Republicans are now demanding that the health care bill be subject to the dreaded superfilibuster, suggesting that they think they're going to lose their fight to scuttle it. Meanwhile, TPM and FiveThirtyEight take separate looks at the reconciliation process that could be used to pass the public option and financing aspects of the bill, while Joe Klein throws in the towel on journamalistic "objectivity" in the face of the GOP's descent into total batshit crazitude.

Looks like it's time for Palin's second gaffe. This from ABC News:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY

Buckle your seat belts.

UPDATE: ABC News now has the full exchange.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

UPDATE 2: Matt Yglesias and HuffPo (and HuffPo) take on other aspects of the interview.

When they told me Democrats were Satan worshippers, I guess I really should have listened.

A Durham County [North Carolina] Democratic Party official was charged Wednesday as an accessory in a sexual assault case that includes allegations that a couple held a man captive in a dog cage.

A prosecutor has said that the case may have involved Satan worship, but a defense attorney for one of the three people charged said it seemed to be consensual sadomasochism gone awry.

When all else fails, stick a live tooth in your eye cavity to avoid going blind.

FOR one father and son, the Biblical exhortation of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" has acquired a unique new meaning.

Rob McNichol's son -- also called Rob -- didn't think twice when the chance arose to help his dad to see again by giving him a canine tooth.

Father-of-eight Mr McNichol snr (57) was blinded in a work-place accident, when liquid aluminium exploded in his face in November 2005.

...

The surgery, Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis (OOKP), involved fitting a living canine tooth with an optical cylinder and transplanting it into the eye cavity.

I'm not sure which Philip K. Dick novel this is from, but we're living it today. Via grinding.be.

Atheist Media Blog has what looks like a bootleg Scientology orientation film. Hail Xenu.

Since Scientology is relatively new, you may hear the question asked: Is Scientology a bonafide religion? Let me assure you, it is, according to more than 65 court decisions around the world.

After a tornado tore through Arkadelphia, Arkansas, in 1997, Mike Huckabee refused to sign a disaster insurance bill for over three weeks because it used standard language that referred to natural disasters as "acts of God." I am not shitting you. He really did this.

"While I realize that to some this is a minor issue, it is a matter of deep conscience with me to attribute in law a destructive and deadly force as being an 'act of God,' " he eventually wrote to the bill's sponsors, Young and Sen. Wayne Dowd. While acknowledging that "acts of God" was the "appropriate" legal term, he suggested the legislature substitute "natural disaster."

This man is insane. Meet your next president. Via Washington Monthly.

Crazy rumor from Ain't It Cool News today: Rumors are flying that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" fame may have done what the United States government has failed to do for the last six years — find Osama bin Laden. This seems crazy, even by the standards of the last few years—but that would be just about the nail in the coffin for any Republican presidential candidate, not to mention any person named "Bush" ever running for public office ever again.

In an effort to dig up dirt on Barack Obama, the Clinton camp has turned to an essay he wrote in kindergarten. No joke.

The Clinton campaign issued a press release Sunday that included this:

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.’ "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07]

Obama's spokesperson gets his two cents in:

Shot back Obama spokesman Bill Burton, "I'm sure tomorrow they'll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut."

God save us from the Clintons. Via Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum.

Meanwhile, in that forgotten place called Not America, Bush's other poodle has been smacked hard in a landslide victory for Australia's Labor party, while Vladmir "Pootie-Poot"¹ Putin does the batshitcrazy thing I didn't think even he'd have the stones to do and has Gary Kasparov arrested.²

--
¹ Actual nickname.
² Never bet against Putin's stones.

Importance notice: It's Islamofascism Awareness Week. What have you done to raise awareness of Islamofascism today?

Cynical-C has a long post about unusual military use of animals. Some of these are actually pretty disturbing.

The most creative way to use a cat as a weapon happened in World War II. The United States’ OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA) needed a way to guide bombs to sink German ships. Somebody hit upon the inspiration that since cats have such a strong disdain of getting wet and always land on their feet that if you attached a cat to a bomb and drop it in the vicinity of a ship, the cat’s instinct to avoid the water would force it to guide the bomb to the enemy’s deck. It is unclear how the cat was supposed to actually guide a bomb attached to it as it fell from the sky but the plan never got past the testing stages since the cats had a bad habit of becoming unconscious mid-drop.

You have got to be shitting me. Commentary at Mahablog, Crooked Timber, and Sadly, No!. My God.

Hillary Clinton, working as hard as ever to make it impossible to support the Democrats in 2008.

Sometimes love is easy, sometimes it is hard, and sometimes a spurned man throws acid in his lady's face—and she marries him anyway.