I will likely donate to MSF/DWB.

"if you can smell what the rock is cookin'" RANDOM and now Jump Around is stuck in my head.

You've transformed into my ex-girlfriend!

To backtrack a little, I appear not to watch comedies on tv. I don't know when I stopped. They just don't really interest me much.

I don't see movies in the theater, either, unless they are in some way larger than life. Comedies, rom-coms, even intimate mysteries or psychological thrillers I see on dvd or streamed. Theaters are for spectacle, from LotR to Bourne. Of course I ordinarily have little compulsion to see a movie when it's first released. I tend to wait till all the excitement has dimmed and the throngs thinned a bit.

--I'm no fun at all.

YOU ARE SO MUCH FUN!

Poor Haiti sometimes seems like a great cosmic experiment in misery.

Not so much a cosmic experiment as a joint U.S. French experiment. Among the highlights: part of the debt Haiti still pays today are reparations to France for the loss of French property in freeing slaves. One of the reasons Aristide was overthrown is he wanted to repudiate that portion of Haitis debt as "odious debt". Another cause is "free trade" that turned Haiti from a horribly poor, but food self-sufficient nation to a large net importer of food. And yes this ties to the earthquake deaths. Natural catastrophes happen, but deaths from them are normally contributed to by social and economic circumstance. For example the huge mudslides that resulted from the earthquakes are largely due to deforestation. The plants that would have held the mud back were harvested for fuel due to desperate poverty. Similarly poverty and failed civil society is a a large part of why almost no buildings in Haiti could stand up to earthquakes.

Not to mentions U.S. actions over the years in overthrowing attempts at democracy.

It never occurred to me that Jamaica would feel the quake. I checked carefully to see if they were mentioned as under threat from tsunami, but no. My sister reports that people in taller buildings did and evacuated. No damage done, though.

Typo Boy, thank you so much for making those connections.

If there is a God, Pat Robertson will burn in hell.

"[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heal of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so, the devil said, 'Okay it's a deal.'

"And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle on the one side is Haiti, on the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come."

I'm envisioning a million Pat Robertson Voodoo dolls . . .

Not to mentions U.S. actions over the years in overthrowing attempts at democracy.

I'm not sure how much this piece ties to poverty in Haiti specifically. The U.S. has a long history of interfering in the internal affairs of Caribbean nations. The Platt Amendment re Cuba and the long-term control of customs in the Dominican Republic come to mind.

On the other hand, there's a lot of severe poverty all over the Caribbean. So maybe foreign interference is a factor all over the region.

Pat Robertson doesn't seem to realize that Haiti became independent in 1803, and Napoleon III didn't come to power until 1848.

Anyone who gets such a basic fact wrong isn't the most credible commentator on the subject.

Of course, being Pat Robertson, he pretty much starts out with negative credibility.