I’m pleased to announce the launch of Firedoglake’s Health Care War Room. This war room will serve as a hub for policy information and organizing opportunities run by FDL.

The year is almost over, and it’s certainly been an eventful one. We’ve seen a new president, some huge bank bailouts, a dramatic election season and we’re closer than we’ve ever been to national health care reform–whether that’s a good thing or not.

It’s also about to be 2010 and the end of a decade that Time magazine suggested might’ve been the worst ever. Hyperbole? We’ll discuss the year that was and the decade that was with a roundtable of our favorite guests, including Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, Mark Green of Air America, Danny Schechter of News Dissector, Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion, Faye Wattleton of the Center for the Advancement of Women, and Nancy Giles of CBS News Sunday Morning.

President Obama could have saved us all a great deal of trouble if he had just said from the outset, “No public option, no way”. Instead, he decided to play a shell game of “Now you see it, now you don’t”.

Under current law, legal immigrants are subject to a 5-year waiting period before accessing programs like Medicaid. The Senate bill did not alter this feature of our health care system. But Robert Menendez has exacted a concession from Harry Reid on the issue.

The federal government’s difficulties in purchasing Thomson Correctional facility in Illinois are only problematic if you’re a fan of the military commissions. If you prefer trying detainees in federal courts or sending them to the custody of their home countries, then this isn’t problematic at all.

Obama is triangulating against you today. They want all those diaries of outrage by “liberals,” so that right wingers will look on and think “good for him — like Joe Lieberman, he really knows how to stick it to liberals.” Meanwhile, they’ll overlook the fact that this bill is nothing but a corporate giveaway written by sleazy greedy whores willing to hold the nation’s sick hostage in order to pull off the biggest Shock Doctrine scam in world history.

On a related note, to the “only the nutroots hates the bill” crowd — the nurse’s union does too. “It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the health-care crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and [...]

Oh lord, The George W. Bush Institute — the “action- oriented think tank” that is part of Bush’s Presidential Center — will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman. “Ideas in Action” will premiere in February and will be co-produced by Andrew Walworth, who produces PBS’s “Think Tank.” Great, [...]

Bowser and Blue — Hey Santa Claus.

God rest ye Total Gym sales hack/Let nothing you dismay/Remember retail therapy is our good country’s way/You hype your tome/Into our home/For Jesus’ birthday… What President Obama, like many other far-left politicians, needs is a paradigm shift — a new way of seeing America, which is really an old way. It’s the way our Founders [...]