What's The Big Deal On Syria? This Deal!

Well now, will you look at that.

Russia and the United States announced Saturday that they have reached a groundbreaking deal on a framework to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, after talks in Switzerland.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stood side-by-side as they set out a series of steps the Syria government must follow.

Syria must submit within one week a comprehensive list of its chemical weapons stockpile, Kerry said, and international inspectors must be on the ground no later than November.

Senior U.S. State Department officials said the timeline for action is to finalize initial inspections of declared chemical weapons sites by November; the complete destruction of production and mixing and filling equipment by November; and the complete elimination of all chemical weapons material in first half of 2014.

Well, that was pretty cool.  I'm sure the Village and the newly anti-war GOP is thril...OH WAIT.

Congressional leaders in both parties made clear there is no clear path forward in avoiding a government shutdown in just over 18 days.

Lawmakers appear as far apart as ever on reaching an agreement to fund the government past the end of September, after which all but the most essential government services would cease for lack of money. Though Congress has been aware for months of the need to reach an agreement to sustain funding past Sept. 30, consensus has been as elusive as ever.

“Shutting down the government, obviously, is what a majority of the Republican caucus wants to do in the House,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday.

That comment came after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, admitted Thursday that he wasn’t sure how the GOP would proceed after the Republican leadership shelved legislation to continue government spending after facing defections in their own ranks.

And remember, President Obama just got a big win.  Clearly it's going to be time to trash the deal as meaningless, and then shut down the government to put "that one" in his place.  And we move on.