I’m not sure that’s a productive graphic. All the orange splotches are concentrated metro areas. More people=of course they produce more on a per square mile basis. Most of what the blue areas do is FEED everyone. Maybe we city folk are underpaying for our food? And, let’s not forget, a not-insignificant part of the the contribution to GDP coming from those New York and Chicago splotches is the finance industry. While some of that is useful economic activity, some of it is legalized fleecing.
Truth is, there are hardly any “takers” in the way Mittens and other conservatives mean.
The Koch Brothers and Chamber of Commerce have already spent $10 million against Hagen . . . and she’s still standing. They got nothing but Obama/Harry Reid. ::yawn::
Part of the reason why I’m not entirely certain we’re going to see the GOP sweep the Senate this year is because of the Tea Party vs. Establishment fight going on. I have a feeling that, like last election, we’ve got a potential to see the Tea Party refuse to support Establishment candidates and Establishment Republican voters refuse to support Tea Party candidates.
This is going to be a very difficult election to predict right up until the votes are cast in November.
What’s scary is that as the GOP floats further and further into right-wing nut-job territory, they don’t seem to lose significant support. This is because the RWNJ echo chamber is pulling them along and they’ve captured a significant portion of the populations, especially in red states. I don’t know where or how this will end, but it will not Wendell.
What Tillis said in the video is horrifying. What he’s really saying is, “Give to poor whites, not blacks and brown people.” Mr. Nice Guy. I sure hope Moral Monday people call this guy out.
But what I really, really wonder is if white resentment of black progress is so very deep that it can propel a vicious guy like this to power, just to keep ‘those’ people down? What’s eating white people? They think taxes are only to give to poor people, when republicans think taxes should only be given to rich people.
What Americans who are fooled by the GOP’s ‘anti-tax’ rhetoric are doing is colluding in giving up their one power of self-determination: taxing oneself for what one wants. The GOP wants taxes to go basically as tribute to rich people, and what the mass of people wants, be damned.
Glad that video is out there. Sen. Hagan is a really good candidate, and she will prevail come November. I do believe that people are fired -up in North Carolina because of the outpouring of those Moral Monday rallies. Young people are fired-up because the Tillis led legislature has made it more difficult for them to vote as they used to do, but that isn’t going to stop them. All this voter suppression going on will backfire on Republicans all over the country, and it will be Republicans, like Tillis who will be paying the price!!
I was making this very point about the establishment vs. TP in a post about Rand Paul wanting to force HRC to testify about BENGHAAAAZI. TP candidates, win or lose, will still win the nomination because the mainstream of the Republican Party has moved so ridiculously far right. The average establishment candidate is just as offensive and crazy as the TP candidate, and there’s virtually no daylight between the two sides on policy. That’s because the TP is the establishment now.
She has been getting slammed by the Kochs for months. AFP’s been running ads against her nonstop to the tune of several million dollars, and it hasn’t put a dent in anyone’s poll numbers.
Yeah, except its a winning strategy. When the down ballot races across the TeaPartySouth start losing, then I’ll take note. Those folks still have alot of influence in a state lege. Sadly.
“aimed at turning back the clock on many years of moderate leadership and policies in the state.”
As evidenced in North Carolina by what? The fact that they didn’t institute Old Testament religious law? Or that they banned gay marriage without the controversial “hunt and tag” amendment?
Unfortunately, while this may isolate Republicans in many instances politically, what it also allows is a shifting further to the right of the Democratic candidates and establishment as they try and make up electoral ground. I remember the (not so) gradual shift throughout the Clinton Presidency after the 1994 mid-terms. Sure, they were still relatively more liberal than the Gingrich Republicans, but by the end there wasn’t much daylight between establishment Democrats in 2000 and establishment Republicans in 1992.
Mithraism was a Roman cult that predates the introduction of Christianity. Its appeal was almost entirely to low-information males and had the great advantage that you weren’t accountable for whatever you did now in the afterlife. Its symbols included bulls, snakes, scorpions and dogs. It was most popular when the Roman Empire started into decline. The parallels with the current crop of GOP top male candidates and their “timeless” view of a world without blame for their recklessness and obsessions on fetish words and places, not to mention geocentric universe, is surprising. Even if Christianity has had a good run nominally, it appears we’re back to the bread and circus gang.
What I have been saying for a long time to those who claim that all this class warfare, racism, etc. signals the death knell of the Republican party is: “just look at the election results.”
Republican voters embrace this kind of candidate, have for decades, and it reached a zenith when an African-American was actually elected president. After Obama’s two victories, these radicals came oozing out of the woodwork and were immediately given the go-ahead to set the country right again.
We have regressed politically to pre-1950s with the blatant, outspoken racism and jingoism, the new direct attacks on women’s rights, and the wet dream of Pat Robertson, the beginnings of the institution of a Christian bible-based system of law.
What is notable is that this not just a Southern phenomenon, it is taking place all over the country. Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Dakota and other places that would once have been politically “Northern” and thus not openly racist and regressive are now strongholds of anti-union, anti-woman, anti-poor and pro-Christian, pro-Republican radical policy.
It is not going away, the Republican Party is not dead or dying, and we are in a world of shit. Nate Silver thinks there is a 60% chance that Republican radicals will take back the Senate, and when they do, that will signal to them that the voters want Oligarchy, and they will give it to us.
