Rapid Fire Sept. 27, 2013 – Arrested Development: US Fiscal Deal Elusive At Best

It’s not an illusion
it’s GOP, er, GOB

The US Senate is expected to send back to the House a “clean” continuing resolution (i.e. without Obamacare defunding) later today, but House Speaker Boehner said they will not accept it, though some Republicans seemed amenable to a short-term deal just a day ago. There is a fair amount of dissent and even publicly-aired acrimony within the Republican ranks, which makes it hard for anyone to suss out when and how a resolution to this fiscal showdown might happen. This showdown countdown is reaching silliness of Arrested Development proportions, so please someone tell Congress they’re not working for Netflix.

• The UN’s security council has agreed to draft language that binds Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, but is otherwise rather toothless. According to intelligence assessments reported by the Washington Post, most of Syria’s stock of chemical weapons is stored as chemical precursors, which would make their destruction less daunting than initially thought. And there’s always burial.