Dog Bites Man

Yes, we should've seen this coming a mile away. The surprise of likely no one but the disappointment of many, the Dems caved on the bill for financing the Bush war in Iraq. Any sort of timetable is out of consideration. As I've said before, I'm not sure the Dems could've held on to timetables throughout the long negotiation process, but they shouldn't appear quite so quick to flush away their ideals. I was listening to the radio this afternoon, and a CNN news report characterized the situation as the Dems "backing down." Harry Reid seems to be trying to make lemonade by pointing out that Bush wanted a bill without any encumbrances, and look--this one has encumbrances! It has "benchmarks" that the bill itself invites the Prez to ignore, but yes, to be technical, it does indeed have benchmarks.

Russ Feingold has already said he's going to vote against this. In the Washington Post piece I linked to above, Nancy Pelosi said she might vote against it. There's a little bit of upside in that the funding expires on September 30, so they'll have to go through this whole charade again then. Given how quick they were to give away the store this time around, I'm not holding my breath that things will be different then, but I suppose it's always possible.