The whole issue gets presented in a one sided fashion, as if the congress is the only party who could possibly compromise. All this talk about a bill "he can sign". As a matter of fact, he can sign any bill he pleases.

The democratic party seems to be pinning its hopes on being able to ride anti-republican discontent. Seeing as they seem to be bereft of any real leadership themselves, I guess that is the best strategy they've got. That's just pitiful, and yet another reason why I register independent, and follow my civic duty of voting with night of stiff drinks.

I'm with Bill Maher - this is America, we should be getting swindled and screwed by the best and brightest, not these bozos.

Senator Reid must have the impression that there's going to be one heck of a backlash if the Democratic Congress does not give Mr. Bush funding for his occupation.

From where we sit, it looks like just the opposite. I've heard just this hour that the phone lines to the Capitol are burning up with people calling in to oppose removing the deadlines from the "emergency" funding bill.

I wonder where Mr. Reid is getting his information, and if there's any validity to it. I also wonder why he and Speaker Pelosi have not seized the message and use Bush's pig-headedness as proof that Bush does not "support the troops."

I am not surprised. Of course, those of us proclaiming the similarities of the "2 parties" will not be surprised. What will also be unsurprising will be the excuses made by run-of-the-mill Democrats. Equally unsurprising will be that the average Democrat will not hold their party responsible for their failures to prosecute an illegal war. etc etc etc

The democrats not only backed down, the dug a hole and buried the American people. I thought we showed them that we wanted to end end the invasion in Iraq by electing a majority of democrats in November. But do they care? Obviously not. I expect this from the lemming republicangs, but now I'm disgusted, angry, hurt, disappointed, and frankly, pissed off at the democrats. What a bunch of yellow-bellied, lily livered wimps!!! We have been through six years of hell with this Bush administration and now when the democrats have control of congress they still let that incompetent fool have his way. I can see why people want to move to Canada - this is another black mark on this country and a sad day for the American people.

Let's keep things straight here folks.

Hillary Clinton's consultant, and former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe put it best when he said recently, on Terry Gross's Fresh Air, that the electorate of the United States is divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats. Some of those are soft, but most are not. There is a tiny segment of swing voters in key states who are so woefully ignorant, and so lacking in critical thinking skills, that they can't decide who to vote for until almost the day of the election.

As McAuliffe put it, these tend to be exurban 25-49-year-old-women who barely understand our politics at all, and vote mostly on their "feelings" on the day of the election.

These are the people the Dems are trying to woo come election day 2008. The calculation is that putting Bush to the wall over war-funding will alienate these pathetically ignorant voters... who lean GOP, but can go the other way.

The Dem calculation, naturally, is that all dems will vote for them, no matter how hard we have to hold our noses in the process (and I've been holding my nose for awhile now), so anything the Dems' natural constituency says that does not accord with 2008 electoral calculations can be ignored, since those voters will vote blue anyway.

Nope, you want someone to blame for Dem cowardice, besides the Dems themselves (who I have trouble blaming because of the aforementioned political realities), blame these badly educated, intellectually lazy, blithely ignorant exurban women who will decide the next election. I'm sure you know one. I know a few. The fact that they will decide the next election is something that fills me with genuine despair for our political process, such as it is.

the next time a Democrat lectures me about "wasting my vote" on a third party.

Idiots. IT'S NOT EVEN A RISKY MOVE ANYMORE!!

but only in the as-yet-imaginary world in which congressional Democrats aren't the ones who blink first.

And here we thought, in the reality-based community, that elections might actually have consequences. Instead, we're saddled with leaders who whine "We don't have a veto-proof majority" and who continue to demonstrate a superficial understanding of how this will be reported and commented upon.

It doesn't matter, Harry, that there will be reports filled out, and more chances to hold the President accountable in the future. What matters is today, and here's how it's going to play in the MSM: "Dems cave".

And you will have handed Bush and the Republicans just a little more energy to continue with business as usual. And more people will die needlessly.

This isn't hard to grasp. Why are the Dems so clueless and spineless?

With spineless wimps like the Democrats in Cogress, who needs enemies? If they do this I will be voting Green in '08.

...which is that the Democrats we voted for in 2006 because they promised us they'd end this war were lying to us just as baldly as George Bush was when he told us Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. They don't really want to end this war, of course - their campaigning bills are paid by the same contributors who pay the Republicans'. The only reason they even pay lip service to ending the war is because they realize that most of us (meaning people who can vote but don't actually pony up any spendable cash) want it ended and they realized in 2006 that we were a voting pool that could put them into power. They used us and, having gotten what they wanted, they're going right ahead with the war they all voted for in the first place. I see all these posts and articles about how chicken the Democrats are, how craven and weak, and I have to say that most of the writers of those articles are utterly missing the point, in my opinion. They're not chicken or craven or weak; they're manipulating us exactly as George Bush did. They're telling us what we want to hear and making token gestures that are supposed to convince us that they're following through on their commitments, but in reality they're just stroking us with one hand while their other hand is picking our figurative pocket.

To the rest of you who live in Nancy Pelosi's congressional district, as I do: it's time for Nancy to go. She has lied to us about her intentions in Iraq repeatedly while simultaneously voting consistently to keep the war going. She abandoned the wishes of her constituency long ago, well before 2006, and I, for one, won't waste my vote on her again. I will, instead be out there campaigning for whoever runs against her, maybe even a Republican. At least with a Republican I'd know what I was getting up front.