Home · News · News Apr 2018 · Apr 17 2018
Tuesday April 17, 2018

It's Time to Admit That Half-Measures Can't Stop Climate Change
TheIntercept | Kate Aronoff | 04/17/18

... AMERICA MAY WELL be the only country in the world where climate deniers making claims similar to Müller enjoy access to the reins of power. Given its status as the world's largest economy and its second-largest polluter, that's not something to be taken lightly; former EPA administrators estimate that the damage wrought by agency head Scott Pruitt in his first year could take three decades to repair. A few dozen miles from the EIKE confab, though -- at a sprawling U.N. campus along the Rhine -- was a preview for the kinds of climate politics that will dominate the 21st century once Trump and Pruitt are out of office. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they're only marginally more in touch with scientific reality than our German revelers.

The relevant question isn't whether the Earth is heating up, but what we intend to do about it. That's a radically different conversation about climate change than the one that's been had in America to this point. Here, decades of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and the denialist think tanks they support have forced the debate to orbit around whether there's a problem at all, prying open the Overton window to accommodate conspiracy theorists and Nobel Prize winners alike. .... Read more

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

In his forthcoming book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.

The Michael Cohen Case: A Definitive Guide to Key Players
TheAtlantic | Natasha Bertrand | 04/17/18

The criminal investigation brings together the president of the United States, an adult-film performer, several lawyers, and a combative Fox News host.

The longtime attorney for President Donald Trump's real-estate empire, Michael Cohen, went to federal court on Monday in a bid to block federal prosecutors from reading documents and other materials that were seized from Cohen's home in a sweeping raid. The porn star Stormy Daniels, whom Cohen allegedly paid off to protect Trump, was there to watch. And the hearing was presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, who ordered Cohen to reveal the name of a client he'd tried to keep secret: the Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In a blow to Cohen and Trump, who asked to review the seized documents before the government had a chance to look at them, Wood ruled that Justice Department staffers divorced from federal investigators--known as a "taint team"--could be trusted to sift through the seized materials and determine what is and isn't protected by attorney-client privilege. ... Read more

Why Japan Is Begging Trump for Help
Politico | William Pesek | 04/17/18

Escaping overseas as scandals explode at home is perhaps the oldest of political strategies. Japan's Shinzo Abe hopes to make it seem new again as he arrives at Mar-a-Lago this week.

There are few better distractions -- or shinier objects -- than President Donald Trump. And Prime Minister Abe hopes getting a warm welcome at Trump's "Winter White House" will remind 127 million Japanese back home he's still got some diplomatic game.

Abe's approval ratings show a distinct lack of faith. A year-long cronyism controversy involving a sweetheart land deal drove his numbers below even Trump's. Nor are voters happy with Abe's enthusiastic embrace of a leader whose bombast is bringing Japan nothing but grief -- a scandal all its own. A month ago, Abe seemed a shoo-in for a third term, putting him on course to be Japan's longest-serving leader. Now, Tokyo is buzzing about who's next. ... Read more

Billion-Dollar Blessings
Propublica | Alec MacGillis | 04/17/18

How Jerry Falwell Jr. transformed Liberty University, one of the religious right's most powerful institutions, into a wildly lucrative online empire.

It was the start of the 2017 Fall Family Weekend at Liberty University, the school founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. 47 years ago in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the lines were especially long to get into the basketball arena for the mandatory thrice-weekly student convocation. There was a festive feel in the air -- as usual, a live band kicked things off with some Christian rock.

Penny Nance, a newly named Liberty trustee who is the head of the socially conservative group Concerned Women for America, took the stage to say that with Donald Trump in the White House, the country was much closer to overturning Roe v. Wade and putting "true limits on the abortionist's hand." Tim Lee, a Texas preacher and evangelist who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, gave a sermon bemoaning "homosexuals and pornographers," declaring that one problem with "pulpits today is that they've got a lot of girlie men in them." ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 17 [8:45]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 17 (FULL) | 59:02
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
  1. Headlines
  2. Trump's Legal Worries Grow as Judge Rejects Effort for President to Review Docs Seized in FBI Raid
  3. Deadliest U.S. Prison Riot in 25 Years Shines Light on Inhumane Conditions in Prisons Across Nation
  4. Hip-Hop Artist Kendrick Lamar Makes History by Winning Pulitzer Prize
Col. Larry Wilkerson on Syria -> War Powers is the "Surest Way to Tyranny" | TRNN | 04/17/18 | 13:48
*Who Really Wins In War With Syria | TYT | 04/16/18 | 7:55
*Crying Alex Jones Turns On Trump: He's Crapping All Over Us! | TYT | 04/17/18 | 7:37
*BREAKING: Trump Lawyer's Secret Client Is... Sean Hannity!?! | TYT | 04/17/18 | 9"32
Republican Mega-Donor Hates Trump So Much He's Now A Democrat | TYT | 04/16/18 | 5:12
The1a.org
The Problem Of Prisons | 1a.org | 04/17/18 | 1hr
On Sunday night, a fight broke out at the Lee Correctional Facility in South Carolina. Nearly eight hours later, the incident was over, and seven inmates were dead.
The fights have been described as "inmate-on-inmate." No guards or employees were hurt, but this prison has a history. "Two officers were stabbed there in a 2015 fight. An inmate was killed during a fight in July 2017, another was stabbed to death in November, and a third was killed in February," The New York Times reports.
Earlier this month, a video showed guards taking 30 minutes to respond to an attack on an inmate in a private prison in Mississippi. And a Vice report found that in private facilities, attacks on guards and inmates are much more frequent than in public prisons. Research has found that pay is lower is private prisons as well.
Public prisons like Lee in South Carolina aren't flush with cash, though. The Federal Bureau of Prisons saw a 14 percent drop in staff recently. As a result, the House Appropriations Committee "said the current inmate--to--correctional officer ratio is 8.3 to 1, up from 4.4 to 1 three years earlier," Vice reports.
All of this is in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, where drug arrests happen, on average, every 25 seconds and where the president has promised "law and order."
President Trump Attorney Michael Cohen's Secret 'Client #3' Is Sean Hannity | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC | 04/16/18 |19:18
Rep. Jim Himes: Can Congress Protect The Special Counsel? | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 04/17/18 | 8:27
John Heilemann: Fox News Now Has A Business Problem | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 04/17/18 | 6:29
Sean Hannity: Cohen has never represented me | CNN | 04/16/18 | 5:34
Stelter: Cohen-Hannity story shows how Trump's world works | CNN | 04/17/18 | 5:43
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Sean Hannity Forgot To Mention Something... | Stephen Colbert | 04/17/18 | 9:40
Comey Compared Donald Trump To A Mafia Boss | Stephen Colbert | 04/17/18 | 5:02
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Sean Hannity is Outed as Michael Cohen's Client & James Comey Drags Trump on 20/20 | Trevor Noah | 04/16/18 | 7:59
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Trump Draining the Swamp, Tax Day | Seth Meyers | 04/13/18 | 2:53
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Sean Hannity is Michael Cohen's Mystery Client | Jimmy Kimmel | 04/17/18 | 2:31

04.17.2018. 11:17



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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part aloud on why he’s still so close to former President Donald Trump: because we can use him for our goals. "President Trump has gotten people who wouldn't give me or Romney or anybody else the time of day. They believe he is on their side," the senator told the America First Agenda Summit crowd on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

The term "climate change" is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change (also known as global warming). Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes.

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AI - Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Deep Learning
AI - Artificial Intelligence

AIArtificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. AI research has been defined as the field of study of intelligent agents, which refers to any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals.

The term "artificial intelligence" had previously been used to describe machines that mimic and display "human" cognitive skills that are associated with the human mind, such as "learning" and "problem-solving". This definition has since been rejected by major AI researchers who now describe AI in terms of rationality and acting rationally, which does not limit how intelligence can be articulated.
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Quantum mechanics | AI - Artificial Intelligence
Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.  It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale.
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Economy, Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests.

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives. Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis,.

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Jay explore Ellsberg's latest book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. In the introduction to the book, Ellsberg writes: "No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral or insane. The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted over a half a century is a chronicle of human madness".

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Nukes
Nukes

Nuclear weapons have come a long way and come in all types of different sizes. Some are relatively small while others are enormous, so big they boggle the mind at what they can be capable of, i.e. the Soviet 'Tsar Bomba' is/was 3,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

Ms. Foroohar says financialization delivers stagnant wages, inequality and economic crisis; the Financial Times columnist and author of "Makers and Takers" says the financial sector represents only 7 percent of the U.S. economy, but takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit while creating only 4 percent of all jobs.

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The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick | 2014 | 10 Episodes

Oliver Stone and American University historian Peter J. Kuznick began working on the project in 2008. Stone, Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham cowrote the script. It covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism." Stone is the director and narrator of all ten episodes.

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

Historian Peter Kuznick says Eisenhower called for decreased militarization, then Dulles reversed the policy; the Soviets tried to end the cold war after the death of Stalin; crazy schemes involving nuclear weapons and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba put the world of the eve of destruction - with host Paul Jay

The Untold History of the United States by Kuznick, Peter.mobi | Book | 6.99 MB

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China’s complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

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911
911

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists attacked the Unites States. They hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon (the U.S. military headquarters) in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Officials believe that the terrorists on that plane intended to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers on the plane fought the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their goal. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? VICE News' "Trump Talk" mashup series tries to answer that. And, we're happy to say, it was just nominated for two Webby Awards. Now you can watch all the nominated videos.

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

Jessica Leeds (1980s)
Kristin Anderson (1990s)
E. Jean Carroll (1995 or 1996)
Lisa Boyne (1996)
Cathy Heller (1997)
Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
Karena Virginia (1998)
Mindy McGillivray (2003)
Jennifer Murphy (2005)
Rachel Crooks (2005)
Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
Jessica Drake (2006)
Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
Cassandra Searles (2013)
Allegations of pageant dressing room visits(1997)
Mariah Billado,
Victoria Hughes,
and three other Miss Teen USA contestants
Bridget Sullivan (2000)
Tasha Dixon (2001)
Unnamed contestants (2001)
Samantha Holvey (2006)

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Trump's Speeches | Rallys |Interviews
Trump's Speeches | Rallys

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? Watch Trump at some of his rallys and see what you think.

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