Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer fairer and cleaner 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.