After a dinner of deep-fried peanut butter meatballs, how about a nice ride on the tilt-a-whirl?

Prof M wanted food on a stick. How about a corn dog? Too ordinary. A sausage dog? Too much like a corn dog. Chicken on a stick? That’s just a kabob. Octopus on a stick? Blah. Ravioli on a stick? Meh.

But credit where it’s due: when I pointed out the deep-fried peanut butter meatballs on a stick, he dove in. But it was a failed mission. He ate one of the meatballs, and tossed the other two. Apparently they were as bad as they sound.

This is Nick at the peanut-butter meatball stand, aka Chicken Charlie’s. Prof M is in the background negotiating his purchase.

Mmmm, a grill full of nice, smoky, jumbo turkey legs. You can almost smell the fair already, can’t you?

It’s Saturday night, so the fair was nice and crowded. This is what the central midway looked like when we entered the fairgrounds.

I’m off all day today. Please make sure nothing too terrible happens in my absence.

However, I won’t leave you blogless. My friend Professor Marc is in town, and on Saturday night we headed out to the Orange County Fair. I went to take pictures. He went to find food on a stick. As it turns out, I didn’t get any really good photos—how’s that for salesmanship?—but I got a bunch of OK ones. And thanks to the miracle of computer technology, I can schedule these to show up every hour on the hour while I’m gone.

First off, here’s the whole fair, taken from the top of the R50XL, “quite possibly the largest traveling observation wheel in the Western Hemisphere.” Come back in an hour for another exciting picture!

With debate over health care now proceeding, it’s time to vote on actual health care bills. A few moments ago the Senate voted against BCRA, their primary repeal-and-replace bill. This is the one they’ve been working busily on for the past couple of months. It wasn’t close: the bill went down 43-57 or thereabouts.

Next up, I suppose, is a bunch of amendments and then a revote? I’m not sure. Or maybe they’ll go straight to voting on the 2015 repeal-only bill.

Eventually they’ll get to the placeholder “skinny repeal” bill and just punt the whole thing to a conference committee. They’ll probably get 50 votes for that. Senators are always in favor of punting.

UPDATE: This was just a “procedural” vote. Everything in the Senate is a procedural vote. This means that BCRA might get modified and then get another vote. But chances of passage are dim. It lost by a mighty big margin tonight.

While I was out to lunch, I guess the Senate voted to proceed with debate on the Republican health care bill. They still don’t know which bill they’re going to debate, but they’re going to debate anyway. Welcome to the world’s greatest deliberative body.

The local tomato crop is coming in, so today I present “Rhapsody in Red and Green.” I am willing to sell it to MOMA for $5 million, and I think that’s quite a bargain.

The best kind of mic is a hot mic. Senators Susan Collins and Jack Reed confided in a hot mic yesterday, and the Washington Post has the transcript:

“I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was ‘grant,’ they just X it out,” Collins says. “With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It’s just incredibly irresponsible.”

“Yes,” Reed replies. “I think — I think he’s crazy,” apparently referring to the president. “I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.”

“I’m worried,” Collins replies.

Collins later claimed that she was “worried” about the budget, not Trump’s sanity. Sure, whatever. But it’s certainly true that she was also worried about the budget:

“You know, this thing — if we don’t get a budget deal, we’re going to be paralyzed.”

“I know,” Collins replies….“I don’t think he knows there is a [Budget Control Act] or anything,” Collins says, referring to a 2011 law that defines the budget process.

“He was down at the Ford commissioning,” Reed says, referring to President Trump’s weekend event launching a new aircraft carrier, “saying, ‘I want them to pass my budget.’ Okay, so we give him $54 billion and then we take it away across the board which would cause chaos.”

“Right,” Collins replies.

“It’s just — and he hasn’t — not one word about the budget. Not one word about the debt ceiling,” Reed says.

“Good point,” Collins replies.

“You’ve got [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney saying we’re going to put in all sorts of stuff like a border wall. Then you’ve got [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin saying it’s got to be clean,” Reed continues. “We’re going to be back in September, and, you know, you’re going to have crazy people in the House.”

There are already crazy people in the House, so I’m not sure why Reed thinks September is going to be any different than July. Also crazy people in the White House. And on House of Cards. There are just crazy people everywhere.

Chris Kleponis/CNP via ZUMA

Which health care bill will the Senate vote on today? Apparently the answer is “all of them.” According to reporters on Capitol Hill, there might be three votes today:

• A vote on the 2015 “repeal only” bill. It’s expected to fail, as well it should since it’s insane.
• The full BCRA magilla, complete with Cruz Amendment. However, that can’t pass under reconciliation, so it will need 60 votes. Obviously it’s expected to fail.
• A “skinny repeal” bill with just a few minor provisions. It’s not a serious piece of legislation, just a placeholder to allow negotiations with the House to begin.

In other words, give up and punt the whole thing to a House-Senate negotiating team. Maybe they can come up with something that the Senate couldn’t figure out on its own.

That’s not likely. But you know the story: I might die, the king might die, or the horse could learn to sing.¹ You never know what might happen when you buy yourself some time, even in a hopeless cause.

¹You’ve never heard this story? Seriously? Fine, here it is: A thief was on trial before the King and sentenced to death. The thief asked the King to spare his life. “You don’t know it, but I am the greatest teacher in your land. If you spare my life, I promise to teach your horse to sing.” The King smirked but accepted the offer. You have a year, and if the horse cannot sing, you will be killed.

Daily, after that, the thief spent his entire day singing hymns to the horse. His friends laughed as they saw him and asked what he hoped to accomplish. “Many things can happen in a year,” the thief told them. “The King may die, the horse may die, I may even die. Or … maybe the horse will learn to sing.”