(Daily Skeptic)—The debacle that was President Biden’s performance at last Thursday’s Presidential debate divided America. Half were astonished to see someone with a crypt-keeper vibe who was obviously dazed and confused and whose language consisted mainly of mumbling nonsense that often trailed off into sheer incomprehensibility. The other half merely saw business as usual from Biden. Political pundits refer to this phenomenon as, in the words of Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, “one screen, two movies”.
Much of the blame for this societal dissonance lies in the unhealthy alliance of our MSM (mainstream media composed of broadcast networks and major newspapers) and the Democrat Party. Since at least the 1990s the MSM have been operating as a propaganda arm for the Democrat Party as opposed to providing “truth to power”. The MSM are gradually losing the battle for relevance in the huge flourishing of, first, cable networks and now internet-based sites, podcasts and assorted social media, but they are still powerful in their waning days. They trashed Trump merrily during his Presidency, pushed Biden over the finish line in 2020, and have carried Biden’s water since then.
And since 2020 the MSM have been carrying more water for Biden than the Ganges in monsoon season. Biden’s deterioration has been evident for some years and it became an issue in the 2020 election. Brit Hume, one of journalism’s grey eminences, posed that Biden was senile based on his manner, behaviour and actions. MSM “fact-checkers” protected the precious candidate. But Biden and his handlers took notice that they had been rumbled and used the excuse of Covid from early 2020 on to hide Biden away campaigning from his basement. MSM ignored his concerning demeanor completely and supported him for President in words that would have embarrassed George Washington.
After a most unusual election came a most unusual Presidency, where the hiding away of the most powerful man in the world continued. Appearances were controlled, press conferences limited and interviews permitted only in controlled scripted environments such as with celebrities or on late night talk shows. Biden’s deteriorating physical condition, as well as his mental decline, were covered up by his handlers in a number of ways.
This year, two events began to poke serious holes in the view that Biden is just old. Last year a Special Counsel, Robert Hur, was appointed to conduct an investigation into the finding of classified documents at Biden’s residences. He reported his findings in January. The report was not kind to Biden to say the least. He stated that Biden should not be prosecuted for the documents because a jury would not find him guilty as they would be sympathetic to the fact he was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. NBC News dutifully provided covering fire for this by rolling out Democrat operatives to trash both Hur and the report.
Then there were the recent international events such as D-Day and the G7 meetings, where Biden was caught on camera spacing out and wandering off. The videos were shown on Fox News and went viral. The Associated Press stepped up for the covering fire and called them “cheap fakes”, following on from the White House reaction. A bemused Fox News said the videos “have not been cropped, they have not been sped up or slowed down or edited in any way”.
And then came the debate. Biden had slipped in the polls against Trump due to the response from voters to seeing a candidate pursue the Kafka-esque strategy of putting an opponent on trial. And so Biden and his handlers came up with a cunning plan – to challenge Trump to a debate in an environment they believed they could control. They set the rules, selected the moderators (CNN, who had earlier supplied the questions in advance to Hillary Clinton in a 2016 debate), had no audience that would cause Biden to lose focus, and banned any cross-talk to limit Trump’s quick repartee. Biden spent seven days at Camp David prepping for the debate as if there was nothing else going on that required his attention. It was a brilliant strategy and only one thing could ruin it – the senility of the candidate. It did.
The reaction was immediate from folks believing in Biden. Democrats and Never-Trumpers were gob-smacked. But it is fascinating how their surprise was akin to reading the last few pages of an Agatha Christie novel. Massive surprise at the unveiling of the murderer is followed by an “oh yeah” as folks think back on the clues that were there all along. These reactions showed up in polls taken over the last few days. A CBS News poll two days after the debate showed 72% of folks now believe Biden’s cognitive issues prohibit him from being President, and this includes 42% of Democrat voters.
The immediate reactions of the MSM were different. At 10:30 that night the panicked howls of the MSNBC political pundits and “experts” mourned the death of their favoured campaign, while CNN threw ashes on the coffin. The New York Times suffered a dark night of the soul, and as the dawn broke published an editorial claiming Biden should step down. These are the guys who in March this year were taking a victory lap comparing Biden to Beethoven, Wagner and Martin Scorsese after Biden angrily shouted his way through a teleprompter speech to Congress.
The assorted Democrat Party apparatchiks and elected representatives were even more on fire. The donors did not like seeing their investment go down the drain. Many wanted their money back. Incumbent Democrats facing election in November were all over the place, with the mood varying from total support to calls to step down. In a Presidential election year Biden is at the top of the ticket and so has the capability of dragging these guys over the finish line, as party regulars tend to vote the entire line. Or not, as the case may be.
The White House gamely tried damage control, saying Biden was ill with a cold or suffering from jet lag after two back-to-back trips to Europe two weeks before the debate. The usually obedient White House Press Corps did not buy it.
No word as yet from White House doctor Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who gave Biden his annual physical this year and claimed he was “fit for duty“.
As for the Biden campaign, its response came four days later on Monday night when he addressed the nation on TV. The Supreme Court had issued a ruling on Presidential immunity when carrying out constitutional duties that essentially destroyed the strategy to tie Trump up in court for bogus charges. All Biden had to do was give a stirring speech on TV about the evil Supreme Court as a dramatic riposte to the debate nightmare. Unfortunately, Biden stank up the joint once again. His speech was only four minutes long, delivered in the trademark Biden mumble. He read both his speech and his instructions (“end of quote”) off the teleprompter. And it did not help that Biden’s face was painted with orange make-up in a vain effort to look as vibrant as his opponent.
This story is going to take a while to play out as the Democrat Party is on the horns of a dilemma. Biden is still planning on running and if he (or those around him) want him to, he will. His delegates (over 90%) have to vote for him on a first ballot at the Democratic Convention in August, which makes him the Democrat nominee. Only pressure from Democrats, anxious about a thrashing in November if he heads the ticket, can change this. But try that with a cranky, senile, elderly man. Also, the $100 million campaign war chest he has raised so far can only be transferred to his VP, Kamala Harris. And Democrats, apart from those who want the first POC woman as President, do not want her as she is, unbelievably, more unpopular than Biden with the public. Raising that kind of money and formulating a nationwide campaign is unrealistic with just four months left. Whatever strategy is followed, one thing is clear – the MSM will support whatever path is chosen by the Democrat Party.
Left out of all this is the state of the country. The focus at the moment is on Biden the candidate, but it is Biden as President for the next six months that is far more worrying. The MSM and Democrat Party, however, cannot waste too much time on something as trivial as the state of the nation. Not when there is an election to win.
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.
