If you are asked to name a single concrete issue that is singularly identified with any of the presidential candidates, then on the Democratic side Bernie Sanders’s call for free tuition at public colleges and to expand Medicare to cover everyone stands out. On the Republican side, the only one that comes to mind is Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall along the entire US-Mexico border and round up and forcibly deport every undocumented immigrant in the country That is his signature issue that he harps on over and over again, starting with his speech announcing his candidacy:
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The revelation that the man who shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado killing three and wounding nine made comments about ‘no more baby parts’ has added support to the idea that he was motivated by the furor created by the false allegation that the organization illegally trafficked and profited from the sale of organs from aborted fetuses.
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Researchers in Egypt have turned up some exciting news.

Egypt on Saturday said there is a 90% chance that hidden chambers will be found within King Tutankhamun’s tomb, based on the preliminary results of a new exploration of the 3,300-year-old mausoleum.

Researchers say the discovery of a new chamber could shine new light on one of ancient Egypt’s most turbulent times, and one prominent researcher has theorized that the remains of Queen Nefertiti might be inside.
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British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves theorizes that Tutankhamun, better known as King Tut, who died at the age of 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Nefertiti’s tomb. Famed for her beauty, Nefertiti was the subject of a famous 3,300-year-old bust.

Reeves reached his theory after high-resolution images discovered what he said were straight lines in King Tut’s tomb. These lines, previously hidden by color and the stones’ texture, indicate the presence of a sealed chamber, he said. The images were later broadcast live on national television last September.

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One senses an increasing level of panic in the Republican party as the durability of Donald Trump’s popularity confounds expectations that he was some kind of summer flower whose bloom would fade as winter approached and people started thinking seriously about the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. If he wins both on February 1 and February 9 respectively, and current polls indicate that he well might, party insiders fear that he will be unstoppable.
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I have apologize to James Baldwin for using the title of his famous book for a mere blog post but when I look around me at what is happening in the US right now, that title keeps coming to my mind because it so accurately captures the deep sense of foreboding I feel at the way things are going. We are entering a very dark period indeed.
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Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks accurately describes Harris’s disingenuous tactic of using extreme hypotheticals to set up scenarios that justify despicable actions targeted at Muslims while at the same time inserting caveats that enable him to respond to critics by accusing them of either misunderstanding him or acting in bad faith.
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Four former operators of US killer drones revealed at a press briefing what really happens in that program. They themselves seem to feel the killings they carry out are actually making the situation worse, in addition to inflicting psychological trauma on themselves. The Guardian has a report on the story.
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Today is Thanksgiving day in the US. It is a holiday that has problematic roots in history and now has become associated with the kick-off to an orgy of shopping. But despite all that baggage it is a nice holiday that celebrates wholesome virtues such as getting together with family and friends and we will spend it with some old and dear friends as we always do.
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Abby Martin of Telesur interviews him on the current state of politics. As usual, he paints an accurate picture, that the spectrum of political opinion has become so skewed that it only ranges from the center to the extreme right and that the current Republican party is off the spectrum and that what we have is a plutocracy with democratic forms, with the actual wishes of the public largely ignored.
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The US military has ‘investigated’ itself about the attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz that killed 30 people. The US commander in Afghanistan spoke at a press briefing today with the expected language, saying that ‘mistakes were made, equipment failed, and we will fix them’, so let’s forget about this and move on.
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