Free Republic

Venezuela is out of food. After several years of long lines, rationing, and shortages, the socialist country does not have enough food to feed its population, and the opposition government has declared a "nutritional emergency." This is just the most recent nail in the beleaguered country's slow, painful economic collapse. Many people expect an economic collapse to be shocking, instant, and dramatic but, really, it's far more gradual than that. It looks like empty shelves, long lines, desperate government officials trying to cover their tushes, and hungry people. For the past two years, I've been following the situation in Venezuela...

Sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you feel like listening to President Almondjoy -- mix cocoa and coconut to get cuckoo nut -- of Iran and sometimes you would rather watch President Chavez pile up mounds of Venezuelan guano. In either case, visiting the United Nations is like taking a trip to Mars. Chavez is an Old School Commie, or perhaps Old Factory. Olfactorily he is challenged, that's for certain: he detects no sulfurous miasma anywhere in the U.N. building other than President Bush's diabolic wake. The United States, he says, is an imperialist power...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday that Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful and said he is "at a loss" about what more he can do to provide guarantees. "The bottom line is we do not need a bomb," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Ahmadinejad said his country has not hidden anything and was working within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. With world leaders gathered at the United Nations, the United States had hoped to move decisively this week toward political and economic sanctions against Iran after it missed an...