Nathan Scandella (personal)

At Least We Still Have a Congress

As I frequently rant against the imperfections of our political system here in the US, it's easy to forget how much worse it is around the world. Not just in the obvious places, like Zimbabwe or Venezuela or Russia. But, even in places like Canada.

At the request of the partisan and unpopular prime minister, The Queen has allowed Canadian Parliament to be suspended for a couple of months. The Parliament apparently was about to conduct a vote of no-confidence with respect to the PM. Are you kidding me? The Queen not only can do that (which I knew), but she would do it?

This reminds me of the engineering union at Boeing, when I still worked there. When I joined the company I was told that the union was basically impotent, and that membership (and dues) wasn't even mandatory. A few years later, I found out that this was not true, as the union collected dues from even objecting engineers, and conducted the first major engineering strike in the US.

What's wrong with Canada? This is 2008. As easy a target as the USA is, we don't have a monarch anymore. It's hard to take other countries seriously when they still get worked up over a queen, still smoke cigarettes, and still have organized crime in their governments. We just have a dufus as President.

Oh, and what the hell is with curling?

Posted at 02:38AM Dec 09, 2008 by Nathan in Politics  |  Comments[0]