Is this a surprise? It was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and if the Global actions weren't so well synthesized, it could have easily been worse than the Great Depression.
Yeah... that was part of my point. Two Supreme Court Justices.
So much for the "socialist" Democrats.
This does not address the minor factor that most Americans most likely don't know what Keystone XL is.
Yes, we'll pretend that Gerrymandering had no effect on the elections. Congress approval is slightly below Ebola approval, yet incumbency kicked butts.
You mean through kickbacks and outright bribery? The locals don't want it. It is not going to bring in the billions of jobs promised.
Or it could be that the locals don't want it, and the Koch bros do.
No they mention it because their billionaire backers require them to push it through the Federal Government because the states won't approve it.
Gerrymandering and appealing to fears is how elections are won.
You can't expect any individual project to be anything else. Even Ghawar, by far the world's biggest oil field, can be described as a "relatively small cog" as it produces 5 Mbbl/day out of worldwide production of about 80 Mbbl/day. It would be a mistake to dismiss its significance though.
The problem hasn't been created by Obama, true enough. But as you say, the slowdown in illegal crossings is not due to Obama improving enforcement either. And it is Obama who wants to push an amnesty plan through executive order.
Who are "dittoheads"? I must assume you mean "those not on the Left". In that case you are very much mistaken.
There have been polls showing a sizable majority supports building the pipeline, including a small majority of Democrats. That kind of implies people have heard about it otherwise there'd be more "I don't knows".
One notable change will be appointments which are under the purview of the Senate, not the full Congress. Democrats in the Senate ended the judicial nomination filibuster which allowed them to approve nominees with a simple majority vote but that majority will go away come January.
I’m sorry, I was busy watching sexy <fill in the blank> twerk, what were you saying?
Yeah... that was part of my point. Two Supreme Court Justices.
Repug light doesn’t work?
Gerrymandering is indeed a problem, but for House and state legislatures only. It has no effect on statewide elections like for Senate and Governors. And the majority in the Senate is what was most at stake in these elections and Democrats performed dismally (no pun intended). I expected them to lose the majority but not this bad. They also lost quite a few governorships, most notably Massachusetts (Martha Coakley deserved to lose as did the state party for nominating her twice), Illinois and Maryland. No gerrymandering there. They did manage to flip Pennsylvania in their favor though, one of the very few positives in this election.
I'm talking about the House of Representatives. You know... the only major electoral institution that Gerrymandering affects. The House of Reps has an approval rating lower than Hermes Conrad can limbo.
You mean like Tom Steyer giving money to (soon to be ex-) Senator Mark Udall to vote against the pipeline?
That's the NIMBY effect. If we allowed it to reign supreme, nothing of any size of significance could ever get built.
Who promised that?
As do the American people, including a slight majority of Democrats.
You are wrong. Federal (state department) approval was needed for the northern leg of the pipeline because it crossed the international border. It has nothing to do with states not wanting to approve it. It should have been a routine, non-political approval. Instead the Obama administration made a political issue of it (in part because his billionaire backer required him to). Of course, it backfired.
What does gerrymandering have to do with Democratic losses in the Senate and among state governors?
Thank you Mr. Civics. The point is, Congress approval is lower than Jacksonville's chances of winning the Super Bowl this year, yet an uber-supermajority are being re-elected.
Yeah. Dems got hit hard. Apparently the economy isn't chugging along fast enough after it was crashed in '08.
That's ok as long as you don't cat call her.
What about them? Except that they have not been particularly inspired choices, especially Sotomayor.
Yeah, if I ran into Ms. Blank on the street and did that, I would be a dick.
No, it isn't. Gerrymandering protects seats, lets the representative go more extreme. So you end up with a statewide group of representatives that don't particularly represent the same state.
FYI, it is the Republicans that bring rape into the conversation: see Todd Akins. And enough about race. The right-wing has been railing about race politics before Obama was inaugurated.
At the danger of sounding like Mr. Civics again, I must point out the obvious. The reason congressional approval is so low yet many incumbents get reelected is that people express their opinion of the Congress as a whole but no voter votes for the Congress as a whole. Instead you vote for one Congressman and maybe a Senator every two years. People want to throw the bums out, but they tend to kind of like their bum most of the time.
I think running away from Obama was a stupid tactical mistake by the candidates as well. Especially Lundgren-Grimes who would not even answer if she voted for Obama. She was neck-and-neck with the Turtle until then when she started losing ground fast.
