It took all day and all night, but I have finally done due diligence and read the entirety of the new healthcare bill. It turns out we were all wrong.

Basically once you get past the legerdemain, what it boils down to is that starting in 2011 ten uninsured families will be eligible for free health care for life courtesy of Uncle Sam. Said families to be chosen by National Lottery so do fill out your census forms. Each subsequent year will incorporate one additional American family into the system.

Thus passing the bill will indeed do some good which is better than no good. The bill is, therefore, good. In light of such facts, complaint and criticism have become churlish. Although it will of course take some time for the remainder of American families to reap the benefits, this is clearly and undeniably an important first step in a new and promising direction.

Now on to immigration reform! No doubt there will be much ink spilled about mass deportations and citizenship and "systemic overhaul" and what-have-you. I submit that when the dust finally settles, if we do nothing else than deport ten less immigrant families per year, we should nevertheless count ourselves victorious.

According to this handy-dandy little gizmo, starting in 2014 I will save $570 per year on health insurance.

Sweet!

Unfortunately said gizmo does not tell me if that insurance covers much. But whatever. $570!!

As someone who cares deeply about his own purity, starting in 2014 I'll donate $570 per year to PNHP or like organization.

Or maybe in four years I'll grow up and embrace pragmatism or seriousness or something, buy an iPad and donate $70 to the Obama campaign.

No doubt by that time, despite rising popularity, he'll somehow manage to be in the fight of his life against Palin and Joe the Plumber's bastard spawn. Only with my unwavering attention to the news cycle and diligent conversational support against Teabaggers and Chomskyites alike will he be able to pull out another squeaker and save us all from Retard Apocalypse once again.

Decisions, decisions. Mercifully, I've got four years to figure it out. Either way it's all win-win though. The future is bright!

(It should be noted that in 2014 we can fully expect Obama to be gearing up for his third term made possible by some Bloombergian machination involving an arcane reading of the commerce clause. Two-terming is for losers.)

Welcome to probably the high-water mark for Obama era legislation. Amidst the celebration, it is not too early to, in our traditionally pessimistic fashion, start assessing the "compromises" that were "required" to "pass the bill." What will an intelligent breakdown of this bill look like, one that considers both its benefits and its problems?

As I have yet to go carefully through the language of the bill, a few observations on media coverage. This vote is evidence that Team Obama has not lost a step in their masterful manipulation of the media/Republican shit-apparatuses' demonization of the Democrats. A pattern is now in place: doubts are raised whether the Dems can get it up-- and that even if they do, in going against their historic flaccidity, they'll surely suffer. The subsequent "surprise" of the enormous Dem majority actually passing legislation benefits everyone: don't fool yourself, Obama now looks Macho Man Randy Savage strong, cable news gets its artificial mini-drama, and Republican chiffoniers get their big bad n- and f-word baddies to sell to the party faithful.

What is missing is any engagement of the actual contents of health care reform that is not deranged or paranoid and sincerely looks at what is missing from a vision of total coverage. Not to mention a harder question, in some ways impossible to answer: how much closer could this bill have been to total coverage and still passed with the Obama gauntlet behind it? This, it seems to me, is the crucial piece of ideology we're getting today. With the Republican protesters saying such horrible things outside, with those irascible Blue Dogs inside, this is the best we could have gotten. Look how close the vote was! 32 million is a lot of people. Best we could have done. Hmmph.