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“I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”: Meteorologists Expect Florence To Stall And Hammer The East Coast “For Days”

The bizarre story of Hurricane Florence just keeps becoming even more strange.  The good news is that meteorologists are telling us that the storm is expected to lose intensity as it approaches the east coast, but the really, really bad news is that it is now being projected that Florence will slow down and finally stall just off the coastline.  In a worst-case scenario, the Carolinas and Georgia could be pounded with wind and rain “for days”, and some areas of North Carolina could end up being buried under nine feet of water.  And even though the peak wind speed of Florence has diminished some, the storm just continues to expand in size.  That means that it will ultimately hit a larger portion of the east coast than originally anticipated, and the overall economic cost will also ultimately be worse than the experts were forecasting.

The word “unprecedented” is being used a lot in conjunction with this storm.  It is behaving in ways that it shouldn’t be, and this “strange stall” along the east coast is absolutely baffling the experts.

While discussing this “stall”, Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Postel stated that he had “never seen anything like this”…

The weird saga of Hurricane Florence, which has already carved an unprecedented path across the Atlantic, is forecast to persist with a strange stall and trek along the Southeast coast.

Instead of roaring ashore and quickly heading inland and weakening, as most storms do, Hurricane Florence should instead “stall near the coast and then parallel southwestward toward Georgia,” Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Postel said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

And don’t let the fact that Hurricane Florence has been downgraded from a Category 4 storm fool you.  The wind speed may be down a bit, but the storm just keeps getting larger, and on Wednesday it was producing waves that were up to 83 feet tall.

If this storm really does stall off of the Carolina coastline, the devastation will be off the charts.  The following comes from CNN…

Florence’s predicted slow southward turn on Friday would mean some coastal areas could get damaging hurricane-force winds for more than 24 hours. “If this blows at 120 mph for four hours, … you lose a shingle every two minutes, and all of the sudden, you’ve lost your whole roof after four hours,” CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

In addition to extreme wind damage, we could also see unprecedented rainfall totals and flooding…

While it sits and spins, the heavy rain Florence unleashes will lead to “catastrophic” and “life-threatening” flooding in the Carolinas. Widespread reports of 20 to 30 inches of rain are likely, and some spots could see 40 inches.

As if that weren’t enough “isolated tornadoes will become a threat Thursday along the North Carolina coast,” the National Weather Service in Wilmington said.

Could you imagine getting 40 inches of rain in a 24 hour period?

And what will things look like if Hurricane Florence decides to stall for an extended period of time and stay roughly in one place for several days?

We don’t know exactly what the storm will do following the “stall”, but what we do know is that the damage from this storm will be immense.

In fact, one FEMA official is warning that power could be knocked out for many people in the danger area for “weeks”…

“This one really scares me,” National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham told CBS.

“This storm is going to knock out power days into weeks. It’s going to destroy infrastructure. It’s going to destroy homes,” said Jeff Byard, an official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

If you live in the path of this storm, hopefully you have evacuated already.

If you haven’t evacuated, hopefully you have stocked up on supplies, because most of the stores have already been completely cleaned out.  At this point, even gasoline is in very short supply…

Michelle Stober loaded up valuables on Tuesday at her home on Wrightsville Beach to drive back to her primary residence in Cary, North Carolina. Finding fuel for the journey was tough.

“This morning I drove around for an hour looking for gas in Cary. Everyone was sold out,” she said.

And remember, this is just a temporary emergency.  Eventually this storm will pass and the region will begin to recover.

In the event of an even worse emergency that is more long-term in nature, what will you do when all of the supplies are gone and the stores aren’t going to get anything else for the foreseeable future?

On another note, many have found it very interesting that federal officials held a major exercise in which they simulated a Category 4 hurricane slamming into the Mid-Atlantic region back in late April and early May.  Representatives from 91 different federal departments and agencies took part in this exercise, and the results of the exercise were quite alarming…

Just months ago, disaster planners simulated a Category 4 hurricane strike alarmingly similar to the real-world scenario now unfolding on a dangerously vulnerable stretch of the East Coast.

A fictional ‘Hurricane Cora’ barreled into southeast Virginia and up the Chesapeake Bay to strike Washington, D.C., in the narrative created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Argonne National Laboratory.

The result was catastrophic damage, which has some experts concerned that Hurricane Florence could produce a disaster comparable to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and in a part of the country that is famously difficult to evacuate.

It is important to remember that Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 3 hurricane when it finally made landfall.  But it was such a massive storm that it absolutely overwhelmed New Orleans.

We could be facing a similar scenario this time around.  Hurricane Florence may only be a Category 2 or a Category 3 hurricane when it finally makes landfall, but it looks like it is going to do an unprecedented amount of damage.

So please be in prayer for those living along the Mid-Atlantic coast, because this may end up being the worst storm that they have ever experienced.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

People Are “Fighting For Food” As Authorities Warn Florence “Could Produce A Disaster Comparable” To Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Florence is about to make a “direct hit” on the east coast, and public officials are making one ominous declaration about this storm after another.  Florence is being called “extremely dangerous”, “a monster”, “the worst in 60 years” and “the storm of a lifetime”.  By the end of this week we shall see if this storm lives up to the hype, but at this point it is definitely an immensely powerful storm.  Hurricanes of this magnitude very rarely come this far north, and panic is starting to set in all across the mid-Atlantic region as people realize that this is really happening.  Over a million people are in the process of evacuating, and it is being reported that there is “fighting for food” at the stores that still have some supplies left…

“It was chaotic! Oh my goodness, long lines!” said Fatimah Spivey.

Reilly Norman described it as “a mess in there; it’s wiped out clean.”

The water aisles were especially bare — empty shelf after empty shelf.

“We came around 1 and all the waters were gone,” said Blake Swain. “Now, it’s just people fighting for food.”

Interestingly, federal officials actually conducted a “simulation” that involved a category 4 hurricane hitting the mid-Atlantic region back in late April and early May…

Just months ago, disaster planners simulated a Category 4 hurricane strike alarmingly similar to the real-word scenario now unfolding on a dangerously vulnerable stretch of the East Coast.

That “simulation” produced “catastrophic damage” along the east coast, and as a result some experts are now concerned “that Hurricane Florence could produce a disaster comparable to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina“…

A fictional “Hurricane Cora” barreled into southeast Virginia and up the Chesapeake Bay to strike Washington, D.C., in the narrative created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Argonne National Laboratory.

The result was catastrophic damage, which has some experts concerned that Hurricane Florence could produce a disaster comparable to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and in a part of the country that is famously difficult to evacuate.

Let us hope that does not happen, because New Orleans still has not fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina after all this time.

But at this point things look very grim.  The computer models are predicting a storm surge of somewhere around 20 feet and up to 45 inches of rain in some parts of North Carolina.

In addition, it is being projected that the insurance industry could be facing up to 20 billion dollars in losses.

And all of those numbers assume that this will remain a Category 4 storm.  According to CNN, there is still a possibility that Florence “could become close to a Category 5 storm” before it slams into the Carolinas…

As of Tuesday morning, Florence was hurling 130-mph winds. Before it pummels the US coastline, Florence could become close to a Category 5 storm — meaning winds could approach 157 mph.

But even a Category 4 storm would be immensely devastating.

A 20 foot storm surge would cause more damage than the wind or the rain from the hurricane would.  It would essentially be a giant “wall of water” that would “swallow parts of the coast”…

“Storm surge has the highest potential to kill the most amount of people,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long said. “It also has the highest potential to cause the most destruction.”

Storm surge is basically a wall of water that could swallow parts of the coast.

“This will have a storm surge in the 20-foot range,” Myers said.

And meteorologists are warning that in a worst-case scenario we could actually see Florence stall along the east coast for an extended period of time.  According to the Weather Underground, this is how that could happen…

The steering currents driving Florence toward the East Coast will collapse on Friday, and models now agree the storm is likely to stall somewhere within 100 miles on either side of the coast, perhaps for one or two days.

The 12Z Tuesday run of the European model introduced a new and very distressing possibility: Florence stalling just offshore of North Carolina near Wilmington for roughly a day, then moving southwestward along and just off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, and finally making landfall close to Savannah, Georgia, on Sunday—all while still a hurricane. This outlandish-seeming prospect gained support from the 18Z run of the GFS model. It painted a very similar picture, with a landfall a bit farther north, near Charleston, on Sunday. The 18Z track from the experimental GFS FV3 model is very similar to the GFS track.

In such a scenario, the damage caused by this storm would be multiplied.

To say that this storm is “dangerous” would be a major understatement.  And let us not forget that there are 12 nuclear power reactors directly in the path of this storm.  If things go bad, they could go really, really bad.

As the storm draws closer to the coast, federal officials are begging people to get prepared…

Federal officials begged residents to put together emergency kits and have a plan on where to go.

“This storm is going to knock out power days into weeks. It’s going to destroy infrastructure. It’s going to destroy homes,” said Jeff Byard, an official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Of course those that have waited until now may find that it is already too late.

Gasoline stations all over the mid-Atlantic are already running out of gas, and store shelves are being “picked clean” of essential supplies…

Long lines formed at service stations, and some started running out of gas as far west as Raleigh, with bright yellow bags, signs or rags placed over the pumps to show they were out of order. Some store shelves were picked clean.

“There’s no water. There’s no juices. There’s no canned goods,” Kristin Harrington said as she shopped at a Walmart in Wilmington.

A “perfect storm” is literally heading for the east coast, and some believe that this could be a metaphor for what is happening to the nation as a whole.

For those of you living in the mid-Atlantic, please get out of the path of this storm, and our prayers are with you.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Hurricane Florence To Intensify “To Near Category 5 Strength” And There Are 12 Nuclear Power Reactors In The Carolinas

The latest forecast is projecting that Hurricane Florence will strengthen “to near category 5 strength” before it makes landfall in the Carolinas, and it is being called “a serious threat to lives and property”.  It is extremely rare for a hurricane of this intensity to come this far north, and one expert is claiming that Florence “has the potential to be the most destructive hurricane we’ve had in modern history for this region.”  At this time, the government is warning of “a life-threatening storm surge” of up to 20 feet or higher, “life-threatening freshwater flooding”, and “damaging hurricane-force winds”.  But there is another factor that not a lot of people are talking about.  There are 12 nuclear power reactors in the Carolinas, including two that are located right along the coast.

According to Google, there are 7 nuclear power reactors in South Carolina…

South Carolina hosts seven operating nuclear power reactors: Catawba Units 1 & 2, Oconee Units 1, 2 & 3, H. B.

And Google says that there are 5 nuclear power reactors in North Carolina…

North Carolina hosts five operating nuclear power reactors: Brunswick Units 1 & 2, McGuire Units 1 & 2, and Shearon Harris Unit 1. These account for nearly 32% of electricity generation in the state.

It is the two reactors at the Brunswick plant that are of the most concern because they sit right along the coast and they are directly in the projected path of the storm.

The following is what Wikipedia has to say about those reactors…

The Brunswick nuclear power plant, named for Brunswick County, North Carolina, covers 1,200 acres (490 ha). The site is adjacent to the town of Southport, North Carolina, and to wetlands and woodlands, and was opened in 1975.

The site contains two General Electric boiling water reactors, which are cooled by water collected from the Cape Fear River and discharged into the Atlantic Ocean.

In a worst case scenario, could we potentially be facing America’s version of Fukushima?

Hurricane Florence greatly intensified on Monday.  This is an excerpt from the very latest NOAA forecast…

1. A life-threatening storm surge is likely along portions of the coastlines of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, and a Storm Surge Watch will likely be issued for some of these areas by Tuesday morning. All interests from South Carolina into the mid-Atlantic region should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place and follow any advice given by local officials.

2. Life-threatening freshwater flooding is likely from a prolonged and exceptionally heavy rainfall event, which may extend inland over the Carolinas and Mid Atlantic for hundreds of miles as Florence is expected to slow down as it approaches the coast and moves inland.

3. Damaging hurricane-force winds are likely along portions of the coasts of South Carolina and North Carolina, and a Hurricane Watch will likely be issued by Tuesday morning. Damaging winds could also spread well inland into portions of the Carolinas and Virginia.

And according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, there is definitely a possibility that Hurricane Florence could still strengthen into a category 5 storm…

Experts weren’t ready to rule out the possibility that Florence could even make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, a feat never achieved by any recorded storm in the region. Dennis Feltgen, a spokesperson for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, says that reaching Category 5 is “certainly a possibility.” If Florence doesn’t undergo a phenomenon known as an eyewall replacement cycle, which would weaken the storm, it has a chance of reaching the 157-mph boundary line and making history, Feltgen says.

As I mentioned earlier, it is very rare for a storm of this magnitude to make landfall this far north…

Landfalling Category 4 hurricanes are rare in the mainland U.S., with just 24 such landfalls since 1851—an average of one every seven years. (Category 5 landfalls are rarer still, with just three on record). All but three of these 27 landfalls by Cat4s and Cat5s have occurred south of South Carolina’s latitude; thus, Florence will be in very select company if it manages to make landfall at Category 4 strength in North or South Carolina.

We only have a couple of previous storms to go on in order to evaluate how bad the storm surge might be.  Unfortunately, water can pile up to enormous heights in this particular region because the continental shelf “extends out more than 50 miles from shore”…

It’s a good thing that landfalls by such strong hurricanes are rare along the South Carolina and North Carolina coast, since this coastline is extremely vulnerable to high storm surges. Two of these three historical Carolina Category 4 hurricanes generated a storm tide of 18 – 20 feet: Hugo of 1989 and Hazel of 1954. The other storm–Gracie of 1959–did not (it hit at low tide, significantly reducing the coastal flooding). The storm tide is the combination of the storm surge and the normal lunar tide, measured in height above sea level. The National Hurricane Center uses the terminology “height above ground level” when discussing the storm tide, meaning the height the surge plus tide gets above the normal high tide mark.

The high vulnerability of this coastline is because the continental shelf extends out more than 50 miles from shore, creating a large region of shallow water less than 150 feet deep just offshore that forces storm surge waters to pile up to staggering heights.

In a worst case scenario, we could be talking about an unprecedented mountain of water slamming into the Carolina coastline.

In fact, it is being projected that if Hurricane Florence becomes a category 5 storm that we could see a storm surge of up to 33 feet…

WU’s storm surge inundation maps for the U.S. coast, computed using NOAA’s SLOSH model, tell a frightening story. Depending on where its center makes landfall, a mid-strength Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds hitting at high tide, in a worst-case scenario, can generate a storm tide in excess of twenty feet above ground level along the entire coast of South Carolina, and along most of the coast of southern North Carolina from the South Carolina border to Morehead City. Many locations could see a higher surge, of up to 27 feet. And a Category 5 storm is much worse: a theoretical peak storm tide of 33 feet is predicted by the SLOSH model for the Intracoastal Waterway north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. These peak surges occur over a 10 – 40 mile stretch of coast where the right eyewall makes landfall.

Let us hope that does not happen, because it is hard to imagine the immense devastation that such a storm surge would cause.

And remember – the two nuclear power reactors right along the coast at the Brunswick facility are directly in the path of this storm.

As news about the intensity of this storm has spread, “panic prepping” has been happening all over the Carolinas.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

With memories of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria still fresh in the minds of US consumers, residents of South and North Carolina are taking zero chances as Hurricane Florence – now a Category 4 storm – barrels toward the eastern seaboard. According to local media reports, store shelves have been cleared of vital supplies like bottled water and food as anxious southerners brace for the worst-case scenario.

Shelves at Wal-Marts in North Carolina and South Carolina had been cleared out by Sunday evening, forcing the stores to frantically restock shelves as residents loaded up on everything from water to plywood to generators, per WGN9. Flashlights and batteries also flew off the shelves.

Of course if people had been prepared ahead of time, they would not have to be scrambling for rapidly disappearing supplies at the stores.

And it is being projected that more than a million people will evacuate from coastal areas by the time that this storm reaches shore…

Hurricane Florence is plowing toward the East Coast as a Category 4 storm with a 500-mile wing span, forcing dire warnings and mandatory evacuations – including the entire coastline of South Carolina and parts of Virginia and North Carolina.

In South Carolina alone, more than 1 million residents and tourists are expected to flee from coastal areas, Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday, vowing that state officials “are not going to gamble” with people’s lives.

This is an extremely dangerous storm, and I strongly urge those that live in the region to play it safe.

You can always replace property, but we only get one chance at this life, and so please do not be reckless with yours.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

GoFundMe Investigating Couple That Raised $403,000 For Homeless Vet But Only Gave Him A Fraction Of The Money

Did a New Jersey couple go on wild gambling sprees, take exotic vacations and buy a new BMW with the money that the public gave to help get a homeless veteran off the streets? This article is about a “feel good story” that has gone really, really bad.  Homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt Jr. served as an ammunition technician in the U.S. Marine Corps.  After leaving the Marines, Bobbitt worked as a fireman and a paramedic before eventually falling on hard times.  Last October, Bobbitt came across Kate McClure after she had become stranded on the side of I-95 in a bad section of Philadelphia.  Even though he was living on the streets, he used his last 20 dollars to buy her some gasoline so that she could get home.  To thank him, McClure and her boyfriend Mark D’Amico created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help Bobbitt get off the streets.  The original goal was to raise $10,000, but the story went mega-viral and the campaign ultimately raised a total of $403,000.

It was the “feel good story” of the holiday season, and it was covered extensively by the mainstream media.  McClure and Bobbitt even made a joint appearance on Good Morning America, and it appeared that this was one news story that truly had a happy ending.

But it didn’t.

McClure and D’Amico never gave Bobbitt the money.  Instead, they took charge of it and bought him the things that they thought he “needed”.

For example, even though the GoFundMe campaign originally touted the idea of purchasing a house for Bobbitt, they bought him a camper instead…

The relationship between Bobbitt and McClure began to deteriorate when she and her boyfriend bought Bobbitt a camper — they originally promised him a house — and parked it in their driveway in New Jersey, where Bobbitt lived until June, Promislo said.

And they also bought a used truck for Bobbitt, but the couple reportedly drove it themselves, and it ultimately broke down…

Bobbitt, a North Carolina native, “had no access to money or food” while living in the camper, Promislo said. “He didn’t have any ability to take care of himself there.”

Promislo said the camper was bought with the money from GoFundMe. McClure and D’Amico also bought Bobbitt a truck, which they drove. The truck ended up breaking down.

Meanwhile, McClure and D’Amico appear to have been living the high life.  In recent months they have taken numerous expensive vacations, purchased a brand new BMW, and even spent some of the money raised for Bobbitt on a gambling spree…

But Bobbitt said he saw troubling signs for the money that thousands had donated to him. McClure is a receptionist for the New Jersey Department of Transportation and D’Amico is a carpenter, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But suddenly she had a new BMW, and the couple was taking vacations to Florida and California and Las Vegas, Bobbitt told the Inquirer. He learned of a helicopter ride they took over the Grand Canyon.

And he told the Inquirer that D’Amico has gambled away some of the GoFundMe money. (D’Amico told the newspaper he had used $500 from the account to gamble on a night when he forgot his SugarHouse Casino card, but had “quickly repaid” the money with his winnings.)

The trailer that McClure and D’Amico bought for Bobbitt is now gone, and his lawyer says that Bobbitt is currently addicted to drugs and is once again living on the streets of Philadelphia…

But now Bobbitt says he’s homeless, hungry and addicted to drugs again. His lawyers say the couple has given him a fraction of the money, CNN reports. And Bobbitt fears he won’t benefit from the rest, according to an interview published by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Bobbitt’s lawyer estimated there should be $300,000 left from the campaign, according to CNN. Chris Fallon said he and another lawyer are working to secure a guardian other than McClure and D’Amico for the balance of the money.

Of course there are always two sides to every story, and McClure and D’Amico insist that they have done nothing wrong.

In fact, they claim that they are holding back money from McClure for his own good…

McClure and D’Amico tell a different story, saying they are withholding a portion of the money for Bobbitt’s own good. They say his problems with drugs have contributed to him wasting some of the money from the campaign that he was given.

“Giving him all that money, it’s never going to happen. I’ll burn it in front of him,” D’Amico told the paper. He indicated the money could be as dangerous to Bobbitt as “a loaded gun.”

And if what they are claiming is true, they may have a point.

According to D’Amico, Bobbitt spent a massive amount of money on drugs last holiday season…

In the NBC interview, D’Amico said Bobbitt spent $25,000 on drugs in 13 days during the holiday season. “Every dollar he ever touched was used for drugs.”

If Bobbitt is going to spend all of his money on drugs, then he definitely needs someone to watch over it for him.

But who is telling the truth?

In the end, Bobbitt is in the exact same place in life as he was before all of this money started rolling in.

He is sleeping under a Philadelphia bridge and spending his days begging for money…

At night, he sleeps under a bridge at the intersection of Callowhill and Second Streets, near an I-95 on-ramp. He spends his days doing exactly what he was doing when McClure’s car stopped in front of him: panhandling.

No matter how much money you throw at a problem, nothing is going to be permanently solved unless someone actually wants to change.

That is true for individuals, and it is also true for the nation as a whole.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

National Health Crisis! U.S. Rates of Syphilis, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Soar To The Highest Levels Ever

America is facing a health nightmare unlike anything that we have ever experienced before.  According to the CDC, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have all skyrocketed to the highest levels on record, and top health professionals are urging coordinated national action to battle this unprecedented crisis.  Even before these latest numbers, the United States had “the highest STD rates in the industrialized world”, and it is becoming exceedingly clear that things are rapidly getting worse.  So exactly what does this say about us as a society?  Sexually-transmitted diseases are spreading like wildfire, and those on the front lines are not optimistic that we will be able to turn this health crisis around any time soon.

On Tuesday, the CDC held a press conference during which they released the latest depressing numbers…

Rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have climbed for the fourth consecutive year in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Washington.

Last year, nearly 2.3 million US cases of these sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed, according to preliminary data.

That’s the highest number ever reported nationwide, breaking the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000 cases, according to the CDC.

If these diseases were just growing gradually, that would be bad enough, but according to the CDC we have truly seen “explosive” growth over the past four years…

Chlamydia, a bacterial infection, remained the most common sexually transmitted disease, with more than 1.7 million reported cases. But health officials are concerned that gonorrhea cases increased a startling 67 percent between 2013 and 2017, and syphilis climbed even faster — 76 percent over those four years.

What we have been doing to fight this epidemic is clearly not working.

And according to Dr. Jonathan Mermin, we are rapidly approaching a “breaking point”…

“We are sliding backward,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said in a statement. “It is evident the systems that identify, treat, and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to near-breaking point.“

During her remarks to the press, Dr. Gail Bolan sounded even more ominous…

“We have seen steep and sustained increases over the last five years,” said Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC. “Usually there are ebbs and flows, but this sustained increase is very concerning. We haven’t seen anything like this for two decades.”

Because syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are not fatal, sometimes people don’t take them seriously.

But the truth is that they can have absolutely devastating health effects…

Chlamydia and gonorrhea, if untreated, can leave a woman infertile. Syphilis can spread from mother to fetus, and cause the baby to have birth defects or to be stillborn.

Harvey noted that a thousand babies a year are diagnosed with congenital syphilis, despite mandatory syphilis testing when a woman is first found to be pregnant (the disease can spread to women during pregnancy).

And remember, syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are just three sexually-transmitted diseases.  There are many, many others, and when you add the statistics from all of them together the numbers are absolutely staggering.

In fact, according to the New York Times approximately 110 million Americans have a sexually-transmitted disease right now.

Let that sink in.

110 million Americans.

That is more than one out of every three Americans.  And when you narrow it down to young Americans in their sexual prime, that number is much closer to one out of two.

In the wake of the CDC announcement on Tuesday, the mainstream media is blaming the usual suspects…

Experts say many factors have contributed to the rapid rise, though the biggest one may be less frequent condom use. It’s less clear whether dating apps, like Tinder, have contributed in some way to the spread of STDs, though some researchers think they have.

And much is also being made of the fact that there have been cutbacks in funding for agencies that fight sexually-transmitted diseases…

Another factor driving the skyrocketing numbers of STD cases may be a decline in funding for state and local agencies working on prevention, said Michael Fraser, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in many areas primarily due to the eroding public health infrastructure,” he said. “The lack of funding at the state and local level to really invest in prevention work is not just about medications, it’s about disease investigators who meet with the individual who is infected and talk about their behavior and do contact tracing to try to prevent the future spread.”

One of the biggest concerns that health professionals currently have is that some of these sexually-transmitted diseases are becoming highly resistant to antibiotics.

As these new strains continue to develop, we will have no way of fighting them, and that is why some health professionals are warning about the potential for a “mega-outbreak” that would spiral totally out of control.

One candidate for that “mega-outbreak” is a strain of gonorrhea that is already being dubbed “super-gonorrhea”…

Gonorrhea – or rather ‘super-gonorrhea’ – is a top contender to be that outbreak.

Some strains of the bacteria are already untreatable with the standard antibiotic, oral azithromycin.

In 2013, those resistant strains accounted for just one percent of samples tested by the CDC.

In 2017, more than four percent of tested gonorrhea samples were resistant.

It has become very clear that our society is being overwhelmed by the consequences of our own reckless behavior.

If we keep doing the same things, we will keep getting the same results, but unfortunately it is not likely that people will be changing their behavior any time soon.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Boy Punished For Calling Teacher “Ma’am” And A Mother Was Investigated For Letting Her 8-Year-Old Walk The Dog

Is America going completely and utterly insane?  Every day we get even more evidence that this country is going downhill really fast.  I am about to share with you some stories that deeply upset me, but it isn’t because anyone died.  Rather, these stories demonstrate that the America that so many of us once loved is dying.  Liberty and freedom are being eroded with each passing day, and we are rapidly becoming a European-style socialist state in which control freaks micromanage even the smallest details of our lives.  Even our speech is being heavily micromanaged, and anyone that gets out of line is likely to be cracked down upon really hard.  At this point, things have already gotten so bad that it is getting really difficult to determine what is safe to say and what isn’t safe to say.  For example, a 10-year-old boy in North Carolina just made national news because he was punished for calling his teacher “ma’am”…

A 10-year-old boy in North Carolina was punished last week for referring to his female teacher as “ma’am.” The incident left his parents both concerned and confused, they told WTVD-TV.

Teretha Wilson noticed her son, Tamarion, seemed upset after leaving the bus Aug. 21 from his school in the town of Tarboro, she told the station. “I asked him what happened. He said he got in trouble for saying ‘yes ma’am’,” Wilson told WTVD’s Michael Perchick.

Are you kidding me?

If you can get kids to use “sir” and “ma’am” in this day and age it is actually a great accomplishment.  But apparently “ma’am” was not this particular teacher’s “preferred title”, and she insisted that little Tamarion quit using it.

And to make her point, she forced Tamarion to write out the world “ma’am” dozens of times on a piece of paper…

Tamarion showed her a piece of paper with the word “ma’am” written dozens of times by hand, four times on every line, Wilson said. The boy said his teacher made him write it because he continued to call her “ma’am” after she asked him not to, the mother told WTVD.

This is just another indication of how pathetic our public schools have become.  In recent years we have witnessed a homeschooling boom all over the nation as parents have pulled their kids out of the public school system in record numbers…

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that 1.69 million kids between the ages of 5 and 17 were homeschooled, based on spring 2016 numbers. And that data comes just from the 15 states that track homeschooling, as well as Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix).

As strange as that first story was, this next one is even stranger.

USA Today is reporting that a mother in Illinois was “investigated” for allowing her 8-year-old daughter to walk the dog around the block…

A mother faced a visit from police and an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigation after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to walk the family’s dog around the block alone on Aug. 2.

Stop the presses and call Robert Mueller!

An 8-year-old girl was allowed to walk the family dog around the block?

What is next?  Are we going to allow kids to bicycle down the street and run outside unsupervised when the ice cream truck comes?

Of course I am being sarcastic.  The truth is that the authorities in Illinois should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.  Literally dozens of people are being shot in the city of Chicago each week, and yet somehow they have time and resources to spend on something like this?

And it probably won’t surprise anyone that this all started with a phone call from a nosy neighbor…

The incident happened as Widen’s daughter walked the family dog, Marshmallow, around the block. A stranger saw the girl walking the dog alone and called police, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Widen told the publication that she can see most of the block from her home’s windows. Walking the Maltese dog is the only time her daughter is unsupervised, she said.

I’m not that old, but when I was 8 years old my mother allowed me and my younger brother to freely wander around pretty much anywhere we wanted.

And we even lived in a foreign country at the time.

Yes, I know that times have changed, and this is something that I wrote about yesterday.  But is it really going to be necessary for us to lock our kids up at home all day?

I really detest what is happening to this country, and it is even infecting many of our kids.

For example, just the other day a little girl accused a man of urinating on her and calling her a racial slur.  That man’s life would have been ruined, but fortunately the little girl ultimately admitted that she had made it all up…

An outrageous set of accusations claimed a man committed a disgusting act against a child while uttering a racial slur.

But after two days, we find out that the children involved were making it all up.

It started Wednesday when a woman living on Grand Rapids’ Northwest side said that a 5-year-old girl soaked with urine came running to her house. The story that allegedly came from the girl and her friends was that a man urinated on her in an alley in the 1000 block of Leonard Street NW and then used a racial slur against her.

Why can’t people just behave normally?

Sadly, we don’t even know what “normal” is anymore.  We live in “Bizarro America” where up is down, right is wrong and everyone just pretty much does whatever is correct in their own eyes.

We like to think that we are a “light” and an “example” for the rest of the world, but we aren’t.

Instead, the rest of the world is laughing at us, and we desperately need to get our act together.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Society Is Unraveling: A Young Boy Will Have No Father For The Rest Of His Life Because A Psycho Started Shooting At A Madden Tournament

The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is disappearing at a staggering pace.  On Sunday, the young men that gathered to participate in the Madden Championship Series tournament in Jacksonville probably never imagined that they would be in any sort of danger, but then gunfire erupted around 1 PM.  Approximately 20 rounds were fired before the shooter killed himself, and it is being reported that 11 gamers were injured and 2 were killed.  One of the victims that was killed was Taylor ‘SpotMePlzzz’ Robertson.  He was a good man with a wife and a very small son, and now his son won’t have a father for the rest of his life.  There have been many other mass shootings in recent years, but this one was just so senseless.  Personally, I have just been really shaken up all day.  Why would anyone ever want to kill somebody over a video game?

According to authorities, it has been confirmed that the shooter was 24-year-old David Katz…

The shooting took place at a video game tournament for Madden NFL 19 at The Jacksonville Landing, a popular entertainment complex in the Florida city. The event was being held inside the complex at the GLHF Game Bar in Chicago Pizza. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department confirmed that suspect identified as David Katz was dead at the scene, and they initially searched whether there were any other shooters before reporting that the suspect had acted alone. He reportedly took his own life.

Katz had traveled from Baltimore to Jacksonville to participate in the tournament, and he obviously planned this far ahead of time because he had his gun with him.  And once he lost on Sunday, Katz apparently snapped and decided that it was time to start shooting.

A witness named Ryen Aleman that was using the bathroom when the shooting began said that he heard at least 20 shots…

“As I was going in the restroom, I stayed in there, and I just heard — there was just so many gunshots, at least 20 of them at the most”

Another witness caught a glimpse of the shooter and said that Katz was in “rampage mode”…

Braheem Johnson of Jacksonville was working at the pizzeria at the time of the shooting. He caught a glimpse of the shooter, whom he described as a young male of average build, firing into the crowd with a large-caliber handgun sporting a laser sight attachment.

“I just heard shots and I looked at the window and I see him,” Johnson said. “Dude came in there, basically like, to kill, basically. He was just in his rampage mode.”

Katz appears to have had a troubled background.  He was a loner, and according to the Daily Mail his parents are divorced…

As a child, Katz had ‘significant health problems’, according to court records in his parents’ divorce.

At the time of the 2014 court filing, the shooter’s father worked for NASA, and his mother, who has a PhD in toxicology, worked for the US Food and Drug Administration.

It is not clear why Katz stopped shooting when he did.  Perhaps he was almost out of ammunition.  It could have been much worse, but without a doubt this is a tragedy that the gaming world will be dealing with for a very long time.  Obviously the future of all esports events is now up in the air, and the Madden community has lost two of it’s brightest lights…

According to friends and family, the two men that Katz killed in the tournament were Taylor ‘SpotMePlzzz’ Robertson, 27, of Ballard, West Virginia and Eli ‘Trueboy’ Clayton, 22, of Woodland Hills, California.

Robertson was married and father to a young son, and had won 72 percent of his 18 prior matches in Madden NFL tournaments, according to EA Sports. Clayton was a rising star in the Madden community.

Taylor Robertson played Madden professionally because he wanted to make a better life for his wife and young son.  He lived in an economically depressed area of the country, and so gaming was a way for him to rise above his circumstances.  And he was really, really good.  But now he is gone, and his wife and child are going to need our support and our prayers…

Robertson was born on November 26, 1990 and is from Ballard, West Virginia, according to his profile. His Twitter profile mentions that he is married and is a father. He often proudly posted pictures of his son on Twitter.

People who know Robertson said that he competed in the games because he wanted to support his family.

Now friends and fans are asking for people to keep Robertson’s family in their prayers.

There had been previous complaints about a lack of security at gaming tournaments, and it turns out that a day earlier there had been an unrelated argument at the Madden event which almost became violent…

Prior to Sunday’s mass shooting in Jacksonville, a number of professional gamers had complained about a lack of security at events, which were often crowded and chaotic. Just one day before the mass shooting, video showed an argument at the Madden event that nearly turned violent, with loud shouts and arguing.

In the future, there will need to be a much greater level of security at all tournaments of this nature.  But of course the same thing could be said about our schools, churches, shopping malls and major sporting events.  Our world has changed, and society is becoming more unstable with each passing day.

For now, we will mourn.  Eric “Problem” Wright is generally considered to be the greatest Madden player of all time, and he beautifully expressed what so many of us are feeling right now…

“Crying and in so much pain. … ” wrote Eric “Problem” Wright, a popular Madden player and Twitch streamer, on Twitter referencing two of the players who were killed. “All over a videogame. Two of our brothers are gone man and its so disturbing. One of the most tragic days ive experienced. This community is like family. Broken.”

We have seen that mass shootings can happen literally anywhere.  We have raised a valueless generation that has no moral foundation, and we have pumped them full of all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs that are messing with their heads.  From now on we are going to need suffocating levels of security at all public events, and many people will decide to just stay home and not participate in public gatherings at all.

Our society is literally coming apart at the seams, and today is truly a very, very sad day for America.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Medicare For All? Shock Poll Discovers That 70 Percent Of Americans Want Single-Payer Healthcare To Happen

Should the U.S. government provide medical care for everybody?  A shocking new poll that was just released found that 70 percent of all Americans actually want this to happen.  Of course if they also asked people if they wanted their taxes to double in order to pay for such a system, the percentage of favorable responses would have probably been a lot lower.  But still, this poll result shows that Americans are willing to embrace socialism to a degree that would have been absolutely unthinkable a decade or two ago.  Of course “Medicare for all” is not going to happen as long as Donald Trump resides in the White House, but if future polls keep returning similar results it is only a matter of time before a Democratic administration will implement such a policy.  And as we have seen with Obamacare, once a new social program is in place it can be nearly impossible to get rid of it.

We all knew that a high percentage of Democrats were in favor of “Medicare for all”, but what really shocked me was that this poll found that 52 percent of Republicans are now in favor of it….

A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports “Medicare for all,” also known as a single-payer health-care system.

The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans.

Wow.

At one time I was pretty certain what a “Republican” was, but things have changed so dramatically that I am not really sure anymore.

Of course nobody likes paying the sky high health insurance premiums that have been forced on us thanks to Obamacare, and so I definitely understand the hunger for change.

But fully socialized medicine would greatly accelerate our trip down the road toward national bankruptcy.  According to one recent study, a “Medicare for all” system would result in a rise in federal spending of more than 30 trillion dollars over a 10 year period…

Medicare for all has been in the headlines after a study by the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found it would lead to a $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending over a 10-year period.

The study’s author, Charles Blahous, wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that even doubling taxes would not cover the bill for a single-payer health-care system.

I don’t know about you, but I sure do not want my taxes doubled so that the left can implement a government-controlled healthcare system.

But what we have today is certainly not working.  That is why many of us are deeply, deeply frustrated with the Republicans in Congress.  They had a golden opportunity to repeal Obamacare during this two-year period that they have been in control, and they have completely fumbled the ball.  It is a political failure of the highest order, and millions upon millions of American families are deeply suffering as a result.

Just recently, Bloomberg profiled one of those families…

When their son Sky was born four years ago, Lindsie and Chris Bergevin were hit with a big surprise: $7,000 in bills for the birth that their health plan didn’t cover. Sky was two when the couple jettisoned their medical insurance, which helped them eventually pay off the debt.

Now that they’re ready to have a second child, they’re not going back to their old coverage, with its premiums of more than $350 a month. Instead, they’ve patched together an alternative through a religious group and a primary-care doctor whom they can visit anytime for a monthly fee.

The health insurance system that we have today is a complete and utter failure.  Families are paying ridiculously high premiums for deeply flawed policies with extremely high deductibles, and a lot of people are saying enough is enough.

For example, it is being estimated that more than one million Americans have now joined “health sharing ministries”…

The number of people joining so-called health-care sharing ministries—religion-based cost-sharing plans—rose 74 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service data. An alliance for the groups said that more than 1 million people now participate in such programs. Similarly, primary-care clinics like the one Julie Gunther started in 2014 have grown to almost 900 from just a handful in the early 2000s, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition, a trade group for the clinics.

There are free market solutions out there that actually work.  In addition to health sharing ministries, direct primary care and association buying groups are other free market models that have shown that they have tremendous potential.

Unfortunately, that is not where society is trending.

Even though Republicans are in control of Washington for the moment, the federal government just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Earlier today, I was astounded to learn that 52 percent of all U.S. children live in a household that receives benefits from the U.S. government each month…

In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them — or 52.1 percent — resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

These included the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.

All throughout American history, social programs have steadily expanded, and until things completely collapse they will probably continue to expand.

In addition to wanting free government healthcare, it turns out that most Americans also want free college education…

The new Reuters poll also showed that a majority of Americans supports free college tuition. Forty-one percent of Republicans said they supported the policy, pollsters found, compared with 79 percent of Democrats.

“Free stuff” always sounds great until you figure out that someone has to pay for it.

And in our case, we have already stolen more than 21 trillion dollars from future generations to pay the bills.  How in the world are we going to be able to afford everything else that the socialists want to do?

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

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