Harry, Nancy, Democrats. Don't blink.

Okay.

We've passed a spending bill with a deadline for troop withdrawls attached to it. Didn't that seem a little bit easy to you?

Especially you, Harry. Why do you think that it was even allowed to go to a vote, instead of getting shut down like all the other substantive bills the Senate Republicans have blocked?

I think we know. Because George W. Bush actually wants to veto it.

He could use the distraction, from the Attorneygate, GSA-gate and whatever other gate's erupt between now and whenever the bill hits his desk. He likes making grand, dramatic stands. He thinks that he can take the high, terrorist-fighting, troop-supporting road on this issue.

Furthermore, he believes that doing so will cost him nothing. He believes, with some historical validity, that Democrats will cave and compromise. That we will settle for some sort of meaningless, non-binding, bullshit little addendum to the spending bill that he can smirk at and ignore.

Let's prove him wrong.

He wants to play chicken. Great. Let's throw the steering wheel out the window while he watches.

Let's announce to the world that this is the only spending bill that he is going to see. And he can either sign it or not. Period.

More to the point, let's stick to it, no matter what.

What's the worst that could happen? Our troops have to come home in April? Great. Something tells me the National Guardsmen on their third deployment aren't going to be too pissed about that. The Republicans will accuse us of cowardice and treason? They already are doing that. The Iraqis will descend into civil war? Ditto. Democrats might suffer some political fallout for taking a firm stand for our principles? It's worth it.

This is our chance, the best one in a long, long, time to break Bush's willful defiance of the facts --- of Iraq, the Constitution, what the American people want, and the new balance of power in Washington.

He's not going to like it. He's going to bluster, and threaten, and cuss, and call us names. Fuck him.

He's been on a six year binge of other people's lives and money.

We can cut him off now.

Let's do it.