{"id":1503,"date":"2017-03-22T15:04:49","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T11:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2017-03-22T15:04:49","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T11:04:49","slug":"red-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1503","title":{"rendered":"Red no more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A page-one story in Sunday\u2019s <em>Washington Post<\/em> describes Virginia as a \u201cpurple state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I live here\u2026 it\u2019s about as purple as the Jolly Green Giant.<\/p>\n<p>The way I\u2019d describe Virginia is a red state with an embarrassing blotch of dark blue at the top, and unfortunately that blotch blotches out the lower 95 percent of the commonwealth where real Virginians (read: real Americans) live. The blue blotch is where Beltway types and various overpaid government employees and contractors live alongside five or six of us who\u2019ve actually traveled through flyover country.<\/p>\n<p>This was one of the many things I didn\u2019t realize before moving here but discovered quickly upon crossing the blue border into enemy territory.<\/p>\n<p>Trouble is the government types are spreading like locusts across the state.<\/p>\n<p>The real part of the state.<\/p>\n<p>Dear Lord, please don\u2019t let us become another Maryland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A page-one story in Sunday\u2019s Washington Post describes Virginia as a \u201cpurple state.\u201d I live here\u2026 it\u2019s about as purple as the Jolly Green Giant. The way I\u2019d describe Virginia is a red state with an embarrassing blotch of dark &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1503\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1504,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}