On Fox News last Wednesday, while discussing The Hill newspaper’s annual 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill list, host Sean Hannity said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “ranks in at number four” but complained that there are others “who are far more deserving” than her. The problem, however, as MSNBC host Dan Abrams pointed out last night, is that Pelosi was number four on last year’s list and is not included in the 2008 edition. Abrams asks: “But why should that stop Hannity from insulting her again?”:

ABRAMS: Next up — Fox’s Sean Hannity really wanted to insult Speaker Nancy Pelosi last night. He talked about “The Hill” newspaper’s 2008 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill list.

HANNITY: Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi—Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi ranks in at number four. Several aides, by the way, who are far more deserving than Nancy Pelosi. This is supposed to be the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill.

ABRAMS: The problem—Nancy Pelosi isn’t on the list this year. She was on last year’s list, but why should that stop Hannity from insulting her again?

Watch it:

House conservatives engaged in political theater today, storming the floor after Congress was adjourned “to attack Democrats for leaving town without doing something to lower gas prices.” Politico reports, “At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark.”

“Bring the Congress back. Let’s have a real up or down vote,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) proclaimed. In fact, there was a real up or down vote on gas prices just two days before. And Boehner is well aware of it because he was responsible for ensuring it didn’t pass. Dan Weiss explains on the Wonk Room what occurred this week:

During yesterday’s vote on the Commodity Markets and Transparency Act (H.R. 6604) to rein in oil profiteers, House Republican leaders pressured 13 of their members to switch their vote from “yes” to “no.” Thanks to these strong arm tactics and weak members, the bill to lower gasoline prices by controlling profiteers failed by a vote of 276-151, falling ten votes shy of the two-thirds majority required for passage under the suspension of the House rules. Once again, the GOP leadership used their power to help keep oil prices and profits high, while hurting the average driver.

Boehner strong-armed his own conservative members to ensure a bill didn’t pass because he wanted to engage in today’s political theatrics. After killing a bill that would have addressed gas prices, House conservatives have decided they want to blow hot air in the dark.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) said, “This band of brothers here is staying late to make a point to the American people: We want to work.” His colleagues then chanted: “Work, work, work.” Putnam has quickly forgotten the conservatives’ record of leading the Do Nothing Congress in 2006. The 109th Congress met for fewer days than the infamous 80th Congress that Harry Truman reviled as “do nothing” in 1948:

“The 109th Congress vies for the title of the all-time worst Congress,” said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution and co-author of “The Broken Branch” with Ornstein. Mann’s indictment of the 109th includes these charges: “It spent little time in session, it failed to pass budget resolutions and appropriations bills, there was no serious oversight of the disaster in Iraq, there were no major substantive policy achievements, and corrupt members were forced from Congress.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) finally brought the six-hour talk-a-thon to a conclusion today by leading the group in an a capella rendition of “God Bless America.”

Check out this scorecard from the Speaker’s office: Read more

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:

MCCAIN: And some of those tactics — you mention the war in Iraq — are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.

Listen here:

Now that our military experts advocate approaching the “war on terror” with more policing and intelligence gathering, McCain wants to approach urban policing with more military power. (HT: Political Radar)

Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh marks twenty years on the air today. During his show this afternoon, Limbaugh received a call from the President George W. Bush, former President George H. W. Bush, and former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush. The Bush family congratulated their “pal” Limbaugh on his “twenty years of important and excellent broadcasting.” Later in their conversation, former President Bush — apparently not realizing he was on the air — asked about “our man [Roger] Ailes,” the president of Fox News:

H. W. BUSH: Do you see our man Ailes at all?

LIMBAUGH: Oh, yeah. I saw Roger at Tony Snow’s funeral…And a couple of times earlier this summer.

H. W. BUSH: Are we on the radio, are we? [...] I didn’t know that. I’ll clean up my act here. I’m glad they told me.

Listen here:

Yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney sent Limbaugh a recorded message calling him “one of the great names in broadcasting history.”

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart has been warning its managers that a Democratic victory in the fall would lead to unionization at Wal-Mart stores. “In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings” discussing the downsides of unionization and not-so-subtly telling employees not to vote for a Democrat.

Wal-Mart Watch notes that the article “would not have been possible without the several brave Wal-Mart employees” who spoke out against the company’s policies, including the employee below who e-mailed Wal-Mart Watch:

In a statement, Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar said the Journal report confirmed stories they have collected from workers:

We have been receiving the reports described in the Journal for the past week. Some of the reports we received were even more egregious than what was described in today’s story. In one case, a worker said they were shown a slide that said ‘Obama = union’ and then were told why unions were bad.

Wal-Mart employees who wish to speak out should contact Wal-Mart Watch to share their stories. Sign a petition to tell Wal-Mart to stop the political intimidation of its employees.

On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was indicted “on seven counts of failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in services from an oil services company that helped renovate his home.” During the White House press briefing today, a reporter asked Press Secretary Dana Perino if Stevens’ is still “invited” to travel with the President on his upcoming trip to Alaska. Perino replied that the invitation “did not change” with Stevens’ indictment:

Q It’s my understanding that Senator Stevens was invited to go along to Alaska on Monday night, and I wonder if that invitation still stands, or if he’s accepted it, if he’s planning to go?

MS. PERINO: I don’t know if he is going to be going on that trip, but protocol is that any member of a state is invited to travel with the President, and that did not change in his case.

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Barack Obama paraphrases Ronald Reagan’s famous question: “Are you better off than you were four or eight years ago?”

Now personally, I’d say I’m much better off than I was as an awkward nineteen year-old college sophomore. On the other hand, I’m not sure that I’d give George W. Bush a ton of credit for that. Which is what’s a bit odd about this question — I’m not sure how tightly linked people’s overall well-being really is to average economic trends. And at the same time the biggest victims of Bush’s policies are the ones who are dead and thus don’t have the chance to complain about it. A lot of people who were working eight years ago are retired today. And a lot of people who are working today were kids eight years ago. Many others have children today who they didn’t have eight years ago. Or maybe eight years ago they were happily married and now they’re divorced.

But even sticking to the strictly economic, we know that any given individual’s wages tend to go up over the course of his/her career as he/she gains experience, skills, and seniority. Thus even during a period in which average wages stagnate, most people will actually be better off than there were a few years in the past.