• Big Oil and Big Natural Gas are fighting, like they always do! It’s about energy policy, like it always is! [New York Times]
• David Axelrod and all his friends are preemptively very offended—on behalf of America—by Wall St.’s big bonuses. [Washington Post]
• Pakistan soldiers cornered a bunch of Taliban people in South Waziristan, which is a place they really wanted to be for whatever reason. [WSJ]
• A suicide bomber interrupted a meeting between Shiite and Sunni tribesman in Iraq by blowing it up and killing six military commanders. [Los Angeles Times]
• The sheriff who has jurisdiction in Evil Balloon County, Colorado, confirmed the hoax and will now be doing everyone on Earth a favor by pressing charges against the hellish Balloon Parents. [CNN]
• Three people died of non-Detroit-related reasons while running the Detroit Marathon. [Detroit Free Press]

Here is Your Barry taking a few minutes to explain, calmly and cheerfully, what his energy policy is, how it contrasts with John McCain’s, and why the reporter is kind of a douche. Obama gets a big F minus for this one because he did not hold this interview on an offshore oil rig in a hurricane. [Las Vegas Now]

GODDAMMIT. You get an email from the DNC saying “Hey check out our new video, it is called ‘Puppet Masters,’ and it is about –” and you don’t even read to the end because shit, it is an ad with puppets in it, you are already clicking the clicky. Then: misery and heartbreak. This ad starts with a shitty kind of animated John McCain gesturing robotically but NO ACTUAL PUPPETS in the classical sense of, you know, some sort of three-dimensional figure operated either via strings or a hand up the butt. Jim Henson is puking with disgust somewhere in Puppet Heaven. [YouTube]

Wonkette operative The Intern has some shocking news about what’s been going on in the House of Representatives ever since Nancy Pelosi turned off the lights and made everybody go on vacation. It is basically the Thunderdome all over again, only with Republican ninjas. MORE »

Disgraced “singing senator” Larry Craig will soon have a new career after he leaves the Senate in January after bringing us all a million laughs: The Idaho homosexual will write a book about energy policy! Craig visited some little county somewhere in Idaho last week to push a great new pollution method called a “coal-gassification plant.” MORE »

• Michael Brown spreads blame and says FEMA was grossly unprepared for Hurricane Katrina: “I predicted privately for several years that we were going to reach this point [of crisis] because of the lack of resources and the lack of attention being paid to what was [once]…a very robust organization.” [WP, NYT, WSJ, USAT]
• Democrats threaten to use “nuclear option” if next Supreme Court nominee is too conservative. Howard Dean: “If we lose, better to go down fighting and standing for what we believe in, because we will not win an election if the public doesn’t think we’ll stand up for what we believe in.” [WP]
• The New York Times wrongly attributed unsigned memo about libel law to John Roberts. [NYT]
• New Supreme Court justices will decide future of McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. [WP, WSJ, NYT, LAT, USAT]

MORE »

Sen. Pete Domenici (left): “These Blue Blockers are not living up their advertised claims.”
Sandia National Laboratory lab director Dr Thomas Hunter (center): “If you’ll observe the photovoltaics and parabolic dishes and troughs — these devices can, at this point where decreasing our dependence on foreign oil is critical…”
George W. Bush (right): “Dude, check out the photovoltaics on that babe!” MORE »