JamesHackerMP

Good dictionary definition. But also, I think most Americans who own them do use them for hunting. You're looking at a minority of Americans and what they are saying, rather than the "silent majority" on that issue. There's a dichotomy between what is obvious and what is true. You hear the NRA mouth off, and other sources, but they are the people who are "louder" than the rest of us, and have bigger microphones, figuratively speaking, than the rest of us. And I think the former (NRA, etc. that I mentioned) are more widely quoted in the world media than the latter (silent majority). The former looks more interesting in print (or on TV) than the latter. Open up to the fact that the people controlling the flow of information (in any society) are often wrong and the "picture" you get of your neighbors south of the border might not always be an accurate one. But that, I think, is getting WAY off topic. Then again, the dictionary definition you quoted could be expanded to include political culture and corporate culture and "culture" within the context of various situations, not just social culture. I'm willing to bet, that the person who started this thread meant social culture not corporate or political culture. And with that in mind, are there really that many sociocultural differences between our two countries?

BTW Reefer, if I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying that, since the "sacred link" between the MP and his/her constituents has been broken anyway by the oligarchy that is the cabinet, PR would not really be severing anything at all that hasn't already been destroyed for quite a while. Is that kind of what you're saying? If you are, from what I've gathered so far, I now don't blame you. After studying PR, as I said, I've noticed that it tends to benefit the one or two largest parties, ironically enough. After all, why would the large parties allow the small parties to exist, if they didn't get some sort of benefit from them? But I have to admit now, your argument is valid. I didn't mean to get cocky like I did, my apologies.

Getting back on topic...doesn't this depend on what one calls "culture"? People throw the term culture around a lot, sometimes improperly, sometimes not.

Do you actually think these legislative efforts--besides the anti-LGBT laws--will actually work?

ROFL! I've said much the same to my friends about voting in US elections. But generally there's only two "toys" to choose from. I share sympathy with your plight by the way. The same party has pretty much controlled the State of Maryland since Andrew Jackson was president. In the last century, there have been 5 governors from the opposing party (GOP) and only one of them was re-elected to a 2nd term.

Interesting. I found a book finally that looks neat, and it discusses the history of Canada and the United States, together. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195448804/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=U1ZRQMFH6V5K&coliid=I2RTISGQRE0NS3

Nationalists?

Would be neat to see what happens if the EC were to deadlock....or maybe not.

George Wallace actually came fairly close to pulling it off. Not by becoming the President himself, but by picking up enough states to play "kingmaker" by deadlocking the electoral college. This election year does seem a little different. It's like the "perfect storm" for someone like Johnson to jump in and, for once, pull it off. As laughable as that sounds to mainstream Democrats and Republicans, the expression "there's a first time for everything" is practically operable, here.

Question (Reefer) if you were making a law mandating proportional representation to replace FPTP, would you make the Commons go 1/2 and 1/2? (Like the Bundestag?) Or all 338 members by PR?

I'm going to have to stick my neck out and ask why this discussion doesn't include Gov. Johnson? I know the starter of this thread said if it comes down to Trump v. Hillary but you have to admit, a wild card has been thrown into it all of a sudden. Sort of changes the polarized discussion a bit.

I'm told that in Brazil there's a growing protestant movement among the younger church-goers, yes.

Very strong.

Q.E.D. Anywho, I even agree that it is more "democratic" in that sense. But does something work better in a representative political system because it's more directly democratic? I don't remember you making mention above (maybe you did, I'll flip through it later) of the disparity in electoral quotients that overrepresents the smaller provinces. Would you change that, too?

A Very Secret Service (original name: Au Service de la France) is a Netflix original series about a young agent and his colleagues in 1960 in the French Secret Service. It probably came up on my Netflix under shows I might like, because i watch Archer all the time, another spy comedy. Anyone seen it? Thoughts?

Actually, it's not that simple. When the choice of president devolves on the House of Representatives, each congressman doesn't get one vote: each STATE gets one vote, and a majority of states is needed to a choice. So 26 state delegations have to have voted for the same candidate for him or her to get elected. How they do that? No clue. (Perhaps they caucus amongst themselves and then hand the vote to the Speaker? And how they'd determine what Maryland's vote was if 4 congressman voted for Hillary, two for Trump and two for Johnson, for argument's sake; is anybody's guess!) The senate would then choose the vice-president, but that's a little more sane: each senator gets one vote, they only pick from the top TWO who received electoral votes and a majority of senators are needed to win the vice-presidency (likely that there would be a result in the Senate on the first ballot while the congressman are voting again and again like it's a papal conclave. Rest assured, however, that if there is no president-elect by Jan 20th at noon, the VP-elect is sworn in as acting president. So there will be somebody with his finger on the button.

In other words "Yanks should be seen and not heard." I love it. Has anyone on this website--yourself not an exception, obviously--held back from telling us what to do about our own "deeply dysfunctional system"? Forgive me if I've failed to make my point about Proportional Representation. My point was that changing a system from FPTP to PR, or any variation, is a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire." What essentially changes is not just who wins the election, but what is known as the "winning coalition" (Alastair Smith, Bruce Bueno's book on political survival--how's that for "Mr PoliSci"? ) Basically, to whom a leader owes his power, and without whose support the leader collapses. But that gets into a lot of other merde I would rather avoid, lest I attract more disdain from some of you. What I mean by that is, that party discipline (whipping) in countries that use PR, MMP (mixed member plurality) and STV (single transferable vote) is just as strong as in Canada. However, Parliamentary democracy requires that, at least to a degree, no? The backbenchers in these countries end up just as nearly-powerless and the cabinet (and particularly the head of government) just as powerful. The fix to responsible government lies more in making the cabinet more responsible to the House, rather than the other way around. Right now--and some of you have confirmed this in other threads by the way--the PM is probably more powerful than he ought to be, more than one Canadian has said that to me before, by the way. It's also the funny way power is quite often reciprocal in nature. Forgive me if I came off that I was somehow looking down on your system. Judging by the reactions, that is kind of what I did. Mea culpa (means my fault in Latin, btw). Like I said on my post in another forum, I'm here to learn as much as throw in my two cents (or $0.03 CAD). I didn't mean to come off as all preachy, sorry. Be that as it may, I don't look down on the Canadian form of government (like at least one of you seems to look down on ours) or parliamentary democracy in general. Actually, I'm here because I have a great degree of admiration for it; and I'm plenty aware of the flaws in my own country's government. I'm terribly sorry, Reefer, that you consider your own country "insignificant". I don't, and that's why I am here. And as for your statement about spending my energy ensuring the world's biggest nuclear arsenal doesn't end up in the hands of Mr Trump (who you're obviously describing) my answer to that is: "all in good time. The election is on November 8, 2016, and I plan to do precisely that." Fair enough? You need to relax, dude. Smoke if you got 'em. All systems have their flaws. All flaws can be improved, which, due to changing circumstances, create more flaws which will themselves require improvement. (Etc., etc.) As for how I write term papers, as one of you asked: typically not on a discussion board; always Microsoft Word, double-spaced. I can explain more if I have still failed to make my point concisely and successfully, so I suppose I'm not ready--as unedjumicated as I am being an American and all--to say "QED." That, btw, is Latin for quad erat demonstratum (which roughly translates into English as "so there.")

Taxme: my answer would be: so what?

Ah. Not only that, you have an independent authority that does the boundaries. In the US, the constitution is completely silent on the matter; so it's left up to the states to do it. And what a great job they do of it!

Well, I was looking for something a little cheaper than $84.95 CDN (or $66.53 USD)...but that's a good suggestion, thx! I found one for free on Amazon Kindle, alas, it is a little out of date (1919, lol).

Why; because the ridings are larger? or because there are too many parties?

I was wondering if anyone knew a good book to read on history of Canada. I found this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NDTUD2A/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=U1ZRQMFH6V5K&coliid=IZET5Z9X16F5U#nav-subnav Alas, it's 1125 pp and of course $17 (US), for the Kindle version, mind you, that's a little pricey. But I might. Still though, any suggestions?

Just answered my own question: 700 members. Probably a bit big to fit in that wing of the Centre Block. Another dumb question: is the process by which electoral quotients--and representation--are determined written into the Constitution Acts? Sorry, I answered again my own dumb question. I looked up on Wikipedia the "formula" under the Fair Representation Act, which it says replaces what was originally in the Constitution Act, 1867. Wow that's....well, heck at least you do not have gerrymandering, eh?

But speaking of electoral quotients, I was told that, as of the last census, ours is well over 725,000 per one member of the House of Representatives. The number of constituents per senator, on the other hand, varies widely: Wyoming's two senators share 563,626 constituents, whereas the two California senators share a constituency of 37,253,956. I can see why some people would think proportional representation would solve certain problems: like the over representation of the small provinces; (I checked) wherein New Brunswick has a much smaller electoral quotient than Ontario. Kind of strange that you'd allow that to happen. One wonders how large the chamber would have to be if you brought the EQ to a uniform, say, 50,000 or something. Probably pretty big.

The senators have desks, the congressmen do not. It's bench seating in the House (just in a semicircle shape, however). Actually, the House of Commons was blown up in WWII. Winston Churchill ordered that the chamber be rebuilt exactly like it was before being hit by a German bomb. In Annapolis, the current State House is the oldest surviving one in the United States (I was told). The chambers are pretty nice-looking. One of the two was used as the "US Senate" chamber in House of Cards (American version) so they didn't have to build a set for it.