Home · News · News Mar 2019 · Mar 26 2019
Tuesday March 26, 2019

Stock buybacks shattered records in 2018
Axios | Dion Rabouin | 03/26/19

Over the past few years the fire beneath Apple's red-hot stock price has largely been stock buybacks. The company has dwarfed other companies in terms of the number and amount of buybacks last year and for the past decade.

Driving the news: S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Monday that companies bought back $806.4 billion worth of their own shares, including $223 billion in just the fourth quarter in 2018. It was short of the $1 trillion Goldman Sachs predicted in August, but still an all-time record.

Of that record total, Apple bought back $10.1 billion worth of its own stock in Q4 and $74.2 billion for the year, more than a third of the entire S&P 500 total. The closest company to that total was Oracle, which spent $29.3 billion. No. 2 company on the buybacks list is Microsoft ... Read more
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Now Trump Wants Judges To Throw Out The Entire Affordable Care Act
HP | Jonathan Cohn | 03/26/19

The Trump administration on Monday adopted a more extreme position on a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act: Instead of asking the federal courts to throw out just one part of the law, as it had done previously, now the administration wants the courts to throw out the entire thing.

Protections for people with pre-existing conditions, tax credits for lower- and middle-class insurance buyers, expanded state Medicaid programs for the poor ? all of these things would be gone, and millions of people would lose health insurance if the administration gets its way.

And the effects would not stop there. The health care law includes all kinds of other, lesser-known provisions, touching everything from the way Medicare pays hospitals to the calorie counts on food menus. ... Read more

Taibbi: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin
RollingStone | Matt Taibb | 03/26/19

On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress, summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. The most telling section, quoted directly from Mueller's report, read:

"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

That one sentence should end a roughly 33-month national ordeal (the first Russiagate stories date back to July 2016) in which the public was encouraged, both by officials and the press, to believe Donald Trump was a compromised foreign agent. ... Read more

16 Years Later, How the Press That Sold the Iraq War Got Away With It | RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/22/19| article
How to Blow $700 Billion by the Pentagon | RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/20/19| article
Trump Wants More War Money Than Last Year and Democrats Don't Seem to Mind | RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/19/19| article

Pentagon Says All of Google's Work on Drones is Exempt from the Freedom of Information Act
TheIntercept | Sam Biddle | 03/25/19

IN SEPTEMBER 2017, Aileen Black wrote an email to her colleagues at Google. Black, who led sales to the U.S. government, worried that details of the company's work to help the military guide lethal drones would become public through the Freedom of Information Act. "We will call tomorrow to reinforce the need to keep Google under the radar," Black wrote.

According to a Pentagon memo signed last year, however, no one at Google needed worry: All 5,000 pages of documents about Google's work on the drone effort, known as Project Maven, are barred from public disclosure, because they constitute "critical infrastructure security information." ... Read more

Who keeps buying California's scarce water? Saudi Arabia
TheGuardian | Lauren Markham | 03/26/19

Saudi-based Almarai owns 15,000 acres of an irrigated valley -- but what business does a foreign food production company have drawing resources from a US desert?

Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town's 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop.

Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows -- but not cows in California's Central Valley or Montana's rangelands. Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, March 26 [12:59]
"Hold Israel Accountable": Palestinians Call on Int'l Community to Oppose Golan Heights Annexation | DN | 03/26/19 | 12:34
Fears of New Gaza Invasion Rise as Israel Launches Airstrikes and Mobilizes Along Border | DN | 03/26/19 | 10:58
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, March 26 (FULL) | 59:02
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
  1. Headlines
  2. "Hold Israel Accountable": Palestinians Call on Int'l Community to Oppose Golan Heights Annexation
  3. Fears of New Gaza Invasion Rise as Israel Launches Airstrikes and Mobilizes Along Border
  4. "Suicide Is Preventable": Public Health Advocates Push to End Stigma After Parkland & Newtown Deaths
Russia Obsession Let Trump Abandon Nuclear Treaties -- Wilkerson and Jay | TRNN | 03/25/18 | 12:58
Democrats' Russophobia Hid Trump's Real Crimes | TRNN | 03/26/18 | 24:06
Devastating Parkland Survivor News | TYT | 03/25/19 | 4:51
Trump Setting Dangerous Precedent | TYT | 03/25/19 | 9:48
The1a.org
It's SCOTUS Season: Springtime And The Supremes | 1a.org | 03/26/19 | 1hr
  1. Curtis Flowers is approaching 50. He's been tried for a quadruple murder not once, not twice, but six times. Now, he's sitting on death row in Mississippi's Parchman prison. And the Supreme Court heard his case. But they won't decide on whether Flowers, a black man, committed murder or not.
  2. "Supreme Court says government has broad authority when detaining some immigrants"
  3. The case of Lee Malvo, the DC sniper, who was 17 at the time of his crime. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole but is now appealing his sentence based on a recent ruling that limited life sentences for juvenile offenders.
*The Mueller Investigation (full film) | FRONTLINE | PBS | 03/22/19 | 52:43
William Barr Memo Leaves Much Unanswered About Mueller Report Findings | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC | 03/26/19 | 12:43
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Holder Knocks Barr For Burying Mueller Report, Just 'Beginning' | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 03/25/19 | 15:14
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Colbert: All The Other Reasons Trump Is A Bad President | Stephen Colbert | 03/25/19 | 16:08

Click to zoom in
Click to zoom in
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Make The Mueller Report Public | Stephen Colbert | 03/25/19 | 6:53

03.26.2019. 12:15



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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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