Getting Hungry Yet?

Or are you just feeling broke? The price of wheat traditionally hovers around $3 to $7 per bushel. Things have changed recently. The price went up a bit in February. To $24 per bushel. That price has now subsided a bit – to a mere $18 per bushel last week. Prices for everything food related is skyrocketing – bigtime.

LUBBOCK, Texas – If you think the cost of gassing up your car is outrageous, wait until you need to restock your pantry.

The price of wheat has more than tripled during the past 10 months, making Americans' daily bread — and bagels and pizza and pasta — feel a little like luxury items. And baked goods aren't the only ones getting more expensive: Experts expect some 80 percent of grocery prices will spike, too, and could remain steep for years because wheat and other grains are used to feed cattle, poultry and dairy cows

"It's going to affect everything … impact on every section of the grocery store," said Michael Bittel, senior vice president of King Arthur Flour Co. in Norwich, Vt….

….The wheat market has been pushed higher by a combination of agricultural, financial and energy issues.

Poor wheat harvests in Australia and parts of Europe and the U.S. have caused China and other Asian countries to buy up more American crops, which are especially attractive because of the weak U.S. dollar.

At the same time, the American crop is shrinking because of federal incentives to grow corn for ethanol. And skyrocketing gas prices make it costlier to get any wheat to market. Those same pressures have also made it more expensive to supply feed grains for livestock.

This is not going to get better for a while, folks. The insane diversion of food into fuel will make this situation much, much worse. The high cost of fuel, meanwhile, will impact the price of food – and everything else that has to be transported to market. Which includes everything. Shopping on the internet will not save you, either – because what you buy there will still have to be transported to you – at exorbitant rates.

The green future has arrived – better have plenty of green to survive it. 

The Master Pastor Of Disaster

Mark Steyn looks at the political disaster that Barack Obama faces over his pastor's extremist, race-baiting remarks. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright's remarks have been widely discussed, of course as has Obama's failure to denounce those inflammatory words until he was politically embarrassed by them. For some twenty years, the man who presents himself as a great healer listened to extreme America-loathing coming from his spiritual advisor. Steyn rips into that particularly juicy vein of column-fodder. 

Yet since his early twenties he's sat week after week, listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race-huckster.

What is Barack Obama for? It's not his "policies," such as they are. Rather, Sen. Obama embodies an idea: He's a symbol of redemption and renewal, and a lot of other airy-fairy abstractions that don't boil down to much except making upscale white liberals feel good about themselves and get even more of a frisson out of white liberal guilt than they usually do. I assume that's what Geraldine Ferraro was getting at when she said Obama wouldn't be where he was today (i.e., leading the race for the Democratic nomination) if he was white. For her infelicity, the first woman on a presidential ticket got bounced from the Clinton campaign and denounced by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for her "insidious racism" indistinguishable from "the vocabulary of David Duke."

Oh, for cryin' out loud. Enjoyable as it is to watch previously expert tossers of identity-politics hand grenades blow their own fingers off, if Geraldine Ferraro's an "insidious racist", who isn't?

The song the Rev. Wright won't sing is by Irving Berlin, a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, all the sophisticated rhymesters. But only Berlin could have written without embarrassment "God Bless America." He said it directly, unaffectedly, unashamedly – in seven words:

"God Bless America

Land that I love."

Berlin was a Jew, and he suffered slights: He grew up in the poverty of New York's Lower East Side. When he made his name and fortune, his marriage to a Park Avenue heiress resulted in her expulsion from the Social Register. In the Thirties, her sister moved in with a Nazi diplomat and proudly flaunted her diamond swastika to Irving. But Berlin spent his infancy in Temun, Siberia (until the Cossacks rode in and razed his village), and he understood the great gift he'd been given:

"God Bless America

Land that I love."

The Rev. Wright can't say those words. His shtick is:

"God damn America

Land that I loathe."

This nation has faults – all do. But it gave the Reverend a bully pulpit to spout his venom back at the country that gave him that chance. Obama could have walked out of the nastiness and changed churches or even could have tried to ask Wright to tone it down. Instead he presumably sat quietly while this wave of bilious America-bashing rolled right on over him. That is Obama's disaster, the one that a significant portion of the population of this nation cannot and will not forget or forgive. Obama cannot present himself as the messiah of change when he cannot even summon the spine to raise a finger to attempt to change or disassociate himself from the venom Wright spewed – until he was cornered politically.

The Tunnels Of Arras

An almost forgotten bit of history from the First World War has been rediscovered under the streets of the French city of Arras. A huge tunnel complex built by the British to allow their troops to attack the German Army by surprise has been partially unearthed and is now open to the public. A reporter for the Daily Mail went to see the complex.

Here, beneath the northern French town of Arras, years of careful excavation have finally unveiled the secret city where 25,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers lived just yards beneath an unsuspecting enemy.

Canteens, chapels, power stations, a light railway and even a fully functioning hospital were all established in this chilly labyrinth where I am standing with freezing water dripping on my head.

Scarred by the devastating losses on the Somme in 1916, British generals came up with a new strategy ahead of their next major offensive at Arras in 1917.

A series of subterranean medieval quarries on the edge of the town would be linked by tunnels to create the most extensive underground network in British military history.

These were not narrow shafts for men on all fours to crawl along. Tunnels had to be wide enough for soldiers to march in one direction and pass stretcher parties coming the other way. The larger routes had to accommodate a supply railway as well. 

It proved to be a mighty feat of engineering but, in the chaotic aftermath of war, it was simply forgotten and covered up. But that neglect is our gain.

Today, much of it remains exactly as it was on that extraordinary morning in 1917 when, at the given signal, several British divisions burst forth under the noses of the enemy.

By the end of one day, they had advanced further into enemy territory than the entire British Army had advanced in years.

And yet the subsequent Battle of Arras would still see the worst bloodshed of the war.

As far as the Great War is concerned, the Arras discovery is on a par with the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. 

The French have built a museum and an elevator to the opened sections of the huge complex. Much of the network is damaged, collapsed or extremely dangerous. Arras has grown in the years since the tunnels were dug and the city now sits squarely on top of the engineering feat. But at least they have now saved a part of it and people can see where some of the 25,000 men huddled for days waiting for the order to emerge and attack. More on the Battle of Arras here.  

Interstellar Opportunity

Here's your chance to own your very own split-level flying saucer! An unusual flying saucer shaped home is up for auction in Tennessee. Built in 1970, the odd structure stands on six "landing legs" and sports a curved custom bar.

The home "landed" on a twisting road leading to Chattanooga's Signal Mountain in 1970 — just after television executives grounded the run of the original "Star Trek" series. It will be sold to the highest bidder Saturday.

The circular house — ultramodern when it was built — is ringed with small square windows and directional lights and perched on six "landing gear" legs. It has multiple levels, three bedrooms, two baths and an entrance staircase that retracts with the push of a button.

Terry Posey, an agent with Crye-Leike Auctions of Cleveland, Tennessee, said the current owner has had the property only four months and didn't want to comment. Posey posted an e-Bay ad and said he already has a $100,000 bid.

John Kleeman of Litchfield, Connecticut, an attorney and space culture enthusiast, said he knows of variations of the flying saucer design in Florida, Connecticut and California.

I'm familiar with what is known as the "Mushroom House" in the Rochester, New York area (the current owners apparently dislike that label, preferring "Pod House.") The man who used to farm the land around our house in Illinois lived in a round house – it was not saucer-shaped, just round. One word of caution on this style of home, however. These are not recommended for families with small children.

You can't make a kid stand in a corner in one of them. 

I Don’t Think We’re In Kansas Anymore

Must be downtown Atlanta. What appears to have been a tornado slammed into downtown Atlanta, Georgia last night causing a considerable amount of damage and injuring some 15 people. There are fears that there may be more victims trapped in a collapsed loft building.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — At least 20 homes in Atlanta's historic Cabbagetown neighborhood were flattened by a tornado that ripped through downtown Atlanta on Friday night, a spokeswoman for the mayor said.

Firefighters fear there could be people dead inside the ruins of a collapsed loft complex in the same neighborhood, the spokeswoman said.

There have been no deaths confirmed from the tornado, but at least 15 people were treated at two hospitals. Most of the injuries were minor cuts, scrapes and bruises, officials said.

The Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts, just east of downtown Atlanta, collapsed in a "pancake fashion," Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran said early Saturday.

The tornado that ripped through the heart of the city damaged the roof of the Georgia Dome during a college basketball game, shattered windows and ripped roofs from buildings before continuing into several residential neighborhoods.

The building that houses CNN was at the epicenter of the storm — sitting next to the dome and hotels where thousands of basketball fans attending the Southeastern Conference tournament were at least temporarily displaced. 

It's fairly unusual for a tornado to hit a large urban area, although it certainly does happen. I don't believe I have ever heard of one hitting Atlanta before this. The National Weather Service has not yet confirmed that this actually was a tornado yet, according to a number of reports, despite CNN's assured tone in the story.