In the playoffs, that 'L' instead of a 'W' meant no bye week and not hosting all the playoff games at Lambeau.  The entire NFC playoff schedule would have been different and SF would not have enjoyed home field had they had to play the Pack.

All of it easily traceable to one bad call because it just happened to be the last play of the game.

If a play goes bad and you commit an blantant unsportsmanlike penalty near the opposing teams bench, there is about a 90% chance someone will retaliate, making the penalties offset and nullifying the play.  Even if the foul was committed at the end of a 70 yard run.

Nullifying a play seems ridiculous when one party was the instigator of the bad conduct.  They should spot the ball where penalty occurred and nullify the gain/loss of the penalty, not the entire play.

The Packers benefited from hitting Kaepernick because SF retaliated, that is non-sense.
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And given the NFL's obviously pressing public concerns about limiting its future liability over player disabilities incurred from compounding injuries, you'd think that the franchises would be getting that message loud and clear. (Sigh!) I guess not.

RG3 was clearly a wounded duck in that playoff game -- and in a full-speed and full-contact sport like football, a wounded duck is also a sitting duck. In my opinion, leaving him in the ball game at that point was clearly an abrogation of both responsibility and authority on the respective parts of Washington's coaching staff and team physician, and their failure to act in RG3's best interests served to compound his injuries rather than limit them.

When winning that playoff game over the Seahawks (which they didn't) became more important than protecting the health and well being of the player, what subsequently happened to Robert Griffin III became practically inevitable. It was simply a matter of when he was going to get hit and knocked out of the game, and not if.

I'll give the credit to Obama if it makes him happy. No doubt Russians will give the credit to Putin. Who cares? It's the outcome that matters.

It doesn't matter if the horse was dragged to water. The accomplishment is making him drink.

"This might help"

There is some seriously confirmation bias addled thinking going on around this issue.

Putin made Obama's team look like war mongering fools, which to anyone who discusses this with non U.S. nationals, is what Americans look like anyway.

And Kerry's reply, more especially his last sentence... priceless, chuckle and all:

"He [Assad] could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week [i.e. 7 days to turn over the 1,000 tons of CWs Kerry says there are]. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he [Assad] isn't about to do it, and it can't be done... obviously."

By the end of the day, President Obama conceded that the idea of monitoring and ultimately destroying Syria's arsenal "could potentially be a significant breakthrough." The Senate postponed a vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to back a proposed punitive strike.

"I think you have to take it with a grain of salt, initially," Obama said in an interview with NBC that was among several he gave Monday in pursuit of public backing for a military strike in response to an alleged Aug. 21 gas attack on Syrian civilians.

"We are going to run this to ground," Obama said. "We're going to make sure that we see how serious these proposals are."

You're right: Lavrov seized on Kerry's remark - which Kerry made with zero seriousness behind it - and then Lavrov did indeed fashion it into the present proposal presently being discussed.

The timing of the new proposal was awkward and its apparent genesis perhaps more so.

It began when Kerry was asked early Monday whether Assad could avoid a U.S. attack.

"Sure. He could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay," Kerry responded with a shrug. "But he isn't about to."

Leaving kerry with his mouth hanging open, his arms flailing helplessly, obama probably wondering how to get rid of him before he opens his trap again in public, and wondering what the he!! hit him and obama and and where the war they both thought was in the bag for them went. And as Mr. Natural has pointed out, leaving "Obama's team look like war mongering fools, which to anyone who discusses this with non U.S. nationals, is what Americans look like anyway."

Reality always has had a way of refusing to be denied  though, and sneaking up on those who try to deny it and biting them on the a$$. Enjoy yourself.

It is not obama's fault that even though he promised transparency there are still some people who are unable to see through him, although the vast majority of people have no problem doing so.

His team has shown tentative incompetence all along the way when it comes to Syria.

He doens't know what to do and now he's willing to take any crappy deal the Russians will give him because heaven forbid he takes a position that is poll proven.

Let's all ignore the fact that going into a weapons schem with the UN and Syria will take decades to finish, it took 8 years to get Lybia to give up it's chemical weapons, and that would be during peace time.

The only way we get chemical weapons from Assad is if he wins and then cooporates with UN inspectors as the soverign leader of Syria.

Until that happens or he somehow loses no UN force or ispectors can possibly do anythign while the bombs are in the air.

Even in a cease fire Assad remains in control of the country.

And while I think Anthony Weiner behaves as an idiot - and find him saying about his 20 month old son wearing a fedora, that "He's bringing sexy back", obnoxious. Really, Weiner! - from what I know I agree with this:

"Anthony Weiner is the best political performer in this field and is progressive and tough enough in his policies and rhetoric that he'd be at or near the top of this race were it not for his scandals," said one veteran of New York City politics who, because of friends working in rival campaigns, did not want to be named saying something nice about the man who called himself Carlos Danger.