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The growth of the biodiesel industry in the U.S. leads to higher production of lower cost food protein. Biodiesel has primarily been made from the byproduct oil of growing soybeans, with the
remaining 80 percent of the bean being protein meal. Higher demand for the oil leads to lower cost protein meal, used to feed livestock, as well as for human consumption. According to the
University of Missouri Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), rising use of soybean oil to produce biodiesel has strengthened soybean oil prices while weakening protein
meal prices. The FAPRI baseline projects U.S. consumption of soybean meal and exports to increase, with the price of the meal dropping more than $80/ton. The U.S. continues to be the largest exporter of soybeans. (more…)

Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamaition of 1870

The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned The Battle Hymn of the Republic 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers. With the following, she called for an international Mother’s Day celebrating peace and motherhood:

Arise, then, women of this day!
 Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
 
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
 
“We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
  
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
 
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
 
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
 
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
 
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.

The history of Mother’s Day is centuries old and the earliest Mother’s Day Celebrations can be traced back to the Pagans spring celebrations honoring The Great Mother, and in ancient Greece in honor of  Rhea, the Mother of the Gods.

It is interesting to note that the Mother and Son imagery of Isis and Horus—in which Isis cradles and suckles her son—is strikingly similar to that of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. (more…)

THE KEY THING TO KNOW ABOUT BARACK OBAMA

is that the man isn’t a liar, he’s a bullshitter in Harry Frankfurt’s sense — he has no regard for the truth one way or the other.  He isn’t intent on deceiving you, he just wants to tell you whatever he needs to to get along and get what he wants.  This has a lot in common with Shelby Steele’s various discussions of Obama as a “bargainer”, a man without an authentic identity, and an “invisible man”. 

Barack Obama was up to his old bullshitting again last night, in his interview with Larry King.  It is well known that Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity Church are very much not your typical black church.  *Jeremiah Wright is a pioneer of “Black Liberation Theology”, he’s a former member of the Nation of Islam, and he’s the one who very controversially introduced many of the themes of Black Nationalist Muslims into the black Christian church.  If fact, every aspect of the Trinity church are centered around the racist themes of “Black Liberation Theology” which many Christians must understand as fundamentally sacrilegious in their racist distortions of the Christian creed.

(more…)

from breadwithcircus.com

This is a performance given by British comedian Robert Newman. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of standup comedy/performance art that I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve never before seen someone do such a great job of explaining geo-politics. Best of all Newman manages to do so in a humourous way. I highly recommend that you watch this video, its only 45 minutes long, it will make you laugh and you’ll probably come out of it with a better understanding of the way the world works.

Watch Robert Newman’s “History of Oil”

Lance Mannion says…..

Concerned readers sometimes write in to ask, “Lance, how can you be a Democrat! Don’t they break your heart every single day of the week?”

Some of them.

But this is something I learned growing up listening to Pop Mannion and Uncle Bill. You’re a Democrat because you want to see certain things get done and unfortunately you need politicians to get them done and politicians are just people, often significantly flawed people. Saints become nurses and doctors and teachers and missionaries. They don’t go into politics. This is what I’ve learned on the blogosphere. The difference between Democrats and a lot of self-styled Progressives is Democrats want certain things to get done; Progressives want a lot of the same things to get done but they want a certain type of person to be the one to get them done.

I’ll tell you, that kind of person doesn’t usually go into politics, and when they do they don’t often get very far.

I’m not bragging when I tell you this, though. Pop Mannion is that kind of person, as close as you can get anyway, and I’ll tell you this too. If you’d voted for him for town supervisor, the odds are he’d have broken your heart at least a half dozen times during both of this long tenures in the job. You know why? Because he’s still just a human being. He couldn’t do everything he wanted to. He couldn’t please everybody he needed to please. He couldn’t be everything to everybody and whenever he had to choose what he could be to whom he broke a lot of people’s hearts.

Read it all…

h/t Tbogg