Home · News · News Dec 2014
Wednesday December 31, 2014
News Articles

House Republicans move to contain fallout from Scalise, Grimm controversies
WashingtonPost | Ed O'Keefe | 12/30/14

Republican leaders moved forcefully on Tuesday to control the damage from a pair of scandals that have suddenly disrupted the party as it prepares to take full control on Capitol Hill.

In back-to-back moves, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pushed out Rep. Michael G. Grimm (R-N.Y.), who pleaded guilty last week to federal tax-evasion charges, and backed Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who acknowledged that he once ­addressed a white-supremacist group before coming to Congress. ... Read more

The 10 Best Night Sky Photos From The Department Of The Interior's Instagram Account
HP | author | date

We already know the Department of the Interior's Instagram game is on point, but these gorgeous shots of the night sky are something else.

The agency manages more than 500 million acres of public lands across the country -- more than enough space to find a perfect starscape. It may be winter, but there's still plenty to explore during the season at one of America's 59 national parks. ... For Great Photos

Turning Money Into Millions of Miniature Billboards
Ben & Jerry: All I want for Xmas... Is a Pocket Stamp! [1:42]
HP | Ben Cohen | 12/30/14

Today we're witnessing the desecration of our Constitution in the United States. Supreme Court rulings such as Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC have allowed corporations and billionaires to spend their fortunes jockeying for power in our political system. The effect has been astoundingly harmful to our country's commitment to fair elections and democratic values. It has resulted in a government that is more responsive to the wealthy elite than to the many.

We the people need to fight back. The Stamp Stampede is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit grassroots organization dedicated to a form of monetary jiu jitsu: using money to get big money out of politics. There are now over 30,000 Stampeders who have purchased rubber stamps in order to revamp their bills with messages like "Not To Be Used For Buying Elections" and "Corporations Are Not People." Every bill is seen by approximately 875 people per year. Together we're making millions of impressions to create a mass visual demonstration of support for reasonable reforms to take back our government. ... Read more
StampStampede.org website

The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room
Bloomberg | Liam Vaughan | 12/29/14

... An hour away by train, in London's financial district, the lake's owners ply their trade. Wharf Pool was purchased for about 250,000 pounds ($388,000) in 2012 by Richard Usher, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) trader at the center of a global investigation into corruption in the foreign-exchange market, and Andrew White, a currency trader at oil company BP Plc. (BP/)

With revenue of almost $400 billion last year and operations in about 80 countries, BP trades large quantities of currency each day. Traders at the company regularly received valuable information from counterparts at some of the world's biggest banks -- including tips about forthcoming trades, details of confidential client business and discussions of stop-losses, the trigger points for a flurry of buying or selling -- according to four traders with direct knowledge of the practice. ...

... "The Cartel" that was set up by Usher and included dealers at JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. (C), Barclays Plc and UBS Group AG. (UBSN). ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 31 [12:13]
*DN | Pope Francis Calls for Action on Climate Change & Capitalism as Planet "Exploited by Human Greed" (12/31/14) [13:21]
DN | "The Great Reformer": Pope Francis Biographer on How Pontiff Became Star Diplomat & Voice for Change (12/31/14) [16:31]
*DN | At End of Warmest Year on Record, "Alternative Nobel" Winner Bill McKibben Urges Action on Climate (12/31/14) [12:44]
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: Israel, Iran, and ISIS - U.S. Policy Towards Syria is Wrong says Wilkerson (12/31/14) [10:52]
*TRNN | Environmental journalist Dahr Jamail recaps: The Top 3 Climate Change Stories of 2014 (12/31/14) [6:59]
TRNN | Mr. Finkelstein on self-deception and the collapse of his identity, Part 3 (12/31/14) [20:30]
TYT | Comcast Gives Lawmakers Something Customers NEVER Get (12/31/14) [4:33]
TYT | Transgender Teenage Takes Her Own Life Because of Bullying (12/31/14) [8:17]
Robert Reich
TYT | Robert Reich's 2014 year in review (12/31/14) [2:40]
Filler
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12.31.2014. 15:52

Tuesday December 30, 2014
News Articles

The $9 Trillion US Dollar Carry Trade Blew Up Oil, Russia, and Brazil... What's Next?
ZeroHedge | author | 12/29/14

As we have emphasized repeatedly, Oil's crash is being misinterpreted by many investors. When it comes to Oil, OPEC matters, as does Oil Shale, production cuts, geopolitical risk, etc. However, the reality is that all of these are minor issues against the MAIN STORY: the $9 TRILLION US Dollar carry trade.

Drilling for Oil, producing Oil, transporting Oil... all of these are extremely expensive processes. Which means... unless you have hundreds of millions (if not billions) of Dollars in cash lying around... you're going to have to borrow money.

Borrowing US Dollars is the equivalent of shorting the US DOLLAR. If the US Dollar rallies, then your debt becomes more and more expensive to finance on a relative basis. There is a lot of talk of the "Death of the Petrodollar," but for now, Oil is priced in US Dollars. In this scheme, a US Dollar rally is Oil negative.

Oil's collapse is predicated by one major event: the explosion of the US Dollar carry trade. Worldwide, there is over $9 TRILLION in borrowed US Dollars that has been ploughed into risk assets. Energy projects, particularly Oil Shale in the US, are one of the prime spots for this. But it is not the only one. Economies that are closely aligned with commodities (all of which are priced in US Dollars) are getting demolished too.

Just about everything will be hit as well. Most of the "recovery" of the last five years has been fueled by cheap borrowed Dollars. Now that the US Dollar has broken out of a multi-year range, you're going to see more and more "risk assets" (read: projects or investments fueled by borrowed Dollars) blow up. Oil is just the beginning, not a standalone story. ...

And that's assuming NO increased leverage from derivative usage.
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World's 400 Wealthiest Add $92 Billion In 2014 As Alibaba Surges
Bloomberg | Peter Newcomb | date

The richest people on Earth got richer in 2014, adding $92 billion to their collective fortune in the face of falling energy prices and geopolitical turmoil incited by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The net worth of the world's 400 wealthiest billionaires on Dec. 29 stood at $4.1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the planet's richest.

The biggest gainer was Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), China's largest e-commerce company. Ma, a former English teacher who started the Hangzhou-based company in his apartment in 1999, added $25.1 billion to his fortune, riding a 56 percent surge in the company's shares since its September initial public offering. Ma, 50, with a $28.7 billion fortune, briefly passed Li Ka-shing as Asia's richest person. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 30 [10:17]
*DN | As American Captives Die While Others Walk Free, Is US Hostage Policy Costing Citizens' Lives? (12/30/14) [11:11], Part 2 [16:01]
*DN | Did the White House Abandon a U.S. Hostage in Syria? Inside the Secret Bid to Free Peter Kassig (12/30/14) [11:06]
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: What are U.S. Objectives in Weakening Russia's Economy? (12/30/14) [7:29]
Larry Wilkerson and Paul Jay discuss the "tactical strength and strategic weakness" of Putin in Ukraine and whether the West is trying to turn Russia into another "Greece".
*TRNN | Mr. Finkelstein talks about his Holocaust survivor parents and their influence in the formation of his early identity (12/30/14) [19:31]
BBC Newsnight
BBC | Noam Chomsky: still going strong at 85 - Newsnight (11/26/14) [8:16]
Note: I don't know why BBC cut this interview short, there was obviously a lot more to the topic. But Professor Noam Chomsky is very prolific and all you have to do is search YouTube.com for all his many speeches.
TYT | The Interview Breaks Records With Unconventional Release (12/29/14) [3:22]
TYT | CNN Misses The Point Completely On Missing Plane Coverage (12/29/14) [2:33]
TYT | Neil deGrasse Tyson Angers Christians with Christmas Tweets (12/30/14) [5:49]
Ring of Fire
RingOfFire | The Geopolitical Dangers of Falling Oil Prices (12/29/14) [3:57]
I have mixed feelings on this interview. I think Mike Papantonio was trying to make a point that we shouldn't try to screw other nations, and to my dismay I think Ed cut him off.
RingOfFire | What Can You Get When You Buy A Politician? (12/29/14) [8:14]
Ring of Fire (12/21/14) [56:30]
  1. 00:45 - "Koch Brothers More Powerful Than You Think." Howard Nations will tell us about the Koch brothers' new plan to increase their influence over American politics. #KochProblem
  2. 10:31 - "What Can You Get When You Buy A Politician?" David TeSelle will explain the return on investment that corporations receive when they buy politicians. #BuyingCongress
  3. 19:07 - "The History of Corporate Fraud." Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy will discuss some of the biggest cases of corporate fraud against the government, and how whistleblowers help keep these corporations accountable.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.
Climate Change
Arctic Death Spiral and the Methane Time Bomb () [1:11:11]
Humor
The Big Bang Theory - Best Scenes of Amy Farrah Fowler
From Blossom to Big Bang Theory, the 38-year-old Bialik has been charming viewers for 25 years. But while she got absolutely zilch in terms of Emmys love for playing the beloved Blossom Russo, the Academy has warmed up to her portrayal of neurobiology nerd Amy Fowler on Bang
The Big Bang Theory - Best of Amy & Sheldon [58:53]

12.30.2014. 12:04

Monday December 29, 2014
News Articles

The Republican's Magical Mystery Tour (Starting Next Week)
HP | Robert Reich | 12/28/14

According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican Congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won't use "dynamic scoring" for his economic projections.

Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side "trickle-down" economics.

It's based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what's lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.

Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn't look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it "reality-based scoring," but it's actually magical scoring -- which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.
Read more

What a Trillion Dollars Looks Like | National Debt
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]

Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For
ZeroHedge | author | 12/12/14

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. ... Read more

Click picture to zoom in - Derivatives and Bank Exposures (2014)
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How US Banks Are Lying About Their European Exposure; Or How Bilateral Netting Ends With A Bang, Not A Whimper
ZeroHedge | author | old, 11/01/11

... Which explains why the banks are if not lying, then taking advantage of a gullible public to misrepresent their exposure by as much as a factor of ten!

Five banks -- JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Citigroup Inc. (C) -- write 97 percent of all credit-default swaps in the U.S., according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The five firms had total net exposure of $45 billion to the debt of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, according to disclosures the companies made at the end of the third quarter. Spokesmen for the five banks declined to comment for this story. ...

... With banks on both sides of the Atlantic using derivatives to hedge, potential losses aren’t being reduced, said Frederick Cannon, director of research at New York-based investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.:

“Risk isn’t going to evaporate through these trades,” Cannon said. “The big problem with all these gross exposures is counterparty risk. When the CDS is triggered due to default, will those counterparties be standing? If everybody is buying from each other, who’s ultimately going to pay for the losses?” ... Read more

Click picture to zoom in - Derivatives and Bank Exposures (2011)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December 29 [10:25]
*DN | The Afghan War is Not Over: U.S. Ends 13-Year Combat Mission, But 10,000+ Troops Continue the Fight (12/29/14) [12:23]
*DN | The Worst Narco-State in History? After 13-Year War, Afghanistan’s Opium Trade Floods the Globe (12/29/14) [12:40]
Bill Moyers | American Indians Confront “Savage Anxieties” (12/26/14) [25:25]
Earlier this month, as part of the $585 billion defense bill for 2015, Congress passed a measure that would give lands sacred to American Indians in Arizona to a foreign company. The deal gives the Australian-English mining firm Rio Tinto 2,400 acres of the Tonto National Forest in exchange for several other parcels so it can mine a massive copper deposit. ... Read more
John Oliver
John Oliver | John Oliver: New Year's Eve (12/29/14) [3:44]
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson and Paul Jay discuss: US/Saudi Oil Play Is Economic Warfare (12/29/14) [10:17]
Lawrence Wilkerson says the target of low oil prices is Russia and Iran, throwing their economies into turmoil and opening their doors to sovereign raiders.
TRNN | U.S. Midterm Election Voter Turnout at Pre-Civil War Level (12/27/14) [14:15]
TYT | This Wealth Gap Chart Is Absolutely Insane (12/27/14) [7:29]
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TYT | Negative Tax Rates For The Biggest Companies That YOU Pay For (12/27/14) [6:54]
TYT | Does Military Intervention Lead To Corruption? The Most Corrupt Countries In The World (12/27/14) [2:08]
Thom Hartmann
Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann [1:29]
Thom Hartmann on "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It"
What Ben & Jerry Are Up To
Ben & Jerry: All I want for Xmas... Is a Pocket Stamp! [1:42]
StampStampede.org website
Handy Dandy Pocket Guide to Stamping.pdf
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Extra videos that I found interesting.

12.29.2014. 11:49

Wednesday December 24, 2014
News Articles

The Destruction Of The Middle Class Is Nearing The Final Stages
ZeroHedge | author | 12/24/14

The events of the past few months seem astounding when taken in all at once. The plan to destroy the U.S. dollar and the American middle class is moving at an ever increasing speed.

  1. At the recent G20 meeting the nations agreed that bank deposits would no longer be considered money.
  2. The spending bill just passed by congress makes the American taxpayer responsible for any derivatives loses that banks may suffer.
  3. And if you don't think there is any danger of a banking crisis in America you may want to keep in mind that the Treasury Dept. has recently ordered $200k worth of 72 hr emergency kits for dispersion to every major bank in America.
  4. New legislation now gives pension plans the ability to cut benefits to pensioners in the future making the future welfare of these people uncertain.
  5. The sanctions being placed on Russia are beginning to destabilize the world in many ways.
  6. Yada, yada, yada
Read more

Elizabeth Warren's real beef with Antonio Weiss: What her fight against him is actually about
Salon | David Dayen | 12/23/14

The nominee to a key Treasury position is part of a larger affront to America's middle class. Here's why

The Senate adjourned last week without dealing with the nomination of Antonio Weiss for Treasury Department undersecretary for domestic finance, the No. 3 position in the agency. Weiss' nomination has sparked a backlash among progressive Democrats, particularly Sen. Elizabeth Warren, largely because of his two-decade career making international merger deals at the boutique investment bank Lazard.

Warren believes that Weiss not does carry the necessary experience for the Treasury position, which oversees many elements of financial reform. She also believes that continually plucking top government officials out of Wall Street closes off alternative perspectives and ensures policies favorable to their interests ... Read more

That's rich! Why so many wealthy Americans think they're middle class
Salon | David Sarota | 12/21/14

By Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's reckoning, being a millionaire does not constitute living high above the ranks of ordinary people. Lew said last week that back when he was in the private sector enjoying six- and seven-figure pay packages, "My own compensation was never in the stratosphere."

Lew made that pronouncement as he sought to defend President Barack Obama's embattled Treasury undersecretary nominee Antonio Weiss from charges that as a financial executive, he is out of touch with the interests of regular people. Lew was seeking to cast his own lot with the ranks of ordinary Americans at a time of growing economic inequality. But in doing so, Lew shed light on a uniquely American phenomenon -- the tendency of extraordinarily rich people to cast themselves as everyday members of the middle class. ... Read more

PLEASE, no more Bushs, no more Clintons!! This is a Democracy, not a Dynasty. Lets choose someone that isn't beholden to Wall Street.

"The nuts hated him": How the Bush dynasty -- and its evolution -- explains America
Salon | Jeff Smith | 12/20/14/span>

Jeb Bush's announcement of a presidential campaign exploratory committee -- and the gauntlet immediately thrown down by movement conservatives -- might sound familiar to longtime political observers. But this is not merely because of its similarity to obstacles overcome by John McCain or Mitt Romney. It's because the reception was nearly identical to that his own father received 51 years ago when he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, the modern Republican Party's evolution can be traced along the branches of the Bush family tree, as the ambitions of Bush men compelled a perpetual repositioning to appeal to the party's activist base. ... Read more

Even More News
  1. Russia says NATO turning Ukraine into 'frontline of confrontation' (Reuters)
  2. Oil Drillers Under Pressure to Scrap Rigs to Cope With Downturn (BBG)
  3. Demonstrators Defy NYC Mayor's Call to Suspend Police Protests (BBG)
  4. U.S. to send more private contractors to Iraq (Reuters)
  5. ISIS Shoots Down Jet From U.S.-Led Coalition, Syrian Monitors Say (NYT)
  6. Russians Race to Secure Mortgages Before Costs Spiral (BBG)
  7. Abe Brings in Former Soldier Nakatani as Defense Minister (BBG)
  8. At Coke, Newest Flavor Is Austerity (WSJ)
  9. Fear and retribution in Xi's corruption purge (Reuters)
  10. UBS Raises Flag on China's $1 Trillion Overseas Debt Pile (BBG))
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 24 [7:45]
DN | Ferguson, NYC, Milwaukee: Protests Erupt After Officer Cleared in Killing of Unarmed Dontre Hamilton (12/24/14) [16:19]
DN | Will Guantánamo Ever Close? U.S. Frees More Prisoners, But Dozens Remain Behind Bars (12/24/14) [10:01]
DN | A Nightmare Taxi Ride: Oregon Veterinarian Jailed in East Timor After Sharing Car with Drug Peddler (12/24/14) [14:25]
TRNN | Larry Wilkerson and Paul Jay discuss whether empire abroad requires brutal methods and eroding rights at home (12/24/14) [14:08]
TRNN | Christmas, Charity, and the Revolutionary Jesus (12/24/14) [31:16]
Chris Hedges and Rev. David Bullock discuss the real meaning of Christmas with Paul Jay.
TRNN | Norman Finkelstein: Is Israel Unfairly Held to a Higher Standard? (12/24/14) [23:35]
Norman Finkelstein and Paul Jay discuss a full-page ad in the NYT that says Israel is condemned by liberals for human rights violations while it defends gay rights, and less is said about the persecution of gays by Iran, Hamas and ISIS.
TYT | How Does A Homeless Man Spend $100? The Answer May Surprise You (12/23/14) [5:03]
TYT | Darrell Issa Report on the IRS Reveals Surprising Results (12/23/14) [4:22]
TYT | Michael Grimm Convicted But Still In Congress (12/23/14) [6:40]
TYT | D.A. McCulloch Knowingly Put a Liar on the Stand (12/23/14) [11:33]
TYT | Obviously, "Jihad On Cops" To Be Blamed On 'PigSharpton' & deBlasio (12/23/14) [6:44]
TYT | "The Interview" WILL Be In Theaters After All On Christmas Day (12/23/14) [4:10]

12.24.2014. 11:32

Tuesday December 23, 2014
News Articles

Russia Moves to Stave Off Panic Among Depositors After Rescuing Bank
Bloomberg | Ksenia Galouchko | 12/23/14

Lawmakers rushed legislation through the lower house of parliament today allowing the Deposit Insurance Agency to buy stakes in banks before they face bankruptcy proceedings to keep the system stable. While the ruble strengthened for a third day as the government told state-run exporters to sell foreign currency, it's still down 30 percent in three months. Standard & Poor's said today it may cut Russia's credit rating to junk in part because of concern about the banking system.

"Urgent measures are needed for the stabilization of the banking system to avoid a panic among the population and a run on banks," Vitaly Isakov, a money manager at Otkritie Asset Management in Moscow, said by e-mail. "There are fears about certain banks' ability to survive in the current situation." ... Read more

"Greatest Fools" Or "Smartest Men In The Room"?
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/14

US Stocks are massively outperforming the rest of the world this year...

So why are expectations for GDP growth in the US now lower than the World...?

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Oprah Interviews Beth Holloway: On Where Are They Now?
magazine | author | date

The man suspected of killing Natalee in 2005, Joran van der Sloot, has never been charged with her murder, but he is currently in prison for the 2010 murder of another young woman. Exactly five years to the day that Natalee disappeared (May 30), van der Sloot killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Peru hotel room, under circumstances eerily similar to Natalee's case.

... "At that time that that was all happening, Joran had reached out [to me]," Beth says. "He was trying to extort money out of me, trying to sell me Natalee's remains, which... just shocks the conscious." Van der Sloot allegedly had offered to reveal the location of the teen's remains in exchange for $250,000. ...

... Despite serving a 28-year prison sentence, van der Sloot got married to a Peruvian woman in a prison ceremony in July and became a father when his wife gave birth less than three months later. ... Read more
Oprah | Beth Holloway: Where Are They Now? (12/21/14) [4:16]

Natural Gas Suggests $33 Oil
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/14

In the last couple of months, the sharp reversion in oil prices has certainly caught the world's attention. While the majority of economists and analysts continue to expect incorrectly that falling oil prices are a positive input to economic growth, the reality is that it is not. The negative impact to economic growth from the decline in oil prices are quite considerable when you consider that almost 40% of all the jobs created since 2009 have been in energy related industries. While the economists and analysts are hopeful for a sharp recovery in oil prices, the current decline in oil prices is nothing more than a return to historical normalcy. ... Read more

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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 23 [10:24]
*DN | Ex-Bush Official: U.S. Tortured Prisoners to Produce False Intel that Built Case for Iraq War (12/23/14) [9:29]
DN | Bush & Cheney Should Be Charged with War Crimes Says Col. Wilkerson, Former Aide to Colin Powell (12/23/14) [9:01]
DN | "The War to Start All Wars": Did U.S. Invasion of Panama 25 Years Ago Set Stage for Future Wars? (12/23/14) [6:38]
*DN | Weaponizing Health Workers: How Medical Professionals Were a Top Instrument in U.S. Torture Program (12/23/14) [19:55]
*TRNN | Lawrence Wilkerson: For Truth, Justice and the American Way, Part 1 (Replay) [10:15], Part 2 [8:26], Part 3 [10:14], Part 4 [9:53], Part 5 [17:32], Part 6 [9:50], Part 7 [10:43], Part 8 [8:46]
*TRNN | Lawrence Wilkerson: Who Makes US Foreign Policy?Part 1 [21:22], Part 2 [17:47], Part 3 [17:47]
There are idiots on both sides, North Korea, i.e. Kim Jong Un, and United States, i.e. Lindsey Graham. Are we going to allow them to drag us into another senseless conflict?? Lets always keep a vigilant eye on ignorant people and move on.
TYT | Right-wing Bangs War Drums After Sony Hacking (12/22/14) [6:28]
TYT | Sony Hackers Rickroll The FBI. North Korea Demands Investigation (12/22/14) [8:59]
TYT | Evil Billionaire Says He's 'A Social Liberal' (12/20/14) [6:31]
TYT | Hypocrisy In Media Coverage Of Police Killings (12/22/14) [5:16]
TYT | Disgusting Pastor Has "Discovered" A Cure For AIDs (12/22/14) [5:12]

12.23.2014. 13:22

Monday December 22, 2014
News Articles

Belarus In Full-Blown Hyperinflation Panic: Blocks News, Online Stores; Bans All FX Trading For 2 Years
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

"We have to do something with these Belarussian rubles," exclaims one Belarussian as she shops to turn worthless rubles (BYR) into physical assets. As AFP reports, The Belarussian currency was dragged down by the slide of the Russian ruble last week, leading authorities to impose draconian measures, forbid price increases even for imported goods, and warn people against panic. Now, however, in an effort to stem the flood of hyperinflating domestic prices, authorities have blocked online stores and news websites to stop the run on banks and shops as people scramble to secure their savings. One of the blocked news websites noted, it "looks like the authorities want to turn light panic over the fall of the Belarussian ruble into a real one," calling the blockages "December insanity." ... Read more

Bank Revenues Plummet 17% In October And November According To Citi
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

It appears that the Q4 earnings season "bloodbath" predicted by harbinger Jefferies is right on track. According to Citigroup, Q4 is shaping up to be nothing short of a disaster for bank earnings. To wit: "Primary revenues decreased 17% yoy over Oct-Nov, notably impacted by weaker lending trends, per Dealogic industry data. Issuance revenues also declined while advisory revenues increased slightly. Loans revenues fell 61% yoy over Oct-Nov with leveraged finance particularly lower, given weaker market conditions [Note: market hit all time highs in both October and Novemer?!]. ... Read more
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Grow Your Way Out Of Debt? Don't Make Us Laugh...!
ZeroHedge | author | 12/22/14

The private sector -- the part that pays the bills -- is only $12 trillion. Total debt -- government, corporate and personal -- in the US is now $58 trillion (misreported yesterday as $59 trillion… but what's a trillion dollars between friends?). That's nearly five times the real economy that supports it. Assuming an annual interest rate of 2%, even if you could contain debt increases to 3% of GDP a year, the productive part of the economy would have to grow at 5% just to stay even. If the average interest rate were to rise to that level again -- and sooner or later it will -- it would take $3 trillion to service America's debt -- or one-quarter of private sector output. That can't happen. The wings would fall off first. ... Read more
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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December 22 [11:48]
DN | Calls for Calm After NYPD Union Says Mayor, Protesters Have Blood on Their Hands for Cops' Murder (12/22/14) [12:01]
DN | "The Interview" Belittles North Korea, But is Film's Backstory & U.S. Policy the Real Farce? (12/22/14) [12:15]
TRNN | Bill Black: Obama administration quietly gave a $57 million award to a whistleblower regarding the Countrywide and Bank of America mortgage scanda (12/22/14) [5:01]
TRNN | Patrick Cockburn, the author of The Jihadis Return: CIA Gets Away with Torture Under the Rubric of the War on Terror (12/22/14) [10:11]
TRNN | Who Should Pay for the Costs of Climate Change? (12/22/14) [15:53]
Michael Moore
FAHRENHEIT 9/11 () [2:02:21]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Wall Street (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Secret Societies (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - 9/11 The Pentagon (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - BP Oil Spill (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - HAARP (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Prison State (older) [54:00]
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura - Area 51 (older) [54:00]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

12.22.2014. 10:52

Friday December 19, 2014
News Articles

Fed (Federal Reserve) Delays Volcker Rule, Giving Wall Street Another Holiday Gift
HP | Zach Carter | 12/18/14

Christmas came early for Wall Street this year. The Federal Reserve on Thursday granted banks an extra year to comply with a key provision of the Volcker Rule, a move that gives financial lobbyists more time to kill the new regulation before it goes into effect.

The Volcker Rule is a key element of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bans banks from engaging in proprietary trading -- speculative deals that are designed only to benefit the bank itself, rather than its clients. Thursday's move by the Fed gives banks an additional year to unwind investments in private equity firms, hedge funds and specialty securities projects. The central bank also said it plans to extend the deadline by another 12 months next year, which would give Wall Street a two-year reprieve through the 2016 presidential election. ... Read more

Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties -- Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Thought
AlterNet | Walter Dean Burnham | 12/17/14

The way many pundits tell it, the Democratic debacle in the 2014 midterm elections sounds like a perfect storm of bad breaks. The President was aloof. The party's message was weak and muddled, in some races focused almost entirely on gender issues. Meanwhile record or near-record breaking waves of political money (for off year elections) cascaded through the political system while voter turnout plunged to levels last seen in 1942.

The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order. Though Republicans jubilate now, the trend is probably as threatening to them as it is to the Democrats. The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests. ... Read more

Krugman says: "Putin's Russia is an extreme version of crony capitalism.

4 Signs the Arctic Is Getting Baked by Climate Change
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 12/17/14

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth.

If you're looking for the ground zero of climate change, head to the Arctic. Nowhere else on Earth is changing as quickly or as dramatically; air temperatures there are rising twice as fast as at lower latitudes. In the summer of 2012, Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level ever recorded, shrinking to less than half the area it occupied a few decades ago. Ice has rebounded somewhat in the two years since, but it is still on a downward trajectory of about 13 percent per decade and could disappear altogether in summer months by 2030. ... Read more

Paul Krugman Shows How Putin's Burst Economic Bubble Is the Essence of Crony Capitalism
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 12/19/14

Alas, "swaggering strongman" Putin is hitting a bit of a snag, writes Paul Krugman in his column today. "Mr. Putin never had the resources to back his swagger," Krugman says. "Russia has an economy roughly the same size as Brazil's. And, as we're now seeing, it's highly vulnerable to financial crisis -- a vulnerability that has a lot to do with the nature of the Putin regime."

The ruble started sliding in August when Putin sent troops to Ukraine and has started downright plunging in recent weeks, Krugman points out. "And all indications are that the Russian economy is heading for a nasty recession."

The global plunge in oil prices has not helped, but it does not explain the bottom dropping out of the ruble. So what's going on? ... Read more

Ring of Fire
*RingOfFire | Wall Street Thinks Elizabeth Warren Is The Devil (12/18/14) [1:49]
RingOfFire | Another Wall Street Appointee (12/18/14) [8:21]
RingOfFire | Wall Street's War On Pensions Plans (older) [8:27]
Thom Hartmann
*ThomHartmann | Politics, Energy and the Fragile World Economy... (12/18/14) [32:19]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 19 [10:38]
*DN | Should Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & CIA Officials Be Tried for Torture? War Crimes Case Filed in Germany (12/19/14) [12:14]
DN | New York Says No to Fracking: State Bans Drilling Following Grassroots Outcry over Public Health (12/19/14) [21:23]
DN | From Free Pre-K to Paid Sick Leave to Pay Raises, NYC Mayor de Blasio Fulfills Progressive Promises (12/19/14) [6:49]
*Bill Moyers | The New Robber Barons (12/19/14) [25:25]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Takes On North Korea Over Sony Hack (12/19/14) [3:55]
*TRNN | Ms. Tarachansky talks about her journey from growing up in a settlement to opposition to the Israeli occupation, Part 2 (12/19/14) [22:55]
*TRNN | Ms. Tarachansky says Israel is ripping itself apart and fascism is celebrating in the ruins, Part 3 (12/19/14) [25:26]
TRNN | Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner: Rights Groups File Torture Charges against Bush-Era Officials in German Court (12/19/14) [12:48]
TYT | Fox News Epic Fail In Attacking Obama Over Sony Hack (12/18/14) [3:06]
TYT | Putin Holds A Show-Stopping, Bear-Loving Press Conference (12/18/14) [9:05]
TYT | Hollywood Cancels Another Film After North Korea Threats (12/18/14) [6:25]
TYT | A True Hero Emerges From The Grief & Anger In Pakistan (12/18/14) [4:31]

12.19.2014. 11:28

Thursday December 18, 2014
News Articles
*StampStampede.org - http://StampStampede.org
The Stampede is tens of thousands of Americans legally stamping messages on our Nation's currency to #GetMoneyOut of Politics. As more and more stamped money spreads, so will the movement to amend the Constitution.
The Stampede is tens of thousands of Americans legally stamping messages on our Nation's currency to #GetMoneyOut of Politics. (current) [2:59]
How Does It Work
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
How Does It Work.
Yes, It's Legal!
Many people assume that it's illegal to stamp or write on paper currency, but that's not the case. It's illegal to destroy paper currency or deface it so much that it's no longer recognizable and has to be taken out of circulation. But that's definitely not what we're up to. You can read what Ben Cohen's lawyer had to say about it, download it here. If your intent is to make the money unusable, it's illegal; but we want our bills to be used over and over again! Also, it is illegal to put a commercial advertisement on money. But we are putting political messages on the bills, not commercial advertisements. Because we all want these bills to stay in circulation and we're stamping to send a message about an issue that's important to us, it's legal!
Legal Statement by Ben Cohen's Lawyer.pdf
Handy Dandy Guide to Stamping
Handy Dandy Guide to Stamping.pdf
OccupyGeorge.com - http://OccupyGeorge.com
How Does It Work
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
How Does It Work.
OccupyGeorge.com website
*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]
CNN Town Hall #Askacop Twitter Question
I have a math question: if 1 black man has zero guns, zero knives and two hands, how many bullets does it take to disarm him?

Jeb Bush's Reverse Midas Touch
ThinkProgress.org | Josh Israel | older,11/21/14

A "self-made man"

Eight years ago, Bush -- best known by the acronym "Jeb" -- departed from Florida's governor's mansion determined to boost his $1,288,000 net worth in the private sector. Since, he has made millions in corporate board fees, speaking gigs, and consulting payments -- but, much like his tenure before getting into public life, has done so with a series of companies that have found their way into legal or financial quagmires. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 18 [9:39]
DN | Does the Release of the Cuban Five Prove the U.S. Failed to Destroy Cuba After Decades of Trying? (12/18/14) [21:58], Part 2 [12:06]
DN | "Cut Loose the Shackles of the Past": U.S. and Cuba Announce a New Dawn in Diplomatic Relations (12/18/14) [10:51]
TRNN | Despite the Department of Justice's decision not to compel Risen to reveal his sources, NYT journalist Risen may be forced in the end to implicate sources. (12/18/14) [5:00]
*TRNN | US and Cuba Restores Diplomatic Relations with a Spy Swap (12/18/14) [9:45]
TRNN | expert Eric Toussain: The countries of South America need their alternative to the World Bank to step forward; if not, they will be back in crisis (12/18/14) [11:38]
TYT | Major Shift In US-Cuba Relations - Trade, Diplomacy To Flow (12/17/14) [9:06]
TYT | New Cuba Policy Provokes Opponents Into A Frenzy Of Nonsense (12/17/14) [6:43]
TYT | Sony Cancels Release Of "The Interview" After Hacking (12/17/14) [7:45]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire (12/14/14) [52:58]
Ring of Fire: Another Corrupt Bush Seeking White House? (12/16/14) [10:19]
Ring of Fire: The Worst Republican Traits In One Package (12/16/14) [3:08]
Thom Hartmann
*Thom Hartmann | James Risen - Did Saudi Arabia Finance 9/11 (10/24/14) [12:40]
Thom Hartmann | James Risen - How Billions Meant for Iraq Vanished Without a Trace (10/24/14) [11:20]
Thom Hartmann | James Risen - The Quiet Military Industrial Rich (10/24/14) [12:37]

12.18.2014. 10:11

Wednesday December 17, 2014
News Articles

Money-Hungry Lawmakers Undermine the Will of the People
HP | Ben Cohen | 12/16/14

Just when you thought the influence of big money in politics hit a fever pitch this year with our $4 billion midterm, our lawmakers snuck in a closing reminder that money reigns supreme in Washington.

Congress approved a $1.1 trillion end-of-year spending bill, known as "Cromnibus," full of handouts benefiting the super-rich. It was a glaring power grab by wealthy special interest groups and evidence of their corrupt grip on our lawmakers. ...

... The Stamp Stampede is nearly 30,000 citizens that are mad as hell and doing something about it. We're legally rubber stamping paper currency with messages like "Not To Be Used for Bribing Politicians" in order to create a mass visual demonstration of support for common-sense reform that ends the culture of corruption in Washington. With hundreds of new people joining every day, we're creating a petition on steroids to take back our democracy. ... Read more

Ben and Jerry Talk About Stamping Money Out of Politics (11/19/13) [2:58]
StampStampede.org website
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
StampStampede.org Store
Below >> Trust me, this is not a good thing! Despite the NeoCons, i.e. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., making more people desperate around the world doesn't make for a safer world. We should be setting examples, i.e. stabalizing areas of instability and helping people raise their standard of living.

Russians Rush To Stores As Country Fears Bank Run
HP & AP | Nataliya Vasilyeva | 12/17/14

Russian consumers flocked to the stores Wednesday, frantically buying a range of big-ticket items to pre-empt the price rises kicked off by the staggering fall in the value of the ruble in recent days.

As the government considered ways to ease the selling pressure on the ruble, which has slid 15 percent in just two days and raised fears of a bank run, many Russians were buying cars and home appliances -- in some cases in record numbers -- before prices for these imported goods shoot higher. ... Read more

The Left Must Derail Hillary Clinton in the Primaries
BillMoyers & Harper | John R. MacArthur| 12/12/14

As a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016 appears ever more likely, it's a good moment to ask what alternative exists to lying down and letting such a campaign drown the body politic.

... What about the rest of us? Is it inevitable that we swallow the nomination of the neo-liberal Clinton, whose support of Bush's Iraq madness (not to mention Obama's Afghan and Libyan stupidity) and her husband's recklessly pro-"free trade," pro-banker, pro-deregulation politics ought to send reasonable liberals fleeing? Is it predestined that principled conservatives accept the anointment of the thoroughly fraudulent Jeb, whose support of his brother's interventionist folly, along with his own outrageous meddling as governor of Florida to "rescue" brain-dead Terri Schiavo, should give pause to even the greediest oil baron seeking patronage from a Republican administration? ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 17 [13:04]
DN | Press Freedom Fight: Reporter James Risen Faces Subpoena in CIA Whistleblower Case (12/17/14) [8:25]
DN | The Destabilization of Pakistan: Tariq Ali on Taliban School Massacre & U.S. Afghan War Blowback (12/17/14) [14:16]
DN | Was Key Grand Jury Witness in Michael Brown Case a Racist, Mentally Ill, Lying Ex-Felon? (12/17/14) [18:45]
BillMoyers
BillMoyers | John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper says: The Case for Elizabeth Warren -- She's No Hillary (current) [3:13]
BILL MOYERS:
That was a bold cover story you had recently: "Stop Hillary."

JOHN R. MACARTHUR (Harpers Magazine):
Yeah, well, we were, it was our effort to force a debate. And we did. I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome that all our competitors were then forced to do cover stories and commentaries on other candidates who might come into the race: Elizabeth Warren, Jim Webb has already announced an exploratory committee, Bernie Sanders, I wish that Sherrod Brown from Ohio would run. There are a lot of people who would make good candidates, but they're intimidated by the Clinton fundraising machine.

BILL MOYERS:
But would she raise a big tent for a lot of Democrats to get under and reverse the Republican wave of the midterm elections?

JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
There's absolutely no room, there's no tent that can hold the working class, the poor, the lower class that I'm talking about, and the Steven Rattners of Wall Street, who go around saying, oh, don't you love us? We're social liberals. We're for civil rights. We're for all the rights that you care about. We're for tolerance, and so on and so forth.

But what they're not for is worker rights. It doesn't matter if you're gay or black or an impoverished white former factory worker. You all have worker rights in common. That's the commonality. Citizens' rights, I would say also, but worker rights. They never talk about worker rights. They just talk about cultural liberalism. That's what they're interested in.

TRNN | Ms. Tarachansky, TRNN Israel - Palestine correspondent and former Israeli settler, tells Paul Jay about her new documentary film, On the Side of the Road (12/17/14) [21:17]
TRNN | Investigative journalist Greg Palast discusses: Hundreds of Thousands of Wrongfully Purged Votes Could Have Cost Dems Midterm Elections (12/17/14) [9:31]
Pull Quote
Citigroup is a very large bank that has amassed a huge amount of political power. Its current and former executives consistently push laws and regulations in the direction of allowing Citi and other mega-banks to take on more risk, particularly in the form of complex highly leveraged bets. Taking these risks allows the executives and traders to get a lot of upside compensation in the form of bonuses when things go well -- while the downside losses, when they materialize, become the taxpayer's problem.

Citigroup is also, collectively, stupid on a grand scale. The supposedly smart people at the helm of Citi in the mid-2000s ran them hard around -- and to the edge of bankruptcy. A series of unprecedented massive government bailouts was required in 2000-09 -- and still the collateral damage to the economy has proved enormous. Give enough clever people the wrong incentives and they will destroy anything.
TYT | Even Other Terrorists Denounce Taliban School Attacks In Pakistan (12/16/14) [11:42]
TYT | Americans Polled On Torture & The Result Devastates (12/16/14) [7:16]
TYT | George Clooney Is Arm Candy To The Most Fascinating Person 2014 (12/16/14) [5:46]
TYT | Meathead Cop Whines That Cops Are The Victims In Tamir Rice Shooting (12/16/14) [7:14]
TYT | Shoot First, Question Later: Interrogation Of John Crawford's Girlfriend Released (12/16/14) [5:28]

12.17.2014. 11:11

Tuesday December 16, 2014
News Articles
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Russia's Economy Is In Big Trouble, Russia's Ruble Slides To Historic Lows
HP & AP | Nataliya Vasilyeva | 12/16/14

A massive interest rate hike by Russia's Central Bank on Tuesday failed to stem the selling pressure on the ruble, which slid another 20 percent to new historic lows.

The surprise Central Bank decision to raise the rate to 17 percent from 10.5 percent came in the middle of the night on Tuesday and represented a desperate attempt to prop up the troubled currency. The ruble has fallen sharply in recent weeks as a result of sliding oil prices as well as the pressure from Western sanctions over Russia's involvement in Ukraine. ... Read more

But, what does this really mean for Russia? Maybe not as much as we all think. Watch the Hudson Report below.
TRNN | Hudson Report: Russia Rejects South Steam Pipeline through Europe (12/15/14) [12:31]

Kevin Yoder MIA After Tucking Wall Street Bailout Into Government Spending Bill
HP | Jennifer Bendery | 12/15/14

For all the anger among progressives about a Wall Street bailout provision that made its way into the just-passed $1.1 trillion government spending bill, there's been little attention on the person who put it in there.

Yoder, a second-term congressman whose largest contributors are in the finance industry, introduced the provision last summer. It was literally written by Citigroup executives, but Yoder took their language and rolled it into an amendment to a spending bill in a House subcommittee meeting. It got swept into the year-end spending package because it "was within the scope of negotiations" on it, according to an Appropriations Committee aide.

The provision, which prompted a fiery speech by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), undoes a rule that prevents big banks from relying on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to bail them out if things go sour when they trade risky assets. The rule was put into place as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which overhauled the financial regulatory system after the 2007-2008 financial crisis stemming from banks making extremely risky bets and losing. The government had to bail them out with taxpayer money, and Yoder's provision paves the way for another possible bailout. ... Read more

I just read the above article about the Wall Street bailout provision that made its way into the just-passed $1.1 trillion government spending bill. The one Elizabeth Warren gave a fiery speech about. Well, a 2 term Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-Kansas) was apparently responsible. I don't even think he knows what he did!

Heck they won't even have to bribe them anymore. Just get them elected, the more illiterate the better.

Massive release of Fukushima radioactive waste being planned -- Gov't Official: I was overwhelmed by amount of contaminated water from reactors, we must dump it into ocean
ENENews | author | 12/13/14

NRA head signals massive release of tainted water to help decommission Fukushima site -- The head of Japan's nuclear watchdog said contaminated water stored at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant should be released into the ocean… Shunichi Tanaka, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, made the comment Dec. 12 after visiting the facility… "I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tanks (holding water tainted with radioactive substances)," Tanaka told reporters, indicating they pose a danger to decommissioning work. "We have to dispose of the water… We also have to obtain the consent of local residents in carrying out the work, so we can somehow mitigate (the increase in tainted water)… While (the idea) may upset people, we must do our utmost to satisfy residents of Fukushima," Tanaka said, adding that the NRA would provide information to local residents based on continuing studies of radioactive elements in local waters. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 16 [9:13]
DN | Mike Gravel to Senator Mark Udall: Make Full Torture Probe Public Like I Did with Pentagon Papers (12/16/14) [10:57]
DN | After Duo Created CIA Torture Methods, Did World's Largest Group of Psychologists Enable Abuses? (12/16/14) [11:55]
DN | "Psychological Torture is Enshrined in U.S. Law": Complicity in Abuses Began Long Before Bush (12/16/14) [13:15]
Elizabeth Warren
"Stop Hillary!" was the headline of the cover story in the November issue of Harper's Magazine. (12/12/14) [03:13]
*Bill Moyers | Web Extra: Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street (12/12/14) [17:31]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Former Vice President Dick Cheney remorselessly defends the CIA torture program that was put in place following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (12/15/14) [9:22] TRNN | 350.org's Co-founder Jamie Henn says: The Lima Accord: A Great Success or Dooming Planet to Climate Catastrophe? (12/16/14) [5:19]
TYT | Cheney & Rove Pin Torture On Their Old Boss - Why Is Amazing (12/15/14) [2:46]
TYT | 'Rectal Feeding' Not Torture, Say Rectal-Feeding Torturers (12/15/14) [8:09]
TYT | Shooter Kills 6, Roams Free & It's Just Another Day In America (12/15/14) [4:16]
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | The Battle for the Future of America... (12/15/14) [7:29]
Thom Hartmann | Fukushima Radiation Testing Positive on the West Coast (10/22/14) [6:53]
Fukushima News 11/14/14:Tepco Can't Stop Poisoning The Pacific Ocean-"Little Cause For Optimism" (11/14/14) [14:59]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

12.16.2014. 15:12

Monday December 15, 2014
News Articles

What's in That Huge, Lobbyist-Driven Spending Bill?
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 12/11/14

Last Sunday, Rebecca Shabad reported for The Hill that good government groups were "bracing for surprises in the massive government-funding bill" that must be passed this week in order to avoid a government shutdown. K Street lobbyists were drooling over the $1 trillion dollar budget authorization, and saw it as "a final chance… to find a vehicle for their priorities."

... The provision that's drawn the most criticism is a measure that would weaken the already watered-down Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. It's a proposal that, according to The New York Times, was essentially written by lobbyists for Citigroup and targets a central provision of Dodd-Frank that limits taxpayers' exposure by requiring banks to isolate some of their riskiest bets in business units that aren't insured by the federal government. The idea was to try to prevent Wall Street from making the kind of reckless trades that fueled the last crisis. ... Read more

The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States
HP |Miles Mogulescu | 12/13/14

Early Friday evening Sen. Elizabeth Warren took to the Senate floor and gave a plain-spoken, barn-burning speech that could make history and put her into serious contention to be the next President of the United States. ...

... "Democrats don't like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don't like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street bailouts. And yet here we are, five years after Dodd-Frank with Congress on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again" ... Read more

What the World Is Saying About the CIA Torture Report
Bill Moyers | author | 12/11/14

The Senate torture report shook up the Washington establishment. But it's an international story -- the CIA's network of black sites was spread around the world, from Thailand to Morocco. Here are some of the comments: ... Read more

Taper Tantrum 2.0: Emerging Currencies Are Crashing
ZeroHedge | author | 12/15/14

More bloodbath. Wherever we look today, things are not going well. While we have become used to day after day of Oil Producers' FX collapsing, today we see the tumble in Emerging Market FX rates begin to accelerate in a very Taper-Tantrum-esque manner. While the Ruble at 64 is grabbing headlines, Turkish Lira is utterly collapsing along with Indonesia and India overnight. Read more

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Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits
RollingStones | Matt Taibbi | 12/13/14

Gosh, the Democrats are really pushing hard to save a key portion of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, aren't they? Like tigers, or Siamese fighting fish they battle! Thrilling to watch!

Oh, wait, that's what they aren't doing. Actually what we're watching in the "Cromnibus" budget fight, is a stage-managed surrender that was inevitable pretty much from the moment the ink began to dry on the so-called sweeping reform of Wall Street the Democrats passed years ago.

The dominant media narrative this past week has been that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, firmly saddled in her high horse, is trying to hold up the passage of the budget over a trifle. In reality, the so-called "Citigroup" provision to kill a rule designed to prevent future bailouts (so named because it was allegedly written by Citigroup lobbyists) is potentially quite an evil and destructive little thing. But the nitpicking counter-spin is already coming hot and heavy.

"It's a marginal regulation," said Patrick Brennan of the National Review, about the Dodd-Frank rule Warren wants to keep. Brennan bro-ishly dismissed "Liz" as an "indefatigable academic" who is "picking a fight that really can't be said to help or hurt the economy," a political fight that is "hardly a hill to die on."

Republicans like South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham derided Warren's gambit as an immature squabble and blasted Democrats in the House who followed her line of thinking. "Don't follow her lead," he said. "She's the problem." ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December 15 [9:10]
DN | Emissions-Cutting Deal Reached at COP 20 Lima, But Will It Help Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change? (12/15/14) [14:03]
DN | Black Youth-Organized Millions March NYC Draws Tens of Thousands in Movement's Biggest Protest Yet (12/15/14) [15:35]
Bill Moyers | John R. MacArthur of Harper's Magazine says: Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street (12/12/14) [25:25]
TRNN | Hudson Report: Russia Rejects South Steam Pipeline through Europe (12/15/14) [12:31]
Europe effort to join the US in isolating Russia has backfired; it makes no sense to build an oil and gas pipeline for Russian exports that would be owned and leased to them by the US and Europe.
TRNN | Nader: Federal Budget For Militarism, Against the People (12/15/14) [10:20]
Consumer advocate and activist Ralph Nader says the Democratic party is incapable of defending the American people from the worst Republican party in history.
TRNN | John M. Ackerman: A Second Mexican Revolution in The Works? Part 2 (12/15/14) [9:01]
Climate of impunity persists in Mexico and only 6.8 % of the 33 million crimes committed in 2013 were ever investigated says John M. Ackerman, Professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
TRNN | Naomi Murakawa: Will the New Federal Racial Profiling Guidelines have Any Impact? Part 1 (12/15/14) [17:05]
TYT | Politicians Finally Work Together...To Screw College Students (12/14/14) [6:42]
TYT | The Media Handled Torture In Wildly Different Ways (12/14/14) [4:00]
TYT | Obama Losing The Race On Race Relations (12/14/14) [5:42]
TYT | MoveOn Spending A Million To Get Elizabeth Warren To Run (12/14/14) [3:10]
TYT | Torture Report 'Full Of Crap' Growls Dick Cheney (12/14/14) [6:02]
TYT | CIA Director Says Torture Doesn't Work… Sort Of (12/14/14) [7:42]
Thomm Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | Economic & Labor News: December 15, 2014 (12/15/14) [6:59]
Thom Hartmann | The New Way to 'Bribe' an Elected Official... (12/12/14) [6:19]
What a Trillion Dollars Looks Like | National Debt
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]

12.15.2014. 10:46

Friday December 12, 2014
News Articles
So why are we still calling ourselves a Democracy?
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Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For
ZeroHedge | author | 12/12/14

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. ... Read more

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California Storm Hits South After Drenching North
HP & AP | Andrew Dalton | 12/12/14

A dangerous storm system blamed for two deaths in Oregon, thousands of power outages in Washington and flooded roadways in the San Francisco Bay Area pushed into Southern California on Friday, causing mudslides and evacuations.

A powerful squall line led the storm's pre-dawn charge, lashing the region with wind-driven rain. Rain fell at the rate of 1 to 2 inches an hour, triggering flash flooding, the National Weather Service said. The main front followed with rain falling at rates of a tenth to about a third of an inch per hour. ... Read more

Bill Moyers | John R. MacArthur of Harper's Magazine says: Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street (12/12/14) [25:25]
Who Controls the World
Who Controls the World: James B. Glattfelder at TED (11/28/12) [14:38]
The Network of Global Corporate Control.pdf
The network of global corporate control (2) .pdf
What a Trillion Dollars Looks Like | National Debt
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]
Click picture to zoom in - National Budget

Click picture to zoom in - FDIC

Click picture to zoom in - Derivatives and Bank Exposures

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, December 12 [9:01]
DN | "We are on a Course Leading to Tragedy": At U.N. Talks, Kerry Delivers Urgent Plea on Climate Change (12/12/14) [6:29]
DN | Pipe Dreams? Labor Researchers Say Keystone XL Project May Kill More Jobs Than It Creates (12/12/14) [13:08]
DN | Former VP Al Gore Urges Obama to Reject Keystone XL as Kerry, Top U.S. Negotiator Stay Mum (12/12/14) [2:22]
DN | Silencing Dissent: U.N. Bars Climate Protesters from Putting "Keystone," "Kerry" or "U.S." on Signs (12/12/14) [5:07]
TRNN | Professor Gerald Epstein says: Federal Budget Guts Most Significant Financial Regulation Since 2008 (12/12/14) [6:54]
TRNN | McClatchy reporter Jonathan Landay says: CIA Director Brennan Retreats on Intelligence and Torture Claims (12/12/14) [8:54]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Torture | Terror | Black 9/11: Money, Motive, Technology, and Plausible Deniability
Unauthorized Biography of D!ck Cheney () [42:57]
The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed () [46:43]
LipTV | 9/11 and the Cheney Conspiracy with Michael Ruppert (02/28/13) [49:20], Part 2 [49:23]
  1. 00:01 Coming Up on Media Mayhem
  2. 00:41 The Collapse network of outside media.
  3. 03:34 30 years of experience in skepticism.
  4. 05:24 Osama Bin Laden and the truth.
  5. 09:44 9/11 was orchestrated by Dick Cheney.
  6. 11:24 Evidence for his case.
  7. 16:33 How Cheney consolidated power so effectively.
  8. 20:56 The excuse for the Iraq War, and the connection to Pearl Harbor.
  9. 26:12 Halliburton and the C.I.A.
  10. 31:44 Working with the LAPD and C.I.A. and coming from a background related to security.
  11. 34:34 The C.I.A. drug shipment conspiracy.
  12. 36:35 Has the LAPD changed since Rodney King?
  13. 40:14 Obama and the machine.
  14. 43:52 The balance of power and the executive.

9/11 The Lost Tapes September 11 2001 NEADS NORAD () [44:38]
LipTV | 9/11 Truth Panel with Loose Change + Core of Curruption Filmmakers (09/09/13) [56:14]
2014 NEW Loose Change 3rd Edition! (2014) [1:29:24]
9/11 Core of Corruption - In the Shadows - 2009 [2:19:38]
Black 9/11: Money, Motive, Technology, and Plausible Deniability () [39:10]
Published on Nov 21, 2012

Special thanks to Michael C. Ruppert, Mark H. Gaffney, and Kevin Ryan for their dedicated research in bringing this information out of the shadowy black operations underworld from which it came. This video is a compilation of evidence they have uncovered.

  1. "Inside Job" Documentary on the Financial "Crisis" of 2008: Inside Job by Charles Furgison Part 1 (2011) [57:07], Part 2 [47:02]
  2. "Crossing the Rubicon" - The Decline of American Empire at the end of the age of oil: http://www.fromthewilderness.com
  3. "Black 911" by Mark H. Gaffney: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2...
  4. Was 9/11 an Inside Job?: http://www.informationclearinghouse.i...
  5. A guide to 9/11 Whistleblowers: http://www.corbettreport.com/articles...
  6. Project Hammer: http://decryptedmatrix.com/live/bushs...
  7. WTC 6: http://www.whale.to/b/wtc_6_h.html
  8. SEC Act Section 12(k)2: http://www.sec.gov/rules/other/34-447...
  9. Richard Grove's testimony (complete transcript): http://www.freewebs.com/abigsecret/gr...
  10. "Collateral Damage" by E.P. Heidner: http://www.wanttoknow.info/911/Collat...
  11. The CIA's forty-year complicity in the narcotics trade by Alfred W. McCOY: http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/facstaff/davi...
  12. Executive Order 12333 created an agreement between the CIA and Justice Department (DEA) to look the other way on Government Drug Trafficking: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-...
  13. AIG and Drug Money: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free...
  14. Maurice Greenberg's report for the CFR: http://www.fas.org/irp/cfr.html
  15. Richard Armitage, Frank Carlucci, Herbert Winokur, and company: http://digwithin.net/2012/04/08/911-a...
  16. Post 9/11 Promotions: http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007...
    9/11 Gold Theft and other smoking guns:
  17. http://911review.org/Wget/Killtown/9_...
  18. http://killtown.911review.org/odditie...
  19. Kevin Ryan's landmark article on who had "Demolition access to the WTC Towers": Tenants: http://www.911review.com/articles/rya...
  20. Security: http://www.911review.com/articles/rya...
  21. Convergence: http://www.911review.com/articles/rya...
  22. Clean Up: http://www.911review.com/articles/rya...
  23. Kevin R. Ryan, et al, Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials, The Environmentalist, Volume 29, Number 1 / March, 2009, http://www.springerlink.com/content/f...
  24. Kevin R. Ryan, The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nanothermites, Journal of 9/11 Studies, July 2008: http://www.journalof911studies.com/vo...
  25. Website for In-Q-Tel: http://www.iqt.org/technology-portfol...
  26. Wikipedia page for Jerome Hauer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H...
  27. Peter Jennings interview with Jerome Hauer, ABC, on 9/11: 14:53
    -or- available on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj0Rz9...
  28. Taku Murakami, US Patent 5532449 - Using plasma ARC and thermite to demolish concrete: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/553...
  29. Albert Gibson et al, Integral low-energy thermite igniter, US Patent number: 4464989: http://www.google.com/patents/about?i...
  30. Michael C. Ruppert, Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA's Highest Ranks, October 9, 2001: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free...
  31. Kevin R. Ryan, Mahmud Ahmed's itinerary from his Washington DC visit the week of 9/11, 911blogger.com, 11/27/2009: http://www.911blogger.com/node/21978
  32. The agreement between LLNL and Savannah River can be found here: https://www.llnl.gov/str/News597.html
  33. Savannah's reference to developing sol-gels can be found here: http://srnl.doe.gov/mat_sci.htm
  34. SEC document for Washington pre-payments: http://www.secinfo.com/dRqWm.4G1Vx.c.htm
  35. The Ties That Bind, Descended from family business empires, six huge business groups dominate the Japanese economy, Multinational Monitor, October 1983: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper...
  36. Securacomm Consulting Inc. v. Securacom Incorporated, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, January 20, 1999, 49 U.S.P.Q.2d 1444; 166 F.3d 182: http://altlaw.org/v1/cases/1099498
  37. Wikipedia page for Stratesec: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratesec
  38. SEC filing for Stratesec, May 2, 1997: http://www.secinfo.com/dS7kv.82.htm
  39. Kroll Inc website: http://www.kroll.com/about/

12.12.2014. 12:03

Thursday December 11, 2014
News Articles
I guess they are kind of pissed off with all the attention they are getting. Now, does anyone go to jail?
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
VICE | The Architect of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Program (12/10/14) [25:00]

Democrats Revolt Against 'Wall Street Giveaway' In Deal To Prevent Government Shutdown
HP | Zach Carter | 12/10/14

Democrats on Wednesday raged against a government funding bill that would provide taxpayer subsidies to risky Wall Street derivatives trading. "The House of Representatives is about to show us the worst of government for the rich and powerful," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the Senate floor. She urged her colleagues not to support a "deal negotiated behind closed doors that slips in a provision that would let derivatives traders on Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out by the government when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system."

... "[It's] an awful invitation for another financial disaster," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, told reporters Wednesday. "A number of us are very concerned." ... Read more

How Wal-Mart Fabricated And Lied About Its "Strong" Chinese Sales For Years
ZeroHedge | author | 12/11/14

For many, if not most, companies and especially retailers, the great wildcard that is the "massive" Chinese market with the potential of hundreds of millions of buyers in the country's nascent middle class, has been a slam dunk when it comes to boosting stock prices. After all, what can go wrong? America's largest retailer was one of those hoping to capitalize on just this shareholder euphoria for Chinese exposure, and just like everyone else, it milked its Chinese exposure for many years. And then, unexpected everything did go wrong: as Bloomberg explains, "After years of heralding China as one of its best markets, Wal-Mart in August said its performance there was among the worst in its major countries." How is that possible? Read on to find out how Wal-Mart fabricated, lied and misled investors for years using every single trick in the book and then some. ... Read more

CNBC | Millionaires' poll
Thirty-one percent of 500 millionaires polled by CNBC said Hillary Clinton was their top choice to become the next president. Jeb Bush was the runner up with the support of 18 percent of the respondents.

Respondents got to choose among nine potential candidates in the survey: Clinton; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); Vice President Joe Biden; Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.); Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas); Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); former Governor Jeb Bush (R-Fla.); Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Governor Scott Walker (R-Wis.)

Washington's coming budget battles
BillMoyers & Robert Reich | Robert Reich | 12/09/14

In Washington's coming budget battles, sacred cows like the tax deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable donations are likely to be on the table along with potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

But no one on Capitol Hill believes Wall Street's beloved carried-interest tax loophole will be touched. Don't blame the newly elected Republican Congress.

Democrats didn't repeal the loophole when they ran both houses of Congress from January 2009 to January 2011. And the reason they didn't has a direct bearing on the future of the party.

First, let me explain why this loophole is the most flagrant of all giveaways to the super-rich.

Carried interest allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers, as well as many venture capitalists and partners in real estate investment trusts, to treat their take of the profits as capital gains -- taxed at a maximum rate of 23.8 percent instead of the 39.6 percent maximum applied to ordinary income.

It's a pure scam. They get the tax break even though they invest other peoples' money rather than risk their own.

The loophole has no economic justification. As one private equity manager told me recently, "I can't defend it. No one can."

It's worth about $11 billion a year -- more than enough to extend unemployment benefits to every one of America's nearly 3 million long-term unemployed.

The hedge fund, private equity and other fund managers who receive this $11 billion are some of the richest people in America. Forbes lists 46 billionaires who have derived most of their wealth from managing hedge funds. Mitt Romney used the carried-interest loophole to help limit his effective tax rate in 2011 to 13.9 percent. ...
Read more

PBS Newshour | CIA and Senate Battle Over Interrogation Torture Report 911/01/14) [7:23]
Robert Reich - What is a good society?
Robert Reich | The Politics and Economics of Inequality (06/30/14) [54:49]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 11 [9:37]
*DN | "These Are Crimes": New Calls to Prosecute Bush Admin as Senate Report Reveals Brutal CIA Torture (12/11/14) [17:56]
DN | "We Are Like the Walking Dead": Latin American Indigenous Groups Decry Corporate Destruction of Land (12/11/14) [5:41]
DN | Putting People Before Profit: Thousands March in Peruvian People's Climate March in Lima (12/11/14) [11:17]
DN | From the Streets to the Suites, Protesters Call for Climate Justice at Corporate Gathering in Lima (12/11/14) [6:03]
Elizabeth Warren
Democrats Revolt Against 'Wall Street Giveaway' In Deal To Prevent Government Shutdown (12/10/14) [6:44]
*Elizabeth Warren on Main Street, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve (12/10/14) [22:54]
Paul Krugman on Main Street, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve (12/10/14) [36:56]
TRNN | Michael Ratner says: The Torturers: Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (12/11/14) [16:16]
TRNN | Congress and Pentagon Shielding Weapons Contracts from Budget Cuts (12/11/14) [11:01]
TRNN | Keep The Oil in the Soil (12/11/14) [6:58]
TYT | Obama Strongly Against Torture & Prosecuting Torturers (12/10/14) [11:01]
TYT | Torture Report Causes Awesome Eruption From Fox News Anchor (12/10/14) [5:27]
TYT | Trillion Dollar Spending Bill Rigs The System More Than Ever (12/10/14) [9:49]
TYT | Teen Jailed 30 Days For Studying History While Black (12/10/14) [5:51]
TYT | Spending Bill Hurts The Poor, Weakens Dems & Does It For $1.1 Trillion (12/10/14) [5:45]
TYT | Afghanistan War Over... So Why Is Obama Sending More Troops? (12/10/14) [3:56]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

12.11.2014. 12:00

Wednesday December 10, 2014
News Articles

Congress reaches deal for $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill
Reuters | David Lauder | 12/10/14

Congressional negotiators unveiled a $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill that aims to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Thursday and punts an immigration showdown between Republicans and President Barack Obama until February.

As the funding deadline loomed, Republicans successfully negotiated a number of policy provisions into the measure, including easing of regulations ranging from the environment to financial derivatives trading. ... Read more

20 Key Findings From the Senate Report on CIA Torture
BillMoyers | author | 12/10/14

After months of wrangling with intelligence officials, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its 6,700-page report on the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush.

The report paints a portrait of the CIA as an agency gone rogue. It, along with two private contractors, skirted congressional oversight by lying about the severity of the torture techniques being employed, and the value of the information that was gathered in the process. ...

  1. The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
  2. The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.
  3. The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.
  4. The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.
  5. The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.
  6. The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.
  7. The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.
  8. The CIA's operation and management of the program complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies.
  9. The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA's Office of Inspector General.
  10. The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
  11. The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities.
  12. The CIA's management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the program's duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.
  13. Two contract psychologists devised the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program.
  14. CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized by CIA Headquarters.
  15. The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.
  16. The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.
  17. The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management failures.
  18. The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.
  19. The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.
  20. The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.
Read more

Warren even dared to bring up the demise of the Brown-Kaufman amendment to the Dodd-Frank reform. This would have set a cap on the size of financial institutions, but it failed amid mass opposition, not just from the financial sector but inside the government. "The hand-in-hand between Treasury officials and Wall Street executives on this was not subtle--a senior Treasury official publicly acknowledged it at the time," Warren points out, referring to a long-forgotten admission in New York Magazine. The Treasury official in question boasted that Brown-Kaufman would have passed if Treasury supported it, "but we weren't, so it didn't."

Elizabeth Warren's Latest Wall Street Attack Was Her Boldest Yet
NewRepublic.com | David Dayen | 12/09/14

If anyone thought that Senator Elizabeth Warren would ease up on her battle with the White House over Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance nominee Antonio Weiss, they can put such thoughts to bed. In a speech today at the "Managing the Economy" conference in Washington organized by several financial reform coalitions, Warren made clear that her fight is about much more than one nominee at the Treasury Department. She crafted a direct challenge to three decades of bipartisan collusion between government and Wall Street, in a highly unusual manner for any politician, let alone one recently drafted into the Senate Democratic leadership. The Weiss affair has become secondary to this bigger competition for what principles will shape the Democratic Party, and what role Warren will play in it. ...

"It's no less puzzling to nominate an international mergers specialist to handle largely domestic issues at Treasury because he has a background in finance."

Then there's the $21 million "parting payment" Weiss will get from his former employer, Lazard, to take the government job. The AFL-CIO has focused on these payouts for Wall Street executives who rotate into government, wondering how it benefits the bank or its shareholders unless they expect a light touch of regulation in the future.
Read more

"Success" in the modern, progressive, world of finance. We have not been "saved from a depression", but rather, the Fed has done a fine job of simply hiding it (and enriching the 1% 400-fold in the process).

"These Are Astonishing Figures, Evidence Of A 1930s-Style Depression"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/10/14

What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another.

These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves.... Read more

Click to zoom - for Larger Image
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 10 [12:20]
DN | Interviews Nigerian Environmental Activist Nnimmo Bassey about U.N. Climate Talks (12/10/14) [10:40]
DN | Brazilian Indigenous Leader: Carbon Trading Scheme "REDD" is a False Solution to Climate Change (12/10/14) [10:36]
DN | As U.N. Summit Enters High-Level Talks, Protesters in Lima Prepare for Historic Climate March (12/10/14) [3:43]
Interesting Videos
What the UNITED STATES thinks of EUROPE (by Aleix Saló) (10/22/14) [1:56]
How do Europeans really feel about each other? (2011) [2:55]
The bear (Russia) is back (03/25/14) [1:00]
TRNN | Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler says: CIA Torture Report Incomplete as Key Documents Remain Withheld (12/10/14) [6:15]
Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler says the Obama administration is using the CIA to protect itself and Bush-era officials from being legally implicated in war crimes.
TRNN | Sean Staars Assistant Professor says: Hong Kong Police Shuts Down The "Umbrellas Revolution" (12/10/14) [10:13]
TYT | Filming Cops On Duty Is Now A Felony In Illinois (12/09/14) [6:13]
TYT | Former Cop Reveals Racism & Violence Within The Force (12/09/14) [7:40]
TYT | Megyn Kelly (of Fox) Freaks On Torture But Her Guest Totally Surprises (12/09/14) [8:27]
TYT | George W Bush Praises The Torturers He Ordered To Torture (12/09/14) [4:51]
TYT | Are Troops REALLY Endangered By Torture Report? (12/09/14) [10:29]
TYT | Torture Report Includes 'Rectal Hummus' & Other Shocking Brutalities (12/09/14) [6:19]
TYT | Torture Report Details Long List Of America's Brutal Crimes (12/09/14) [6:47]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire (12/07/14) [51:58]
  1. 00:42 - "The Mythical Center." Author Thomas Frank in Washington, D.C. will explain the myth of the "Center", and why Democrats need to avoid moving towards this non-existent area of politics. #CentristDems
  2. 11:13 - "CEOs VS Uncle Sam." Howard Nations will tell us why some of the biggest corporations in America are paying their CEOs more than they pay in taxes. #PayUp
  3. 21:56 - "No Justice In Ferguson." Blogger Chauncey DeVega in Chicago will tell us why there is no justice for Michael Brown's family. #Ferguson
  4. 31:39 - "The Safety Net For Police Officers." Attorney Karen Evans in Washington, D.C. will explain why it is so difficult to prosecute police officers, even when the evidence against them is overwhelming. #HoldThemAccountable
  5. 41:57 - "Will Wage Theft Derail Minimum Wage Movement?" Michael Burg will tell us how wage theft from employers is undermining the momentum of the minimum wage increase movement. #WageTheft
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | Bush Torture Report Released... (12/09/14) [9:22]
Thom Hartmann | Latest from UN Climate talks in Peru... (12/09/14) [5:05]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

12.10.2014. 12:06

Tuesday December 09, 2014
News Articles

With CIA Torture Report Set For Controversial Release, Washington Braces For Fallout
HP | Ali Watkins | 12/08/14

The White House confirmed Monday that a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's post-9/11 torture program would be released Tuesday, despite reports that some in the Obama administration had pressured the panel to delay the document's controversial release. ...

... Tuesday's release will mark the end, for now, of the bitterly fought battle over the document waged between the White House, its chief intelligence agency and the Senate panel. Even though the committee voted in April to declassify the report's summary, the public revelation was held up by protracted disputes over information that the White House and CIA wanted to keep secret, but that the Senate committee wanted to publicize. After months of tense negotiations, the two sides came to an agreement last week. ... Read more

Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.pdf

Fox | Everything the president said above is untrue -- and it appears that the looming Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture program will soon prove it. (2007) [2:01]
The 30 year mortgage robs your future. […] It simply enabled borrowers to buy more house than they could afford by spreading the payments out over a longer term. On top of that, those homeowners paid tens--even hundreds of thousands of dollars more in interest.

Instead of a 30 year mortgage, Dave recommends getting a 15 year mortgage with "at least a 10% down payment and monthly payments that are no more than 25% of your take-home pay."

Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank to end deposit advance loans, citing tougher regulation
WashingtonPost | Danielle Douglas | older, 01/17/14

Facing tough new regulations, some of the country's largest banks, including Wells Fargo, said Friday that they are abandoning a short-term, high-interest loan product that consumer groups have called a debt trap.

The exit of Wells Fargo, Fifth Third, Guaranty Bank and U.S. Bank could be a harbinger of things to come as banks anticipate tougher rules on an array of consumer products, including prepaid cards. ... Read more

U.S. Bank refunding customers $48 million for deceptive practices
News Channel 4 | author | 09/25/14

U.S. Bank, which is the fifth largest in the country, was ordered to pay customers $448 million as part of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crackdown on deceptive banking practices. ... Read more

Even The BIS Is Shocked At How Broken Markets Have Become
ZeroHedge | author | 12/08/14

... It started in June of 2013, when Jaime Caruana, certainly the most prominent doom and gloomer at the BIS (who also was Governor of the Bank of Spain from 2000 to 2007 when this happened) asked if "central banks [can] now really do "whatever it takes"? As each day goes by, it seems less and less likely... [seven] years have passed since the eruption of the global financial crisis, yet robust, self-sustaining, well balanced growth still eludes the global economy.... low-interest policies have made it easy for the private sector to postpone deleveraging, easy for the government to finance deficits, and easy for the authorities to delay needed reforms in the real economy and in the financial system. Overindebtedness is one of the major barriers on the path to growth after a financial crisis. Borrowing more year after year is not the cure...in some places it may be difficult to avoid an overall reduction in accommodation because some policies have clearly hit their limits." ... Read more

"Rectal Feeding," Threats to Children, and More: 16 Awful Abuses From the CIA Torture Report
MotherJones | Nick Baumann | 12/09/14

A new report from the Senate intelligence committee says the CIA pureed hummus and put it in a detainee's rectum.

On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary of its years-long investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation program. President George W. Bush authorized the so-called "enhanced interrogation" program after the 9/11 attacks. The United States government this week has warned personnel in facilities abroad, including US embassies, to be ready in case protests erupt in response. The full report includes over 6,000 pages and 35,000 footnotes. You can read it here. Here are some of the lowlights: ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 09 [11:35]
*DN | "They Have Destroyed Our Livelihood": Activists Protest Shell and Chevron at U.N. Climate Talks (12/09/14) [6:16]
*DN | "Corporate Conquistadors": New Report Exposes How Multinationals Drive, Profit From Climate Change (12/09/14) [6:23]
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert | President Obama Takes Over On 'Colbert Report' () [2:52]
*TRNN | Dr. Thomas O'Donnell of The Free University of Berlin: The sliding oil and gas prices, combined with the sanctions, causes Russia to pivot to Asia for a long-term economic strategy (12/09/14) [12:58]
TYT | Conservative Blogger Exposes Gang Rape Victim At University Of Virginia (12/08/14) [8:43]
TYT | In One Joke, Stephen Colbert Nails Obama, Rips Dems & Confuses CNN (12/08/14) [8:20]
TYT | Sony Hacking Reveals Profit Surprises You Never Saw Coming (12/08/14) [10:13]
Keiser Report
Keiser Report: Unjust Road to Independence () [25:28]
Christmas Lights - Regular | Mini | LED
The LED light uses 15% of the energy of a standard incandescent mini-light with a brighter light for a greater impact.
Click to zoom - for Larger Image

12.09.2014. 12:03

Monday December 08, 2014
News Articles

Citigroup: The Original Gangsta
TruthDig | Robert Scheer | older, 06/14/14

Barack Obama's Justice Department on Monday announced that Citigroup would pay $7 billion in fines, a move that will avoid a humiliating trial dealing with the seamy financial products the bank had marketed to an unsuspecting public, causing vast damage to the economy.

Citigroup is the too-big-to-fail bank that was allowed to form only when Bill Clinton signed legislation reversing the sensible restraints on Wall Street instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt to avoid another Great Depression.

"Today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority," a beaming Clinton boasted after signing the Financial Services Modernization Act into law in 1999.

Called the Citigroup authorization act by some wags at the time, those antiquated laws, the Glass-Steagall Act primarily, had put a safety barrier between the high rollers in Wall Street investment firms and the staid commercial banks charged with preserving the savings of ordinary folk. The new law permitted them to merge.

Clinton handed the pen that he used in signing the new law to Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill, whose Citicorp had already merged with Travelers Group before the law was even officially changed. On an earlier occasion, Weill had informed Clinton about his merger plans in a telephone conversation. After hanging up, Weill then bragged to his fellow banking executive John S. Reed, who was on the call, that "we just made the president of the United States an insider," according to Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley in her book on the Citigroup merger.

In 2000, just before leaving office, Clinton went much further in radical deregulation of the financial industry when he signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. In one swoop this eliminated from the purview of any existing regulation or regulatory agency the new financial products, including the mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the financial meltdown and the subject of the $7 billion fine levied in what has to be viewed as a copout deal. ...
Read more

Japan's Recession Deepens as Election Looms for Abe: Economy
Bloomberg | Keiko Ujikane | 12/07/14

Japan's recession was deeper than initially estimated as company investment unexpectedly shrank, a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he campaigns for re-election on his economic credentials.

The economy contracted an annualized 1.9 percent in the July to September period from the previous quarter, weaker than the 1.6 percent drop reported in preliminary data. The result was also below every forecast in a Bloomberg News survey that showed a median 0.5 percent decrease. Read more

According to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, "Four months before 9/11", FBI monitoring overhears Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz "discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the US would invade Iraq and divide the country.… They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil."

California Drought, High Temperatures Create Worst Conditions In 1,200 Years
Reuters & HP | author | 12/07/14

A combination of record high temperatures and sparse rainfall during California's three-year drought have produced the worst conditions in 1,200 years, according to a study accepted for publication by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The state has gone through numerous periods of dry weather, with as little or less rainfall as the past few years, but scientists looking at the cumulative effects of temperature, low precipitation and other factors said that it all adds up to the worst conditions in more than a millennium. ... Read more

Up Close and Personal With George W. Bush's Horrifying Legacy
TruthDig | Robert Scheer | older, 06/18/14

The Iraq disaster remains George W. Bush's enduring folly, and the Republican attempt to shift the blame to the Obama presidency is obscene nonsense. This was, and will always be, viewed properly as Bush's quagmire, a murderous killing field based on blatant lies.

This showcase of American deceit, obvious to the entire world, began with the invented weapons of mass destruction threat that Bush, were he even semi-cognizant of the intelligence data, must have known represented an egregious fraud. So was his nonsensical claim that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when in fact he was Osama bin Laden's most effective Arab opponent.

Yet Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by overthrowing a leader who had banished al-Qaida from Iraq and who had been an ally of the United States in the war to contain Iran's influence in the region. Instead of confronting the funders of Sunni extremism based in Saudi Arabia, the home of 15 of the 19 hijackers and their Saudi leader bin Laden, Bush chose to attack the secular leader of Iraq. That invasion, as the evidence of the last week confirms, resulted in an enormous boon to both Sunni extremists and their militant Shiite opponents throughout the Mideast.

How pathetic that Secretary of State John Kerry is now reduced to begging the ayatollahs of Iran to come to the aid of their brethren in Iraq. Or that the movement to overthrow the secular leader of Syria, a movement supported by the United States, has resulted in a base for Sunni terrorists in Iraq and Syria of far greater consequence than the one previously used to plot the 9/11 attacks from isolated Afghanistan. ...
Read more

"Deadly" radioactive material up around 50,000,000% at Fukushima plant in recent months -- Strontium-90 spikes to record level near ocean outside Reactor No. 2

With Q3 Buybacks Surging, These Are The Top 20 Repurchasers Of Their Own Stock
ZeroHedge | author | 12/08/14

As it turns out our conclusion that it's all over was premature (with the Fed getting some breathing room thanks to desperate corner offices eager to pump up their CEO's equity-linked compensation), and as the just concluded Q3 earnings seasons confirms, what went down, promptly soared right back up, with stock repurchases in Q3 surging by 30% following the 30% drop in Q2, and nearly offsetting all the lost "corporate wealth creation" in the second quarter, with the total amount of stock repurchases by S&P 500 companies jumping from $112 billion to $145 billion, just shy of the Q1 record, and the second highest single quarter repurhcase tally going back to 2007, and before. ... Read more
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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December 08 [12:40]
*DN | As Typhoon Hagupit Wreaks Havoc, Leading Filipino Environmental Voice Silenced at U.N. Climate Talks (12/08/14) [11:07]
DN | At Lima Talks, Nations Worst Hit by Global Warming Say Climate Aid Isn't Charity, But Reparations (12/08/14) [16:08]
DN | The Laundering Machine: How U.S. Corporations Threaten Peru's Forests Through Illegal Logging (12/08/14) [7:11]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Wednesday night, however, was a rare occasion in the comedian's career when he simply couldn't find a way to laugh about how broken our society is. (12/04/14) [3:38]
CNN
CNN | Even George W. Bush Finds the Eric Garner Grand Jury Decision 'Hard to Understand' (12/06/14) [1:10]
*TRNN | Economist Richard Wolff says workers are returning to jobs with lower wages, fewer benefits, and less job security than they had before the financial crisis hit. (12/07/14) [12:12]
Professor Richard D. Wolff website
*TRNN | Dr. Thomas O'Donnell discusses: The Russian ruble takes a tumble as the falling oil prices slide, and the geo-politics of it al. (12/08/14) [12:17]
*TRNN | Is Congress' Call for ISIS War Debate a Sham? (12/08/14) [16:28]
TYT | Government Debt And Deficit: Obama vs. Bush (12/07/14) [5:07]
TYT | Wall Street Launches Assault On Your Money (12/07/14) [5:11]
TYT | Obama, McConnell Lock Arms In Expanding Corporate Power (12/07/14) [8:59]
More News
The Antares unmanned spacecraft, ISS-bound, explodes on takeoff from NASA facility in Virginia (10/29/14) [1:00]
The Antares unmanned spacecraft crashed after a self-destruct signal was sent to it due to a catastrophic anomaly the rocket experienced 10 to 12 seconds after ignition. The $200 million craft was lost along with its payload, which included 2,200 kg of cargo meant for the International Space Station.
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Financial Crisis (forget the UFO stuff, he only brings it up once)
Paul Hellyer: Ex Canadian Minister of Defence speaks about UFOs, global warming, and the world financial system (06/10/13) [1:07:09]
1993 WTC
1993 World Trade Center Bombing Documentary () [44:30]
Rare TV NEWS report about 1993 WTC bombing FBI Foreknowledge () [2:10]
NYTimes | The FBI Allowed the 1993 WTC Bombing to Happen by Ralph Blumenthal (10/28/93) (article)
911 WTC
9/11 Science vs. Conspiracy Theories (2008) [9:56], Part 2 [8:49]
Salon | Sibel Edmonds: "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001? (03/27/2004)
Salon | Insiders voice doubts about CIA's 9/11 story (10/14/11)
Rense | Why No Norad On 911? (02/26/07) (article)
DUMBs
The Alberino Analysis - Deep Underground Military Bases (09/16/14) [41:27]
Phil Schneider's Last Speach ~ Two Months Before His Assassination () [1:08:45]
The Underground Bases, Dulce Base, etc. ... () [1:20:11]
Fukushima
Fukushima Daiichi's: Hidden Crises Radioactive Water NHK Documentary (02/09/14) [49:11]
Nuclear Waste
The Nuclear Waste Destruction 2014 () [1:07:29]
The Truth about Nuclear Waste Disposal () [52:20]

12.08.2014. 12:15

Friday December 05, 2014
News Articles

The Story Behind the Story of Those Huge Corporate Tax Cuts
BillMoyers | Joshua Holland | 12/03/14

Last week, Igor Volsky reported for Think Progress that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had struck a deal with House Republicans to give corporate America a massive tax giveaway just weeks after the midterm elections. The agreement, wrote Volsky, “would permanently extend relief for big multinational corporations without providing breaks for middle or lower-income families.” Writing in The Washington Post, Jared Bernstein, a former economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, called the package ”a dog’s breakfast of permanent tax breaks mostly for businesses that would add over $400 billion to the 10-year budget deficit without doing anything for low-income, working families.”

He wasn’t alone in panning the deal. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Volsky that the cuts would be “fiscally irresponsible.” The 10-year, $444 billion package includes a few provisions that were popular with Democrats, but would phase out existing tax credits for clean energy development. Mostly, it’s a boon for some of the top corporate tax-avoiders in America. Some 90 percent of the cuts would benefit their bottom lines. One of the biggest beneficiaries would be GE, which, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, claimed tax refunds of $3.1 billion on $27.5 billion in profits between 2008 and 2012. That means the company had a negative tax rate of 11 percent. Other big winners would include Wall Street financial firms, pharmaceutical companies and computer and Internet businesses. ... Read more

So now let's look at the big picture. The final totals are $59 billion, 3 percent of the total federal budget, for regular welfare and $92 billion, 5 percent of the total federal budget, for corporate welfare.
Microsoft Admits Keeping $92 Billion Offshore to Avoid Paying $29 Billion in US Taxes (08/23/14)

10 Corporate Tax Dodgers You Should Know About
BillMoyers | author | 05/29/14

Bank of America logo Bank of America - runs its business through more than 300 offshore tax-haven subsidiaries. It reported $17.2 billion in accumulated offshore profits in 2012. It would owe $4.3 billion in US taxes if these funds were brought back to the US.
Citi logo Citigroup - had $42.6 billion in foreign profits parked offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes. It reported that it would owe $11.5 billion if it brings these funds back to the US. A significant chunk is being held in tax-haven countries.
ExxonMobil - had a three-year federal income tax rate of just 15 percent. This gave the company a tax subsidy worth $6.2 billion from 2010-2012. It had $43 billion in offshore profits at the end of 2012, on which it paid no US taxes.
Fedex logo FedEx - made $6 billion over the last three years and didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes, in part because the tax code subsidized its purchase of new planes. This gave FedEx a huge tax subsidy worth $2.1 billion.
GE Logo General Electric - received a tax subsidy of nearly $29 billion over the last 11 years. While dodging paying its fair share of federal income taxes, GE pocketed $21.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
Honeywell logo Honeywell - had profits of $5 billion from 2009 to 2012. Yet it paid only $50 million in federal income taxes for the period. Its tax rate was just 1 percent over the last four years. This gave it a huge tax subsidy worth $1.7 billion.
Merck logo Merck - had profits of $13.6 billion and paid $2.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2012. While dodging its fair share of federal income taxes, it pocketed $8.7 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
Microsoft logo Microsoft - saved $4.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2011 by transferring profits to a subsidiary in the tax haven of Puerto Rico. It had $60.8 billion in profits stashed offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes.
Pfizer logo Pfizer - paid no US income taxes from 2010 to 2012 while earning $43 billion worldwide. It did this in part by performing accounting acrobatics to shift its US profits offshore. It received $2.2 billion in federal tax refunds.
Verizon logo Verizon - made $19.3 billion in US pretax profits from 2008 to 2012, yet didn’t pay any federal income taxes during the period. Instead, it got $535 million in tax rebates. Verizon’s effective federal income tax rate was negative 2.8 percent from 2008 to 2012.

Learn more about each company at the Americans for Tax Fairness website or download and read the entire report (PDF).
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, December 05 [55:00]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | The United States of Ferguson (12/05/14) [23:17]
Jon Stewart
*Stupidity of Pink Fracking Fully Exposed on The Daily Show (12/04/14) [4:45]
*TRNN | Michael Klare, the author of The Race for What's Left: The Geopolitics of Tumbling Oil Prices (12/04/14) [15:53]
*TRNN | Journalist Max Blumenthal says: Early Elections Could Result in Most Right-Wing Coalition in Israel's History (12/04/14) [13:27]
TYT | Revenge Porn Lands This Man In Jail For 1 Year (12/04/14) [5:44]
TYT | Couple Mocks Chokehold That Killed Eric Garner On Live TV (12/04/14) [5:19]
TYT | #CrimingWhileWhite Sheds Light On Incredible Racial Stories (12/04/14) [5:15]
TYT | Emotional & Irresponsible, Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice Was Deemed Unfit For Duty 2 Years Prior (12/04/14) [5:28]
TYT | Obesity, Not Cops, Killed Eric Garner Says Politician (12/04/14) [6:12]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | Violent Choke Hold Grounds Enough For Police Indictment (12/04/14) [10:17]
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | Rep. Peter DeFazio on GMO Labeling & Infrastructure Spending (12/04/14) [15:39]
Corporate Welfare vs Social Welfare
Corporate Welfare
*Corporate Welfare - Click to zoom
Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs
thinkbynumbers.org | author | 2012

http://thinkbynumbers.org

When one thinks about government welfare, the first thing that comes to mind is the proverbial welfare queen sitting atop her majestic throne of government cheese issuing a royal decree to her clamoring throngs of illegitimate babies that they may shut the hell up while she tries to watch Judge Judy. However, many politically well-connected corporations are also parasitically draining their share of fiscal blood from your paycheck before you ever see it. It's called corporate welfare. The intent here is to figure out which presents the greater burden to our federal budget, corporate or social welfare programs. ... Read more

Or read the Archived article here:
Click to zoom - for article

STUDY: U.S. Spends $59 Billion on Social Welfare...$92 Billion on Corporate Welfare
wepartypatriots.com | author | 09/21/12

A recent blog post by Mike Sinn for Think by Numbers questions if the government spends more on social welfare or corporate welfare. The GOP has attempted to turn the political discussion surrounding the upcoming election into a debate about President Obama and social welfare, while progressives have done the same with Mitt Romney and corporate welfare. But who is right!? There have got to be...facts...haven't there!?

According to analyzed numbers from the year 2006, the government spends $59 billion (3% of its total budget) on social welfare and $92 billion (5% of total budget) on corporate welfare. Perhaps more interesting is that in 1996, when new welfare reforms were signed into law by President Bill Clinton, both caseloads AND child poverty significantly dropped, saving the government gobs of money: ... Read more

Or read the Archived article here:
Click to zoom - for article
Social Welfare
*Family Needs vs Poverty By looking at the following graphs I realized that in most families health care and child care take over half the family income. Just imagine if Minimum Wage was raised to a liveable wage, Health Care was reigned in, and Child Care was provided in a efficient way how low income families could have a more positive life.
Budget: Housing, Food, Transportation, Child care, Health care, Taxes, Insurances, supplies (school, household, personal care).

Observation: It is clear that even in the best of economic times, many parents in low-wage jobs will not earn enough through work to meet basic family needs. A full-time, full-year worker paid $7.25 per hour (the minimum wage) will earn about $15,080 a year before taxes (DOL 2009). This is below the federal poverty line of $15,825 for a single parent with one child -- and far below the income necessary for such a family to attain a secure living standard even in the least expensive family budget area... which stands at $35,132 for that family type in Simpson County, Miss.

Family Needs vs Poverty - Click to zoom
Econ4 on the New Economy [7:12]
Econ4 on the New Economy
Econ4, a group of heterodox economists, has released a short video and a statement on the "new economy" which they define as more sustainable and equitable forms of organizing "productive" activity and the resources that support them.
RERUN
*What happened to WTC building 7? [9:01]
Comment: No Steel Skyscraper has ever collapsed straight down at free fall speeds from fires... except on 9/11. Look at the following videos at fires that engulfed the buildings and burnt for hours and still the buildings remained standing.
President Bush said "I don't think anyone could ever imagine anyone flying a couple of airplanes into the side of buildings"
Remember the X-Files and these three characters. Well, there was a spin-off from the X-Files called the Lone Gunmen and this episode aired 1/2 year before 9/11. As President Bush said "I don't think anyone could ever imagine anyone flying a couple of airplanes into the side of buildings"... yeah right!

*Lone Gunmen March 4, 2001 PILOT EPISODE [44:31]
PBS | America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero [1:26:27], PBS | American Rebuilds (website)

12.05.2014. 10:53

Thursday December 04, 2014
News Articles

Anywhere But Here: Las Vegas and the Global Casino We Call Wall Street
BillMoyer | Rebecca Solnit | 12/02/14

... Lake Las Vegas, the subject of Michael Light's aerial photographs in Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain, is such an explicitly European fantasy that a replica of Florence's famous Ponte Vecchio bridge crosses a stretch of its artificial lake, and the houses are mostly in the stucco-and-tile-roof mode called "Mediterranean." From near the earth you see into yards and houses, terra cotta roofs, pieces fitting together like a puzzle, tight to each other, despite the expanse all around, or you see the texture of the earth that has been groomed and scraped and graded into something you can drop a mansion onto. From a little ways higher, you see the layout of the streets, like a fingerprint pressed into the landscape, the whorls and cul-de-sacs of the curvilinear layouts beloved of developers. ... Read more

I guess we have Ghost Cities just like China!
Lake Las Vegas - Recovery remains invisible and economic collapse remains apparent. (09/09/13) [9:57], Part 2 [5:43]
How people around the world see our Government
The soldier's anger that morning after 9/11 was understandable. At that moment I regretted my failure to make clear that my quarry was his country's imperial state of mind, as seen in its foreign policy and cultural overkill, and not his warm-hearted compatriots, most of whom are oblivious to the deeds done in their name.

George Bush the First had flaunted this imperiousness with a gritty phrase on the eve of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: "The American way of life is not negotiable." If that's so, I argued in these pages, then it will eventually cost the rest of us an arm and a leg and a lung; maybe more. While I would rather live in the shadow of the White House than at the mercy of sharia law, the policies of Washington, I came to realise, reflect the ruthlessness of corporate America, which treats other lands according to their rating: market, mine, sweatshop or basket case. Uncle Sam's rapaciousness is both driven and disguised by a mix of pop culture, mass media, brand fetishism and propaganda so clever and tantalising that most of us feel the sooner we're indoctrinated into the American Dream, the better. Hey, don't stop the music.

The events since 9/11 have heightened my concerns. The wounded Goliath is on a rampage - armed to the teeth, adored by the polls, unfettered by law, answering to no-one and licensed to kill. Western nations fall in behind the furious avenger, beguiled by the notion of civilisation protecting itself, striding forth with the flame of freedom. Our commentators applaud. The "axis of evil" speech is hailed by The Australian's foreign editor as a "key defining document of the new era" in which George W. Bush guides us beyond the "magnificent" Cold War strategy of deterrence to the brave new magnificence of "pre-emption", where the US upholds democracy, topples tyrannies and makes the world a better place.

A better place for whom?

It's All Coming To An End, Bill Gross Warns
ZeroHedge | author | 12/04/14

Bill Gross, the legendary bond investor is absolutely spot on in the following paragraph from his latest, December, investment outlook:
How could they? How could policymakers have allowed so much debt to be created in the first place, and then failed to regulate their own system accordingly? How could they have thought that money printing and debt creation could create wealth instead of just more and more debt? How could fiscal authorities have stood by and attempted to balance budgets as opposed to borrowing cheaply and investing the proceeds in infrastructure and innovation? It has been a nursery rhyme experience for sure, but more than likely without a fairytale ending. ... Read more

How people around the world see our War on Terror.
Frank Njenga, a psychiatrist in Nairobi, who is president of the African Association of Psychiatrists and Allied Professionals. "The White House war on terrorism is generally viewed here in Kenya as a futile exercise that is exacerbating the insecurity across the world," Dr. Njenga said. "It is perceived from this end that the major perpetrators of terrorism in the world are the inequities that exist in the world--economic, social and political. Those people who believe that they are downtrodden will continue to perpetuate acts of terrorism."


Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 04 [12:40]
DN | Out Cheneying-Cheney: Obama's Likely Defense Pick Once Backed Pre-emptive Attack on North Korea (12/04/14) [6:48]
DN | "I Can't Breathe": As Protests Erupt in NYC, Eric Garner's Nephew Speaks Out on Grand Jury Ruling (12/04/14) [7:41]
DN | Vince Warren on How Police Officers Get Away with Killing from Ferguson to NYC (12/04/14) [24:55]
*TRNN | Laura Flanders | Chris Hedges: U.S. Drones kill more people than ISIS (12/03/14) [25:57]
TRNN | This is What Voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility Looks like? (12/04/14) [14:27]
TYT | Teen Choked By Cop After Refusing To Show ID (12/03/14) [10:40]
TYT | No Charges For White Cop In Eric Garner Killing, Despite Shocking Video (12/03/14) [8:45]
TYT | American Cops Kill With Startling Frequency Compared To Other Nations (12/03/14) [9:00]
TYT | Glenn Beck Sued For Defamation By Saudi He Constantly Defamed (12/03/14) [6:21]
TYT | Cleveland Cop Had 'No Choice' But To Shoot Tamir Rice Says His Dad (12/03/14) [9:53]

12.04.2014. 13:08

Wednesday December 03, 2014
News Articles

The Next Big Climate Question: Will India Follow China?
NYTimes | Michael Greenstone | 12/02/14

For more than 20 years, international climate talks have been dominated by a schism between those who created the problem of climate change (largely the United States and nations of the European Union) and those who would greatly contribute to it moving forward (largely China and India). But as climate negotiators meet in Lima, Peru, this week and next, and news reports are full of gloomy predictions that the negotiations will produce little, there are increasing signs that this stalemate may have been broken. This emerging shift is due in large part to China and its decision to break ranks and join the United States in making commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ... Read more

Mikhail Gorbachev Blames American 'Triumphalism' For Bringing About A New Cold War
HP | Paul Vale | older 02/12/14

Mikhail Gorbachev has blamed America for bringing about a new Cold War, warning that "militarists" are pushing Europe to the brink of conflict by building fences around his country.

Speaking to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass on Monday, the 83-year-old former Soviet President said that "triumphalism" emanating from Washington had led to rising tensions between East and West, though he added there was still time to resolve the growing dispute before it led to direct conflict. ... Read more

Why Gorbachev Feels Betrayed By The Post-Cold War West
WorldPost & HP | Nathan Gardels | older, 11/07/14
Read more

Russia Recession Signs Mount as Central Bank Stems Ruble Losses
Bloomberg | Ksenia Galouchko | 12/03/14
Read more

6 Charts That Illustrate Vladimir Putin's World of Pain
Bloomberg | author | 12/03/14
Read more

Economist: I've Crunched the Numbers, and the American Dream Is Dead
AlterNet | Travis Gettys | 12/02/14

A California economics professor says he's crunched the numbers, and he has concluded that the American Dream is dead. Gregory Clark, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, found that social mobility had diminished significantly in the past 100 years.

"America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England or pre-industrial Sweden," Clark said. "That's the most difficult part of talking about social mobility, is because it is shattering people's dreams." ... Read more

Chomsky: Elites Have Forced America into a National Psychosis to Keep Us Embroiled in Imperial Wars
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 12/02/14

... A society in which this is the predominant voice can be maintained only through some form of national mobilization, which may range in its extent from, at the minimum, a commitment of substantial resources to a credible threat of force and violence.

Given the realities of international politics, this commitment can be maintained in the United States only by a form of national psychosis - a war against an enemy who appears in many guises: Kremlin bureaucrat, Asian peasant, Latin American student, and, no doubt, "urban guerrilla" at home. ... Read more

"Why Do They Hate Us?" Gore Vidal Interview on Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2002) [33:43]
DN | Expanding U.S. Strikes to ISIS in Syria, Has Obama Opened New Phase of "Perpetual War"? (older 09/23/14) [19:48]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, December 03 [7:39]
DN | United Nations Panel Slams U.S. Record on Police Brutality, Torture, Child Migrants & Guantánamo (12/03/14) [15:25]
*DN | A "Precise" U.S. Drone War? Report Says 28 Unidentified Victims Killed for Every 1 Target (12/03/14) [4:44], Part 2 [10:53]
America's Drone Wars (10/22/13) [1:03:13]
Drone Wars UK website
Jon Stewart | Stephen Colbert
Jon Stewart | A grand jury in Ferguson decides not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, sparking civil rights protests across the U.S., but Fox News blames "racial arsonists" for the outcry. (12/01/14) [9:13]
Stephen Cobert | Senator John McCain weighs in on U.S. military intervention in Syria and discusses his book "Thirteen Soldiers." (12/01/14) [6:58]
HBO | Tonight with John Oliver: Turkey Pardoning (11/23/14) [2:08]
*TRNN | OPEC Steps On The Gas Pedal: Gas and oil production is dropping in the US because it is reliant on $100 a barrel, anything less is not feasible for shale oil producers says journalist Steve Horn (12/03/14) [17:49]
*TRNN | Republican Challenge on Immigration Disingenuous (12/03/14) [15:14]
If the republicans were genuinely concerned about H1B visas, they could have joined AFL-CIO and demand cutting the numbers says William Spriggs, Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO.
TYT | Poor People Would Riot: Chris Rock Says (12/02/14) [6:00]
TYT | Mentally Impaired Man To Be Executed In Texas (12/02/14) [9:48]
TYT | ISIS Newbies Hilariously Regret Career Choice (12/02/14) [7:05]

12.03.2014. 14:13

Tuesday December 02, 2014
REPEAT - But I think is important!
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]
Who's Responsible for National Debt - Click to zoom
Click to zoom - for Larger Image
Donald Rumsfeld Admits Day before 911 "2.3 TRillion Dollars Missing from DOD" () [3:57]
Daily Ticker | Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For (2014) [5:32]
Tuesday December 02, 2014
News Articles
Click to zoom - for Larger Image

How Did the Gates of Hell Open in Vietnam?
AlterNet & TomDispatch.com | Jonathan Schell | 11/30/14

Now, in Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth. Meticulously piecing together newly released classified information, court-martial records, Pentagon reports, and firsthand interviews in Vietnam and the United States, as well as contemporaneous press accounts and secondary literature, Turse discovers that episodes of devastation, murder, massacre, rape, and torture once considered isolated atrocities were in fact the norm, adding up to a continuous stream of atrocity, unfolding, year after year, throughout that country.

It has been Turse's great achievement to see that, thanks to the special character of the war, its prime reality -- an accurate overall picture of what physically was occurring on the ground -- had never been assembled; that with imagination and years of dogged work this could be done; and that even a half-century after the beginning of the war it still should be done. Turse acknowledges that, even now, not enough is known to present this picture in statistical terms. To be sure, he offers plenty of numbers -- for instance the mind-boggling estimates that during the war there were some two million civilians killed and some five million wounded, that the United States flew 3.4 million aircraft sorties, and that it expended 30 billion pounds of munitions, releasing the equivalent in explosive force of 640 Hiroshima bombs. ... Read more and here

Inhofe's Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory: It's All About Barbra Streisand
magazine | author | date

The recent news on the front page of the New York Times was stark. As thousands of diplomats were gathering in Lima, Peru, to work on an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and climate-policy experts were warning: that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet's atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding--events that could harm the world's population and economy.

But with an effort under way in Lima to protect the difference, as the newspaper put it, "between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one," one fellow in Washington is readying himself to prevent any progress toward a climate accord: Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth's climate, not homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: "As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month. He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions. ... Read more

52 Slow Cooker Recipes That You'll Never Want To Live Without
HP | Alison Spiegel | updated 12/02/14

It's the easiest, most effective way we know to draw out deep flavors and produce effortlessly succulent dishes, be they meat-heavy or completely meat-free. The time to get down with your slow cooker is now. Here are 52 recipes to try out: ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December [16:01]
*DN | Will Obama's Police Reforms Bring Change? Admin Urged to Seize Political Momentum of Ferguson Moment (12/02/14) [15:11]
*DN | Will Texas Execute a Schizophrenic Man Who Tried to Subpoena Jesus, JFK & the Pope at His Own Trial? (12/02/14) [9:02]
*TRNN | Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, describes: How the Military Fails U.S. Veterans (12/02/14) [8:18]
TRNN | Professor Vijay Prashad describes the horrific circumstances in which thousands of Indians died and generations suffered health effects, CEO of Union Carbide suffered no consequence (12/02/14) [6:43]
TYT | Nancy Grace Stuns With Her Shocking Michael Brown Opinion (12/01/14) [5:05]
TYT | Obama Wants Police To Use Body Cameras (12/01/14) [7:26]
TYT | GOP Staffer Viciously Attacks Obama's Daughters & Regrets It Immediately (12/01/14) [7:54]
Thom Hartmann
Let's raise taxes to 74% (12/01/14) [9:31]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

12.02.2014. 11:43

Monday December 01, 2014
News Articles

NOAA: 2014 is shaping up as hottest year on record
CNN | Shelby Lin Erdman | 11/30/14

The first ten months of 2014 have been the hottest since record keeping began more than 130 years ago, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That may be hard to believe for people in places like Buffalo, New York, which saw a record early snowfall this year. But NOAA says, despite the early bitter cold across parts of the United States in recent weeks, it's been a hot year so far for the Earth.

With two months left on the calendar, 2014 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. ... Read more

The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels.

  1. Extreme weather: The planet could see as many as 20 more hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century because of climate change, according to a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  2. Drought: In the coming decades climate change will unleash megadroughts lasting 10 years or more, according to a new report by scholars at Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey. We're seeing hints of this already in many arid parts of the world and even in California, which has been rationing water amid record drought. In this 2012 photo, a man places his hand on parched soil in the Greater Upper Nile region of northeastern South Sudan.
  3. Wildfires: There's not a direct link between climate change and wildfires, exactly. But many scientists believe the increase in wildfires in the Western United States is partly the result of tinder-dry forests parched by warming temperatures. This photo shows a wildfire as it approaches the shore of Bass Lake, California, in mid-September.
  4. Coral reefs: Scientists say the oceans' temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to affect the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, which have been bleaching and dying off in recent decades. This photo shows dead coral off the coast of St. Martin's Island in Bangladesh.
  5. Deforestation: Climate change has not been kind to the world's forests. Invasive species such as the bark beetle, which thrive in warmer temperatures, have attacked trees across the North American west, from Mexico to the Yukon. University of Colorado researchers have found that some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically boosting the bugs' threat to lodgepole and ponderosa pines. In this 2009 photo, dead spruces of the Yukon's Alsek River valley attest to the devastation wrought by the beetles.
  6. Mountain glaciers: The snows capping majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, once inspired Ernest Hemingway. Now they're in danger of melting away altogether. Studies suggest that if the mountain's snowcap continues to evaporate at its current rate, it could be gone in 15 years. Here, a Kilimanjaro glacier is viewed from Uhuru Peak in December 2010.
  7. Endangered species: Polar bears may be the poster child for climate change's effect on animals. But scientists say climate change is wreaking havoc on many other species -- including birds and reptiles -- that are sensitive to fluctuations in temperatures. One, this golden toad of Costa Rica and other Central American countries, has already gone extinct.
  8. Animal migration: It's not your imagination: Some animals -- mostly birds -- are migrating earlier and earlier every year because of warming global temperatures. Scholars from the University of East Anglia found that Icelandic black-tailed godwits have advanced their migration by two weeks over the past two decades. Researchers also have found that many species are migrating to higher elevations as temperatures climb.
  9. Food prices: A U.N. panel found in March that climate change -- mostly drought -- is already affecting the global agricultural supply and will likely drive up food prices. Here, in 2010, workers on combines harvest soybeans in northern Brazil. Global food experts have warned that climate change could double grain prices by 2050.
  10. Pollen allergies: Are you sneezing more often these days? Climate change may be to blame for that, too. Recent studies show that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels promote the growth of weedy plant species that produce allergenic pollen. The worst place in the United States for spring allergies in 2014, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America? Louisville, Kentucky.

No Safe Place: How Cities Are Making it Illegal to Be Homeless
BillMoyers | author | older 08/13/14

Read more

It Costs $21,000 More to Ignore the Homeless Than It Does to Give Them a Home
BillMoyers | Scott Keyes | older 05/28/14

The Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets.

The study, conducted by Creative Housing Solutions, an Oklahoma-based consultant group, tracked public expenses accrued by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room intakes that the patient was unable to afford.

Andrae Bailey, CEO of the commission that released the study, noted to the Orlando Sentinel that most chronically homeless people have a physical or mental disability, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. "These are not people who are just going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job," he said. "They're never going to get off the streets on their own."

There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade. ... Read more

Paul Krugman on Who Is Really to Blame for Europe's Dire Straits
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 12/01/14

Paul Krugman is guardely optimistic about the U.S. economy, which seems to be climbing slowly out of the deep trench of the global financial crisis. Not so with Europe, where, he writes, bad ideas have proven to have an enduring grip. Unemployment there is twice what it is in the U.S. and deflation looms. Like Japan before it, Europe appears to be having a lost decade.

Was this necessary? No, Krugman writes in Monday's column. And without mincing any words, he lands the blame squarely at the feet mostly of Germany, which has used its economic might to inflict austerity and other punitive monetary policies on the rest of Europe. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December [9:49]
DN | "A Dark Moment in Egypt's History": Former Dictator Hosni Mubarak Cleared in Death of Protesters (12/01/14) [12:24]
DN | Dehumanizing the Black Lives of America: Michael Eric Dyson on Ferguson, Police Brutality and Race (12/01/14) [17:08]
DN | "Not One More Darren Wilson, Not One More Mike Brown": National Protests Continue Ferguson Struggle (12/01/14) [16:01]
TRNN | A Real Climate Treaty From COP20 Would Phase Out Fossil Fuels (11/30/14) [16:02]
EcoEquity director Tom Athanasiou says a real split has emerged in the elite on whether to maintain an economy driven by fossil fuels or transition towards low or zero carbon through large-scale infrastructural development.
TRNN | Alan Robock: Global Warming Theory Based on Evidence, Not Belief , Part 1 (11/30/14) [16:34]
TRNN | #BlackoutBlackFriday Targets Retailers as Protests Continue against Ferguson Grand Jury (12/01/14) [3:51]
Bill Moyers | Elizabeth Warren
Bill Moyers | The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy (11/29/14) [23:12]
BillMoyers | A big part of the damage came during an exchange between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and William Dudley. () [2:54]
TYT | America Wins The Freedom Rankings, Right? Not. Even. Close. (11/30/14) [6:20]
TYT | Don't Blame Darren Wilson, Blame Something MUCH Bigger (11/30/14) [5:13]
TYT | Justice Scalia's Grand Jury Rant Highlights Everything Wrong With Ferguson (11/30/14) [2:57]
TYT | The Changing Climates Of Global Warming Propaganda (11/30/14) [4:48]
TYT | Unarmed Man Shot At By Cop While Trying To Save Daughters Life (11/26/14) [4:50]
TYT | Darren Wilson Shares His Side Of The Story (11/26/14) [2:52]
TYT | Governor Insists Food Stamps Come With Drug Tests (11/30/14) [7:22]
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | How to Talk to Your Conservative Relatives... (11/26/14) [9:20]
Ring of Fire
Papantonio: SEC Delays Wrecking Our Economy (11/29/14) [9:140]

12.01.2014. 08:38



Special Interest Important stuff
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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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