Assigning blame for higher food prices.

Via Instapundit comes this story warning that restaurant food prices are about to sharply rise.  The challenge for the government?  Why, finding who to blame, of course.

After all: can’t blame it on short-sighted conversion of corn crops into ethanol; the government’s pushing for even more use of ethanol, despite the objections of the auto industry.  Can’t blame it on higher gas prices; the government doesn’t really want to explain why it’s put a moratorium on offshore drilling in (disproportionate) response to last year’s Gulf oil spill.  And there’s absolutely, positively, and completely no possible way that this administration is going to let even the hint of a suggestion of an implication of a reference to The Dread Word “Stagflation” escape any lips of any person associated with the executive branch.  If that happens, the President might as well put on a sweater, muck up a hostage rescue, and go get beat up by a rabbit now – just to get it over with.

No, the government’s most comfortable option is, as always, to blame somebody on the Right for all of this.  My guess?  Rush Limbaugh.  He hasn’t been the subject of a Two-Minute Hate recently, and this administration likes to cycle through their favorite targets of those, lest overuse of any one of them makes the whole thing stale.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh QE2 & Carter II.

While I liked how Glenn snuck a Mythos reference* in when he linked to this story about quantitative easing, there’s one small problem with it: Case NIGHTMARE GREEN was at least a plan.  QE2 is at best a Hail Mary pass.

In other news, we’re starting to see the first local stories about rising food prices.  Inflation and a stagnant economy; who would have thought that we’d ever see such a thing?  We’ll need a word for that, I guess.  Hmm… “Inflatnant?”  No, doesn’t really trip off of the tongue.  Oh, well, I’m sure that we’ll find a suitable term.

Moe Lane

*It’s part of the background of Charles Stross’ excellent spy fiction/Cthulhu Mythos mash-up series, the first book of which can be found here.