It's official. According to a statement from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has been in a recession since December 2007. But while that conclusion from the non-governmental NEBR differs from the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction, by any accounting the Bush recession will be well underway by the end of this year. And by either measure, the conservative talking point of a Clinton recession "inherited by George W. Bush" remains a myth.The NEBR declaration is just the latest confirmation of the severe Bush downturn. Last week, the Commerce Department revised its third quarter (July through October) gross domestic product decline to 0.5% from 0.3%, while two recent forecasts predicted a Q4 drop-off of at least 3%. Two weeks ago, the quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia concluded that the United States already entered a recession in April. Today, the NEBR's analysis, which includes a broader range of factors beyond GDP, concluded that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007. As CNN reported: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.Employers have trimmed payrolls by 1.2 million jobs in the first 10 months of this year. On Friday, economists are predicting the government will report a loss of another 325,000 jobs for November.The NBER also looks at real personal income, industrial production as well as wholesale and retail sales. All those measures reached a peak between November 2007 and June 2008, the NBER said.Facing the avalanche of grim news Monday, the White House still refuses to use the term "recession" to describe the economic calamity that Barack Obama will inherit from George W. Bush. Two months after press secretary Dana Perino claimed, "I don’t think anybody could tell you right now if we’re in a recession or not" and one month after he himself reje...