With health care’s fate (in the Senate, at least) sealed, things are starting to wind down into holiday mode. Tune in tomorrow morning at 7am ET for another exciting cloture vote! There is still enough news to generate another helping of The Roundup, however.

• My boss Jane caused quite a stir with those top 10 reasons to kill the Senate health care bill. Igor Volsky and Jonathan Cohn offer rebuttals, with Cohn’s based on his article today about how the bill will save families money, complete with full-color graphs.

• I prefer to call your attention to Jon Walker’s 35 ways to improve the bill, which is a distillation of the work FDL and other progressives have been doing on health care policy for months. Some of these changes, though probably not all, are realizable in conference. Those who are saying to pass the bill are hurting the opportunities to make these changes and help people get better, cheaper and more moral health care choices for all Americans.

• Mike Lux makes an important point that the Senate bill cannot pass the House as is. I’ve been writing about this fairly extensively. There are not 218 votes for the Senate bill in the House, and so at least some of Jon Walker’s 35 changes will have to be adopted.

• The United States and Russia are close to inking a deal that would reduces nuclear stockpiles in both countries by at least one-quarter. Plutonium Page has an excellent story on the ins and outs of this deal, and the potential pitfalls with Senate ratification (yes, Republicans will play politics with this, too).

• The President announced $19 billion dollars in savings just from federal contracting reforms, like consolidating software purchases. Effective technocratic government at work.

• If you were wondering how the Senate Democratic leadership is touting its bill, well, here you go.

• Boy, David Paterson is unhappy about their share of Medicaid funding under the new health care bill. He’s calling it “unfair” for New York State.

• Mortgage delinquencies are up again for the sixth consecutive quarter. That’s a sign of a still-struggling economy. Allow me to dissent from these economists that we don’t need any more stimulus.

• Check out Tom Coburn defending the President against the GOP’s claim that he’s to blame for unemployment and the soaring national debt. That’s going to be a valuable piece of video come election time.

• Looks like Hamid Karzai is following the directive of his American paymasters, keeping their favorites in the cabinet while getting rid of the most obviously corrupt members.

• GOP State Sen. Roy Ashburn could challenge Blue Dog Jim Costa in a Central Valley district in California. This gives Costa a legitimate contender, but Ashburn has a flaw – he voted for tax increases in the California budget early this year, seen as a sacrilege to the hard-core Republican right in this state.

• I am shocked, shocked that the Bush Administration relied on a con man to overhype terror threats and raise fears in the public.

• Is the CHIP program still in jeopardy? I think there are efficiencies to folding CHIP into the exchanges, but until the minimum coverage in the exchanges is as good for children as CHIP, that shouldn’t happen.

• Sweden is becoming an advocate for nuclear power. They see it as an acceptable alternative in an age of climate change. Interesting.

• Tony Blair to The Guardian: “It’s not true nobody likes me!” Now that’s the mark of a successful post-Prime Ministerial career.

• I’m a bit fascinated by volcanic eruptions, especially their major impact on global climate. There’s a major potential eruption likely in the Philippines. Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 tangibly lowered global climate and caused massive environmental destruction.