Are you “roundup ready” today?

• The right is prepping a full-on hissy fit against Harry Reid because he compared obstructionists on health care to those who dragged their feet on abolishing slavery. As a formal matter of how both groups did this, by blocking legislation, I don’t know how you could argue Reid’s point. Fortunately, he’s not backing down, at least not for the moment.

• Markos explains why that Barney Frank endorsement of Joe Sestak is important:

Yet for all their troubles in maintaining their united front on the floor of Congress, elected Democrats have remained united on electoral matters. Note how no one came to Ned Lamont’s aid during the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, even though he was already a cancer inside the Democratic Party. Even corrupt Democrats get a pass, which cost us William Jefferson’s seat in New Orleans, and could’ve proved troublesome in Al Wynn’s Maryland district until the voters solved the problem by electing Donna Edwards instead [...]

Elected Democrats could certainly use some internal pressure for party unity. Gay marriage failed in New York because promised “yes” votes from Republicans failed to materialize. And why did they chicken out? They were all afraid of being Scozzafava’d. DeMint’s support of Doug Hoffman may have cost Republicans the seat, but it preserved marriage discrimination – a tradeoff they would make any day of the week.

We need a little bit of that enforced party unity, and any help we can get from within the caucus helps build credibility for primary insurgents.

• 2012 is a long way off, but Democrats are trying to fix the embarrassing process from the 2008 primary that effectively handed the nomination to unaccountable superdelegates. So far, there’s a consensus on starting the primary process later in the calendar, and potentially reducing the impact of superdelegates relative to overall delegates. Changes could also come to the caucus process.

• It does look like many Guantanamo detainees will be shipped to the prison in Thomson, Illinois, to a “super-Supermax” facility. As Adam Serwer notes, that kind of excessive solitary confinement could be seen as a kind of torture in itself.

• While delayed, it looks like Iraq really will hold elections early next year, as a result of wrapping up a law on representation. The White House applauded the move. The Iraq drawdown could have been pushed seriously off course with no election law.

• Will Congress and the White House kick off the new year with sanctions on Iran?

• There are actually a few House seats where Democrats will be heavily favored to pick up next November. One of them is Delaware’s House seat. That’s not the only one (LA-03, for example).

• A small reform, but Mark Pryor may have improved the health care bill today by adding the concept of performance reviews – kind of a Yelp for insurance companies in the exchange.

• Barney Frank said in his endorsement press conference for Joe Sestak that the financial regulatory reform bill would hit the House Rules Committee tomorrow with amendments on the House floor through the rest of the week and a final vote by Friday. One intriguing amendment for the floor? A measure to restore Glass-Steagall protections.

• Steny Hoyer is speaking out about Republican obstruction. If he was the Majority Leader of the Senate and not the House, I think he might be saying things a bit differently.

• “Another reporter” at TPM says that the President will address his decision to escalate in Afghanistan during his Nobel Peace Prize speech. That should be interesting.

• Daphne Eviatar has a troubling report about three alleged suicides in Guantanamo in 2006. It’s thoroughly depressing.

• Eliot Spitzer has to be smiling – his nemesis Joe Bruno was convicted today on corruption charges. He could get up to 40 years in prison.

• We live in a country where Jonah Goldberg can get a $1 million advance for a book deal called “The Tyranny of Clichés.” Draw your own conclusions on that.

• Finally, Tweet in Klingon. Try it. It’s fun.