The moral stakes in the health care debate could not be higher. Like the knight in Bergman’s iconic chess match with Death, we cannot afford to lose.

The panel’s theme was framed around the idea of a reverse “shock doctrine” in which progressives would seize the opportunity of following George Bush and move aggressively to implement a progressive agenda. What happened?

Lanny is a partner in Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and was a registered lobbyist for Whole Foods in the first quarter of 2009 for the low low price of $40,000. Orrick filed a “termination report” on March 1 (PDF), but somehow Lanny was still trying to put together an anti-Employee Free Choice effort on behalf of Whole Foods and Starbucks in late March. Lanny wanted to see if he could bring everyone together and get them to agree to EFCA just without card check or binding arbitration or anything included in the original bill, which lasted about 48 hours until the Chamber landed on his head and Lanny bailed.

On Friday at Netroots Nation, Digby, Marcy and I had lunch at a restaurant near the convention center. At one point, we were laughing so loudly at our table that I was certain we’d end up as someone’s “drunken bloggers” tweet from the restaurant (although we were having iced tea and water to drink because we had panels to contend with later). What set off the laughter? We were reminiscing about the media freak show absurdities the last time around during the Clinton years. And talking about the current circus side show atmosphere of the moment.

Rachel Maddow

The Bear That Wasn’t.  This 1967 MGM cartoon was based on the 1946 Frank Tashlin book The Bear That Wasn’t and was produced by Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. 

What’s on your mind?

A medley of classic TV commercial jingles from the 1950′s and 1960′s.

What’s on your mind?

You supply the pictures, and I’ll supply the war.

Bob McDonnell, the GOP’s candidate for governor against Terry McAuliffe-slayer Creigh Deeds, has undergone a thorough extremist-washing in the media covering the gubernatorial campaign. It’s important for Virginia voters to know that McDonnell is a right-wing extremist; here’s some handy reminders.

Not long ago (though it strangely seems far removed) I wrote a series of posts about the incident surrounding Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. First, it was an illegal and unconstitutional arrest but with Obama’s gaffe and silly “Beer Summit” we lost that discussion. Continued abuse of police power is a sad result.