back and grimmer than ever

A long hiatus-- call it a new semester, a quick spring break, overwhelm on all sides. I finally got a look at a recent New Yorker, and Hertzberg, in his brilliance, got me in the mood again to spout.

What my imaginary friend HH , the man who is 1/2 of 25% Calvin's namesake, has to say supports a running theme in this log: things are looking bleak for the republic.

Consider his breakdown of the Senate:

55 Republicans
44 Democrats

Take each senator to represent 1/2 of his/her state. That means the parties represent:

Republican: 131 million people
Democrats: 161 million people

More specifically, consider that the last 3 elections since 2000 put them there. How many voted for each party in senate races?

Republican: 97.3 million
Democrat: 99.7 million

As Hendrik puts it, "unless acres trump people," this is not democracy.

The piece is a discussion on the filibuster and judicial appointments. In another sobering shot, content of which of course we all knew, but HH draws our attention to it just right, he reminds us that Scalia, Bush's choice for exemplary supreme ct judgemental, takes it as fact that gov't derives its power from God. I prescribe mandatory viewing of the constitutional peasant scene in The Holy Grail ("supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses..."), preferably a la A Clockwork Orange reprogramming scene.

This is the necessary salt with which to take all Repub. references to the "elite" who have coopted the nation, not to mention silly talk of "political capital," etc.