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

Friday Night Blues and Beer #168

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:03:25 +0000

The Beer: While the rest of the world races to grab an overly priced case of Budweiser with lime I got my hands on a spicy ginger beer from Stewart's. I'd like to tell you in my own words all about the marvelous time but I could never top this. Yep, it is pretty frigging spicy and I don't think it is good for the gut either as I get the sense that it is eating away at mine and my burps taste like fire but holy smokes - does she go down good. $4 bucks a pop if you can find it. The only problem is, she only says beer on the bottle...

The Blues: When you called out for me baby didn't I help to ease your pain? This be the blues and this be Friday night - Let's get it on:

The Playlist: Greg Koch (Your Face), Ron Yarosz (Gettin' It Done), Joe Houston and LA Jones (Barefootin), Battlerack Scatter (Blues Ain't For Everybody), Eric Burdon (Forty Days And Forty Nights), Dr. Hector & the Groove Injectors (The High Cost of Living), Long John Hunter (8 Ford), Wes Jeans (Drownin' On Dry Land), Earl Seratte & the Blues Kings (Walkin' In Your Sleep), Shemekia Copeland (Talking To Strangers), Gas House Gorillas (Nine Lives), Earl King (I'm Still Holding On), Luther Kent (I Wouldn´t Treat A Dog), Ronnie Earl (Blue Guitar), Johnny Nitro & The Door Slammers (Little Girl), Lucky Peterson (You're the One for Me) and the JW Jones Band (Standing in Line).

Lyrical highlight:

The sun is shining all day long but the rain keeps falling down

See you inside!

{mp3}071709_FridayNightBlues{/mp3}

01:10:10 32.1MB

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Persian farce

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:06:06 +0000

Excerpts from an lengthy review article in the Times Literary Supplement, July 3, p. 3 (text subscriber only):

Clouds over Tehran
Whether or not “revolutionary” enforcers at the command of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei bludgeon to a halt the protests against a blatantly falsified election “result”, there is no way that the extraordinary Iranian presidential election campaign of 2009, or its still more extraordinary aftermath, can be made unreal by mere fascists. Thirty years after the Shah’s overthrow, the revolutionary façade has cracked, exposing chasms within the establishment between those who, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insist that Iran is still not Islamic enough and those who, while not questioning the system of rule by divine law, unwittingly put the revolution in question by seeking to move on to something more closely resembling a “normal” state...
So confident this year were the established powers that they allowed unprecedented live debates between the chosen four on Iran’s unendurably dull state television. That prime-time battle of ideas was a miscalculation that may yet prove to be historic. Ahmadinejad is a populist demagogue who does a passable imitation of a fundamentalist warrior, the “outsider” son of a poor (in fact, well-to-do) blacksmith battling on behalf of the “dispossessed” against the Islamic Republic’s corrupt and profiteering ruling caste. Better known abroad for demanding the excision of the “cancerous tumour” Israel and announcing imminent Islamic victory over the “Great Satan”, his domestic pitch relies on projecting himself as the pious servant of Allah dedicated to relieving the sufferings of the devout poor. It is a great act, but one difficult to square with his persecution of trade unionists, his hostility to the minimum wage, paid holidays and other “infidel” relics of unIslamic class warfare, as well as the spreading poverty, unemployment and inflation attributable to his reckless mishandling of what should be a rich economy. For a few brief hours, he now had to share the stage, in exchanges that gave him a taste of his own blistering rhetoric. Iranians witnessed, electrified, a regime at loggerheads, openly trading blame for its loss of credibility...
“No one in their right mind”, as the greatly revered Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri observed from the holy city of Qom, could believe results that, for example, swelled the Ahmadinejad first-round vote from 198,417 in 2005 to 1,113,111 in East Azerbaijan, where he comfortably outpolled Mousavi, an Azeri from Khamein; and from 69,710 to 677,829 in Karoubi’s home province of Lorestan (where the popular native son’s vote shrivelled from 55.5 per cent to 4.6 per cent and the 14,920 who voted for him were fewer, he complained, than the volunteers in his campaign). In Isfahan and Tehran itself, Ahmadinejad more than doubled his support. Most suspect of all was the 113 per cent swing to Ahmadinejad in rural provinces. Contrary to Western assumptions, Ahmedinejad’s base is in cities and their poorer suburbs; in the countryside, voters have a history of going against hardliners...
The contrast between the insults, clubs and bullets flying within Iran itself, and the tones of sweet reason that Western politicians have for years thought wisest to adopt with the Islamic Republic, illustrate how far adrift is what passes for Western policy from Iran’s grim but far from monolithic reality [emphasis added]...
The fervour of those protests and the despotic malevolence with which Ayatollah Khamenei girded himself to snuff it out, are the reference points in a fight that has finally burst into the open between two Irans: one obscurantist, undeniably oppressive, and intrinsically belligerent, the other a proud, culturally sophisticated and overwhelmingly youthful Islamic nation that, now if not before, yearns to be delivered from the “Persian night” of Khomeinism.
What is happening should indelibly change external perceptions of Iran and its multiple discontents...

Today:

Top Iran cleric criticizes hard-liners in sermon

Where it will all end, knows Allah. More from Terry Glavin.

Mark

Ottawa

Mickey I.: Less than meets the eye

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:18:17 +0000

The conclusion of a review in the Times Literary Supplement (IN BRIEF, July 3, p. 27, text subscriber only) of a review of the Mickster's True Patriot Love:

...
Ignatieff has always been a political intellectual, with a sense of the pressing issues of the day, though ready to follow his thinking where it might lead, including support for the war in Iraq. The origin of this book preceded Ignatieff’s entry into politics with a trip in 2000 across Canada’s west following the route of George Munro Grant’s 1873 Ocean to Ocean, written to promote the projected transcontinental railroad. It has been received in Canada as a kind of political manifesto, and contains banal reflections on policy and proposals for a national energy grid and highspeed railways. In it, the politician has superseded the intellectual.

Mark

Ottawa

Still a good war

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:25:33 +0000

A post by BruceR at Flit (Bruce is a Canadian Army reservist, recently returned from a tour in Afstan):

Reasons for positive thinking
I and others may cavil about long-term sustainability of our plans, or note disappointment wastes of time or money, or wonder aloud whether our priorities as Afghanistan's allies need to be re-ordered a little. But there can be no question that Afghanistan is still on the whole a nicer, safer place than it was in 2001, or 1991 for that matter. Kabul is booming. And Peter Bergen is right that the majority of Afghans' war for a better future for themselves is far from lost, for reasons he aptly outlines here. The cause that we committed to, and in which Canadians continue to die, is still a just one. If I didn't continue to believe that, I frankly wouldn't care about the problems that have been identified as much as I do.

I added the following at a Torch post on Bruce's:

...
From the Bergen piece:
...
Objections to Obama’s ramp-up in Afghanistan begin with the observation that Afghanistan has long been the "graveyard of empires"—as went the disastrous British expedition there in 1842 and the Soviet invasion in 1979, so too the current American occupation is doomed to follow. In fact, any number of empire builders, from Alexander the Great to the Mogul emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to the British in the Second Afghan War three decades after their infamous defeat, have won military victories in Afghanistan. The graveyard of empires metaphor belongs in the graveyard of clichés [emphasis added]...
My bit on the "unconquerable Afghans" here, and more:
Jack Layton: Simply ignorant or just plain lazy?

Mark

Ottawa

Celebrating Diversity

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:49:09 +0000

The Urban Viking Europes last village peoples to resist the evils of Christianity, embracers of a sustainable lifestyle, and a strong voice for open borders. As a Viking-Canadian, I celebrate Canada as a place where I can celebrate my culture, language, and customs with the support of taxpayers money. And what better way to celebrate my culture than to go 'a-Viking'? Like most Vikings, I am opposed to all forms of gun ownership or possession. Instead, I carry a chain mace.

The Chain Mace. I taught myself how to use this while homeless. There are plenty of great resources on the subject *.

You can make your own mace, too. You will want to personalize yours for weight, size, number of balls, length of chain, and accessorize with spikes or nubs. I like the three headed chain mace.

Care and use. Aside from rust, your chain mace will require little maintenance. It is an earth friendly device that has a small carbon footprint. I prefer a leather grip for its no slip properties. Sometimes the handle gets slippery from sweat or gore. You can treat the handle with mink oil to keep it fresh.

Tactics. As a novice, dealing with an armed opponent is beyond my skill set, so I prefer opponents who are unarmed. This is a good way to master the basics of offensive technique. In my personal experience, I have found that attacking from behind is also very effective and you can take your time to land a good whump or two before your new friend can respond, if they can respond at all.

Bicyclists make good people to share Viking culture with. After you whump them, they inevitably fall over and entangle themselves in the twisted wreckage. With a bit of planning, they can arrest their momentum in a bridge abuttment or block wall. Then, it is much easier to help yourself, taxspender style, to their wallet or purse for some whiskey money. On one hilarious occasion, a cyclist eluded my swing and peddled off at speed, screaming at the top of his lungs. He drove into a mound of garbage (ah, Toronto!) where he offered up his wallet in exchange for his life, even without having lost consciousness.

Of course, bicycles and cars are bad for the environment. You can practice your eye shots on the headlights, and bicycle tires go pop in a very amusing way.

I am thankful to Set, the Snake God that I can explore my Viking culture here in Canada, and share it with so many. Unfortunately, Canada is a racist shithole, and I do not feel welcome or accepted by Canadian society. One man, a racist, called me names after I broke his collar bone. This hurt my feelings. Another man made homophobic remarks as he limped away. After he trod in a dog turd (ah, Toronto!), he insulted Lesbians. I believe the taxpayers of Canada owe me a community center.

I, Fenris Badwulf, who cares, wrote this

xpd Mitchieville, DustMyBroom

Blues in the Mail: The Twisters

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:12:15 +0000

Say hello to Canada's premier jump/blues band The Twisters. Courtesy our good friends at Northern Blues Music I just got my dirty mitts on their latest release Come out Swinging. My first record was the soundtrack to Grease and after that it was all down hill but prior to that I listened to plenty of Benny Goodman and Mitch Miller and still to this day I just love that swing and The Twisters are a welcome addition to my collection.

The arrangements are really tight with awesome harmonies all with one foot in the blues but not confined to the standard patterns. These guys are a lot of fun and if you are into rocking around a floor or just snapping your fingers to the groove these boys are for you:

Cueing Long Overdue:

{mp3}Twisters_Long_Overdue{/mp3}

You can hear further samples on their website and you can pick it up online at Northern Blues Music.

Dismal, dismal, dismal

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Aplogies to Neil Young (ah, note Emmylou). First this post:

Lies, damn lies, and economics

Now from The Economist:

What went wrong with economics
And how the discipline should change to avoid the mistakes of the past
Illustration by Jon Berkerly
OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. A few years ago, the dismal science was being acclaimed as a way of explaining ever more forms of human behaviour, from drug-dealing to sumo-wrestling. Wall Street ransacked the best universities for game theorists and options modellers. And on the public stage, economists were seen as far more trustworthy than politicians. John McCain joked that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, was so indispensable that if he died, the president should “prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him.”
In the wake of the biggest economic calamity in 80 years that reputation has taken a beating...
...Economists need to reach out from their specialised silos: macroeconomists must understand finance, and finance professors need to think harder about the context within which markets work. And everybody needs to work harder on understanding asset bubbles and what happens when they burst. For in the end economists are social scientists, trying to understand the real world. And the financial crisis has changed that world.

Pretty damps squib, what? There's the whole problem. Social scientists are not real scientists; they are simply unable accurately and reliably to predict human behaviour. Nor can economists accurately and reliably predict future developments since they depend on the behavious of, er, humans.

Mark

Ottawa

My tier is a whole lot better than your tier

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:53:24 +0000

Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail is, er, quivering:

Someone will have to pay for a two-tier job system
The compensation gap between the public and private sectors is growing ever wider
...
Across the country, the compensation gap between public- and private-sector jobs has grown increasingly wide.
The [Toronto] garbage workers are typical. Their hourly wage is about 20 per cent higher than in the private sector. They have a gold-plated benefits plan, to which they contribute not a cent. After 10 years service, their jobs are guaranteed. Workers with top seniority get seven weeks vacation. Then there's the pension - a generous defined benefits plan, guaranteed by you and me.
A stunning piece of research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has chronicled the public/private wage gap. It found that public-sector workers across Canada earn 8 per cent to 17 per cent more than people with similar jobs in the private sector. The public-sector wage advantage is now 11.9 per cent for municipal workers, 7.9 per cent for provincial workers and 17.3 per cent for federal workers.
That's just half the story. They also get better benefits and pensions. Their work weeks are shorter (typically 33.5 hours, versus 37.3 in the private sector), and they get more vacation and sick leave. Once you calculate the value of the benefits and shorter work time, the total compensation advantage adds up to 35.9 per cent for municipal workers, 24.9 per cent for provincial workers and 41.7 per cent for federal workers.
There used to be a deal that everyone understood: Public-sector work didn't pay a lot, but there were good benefits and job security. Now, people are forking over tax dollars so government workers doing essentially the same jobs can make a lot more than they do...

Government-backed private sector tiers too:

Some pensioners are more equal than others

Mark

Ottawa

Picking losers, or, high voltage subsidies

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:31:22 +0000

How for pity's sake can the Premier of Ontario justify giving great wads of money to pretty well-off people to buy unproven cars?

Electric-car rebates spark negative buzz
Toyota cries foul as premier announces $10,000 rebate plan at GM dealership
Toyota Motor Corp. and several other critics are crying foul over the Ontario's government's plan to offer rebates of up to $10,000 to people who buy plug-in hybrid and battery-electric vehicles.
Toyota says the move looks like a ploy to help General Motors Corp., in which the province is now a minority shareholder after it rescued the company, along with the U.S. and Canadian governments.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty chose a GM Chevrolet dealership in Toronto on Wednesday in which to announce that Ontario would offer the rebates on new vehicles after July 1, 2010.
Stepping in and out of GM's upcoming Chevrolet Volt electric car, he said he wants one out of every 20 vehicles in Ontario to be electrically powered by 2020.
Ontario had to help stabilize the auto industry by providing aid to GM and Chrysler Group LLC, said Stephen Beatty, managing director of Toyota Canada Inc. But he said that was meant to be a one-time action.
"How long does this continue?" Beatty said.
"We can't set up a situation where the future of the industry depends on constant subsidies. This suggests that (the government) is prepared to be interventionist beyond their aim to help the industry recover."
Toyota, known for its hybrid technology, was not informed of the government's intention to offer the rebates and was taken off-guard upon learning the announcement venue was a Chevrolet dealership, Beatty said.
"The question is: Is this a well thought-out industry strategy? Or is it sort of the next stage in advancing a particular product and helping a particular company?"
Industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers echoed Beatty's concern.
"A cynic would say this is just government subsidizing a product that is produced by a company they own. I think that is a bit too cynical. I just think it is bad policy, from a variety of perspectives."
Ontario loaned General Motors $3.16 billion U.S. as part of an overall $60-billion rescue package.
Together with the federal government, it now owns a 12-per-cent stake in the revamped GM, which exited bankruptcy protection last week.
"The fact they are offering such a high upfront incentive is an admission that there is high risk for this technology," DesRosiers said.
"Years before the vehicles are available, they're putting a bribe of $10,000 in the marketplace, and the only reason they do that is because they anticipate they aren't going to sell."
DesRosiers said the government would have been further ahead if it followed the lead of the U.S., which has invested $25 billion in a fund to promote electric battery technology.
"If the government was serious about helping the electric car industry, they would have put one, two, three, five billion dollars into a fund to promote companies to develop the technology," he said.
Ontario's goal is to become a world leader in building and driving electric cars, McGuinty said.
"This would put Ontarians into cleaner, more efficient vehicles, and expand the electric vehicle market for manufacturers," he said. "Expanding the use of electric vehicles by consumers and government will help create and sustain jobs in the auto sector and put Ontario at the forefront of the new, green economy in North America.".. [Huh?!? None of the vehicles covered under these subsidies is assembled, much less designed, in Ontario. Batteries not made here either.]
Toyota is bringing a plug-in version of its Prius hybrid car to North America later this year. But that will be on a test basis only [emphasis added], and in limited numbers, Beatty said. "We're not entirely convinced that the technology is a winning proposition for consumers today," he said.
In that context, announcing rebates for electric cars may amount to helping GM push its corporate strategy for the Volt electric car, not assisting the industry as a whole. GM is scheduled to start selling the Volt by the end of 2010. The car is expected to cost roughly $40,000 U.S. at U.S. dealerships [emphasis added].
Drivers of electric cars would get green licence plates, allowing them to use less-congested carpool lanes, even if there is only one person in the vehicle, McGuinty said. Drivers of the cars would also have access to parking at Ontario government and GO Transit lots.

Earlier:

Don't plug it in...

Update: Some reality from Dennis DesRosiers (Canada's best auto analyst in my view):

Incentives for plug-ins a subsidy for failure?
The Ontario government is now offering a $10,000 incentive for consumers to purchase one of the new plug-in electric vehicles about to enter the market. This incentive is being played as a move to save the environment. I see it as the government deciding a year in advance that these technologies are going to fail. The whole initiative comes across as a desperate move to appear green...
With this initiative, the government is also asking consumers to take extraordinary risk. We hope these plug-in vehicles work and are successful but there are many other current vehicles for sale that offer no risk.
For half the price of a subsidized plug-in, a consumer can buy dozens of other vehicles that offer exceptional fuel efficiency, are guaranteed to last 15 to 20 years and have a very well-defined and low-cost maintenance cycle. We have no idea what the life cycle maintenance cost will be for one of these electric vehicles; we do not know whether they will be reliable or can withstand our harsh winters...
...Why is the government encouraging consumers to buy a vehicle that will cost substantially more to own and operate than dozens of current fuel-efficient vehicles?
Dennis DesRosiers is president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants in Richmond Hill.

Even, holy hybrid, the Crvena Zvezda agrees:

Dubious subsidy for electric cars

And, I ask again, what about diesels?

Mark

Ottawa

Akewsasne apartheid?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:22:49 +0000

One consequence of "Mohawkistan"? A "temporary" Canadian border post has now been established at Cornwall city, at the northern end of the bridge to the Mowhawk Akwesasne reserve on Cornwall Island. This presumably means that every time Canadians resident on the island, mainly Indians who are in fact living on Canadian territory, wish to travel by land to the rest of Canada they will have to undergo inspection by the Canada Border Services Agency.

The Canadian Border Services Agency set up a temporary post at the foot of the Seaway International Bridge. Photograph by: Pat Mcgrath, the Ottawa Citizen

In other words, some Canadians travelling within Canada--those on Cornwall Island and no others--will be subject to border controls. Certainly smacks of apartheid towards a first nation to me. One awaits the protests.

Mark

Ottawa