If Canada's a republic, why does it still have a coat of arms that's practically dripping with British royal imagery?
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes II
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If Canada's a republic, why does it still have a coat of arms that's practically dripping with British royal imagery?
In some other timeline, a forum member is complaining "if the Bourbons have had no connection to Canada since the Seven Years' War, why is Quebecois symbols dripping with fleur-de-lis?"
Remember, mate, the Coat of Arms of the Republic of Finland still has a crown on it.
Though that is hardly the weirdest part of Finnish republican imagery...
In some other timeline, a forum member is complaining "if the Bourbons have had no connection to Canada since the Seven Years' War, why is Quebecois symbols dripping with fleur-de-lis?"
Remember, mate, the Coat of Arms of the Republic of Finland still has a crown on it.
Though that is hardly the weirdest part of Finnish republican imagery...
I'm more weirded out they have a VP. Surely they'd have a more ceremonial presidency like Germany or Ireland
Actually they're semi-presidential - The (Liberal-NDP) Cabinet's accountable to both the (Liberal majority) Commons and the executive (Conservative) President.
Why do the Liberals feel the need to form a coalition in spite of having a majority? Also, semi-presidential systems generally don't have a VP.
Well, you know, Trudeau the Elder did try to form a coalition with the NDP in the early 80s despite having a majority in the Commons. This had to do with legitimacy more than anything else. The Liberals had failed to pick up a single seat to the West of Manitoba, and many people in the West felt that Trudeau the Elder's government was an "eastern establishment" lacking moral legitimacy to impose their policies on the rest of Canada.
Ed Broadbent turned down the offer because, well, seeing the Liberals already had a majority, he (probably rightly) suspected that NDP influence over policies would be highly limited, and that the NDP would probably only lose support in the West by supporting the increasingly unpopular Trudeau.
Weird things do happen in countries with FPTP. In 1931 in the UK, the Tories under Stanley Baldwin won 470 seats, yet the person to head the National Government was Ramsey MacDonald, whose National Labour party picked up erm... 13 seats. Why did MacDonald get to continue to be Prime Minister? Because His Majesty George V desired it to be that way.
Coalition: The Grits don't have 35 senators (out of 69), therefore, coalition.
As for Semi-Presidential (Including Fully Presidential republics with a Prime Minister and Parliamentary republics) VPs: There's Bulgaria, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, India, Mauritius, Namibia, Peru, Tanzania...
Didn't you just mention that the confidence of the Senate wasn't necessary?
For keeping a Stable Government, yes, Senate confidence's not necessary.
For other things, such as Presidential Impeachment or approving the dissolution of the Commons... no, that's where the Senate becomes important, and you don't want a hostile majority in a body that has considerable power over bills made by the Commons...
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I was going to make a jokey reference to how in Sweden in the 18th century, the Hats and the Caps would, when they got the numbers in the Riksdag to do it, start impeaching officeholders of the other party on trumped up charges just to get rid off them, but then I realized that... oh, yeah, many Republicans in the US today have the attitude that they should just start impeaching Democratic officeholders for similar flimsy reasons and so such a reference is unnecessary.
So, Trudeau and the NDP are teaming up to impeach Harper...?
Are there any charges, or is it more "look, the parliamentary arithmetic makes it possible for us to impeach that guy, let's see if we can come up with an excuse!"
With the risk of sounding like one of those evil Republicans, I have found myself rethinking my attitude to the impeachment of Bill Clinton in recent days and my general regard for the man.
I mean, social permissiveness and "a politician's private life is his private life" and all that, but... Seriously, if a CEO had an intern give him a blowjob in his office, would we really be that sympathetic to the CEO when this later on became a scandal? I mean, in the case of the CEO, we would be asking questions akin to "to what extent was this properly consensual or not? to what extent was this man of evident power using that power to pressure a young girl into giving him sexual favours?"
Now, maybe Bill Clinton shouldn't have been impeached, maybe he didn't strictly speaking break the law or anything like that. But had this taken place in a parliamentary democracy and had Bill Clinton been a prime minister, I think that once the scandal broke, Bill Clinton would more or less have been forced to resign in disgrace.
Of course, this probably have less to do with the legal aspects of the matter more than it has to do with the culture of the American presidency. The President is sort of "above and beyond" having to resign when he does something disgraceful that isn't strictly speaking illegal.
Clinton's actions around the scandal certainly warranted scrutiny, but I'm against letting the scandal overshadow his actual accomplishments as president.
But is this really the attitude we usually take when it comes to scandals of this nature? To rush to the man's defense and say "we shouldn't let this overshadow the good stuff he did!" And, if it is, is that really the attitude that we should take?
Highly Unlikely. They have no charges, and when he was Prime Minister ITTL, Harper himself didn't think about using his Coalition to impeach then-President Paul Martin, waiting politely until the 2007 elections...
If ITTL Trudeau Sr. served as Prime Minister for two years (1980-1982), then Becoming President, so will Trudeau Jr. - Don't forget, Harper can't run for a third term, for now...
If they would Impeach, it's gonna be over either Robocall '11, Robocall '12, or that F-35 Affair.
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Teshuvah
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This is a first in a series of modern day homages to Plutarch's Parallel Lives: Parallel Politicians.
Bernard Sanders, MP and Senator Jeremy Corbyn
Bernard Sanders was born to a working-class Jewish family in London. From a young age, he became active in politics, working in the Labour's youth wing during the Post-WWII years. After being active in politics in college, he entered into politics in the 1970s, being elected as an MP from London in 1975. He was Margaret Thatcher's most ardent critic during her reign, and after Labour's landslide defeat in the 1983 election, he made a long, impassioned, but poorly attended speech about the future of Great Britain.
In 2015, Ed Milliband resigned after his party's humiliating defeat in the general election, and Bernard Sanders' patience paid off. He was elected as Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition, over the old Blairite guard's fervent objections. Key objects of his agenda have been his outspoken commitment to preserving the NHS and increasing its funding, his proposal to adopt a German-style tuition-free higher education model, and his belief in the continued importance of the United Kingdom's membership in the EU.
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Jeremy Corbyn was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He was elected to the state legislature in 1973, to the House in 1981, and to the Senate in 1991. As a left-wing outsider, he was an outspoken critic of both Ronald Reagan and, at certain points, Bill Clinton. In 2015, he began an underdog bid to take the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2016 away from frontrunner Hillary Clinton. After an initial loss in Iowa, he rebounded with victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, and now has has sights firmly set on Super Tuesday.
Bernard Sanders, MP and Senator Jeremy Corbyn
Bernard Sanders was born to a working-class Jewish family in London. From a young age, he became active in politics, working in the Labour's youth wing during the Post-WWII years. After being active in politics in college, he entered into politics in the 1970s, being elected as an MP from London in 1975. He was Margaret Thatcher's most ardent critic during her reign, and after Labour's landslide defeat in the 1983 election, he made a long, impassioned, but poorly attended speech about the future of Great Britain.
In 2015, Ed Milliband resigned after his party's humiliating defeat in the general election, and Bernard Sanders' patience paid off. He was elected as Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition, over the old Blairite guard's fervent objections. Key objects of his agenda have been his outspoken commitment to preserving the NHS and increasing its funding, his proposal to adopt a German-style tuition-free higher education model, and his belief in the continued importance of the United Kingdom's membership in the EU.
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Jeremy Corbyn was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He was elected to the state legislature in 1973, to the House in 1981, and to the Senate in 1991. As a left-wing outsider, he was an outspoken critic of both Ronald Reagan and, at certain points, Bill Clinton. In 2015, he began an underdog bid to take the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2016 away from frontrunner Hillary Clinton. After an initial loss in Iowa, he rebounded with victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, and now has has sights firmly set on Super Tuesday.
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