{"id":1747,"date":"2010-01-31T15:43:28","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T14:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1747"},"modified":"2010-01-31T15:43:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T14:43:28","slug":"the-strange-state-of-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1747","title":{"rendered":"The strange state of American politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A good friend of mine in Washington DC sent me an e-mail today which includes this comment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Our politics suck now&#8211;looks like no health care reform. Premiums for private insurance went up an average 8.5% over the past year while premiums charged to retirees on our Medicare jumped more than 12%. Americans have difficulty &#8220;connecting the dots&#8221; and easily succumb to the fear and scare tactics from the right-wing conservatives doing the bidding of the private insurance companies who want no change.<br \/>\nThink about it: The U.S.&#8211;the oldest constitutional democracy&#8211;is the only democracy in the world where a person can get the most votes for President and lose (Al Gore), and the majority party in the 100-member Senate needs 50 votes plus ten to pass any legislation.  Strange.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A good friend of mine in Washington DC sent me an e-mail today which includes this comment: &#8220;Our politics suck now&#8211;looks like no health care reform. Premiums for private insurance went up an average 8.5% over the past year while premiums charged to retirees on our Medicare jumped more than 12%. Americans have difficulty &#8220;connecting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}