Will it come up for a vote in the Senate today?

Or will the Ben Nelson and Susan Collins (R, ME) so-called centrist group of Senators end up pushing the vote to Sunday?

How many Republican votes will be needed to get to the magic number of 60?

Will Al Franken suddenly be seated some time today?

Is Ted Kennedy going to be able to make it for the vote?

Is Mary Landrieu (D, LA) going to reprise her February 3 vote, when she was the only Democrat to vote against an amendment which came up short by two votes, an amendment to add $25 billion in infrastructure investment to the bill (for such frivolous unnecessities as highways, mass transit, and water projects)?

Will Susan Collins vote for the bill or will her bruised ego get in the way?

Will Ben Nelson vote for the bill or will he decide he’d much rather see the economy go over the cliff?

Will the Collins-Nelson group suddenly be blessed with the insight that every single one of the items they are hell-bent on cutting out of the bill (as per their $90 billion list of cuts) “truly helps stimulate the economy” a lot more than the tax cuts they are determined to leave in?

Will Tom Coburn (R, OK) come up with some inventive maneuver at the last minute to block the bill for at least a month?

Will President Obama realize in time that maybe “The economy is doomed unless you pass a package of about $800 billion, any package of about $800 billion!” is not quite the right message to be sending?

Will the members of this august deliberative body have a last-minute epiphany and suddenly put country above obstructionist party and/or personal agendas, and take the economy out of the handbasket it is currently in (before it reaches its current destination), and pass the bill by something like 79 to 19?

Or will a majority of the members of the Senate — in keeping with the quality of the debate so far — suddenly realize that it’s far better to scrap the bill altogether and just give every person in the U.S. a million dollars, seeing as how a million dollars each for 300 million people would only be $300 billion?

Is “august deliberative body” already thoroughly out-dated as a description of the Senate?

Will our hapless media start calling a spade a spade, and stop whitewashing Republican obstructionism with statements like “The Democrats will need the support of at least two Republicans and probably more to win passage of the stimulus bill, which for procedural reasons will require 60 votes.”?

Is Mitch McConnell (R, KY) even capable of realizing that the question of “the appropriateness of an almost $1 trillion spending bill to address the problem” is best decided by economists rather than witch-doctors or Joe-the-Plumber-War-Correspondent-Economic-Analyst?

*** Update, 8:09 a.m. ***

Encouraging news. “Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the GOP is ready to support a bill….” No, wait. He added: “but we will not support an aimless spending spree that masquerades as a stimulus.” What he may as well have added: “And we will portray every version of the stimulus bill as an aimless spending spree, so there!”

As Major League Baseball used to say a few years ago: “What a game!”