a British Overseas Territory consisting of the larger Caicos Islandsand smaller Turks Islands, two groups of tropical islands in the Lucayan Archipelago of the Caribbean Sea and northern Caribbean region.Tropical paradise are us, apparently. And a financial Switzerland, but warm. In the early days of European settlement, salt was the major export product. That hardly matters, because year-round, the temperature rarely goes above 90 or below 65. This is what we like to refer to as "perfect." So, yeah, I'm going. And why wouldn't I?
They are known primarily for tourism and as an offshore financial centre. The resident population is about 49,000,[2] of whom 23,769 live on Providenciales in the Caicos Islands.
The Turks and Caicos Islands lie southeast of Mayaguana in the Bahamas island chain and north of the island of Hispaniola and the other Antilles archipelago islands.Cockburn Town, the capital since 1766, is situated on Grand Turk Island about 1,042 kilometres (647 mi) east-southeast of Miami, United States. The islands have a total land area of 430 square kilometres (170 sq mi)
officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the largest country in the Central American isthmus. The population of Nicaragua is slightly over 6 million. Nicaragua's capital, Managua, is the third-largest city in Central America. The multi-ethnic population includes indigenous peoples, Europeans, Africans, Asians. The main language is Spanish. Native tribes on the eastern coast speak their own languages.I'm not even going to get into Nicaragua's political history. Like many southern-hemisphere countries, it is a long litany of revolution, dictatorships and democracies that really aren't. Suffice to say that the current president is the guy who led the communist revolution of the 1980s, and that the legislature amended the constitution to let him run for a third consecutive term. Whatevs.
The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century. Nicaragua gained independence from Spain in 1821. Since its independence, Nicaragua has undergone periods of political unrest, dictatorship, and fiscal crisis—the most notable causes that led to the Nicaraguan Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Nicaragua is a representative democratic republic.
Nicaragua occupies a landmass of 130,967 km2 (50,567 sq mi). Nicaragua has three distinct geographical regions: the Pacific lowlands - fertile valleys which the Spanish colonists settled, the Amerrisque Mountains (North-central highlands), and the Mosquito Coast (Atlantic lowlands/Caribbean lowlands).The population of roughly 6 million is largely Mestizo, meaning a mix of European and indigenous peoples (Indians, y'all). They're pretty Catholic, but the government really runs the church. All in all, the country is pretty but poor -- nearly half the population lives below the poverty line, and almost 80 percent live on $2 per day, which makes you wonder what the fuck the poverty line is. It also makes you want to tell "poor" people in this country to shut the fuck up, but that is a different conversation.
The low plains of the Atlantic Coast are 97 km (60 mi) wide in areas. They have long been exploited for their natural resources.
On the Pacific side of Nicaragua are the two largest fresh water lakes in Central America—Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. Surrounding these lakes and extending to their northwest along the rift valley of the Gulf of Fonseca are fertile lowland plains, with soil highly enriched by ash from nearby volcanoes of the central highlands. Nicaragua's abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems contribute to Mesoamerica's designation as a biodiversity hotspot.
In 2010, agriculture accounted for 36.1%, services comprised 48.5%, and industry 15.4% of Nepal's GDP.[89] While agriculture and industry are contracting, the contribution by the service sector is increasing.[89][90]Agriculture employs 76% of the workforce, services 18% and manufacturing and craft-based industry 6%.[citation needed] Agricultural produce – mostly grown in the Terai region bordering India – includes tea, rice, corn, wheat, sugarcane, root crops, milk, and water buffalo meat. Industry mainly involves the processing of agricultural produce, including jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. Its workforce of about 10 million suffers from a severe shortage of skilled labor.[citation needed]I don't know where you go from there. Let's face it, this is your ace in the hole:
One of the most time-honored phrases in the Marine Corps — "every Marine a rifleman" — could get an update as the service's top leaders consider new gender-neutral job titles for all positions.Because Mabus is a Social Justice Warrior, there apparently are no restrictions on changes he is willing to make. SJWs feel the need to control the language as well as the actions of other people, regardless of how stupid the result is. Mabus clearly falls in that camp:
The Marine Corps is conducting a sweeping review of its military occupational specialty titles, Capt. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, told Marine Corps Times. The move follows a January directive from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus that Navy and Marine leaders ensure all job titles are gender neutral as ground combat jobs opened to women.
Initially, a Navy official told Marine Corps Times that Mabus didn't intend to change iconic titles like infantryman, rifleman or midshipman. Instead, the official said, he only wanted titles to change the titles if "man" stood alone as a separate word, as in reconnaissance man or field artillery sensor support man.I will leave you to your own conclusions as to why the SJWs want to enact these kinds of changes. But I think we can rest assured that future generations, looking back on the de-militarization of our military, will not look kindly upon people like Ray Mabus. His efforts to turn the Marines into some kind of social club will not be appreciated in the future when we need a military organization that is proud to be "first to fight" rather than proud to be "gender-inclusive."
But a Marine official with knowledge of the review said "every single" title, billet and job description is being looked at.
a landlocked country in central South America, bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the country from north to south. Due to its central location in South America, it is sometimes referred to as Corazón de Sudamérica ("Heart of South America").About 6.5 million people live in Paraguay, which has a long history of military dictatorships and isolationism. They apparently have some serious episodes of stupid in their history, as well:
Solano López led the nation into the Paraguayan War in 1864 against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, and was overwhelmingly defeated in 1870 after five years of the bloodiest war in South America. William D. Rubinstein wrote: "The normal estimate is that of a Paraguayan population of somewhere between 450,000 and 900,000, only 220,000 survived the war, of whom only 28,000 were adult males."[19] Paraguay also suffered extensive territorial losses to Brazil and Argentina.OK, Paraguay is pretty small. Argentina and Brazil are pretty big. Uruguay is a whole bunch bigger than Paraguay, too, and not just in size but in population. Paraguay was asking for it. No wonder they got their asses kicked. But I digress.
During the pillaging of Asunción in 1869, the Brazilian Imperial Army packed up and transported the Paraguayan National Archives to Rio de Janeiro.[citation needed] Brazil's records from the war have remained classified.[20] This has made Paraguayan history in the Colonial and early National periods difficult to research and study.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a concentrated solar thermal in California and the world's largest solar thermal power station, suffered a small fire on one of its three boiler towers Thursday, according to the Associated Press. The fire caused the boiler tower to be shut down while firefighters ascended 300 feet to deal with the blaze, leaving the plant at one third power since another tower is already down for maintenance.You had one job: generate power. You failed. Did you have to make things worse by setting yourself on fire? Did you have to take a situation where you were figuratively setting fire to $1.6 billion in taxpayer subsidies and make it literal? Apparently, yeah. Still think it's a good idea for government to use your money as venture capital on jackass schemes?
The Ivanpah plant works by using its massive fields of mirrors to direct sunlight towards the top of the three 459-foot boiler towers, which then creates the steam to drive turbines that create the actual electricity. But several misaligned mirrors directed some of this sunlight to the wrong place, starting a fire amidst some electrical cables, San Bernardino County, California fire Capt. Mike McClintock told the AP. Plant personnel had the fire out by the time firefighters on site.
Consumers have their plans cut out from underneath them each year as insurers have either pared back plans or exited exchanges altogether as Obamacare’s economic model continues to fail. At the same time, premiums and deductibles have continued to skyrocket, and tax subsidies cannot hide the impact on families.Insurance companies are bailing out, because they aren't selling insurance anymore. If a sick person can wait until he actually has to incur health care costs to buy insurance, and the insurance company then has to sell him the insurance, that isn't insurance. It's insanity. It might make libtards feel good because people with poor planning skills or no money can get someone else to pay for their healthcare, but it is a really good way to get companies to stop paying for anyone's health care, including those folks who bought insurance the old-fashioned way, based on the risk that they would need it.
What was promised as more “choice” is becoming fewer choices as UnitedHealthcare and now Humana begin to pull out of certain regions. An AP story in 2014 reported that of the 19 nationally recognized cancer centers that responded to a survey, only 4 reported access through all Obamacare insurers. Last month, Blue Cross Blue Shield released a report warning that costs under the president’s plan are unsustainable – fully 22 percent higher than people covered by employers. And The Hill reported that Obamacare insurers lost money in 41 states in 2014, which could determine whether big companies like Aetna stick with it.
Remember the now-infamous promise made by President Barack Obama when pushing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare? “If you like your plan,” the president repeated on dozens of occasions, “you can keep your plan.”
When millions of Americans got thrown off of their existing health-insurance plans in the fall of 2013, PolitiFact called it the Lie of the Year. Obama ended upapologizing for the lie in an interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd in November 2013, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that it was a lie. “We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place,” was as far as Obama’s contrition went.
Almost three years later, there is little evidence of any more contrition on that failure, or others in Obamacare for that matter. Earlier this week , Charlie Rose interviewed three former Obama speechwriters on a variety of topics. After discussing their work on lighter-topic speeches, Rose asked whether they felt they had an impact on Obama’s more serious addresses. Jon Lovett replied that he felt most proud of his impact on “the most serious speeches – health care, economic speeches.”
That prompted his colleague, Jon Favreau, to interject. “Lovett wrote the line about ‘if you like your insurance, you can keep it,” he said, as the panel erupted in laughter. “How dare you!” Lovett shot back in mock indignation. “And you know what?” he asked as the laughter continued. “It’s still true … no.”
Are incompetence and deceit humorous? Perhaps in the Obama administration, the answer might be yes. For the rest of us, especially those who find themselves stuck between a federal tax mandate and an insurance market that has narrowed as significantly as its costs have skyrocketed, no is the correct answer.The people behind Obamacare joke about what a lie it was. Think it's funny? Gee, I wonder who could have seen this coming?
Donald J. Trump’s behavior in recent days — the political threats to the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan; the name-calling on Twitter; the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s marriage — has deeply puzzled Republicans who expected him to move to unite the party, start acting presidential and begin courting the female voters he will need in the general election.Why would he act like this? Well, of course, it's because he won slightly more than a third of the votes cast during Republican primaries and caucuses, and what's that mean? Mandate!:
But Mr. Trump’s choices reflect an unusual conviction: He said he had a “mandate” from his supporters to run as a fiery populist outsider and to rely on his raucous rallies to build support through “word of mouth,” rather than to embrace a traditional, mellower and more inclusive approach that congressional Republicans will advocate in meetings with him on Thursday.It seems to me to be likely that if his jackhole approach failed to win a majority of votes from Republicans, it won't win a majority of votes from the general voting population. Get ready for six months of the latest Trump reality show -- great ratings on TV, but totally devoid of intellectual content.
