Dust my Broom - News, Views and Blues from a Free Canadian

Oshawhat?

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Now we know Government Motors' product plans for Canada. This is not encouraging:

...The next-generation Impala will start production in February 2013, according to the latest timetable communicated by the company to suppliers. The current model, in production since 2005, will be more than seven years old by then. That is an unusually long stretch for a vehicle without a revamp, but GM lacked the money to redo it...

The Chevy Impala and Camaro are now the only vehicles assembed at Oshawa. Then "The Buick Regal...[is] to start in Oshawa in August 2011..."

Here's a critique of the plans:

Here's GM's lineup of vehicles assigned to Oshawa: the new Cadillac XTS, the Buick Regal, a redesigned [emphasis added] Chevrolet Impala and the retro Camaro.

SUPPLIED FILE PICTURE (top), MICHAEL STUPARYK/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
The cars to be produced in Oshawa include the new Cadillac XTS, top, the Buick Regal, a redesigned Chev Impala and the retro Camaro, above.
That wouldn't be my choice for the guts of GM's Canadian operations. Three of these vehicles – the Caddie, Impala and Camaro – are out of step with the times. Too big, apart from the Camaro and Regal. Too thirsty. At best, the Camaro and XTS are low-volume niche products. [The redesigned Impala will actually be smaller than the current version, see first link in the post--a fact that seems to have escaped the author.]
...There's speculation that one of the four Oshawa models will also be built in a hybrid version. Read on.
The Cadillac XTS is a luxury stretch sedan. The Impala is another land yacht. It's favoured by fleet buyers (police and taxis) [rental companies too, which can actually be a drag] and, otherwise, by an elderly demographic. Buick, like Cadillac and the Impala-Caprice line, skews to an old demographic. Possibly the oldest, in fact. It's often said that today's Buick buyer is purchasing his last vehicle.
As for the Camaro muscle car, it's among the swan songs of 77-year-old Bob Lutz, the veteran Detroit "car guy," and GM's design chief until recently, who will retire soon. Lutz beguiled the car press by candidly dissing earlier GM flops like the Pontiac Aztek, and by flying to work in a chopper he pilots...
On the bright side, though, Chev and Cadillac are the two GM brands with real life in them. (There's hope for Buick, but mostly in Asia, where it did not develop a reputation as a stodgy "dad's car" along with Oldsmobile – R.I.P.) Cadillac has gained market share of late, thanks to the street cred lent by prominent hip-hoppers who adopted its SUVs earlier this decade.
Caddie is still very far back of BMW, Lexus and Mercedes in the luxury segment. But it's not impossible to imagine a comeback to at least respectable sales volumes...
...Chevrolet basically is GM...
GM simply has to reverse Chev's slow decline or there is no GM...
...I can't help being disappointed. Oshawa won't get one of GM's most impressive cars, the Chevy Malibu, deserved winner of just about every "car of the year" award going, and a strong seller despite the diminished allure of the Chev brand.
Neither will Oshawa get the high-volume Chev Cobalt econocar...

In fact this product range is aimed squarely at the US, not Candian, market. Americans do like their "land yachts" and can afford to pay more for a vehicle than Canadians. The Impala still sells pretty well in the US and better than the smaller Malibu--though Impala sales are down drastically this year. And will sales of the current model hold up until 2013? Good luck. Even getting Oshawa to 2011 with just the Impala and Camaro might be a stretch.

As might be expected the Malibu sells better than the Impala in Canada though I can't find comparative sales figures. But this January 2009 GM Canada press release touts Malibu sales and does not even mention the Impala.

See also the top five selling in Canada this February to see how different the two auto markets are.

The new Buick Regal--" a stylish Fusion-size sedan"--might have a good chance in the US but I can't see a lot of them being sold in Canada at a very profitable price--the Regal will also be competing against the Toyoto Camry and Honda Accord, eh?

With the above eventual product lineup at Oshawa I also can't see how GM can keep "15 to 17 per cent of the company's production here." That's what the Canadian and Ontario governments think they're getting. Hah! Unless the Ingersoll, Ontario, plant really, er, revs up:

...
GM makes Chevrolet Equinox and ~~Pontiac Torrent~~ SUVs at Cami, and on June 26 said it will make the GMC Terrain crossover at the Canadian plant. Cami’s output is down 78 percent this year through July 4, according to trade publication Automotive News...

More here on these midsize crossovers:

...

The 2010 GMC Terrain...

Mark

Ottawa

Celebrating Social Justice

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

And on the twelfth of July, 2009, what could be best to celebrate than the victory of social reformer and activist William of Orange over forces sympathetic to absolute monarchy, state religion, and oppression of bourgeois property rights?

I first was introduced to William of Orange by my public school science teacher, the one who constantly told us that the Harp seal was going to become extinct that year if the evil seal hunt occured. That was back in 1972. You remember 1972? That was the year the harp seal became extinct. Actually, not. The seals have been going extinct every year since then, but actually never have. And each year, people fork over money to save the seals that are not going extinct, to save them from extinction. I learnt about those sorts of gimmicks when I started telemarketing; but at the time, William of Orange was an interesting guy, and the gimmicks used to smear him, his beliefs, his followers, and his faith, were just so much new kindling for the power plant of my mind.

My bolshevik science teacher was filled with facts that were untrue about William of Orange. But as a young, inquisitive mind, the use of history as disinformation was something exciting to have exposure too. I soon demolished the spiders web of falsehoods that were the tales of my bolshevik science teacher, and with it, can shine some light on the murky, spineless creature, that is the modern left, that lives in darkness and prefers its food dead and rotten.

The protestants of Ireland were in revolt against an oppressive aristocracy. The issues were property rights, so Marx would classify this as a bourgeois revolution. And Marx liked bourgeois revolutions, as they preceeded proletarian revolutions. So Marx, unlike his science teacher disciple who was just wearing his skin like a wolf wears a sheep skin to hunt, was pro-Orange. Real Marxists sympathize with the Orange revolution. I will deal with the fake Marxists in a bit.

The aristocrats in Ireland adopted the forms and structures of the Catholic church as a state religion to make themselves more powerful. The utility of state religions was quite apparent in these times; the aristocrats had no illusions about being faithful to the spiritual teachings of the Catholic church of the time; it was a useful means to the end. Much as Che mouthed socialist theory, but trampled on this theory with his mass murders, tortures, and insults to the intellegent; so too the Irish aristocratic class merely used the trappings of the church to advance the defence of their overweening property rights, avoidance of taxation, and oppression of free speech.

And this ties us back to the present age, this meme of corrupt forces clothing themselves in convenient cameoflage. And this brings us back to my bolshevik school teacher, and to progressives and modern activists in general. The average reader soon observes that modern bolshevik has very little in common with the teachings and beliefs of bolshevik theory. We have feminists who champion prostitutes, where feminism abhors this profession. We have gay rights parades which feature homophobic anti-israeli prancers. We have journalists that cannot spell even when they copy over press releases. We have a workers party that agitates for policies that exploit the taxpayers, who are ... workers. Indeed, the leftists are not ideological leftists, not consistant, not logical. No, leftists are a front organization for a resurgent aristocracy. Like the Anglo-Norman aristocracy of Ireland used the Catholic church for their own greedy oppressive purposes, so too does the modern aristocracy use the veneer of bolshevism to adorn their works. The skin this wolf is wearing is not sheep, but Karl Marx's hide.

So when I watch the Orange Day parade on youtube, when I listen to those wonderful drums and fifes, I see the successful overthrow of a corrupt aristocracy at the hands of the bourgeois. Same as Marx saw. But not the vision that the predators in Marx's hide wish you to see. But I do see that the very aristocracy that William of Orange set out to destroy has reformed: the little dead bits of aristocrat have crawled out of whatever hole they have been rotting in, and gathered back together. Aristocrats have a number of attributes, and one of them is aversion to ability. Aristocrats like to pass on their wealth and power to their family, not to those most able to wield it. They are ideologically opposed to hiring and promotions based on ability, and you can see this manifest here in the present time.

Pierre Burtons son. Let us say that your father was a gifted writer and journalist. An aristocrat would wish to use this attribute to gain a high paying, high pensioned, low effort job. Why have ability, when you can rest on Dad's laurels? Of course, no such example exists (and in our current free speech environment, I could not talk about it anyway; aristocrats infest the upper levels of our society like rabies infects the brain), but you might be able to find other examples of sons, daughters, and whatever gender they choose to be, progeny of progressives, handed elite jobs, and being incompetent at it. Watch for these aristocrats, watch for them being incompetent, and for dressing themselves in the zombie skin of bolshevist thought. And when I see the Orange parade, which celebrates the defeat of these aristocrats in the past, it gives me hope that the modern aristocrats will go the same way, in the same way.

As the aristocrats go about enlarging their plantations in Toronto, be it the Jane-Finch estate, the Flemingdon Park, the Ossington and Dundas, or the whatever third world stink hole they are building this season, do look for those high paying, high pensioned, low effort jobs. When you pass through Jane and Finch, look for the six figure salaried 'community workers'; look around for the street nurses not on the street, the teaching assistants who never produce a literate student, the food bankers with their restaurants. The aristocrats in the media ignore their kin and instead prattle about issues to delude the stupid, ignorant, nieve, and simple; they lie, avoid, manipulate, and deceive. Nothing we haven't seen before. And if you talked to the soldiers of William of Orange's army, they would nod and understand your story.

The Battle of the Boyne is a celebration of freedom, the overthrow of a corrupt aristocracy, and a victory for law abiding people. It happened in the past, and will happen again. Our current crop of aristocrats are every bit as dumb, incompetent, and lazy as the Fenians who shuffled to their graves on the Boyne. Perhaps they should consider surrendering now, before it is too late. As for the awakening bourgeois here in Ontario and the West, faced with the extortions of taxation, oppressions of 'human rights', and the lying accusations of 'racism' at every turn, No Surrender is no longer not an option.

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this

xpd Mitchieville, DustMyBroom

"Presentism"

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:34:24 +0000

Jonathan Yardley deals with what Margaret MacMillan omits in her latest book:

...
What goes unmentioned in MacMillan's otherwise astute analysis is the trend among professional historians to view the past through whatever contemporary lens they find most congenial. A persistent theme in Gordon S. Wood's collection of essays "The Purpose of the Past," published last year, is that this practice of "presentism" is now so widespread in academia that it threatens to become standard and accepted practice. The hegemony of the "Holy Trinity" of race, gender and class theory has turned the writing of history in too many instances into propaganda machinery for certain political and ideological points of view popular among the rebellious young of the 1960s and '70s and still regarded as gospel in many university departments of history, the social sciences and literature.
This is a matter about which I have written often, and I do not intend to labor it further now. The point is that complaints by professional historians about abuses of history by politicians and other amateur malefactors lose some of their force when one considers that the history departments themselves are much in need of a housecleaning. This is scarcely the case with MacMillan, whose high reputation has been earned through scrupulous research, clear-eyed interpretation and eminently readable prose. But "Dangerous Games" would be an even better book had she placed this issue squarely on the table...

Mark

Ottawa

Zionists killed Michael Jackson

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:26:25 +0000

What would we do without blogs?

Pretty mangy bear (II)

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:01:57 +0000

Further to this post, David Ignatius lays things out:

A Russian Economy In Reverse Gear
The un-modern face of Russia's economic "modernization" was evident in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's response to the nation's credit crunch. Last month he ordered state-controlled banks to lend $13 billion -- and said that the banks' CEOs couldn't take their summer vacations until they had done his bidding.
Russia today often seems to combine the worst aspects of a free market and a command economy. It has the dealmaking and corruption of the new capitalism, and the top-heavy bureaucratic inefficiency of the old communism. The result is an economy that seems stuck in second gear, even as those of the nations Russia sees as its peers -- Brazil, India and China [some doubts about the latter two, too] -- continue to accelerate...
Russia's industrial workforce today is nearly seven times less productive than its American counterpart, Inozemtsev calculates. Its industrial exports totaled just $32 billion last year, compared to $1.4 trillion from its "BRIC" colleagues, Brazil, India and China.
This economic disaster is obscured by Russia's success as an energy exporter, which fuels an unrealistic dream that it can prosper as a "petro-superpower." But even this crucial sector is backward and badly managed. "In spite of Russia's immense reserves and smart people, its oil and gas production is stagnating because of corruption, underinvestment and mismanagement," says J. Robinson West, the chief executive of PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm.
"Why has this happened?" asks Inozemtsev [a professor at the Higher School of Economics and director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies]. "I have one and only answer: The ruling Russian bureaucracy is simply incapable of managing anything more sophisticated than an oil well. In the last 10 years, the government has made nothing that would be able to contribute to the industrial growth in this country...
...The energy giant Gazprom, for example, spends three times less on research and development than any other major energy company in the world.
State-run monopolies add to inefficiency. Inozemtsev estimates that raw material and energy costs are three to four times greater in Russia than in China; a kilometer of paved road costs three times more here than in Western Europe, and new retail space is four times more expensive.
High oil prices convinced Russians that they live in a rich country. Their best economic hope is to admit that they don't -- and to adopt the tough modernization policies that have brought real prosperity to countries such as South Korea and Malaysia. Otherwise, says Inozemtsev, oil-rich Russia will "end up in a mess like Venezuela, Nigeria or Angola."
In last week's summit with President Obama, Russia's leaders asked to be taken seriously as a global player. But until they fix their economy, this will remain an empty demand. The numbers show that today's Russia is a declining power, not a rising one.

Over to Krazy.

Mark

Ottawa

Principles and reality of war

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Two excerpts from Andrew Roberts' Masters and Commanders (paperback, 2009):

1) Principles (p. 139):

'The ultimate objective of all military operations is the destruction of the enemy's armed forces by battle,' reads the US Army's Field Services Regulations of 1923...

Surely the "ultimate objective" is compelling the enemy to accept he conditions one desires; or, failing, that, the penultimate objective is having the enemy agree to conditions one can tolerate. The antepenultimate objectives being that the enemy simply, one way or the other, effectively goes away--or one does oneself, not having, er, "lost". And of course much depends on the nature of the enemy.

Recent examples of objectives here, here and here.

2) Reality (p. 219):

If Rommel's army were all Germans they would beat us.
Winston Churchill, July 1942

Indeed (numbers from October).

Update: More details on 1942 German/Italian composition of Panzerarmee Afrika

Mark

Ottawa

The progressive Corn Cob

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Greenies across the planet are united in the one voice of diversity, proclaiming that there is something important about the climate and that other people should give more money to fund soft, high paying jobs for greenies.

One way you can fight Global Warming is to encourage your fellow greenies to eschew toilet paper in favour of planet friendly corn cobs.

1) Re-usuable. A corn cob can be used up to three times by someone with a normal roughage consumption diet. As roughage consumption increases consumers can personalize their toilet hygene customs to suit their cultural norms and non-Christian religious practices. Go easy on your hemorroids, though, as a 'pull through' against the cob grain my aggravate your rectal sphincter, especially if after a night of sodomy * .

2) Ancient Wisdom. The written records of the Notalotagumption tribe contain detailed accounts of the trade in corn cobs between the friendly Huron and Iroquois tribes, who lived in peace before the evil heteronormative white man introduced war, fatty meats, tobacco products, and homophobia in the early eighth century. Northern tribes prized the corn cobs, and eagerly traded gold, silver, copper, machine tools, plywood, and aggregates for these, natures perfect alternative to toilet paper.

3) Recyclable. The fece smeared corn cob makes an ideal addition to the diversity of your compost heap. There is a dynamic synergy between turd and cob that brings about rapid environmental decomposition. The global village that is the multi-cultural diversity of bacteria, fungi, and slime molds celebrate the turd and cob combo like welfare people on cheque day before the time of Mike Harris.

There is no reasonable argument against state subsidies of activist groups agitating for increased state funding. And when the banner issue is corn cob ass wipe, only a racist, a Christian, or a taxpayer could question the wisdom of spending money on activist jobs, pensions, and bankable sick days.

Get your activist and progressive friends on the corn cob campaign!

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this. I care.

xpd Mitchieville, DustMyBroom

Reactionary Reds

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:33:25 +0000

Terry Glavin returns to the lists:

Saeed Rahnema: For Progressive Solidarity, Against The "Reactionary Left."
For a properly rigorous assessment of the pathetically reactionary currents that have caused such stupefaction across the western liberal-left spectrum in recent years, with particular reference to solidarity with the Iranian uprising, here's Saeed Rahnema.

The upshot: "The left has historically been rooted in solidarity with progressive movements, women's rights and rights for unions and its voice has been first and foremost a call for freedom. The voices that we hear today from part of the Left are tragically reactionary. Siding with religious fundamentalists with the wrong assumptions that they are anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists, is aligning with the most reactionary forces of history. This is a reactionary left, different from the progressive left which has always been on the side of the forces of progress."

It's like I've been saying. Here, and here, and here...

Mark

Ottawa

Toronto's war against the Planet

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

I have never been so outraged as I am right now. My left eyebrow is twitching. The blood that courses through my veins burns with self-leftist anger that can only be quenched with adequate social spending. My feet are aching to put on sandals, and my morning scotch sits unappreciated by my mouse pad. Even my adorable house cat, Mister Whiskers, is upset. He is pretending to sleep in the sunny widow sill, dreaming of social justice just beyond his reach, on the branch where the chickadees sing of taxspending.

All my life the Greenies have been telling me the planet is going to explode (nuclear war), freeze (Return of the Ice Ages), be irradiated (ozone layer), or melt (global warming). Each year was the last year for a diversity of cute, cuddlesome critters, like the harp seal (going extinct since '72), ground hogs, raccoons, or urban hip-hop rappers. After many years of last years, confronted with the extinction of everything cute, I developed an empathy for media-friendly critters that can be photo shopped to chisel a buck out of the taxpayers. Now it is the turn of the Rat.

Rats have a long history and a rich cultural heritage in Toronto. Indeed, Toronto and Rats are synonymous. The wise chief of the Winnebago, Willard, refered to Toronto as 'the city of Rats' during land claim negotiations. Hockey great Harold Ballard, after whom the Ballard Landfill and Maritime deep dumping zone is projected to be named, was commonly compared to the cute, cuddly Rat, especially by Leaf's fans, players, and coaches.

But now Toronto has forgotten its' non-white, non-working, non-Christian, non-male, non-heteronormative heritage ... and is oppressing the Rat. And if genocide, mass murder, institutional rape, and over priced Tofu are not bad enough, Toronto is using harmful products to poison our animal friend, the Rat.

I watched with horror the main stream media reports of city workers putting down some sort of death spray to, horrors, kill our fellow Rat-Canadians. What sort of lingering death spray was this? What horrible toxic chemical? I could only think that this stuff * was some sort of military poison, like those used by the evil English in their war of hate against the peaceful Prussians during the first war against the planet (1914-1918).

Mustard Gas. Named after its inventor, Colonel Mustard *, this horrible stuff was used to make people suffer by wicked men. This is a war crime (except when done by darlings of the left, like Che, or Saddam, or Pol Pot). Why is this stuff being used in Toronto, the City of Light? Could not earth-friendly alternatives been found, like catch and release (the ravines of Toronto are excellent places for wildlife to live), or simply housing Rat-Canadians in comfortable public housing (like is done with Looter-Canadians in the Jane-Finch plantation). It is bad enough that poison hurts people, but it is worse if it hurts Rats. When Toronto hurts Rats, it hurts its own soul.

The main stream media is silent about the toxic effects of death spray, where they were yammering poodles about pesticides, paint, or gaps in the ozone layer. Why are they silent? The main stream media is anti-Rat. Reparations are demanded! Academia is silent about death spray, where they were itchy bedbugs about lead in water, strontium in milk, or the omnipresent invisible knapsacks of whitey privilege. Academia is filled with hate, the rat haters. Tax them, and strip them of tenure. And what of our progressives and activists? Why so silent about the rights of Rat-Canadians? One would think that when the profit motive is removed from the considerations of the media, academia, and activists, then they do not shift their fat arses.

Like my fellow Outraged-Canadians, I am so upset that I am turning to youth crime. In the traditions of my people, I am taking an activist to the sacred grounds of Set, the Snake God, and offering him up to the jaws of a water serpent, in this case Beauregard the Crocodile *. I will anoint the activist with garlands of garlic, shallots, and parsley, and dab mayonaisse upon his head. Hopefully, his happy cries, along with the sounds of his bones snapping in the jaws of the crocodile, will let The Man know that I need a handout, maybe a community center, to assuage my anger, at least until next time.

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this

xpd Mitchieville, DustMyBroom

Friday Night Blues and Beer #167

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:18:14 +0000

The Beer: I've never read the word ninkeberry before and even if I could of dreamed up that word I would never have applied it to a beer. Say hello to a Belgian pale ale from the Brouwerij Huyghe which we will now refer to as the Ninkeberry. I could smell the sweet fruit the second I popped the cap. Mangoes and apricots and peaches stir the nest. She pours a hazy orange with a mild head that slips down to a very moderate lace. The taste is all about the fruit and passion fruit at that and goes down like some sort of tropical juice with no noticeable hops or malts at all. My first impression would be that this is some sort of girls drink but beer is a man drink and it also tastes so damn good all if overridden. Contains 3.5% alcohol and ran me around $3.50 for the bottle. Two thumbs up but as always get a second opinion.

The Blues: Hope you got your swinging boogie shoes on and are ready to do a little twitching, maybe even some finger snapping. Let's get it on:

The Playlist: Clara Ghimel (Hot And Cruel), Warren Storm & The Blues Rockers (Honey Hush), Chick Roberts (Young Fashioned Ways), Insomniacs (Serves Me Right), Jay Jesse Johnson (Bad Voodoo), Fathead (The Low Life), Johnnie Bassett & The Blues Insurgents (Raise The Roof Raise The Rent), Rick Estrin and The Nightcats (Bigfoot), Sista Monica (People Love The Blues), Catfish Keith (Big Fat Woman), Little Sonny (Where Women Got Meat on Their Bones), Mike Malone And The Soul Catchers (Rat), Larry Garner (Keep The Money), Charlie Morris Band (Got Greedy), Ty Curtis Band (Done Me So Wrong), Texas Slim (Driving Blues) and 61 South (Shake Your Hips).

Lyrical highlight:

Not good enough for heaven, not bad enough for hell

See you inside!

{mp3}071009_FridayNightBlues{/mp3}

01:06:22 30.3MB

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