Another Day in Socialist Paradise

It's really better to let the government have supreme power and run everything:

Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez.

The OPEC nation has suffered three nationwide blackouts this year, and chronic power shortages have sparked protests from the western Andean highlands to San Felix, a city of mostly poor industrial workers in the sweltering south.

The problem suggests that Chavez, with his ambitious international alliances and promises to end capitalism, risks alienating supporters by failing to focus on basic issues like electricity, trash collection and law enforcement.

Maybe Sean Penn can save Venezuela, like when he saved New Orleans.

C'mon, let's get going with the free health care, free college, free food programs, free mandatory exercise program every morning in the People's Square . . . .

What? The government and its Glorious Leader are not fulfilling your every Utopian need? Well, at least you can call someone about that, right? Maybe not:

North Korea is clamping down on mobile phones and long distance telephone calls to prevent the spread of news about a worsening food crisis, according to the United Nations investigator on human rights for the isolated communist country. In a report to the UN General Assembly, (the government of North Korea ) is using public executions as a means of intimidating the population, and using spies to infiltrate and expose religious communities.

Available food is disproportionately directed to the political elite, the media is controlled by the state, there is no political participation, and dissidents and those with religious faith are persecuted, as well as those who return to North Korea after
illicitly leaving the country across the Chinese border.

Li'l Kim; still rotten to the core after all these years.