* Perhaps taking a cue from her most rogueish guest, Oprah Winfrey has decided she will no longer be shackled behind her talk show.

* The Senate takes up its version of the health care bill tomorrow morning. Harry Reid needs 60 votes just to proceed with debate, because the Republicans do not want to deal with this thing at all. If they filibuster, let us hope they forgo the phonebooks and pledge allegiance to the flag for twelve hours straight. (Eat your heart out, Todd Akin!)

* Said health care bill is 2,074 pages long. Tony Perkins and his fightin' evangelicals have released something called "The Manhattan Declaration," which manages to cover "the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty" in just 4,700 words.

* President Obama will make a decision about Afghanistan troop levels after Thanksgiving, assuming he's not in a food coma.

"It really doesn't matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost," Thompson said on his radio show today.

(Barack Obama has a secret Afghan baby??!!?!??)

Ahem. Now, if Fred Thompson had heard Fred Thompson saying that the war has been lost, Fred Thompson would have been outrageously outraged to an outrageous degree. Because here's what Fred Thompson told Sean Hannity in 2007 when Harry Reid suggested that the war in Iraq had been lost…

I [Fred Thompson] asked [a former Army captain] what she thought about this. She said, "How in the world can anyone, any one of our leaders, declare war, declare that the war has been lost when we've got troops in the field? My friends are over there in the field. I know what they think about this."

And, of course, it's just like all other Americans think. The very idea that they would do this and undercut our efforts over there is unprecedented. And it's not only unprecedented; it's awful politics.

But this is different, you see, in so many ways.

When Fred Thompson tells us that the war in Afghanistan has been lost, he's making a legitimate if controversial criticism of specific decisions being made (or not made) by the Obama administration.

Whereas when Harry Reid did that, he was being a Democrat.

Were you really? You probably shouldn't have been wondering…

Republicans, who have criticized the Democrats' initiative as a step toward government control of the healthcare system, are already planning a series of delaying tactics, including forcing the entire bill to be read aloud on the Senate floor.

"It's going to be a holy war," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Wednesday evening.

All right! A good ol' fashioned holy war, just like they used to do it in the olden days. I'ma go grab my filabustin' stick!

Anyway, the Senate has a health care bill, it runs 2,074 pages, and that is a source of great consternation. Why is this bill so long? Look at it! Why does it have all those words and numbers? Can't they just overhaul the American health care system with a Facebook note, like normal people? What outrageous things are the Democrats trying to hide with their writing and publishing?

How about this?

To raise money for the health overhaul, Democrats are proposing a new 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures. The tax was a surprise addition to the sweeping 2,074-page bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled late Wednesday. It generates $5 billion over a decade for the plan, which is expected to cost $849 billion over a decade.

The tax would fall on the individuals who undergo the procedures. If they don't pay it when they’re billed for their surgery, then it falls to the provider who performed the procedure.

Outrage-o-meter says… 3. Maybe 4, max. Fun fact: since 2004, New Jersey has been the only state with its own cosmetic surgery tax law on the books.

Yet if you've ever gone down the shore in July, you'll notice that it's had zero impact in terms of putting bureaucracy, or even common sense, between patients and their plastic surgeons.

^{Aww, NJ, you know I love you. Next time I'm in Belmar, the pork roll-egg-and-cheese is on me.}

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Bloomberg was narrowly leading Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., his Democratic rival, 50.5 percent to 46.1 percent. The mayor was projected to win by a much thinner margin than in 2005 — when he thoroughly trounced Fernando Ferrer — and than many had anticipated.

Whoa! So, not only did Harry Reid lose New York City to the already sitting mayor, but he did it by a much smaller margin than people expected he'd lose it by, which clearly shows Americans' frustration with Democratic legislators insistence on trying to insidiously provide them with moderately more affordable health care.

Look at me! I'm punditing!

Submitted by flasunbum.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Below, more coverage of Joe Lieberman and the health care debate from The Colbert Report and Daily Show.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report air Monday through Thursday starting at 11pm / 10c.

Anyway, while you're thinking deeply about distracting stuff, here's another rumor that never happened…

The Obama White House, having pushed for a public health care plan with a trigger, is skeptical that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can come up with the votes for a more progressive opt-out proposal.

The administration told Reid, "You're the vote counter. But don't come crying to us when you need that last vote," according to NBC News' Chuck Todd.

See. They're just like a real American family.