Willy Loman

Ry Cooder at least in my mind plays California Blues. Although he may be better known for the CrossRoads movie and heavy delta tunes he has recorded. I like the music he has made with the rythm bands. It is still blues, but just Ry Cooder Blues. Here's Let's a Ball. and his Crazy About an Automobile Cooder turned 63 last week and has some new tunes out with the Chieftans. If you want to download his newest release for free go to the itunes store, click Quick Links, and enter one of these codes... ATJRH3YTTX4P or PEMWJJXYKR37 or YP3Y4E33FHPY or RXMM9NE73MER or 77T497467RE3 Each code is good for one download, so I guess it is the first five lucky winners. But hey I only get 4 hits a day. Top that one pogge two videos and free music downloads :)

Despite the fact that safe abortions are already part of the overall strategy adopted by the G8 last year , our evangelical lead government has again declared and this time finally decided that Canada will not support foreign-aid projects that include abortion . They did not clarify whether we will pull out of the current aid programs that provide funding for abortion services or explain how they would separate abortion services when providing aid for maternal health. Does that mean that Canadians will not provide funding for local clinics or new hospitals if those clinics or hospitals also provide abortion services? Or support family planning education, if those courses include information about safe abortion timing or I assume if the medical practitioner presenting the information performs abortions. What about the red cross, they also provide blood collecting services to be used when performing abortions. I guess that leaves us creating a somewhat evangelical alliance with the f

Over the last 18 months the PMO has set up regional offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Apparently their role is to monitor local media and provide feed back to party head quarters for dissemination by the PMO's communication apparatus in Ottawa.  Additionally they are to facilitate access for the non-english media outlets that support the large and growing ethnic groups in the major cities.  In other words plant the ethic based press releases that continually flow out of the PMO directly into the local community papers, read by individuals of that particular ethnicity. Working out of a regional ministerial offices in the three cities, the commissars can now increase favorable messaging to the surrounding ridings presently held by the opposing parties. According to one unnamed government official this unprecedented expansion of the PMO outside of Ottawa is part of an effort to address complaints about a lack of information from and access to top Tories. Or in reality provid

Harper has called in Norway to help salvage his forthcoming G8 showpiece initiative, maternal and child health.   The special adviser to Norwegian Prime Minister flew to Ottawa this week to brief the conservatives on Norway's efforts to reduce the deaths of pregnant women and young children in poor countries. He stressed that family planning, including abortion, could not be stripped out of the strategy. According to Norway the G8 adopted a general consensus about reproductive health last year and safe abortion in countries where it is legal was part of the overall strategy. Maybe Harper was in the washroom when those issues were discussed. You can tell this G8 meeting is not going to go well. Harper should really stick to issues that he knows and cares about: the tightening of immigration policies, the building of prisons, eliminating the access to information or the creation of a one party state. See Macleans article .

This dude ran into his neighbor's burning townhouse last night and saved two lives . Don't usually blog about this stuff, but sometimes attention should be paid. 

The reformatories will be reintroducing their ideological crime bill to eliminate the faint hope clause for convicted murderers via the Senate. Currently, the punishment for first-degree murder is a life sentence with no parole for at least 25 years, and for second-degree murder, a life sentence with no parole for a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 25. However the "faint hope clause" which the reformatories want to eliminate allows those convicted of murder to apply for an early parole after they've served 15 years. It is a not a cake walk to a fast track parole. Their application has to be reviewed and approved by a judge, with input from Corrections Canada and the justice minister, before it could reach a parole jury for consideration. Those convicted of multiple murders are not eligible. Of course we have no idea of how many murderers there are and how many receive early paroles and of those how many are not truly rehabilitated which is one of the purposes of t

First Dawg , then JJ . Here's Honky Tonk Woman She blew my nose and then she blew my mind

It was the wops, specifically the Italians, when I was a kid growing up in north Toronto. I wasn't allowed to call them that, it was just the term that my father used when he was describing what was wrong with the city or in particular the neighborhood.  Of course being a TTC bus driver, he had a wider range of groups that he referenced daily, coming home with stories about the damn kikes, coons, micks or spicks, depending which route he was on that month. I had no idea what these people looked like or if they had horns sticking out of their heads, all I knew was that they had done some injustice to my dad. Despite that fact that many of my buddies at school were Italian or that my dad's best friend from work was Irish, every nationality that was more recent to Canada than those previous was given their own racial name. During my time in Toronto the Italians were followed by immigrants from India and Pakistan, then Jamaica, and then so many different countries, that we seeme

Hey Tiger, I didn't give a shit that you cheated on your wife and screwed everything in a skirt or whether you kept or lost your endorsements. I don't really care that you are back on the course. I hate golf and you could do almost anything and I wouldn't really care. You're just another athlete with an oversized ego trying to make more money. But using your dead father's voice in a fucking commercial , you really are an asshole. Willy

That's Fat Man, killing 80,000 people. The smaller and less genocidal of the two bombs dropped by the USA in 1945. Today Obama outlined the new American policy regarding the deployment of their 9,500 plus nuclear arsenal. Shorter... We will no longer threaten you with a nuclear attack unless we decide to at a later time. Read more: The Raw Story

Seems CBC really wants bloggers to cut and copy their articles after all. Go to a CBC article and copy a paragraph or a sentence or even the middle of sentence and viola "Read more:" and their link automatically appear. Example 1: a fragmented sentence es said the administration decided against limiting the nation's options further because of the danger still being posed by the pro  Read more:  http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/06/nuclear-weapons.html#ixzz0kMstCc5u Example 2: So far the smallest sampling seems to be 45 characters ement, U.S. President Barack Obama said the p              Read more:  http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/06/nuclear-weapons.html#ixzz0kMstCc5u Example 3: Drop one character and the link is not generated. ement, U.S. President Barack Obama said the It all seems silly, since all you have to do is delete the link, but maybe it is a legal thing, where you knowingly deleted their link and therefore they can now demonstrate that you know

If they had all of the country's resources available to them, they could accomplish anything they wanted. One of the first and obvious things it would do is use that country to slow down the development of international environmental treaties that would cost the oil company billions of dollars. In fact the country would become the leading voice against any decline in the use of fossil fuels . However oil companies have been able to stall environmental change for decades just by paying off a few US senators or some Arab sheiks. What I am imagining is an oil company having all the resources of a country made available to them. They could use that country to make an internationally binding claim to undiscovered, yet recoverable oil reserves , say  90 billion barrels worth . They could use the country's defense department to invent new technologies to run their mapping and seismic testing in these never before developed areas, say the ocean floor under the ice cap. The defens

If you thought Orwell's 1984 was prophetic and down right scary, here's the 21st century update. This is a presentation by game designer, extraordinaire, Jesse Schell  presented at February's D.I.C.E. Summit , an annual conference for video game executives that will scare the bejesus out of you. This shortened 10 minute version is being called the Most Disturbing Presentation Ever and here is accompanying article from Discovery News . This is not about kid's games. His full 28 minute presentation is available here .

Calling Hillary Clinton's rebuttal of Canada's maternal health initiative a tempest in a teapot. Harper's Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon claimed on CTV over the weekend that Hillary Clinton was expressing her personal opinion when she criticized Canada's maternal health initiative, not the policy of the Obama administration . Unfortunately Mr. Cannon, much like the services offered in your governments proposed initiative represents your party's leader's personal and religious opinions.

Duracell hires South African orphans to hack apart the easter bunny. Knights use the holy hand grenade to kill a rabbit and my favorite Christian song, written by a Jew and sung by Hindus Happy Easter

With a vice like grip on the oatmeal cookies Harper questions a local food bank volunteer about what foods go into the boxes prepared for Canada's veterans . Expect to see more photo ops for Harper, opening  hockey rinks and working in food banks across Canada in the coming months. It is enough to turn you off oatmeal cookies.

There's been way too much feminism being displayed here lately with posts about abortion, women's rights and the like. This blog and Willy both need a shot of testosterone. Here's I'm a Man by Bo Diddley in a live performance with Steve Crooper on lead. The first bit is Who do You Love which Bo Diddley also wrote. I'm glad I found this performance, it was only posted on You Tube two days ago. This is the version of the song that I grew up with and although Muddy Waters' cover of the song, Mannish Boy , gets a lot more play around these here parts, I like the original. I saw Bo Diddley at Ronnie Hawkins' bar, backed by the pre-Band, Band on January 10, 1963 or possibly 64. I remember the date because it was Hawkins birthday. The year and whether it was raining or possibly snowing is harder to remember. The bar was almost empty and they let two fifteen year olds, with phony 21 year old ID in. What amazes me now, was that I was sitting there listening to t