Westminster's Revenge on House of Commons Night in Canada

RON MACLEAN
(in studio)
Welcome to another extraordinary summer telecast of House of Commons Night in Canada. I’m Ron Maclean, with Don Cherry again beamed in from…Don, where exactly are you?

DON CHERRY
(on webcam via Skype, obviously in raucous bar, patrons mugging behind him)
Wellington's Pub in Parry Sound,I know I'm not supposed to plug anything but hey, you asked.

RON MACLEAN
How do you Skype in a pub?

DON CHERRY
On my iPhone!  Where've you been?

RON MACLEAN
It seems only yesterday you didn't know what Twitter was...

DON CHERRY
You call me up to get nostalgic?

RON MACLEAN
Of course not, I'm calling you to get your reaction to defeat of the government's motion about Syria in the British House of Commons.

DON CHERRY
Now we're talking.  I saw the clip where they announced the vote, and then I watched the whole thing on the BBC...

RON MACLEAN
And what did you think?

DON CHERRY
I think Bercow has the makings of a great hockey player.

RON MACLEAN
Bercow being the Speaker...

DON CHERRY
Yeah, he tells people to shut up and sit down.

RON MACLEAN
I heard him tell some guy he looked like an erupted volcano and to calm himself..

DON CHERRY
That's what I mean.

RON MACLEAN
So let's get into the specifics...

DON CHERRY
The debate was fantastic, it doesn't get better than that.  Instead of yelling at each other - OK, so there is some yelling at Prime Minister's Question Time - they actually listen to each other and yield the floor as required.  And Rifkind told Milliband he was "incapable of taking 'yes' for an answer"...you don't hear that kind of stuff in our House of Commons.

RON MACLEAN
So you think we have something to learn?

DON CHERRY
Absolutely.  And, bonus, the vote saved Obama's ass....

RON MACLEAN
I'm sure we'll be hearing from CBC management tomorrow....

DON CHERRY
Cameron and his crazy friends wanted to shoot up Syria for no obvious reason...

RON MACLEAN
There was the gas attack...

DON CHERRY
We don't know that.  Kerry says they have good evidence but doesn't say what it is, and the UN weapons inspectors - does this sound familiar, people? - had to cut short their work, but in any case the methodical work they've done will take some weeks to analyze.  If it takes these guys weeks to figure things out after being on the ground, how could Obama know for sure what happened yesterday? Anyway, Saddam gassed his own people when he was a friend of the US, and nobody, including Donald Rumsfeld, said boo, so it doesn't make sense that the issue is chemical weapons.  Personally, I don't see why a gas attack is worse than shooting hundreds of unarmed protesters in cold blood, as the military in Egypt did only weeks ago without Obama breaking a sweat, and it's not clear that it's worse than American helicopters machine gunning children in Afghanistan, or children dying slowly trapped in rubble after being bombed.

RON MACLEAN
Are you saying the Americans caused children to be bombed in Syria?

DON CHERRY
Well not directly but atrocities have been going on for two years in Syria without any thought of blowing up Assad, and Susan Rice and her friends torpedoed any chance of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria by demanding Assad should go as part of any negotiations, which doomed any chance of useful diplomacy, and then blamed everything on Russia.  So now Obama is choking on his own tough talk, but he can't walk the walk because he has no plan, no Security Council resolution, no allies, and no way out.  That's why the British House of Commons saved Obama's a...

RON MACLEAN
...aaand I think we'd better leave it there for now, on this special edition of House of Commons Night in Canada, covering historical proceedings in British Parliamentary Democracy.  Don, thanks for joining us.

DON CHERRY
No problem. You know, Wellington's is fun, but I'd really like a night out in the Strangers Bar in the Palace of Westminster.  They have fisticuffs and everything...