A Dangerous Dysfunction  —  Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week.  Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement.  It's a seriously flawed bill, we'll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it's nonetheless a huge step forward.

Bipartisan Tragedy  —  I quoted David Gergen earlier saying that public opinion may cause the final bill to ultimately fail, which I agree may be remotely possible.  But that's the last rational thing he said all night.  At the moment of the passage of the cloture vote in the Senate, he blurted this out:

Gutted Healthcare Bill Ignores this Nation's Best Opportunity for Reform  —  The stripped healthcare “reform” bill fails to leverage the power of those who have the greatest potential to determine and maintain good health for all of us: women.  We all suffer when women …

Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups  —  ****Updated with video link and more transcript  —  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today took shots at those who are not supporting the health care legislation.

Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator  —  As the president's job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent …

Heaven and Nature  —  It's fitting that James Cameron's “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime.  Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message.  It's at once the blockbuster to end …

Obama gets an ‘A’ for effort from Schwarzenegger  —  Washington (CNN) - Not every Republican is a critic of President Obama.  At least one thinks the president is doing a fine job - at least when it comes to the effort involved in being the country's chief executive.

Dick Cheney: HUMAN EVENTS' Conservative of the Year  —  In Washingtonian “inside the Beltway” terms, the most amazing aspect of former Vice President Dick Cheney's new clout is that he is achieving it the old-fashioned way: talking about public policy.  He is not running for President or any other office.

Remembering Obama's campaign health-care plan  —  “Though the American left and right don't agree on much,” wrote Frank Rich over the weekend, “they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama's brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger's public image.”  —  It's hard to imagine why.

Election 2010: North Dakota Senate  —  2010 North Dakota Senate: Hoeven 58%, Dorgan 36%  —  Incumbent Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan may have a serious problem on his hands if Republicans recruit Governor John Hoeven to run for the U.S. Senate in North Dakota next year.

The WYSIWYG president  —  There's a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn't the man progressives thought they were voting for.  —  But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself.  If you actually paid attention to the substance …

Fed's approach to regulation left banks exposed to crisis  —  Foreclosures already pocked Chicago's poorer neighborhoods but the downtown still was booming as the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago convened its annual conference in May 2007.  —  The keynote speaker, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke …