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Merci de votre compréhension.
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44
Rappel du premier message :
Bonjour Biloulou
Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait!
Auteur
Message
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 23/1/2010, 16:09
Sylvette a écrit:
What Scott Borwn's win means for the Democrats
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 22, 2010
On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health-care reform. "If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have."
Spoiler:
The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health-care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don't throw her a millstone.
After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that . . . it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama, not Bush.He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.
Bull's-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to a Rasmussen poll, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.
Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don't Mirandize terrorists. Don't raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.
These deals -- the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback -- had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff -- in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a ("Cadillac") health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are [i]not unionized.
The reason both wings of American liberalism -- congressional and mainstream media -- were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they'd spent Obama's first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year's two gubernatorial elections.
The evidence was unmistakable. Independents, who in 2008 had elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey. On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who had gone 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.
Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to diss Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal -- of a man who had them swooning only a year ago -- something is going on beyond personality.
That something is substance -- political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power -- even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can't even see is in your own interest.
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?
"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up." I say: Let them sleep.
OK, Zed, des que j'aurai une minute, mais bon cet article que j'allais poste de toute facon devrait vous donner une idee!
Ô vous savez, des idées j'en ai, mais c'est les idéaux qui me font souvent défauts.
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Sujet: 1850 - 23/1/2010, 16:16
Zed
Lorsque vous parlez de gratuite des soins medicaux:
Vous pensez: comme ca l'est au Canada?
------
Je serais parcontre, pour une contribution mondiale du monde libre.
Ah c'est interessant..
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Sujet: 1851 - 23/1/2010, 16:28
Rasmussen
Ouffff!
Date .....................Presidential Appro Index - Strongly Appr - Strongly Disappr - Total Appr - Total Disappr
01/23/2010
-19
24%
43%
44%
55%
01/22/2010
-18
25%
43%
45%
54%
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Sujet: 1852 - 23/1/2010, 16:39
Also:
Final Health Care Tracking Poll: 58% Oppose the Plan Before Congress
61% Say It’s Time for Congress To Drop Health Care
Just 30% Now Say Health Care Reform Is Goal Obama Most Likely to Achieve
30% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction
Just 21% Favor Bernanke’s Reappointment As Fed Chairman
26% Have Favorable View of Rahm Emanuel, 48% Don’t
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 23/1/2010, 16:41
Sylvette a écrit:
Zed
Lorsque vous parlez de gratuite des soins medicaux:
Vous pensez: comme ca l'est au Canada?
------
Je serais parcontre, pour une contribution mondiale du monde libre.
Ah c'est interessant..
C'est de la logique mathématique, et aussi, sans police, c'est l'anarchie. (l'état naturelllllllllllllll des choses)
Quand l'ONU dit, envoi tes soldats par ci ou par la, a qui donc parle-t-il?
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Sujet: 1854 - 23/1/2010, 17:09
Cette video n'a pas ete preparee par les Republicains
TPM mocks Obama
With health reform's fate uncertain, Talking Points Memo puts together a scathing video montage of President Obama's predictions that reform would be finished in 2009. Yet another sign of a restless left.
TPM: Well folks, it's been one year since President Barack Obama took office. And he spent a lot of that year working on health care reform.
But with the future of reform uncertain at best in the wake of the special election in Massachusetts that left Senate Democrats without their filibuster-proof supermajority, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back and relive all the exciting speeches about getting health care reform done. Masochistic? Maybe. Yes.
Dernière édition par Sylvette le 23/1/2010, 17:42, édité 1 fois
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Sujet: 1855 - 23/1/2010, 17:12
Oui Zed
Mais pour en revenir aux soins gratuits pour tous les Americains, le seraient-ils vraiment?
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Sujet: 1856 - 23/1/2010, 20:49
White House caught in Democrats' crossfire By GLENN THRUSH & JAKE SHERMAN & LISA LERER | 1/22/10 4:45 AM EST
Hill Democrats are demanding that Obama’s brain trust, including White House senior adviser David Axelrod, shelve their grand legislative ambitions.
Congressional Democrats — stunned out of silence by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts — say they’re done swallowing their anger with President Barack Obama and ready to go public with their gripes.
Spoiler:
If the sentiment isn’t quite heads-must-roll, it’s getting there.
Hill Democrats are demanding that Obama’s brain trust — especially senior adviser David Axelrod and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — shelve their grand legislative ambitions to focus on the economic issues that will determine the fates of shaky Democratic majorities in both houses.
And they want the White House to step up — quickly — to help shape the party’s message and steer it through the wreckage of health care reform.
“The administration has got to be in the forefront now, instead of throwing some meat on the track and seeing what the House can work out,” said New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell, expressing the frustrations also voiced by about two dozen Democratic elected officials and aides interviewed by POLITICO.
“I haven’t seen Rahm Emanuel except on television. We used to see him a lot; I’d like him to come out from behind his desk and meet with the common folk,” added Pascrell.
“What happened was they got so caught up in all these other issues like health care and cap and trade and all this other stuff, that because of that they maybe didn’t put enough focus on the economy,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a moderate who represents a conservative, rural district hard-hit by the economic crisis.
The White House would not comment for this story.
Administration officials say they get it — with Axelrod recently admitting that Obama’s team is recalibrating and refocusing on the economy. Emanuel, for his part, is now pushing for a stripped-down health care bill that could be passed within a few weeks and force Republicans, for a change, to take a few tough votes.
That may mollify some Democratic moderates, but it will further infuriate the liberals, who insist that the lesson of Massachusetts is that Obama has come on too weak, not too strong. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman captured the left’s winter of discontent Thursday with a blog post in which he wrote that he’s “pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”
Despite the criticism, Obama is still popular on the Hill, and most Democrats acknowledge the enormity of the problems he faced when he took office.
“At this point, the challenge that they have had, and we have had, is that there were so many problems that were dumped in their lap when they took over,” said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow. “They have been moving quickly on a hundred different points, so I think that’s their biggest challenge.”
But the Brown loss has exposed deep resentment about Obama’s all-fronts legislative strategy, his hands-off approach to health care reform for much of the year, the actions of his economic team — especially Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — and his Afghanistan escalation.
But more than anything else, there’s a sense that the party’s greatest communicator isn’t conveying to voters that he understands their worries about the economy.
And that could swamp all Democratic boats, even those carrying incumbents who previously felt they were secure.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who supported Obama’s $787 billion stimulus a year ago, says the president needs to be much more forceful about how, where and why the money was spent if Democrats are going to get credit for attacking the recession in an era of double-digit unemployment.
“I think the administration needs to be much more aggressive, and hopefully the president will outline some of this in his State of the Union address,” she said. “We very much need leadership from the executive on this. You can’t just put money out there — even if we had it to put it out there — unless it’s going to produce an actual new job.”
Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy — whose father’s seat was captured Tuesday night by a Republican who opposes the health care reform bill — says Obama is still popular but needs to harness his “fierce urgency of now” when it comes to improving the economy.
“We’ve done a damn good job at righting this ship. And now it’s starting to move in the right direction. Now what happened?” he said. “We lost the sense of urgency that we’re still doing it every single day, because this isn’t over yet.”
The problem, from the perspective of the White House, is that fractious Democrats provide all the political direction of a nine-needled compass — and often send contradictory messages about how they want him to proceed. In the House alone, there are nearly as many Democratic positions on health care as there are Democrats, with liberals goading Obama to double-down on reform and ram through a bill using the Senate’s controversial 51-vote “reconciliation” process.
Moderates, embodied by Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a fiscal hawk, and New York Rep. Eliot Engel, are urging Obama to dispense with the issue as soon as possible before he marches the party off a cliff.
“I think that an effective majority is one that advocates and listens,” Engel said. “I’ve done a lot of advocating; now I’m listening. If the people say, ‘Wait, slow down, you’re going a little bit too fast,’ then we need to slow down.”
At the moment, the whole cacophonous crew seems to be united by the fear that no one is safe if a tea party-backed Republican can win the Senate seat the late Ted Kennedy held for nearly 50 years.
On the day after Brown’s win, panicky House Democrats convened in the Capitol to discuss post-Massachusetts strategy, with some in attendance complaining about what they believed to be continued White House disengagement.
“We all pretty much knew for sure we were going to lose Massachusetts,” one person in attendance told POLITICO on Wednesday. “And yet, last night and this morning, we had absolutely no message guidance from the White House, [the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] or [the Democratic National Committee]. There was no leadership. ... So all of the members today are just opining about what they think it means and whether we should move forward on health care.”
Despite the criticism, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs seemed determined to stay the hands-off course. Gibbs told reporters Thursday that, after Massachusetts, the president wants to let “the dust settle” and look “for the best path forward.”
But House Democrats, already terrified by the wholesale defection of independents to the GOP in Massachusetts, were infuriated when a New York Times article, apparently citing an administration source, suggested Speaker Nancy Pelosi could pass an unamended version of the Senate’s health reform bill.
“The sense was that the Obama folks were trying to say it was inevitable when it wasn’t,” said New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, a supporter of the public option who has clashed with the White House repeatedly about the issue.
“It wasn’t that they were bullying us, but it reinforced the idea that they were a little tone-deaf to what the reality inside the House and Senate really were,” Weiner added.
Meredith Shiner, Kasie Hunt and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 23/1/2010, 20:55
Sylvette a écrit:
Oui Zed
Mais pour en revenir aux soins gratuits pour tous les Americains, le seraient-ils vraiment?
Gratuit pour l'individu, mais pas pour le peuple. Je veux dire, c'est pas une gratuité magique, ca devient comme un service inclu, les taxes s'en chargent.
C'est comme ca au Québec.
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Sujet: 1858 - 23/1/2010, 20:59
Zed: Eh bien voila. Nous sommes bien d'accord, et la majorite n'en veut pas et c'est pour le prouver que Scott Brown a ete elu mardi dans un des etats les plus bleus qui existent.
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Sujet: 1859 - 23/1/2010, 21:09
Manque de chance pour Polanski, il devra etre present pour la sentence!
JANUARY 23, 2010, 7:22 A.M. ET
Polanski Loses Bid to Be Sentenced in Absentia
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Director Roman Polanski lost his bid Friday to be sentenced without returning to the U.S. when a judge ruled the director must be present in court if he wants to resolve his 32-year-old sex case.
Spoiler:
Reiterating Mr. Polanski was a fugitive from justice, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza said he was acting to protect "the dignity of the court."
Bart Dalton, a lawyer for Mr. Polanski, said the ruling would be appealed.
Before the hearing, the judge provided lawyers with his 11-page tentative decision denying the request by the 76-year-old Mr. Polanski, who fled the U.S. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
Lawyers Chad Hummel, who represents Mr. Polanski, and Lawrence Silver, who represents victim Samantha Geimer, tried to convince Judge Espinoza to change his mind.
But Judge Espinoza cited a law that says someone who flees is not entitled to the processes of the court unless they return. The judge also cited the length of time Mr. Polanski had been a fugitive and the deterrent factor for others who might consider fleeing to escape justice.
Deputy District Attorney David Walgren argued vehemently against Mr. Polanski's bid to be sentenced without returning to this country from Switzerland, where he is under house arrest and fighting extradition. Judge Espinoza, however, interrupted Mr. Walgren as he began to denounce the director as "this criminal, this fugitive, this child rapist."
"This is not helpful," Judge Espinoza snapped. "I'd rather not inflame this proceeding."
Mr. Polanski was initially accused of plying the 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill then raping her at Jack Nicholson's house.
Mr. Polanski was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy. He later pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.
Mr. Silver stepped to the lectern at one point to plead for a resolution of the case, saying Ms. Geimer wants it to be over.
"I implore you to end the 32-year prolonged suffering of this victim," Mr. Silver said, citing a state constitution amendment known as Marcy's Law meant to protect victims' rights in criminal cases.
"I don't think it was ever intended for this use," said Judge Espinoza, who found that Ms. Geimer's rights have not been violated in the current proceeding.
In court documents, Mr. Polanski's attorneys said the late Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband sentenced the director in 1978 to a diagnostic study at a California prison where he served 42 days.
Although the judge told attorneys that would be Mr. Polanski's full sentence, he later indicated he was going to renege on the bargain and give him a harsher sentence at a scheduled hearing.
Mr. Polanski fled to France and has been a fugitive ever since.
His attorneys said the judge's promise is binding and Mr. Polanski has served his full sentence. They have asked Judge Espinoza for a full hearing with witnesses about allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.
Judge Espinoza added another twist in his remarks from the bench by saying he believes Judge Rittenband originally intended to sentence Mr. Polanski to a maximum 90-day period of incarceration for the diagnostic study but never officially imposed the penalty in court.
Prosecutors insist Mr. Polanski must appear in a Los Angeles courtroom and not be permitted to manipulate the justice system.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 23/1/2010, 21:35
Sylvette a écrit:
Zed: Eh bien voila. Nous sommes bien d'accord, et la majorite n'en veut pas et c'est pour le prouver que Scott Brown a ete elu mardi dans un des etats les plus bleus qui existent.
Comment on peut être contre le fait que tous aient accès a la santé???
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 23/1/2010, 22:23
Zed:
Permettez que je pose une autre question:
Comment se fait-il qu'un citoyen ne puisse envisager une couverture medicale pour tous (ou presque, ce n’est jamais du 100%) sans qu’elle soit le fief du gouvernement?
Bien evidemment qu’il est necessaire que les primes d’assurance baissent afin que presque tous puissent etre assures. Ce n’est pas pour autant que le gouvernement doive s’octroyer le droit de gerer le systeme et s’autoriser a decider pour nous de ce qui est notre interet avec l'argent de NOS impots.
Dernière édition par Sylvette le 24/1/2010, 10:03, édité 1 fois
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Sujet: 1862 - 24/1/2010, 09:57
Tens of Thousands of Venezuelans Protest Hugo Chavez
Saturday, January 23, 2010
CARACAS, Venezuela — Tens of thousands of Venezuelans opposed to President Hugo Chavez took to the streets Saturday, blaming him for rolling blackouts, water rationing, widespread crime and other problems they say are making daily life increasingly difficult.
Spoiler:
Chavez backers flooded the capital's avenues with an equally impressive demonstration as the socialist leader confronts mounting criticism and an emboldened opposition ahead of upcoming congressional elections.
Waving Venezuelan flags, protesters accused Chavez of dragging the politically divided South American country into a severe crisis as he accelerates his drive to transform it into a socialist state.
"Chavez is leading the country to ruin," said 79-year-old Olga Damjanovich at the opposition protest. "He's controlled all the country's institutions for more than a decade, so how could it be possible that he's not responsible for the problems weighing down on us?"
Many wore T-shirts that read: "3 Strikes: Blackouts, Water Rationing and Crime. Chavez, You've Struck Out!"
Chavez backers rebutted the criticism, accusing opponents of exaggeration.
"Things aren't all as we would like them to be, but we know that El Comandante (Chavez) is doing what he can to help us, the poor," said Yorbert Rodriguez, a 39-year-old bricklayer.
Political rivals organized Saturday's demonstrations to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of an uprising that toppled Venezuela's last dictator, Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez. Chavez allies argued that democracy is growing stronger, while government foes said their liberties are slipping away.
Opposition parties hope to make a strong showing in September's elections by holding Chavez responsible for rampant crime, a recent currency devaluation widely expected to boost inflation — which ended 2009 at 25 percent — and electricity rationing.
Chavez, a tireless campaigner who remains popular, has overcome bigger obstacles during his 11-year presidency. The former paratroop commander emerged unscathed from a botched 2002 coup and devastating two-month strike the following year.
Margarita Lopez Maya, a political science professor at the Central University of Venezuela, believes increasing numbers of Venezuelans are "putting the president's capacity to resolve problems in doubt," but they haven't embraced the opposition as a result.
"There may be doubts — even disapproval, but there's no alternative these people believe in," she said.
jam
Nombre de messages : 1404 Age : 69 Localisation : saint-nectaire land Date d'inscription : 02/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 01:23
Sylvette a écrit:
Zed:
Permettez que je pose une autre question:
Comment se fait-il qu'un citoyen ne puisse envisager une couverture medicale pour tous (ou presque, ce n’est jamais du 100%) sans qu’elle soit le fief du gouvernement?
Bien evidemment qu’il est necessaire que les primes d’assurance baissent afin que presque tous puissent etre assures. Ce n’est pas pour autant que le gouvernement doive s’octroyer le droit de gerer le systeme et s’autoriser a decider pour nous de ce qui est notre interet avec l'argent de NOS impots.
euh... il me semble que c'est pourtant le principe généralisé dans tous les états du monde c'est le gouvernement qui décide comment il utilise les impôts et à qui il les prélève c'est d'ailleurs la seule chose qu'il a à faire son activité principale c'est même je dirais, la seule justification concrète d'un gouvernement quelconque dans un pays quelconque mais on peut effectivement ne pas être d'accord avec ce principe et dire: vive l'anarchie et mort aux vaches c'est un point de vue tout aussi défendable
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 01:30
JANUARY 23, 2010
Swind Flu Count Plagued by Flawed Data
Last April, as news reports from Mexico painted a frightening picture about the emergence of swine flu, ill students started coming in to the University of Delaware's health service. The appearance of flu-like symptoms after the seasonal strain had run its course prompted officials to send samples to state laboratories, which confirmed the new virus was on campus.
Spoiler:
Flu Tracker Track flu activity state-by-state and week-by-week.
"This was a time when everyone was anxious about the disease," recalls E.F. Joseph Siebold, director of the university's health service. "Everyone was prepared for a worst-case scenario."
That scenario failed to materialize. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that about 55 million Americans have been ill with H1N1 and about 11,000 have died—a far smaller toll than projected in a report last summer commissioned by the White House. That report warned of a scenario in which 60 million to 120 million people would become sick last fall and this winter and 30,000 to 90,000 people would die of swine flu.
So why were the initial swine-flu projections so far off the mark?
One possible explanation is that the early projections were fairly sound, but the CDC's latest tally of swine-flu cases is incomplete. To arrive at its estimates, the CDC relies on the nation's patchy surveillance system. While broader than that of many other nations, U.S. health reporting isn't set up to catch every case.
The swine-flu estimates were based in part on the Delaware outbreak. Even as the university's health department beefed up staffing and issued early alerts, about half of ill students didn't bother to seek treatment. Those who did generally didn't have their cases confirmed by lab test.
In its analysis, the CDC attempted to address the gaps in the chain between illness and confirmation at the University of Delaware and in other outbreaks elsewhere around the country. That led the agency to conclude that before July 23, just one of every 79 people believed to be infected with H1N1 who experienced symptoms had a positive test reported to the CDC. Once the CDC began discouraging tests for patients who weren't hospitalized, the agency instead extrapolated that each hospitalization represented 221 cases of swine flu.
Yet even with those assumptions, the CDC's calculations leave plenty of room for uncertainty, says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prof. Lipsitch was a co-author of last summer's report outlining the scenario of up to 90,000 deaths. Later, he conducted an independent analysis of swine flu's spread, using data from outbreaks in Milwaukee and New York. He determined that each hospitalization could represent as few as 70 overall cases, or as many as 600.
In all of the calculations, very large numbers are being estimated from very small ones. "For all of these steps, we used the data we had available to us," says David Swerdlow, a CDC epidemiologist.
He adds that the estimates are "reasonable."
Delaware was chosen as a test case because it represented an isolated outbreak, and CDC investigators were on hand to help gather and analyze data. But a student population with on-campus health service might not behave like the general public.
Most countries aren't even trying to extrapolate swine-flu tolls from smaller samples. And figures from early outbreaks, particularly in Mexico, led to the high projections in the U.S. Prof. Lipsitch says that initially, "the data were limited and misleading and confusing."
This week, the World Health Organization said that at least 14,142 people had died of the flu world-wide—or just 3,000 more than the U.S. totals. But these figures aren't comparable. "WHO counts only laboratory-confirmed cases, but we understand this is a significant undercounting of the total," says spokeswoman Karen Mah.
These same challenges complicate efforts to count U.S. deaths from seasonal flu, which also is rarely confirmed by lab test. But there are key differences between the strains of flu and their death tolls. H1N1 has been killing much younger people. In a typical flu season, 90% of victims are 65 or older. Yet 88% of the new flu's victims were under 65.
On the other hand, death counts might overstate the burden of H1N1, which could be alleviating the toll from the typical seasonal flu. Some epidemiologists think the two flu strains may be competing, so that individuals who contract one type of flu aren't getting the other. That could explain why the seasonal flu has been very mild so far.
One piece of evidence: Fewer Americans in November and December told telephone pollsters from a near-daily Gallup/Healthways survey that they were sick with the flu the day before than did when asked the same question a year earlier.
The CDC numbers might be the best available, but they are far from certain. "You could put three statisticians in a room and get three different answers," says Jimmy Efird, a biostatistician at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "Sometimes you're better off not trying to estimate something when it's difficult to model."
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 01:50
jam a écrit:
Sylvette a écrit:
Zed:
Permettez que je pose une autre question:
Comment se fait-il qu'un citoyen ne puisse envisager une couverture medicale pour tous (ou presque, ce n’est jamais du 100%) sans qu’elle soit le fief du gouvernement?
Bien evidemment qu’il est necessaire que les primes d’assurance baissent afin que presque tous puissent etre assures. Ce n’est pas pour autant que le gouvernement doive s’octroyer le droit de gerer le systeme et s’autoriser a decider pour nous de ce qui est notre interet avec l'argent de NOS impots.
euh... il me semble que c'est pourtant le principe généralisé dans tous les états du monde c'est le gouvernement qui décide comment il utilise les impôts et à qui il les prélève c'est d'ailleurs la seule chose qu'il a à faire son activité principale c'est même je dirais, la seule justification concrète d'un gouvernement quelconque dans un pays quelconque mais on peut effectivement ne pas être d'accord avec ce principe et dire: vive l'anarchie et mort aux vaches c'est un point de vue tout aussi défendable
Cela veut PEUT-ETRE dire qu'en Europe en general et en France en particulier, les citoyens en sont arrives a etre si totalement embrigades par le socialisme qu'ils acceptent tout ce que le gouvernement leur impose "pour leur bien".
Aux Etats Unis, le POTUS voulait nous imposer le meme systeme et pour le moment ca ne marche pas. Ca voudrait dire que le vote des Americains a plus de pouvoir que le vote francais? Je ne sais pas une chose est certaine, il n'est nullement question d'anarchie mais de LIBERTE. Je n'avais encore jamais remarque a quel point les Francais acceptent que la leur soit aussi reduite pour que Jam ait ecrit un message se terminant ainsi?
Je rappelle que 58% des Americains sont maintenant contre Obamacare (40 % sont pour). Obama se "tate" toujours pour savoir s'il va ou non pousser pour que cette reforme passe - peu importe les consequences (Il sait que ca risque d'etre un suicide politique pour lui et pour tout elu qui la votera.)
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Si demain, notre POTUS decidait qu'il est injuste que certains se goinfrent pendant que d'autres ont tout juste a manger et que donc, a la chavez, il nationalise tous les magasins prives (comme Casino au Venezuela) et les remplace par des magasins gouvernementaux a prix socialistes (bien evidemment les impots seront "legerement" augmentes), il faudrait aussi accepter?
Aucune difference pour moi entre ca et Obamacare.
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Je rappelle que le seul devoir d'un president americain c'est de defendre son pays.
Tout ce qu'il fait d'autre c'est du surplus. Lever des impots et augmenter le deficit (particulierement dans les proportions dont il est question) sont la pire des choses qu'il puisse faire (je rappelle les consequences fatales de l'augmentation d'impots precede de la fameuse promesse "read my lips" de Bush 41... et l'augmentation du deficit de Bush 43) pour un programme dont ils ne veulent pas dans ces conditions.
Il y a d'autres solutions pour que les primes baissent, donc pour que presque tous puissent etre assures, que les depenses terribles faites par le gouvernement diminuent et qu'1/6 de l'economie privee ne s'etatise pas, inutile de passer par la voie que nous montre les Democrates.
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Rasmussen a ce sujet
Rasmussen Reports has been tracking support and expectations for the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats regularly since last June and weekly for the past six months. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said House Democrats do not have the votes to pass the legislation in its current form. As a result, this is the final tracking update for that legislation.
If the Democrats in Congress develop another approach, Rasmussen Reports will resume tracking as appropriate. However, polling released earlier today shows that 61% of voters nationwide want Congress to drop the health care plan and focus on the economy and jobs.
The final tracking numbers indicate that public expectations for the legislation fell sharply following Tuesday’s Senate vote in Massachusetts. Prior to Republican Scott Brown’s stunning victory in that overwhelmingly Democratic state, 70% of voters nationwide said it was at least somewhat likely the legislation would pass. Polling on Wednesday and Thursday nights found that number had fallen to 42% while 50% said it was unlikely to pass.
Perhaps more telling is that only 14% now believe the plan is Very Likely to pass while an equal number say it is Not at all Likely to do so.
The election of a Republican in Massachusetts had little impact on public support for the legislation, though. The final tracking numbers show that 40% of voters nationwide favor the plan while 58% are opposed. Support has remained between 38% and 42% every week since Thanksgiving (see question wording and trends).
As has been the case throughout the debate, those who feel strongly about the issue are more likely to be opposed. Just 18% of voters Strongly Favor the plan while 50% are Strongly Opposed. That latter figure is the highest level of strong opposition yet recorded.
For months, most voters have believed that passage of the plan would lead to higher costs and lower quality of care. From the beginning of the health care debate, another challenge has been the fact that most Americans have insurance and are generally happy with their coverage.
However, 52% of voters fear that they could be forced to change insurance if the health care legislation passes.
Adding to concerns about paying for the plan is the fact that 78% of voters expect it to cost more than projected. Voters overwhelmingly believe passage of the plan will increase the federal deficit and lead to middle-class tax hikes.
Most voters also dislike the propose excise taxes on “Cadillac” health insurance plans.Opposition is even higher when union workers are exempted from that tax, as the White House and Democratic congressional leaders agreed to do last week to get more support for the overall plan.
While most Americans oppose the plan, two reforms in it are supported by more than 70% of the public -- creating a new national insurance exchange and requiring health insurance companies to accept applicants with pre-existing conditions.
Also consistent throughout the health care debate has been the partisan nature of the response.
The latest numbers show that 75% of Democrats favor the plan, while 89% of Republicans are opposed. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 30% support the plan, and 66% are opposed.
Opposition has been strong from senior citizens, the people who use the health care system more than anybody else. The final tracking numbers show that just 35% of seniors favor the plan while 62% oppose it. Those figures include 14% who Strongly Favor it while 52% are Strongly Opposed.
Rasmussen Reports election night pollingshowed that health care was a major issue in the Massachusetts race but not decisive. However, 70% of voters nationwide believe it was at least somewhat important in that campaign. Forty-nine percent (49%) say it was Very Important.
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 02:18
Dans le meme ordre d'idees, on n'est pas passe loin d'un nouvel impot cap-and-trade. Il aurait fallu lui dire amen aussi?
A CE Sujet:
JANUARY 23, 2010
A Glacier Meltdown
The Himalayas and climate science.
Spoiler:
Last November, U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri delivered a blistering rebuke to India's environment minister for casting doubt on the notion that global warming was causing the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
"We have a very clear idea of what is happening," the chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the Guardian newspaper. "I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."
Then again, when it comes to unsubstantiated research it's hard to beat the IPCC, whose 2007 report insisted that the glaciers—which feed the rivers that in turn feed much of South Asia—were very likely to nearly disappear by the year 2035. "The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers," it wrote in its supposedly definitive report, "can be attributed primarily to the [sic] global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases."
It turns out that this widely publicized prediction was taken from a 2005 report from the World Wildlife Fund, which based it on a comment by Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain from 1999. Mr. Hasnian now says he was "misquoted." Even more interesting is that the IPCC was warned in 2006 by leading glaciologist Georg Kaser that the 2035 forecast was baseless. "This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude," Mr. Kaser told the Agence France-Presse. "It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing."
On Wednesday, the IPCC got around to acknowledging that the claim was "poorly substantiated," though Mr. Pachauri also suggested it amounted to little more than a scientific typo. Yet the error is of a piece with other glib, and now debunked, global warming alarms.
Among them: that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States (it was 1934); that sea levels could soon rise by up to 20 feet and put Florida underwater (an 18-inch rise by the year 2100 is the more authoritative estimate); that polar bears are critically endangered by global warming (most polar bear populations appear to be stable or increasing); that—well, we could go on without even mentioning the climategate emails.
For the record, most Himalayan glaciers do seem to be retreating, and they have been "since the earliest recordings began around the middle of the nineteenth century," according to a report from India's ministry of environment and forests. The reasons are complex and still poorly understood, and we're glad to see responsible scientists acknowledge as much. If more of them could help the IPCC get its facts straight, we might put more stock in its reports.
jam
Nombre de messages : 1404 Age : 69 Localisation : saint-nectaire land Date d'inscription : 02/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 02:26
mais alors, si c'est pas le gouvernement qui décide de ce qu'ils vont faire des impots; des questions se posent: qui donc décide: qui paie les impôts pour un total de combien? qu'est-ce qu'on fait avec ces impôts?
(je connais pas trop les habitudes usa dans ce domaine mais depuis quelques années c'est possible que c'est pas le gouvernement, mais les militaires qui utilisaient les impots, du coup ça serait devenu l'habitude actuelle et on peut comprendre que ça surprenne, cela dit si c'est pas le gouvernement qui gouverne, à quoi sert-il alors?)
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Sujet: 1869 - 25/1/2010, 02:38
Jam (entre autres) je pose des articles ici pour vous donner un autre point de vue que celui que vous connaissez en France ou que vous lisez dans la presse francaise.
Les avez-vous lus ou bien continuez-vous de penser que je ne choisis que ceux qui sont anti-Democrates, juste pour le plaisir? Je me demande comment vous continuez a comprendre si mal l'ame americaine.
L'Americain donne de facon extremement genereuse mais il n'aime pas qu'on lui prenne le fruit de son labeur et puis il n'aime pas non plus qu'on le prenne pour un imbecile. Il aime la liberte de choisir et surtout surtout, le moins d'ingerence possible du gouvernement dans sa vie de tous les jours.
Le POTUS non plus n'a rien compris, apres les elections de mardi dernier, je me demande toujours s'il a appris sa lecon.
========== The Bay State's Voter Revolt A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders
Thursday, January 21, 2010
There are two ways to look at Republican Scott Brown's pivotal victory in the Senate race to represent Massachusetts. The voters looked at runaway spending in Washington and the corrupt deals cut to grease the support of key Democratic senators, government workers and Big Labor for Obamacare, and said, "Enough."
Spoiler:
Fickle voters in a state that gave Obama 62 percent of the vote in November 2008 turned around and handed victory to a Republican, who pledged to block President Obama's health care package, because they voted in a knee-jerk response to this question: Whom do I hate the most today?
My guess is that the answer is: some of both. The cycle of voters rejecting the party they've put in power has accelerated. Party leaders can take the credit for this rejection, as they have been brazen in abusing power once they've secured it.
I have little sympathy for supporters who claim they are shocked that Obama has governed not from the center, but from the left. For the most part, Obama has delivered on his promises.
Granted, some of what Obama promised -- universal health care that would raise taxes solely for families earning more than $250,000 -- never could be delivered. But D.C. Dems could have put together something that was a lot less objectionable.
Team Obama has heaped the blame on Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley for running a lame campaign. Coakley did misstep in claiming that al-Qaida was "gone" from Afghanistan. Worse (oddly), she expressed scorn to the Boston Globe for the very notion of campaigning like "standing outside Fenway Park" and "shaking hands." In any other year, the Democratic nominee could do far worse and win.
With polls showing public support for Obamacare trailing behind spirited opposition, the president needs to look at his own contribution toward electing the first GOP senator from Massachusetts since 1972. When the president agreed to exempt union and government workers from the Senate health care bill's proposed excise tax, his administration essentially waved the middle finger at the 87 percent of wage earners who aren't union members.
It was clear Obama didn't get it Sunday when he went to Beantown to stump for Coakley. He's no longer in a position to say he stands against "special interests." And he dissed Brown by saying, "It's easy to say you're independent and you're going to bring people together and all that stuff -- until you actually have to do it" -- without a touch of irony.
This is the same president whose favorite health care bill failed to woo a single Republican Senate floor vote. Do not tell me that Republicans would not negotiate with Democrats. The Healthy Americans Act -- a model for universal care without the employer mandate -- is sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and has more than 10 co-sponsors, including four other Republicans.
If Obama and the Democratic leadership had wanted to pass a truly bipartisan bill, they could have started with Wyden-Bennett. But they decided they wanted to be the lone, all-giving benefactors, with special treats for friends. They wanted all the glory, but they earned all the blame.
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Dernière édition par Sylvette le 25/1/2010, 03:53, édité 1 fois
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 02:49
jam a écrit:
mais alors, si c'est pas le gouvernement qui décide de ce qu'ils vont faire des impots; des questions se posent: qui donc décide: qui paie les impôts pour un total de combien? qu'est-ce qu'on fait avec ces impôts?
(je connais pas trop les habitudes usa dans ce domaine mais depuis quelques années c'est possible que c'est pas le gouvernement, mais les militaires qui utilisaient les impots, du coup ça serait devenu l'habitude actuelle et on peut comprendre que ça surprenne, cela dit si c'est pas le gouvernement qui gouverne, à quoi sert-il alors?)
Vous mettez la charue devant les boeufs, Jam. Expres ou pas, je ne sais pas trop mais nous en arrivons la ou vous vouliez sans doute vous rendre: a la haine de l'uniforme. Avant de l'abandonner, je ferai remarquer que vous utilisez l'imparfait "les militaires qui utilisaient les impots" en fait, ils continuent (au present), vu que contrairement a la promesse du POTUS nos soldats sont encore en Irak et qu'ils sont plus nombreux encore en Afghanistanque l'annee derniere, mais bon.
Donc la charrue devant les boeufs, disais-je,
Les Democrates, POTUS et elus du Congres confondus, nous promettent une assurance medicale qui sera payee grace a une augmentation des impots, une augmentation des primes et une augmentation du deficit.
Pas le contraire, comme vous le sous-entendez, c'est a dire qu'une partie des impots deja leves serviraient a Obamacare.
et nous n'en voulons pas. Voila, voila.
Si Nicolas vous "offre" genereusement, pour votre bien quelque chose comme, oh je ne sais pas, une voiture par exemple et qu'en contre partie il vous augmente vos impots, etc.. etc.. etc... vous allez lui dire: "Oui, Nicolas"? je ne pense pas.
et bien voila, c'est pareil pour nous.
Nous avons eu une chance folle que les elections aient lieu au Massachussets et pas au Texas par exemple. Une chance infinie, meme si la Maison Blanche essaye de nous faire croire qu'Obamacare n'y est pour rien.
Un Republicain elu dans un des etats les plus bleus qui avait vote Obama a 62 ou 64% (je ne sais plus), et ce malgre un appel de la veuve de Kennedy. C'etait inattendu et inespere. C'est dire a quel point, il existe un ras-le-bol et une fin de non recevoir pour ce projet de loi.
Mais vous aviez bien compris, n'est-ce-pas?
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Sujet: 1870 - 25/1/2010, 04:02
Jan. 24, 2010 Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
THOMAS MITCHELL: An irrefutable right correctly restored
THOMAS MITCHELL MORE COLUMNS
It was either the end of democracy as we know it, or the restoration of it.
That summarizes the reaction to Thursday's Supreme Court ruling in the case of "Hillary: The Movie," in which the court overturned aspects of previous opinions allowing Congress to place limits on how much and when corporations and unions could spend money to advocate for or against political issues or candidates.
Spoiler:
Specifically, the court held the McCain-Feingold Act was unconstitutional in prohibiting a group calling itself Citizens United from showing an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary in the final days before the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.
Predictably, The New York Times on Friday lamented the ruling.
"The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights ..." Times editorialists proclaimed. "It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans ..."
Odd, I thought The New York Times was a corporation. Oh, that's right, McCain-Feingold exempts news media corporations.
The Wall Street Journal editorialists on the same day pointed out the hypocrisy of the Times argument.
"The Court's opinion is especially effective in dismantling McCain-Feingold's arbitrary exemption for media corporations," the Journal editorial points out. "Thus a corporation that owns a newspaper -- News Corp. or The New York Times -- retains its First Amendment right to speak freely. 'At the same time, some other corporation, with an identical business interest but no media outlet in its ownership structure, would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue,' wrote Justice (Anthony) Kennedy. 'This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment.'"
There is no rationale for exempting the media from restrictions, any more than an argument could be made that news media corporations could have their free press rights abridged simply because they are operated by corporations. The argument is fallacious on its face.
Censorship of a message because of its content or its advocate is clearly unconstitutional. The First Amendment grants not only the freedoms of speech and press, but also "the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." A corporation or a union is an assemblage and political messages state grievances. Free speech is meant to give all citizens access to every viewpoint available. The voters are perfectly capable of rejecting a bogus argument no matter how much money is spent on it or when.
Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-4 ruling, spells this out in no uncertain terms. "The law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations -- including nonprofit advocacy corporations -- either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election," Kennedy writes.
He points out that this makes it a felony for the Sierra Club to run an ad before an election that exhorts the public to disapprove of a congressman who favors logging in national forests or for someone to tell the voters to support a candidate who favors free speech. "These prohibitions are classic examples of censorship."
In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens found quotes from Thomas Jefferson in 1816: "I hope we shall ... crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Stevens wrote this was proof the Framers would find the "notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment ... quite a novelty."
Justice Antonin Scalia skewered this line of reasoning thusly: "Of course the Framers' personal affection or disaffection for corporations is relevant only insofar as it can be thought to be reflected in the understood meaning of the text they enacted -- not, as the dissent suggests, as a freestanding substitute for that text. But the dissent's distortion of proper analysis is even worse than that. Though faced with a constitutional text that makes no distinction between types of speakers, the dissent feels no necessity to provide even an isolated statement from the founding era to the effect that corporations are not covered, but places the burden on petitioners to bring forward statements showing that they are ..."
The ruling is a restoration of a key democratic principle.
Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal and writes about the role of the press, free speech and access to public information. He may be contacted at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@ reviewjournal.com. Read his blog at lvrj.com/blogs/mitchell.
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 25/1/2010, 08:24
Ouille! J'avais presqu'oublié, c'est en relish ici, I'm so retarded some time
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Sujet: 1872 - 25/1/2010, 14:25
Leonardo da Vinci's bones to be dug up by Italian scientists
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
Spoiler:
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist, said the project could throw new light on Leonardo’s most famous work. “If we manage to find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo’s face and compare it with the Mona Lisa,” he said.
The identity of the Mona Lisa has been debated for centuries, with speculation ranging from Leonardo’s mother to Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.
Some scholars have suggested that Leonardo’s presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.
Recreating Leonardo’s face could test the theory of Lillian Schwartz, an American expert who drew on computer studies to highlight apparent similarities between the features of the Mona Lisa and those of a self-portrait by the artist.
Talks about the exhumation with French cultural officials and the owners of the chateau have resulted in an agreement in principle, according to the Italian team, and the project could receive formal permission this summer.
The church in which Leonardo was buried was destroyed after the French revolution of 1789. The remains were reburied in the castle’s smaller chapel of Saint-Hubert in 1874, beneath an inscription that describes them as “presumed” to be the master’s.
Silvano Vincenti, head of the Italian team, said its first step would be to verify that the remains are Leonardo’s. They will use carbon dating and compare DNA samples from the bones and teeth to those of several male descendants buried in Bologna, central Italy.
“There aren’t any clues in the history books, but we’ll be able to find out if Leonardo died of a disease such as syphilis or tuberculosis, because that shows up in the bones. Syphilis was seen as a form of plague at the time: some 20m people died of it in the first quarter of the 16th century,” Vincenti said.
Bone tests could also establish whether Leonardo suffered from lead poisoning, as did many fellow-painters of the time, because they were exposed to toxic pigments.
However, the plans have provoked criticism from Leonardo scholars who regard the notion of a self-portrait as a myth and who believe his remains should be left alone.
Nicholas Turner, a former curator of drawings at the Getty Museum, said: “It sounds a bit fanciful, slightly mad, as if the Leonardo bug has taken hold too firmly in the minds of these people. We know that Mona Lisa was a specific person, she existed and it’s her portrait. If Leonardo heard about all this, he’d have a good chuckle.”
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Sujet: 1873 - 25/1/2010, 14:38
Mais decidement ou est donc le Cercle?
How Hugo Chavez's revolution crumbled By Jackson Diehl
Monday, January 25, 2010
While the world has been preoccupied with the crisis in Haiti, Latin America has quietly passed through a tipping point in the ideological conflict that has polarized the region -- and paralyzed U.S. diplomacy -- for most of the past decade.
Spoiler:
The result boils down to this: Hugo Chávez's "socialism for the 21st century" has been defeated and is on its way to collapse.
During the past two weeks, just before and after the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, the following happened: Chávez was forced to devalue the Venezuelan currency, and impose and then revoke massive power cuts in the Venezuelan capital as the country reeled from recession, double-digit inflation and the possible collapse of the national power grid. In Honduras, a seven-month crisis triggered by the attempt of a Chávez client to rupture the constitutional order quietly ended with a deal that will send him into exile even as a democratically elected moderate is sworn in as president.
Last but not least, a presidential election in Chile, the region's most successful economy, produced the first victory by a right-wing candidate since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from office two decades ago. Sebastián Piñera, the industrialist and champion of free markets who won, has already done something that no leader from Chile or most other Latin American nations has been willing to do in recent years: stand up to Chávez.
Venezuela is "not a democracy," Piñera said during his campaign. He also said, "Two great models have been shaped in Latin America: One of them led by people like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Ortega in Nicaragua. . . . I definitely think the second model is best for Chile.
And that's the model we are going to follow: democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, alternation of power without caudillismo."
Piñera was only stating the obvious -- but it was more than his Socialist predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, or Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been willing to say openly. That silence hamstrung the Bush and the Obama administrations, which felt, rightly or wrongly, that they should not be alone in pointing out Chávez's assault on democracy. Piñera has now provided Washington an opportunity to raise its voice about Venezuelan human rights violations.
He has done it at a moment when Chávez is already reeling from diplomatic blows. Honduras is one. Though the country is tiny, the power struggle between its established political elite and Chávez acolyte Manuel Zelaya turned into a regional battle between supporters and opponents of the Chávez left -- with Brazil and other leftist democracies straddling the middle.
The outcome is a victory for the United States, which was virtually the only country that backed the democratic election that broke the impasse. Honduras is the end of Chávez's crusade to export his revolution to other countries. Bolivia and Nicaragua will remain his only sure allies. Brazil's Lula, whose tolerance of Chávez has tarnished his bid to become a global statesman, will leave office at the end of this year; polls show his party's nominee trailing a more conservative candidate.
Haiti only deepens Chávez's hole. As the world watches, the United States is directing a massive humanitarian operation, and Haitians are literally cheering the arrival of U.S. Marines. Chávez has no way to reconcile those images with his central propaganda message to Latin Americans, which is that the United States is an "empire" and an evil force in the region.
Then there is the meltdown Chávez faces at home. Despite the recovery in oil prices, the Venezuelan economy is deep in recession and continues to sink even as the rest of Latin America recovers. Economists guess inflation could rise to 60 percent in the coming months. Meanwhile, due to a drought, the country is threatened with the shutdown of a hydroelectric plant that supplies 70 percent of its electricity. And Chávez's failure to invest in new plants means there is no backup. There is also the crime epidemic -- homicides have tripled since Chávez took office, making Caracas one of the world's most dangerous cities. At a recent baseball game a sign in the crowd read: "3 Strikes-Lights-Water-Insecurity/President You Struck Out."
Chávez's thugs beat up those baseball fans. The man himself is ranting about the U.S. "occupation" of Haiti; his state television even claimed that the U.S. Navy caused the earthquake using a new secret weapon. On Sunday his government ordered cable networks to drop an opposition-minded television channel.
But Chavez's approval ratings are still sinking: They've dropped to below 50 percent in Venezuela and to 34 percent in the rest of the region. The caudillo has survived a lot of bad news before and may well survive this. But the turning point in the battle between authoritarian populism and liberal democracy in Latin America has passed -- and Chávez has lost.
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Sujet: 1874 - 25/1/2010, 14:41
At Least 11 Killed in Series of Baghdad Hotel Blasts
Monday, January 25, 2010
BAGHDAD — DEVELOPING: Iraqi police say three blasts have struck near three hotels in downtown Baghdad, killing at least 11 people.
Spoiler:
The officials say the blasts wounded at least 20 people.
The first blast struck at about 3:40 p.m. near the Sheraton Hotel along Abu Nawas Street, just across the Tigris River from the Green Zone.
The officials say two others struck near the Babylon Hotel and al-Hamra Hotel, which is popular with Western journalists.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
This is a developing story. Refresh page for updates.
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Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
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