Midday afternoon thread

• "Time Horizons" is seriously the funniest shit to come out of Republican mouths in ... well, at least the last few days.
• Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What do they say about the definition of the word "insanity"? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the results to be different?
• Republicans asks the net for advice, guess who responded? The Paulites, of course.
• The real price of gas.

  Rising fuel prices are causing financial strain for some home health care workers and the industry is considering replacing some services in rural areas with remote monitoring systems, the AP/Chicago Tribune reports. Gasoline prices have increased by more than 80% in the past 18 months, and experts say it is "a particularly knotty problem for nurses, aides and other employees of home health care agencies -- many of whom are responsible for their own travel expenses and depend on government reimbursements that haven't yet caught up with the rising prices at the pump," the AP/Tribune reports. A survey by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging found that 50% of home care employees said they have already cut back on home visits because of fuel costs and 90% expect to make cuts in 2009.

  -- demfromct

• Planning a trip abroad? Check Health Map to see what to prepare for. And

  yes, there's still avian flu in Indonesia -- demfromct

• I love this comment from WSJ:

  You know Obama is doing well, when the press has to dig up two-week-old “glibly-chosen words” to throw the McCain camp some kind of bone… meanwhile McCain appears to have launched a nationwide tour of history museums, starting with one in Maine this morning.

  Comment by Cornfields - July 21, 2008 at 7:48 am

• The Swing State Project made a number of changes to its senate race ratings, all in favor of Democrats -- DavidNYC
• Uh oh.

  "I'm not a convert, I'm one who recognizes the power and extraordinary influence the netroots have. Not just with politics, but it's about a different interactions with people." He went to Austin because "I wanted to understand more fully the intensity behind those names. We actually met 'Bill in Portland Maine.'"

  Note he doesn't tell us what he actually thought of BiPM...

• Charlie Cook wrote Saturday in The National Journal that Republicans no longer have a realistic chance of holding their own in this year's Senate contests:

  Jennifer Duffy, The Cook Political Report's Senate editor, says the bottom line is that Democrats are poised to pick up five to seven seats. Holding that pickup to four would be a moral victory for Republicans. The possibility that Democrats will net eight or nine seats remains unlikely, but it isn't as laughable a scenario as it was six months ago.

  We ...uh ... feel their pain. -- Meteor Blades