Saturday, May 08, 2010

Off With Their Heads

Do you remember way back in the year 2000 when our country stood on the brink of the abyss because there was some doubt as to who our next president would be? Not because there was nobody equipped for the job. There were loads. Most notably: inventor of the Internet Al Gore, inventor of the ambivalent third party Ralph Nader, and inventor of facts that suit him George W. Bush. For weeks after the votes were cast, some of them into a swamp in Florida, there was no clear winner. The Supreme Court eventually did the job that the Electoral College could not: they named our first president of the new millennium, and then things got really interesting. We learned all sorts of things about hanging chads and voter fraud. For example, we learned that voter fraud can lead to global warming. Ah, the good old days.
Across the pond, it seems like old times. The recent British election failed to produce a new Prime Minister. This caused world markets to plummet, and members of all parties to scramble for support to form a government. The two "major parties," the Conservatives and The Labour Party, want members of a third party to join with them to create a majority. Ironically, that third party is called "the Liberal Democrats." With five seats left to report, the Conservatives had thirty-six percent support, compared to twenty-nine percent for Labour and twenty-three percent for the Liberal Democrats. Think of that twenty-three percent as a great, big hanging chad. With everyone screaming for election reform, I suggest an even easier solution: What are you paying Queen Elizabeth twelve million dollars a year to do? Wander around shaking hands with the commoners? Put her to work, I say.

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