North Pole 50 degrees above normal

Freak storm pushes North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point

By Angela Fritz December 30 at 7:12 PM  

This storm in the far North Atlantic is the same storm that caused two tornado outbreaks and widespread flooding in the United States. Now, it’s pushing temperatures at the North Pole well above average. (earth.nullschool.net)

This story has been updated to include buoy measurements that confirm the North Pole temperature climbed above 32 degrees on Wednesday.

A powerful winter cyclone — the same storm that led to two tornado outbreaks in the United States and disastrous river flooding — has driven the North Pole to the freezing point this week, 50 degrees above average for this time of year.

From Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, a mind-boggling pressure drop was recorded in Iceland: 54 millibars in just 18 hours. This triples the criteria for “bomb” cyclogenesis, which meteorologists use to describe a rapidly intensifying mid-latitude storm. A “bomb” cyclone is defined as dropping one millibar per hour for 24 hours.

NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center said the storm’s minimum pressure dropped to 928 millibars around 1 a.m. Eastern time, which likely places it in the top five strongest storms on record in this region.

[Rivers are rising to record levels in the Midwest, flooding is ‘major to historic’]

“According to the center’s records, the all-time strongest storm in this area occurred on Dec. 15, 1986, and that had a minimum central pressure of 900 millibars,” Mashable’s Andrew Freedman reported on Tuesday. “The second-strongest storm occurred in January 1993, with a pressure of 916 millibars.”

As this storm churns north, it’s forcing warm air into the Arctic Circle. Over the North Sea, sustained winds from the south are blasting at 70 mph, and gusting to well above 100 mph, drawing heat from south to north.

[The best — worst? — TV weather bloopers of 2015]

Although there are no permanent weather stations at the North Pole (or really anywhere in the Arctic Ocean), we can use weather forecast models, which ingest data from satellites and surrounding surface observations, to estimate conditions at Earth’s most northern location.

Temperatures in the Arctic Circle were hovering around 32 degrees on Wednesday morning, using data from the GFS model. (weatherbell.com)

On Wednesday morning, temperatures over a vast area around North Pole were somewhere between 30 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and for at least a brief moment, surpassed the 32-degree threshold at exactly 90 degrees North, according to data from the GFS forecast model.

Data from the International Arctic Buoy Programme confirms that temperatures very close to the North Pole surpassed the melting point on Wednesday. A buoy (WMO ID Buoy 6400476) at a latitude of 87.45 degrees North hit a high temperature of 0.7 degrees Celsius — or 33 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Consider the average winter temperature there is around 20 degrees below zero,” wrote the Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow on Monday. A temperature around the freezing mark signifies a departure from normal of over 50 degrees, and close to typical mid-summer temperatures in this region.

In other words, the area around the North Pole was about as warm as Chicago on Wednesday, and quite a few degrees warmer than much of the Midwest.

[Fallstreak holes punch through clouds like swiss cheese over the Southeast]

Meanwhile in habitable areas around the North Atlantic, winds are howling and waves are rocking the coastline. In Britain, a week of excessive rainfall has pushed rivers and streams well beyond their banks, stranding vehicles and buckling bridges.

In a blog post on Monday, the U.K. Met office said that December has been a record-breaking month for rainfall in parts of the United Kingdom. A Christmas weekend storm brought up to 8 inches of addition rainfall on saturated soil. The Met Office listed just a small portion of the December records that were set this weekend, in some cases blowing away the previous December records by 10 inches.
SEE LINK FOR VIDEO

This post has been updated to include the WMO ID number of the buoy that recorded temperatures above 32 degrees on Wednesday. 

 

Angela Fritz is an atmospheric scientist and The Post's deputy weather editor. 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/12/30/freak-storm-has-pushed-north-pole-to-freezing-point-50-degrees-above-normal

Bank “Bail-Ins” Begin…Watch your bank accounts!

A Crisis Worse than ISIS? Bank “Bail-Ins” Begin…”Your Life Savings Could be Wiped out in a Massive Derivatives Collapse”

 

Ellen Brown

Global Research

December 29, 2015

 

While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US.  Poverty also kills. 

At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,000 savings were confiscated in a bank “rescue” scheme. He left a suicide note blaming the bank, where he had been a customer for 50 years and had invested in bank-issued bonds. But he might better have blamed the EU and the G20’s Financial Stability Board, which have imposed an “Orderly Resolution” regime that keeps insolvent banks afloat by confiscating the savings of investors and depositors. Some 130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders suffered losses in the “rescue."

The pensioner’s bank was one of four small regional banks that had been put under special administration over the past two years. The €3.6 billion ($3.83 billion) rescue plan launched by the Italian government uses a newly-formed National Resolution Fund, which is fed by the country’s healthy banks. But before the fund can be tapped, losses must be imposed on investors; and in January, EU rules will require that they also be imposed on depositors. According to a December 10th article on BBC.com:

The rescue was a “bail-in” – meaning bondholders suffered losses – unlike the hugely unpopular bank bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis, which cost ordinary EU taxpayers tens of billions of euros.

Correspondents say [Italian Prime Minister] Renzi acted quickly because in January, the EU is tightening the rules on bank rescues – they will force losses on depositors holding more than €100,000, as well as bank shareholders and bondholders.

. . . [L]etting the four banks fail under those new EU rules next year would have meant “sacrificing the money of one million savers and the jobs of nearly 6,000 people”.

That is what is predicted for 2016: massive sacrifice of savings and jobs to prop up a “systemically risky” global banking scheme.

Bail-in Under Dodd-Frank 

That is all happening in the EU. Is there reason for concern in the US?

According to former hedge fund manager Shah Gilani, writing for Money Morning, there is. In a November 30th article titled “Why I’m Closing My Bank Accounts While I Still Can,” he writes:

[It is] entirely possible in the next banking crisis that depositors in giant too-big-to-fail failing banks could have their money confiscated and turned into equity shares. . . .

If your too-big-to-fail (TBTF) bank is failing because they can’t pay off derivative bets they made, and the government refuses to bail them out, under a mandate titled “Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution,” approved on Nov. 16, 2014, by the G20’s Financial Stability Board, they can take your deposited money and turn it into shares of equity capital to try and keep your TBTF bank from failing.

Once your money is deposited in the bank, it legally becomes the property of the bank. Gilani explains:

Your deposited cash is an unsecured debt obligation of your bank. It owes you that money back.

If you bank with one of the country’s biggest banks, who collectively have trillions of dollars of derivatives they hold “off balance sheet” (meaning those debts aren’t recorded on banks’ GAAP balance sheets), those debt bets have a superior legal standing to your deposits and get paid back before you get any of your cash.

. . . Big banks got that language inserted into the 2010 Dodd-Frank law meant to rein in dangerous bank behavior.

The banks inserted the language and the legislators signed it, without necessarily understanding it or even reading it. At over 2,300 pages and still growing, the Dodd Frank Act is currently the longest and most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature.

Propping Up the Derivatives Scheme
 
Dodd-Frank states in its preamble that it will “protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” But it does this under Title II by imposing the losses of insolvent financial companies on their common and preferred stockholders, debtholders, and other unsecured creditors. That includes depositors, the largest class of unsecured creditor of any bank.

Title II is aimed at “ensuring that payout to claimants is at least as much as the claimants would have received under bankruptcy liquidation.” But here’s the catch: under both the Dodd Frank Act and the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivative claims have super-priority over all other claims, secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured.

The over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market (the largest market for derivatives) is made up of banks and other highly sophisticated players such as hedge funds.

OTC derivatives are the bets of these financial players against each other. Derivative claims are considered “secured” because collateral is posted by the parties.

For some inexplicable reason, the hard-earned money you deposit in the bank is not considered “security” or “collateral.” It is just a loan to the bank, and you must stand in line along with the other creditors in hopes of getting it back. State and local governments must also stand in line, although their deposits are considered “secured,” since they remain junior to the derivative claims with “super-priority.”

Turning Bankruptcy on Its Head

Under the old liquidation rules, an insolvent bank was actually “liquidated” – its assets were sold off to repay depositors and creditors. Under an “orderly resolution,” the accounts of depositors and creditors are emptied to keep the insolvent bank in business. The point of an “orderly resolution” is not to make depositors and creditors whole but to prevent another system-wide “disorderly resolution” of the sort that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. 

The concern is that pulling a few of the dominoes from the fragile edifice that is our derivatives-laden global banking system will collapse the entire scheme. 

The sufferings of depositors and investors are just the sacrifices to be borne to maintain this highly lucrative edifice.

In a May 2013 article in Forbes titled “The Cyprus Bank ‘Bail-In’ Is Another Crony Bankster Scam,” Nathan Lewis explained the scheme like this:

At first glance, the “bail-in” resembles the normal capitalist process of liabilities restructuring that should occur when a bank becomes insolvent. . . .
The difference with the “bail-in” is that the order of creditor seniority is changed. In the end, it amounts to the cronies (other banks and government) and non-cronies. The cronies get 100% or more; the non-cronies, including non-interest-bearing depositors who should be super-senior, get a kick in the guts instead. . . .
In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.

As of September 2014, US derivatives had a notional value of nearly $280 trillion. A study involving the cost to taxpayers of the Dodd-Frank rollback slipped by Citibank into the “cromnibus” spending bill last December found that the rule reversal allowed banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books. 

This is money that taxpayers could be on the hook for in another bailout; and since Dodd-Frank replaces bailouts with bail-ins, it is money that creditors and depositors could now be on the hook for. Citibank is particularly vulnerable to swaps on the price of oil. Brent crude dropped from a high of $114 per barrel in June 2014 to a low of $36 in December 2015.

What about FDIC insurance? It covers deposits up to $250,000, but the FDIC fund had only $67.6 billion in it as of June 30, 2015, insuring about $6.35 trillion in deposits. 

The FDIC has a credit line with the Treasury, but even that only goes to $500 billion; and who would pay that massive loan back? The FDIC fund, too, must stand in line behind the bottomless black hole of derivatives liabilities. As Yves Smith observed in a March 2013 post:

In the US, depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositors to fund derivatives exposures. . . . The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss.

Even in the worst of the Great Depression bank bankruptcies, noted Nathan Lewis, creditors eventually recovered nearly all of their money. He concluded:

When super-senior depositors have huge losses of 50% or more, after a “bail-in” restructuring, you know that a crime was committed.

Exiting While We Can

How can you avoid this criminal theft and keep your money safe? It may be too late to pull your savings out of the bank and stuff them under a mattress, as Shah Gilani found when he tried to withdraw a few thousand dollars from his bank. Large withdrawals are now criminally suspect.

You can move your money into one of the credit unions with their own deposit insurance protection; but credit unions and their insurance plans are also under attack.

So writes Frances Coppola in a December 18th article titled “Co-operative Banking Under Attack in Europe,” discussing an insolvent Spanish credit union that was the subject of a bail-in in July 2015. When the member-investors were subsequently made whole by the credit union’s private insurance group, there were complaints that the rescue “undermined the principle of creditor bail-in” – this although the insurance fund was privately financed. Critics argued that “this still looks like a circuitous way to do what was initially planned, i.e. to avoid placing losses on private creditors.”

In short, the goal of the bail-in scheme is to place losses on private creditors. Alternatives that allow them to escape could soon be blocked.

We need to lean on our legislators to change the rules before it is too late. The Dodd Frank Act and the Bankruptcy Reform Act both need a radical overhaul, and the Glass-Steagall Act (which put a fire wall between risky investments and bank deposits) needs to be reinstated.

Meanwhile, local legislators would do well to set up some publicly-owned banks on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota – banks that do not gamble in derivatives and are safe places to store our public and private funds.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-crisis-worse-than-isis-bank-bail-ins-begin-your-life-savings-could-be-wiped-out-in-a-massive-derivatives-collapse/5498376
  

Obama Spies on U.S. Congress

Lawbreaker! Obama Spies on U.S. Congress

Wednesday, December 30, 2015 6:29

 

A bombshell new report in the Wall Street Journal could rock the Obama administration to its foundations. 

According to the report, President Obama’s National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for years. That alone might not be enough to cause an international incident, but the fact that many of Netanyahu’s conversations with U.S. lawmakers were caught up in the spying very well might spell the end of Obama’s presidency.

The reason for the spying? Obama was concerned that Netanyahu would strike a pre-emptive assault on Iranian nuclear facilities, thus ruining any chances of a deal. Once it became clear that wasn’t likely to happen, though, the NSA continued to spy on Netanyahu as he spoke to Congress about scrapping the deal through political means.

Obama was not unaware of how it would look if he was exposed as spying on Congress. Instead of barring the NSA from picking up these conversations, though – or at least refusing to read them – he chose a middle road that not even his most ardent defenders can spin. The compromise was that the NSA would spy, they would send relevant communications to Obama, and they would redact any criticism of his administration and block out the names of the lawmakers in question.

In January of last year, incidentally, Obama said he was going to stop spying on foreign leaders altogether. “The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to know what they think about an issue, I’ll pick up the phone and call them rather than turning to surveillance.”

Over the last couple of years, many have wondered why Obama did not reach out to Netanyahu with regular talks; apparently he didn’t need to.

As said, this would have been a minor scandal – if a scandal at all – if the spying did not extend to Congress. When one senior U.S. official realized how badly the White House could be damaged by these revelations, he called it an “Oh sh**” moment, a phrase that will almost certainly live in infamy if this story plays out the way it should.

Hearing the story on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz said that the Obama administration “views Congress, Republicans, and sometimes even Democratic members of Congress as their enemy.” He went on to say, “At times, it seems like they view the American people as their enemy.”

Will this scandal bring Obama down the way Nixon was brought down by Watergate? Or will Obama get a yet another free pass to treat American law like yesterday’s news?

http://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2015/12/lawbreaker-obama-spies-on-u-s-congress-2492878.html 

http://www.fixthisnation.com
 

Proof  Gun  Control  Won’t Stop  Crime

Dave Jolly

Dec 30 2015 

Every morning I peruse through dozens and dozens of news stories in search of topics to report on and one thing I’ve noticed is how many news reports there are about criminals and illegal guns.

Convicted felons are not allowed to own or possess a firearm, but that doesn’t seem to prevent many of them from obtaining a gun. In just one day I saw 8 reports of law enforcement arresting someone for illegally possessing a gun or guns. Those reports include raids on drug houses or illegal marijuana farms and law enforcement officers responding to calls and finding firearms in the possession of convicted felons.

In all of these cases, none of the firearms discovered and confiscated, had been obtained legally. Some of the guns had been stolen, some had the serial numbers removed and most of them were purchased off the streets from other criminals.

I recently spoke to a gun store manager and the effectiveness of the FBI background checks. He told me that at his gun shop, it’s rare that a background check comes back flagged and banning the sale of the firearm. He’s had a couple of background checks come back identifying the purchaser as a convicted felon. 

One of those instances turned out to be a case of mistaken identity where the FBI confused the purchaser with someone else of the same name.The gun store owner also told me that several of his customers used their legally purchased gun to stop home intruders or from being mugged out in public. He added that to the best of his knowledge, none of the guns he’s sold have been used to commit a crime. When I asked him how he felt about gun control and universal background checks, he told me that he believed they were illegal intrusions on our Second Amendment rights.

I spoke to another gun store operator and he said he thought background checks were good, but was not thrilled about many of the other gun control laws already in existence and those being pushed by Obama. He told me that as far as stopping crimes, criminals don’t usually walk into a gun store to buy a gun they plan on using in a crime and that it’s really easy for criminals to get their hands on guns from other sources.
 
The bottom line is that most gun control laws have little to no effect on preventing crimes and gun violence. Just look at the high incidence of gun involved crimes committed in the cities and states that have the strictest gun control laws. Gun control laws only serve to make it harder for law abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families.

Americans need to stand up for their constitutional rights. We need to vote out every politician that wants to take those rights away from us and if Obama wants to take our guns away from us, then it’s time we take America away from him and return it to the nation it was!

http://godfatherpolitics.com/27546/proof-gun-control-wont-stop-crime/

Legal gun owners stop crime

 Surprise! Law Abiding Gun Owners Stop Crimes Over Christmas Holiday

December 29, 2015 by Onan Coca

Surprise! Over the course of just a few days concealed carry permit holders stopped at least 3 different violent crimes from occurring… sadly, the liberal media failed to report those important events.

On December 22^nd, in Gary, Indiana, one criminal was killed and another wounded when they tried to rob two men from Illinois who had been traveled to Gary to purchase a car. They’d found the vehicle on Craigslist and had made arrangements to buy the car, but it was all an elaborate ruse to lure the car-buyers in.

The would-be car buyers — a 55-year-old man from Olympia Fields and a 65-year-old from Chicago Heights — called police around 7 p.m. Sunday to report a shooting on Gary’s west side. They told officers that they made arrangements to make a purchase from Craigslist, when the man and woman they planned to meet with tried to rob them, according to Gary Police Lt. Thomas Pawlak, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

When Johnson pulled a gun, one of the buyers took out his own gun and fired at the couple, Lt. Pawlak said.

On December 23^rd in Miramar, Florida, a thief was shot and killed during an armed robbery at a restaurant.

A would-be thief was shot and killed by a Miramar restaurant employee during an armed robbery attempt Wednesday night, police said…

The suspect entered the eatery wearing a ski mask and gloves. The employee fired several shots, killing the suspect, Rues said.

At least one customer and other employees were in the restaurant at the time but no other injuries were reported. 

"There were words that were spoken and at present time we are taking a statement from the employee that fired his weapon and bystanders that were at the restaurant as well," Rues said.

On Christmas night in Warner Robbins, Georgia, an accused robber was killed when his victim shot him in self-defense.  Police are still investigating this case as a possible crime.

Do gun crimes happen? Of course they do. But the facts are clear -- legal gun owners stop crime.

http://godfatherpolitics.com/27520/surprise-law-abiding-gun-owners-stop-crimes-over-christmas-holiday/

Oregon persecutes Christians -denies 1st Amdnt freedom of religion

Christian Bakers Say the Government Cleaned Out Their Bank Accounts

2:00PM EST 12/29/2015

Aaron and Melissa Klein say the government cleaned out their bank account. (Reuters)

Melissa Klein was checking her bank accounts just a few weeks before Christmas when her face turned ashen. The money was gone—every single penny.

Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries had confiscated all the cash in Mrs. Klein's checking account and savings account as well as a special account set aside for their church tithe.

Yes, friends—the state of Oregon stole money meant for our Lord.

Mrs. Klein and her husband, Aaron, are devout evangelical Christians who own a mom-and-pop bakery—Sweet Cakes By Melissa.

In July, they were ordered to pay more than $135,000 in damages to a lesbian couple after they refused to bake their wedding cake. The Kleins objected because of their religious beliefs.

The judgment was awarded to the lesbians for "emotional suffering." (What about the 'emotional suffering' of the Kleins, as well as the loss to their personal lives and their business?)

Just a few weeks before Christmas, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian wiped out the Klein family's bank accounts—taking nearly $7,000.  (Sounds like Kleins have a valid lawsuit to me.)

Faced with a state-mandated 9 percent interest penalty, the Kleins opted to pay the disputed amount in full—turning over a $136,927.07 check to the corporation 'government'. That money, which was not in their bank account, was acquired through donations to the family. (No hearing on behalf of the Kleins, no consideration for their religious beliefs or hardships.)

It was the price the Kleins had to pay for following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

"It was like my breath was taken away," Mrs. Klein told me in a telephone conversation. "I panicked. Everything was gone."

And as I said before, Commissioner Avakian even seized money set aside for You Know Who.  

"We had three accounts," she told me. "I have one account that's labeled, 'God's money'—our tithing. They just took it."
Attorney Tyler Smith, who represents the Kleins, tells me his clients still plan on fighting the state's decision—even if it means going to the Supreme Court. (Hope this 'attorney' is a good one because he stands to make a huge profit off this case, leaving the Kleins in deeper financial trouble trying to defend their rights.)

"The least expensive option to stay in compliance with the law was to pay the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries funds that will be kept in a separate account until they prevail in their court appeal," Smith told me in a prepared statement.  He said the couple had asked the state to hold off on collection attempts—but that request was denied.

"Aaron and Melissa will continue to work to ensure that every American has the First Amendment right to express their faith-based beliefs, and to conduct their daily affairs according to their conscience," Smith said.

Their trouble started in 2013 when Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer asked the Christian bakers to prepare their wedding cake.

When Mr. Klein explained that they would not be able to prepare the cake, the women filed an anti-discrimination complaint with the state of Oregon. (You mean there were no other bakeries to consult with within 50 miles of their wedding location?)

The state later determined that gay rights trump religious liberty—ruling that the Kleins had violated the lesbians' civil rights by discriminating based on sexual orientation.  (What about the Klein's civil rights?)

Oregon has a law on the books that protects the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. It also prohibits private businesses from discriminating against potential customers, the newspaper noted.

The Kleins were also slapped with a gag order—banning them from speaking publicly about their refusal to participate in or bake wedding cakes for same-sex marriages, The Oregonian reported.

They were ordered to "cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation."

"Within Oregon's public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society," the ruling states. "The ability to enter public places, to shop and dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry."

On a side note here—I predicted that once gay marriage was legalized, LGBTQIA supporters would attempt to silence all dissent.

After the controversy, the Kleins had no choice but to shut down their retail store and move their business to their home.

Avakian has publicly stated his intentions to target Christian business owners who do not comply with the state's way of thinking. Here's what he told The Oregonian about Sweet Cakes By Melissa in 2013:

"The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to 'rehabilitate'."

I've never met Brad Avakian, but he sounds like a pretty ruthless individual—a person who is using his office to bully and intimidate Christians.

Be warned, friends. In Oregon, gay rights trump religious liberty.  (AND your Constitutional rights.)

Todd Starnes is host of "Fox News & Commentary," heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is God Less America.

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/american-dispatch/54117-christian-bakers-say-the-government-cleaned-out-their-bank-accounts?utm_source=The%20Flaming%20Herald&utm_medium=email&utm_content=subscriber_id:1028941&utm_campaign=Blogger%20-%20Bert%20Farias%20-%202015-12-30