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I’m working on a really long post, but I feel obligated to note this item here; it’s important and, in a way, will even tie in to the upcoming phonebook-length essay.

Browsing Cleveland.com today, I decided to see just what exactly Brent Larkin had written under the headline “Drawing the line on Democrat griping.” Had this been a work of, say, reactionary automaton Kevin O’Brien, I wouldn’t have even bothered, but I’ve found Larkin occasionally makes a fair point or two.

He does so, here. Said point is made in his usual crusty, crabby, how-distasteful-this-all-is way, but aside from the fact that I’m hardly one to talk, he does make a significant point all the same: Ohio’s Democratic Party seems to have invited the partisan redistricting heist of which they, and I, have been complaining so volubly.

Old man Larkin notes something I apparently missed in my normal indifference to Ohio politics, that “Last year, Democrats had a chance to take politics out of drawing new congressional boundaries and replace it with a plan that reeked of fairness.”

The plan would have amended the Ohio Constitution to create a seven-member panel to redraw those boundaries every 10 years. Republican and Democratic members of the Ohio House and Senate would have shared equally in the appointment of four members. Those four would have appointed the other three members. The support of five members would have been required for approval.

[The] proposal would have taken effect for this year’s drawing of new boundaries. It required voter approval, which would have been a near-certainty.

The Ohio Senate voted to put the plan on last November’s ballot, but it died in the Democrat-controlled House.

The hectoring editor emeritus goes on to list various reasons why the Democrats did such a silly thing. I would like to think they might offer up at least a token defense of their rejecting this reform, but having few illusions about the nature of politics even in parties I view relatively favorably, I expect that defense would be pretty thin. For what it’s worth, I’m not aware of anyone else even raising this point; presumably Democrats don’t want to talk about it because it makes them look bad, and presumably Republicans aren’t mentioning it because they don’t want to acknowledge the possibility that the current system which they’re exploiting is not the acme of fairness.

So, thank you, grumpy old newspaperman, for informing me of what everyone else finds inconvenient to recall. What can I say; this was an awful choice even if it hadn’t quickly rebounded to Democrats’ and democracy’s disadvantage. (more…)

I have pondered, often in teeth-gnashing frustration and occasionally in a more measured intellectual curiosity, why America’s two big political parties seem so different. In particular, why Republicans generally seem like a Mongol horde of bullying, though tightly-coordinated, aggression, compared with Democrats’ typical indisciplined, wishy-washy rabble.

“They’re just evil, psychotic assholes” is satisfying, in one sense, but not fully convincing, even if I believe it’s true (for the most part, yes). A little too George W. Bush; not quite enough mechanistic rationalism.

But in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait seems to have developed the sort of logical cause-and-effect model I’ve been looking for. Mostly just common-sense stuff, a collection of independent parts which nonetheless fit into a plausible composite.

I find this satisfying and mostly just felt like noting it, here, as a crib-note for my own reference. This is a good excerpt:

Republican ideology is uncomplicated (markets good, government bad), whereas Democrats advocate a hybrid, perpetually hard-to-explain ideology (markets usually but not always good, government sometimes necess—HEY WAKE UP!). Republicans are ethnically homogeneous, drawing 90 percent of their votes from whites, where Democrats are heterogeneous, relying on nonwhites for around 40 percent of their support. Republicans draw their economic support almost exclusively from business, while Democrats rely both on business and on groups often opposed to business, such as labor and environmentalists.

Chait also ties this in with the ways in which America’s demographics and Constitution result in over-representation of reactionary populations; he suggests that in light of this the GOP might well be a “permanent majority” party in theory, but instead chooses “to shift the terms of the debate and will gladly lose seats to do it.”

Well. All very logical and orderly, then, even commendable in a sense. Pity about the whole “evil, psychotic assholes” part.

First, on a relatively-serious note, apparently I am not the only one fed up with Sherrod Brown’s tireless advocacy of polluting free-riders. The business-as-usual skeptics at 350.org have decided to call shenanigans on Sherrod, and hope to launch a campaign shaming him for an April vote to dilute Clean Air Act regulations.

Good. I’ve already kicked in a bit of cash, and I hope others will do so as well. You cannot be a friend to the lying delusional profiteers who run the coal industry and to progressive Democrats both. If we just go on giving Democrats a pass because the Republican alternative is always worse on some issues and never really better on any, what the fuck can we be said to actually stand for?

In his blog post, 350er Jamie Henn alleges a friend from Ohio expressing hesitancy, saying “I feel a little bit nervous funding an ad going after Sherrod.”

Well, get over it, Nellie.

Moving on to the category of farce…

I really hope that one of these months the reality that Osama bin Laden is actually dead will catch up to news media, and we can stop seeing and hearing his name everywhere. But, I have to acknowledge the reports of “revenge attacks” and threats of same, just because it’s so fucking silly that it’s actually entertaining.

I mean, I feel like Walter blowing up at the nihilists when they demand a ransom after their lack of a hostage became common knowledge.

Seriously, you al-kaseltzer guys: you’re offended because U.S. Navy Seals killed your figurehead? Who are the fucking terrorists here??!? You’ve already committed yourselves to war on the United States and our allies! What the fuck conceivable meaning is there in your swearing, now, to attack us? I thought that was your fucking plan anyway, dipshits! What, you were kind of half-assing it lately but now you’re really mad? You expect to send this message and then deliver credible threats? Again, you were already supposed to be an active terrorist organization committed to violent action against us; threatening violence does not afford you any further fucking leverage at this point!

“WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?!”

Sheeeeeeeesh.