Reader Tips

Reader Tips 33 Comments

The song “Mercury Blues” (“I’m gonna buy me a Mercury / and cruise it up and down the road“) has been covered by a lot of artists over the years. David Lindley’s up-tempo, slide guitar-heavy 1981 release was probably the most famous version until country music star Alan Jackson’s big 1993 hit was used by the Ford Motor Company to advertise its pickup trucks. Tonight’s featured amusement en route to the Tips is a recording of the original version of the song – with its original title – by the artist who wrote it: From 1948, here’s K.C. Douglas performing Mercury Boogie.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

33 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. News item from Florida:
    “State mandate: Clearwater’s lifeguard station needs to be handicapped-accessible.”
    “Clearwater officials are a bit baffled by the order to make the upper floors handicapped-accessible. They expected to get a waiver so they could skip that requirement, but the state turned them down. ‘Our premise was that a lifeguard has to be physically fit. If you can’t go down stairs, you can’t be a lifeguard. And the building isn’t open to the public,’ said Clearwater parks and recreation director Kevin Dunbar, who oversees the beach rescue team. ‘But common sense doesn’t really play into it.'”
    (via AmericanDigest.org)

  2. This initiative from the Democrats of Massachusetts is very peculiar. I asked a political savvy American friend of mine about it and she thinks it’s a blunt attempt to remove the small power that all of the small states have.
    Here in Canada, if voting for the winning party & PM were done something like this, I wonder what fundamental changes would occur?

  3. Robert – I’m not sure what you mean. These few states in the US, attempting to change the election system from the electoral college vote, which theoretically votes for the candidate that won the popular vote in that state…to a vote for the candidate that won the national popular vote…is an interesting change. But is it major or minor?
    In Canada, we don’t vote for the PM but for the party. The party with the most popular votes, gets to form the govt.
    Will removing the electoral college really change anything? At the moment, the candidates focus on those states with the most electoral college votes. How would moving to requiring the college to vote for the ‘most popular’ candidate change things? And HOW is each state going to know which is the most popular candidate..unless the electoral college vote takes place days and days after the general election? That essentially renders the Electoral College irrelevant. It would simply mean that the EC vote would have to be 100% nationally!
    I must be missing some vital point.

  4. That (10:14) IS very odd, Robert.
    “(Opponents) are concerned about a possible scenario where Candidate X wins nationally, but Candidate Y has won in Massachusetts. In that case, all of the state’s 12 electoral votes would go to Candidate X, the candidate who was not supported by Massachusetts voters.”
    Supporters of the bill cite their concern that under the Electoral College system, “presidential candidates…focus unduly on a handful of battleground states.” Well, if the voters in a particular state don’t count (in effect) should their choices run contrary to the popular (aggregate) vote in the rest of the country, how exactly does that encourage presidential candidates to focus on that state?
    I think your American friend is correct.

  5. Herbert I. London, Common Man and Common Sense:
    “If there was one overarching goal of the Marxist project, it was refashioning human nature. Whether religion or politics, the Marxists argued that an obsession with God and a belief in national identity had to be challenged and defeated.
    “An ideology based on the common man ultimately had little confidence in his beliefs. Marxists maintained they were endowed with an understanding others didn’t possess. While Marxism is dead; this distaste for the opinion of the common man persists.
    “Instead of Marxism, it now takes the form of expert opinion or a ‘fraternity of experts,’ who are eager to regulate human behavior. These are the new progressives, many of them former Marxists, and many who believe that American patriotism should be subordinated to transnational loyalty. Some call these people ‘liberal internationalists,’ who rely on U.N. prerogatives and other international bodies for guidance.”
    (…)
    “The expert fraternity should probably be treated with suspicion. The very fact that it distrusts the common man should be cause to distrust it. So when the new big idea emerges from the tombs of government, beware: The expert who wants to regulate distrusts you and your ability to decide anything for yourself.
    “From the ashes of Marxism has emerged a class of elitists not unlike the former members of the Soviet Communist party. They knew what was best for the citizens of Russia, and the expert fraternity knows what is best for us.”

  6. Buah’s win over Gore may not have happened if populous states were to do this. California and a few populous states would elect the government.
    I really don’t see any benefit for the State, they are in opposition or not so what advantage is there?

  8. ET:
    The party with the MOST popular votes in Canada does NOT form the government; it’s the party with the most seats. With our current 3 (4? 5?) party system, it’s true that usually the most votes equals the most seats, but it’s not necessarily so.
    Now, on to tonight’s tip. I invite everyone to download the book “Dying of Money” (currently out of print, and apparently going for $200/copy on Amazon) from the following link:
    http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-read-sought-after-dying-money-hyper-inflation-here
    It’s a detailed analysis of Germany’s hyper inflation of the 20’s, and the US inflation of 62-73. It’s full of gems, of which I reproduce the following here:
    The eternal conflict, eternally short-sighted, proceeded between one productive class and another, especially between labor and industry. The instrument of their pursuit of self-interest was political power, and the principal casualties of that were they themselves. Labor habitually thought that good business profits came at labor’s expense, industry that good wages came at industry’s expense. Both are wrong. Wages and profits accumulate and do not exclude one another. Good profits depend on the well-being of labor, and good wages on the well-being of business. Constantly seeking their separate advantage, however, both industry and labor were chronically found in the camp of inflationary politicians who managed the remarkable feat of offering everyone more and leaving everyone with less. – Page 91
    Practically every page reveals something that I hadn’t quite considered before. If you’ve never followed a link before, follow this one.

  9. GM announces price of Chevy Volt:
    http://www.winnipegsun.com/money/2010/07/27/14843056.html
    $41k US, you need green to be green. Only Hollywood lefties will buy this slug of a car.
    BTW I like Steve Miller’s version of Mercury Blues too. Bye bye Mercury, no longer will we be in anticipation of the long awaited Marquis De Sade option (long running Car and Driver joke.)

  11. EBD: I don’t really care if my lifeguard is ambulatory or if he can even float on his back!
    I want him… errr… her… Geez, IT, I guess, to be a multi-lingual, asexual macho hermaphrodite, leftwing conservative, taupe-coloured (any trace of white, brown, yellow, black, or red is verboten, don’tcha know?), fanatical religeous agnostic pacifist (saywhat?), who likes quiet walks in the park, gay porn, fast cars, and shooting things!
    I hope all our Protective Services Departments implement these new guidelines. We’re so woefully behind the times!

  13. Toronto Sun, Tuesday, July 27: “Summit arrests ‘political'”
    Link: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/07/26/14835266.html
    One of the vandals is claiming that the arrests are “a strong indication of the state’s intent to criminalize ideas, dissent, and effective community organizing.”
    Uh, no, they’re an indication of the state properly taking action against those who smash windows and set cop cars on fire.
    Note “community organizing”. Where have we heard that phrase before?
    In the May 1970 issue of The Objectivist, Ayn Rand wrote, “A very dangerous notion is now being smuggled into our cultural atmosphere. It is being introduced in reverse … The form is sympathy for criminals who claim to be motivated by political goals; the notion is the legal category of ‘political crimes’.”
    It is not necessarily a crime merely to advocate violence, it may be a crime to directly induce it or to organize people to commit it, but it is definitely a crime to indulge in violent attacks on property such as some of the G20 protesters did. Political motive for a crime is irrelevant; it’s still a crime.

  15. ET, my apologies for not explaining myself more clearly. KevinB picked up on what I was getting at though. Though our system is not at all the same as the American one, there is a loose similarity between their electoral college and our system in which each province has a certain number of MPs it sends to Ottawa.
    I was just hypothesizing whether if our system were so changed to be one where all votes nation-wide were added up to determine the winning party (and perhaps the seats distributed accordingly) how would that have affected our nation’s history.
    As to the situation in Massachusetts, I still don’t think we have a complete answer as to ‘why’ the Democrats there voted this in. Forget about the stated reasons, I’m thinking there must be a bold faced political reason for doing so?!
    One thing that comes to mind is if such initiatives were successful in enough heavily populated liberal ones then those voters in the less populated conservative states would soon learn that their votes really didn’t matter and perhaps become apathetic about voting altogether.
    Hmmmm, that kind of reminds me of a running complaint of Western Canadian voters for 30+ years!

  16. Survey says, experts decry, critics slam, pollsters poll, MSM moans:
    More cuts to the left-liberal arts.
    …-
    “Stephen Taylor: The beginning of the end of the Canadian welfare state
    I received a call last week from a reporter around noon about what he conceded was “the story that just won’t go away.” He was, of course, talking about the census. He wanted to know if I could pass on a few names of possible interviews for right-wingers that support the government’s stand to scrap the long-form census. Of course, there are the folks over at the Western Standard who are taking up their obvious position against the mandatory “burden,” but in broader view, it got me thinking about who opposes the government’s plan and why the story would not just go away.
    Every day it seems that there’s a new group of people lining up to bemoan the Industry Minister’s announcement that the census would forego the mandatory long-form. Certainly, this illustrates a serious problem that Stephen Harper faces as Prime Minister. Facing an opposition that can’t get its act together is one thing, but a nation where the voices of special interests are louder than ordinary citizens is another.
    Indeed in this country, there are two groups of people. In fact, some would call these groups the haves and the have-nots. This is an not inaccurate way of describing it, but those that would might have the two switched. Canadians form two groups: those that receive from the government and those that pay to the government. Those who form — or are constituent to — organizations dependent on government policy (and spending) are firmly against the changes to the census. Those on the other side are largely ambivalent because they are the large, unorganized and unsubsidized net taxpaying masses.
    The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.
    If Stephen Harper succeeds in moving in this direction, he will be in the initial stages of dealing a huge blow to the welfare state.”
    http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/26/stephen-taylor-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-canadian-welfare-state/

  19. Speaking of car-themed songs, I must admit I do like Jamie Cullum performing “Gran Torino”, from the Clint Eastwood film.

  21. O’s Furrin affairs adviser, Canadian Whitey Taliban Jack LaytoNDP, says:
    murderous Muslim Taliban R’us.
    …-
    “U.S.: Pakistan Ties Have Strengthened”
    “Wall Street Journal – Tom Wright, Siobhan Gorman”

  22. Excellent piece from Christie Blatchford (not at all unusual for Christie)
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/christie-blatchford/canadian-media-at-fault-for-rush-to-believe-friendly-fire-report/article1653971/
    “This mess is not a WikiLeaks problem, nor a Canadian military problem, nor a Canadian government problem. It is a problem with the Canadian media – Ottawa-centric, conspiracy-embracing, unquestioning and unskeptical so long as the information seems damaging to the government, too quick to publish and, of course, absolutely without a shred of accountability. Shame on us.”

  23. Woman accused of leading G20 riots released on $140,000 bail
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/woman-accused-of-leading-g20-riots-released-on-140000-bail/article1654557/
    Could someone please explain something to me?
    Amanda Hiscocks, a prominent social activist in Guelph and one of the four alleged ringleaders of riots that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars damage in downtown Toronto during the G20 summit, is out on bail, will live under house arrest at her sister’s place in Ottawa, and will continue to make required court appearances in Toronto.
    HOWEVER, when Justice of the peace Mark Conacher granted her bail Tuesday of $140,000, she was already battling various charges related to protests over the past years AND was out on bail from a pending trial in Guelph on charges of arson and mischief in November 2008. In 2010 she participated in protests and demonstrations in Vancouver related to the Olympic Games, resulting in a charge of failing to comply with bail conditions.
    So, what I’d like explained is, how come Hiscocks can be out on bail with a previous charge of “failing to comply with bail conditions”? It kind of looks like Ms. Hiscocks isn’t in the habit of meeting bail conditions, so how come Conacher let her out of jail? Justice, Canadian-style, simply means, it seems, “be nice to the criminal and to Hell with law-abiding citizens.”
    One of Hiscocks’ supporters, Cory Legassic, a Montreal-based social activist, had this to say about her activities: “I think she is against larger violence that has happened in the world and is committed to building healthy communities.”
    Yeah, right: Shattered glass, feces thrown in the street, and burning police cars really contribute to building healthy communities …
    Social activist = totally irresponsible, unaccountable, unhinged, CRAZY

  24. Curious what the members of Journolist look like? Just go here. Remember that it was this group (of almost all white faces) who were/are the ones coordinating the campaign to scream “Racism” against anyone who dared disagree with Barack Obama’s socialist agenda.

  25. I shamelessly took this from Five feet of Fury’s site. Its just to good a treatise on human behavior not to have it here as well.
    Just change the title to:
    Guess who will become an Islamofacist.
    Who goes Nazi?
    By Dorothy Thompson
    http://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/0020122
    The characters are a might different in social structure, but the stereotypes are the same among us. If not their shades.

  26. Survey says, critics deplore: craps the survey.
    More, please.
    …-
    “Ottawa scraps civil-service survey
    Federal civil servants won’t get to fill out a workplace survey this year because the Conservative government has axed it.”
    …-
    Soap time:
    “Oprah’s darkest secrets
    What OPRAH WINFREY wishes would remain secret forever!”
    …-
    (H/T NNW)

  28. Well into Hirsi Ali’s book, Nomad, and it is another excellent read on her life and how she sees islam in America now that she lives there still under 24/7 guard. I feel that she is like a Cassandra in Troy with her warnings of how islam and its followers are becoming increasing more militant.
    This is mostly due to Saudi money funding mosques throughout Europe and North America and stacking them with young firebrand imams. She reminds us that muslims are brainwashed since birth in their unchanging religion and it is an easy step to radicalism.
    She writes: “I believe it would be a grave mistake to be complacent about islam in America.”
    Couple of paragraphs. Here she is writing about the difference of between the muslims coming to North America and the leftists/liberals that welcome them:
    “One side wants change in their circumstances without letting go of tradition; the other, overcome with guilt and pity, want to help newcomers with the material change but cannot bring themselves to demand that they excise traditional, outdated values from their outlook.”
    This one covers how the young muslims through the mosques are taught the hardline islam that joins muslims of all countries into a fifth column and how they relate to American patriotism:
    “Can you be a Muslim and and American patriot? You can if you don’t care very much about being a muslim. If you squint and look away, you can avoid thinking about the very basic clashes between the submissive, collectivist values of islam and the individualist, libertarian values of the democratic West. Almost 50% of muslims consider themselves muslim first, American second. Only 28%, little more than a quarter, considered themselves Americans first.
    Asked whether suicide bombing can be justified as a measure to defend islam, 26% of American Muslims age 18 to 29 said yes. With estimates between 2-8 million that is a lot of people.”

  29. I like Steve Miller’s version…..someone had to comment on this oft-covered song…..better, far better than Alan Jackson’s yokel version…..just sayin….

  31. beagle…
    If you are referring to CRU Brits, yes they did lie when they implied global warming was anthropogenic.
    Global warming, climate change has happenned before, pre-industrial age.
    What’s your point?

  32. In my era, Mercs were known for their snappy 255 flathead V-8s and their wide back seats. How many of you recall reverberators on the back speakers, and sex lights under dash? It’s all in the past now. Very soon, it’ll all be plastic crap from China!!

  33. my point tech, is not so long ago and in many places still, the caustic right wing as part of their arsenal to dispute climate change, even denies temperatures are rising around the world *whatever* the cause (which is an entirely different question)

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