We don’t have guffaws in the U.S. Here they’re called “belly laughs” as in “The Republicans had a great belly laugh as Gary Hart went down in flames.”
To be honest I was remarking on the voters themselves not the politicians but now you mention it our MP’s do sometimes come out with some absolute twaddle - I remember a famous ‘diss’ but it was a while back when I were just a lad but the gist was that the speaker was wearing a knitted jumper, the kind you might get from an elderly relative, and as he was trying to speak to the house when the opposistion started chanting ‘woolly jumper’ over and over until he just gave up. I couldn’t decide (even at 8 or however old I was) whether it was a hilariousley public school style taunt or simply a complete and utter waste of time. Utterly ridiculous really.
Whenever I’ve watched QT, I’m half expecting them to start firing rubber-bands around, any second . All terrorists would need to do in that place is spread a few “Whoopee cushions” about, and the whole parliamentary process would grind to a halt.
I think this election is much more vitriolic because many liberals/conservatives see Obama/Palin as different, that he’s the one that’s going to change Washington somehow. Now that they actually have a cause, they’re going to root for it with the zeal of a fanatic, instead of that of a sports fan.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Well, I care a great deal about the coming election and have very strong preferences about the outcome.
I don’t read the political threads much. Most of them are partisan ranting or facts taken out of context, presented in a manner that would be put a political advisor to the blush.
There are other threads.
That’s the whole point of the parliamentary process- to grind things to a halt. If you don’t pass too much legislation, you can’t fuck things up too much.
I know, there is just a hell of a lot less than there used to be!
I’m not against people being interested in politics and this election result in particular but I have noticed that it seems that there is more of a culture of ‘were right, they’re wrong’ than I have noticed over here - here it is more of a case of ‘well they all have their bad points, which one is the least bad’?
Maybe we need to get some better candidates? Scrap that, get rid of the ‘maybe’.
Um, you are aware that for the two final candidates in a major political party to be black or female is a bit of a big deal, especially since they were not representing a conservative party?
Well, this election is really over the top batshit because we’re (and by “we”, I mean the Dope) ecstatic that we’re finally going to be free of Bush! Woohoo! There will be dancing in the streets come inauguration day. (Well, here in Michigan, the dancing will probably be indoors. It’s COLD in January.)
Anyway. We’re just frantic because we want to get it right for once. It’s different for alla y’all, if your government can fall if it gets too unpopular, we just have to grin and bear it until the appointed time, whereupon we go nuts.
Sounds a bit like this episode which happened to the ex-media/breakfast oddball, Gyles Brandreth - though with some apparent differences and almost Churchillian wit:
"In demand as a speech-writer/doctor, Gyles made many friends, but was obviously irritated that his relatively high media profile (and his penchant for loud knitted jumpers on TV) held him back from office. But this did give him one brilliant opportunity in the house - when baited by Prescott muttering ‘Woolly jumper, woolly jumper’, he responded: “The advantage of a woolly jumper is that you can take it off at will. The disadvantage of a woolly mind is that you are lumbered with it for life.”
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/iaindalesdiar-21/detail/0297643118
Meh, it seems to me that it was approximately the same last time the U.S.A. had an election, with a ton of political threads, or at least “mine is good, yours is bad” threads, and lots of other members lamenting sadly “look, can we not just shove all this election stuff into its own temporary forum?”
Perhaps it seems louder because the whole thing takes longer. I admit I’m still hoping it might settle down to more discussion of policy, but will probably not be holding my breath. I just our Murcan friends vote in Obama on the grounds that the others are too scary. 
Oh well, I’m going to find the Labour Party “leader” in Holyrood result fairly amusing - that, plus the Glenrothes by-election (whenever Brown bothers to set a date for it) but that might not seem all that entertaining from Southampton, admittedly.
Ah, good for you. I was suddenly trying to work out who the woolly jumper man would have been. Heck, I suppose Brandreth got off lightly from Prescott, in that Prescott didn’t thump him. 