The CBO says the health care reform bill will reduce the deficit by many billions and cover many millions. It will be voted on on Sunday. Then a mobs of angry white people will probably form around the country.

The Democrats are still short on votes but the CBO score will almost certainly provide a really convenient excuse for members to switch to yeses.

And obsessively following the completely unofficial whip count is pretty pointless—they are a couple votes short, and they will do everything they can to get those votes by Sunday. The CBO report helps.

Smarter-than-me observers put the chances of passage at 50% or 60%. I am more confident than that, because Michele Bachmann is freaking the fuck out.

Only about 300 angry, angry teabaggers even bothered to show up to the rally outside the Capitol on Tuesday. But if this terrible socialist death panel takeover is jammed down America's throat on this weekend, I basically expect them to attempt to burn down the White House, just as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison would've wanted them to.

Alternatively, the Tea Partiers could be incredibly demoralized by passage of the one thing they hate more than people who they suspect are secret ACORN spies. They all sorta preemptively celebrated their role in killing the bill, before it was actually killed, and passage could dampen their enthusiasm for screaming nonsense at sick people for a while. Which is nicer to consider than the possibility that they'll become a grassroots, decentralized, nonpartisan movement of a bunch of nutcases in clock towers with tricorner hats and assault muskets.