Politics and Press » Election

Snowbound trip to the Polls

Mackenzie Brothers — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:59:27 +0000

Canucks got out of their igloos yesterday, rounded up the sled dogs and snow shoes and headed off to the polls to make sure that they got their money’s worth out of the $300,000,000 spent on what most thought was an unnecessary election. Well, less than 60% actually did that, an all-time low turnout that proved that the skeptics were right. At the end of the day very little had changed. As predicted, the Conservatives will once again lead a minority government with 1 per cent more of the popular vote and 17 new seats, mostly at the expense of the opposition Liberals, but still well short of the majority it was looking for. But while the Tories swept rural BC and Alberta, where a rubber duck would have easily carried most ridings, they failed to make any gains in Quebec, despite endless aggressive courting, and had no seats at all in Newfoundland or the three major cities Vancouver, Montreál and Toronto. It also could be a victory, that they may soon come to regret as the liberal kings-in-waiting, Michael Ignatief, Bob Rae, and yes young Justin Trudeau, expectantly observe Prime Minister Harper making hash of the economic crisis.

About the only thing the election did prove was how spectacularly stupid the British first past the post vote-counting system is. In Canada there is no reward for getting 49% of the vote in your riding if someone else gets 51%, which makes voting a useless gesture in vast areas of the country where it is clear from the start who will get the most votes in a particular riding. The result is mocking disinterest from the young folks (among others) as they see their green party get 7% of the vote and no seats while the Bloc Quebecois, running only in Quebec, gets 10% of the national vote and 50 seats. What the hell is the point of rounding up the dogs for the long cold trip to the polling booth? Only true satirists could come up with a system like that.

West to Alaska – the Globe looks at Gov. Palin

Mackenzie Brothers — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:53:01 +0000

With 100% credit to the Toronto Globe and Mail’s resident poet John Allemang

PALIN COUNTRY

Please call us rednecks, ’cause we’re proud
To be so rough and rude and loud,
And act in ways elitists think
Proves that we’ve had too much to drink
In some dead-end Alaska dive
When, dude, it just shows we’re alive.
We love our church, our kids, our beer,
Can tell you right down to the year
That God put Man upon the Earth,
Know life starts well ahead of birth,
Don’t give a damn about the arts
And stay away from foreign parts
Until the moment that we’re sent
As John McCain’s vice-president

The great thing, when your neck is red?
Nobody cares what’s in your head -
The voters seem to like ‘em dumb,
So why not play a hockey mom
Who hunts and prays and procreates
To govern these Unites States?
If you can drive a snowmobile,
The people, bless them, think you’re real,
And in the end who needs a brain?
Just tell your kids they must abstain,
Pretend that when your rule’s ignored
It’s some great gift sent by the Lord,
And prove you’ll go to any length
To make such redneck fault a strength.

What ever happened to the US election system?

Mackenzie Brothers — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:39:07 +0000

It’s not so long ago that the US caucus system designed to choose nominees for the presidential candidates of the only two parties that count came up with figures like Eisenhower, Stevenson, Kennedy, Reagan, McGovern, Nixon. Now it is certainly true that not all of these chaps proved to be such worthy leaders, but all of them were at least experienced politicians or, in the case of Eisenhower, an important historical personality and father figure. You could despair of Reagan and Nixon’s California view of the world or McGovern’s innocence, but their campaigns were veritable Socratic dialogues compared to the reports reaching foreign ears of the level of discussion in the current round of presidential candidate debates.

Recently on what many thought were satirical comedies, European and Canadian television has been running selections from Youtube or CNN debates in which grown men striving to lead a very powerful nation struggled over who was the best Christian or indeed if one of them was a Christian at all. This takes place in a country that is supposed to separate church and state. The Scopes trial was revisited and nobody seemed willing to really defend the idea of evolution. Questions were thrown at the man who was once the leading candidate about whether he wore secret underwear, and the beast that raised questions about real Roman Catholic beliefs, who seemed to have left the stage forever with the Kennedy election, once again raised its weird head. Fortunately Joe Liebermann isn’t in the mix.

What is going on? It is impossible to imagine any of these debaters would be taken seriously as a contender for any important position in any other leading western country with arguments like these. Certainly it is true that at least a couple of these people might have something to offer on some important topics, like health care for the US society or the Middle East for the global one. But they don’t seem to be able to find a forum or get much of a chance to discuss anything of consequence when the only topic that wins you votes is whether your Christianity is better than the next guy’s. Isn’t anybody down there working on a way of changing the electoral system?