Home · News · News Nov 2013 · Nov 20 2013
Wednesday November 20, 2013
News Articles

US Ranks 43rd in the World on Climate Policy (and Canada is Even Worse)
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 11/20/13

Recently, there's been some good news when it comes to US greenhouse gas emissions: They're actually going down. The bad news, though, is that despite this progress, we still only rank 43rd in the world for the overall effectiveness of our climate policies. ...
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Obama Administration Maps Out Detour Around HealthCare.gov
HP | Jeffrey Young | 11/19/13

People interested in buying health insurance under Obamacare could soon skip the HealthCare.gov website and apply for coverage and financial assistance directly with private insurance companies and online brokers, the Obama administration said Tuesday, in its latest effort to work around the faulty website.

These insurance issuers and brokers are about to get what they want. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is close to providing insurers with the technological capability to also take subsidy applications, as well as sell plans to customers, spokeswoman Julie Bataille said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. ... Read more

The American Model Of "Growth": Overbuilding And Poaching
ZeroHedge | author | 11/19/13

The rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other simulacra of "growth" are masking the real model of growth in America: overbuilding and poaching, as in poaching customers and sales from competitors.

No matter how many outlets a company has, there's always room for a few hundred more somewhere. Now that there's a Starbucks on every corner, you might think the opportunities for expansion are limited. No way--now there are Starbucks in bookstores, Safeway supermarkets, subway stations (BART), etc. ... Read more

A Daring Swiss Bid to Stomp Out CEO Pay Excess
Bill Moyer | Sam Pizzigati | 11/19/13

Something astounding is happening in Switzerland. For the first time ever, voters in a modern developed nation are going to be voting on whether to create what amounts to a "maximum wage."   The vote will come Sunday, November 24, on a ballot initiative that bans any Swiss corporate executive compensation that runs over 12 times worker pay.

In effect, under this "1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay," no Swiss company would be able to pay its top executives more in a month than the company's lowest-paid workers make in a year. ... Read more

How Washington D.C. Is Sucking The Life Out Of America
ZeroHedge | author | 11/19/13

Ever since I started writing about what is happening in the world around me, my primary theme has been that the root cancer at the core of the U.S., and indeed global economy, is cronyism and an absence of the rule of law when it comes to oligarchs. In the U.S., this cronyism is best described as an insidious relationship between large multi-national corporations and big government to funnel all of the wealth and resources of the nation to themselves at the expense of everyone else. In a genuine free market defined by heightened competition and governed by an equal application of the rule of law to all, the 0.1% does not aggregate all of a nation's wealth. This sort of thing only happens in crony capitalism, which is basically nothing more than complete and total insider deals to aggregate newly created money into the hands of the few. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, November 20 [12:41]
*DN | "Finance Climate Action, Not Fossil Fuel Subsidies": Activists Blast Priorities of Biggest Polluters (11/20/13) [11:44]
DN | As Poor Countries Walk Out of Climate Talks, Venezuela Calls on Industrial Nations to Take Action (11/20/13) [17:43], Part 2 [4:05]
MSNBC Dylan Rattigan
Dylan Rattigan Gets Emotional About Debt (older but GOOD) [4:48]
TRNN News
TRNN | Kshama Sawant: Boeing receives almost $9 billion in state tax breaks but threatens to move some operations out of Washington due to a contract dispute (11/20/13) [6:59]
TTY News
TYT | George Zimmerman 911 Call - 'Gun In My Freaking Face' (11/20/13) [6:32]
TYT | Walmart Holds Food Drive For Its OWN Employees (11/20/13) [5:35]
TYT | How To Get A Job At Fox Business (11/20/13) [4:53]
TYT | White Supremacist Arrested For Terrorizing Town (11/19/13) [4:37]
TYT | The Two Establishment Candidates For 2016 (11/19/13) [7:40]
MSNBC Chris Hayes - Al l In
Chris Hayes | Time to use the nuclear option (11/19/13) [3:22]
Chris Hayes | Expanding Social Security (11/19/13) [3:59], Part 2 [5:51]
Chris Hayes | Battle lines are drawn in the Cheney family (11/19/13) [3:35]
More segments on the MSNBC website
MSNBC Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | Marriage equality spreads, GOP goes anti-ga (11/19/13) [20:16]
More segments on the MSNBC website
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Jon Stewart | Rob Ford, the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, has done it again (11/19/13) [4:40], Part 2 [4:28]
Stephen Colbert
Even More News

  1. JPMorgan $13 Billion Mortgage Deal Seen as Lawsuit Shield (BBG)
  2. J.P. Morgan Is Haunted by a 2006 Decision on Mortgages (WSJ)
  3. World powers, Iran in new attempt to reach nuclear deal (Reuters)
  4. Keystone Foes Seek to Thwart Oil Sands Exports by Rail (BBG) - mostly Warren Buffet?
  5. How Would Fed Deal With Debt Ceiling Crisis? Look to Minutes for Clues (Hilsenrath)
  6. Anything to prevent the loss of prop trading: 'Volcker Rule' Faces New Hurdles (WSJ)
  7. BOE Sees Case for Keeping Record-Low Rate Beyond 7% Jobless (BBG)
  8. Obama Backs Piecemeal Immigration Overhaul (WSJ)
  9. Abenomics Seen Cutting Japan Bad-Loan Costs to 2006 Low (BBG)
How a Shadowy Network of Corporate Front Groups Distorts the Marketplace of Ideas

How a Shadowy Network of Corporate Front Groups Distorts the Marketplace of Ideas
Bill Moyer | Joshua Holland | 11/19/13

In 1971, Lewis Powell, who would become a Supreme Court justice the following year, penned a memo calling on the American business community to aggressively engage in shaping the country's political discourse and regulatory landscape. The "American economic system is under broad attack," he wrote. He said the time had come to fight back. "Business must learn . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination -- without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business." ... Read more

Exposed: The State Policy Network.pdf

Mackinac Center for Public Policy
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a right-wing pressure group based in Michigan. Founded in 1987, it is the largest state-level "think tank" in the nation. It was established by right-wing activists to promote "free market," pro-business policies. The Center voices its policy positions though publications and has moved beyond Michigan by helping the leaders of similar conservative institutions to ratchet up their operations in many other states and countries around the world. It is a member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a web of state pressure groups that denote themselves as "think tanks" and drive a right-wing agenda in statehouses nationwide.

11.20.2013. 12:08



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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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