AHHHH. 14-9. So long, terrible Senate Finance Committee! Back to your cornfields, Grassley! Back to your barbwired condo in Hell, Baucus! Back to whatever there is in Wyoming, Enzi! HAHAHAHH– oh god, they have to draft and pass a climate change bill too, don’t they? RATS. As far as health care goes, though: congratulations! Now, after eight months, our beloved bicameral legislature can move on to Step 2. “Step 2,” hopefully, is where they make it a not-shitty bill. This task belongs to… Harry Reid! NEAT. [YouTube, Washington Post]

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 »

Terrible Sen. Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley’s second-in-command for reaching a bipartisan health care bill, wants to reform health care in much the same way that his superior does: by killing health care reform completely. This does not portend well for the Gang of Six! Even White House meanie Robert Gibbs admitted today that Enzi, whom Obama once praised for his good-faith negotiating efforts during a primetime press conference, has thrown his wiener in the cogs of progress one too many times now and should proceed to piss off. [TPM]

Creepy Italian sausage SILVIO “JUST CALL ME PAPI” BERLUSCONI cherishes his privacy. Sì, Berlusconi needs his special alone time, so he can mount meter maids and plow the dickens out of teenage models in peace. But why won’t the evil ITALIAN MEDIA respect Berlusconi’s privacy? Surely they will all be excommunicated after ruining his daughter’s birthday celebration, and also, Berlusconi’s chances of scoring with his daughter’s extremely young friends. Vaffunculo! Italy: spay this man before HANS BLIX is required to, under international law. Snipity snip snip! … MORE »

• WHO THE HELL IS MIKE ENZI? The kinda-sorta longshot hope for these wretched Democrats to salvage what is supposed to be the crowning legislative achievement of the last 40 years of Democratic politics would be to get all the bills out of committee, fart all over the bad ones during the reconciliation process, and send something resembling Improvement to Obama’s desk. This will require telling such people as “Mike Enzi,” a loser Republican dildo from Montana “Wyoming” who said this about what would need in any “deal,” to fuck off forever and maybe work on other issues: “I also need commitments from Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi, as well as the Administration, that the bipartisan agreements reached in the Finance Committee will survive in a final bill that goes to the President.” UPDATE: Oh whoops, he is from Wyoming, like Dick Cheney… JUST SAYING… [AMERICAblog]