The Post-Partisan Emporium

  All Their Stupid Ideas Can be Reversed and We Will Make the Deserts Bloom We will restore the very ground of our being ELIZABETH NICKSON Did none of the Masters of the Universe take Marketing 101? I know it’s a quasi-discipline, much  déclassé , for the peons in flyover country who sell widgets to live, but it does determine the world. What do you want to buy with your disposable income? What food, what house, what car, what do your children lust after?  Shopping decisions determine the shape of the real world, where real things happen. For some people, it’s their only opportunity for self-determination, and take it they will. This fundamental human characteristic is described perfectly by a graph, a chart. The  Marketing Curve  has been around for fifty years, and its one assumption is that human desire is the primary driver of the economy. We are divided into forerunners, innovators, early adopters and late adopters and it holds true for digital products, politics, vacations, and h

  The irony of protein corporations As I’ve noted many times before, including in  Soy 101 , grass-fed/pasture based grass finished cattle doesn’t eat much if any soy, and grass-fed/feed lot grain-finished cattle eats very little soy (largely husks in the form of pellets). This recent paper,  The Rise   of Meat Substitute Consumption and its Impact on the U.S. Soybean Industry , from Purdue University reaffirms this second point about conventional US beef production. As noted in this paper:  “…The total amount of feed excluding harvested forages fed to beef cattle equals approximately 64.5 million tons in 2019 in the U.S. Roughly 57% of this amount came from corn and only roughly 4% was soy-related ingredients…” The researcher’s analysis, based on certain assumptions, goes on to note that plant based and especially cell-Ag proteins increase the markets for soybean since soy isolates are used in many of the plant based products and soy hydrolysate is the most available source of amino a

‘Lunatic Farmer’ Joel Salatin: ‘You Cannot Have Freedom Without Participation’ BY:  SAMANTHA STRAYER Joel Salatin’s words resonate with those of us who grieve for the state of the nation and struggle with how best to pursue its restoration. Through a series of serendipitous events, America’s most famous farmer Joel Salatin spoke at Hillsdale College for a “ Parallel Economies ” conference that has just been posted free online. After a 45-hour trip from South Africa to small-town Michigan, Joel didn’t miss a moment to engage with the hundreds of attendees. After Q&A and several interviews, Joel delivered a lecture to a packed auditorium on “ Local Food as Parallel Agriculture .” He concluded his visit with a book signing for a long line of fans, old and new. Showing no hint of jet lag, he was ebullient and gracious throughout. Woke ideology has so thoroughly corrupted public discourse and daily commerce that Americans are desperately seeking alternatives, or parallel systems, partic