness of their declaration,” said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“It was better than expected,” he added.
And for interpretation, see
David ignatius:
The mystery is why this outcome in Syria is derided by so many analysts in Washington. Partly, it must be the John McCain factor. The Arizona senator is in danger of becoming a kind of Republican version of Jesse Jackson, who shows up at every international crisis with his own plan for a solution, sometimes through personal mediation (as with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), other times demanding military intervention (as in Syria). Because McCain is a distinguished figure, he commands respect even when his proposals have no political support at home.
Not so Obama. He can propose what the country wants, succeed at it and still get hammered as a failure.
No mystery, really. Beltway pundits act like they're in junior high school, and they don't like Obama. Obama doesn't like them. It's a huge part of their punditry, since they tend to gloss over policy.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Outside:
THE TRUTH ABOUT SUPPLEMENTS
Are you taking too many pills? New studies question the vitamin gospel.
Charles Blow:
Even Karl Rove struck a rational tone in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published online Wednesday evening, saying:
“Any strategy to repeal, delay or replace the law must have a credible chance of succeeding or affecting broad public opinion positively. The defunding strategy doesn’t. Going down that road would strengthen the president while alienating independents. It is an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject it.”
But all those pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, or at least defiant ones.
Gail Collins:
I know you’re worried about the government shutting down on Oct. 1. Who wouldn’t be? Services suspended, the nation’s credibility damaged in the eyes of the rest of the world. What serious person would want to let that happen?
Hehehehe.
Alec MacGillis:
[Sharon] Watts [founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America] looks at it all differently. She sees a Senate vote that came closer to approving significant gun law reform than lawmakers have in two decades, with six senators with A ratings from the NRA, and two senators up for reelection next year in gun-friendly states, voting for the legislation. She sees the Senate having finally having confirmed a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, after years of attempts by the gun lobby to weaken the agency. She sees a strong gun control message having prevailed in a state senate special election in suburban Chicago and in the special election to fill John Kerry’s seat in the Senate, where the not particularly scintillating Ed Markey was aided by ads attacking his Republican opponent for favoring the gun lobby. She sees her group having led the charge to get Starbucks to discourage customers from open-carry of firearms on its premises. And she sees several states that have passed comprehensive new regulations—including, yes, Colorado, where the law remains on the books even as two senators who voted for it head home. Their defeat was a disappointment, no doubt—the gun control side would have dearly liked to prove that it could protect every legislator who casts a tough vote – but to declare the “death of gun control” on the basis of an election in two state legislative districts, one with 52,000 people voting in a state of 5.1 million, in which one of the senators lost by a few hundred votes? “Why is that a death knell for reform?” says Watts. “It’s almost like [the press] is writing from the playbook of the gun lobby.”
Sarah Binder:
Democrats have to take a few steps to set up a vote to strip the ObamaCare defunding provision from the bill. Reid/Democrats will probably offer an amendment, in the form of a “motion to strike” the defunding language. Counter to claims that this move exploits an obscure procedure, Senate floor amendments come in three different flavors (i.e. forms)—including motions to strike. Reid might also “fill the amendment tree,” meaning that he would fill up all of the remaining amendment slots with inconsequential amendments to block GOP senators from attempting to amend the CR themselves.
With the motion to strike defunding pending, Reid would file cloture on the BILL. Keep in mind that the BILL is still the House bill (CR+defund). Any GOP effort to block cloture again puts the GOP on the wrong side: Republicans would be blocking a CR that defunds ObamaCare. Assuming Reid again gets 60 vote for cloture, that brings the Senate to its customary 30 hours of “post-cloture” consideration time (including time spent on debate, voting, and so on.)
This is the most important part, because this is when the Senate would vote on the motion to strike. The 30-hour time cap post-cloture means that by definition there cannot be a filibuster of any of the votes that are attempted during the 30-hour period. In other words, there would be no need for Reid to file cloture on the amendment: Any effort to talk the amendment to death would have to end when the 30 hours were exhausted.