Hang 'em High

Hangman - Ottawa and Victoria Version*

I may have let my imagination run away with itself when I heard that yet another Parliament of a white majority former British Colony had been "hung." It can't be a criime to accidentally imagine Stevie Harper and John Baird dancing with their feet high above the ground, can it?

First it was Stevie, and then Stevie again, eking out a "minority" government, though why acceding to the will of the actual majority of the house is equated with a coup is beyond me. Of course Mr. Harper just ignores the fact that maybe 15-20% of Canadians actually want him to be Prime Minister and rules like a man with a mandate and runs and hides (prorogation) when that becomes difficult. About forty percent of the vote in an election that half of more of the qualified voters refused to participate in hardly seems a mandate to me. Of course having the last election on short notice, right after everyone went to Grandma's for Thanksgiving and quietly changing a bunch of ID requirements over the summer didn't promote participation either, or was that the intention?

But with a lack of leadership in opposition, or any opposition party with a prayer of governing and slipping your agenda into bills about other stuff, US style, and Canada is well on its way to being "unrecognizable, when Harper is done with it" as he promised years ago.

It was after the election in the UK that everyone became familiar with the term "hung" as the kinda winner reached out to the kinda equivalent to Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe here - in other words the third place party, and formed an actual coalition with Clegg as Deputy PM, rather than endlessly threatening to call another election that "nobody wants" or at least that's what they claim. After all, it is soooooooo damn hard to pry oneself away from the couch or whatever and go to the polling station. Harper and his henchman make participation in the democratic process seem just slightly less onerous than serving in the military or on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan.

Now that the Australians have brought about the tri-fecta of "hung" parliaments, perhaps it will become clear that the majority of the voting public in the old Empire DON'T LIKE ANYBODY VERY MUCH! In the Sydney Morning Herald, some of the currently being heavily courted small independent party MPs hope this hung situation can lead to change in "Parly."

Most observers would agree with the independent that question time, in theory the most important hour of the parliamentary day when the executive is directly scrutinised, has degenerated to virtual uselessness.

The prime minister and ministers of whichever party is in power very rarely answer opposition questions in any real sense. Instead they turn their answers into torrents of abuse that often run unchecked for many minutes.

Jeepers, creepers, sounds just like Ottawa and Victoria, don't it?

The situation has caused the Aussie Dollar to lose value and created instability all around Asia but hey, the guys who spent $100,000,000 to get rid of Kevin Rudd and bring about this election and will buy another one if necessary are so far cautiously happy with the results.

This first hung parliament in 70 years is a potential tailwind for the nation’s mining companies, as a Liberal Party majority would likely shelve the new mining tax.

....../snip

News of the hung parliament sent shares of mining companies in Australia higher on Monday, as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, and Xstrata (XSRAF.PK) all posted gains

By the way, they are as dishonest with party names in Australia as they are in B.C. and Canada, as the "Liberal Party" there is just slightly to the left of Attila the Hun - right wing whack jobs compared to the Labour Party (interesting how "labour" hasn't been turned into a dirty word yet in the Mother Country and the former penal colony)

They look forward to the demise of the hated mineral "profits" tax, and so far have been much more successful in evading corporate responsibility than say Catalyst Pulp mills have been in BC. Somebody has to pay taxes, but goddamnit, it ain't gonna be the folks with money, not if they can help it - they would rather pay lawyers and accountants even more to avoid their share of maintaining the quality of life for their employees, who wouldn't even be white if God woulda put the damn minerals in the right place to begin with.

* I haven't been able to make my javascript game work in Blogger, but I could e-mail working instances to anyone interested. I could even include any favorite air dancers for anyone requesting their copy. One just needs to download onto their hard drive and then open in a browser.

My copy currently contains -"Stephen Harper","Gordon Campbell","John Baird","Colin Hansen","Rick Coleman","Stockwell Day", "Mikey DeJong","Jason Kenny", "Helena Guergis", "Ida Chong", "Shirley Bond", "Peter McKay" but there's room for more. One must take petty satisfaction where one finds it, eh?

Of course the goal isn't necessarily to spell the "word" or name correctly because then they don't "swing." Then you get a dialog box telling you something like.

Are they Venal or Stupid? Department:

Terry Lake, part of the two man, 1/2 brain cell, brain trust from Kamloops showed his lack of mathematical skills and inability to grasp abstract or basic concepts this morning while being interviewed by Marion Barschell for Daybreak on the CBC. In his exalted position as chairman of the never yet to have met in twenty years "select" committee tasked with dealing with the anti-HST petition said:

Since they only got 37% of the voters in my riding (Almost 4 times the amount necessary by the way or 370% of the required amount) to sign the petition that means there might be 67-68% who LIKE the HST.
(approximate quote...off the air)

Kev and Terry together probably set up an intelligence vacuum that sucks any sense from surrounding ridings as well, thereby explaining why things occur in MudSlide Slater Land and Donna Barnett's (or is that Barnum of Barnum and Baily and fools/suckers being born every minute fame?) imaginary Cariboo fantasy land.

Well Mr. Lake, if I could be so personal as to address you as Meester, once you went over 100% of the voters you got into Star Trek territory for me. I guess fuzzy math skills make the BC liaR book keeping methods easier to tolerate. Keep in mind, feeble minded one, that that was 37% of the ELIGIBLE voters in your riding. The 35-40% you managed to get elected with were 35-40% of about ONE HALF of the eligible voters or 17-20%, meaning that 80% of the voters OR MORE, don't really like you very much.....keep that in mind as we head into the beautiful Recall season and nothing smells as nice as recall on a cool fall morning, NOTHING!