One of the GOP's favorite talking points is "Bush inheited a recession", the latest example of this being Lynne Cheney's meltdown on CNN. The talking point is not entirely true, as NBER, the official origanization pegging when a recession occurs notes that the recession began 3 months into the Bush administration.

But this got me thinking, what "well as you know," talking points should the Dems tack on for years to come?

While I'm not the first person to make this suggestion on dailykos (see here or here), There are some additional points I like to add about this.

To recap, since the Reapportionment Act of 1929, the number of US House of Representatives has been fixed at 435. What that means is that given that the US population is pushing 300 million, each repersentative "represents" about 690,000 people. A perpective of just how out-of-whack this is, compare this population-to-representation ratio to other countries (with numbers culled from wikipedia):

One thing that struck me about the whole Mark Foley mess is that it's the Democrats who are speaking up for GOP victims.

Presumably the GOP pages have parents who have completely bought into the GOP message- those secular immoral liberals, whose immorality will be the end of the western civilization, and only the GOP, the icon of all that is good and moral, can stop. Oh, and here are our children, do as you wish with them.

Of course this is nothing new. All those Catholic kids weren't getting molested by atheists; of course not, who knows what kind of unspeakable evil those godless athiests might do to our kids?

I'm not saying that skepticism of outsiders are misguided, but maybe it's the unqualifed trust of people who share your own ideology/DNA that is misguided.

This of course brings us to the biggest irony of them all, blindly trusting our national leaders to preserve our freedoms because someone overseas threatens our freedom. Even as they evicerate the Bill of Rights.

Now that Mr. President has been given the power to undertake torture "interrogation methods" deemed neccessary against "enemy combatants", may I make a suggestion?

It's seems that the GOP are interested in techniques that would

a) cause prolonged physical discomfort
b) in a manner distasteful to Muslims
c) added humiliation via nakedness and such

With that in mind, may I suggest the following technique

 SPEAK, WHERE ARE THE REST OF YOUR CELLS?!

We can even make them carry their own interrogation tools:

WHY DON'T YOU TELL US HOW SADDAM IS LINKED TO OSAMA?!

And of course, research have show that this is a very uncomfortable position to be in:

YOU ARMS ARE GETTING TIRED AREN"T THEY?
JUST TALK AND WE'LL LET YOU DOWN!

Additional allgeations of George Allen's past conducts from Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue:

In 1984, I worked as a contract field consultant for the National Republican Congressional Committee and also as a writer for the Voices for Victory Program in the Reagan-Bush Presidential campaign.
....
At a cocktail party that followed our meeting, Allen huddled with some other Virginia politicos and GOP operatives and discussed the upcoming Presidential election as well as a field of Democratic candidates that, at the time, featured civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.

"You mark my words," Allen said. "Jesse Jackson can't win in Virginia. Hell, he's so far-out that even the n****rs won't vote for him."

Update [2006-9-26 15:25:28 by clone12]: It has come to my attention that CHB is not exactly the most credible source, and since for some reason the "delete" button doesn't seem to want to work, the statement is inserted here as a disclaimer- a la "Path to Macaca"

Couple of things:

A) A recent report suggests that one of the casualties of global warming could be the Napa valley, famed for its wines

"In the last 25 years we've never turned on the sprinklers during the summer -- now we'll be turning on the sprinklers," says Garvey, whose Flora Springs company has vineyards in Pope Valley, Rutherford, Oakville, Carneros, and St. Helena. "We've had four and six days in the high 90s and low 100s. I don't remember back-to-back-to-back days being this hot. I don't know if it supports global warming (theories), but things are changing."

B) A friend, who's in the business of buying and selling wines, noted that the French have been buying up wineries in Washington State, which presumably would be become better wine producing area if the temperature shifts their way.

Do the French know something we don't about global warming?

The GOP SOP involves finding some "expert" and claims that his/her opinion outweighs all the other majority voices, or at the very least, that a single bought-and-paid-for "expert" should be a sufficient counterweight to everything else.

It's a marketing tactic we see over and over again- evolution, global warming, tax cuts, second-hand smoking. That news of wage stagnation is invalidated by a cherry-picked Bush supporter who goes on TV bragging about just how great the economy is. For him.

Which is kind of telling, I think, that GOP could not find one general (unless I missed that news conference, of course), retired or otherwise, that comes out in support of Bush's pro-torture policy.

It's not for lack of trying on the GOP's part. I'm sure. It's kind of amazing considering that given the sheer number of people out there, it's possible to find a creationist with a bio PhD, or a geologist who thinks that there's nothing extraordinary about retreating glaciers, but somehow they couldn't find one general who's willing for stand for torture.  

I report, you decide. Considering the follwing factoids:

1) Newt Gingrich Declares Iraq as "WWIII"
2) The insistence that Bush is fighting against "Islamo-facism"
3) Hyping China/Iraq/Iran/Cuba/Syria/N. Korea/[Insert Country Here] as the "Next Nazi Germany"
4) Calling anyone who questions them "appeasers"
5) And this.

One almost thinks that the NeoCons suffer from horrible bouts of WWII-Envy to the point that they have to manufacture a fake war just to prove how manly they are relative to that Democrat bastard FDR....  

Due to demands of the aftermarket DVD sale, Disney has held off some of the scene to be put back in the directors's cut. Some highlights:

1) A car chase scene between Osama Bin Laden (played by Mel Gibson) and Agent 007 (played by the digitally mastered Young Sean Connery).

2) The development of Ann Coulter, CIA undercover, as the love interest of Sean Hannity. Cpt. Hannity would tearfully bids his love goodbye as the NASCAR-superstar-turned-SEAL specialist who gives up a huge endorsement deal with ESPN, heads for Iraq. This would later resolve into a love triangle involving Selma Hayek, who plays a young Pakistani village girl that Hannity rescued. (leaving open a possiblity of a spinoff drama for the Thursday night slot)

3) Flashback scenes from George W Bush's younger days, who, despite his full-ride scholarship to Oxford, chose to volunteer in Vietnam. In fact the movie Top Gun was based off him (He was Ice Man)

Confirming on-the-ground anecdotes, the Office of Federal Housing and Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body for Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE)- i.e. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has released data showing that housing price growth has slowed down considerably during Q22006.
It should be noted that OFHEO data only goes back 3 decades.

To be clear, while housing prices did grow during Q22006, the change in the rate of growth has slowed down. National housing prices grew by only 1.17% between Q12006 and Q22006, compared to 2.20% growth between Q42005 and Q12006, year-to-year changes went from 12.77% to 10.06%.

In housing price forecast literature, housing price "acceleration" and "deceleration" is a leading indicator for housing market downturns. While this is not a definitive evidence for a coming national housing price decline, it is something worth noting.

Glenn Greenwald lays the smackdown on a 101st Fighting keyboarder:

[David] Warren argues that the cowardice of the two Fox journalists in saving their own lives illustrates why we are losing the War of Civilizations -- because of what Warren calls the "Chestlessness" of our "men." ... To Warren, the cowardly chestlessness of Western men is why "the West is proving unable to cope with a threat from a fanatical Islamic movement, that it ought to be able to snuff out with fair ease."

Warren has a biography page on his website. In telling us about himself, Warren complains that "the thumb on (his) right hand still hurts sometimes from when it was broken in a dodgeball game" tells us that his favorite sport is cricket, talks of his love for Ella Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, ...and says he is "fascinated by seeds, small shells, tiny fishes, & insects."

Read the whole thing, and don't forget to check out this snarky follow-up from TBogg

Before Keith Olbermann's wonderful commentary against Donald Rumsfail, he notes (via his "Worst Person in the World" ssement") that Rush Limbaugh blames the obesity epidemic on... food stamps!!!

LIMBAUGH: I think you might then say that the obesity crisis could be the fault of government, liberal government. Food stamps...

As KO snarkily noted, does that mean Rush got fat on food stamps?

But the true comedic gold is this bit of gem:

LIMBAUGH: This is what happens when you let the left run things. ... At least here in America, didn't teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn't teach them how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter. The real bloat here, as we know, is in -- is in government.

Slaughter a cow to get butter?

I got a fundraiser letter from the Environmental Defense Action Fund today. The missive contains a foreward from John McCain, touting his bipartisan efforts via the "McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act".

As you may imagine, this is not good sales pitch for me.

One day I might consider voting GOP again, and until we're at the point where the "GW Bush Library" is a nickname for a medium security prison that houses all the NeoCons, it will have to remain a theoretical future.

But in spite of that, it is still encouraging to see a GOP sentaor publically align himself with an organization that is devoted to doing something about global warming. Hopefully the GOP will continue to redirect their energy from their war on science towards something more useful.

There are some claims about how H1Bers are "taking our jobs". While I can't speak for everyone, I can address some of the claims about H1B's within my own experience.

Maybe it's just me, but the new GOP push using Iran as a campaign strategy doesn't seem like a win-win situation for the GOP. Iran is more than twice as populous as Iraq, weren't grounded down during the 90's, and they certainly are wrapped up in sectarious violence. By all meaningful metrics, any military undertaking in Iran will be orders of magnitudes more difficult than Iraq.

And now the GOP plans to sell the meme that they should be trusted to carry out a war against Iran given their abject failure in Iraq?

Let's frame this properly.

From Think Progress:

[Conservative lawmakers] largely praised the administration's response, although it appeared British authorities had thwarted the plot with minimal involvement by the United States.

I think the proper rejoinder to wingnuts taking credit for something they didn't do is: "Of course it was successfully foiled, you guys didn't go in and screw it up!"

From the IOKIYAR File

Wheelchair-confined Richard Paey committed almost exactly the same violations of Florida prescription drug laws that radio personality Rush Limbaugh did, with a different result: Limbaugh's sentence, in May, was addiction treatment, and Paey's, in 2004, was 25 years in prison. Both illegally possessed large quantities of painkillers for personal use, which Paey defiantly argued was (and will be) necessary to relieve nearly constant pain from unsuccessful spinal surgeries after an auto accident, but which Limbaugh admitted was simply the result of addiction. (In fact, if Limbaugh complies with his plea bargain, his conviction will be erased.) Paey's sentence now rests with a state Court of Appeal.

While neither of whom deserved to be locked up, only one of them engages in sheer hypocrisy

"I'm appauled at the people who simply want to look at this abhorrent behavior and say "People are going to  do drugs anyway - let's legalize it". It's a dumb idea. It's a rotten idea, and those who are for it are purely, 100 percent selfish"
  -Rush Limbaugh, Sept 23, 2003

Glenn Greenwald, via salon.com, alerts me to this bit of passive-aggresive gem from the folks at powerline:

Professor David Gelernter asks why so many American Jews hate the president who stands by Israel... My answer... is that the true religion of the American Jews within Professor Gelernter's sights is liberalism

Ah, I get it, "American Jews" are scum for not being "Jew" enough.

Aside from the fact that the whole premise is inane- should a NeoCon with a Bavarian heritage oppose Iraq invasion because Germany did? playing this anti-semite card just smacks of hubris-"How dare those Jews oppose what I say is good for them!"