Earlier today, I cross-posted at my blog and Daily Kos a quick write-up of an interaction I had this morning during a fundraising phone call from the DCCC.

It boiled down to this. I told the caller that my policy (which was true even before I was laid off last week) is to give only to targeted candidates. It's a policy I've more or less stuck to, although I did give some money to Sen. Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund and the DNC. I expressed some unhappiness with the passage of the funding bill, thinking that would end the call, and not really wanting to get into an argument about politics with someone who was in all likelihood a full-time phone bank caller.

That was when she asked me if I wanted the troops to be cut off from their supplies.

It escalated pretty quickly, with her claiming the President hade the veto, with me saying that no funding bill would have meant no veto, and her claiming that the troops would starve in Iraq without the funding bill. Literally, that was what she said: "starve".

It is a dark day in our nation's history. That sounds melodramatic - but it is true. Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history.

The numbers are not pretty. First, 216 House Democrats cast the key vote to send a blank check Iraq War funding bill over to the Senate. As I reported at the beginning of the day and as the Associated Press now confirms, the vote on the rule was the vote that made it happen. As the AP said: "In a highly unusual maneuver, House Democratic leaders crafted a procedure that allowed their rank and file to oppose money for the war, then step aside so Republicans could advance it." Nauseating.

In the Senate, we saw lots of promises and tough talk from senators telling us they were going to do everything they could to stop the blank check. Some of them bragged that they were going to vote against the bill - as if that was the ultimate sign of heroics. Then, not a single senator found the backbone to stand up to filibuster the bill a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. To quote the Big Lebowski, "These men are cowards," because apparently, Senate club etiquette comes even before the lives of our troops.

The blank check sailed through the upper chamber on a vote of 80-14 with 38 Democrats (the majority of the party) voting yes. In all, at a time when 82 percent of Americans tell pollsters they want Congress to either approve funds for the war with strict conditions or cut off all funding immediately, 90 percent of House and Senate Democrats combined voted to give George W. Bush a blank check.

The worst part of it all was the overt efforts to deceive the public - as if we're all just a bunch of morons.

There is a Washington gambit where you trick people into accusing you of doing something bad, in order to distract attention from the fact that you are doing something far more sinister.

For example, if you look closely at some of the "deals" that Members of Congress have made in which they swapped their votes for various trade agreements, you realize that to call the arrangement a "deal" is to praise it with faint damnation. You look afterwards, and in turns out that the tomato growers in Congressman X's district were not protected at all. "Congressman X got snookered," you think. Then you look closer and you realize that Congressman X has made pretty much the same "deal" on the last three trade votes. He expressed concern about the tomato growers in his district, he got a letter from the Administration promising him that tomato growers in his district would not get slaughtered, he announced the "deal" with great fanfare, he voted for the trade agreement, tomato growers in his district got slaughtered.

"Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops," AP reports. The article notes that "details remain subject to change," but says that the bill "would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year," implying that there would be no meaningful restriction on the President's request.

Like earlier articles containing basically the same information, the article doesn't cite any named sources, nor does it provide significant detail, suggesting that the anonymous announcement may be, to some extent, a trial balloon. If the announcement unleashes a tsunami of protest, leaders have left themselves room to back away from it. Hopefully, this is exactly what will happen.

But suppose not. Suppose, as may be possible, that Democratic leaders have really committed themselves, as the AP article seems to suggest, to providing all the money for the war in Iraq that the President has asked for, without including any limitation on the duration of the war, regardless of how much protest this generates among opponents of the war - even at the cost of splitting the Democratic caucus. Then what?

Congressional Democratic leaders are moving to make their proposed timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq "advisory," the Washington Post reports.

Many Americans looking to Congress to take decisive action to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq will be very disappointed if this turns out to be true. And many anti-war Democrats in Congress will again face a dilemma: whether to support the leadership's strategy on the war in a close vote. On the one hand, many were already justifiably unhappy with the bill that passed the House. On the other, many will find the political logic for supporting the leadership compelling, as they did before, knowing that ultimately, the political story that will be told will be either "Congress voted to condition funding on a timetable for withdrawal" or it won't be. Congressional action moves the debate forward in a unique way. As even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, the Congressional debate has already had a positive impact.

This is the week when moral resolve separates cowards from patriots. With a majority of Americans behind them, will the Democrats stand strong or will they capitulate to the politics of pusillanimity as Cheney expects them to do?

Paired with some measure of accountability, the supplemental appropriation bill moving towards the president's desk provides the money requested for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To wit, the issue is not a time table, but whether Bush will veto funding for the troops.

If Bush truly needs the money as he claims, he must accept public accountability to receive it. In case Bush forgot, the Republican self-licking, rubber stamp for his blank check spending in Iraq was retired permanently last November.

Check out this chilling Public Service Announcement from CODEPINK and share the message.  It's time for the Bush regime to stop treating soldiers like toys and bring them home.  The games are over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc1ARRgbR N0

One of the things that appeals to many progressives about Barack Obama's presidential candidacy is his background as a community organizer. It's not just that he can claim familiarity with the problems of the community that he worked in - it's that the experience of trying to organize people to confront such problems informs how you view the world.

How then to explain Obama telling the AP that Democrats would have little choice but to "fund U.S. forces in Iraq" without withdrawal timelines if Bush, as he has threatened, vetoes the supplemental?

The question here is not just what one predicts will be the outcome of the confrontation between Congress and President Bush. Obama, as a member of the Senate and as a leading Democratic presidential candidate, is a key protagonist in the confrontation. What kind of organizer confides to the media that when push comes to shove, his side is going to back down?