The "rule of thumb" breakdown was like this: Anything that required physical equipment (powerful computers, test rigs, etc) they sucked at, because they didn't have it. Anything that did NOT require physical equipment (mathematics, optics, theoretical physics, etc), they excelled at.

I remember when I was doing my linguist course while in the Navy, back in '82. One of my instructor's husband had PhD in physics - they were Jewish, and had only been able to leave the Soviet Union the year before. He saw the chess programme I had on my Radio Shack Model I (yes, I'm that old), and nearly freaked - not because of the chess programme, but because he'd never seen a computer that powerful - and he couldn't believe he could just go to the store and actually *buy* one.

Same for Newfoundlanders, if you want to be accurate.

Am I the only one here who understood my comment to be a joke?

Calling what is spoken in Quebec "French" is just as silly as saying what is spoken in Newfoundland is "English"

You answered your question in your question. To wit:

.... and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question.

In other words, he's not managing.

The whole idea that China should be 'held responsible' for the hacking is just plain silly on it's face. Governments and private corporations have been spying on each other ever since the first cave man tried to keep a secret.

Can you imagine during the cold war of the US President went to Stalin and said "please stop spying on us"? Because that's exactly what's been suggested here.

Well, I grew up in a small town myself - only 3,500 - in the interior of Labrador. It don't get no smaller than that :)

Also, the riding of Ottawa-Vanier wasn't exactly what you would call The Big CIty ....... Vanier was (still is?) a small French slum surrounded by Ottawa. We had grade 8 kids come to the campaign office asking questions for their social studies classes who literally couldn't speak a word of English. It honestly reminded me of being on the North Shore up past Quebec City, it was so provincial.

There is a big difference between thinking that Climate Change is a myth, and being against Kyoto. I am a (Canadian) conservative.

Do I think that climate change is real? Yes.
Do I think it's mostly man-made? Yes.
Do I think Kyoto is a GOOD THING(tm)? No freaking way.

Kyoto exempted two of the biggest carbon producers in the world - India & China - from having to reduce their emissions, while expecting the developed world to not only reduce theirs, but to PAY EVERYBODY ELSE TO DO NOTHING.

Kyoto, in practice, was more about wealth redistribution to the developing world than climate change.

And in the specific Canadian case ..... the Jean Cretien government, which actually signed the treaty, did absolutely nothing to implement it - to the point where not only did we NOT reduce our emissions, but they had actually increased by a rather large percent - to the point where we would have had to shut down every gasoline & diesel engine in the country for a year to even begin to meet it's objectives. All the Tories did was call a spade a spade, and face reality.

Reality Check: It ain't just the Tories. I remember one particular election I was working on for the Tories in the 80s. It was in Ottawa-Vanier, a riding that had elected a Tory only *once* since Confederation. That was back in the 1920s, when - for one election - Rockliffe (old money, filthy rich part of Ottawa) had been included in the riding. It was removed next election, and everything went back to Red, where it's been ever since. The previous election, the LIberals had won by over 22,000 votes - the Tories didn't even get their deposit back, which means they got less than 10% of the vote. It was about as safe a seat as could possibly exist. So, what happened? The Liberals "forgot" to enumerate whole apartment buildings in polls that had gone Tory the previous election. Signs were ripped down literally faster than we could put them back up. On election day, they moved the polls in Tory areas without notice. In the 6 polls that I was an scrutineer for, my Liberal counterparts literally tried to disqualify every Tory vote they came across.

The moral of the story is this: bad behavior during elections is hardly confined to the Tories. There are idiots on *all* sides - what saves us is our system, which is pretty good at catching this sort of thing, and the fact the the idiots are rare IN ALL PARTIES.

I think you need some more windex for your glass house there.

1) First-Past-The-Post favours different parties at different times - it all works out in the end, provided you think about time scales larger than one meal to the next. One thing it *does* do, is give a party chance to form a stable government and actually govern. In most proportional systems, you wind up with an almost permanent gridlock system, where the tail winds up wagging the dog. YMMV
2) The Prime Minister does not have absolute power - nothing even close to it.
3) General B'weto will remain in power until he dies, or is overthrown by a coup; any elections he decides to have, will be elections where he gets over 90% of the vote.
4) The WILL be another election - there is no choice in the matter. If the Prime Minster looses, he will leave 24 Sussex Drive on his own, without requiring police escort of military prompting.

Yeah - we live in such a brutal dictatorship.