Cliff Schecter

It’s been quite a few years. While the usual suspects on the Professional Right threaten to burn books, those of us in the reality-based community sometimes peer at them to try and make sense of an ongoing economic disaster and resulting surge in right-wing populism. These two gale-wind crises, working in unison, have given rise to both an inexorable oligarchic elite on the one hand, and on the other, a cavalcade of angry, middle-aged, portly, pasty whites wearing funny hats and saying not-so funny things about Americans and America.

Luckily for us, the past few months have provided some masterful works that have provided insight both into what has happened and what will happen, if we don’t take the violent and sometimes merely threatening deadly serious.

That’s where the great Will Bunch comes in–

“Will Bunch is writing a book.” When I heard those words a few years back from progressive polymath and all-around great gal Jen Nix I started getting excited. I only knew Will in passing at that time, an email between us here and there perhaps.

There is perhaps nobody who has better understood, adapted to and in fact helped usher in the forces of political change in this country over the past generation than Joe Trippi. Yes, you read that right, and it is not hyperbole. He is most famous for his term running the Howard Dean for President campaign in 2004, but if that is all you know about him, you’re missing a lot of the story.

That’s right–McCain just reached out and physically assaulted a guy at a diplomatic meeting where guns were present.

As The Washington Post reports, yesterday Barack Obama had a meeting with a number of labor leaders in the AFL-CIO, important in that some of their major affiliates (such as AFSCME) endorsed his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primary.

The recently married Republican congressman ogles a team of high-school volleyball players and says he’s just window-shopping. Ewwwwwww.

Depending upon your definition of “contributes.”

Seriously, I am glad everyone is doing their part to make sure this important story–broken in The Real McCain–is covered. How much have we been forced to hear about idiotic issues like flag lapel pins? So thanks to the Public Service Administration guys and gals (who are comics based in LA–and obviously quite talented as you can see).

When you embark on this A Clockwork Orange type program to convince our troops of the infallibility of the cause, or the leaders of that cause, what kind of country have we become? Perhaps, upon inspecting McCain’s thesis for The National War College back in 1974, one could have predicted he would have ended up with the Leo Strauss crowd, who believed in “noble lies” such as “religion” (according to Strauss) to keep the rag-tag populace in line.

According to the Pew Research Center, when asked to describe their views of McCain in a word, the term “maverick” didn’t even come up. Nor did “reformer” or “independent.” Ruh-roh. It looks like the embrace of Bush, 100 years in Iraq and his newfound affection for Bushenomics have all done serious damage to McCain’s perceived maverickness …

You can tell that after the c*nt story, the profile of McCain’s failed first marriage in a major British newspaper and his atavistic positions on birth control and abortion, McCain might be getting a bit worried about seeming insenstive to women. So under the”Straight Talk Express” goes Clayton Williams …