Meanwhile, the idiot “Greens” in
Congress shove corn into our gas tanks

[snip]
…[]…Confronted with a severe drought, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, this week sowed panic in world commodity markets when he banned grain exports for the rest of the year. At a time when the global consumer economy is still in the doldrums, a surge in the cost of wheat, milk, meat, cocoa and other staples of the world’s daily diet is increasing the pressure on manufacturers and retailers to pass the rises on to cash-strapped consumers across the US, Europe and parts of Asia.

According to the British Retail Consortium, in-store food costs rose 2.5 per cent in July from a year earlier, up from a 1.7 per cent rise the month before. In the US, the deflation the Department of Agriculture was projecting as recently as July 25 for cereals and bakery products such as wheat will need to be put under review. It is forecasting inflation of 2–3 per cent this year for meat as well as sugar and sweets. For milk, cheese and eggs, which fell in price last year, it predicts 1.5–2.5 per cent increases.

Futures Markets Here are all the listings and the news.

Big producers are beginning to disclose mark-ups in some cases rather steeper than those. J.M. Smucker is, for instance, imposing an across-the-board rise of 9 per cent for its coffee sold to US supermarkets under brands including Folgers, Dunkin’ Donuts and Millstone. On Friday Kraft Foods followed with rises of more than 10 per cent in the US market on coffee brands including Maxwell House.
Will consumers countenance all these increases? “Household food budgets don’t go up,” says Paul Weitzel, managing director at Willard Bishop, a retail industry consulting firm in the US. Instead, “people change their shopping behaviour”. [snip]

The pricing increases will eventually be passed along to shoppers, predicts Susan Anderson at Citigroup, but it will not happen quickly. “There will be a six-month lag instead of a one- to two-month lag,” she says. If nothing else, that provides some reassurance for Christmas. (emphasis added)
Rising commodity prices in early 2008, led by oil, resulted in significant price boosts for a variety of food products, almost all of which were passed on to consumers two years ago.
But after the run-up peaked, the decline in input prices and the sharp economic downturn precipitated by the financial crisis led to stable and even deflationary pricing in the US and elsewhere. As a result, shoppers encountered something almost never seen in supermarkets and grocery stores: declining prices over an extended period of time.

But suppliers adjusted, leading to what we see now. Notably, flagging demand for beef in 2008, combined with high grain prices, led the large US cattle companies to reduce their herds over the past two years, which created an undersupply of beef and the consequent rise in price tags at supermarket meat counters. [snip]

Right at the time food costs rise, Obama figures to let the Bush tax cuts expire Jan 1 2011, giving the public colic.

In 2008, during the last big run-up in food prices, the price of pasta in the US jumped by more than 20 per cent. Nonetheless, unit sales crept up slightly, leading to a 22 per cent gain in the dollar value of pasta sales across most US supermarkets. “At the very bottom of the consumption chain there’s no place to hide,” Mr Rand says. “You end up with pasta or rice. People have very few alternative bulk products that are going to be cheaper than that. It doesn’t matter if the cost of spaghetti has gone to $1.19 from 99 cents. But if you take my beef from $6 to $9, that’s a different deal.” [snip]

So enjoy the ethanol in the gas even as corn prices drop for now.
That is only the vagaries of the weather moving prices lower. Some flooding, high winds or cold temperatures change prices fast.

President Obama has taken control of US nuclear policy by demanding a shift in doctrine and laying the groundwork for deep cuts.  Welcome to typical liberal “blame America first” policy making.  See, in Barack Obama’s mind, rogue states, like Iran and North Korea, aren’t responsible for the world’s nuclear woes.  The US is the real culprit here.  If we just roll over and give the farm away, we can all live in peace and harmony.  I don’t know what planet the president lives on, but it’s not even remotely connected to the real world.

Liberal “blame America first” policy making works so well too.  For example, the Russians are still considering missile deployments on the Polish border in ”grattitude” to the president, who threw Poland and Czechoslovakia under the bus on the missile shield.  Smart power indeed!

Don’t remember this occurring during the Bush years!

Russian general confirms submarine patrols near US

MOSCOW – A top Russian general says two nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines that have been spotted off the U.S. East Coast are part of regular patrols. [snip]

They start up more aggressive actions when we get a Commander-in-Wuss. Next, Obama apologizes for having the US East Coast so close to the ocean.

Olga gave Viktor a new pair of Jeans, “food and drink”, and 1000 rubles.   A ruble is worth about 30 cents American, just about enough to buy the political devotion of Susan Roesgen.

Oh well.  Whatever else you learn in this article, it’s interesting to know that The Moscow Times has classified ads and real estate listings.

The testing goes on and The ONE is found wanting! The suit is very empty!

The World Will Test Us, Part III

 Joe Biden tried to warn America; he really did. In October, while campaigning for his running mate, Biden predicted what would happen if America elected an untested, inexperienced, single-term Senator as President:

  “Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.”

[snip]
Earlier this month, the Chinese started harassing an unarmed Navy exploration vessel, requiring the US to send armed escorts into the international waters of the South China Sea. North Korea is about to launch an ICBM with a reported range that easily includes American territory. Moscow has flipped Kyrgyzstan and put our supply routes into Afghanistan in jeopardy.
Biden was right; they’re testing the mettle of the new President. Evidentally, they’re finding that he doesn’t have much, and they’re becoming more and more arrogant about their provocations.

We’re being bullied. How nasty of them to behave that way. Can  our esteemed Senatorial delegation to get our President to use our anti-bullying laws to make the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans stop.

You know the laws, the ones we teach our kids in school. The rules where you find someone to fight your battles for you. Yep, the ones that make things stop going bump in the night. Un huh, those rules are the ones the Admirals should be using.

All of the countries that the Messiah has offered the “new tone” in diplomacy have dissed the Teleprompter.

Even Obamassiah’s buds in Cuba and Venezuela tossed him under the short bus with his fave bowling team.

Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.  Europe couldn’t wait for an Obama presidency, but they might want to reconsider:

The Polish president’s office backtracked Sunday on a previous claim that U.S. president-elect Barack Obama had promised Poland to continue the Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar missile defense program.
Presidential aide Michal Kaminski said Obama “made no declaration on missile defense.” But Kaminski did not explain why Polish President Lech Kaczynski had claimed Saturday that Obama told him “the missile defense project would continue.”

It looks like the Russians have Obama pegged perfectly–get belligerent, and he’ll buckle.  If I were a country bordering Russia, I’d be awfully neverous right now.

When Putin worries about Google reducing competition, you have a comedic collision. This should tell you something about Google!

Russian watchdog rejects Google bid for ad firm

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s anti-trust watchdog rejected on Thursday a $140 million bid by Google Inc. to buy the Begun advertising agency, claiming the deal would reduce competition in the online advertising market. [snip]

Russia’s anti-monopoly service has been under the spotlight since Vladimir Putin, Russia’s powerful Prime Minister, demanded the anti-trust service become more active. [snip]

Google collects more information on people, who use their g-mail, tool bars and search engines, than the KGB.

This election is devolving to a choice between McCain’s experience or drycleaning. For me that’s a problem, since I’m not a fan of McCain. I think half the time there’s a “to let” sign posted on his forehead.

From Hot Air  Ed Morrissey writes:

Bobby Jindal hits back at whining from the Barack Obama campaign over his response to Obama’s attack on Randy Scheuneman. On ABC’s This Week, Jindal was asked about a sharp retort from John McCain after Obama said that McCain was unduly influenced towards our ally because of Scheuneman’s prior work for the Republic of Georgia. Instead of taking that bait, Jindal pressed the experience advantage McCain has over Obama and why it mattered in this crisis:

Tapper: “So you don’t think that Senator Obama is echoing the Kremlin and has views that are bizarrely in sync with Moscow? Is it fair to say you don’t share that?”

The simple non-cowardly answer is yes. Let Obama and his KGB wrestle with that.

Why attack Scheuneman for working on behalf of a democratic ally of the United States? It seems especially strange now, while the Russians drop bombs on civilian centers in Gori and Tbilisi, and most people understand Russian intent to keep Georgia from allying even closer with the West. Scheuneman certainly did nothing wrong in representing Georgia previous to his work for McCain, and Obama’s attack on McCain suggests that Obama doesn’t value Georgia’s friendship and doesn’t understand the strategic necessity of Georgian independence from Moscow.

Jindal uses that as subtext to explain everything wrong with Obama’s response over the last 48 hours. Instead of scolding Russians for attacking Georgia, he told Georgia to exercise restraint as Russian bombers attacked their civilians. Instead of supporting an ally, Obama attacked McCain’s adviser for his previous work for Georgia, an attack supported by current lobbyists for Russia.

Obama clearly has no idea of the issues or the consequences surrounding Putin’s South Ossetia adventure. He’s flailing for a policy, while McCain — who’s actually been to Georgia and studied the ongoing political conflict for a decade — understood immediately what the outbreak of war means, and what its motives are. Jindal does a good job here in driving that point home, while Obama continues to demonize lobbyists as his only response to every policy issue.

Politics of fear? That’s all Obama can sell.

Really Ed, might that not depend on which side one stands? Perhaps he truly is in sync with his side.

The world is getting a taste of war. Not the lawyer kind the US Army is forced to fight, where combatants pretend to be civilians, where churches, mosques and schools are protected armories and our troops have to come under fire before locking and loading.

No, it’s the other kind of war, which our enemies fight. The one where tanks blow holes in homes and kill anything moving in front of them. So what if the tanks grind the bodies to burger as they punch forward for more blood.
This is the kind of war where the bombs are dropped on the towns, then the civilian deaths are blamed on the other side. Why not, the ACLU, Code Pink, the assorted other goofy lefties are not going to speak out on this carnage because the good guys are doing it!
An enormous lack of feck on the part of the anti-war crowd.

What have you heard from the MSM about this civilian slaughter? Yeah, they dropped some bombs. No screaming ledes like Women and children targeted, collateral damage extremely high from Russian attacks. Tanks shell homes as families flee. Where are those grabbers?

Is Obama looking back at a powerful USSR as the time of everything good? When this country was in a struggle with evil? We know the past eight years are not the time, for he has so said. He wasn’t around for the Great Depression so that era is out also.

Obama never has spoken to how well the Iron Curtain worked to keep the western people from rushing in to luxuriate in that splendid socialist state, the USSR. Recreation of those rosy years will contain the wonders like “The Ministry for State security” food shortages, gulags, Trabants, pollution, worthless money, internal passports, and state TV. Many more hearts desires too, I’m sure.

Solzhenitsyn can start spinning in his grave while he’s still fresh.

Flash news

The U.S. Ag bureau advises tomato growers to diversify crops. Prices will drop when the extended growing season at Nome hits full production.
Chick Little posts advisories on sky conditions, postulating serious positional shifts.
Gov. Schwarzenegger predicts fewer fires in CA in the next millennia.
Vermont gets beachfront property again.

U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change

Synthesizing reams of data from its three previous reports, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time specifically points out important risks if governments fail to respond: melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees.

UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast

“Only urgent, global action will do,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world’s two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.
“I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role,” Ban told reporters. “Both countries can lead in their own way.”
Ban, however, advised against assigning blame. [snip]

It is providential to have a U.N. Secretary-General who isn’t a finger pointing hysteric.

Cult awaits end of days in cave after leader’s arrest

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) – Members of a Russian doomsday cult barricaded themselves in a cave to wait out the end of the world as the cult’s leader underwent psychiatric exams Thursday, Russian media reported. [snip]
“It is obviously some kind of insanity,” Mitropolitan Kirill, a high-ranking Russian Orthodox Church official, told Russian television. “It is perhaps even a medical case. A very dangerous phenomena is happening in Russia’s religious life.”

I’m surprised the UN isn’t in the cave with them. Well, they are secure from the sky calamity in the homemade grotto.

Coming Soon to New England Republican!  A look at Weird Wesley Clark!

The suspense finally got to me.  Where have the Clintons been keeping Weird Wes’ since the last Presidential go-round?  Well, apparently Wes’ has been on the lefty lecture circuit, piling up about $40 Large a year yammering about the World To Come when people like him are back in charge.

I mean,you’d think a a guy who bombs Christian and Muslim civilians, orders air strikes on the CNN Belgrade Bureau, demands that Brit soldiers slaughter 200 Russian soldiers, sends Armor to Waco to burn up about 90 religious fanatics, speaks out of both sides of a pinched button-hole shaped mouth, uses hair pomade by the gallon,  and now demands censorship of stuff he doesn’t want to hear….well, that guy would be a Conservative!

Well, uh uh!  Clark’s a Hillary-style liberal when it matters, and something else when he opens his mouth unattended.  Therefore, both left and right are baffled by this brass jackass, and it isn’t because he’s complicated.   He’s just weird.

There are two commissioned officers posting here at New England Republican and one enlisted man.  I’m the enlisted man, and I don’t want to trespass on their territory.  But I’m  puzzled by a closed system that can raise a middling human being like Weird Wes’ to power.  I figured that I’d better look into it. 

The battlefield is about the size of Texas; four times the size of New England.  Its average annual temperature is like that of Massachusetts.  Its capital city is on the same latitude as Phoenix, Los Angeles and Memphis.  It’s mountainous, dramatically uplifted more than a million years ago by the thrust sheets of the advancing Indian subcontinent.  Roughly half of the country is contorted by its definining feature, a majestic but forbidding mountain range.  The capital is Kabul, the battlefield is Afghanistan and the mountain range is the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush, translated by some historians as “Hindu Killer”, is a Himalayan extension of the Alpine system of Europe and North Africa.  It’s officially part of the Pamir-Karakoram chain of the Himalayas;  it angles southwest from Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the Durand Line.  There are seven mountain passes which have served as highways for invaders and trade at least since 1500 BC, when invaders from Central Asia brought what linguists now call the Indo-European languages to the region.

Alexander The Great, after marching and fighting the width of Afghanistan, used the Khawak Pass to reach Samarkand in 330 BC.  He led his starving army over the 12,000 foot snowy pass, and then west back through the Khyber Pass on the modern Hippie Trail to Kabul.  Today it’s likely that Taliban and other tribal fighters use the same passes for the purpose of fighting NATO and American troops.  The blood of thousands, maybe millions, of nameless soldiers and unaffiliated warriors has been spilled here since the first Aryans arrived 5000 years ago.

Afghanistan borders six countries.  Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west and south, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China to the north.  Its China border lies at the dead end of the valley of the Wakhan Corridor.  The Wakhan is a 150-mile long, ten-mile wide geographic tendril, like an appendix, projecting northeast, between Pakistan to the south and Tajikistan in the north to the Chinese border.  It’s an atavistic survival of Britain’s Great Game with Russia, a border anomaly established to deny Russia access to the Indian Ocean.   Marco Polo used the valley almost eight-hundred years ago to travel that portion of The Silk Road.  Today it’s a remote, hostile patch, the habitat of the Marco Polo sheep, and probably the route used to smuggle drugs to China.

The short account is that humans have been scrambling over, fighting for, and surviving in this land for 50,000 years.   It was Hellenized by the Macedonians and their successors, converted to Buddhism by adherents from India, ignored militarily by the Romans but conquered and converted by Muslims, trampled by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, by Darius and other Persians and Parthians; invaded by Turkic tribes, by the British, the Russians and Americans.  Simulataneous with low-grade warfare, it was also a web of routes for The Silk Road, the commercial paths taken by bearers of luxury goods from the east to the Mediterranean world.  The world’s first mobile shopping mall.

The material for Julius Caesar’s silk curtains probably came through Afghanistan from China, over rocky, barren trails now prowled by American Rangers and Special Forces.  Julius and other Romans who possessed silk, believed that it grew on trees.  Julius, Augustus and Tiberius had intermittent difficulties with the Parthians, who, along with the Afghan Kushans, controlled the trade routes through Afghanistan.  The Romans were not welcome there.  The Parthians left no written account of themselves, but must have known the origins of silk.  Perhaps they played the first lasting joke on the Romans.  They told them it was gathered like fruit and nuts.

The historian’s routine explanation for Afghanistan’s long travail is that it lay at the “crossroads” of competing civilizations; that it was the junction between south and central Asia and the Middle East.  These designations are entirely theoretical to the historian-geographer.  They mean nothing.  The human explanation for the boiling activity in the region is that the wars of conquest that tortured Afghanistan for 5000 years were wars for local power, for goods, and to a lesser degree, religion.  They were fought for the things that fill the voids left by deprivation, insecurity and the anxieties of hard-scrabble life.   It hasn’t ended.

The communist coup staged in 1978 led to the Soviet invasion, and then to the Taliban in large part because of American indifference.  Millions were killed and exiled in the civil and religious wars of the past thirty years.  Today Afghanistan resembles nothing as much as itself of a thousand years ago.  Ghosts everywhere, in every corner of every mud hut and mountain pass.    It is our obligation to bring the country back to life. 

Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life. [snip]

No vodka, no drugs and no condoms, it is about the opposite of our public schools.

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin’s newly-minted ideology of “Sovereign democracy”. This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia’s supposed unique political and spiritual culture. [snip]

Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers. [snip]

Those who hoped that Russia’s first post-totalitarian generation would be liberal, have been dissapointed. Although explicit support for extremist and racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is mushrooming.

Slogans such as “Russia for the Russians” now attract the support of half of the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as “fascist”, for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too evident.

The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to take power.

Just as the Nazis in 1930s rewrote Germany’s history, the Putin Kremlin is rewriting Russia’s. It has rehabilitated Stalin, the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. And it is demonising Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically-elected president. That he destroyed totalitarianism is ignored. Instead, he is denounced for his “weak” pro-Western policies.

While distorting its own history, the Kremlin denounces other countries. Mr Putin was quick to blame Britain’s “colonial mentality” for our government’s request that Russia try to find a legal means of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Yet the truth is that Britain, like most Western countries, flagellates itself for the crimes of the past. Indeed, British schoolchildren rarely learn anything positive about their country’s empire. And, if Mr Putin has his way, Russian pupils will learn nothing bad about the Soviet empire, which was far bloodier, more brutal - and more recent.

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes off Stalin’s crimes. It describes him as “the most successful leader of the USSR”. But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and starved in the cause of communism. [snip]

Nashi is both a symptom of the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad.

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren’t they ringing about Nashi?

From pestering the Estonians to arming Iran, fascism is resurging in Russia. The Progressive elements are alive and well in a new Stalinist autocracy, a Tsarist style is more in favor with Putin. Children for the Motherland will replace those not willing to adopt the party line. School them early and often in the “Fascialist” belief system.

Listen to Putin first, then Obama, Clinton and Edwards; not much of a difference separating the crowd. Everything for the state, public schools, healthcare and of that big bugbear democracy, well totalitarianism is so much neater and propitious to a smooth interaction of government and the people.

What’s the difference between Hitlerjugend and Nashi? Looks to me to be only the spelling.

Close Gitmo; send them to Abu Gharib where they belong.

Released Gitmo Detainee Returned to Jihad

Another detainee released from Guantanamo Bay who immediately rejoined the jihad has been killed in a shootout with Russian security services in Chechnya: Russia: Ex-Guantanamo detainee killed.

MOSCOW - A man formerly held in the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was killed Wednesday in a shootout with security agents in a restive North Caucasus republic, Russia’s top security agency said. [snip]

The Donks want them released, because they  give their word of peace. One may see what an Islamo’s word is worth.

A wave of the chuck’s tail to: LGF

Russian President Vladimir Putin opposes the US missile defense system.  The Russians are particularly distraught over plans to cover Western Europe and are threatening to retarget European cities with nuclear weapons.

Now, the Europeans can participate as they see fit.  If they’re intimidated by Russian threats, that’s no skin off our teeth.  However, the threat from rogue states developing nuclear missiles is far too great to scrap the system.  And let’s not forget that nations like Putin’s Russia made this system a necessity.  In the run up to the Iraq War, Russia’s support for Saddam Hussein effectively allowed him to ignore UN sanctions and inspections.

Too many nations have proven their economic interests far outweigh their desire to control nuclear proliferation, which means missile defense is vital to our national security.