Tag: News, Politics, Events

Here is a wicked thought. Kerry wins electoral college and loses the popular vote. Because the President is so heavily supported in many states but each state is won on a first past the post system, the extra extra votes are useless. They do not make him win anymore. Here is the percentage lead Bush holds in each of his top three states:

• Texas (34 electoral votes) 21%
• Florida (27 electoral votes) 5%
• Georgia (15 electoral votes) 19%

If you look at the western plains, West of Iowa and east of the west coast states, many of the states are lead by Bush by over 20%. By comparison, Kerry will win the 55 electoral college votes in California by a lead of under 10% and the 31 of New York by just a little more.

Wouldn’t it be sweet of the White House were to be won by Kerry in the same way Bush won it?

Don’t make me vote again this year. I heard Harper say that his agenda was “frankly supported by the majority of Canadians” even though he got 29% of the vote in June. Nothing has changed. If you make us vote for you before the Liberals have done anything, you will see 5 seats in Quebec go to the Liberals, you will see a couple in Ontario go to the Liberals, you will see a few percentage points move NDP from Green and that will likely put the NDP into the low twenty seat range and, pooff, there goes Harper’s dreams of power. From today’s Toronto Star:

The Liberals were huddling last night to assess whether the raft of proposed changes would amount to a fundamental rewriting of the Martin government’s blueprint for minority rule. The choice rests with this shaky minority government to reject the changes as a threat or accept them, in whole or in part, which would in effect allow opposition parties to have a hand in designing the governing plan. A throne speech has only been successfully changed by the opposition twice in the history of the Canadian Parliament; in 1899 and in 1951, and the changes in both cases were minimal.
The vote on the Bloc gambit takes place later today, and if Government House Leader Tony Valeri judges the proposed changes to be a sharp shift in the Liberals’ chosen path, the Commons will be in a mad scramble around 6 p.m. as the three-month old government tries to hold on to its precarious control of Parliament. A loss by the Liberals in this case would amount to collapse of the Martin’s barely-begun government.

Don’t make us vote again, Mssrs Tory and Separatist alliance. All that you have shown in the last three months is that you two, the Alberta and Quebec independentistas, have much in common and that is the thing that most Canadians will agree upon.

William Safire
has a good op-ed on the upcoming Afghan election. People
lining up to vote is a good thing     People lining up in
Cambodian and South Africa after long horror was a good thing. This
is good, too. Canadians will be
protecting voters there. This is also good. We should be having parades.

“Paaaul, Paaauuul – do you hear me?” [Ed.: insert your own scary ghost sounds here]

The CBC’s web site is running the most unattractive rather toady picture of the man who would be Prime Minister, minority leader Paul Martin this morning. He looks haunted by something…or someone. Could it be the news that the Tories are going to move amendments to today’s speech from the throne? Could it be that the ghost of MacKenzie King is whispering in his ear that he has blown it before it even began?

While it is stupendously whacked that the mostestly freeest country in the world goes through a pre-registration of the prime freedom, the right to vote, it is heartening to find out there is a rush to register giving hope for a huge turnout that might actually reach the point of the majority of eligible voters actually exercising their franchise.

By the way, Ian tells it like it is from the trenches of voter turn out. If you are in the US, take his challenge whatever your political stripe and help mobilize the vote. Unless, of course, you are for local municipal totalitarianism or part of that “Fools for a Dictatorial Vermont” movement.

When will the senselessness end…

Seeing as I have right of UK abode and can get citizenship based on where the folks were born, you can file this under “it’s about time”:

Gurkhas who have served in the British Army are to be allowed to apply to settle in the UK and gain British citizenship. The announcement made by Tony Blair follows a government review and a campaign by the Nepalese soldiers. The prime minister said the Gurkhas had made an “enormous contribution” and it was important that their commitment and sacrifice were recognised. Gurkhas have fought as part of the British Army for almost 200 years.

The Gurkhas are still part of the British army and, though they come from a small country have done more than the share of many larger nations:

During World War I some 100,000 Gurkhas enlisted in regiments of the Gurkha Brigade. They fought (and died) in France, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Gallipoli, Palestine and Salonika. They won two Victoria Crosses. In World War II there were no fewer than forty Gurkha battalions some 112,000 men. Gurkhas fought side-by-side with British and Commonwealth troops in Syria, the Western Desert, Italy and Greece from North Malaya to Singapore and from the Siamese border back through Burma to Imphal then forward again to Rangoon. A total of ten Victoria Crosses were awarded to Gurkhas during World War II.

My father has a number of childhood stories shared from family members who fought in WWII and describe the skill with the knife of the Gurkhas and their way of dealing with Nazis. Recently they have publicly been in East Timor and Bosnia and when I hear of goings on on the Afghan-Pakistan border, I can’t imagine they are not there, too. Once at the CNE when I was a kid, we saw the tatoo and the Gurkhas marched – double time for the entire drill. Bagpipers, too.