It's become apparent today that counting votes on ObamaCare has devolved into an exercise of herding cats. The Hill is heroically trying to compile a whip count:

House Democratic leaders don't have the votes to pass healthcare reform. At least not yet.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has expressed confidence that when push comes to shove, healthcare reform will pass Congress. But there will be plenty of pushing in the days ahead.

Pelosi is clearly down in the vote count. Thirty-four House Democrats are either firm no votes or leaning no, according to The Hill's whip list. Dozens more are undecided.

You can find the whip count here.

Today President Obama tried pulling out all of the stops by parading former Republican Congressman Ray LaHood (now President Obama's Secretary of Transportation) to flack for ObamaCare but, as JammieWearingFool wisely notes, LaHood would be on his way out of Congress if he supported ObamaCare as an incumbent Republican congressman. Irony, though, is not one of those things these Democrats readily grasp.

Why is it that all the attempts by this administration at the mere pretense of bipartisanship fall flat on their face? Could it be that there is no bipartisanship at work here but instead a preponderance of slight of hand combined with heaps of chutzpah to move ObamaCare through the House by means of dishonest devices (such as the Slaughter "deeming" debacle which BTW have a longer history of use in the Duma than the House of Representatives)?

Twenty three hundred people turned out in bad weather to protest ObamaCare legislative tactics in St. Louis today because of the subterfuge anticipated by Speaker Pelosi this week. I'm reminded of the hundreds of national news reporters camped out on the outskirts of Crawford, Texas to cover the antics of a clown named Cindy Sheehan who was exploiting the death of her son (a fallen warrior in the Iraq War) for brazen political gain and attention. Where were these same inquisitive reporters today when protestors in St. Louis stood against a subversion of the rules of our Congress? The answer is they were in the cloak rooms of House power brokers obsequiously asking "How can we help?" The head waiter seating them at their tables is a fellow familiar with the scene and easily spotted: just look for the name "LaHood" embroidered on his House waiter's coat. He's the guy humming "be my guest, be my guest..." while shoe shine boys wearing GM uniforms worked alongside Chrysler executives that took drink orders. This is what Congress has become in the new world of Pelosi Rules and the Obama Machine.