online safe havens for hate speech are irresponsible. I don’t have much more to add about the whole storm that has been going around in the past day or so, except to also point (as Howard did as well) to Ross Mayfield’s contribution on the subject.
Archives for March 2007
The results of Quebec’s election
yesterday confounded all predictions and proved to be among the most interesting elections in contemporary Canadian history. I think this will prove to be a watershed election for both Quebec and Canada, though I am not sure how things will play out.
Some impressions:
- It’s annoying to note the interesting showing by the Green Party and then to remember all of the coverage that the foundation of Québec Solidaire received in the press.
- I think that Charest is secretly disappointed that he didn’t lose his seat last night. He’s never had either a taste or a feel for Quebec politics, having ended up there via a series of events beyond his control.
- Plus, there’s not much Charest can do to fix things in the PLQ. I think the main reason for their lack of success last night is that Charest will never be seen as anything but a strong Federalist, whereas his predecessors (i.e., Bourassa) retained a great deal of aloofness towards Ottawa.
- I think the socially left side of the PQ has gone beyond what the non-Montreal voter in Quebec will accept – and mixed with the emphasis on civic (not ethnic) nationalism that Parizeau’s “money and the ethnic vote” comment in 1995 provoked, sealed their fate.
- I don’t think we can escape the fact that Boisclair’s being gay had an impact on the results. I don’t think Quebecois outside of Montreal are homophobic in general – far from it – but this part of his persona cemented the close identification of Boisclair with Montreal, which most Quebecois seem to believe is completely out of step with the rest of the Province. So it wasn’t an anti-gay vote but an anti-Montreal vote. Being gay just reinforced Boisclair’s Montreal-ness.
- I don’t think either the PQ or the PLQ will be capable of truly addressing the problems that surfaced for them in this election, at least not for some time.
- I think we get a Federal election sooner than later following this result, if only because the Quebec voters have clearly demonstrated that they’re willing to experiment with new things. Right now, I would predict a Harper majority.
- Paul Wells made a great point in his blog last night: “…how does Stéphane Dion feel, knowing that 46 Quebec seats are now held by Liberals who agree with Stephen Harper on federalism and 42 Adéquistes who agree with him on everything else?”
Overall, the whole thing was as stunning political theater as we’ve seen in years. There are still too many wildcards in the deck to know how this will play out, but I suspect that notwithstanding the wild results, Quebec won’t have to go to an election for some time. Only time will tell.
Gruber has posted an exposé
about a company called LogoMaid that has ripped off Dan Cederholm’s SimpleBits logo. I’m going to post a long quote from Gruber’s site with links intact, because, as he said, it’s a good thing when high PageRank sites spread the word about crap like this (this isn’t as high as Daring Fireball, but it’s OK).
Anyhow:
LogoMaid is an outfit that sells off-the-shelf logos and corporate identities for a couple hundred bucks a pop. Unsurprisingly, their work is not very original or good, and in some cases, is a flat-out rip-off. Dan Cederholm spotted this knock-off of his SimpleBits logo, on sale at LogoMaid for $199, and posted it to his Flickr account.
White House Press Secretary
Tony Snow today was trotting out a new talking point: that Congress has no oversight authority of the Executive Branch. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has the story and provides a strong opinion about all of this that should be read. To me it’s just the latest in a long line of really remarkable efforts by the White House to completely re-configure US governance from the top down.
It brings to mind an important question: has the Bush administration’s primary and overarching goal been to strengthen Executive power beyond anything recognizable in US history?
Every policy that has been pursued by the Bush administration – and I include the Iraq War in this – can easily be seen to have been done in the service of increasing Executive power. And when you consider that many of the muckety-mucks – including most notably Cheney – came out of the Nixon era, it starts to look like a pretty reasonable theory.
When we look at why something like the invasion of Iraq happened, people bring out all kinds of theory about NeoCon dreams or restoring American force in the world or (even) a justifiable response to presumed terrorism and terrorist intentions on the part of Saddam. But what if all of those reasons are simply incidental? What if the ultimate reason to start a war was just to cultivate more fertile ground for strengthening the Executive Branch?
The implications are staggering when you turn the equation around like that – not Executive privilege as an outgrowth of the needs of wartime, but as the underlying reason for the war in the first place.
Roughly Drafted Magazine
published an interesting piece called How FairPlay Works: Apple’s iTunes DRM Dilemma at the end of February. It’s a must-read in the context of the very open Apple-DRM file. At the bottom of the article there are links to several other interesting pieces as well. Well worth your time.
