So the Dems folded on FISA

I just don’t get it. Honestly, I have no idea why these things go the way they do. The FISA bill has been voted upon, and it passed. Awesome. Here’s the thing, though: there was no “compromise”. It just handed the president everything he wanted.

The reason I’m just at a loss is that there’s no logical reason for the Democrats to just fold like they did. It’s not like the president, his party, or his plan were that popular. Everything is at record lows in the polls. There was no uproar of public support for the bill, if anything the opposite is true.

So what the hell is going on? Are the Democrats trying to prove that they’re worthless and don’t deserve what the voters have given them? It’s as though they’re hell-bent on thumbing their noses at the public to show them that electing a blue majority was pointless.

We were given a lot of promises in 2006. After a pretty nice honeymoon period, nothing actually happened. Bush gets all he wants, the Iraq fiasco rolls along unchecked, and bills like this pass with relatively little resistance except by the few principled Representatives such as Feingold.

The Senate votes next week. Let’s hope something happens. If the Republicans can filibuster their way out of everything, I don’t see why the Dems can’t just vote it down.

A prediction that I really, really hope won’t come true.

I was sifting through some standard right-wing bile, came across a quote of John Bolton’s saying that an Obama presidency would be a “repeat” of the Clinton presidency, with WTC attacks and embassy bombings and the like.

We can look forward to a LOT of these attacks on Obama as the election season rolls on, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about here. No, my prediction hinges on the hypothetical terrorist attack that happens on American soil within six months of Obama taking office. It could happen, historically it happened to the last two presidents, odds are pretty good, right?

Well anyway, the important thing is to take a look back. Remind ourselves that, after 9/11, the right knew who to blame: Bill Clinton. Author Gerald Posner wrote a whole book about it. Apparently Clinton administration officials knew about the 9/11 hijackers. The TV movie Path to 9/11 basically laid the blame at Clinton’s feet for two hours.

Done? Hardly. David Horowitz railed Clinton, saying his policies let 9/11 happen. There was the phony story about Sudan offering up Osama bin Laden that Clinton supposedly ignored. Some of the geniuses at FOX weighed in, once again blaming Clinton. NewsMax was REALLY on the assault in heaping blame on Slick Willy.

Do I need to go on? USA Today said that Clinton “passed” on bin Laden. I could continue, but I think I’ve made my point. After 9/11 happened, the media (especially on the right) absolutely dove at the chance to dump blame on Clinton, virtually ignoring Bush in the frenzy.

So here’s my prediction that I mentioned earlier. If an attack does happen on American soil sometime between January and August, or maybe even October, of 2009, the right and the media are going to completely scrap all of the “blame the last president” hoo-hah that we saw in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead, we’ll be greeted to a veritable tidal wave of “see what happens when a liberal takes charge?” and similar accusations.

Of course, it’d be pretty stupid of me to expect anything like “consistency” or “common decency” in a situation like this. That’s how we see the right working, anyway. Take the credit but shift the blame.

Although it does make you re-think the whole “Bush renews effort to capture bin Laden” deal. Maybe it’s about more than just looking good. Maybe he’s worried that there will be another attack and people are going to finally figure out that he didn’t do fuck all to incapacitate either bin Laden or the outfit he runs.