Reader Tips

Reader Tips 41 Comments

Last Friday songwriter, singer, and guitarist J.J. Cale passed away at the age of 74. Although never a big star, the quiet Oklahoman’s songwriting and laid-back, in-the-pocket guitar playing strongly influenced other musicians over the years including Neil Young, Mark Knopfler, and, of course, Eric Clapton, who exposed Cale’s songwriting to the broader public with his recordings of “After Midnight” and “Cocaine”.
Tonight we listen to Cale himself: first, a live 1971 performance of After Midnight, and then a studio version of Crazy Mama.
The comments thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

41 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. A judge has granted a restraining order against Chicago Teamsters Local 727 on behalf of a chain of funeral homes.
    Among the incidents:
    “During the service of a young child who had passed away from cancer, picketers laughed, smiled and joked as they created a disturbance..”
    “Picketers used a bullhorn to shout profane and sexually explicit taunts while a woman and her four and five-year-old sons attempted to make arrangements for her grandmother’s funeral..”
    “Picketers repeatedly used the siren function on a bull horn, compressed air horns, car horns and car alarms to create loud disturbances during arrangements and services.”
    Classy guys.
    h/t

  4. It’s probably nothing..

    Computers manufactured by the world’s biggest personal computer maker, Lenovo, have been banned from the “secret” and ‘‘top secret” ­networks of the intelligence and defence services of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, because of concerns they are vulnerable to being hacked. Multiple intelligence and defence sources in Britain and Australia confirmed there is a written ban on computers made by the Chinese company being used in “classified” networks. The ban was introduced in the mid-2000s after intensive laboratory testing of its equipment allegedly documented “back-door” hardware and “firmware” vulnerabilities in Lenovo chips.

  5. Anthony Weiner is determined to be next New York Mayor.
    Never Give Up,
    Never Surrender..
    KEEP IT UP
    STRAIGHT AHEAD
    HEADS UP

  6. Yikes. I suppose it’s considered poor etiquette to criticize the recently deceased, but last night we had the immortal “El Paso”, and tonight we have something called “Crazy Mama”, which isn’t quite in the same category, class or, frankly, universe.

  7. RE: JJ Cale. I`ve know a few crazy mamas in my lifetime. Some were a lot of fun!! Some drove me nuts, some drove me broke. Life is a highway. Stay in the fast lane!!

  9. Edit: not Vegas (sorry, reading too many open tabs), but rather California…
    O, Sweet Saint of San Andreas….hear our prayer…

  10. Toronto Star, Sunday, July 28 (but the link goes elsewhere; same article).
    http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-07-22/news/40727917_1_greece-big-deal-crisis
    PK: “There are influential people out there who would like you to believe that Detroit’s demise is fundamentally a tale of fiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employees. It isn’t. For the most part, it’s just one of those things that happens now and then in an ever-changing economy.”
    In other words: just keep on trusting in the elite class parasites to spend your tax dollars wisely, even though they’ve rarely done it in the past.
    He’s in total denial now.

  11. I just want to say to anybody interested in the J.J. Cale part of this thread. I heard him for the first time when I was a late teen(I’m now 50) and there can be no better ambassador of the guitar than Mr. Cale. Sure Hendricks and others were brash and loud, but the things Cale could do with a guitar were what was the difference between Michelangelo and Courtney Love. He was the ultimate MASTER of the 6 string guitar and the recording studio. If anybody is planning a long road trip, load the CD changer or iPod with J.J Cale songs and you will remember the music , not the drive.
    Farewell, Mr Cale. You will be sadly missed. R.I.P.

  12. Monday, July 29. Airhead former Globe columnist Chrystia Freeland (now attempting to run for the Liberals in Toronto Centre riding, vacated by Bob Rae) still way off base:
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/path-leading-to-middle-class-prosperity/article13476291/
    CF: “The combined impact of globalization and technological change is radically transforming the world economy …”
    This premise is true, but it’s not news; it has always been so.
    CF: “It took two deep depressions – the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Long Depression of the 1870s – two world wars, and Communist revolutions in Russia and in China before we figured out how to make the industrial revolution work for the vast majority of the population. And it also took the invention of a whole new set of institutions – pensions, public education, public health care, social welfare, trade unions, and even mass democracy itself.”
    Wrong. The Industrial Revolution worked fine from day one. The big problem back then was dire poverty, but due to that revolution, standards of living rose so that today most of us, even “the poor”, live in much greater comfort than most did a couple of hundred years ago. If it hadn’t worked, we’d still be living in 1700s-style dire poverty.
    The communist revolutions were, if anything, anti-industrial in nature. Both severely hampered the local standards of living, while murdering a hundred million people or so. Neither had the slightest thing to do with enabling us to “figure[] out how to make the industrial revolution work for the vast majority of the population”. Nor did Nazi Germany, which belongs in the same category.
    The Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by Federal Reserve policies, and the two world wars were caused by socialism — the doddering traditional kind for WW1 and the nasty extremist Kant-Hegel variety for WW2.
    As for those “institutions”, first of all it’s a typical apples-and-oranges list, but some of them are at least partially responsible for the slowdown in our standard of living. The pensions started out as a Ponzi scheme (the politicians admitted it), public education has been severely dumbed-down, mainly to protect the feelings of the less intelligent, and trade unions have at best outlived most of their usefulness.
    CF: “a very small and very lucky and very smart group of people” is benefiting … the “plutocrats” …
    Ah yes, the “1%” demonized by the vacant Occupy protesters.
    CF: “But the other side of the coin is the devastating hollowing out of the middle class in the western industrial democracies. Traditional middle class jobs are being made redundant by the technology revolution or outsourced to lower-wage economies.”
    Traditional jobs have always been made redundant by any technology revolution, but as many or more are usually created to replace them. If they aren’t, look to government policies that hamper job creation, such as labour laws, complicated tax codes, regulations, payroll taxes, and so on. Not globalization.
    CF: “Figuring out how to make today’s vast economic transformation work for the middle class is the central political issue of our time.”
    Political interference in the economy is the problem, not the solution. An economy can only be productive if every individual is free to use his own judgment for the purpose of trading with others for mutual benefit. Any attempt by government to dictate terms of trade inevitably causes trouble.
    CF: “Today’s conventional wisdom is deeply cynical about politics. … What we have lost is our belief that our government represents us all, and that we, collectively, can use it to address the big challenges of our time.”
    No, moron, that’s what we’ve been trying to do for decades! That’s the frigging problem!
    CF: “We all desperately need to re-engage with our democratic system, in all its messy glory, and elect leaders whom we charge with the job of solving the 21st-century’s greatest tasks, first and foremost making our new economy work for the middle class.”
    That sure ain’t you. See previous comment. The only thing that distinguishes government from other institutions is the power to use coercion, and coercion does not create, invent, innovate or discover, it only destroys. What we require from our political leaders is freedom.
    CF: “We know some of things we need to do.” … “investing in public education” … “become the world’s most attractive destination for entrepreneurship” … “we need to find ways to realign business incentives with public ones” …
    We’ve been investing in public education for decades with decidedly mixed results. These days, one enormous problem is that it can easily get taken over by crackpot ideologues (see OISE). There is no justification for using tax dollars for education. If we have to figure out anything with regards to education, it’s how to transfer it to the private sector where it belongs.
    There’s nothing wrong with being a magnet for entrepreneurs (as per the above, why not in education?), but that mostly means streamlining the tax and regulatory codes and letting business get on with it. And it’s a mistake to try to become the “world’s best” at anything. You can’t improve on freedom. Just get out of the damn way!
    Finally, the only incentive for business should be to try to make a profit by providing goods and services that the public needs or wants. Meanwhile, the proper function of government is to protect individual rights. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. Businesses are not departments of government, and neither are individual citizens.
    CF: “we need a new vision of politics and what it can and must accomplish”
    See all of the above. Politics means spending tax dollars. The best solution is to leave them in the pockets of individuals to look after their own lives. Leave the visions to Nostradamus.
    Freeland’s article is filled with the same shallow, woolly, fuzzy thinking (if one can call it that) that was central to her Globe columns over the past few years. Canada does not need this kind of person as a Member of Parliament.

  16. EBD
    Thank you for the links to the music, very much appreciated.
    arctic_front
    Me and you both, some of his stuff like Magnolia still the first thing goes through my head when my magnolia tree flowers but guess most of his songs through the years have attached themselves to some of my memories.
    RIP J.J.Cale.

  18. Both songs are from Naturally, the first J.J. Cale album. I wore out multiple copies in my youth. A tasteful antidote to the bombast that passed for music then and now. R.I.P.

  19. Good for Anthony Weiner for not giving up. He is being pilloried and scoffed at way beyond anything that might be warranted by his kinky sexual behaviour. What astonishes me is that no one would be making such a big deal of this if he were not a heterosexual. Interestingly, the chief beneficiary of this is the lesbian Chrstine Quinn. Quite frankly I do not think that the sexual behaviour of either of these individuals should be the focus of the campaign. Why suddenly in this “liberated” age is Weiner a pariah, for what I think is common sexual behaviour among young people? What does he even have to apologize for?
    Particularly disturbing is that it is obvious that someone (possibly a group supporting Quinn) made a deliberate point of digging up year-old dirt on Weiner and probably paying the woman to come forward. Surely that is dirty politics, but the left seems to be quite o.k. with that. (I know that both Weiner and Quinn are on the left — but presumably she is much more so.) How could so many people have allowed themselves to be duped by this deliberate smear, and why has no one come forward to defend Weiner by suggesting that his relatively innocuous private sexual activities (among consenting adults) are none of our business?

  20. Weiner has shown poor judgement with his behavior. Also, he is married so he shouldn’t be sexting with other women. Now maybe this marriage is one of convenience(his wife also has ties to islamic terror groups) but that just proves that he is also deceitful. A sham marriage for political/professional/personal gain is still a lie. He has proven that he cannot be trusted and that he will lie to cover up his terrible behavior. I don’t know about you but I don’t want a sexual deviant sociopath as a leader. He has no values, no integrity, and is not trustworthy. He is just a political disaster waiting to happen if elected.

  21. Ahhhh, the 70’s, quit High School at 16, joined the Navy in 71′ the day I turned 17, back then during the Viet Nam era the military would take any warm body they could get their hands on, besides, if you were 18, no job, not in school or in college, or wasn’t born into a rich family you got drafted. It was well into the 90’s before the US Gov’t finally admitted the drafting process was heavily biased in the South. I reckon that was the North’s way of getting us Southern Boys back for the Civil War.
    I remember J.J. , had him on 8-Track.

  24. RobertL “Weiner . . . is married so he shouldn’t be sexting with other women. ” Surely this is no one else’s business. In the past we have been quite forgiving of politicians who are unfaithful to their wives (and Weiner is not even having sex with them!) Mostly it is not discussed. The lying is another matter, but given the embarrassment of this situation, most people would attempt to cover up. Again, there are lots of examples in our political class. Your speculation about the nature of his marriage to Huma is just that . . . speculation.

  25. The Canpotex and Belarus Potash Corp are two government-sanctioned oligopolies that rely on each other to support artifically high potash prices. Today, that arrangement collapsed: Urulkali pulled out and will ramp up production. Potash prices will fall from $400 to $300 dollars. Potashcorp stock price has lost 23%.
    Dear Brad Wall: treating foreign investment like you do doesn’t pay. Basing a government surplus-which you can kiss goodbye-on high commodity prices doesn’t pay. You’re going to get what you deserve. Saskatchewan is going right back to being a backwater nothing.
    http://business.financialpost.com/2013/07/30/shares-of-potash-producers-set-to-collapse/

  26. Cale’s Cocaine has one of the greatest guitar riffs ever, right up there with All Along the Watchtower by Hendrix and both songs with execrable lyrics by the way.

  27. Doesn’t he kind of come off as a sociopathic liar, though? I mean, hiring a private dick (or weiner) to find out who “hijacked” his twitter? Calling Andrew Breitbart a liar?
    And Huma’s ties to the Muslim brotherhood make the nature of her highly political marriage quite worth speculating about.
    Plus, what kind of a sleazebag thinks women want to look at pictures of male genitalia? We don’t feel about those things the way men feel about boobies. You could have a picture of Johnny Depp’s. I wouldn’t want to see it.

  28. BTW, he spent that 45 grand on the private weiner from his campaign funds. I’m sure the people who donated really appreciate that.

  29. Well, Black Mamba, the kind of people who donated to Cong. Weiner in the first place had already lost all power of critical judgment. You and I would think that people in the Women’s Industry wouldn’t have appreciated the antics of B.J. Clinton either, but we would be mistaken.

  31. Liberals: We’re Entitled to Our Off Hooks.
    …-
    “Debt-ridden leadership candidates off hook”
    “As of Tuesday — that is, nearly seven years after the leadership race in which Liberals picked Stephane Dion to lead them — four candidates still owed money.
    Dion owed the least, at $7,500 while Ken Dryden still owed a hefty $225,000.
    Hedy Fry had $69,000 in outstanding debt while Joe Volpe had yet to repay $97,800.
    The candidates were given several extensions of the original 18-month deadline to repay their loans.”
    http://metronews.ca/news/canada/752999/debt-ridden-leadership-candidates-off-hook/

  32. Vorwarts mit Agent 21 UNaBomber Mao Stlong*.
    …-
    “The IPCC gets a billboard at Coors field”
    “In a moment of unusual candor, a UN bureaucrat admitted that global warming is really about wealth redistribution.
    CFACT shared his statement on a new billboard, right outside the Rockie’s 50,000+ seat ball park in Denver, Colorado.”
    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/cfact_billboard_climatepolicy.jpg
    *Ex-Liberal leader Rae’s uncle Mo, c/o Red China.

  33. Linda
    It’s not “duped”. Weiner had demonstrated that he is not fit for office because a) his questionable decision making; and b) that he could not possibly do his job effectivly as his reputation has been ruined. In other words, he commands absolutely no respect. He cannot lead anything, much less a city, when his reputation has been so rightfully tarnished.
    All of that said, his sexual behavior is typical of that of a sexual deviant. He needs help, not access to the public purse strings. Weiner is a new age ‘flasher’ with serious problems, nothing more.
    “his relatively innocuous private sexual activities (among consenting adults) are none of our business?”
    You’ve fallen off your rocker today Linda. OF COURSE IT’S OUR BUISNESS! He is a public official; who has a) betrayed his wife resulting in a breach of marriage contract; and b) demonstrates his character(or lack thereof). Under these circumstances Weiner would be fired from most positions of power or trust in the private sector; and such will be true electorally.
    “Why suddenly in this “liberated” age is Weiner a pariah, for what I think is common sexual behavior among young people?”
    This could be the most juvenile thing I’ve read in weeks; and is a blatant use of moral relativism to justify what is clearly a reckless and self-sabotaging behavior. My goodness Linda, I sure hope you do not have teenaged kids; or, hope that you have not counseled such kids that this behavior is acceptable. You really must grow-up and give your head a shake. You are waaaayyyyyy off on this particular issue.

  35. CAW letter from Duranty’s NY Slimes.
    …-
    “The New York Times writes “Al Qaeda in Iraq Scores Big”.”
    …caw…caw.caw… “is probably as close to eating crow as anything recently published by the Gray Lady.”
    “Time to re-excerpt my old post, the Ten Ships, published in May, 2010, which if read, might have made the NYT’s surprise and astonishment at the burgeoning disaster less. I began with a quote.”
    http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/

  37. Ontario Liberals hire a facilitator, aka a liar coach.
    Sorry! It won’t work. No way. It’s a waste of time. It’s taxpayers’ money.
    …-
    “Meanwhile, The Canadian Press has learned that the Wynne government has retained the services of a prominent defence lawyer to help deal with the OPP investigation into allegations that senior McGuinty aides deleted emails on the gas plants.
    A source familiar with the topic said Bill Trudell — chairman of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers — would act on behalf of the Liberal aides as a facilitator.
    “Mr. Trudell has been retained to ensure that current staff members, who may be contacted (by police), are aware of their obligations and responsibilities, and work together with the OPP to facilitate their investigation,” the source said.”
    http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/news/speaker-dave-levac-says-he-never-felt-political-interference-from-liberals-1.564743

  38. PET Cemetery Report: Fee Speecher’s Edition.
    Liberal preverts come out for “she-ignatieff” Just Visiting: “As explained by Maclean’s Paul Wells, Freeland has spent most of her adult life living in the United States.”
    “Her campaign co-chairs include the likes of former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham and Liberal MPP Glen Murray.”
    …-
    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/liberals-star-candidate-launches-campaign-she-ignatieff-150343173.html?NewsWatchCanada.ca

  39. Maz… about 1997(?) I mesmerized my co-workers at a chemical plant because I could predict the weather 3 days in advance. With BEYOND amazing accuracy. What they didn’t know was that I read the Toronto Sun weather page and whatever Chicago got as weather, we were destined to get (Toronto) 3 days later. Like clockwork.
    What amazed me was that no one ever found out. Coworkers would start asking mid-week… ‘hey, ugh, I have family coming for the weekend… ummmm… what do you think?’. By Thursday, I could tell them. So they planned. They VERY often came back and said “Thanks”… everything worked out!
    Ahhhhhhh, weather! 😉

  40. Meanwhile, Of Jack (John) Layton*.
    c.c. Citoyen MulcairBloc.
    …-
    “Growing up in St. Catharines, Ont., in a single-mother family, Hollett said she first became attracted to politics when she met NDP leader Jack Layton. But she wasn’t sure about entering politics, she said, until she found out about Layton’s death. “I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for … it’s a reminder when someone dies. The time is now.”
    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/toronto-federal-byelection-attracts-media-stars-liberals-ndp-212835247.html
    …-
    “*Layton found in bawdy house: Ex cop”
    “He came on a bicycle. I escorted him down and he went away on his bike.”
    http://www.lfpress.com/news/canada/2011/04/29/18085951.html

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