Chart of the day is.....

.....cigarette consumption in The Americas, according to The Tobacco Atlas website.

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I thought this dataset was pretty interesting when I stumbled upon it last night. The USA at 1196 per capita (60 x 20-packs per person per year, so if you didn't smoke a pack this week, somebody did it for you) surprised me, as did Peru's tiny 129 cigarettes-per-person-per-year consumption. Also, this might explain why Cuban doctors are so good; they have to keep up with their coughing and spluttering citizens. Argentines are big smokers, so that one came as no shock. But Paraguay is a dirt poor nation so what are they doing smoking so much? Must be because Paraguayan ciggies are dirt cheap...I dunno.

Presidential Approval in the Americas at end 2009

Those nice people over at the reliable Mitofsky ratings agency in Mexico have put together their regular "poll of polls" for leaders in the Americas (I'd say 'Presidents', but Harpo is there) as at the end of 2009. Here's the chart (click it to make it bigger), below some comments:

• Martinelli and Funes top the bill, but both are still early into their terms and enjoying that honeymoon period.

• Lula is Yoda.

• 'Chelle (Chile) and Tabby (Uruguay) are now wrapping up their very successful terms and both should be congratulated on good jobs done.

• Uribe (Colombia) is still popular but has been dropping all through the year, his attempt to muscle in on the May elections largely to blame.

• Evo (Bolivia) and Felipe (Mexico) batting well enough and Lugo (Paraguay) at 50% doing just enough to get a green.

• The Hawaiian (USA) under 50% already? That didn't take long, did it?

• Studmuffin (Ecuador) has seen a sharp drop in 2009, a lot due to the electricity crisis late year but the unemployment inertia is to blame too.

• The ones in red? Yep, totally agree. All of them "ugh".

Finally, you'll note that Hugo Chávez doesn't make the list. Mitofsky doesn't cover him in its poll of polls, probably because they like to be accurate and the polls that come out of Venezuela show wild differences. For example, the latest December numbers for Chávez from pro-gov't pollsters IVAD have him at 60.3% while the pro-oppo Datanalisis guys have him as low as 46.3% for exactly the same time period. I wonder why.........

Don't worry 'bout jobs, Statesiders...could be worse....you could be Colombia

Here's how the latest unemployment data stack up, from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego:

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Reports are now coming through of tall, overweight, white-skinned people trying to sneak across the border and into Tijuana in an attempt to find gainful employment. Locals were later spotted showing them how lawnmowers work.

Reap = Sow

Just how many LatAm countries are more peaceful than the USA? A lot

Blue good, yellow ok, orange suspect, red danger

A bunch of pinko lefty handwringers called "visionofhumanity dot org" has just released its annual "peace index" which ranks world countries in order of their peacefullynessation. Anyway, toe-curlingly boring New Zealand is ranked number one and wins again (yawn) while that paragon of democracy and Hope™ Iraq is last on the list at 144.

But we don't give a rat's posterior about those dudes...we wanna know about how The Americas did. So your vigilant Otto has extracted all the regional countries and lined 'em up for your dee lek tay shun. Here we go:

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Most boring country in the region is Canada. I mean, these guys should stop being so genteel and friendly and get on with killing each other a little more, no? Then comes Chile and Uruguay scoring well. But if we use the good ol' USofA as our benchmark we see that according to those commie bedwetters at VisionOfHumanity a full eleven states rank as more peaceful in the region than the world's self-appointed guardian of peace....including Cuba. But don't worry USAers, you'll be beating out Peru next year, that's for sure.

Then right down the bottom we have Venezuela, largely due to their habit of shooting each other dead by the tens of thousands every year, and then dead last Colombia. Surprise. Mega mega surprise.