Pharmakia and Magic Arts

The Bible tells us that pharmakia will be prevalent in the Last Days and even when God’s judgment is raining down on planet earth, people will refuse to give it up.  Pharmakia is Greek for “drugs and spells” and can also mean“magic arts”.  Of course we get our English word pharmacy from it.  During the Tribulation people will refuse to give up and repent of their pharmakia.  And if the Tribulation is close then we should expect to see rising drug use today...and we do.

*************************************

Thanks in part to the widespread legalization of marijuana, so many American workers are testing positive for marijuana (and other drugs) that business owners in the US are being forced to relax and reassess their policies on pre-employment drug screens in order to accommodate workers who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have been welcome in the labor pool.

 During that time, the number of states where marijuana has been legalized for recreational has increased to18 from eight (plus Washington DC).

Surging rates of marijuana positivity are prompting fewer companies to even bother testing their employees for THC (for those who are unfamiliar, THC is the active ingredient in marijuana that's primarily responsible for its effects) in the first place. And in some states, employers have been legally barred from factoring in marijuana test results into their hiring decisions.

But in states that haven't embraced legal marijuana, this trend is becoming a significant barrier to entry that's having a cascading effect across the labor pool, as one 'expert' quoted by WSJ pointed out.

"We certainly heard from some of our employer customers that they were having difficulty finding qualified workers to pass the drug test..."

Unfortunately, marijuana isn't the only drug that's showing up more frequently in urine screens.

Over the past year, the share of American workers who have tested positive for other drugs has risen 4.6% to the highest level since 2001 (the heyday of the American prescription painkiller crisis), according to Quest.

One employment agency said it has tried to convince some of its clients to ease its policies on positive drug tests for THC (except for jobs where federal regulations require negative drug tests). But this lax attitude has sometimes had unintended consequences.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/number-us-workers-testing-positive-marijuana-reaches-2-decade-high

What’s the Truth About Russia Ukraine War?

 I remember questioning how quickly all the folks on both political sides came together to announce “Putin is bad! Ukraine is good!  America needs to do everything in its power to stop evil Russia!”  Could it really be all that simple or is their something much more nefarious going on?  What if we found it was America that had been provoking Putin for 14 years by overthrowing Ukraine’s government and threatening NATO membership?  What if Putin is actually trying to defend his people from being overtaken by a godless horde of LGBT, transgender, drug addicted, porn-fueled Westerners who may prove to be as corrupt as Putin is?  Is it tragic that women and children are caught in the middle?  Of course but women and children are suffering all over the world but we ignore their plight...so why are we so willing to risk nuclear war by pushing Russia to the brink?

**********************************

Here’s the real story: Russia’s invasion is the end result of 14 years of provocation by the West, including repeated declarations that Ukraine will join NATO and a U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2014 that displaced a pro-Russian president.

Russia never planned a blitzkrieg on Kyiv. That’s a Western invention intended to make Putin look like a failure. In fact, Russia is slowly and methodically taking territory in the south and east of Ukraine in order to control the seacoasts, eliminate pro-fascist elements in Mariupol and establish pro-Russian autonomous zones in Donbas.

Churchill? Really?

A full assault on Kyiv, if it ever comes, is last on the list. Ukraine may reoccupy a village here and there, but they’re losing ground in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Melitopol, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and surrounding areas.

Moreover, Zelenskyy is no Churchill.

He’s succeeded in presenting himself as a strong wartime leader, standing up to the big, bad Putin. But in reality, he’s a corrupt oligarch with millions of dollars hidden offshore. His acting skills have enhanced his propaganda efforts, but it doesn’t take much training to see how phony he is.

Innocent civilians, including women and children, are dying under his failed leadership and inability to come to terms with Putin before the invasion began. In a nutshell, Zelenskyy bet on support from Biden and the West and lost.

There is ample evidence from numerous sources to support this analysis. Some of the best sources come from Switzerland, where military experts are infuriated that traditional Swiss neutrality has been cast aside.

Most tellingly, Pentagon leaks say the same thing. The story from inside the Pentagon is that Putin is not acting recklessly but is being patient and methodical. It also says that, despite some civilian casualties, Putin is actually using a restrained approach. Furthermore, there are no signs he is preparing for the use of chemical or biological weapons.

The Most Severe Sanctions in History

Payments in and out of Russia have been blocked. The Central Bank of Russia has been banned from the global dollar payments systems. The same is true for the 10 largest Russian banks and a long list of oligarchs and Russian government officials.

Accounts of Russian targets in Western banks have been frozen. Exports of critical technology and high-tech equipment to Russia have been banned. U.S. and European airspace has been closed to Russian airlines.

Secondary sanctions have been imposed so that if another nation like China sells goods to Russia made with U.S. technology or machines, that nation will be punished also. The list goes on.

Economic sanctions of these kinds sound powerful when they’re announced and do have some impact. But in the long run they never work. In the end, the costs are real but the effects of the sanctions are nil. It’s a lose-lose proposition.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/rickards-ive-never-heard-so-many-lies

Why Are People Acting So Weird?

This article comes from a very Liberal site and does their part to try and explain why people are freaking out on airplanes, against health workers and police, why murder rates and violent crime has spiked and why there are so many instances of folks yelling at school board meetings.  They blame drinking, Covid isolation, drugs, guns and financial stress from Covid shutdowns.  We believe there is another more Biblical reason. Paul warned that folks in the Last Days would be lovers of violence and that their love would grow cold.  People’s behavior is also one more sign America is nearing the implosion point as Godlessness overtakes us.

***************************

People have been coping with the pandemic by drinking more and doing more drugs, and “a lot of these incidents involve somebody using a substance,” Humphreys said. “Whether they’re drinking before they get on the flight … A lot of auto accidents, including aggression-driven auto accidents, come from substances.”

Americans have been drinking 14 percent more days a month during the pandemic, and drug overdoses have also increased since 2019. Substance-abuse treatment, never especially easy to come by, was further interrupted by COVID.

Americans have also been buying more guns, which may help explain the uptick in the murder rate. Gun sales spiked in 2020 and 2021, and more people are being killed with guns than before. In 2020, police recovered nearly twice as many firearms within a year of purchase as they did in 2019—a short “time to crime” window that suggests criminal intent. “Put more plainly, thousands of guns purchased in 2020 were almost immediately used in crimes,” Champe Barton writes at The Trace. Though owning a gun doesn’t make it more likely that you’ll kill someone, it makes it more likely that you’ll be successful if you try.

The pandemic loosened ties between people: Kids stopped going to school; their parents stopped going to work; parishioners stopped going to church; people stopped gathering, in general. Sociologists think all of this isolation shifted the way we behave. “We’re more likely to break rules when our bonds to society are weakened,” Robert Sampson, a Harvard sociologist who studies social disorder, told me. “When we become untethered, we tend to prioritize our own private interests over those of others or the public.”

The turn-of-the-20th-century scholar Émile Durkheim called this state anomie, or a lack of social norms that leads to lawlessness. “We are moral beings to the extent that we are social beings,” Durkheim wrote. In the past two years, we have stopped being social, and in many cases we have stopped being moral, too.

“We’ve got, I think, a generalized sense that the rules simply don’t apply,” Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, told me. In some places, he says, police arrested fewer people during the pandemic, and “when enforcement goes down, people tend to relax their commitment to the rules.”

Though it’s been a lifesaving tool throughout the pandemic, mask wearing has likely made this problem worse. Just as it’s easier to scream at someone on Twitter than in real life, it’s easier to rage at a masked flight attendant than one whose face you can fully see. “You don’t really see a human being so much as you’re seeing someone masked,” Sampson said. Though one study found that face masks don’t dehumanize the wearer, another small experiment foundthat they do impair people’s ability to detect emotions.

 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/03/antisocial-behavior-crime-violence-increase-pandemic/627076/

US Marines Deploying to Australia

 Many experts agree that USA is not ready to fight a major war on two fronts.  Many folks warned that when Putin invaded Ukraine that China was fueling the jets for an invasion of Taiwan.  It hasn’t happened...yet.  But the possibility of it still exists.  China and Russia are cooperating on many fronts and quite possibly are cooking conditions to further knock USA off our super-power pedestal while at the same time hammering away at the “faith and confidence” that supports the US Dollar.

**************************

As tensions rise between the United States and China, thousands of American soldiers are being sent to Australia in preparation for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

A rotational US Marine force of approximately 2,200 soldiers will be based in the Northern Territory through September. 1,000 Marines have already arrived in Darwin, where they will train with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to ensure preparedness for potential conflict/crises in the region.

Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said that conflict with China “shouldn’t be discounted”, and warned that Beijing may try to use the current war between Russia and Ukraine to their advantage and try to annex Taiwan while the world is distracted.

Chinese state-affiliated media warned in 2021 that, should Australian forces defend Taiwan, they would suffer a “heavy attack”, a threat that Australian leaders have not taken lightly.

https://100percentfedup.com/us-deploying-thousands-of-marines-to-australias-northern-territory-to-prepare-for-possibility-of-war-with-china/

Gradually...Then Suddenly

 If you are watching for more conditions to add to the perfect storm building for America that will affect the whole world, notice that we are near a financial bankruptcy event.  If this happens while gasoline is at $6 gallon and food shelves are empty you really will have the perfect storm.  Of course we all know that America needs to vanish in order for the New World Order of globalism to enter.  And we also know that the US dollar needs to vanish to bring in a global currency.  So these coming events shouldn’t surprise us who know we are living in the very Last Days.  So we continue to “turn our eyes upon Jesus”.

******************************

As we rush towards our World War 3 rendezvous with destiny, aided and abetted by politicians placed in power by globalist billionaires hellbent on the destruction of our way of life, so they own everything and you own nothing, I can’t help but ponder who is to blame and could we have avoided this dystopian outcome.

The United States has been going bankrupt gradually for the last fifty years, both financially, intellectually, and morally. Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 and opening the debt door to morally bankrupt bankers and politicians set in motion a downward spiral accelerating at hyper-speed as we speak. The American Empire was born in the shattered global debris of World War II with the Bretton Woods agreement, which left the USD as the dominant currency in world trade, specifically as the settlement currency for all oil transactions.

The empire has been sustained by currency supremacy, military might, and until 1980, manufacturing superiority. Once the most highly educated nation on the planet, decades of lowering the bar, less than mediocre union teachers, and replacing education with indoctrination, has created generations of ignorant zombies incapable and uninterested in critical thought.

The road to bankruptcy was very gradual at the outset of empire, with the national debt topping out at $269 billion, 119% of GDP, in 1946. In 1960 it had only grown to $286 billion but had dropped to 54% of GDP. Rebuilding the world and being the dominant economic power paid huge dividends. After a decade of guns, butter and welfare programs, the debt grew to $398 billion, but continued to drop as a percentage of GDP to 35% in 1971. After decoupling from gold, the national debt soared to $908 billion by 1980, inflation surged to 15%, and Volcker had to raise interest rates to 20% to avert disaster. What happened over the next forty years was mind boggling in its recklessness, shortsightedness, and acquiescence to the Wall Street cabal. These decade-by-decade increases were obscene:

• 
  

  1980               $908B            32% of GDP

• 1990               $3.2T              54% of GDP

• 2000               $5.7T              52% of GDP

• 2010               $13.6T            90% of GDP

• 2020               $27.8T            129% of GDP

• Today             $30.3T            130% of GDP

  
  

  There is no conceivable way this debt can ever be repaid, therefore it will not. It’s just pure math, which the average dumbed down American chooses not to question or dispute. In their own lives they need to make enough income to make their mortgage payment and car loan payment. It’s the same for the government. The only way debt obligations can be met is for tax revenue to exceed expenses. Borrowing to make debt and interest payments is unsustainable, reckless, and an example of imperial empire arrogance. The only unknown now is whether the debt is defaulted upon, it is hyperinflated away, or some sort of debt jubilee and currency collapse makes it mute.

  
  

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/gradually-then-suddenly

Disney Plans to Literally Shove LGBTQIA+ Wokeness Down Our Throats

 Of course Satan is smart and he knows that if he can get ahold of your kids at a really young age he can change the world.  And what better way to get ahold of your children than through a company that is all about children?...Disney!

Watch this video of a Disney zoom call discussing how much more inclusive they can be by making even more LGBTQ characters at their theme parks and in their movies.  Also notice they will no longer be saying “Welcome ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” because we all know there could be a non-binary 5 yr old in the crowd who could feel excluded.

This insanity has no end.

Here; https://youtu.be/TxhyEBiq5qY

Good Will be Called Evil and Evil Will be Called Good

 You don't have to look very far around you to see that this prophecy of the Last Days is being fulfilled in front of our eyes.  Gay marriage is called good.  Fornication is called good.  Pornography is called good. Worshipping other gods is called good.  The inerrancy of scripture is called bad.  Saying Jesus is the only way is called bad.  Saying God created two genders, male and female is called bad.  Killing babies in their mother's womb is called good.  Men dressing as women is called good.  And the list goes on.

A new survey has found that the vast majority of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track morally, but meanwhile the nation continues to move away from organized religion at an unprecedented rate.  Needless to say, America's moral decline has been a focus of mine for a very long time.  

Our society has been steadily decaying for decades, and our culture is now radically different than it was when I was growing up.  I would love to see our culture return to the way that it was 50 or 60 years ago, but I don't think that is ever going to happen.  

Instead, the numbers seem to indicate that our culture is going to continue to deteriorate as older Americans die off and younger Americans gain more power in society.

According to a brand new Deseret News/Marist Poll survey that was just released, 72 percent of Americans believe that "the nation's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction".

On the surface, that number would seem to be really good news.

Because if most of us can agree that there is a problem, theoretically we should be able to agree that a solution to that problem is necessary.

The survey also discovered that it isn't just highly religious Americans that believe that we are in moral decline.  74 percent of Christians agreed that "the nation's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction", and 69 percent of non-religious Americans also agreed with that statement.

I found that to be very noteworthy.

And this is how the numbers broke down by political affiliation...

-90 percent of Republicans agreed

-77 percent of Independents agreed

-51 percent of Democrats agreed

It is very rare for any survey to ever find this sort of widespread agreement on any issue.

Surprisingly, the survey also found that more than half of all Americans still believe in the God of the Bible...

For example, 54% of Americans report they believe in God as described in the Bible--this includes 86% of all those who practice a religion and one in three (33%) individuals who report they do not practice a religion.

In the report, Generation Z and the future of faith in America, Daniel A. Cox, senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, who also serves as director of the Survey Center on American Life, paints a complicated and diminished view of religion in American life.

According to that report, Americans that are in Generation Z are almost four times as likely to be religiously unaffiliated as members of the Silent Generation are...

Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is now the least religious generation yet, with 34% of them identifying as religiously unaffiliated. Among millennials, 29% identify as religiously unaffiliated, while Generation X stands at 25%. Only 18% of baby boomers and 9% of the silent generation identify as religiously unaffiliated.

Survey after survey has shown the same thing.

Americans are losing their religion, and young adults are leading the way.

We are a completely different nation than we were 50 years ago.  In this sort of an environment, crimes against humanity of the highest order can be revealed and yet hardly anyone gets upset about them.

When I was growing up, what was right and what was wrong was generally very clear.

But these days very few people have a clear sense of what is right and what is wrong.

In fact, much of the time what used to be "wrong" is now called "right", and what used to be "right" is now called "wrong".

We have become an upside down society where those that actually try to stand up for morality and virtue are called the bad guys, and those that are dragging our society into the gutter are called the good guys.

If we continue to stay on this path, there is only one way that things can end.

Unfortunately, those that are determined to fundamentally transform our society seem to have unstoppable momentum at this point, and that is really bad news for all of us.

Here;  Most Americans Believe Nation’s Moral Compass Is Pointing In Wrong Direction (prophecynewswatch.com)

Many have said to me that they believe we are on the verge of a Great Revival in America.  They believer that people are going to embrace Jesus Christ and turn back to God the Father.  I hope they are right but I simply don't see that playing out.

The Bible says that there comes a time in a nation when "God give them over to the desires of their flesh".  Sexual perversion may play a huge part in that.  Do you ever see a day when Americans reject gay marriage and change the laws back to ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN?  Nope.  Do you ever see the day coming when fathers will love their wives and be married to one woman with a commitment to raise Godly children?  Nope.  Do you see a day coming when Americans will embrace the idea that Jesus is God, born of a virgin, died on a cross and rose again from the dead PROVING that He is the only path for eternal life and the forgiveness of sin?  Nope.

I don't believe we are going back.  There are simply too many Americans that are calling evil good and good evil.  And for this reason judgment seems to be this nation's only future.

Of course the million dollar question is;  How do followers of Christ live in a nation where judgement has started?  I believe the answer is that the light within us (Holy Spirit) will actually shine brighter and be more visible to all of those around us as the darkness grows.  So yes, there certainly good be a big harvest yet to happen in America but I don't believe it will be called a revival.  The joy of the Lord will be our strength. 

Global Food Crisis May Be Inevitable

 To go along with our last post about Farmers on the Brink, we add this article.  Yes, food may never be cheaper than it is right now.

When I started warning of an emerging global food crisis a number of months ago, many out there assumed that I must be exaggerating things.  Sadly, I was not exaggerating one bit.  The soaring price of fertilizer, extreme global weather patterns, shocking crop failures and an epic global supply chain crisis had combined to create a "perfect storm" even before the war in Ukraine began.  

Of course the war has made things far worse, because Russia and Ukraine collectively account for about 30 percent of all worldwide wheat exports under normal conditions.  For a while, the mainstream media and our leaders in Washington were in denial about what was happening, but now everyone is finally admitting the truth.  In fact, at this point even the Biden administration is conceding that a global food crisis is here...

The White House confirmed Monday they expect certain parts of the world to suffer a food shortage as an effect of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

"We do anticipate that higher energy fertilizer, wheat, and corn prices could impact the price of growing and purchasing critical food supplies for countries around the world," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

I am glad that the White House is talking about this.

Hopefully it will get a lot more people to understand the seriousness of the crisis that we are now facing.

According to Psaki, the poorest parts of the planet are expected to be affected the most...

She said food shortages were not expected to hit the United States, but rather countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

This is what I have always said.  Those at the bottom of the economic food chain will be hit the hardest at first.

But we will feel a lot of pain too.

One of the primary factors that is causing this new global food crisis is the price of fertilizer.  This is something that Glenn Beck commented on during one of his shows this week...

"Now, the bigger problems are fertilizer and energy. The energy price to run the tractors, to run the trucks, to run everything else. And the price of phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen. Those are the three major things we use to make fertilizer ... this is causing so much stress on the farmers that farmers all around the world are not planting their fields. They are reducing the acreage, because without fertilizer, you're not growing much. So why plant all those fields?" Glenn continued.

"So far, the price of corn has doubled. Soybeans and wheat are skyrocketing. The strategic food reserves, in some parts of the world, are now opening," he warned. "We'd better have perfect weather all over the world, because if things continue the way they are and don't turn around quickly, hundreds of millions of people will experience famine by the end of the year."

Beck is entirely correct that conditions at the end of the year will be worse than conditions at the beginning of the year.

At this point, we are still eating food that was grown last year.

By the end of the year, we will primarily be eating food that was grown this year, and this year a lot less food will be grown than originally anticipated.

The head of the UN World Food program, David Beasley, is telling us that what we are facing is unlike anything that we have seen since World War II...

"Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe," said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. "There is no precedent even close to this since World War II."

Beasley has no idea how we are going to be able to feed everyone.

In fact, he is warning that his agency will soon be forced to make some very harsh choices...

The World Food Program's costs have already increased by $71 million a month, enough to cut daily rations for 3.8 million people. "We'll be taking food from the hungry to give to the starving," Mr. Beasley said.

Reading that should chill you to your core.

But here in the United States, most will not start paying attention until it starts to affect them personally.

Here;  Global Food Crisis By End Of Year May Be Inevitable (prophecynewswatch.com)

I love what Jan Markell has said, "What exactly DID you think the Last Days would look like?"

As I reflect on that and remember Jesus' words, "there will be wars, rumors of war, famine, pestilence..."

We should expect to be seeing these things...and in fact we are.

Of course our blessed hope is that Jesus is always near.  He feeds the sparrows and waters the flowers so we will trust Him that he will care for us.  We also believe that He is soon coming to take us to the place He has prepared for us.  If that wasn't true, would He have said it?

When you see all these things beginning to happen then look up!  Because your redemption is near!

Even so, Come Lord Jesus!

Farmers On the Brink

 We will continue to warn you about what looks like a perfect storm forming over farmers and ranchers.  We will also encourage you to exercise the "Joy of the Lord" as you allow the things of this world to grow dim as you focus on Jesus' face and the promises He has made for those who love him.

Here are some of the elements of a perfect storm coming for farmers and ranchers.  As the storm rages over them it will soon be coming for all of us...because they produce 100% of our FOOD.

Diesel fuel is $5/gallon and a massive shortage could be on the horizon.  Famers use billions of gallons to plant and harvest.

Fertilizer costs are up 400% from last year if you can find a trucker to deliver it. Yields could be way down if fertilizer isn't applied.

Propane is in very short supply.  Farmers use propane to dry their crops.

Ukraine is Europe's bread basket and fields aren't being planted.

Wheat is up 70%.  What do you think a box of Wheaties might cost 10 months from now?

The winter-wheat crop is poor in Oklahoma and Texas because of dry conditions over the winter.

Grocery prices are already 30-50% more than they were just a few years ago.

So here is an article that expands on it even more.

While the concept of a perfect storm is often too casually assigned in popular culture, it is difficult to find a more apt description of what has been unfolding in the global agriculture markets over these past several months. The tempest caused by the European energy disaster has merged with the hurricane of consequences flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forming the genesis of a generational crisis in food that will leave few unaffected. While we’ve been warning about just such a scenario for some time, after spending the past two weeks traveling across the US Midwest and conferring with our contacts in the agricultural sector, even we are a little spooked by what we’ve learned. In a financial crash, the correlation between all asset classes converges to one. The coming crash in global food supply will be driven by a similar phenomenon across virtually every input into farming – they are all spiking to historic highs simultaneously, supply availability is diminishing across the spectrum, and the time to reverse the worst of the upcoming consequences is rapidly running short.

Other than that, things are great.

We begin with the price of fertilizer, which has been soaring to record highs across the globe. Key sources of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous – important inputs into soil fertility, crop yield, and plant maintenance – have all gone vertical. Ammonia is derived directly from natural gas, and the price of natural gas outside of the US has gone vertical. It's no surprise that the price of ammonia has tripled over the past twelve months. Belarus is the third-largest supplier of potash in the world and its state-owned miner, Belaruskali, declared force majeure after sanctions were imposed by the US and Europe. The number two supplier of potash globally? Russia. Perhaps front-running the Russian move on Ukraine, China halted phosphate exports last fall in an effort to ensure adequate domestic supply. The combined impact of these events can be seen in the Green Markets North American Fertilize Index, which tracks a blend of fertilizer prices globally:

Glyphosate is effectively little more than an elegantly modified fertilizer, containing both phosphorous and nitrogen. It is derived from similar starting materials – including ammonia – and, as such, its price has soared amid chronic supply shortages. This has caused the price of other herbicides to rise as farmers desperately seek substitutes, as described by this article in The Western Producer (emphasis added throughout):

“The much-ballyhooed glyphosate shortage is just the first domino to fall, according to a leading crop protection company.

‘The knock-on effect on basically every other herbicide molecule is starting to manifest itself,’ said Cornie Thiessen, general manager of ADAMA Canada. ‘We are seeing quite a domino effect in the market because of the glyphosate challenges.’

Bayer was already warning customers in late 2021 about a potential glyphosate shortage.”

If farmers skimp on herbicides to get by this season, it only makes dealing with weeds more challenging in the future. As one expert warned us, it only takes one year of negligence to do several years of damage to a field.

Diesel is another significant input into farming, and it too is facing a global supply crunch. Javier Blas, an energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg whose Twitter account is an absolute must-follow, recently published an editorial sounding the alarm:

“The dire diesel supply situation predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While global oil demand hasn’t yet reached its pre-pandemic level, global diesel consumption surged to a fresh all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2021. The boom reflects the lopsided Covid economic recovery, with transportation demand spiking to ease supply-chain messes.

European refineries have struggled to match this revival in demand. One key reason is pricey natural gas. Refineries use gas to produce hydrogen, which they then use to remove sulphur from diesel. The spike in gas prices in late 2021 made that process prohibitively expensive, cutting diesel output.”

As expensive as it is to fuel the field equipment needed to farm, keeping them operational at all is becoming an ever-growing challenge. The same chip shortage constraining automobile production has struck the farming equipment industry, making new equipment and spare parts harder to come by. Farmers in Iowa recently vented their frustration at a Republican forum on agriculture:

“…they bemoaned the hit-and-miss availability of parts to fix their equipment — the result of pandemic disruptions in the production of those parts. Iowa Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, is a farmer who said his neighbor was forced to buy a hydraulic pump for his tractor from a Nebraska dealership because it was the only place in the country that had it stocked.

Jim Boyer, an Emmet County farmer, had a similar, personal anecdote. He’s awaiting a $40 emissions-related sensor for his tractor, and he’s not sure if it will arrive anytime soon.

‘I cannot drive that tractor — a quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment — because I cannot get that sensor,’ he said.”

Compounding these challenges with machinery is a burgeoning labor shortage that is rapidly adding pressure to this brewing catastrophe. Although the labor issues in the US span well beyond agriculture, there are aspects that exacerbate the impact on farmers, including the physical labor intensity and seasonality of many roles, as well as the reliance on foreign laborers to fill key positions US citizens have historically shunned. This is especially challenging in light of vaccine mandates at border crossings. Here’s a recent report from Wisconsin Public Radio which describes the challenges well:

“While some farms employ workers all year round, Strader said many jobs are seasonal, starting in March and April and going until late fall when harvest ends.

With producers on edge about hiring for this year, Strader said many farms started recruiting earlier than usual and developed a contingency plan for how to make it through the season without employees. That could mean discontinuing certain markets or scaling back the variety of produce that they’re growing.”

Farmers are also competing with other sectors for a limited pool of labor. The gap between job openings and unemployed but willing workers across the entire US continues to widen:

Even generously assuming farmers can cobble together enough fertilizer, herbicide, machinery, and labor to produce a good harvest this fall, they may be left to deal with yet another crisis of supply that few off the field have on their radar: propane. As Tracy Schuchart – yet another absolute must-follow on Twitter – has been flagging for several months, the US exits the winter of 2021-2022 with concerningly low levels of propane inventory, well-below typical averages for this time of year:

Here; Farmers on the Brink - Doomberg (substack.com) 

"But Dennis, food shortages and outrageous grocery prices could never happen here!  This is America!"

Really?  Have you read your Bibles at all recently?  Has God used famine in the past to wake up His people or even to destroy those nations that He chooses?

"Well yes, but that was Old Testament.  Ever since Jesus came God only means to bless America and never to curse us or discipline us.  Remember the song, God Bless America?"

Oh...OK  Got it.  So when Jesus said "there will be famines" as the Last Days approach, that was only meant for everyone else in the world but NOT including America?

Hat tip to Natalie P.

Followers of Christ Need Not Apply

 Pretty scary times when a black woman with a perfect resume gets fired for because she affirms Christian beliefs.  Also pretty scary that the Left is blind and delusional to their intolerance.

Today's story is about a black woman appointed by a Democrat mayor who once affirmed that homosexuality is a sexual sin along with many others.  

That was all the LGBTQIA+ community needed to start feeling bad and begin to bully the black woman.  She was fired one day later.

Not too long ago, there was at least this understanding about hot-button issues: there are good people on both sides. Now, thanks to the woke hijacking of America's towers of business, tech, sports, education, and entertainment, those days are long gone. 

Anyone who disagrees with the Left now is not only undeserving of respect -- but cast out like a societal leper. It doesn't matter how mainstream your beliefs may be. As the firing of Kathlyn Barrett-Layne in New York City proved, there's no room at the table for anyone with Christian views.

She barely held the position for a day -- long enough, it turns out, to have the city's LGBT activists out for blood. Of all of Mayor Eric Adams's (D) picks, she was the perfect candidate for his Panel on Educational Policy. A retired teacher, assistant principal, and field supervisor with more than 30 years of experience in NYC schools, Barrett-Layne had one glaring problem: she's an orthodox Christian. 

The city's extremists must not have scoured her name until the appointment was announced, but it didn't take long for them to find a fireable offense. Several years ago, Barrett-Layne, in her ministry capacity, had written a book that listed "homosexuality" as one in a series of sins.

Leftist groups exploded. The mayor appointed a "virulent homophobe," one former councilman declared, and she will have "direct impact on LGBTQIA+ students and staff. It's unbelievable," Danny Dromm fumed. "She's got to go." Within hours, Adams pulled the plug on Barrett-Layne, an African-American woman, withdrawing her name and sending a chilling message that people of faith need not apply.

"I feel bullied," the shocked educator said. "I believe the city is being bullied. I feel as though my character, my name, my church have been defamed with lies and that everything was taken out of context." Pushing back against the smear campaign that's being waged against her, Barrett-Layne insisted to reporters, "I'm not homophobic. The answer is no, absolutely not." Even so, State Senator Brad Hoylman (D) told reporters that the mayor "seems to have a 'blind spot'" if he's willing to appoint people who "make the LGBT community very uneasy."

This controversy over a Christian with a Christian perspective should be another wake-up call to parents with children in government schools. Don't think that the iron grip LGBT activists have on public education is limited to big-city schools. It's everywhere. And these Leftist extremists are making it clear that they don't want parents anywhere near the decision-making process. 

Of course, the other piece of this story is that the city is losing a valuable voice. As part of the education panel, Barrett-Layne would have had direct input in the local curriculum. What does this say to Christian moms and dads in the area who have kids in the public schools? Simple: their views will not be tolerated.

Adams, who's already signaled weakness with Barrett-Layne, is in for a bumpy road. Once you feed the beast, it only gets hungrier. LGBT activists won't be happy until they take out every Christian in the mayor's young administration. And now that he's proven he's vulnerable to their demands, holding the line now will be next to impossible. "We were too nice to him," Equality New York's Cathy Marino-Thomas insisted before adding an unveiled threat: "Maybe he needs to see the other side. It's a little nastier."

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you surrender to the mob. They don't go away -- they only get louder. In this open season on faith, when believers are the hunted, the only way to stop it is to stand. A lesson Mayor Adams learned too late.

Here;  Welcome To The Big Apple: People Of Faith Need Not Apply (prophecynewswatch.com)

Of course we all know that Jesus said the world will hate US because it hated him first.  But those of us growing up in America thought that was only a warning for other Christians living in other nations like Pakistan or Iran.  We had no idea that hatred and intolerance of Christians was coming to America.  But yet here it is.

And for those who still hold out hope that America is going to go back to the "way things were", I think it's time to wake up and realize that gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ "rights" are here to stay.  We are becoming a larger stench in God's nostrils with each passing day.  And where are the church pulpits to sound the alarm?  Oh yeah...they are as "woke" as the godless folks and quite possibly the Senior Pastor standing behind the pulpit is gay, lesbian or transgender.