The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
The neighborhood said he was crazy….. pic.twitter.com/xUoVqV0Vuv
— Alastair (@StockBoardAsset) September 2, 2017
A few homes did this… https://t.co/D6YisAaPyI
— Village Whisperer (@village_whisper) September 3, 2017
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– Oil Spill Shuts New Orleans Port & Mississippi River (ZeroHedge, Feb 24, 2014):
A 65-mile stretch of the Mississippi near New Orleans remained closed Monday after two vessels collided and caused an oil spill on Saturday in foggy conditions about 30 miles west of New Orleans. As NBC news reports, the Lindsay Ann Erickson crashed with the Hannah C. Settoon, which was pushing two barges carrying barrels of light crude oil that spilled into the river. Clean-up efforts are underway.
In this aerial photo, river traffic is halted along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Vacherie, La., due to a barge leaking oil in St. James Parish, La., Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014. The collision happened Saturday afternoon near Vacherie.
Via UPI,
The U.S. Coast Guard said the source of an oil spill was secured but 65 miles of the Mississippi River including the Port of New Orleans remained closed Sunday.
Read moreOil Spill Shuts New Orleans Port & Mississippi River
– Mississippi River nears historic lows, shipping at risk (Reuters, Jan 2, 2013):
The drought-drained Mississippi River will rise slightly later this week between St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois, but later continue its decline toward historic lows, according to a National Weather Service forecast.Low water, due to the worst U.S. drought since 1956, has already impeded the flow of billions of dollars worth of grain, coal, fertilizer and other commodities between the central United States and shipping terminals at the Gulf of Mexico.
A further drop in river levels could halt commercial shipping traffic entirely by this weekend, the American Waterways Operators and the Waterways Council Inc said in a statement on Wednesday.
Read moreMississippi River Nears Historic Lows, Shipping At Risk
– What Does It Mean that Residents in All 50 States Have Filed Petitions to Secede? (ZeroHedge, Nov 16, 2012):
A lot of attention is being given to the fact that residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the United States.
Daily Caller reports:
By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.
***
Petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals. (RELATED: Will Texas secede? Petition triggers White House review)
The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin.
***
States whose active petitions have not yet reached the 25,000 signature threshold include Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
***
Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.
Other states with multiple efforts include Alaska, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
As Google notes, web searches for the term “secession” are being run in a number of states:
Read moreWhat Does It Mean that Residents in All 50 States Have Filed Petitions to Secede?
– 20 US states file petitions to secede (The News, Nov 12, 2012):
WASHINGTON: At least 20 US states have filed petitions to secede following the re-election of Barack Obama.
Following the re-election, several petitions surfaced requesting the Obama administration to peacefully grant the applied state to withdraw from the United States of America in order to create their own government.
Louisiana was the first state to file a petition followed by Texas.
States with secession-related petitions on the White House website now include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Flashback:
– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Worldwide Water Conspiracy (Video):
– The Mississippi River Is Drying Up (Economic Collapse, Aug 14, 2012):
The worst drought in more than 50 years is having a devastating impact on the Mississippi River. The Mississippi has become very thin and very narrow, and if it keeps on dropping there is a very real possibility that all river traffic could get shut down. And considering the fact that approximately 60 percent of our grain, 22 percent of our oil and natural gas, and and one-fifth of our coal travel down the Mississippi River, that would be absolutely crippling for our economy. It has been estimated that if all Mississippi River traffic was stopped that it would cost the U.S. economy 300 million dollars a day. So far most of the media coverage of this historic drought has focused on the impact that it is having on farmers and ranchers, but the health of the Mississippi River is also absolutely crucial to the economic success of this nation, and right now the Mississippi is in incredibly bad shape. In some areas the river is already 20 feet below normal and the water is expected to continue to drop. If we have another 12 months of weather ahead of us similar to what we have seen over the last 12 months then the mighty Mississippi is going to be a complete and total disaster zone by this time next year.
Most Americans simply do not understand how vitally important the Mississippi River is to all of us. If the Mississippi River continues drying up to the point where commercial travel is no longer possible, it would be an absolutely devastating blow to the U.S. economy.
– Army Corps opens Louisiana spillway to avert flood possibility (Salt Lake Tribune):
New Orleans — In a last-ditch move to relieve stress on levees burdened by floodwaters, the Army Corps of Engineers opened a major Mississippi River flood gate on Saturday for the second time in nearly 40 years, funneling water toward farmland and small communities to save New Orleans and Baton Rouge from inundations.
Read moreArmy Corps of Engineers Opens Morganza Spillway, A Major Mississippi River Flood Gate
(NaturalNews) As record-breaking Mississippi River flood waters crested this morning near Memphis, Tenn., many other towns and cities along the river are awaiting record-breaking flood levels expected to arrive later this week and early next week. The Washington Post has reported that three million acres of mostly farmland have already been flooded in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi — and much of this water is highly polluted with chemicals, pesticides, and other dangerous pollutants that are now surging down towards the Gulf of Mexico (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs…).
Flood waters continue to rise all along the Mississippi, including in Natchez, Miss., which today saw its portion of the river rise to 58.3 feet, breaking the all-time 1937 record of 53.04 feet. Vicksburg, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., and New Orleans, La. are all expected to see record-breaking crests late next week, some far exceeding previous record flood levels. And the US Army Corps of Engineers may release several more levees in Louisiana within the next few days.
“I really can’t compare it to anything,” said Andy Prosser, head of marketing at the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce (MDAC), to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), concerning the flood damage that has already occurred (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100…). “This is unprecedented territory.”
– Memphis Music Landmarks Spared From River Flooding (NPR):
The Mississippi River rose Monday to levels not seen in Memphis since the 1930s, swamping homes in low-lying neighborhoods and driving hundreds of people from their homes. But officials were confident the levees would protect the city’s world-famous musical landmarks, including Graceland and Beale Street, and that no new areas would have any serious flooding.
New Orleans (CNN) — Waging war against historic flooding in eight Midwestern and Southern states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a spillway north of New Orleans on Monday in an effort to calm the rising Mississippi River.
A crowd gathered near the entrance to the Bonnet Carre spillway to watch workers use cranes to slide open the gates to the flood control system. The spillway, like another that could be opened next week, is designed to divert floodwater away from New Orleans and slow the raging river to protect the low-lying city.
Bonnet Carre is part of a system built after the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1927. While the river’s highest levels may still be days away, a decision to open the second flood control structure — the Morganza Spillway — may not be, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
How does the government determine an unknown amount of radioactive water to be safe???
There is no such thing as safe levels of radiation.
– Are There Safe Levels of Radiation? How Much Radiation Is Safe?
– Radioactive Water Pumped Into Mississippi River (WJTV – May 2):
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating a radioactive release into the Mississippi River from the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson.
A spokesperson from Grand Gulf tells News Channel 12 that they found standing water in an abandoned unit.
In an effort to remove the standing water, Entergy began pumping the water out and into a drain that emptyed into the Mississippi River.
A censor went off detecting the chemical “tritium” in the standing water.
NRC officials say the River has diluted the radioactive material and is not causing harm to the people.
Right now the incident is under investigation by the NRC.
Entergy officials tell News Channel 12 they are not sure of the source of the tritium.
There’s no word on how much Tritum was pumped into the river.
– Radioactive water released into river at Grand Gulf (The Natchez Democrat – May 4):
PORT GIBSON — An unknown amount of radioactive water was released accidentally into the Mississippi River late last week at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating the incident, but suggests the release poses no public health hazard.
Read moreUnknown Amount of Radioactive Water Pumped Into Mississippi River
Don’t miss:
– HAARP Rings And Scalar Squares Cause – As Predicted – MASSIVE Tornado Outbreak (04/28/2011)
– TVA loses all power transmission lines in Alabama and Mississippi, Browns Ferry Nuclear plant forced into emergency shutdown (timesfreepress):
Wednesday’s storms took out all of TVA’s electric power transmission lines in Mississippi and North Alabama, and forced Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant unto diesel backup power and into emergency and automatic cold shutdown.
Bill McCollum, the chief operating officer of Tennessee Valley Authority, said it may be weeks before power can be restored to all of the 300,000 customers whose power is supplied by the federal utility.
“With the level of damage we have, it will be — we hope it will be days until we get most of the customers back on, but it will be weeks before we’ve fully repaired all of the damage,” he said.
McCollum said the reactors, now being cooled by backup diesel power, are safe.
– Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant recovering after losing power (CNN):
(CNN) – Crews are working to restore power to a nuclear plant in northern Alabama.
The severe storms that cut across the Southeast Wednesday night also managed to knock out external power to three nuclear reactors at the Browns Ferry plant.
Back-up generators kicked in, so nuclear regulators said the plant is safely in shutdown mode.
– Tornadoes damage reactors in U.S.; Backups work (CBS NEWS):
Alabama and other southern states are reeling from a series of tornadoes that killed more than 200 people. But there’s no nuclear disaster to go with the natural disaster — a promising sign amid concerns that the U.S. could someday face a nuclear crisis like the one that has followed the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
The savage storms in that passed through parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia on Wednesday knocked out power to the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, about 30 miles west of Huntsville, Ala.
…..
“The Browns Ferry units are among 23 U.S. reactors that are similar in design to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan where backup generators were swept away in the tsunami that followed the massive earthquake on March 11,” Reuters reported.
– Browns Ferry hit by major storms (World Nuclear News):
The three boiling water reactors at TVA’s Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama shut down automatically with cooling systems powered by “a combination of offsite transmission and on-site diesel generators.” However, the shutdown was notified as an ‘unusual event’ to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “when the normal and alternate power supplies for essential equipment were unavailable for more than 15 minutes.” TVA stressed that “safety systems performed well.”
The plant shut down on 27 April at 4.36 pm and units 2 and 3 achieved cold shutdown at 2.43 am and 5.45 am on 28 April respectively. TVA said that unit 1 was was being cooled and the priority now was to get that reactor into cold shutdown as well.
HAARP is real:
– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: ‘HAARP’ (Full Episode)
See also:
– HAARP Magnetometer Data Shows Japan Earthquake Was Induced
Added: 26.04.2011
Watertown, Martinsburg New York, within 24-48 hours from now.. tornados and severe weather will hit the center of the ring area.
Harper Kansas .. no pun intended on HAARP play on words… in Kansas at I-35 east of Caldwell .. at the state line exactly = tornado or VERY severe weather after this current storm blows through.. in 24-48 hours from now.
Reporting from Indianapolis and Denver — The last time Indiana missed its deadline for passing a budget and had to shut down the government was during the Civil War.
But on Monday, as lawmakers raced to hammer out an agreement over school funding, state agencies began preparing 31,000 workers to be temporarily out of a job. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has warned residents that most of the state’s services — including its parks, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and state-regulated casinos — would be shuttered unless a budget is passed today.
Indiana is one of five states — along with Arizona, California, Mississippi and Pennsylvania — bracing for possible shutdowns this week as time runs out for lawmakers to close billion-dollar gaps in their fiscal 2010 budgets.
Of the 46 states whose fiscal year ends today, 32 did not have budgets passed and approved by their governors as of Monday afternoon, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Although the majority of those are expected to pass eleventh-hour budgets, the fiscal futures of a handful remain uncertain, said Todd Haggerty, an NCSL research analyst.
“It’s a lot of states that are coming down to the wire,” Haggerty said. “It’s far more than we’ve seen in the past, and it’s because of the state of the economy.”
At least 29 states plus the District of Columbia, including several of the nation’s largest states, faced an estimated $48 billion in combined shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2009 (which began July 1, 2008 in most states.) At least three other states expect budget problems in fiscal year 2010.
Related articles:
– The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic
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LEVEES on the cresting Mississippi River held today as the worst US Midwest flooding in 15 years began to ebb, but multibillion-dollar crop losses may boost world food prices for years.
Water levels on the river receded for the second straight day as mostly clear weather gave saturated areas a chance to start draining. Forecasts for similar dry weather in coming days gave further encouragement.
The swollen river was expected to crest tomorrow in St Louis at 11.9 metres, 3.3 metres below the record set in 1993 and a level considered “manageable”, said US Army Corps of Engineers St Louis District spokesman Alan Dooley.
“The crest in the areas up the Mississippi River in the district has passed,” Dooley said. “The water is still up very high and it is up against levees.”
Vincent Quinones works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday after the Federal Reserve issued a mixed assessment of the economy. Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 358 points. (By Andrew Harrer — Bloomberg News)
So much for that second-half rebound.
Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal.
It ain’t gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter.
This thing’s going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We’re caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.
Only this will be a different kind of recession — a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 — whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.
Since last June, we’ve seen a fairly consistent pattern to the economic mood swings. Every three months or so, there’s a round of bad news about housing, followed by warnings of more bank write-offs and then a string of disappointing corporate earnings reports. Eventually, things stabilize and there are hints that the worst may be behind us. Stocks regain some of their lost ground, bonds fall and then — bam — the whole cycle starts again.
It was only in November that the Dow had recovered from the panicked summer sell-off and hit a record, just above 14,000. By March, it had fallen below 12,000. By May, it climbed above 13,000. Now it’s heading for a new floor at 11,000. Officially, that’s bear market territory. We’ll be lucky if that’s the floor.
In explaining why that second-half rebound never occurred, the Fed and the Treasury and the Wall Street machers will say that nobody could have foreseen $140 a barrel oil. As excuses go, blaming it on an oil shock is a hardy perennial. That’s what Jimmy Carter and Fed Chairman Arthur Burns did in the late ’70s, and what George H.W. Bush and Alan Greenspan did in the early ’90s. Don’t believe it.
Truth is, there are always price or supply shocks of one sort or another. The real problem is that the underlying fundamentals had gotten badly out of whack, making the economy susceptible to a shock. The only way to make things better is to get those fundamentals back in balance. In this case, that means bringing what we consume in line with what we produce, letting the dollar fall to its natural level, wringing the excess capacity out of industries that overexpanded during the credit bubble and allowing real estate prices to fall in line with incomes.
The last hope for a second-half rebound began to fade earlier this month when Lehman Brothers reported that it wasn’t as immune to the credit-market downturn as it had led everyone to believe. Lehman scrambled to restore confidence by firing two top executives and raising billions in additional capital, but even that wasn’t enough to quiet speculation that it could be the next Bear Stearns.
Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of worrisome news from nearly every sector of the economy.
American Express and Discover warn that customers are falling further behind on their debts. UPS and Federal Express report a noticeable slowdown in shipments, while fuel costs are soaring. According to the Case-Shiller index, home prices in the top 20 markets fell 15 percent in April from the year before, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac report that mortgage delinquency rates doubled over the same period — and that’s for conventional home loans, not subprime. United Airlines accelerates the race to cut costs and capacity by laying off 950 pilots — 15 percent of its total — as a number of airlines retire planes and hint that they may delay delivery or cancel orders of new jets from Boeing and Airbus. Goldman Sachs, which has already had to withdraw its rosy forecast for stocks, now admits it was also too optimistic about junk bond defaults, and analysts warn that Citigroup and Merrill Lynch will also be forced to take additional big write-downs on their mortgage portfolios.
The crest of the swollen Mississippi River moved downstream yesterday as volunteers manned sandbagged levees and coped with the costs of the Midwest’s worst flooding in 15 years. “At times like these you don’t know whether to cry or laugh. But here in the Midwest we tend to favour the latter,” said Charlotte Hoerr, who, with her husband Brent, farms land not far from the river in this small Missouri town.
The river overcame more than two dozen levees last week, submerging small towns and vast stretches of prime farmland as the nation’s most vital waterway absorbed the run-off of torrential rains that put many Iowa towns under water. The Midwest flooding and storms are expected to push US and world food prices higher. Up to five million acres of newly planted crops have been lost at the heart of the world’s top grain and food exporter. Prices for corn, cattle and pigs all set records this week owing to the floods, as a world economy already hit by inflation from rising energy prices absorbed the blow.
Related articles:
– The U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves
– Nine meals from anarchy – how Britain is facing a very real food crisis
– Time to Stockpile Food?
– Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.
– UN alert: One-fourth of world’s wheat at risk from new fungus
– THE FOUR HORSEMEN APPROACH – FAMINE IS IN THE AIR
(Wake up: “World Situation” & Prepare yourself: “Solution” – The Infinite Unknown)
The swollen Mississippi River ran over the top of at least 12 more levees on Wednesday, as floodwaters swallowed up more U.S. farmland, adding to billion-dollar losses and feeding global food inflation fears.
Volunteers and aid workers were piling sandbags up and down the most important U.S. inland waterway to try to protect more levees and thousands of acres of prime crop land threatened as the river’s crest moves south after last week’s torrential rains.
About 10 levees were breached earlier this week, bringing the total to 22 on Wednesday. The levee breaches lowered the river level by letting water spill onto the surrounding land.
“Their misfortune had been our fortune. I’d rather it hadn’t come at the expense of others. But it is what it is,” said Steve Cirinna of Iowa’s Lee County Emergency Management Agency.
KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 23 (Reuters) – Germany’s Bayer AG (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) is battling to keep thousands of U.S. rice farmers from becoming part of a massive class-action lawsuit over the contamination of commercial rice supplies by a Bayer biotech rice not approved for human consumption.
In hearings this week in federal court in St. Louis, Missouri, lawyers representing rice farmers said about 7,000 long-grain producers in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas should be allowed to seek unspecified damages against Bayer for contamination that was uncovered in August 2006.
Farmers suffered extensive losses, both from a plunge in rice prices, and in a drop in export business as Japan and the European Union moved to restrict U.S. rice from crossing their borders.
Many farmers also were not able to plant a crop the following year because of seed shortages tied to the contamination, and had to undertake costly clean-up efforts, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Bayer is fighting the class-action move, and both sides are now awaiting a ruling from U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry .