There's been a lot of huffing and puffing lately about Haiti.  The
problem, as every knows, is that the armpit of the hemisphere and our
swampland paradise are separated by only a few miles of ocean.  What's
worse, even poor Haitians can build boats solid enough to last until
the Coast Guard rescues them and puts them in some swampy jail.

  Every decade or so, Haiti degrades from a mere armpit into an open
sore, and a few thousand refugees sail off towards paradise.  You
might imagine that 10^7 blue-haired Floridians could assimilate 10^3
Haitians pretty easily; it is swampland paradise, after all.  But no:
the blue-hairs become uneasy.  It seems that the Haitians are even
worse than godless atheists -- they sacrifice animals in weird voodoo
rituals that cause the spread of AIDS.

  So 10^7 blue-hairs and 25 whores cried out in fear, and when 25
whores cry out, pimps listen.  In this case, Mr. Clinton brought out
out his stick and carrot, and aimed them at some Haitian generals
which were apparently responsible for this dire corruption of our
paradise.

  As per standard practice, the stick was the US army, which besieged
the dictators' little kingdom and threatened the lives of their
families.  It wasn't said in public (diplomatic politeness and all
that), but "remember Qaddafi's son?" expresses the general idea.  The
carrot is best expressed by "happy dictators in faraway lands".

  After a few months of haggling, and by the intercession of St.
Carter, this was all a smashing success: Haiti is an armpit again, and
the local slimeball leader is *our* slimeball leader (and their's too
-- they elected him).  Nevertheless, this all was quite expensive (and
we're still paying for the carrot), and we need to consider more
cost-effective alternatives:

1)  Carpet-bombing.  The B52's are all flying exercises anyway, and if
we don't drop the bombs somewhere we'll have to pay to keep them in
inventory.  This nice thing about this solution is that there won't be
any more Haitians, and so the problem can't recur.  Unfortunately, the
bleeding hearts won't stand for it.

2) Open borders.  Rein in the Coast Guard.  Let the witch doctors in.
As a sop to the Floridians, rein in the Coast Guard again and let
their boats sink.  Unfortunately, the bleeding hearts won't stand for
this either.

3) Free trade.  Haiti's entire export economy is sugar, and for some
reason (something to do with happy Hawaians) we impose a sugar import
quota.  If we just allowed Coca-cola to buy more of their sugar the
place might degenerate into an open sore less frequently, and our
caffeine would taste better.  But this might put a thousand American
farmers out of work: the bleeding hearts won't stand for it.

                             :)