Quotulatiousness

April 26, 2010

Maxime Bernier: Harper’s successor?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:32

Okay, so Andrew Coyne doesn’t quite go so far as to say that Bernier is the next leader of the Conservative party, but he certainly makes a case for Bernier speaking for an under-represented viewpoint in that party — actual conservatives, even (whisper it) “libertarians”:

Let’s just pause for a moment to consider what an extraordinary thing Maxime Bernier is attempting. The former minister in the Harper government is widely said to be preparing the ground for a future leadership bid. How has he been going about it? Since January, Bernier has been methodically laying explosives beneath the government and detonating them at regular intervals, in speeches and writings that, while not overtly criticizing Conservative policy, point in precisely the opposite direction to that on which the government happens to be embarked.

[. . .]

I cannot think of a precedent for this performance. Bernier is careful not to attack the party’s current leadership — just everything they’ve been doing. Yet he could hardly be accused of heresy. He represents, to paraphrase Howard Dean, the Conservative wing of the Conservative party — the party’s soul, its core beliefs, varnished as they may be under layers of expediency, yet still there. Indeed, so contorted has the Conservative party become that many people insist he is merely giving voice to what the leader himself believes.

[. . .]

Indeed, as a libertarian conservative from Quebec, he may find he has more supporters in the West. I don’t suggest he will be leader, or should. His record in cabinet was decidedly mixed: a fine industry minister, he was a disaster at Foreign Affairs. Though the speeches are thoughtful, it remains unclear whether there is a man of substance behind them, not least after the Couillard fiasco. Yet his willingness to state brave truths openly, to call the party back to its authentic self, marks him as one to watch.

I’ve often asked folks what substantive difference there is between the current Conservative government and the previous Liberal government. Other than the colour of the party signs, there’s not much actual “conservative” governing going on.

P.J. O’Rourke definitely wasn’t an “A” student

Filed under: Education, Government, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

At least, based on his apparent contempt for “A” students:

America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students — A students teach.”

It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq war, and to hell with what happened to the Iraqi Class of ’03 after they’d graduated from Shock and Awe.

The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

Now there’s health care reform — just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101.

Why are A students so hateful? I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement? They are. You can look it up (if you have a fancy education the way our betters do and know what the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary is). “Smart” has its root in the Old English word for being a pain. The adjective has eight other principal definitions ranging from “brisk” to “fashionable” to “neat.” Only two definitions indicate cleverness — smart as in “clever in talk” and smart as in “clever in looking after one’s own interests.” Don’t get smart with me.

Whole piece here.

McAfee’s tech problem resolved: image problem will take much longer

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:43

After the technical disaster of an anti-virus company releasing an update that shut down many of their customers’ computers, McAfee now has to cope with the public relations disaster:

After dealing with McAfee’s most recent fix that sabotaged Windows XP PC clients worldwide, users of the antivirus software headed over to Twitter to vent their rage, creating a public-relations and legal nightmare that will likely continue long after the last machine is patched.

“I hate McAfee,” more than one Tweeter wrote, summing up the frustration felt when a McAfee update identified a “normal Windows process” as malware and killed it, kicking off a death spiral for the affected machines.

Another Tweet: “McAfee DAT 5958, you’ve made…no wait, what’s the opposite of “made my day”?… you’ve DESTROYED MY DAY. hate you McAfee. HAAATEEEEE.”

“VirusScan,” another person Tweeted. “The cure is worse than the disease.”

I was fortunate, as fellow blogger William P. alerted me to the issue and I got home and turned off McAfee automatic updating before my desktop machine loaded the poison update.

Powered by WordPress