Well.

Just as predicted. That light at the end of the tunnel was a train.

The country club boys have reached a compromise agreement on torture. And also as predicted, McCain gets to look like the nation's savior and Bush the statesman who managed the Senate. The details are still not fully revealed, but essentially the compromise let's Bush do whatever torture he wants with a (yet another) layer of officers overseeing whether terraists can look at who's accusing them of what. Habeaus corpus is on life support. Suppose they decide accusatory information is "top secret"?

"Hey Ahmed (or Bob, or Jim, or Debbie), we're going to hang you but we can't tell you why."

And what about the Democrats?

Who you say? D .. e ... moooo .. crates?

Nowhere to be found other than Harry Reid today mocking the Republicans for not being able to reach an agreement. Do you think that McCain set him up?

Here's Digby's take on the optics which I think are just precisely so:

Here's how the optics look to me:

McCain, the Republican rebel maverick, showed that Republicans are moral and look out for their troops.

Bush, the Republican statesman and leader, showed that he is committed to protecting Americans but that he is willing to listen and compromise when people of good faith express reservations about tactics.

The Democrats showed they are ciphers who don't have the stones to even say a word when the most important moral issue confronting the government is being debated.

Unless the Dems ready to threaten to filibuster a national security bill a month before an election --- which I doubt --- I expect that the Republicans are going to rush this through the conference and force through this piece of shit bill in a hurry, just like they forced the AUMF through in October 2002 and give the republicans a big honking "victory" in the GWOT.

I'm giving odds on filibuster by Democrats, as long as I get the "they don't" side. This is exactly how free people willingly give up their liberty, one drip at a time. We've been dripping for awhile now.

Add to that analysis, this little ditty:

RNC:

Total raised for August 2006: $7.7 million
Total raised for 2006 cycle: $175.8 million
Total spent for 2006 cycle: $160.4 million

Cash on hand: $39.3 million

DNC:

Total raised for August 2006: $6.7 million
Total raised for 2006 cycle: $97 million
Cash on hand: $10.9 million

I read a pessimistic piece yesterday by Eric Alterman about his assessment of the Dems chances for taking the House or the Senate. In short, it's his position that Republicans are so much better at shaping the optics that Democrats don't have a chance, in either House. The conventional wisdom, right now anyway, is that Dems will take the House and that there's a "revolution" in the air. Forty million bucks will do a lot of clearing the air.

I just don't know. It's crap like this, crap that the media just eats up whole, that makes me think that Alterman is not so far off. I'm trying to be optimistic, I'm reeeeaaaallly trying.