Why Venezuela putting its food supply under military control is so chilling

Why Venezuela putting its food supply under military control is so chilling:
"In the state of nature, force triumphs over all else.
If societal progress is measured by movement towards voluntary individualism and away from coercion at the hands of strongmen, then by all accounts Venezuela is regressing into this decivilized state.
That is the takeaway given the news breaking this week that Venezuelan potentate President Nicolás Maduro is putting the country’s military in charge of its food supply.
Not even the most doe-eyed Bernie Sanders supporter could think it a wise or comforting decision to put the supply over a nation’s food in the hands of a defense minister.
As the Wall Street Journal details, “Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino…will be in charge of transporting and distributing basic products, controlling prices and stimulating production, according to a decree published Tuesday in the official gazette.”
...It can only be called rational from Maduro’s perspective insofar as control over the food supply is a proxy for total control over the people in a struggle to retain power.
...The State Department issued a statement last week that acknowledged Venezuela’s “extremely difficult” past year, but urged “leaders of all branches of the government to engage in the national dialogue required to effectively address your country’s problems.”
In other words, rather than issuing a call for solidarity with the people of Venezuela as they try to regain their dignity, liberty and rights, our Department of State is proposing throwing a life line to a dying socialist regime that is the avowed enemy of the United States..."

June Hottest Month On Record? It's Just One More Overheated Claim

June Hottest Month On Record? It's Just One More Overheated Claim | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD:
"A trusted -- by some -- federal agency says that this June was the hottest June on record in the Lower 48.
Many will take this as further evidence that man's greenhouse gas emissions are cooking the planet. Others will look at it and ask "what in the world are these people talking about?"
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week that "above-average temperatures spanned the nation from coast to coast, and 17 states across the West, Great Plains and parts of the Southeast experienced temperatures much above average."
Well, OK.
But what about those places where June was cooler than usual, or was at least nowhere near a record warm month. 
Real Climate Science points out a few spots where it didn't get so hot in June and asks "where was this record heat located?"
It surely wasn't in Crosbyton, Texas, where June 2016 was cooler than many a June going back more than 100 years.
Nor was it in Albany, Ga.; Lexington, Va.; or Berkeley, Calif., or several other locations around the nation.
Real Climate Science also points out that, "averaged over the whole country, only 3.2% of June days were over 100 F, compared to 11% during June 1933."
Only 17.4% of weather stations reached 100 degrees this June "compared to 57.6% during June 1933."
One of the points that has to be taken from this is the foolishness of trying to determine an average temperature for a country, let alone an entire planet.
And it is indeed foolishness. Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, says the concept of a global temperature is thermodynamically as well as mathematically impossible to establish.
"It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth," Andresen, an expert in thermodynamics, says..."

Lunch video-----WATCH: Chilling Cartoon Warns America About Dangers of Socialism... in 1948

WATCH: Chilling Cartoon Warns America About Dangers of Socialism... in 1948 » Louder With Crowder:

Lunch video-----Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?

Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree? - YouTube:
"Is it true that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real?
Where does the 97% figure come from?
And if it is true, do they agree on both the severity of and the solution to climate change?
New York Times bestselling author Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, reveals the origins of the "97%" figure and explains how to think more clearly about climate change."

Noon-toon

After Controversial SCOTUS Ruling, What’s Next for the Pro-Life Movement? | TheBlaze.com

After Controversial SCOTUS Ruling, What’s Next for the Pro-Life Movement? | TheBlaze.com:

"During remarks Wednesday at the National Press Club, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, called the ruling “a tough blow” to the pro-life movement, but said she is confident that pro-lifers are winning “outside the beltway.”

The Supreme Court recently struck down a provision of a Texas law requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility.

Without the regulations in place, Dannenfelser said, women are only granted “whatever abortionists deign to provide them.”"

Senator Whitehouse’s Dangerous Agenda | Economics21

Senator Whitehouse’s Dangerous Agenda | Economics21:
"On July 11, 19 Democratic senators, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), took to the floor to attack fossil fuel companies for engaging in a “web of denial” about climate change.
Senator Whitehouse and his like-minded colleagues are using climate change as a Trojan Horse to hide their environmental agenda and their hostility to the economic benefits derived from using fossil fuels.
Senator Whitehouse’s resolution claims that fossil fuel companies have engaged in a “misinformation campaign to mislead the public and cast doubt in order to protect their financial interest.”
It also claims that think tanks, public relations firms and other organizations have been funded to give legitimacy to this campaign and are part of this web of denial.
These senators base their allegation on a sound bite—“the science is settled”—that is derived from the radical tactics of activists like Saul Alinsky.
Sound bites are not evidence.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which climate activists cite as the gold standard on climate science, does not claim that the science is settled. 
In its most recent Assessment Report, it identifies a number of important climate factors and processes for which the state of knowledge is limited.
It ranks the level of confidence about 11 factors contributing to warming from very high to low.
Of the 11, only 2 are ranked “very high” and only 3 are ranked “high.”
This only represents 45 percent.
That is hardly sufficient for claiming settled science.
...The list of reasons why the science is not settled, and likely never will be, could go on, but these few examples are sufficient to make the case that Senator Whitehouse and his 18 other colleagues are not interested in facts and honest debate.  
Their goal is to silence critics of the climate orthodoxy, which provides the ultimate rationale for environmental overreaction and the precautionary principle.
As one observer commented years ago, freeze or fry, wet or dry, the problem is always the same, fossil fuels and the solution is more regulation.
These senators with the support of the environmental lobby represent a clear and present danger not just to the first amendment but also to our system of government.  
Environmental elites have for some time championed greater control by central governments.
At the 2000 climate change Conference of the Parties (COP), former French president Jacques Chirac called for global government—“For the first time, humanity is intuiting a genuine instrument of global governance…which France and the European Union would like to see established.”
More recently, the former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres stated,

• “Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. 
• Communist China is the best model”.  

And lest anyone think that she simply misspoke, she also said, “The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn't a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective.
This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science.
So it's a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”.
A world government modeled on the UN or EU is a scary thought.  
Senator Whitehouse and his colleagues took an oath to “support and defend” the Constitution.
But history has demonstrated that silencing criticism and debate are the first steps in limiting freedom and liberty"

Why Detroit QLine may be more of a headache than a transportation convenience

Why QLine may be more of a headache than a transportation convenience:
"The $179.4 million project to add streetcars to Woodward was billed as “an unprecedented public-private partnership” that would vastly improve transportation in greater downtown Detroit.
But as crews get closer to finishing the QLine, it has become increasingly clear that the streetcars may cause more headaches than solutions and may benefit visitors at the cost of resident who rely on buses...
The QLine also may bump new bus rapid transit lines from Woodward.
In 2011, the U.S Department of Transportation stopped supporting the streetcars in favor of more practical bus rapid transit lines, which would send 70 speedy buses up and down Woodward, Gratiot and Michigan avenues.
Nevertheless, DDOT approved $37.2 million in federal funding for QLine. 
The rest was privately funded.
The QLine, which also was billed as a faster alternative to buses, was supposed to shuttle passengers from New Center to downtown in 8 to 12 minutes.
Officials now concede the ride will take more than twice as long.
“Run time is expected at approximately 25 minutes from Grand Boulevard to Congress,” QLine spokesman Dan Lijana said.
That’s roughly the same time it takes a bus, which has more stops than the QLine..."

Chicago’s Collapse Has Begun

Articles: Chicago’s Collapse Has Begun:
"The city of Detroit, now famous as an economic disaster, began its decline when it lost jobs. 
This was accompanied by a loss of population, a rapid rise in poverty, increasing dependence upon federal entitlement programs and an unstoppable downward economic spiral.
Puerto Rico is now undergoing an economic collapse sparked not by population loss but by excessive government spending.
Chicago is in the same situation.
Government overspending and overtaxation comes first, population loss follows.
Chicago is technically bankrupt.
Its expenditures have exceeded its receipts for about ten years.
All big rust belt cities in the Midwest, East, and Northeast have been losing population since 1950. Detroit’s population has dropped from 1.85 million to 800,000.
Chicago was only able to delay its loss of population by becoming the first official sanctuary city in 1985. 
...Chicago is still showing clear, irrefutable evidence of population and economic decline.
...A study by New World Wealthy published in March 2016 found that Chicago had lost more millionaires, 3,000, than any other city in the U.S. The only cities that lost more were European. Rome lost 5,000 and Paris 7,000.
...Illinois lost 105,200 persons to outmigration last year, and has the lowest credit rating of all 50 states, some of the largest debt, and the highest unemployment rate of all 48 states.
...In 2014 SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher noted that the average household in Chicago owes the city and state $88,000 for their pension and bond debt, and much of the bond debt was created to paper over the huge demand for money imposed upon residents by public pensioners.
The city’s pensions are only 50% funded and there is no remedy in sight..."
Read on.
It gets worse!

Most Obamacare Co-Ops Have Now Failed - Washington Free Beacon

Most Obamacare Co-Ops Have Now Failed - Washington Free Beacon:

"Only a third of Obamacare co-ops are still in operation after two more co-ops announced they were closing their doors in the past week.

Connecticut’s co-op, HealthyCT, was placed under an immediate order of supervision on July 5 after being forced to pay $13.4 million for the Affordable Care Act’s risk adjustment program."

WELL, IT’S NICE OF NBC TO FINALLY ADMIT THEIR BIASES...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » WELL, IT’S NICE OF NBC TO FINALLY ADMIT THEIR BIASES, as they dub Rudy Giuliani as the “far-right fo…:
"WELL, IT’S NICE OF NBC TO FINALLY ADMIT THEIR BIASES, as they dub Rudy Giuliani as the “far-right former mayor” in a piece titled “Here Are the Republican National Convention Speakers We Know Of:”

"I screencapped this passage, in case someone from NBC went in and airbrushed the piece, which they’ve since done after a backlash on Twitter. 
But note that this appeared in an allegedly a straight news article, not a rant by a fire-breathing MSNBC socialist. 
Rudy Giuliani is a good man who saved New York from becoming the next Detroit or Newark. 
But if you think the moderate pro-gun control, pro-choice Republican is on “the far-right,” it speaks far more about your worldview than his. 
And it was nice of NBC to finally triangulate where they view themselves as fitting in on the political spectrum. 
Take a bow, fellas."

AM Fruitcake

History for July 14

History for July 14 - On-This-Day.com:
Emmeline Pankhurst 1858, William Leefe Robinson 1895, Irving Stone 1903


Woody Guthrie 1912, Gerald Rudolph Ford (U.S.) 1913, Ingmar Bergman 1918


1789 - French Revolution began with Parisians stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.


1798 - The U.S. Congress passed the Sedition Act. The act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government.


1868 - Alvin J. Fellows patented the tape measure.


1914 - Robert H. Goddard patented liquid rocket-fuel.


1933 - All German political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed.

1945 - American battleships and cruisers bombarded the Japanese home islands for the first time.


1951 - The George Washington Carver National Monument in Joplin, MO, became the first national park to honor an African American.


1958 - The army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy.

LIBERTY REVIEW

LIBERTY REVIEW:

http://libertyreview76.blogspot.com/2016/07/descending-into-darkness-by-tammy_29.html

Descending Into Darkness

By Tammy Derouin

We have reached a low which is only acquired by hitting rock bottom and then finding a way to dig even deeper.  The abuse of power by the current administration along with the support and cooperation of puppet government agencies is beyond comprehension. They blatantly give a wink and a hand shake, creating a free pass, allowing the ruling party to operate above the law.  

As an American, I expected the rule of law to apply equally among all Americans, regardless of position or rank.  But then again, I also expected our elected servants to follow the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.  A system of checks and balances was created to prevent tyranny from resurfacing.  If one branch attempted a hostile over reach of power, the other two branches were supposed to push back, ending the encroachment.  Furthermore, I expected our government officials to faithfully uphold their oath of office and to defend and protect our Constitution.  Our Constitution alone cannot act and enforce the laws and ideals of freedom and independence.  It is up to the people to maintain the integrity of such a sacred document.

I expected more because the United States was an exceptional nation. The American people were once free and had a system of government based on law, not man.  The American people demanded truth and justice and didn’t take too kindly to those who lied and attempted to deceive them.  Evil was our enemy and the enemy, if not destroyed, was kept a world away. 

A dark cloud, a fundamental transformation, began to overshadow our nation.  It chipped away at our foundation, eroding our basic human freedoms, our God given rights. Never before had the rights of man been declared so eloquently and fought for so fiercely.  So why did a strong and independent people begin to believe they were no longer exceptional?  Why did we turn on ourselves? Dependency replaced independence.   Fairy tales replaced truth.  Death replaced life.  We are descending into darkness.......

Robin Smith: America's (Subsidized) Fruited Plain

Robin Smith: America's (Subsidized) Fruited Plain — The Patriot Post
"...America the Beautiful was based on the soaring words to a poem written in the 1890s.

...Yet those waves of grain and the fruited plain exist today largely through corporate agribusiness that has prices guaranteed through the massive subsidies of corn and soybeans. 

And in an exhibit of the usual market distortions wrought by government interference, these two staples are used primarily in cattle feed and processed foods — not the fruits and vegetables that we know to be healthy for Americans when made available from farm to fork.

...The original intent of the farm bill — which has been renewed every five years since the 1930s — was to protect farmers whose entire financial health could be destroyed by pestilence of insects, floods, droughts or other natural disasters or events outside the control of the growers. 

Today, however, subsidies and federal “crop insurance” not only essentially remove all risk from farming, if one qualifies, but these massive outlays of taxpayer dollars typically go to corporate crop-growers.

Around $20 billion in farm subsidies are paid annually with taxes collected from American workers' wages. The largesse goes disproportionately to corn farmers, who in 2010 produced over 32% of all the corn in the world, generating almost $64 billion in revenue. 

Yet most of that subsidized corn is processed into feed for animals or, far worse, ethanol to meet the government standards regarding gasoline mixture.

...The “Family Farm Report, 2014 Edition” documented that 31% of all of the small family or Residence Farms received subsidy payments; by contrast, 80% of midsize and large-scale commercial farms received payments.

Since 1995, 75% of federal subsidies have gone to 10% of farms, the larger agribusinesses. 

In addition to subsidies, federal crop insurance is supplied with the government (you the taxpayer) paying 65% of the premiums totaling about $89.8 billion over a decade.

...Another fun fact about the farm bill is that most might believe the bulk of the spending would be for the purpose of providing a safety net in the case of potential financial disaster. 

But 80% of the entire cost of the farm bill is attributed to food stamps, which creates an interesting relationship.

...In other words, those who eat the foods sweetened with corn-derived fructose and soy-fed animals used in processed meats are more likely to have blood sugar and cholesterol problems, and, thus, heart problems..."

Read it all!

The world certainly needs one now-----Bonnie Tyler - I Need a Hero

Darrell Issa Grills Loretta Lynch in House Hearing on Clinton Emails | Video | TheBlaze.com

Darrell Issa Grills Loretta Lynch in House Hearing on Clinton Emails | Video | TheBlaze.com:

"The Justice Department closed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use without any criminal charges, Lynch announced last week.

At the House hearing regarding the Justice Department’s decision, Issa pressed Lynch to explain the agency’s conclusion.

“What do I say to the tens of thousands of people that live and work in my district that work for the federal government, including more than 47,000 Marines?” he asked. “What do I say [to them] when, in fact, saying something that isn’t true — and handling classified information in an extremely careless way — has no criminal ramifications? "

Why Iran Might WANT To Get Nuked After Nuking Israel

Why Iran Might WANT To Get Nuked After Nuking Israel | PJ Media
"In all the controversy about the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran’s nuclear aspirations, it has been little noted that the leaders of the Islamic Republic may have reasons of their own actually to want to nuke Israel.
And their motivation is not in spite of the fact that Iran would almost certainly be nuked in retaliation … but because of it.
Sounds crazy?
Of course.
But once you enter into the wild and weird world of Shi’ite Muslim eschatology, it all begins to make sense.
As I show in my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran, there are specific conditions in Shi’ite tradition for the return to earth of their messiah-like figure -- the Twelfth Imam.
Jafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam and central figure of Shia jurisprudence, prophesied that the Twelfth Imam would not return “till you are severely tested.” Jafar added:
At that time you shall be severely examined and you shall be differentiated and sieved. There will be famines. 
A person will become a ruler in the morning and put to death in the evening.
The return of the Twelfth Imam, Jafar went on, would come at a time when the Shi’ites were experiencing persecution to a terrible, unprecedented degree:
That which you look forward to will not be until you are tested … That which you look forward to will not be until you are sieved … That, which you look forward to, will not be until you are sifted. That which you look forward to will not be except after despair.
How severe would this test be?
Jafar said that the Twelfth Imam’s return “will not occur till two-third population of the world is not destroyed.”
Presumably, then the Twelfth Imam will return when one-third of the world’s population has been destroyed.
...The Iranian leader Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was President of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and remains influential in the Iranian government, said in December 2001:
“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing [sic] in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”
It could also, with millions of Muslim dead, bring back the Twelfth Imam..."

Election polling at a crossroads? Why polling may be on the cusp of big changes

Election polling at a crossroads? Why polling may be on the cusp of big changes - Fox 5 NY | WNYW
"...But like the campaigns that bad poll numbers throw in to turmoil - some say political polling itself is at a crossroads.
..But the rise of cell phones has made traditional scientific polling much tougher to do.
A 1991 law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act made it illegal for pollsters to use automatic dialers to call people on their cell phones.
...“It's gotten maybe 3 or 4 times as expensive as it used to be just two elections ago,” Zukin said.
...And because of that, many companies are working to define what the future of election polling will look like.
“Almost all polling will be done on the internet four years from now,” Zukin said.
“The problem with doing internet polling right now is twofold.

• First, it's right now not everybody is online, and this is especially true of older people who are most likely to be voters.”
• “The second is that there's no good way yet to do a probability sample where everybody has a known chance of being included in the sample of web based users. 

...And once online polling finally hits its stride, some experts say there's really no limit to the kind of information it can provide.
...“Instead of being an episodic thing like it is now when it comes out, it will just be there as a data stream.
And we'll probably get there by 2020. 
Certainly by 2024,...”

Lunch video-----The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels

Noon-toon

Baton Rouge Police: Three Arrested in Plot to Kill Officers | Video | TheBlaze.com

Baton Rouge Police: Three Arrested in Plot to Kill Officers | Video | TheBlaze.com:

"Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie said Tuesday that officers arrested three people whom they believe were plotting to murder police officers just days after five officers were fatally shot in Dallas.

Law enforcement officials, who spoke during a press conference Tuesday, said they believed the threat to be both credible and substantial."