The Dems need two GOP votes in the Senate for this. Likely candidates include Jelenik, Kahn, Garcia, McManus and possibly several others (not Bishop himself, though.) If Mike protests that it's still a "Dem tax hike" because only two or three Repubs went along, fuhgettaboutit. Having even one Repub on board, much less two, will see this thing branded as a "bipartisan" tax hike. And there's your dead mouse head for the whole party.

It's depressing, frankly. Mike has been doing a superlative job in holding his caucus in line. He's understood that politically it would be impossible for him to prevent some kind of tax hike, and has said he wouldn't try. That wouldn't be too bad if it meant raising less economically destructive taxes like imposing sales tax on pop and bottled water sales ($250 million), or a mildly damaging one like the $150 million garbage tax the House passed.

Those add up to $400 million in new revenue, and if Republicans couldn't wrest from the other side enough real cuts and reforms to make up the difference in the current and 2008 budgets, well, they wouldn't be called the "Stupid Party" for nothing.

But to allow a $1.8 billion income tax hike? In a state that has an unemployment rate pushing twice the national rate, has lost 362,000 jobs since 2000, has experienced an actual per capita personal income decline of 0.7 percent in real inflation-adjusted terms over the past six year (it's grown 4 percent nationwide), and has plummeting home values and a falling population? Start looking around for the light switch...