What Everyone Gets Wrong About Kushner's Clearance Fiasco The president has the power to share whatever information he wants, and that's why his son-in-law's predicament matters less than you think. In case you somehow missed it: Kushner's interim Top Secret clearance has been "downgraded" to an interim Secret clearance, and Washington's chattering class is freaking out. But in the final analysis, the practical ramifications of this just aren't that big a deal, because Kushner and the president will be able to find workarounds if they so choose. Here's what many don't get about the security clearance process: It's a "process" except when it isn't, and whatever "rules" might apply only apply when the president wants them to. The president has the authority to share classified information with whomever he pleases, even if it's the Russian foreign minister. ... Read more Bernie Sanders Wants Congress to End U.S. Support for Yemen War A BIPARTISAN GROUP of senators unveiled legislation on Wednesday designed to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The resolution -- introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; and Mike Lee, R-Utah -- attempts to use the War Powers Act of 1973, a Vietnam War-era law that limits the president's power to wage war without congressional authorization, to disentangle the U.S. from a campaign that has claimed thousands of civilian lives and led to mass starvation. The U.S. military currently provides vital support to the Saudi-led incursion into Yemen. Saudi Arabia began its bombing campaign in March 2015, aiming to restore Yemen's former Saudi-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power. Hadi was deposed in 2014 by a Zaidi Shiite rebel group commonly known as the Houthis. ... Read more Want to Address the Greatest Foreign Threat to US Democracy? Fix Voting Machines Democracy, the very essence of the United States, is under attack, we're told at least once a week. Not because Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker refuses to hold special elections -- literally denying all citizens the right to vote -- because he's afraid Republicans will lose. Not because the Pennsylvania GOP is threatening to impeach judges for issuing a fair redistricting map. And not because racist Republican voter ID laws are an extension of the decades-long attack on the Voting Rights Act, including the mass disenfranchisement of formerly incarcerated people. All of those things are happening, of course, and have a direct and harmful impact on the right to vote and have one's vote counted in the United States, especially if you're likely to vote Democrat. ... That said, there is a significant threat to US democracy from abroad -- and domestically -- that isn't getting the mainstream attention it deserves. This is the unconscionable vulnerability of electronic voting systems throughout the country. ... Read more China's New "Silk Road"China's New "Silk Road": Future MEGAPROJECTS | | 06/02/17 | 11:16 Why Are Millions of Chinese Kids Parenting Themselves? | TheAtlantic | 02/22/18 | 14:33
Generations of Wang Ying's family farmed the misty mountains of Liangshan, one of China's poorest regions. But now, the 14-year-old girl lives on her own as the sole caretaker of her two younger siblings. They are among an estimated 9 million "left-behind children" raising themselves in the Chinese countryside.
An Industry Group Says the Trump Administration Is Run "Like a Bad Family Owned Small Business" -- And They Love It A contractors trade association, in an internal presentation, mocks the president while praising him for cutting back on rules meant to protect workers. Trump, the presentations state, is an "autocratic leader" who regularly "humiliates [his] senior team" and is running the administration "like a bad family owned small business." One presentation quotes the president's statement that infrastructure should be "easy" and follows it with a rhetorical eye-roll: "Really? Read more Free-Diving Under Ice, There Is 'No Place for Fear' | TheAtlantic | 02/28/18 | 3:47 |
"Freakishly Warm" Arctic Weather Has Scientists Reconsidering Worst-Case Scenarios on Climate Change | DN | 03/01/18 | 7:08
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, March 01 (FULL) | 59:02
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Jennifer Francis -> Wacky Weather: Bitter Cold Winter Link to 'Arctic Warming' | TRNN | little older | 13:59
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill to End Catastrophic US War in Yemen | TRNN | 02/28/18 | 7:26 Col. Larry Wilkerson -> Western Media Distorts Escalating Syrian War | TRNN | 02/28/18 | 16:44 Church Holds Bizarre AR-15 Ceremony | TYT | 03/01/18 | 7:11 Trump Trashes His Own Attorney General. Again. | TYT | 02/28/18 | 7:22 The1a.org On Clearance: Must Kushner Go? | 1a.org | 03/01/18 | 1hr
ared Kushner is tasked with some high-level responsibilities as the senior adviser to President Trump. Kushner, who is also the president's son-in-law, has worked to negotiate a peaceful resolution to long-standing conflicts in the Middle East, met with leaders of ally nations like Saudi Arabia and talked trade with China and Mexico.
'Javanka' Faction Falling Apart As Hope Hicks, Others Quit W.H. | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC | 02/28/18 | 18:12
But this week, his access to top-secret intelligence, including highly classified information, was restricted. Kushner's background check has not cleared, even after Kushner spent months of working for the administration, leading White House chief-of-staff John Kelly to pull the plug on much of what Kushner can hear and see in his role. Others on staff in the White House, from top aides to the president's daughter, Ivanka, also had their security clearances downgraded or called into question. Now the world is watching to see if losing access to sensitive information will hobble the ability of these staffers to do their jobs. |
03.01.2018. 11:17
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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
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
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
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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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?
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
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
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
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 | 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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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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