A Cougar Sighting North of Chicago

North Chicago Police are investigating multiple reports and police sightings of a "large cat" on the prowl in their community on Friday. The reports were of a three foot tall, seven foot long (including the tail) cat, that is a dangerous animal. North Chicago is about thirty-five miles north of the north side of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan. The beach is a freeway for animals this time of the year and that is likely how this large cat came down from Wisconsin. I do recall a friend commenting on similar sightings up near the Wisconsin border a few years ago.

Will the Mothers Who Left Their Children at the Blogosphere...

... Please come pick them up, they are beating the heck out of the newspaper business. Some blogosphere numbers here. Hugh Hewitt has a plan:

"Here's a plan: Hire more lefties to report anti-American stories, and whenever possibly, betray national security secrets. Cheerlead for Barack Obama and refuse to investigate obvious stories such as how many church services Barack did attend and what was preached those days. Avoid at all costs running columns by Mark Steyn and others with dedicated followings."

As to Hewitt's final point it is worth noting that the Chicago Sun Times did exactly that, dumping Mark Steyn while retaining racial, Wright and Obama apologist Mary Mitchell.

Hat Tip: Professor Reynolds at Instapundit.

Sadam Paid For Democrat's Prewar Propaganda Trip

Copyright for Photo

Federal prosecuters allege that CAIR Director Muthanna Al-Hanooti of Dearborn Michigan was a conduit for Iraqi intelligence services and that he paid for a prewar trip to Iraq by US Congressmen at a time that coincides with a trip by three anti-war Democratic Congressmen. Jim McDermott D-Wa), David Bonior (D-Mi) and Mike Thompson (D-Ca) made their infamous Iraq trip in October of 2002. Al-Hanooti is also the head of Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations (FAAIR), a group that investigators suspect has been financing the Iraq "insurgency".

Prosecuters say that they have no reason to believe that the Congressmen knew that Sadam was the source of the funds that paid for their moonbat junket. However, considering the talk that had been going around for years even at that time that certain Detroit businessmen were actually funnels for Sadam Hussein's influence using cold hard cash, I really have to wonder how naive those three are.

Thank you gentlemen.

Professor Reynolds Blogs About Zombies - Again

Okay, he was actualy blogging about the Voting Dead or Cook County's occasional, ahem, influence on national politics. However when one considers our tendancy to allow the dead to vote he may as well have been writing about zombies. The Professor was pointing out an article from the New Editor on the makeup of the Obama lead in the Democratic primaries, 60% of that lead is from right here in Cook County, Illinois. That would be the county that includes Senator Obama's adopted home town of Chicago, the home of the Voting Dead, Jerimiah Wright and Toni Rezko. It's the Chicago Way, we see your James Riatti and raise you a Toni Rezko and the Cook County Democratic Machine, sucka!

Schoolgirls Arrested at Holy Name Cathedral

Photo Copyright: AP

Left to right: Donte Smith, 21, Ryane Ziemba, 25, and Ephran Ramirez Jr., 22 are three of the Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War. The schoolgirls now await their Monday morning bond hearing.

Six self-described "Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War" (apparently the plaid skirts are optional) were arrested in Chicago's Catholic Holy Name Cathedral during Easter Sunday Mass yesterday. The Tribune has some video of their hysterics (including use of the ever-poular fake blood) during Cardinal George's Easter Sermon and let's just say that "schoolgirls" is an apt description of these children. Strangely one of them uses a moonbat argument with the wrong moonbat number, one of the "schoolgirls" claimed that America has killed over 400,000 in Iraq, somebody should tell the kid that the Officially Sanctioned Moonbat Iraqi Death Total is at least 600,000, although this kook had the total at 1,000,000.

Obama's Racist "Minister"

Barack is full of it. I once protested a Ku Klux Klan rally that was held on the steps of City Hall in Mobile, Alabama and I can state with authority that the words of Jerimiah Wright, Obama's racist "minister" were little different from the words of the then Grand Kleager of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It is a little bit late for good advice but Obama really needs some friends other than the fascists from Hyde Park.

What is it With Obama, his Friends and Grandmothers?

Barack uses his grandmother as a prop to excuse his twenty-year relationship with a racist preacher and his buddy Alexi is attempting to steal a grandmaother's home with the help of some of his mobbed-up buddies.

Nut Cases in Chicago

Well they were on Michigan Ave. after all, but there weren't very many of them. The annual Chicago anti-war temper tantrum was this evening and it was even less populated than last year's relatively sparsely attended event. The group walked past me in about five minutes, actually during most of the five minutes they stood and chanted. They had all sorts of wonderfully unimaginative chants that insulted passerby, including one that insulted any Michigan Ave. shoppers that might be within earshot at 7:30 in the evening. Shopping is clearly offensive to this group. We the viewers were also told that the only way to "exercise democracy" was to join that rag-tag group of losers in the middle of Michigan Ave.

The march featured the usual groups of fascists, communists, dead-enders and pseudo-jihadists, including a group of high school and college-age kids who mindlessly chanted "intifada. intifada!" There was a guy with a hand-painted SDS sign who was not getting the love he felt he deserved, likely because only the ornery old leftists knew what the hell the sign meant, for most of the crowd it may as well have read "PMS". Photos to follow.

Is the World Running Out of Rice?

At the outset I must stress that I have an active financial involvement in the Chicago rice market (the futures are traded in the Mansfield Trading Room at the Chicago Board of Trade) and I have a futures position in rice. Additionaly this post is in no way an endorsement of any trading positions that could be taken in agricultural cash, futures or option markes. Btw, the Mansfield Room is named after Eddie Mansfield who manned the entrance to the trading floors from the 1920s until I think, the early 1990s.


The Philippines has run out of their food staple, rice, and they are frantically trying to source it from around the world. They are not having the success that they need to have, the Filipino government bought rice in Manila Monday at prices that were up 30% to 50% from January and they could only get about half of what they wanted. They came to the US yesterday and bought one fifth of what they bought Monday. They are in trouble, if you have friends or family in the Philippines send them packages of food staples, they might need them. The shortages in the Philippines are attributable to a drought last year in their Luzon province and a multiple year drought in Australia.

To those local problems you can add relatively tight supplies in the world's largest exporter Thailand, flooding and pest problems in the second largest exporter, Vietnam (they even shut off letting new export contracts for a time late last year), below average crops in India, the Middle East and northern Africa, the virtual loss of Bangladesh added to burgeoning demand and you have problems in the world of rice.

China is the bull in the china shop so to speak and it is nigh impossible to figure out their agricultural situation, making their traders seem supernatural at times. In my career I have come to accept the fact that China is so large that entire areas of that country can have weather problems and they will still make a crop. The past few years have been different as they have waded more aggressively into the world's rice market, especially the high end varieties. As the Chinese people grow wealthier they want better food and one of the popular foods these days has been "fragrant" or Basmati rice. The fragrant rice varieties are truly wonderful tasting and smelling thus they command a large price premium to more pedestrian varieties. An American variety of fragrant rice is Texmati, sometimes referred to as "popcorn rice" for the smell it makes while being cooked. Basmati is the only rice variety that India will currently allow for export and the Indian government has actually been sporadically patrolling their borders for smugglers with 50 pound sacks of rice, now that is extreme. The rice world has also seen a boom in demand from growing economies in the Middle East and Africa.

The CBOT web site is here.

Prayers Go Out to Mark Kirk and His Family

 A mutual friend just called to inform me that Rep. Mark Kirk's father has passed away. My prayers go out to Mark and his family. 

Code Pink Heads to NYC?

An explosion rocked a military recruiting station in Times Square. Hello Medea?

FARC Guerilla Had Obama Figured Out

The recently deceased Columbian FARC Guerilla leader Paul Reyes just happened to have a laptop containing damning information about all sorts of Western Marxists including, according to the Gateway Pundit, the all-wonderful Barack Obama. Geez, what's next for the guy?