Watched some of the British election coverage on C-Span, just as I did in the summer of 2001, several months after the White House coup in the United States.

It goes without saying that the BBC covers elections about a million times better than our U.S. "networks" do.

Last time, I was incredibly impressed with their parliamentary system, whereby every candidate for M.P. assembles in his/her home constituency for a formal announcement of the results. I was especially impressed seeing that Tony Blair had to stand on a stage (in what looked like a high school auditorium) with the other candidates from Sedgefield--including not only the Tory and Lib-Dem candidates but every other asshole who felt like running for M.P., including a guy dressed in a clown suit.

This time, I was even more impressed--and there was no clowning around. Blair had to stand on the stage (he was the winner, of course) with an independent candidate who ran for office because his son had been killed in Iraq and he believed Blair had lied and misled the country into war.

The guy did pretty well, garnering (I believe) about 10% of the vote. And Blair had to stand there, three feet behind the anti-war candidate, looking like he'd just bitten off and swallowed a big fat turd, while the anti-war guy gave a moving and damning concession speech in which he openly alluded to Blair's lies.

Blair has gone from looking sprightly and fresh-faced to looking like a bleary, haggard, run-down phony loser. He made his bed and he's sleeping in it. But compared to our own chimp-faced piece of inhuman presidential shit, he looks like King Lear.

Their system is just better then ours. Their democracy is better than ours. True, their weather is shit. But compared to our psychotic, holographic holocaust of a nation-state, Britain seems like a pretty good country.

N.B. For you fans of "The Office," Slough went for Labour.