Home · News · News Aug 2019 · Aug 09 2019
Friday August 09, 2019

Mitch: Senate to Consider Gun Bills... LATER
HP | AP/Lisa Mascaro | 08/09/19

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Shifting the gun violence debate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday he now wants to consider background checks and other bills, setting up a potentially pivotal moment when lawmakers return in the fall.

The Republican leader won't be calling senators back to work early, as some are demanding. But he told a Kentucky radio station that President Donald Trump called him Thursday morning and they talked about several ideas. The president, he said, is "anxious to get an outcome and so am I." ... Read more

The countries most at risk of a water crisis
Axios | Dave Lawler | 08/09/19

17 countries use more than 80% of their available water supplies every year, meaning droughts or increased water demand for agriculture and growing cities could leave them at risk of crisis, according to the World Resources Institute.

Zoom in, and more pockets of concern emerge. States like New Mexico in the U.S. and cities such as Cape Town, South Africa -- which nearly ran out of drinking water last year -- have "extremely high" stress levels. ... Read more
Click on Image to Zoom in

Business Group Spending on Lobbying in Washington is at Least Double What's Publicly Reported
TheIntercept | Andrew Perez, Abigail Luke, Tim Zelina | 08/06/19

INFLUENTIAL CORPORATE TRADE organizations and nonprofits spent $535 million on lobbying in 2017 and as much as another $675 million on unregulated efforts to influence public policy, according to a two-month investigation.

The figures, taken together, highlight how business interests can exploit loopholes in lobbying rules, which don't cover many staples of modern influence campaigns, such as strategic consulting, broadcast advertising, media relations, social media posts, and polling -- or even the financing of astroturf campaigns.

MapLight reviewed tax returns from almost 100 trade organizations and nonprofits to identify unregulated spending on items described as "advocacy," "consulting," "contributions," "coalitions," "consortiums," "government affairs," "communications," "programs," "special projects," "dues," "memberships," and "subscriptions."

The $1.2 billion in combined spending demonstrates the increasing power of tax-exempt trade groups known as 501(c)(6) organizations. The Internal Revenue Service has approved thousands of applications for nonprofit status for such organizations, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spends more on lobbying than any other trade organization, to the Washington State Society of Anesthesiologists. Their influence has grown substantially since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision allowed them to spend directly on politics. ... Read more

Samantha Bee
Just Another Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week of Gun Violence | Full Frontal by Samantha Bee | 08/07/19 | 6:46
A Reminder to Our Government That White Supremacist Violence is Terrorism | Full Frontal by Samantha Bee | 08/07/19 | 8:00
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, August 09 [11:37]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, August 09 (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. Mass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Leave Kids Without Parents
  3. Supersizing Climate Change: U.N. Says Meat Production Destroys Land & Diminishes Key Water Sources
  4. Documents Reveal Monsanto Surveilled Journalists, Activists & Even Musician Neil Young
New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change | TRNN | 08/08/19 | 13:16
4Chan's and 8Chan's Internet-Brewed Racism Informs Trump's Rhetoric | TRNN | 08/07/19 | 20:49
Trump Brags About Himself While Visiting Hospital | TYT | 08/08/19 | 7:48
The1a.org
Friday News Roundup -- Domestic | 1a.org | 08/09/19 | 1hr
  1. Over the weekend, mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, reignited debates that surface each time the nation reels from such atrocities: about gun control, about mental health, about domestic terrorism. One listener, Sandy from Houston, called in and said she ran errands with her daughter Monday morning and told her she was nervous to go into a Walmart, where the El Paso shooting took place. Her high school-aged daughter responded: "Try having to go to school."
  2. We're also following another spate of violence from the weekend that got much less attention. In Chicago, seven people were killed and at least 55 were wounded by gunfire between Friday evening and Monday morning -- the city's worst weekend of gun violence this year.
  3. We also bring you the latest on the administration's immigration policy. This week, ICE officials raided work sites across the state of Mississippi, arresting nearly 700 people the agency says are undocumented immigrants. Officials called it the largest immigration enforcement action to be conducted in a single state.
Friday News Roundup -- International | 1a.org | 08/09/19 | 1hr
  1. This week, the Indian government moved to change the status of the disputed territory of Kashmir, intensifying tensions in a long-volatile area. In response, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan warned that the move could cause "ethnic cleansing" and war in the primarily Muslim territory, according to NPR's Diaa Hadid. The area is divided between India and Pakistan. Separatist conflict there has claimed about 45,000 lives since the 1980s.
  2. In Hong Kong [protests have reached their 10th consecutive week] . Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens have taken to the streets. Sparked by an anti-extradition bill that Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam walked back, the demonstrations have evolved into expressions of anger toward Beijing
  3. Meanwhile, the United States designated China a currency manipulator, signaling a new front in an ongoing trade war. Bloomberg's Shawn Donnan told us this week that the president's views on trade with China haven't changed since the 1980s. He's willing to use tariffs, whereas other presidents have not been willing to impose them. And the Brookings Institution's David Dollar says "market forces are pushing China's currency down," not currency manipulation by Beijing.
Trump Greeted By Protests In Dayton And El Paso | Stephen Colbert | 08/07/19 | 4:28
Is Senator Mitch McConnell Stalling For Time On Gun Reform? | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 08/09/19 | 14:01
A President Who Can't Rise To The Occasion? | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 08/09/19 | 17:53
Some Commenters
  1. People are DEAD AND THIS THING IS GOING GOLFING? WE HAVE TO REMOVE THIS ANIMAL!
  2. The only thing worse than trump showing up at El Paso would have been if he brought Moscow Mitch along.
  3. Well, Nero had his fiddle, and Trump has his golf clubs. Meanwhile, Rome, I mean, America is burning.
  4. Crooked Donny's narcissistic personality disorder has unfortunately become everyone's problem.
  5. He cant rise to anything but a KFC bucket, hamberders and coke. Perhaps a napkin for his tiny twitterfingers.
Trump Admin ICE Raid Leaves Children Crying | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 08/08/19 | 15:52
Fox's Tucker Carlson calls white supremacy problem a hoax | CNN | 08/08/19 | 6:44

08.09.2019. 09:57



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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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