Election Predictions

The polls close in a about 40 minutes. I'm betting on a slim Liberal majority or minority and a surge for the NDP.

My two bets in the office pool:

Libs 56
PC 30
NDP 21

OR if Tim Hudak's hateful campaign of wrong-head libertarianism, xenophobia and homophobia, backed up by as much help as the Harper cabinet could throw his way resonates with the remaining Rob Ford fans in the 905 belt

Libs 50
PC 37
NDP 20

Either way, I think we can expect another four years of Premier Dad, which, while he isn't my first choice either locally or provincially, won't be that bad. At least not when one considers the Mini-Mike Harris alternative we thought we were facing at the start of the campaign.

Credit where credit is due dept.-- the National Toast has a good graphic on which industries give how much to which parties.

Tweet

saving summer in a jar

We took my visiting in-laws to the farmers market last week and bought a bushel of sweet red peppers. My mother-in-law couldn't figure what the heck I was going to do with them all or how we could eat a whole bushel before they spoiled. Fortunately, I had a clever plan.

wash them

roast them

give the peppers as much heat as the grill will muster and turn often until they get black on the outside, then take a sharp knife and scrape off the blacken outer skin (some people pop them into a paper bag straight off the fire to make this easier) scrap off the pips and cut the peppers into strips. Try not to eat too many. They will be candy sweet at this point, so that is harder than it sounds. About a quarter of ours magically vanished before the final step.

sterilize the jars and lids, pack the peppers in with a couple of cloves of garlic and enough olive oil to top up the jar. Put the filled jars in boiling water for about five or ten minutes, then remove and tighten the lids. As they cool, they will seal

Viola, summer in a jar.

Tweet

Dick

 Poor, poor Dick Cheney. He feels he has been grievously wronged and is waiting for an apology. How dare the uppity Keyan Muslim socialist usurper suggest that President Cheney and his fatuous meatpuppet Dubya (who is either too drunk to be allowed in public by his keepers or may actually have enough brains to keep his fool mouth shut since leaving office) overreacted to the events of Sept. 11, 2001!
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals murdered a couple of hundred thousand people in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, a country that the United States continues to occupy and will for the foreseeable future. Just because Dick Cheney and his pals embraced torture, made people disappear into secret prisons, practiced assassination, suspended habeas corpus and generally wiped their asses with the Constitution all in the name of security,
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals played on the fears of the traumatized American public to empty the U.S. treasury for the enrichment of their friends in the oil and security industries.
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals, for their own political advantage, engendered a climate of fear and elevated the domestic security forces to the point where every tiny one horse town now has have its own SWAT team and armoured car, police feel free to mace peaceful protesters and taser children, and fighter jets are scrambled because someone swarthy spend a few too many minutes in the airplane's toilet or happens to mutter to themselves in a language other than american.
Just because Dick Cheney and his pals shrieked "traitor"  and evoked the holy martyrs of 9/11 (the most important, specialest and utterly innocent people to have died at any point in history, not like those sneaky dirty throngs of African kids who starve to death every day or those terrorist Palestinian kids whose schools and homes the Israelis keep blowing up)  any time anyone even expressed the mildest of doubts about anything the administration did from tapping everyone's phone to cutting taxes for millionaires.
Just because of all the blood Dick Cheney spilled, the treasure he squandered and stole and the myriad horrors he ordered inflicted, Barack Obama had the unmitigated gall to say the Cheney administration overreacted to 9/11 and now Dick Cheney is waiting for an apology.
As far as I'm concerned he should get one, just as soon as he personally apologizes, face to face, one at a time to every single person left alive in Iraq. Just as soon as he apologizes to Valerie Plame and about 300 million other americans - I imagine the guy he shot in the face would at least like to hear an "oops, my bad" - for the various ways he has screwed them and made their country a worse place.
After he gets done making all those apologies, then I think Obama should apologize to Cheney and clarify his remarks......... preferrably while testifying at Cheney's trial at The Hague.

Tweet