Fat Al Gore Shuts Down Highways the Terrorists Couldn’t
Remember some years back when one of the big fears was that terrorists would take out one or several of the critical rail or road bridges that cross the Mississippi River?
While attacks against [famous] landmarks would cause massive traffic problems–and give terrorists a major psychological victory–some of the most lucrative bridge targets are located in the nation’s heartland, at rail crossings over the Mississippi River. Forty percent of the nation’s freight rides the rails, and much of it crosses the Mississippi at one point or another.
Since the mid-1800s, scores of rail bridges have been built across the river, but today, the majority of freight trains pass at seven major crossings: Little Falls, Minnesota; LaCrosse, Wisconsin; Clinton, Fort Madison, and Burlington, Iowa; Thebes, Illinois, and Memphis, Tennessee. Collectively, at least 680 million gross tons of freight cross these bridges each year.
Yet while we were worrying about the terrorists, Fat Al Gore struck at the single highway that carries 500 million tons of trade under those bridges every year. For the last 9 days, Fat Al Gore has been closing an 11-mile stretch of the Midwest’s most important highway, the Mississippi, holding up 97 vessels.
As the CNBC report calculates, here’s the trade that Fat Al Gore is holding up.
This really is the giant super highway of the American Midwest. $180 billion of goods up and down this river. 60% of US grain is shipped on this river. 22% of oil and gas. 20% of coal.
And this post describes more of the costs, including presenting problems for the drinking water
Maybe it’s time we started devoting some of the billions we spend on counterterrorism and start trying to do something about Fat Al Gore?
This global warming hoax is really a great hoax, much better than the crop circles. Fat Al Gore should be proud of himself.
during the Cheney maladministration, it was the natural order of things that ultimately exposed Bush and his felonious administration in by his true political Nemesis: Hurricane Katrina.
following the aftermath of the devastating levee smashing storm, the world saw with full clarity how depraved the Bush administration was in their criminally negligent handling of the situation.
in the aftermath, no mistake was made by the global community: Everyone the world over knew that Bush was a criminal (& this following the growing realization–by those not paying close enough attention at the time–that the Bush administration’s conduct leading up to the Iraq war was patently illegal).
now, in an eerily similar manner, the Stealth Obomber administration is thumbing its collective noses at the natural order of things and ignoring the consensus opinion of thousands of professional scientists that, we humans are indeed changing the world in ways that are becoming increasingly clear are detrimental to the many of the higher species that flourished during the relatively mild Holocene (c. 10,000 BC to about 1980).
it is becoming more and more difficult to argue that the present age is experiencing similar changes in climate (cf. Hansen et al., 2012: Perception of Climate Change PNAS).
in an all too familiar pattern of institutionally proscibed and sustained ignorance, the Obombers are heading down that same hideously dark ppath of learned ignorance.
i wonder how the natural order of things will put the administration down like the foul dog that it is.
Little Falls Minnesota!!
I’ve been there! Where has 4D been lately?
@bmaz: Good question.
Yeah. And all those billions in research grants fueling the income gap…
Hey x174, if you want to see just how mother nature is going to destroy foul corporate-puppet dog and hostis humani generis Barack Obama, check out the make and use coefficients in the BEA’s Benchmark Input-Output Accounts for industry code 483000, per http://www.bea.gov/industry/io_benchmark.htm . If I remember right, housing is extra-dependent on inland shipping, bulk commodities too. Nice economy you got there. Shame if anything happened to it this fall.
If Grover Norquist wasn’t using all that water to fill the bathtub in which to drown the government, we’d have plenty left in the Mississippi.
@Peterr: Folks, Peterr will be here all week for yer comedic pleasure….
Enjoy the veal!!!
@Peterr: I propose that Fat Al Gore should take a cue from Archimedes. If he can be convinced to bathe in the Mighty Mississippi for four hours a day, his body in the river should raise the water level enough to allow several vessels to pass during that time.
OT – Via the AP’s Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, who could’ve predicted? Heh!:
I don’t like this article, you don’t do a good job of implying how fat Fat Al Gore really is. I would suggest adding a few “momma” jokes to round out the flavor.
@zot23: He so fat, he could sit on the Internet he invented.