We’re on day -2 of the federal election, and already I heard Jack Layton on the radio mouthing off his favourite phrase:

Mr. Harper doesn’t like to play like that: it’s my way or the highway with him

Where have I heard this before?

Since Harper met you on 2 out of your 4 demands, isn’t it YOU who does not want to play? Seems to me that Harper met 50% of your demands, but you won’t play until 100% of your demands are met.

Seems to me, Jack, it’s YOUR way or the highway.

Once again, the Toronto Star is spreading lies and deceit, and it seems the 100 or so commentators are just eating it up, evidently without putting their own brains in gear. Today’s headline reads:

Conservatives ruled in contempt of Parliament

Of course, this is a direct quote from Liberal finance critic Scott Brison on the ruling of Peter Milliken that there was a “prima facie breach of privilege”. In other words, Milliken says there SEEMS to be something breaching parliamentary privacy, but a few committees are required to investigate and decide the outcome. NO guilt. NO Contempt of Parliament. Innocent until proven guilty, eh Star?

But we won’t let the truth get in the way of a good headline, now will we?

Sometimes I’m forced to watch Global TVs 5:30 news. Sometimes I linger long enough, past the dire Global Warming footage, and “green” energy announcements, to catch the promo for the six o’clock Global Toronto News. You know, the promos where the local figureheads are walking around Toronto, touting about how much they know about what’s going on. What I saw last night had me falling off my chair.

The promo starts. Here we have the two figureheads, Anne Mroczkowski and Leslie Roberts. They are in a gym and an irate guy comes up to them with a bill complaining about how expensive it has gotten. The figureheads reply (paraphrasing):

Oh, yes, the bill has gone up another 8% when the HST was introduced. Ottawa is taking that money and giving less of it back to Toronto.

Here’s the thing. I, and people who read my blog on a regular basis, know this is utterly false and misleading. The extra 8% on top of the gym bill constitutes the PST portion of the HST, and, of course, ends up at Queen’s Park, NOT in Ottawa. Ottawa does not get ANYTHING extra from the HST, and is in fact, out $4B that it has given to the province to ease the transition. I am worried about the average (brain-dead) viewer in Toronto though, who just laps up anything Global serves to them. And this promo is exempting McGuinty, whom we desperately have to get out of office this fall.

Problem is, that this is a promo for a NEWS SHOW. They are supposed to report the news, not promote any one political party over another. However, in one promo it is helping Dalton McGuinty in exempting him from the higher HST bills, AND laying the blame solely on The Harper Government (see what I did there?).

I think Global Toronto is starting to see McGuinty might lose this fall!

Need a link to this promo video. I you have one, let me know!

This strategy is so brilliant, I wish I’d had thought of it: invent your opponent’s platform, release it, and then attack it as if it was real. A conveniently leaked “closed door” meeting revealed the Tory platform to the media. The made-up platform contained a whole bunch of stuff that people don’t like, so along with snide remarks by Liberal officials, the LPO Twitter-sphere went crazy attacking this newly released fictional Tory platform, spreading “the word” as if it was the truth. I tell ya, it’s not a bad idea.

The Ontario liberals are so out of ideas, last week they asked the public for guidance. I guess anything will help at this point. They even asked for Opposition platforms, so they could steal some good ideas from them. And now this.

Unfortunately, the Ontario voter seems to be so far removed from reality, this strategy might just work:

PC’s will close all hospitals*

* we made this up

If the Ontario voter is stupid enough to believe this crap, than they deserve a third term with Dalton.

Never use the Lifestream and wp-twitter plugins at the same time on WordPress 3, or you’ll end up in a feedback loop you’ll never believe.

Lifestream was fetching twitter feeds and putting them on my WordPress blog, and then WP-twitter was posting those posts back to Twitter which Lifestream fetched again and posted, etc. etc.

Found it, fixed it, now I hope my 100 (yes, I AM popular) followers will forgive me.

For those of you who are extremely annoyed by my sending out about two hundred and fifty thousand tweets about my Lifestream postings: sorry!

Next time I upgrade a buggy WordPress plugin, I’ll remember to turn off automatic blog posting to Twitter…

Still don’t know what happened there… And if it makes you feel any better, I think Twitter has now blacklisted me for a while for sending out a large number of Tweets in a short time.

Nothing from me for a while!

These are a favourite of mine. Very rich, and very yummy. Easy to make with one bowl mixing and no fuss rolling of dough.

Ingredients for bottom:

9 x 13 baking pan
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c butter (softened)
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 1/2 c flour

In an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Add the yolks and vanilla and beat on high speed. Once incorporated, slow down the mixer and slowly add the flour until just incorporated (the dough will be crumbly). Do NOT over-process.

Prepare two sheets of waxed paper 10 x 14. Line your hands with plastic wrap and take the dough out of the bowl and shape it into a ball, avoiding direct contact with your skin. Then flatten the ball and put between the waxed paper sheets. Roll out the disk to a rough 10 x 14 shape. Slide dough and waxed paper sheets onto a cookie sheet and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 deg.

Once chilled take the top waxed paper off the dough and with bottom waxed paper and all, plop dough in the baking pan, the bottom waxed paper turns into a pan liner. Press the dough down into the pan, paying special attention to the corners which may be a bit hard because of the waxed paper. Press down the dough that is going up the sides into a 1/4″ x 1/4″ edge to contain the liquid that is going to be poured on in the next section. You can take bits from other parts of the bottom if you’re uneven. Decorate the edge with a fork or something similar.

Put a piece of aluminum foil on top of the crust and hold down with some pie weights or a large number of pennies to stop the dough from rising.

Bake for 15 minutes. Then remove the foil and weights and bake for another 7-9 minutes or until lightly golden.

While this is baking, prepare the filling:

In a heavy sauce pan, put the following ingredients:

1 c dark brown sugar
5 Tb butter
3 Tb heavy cream
3 Tb Maple syrup
2Tb Corn syrup

Bring the mixture to a slow boil while stirring, then let simmer for about a minute to dissolve the sugar.

And now the piece the resistance:

Coarsely chop 1 1/2 C Macadamia nuts (unsalted). If yours are salted, rinse off the salt and re-crisp them in the 350 degree oven for 5 minutes (no NOT roast them!).

Spread the nuts evenly over the bottom and pour over the sugar mixture until everything is nice and even. Bake in the oven for another 10 minutes or until sauce is bubbling.

Take out of the oven and let cool completely.

It should look something like this:

Take out the bars by pulling up on the waxed paper and place on a cutting board. Peel off the waxed paper:

Use an electric knife (or sharp large kitchen knife) and slice and dice the bars into 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch pieces:

You can keep them in a tin for up to two weeks, or freeze them to have some left for Christmas!

If you are currently using an 8 character (or less) password than you really have no security at all. With today’s cheap and fast computing power, a skilled hacker can crack an 8 character password in under two hours. And it doesn’t matter if your password is “H%gd1f4&” or “password”. Today’s fast computers will iterate through all possibilities, from AAAAAAAA to zzzzzzzz (or for you computer geeks: from !!!!!!!! to ~~~~~~~~) and everything in between, in under two hours.

For now, it is best to switch to a 12 character password. Using current computer power would take about 17,000 years to crack. However, computer speed continuously increases, so that number is shrinking by the day.

So what to do? Experts say that thinking of a “pass-phrase” rather than a “password” would be better: think of a phrase like “The Capital Of Canada Is Not Beavertown!” or “My son’s name is not Sally” or even “Count Iggy is Not a Canadian”. Of course, there are still a large number of online businesses and even banks that do not allow passwords longer than 8 characters. This will have to change soon, so you better get ready memorizing that new pass-phrase!

Here’s the link.

I understand you need some votes, but to go as far as to threaten people to actually vote for you in order to keep you far away in Toronto for four more years is going too far.

link

Waking up this morning, I am left wondering: how much more can we take? It seems that every morning there is a new idiotic “green” announcement that makes no economical or ecological sense.

This one involves IKEA, the Green (furniture) Giant. The Swedish company is using one of Ontario’s ill-conceived green energy programs to install 6.4M dollars’ worth of (taxpayer subsidized) solar panels on some of their stores so they can generate energy and claim to be (taxpayer subsidized) “Carbon Neutral”. I say “taxpayer subsidized” because, although the initial investment is covered by IKEA, the good government of Ontario (ie: you) is going to pay IKEA a whopping 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced. At this rate, IKEA will be making back its investment in about 7 years, and since solar panels are good for about 20 years, IKEA will be making good coin off the taxpayer of Ontario for the following 13 years, AND can affix a “prestigious” (for those who still believe) Carbon Neutral statement on their front doors.

And Dalton just stands there and smiles and says this is A-OK.

Next October can’t come soon enough.

I just hope Walmart doesn’t find out…