cat-herding1.jpgYawn. Bush Junta repeatedly warned of 9/11, did nothing, tried afterwards to hide their incompetence. Nothing we didn't already know. Even at this late date we wind up reading about it from a foreign news source, the Sydney Morning Herald. (h/t Charles and Raw Story)

In this election season, being able to tell genuine grass-roots groups from corporate astroturfers is particularly important. Consumer Reports and the Center for Media and Democracy have created Full Frontal Scrutiny, dedicated to separating the grass-roots wheat from the astroturf chaff. (h/t Unbossed.)

Even as Wall Street's investment banks have declared a de facto moratorium on financing new coal-fired power plant construction and are investing in natural gas and renewable energy, Minnesota's Chamber of Commerce realized that a) it's hard to transport goods and services over crumbling roads and bridges, and b) a modest rise in the gas tax will reap major rewards.

As dday and DWT point out, Barack Obama has more coattails in Dennis Hastert's congressional district than does rib-serving media favorite John McCain. Bodes well for November, no matter who's the Democratic nominee. Howie also points out that the campaign that Republican Jim Oberweis ran was a textbook bash-the-immigrants campaign -- and couldn't beat Democratic candidate Bill Foster. (Tom DeLay picked Hastert to be his puppet Speaker in part because he was in one of the safest Republican districts around. Now Tom DeLay's no longer in Congress, and a Democrat's sitting in his seat.)

It's not surprising that Bush and the GOP/Media Complex love Colombia's murderous drug-running right-wing dictator Alvaro Uribe, the last of the Latin American "Chicago Boys" disaster capitalists. What's sad is that Obama and Clinton are echoing Bush on this issue.