Charlie Christ's favorite number? 1-900-Mix-A-Lot, and shake that healthy (uninsured) butt, baby with back scoliosis. Parents using Florida's toll-free KidCare line to get health insurance from the state for their otherwise uninsured kids for $15-$20 a month got an even better surprise than the KidCare program when they rang.

People calling the governor's office heard an on-hold recording of Crist promoting the toll-free Florida KidCare line. Except two numbers were transposed. Anyone calling the number Crist gave out was told to call another number. The recording on that one begins, "Hey there sexy guys" and says the caller can have a more graphic conversation with a woman for $2.99 a minute.

36-24-36? Only if she's 5"3 with a bad cough, a fear of needles, and a Cookie Monster onesie. Nice work, Florida. To recover, they've made the KidCare website as fully operational as you'd think a government program giving away basically free health insurance should be:

Meanwhile, if your side-game, Lady Daisy Dukes, starts to go cold? Get her hot again, pops!

VoodooMagik dick enlargement? Snake oil.
Viagra? Old hat, short-lived.
Money? Traditionally uncreative.

So what to do when your mistress goes all Hunnybunny or starts to blueball the Old Boy? Power. Or political office. Yeah, give 'er one of those, or so thought Sen. Max Baucus in Montana, who decided he needed to spice things up with the lady via a U.S. Attorney nomination who—although he argues to the contrary—obviously home-wrecked on him and his wife.

The Montana Democrat nominated Melodee Hanes, who was Baucus' state office director, and three others to the post in March, spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said. The two began having an affair in the summer of 2008, Matsdorf said.

Gentlemen, if your mom hasn't told you to take note of women with first names suspiciously suffixed with "ee" instead of the traditional "y" (ex. "Stacee, Daisee, Casee, Ashlee, Katee, etc), well, I will: they have ambitions to appear stupider than the average person to possibly elicit sympathy so you will nominate them from their Buffalo Shrimp-slinging origins to one day be a U.S. Attorney. Not that there's anything wrong with Hooters, or Buffalo Shrimp, or creative names. But failure to disclose nepotism in the form of an affair in the form of a U.S. Attorney nomination? For every stupid action, there is an equally stupid reaction: thanks, Alberto Gonzales, for the gift of Marcus Baucus. Thankfully, Melody Melodee removed her name from the nomination. She now works for the Justice Department.

At least one lady's got it right, and of all people, she's a Republican from New Jersey. Local politics, the great foundation of our democracy is filled with figurative dildos: people who are tools of other people just looking to either (A) stick it to someone else or (B) get themselves off. So why not just run with it all the way? Stepfanie Velez-Gentry makes a living hosting sex-toy parties.

As the owner of Nookie Parties, she organizes gatherings for women and couples in which she sells sex toys, lotions, games, lingerie and other erotic items. "It's kind of like a Tupperware party, but with adult novelties," the 29-year-old mother of two said. Velez-Gentry said she started the company in 2007 as a way to help support her family in a tough economy.

Industrious, smart, a family woman? I'd vote for her. All the American people are looking for is a little honesty, you know? As much as it seems like we enjoy getting fucked, taking it in the voting booth is, while a time honored American tradition, ever so uncomfortable.

This very brief and innocuous-sounding Roll Call story is basically its obit.

Democratic moderates, uneasy with Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) choice of a public insurance option even though it includes an opt-out provision for states that do not want to participate, are looking for an alternative that can garner the 60 votes needed for passage. The public option offered by Reid is strongly opposed by all 40 Republicans.

Carper described Thursday's meeting as productive.

"Among the concerns that centrists have expressed are concerns about an alternative that might be government-run or government-funded, and we had an opportunity to drill down on both of those concerns," Carper said.

Among those who attended all or part of the meeting were Democratic Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska); Kay Hagan (N.C.); Mary Landrieu (La.); Blanche Lincoln (Ark.); Ben Nelson (Neb.); Mark Pryor (Ark.); Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.); Arlen Specter (Pa.); and Mark Warner (Va.).

You know what? That is a lot of Democratic Senators attending this "let's kill the Public Option" meeting. It is also a nice illustration of the way being a Senate moderate works: saying "I can't support this because others might not support it because of the fact that they might not support it."

And then there is today's Washington Post story on the ongoing negotiations, which presents these developments as a positive for a Public Option:

At Reid's urging, various senators have begun exploring alternatives for a public plan that could pass muster with the centrists, and some lawmakers are starting to examine other ways to achieve the same goals of greater competition, better coverage and lower prices. But as the negotiations unfold, liberal Democrats say they are growing increasingly realistic in their expectations.

This means they have already conceded. If they can convince the vile "moderates" to grant them a more subsidies they will drop their insistence on a government insurance program that can actually cover or negotiate with anyone.

So, liberals lose again!

Politicians frequently use props to help the American people understand them if they happen to be watching CNN with the volume down in order to hear when their microwave pizza is done in the next room. In the health care debate, the sheer size of the Democrat's bill itself has made it a popular prop for opponents, and this weekend they dragged out huge blocks of paper in advance of the vote on whether to hear the bill in the Senate. (On Saturday, the Senate voted 60-39 to bring the bill to the floor.) Writes the Washington Times:

The real star of the health care debate this weekend has been the 2,074-page bill - a physical manifestation of the size and scope of what's at stake as senators consider the overhaul of one-sixth of the nation's economy.

"It's a massive increase in government, as shown by this bill," Mr. Ensign told a reporter off the floor later, spreading his arms wide as if to encompass the stack of papers that comes in at more than a foot tall.

Wow, over a foot tall! If only there was some way to make it exactly half that tall... Wait, Mr. Ensign, you did print double-sided, right? Because that's not what New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall says:

"You only have print on one side, which isn't even the way we print them up around here. I've had mine printed up on both sides, so I use both sides of the paper. So they've made an attempt here to make it look a lot higher than it is," he said.

Mr. Udall said when the official print of the bill arrives, the type will be much smaller as well, and said at that point it will amount to "an average-size book."

Republicans here are acting like desperate undergraduates trying to meet a page requirement for an essay about the Sociology of the Bicycle: MARGINS: 3.5"; FONT: 25pt; SPACING: 2.999. GRADE: C-

But still, Udall should really just let the GOP throw out their well-insured backs carrying a millstone they so giddily fashioned from printer paper, looped with twine and hung around their own stupid necks. Don't play the printing game; otherwise pretty soon the whole health care debate will descend into a never-ending stream of tricks meant to make the bill bigger or smaller depending on one's political affinity:

TO: All Democratic Senators
FROM: Sen. Tom Udall
SUBJECT: Health Care Bill Printing

Fellow Senators,

As you may know, Republicans are currently unfairly inflating the size of our health care bill via printing only on one side of the page, and using a ridiculously large font. This is such a good and clever idea that we must fight back.

Allow me to introduce Yiskah. Yiskah—who I met through my Au Pair—is skilled in the ancient Turkish art of rice writing. Tomorrow, each of you will be given a copy of the health care bill written on grains of rice, which should fit in a small Ziploc bag. Please display these grains to the media and constituents to reinforce how efficient, healthful and multi-functional our bill is. Shake the bag around a bit. Throw it high into the air to emphasize the compactness of the bill. If need be, cook the rice and feed it to a homeless person. (Photo op!) Just make sure you contact Yiskah for another copy.

Best of Luck,

Tom Udall

Next week: We will read the entire Senate health care bill twice and conduct an in-depth, 20-year cost-benefit analysis of the proposals contained therein.

Supposedly it is voice actors. "Working voice actors," with "busy lives." But we definitely heard a guy with a non-Plains State regional accent. That's no working voice actor!

Anyway, these "actors" are reading, verbatim, unexpurgated, the entirety of HR-3962 and "The Senate Bill," which means the Chairman's Mark of the Finance Committee bill. You will be totally informed about all the death panels, once you have heard various calm-sounding people reading tables of contents and listing subsections and explaining what terms mean "for the purposes of this bill." Our favorite is Kristi Steele's sexy take on Title III Subtitle B Pt 1 of the Senate bill, "Extension of Long-Term Care Hospital Provision."

And now we know as much about Health Care Reform as we do about the dangerous side-effects of Yaz.

[Via John Dickerson]

I mean, I guess we shouldn't be shocked? It's generally been accepted and engendered as common knowledge that the health care industry—where people go to, you know, try to keep living—is among the most bottom-line profit centers in America. That bottom line, of course, being somewhere between your heartbeat and your wallet. I still find this one a little hard to get over, though: it's probably been going on for years, and it's no doubt common practice where it's exercised, but still. When people are as unabashedly, apologetically having their agendas literally written by multinational corporations, you have to wonder what it's gonna take for someone to throw the first Molotov Cocktail, figurative or otherwise.

The New York Times found emails proving that a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical pusher Roche had their distributed talking points for both Democrats and Republicans printed in the Congressional Record under the names of 42 representatives. It was almost an even split: 22 Republicans, 20 Democrats.

This shit's just incredible. Watch this jackass blame it on his staff instead of making himself accountable:

In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: "I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was." He said he got his statement from his staff and "did not know where they got the information from."

Asshole. Now, you're probably wondering, well, come on, how blatant was this? They had to at least, I don't know, slip them pieces of paper, hard copies. I mean, this is the kind of thing that's only talked about at lobbyists firms, when they're wasted and jumping around with glee at making their money influential in politics! Right. Right?

In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, "We are trying to secure as many House R's and D's to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible." He told the lobbyists to "conduct aggressive outreach to your contacts on the Hill to see if their bosses would offer the attached statements (or an edited version) for the record."

You're reading this correctly.

[Interlude: Can we get a #FuckYeahNYT? This is the fourth estate at their finest.]

So. Exactly how upset should we be about this? Because this isn't groundbreaking, this is just more proof that the scenario here is circumstantial. Lobbyists are running the rhetoric of Washington D.C., shamelessly, the more money they have behind them, the better they're doing.

Our elected officials are a bunch of clowns. Smart words written by smarter, better paid people are given to them. The words come out of their mouths. They get something in return. The chance to sound smart? Money? Who knows. Can we stop it? Can we make Washington a cleaner place where lawmakers aren't spoon-feeding the future of our country the poisonous horseshit that is a medical company's bottom line? And mind you: this is just one lobby. And one instance.

Is there any kind of indignation or recognition that this might be even—maybe, kinda, sorta—disingenuous and sociopathic behavior on behalf of our elected officials? Can Washington even recognize its own processes for what they are?

Asked about the Congressional statements, a lobbyist close to Genentech said: "This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it."

Right. So. You done with that bottle?

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists' [NYT]

Baum sent an email to every single Jew on his contacts list asking them to write letters to Senator Joe Lieberman asking him to support health care reform. This is funny and stupid in many ways. Like: Lieberman represents American Jews, as a whole? (No, he represents Connecticut insurance companies. And right-wing Jews.)

From: Dan Baum
Subject: Jews

I'm the last guy in the world to try to organize people by religion, but we Jews may be the only people to whom Senator Joseph Lieberman might listen. He is threatening to filibuster the health-care bill to remove the public option. He has been an obvious problem for years, but this time he can do genuine damage, and it's possible a deluge of calls and emails from Jews nationwide will give him pause. Please take a minute and either call his office — (fair warning, the mailbox was full) or (860) 549-8463, or send him an email... This is the text of the message I used, but you could compose your own:

"As a fellow Jew, I am appalled by your threat to filibuster the health care bill now working its way through the Senate. I appeal to your conscience. Do not block access to affordable health care for millions of Americans. Please support the bill." This will take only a minute to do. Once you've sent a message to Sen. Lieberman, please forward this email to all the Jews you know. We could make something happen.

Various poor wording choices and mistakes in tone—the sorts of things that are huge deals to Old East Coast Jews Who Work In Media, i.e. everyone the list he sent this to—displeased the recipients of this honestly well-intentioned missive. Like you are not supposed to say "as a Jew" because that means you are an annoying Jew, and you are not supposed to assume that other Jews think the same way as you do, even though as a whole America's Jews are almost uniformly liberal on matters of domestic policy, and have been since forever. Still: unacceptable! Which is why Jeffrey Goldberg, in order to embarrass and shame Baum, published his email along with a mocking response from another Jew who is not named!

And the second email, with its terrible strained Borscht Belt humor, is so much worse. So, Jews on Dan Baum's email list: please out this farbissener!

About 15% of actual working physicians are members of the AMA, which means they're not terribly representative of doctor opinions, but it's all they got, and it has generally not been a fan of government health care. In the '60s, the AMA warned that Medicare would destroy the fabric of American society and kill all the olds. (Now they oppose any cuts to Medicare of any kind, of course.) But then they endorsed the House health care reform bill! And then, apparently drunk on liberal praise, they went on to endorse gay marriage and the abolition of Don't Ask Don't Tell and medical marijuana.

The AMA noted that bans on gay marriage lead to health coverage disparities. Then, in a counterintuitive bit of logic, they said DADT was also hazardous to the health of the LGBT population (you'd think banning them from the military would, on the whole, do a lot to keep gays and lesbians alive, but there is an issue with doctor-patient confidentiality and military doctors being forced to report the sexual orientation of personnel who go to see them).

Finally, they reversed their 12-year position on the demon weed. The AMA used to say marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, which is insane what is wrong with this country, but now they say that if it is going to be used medicinally that there should probably be some controlled clinical trials involving it, which is impossible under its current classification as "a substance that will get your daughter raped by a colored jazz musician."

So aside from that whole "arranging a doctor shortage" thing the AMA is looking pretty good these days!

On C Street, in the townhouse owned by The Family, the famous secretive Christian cult. Other C street residents include [clarification: have included] John Ensign and Chip Pickering Jr., both of whom cheated on their wives. Governor Mark Sanford, who also cheated on his wife, sought moral counsel there.

The Family rents the townhouse out to male congressmen for below-market rates, and basically everyone who lives there is a creep and a degenerate.

The House of Representatives more or less proportionately represents the entire country equally. Its vast size provides a decent counterbalance to the extremism or incredible dumbness of a large number of its members. The Senate, meanwhile, provides a really easy and convenient way for industries to purchase political loyalty: you only need to buy a couple people off to completely stall anything at all. Hell, buy Joe Lieberman and you might kill health care altogether!

So. Drudge links to some very wishful thinking by the New York Post calling reform DOA in the Senate. Josh Marshall thinks its passage is more or less a foregone conclusion. Tim Noah thinks the Senate will maybe pass a terribly watered down version of reform.

Honestly the situation is exactly the same in the Senate as it was before the House vote. There are 50 liberals, 40 Republicans, and 10 assholes who are steering the entire process. Those 10 assholes represent a fraction of the populace. They want to make health care reform do less for fewer people because that is their working definition of "centrism." And they talk like this:

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) conceded that movement across the Dome "builds momentum, which is helpful."

But Conrad, a deficit hawk who represents a conservative-leaning state, said Saturday night's vote would not pressure Democratic Senators into embracing specific policies within the House bill or speeding up a floor debate that could take several weeks and stretch into early next year.

"This is the Senate. ... There's no way I know of to move faster. Honestly ... I've never thought this thing would be done before December of this year, and I still wouldn't be shocked if it's not done in December," Conrad said Thursday afternoon. "I think people are very much directed by the constituencies that they represent. I represent North Dakota; I'm not affected by what some colleague in the House from California thinks, frankly."

Hah. Ha! 38 million people live in California. 640,000 people live in North Dakota. Do you know what the population of Nancy Pelosi's Congressional district is? It is 640,000.

Obviously it is not Kent Conrad's job to care, at all, what Nancy Pelosi's constituency thinks, except inasmuch as what they think might be what is best for the people of North Dakota as well. But, theoretically, in a representative democracy, Kent Conrad's constituency shouldn't have immensely more power than Nancy Pelosi's constituency, right?

But the Senate stands where it did before: Harry Reid's bill is being scored by the CBO, and when it is released, there will be a lot of really terrible columns and news stories about how long it is. When we are feeling optimistic, this is how we think it'll go down: the Dems need 60 votes to let it go to debate and 60 votes to end debate (in the event of a GOP filibuster—which we don't think is inevitable but it also seems idiotic to predict that they'd be adults about anything at this point) and then, maybe, hopefully, 50 Senators and Vice President Smilin' Joe Biden will vote for it and the assholes can save face by voting against it without making it actually fail. And then the Senate will have actually done something halfway decent and fairly monumental.

(Meanwhile the House passed a climate bill last June. Did you know this? Don't look for it to become law this year, though!)

• Ban all guns, except rifles and shotguns.
  
• Enforce the separation of church and state.
  
• Which would lead to the legalization of gay marriage, and also probably abortion.
  
• Publicly finance all politics.
  
• Ban advertising by pharmaceutical companies. (Partly so the song 'viva Viagra' no longer gets stuck in my head, causing much embarrassment when I walk around singing it.)
  
• Government subsidised journalism. (Anyone who doesn't agree should stop reading anything that originated with, or is on, the BBC.)
  
• Significant government support for the arts.
  
• Strip Sheriff Joe Arpaio of all powers. Immediately. (As the beginning of prison reform.)
  
• Legalise illegal immigrants.
  
• Legalise drugs. (The Economist has the best argument for this here, if you subscribe. That you can read at this odd site here if you don't.)
  

Further suggestions welcomed, for when I become a benevolent dictator.

I don't know. The lone Republican "Yea" vote for the bill was Joseph Cao of Louisiana, you know he's gonna get trashcanned after school on Monday. Great, the Democrats made a huge-ass compromise for the Republican moral majority, I wonder what the Freakonomics guys will have to say about it, but you can bet your ass pro-choice activists are pissed. Meanwhile, the TVs gonna be filled with lots of talking heads tomorrow, many of whom will tell you how utterly fucked this country is, like this guy. People will be mad and people will be sad, and people will be happy and people will be elated, and people get their pockets lined.

And maybe, just maybe, one day, some parent with a kid who's got a bad fever in the middle of the night won't have to worry about taking him in to get checked out because they can't afford it or they'll get treated like shit, they'll just do it. And it'll be fine.

Eh. Big dreams. Was that even covered in the package? I don't know. Yay. Health Care, I guess.

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona, decided it would be for the best of the debate that a child be brought forth and tortured by being used as an exhibit by Rep. Shadegg, as he helped floor members understand something about the health care bill basically ensuring this kid would be broke or dead or addicted to smack or all of the above. Watch as the kid tries to do what I want to do, which is eat the microphone:

Yeah, kid, NOM, indeed. But old people like babies so whatever, nobody blinks at what kind of patent ridiculousness this is. But when the "Fat Pride Community" talks about getting healthy, nobody listens to them, even though they're 2/3rds of our country. And what do they have to say? It's not just about getting skinny. O RLY? And who is this talking for them? Professor Bacon, that's who. Seriously:

"I get so angry when I feel people pushing a weight-loss agenda," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco and author of "Health at Every Size," a book published last year whose title has become the rallying cry of the fat pride community. "What we're doing in public health care policy is harmful. We give a direct and clear message that there's something wrong with being fat."

Oh, ho, ho! A conspiracy! The tasty-meat industry has infiltrated all walks, it seems! But they might be screwed, as the House has started debate on the current legislative package, which will eventually lead to a vote on something like a 2,000 page bill, the contents of which most Americans seem to think include a provision that says something along the lines of "YOU, SIR, OR MA'AM, ARE GOING TO DIE. WE ARE GOING TO KILL YOU, AND YOU ARE GOING TO ENJOY IT! AND ALSO PAY US TAXES TOO, THANKS!" So they're getting together and freaking out, screaming mean things at a building where nobody can hear them inside.

"Kill the bill!" a few protesters yelled, egged on by a woman with a megaphone. "You'll be starting a civil war, you fascist tyrant!" yelled Andrew Beacham, 27, of nearby Falls Church, Va. Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail, said in an interview that he believed Mr. Obama was a fascist because-

I'm sorry, what?

Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail,

Unless he's fighting for provisions in the health care package to cover taxpayer-supported Bumble and Bumbles, I will stop processing information past that sentence. And he's not, and I did.

Oh, whatever. If there's anything nice that these Town Hall meetings have yielded, it's that we're no longer shocked and disturbed by the fucked up rhetoric plaguing our national debate. It's hard to be disappointed once something becomes the standard, no? These guys are just being ridiculous, now. Like this one, who killed a bunch of trees just to prove a point that the bill is long and complicated.

....(The representative) took a foot-high copy of the House bill to the podium when he spoke. "This bill steals freedom, and those of us that believe in freedom have contempt for those who would steal our freedom and contempt for this bill," he said in a shout, heaving the papers to the ground below the low stage.

What kind of asshole would do that? Let's go back to the first part of that paragraph...

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona..

Oh, you mean, the baby-puppeteer? Yeah. That one.

Forget obesity for a moment. There are thousands of pages in the legislation. Hopefully, there's at least a milli or two in that thing set aside to look into the causes, effects, and ways to prevent important conversation-born at-large jackassery from infecting our country any further. The biggest health care crisis we've experienced in the history of our country is the one we've brought upon ourselves since we started talking about health care: that we, and our conversations about things that should matter, are getting patently stupider every time we have them.

Michele Bachmann has called for a revolt against healthiness starting at noon today, and according to Politico, thousands of tea partiers have heeded the call so far, standing outside the Capitol and chanting "Palin/Bachmann 2012!", which is maybe like their version of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project or something?

The protesters, who are occupying the patch of grass only a few yards from where Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, have also chanted "you work for us!" Many are holding signs that echo their distrust of Obama and their belief that he is pursuing socialist policies.

They've advanced to within yards of Obama! Fix the bayonets and say a prayer boys, it's happening.

It's not just teabaggers taking back their government: Eight protesters were arrested this morning for occupying Sen. Joe Leiberman's office and demanding that he support reform. If you're a member of Congress, today's a good day for a long lunch in a dark bar.

Also: Strangely, Fox News isn't staying live with the tea party without commercial interruption—they're talking about some baby someone found in a box somewhere.

It was during his radio program, so sadly there is no video of Glenn clutching his abdomen, vomiting, and finally collapsing in pain.

Beck is expected to make a full recovery, after his appendix was removed at "an undisclosed hospital."

Let's hope things go better than they did the last time he went to the hospital, when he had to wait for 40 minutes in the emergency room! This was back when he was with CNN, so he blamed the health care industry instead of secret Maoist-ACORN Lizard People.

House Dems decided, instead, to cute the price tag of the bill by expanding Medicaid, which pays providers way less than Medicare, but it is for urban poors. That is a much bigger, but obviously much less important constituency than Real Americans in Small Towns and so on.

So it is good to Cut Down on Government Spending except, obviously, when the Government is Spending Money deserving, hard-working folks in Coors ads and so on.

We can all agree, as patriotic Americans, that the House of Representatives should only pass bills that name post offices after Ronald Reagan and honor country music's contributions to America.

What Congress should not do, ever, is try to vote on bills that are long.

Despite the badness of long bills full of evil Government words, every Congress passes thousand-page bills on transportation, energy, and education. No Child Left Behind was 1,033 pages long. The House Conference Report on the 2005 highway bill: 1,231. All of this is in the public record. You can download PDFs of any bill you like from the Library of Congress and Adobe Reader will tell you, right there at the top, how many pages of unreadable bureaucratese passed right by the Republican majority.

What is awesome here is that Politico is not simply playing into a meaningless Republican talking point, they are lovingly assisting in the creation of a meaningless Republican talking point.

Wouldn't it have been much more terrifying for conservatives if Nancy Pelosi's health care reform bill ended up being short? Like, it coulda been a four-page Jack Chick tract of jackbooted Americorps thugs throwing insurance company executives to the "death panels," which are grizzly bears, obviously.

1. His Name is No, Dr. No - Some hippie was once so enthralled by his resistance to the word "yes" that s/he sent him a giant "NO" in gratitude. He loves it so.

2. "Effective Nuisance" - That's going on his business card STAT!

3. Healthcare is His Thermopylae -

Mr. Coburn is preparing for what he considers a career pinnacle of havoc. Enacting the proposal, he says, would be catastrophic, and so if precedent holds, he will try to hinder it with every annoying tool in his arsenal: filing amendments (he has done that 508 times since joining the Senate, second only to John McCain's 542 in that period), undertaking filibusters and objecting strenuously.

And that fucking poseur Joe Lieberman can kiss his ass.

4. Friendship Means Paying off Your Friend's Mistress - And then ripping said friend a new one for being such a sick cheating cheaty bastard. Hey! Where do you think you're going, Ensign? Take your public shaming like a man!

5. The Correct Way to Treat Water Moccasins is to Behead Them - It's what Jesus should have done.

Back when establishment Democrats (like Obama!) were trying to convince us loony internet liberals not to campaign against Joe Lieberman, you heard a lot about how Lieberman is only a conservative on foreign policy, and not domestic issues. (How his full-throated support for any bombing campaign against any Muslims anywhere in the world is supposed to be not as big a deal as the fact that he doesn't want to publicly execute gays or whatever has always been beyond us, but that is what we were told.) Now he's pissed that distinction away.

We all know that Vinegar Joe Lieberman is a sanctimonious, thin-skinned, self-satisfied monster. And a pious, amoral scumbag. And a narcissistic, deluded underminer who represents everything that is wrong with the United States Senate. And a war-mongering, concern-trolling religious zealot. And, generally, a bastard. And probably a racist. But why would this weasel-human hybrid who is actually literally slowly receding into his own asshole a little bit every day suddenly pipe up on health care reform with a position at odds with most Connecticut residents and a vast majority of the Democrats he claims to represent?

Because no one had been paying attention to him! (And also because he is owned by the various insurance companies of Connecticut. Like he is literally Aetna's personal offensive Jeff Dunham puppet. Well, they have to share him with AIPAC.)

This is the thing, Joe. The opt-out public option is a conservative compromise. It is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates and open to everyone, which is a compromise from single-payer. You would like a further compromise, to "no health care reform, at all, unless the Democrats all kneel down and blow me, as I will demand they do whenever they might need my vote, from now until I finally decide to caucus with the Republicans, which will only happen if the Republicans take the majority and the Democrats stop blowing me periodically."

And, obviously, his literal, stated objections to the bill are not based in any way on reality.

So the question basically is, what is his end-game here? What the fuck is he doing?

Whether Joe Lieberman will run for reelection in 2012 is currently a mystery. He has $1.4 million in the bank, which is a lot, but not as much as he had in 2006.

He also is polling rather terribly in Connecticut, where Democrats and independents both prefer real Democrats. He could run as a real Republican, but, as we said, those independent voters he needs to win do not like him, at the moment.

So our "what is Joe Lieberman doing" possibilities are:

• He is just following the golden path of his own of self-delusion, thinking he will be remembered as a mavericky hero who bucked the status quo once he retires in 2012.
• He's going all-in as a Republican in the desperate hope that a 2012 GOP landslide will win him one more term.
• He is just trying to sink health care completely for his insurance company friends, who will give him a lucrative post-Senate job.
• He is just trying to force Harry Reid to pay him fealty once again, because it makes him feel nice.
• He is just a prick.

Weirdly, Lieberman said he'd vote to bring the bill to the floor, and then he'd support a GOP filibuster. A GOP filibuster is decidedly not a sure thing, though it certainly moves one step closer to a sure thing every time Joe Lieberman opens his mouth. Christ, what an asshole.

"I can't see a way in which I can vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated and run insurance company," the Connecticut senator said. "It's just asking for trouble."

What kind of trouble? This kind:

"Well all the history we have of health entitlement programs, including the two big ones that I dearly support, Medicare and Medicaid, is that they end up costing more than we're prepared to pay, and they add to the debt, and then they add to the burden on taxpayers."

Hmm. Where have we heard that argument before?

So does this kill the opt-out compromise?

Harry Reid doesn't think so, especially if he can get Olympia Snowe, a proper lady person who is "frightened" of the public option, back to the table.

[Pic: The Washington Post]