Since the beginning of 2008, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room have been closely tracking the hidden influence of the corporate right over national politics, including pollution billionaires David and Charles Koch, mountaintop removal kingpin Don Blankenship, and big oil’s vast front group networks. These polluter magnates have worked with Republican operatives to shape the Tea Party movement that has redefined American politics.

Now, a new documentary fully exposes how front groups like the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, Energy Citizens, and Blankenship’s Friends of America have taken populist discontent during a Democratic presidency and redirected it to their radical right-wing corporate agenda of global warming pollution, regressive taxation, and health-care profiteering. In (Astro)Turf Wars, Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham journeys from Philadelphia to West Virginia, interviewing angry grassroots conservatives and the corporate public relations experts who are manipulating them. Going undercover at several Tea Party rallies, Oldham has exclusive coverage of how corporate profiteers are attempting to bring the United States government back under their thumb.

Watch the trailer:

The complete documentary can be seen online for $1.99 at astroturfwars.com.

(HT Kevin Grandia)

ENDLESS SUMMER:  September was the hottest on record globally in the RSS satellite dataset.  In this country, the record-smashing temperatures in Southern California got most of the attention (see “No on Prop 23: It’s getting HOT out here!“)

But, as Steve Scolnik of CapitalClimate reports, “that event was just one of literally thousands of daily high temperature records set in the U.S. during September,” continuing a trend that has persisted for almost the entire year.

I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming.  If you want to know how to judge whether the 5.2-to-1 ratio for September is a big deal, here’s what a 2009 National Center for Atmospheric Research study found for “1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States” over the past six decades (see “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.“):

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… in this Think Progress cross-post, “Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down.“  Don’t miss the temperature-raising video:

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I can’t find any media coverage of the UK’s official Government response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 8th Report of Session 2009-10: The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

I think that is because:

1. It re-re-re-re-vindicates climate scientists, and since the media glossed over the first three, why start now?
2. It didn’t involve anyone exploding.

The only reason I found out about this is because of the tireless reporting of BigCityLib, whose piece, “CRU Cleared Again” is reposted below:

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Millionaire executive Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, continues to deny the existence of global warming. Freak floods caused by historic rainfall are ravaging the state, during the hottest year in recorded history, which has brought climate catastrophes to every corner of the globe. Brad Johnson has the story.

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If the Tea-Party-led Republicans take over one or both houses of Congress this November, we won’t just see the end of any possible action on climate change or clean energy.  They may well force a government shutdown, which will close our national parks, prevent food from being inspected, and stop any government oversight of coal mines or offshore drilling “” or clean air and clean water, for that matter.  Think Progress has two video interviews with the Senate’s leading government basher.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) sealed his status as the right’s standard-bearer when he brought the Senate to a virtual halt this week by threatening to hold all legislation unless it had been preapproved by his office.  Though DeMint insisted that this unprecedented move was simply an effort to allow his office to read and consider pending legislation, the senator made his true intentions clear on the “Focal Point” radio program — preventing the government from functioning. 

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California Sets 33% By 2020 Renewable Energy Standard

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) has taken matters into its own hands after Senate Bill 722 failed to pass last month. The ARB unanimously voted last week to set a new standard that mandates 33 percent of the state’s energy be renewable by 2020.

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