[Rome2000]

$16 million?

Thats less that the marxist in chief has spent going on vacations this year.

That figure seems way off.

[Reaganesque]

The remaining population may want to consider moving. Shut the country down and find somewhere else to live.

[TheZMan]

Quick, let’s send billions to rectify the situation! Hurry!!

[Dick Bachert]

The hearts and prayers of Americans always go out to those who suffer catastrophic events. Haiti is but the most recent example. American people and treasure are already flowing into that sad place, made sadder still by this earthquake.

Of course, as Barack Obama spent his first year in office reminding the entire world, America is just like all the other nations out there and we are a most “unremarkable” people.

I’d remind him that the wealth which we are now about to pour into Haiti is the result of the superior and productive political and economic system left us by some wise and far-sighted men over 240 years ago. How sad that Obama is well on the way to destroying it.

The persistent poverty in places like Haiti is a product of the inferior systems the people of far too many of those nations continue to tolerate. I don’t know much about the human beings at the top of the current Haitian food chain but situations of this sort have, in the past, caused a huge surge in the quantity of numbered accounts in Swiss banks. I hope that doesn’t happen in this situation. If it should, I hope the decent members of the Haitian population conduct public hangings of those involved.

As one commentator recently remarked, Haiti could easily join the other wealthy tourist spots in the Caribbean were it not for their unfortunate inability to move out of the 18th century.

If any good can come from this disaster, perhaps it will be that they will reexamine their social and economic “model” and rebuild their homeland in ways that will permit ALL of their citizens to participate and prosper.

[Dixie Yooper]

Then of course there’s always the Pat Robertson theory....

[Carpe Cerevisi]

"If you look at neighboring Cuba, they have a very good emergency management infrastructure," Tierney said. "That's partly because of the way they organize the country from the block upward."

I bet they do.

[tubebender]

In all the photos of the rubble I did not see one re-bar in the remains of the concrete walls...

[BelegStrongbow]

It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments, poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to poverty.

It does, does it? Pray tell, where did the poverty come from then...could it be: expropriations by formerly extremely stable (because utterly autocratic) governments now replaced by unstable pseudo=democracies. Haiti is a man-made disaster, precisely the right use of that term now so terribly misused by the present terrible Administration. Evil humans made Haiti what it is and thousands of hapless Haitians suffer just about continually as a result.

In addition, one only has to look at the other two-thirds of Hispaniola to see that proper rule of law, honest government and true democracy will weather disasters while tyrannies and dictatorships only produce rubble and death.

Trust Yahoo to studiously look past the point.

[TADSLOS]

Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh. Some places just suck 24/7/365.

[Cheetahcat]

The once beautiful Miami is always the sacrificial lamb here

[Berlin_Freeper]

Terra not firma.

[Berlin_Freeper]

Try changing the name to Lovee.

[mlizzy]

Could it be that Christ is sounding a wake-up alarm to not just the good people of Haiti, but to the world as well? Because if you can't feel poorly for the poor of Haiti, what's left of your soul you should nourish. And no matter how wonderfully they build their future buildings (if they would be able to do that anyway), there's nothing that's going to take a hit very well from a "delivered" powerful earthquake (in Haiti, California, or even Illinois).

Pray for the good people of Haiti, and for yourself and your family as well.

[wendy1946]

It isn’t because of Voodoo. We have a state religion (secular humanism/evolutionism) which is stupider than Voodoo and we don’t seem to suffer from repetitive disasters...

[Huck]

My brother used to have a really funny tee shirt that said:

STOP PLATE TECTONICS

I wonder when the left will start crafting tectonics legislation. They should get a few scientists on it.

[Godzilla]

"There's a whole bunch of things working against Haiti. One is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty," he said.

This clown has the factors all bassackwards. There are a lot of placed in tectonically active and hurricane prone areas that are not the cesspools Haiti is.

The primary cause is a hyper corrupt and incompetent gov't more willing to take payoffs than to cut and past building code standards well established in the rest of the civilized world. They don't give a rats rear end about the people, only their desires.

[Hot Tabasco]

I find it odd that there’s no mention of Bush in this article......

[Uri’el-2012]

Isn't Haiti still officially a Roman Catholic country ?

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[TigersEye]

It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments, poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to poverty.

That's an extremely ignorant statement. Poverty is not the starting point of any chain of cause and effect. From that ill-chosen list of causes low literacy rates would come before the rest as a root cause.

[End Times Sentinel]

"Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty,"

A lot of what ails Haiti is man made.

How's the voodoo working out for you now?