Home · News · News Dec 2015 · Dec 15 2015
Tuesday December 15, 2015
News Articles

9 Candidates Will Take The Stage At The GOP Debate, But All Eyes Will Be On Donald Trump And Ted Cruz
HP | Julie Pace | 12/14/15

Donald Trump will be standing at center stage, but Ted Cruz will be in the spotlight at Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate.

The Texas senator is challenging Trump's lead in the kickoff Iowa caucuses, and he has the money, campaign infrastructure and conservative appeal to compete deep into the GOP primary season. Those assets now make him a target for his rivals, most notably Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. ... Read more

Here's What's Up With The East Coast's Absurdly Warm Weather
HP | Nick Visser | 12/14/15

The weather's been positively toasty across much of the east coast over the past several days, especially for a December. In New York, Sunday temperatures shattered a 30-year-old record, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And the month has been chock-full of 60-plus days.

So what's going on? Is this a climate change thing, or a welcome boon from the ongoing El Nino tropical weather event? The answer actually lies with a buzzword from 2014's equally extreme temperatures: the polar vortex. ... Read more

The Fixed Income Bloodbath Continues: Wall Street Harbinger Jefferies Reports Another Terrible Bond Trading Quarter
ZeroHedge | author | 12/15/15

Earlier today Jefferies reported another quarter in which its Fixed Income revenue could best be described as dismal: Fixed Income posted a nominal $8.4 million in revenue: a whopping 83% collapse from the already subdued $48.6 million a year ago. The biggest irony is that while other banks are clamoring to be allowed to "prop trade" again, Jefferies which has had the green light to do just that as it never got an FDIC bailout and remains the only sizable pure-play investment bank, just got crushed precisely due to its junk bond prop trading. ... Read more

Essentially, TV news producers are wondering: "How do we keep getting the great ratings without helping elect the Fourth Reich?"

Matt Taibbi: It's Too Late To Turn Off Trump
AlterNet | author | 12/14/15

At some undefined moment over the past two weeks a light bulb suddenly came on over the talking heads in our corporate media as it dawned on them that Donald Trump was saying things that were really not so nice and kinda scary. Why it took them nearly half a year to reach this epiphany has not been satisfactorily explained or even examined, but as Matt Taibbi takes note in Rolling Stone, a good bet is that it had something to do with ratings, a factironically acknowledged by Trump himself. Citing the moral quandary posed to big TV execs by continuing to profit from coverage of someone who could at any day float the idea of, say, ethnic cleansing to his adoring fanbase, Taibbi sees this as an uncharacteristic problem for CNN and all of the major media who've sold out to Trumpmania: ... Read more

The 'Independence Day: Resurgence' Trailer Is So Good Even Jeff Goldblum Can't Handle It
HP | Cole Delbyck | 12/13/15

Football fans got quite the treat this Sunday when Fox aired the first trailer for the hotly anticipated follow-up to the sci-fi classic "Independence Day." Picking up 20 years later, "Independence Day: Resurgence" follows humanity's second round with an alien race hell-bent on world domination.

After the events of the first film, Earth has shored up its defenses, using alien tech to prevent another invasion. However, an alien distress signal draws a new force of life-threatening extraterrestrials, forcing the human race to once again fight for its survival. ... Read more
The 'Independence Day: Resurgence' (trailer) [2:21]

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, December 15 [11:48]
*DR | What An Interest Rate Hike From The Fed Could Mean For The Economy (12/15/15) [1hr]
On Wednesday the Federal Reserve is expected to announce an interest rate hike for the first time in nine years. What higher rates could mean for the economy, small businesses and consumers.
DR | Voter Discontent And Demographic Trends Driving The 2016 Presidential Race (12/15/15) [1hr]
Donald Trump continues to top Republican presidential polls and will be center stage for the upcoming debate. Diane and guests discuss voter discontent and the demographic trends driving the 2016 presidential race.
*TRNN | Bill Black: A "Jihadist" Against the Banks? (12/15/15) [8:11]
*TRNN | Chris Hedges and author Vijay Prashad trace the acceleration of U.S. militarism since the collapse of the Soviet Union (12/15/15) [27:16]
*TRNN | Professor Chris Williams says: 'Fossil Fuels' Nowhere to be Found in the Paris Agreement (12/15/15) [11:49]
TYT | No, Solar Panels Don't Suck Up All The Sun's Sun Juice (12/14/15) [3:51]
TYT | Deal Reached In Paris Climate Talks (12/14/15) [8:36]
TYT | Timid Ted Cruz Turns The Other Cheek After Trump Attack (12/14/15) [6:03]
RT | 'US doesn't understand what it's doing in Syria' -- CIA Veteran (12/14/15) [24:45]
RT | Keiser Report: Financial Monster Creations (E849) (12/15/15) [25:44]
RoF | ow And DuPont: The Largest Criminal Merger In History? (12/15/15) [7:30]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*Thom Hartmann | Who Were the Bolsheviks and Why They Matter Today... (11/05/15) [43:10]
Thom Hartmann talks with Professor Stephen Cohen, Contributing Editor-The Nation / Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. Stephen's books, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (still in print) PLUS, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives, which examines the "New Cold War," BOTH available in paperback.
NPR (National Public Radio) - www.npr.org/
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) - www.pbs.org/
MSNBC - Maddow/Hayes - www.msnbc.com/

12.15.2015. 13:00



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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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