Are you noticing the missing items at your local grocer?
We ask because we are. We also ask because we did a roundtable on this last week for HILDA'S MIX and we also contacted 42 member of THE COMMON ILLS community in 40 US states. These are the ten most reported missing items.
1) Trash bags
2) Butter
3) Various name brand potato chips
4) Pecans, walnuts and almonds
5) White onions
6) Pepsi Zero
7) Morningstar Farms products (vegan and vegetarian food products)
8) Morning Star products (
9) Avocados
10) Eggs
Is this part of the food shortages President Joe Biden recently warned of? Last month, Keith Good (ILLIONIS FARM POLICY NEWS) noted:
Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove reported yesterday that, “President Joe Biden said that the world will experience food shortages as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and production increases were a subject of discussions at a Group of Seven meeting on Thursday.
“‘It’s going to be real,‘ Biden said at a news conference in Brussels. ‘The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.'”
Those remarks have really not gotten the attention they deserve or, as Elaine put it in a roundtable here earlier this month, "How is that not bigger news!"
It should be. It's a failure of his presidency, a failure of leadership.
Some of this is due to the economy and some of it is due to supply chain issues. On the latter, in March's "Will anyone in the administration be left with a record they can run on?," we noted:
And there's Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg.
The
five feet, eight inches gentleman is the Secretary of Labor. He was
appointed to that post with no real qualifications. Two times as Mayor
of South Bend does not really qualify you to be put in charge of the
nation's transportation system. And it really shows -- it really,
really shows.
When you're at the grocery store and there's no bottles of Pepsi Zero?
That's Pete. As Kat pointed out last November, when Adele's 30 can't
make it into stores, 'that's Pete.
As he struggles to do the job, it's hard not to remember that in the
midst of pandemic, he elected to take paternity leave. We support
paternity leave and maternity leave. For workers. We're not really
sure that if you're hoping to one day be President of the United States,
you take time off for paternity leave in the midst of a pandemic when
you're a Cabinet Secretary.
If he makes a future run for the presidency, will he promise the voters
that, if elected to office, he won't be darting off to take paternity
leave in the midst of another crisis or pandemic? Will voters believe
such a promise.
What we have is a failure of leadership and an administration that is clearly not up to the job. The US has seen better days but for a sitting president to think he can get away with telling Americans that they'll be seeing a food shortage and there won't be pushback?
The media trots along obediently behind Joe Biden but we're not that stupid. We know that he may be the President of the United States but he is a public servant and he has to answer to the American people. The American people get that they are Joe's boss. Friday, Gallup noted:
During Joe Biden's fifth quarter in office, which began on January 20 and ended on April 19, an average of 41.3% of U.S. adults approved of the job he was doing as president. The latest average is essentially unchanged from the 41.7% in his fourth quarter but significantly lower than his first three quarterly averages.
Biden enjoyed majority approval ratings during his first two quarters in office. A trying late summer and early fall 2021, marked by a surge in new coronavirus cases, the troubled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and rapidly increasing gas prices and inflation, led to a decline in Biden's public support. His job approval ratings in eight Gallup polls conducted since September have ranged narrowly between 40% and 43%.
Gallup's latest update on Biden's job approval, from an April 1-19 survey, finds 41% of Americans approving and 56% disapproving of the way Biden is handling his job as president.
And as Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) pointed out last Wednesday:
The corporate media pro-Biden propaganda said that he was the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt and had cut child poverty in half. Now the child tax credit is gone, Build Back Better is up in the air, and promises to relieve student loan debt are a distant memory. Biden and his team think that spin about “Putin’s price hikes” will help to minimize political damage but the polls are an indication of a sour national mood.
Things don't look good, not for Joe, not for Americans.
In case you're wondering what, if any, items were said to be plentiful and overflowing on the shelves? Coke Zero (Coke of all forms), yellow onions, Kraft cheese and Marie Callender frozen items.