Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
12/04/2008 9:03 Comments ||
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#3
Someone called Canada a 'geopolitical accident' and its politics reflects this with different parties and party factions dominant in different regions. All governments are coalitions of these different parties.
#6
This is a major reason that I, too, hate parlimentary systems, and REALLY hate the fact that our a**holes in the State Dept. set up countries where we do nation building with this model.
#7
Naturally, AlanC, they hate the fact that things actually take time to get accomplished in our system and they are still bound down by silly wastes of time like 'checks and balances', which themselves are eroding away as we speak. So why wouldn't they pick a better system to keep the little people from sticking their long noses into the govt's business?
#9
I'm not so crazy about the Steyn link (although I do enjoy reading Steyn) provided by Grenter. In Canada there are 305 seats in the house of parliment. There are 305 electoral districts called ridings. Every riding elects a member of parliment (MP). By past precedent, whatever party has the most MPs forms the government. We had an election ~7 weeks ago. The Conservatives won but with a little less than half the seats (methinks ~140). The Liberals won 77. The Separtists 50. The NDP (socialists) the rest, along with a few independents. If a government cannot get 153 votes (ie the majority)on a key piece of legislation (considered a 'confidence' vote), they are deemed unable to govern and we get a new election (again, past precedent). The conservatives are facing such a vote on Monday. They would likely loose. However, instead of forcing a new election, the Liberals & socialists want to form the new government without holding an election. However, combined they hold less seats than the conservatives, and this is key. They need the separtists support in order to pass any legislation, including confidence votes. So the near left Liberals and the far left NDP have signed an agreement with the separtist left. The Governor General (our unelected head of state, who also decides if the left coalition will get to form the new government if the conservatives loose power or can call an election to let the people decide) just agreed to alow the conservatives to suspend parliment until late January, when the conservatives will present a budget. This prevents the immediate confidence vote from occuring. However, the budget vote in late January will be a confidence vote, as budgets always are. This is where we currently stand.
Less than two months after winning re-election, Harper successfully asked the unelected representative of the head of state for the power to close down Parliament until Jan. 26, hoping to buy enough time to develop a stimulus package that could prop up the economy.
"Today's decision will give us an opportunity I'm talking about all the parties to focus on the economy and work together," Harper said after the private meeting.
Governor General Michaelle Jean, who represents Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, granted the unusual request to suspend parliament. Had she refused, Harper would have had two choices: step down or face a no-confidence vote Monday he was sure to lose.
Harper would not offer details on their conversation.
#11
Vancouver radio this morning was expressing the hope that the gov't would shut down to give everybody time to cool down and think things through rather than get all wound up.
they got their hope, now to see if there is any change.
#14
I do like the idea that in a Parliamentary system the election cycle is short. I like the idea that the opposition party creates a shadow government and thus policies. I like the idea that in a Parliamentary system the government can call a vote and get a referendum on what they are doing, or the party can remove the leader if they know the leader is unpopular but they want to stay in power.
I don't like the idea that the party in power controls the executive and legislative branches by definition. I like a balance. I want Taiwanese style fist fights shown on pay-per-view to help pay off the budgets.
A small central Alabama county whose mainly black residents gave Barack Obama more than 70 percent of the vote on Election Day has created an annual holiday in honor of the president-elect.
The Perry County Commission voted 4 to 1 to observe the second Monday in November as "The Barack Obama Day." County offices will close and its roughly 40 workers will get a paid holiday.
The sponsoring commissioner, Albert Turner Jr., said the holiday is meant to highlight the Democratic president-elect's victory as a way to give people faith that difficult goals can be achieved.
The majority of the county's 12,000 residents are black.
The county commission's three black members and one of its two white members voted for the resolution.
Commissioner Brett Harrison said Wednesday he voted against the resolution because of the holiday costs to the county, which has a $2.2 million annual payroll and is one of the poorest in the state. He said closing the courthouse would also idle some state employees.
"I'm a Democrat, but just in these financial times, it's not using the county's money wisely," Harrison told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday. "The recognition is certainly well-founded."
Turner said copies of the resolution, adopted at a Nov. 25 meeting, have been mailed to Obama and his transition team.
An Associated Press exit poll found black voters in Alabama almost universally supported Obama while more than eight in 10 whites backed Republican John McCain. McCain carried the state with 60 percent of the vote.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/04/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Do they realize that he wouldn't piss on them even if they were on fire?
#4
Lets make Dec 25th Barack Obama Day instead of the holiday for that other guy.
Posted by: The Left ||
12/04/2008 20:09 Comments ||
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#5
next up? Perry County requests bailout funds for budget relief
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/04/2008 20:11 Comments ||
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#6
ION OBAMA, WORLD MIL FORUM > IIUC, BARACK OBAMA'S ANCESTRAL HOME IS REPOR IN SW IRAN [Iran-Iraqi SHIITE area]. "MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD" IS NOW MASTER OF THE US WHITE HOUSE AND PRESIDENCY. LOCAL SHIITES WONDER IFF OBAMA IS TRULY CHRISTIAN, OR IS ELSE IS A MUSLIM "POSING" AS A US PROTESTANT OR CHRISTIAN???
* SAME > OBAMA'S GRANDFATHER WAS A LOYAL BRITISH SOLDIER DURING WW2 WHOM AFTER THE WAR WAS TORTURED BY THE BRITISH AFTER BECOMING A MAU-MAU AFRICAN REBEL.
HMMMMM....what I like to belabel "MARIANO'S WAR" - I can relate to these in many ways!?
Coleman appeared to hold a decided advantage in the contest after he won the actual vote count in 2008. But as the dispute dragged on, the events following Election Day proved largely irrelevant -- minor skirmishes leading up to the legal, political and public relations battle that was to follow.
After the seventh recount of the vote was completed in September 2009 -- settling nothing since both candidates challenged every vote cast -- Franken filed simultaneous legal proceedings in state and federal courts, before the European Commission of Human Rights and with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2010, Coleman suffered a setback when the Supreme Court issued its first decision on the contest. In what became known as the "Franken's Fools" decision, the court held that even those absentee ballots that voters forgot to mail must be counted.
No forgotten ballots were ever recovered, but Franken's crack legal team assembled a group of Harvard psychologists who submitted expert testimony at trial establishing that the average Franken voter was twice as likely as the average Coleman voter to be chronically forgetful about life's basic tasks.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
12/04/2008 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A small central Alabama county whose mainly black residents gave Barack Obama more than 70 percent of the vote on Election Day has created an annual holiday in honor of the president-elect.
