Pass parameters into logger calls directly instead of pre-merging
with the logger message. This way the logs are easier to maintain
and process. The code is also faster when logging is turned off
since it doesn't have to evaluate all params and render them into
strings.

basestring has been removed from python 3.

Retains python2.7 compatibility for all files. Fixes only syntax errors,
tests still fail on python3 for various reasons.