MN Progressive Project: Bachmann finally fact-checked by MN media

Corrente: It's all about the rents, part one million and ten

Where's the Outrage? Repo Madness

John R. MacArthur: Of the IRA and the Afghan war

Attytood: It's not about the mosque - it's America's war on the Other"

Esquire: Anatomy of a right-wing news headline

That's a serious drop from April, which is when this video said we were at a mere five-year high. If you're apartment-hunting, time to renegotiate the rent.

This is right in line with my own economic indicators, which are based on Craigslist. I've noticed that nice apartments that used to go within a day or two now linger for weeks as landlords keep dropping the asking prices. (Also, people are selling fine guitars at deep discounts. Just in case through some miracle, you can actually afford one.)

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. apartment vacancies rose to 7.8 percent in the third quarter, the highest since 1986, as rising unemployment reduced rental demand, Reis Inc. said.

Actual rents paid by tenants, known as effective rents, declined 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the New York-based property research firm said in a report today. Asking rents, or what landlords sought, fell 1.8 percent from a year earlier.

Job losses and falling wages are shrinking the pool of potential tenants. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in August, the highest since 1983, the Labor Department said Oct. 2.

Vacancies “continued to rise despite what has traditionally been a strong leasing period for apartment properties,” Victor Calanog, director of research at Reis, said in a statement. “Given the inherent seasonality of rental and lease-up patterns we expect fourth-quarter figures to be even weaker, implying that we may break historic vacancy levels by year-end 2009.”

The apartment vacancy rate was 7.7 percent in the second quarter and 6.2 percent in 2008’s third quarter, Reis said. Compared with the second quarter, asking rents fell 0.5 percent and effective rents fell 0.3 percent.

A useful meme from Faithful Progressive: GOP candidates who support the Libby iPardon are soft on crime and national security.

The Cato Institute lists a few sentences the President has inexplicably neglected to commute.  (Link courtesy of the damnedest blog you've never read, Racrecir.)

Bad Attitudes: Even the Freepers know a criminal mob when they see one.  (Also: he used to be the Decider.  Now he's the Commuter of Scooter.)

A Tiny Revolution:  Why are so many foreigners constitutionally incapable of appreciating American exceptionalism?

Cinemablend:  Sign of the apocalypse: Texans in ten-gallon hats say "hell yeah" to Sicko.

The Executioner's Thong:  Ooh, baby, it's the fourth of July.

Once a year, guest blogger Simbaud rents Land of the Dead so he can enjoy the pretty fireworks.  Send your Yankee Doodle Links to: Simbaud AT gmail DOT com.

In another great Cafferty moment-Jack connects the dots and wonders why the new lobbyist reformer that replaces a corrupt leader rents an apartment from a lobbyist?

Cafferty: These guys are either arrogant or stupid and neither of those is a good thing if you're going to be the House majority leader--am I missing something here? Where's the reform part? I wonder how long this guy is going to last.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (rough transcript)

Wolf: You did hear Ed Henry say that it is a basement apartment which is not necessarily all that desirable---

Cafferty: Yea...and pigs fly upside down and the moon is made of green cheese and there's no quid pro quo from a lobbyist who is also your landlord. Do I look like I just fell out of the back of a vegetable truck to you?

Wolf: No, you look like Jack Cafferty...

I have to believe that Wolf is purposefully playing the straight man at the end. I mean he couldn't be serious, right?

via World O' Crap

Remember when I said that I was cynical enough to believe if you signed a petition or donated money at RightMarch to "save Terri," you would be added to Phil Sheldon's mailing list, which he rents out to other groups and to politicians?

Well, per the NY Times, this has already happened...read on

Hopefully WOC will do a special on Ghoul T.V. starring Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough. I'm going to bring you a new chapter from Ghoul TV in a few minutes..from Joe the Ghoul man.