It's your recession, Republicans: own it!

Despite the best efforts of right-wing blowhards like Palm Beach County's own Rush Limbaugh, who has taken to referring to the current economic woes as the "Obama Recession," the fact is that it's Drunky McStagger's baby all the way. Indeed, I would encourage Republicans everywhere to embrace the recession, since you're not only responsible for it, you've let it go on for a full year now:

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy .

The NBER is a private group of leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns. It typically takes a long time after the start of a recession to declare its start because of the need to look at final readings of various economic measures.

The NBER said that the deterioration in the labor market throughout 2008 was one key reason why it decided to state that the recession began last year.

But wait, Republicans -- there's more! You really should take pride in your recession because it's one of the longest in decades!

The current recession is one of the longest downturns since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

The last two recessions (1990-1991 and 2001) lasted eight months each, and only two of the 10 previous post-Depression downturns lasted as long as a full year, according to the NBER.

Yep, all this good news -- including the Dow Jones dropping by almost 680 points, or 7.7%, today -- is thanks to you, Republicans, for putting the utterly incompetent and quite likely destructive Bush crime syndicate in charge of things for the last eight years! (Yes, I'm being sarcastic here ...) Oh, by the way, who was in charge during the last two recessions (1990-91 and 2001)? The Republicans, you say? Shocking ...

But, you know, keep up that oh-so-successful supply-side and trickle-down economics and tax breaks for the wealthy, GOP. Meanwhile, it'll be nice to have the grown-ups in charge beginning in January.