I haven't done a Farley update for a while. Here he is in all his glory - all 45 pounds of him. He was less than 15 pounds when I got him, so he's more than tripled in size. He's a good dog, or will be once he gets through his rebellious teenage years (months). Sometimes I'll swear he's downright willful, knowing full well he's not supposed to do something, like chewing on a shoe, and then doing it right in front of me!
Something's wrong with this picture. I bought new printer cartridges the other day, and as usual for that sort of item, they came in that bullet-proof, industrial-strength, non-biodegradable, plastic bubble pack that require power tools to open. Inside, there were three envelopes for the environmentally conscious among us to mail off the empties for recycling. If HP really wanted to be environmentally responsible, you'd think they'd come up with better (and far less annoying) packaging. Go figure.
EEWWW! Caroline lost the toenail off the big toe of her left foot. I hope she saved it and has it bronzed in commemoration of her summit of Mt. Rainier.
And for those of you who think that only American politicians like to throw a lot of crap around, there's also an election going on in the Great White North. The latest scandal is that the Conservatives had to take down a photo-shopped picture on their website of a puffin pooping on the Liberal leader Stephane Dion (no relation to Celine).
Unlike the two party system of the US, Canadians have their choice of five parties; Conservatives, Liberals, NDP (like the British Labour party), Bloc Quebecois (these are Quebec nationalists in the federal parliament), and the Green Party. The party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons gets to form the government, but its unlikely that either of the big two parties will win an outright majority. The winner will have to get support from one or more of the smaller parties to form a government.
In a lot of ways I think that the parliamentary system makes the leaders a lot more accountable than in the American system. Canadians don't elect a Prime Minister, they elect a representative in their own riding (like a congressional district in the US). The Prime Minister is the leader of the party that wins the most seats in parliament, and the PM must win in his own riding. The PM forms his (or her) cabinet from elected members. So the PM and his cabinet members debate and vote like any other members of parliament, and they even have to answer questions every day from the Opposition. Can you imagine if George Bush and say, Donald Rumsfeld before he got fired, had to answer questions in Congress every day it was in session?
2 comments:
My apologies to all my dad's blog readers out there. The picture of my toe is absolutely disgusting, and I can't beleive my dad actually posted it! Wait a minute... it is my gross father, maybe I'm not suprised!
I had a similar thing happen to my toenail after doing the Carthew-Halderson Lakes hike in Waterton Lakes National Park.
I agree that question period is a great feature of our system but I beg to differ on your point of the Cabinet consisting of elected members. Most are but Harper appointed Michael Fotier, his campaign co-chair as Public Works Minister, later Minister of International Trade. He then appointed him to the Senate. Alas I also fear you are wrong to assume Harper won't get a majority. At this point it seems very likely as the Liberals are particularly weak.
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