And compared to the previous scores of both the Senate and House versions... The costs are down even more:

How is this for bipartisan?

Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold"
on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate,
according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no
nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a
60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily's Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report
(sub. req.), "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more
aggressive use of the power than is normal." The magazine reported
aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were the source of the news
about Shelby's blanket hold.

Somebody call the wahhhhmbulence for this poor kid. Sadly, this is pretty typical of the ridiculous number of bipartisan efforts as the GOP has taken the act of fillibusters to heights unseen in American politics:

Co-conspirators Stan Dai and 25 year old WingNerds Gone Wild video producer James O'Keefe seen leaving the courthouse in a photo that O'Keefe did not have a chance to tamper with before I could:

After getting caught messing with the phone lines in Senator Landrieu's Louisiana office, even videoing his and his co-conspirators with their pants caught around their felonious ankles himself, Magistrate Judge Louis Moore released James O'Keefe on bail to his parents' custody in New Jersey until his next hearing on February 13.

No word on whether or not the right WingNerd internet sensationalist and Rovian troll clone will dwell in their basement...

Newly minted #45 and President Brown, that is:

The Polls are open in Massachusetts and there are early reports are of a high voter turnout. Polls will be closing at 8 P.M. Eastern time. The mathcup between Coakley/Brown has clear ramifications in the Senate and on future legislative efforts by the Obama administration being that it will decide the fate of the Democratic party's 60th vote and the filibusterosity of the Senate.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line reported one very fishy voting ballot, though it appears to be an isolated incident:

Rep. Weiner has been hammering Lieberman's stupidity lately in his own special way and, below the fold, hits Harold Ford with a Lieberman too...

And lying about knowing them too. From TPM:

Early this morning Tea Party Express organizers asked for donations to help Brown:

"We are in a fundraising drive so that we can buy as many TV ads supporting Brown as possible," they wrote to supporters.

"We must take action, for if we can pull out a victory, we stop the Democrats dead in their tracks in their effort to secretly ram through their socialistic healthcare plan," they wrote. "That's because Scott Brown wholeheartedly opposes the Democrat's government-run healthcare plan and has made his opposition to it a central part of his campaign."

No matter what happens in that election, the Democratic party already passed something in the Senate, as craptastic as it is, and if there is even a hint that the obviously addle-brained Brown won't join the rest of the Senate to pass anything the House adds to that?

The House will surely pass the Senate's junk if Brown wins. And there is absolutely nothing Scott Brown can do about it. Ever. And that is the naked truth.

Talk about trying to scare teabagrrrs into opening their wallets for a guaranteed nothing. And nevermind the fact that Brown voted for the same kind of "socialist" reform in Massachusetts when that came up in his state. Flip-Flop much?

Just like the Christianists, GOP operatives are trying to use the teabagers as an ATM machine for Brown's own political purposes with a blatant disregard to the tea party activists' own stated interests, as crazy as most moderates and the left find some of the teabagers' ideas are.

And all of this lying to the Tea Party activists while Scott Brown is simultaneously lying to the moderates and the left about his not knowing about the tea party despite the fact that his GOP political operatives are raising money for him from their well placed Tea Party operatives in the movement's leadership AND Brown having addressed the tea party at their events:

State Sen. Scott Brown told reporters in Massachusetts today he was "unfamiliar" with the "Tea Party movement," despite earning the endorsement from one of the groups who is raising money for his campaign to win the U.S. Senate seat Tuesday.

Are you gonna believe Brown about not knowing who and what the Tea Party is or your own lying eyes? Some video of Brown at a Tea Party event below the fold:

And Mike Stark has been out there looking around for signs of life in the healthcare debate. He may have found some in the House because some members are as alarmed about some of the features of the Senate version of reform as the rest of the country is:

One of the members willing to speak out was Rep. Peter Defazio (D, OR).  His statement needs to be seen to be believed:

Transcript of this video and more below the fold.

From Scarce at MLN, Joe Lieberman's numbers across the board are pitiful after his healthcare asshattery.

That's the word from PPP's poll they've done this week in Connecticut.

Want to know how far Joe Lieberman has fallen in the
wake of the health care vote last month? Barack Obama's approval rating
with Connecticut Republicans is higher than Lieberman's with the
state's Democrats.

81% of Democrats now disapprove of Lieberman's job performance with
only 14% approving, and he's not real popular with Republicans who
disapprove of him by a 48/39 margin or with independents who do so by a
61/32 spread either. It all adds up to a 25% approval rating with 67%
of his constituents giving him bad marks.

Lieberman managed to antagonize both sides with his actions
during the health care debate. Among voters who support the health care
bill 87% disapprove of how Lieberman handled it with only 10%
supporting it. But by voting for the final product after getting it
watered down he also managed to earn the unhappiness of constituents
opposed to the bill, 52% of whom say they disapprove of what Lieberman
did to 33% in support.

Overall just 19% of voters in the state say they like what Lieberman did on the issue with 68% opposed.

Full PDF of the poll is here. It is becoming pretty clear that the Democrats will have to adopt the more popular Nancy Pelosi's House version of healthcare reform with a Public Option as opposed to the Joe Lieberman's Senate dungpile if they want to keep any voters, not just the left or their base, interested in their brand.

Promoted. Originally posted 2009-12-19 12:15:11 -0500. -- GH

Bearing in mind that the plan has likely been weakened even more since last night's vote, via the CBO's Director's Blog below the fold.

From Howard Dean's WaPo Op Ed and after suggesting the Senate needs to kill this bill if they are not going to fix the real problems:

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based
on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance
companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as
younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed
to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to
enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an
insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium
dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a
year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few
Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are
likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are
insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with
a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a
public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold
the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives
understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about
what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend
their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American
people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to
insurers, whether or not you want it to.

To be clear, I'm not giving up on health-care reform. The
legislation does have some good points, such as expanding Medicaid and
permanently increasing the federal government's contribution to it. It
invests critical dollars in public health, wellness and prevention
programs; extends the life of the Medicare trust fund; and allows young
Americans to stay on their parents' health-care plans until they turn
27. Small businesses struggling with rising health-care costs will
receive a tax credit, and primary-care physicians will see increases in
their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

More constructive criticism, including last night's Special Comment from KO, below the fold because, honestly, this Bill resembles an insurance corporation dump on the Senate floor that needs to be flushed:

Michael Collins

The myth that the Democratic plans for health reform will produce anything by the target date of 2014 is only exceeded in absurdity by the myth that the world will end on December 21, 2012.

"New media" pundit Eric Alterman is down on his knees, genuflecting before the graven idol of Democratic Party interests. He wrote a full fledged justification supporting the current idol with feet of clay, the Democratic health care reform effort ongoing in the United States Senate. The article looks like talking points hot off the press from the White House Office of Disinformation since he's giving the president credit for all the good things which have materialized as if by magic in the latest Senate's efforts.

To begin with, he failed to note these very real issues in the health care debate: the immediate need by tens of millions for adequate health care and financial relief from exorbitant prices; the preservation of insurance companies at the center of public health care, companies with no interest in or obligation for the public welfare; and, the gross hypocrisy of the president demanding that health reform not add one penny to the deficit while he spends hundreds of billions for the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq - pure deficit operations with no discernible benefit to citizens.

Alterman starts out with this catchy header:

Via Greg Sargent, nobody, absolutely nobody, but Harry Reid and the CBO scoring it has a clue what it entails:

There was contentious debate, however, over what kind of trigger to
use, the aide says. One idea was the Federal triggered public option.
Another idea was a kind of state-based trigger. While the details of
the latter idea are murky, the basic concept was that if certain
affordability goals weren’t met within particular states, a trigger
would compel state governments to offer a public option. Something
along those lines.

On Tuesday night, just before the news broke of the compromise, the
Senators kicked all staff out of the negotiating room, the aide said.
That meant that staffers who were talking on background to reporters
didn’t know what final decision had been reached.

What’s more, this aide asserts, Harry Reid, keeping it close to the vest, never made it clear to his fellow Senators which public option he would send to the CBO for scoring.

I am pretty sure that any kind of trigger will be designed, as per usual, to never ever be pulled. And even if all requirements were ever met to allow them to pull it? Doesn't mean they will, as past experience dictates. Below the fold, some other stuff you probably want to know, or don't want to know? Depends on your perspective:

From The Hill, Brown calling their bluff:

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and David Vitter (R-La.) are preparing an amendment to force members of Congress into any public option health plan that becomes law, frustrating at least one Senate Democrat who wants to join the effort.

From the Senate floor, Sen. Dodd tells you what he, Sen. Sherod Brown and Sen. Barbara Mikulski think about it:

And available for your reading pleasure in a massive, humoungous 2000 +++ page PDF file.

Click for PDF

Taken from

http://democrats.senate.gov/

[update] In case you have issues trying to upload it from the Senate site, via mcjoan at dkos:

HuffPo has also loaded up the pdf, so you can get it there.