Thursday Links and Thoughts

Some quick thoughts and under reported stories for this Thursday morning:

• I hope Scott Brown enjoys his 36 months in the US Senate. There's little chance he can retain Massachusetts in a Presidential election year (the seat's up in 2012). Pathetic performance by the Dems up in the Bay State.
• Can we pay attention to stories like this one yet? Religious tensions and conflicts in Africa are more important than most of the North American media would say. Nigeria is so important economically, politically, and psychologically to West Africa and the continent as a whole. This conflict rages while the President recovers from being rumoured dead.
  
• Robert Ghiz has decided that Shawn Graham is taking too much of the political flak out east. He's decided to join in.
• And by the end of the month, they meant whenever.
• We're still not entirely clear why all the bees are dying. Not enough flower power?
• Ah, the sounds of a perfectly functioning coalition government doing exactly what the people want. The fact that the Germans are just now figuring out how screwed they are, four months after the election is over is somewhat disturbing. Not a good trend for Canadian Liberals.
• Yes Virginia, Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal. That's why stories like this don't scare the living crap out of me. I'm not hyperventilating, I'm sighing my relief.
  
• Are you ready to see the political fringes of Europe at work? Because the European Parliament isn't crazy enough, the Lisbon Treaty (no, nobody actually read the thing) allows for citizen's initiatives.