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Tuesday November 12, 2013
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Former Fed Quantitative Easer Confesses, Apologizes: "I Can Only Say: I'm Sorry, America"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/12/13

"I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing.... We were working feverishly to preserve the impression that the Fed knew what it was doing... The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.... Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets. As for the rest of America, good luck..... The implication is that the Fed is dutifully compensating for the rest of Washington's dysfunction. But the Fed is at the center of that dysfunction. Case in point: It has allowed QE to become Wall Street's new "too big to fail" policy." ... Read more

Meet Your Taxpayer-Subsidized Farm Bill Billionaires!
HP | Jason Linkins | 11/11/13

When most people think about farm subsidies, chances are they do not immediately think "massive taxpayer money boondoggle that should be cut from the federal budget immediately." They've probably heard about how hard it is out there for small family farmers, doing honest work in the world, keeping everyone fed and maintaining our institutional repository of agricultural practices. Surely, these subsidies are helping to keep an important way of life alive for the True Sons of Soil and Toil ... like, say, multi-billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Reps. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.) and Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) both cited the Bible last week to argue that while individual Christians have a responsibility to feed the poor, the federal government does not.   Yet both men's farms have received millions in federal assistance, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that advocates for more conservation and fewer subsidies. LaMalfa's family rice farm has received more than $5 million in commodity subsidies since 1995, according to the group's analysis of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department, while Fincher's farm has received more than $3 million since then. ... Read more

There is a reason these subsidies are never cut - Congress is on the Take:

  1. Senators. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley received $1 million in federal Farm handouts over 11 years.
  2. Families of Senators. Grassley's son received $699,248.
  3. 4Republican Districts. In just four Republican Districts in Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas the government handed out $5.4-billion in farm subsidies to big argi-business.
  4. Corn and Milk. In 2005 alone, the US government spent $4.9 billion guaranteeing Corn and Milk prices.
  5. All Industries. It isn't just farm subsidies. Every big business is at the public trough. Annual Direct Federal Subsides To Industries:

  6. Farm = $35 billion
    Airline = $68 billion
    Oil = $35 billion.
    Coal = $86 billion
    Natural Gas = $100 billion
    Ethanol = $173 billion
    Flood Insurance = $12 billion
    Total = $509 billion

  7. State Subsidies. It isnt just Federal Subsidies. Texas State Subsidies Oil/Gas total $1.4-billion
  8. Indirect Subsidies. Indirect Federal, State and Local Oil Subsidies including Tax breaks, Delpletion Allowance, Oil Pipelines, Monitoring, Transportation, Remote Sensing/Mapping (USGS), etc. less environmental costs = $310 billion.

Total Government Subsidies to Businesses: $800-billion.


Republicans Refuse to Cut Subsidies. In 2011, the Democrats proposed a bill to cut some of these subsidies. No Republicans voted for the measure and it lost 176-249, with all Republicans voting against it:

http://republicanpartyconvention.com/blogs/e2-wire/146843-house-thwarts-dem-bid-on-oil-tax-breaks
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ten-reasons-cut-farm-subsidies
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home
http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/business/06boonies.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy08/pdf/hist.pdf
http://www.dot.gov/bib2009/crosswalk.htm
http://cleantech.com/news/node/554
http://www.heritage.org/Research/welfare/Test080101.cfm
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/1209/Antisocialist_Bachmann_got_250k _in_federal_farm_subsidies.html
U.S. Drought Monitor Update for Nov 5, 2013
ncdc.noaa.gov | author | 11/05/13

According to the November 5, 2013 U.S. Drought Monitor, moderate to exceptional drought covers 32.2% of the contiguous United States, a decrease from last week's 34.7%. However, the worst drought categories (extreme to exceptional drought) increased slightly from 2.8% last week to 2.9%. ... Click to zoom
Read more

Rising Seas Around the World (Interactive)
Click to zoom
NatGeo | Rising Seas Around the World


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, November 12 [15:16]
DN | "Stop This Madness": Filipino Climate Chief Yeb Saño Begins Hunger Fast to Protest Global Inaction (11/12/13) [13:34]
*DN | Thom Hartmann on "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America - and What We Can Do to Stop It" (11/12/13) [19:31], Part 2 [7:17]
Could the United States face another economic collapse? Writer and broadcaster Thom Hartmann looks back at past financial crises and comes to a startling conclusion. "As long as you don't look too closely at our nation, things seem under control -- the United States looks whole ... but when you go around to the 'dark back side' of the nation, you see the shocking truth. There you see a nation whose core fundamentals have been hollowed out," writes Hartmann in his new book, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It."
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | John Nichols and Robert McChesney on Selling out Democracy (11/12/13) [31:39]
special interests pumped big money into promoting or tearing down candidates and ballot initiatives in elections across the country. It was a reprise on a small scale of the seven billion dollars we saw going into presidential, congressional and judicial races in 2012. To sway the vote, wealthy individuals and corporations bought campaign ads, boosting revenues at a handful of media conglomerates who have a near-monopoly on the airwaves.

No one knows the dangers of this 'money-and-media complex' better than John Nichols and Robert McChesney, who speak with Bill this week on Moyers & Company. Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and a pioneering political blogger. McChesney is a professor and leading scholar of communications at the University of Illinois. Their latest book is Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
*Bill Moyers | Heidi Boghosian on Spying on Democracy (11/11/13) [20:52]
Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, Heidi Boghosian, joins Bill for a conversation on what we all need to know about surveillance in America. Boghosian, author of Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance, says the government is working with corporations to illicitly spy on virtually all of us, not just suspected terrorists or the Angela Merkels of this world. "They are hand-in-hand working to gather information about Americans as well as people across the globe, to really be in a race to collect more information than any other country can."
Philippines' Super Storm
News31 | Philippines declares 'state of calamity' (11/12/13) [2:18]
Wealth Inequality in America
*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]
TRNN News
The Untold Story of America's War in Afghanistan , Part 2 [9:52]
TRNN | Former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley examines what the IAEA already knows about Iran's nuclear program and debunks myths and misconceptions (11/12/13) [8:07], Part 2 [7:30]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | 60 Minutes: Meh Culpa: Lindsey Graham pays a price for the "60 Minutes" report on Benghazi being total bulls**t (11/11/13) [5:45]
Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation
Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", Nasa has warned.
Surface of the Sun As You've Never Seen It [3:35]
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.

11.12.2013. 17:41



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title

I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title

I'm still working on this

Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title
Documentaries (small | pop-up)
Documentaries (big | full screen)
Good YouTube Documentaries

Note: To view a video, click on its name/title
Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
Good YouTube Docs. (big | full screen)

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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