If the “Ukrainian narrative” was not ugly enough, it continues to work its way farther to the dark-side. It is debatable how long the American people will buy the line that funding the war in Ukraine will result in a good outcome. Someday, what is happening in Ukraine may be looked back upon as a horrible blunder, lie, and misstep largely orchestrated by America and the “Obama/Biden political machine.”
Sadly, US senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday agreed, due to fairly intense pressure from the White House, to withdraw the so-called ‘Yemen War Powers’ resolution from a vote in the Senate. The crucial bill would have restricted US military involvement in war-torn Yemen and reasserted Congress’ war-making authority. As a footnote, the word was put out that President Joe Biden would most likely veto the bill passed if it passed. White House officials said the bill “could complicate the effort to back Ukraine in its war against Russia.”
Recently, in a phone call, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “thanked” President Joe Biden for the “unprecedented defense and financial assistance that the U.S. provides to Ukraine.” that of course did not stop him from asking for billions more. So far the total that has been either proposed, pledged, or enacted exceeds a mind-boggling $100 billion. With every billion dollars representing roughly three dollars for every man woman and child in America, this means it has already cost each of us around 300 dollars. When you consider how many people, such as children and those barely getting by don’t share in this burden, the amount placed upon each taxpayer soars. Much of this money has been doled out with little oversight.
It is important to remember that under Biden’s tutelage this “conflict” has become not so much about defending Ukraine but ending Putin and Russia. It is not about the people of Ukraine but much more. The Ukrainian people and much of Europe have become mere pawns in a game. Unfortunately for the Biden camp, for all the money being poured into this “theater” it would be naive to think Putin will not achieve his goals or come out of this conflict the victor.
Even as this is being written, Ukraine is bracing for yet more Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Ukraine has accused Moscow of intentionally unleashing additional suffering on the population headed into Christmas. Its Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said, “Russian terrorists will do everything to leave Ukrainians without electricity for the New Year.” Currently, around 80% of the Kiev area appears to be without electricity for the second day in a row.
The only thing growing as fast as the cost of Biden’s proxy war is the ego of Ukraine’s President Zelensky. This has become more apparent by the day as the attention-seeking comedian media star turned politician pushes his way onto the center of the world stage. Zelensky is constantly appearing at major public events to make appeals for aid. These include the Grammys and Cannes Film Festival. This is when he’s not busy addressing the G7, the European Parliament, or an UN-sponsored event.
Pro-war advocates even arranged for Zelensky to give a 30-minute long speech before Congress, foreign leaders seldom get this opportunity. During the speech, he was frequently interrupted by spontaneous standing rounds of applause from US lawmakers as he vowed: “absolute victory“ over Russia. With events like this taking place, it is little wonder Time magazine recently named Zelensky and The Spirit Of Ukraine as person of the year.
There are, however, signs global audiences are tired of hearing Ukraine’s President Zelensky ask for more money. His message is steeped in propaganda. This could be the chief reason the formal request for Zelensky to talk about “world peace” before the kickoff to the World Cup final, was recently denied.
The Biden administration along with Ukrainian officials have been shocking the world with claims of how well things are going on the battlefield.” This has gone to the point where NBC News reports that the White House now calculates that the Ukrainian armed forces are capable of retaking the Crimean Peninsula. Administration officials are using this as a reason Congress still needs to fund Ukraine.
Those promoting and encouraging such an offensive move ignore the danger it may cross Moscow’s “red lines” and increase the possibility of nuclear weapons being used.
Still, with many Americans distracted by the holidays, few are paying attention to just how much money we are spending supporting Ukraine. The visual aid above helps clarify the distinction between what has been proposed and enacted. The additional “proposed” billions that are shown in the above chart have at this point been approved with the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. Approving the current request would bring the total amount approved to $104 billion in less than a year.
To the chagrin of many Americans, the war in Ukraine continues to grind on. The ramifications of the Biden proxy war extend far past spending. It includes using presidential draw-down authority to pull hundreds of millions in weapons and anti-air missile systems from American stockpiles. Biden’s newly announced pledge to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine means we may be short weapons if a problem comes up somewhere else.
This is why NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg commenting on the state of Russia-West relations said “Even if the fighting ends, we will not return to some kind of normal, friendly, relationship with Russia. Trust has been destroyed.” He claimed that NATO sought to build positive relations with Russia immediately after the Cold War – despite the fact it expanded to Russia’s doorstep soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For now, the idea this conflict will rapidly end has been placed on the back burner. This could be because many people are benefiting from the spending. To the warmongers, this is because we have not done enough. Those of us advocating the antiwar position view this as an unnecessary proxy war and that we have no business there. This extends to the position we should do everything we can to bring hostilities to an end.
Some of us take the position that this was all set in motion by the U.S. choreographed coup in Kiev eight years ago under the Obama Administration. It would be hard to overstate the significance those events played in creating the situation currently before us.
A huge factor in keeping truthful information about what is happening is held hostage by propaganda. The situation on the ground in Ukraine may be far different than we in America are being led to believe. Recently the Russians have altered their strategy in reaction to reality but not because they are in dire straits. An argument can be made that Russia’s pullback from some Ukrainian territory was strategic and that by pulling back they have sucked the Ukrainian troops into a meat grinder where they have suffered massive casualties.
Michael Vlahos and Douglas Magcregor got together recently in the library of the Army-Navy Club, Washington, D.C., to reflect on the war in Ukraine.
It appears Putin has been to the front to confirm that Russian troops are prepared for a winter offensive. This is the type of warfare in which Russia excels. When it comes to fighting on the ground in cold weather, it has been said that Russia invented winter. It certainly does not look like a pleasant winter for the people of Ukraine, and for that, they can thank Biden.
Article cross-posted from Bruce’s Blog.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
