From the Mail and Guardian:

…Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5,5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.

“The situation has deteriorated since September,” said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. “In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008…

Part of this is just related to climate – not the bogus “global climate change” of the left, but the simple fact that they had really bad weather in Russia this past year, and weather predictions for the new year look pretty grim, as well (and, sorry environmentalists, the predictions are for a lot of very cold weather). We can’t really do too much about the weather, but we can do something about this: the United States has 21.5% less agricultural land now than we had in 1950.

With a population double what we had back then, we’ve got vastly less agricultural land to farm on. We have steadily decreased our agricultural base for decades now – and here we are, about to have a global food crisis which could probably have been easily filled if America farmed the way it used to.

Outside of the actual pain this food crisis could cause – especially among the poorest and most vulnerable – there is also the practical effect on American wealth. By not producing as much food as we used to, we have that much less to sell on the global market – part of our trade deficit is caused by the fact that we are not the gigantic food exporter we used to be (in fact, we may end up being a net food importer soon, if not already). While people like to concentrate on high tech jobs, it must not be forgotten that America’s first impact on the world was our gigantic agricultural industry – we used to feed the world, now we can barely feed ourselves.

This is why I yammer on endlessly on the subject of production – the “make/mine/grow” thing. We have to get back to doing the hard work we used to do – it is the only way to wealth; it is the only way to restored American prosperity. We either get back to work, or we eventually die as a nation. It is really just that simple.

Done in 2 minutes and 2 seconds:

From Harris Interactive:

…Currently, two-thirds of Americans (67%) have a negative opinion of the job President Obama is doing while just over one-third (37%) have a positive opinion. This continues the president’s downward trend and he is now at the lowest job approval rating of his presidency.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 3,084 adults surveyed online between October 11 and 18, 2010 by Harris Interactive…

…While the president is at a low point, there is a political body with ratings much lower than his. Just one in ten Americans (11%) give Congress positive ratings on the job they are doing while nine in ten (89%) give them negative marks. While Congress may be under Democratic control, even four in five Democrats (81%) give them negative ratings…

Not at all where Obama and his Democrats want to be a week before the vote. Generally, these sorts of polling results bode very, very ill for the party in power. They are the sort of results where, once the votes are counted, phrases like “historic” and “unprecedented” are applied to the shellacking the ruling part takes…

From CNN:

California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is in the hospital for an infection related to reconstructive surgery after her battle with breast cancer, Fiorina’s campaign announced…

Just part of her long battle with breast cancer, and if anyone can take it and bounce back, she’s the one.

WARNING: Obscenity in this video – it is worse than you thought.

Teachers are ok. Teachers union? An absolute blight on American education. All teacher union contracts should be canceled and no group associated with the current teachers unions should be allowed to engage in collective bargaining agreements with any American school district.

From Reuters via CNBC:

Litigation arising from foreclosure paperwork problems could be “very damaging” to the housing market, a top U.S. banking regulator said Monday.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Chairman Sheila Bair said she did not believe legislation would be needed to address concerns over whether the paperwork was properly done so long as investigations show the issue was mostly “procedural.”…

Translation: “for goodness sake, if we make the banks actually do their job properly, our whole ‘extend and pretend’ game will crash and a score of big banks will go under. Don’t you hicks out there realize that only via government corruption are we keeping these banks afloat?”.

The problem here isn’t that people lost their homes unfairly – if you don’t pay your mortgage, you lose your house. People who have been foreclosed upon or who face it might be able to spin things out and live rent free for a while, but the plain fact of losing the house cannot be escaped. The problem here is that this mess will slow down foreclosures making banks keep the toxic loans on the books for longer than they can stand…and, even worse, sales of distressed houses will drop like a rock as title insurers back off any short or foreclosure sales because there are too many questions about who has title to the house. Ultimately, we could also see massive lawsuits from people who bought mortgage-backed securities and took a bath on them…

What the Banksters and Bureaucrats want is for this problem to go away – and go away very fast. The game they’re playing only works as long as everyone pretends there is no problem…as soon as someone notices the emperor has no clothes, the jig is up. We’ll see how successful they are…but I’m not counting on it as once lawyers get involved, easy resolution becomes impossible.

$45,000.00 for a puff piece on a blog?

Well-known mommy blogger Lyss Stern agreed to write a puff piece for an advertising supplement for the New York Observer to pay off a nearly $45,000 dental bill, then reneged on the deal, contends a New York lawsuit filed by a dental firm…

If you want your firm puffed, then I’m your man – I’ll undercut any blogger out there! Mad Mark’s Blog-O-Rama is open for business!

HAT TIP: Instapundit

From National Journal:

It’s easy to look at what appears to be a gigantic Republican 2010 midterm election wave in the House and feel a little slack-jawed, but not so much surprised. There were plenty signs well over a year ago that Democrats were facing grave danger, but even when expecting an onslaught, one can still be shocked at its size and unrelenting force. It would be a surprise if this wave doesn’t match the 52-seat gain on Election Night in 1994, and it could be substantially more…

That, coming from Charlie Cook, should freeze a lot of Democrat hearts. He’s been extra cautious all year long, and now just a week out he’s seeing the tidal wave coming. Of course, he’s probably seen it a lot longer than that, but no sense betting the farm until you’re sure.

Cook goes on to note that the Senate is more tricky to predict. At a minimum, the GOP should pick up 6 seats – something which was considered almost impossibly as little as three or four months ago. Very likely the pick up will by 8…and just that chance of 10 or more. All in all, the 2010 elections look to be a clear rejection of Obama and his Democrats. But, what then?

Make no mistake about it, if we Republicans do score big, our problem becomes in a lot of ways a lot bigger. We’ve got to contend with a collapsing economy for which we, as at least the majority party in the House, will start to bear some blame. We’ve got to work on fixing the problem, because nation comes first, but we have to do it in such a manner as to keep all credit away from Obama, because the United States cannot afford a second Obama term. It is abundantly clear that Obama is the worst possible man to have in the White House at this juncture, and all our efforts must be coordinated with the necessity of ensuring that anyone else is President on January 20th, 2013…even if its a different Democrat, that is still vastly superior to keeping Obama.

Hard times are coming for the country – we must brace ourselves for unemployment to go well above 10%; perhaps even as high as 15%. We must be on guard as our enemies around the world, figuring we are weak and distracted, attempt to take advantage. We must start the process of returning America to constitutional government in the teeth of a vile and increasingly corrupt left which is determined to hang on to power, come what may. This is not the time of fun and games…our celebration of victory should end by the end of the day, November 3rd…we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Joe Walsh, Life of Illusion

Which, in a lot of ways, would make a good campaign song for the Democrats, this last week…

From Politico:

Republicans are on the verge of broad wins next week for one big reason: independent voters are ready to boot Democrats from office, according to a new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll.

Expressing deep dissatisfaction with President Obama’s policies and performance, independents have increasingly sided with conservatives in the belief that government grew too large, too fast under Obama—and that it can no longer be trusted. In the final pre-election Battleground Poll, Republicans hold a 14-point edge among independents and lead overall, 47 percent to 42 percent, in the generic ballot match up…

Energize your base all you want, Democrats; that and $2.50 will get you a cup of coffee…though you might want to dig deep for about $20…you’ll be needing a bottle of whiskey come November 3rd to drown your sorrows.

You lied to the American people and you are about to pay the price for those lies. You told us Obama was a centrist. You told us you’d be transparent. You told us that you’d clean up the corruption. You told us you’d get spending under control You lied, Lied, LIED!!! You were just saying whatever you thought would work to get elected.

Well, you got elected – you “won”. Congratulations – now, how does that 2008 victory taste?

UPDATE: Rasmussen shows the GOP maintaining a 9 point lead in the “Generic” ballot. To bring us back down to earth, however, it also looks like the Maryland governorship is slipping away from us. We won’t win it all, fellow GOPers…we’ll just win a whole lot.