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Preventing Armageddon Would Cost Only $100 Million … But Congress Is Too Thick to Approve the Fix
The government has thrown tens of trillions of dollars at the big banks, even though bailing out the big banks hurts – rather than helps – the American economy. See this, this and this. (And it doesn’t take a PhD economist to guess that using bailout funds to buy gold toilet seats and prostitutes is probably not the best way to stimulate the economy as a whole)..
Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz says that the $3-5 trillion spent on the Iraq war alone has been very bad for the American economy. See this, this and this. Security experts – including both hawks and doves – agree that waging war against Iraq and in other Middle Eastern countries weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
The government has thrown money at all sorts of other useless projects.
And yet Congress refuses to spend a mere $100 million to prevent Armageddon.
Specifically, well-known physicist Michio Kaku and other members of the American Physical Society asked Congress to appropriate $100 million to harden the country’s electrical grid against solar flares.
Congress refused.
Kaku explains that a solar flare like the one that hit the U.S. in 1859 would – in the current era of nuclear power and electric refrigeration – cause Armageddon.
Not only could such a flare bring on multiple Fukushima type accidents, but it could well cause food riots nationwide.
Kaku explains that relief came in for people hit by disasters like Katrina or Sandy from the “outside”. But a large solar flare could knock out a lot of the power nationwide. So – as people’s food spoils due to lack of refrigeration – emergency workers from other areas would be too preoccupied with their own local crisis to help. There would, in short, be no “cavalry” to the rescue in much of the country.
Such an event would be the most likely Armageddon-type event to hit us (from a secular source, anyway … remember, the Mayans aren’t predicting the end of the world this year.)
In addition, we’ve spent tens of trillions on the “war on terror”, but have failed to take steps to protect against the largest terrorist threat of all: an attack on the power supplies to nuclear power plants. As discussed in more detail below, an electromagnetic pulse (emp) which took out the power supply to a nuclear power plant would cause a Fukushima-style meltdown, and spent fuel pools are extremely vulnerable to terrorism.
We’ve sounded the alarm for years about the failure to harden our electrical system against electromagnetic storms from our sun.
For example, we noted last year that the extreme vulnerability of nuclear power plants to solar flares is a very real threat which we must address:
Nasa scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide, perhaps for months. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Indeed, the Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the sun’s most violent radiation, and yet the magnetic field fluctuates over time. As the Telegraph reported in 2008:
Large hole in magnetic field that protects Earth from sun’s rays … Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun’s violent blasts.
I’m not predicting some 2012 Mayan catastrophe. [Indeed, I think the whole Mayan 2012 thing is fake.] I am simply warning that a large solar storm – as Nasa is predicting – could knock out power throughout much of the world, especially if the earth’s magnetic field happens to be weak at the time.
What would happen to nuclear power plants world wide if their power – and most of the surrounding modern infrastructure – is knocked out?
Nuclear power companies are notoriously cheap in trying to cut costs. If they are failing to harden their electrical components to protect against the predicted solar storm, they are asking for trouble … perhaps on a scale that dwarfs Fukushima. Because while Fukushima is the first nuclear accident to involve multiple reactors within the same complex, a large solar storm could cause accidents at multiple complexes in numerous countries.
If the nuclear power companies and governments continue to cut costs and take large gambles, the next nuclear accident could make Fukushima look tame.
I’m not saying this will happen in 2012, or 2013 (although Nasa appears to be hinting at this). But a large solar storm which knocks out electrical grids over wide portions of the planet will happen at some point in the future.
Don’t pretend it is unforeseeable. The nuclear power industry is on notice that it must spend the relatively small amounts of money necessary to prevent a widespread meltdown from the loss of power due to a solar storm.
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Most current reactors are of a similarly outdated design as the Fukushima reactors, where the cooling systems require electricity to operate, and huge amounts of spent radioactive fuel are housed on-site, requiring continuous cooling to prevent radioactive release. [Designs which would automatically shut down - and cool down - in the event of an accident are ignored for political reasons.]
The conservative G2 Bulletin reported earlier this year:
As scientists warn of an impending solar storm between now and 2014 that could collapse the national power grid, thrusting millions into darkness instantly, a debate has flared up between utilities and the federal government on the severity of such an event.
NASA and the National Academy of Sciences previously confirmed to G2Bulletin that an electromagnetic pulse event from an intense solar storm could occur any time between now and 2014.
They say it could have the effect of frying electronics and knocking out transformers in the national electric grid system.
Already, there are separate published reports of massive solar storms of plasma – some as large as the Earth itself – flaring off of the sun’s surface and shooting out into space, with some recently having come close enough to Earth to affect worldwide communications and alter the flights of commercial aircraft near the North Pole.
But in February, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which represents the power industry, issued a stunning report asserting that a worst-case geomagnetic “super storm” like the 1859 Carrington Event likely wouldn’t damage most power grid transformers. Instead, it would cause voltage instability and possibly result in blackouts lasting only a few hours or days, but not months and years.
NERC’s assertion, however, is at serious variance with the 2008 congressional EMP Commission, the 2008 National Academy of Sciences report; a 2010 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report; the 2012 report by the Defense Committee of the British Parliament, and others.
Even the British scientists who contributed to the parliament report came to their own independent assessment that a great geomagnetic storm would cause widespread damage to power grid transformers and result in a protracted blackout lasting months, or even years, with catastrophic consequences for society.
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[The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or "FERC"], which regulates interstate electricity and other energy sales but has no authority now over local utilities to harden their grid sites, says that as many as 130 million Americans could have problems for years.
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U.S. transformers on the average are more than 30 years old and are susceptible to internal heating, according to FERC experts.
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There is ample evidence in the possession of the FERC revealing the damage to transformers from previous geomagnetic storms. For example, there was serious transformer damage to the Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey in the aftermath of the same geomagnetic storm that caused the March 1989 Hydro-Quebec blackout.
There’s An Easy Fix … Are We Smart Enough to Take It?
Japan’s nuclear meltdown, the economic crisis and the Gulf oil spill all happened for the same reason: big companies cutting every corner in the book – and hiding the existence of huge risks – in order to make a little money.
There are relatively easy fixes to the threat from solar flares:
The head of the leading consulting firm on the effect of electromagnetic disruptions on our power grid – which was commissioned to study the issue by the U.S. federal government – stated that it would be relatively inexpensive to reduce the vulnerability of our power grid:
What we’re proposing is to add some fairly small and inexpensive resistors in the transformers’ ground connections. The addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly reduce the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into the grid.
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We think it’s do-able for $40,000 or less per resistor. That’s less than what you pay for insurance for a transformer.
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If you’re talking about the United States, there are about 5,000 transformers to consider this for. The Electromagnetic Pulse Commission recommended it in a report they sent to Congress last year. We’re talking about $150 million or so. It’s pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
Mechanical engineer Matthew Stein [notes]:
There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more being planned or under construction…. Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization and the planet’s ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable.
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In the past 152 years, Earth has been struck by roughly 100 solar storms, causing significant geomagnetic disturbances (GMD), two of which were powerful enough to rank as “extreme GMDs.” If an extreme GMD of such magnitude were to occur today, in all likelihood, it would initiate a chain of events leading to catastrophic failures at the vast majority of our world’s nuclear reactors, similar to but over 100 times worse than, the disasters at both Chernobyl and Fukushima.
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The good news is that relatively affordable equipment and processes could be installed to protect critical components in the electric power grid and its nuclear reactors, thereby averting this “end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it” scenario. The bad news is that even though panels of scientists and engineers have studied the problem, and the bipartisan Congressional electromagnetic pulse (EMP) commission has presented a list of specific recommendations to Congress, our leaders have yet to approve and implement any significant preventative measures.
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Unfortunately, the world’s nuclear power plants, as they are currently designed, are critically dependent upon maintaining connection to a functioning electrical grid, for all but relatively short periods of electrical blackouts, in order to keep their reactor cores continuously cooled so as to avoid catastrophic reactor core meltdowns and fires in storage ponds for spent fuel rods.
If an extreme GMD were to cause widespread grid collapse (which it most certainly will), in as little as one or two hours after each nuclear reactor facility’s backup generators either fail to start, or run out of fuel, the reactor cores will start to melt down. After a few days without electricity to run the cooling system pumps, the water bath covering the spent fuel rods stored in “spent-fuel ponds” will boil away, allowing the stored fuel rods to melt down and burn[2]. Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) currently mandates that only one week’s supply of backup generator fuel needs to be stored at each reactor site, it is likely that, after we witness the spectacular nighttime celestial light show from the next extreme GMD, we will have about one week in which to prepare ourselves for Armageddon.
To do nothing is to behave like ostriches with our heads in the sand, blindly believing that “everything will be okay” as our world drifts towards the next natural, inevitable super solar storm and resultant extreme GMD. Such a storm would end the industrialized world as we know it, creating almost incalculable suffering, death and environmental destruction on a scale not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.
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There are records from the 1850s to today of roughly 100 significant geomagnetic solar storms, two of which, in the last 25 years, were strong enough to cause millions of dollars worth of damage to key components that keep our modern grid powered.
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“The Carrington Event,” raged from August 28 to September 4, 1859. This extreme GMD induced currents so powerful that telegraph lines, towers and stations caught on fire at a number of locations around the world. Best estimates are that the Carrington Event was approximately 50 percent stronger than the 1921 storm.[5] Since we are headed into an active solar period much like the one preceding the Carrington Event, scientists are concerned that conditions could be ripe for the next extreme GMD.[6]
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The federal government recently sponsored a detailed scientific study to better understand how much critical components of our national electrical power grid might be affected by either a naturally occurring GMD or a man-made EMP. Under the auspices of the EMP Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and reviewed in depth by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Academy of Sciences, Metatech Corporation undertook extensive modeling and analysis of the potential effects of extreme geomagnetic storms on the US electrical power grid. Based upon a storm as intense as the 1921 storm, Metatech estimated that within the United States, induced voltage and current spikes, combined with harmonic anomalies, would severely damage or destroy over 350 EHV power transformers critical to the functioning of the US grid and possibly impact well over 2000 EHV transformers worldwide.[7]
EHV transformers are made to order and custom-designed for each installation, each weighing as much as 300 tons and costing well over $1 million. Given that there is currently a three-year waiting list for a single EHV transformer (due to recent demand from China and India, lead times grew from one to three years), and that the total global manufacturing capacity is roughly 100 EHV transformers per year when the world’s manufacturing centers are functioning properly, you can begin to grasp the implications of widespread transformer losses.
The loss of thousands of EHV transformers worldwide would cause a catastrophic grid collapse across much of the industrialized world. It will take years, at best, for the industrialized world to put itself back together after such an event, especially considering the fact that most of the manufacturing centers that make this equipment will also be grappling with widespread grid failure.
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In the event of an extreme GMD-induced long-term grid collapse covering much of the globe, if just half of the world’s spent fuel ponds were to boil off their water and become radioactive, zirconium-fed infernos, the ensuing contamination could far exceed the cumulative effect of 400 Chernobyls.
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The Congressionally mandated EMP Commission has studied the threat of both EMP [i.e. an electromagnetic pulse set of by terrorists or adversaries in war] and extreme GMD events and made recommendations to the US Congress to implement protective devices and procedures to ensure the survival of the grid and other critical infrastructures in either event. John Kappenman, author of the Metatech study, estimates that it would cost about $1 billion to build special protective devices into the US grid to protect its EHV transformers from EMP or extreme GMD damage and to build stores of critical replacement parts should some of these items be damaged or destroyed. Kappenman estimates that it would cost significantly less than $1 billion to store at least a year’s worth of diesel fuel for backup generators at each US nuclear facility and to store sets of critical spare parts, such as backup generators, inside EMP-hardened steel containers to be available for quick change-out in the event that any of these items were damaged by an EMP or GMD.[12]
For the cost of a single B-2 bomber or a tiny fraction of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bank bailout, we could invest in preventative measures to avert what might well become the end of life as we know it. There is no way to protect against all possible effects from an extreme GMD or an EMP attack, but we could implement measures to protect against the worst effects. Since 2008, Congress has narrowly failed to pass legislation that would implement at least some of the EMP Commission’s recommendations.[13]
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Citizens can do their part to push for legislation to move toward this goal and work inside our homes and communities to develop local resilience and self reliance, so that in the event of a long-term grid-down scenario, we might make the most of a bad situation. The same tools that are espoused by the Transition movement for developing local self-reliance and resilience to help cope with the twin effects of climate change and peak oil could also serve communities well in the event of an EMP attack or extreme GMD. If our country were to implement safeguards to protect our grid and nuclear power plants from EMP, it would also eliminate the primary incentive for a terrorist to launch an EMP attack. The sooner we take these actions, the less chance that an EMP attack will occur.
Will we insist that these inexpensive fixes to our electrical grid be made? Or will we focus on over-blown dangers … and ignore the thing most likely to actually get us?
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I have to take issue...The Obama phone is nothing compared to cash for clunkers which just inflated the used car market...but this could be done for less than the price of the next Solyndra...or less than creating a new Gitmo......Maybe get Bloomberg to contribute part of his tax on soda or corn chips...but I digress..
Why doesn't Reagan get credit for the Obama-phones? He's the guy who was in power when the laws actually started getting implemented.
Gummit's been giving poor people phones for almost 30 years, and before that, gummit taxed folks to help distribute phone infrastructure.
It's just the popularity of that song "Banana Phone," isn't it?
Thanks for the laugh.
Welcome...some of this shit you just gotta laugh at.
The credit/fiat/pump system is destroying peoples purchasing power across the globe and now I'm supposed to be concerned about a solar flarë or Russia putting an EMP on me when we have subs sitting off their coast?
OMG!!!...the bees will stop buzzing, the grass will stop growing, the bears will stop baring all...at least on a web cam so I can see it from inside four walls in a condo...lol.
Perspective ;-)
The low cost solution is to shutdown the grid before the flare hits. Disconnect the HV lines from all plants and substations before the CME hits the earth. It takes about 3 days for a CME to reach the earth from the Sun. Although this would disrupt the global economy for more than a week. but much better than years!
This is an interesting idea, but unfortunately it's not as easy as just flipping a switch. Opening breakers across the grid would be a complex process and getting the grid back up and running again if it is taken completely down, even for a short time, would be a monstrous operation. Although it would still be better than having a damaged system out of commission for years.
The 1859 solar flare they refer to in the article melted telegraph wires from the poles. You would have to ground every cable in the grid, or at the very least, every cable in the "backbone" of the grid. As I said below - we'd be royally f*cked if this happened.
Comparing an antique telegraph line to a modern high voltage line is like comparing a pencil to a telephone pole, they are in just slightly different leagues.
Reconnection / Load rebalancing from a completely Nationwide "cold start" would be quite an experience.
That's not to say that some of the infrastructure will not sustain damage anyhow, and I would guess (confidently) that capacitor / reactor banks might well be in for an "interesting time".
It would be interesting to see data on voltage distribution for long lines in such an instance. Should they be grounded, or would it be better to let them "float"?
Will it be easy? No, but it can be done. As far as reboot they will do it like they did back in 2003 when most of the east coast lost power. They will have to turn back on the grid in sections so that the load is increased in stages.
"Should they be grounded, or would it be better to let them "float"?"
In my opinion they should float. If they grounded them at just a few points the current flowing through those points could be extremely high overheat or melting the power lines. To do proper grounding they would need to place ground connections every 50-100 Miles. That would get pretty expensive very quickly.
Intuitively, yes, float seems better, but I'm not entirely convinced it'll end up better - there are a LOT of insulator strings out there, and there will be some that are contaminated / damaged to the extent that their design protection factor has been seriously eroded. Uncontrolled flashover will inevitably give rise to further local damage (maybe difficult to access in terms of repair), and this local damage will in turn impede reconnection.
As you say, reconnection is certainly do-able, but note your points - ONLY the East Coast lost power, so there was already a reasonably balanced grid system "elsewhere" that could be used as a "buffer" when reconnecting loads / generation. For a COMPLETELY cold start, that luxury will not exist, and in view of probable occult component failures throughout the transmission / distribution system, reconnection will be a very slow and laborious process. I'd envisage a series of generation islands on start-up with reconnection spreading from there outwards. Estalishment of island interconnection will be interesting too (although it has been done many times before).
As you say, reconnection is certainly do-able, but note your points - ONLY the East Coast lost power, so there was already a reasonably balanced grid system "elsewhere" that could be used as a "buffer" when reconnecting loads / generation.
The East Coast Grid is probably the largest (or very close to the largest). When the East coast failed they isolated the rest of the country from the grid. So its possible to break up the grid and re connect it back up.
"For a COMPLETELY cold start, that luxury will not exist, and in view of probable occult component failures throughout the transmission / distribution system, reconnection will be a very slow and laborious process"
The biggest issue will be restarting the Nuke plants. Since these need to be shutdown when the lose connectivity to the grid. The rest of the power plants can be switched to standby where they remained powered up. My guess is because the 100+ nuke plants will be offline and probably take several weeks to get them all back up, that there would be some constrants. Ie Power hungry businesses (ie Electric arc smelting) will need to be kept offline for an extended period. Also consider that currently there is excess generation capacity since the economy still hasn't (and probably will never) recover. Although EPA\O'bama plan to phase out Coal will become a problem in the next 5 or so years.
My Biggest worry would be with the Nuke Plants since they only keep three days of backup diesel fuel. What if fuel deliveries are disrupted for more than a week. Would they be able to keep the plants and the Spent fuel pools cool if they are unable to get fuel and unable to reconnect to the grid for more than a week?
"Uncontrolled flashover will inevitably give rise to further local damage"
I doubt flash over will be a problem. There are limits on how high a CME will increase voltage on the power lines. For a flash over to occur, the voltage will need to soar in to several megavolts. If it gets that bad its unlikely that any grounding system is going prevent destruction anyway.
I propose a combination of floating and grounding. Allow an area like Wall Street to float and ground an area, say like the other side of Queens. That way the induction would occur over Wall Street and be carried away where it can be grounded at a safe distance away, and "the current flowing through those points could be extremely high overheat or melting the power lines" causing fires and havoc, a safe distance away from important areas, like Wall Street, the Capitol, etc...
Important areas... lol!
Yeah, it's too hard, so why bother?
It's enough if they just get the New England region back online. The flyover States donT need no electricity, and California, Texas and Florida all have Sunshine.
Absolutely correct. We don't need no electricity grid to pump the diesel to fuel the trucks. Which means that YOU don't need none of the food we raise here. Let's see... can you eat electricity? Hope so.
It surely seems like our representatives are hell bent on taking us down for whatever reason. Be it stupidity or greed. Fuck the bastards, I'm looking forward to see them in hell on earth or in hades. I for one will show the swine and their lackeys no mercy.
The herd is way overdue for a culling.
The mutants who survive will be better developed and prepared to adapt, in a Darwinian sort-of-way.
This is bullish! Bullish for the race, not necessarily for you/me individually...
Maybe that solar flare, with our stupid lack of preparation so well outlined above, is our destiny
The destiny of the cruel and stupid, to eliminate many of their own number
There have long been those who say that human beings are a plague species ...
Destroying the generous, once rich natural earth on which we live
And ultimately destroying and wiping out ourselves
Due to being selfish, sadistic, foolish, short-sighted, not willing to prepare against highly possible eventualities
If we humans die off
Shall the animals we tormented and tortured mourn us?
Shall the souls of the species we extinguished mourn us?
Shall the earth we polluted and raped mourn us?
Or would it be a cosmically just reckoning for human cruelty ... cruelty that is, by its nature, ultimately also stupidity?
The experts on resource over-reach, at times come to a similar conclusion as that on the multi-lingual inscriptions on the George Guidestones ... That we humans should keep our numbers to a half-billion or so, the amount of people sustainable without damaging the earth
Maybe we are going to get back again to that pre-1800, pre-coal and pre-petroleum age number of humans, and finally 'Leave room for nature' once again ... Whether we intend to do so or not
The Wrath of God perhaps will shortly arrive to re-balance the great account of planet earth
The author of this Zerohedge post makes a fundamental error; namely that the purpose of government is to protect the people and their natural rights.
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there are some human cultures who lived with respect for "the earth" - co-existance, planning for "seven generations" out, etc.
it's really the FatherGod religions that believe the planet is a cursed place to suffer until resurrected to Daddy's side in Paradise - they are the ones who justify consuming all the resources, and leaving behind a wasteland. they've also labeled "Mother" nature, to compliment their "Father" god story of power over. there can be no respect for our environs as long as this falsehood is embedded culturally.
history carefully re-searched will reveal life prior to the FatherSkyGods, even though many earlier cultures had history spoken, not wordy books to revere.
Hmmm.... right now I'm favoring the explanation that, first of all, they haven't found a way to launder the money through a labor union to do it, and secondly that $100M is chump change for these guys. Make it a couple billion, and propose how to do it with a labor union in charge of it, and it's a sure thing to fly through Congress.
So, the USA might save some its power grid network & stop some (or even most) of the nuclear reactors blowing up... Ok. The pulse will be well-behaved then, and all the other stuff attached to the power grid, which controls life-critical systems, computers controlling them etc etc and there are no leaks or unkowns unkowns? You just move the problem along the line of processes, the secondary & tertiary levels that you didn't have time to consider.
What happens to the rest of the world? doesn't concern you? Well, you just get to die slowly from everybody else's radioactive plumes & polluted oceans then - your carriage is still attached to the train, no matter what you do.
So real protection means a global response - not going to happen is it?
This actually sounds like another millenium bug type of scare to me, to be honest.
a biblical banker is like a like a monk who knows how to count and to reason outside dogma; a rare thing. He has antidote to becoming merchant of temple.
Opposites attract but atavism detracts man from that fatal intellectual attraction that is his salvation, as it spins him into orbit of enlightenment. Pity, Kismet or fate is such a lodestone for the dogmatic, inciting dissolution into depths of darkness that for bankers is called 'lucre', madness of our current age. To each his own foible.
Karma.
Why should our lords and masters care if we have to wipe our asses with leaves while in the dark? They have a never ending supply of toilet paper, the best food and drink to make it necessary, and no shortage of off-the-grid backup power to warm it and show it in the best light.
The only way they will change is with a 30-06.
Is that how they killed all the Republicans?
Someone check Boehner's pulse.....I think that cat might be dead. I told him not to look directly into Pelosi's eyes but that son of a bitch never listens to me.
I made a video today of all the Sun's CMEs.
The SUN is freaking out!
It looks like it's about to chain sequence to its next phase,
or give birth to a Phoenix of light.
And those daggers of light sticking out of it
like a bunson burner didn't used to be there.
So 12-21-2012
We're all going for a ride on a Galactic Plane bitchez!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq94yONt4HE&feature=plcp
"congress is too thick"
could have cut the headline there