You know how those big farms that feed us all have those little side roads that allow them to move their equipment and crop around in their day to day operation? The Environmental Protection Agency says they generated too much dust, by which the mean dirt flying into the air when a car drives on it, which they seem to think is bad for the Earth which is literally where this “dust” comes from.

This won’t cause an increase in food prices at all:

OKLAHOMA CITY — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on farm dust, so senators have signed a letter addressing their concerns on the possible regulations.

The letter dated July 23 to the EPA states, “If approved, would establish the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation’s history.” It further states, “We respect efforts for a clean and healthy environment, but not at the expense of common sense. These identified levels will be extremely burdensome for farmers and livestock producers to attain. Whether its livestock kicking up dust, soybeans being combined on a dry day in the fall, or driving a car down the gravel road, dust is a naturally occurring event.”

Many in the Oklahoma farming industry are opposed to the EPA’s consideration. One farmer said the possible regulations are ridiculous.

“It’s plain common sense, we don’t want to do anything detrimental,” said farmer Curtis Roberts. “If the dust is detrimental to us, it’s going to be to everybody. We’re not going to do anything to hurt ourselves or our farm.”

Roberts, a fourth generation farmer and rancher in Arcadia, said regulating dust in rural areas will hurt farmers’ harvest, cultivation and livelihood.

“Anytime you work ground, you’re going to have dust. I don’t know how they’ll regulate it,” Roberts said. “The regulations are going to put us down and keep us from doing things we need to be doing because of the EPA.”

Oklahoma Farm Bureau President Mike Spradling said the rules could be detrimental to farmers across the Sooner State.

“We as an organization do not feel dust is a pollutant,” Spradling said. “It would almost be impossible to comply with what’s being addressed now from the EPA as in agriculture. We’re doing everything we possibly can.”

“It’s just common sense, we don’t like dust in the morning but it’s something we got to live with,” Roberts said.

Here’s a copy of the EPA policy which various hippies and idiots who have no idea how farmers get their organic fruits and nuts to them (Hint: it involves trucks and dirt roads) claim isn’t that onerous. Yeah, doesn’t look like it’s a scheme to put farms out of business at all.

Better stock up on corn, I have e feeling we’re going to see shortages in the next few years.

Debka is more trustworthy than some sources, but they have been known to get it wrong. But if this is true this will have significant impact as the world realizes their ability to buy oil can easily be taken away by a rouge state or worse, a non-state actor:

The Japanese supertanker M. STAR carrying 270,000 tons of oil was damaged by an explosion Wednesday, July 28, caused by a suspected attack in Omani territorial waters near the  Strait of Hormuz, which passes Iran and Oman. One lifeboat was blown off the ship and a large dent made in its hull. A crew member was slightly injured, but there was no oil leak.
The spokesperson for the tanker’s owners Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd said: “We believe it’s highly likely an attack from the outside, maybe a terrorist incident. There is nothing that could cause a spontaneous explosion in that part of the vessel.”
But the most striking feature of the incident, noted by debkafile’s military and intelligence sources, is the unusual degree of assent between US Navy and Iranian officials that the damage to the supertanker was caused by an explosion by an unknown hand.

“The fire which was triggered by an explosion on the deck of the vessel was contained with the help of the crew and regional forces,” Fars News Agency quoted head of marine department of southern Hormozgan Province, Ali Akbar Saffai, as saying, after two Iranian officials before him had attributed the blast to a low-magnitude earthquake.
Clearly both Washington and Tehran were taken unawares by the first attack ever mounted on a commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow transit channel for some 40 percent of the oil shipped worldwide and one of the most carefully secured waterways in the world.
Both the US and Iran need time to find its cause and decide what to do. Meanwhile, this exceptional circumstance finds them of one mind on at least one issue, the incident must not be allowed to spiral out of control into a larger event.
According to our sources in Washington and Tehran, while waiting for evidence, both speculate that the perpetrators may be either pirates in the pay of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or even a rogue element in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which is bent on settling scores for the latest UN, US and European sanctions against their country.

Tehran has repeatedly warned it will fight back if sanctions hurt its economy and energy supplies.

The attack on the Japanese supertanker intensified Saudi and the Gulf emirates’ concerns over a possible threat to their oil exporting routes. Wednesday night, fearing an unidentified assailant may also go for their oil ports and shore installations, Persian Gulf navies, the Fifth Fleet Bahrain-based headquarters and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards naval installations at Bandar Abbas went on a high alert.

Keep an eye on this one.

h/t Arizona Lawman’s Police Gazette.

For me, since I’m turning 39, the news will be grave indeed as my knees and back perform well below expectations. But for the American economy the news will probably even worse. Via Hot Air we can start with this Barclay’s report which is considered an optimistic view of the economy. They’re prediction for growth has been revised to 3%.

Barclays GDP

I’ll let you read through that but the first few pages are where the worries should be. If you look at the various data as a whole for the last couple of year it looks like several things are happening in the economy, and none of them are really helpful for long term stability of a consumer driven model. The first is that people are getting out of debt and more importantly trying to minimize personal debt. As people who can afford to get out of debt do so we’re left with a population of debters who will never pay off, thus destroying the credit industry long term. The second is that people seemed to run out and make their big purchases all at once while they could, and are now slowing down on buying. Art Laffer predicted this and every survivalist out there knows someone who made a bunch of large purchases while beginning their preps and now is living a frugal lifestyle. The there is is that it looks like economic activity is slowing in proportion to the length of time we have high unemployment, which will not change anytime soon.

Foreclosures are up 75% in major metro areas and there is no real economic good news on the horizon. So I think tomorrow we’re going to see a very bad economic news day, and likely a drop in the Dow in response. Will it be TEOTWAWKI? No. The Obama administration and a complicit media will put a positive spin on things, and investors are far enough removed from the first crash to be overly skittish. This will be just another day for most of us.