NR PLUS World

Reality Bites

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A woman wearing a protective mask waits in line to refill gasoline at a gas station with subsidized fuel in Caracas, Venezuela, June 7, 2020. (Manaure Quintero/Reuters)
How socialism destroyed Venezuela's economy and impoverished her people.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE V enezuela’s last oil-drilling rig has shut down.

Venezuela still has plenty of oil — about one-fifth of the world’s known petroleum reserves are under the jackbooted feet of Hugo Chávez’s heirs. Nothing happened to the oil, and, in spite of the recent coronavirus-related turbulence in the energy business, nothing really happened to the oil market, either.

Politics happened, and destruction happened. Sometimes, those are synonyms.

What’s a barrel of oil worth? It depends. Economic values are relational. One telephone is worthless — if there were only one telephone in the world, it would be a scarce item, indeed, but not a valuable one, …

Most Popular

Elections

The Completely Insane Electoral College Strategy

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Why limit yourself to the far-fetched when the utterly fantastical is an option? President Donald Trump’s challenges of the outcome of the presidential race in several razor-thin battleground states are unlikely to succeed. Faced with this prospect, some allies of the president are advocating, or ... Read More
Elections

The Completely Insane Electoral College Strategy

By
Why limit yourself to the far-fetched when the utterly fantastical is an option? President Donald Trump’s challenges of the outcome of the presidential race in several razor-thin battleground states are unlikely to succeed. Faced with this prospect, some allies of the president are advocating, or ... Read More
World

Raphael Warnock’s Blood Libel

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Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Senate candidate seeking to unseat Republican Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s runoff election in January, has had some interesting things to say about Israel in the past. Here is Warnock during a 2018 sermon: We need a two-state solution where all of God’s children can live ... Read More
World

Raphael Warnock’s Blood Libel

By
Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Senate candidate seeking to unseat Republican Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s runoff election in January, has had some interesting things to say about Israel in the past. Here is Warnock during a 2018 sermon: We need a two-state solution where all of God’s children can live ... Read More
NR PLUS Science & Tech

Wokeists Assault Space Exploration

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In October 2020, NASA’s Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey committee received a manifesto from its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG). Written by NASA Ames Research Center public-communications specialist Frank Tavares -- along with a group of eleven co-authors including noted ... Read More
NR PLUS Science & Tech

Wokeists Assault Space Exploration

By
In October 2020, NASA’s Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey committee received a manifesto from its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG). Written by NASA Ames Research Center public-communications specialist Frank Tavares -- along with a group of eleven co-authors including noted ... Read More
NR PLUS White House

The Final Act

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The president of the United States, Donald Trump, is rage-tweeting as I write. He has moved from a conspiracy theory about the poll watchers and mail trucks of fake ballots to a conspiracy theory about software that was programmed to inflict an electoral loss on Donald Trump. Soon, it will just be crazed ... Read More
NR PLUS White House

The Final Act

By
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, is rage-tweeting as I write. He has moved from a conspiracy theory about the poll watchers and mail trucks of fake ballots to a conspiracy theory about software that was programmed to inflict an electoral loss on Donald Trump. Soon, it will just be crazed ... Read More