It’s Christmas in the Senate Finance Committee! Max Baucus has crafted his latest proposal for bipartisan health care reform by doing what responsible centrists always do: lopping off a random $100 billion from the price tag and declaring, “this is bipartisan, now.” It features all sorts of lovely concessions on significant planks of the earlier bills: it lowers the expansion of Medicaid, caps the employer health care tax exemption, drops the public option (and its slave, the Trigger), and LITERALLY WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TO BE ALIVE. In return for these concessions Max Baucus received such kind words from Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley as, “Fuck you Max,” “Fuck your stupid bill Max,” and “Die, Max Baucus.” MORE »

Senatorial grumpus Chuck Grassley really wants a solid, bipartisan health care reform bill to pass, you guys. This is why he has been refusing to compromise on a single thing for eight months — and more recently, spreading toxic falsehoods and suggesting he’ll vote against his own bill — in his role as chief Republican health care negotiator! We can gauge his powerful commitment towards reaching a satisfying agreement in the near future, too, by reading one of his recent fundraising letters, dated August 10: “I had to rush you this Air-Gram today to set the record straight on my firm and unwavering opposition to government-run health care… And ask your immediate support in helping me defeat ‘Obama-care.’” (It’s his hasty ellipsis — he was really rushing to send that Air-Gram!) MORE »

• CHUCK GRASSLEY SUCKS AGAIN: But… but… maybe he’ll reach a compromise that everyone likes! He could still come around! “Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of three Senate Republicans negotiating on health care, said the soaring federal budget deficit ‘puts a stake in the heart’ of $1 trillion measures being debated in Congress.” Yes, we cannot add to those higher deficit projections for 2009 and 2010 with this health care measure set to launch in 2013. [Bloomberg]

• Martin Peretz of The New Republic has an extremely developed, terminal case of xenophobic crotch rot. [Barrett Brown: True/Slant]
• Senator Grassley is only interested in the perfect health care bill. It must be as strong as an ox on ‘roids, as whimsical as a bicurious white tiger. It must birth from Adam’s meatiest rib. It must be a masterpiece, it must be perfect. [Matt Yglesias]
• The aporkalypse will kill 50% of everybody. [AMERICAblog]
• Charlie Crist reveals that his secret Judaism saves white people from Hurricanes every year when he visits the Holy Land and sticks his cock into the Wailing Wall. [AP]

Confused old person Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is two or three more annoying media turns away from finally getting booted from health care negotiations, has found another outlet receptive to his newfound bad-faith curmudgeonly psychobabble: National Review’s The Corner, the #1 blog on the Internet. In an interview with the site’s Robert Costa, “Grassley says ‘the jury is out’ on whether he might leave the negotiating table. ‘I’ll make a decision on walking away if it becomes clear that I can’t get a good agreement.’” Harumph! So let us ask, for the 850,000th time in six months, what in hell would be a “good agreement” for you, Chuck Grassley? MORE »

Alright: we had some respect for Chuck Grassley throughout much of this health care process, since he was, for some indeterminate period of time, operating in good faith, trying to work out a bipartisan deal with the new super-majority party that seemed destined to finally pass its greatest legislative accomplishment in generations. MORE »

Here’s your favorite Chuck Todd asking old Chuck Grassley a very good question, today: If you get everything you want in a health care bill, and you think it is a good bill for the American health care system, but only three or four Republicans will ever go for this bill because THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THE POLITICS OF KILLING OBAMA, would you then vote against it? Your own gutted co-op-loving bill that you wrote? Grassley responds with a hearty “YOU BET I WOULD VOTE AGAINST IT!” And so the good-faith bipartisan negotiations go. [MSNBC via Ezra Klein]

The clone armies of Markos Molasses, Matt “David” Yglesias and others are still in Pittsburgh playing grab-ass with the supposed racist Bill Clinton at this year’s Netroots Nation conference. What the dickens are they hoping to achieve? Well this morning, during an address from former Republican sack o’ cancer Arlen Specter, they were able to get the Pennsylvania senator to prank-call and prank-Twitter his old friend Chuck Grassley — who is now furious! Does it make your day to know that you’ve RUINED a friendship, communist bloggers? Because it would make ours. MORE »

That’s the only question. When Chuck Grassley goes around spreading this crap about Obama “trying to pull the plug on Grandma,” do you start to worry that maybe he’s acting in bad faith? We don’t think Grassley is sane enough to tell the difference between good faith and bad faith anymore. He just wants to shout on Twitter, not write bipartisan legislation. [Huffington Post]

Trig will live after all! Suck a beanpole, Obama, because the Senate Finance Committee will apparently strip from its terrible hell-bill the provision to reimburse Medicare doctors who provide end-of-life counseling sessions. Chuck Grassley is the force behind this stripping, because holy shit, he had no idea that Obama was planning on killing him (”grandma”) with this provision! Which he was! The Senate Finance Committee health care bill will soon just be a massive tax cut for Wall Street investment banks and Montgomery Burns. [TPM]

Uh oh, Grampa Cornpants has stolen the intern’s key to the Twitter machine again. Time to shout nonsense at the President! See, Chuck Grassley and the Republicans, along with certain awful humans like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, are begging a resilient Obama to wait until after their August recess to “finish” health care, because they want it to lose all momentum and die on the Senate floor. Who will want to cast a tough vote a mere fourteen months before midterm elections?? doRITE, doRITE! [Twitter]