If the Haitian people really wanted to get in good with us, they'd apply for statehood, or at the very least to be a US territory ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Haiti is an odd case in the world. They are the only modern nation born from a slave revolt. All of the capital of the country fled to Cuba and New Orleans after the French were defeated. They basically started with absolutely nothing and little expertise at anything. A very unique situation in the world.
#6
True, mojo, but there are days I'd trade Haiti for Laficornia ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2010 10:47 Comments ||
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#7
Hmmm, Interesting, it seems former Phrench owned States/Nation's Government(s) suck.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/26/2010 13:44 Comments ||
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#8
The French were the worst colonists evah. I include Quebec and Louisiana among the failed states they've left in their wake.
Posted by: regular joe ||
01/26/2010 15:21 Comments ||
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#9
If the Haitian people really wanted to get in good with us, they'd apply for statehood, or at the very least to be a US territory ...
Clean it up. Install some sewage treatment plants, water treatment plants, sensible land management, roads, building codes, power, law enforcement, etc. It could easily rival Jamaica as a tourist destination and quite possibly a lot of other places too. It might also have some potential for agriculture and light manufacturing. Definitely has cheap labor.
#11
There is a belief among leftists in Latin America that any non-white territory that requested statehood would be given the Turkish brushoff. Even many Puerto Ricans beleive that they would not be granted statehood. I beg to differ. Why should they escape having Nancy Pelosi be their Speaker of the House?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/26/2010 21:53 Comments ||
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#12
Speaker of their house?
Hmm, it would give her somewhere new and tropical to fly her broomstick to.
Honduras will inaugurate president-elect Porfirio Lobo this week, two months after one of the world's most recently famous little countries held a successful democratic election. So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.
The U.S. has formally recognized the November presidential election, and the State Department tells us it also recognizes the congress's second vote to remove Mr. Zelaya. So what's the problem?
It appears that State's pettiness still flows from the refusal of interim president Roberto Micheletti and his cabinet, from June to December, to cave to the U.S. demand that they reinstate Mr. Zelaya. In earlier acts of pique, State stripped the U.S. visas of Mr. Micheletti, his advisers and cabinet officials and even the entire Honduran Supreme Court. Last week it yanked more visas from members of the interim government.
Insofar as Mr. Micheletti is leaving office January 27, the only explanations for this pistol-whipping would appear to be: Don't mess with Uncle Sam's regional agenda, which since April's Summit of the Americas includes overtures to Hugo Chávez, Raúl Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.
A day after the latest U.S. slap, Mr. Micheletti said he'll withdraw from public appearances for the remainder of his term. "I am going home to my house, for the peace of the nation and because I do not want to be an obstacle to the new government," he said.
Meanwhile, also under pressure from the U.S., President-elect Lobo said last week he will let Mr. Zelaya go to the Dominican Republic despite legal charges pending against him. The U.S. has been lobbying for a "get out of jail free" card for Mr. Zelaya. Mr. Lobo no doubt wants the foreign aid tap turned back on, so this arrangement benefits both sides. Prediction: Mr. Zelaya will join the Chávez network to make constant trouble for the region's democracies. And his U.S. visa will remain intact.
The State Department has never explained its harsh treatment of Honduras, a democratic ally. And this latest bullying won't help U.S. credibility with other Latin leaders who might help us, as opposed to assisting the chavistas.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2010 00:00 ||
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the next President needs to clean house at State. Forced retirement of Democrat toadies, Chavistas, Arab bootlickers , Europhiles, and Edward Said Orientalists
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2010 7:42 Comments ||
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I am convinced there will be no happy endings as long as political appointees inhabit the US State Department. It has and will probably remain a house of constituent rewards.
Their study is titled: Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.' And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli occupation'and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are directly' as opposed to indirectly' exposed to political violence.
I believe that Arab and Muslim men, including Palestinian men, are indeed violent towards Arab and Muslim women. I also believe that war-related stress, including poverty, usually increases intimate partner violence,' aka male domestic violence. But beyond that, how does one evaluate this study?
First, let's follow the money. This study was funded by the Palestinian National Authority as well as by the Core Funding Group at the University of Minnesota. The Palestinian Authority is not a disinterested party. But even worse: The data was collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau. These are the people who told the world that Israeli soldiers shot young Mohammed al-Dura, committed a massacre in Jenin, and purposely attacked Palestinian civilians (who just happened to be jihadists dressed in civilian clothing or hostage-civilians behind whom the jihadists hid).
Second, let's note that the study has a political goal which trumps any objective academic or feminist goal. (These researchers claim to have a feminist' perspective). In my view, this study wishes to present Palestinian men as victims, even when those men are battering their wives. And, it wishes to present Palestinian cultural barbarism, which includes severe child abuse, as also related to the alleged Israeli occupation. Today's bad science minute is brought to us by: the Department of Medicine at Harvard University; the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at Minnesota University's School of Public Health; the Boston University School of Medicine; the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
#2
Well , my research shows that the number one reason of Paleo man anger issues is generations of inbreeding . Sweet fanny adams to do with 'occupation'- Just look at the rest of the middle east and their anger issues .. doh
Can I have a grant please :)
Posted by: Oscar ||
01/26/2010 13:38 Comments ||
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""This study was funded by the Palestinian National Authority as well as by the Core Funding Group at the University of Minnesota....""
U of M is a hotbed of socialism.
Do never trust ANYTHING coming out of this institution
Posted by: Mike Hunt ||
01/26/2010 21:54 Comments ||
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Stockholm Syndrome: "A term used to describe the positive bond some kidnap victims develop with their captor."
Copenhagen Syndrome: The peculiar psychology of Barack Obama's first year in office.
Let's expand on that a bit. In September, Mr. Obama paid a semi-impromptu visit to Copenhagen to make a personal appeal for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. It failed. The nice way to think about it: The president was trying to win one for Team America. Less nice: It was a feckless and unpresidential errand on behalf of the Chicago political machine to which he remains beholden.
And then there's the possibility that Mr. Obama really believed that he alone could pull the rabbit out of the hat. Not Dick Daley, not the First Lady. This one would require the full Barack abracadabra.
That's the one I vote for, in additions to being beholden to the Chicago machine.
Mr. Obama was back in Copenhagen a couple of months later, this time for the U.N.'s climate summit. It was a chronicle of a fiasco foretold. In the run-up to the conference, dozens of press accounts noted the gaps between the otherworldly idealism of "Hopenhagen" boosters and the calculated realism of China and India. A politically rational president would either have stayed away or made an appearance at the beginning of the conference, so as to be far from the scene of the crime when it ended.
Instead, the president chose to raise expectations by showing up at the end of the conference, as if he were sure that the magic would not fail him twice. It did. "The debacle of Copenhagen is also Barack Obama's debacle," editorialized Der Spiegel, a left-of-center publication. No points in old Europe for the old college try.
In fact, Mr. Obama's first year in office amounts to a long parade of rebuffs. His inaugural address famously offered the world's dictators an outstretched hand in exchange for an unclenched fist. From North Korea, he got missile and nuclear tests. From Iran, he got a contemptuous rejection of his extraordinary offer to enrich uranium for it. From Cuba, Fidel Castro said last month that "the empire's real intentions are obvious, this time beneath the kindly smile and African-American face of Barack Obama." From Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is now comparing Mr. Obama to the devil, a shtick he first tried out on George W. Bush back when liberals thought it was kind of funny.
Of course these are America's enemies, so we probably should not have expected better even if Mr. Obama seemed to believe we might. What about our (ostensible) non-enemies? The president pre-emptively conceded the Czech and Polish missile-defense bases to Russia in hopes of getting Moscow to take a tougher line on Tehran's nuclear programs. The Kremlin isn't biting. Neither is China, never mind Mr. Obama's gratuitous snub last year of the Dalai Lama.
As for the Muslim world that Mr. Obama has been at such pains to court (the Cairo and Ankara speeches, his opposition to Gitmo and the war in Iraq, etc.), the 2009 Pew Global Survey that measures opinions about the U.S. finds as follows: Turkey, 14% favorable views of the U.S.; Palestinian territories, 15%; Pakistan, 16%; Jordan, 25%; Egypt, 27%. Granted, this is up slightly from the last year of the Bush administration, but only by a couple of percentage points on average. So that's the great Obama perception dividend?
And then there are America's friends. Hondurans will not soon forgive the administration's efforts to shove ex-president Manuel Zelaya down their throats. Among Israelis suspicion of Mr. Obama is pervasive. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wonders aloud, "Est-il faible?" (Is he weak?)
Now the same question is being asked in the U.S. in the wake of Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts. The president from Oprah Nation, says Newsweek, suffers from an "inspiration gap"; the prevailing wisdom is that he's too cool and detached for his own political good. Are they kidding? Should the president now take squealing lessons from Howard Dean?
Mr. Obama's real problems are of a different stripe. It's not as if he lacks for charisma. It's that he believes too much in the power of charisma itself and specifically too much in his own.
He seems to have come to office believing that America's problems abroad could mainly be put down to the rough-edged persona of his predecessor. Change the president, change the tone, give magnificent speeches, tinker with the policy, and the world would revert to some default mode of liking America and wanting to work with it. It doesn't work that way. Nor does it work in domestic policy, where personal salesmanship has failed to overcome the defects of legislation. Americans still generally like Mr. Obama, or at least they'd like to like him. It's the $12 trillion deficit and Rube Goldberg health schemes that rub them wrong.
So what's Copenhagen Syndrome? It is a belief in your own miracles. It is thinking that those who crowned you king actually knew what they were doing. It is buying into your own tulip bulb mania. It is the floating evanescent bubble of self. God help you when it bursts.
A new system of determining radio station ratings is now in place and it has been devastating to liberal talk radio. First, understand that radio ratings are based on a combination of how many listeners a station has and how long they listen. The old system of determining ratings was based on a diary system. A statistical sample of radio listeners was given a diary and asked to write down what stations they listened to and for how long. The new system is electronic. Listeners now receive an electronic gadget that a listener carries. The gadget receives a sub carrier signal broadcast by all radio stations and registers exactly what station is listened to and for how long. No longer can a loyal, enthused listener claim they listen to their favorite radio station 25 hours a day and thus corrupt the ratings. This new system began in Portland this past October. Arbitron ratings are based on 4 three month intervals (winter, spring, summer, and fall ratings periods).
The most recent ratings (October-November-December)from the fall ratings book have recently been released. It's the first time the electronic devices did the measuring. Because of seasonal differences in listening habits, most radio time buyers, like myself, compare apples to apples. If I want to know how a radio station's audience numbers are fluctuating, I'll compare the fall 2008 ratings to the fall 2009 ratings.
What happened to KPOJ? These numbers represent the overall 12 years of age and older total audience share combining how many listeners with how long they listen. It's called the average quarter hour share (AQH).
Fall 2008 = 3.5
Fall 2009 = 0.9
This means that under the old diary system where a listener wrote down what they claimed to listen to and how long, KPOJ was thought to have 3.5% of the audience listening to them. But when the electronic gadget registered what was actually listened to and for how long, KPOJ's rating plummeted.
KPOJ's programming essentially stayed the same during the past year. The only thing that was different was the reporting system. It very clearly shows that KPOJ listeners were wildly overstating the amount of hours they listened. They were lying.
As a point of reference, you may think a 3% share of the audience is very small. It's not. Portland is the 23rd largest radio market in the United States. There are many radio stations in Portland. Historically, a station could be top rated with as little as 6% of the audience.
What about the conservative talk stations listeners? Don't they lie too? The numbers say no. see the source for the HTML/image table of conservative results
It's interesting to note that 2 of the 3 conservative talk stations actually increased their ratings under the new system. Apparently, conservative news talk listeners didn't lie under the old system of writing down what stations they listened to and for how long.
By the way, in reference to the above picture of me and the Alaskan brown bear... I believed him to be a liberal. Perhaps Ellie Light will befall a similar fate...
#1
With the diary system, people wrote down a lot of what they thought they 'ought' to be listening to, not what they actually had on.
Under the new system:
Big winner: Smooth Jazz/Easy Listening
Big Loser: Classical
This article tracks those results perfectly. The diarists were lying to themselves.
#2
Fragmentation of music radio can directly be linked to disco and "all disco, all the time" radio stations that cropped up in the mid 1970's.
Up until the disco explosion, the trend was for music stations that played popular music to include many different subgenres of pop/rock. Top 40 stations drew form many different styles. On many major urban radio stations you could hear, in a row, tunes by the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Elvis, Flying Burrito Brothers, etc. IOW, a real mix of stuff. It was a great time to listen to radio.
Higher ups in the industry decided that they could generate loyal listeners (translates to more ad revenue) by having several different stations each of which played one narrowly defined sub group of popular music - disco at first, then hard rock, classic rock, soft rock, etc.
I was in the biz then, I know.
Political radio is easier to understand. Leftist talk radio is epic fail.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/26/2010 7:04 Comments ||
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#3
It figures that my favorite listening, classical, is the biggest loser.
Here in Boston we had a channel that was PRIVATE and played only classical, WCRB. When the owner/founder died they tried to keep it open but this year it was subsumed into the NPR family. So far they are still all classical but the "news" segments are moving left.
#5
In fairness, in 2008 libs were feeling all Hopey Changey. As 2009 went on the the odor of corruption, organic fertilizer and ultimate failure slowly grew, even as Air America finally croaked.
The libs probably just moved on to All Disco, All the Time.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2010 8:22 Comments ||
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#6
To the extent liberal radio and teevee rely on advertising (competitive capitalism) for revenue, they will always fail.
#10
Just you wait until the deceased audience segment is counted.
Posted by: ed ||
01/26/2010 11:40 Comments ||
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#11
Left wingers tend to be dishonest. They have to be, as their politics is too stupid and in defisance of basic common sense to survive in an honest environment. Yes, they may lie to themselves, but they will also lie to others at the drop of a hat.
#1
The California Office of Homeland Security, as inspired by LAPD, has trained several thousands of patrol officers and other non-counter terrorism officers under this concept.
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
01/26/2010 9:25 Comments ||
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#2
Thank you ryuge. The Patrol officer is America's Shield Against Jihad and crime in general. Without him or her there is little accurate community intelligence available. While they look down their federal noses, local law enforcement is generally the first stop for the Bureau's "Special" agents.
#4
You're welcome, Besoeker. And my thanks to the patrol officers out there doing a job that most of us don't have the cojones desire or the ability to do.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
