Nears finish line.

Hamas fails to turn out in numbers expected.
h/t Allen

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs confiscates your school lunch, and the question facing British voters today is why anyone wants the job?

Whoever wins the election must make sorting out the public finances the top priority, the European commission warned on the eve of the poll, as it predicted the British budget deficit would swell this year to become the biggest in the European Union, overtaking even Greece.
The commission’s spring economic forecasts put the UK deficit for this calendar year at 12% of GDP, the highest of all 27 EU nations and worse than the Treasury’s own forecasts.

Polls close at 2100 GMT . You can follow election results later today with the Sky News election map.

When Mr. Rudd was elected in 2007, he declared addressing climate change as the great moral challenge of the current generations.

That is, second only to the great moral challenge of re-election.
h/t Manotick

Just to watch it die.

As readers may appreciate, I am morally obligated to link to this.
h/t Larry W.

I had my suspicions that there might be more to this than Obama’s auto mall shopping spree;

Sen. Chuck Grassley’s charge was backed up by the inspector general for the bailout — also known as the Trouble Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Watchdog Neil Barofsky told Fox News, as well as the Senate Finance Committee, that General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.

If this keeps up, the graves they dig in may end up their own;

Allix was required by law to hire an archeology team last year — to dig up the family property — before she was allowed to build a house just outside of Parksville. Bones and aboriginal artifacts were found, but her son said not much has been done with that discovery.
“It’s just a box full of artifacts — that aren’t even on display,” said Tim Allix. “If the B.C. government had to pay $35,000 for this, they wouldn’t do it. They’re saying ‘Ah, let’s just pass this on to the landowner.'”
Under the province’s Heritage Conservation Act, landowners whose property has been designated a heritage site cannot build until archeologists have done an assessment and removed any First Nations artifacts or human remains — at the landowner’s expense.

I’m become relatively immune to outrage over public policy infringements of private property – the sheer volume of abuse makes rage unsustainable. What I can’t wrap my head around is the behavior of free citizens who apparently believe they can exploit government-mandated property abuse without eventual risk to their personal safety.

Many B.C. residents don’t know their land has been designated, because there is no system in place to inform them. The province keeps the database of sites that are reported to them, by First Nations and other interested parties, but that information is not shown on land title documents.
There are now 38,000 registered sites with some 2,000 new ones added every year. The minister responsible, Kevin Krueger, acknowledged that the lack of disclosure has been a long-standing problem.

Canadians are a numbingly tolerant lot, but everyone has their breaking point. If my job description included digging around in someone else’s dirt, I’d be certain to have a freely-offered invitation in hand before setting foot on their property – “Heritage Conservation Act” be damned.
h/t Kevin B

Yoo Hoo! I have a nomination!

A lot of people had forgotten…

[…] the shameful incompetence that led to the Waco massacre that — unlike the blamed Limbaugh, etc. — actually inspired Timothy McVeigh, but by bringing it up again Clinton is reminding people, and undermining the elder-statesman role he was trying to carve out. Bad move. Either he’s losing his touch, or they’re getting desperate.

More…

And, if that’s not enough to cheer you up – “I’d say we are in the eye of the deflationary storm.” Enjoy!

Via Flea;

The video released by Wiki Leaks is EXTREMELY misleading, and propagating it as “murder” is borderline criminal. Their 17 minute version edited out any mention of hostile gunfire on the part of insurgents for the purpose of defaming U.S. Defence Forces. WikiLeak head Julian Assange has since reluctantly admitted to AK-47 and RPGs being present. To their credit, they did release a full 39 minute version, but for “research” purposes only. Their edited version tells a very different story.

I was afraid they were going to force us to eat them all.

“Money and ethnics are good for some things, afterall.”

Ritual sacrifice of children on rise in Uganda.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
April 1, 2010 – Canada, U.S. unite on car emission standards […] Until now, California was seen as the bellwether of emissions standards…
April 1, 2010 – California’s last auto plant shuts its doors
Related – “Taxpayers spent $60 billion to bailout GM. They own 60 percent of the company. And now they’re buying its cars.”

Need a pick me up?

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else — something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you’d like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times’ East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars.
I’ve witnessed up close — often way too close — how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means.

If only they had more condoms.