w/ Brad & Desi
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BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
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VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
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'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
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![]() | MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
Until they wised-up and changed the lyrics of the Gilligan's Island theme song at the beginning of Season 2, to also mention "the Professor and Mary Ann", the song originally referred to only those two (of just seven!) castaways as simply "and the rest". While the nation has understandably been focused on Trump and Musk's almost complete shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Elon's DOGE Bros' takeover of the computer payment system at U.S. Treasury that cuts checks for about 95% of payments made by the nation each year (about $6 trillion worth), the shutdowns, pauses and freezes at other critical, if smaller or lesser well-known agencies, has felt a bit like "and the rest." On today's BradCast, we focus on...well, the Professor and Maryanne for a bit...along with the other Castaways as well. [Audio link to full show follows below.]
Tortured TV metaphor aside, we're joined today by award-winning, best-selling investigative journalist and author DAVID DAYEN, Executive Editor of The American Prospect, to discuss a few government agencies that Donald Trump has pretty much completely put out of business for the moment, maybe permanently, and completely unlawfully.
This week, Dayen reported at TAP about Trump's takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created in 2011 in response to the Great Recession. It is the only federal agency specifically focused on protecting consumers. It was the brain-child of Elizabeth Warren during the Obama Administration, before she became a U.S. Senator, and it actually holds major banks and other huge corporations financially responsible to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for ripping off Americans. No wonder the Republicans have been trying to shut it down since its inception. Now, as we discuss today, it appears they have done so. Unlawfully.
In late November, Elon Musk posted on Twitter/X: "Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies." In fact, the CFPB doesn't duplicate the work of any other federal agency. But the small, independent Bureau very well might have made it more difficult for Musk to take advantage of suckers on X with a new payment app he is rolling out.
Trump's newly-minuted U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent --- who allowed the DOGE Bros into the agency's computer payment system --- is also serving as Acting head of the CFPB. "The first thing Bessent did is he said, 'Put a pause on all litigation, all enforcement, all rule-making, and all communications,'" at CFPB, Dayen explains today. "They've basically turned the agency into a ghost town." Employees there tell him they are still able to do things like examine data and work on reports. But they just can't publish them or act on anything "that can protect consumers in real time."
We also discuss how Trump has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with his unlawful removal of one of its Commissioners (who is now suing). Without her there, the Board which adjudicates union elections, worker rights and investigates labor law violations, no longer has a quorum to do any of that. "So it's a free pass for companies who don't want any consequences for union busting behavior to just continue to do it, appeal everything into a netherworld that half-exists and half-doesn't now," Dayen says.
All of this is illegal, of course. But Trump's captured DoJ certainly isn't going to do anything about it. Will the courts? As you know, SCOTUS has been captured and corrupted as well.
Dayen tells me he is also very concerned about whatever the DOGE Bros are doing inside of the nation's payment system at Treasury. Shortly after my conversation today with him, however, the news broke that Musk's lead Bros inside of Treasury's computer system, 25-year old Marko Elez, had resigned after a series of racist posts were discovered from a Twitter/X account that he deleted in December. If you're wondering if those posts are somehow out-of-context or written years ago, just last July he Tweeted: "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool." So, yeah.
Also today, we discuss some of the very serious and under-reported concerns regarding the H5N1 bird flu above and beyond what it is doing to spike the price of eggs on grocery store shelves. The virus appears to be both quickly spreading AND mutating. Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) are also effectively handcuffed by the Trump Administration in what they are allowed to study any communicate to the public about it. Not that Trump that we have reason to worry about Trump's leadership during a deadly pandemic or anything.
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more news on the DOGE Bros' ongoing infiltration and attack on the U.S. Government and our Constitutional order, such as over at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where they have reportedly now descended, after the disgraced "scientist" who helped facilitate Trump's fake hurricane in Alabama years ago (remember "SharpieGate"?) has now been tapped to run the entire agency. In addition to producing critical climate and data on our oceans, the agency also houses the National Weather Service, which Project 2025 calls for privatizing. Sadly, she has even more today. Though we do close on an amusing note!...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Elon Musk's DOGE Bros descend on NOAA, Trump taps disgraced 'SharpieGate' guy to run it; Iconic monarch butterfly hits new low in Western U.S.; PLUS: Study finds rat populations are increasing due to global warming... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): January surprises with a global temperature record; "We feel terrorized": What EPA employees sasy about the decision to stay or go under Trump'; E.P.A. demotes career employees overseeing science, enforcement, and more; Colombia’s president orders national oil company to cancel US venture over environmental concerns... PLUS: Trump’s reversal of climate policies risks undermining U.S. manufacturing, costing jobs... and much, MUCH more! ...
Today on The BradCast': We momentarily take Donald Trump's delusional bait on Gaza, before spitting it out to take on his and Elon Musk's very real, horrifying, unlawful breakdown of the American Constitutional order and all that it means (or used to) around the globe. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]
After air last night --- as usual these days --- a number of troubling Trump-related stories broke. Among them, news that the Administration has notified all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) workers across the globe that they are immediately off the job and must return to the U.S. within 30 days. Decades-old programs in about 120 countries are now stopped dead in their tracks, including life-saving food for starving children that will now be left at the ports; HIV medicine on shelves that won't be delivered to AIDS victims; hundreds of other programs supporting clean water, independent media, education, including for girls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan; tracking and preventing polio, smallpox, tuberculosis and Ebola outbreaks; and much more.
American foreign aid "soft power" initiatives that foster goodwill around the globe and make up less than one-percent of the annual U.S. budget are apparently all now out of business. Foreign strongmen from Russia to Hungary to Iran to China and beyond are rejoicing today and openly expressing their public thanks to Musk and Trump for doing their bidding.
Also last night, Trump announced during a presser in D.C. with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the U.S. will relocate (forcibly, I guess?) nearly 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to somewhere or another, "take over the Gaza Strip", raze the entire territory and claim "ownership" of it for the U.S., before filling it with beautiful new seaside resorts, turning it into the "Riviera of the Middle East". What could possibly go wrong?
Here to explain what is definitely wrong about that and so much more today, are two of our favorite BradCast panelists, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime blogger and co-host of his weekly Professional Left Podcast.
In addition to Trump's delusional "ethnic cleansing" dreams for Gaza, we also discuss how he is "a powerful useful idiot" for Netanyahu and his rightwing allies. But Parton isn't buying the idea that his new scheme is meant to distract from Trump's lawlessness elsewhere. "The idea that he's got some strategy to distract from all the terrible things that Elon Musk is doing, I don't think that's true. I think they've just divided up the work."
"I'd say this is tossing a match onto a pile of oily rags," Driftglass chimes in. "But the fire is already burning. This is adding napalm to napalm. And everybody knows it. I think Trump is narcissistic enough and stupid enough and willing to listen to his real estate friends enough to say, 'Sure, why not?'"
Meanwhile, back on the home front (Fatherland?), where "Elon Musk bought his way into the Treasury [and] bought this 60% share in this President," the richest man in the world is "getting what he paid for," says Driftglass, in personally shutting down one federal agency after another, all unlawfully. But who's gonna stop him? Drifty argues Trump will simply ignore any adverse court rulings that may come down the road, if they come at all. "You can't undo the damage I've done, therefore I win!," he quips, before noting: "Trump is perfectly willing to change his mind on a dime and lie about everything and say 'I never authorized anything.' But it's going to take public outrage in the streets, by the right people." Who are those "right people"? Tune in.
Digby joins me in dismissing Trump's largely toothless Executive Orders but agrees that what Musk is doing is of another order. "The DOGE thing is a genuine constitutional crisis," she warns. "The Republicans have absolutely laid down and said [to Trump], 'Please give me your boots so I can lick them.' So they are completely useless, and that's a big part of the problem. I'm terrified about how far this can go."
For much more terror and how we might, collectively, put a stop to it, please tune in for today's often terrifying --- if still occasionally humorous --- BradCast...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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Today on The BradCast: The last 4 or 5 days since Elon's DOGE Bros have, with the apparent permission of Trump, started taking command and control of computer systems and databases at federal agencies --- including the U.S. Treasury's system which pay out nearly $6 trillion per year --- have been, to say the least, chaotic, disturbing and insane. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
As we discussed yesterday, Trump, his co-Prez and their flunkies are unlawfully taking over and disassembling the U.S. Constitutional order and its Administrative State. In response, however, their lawless overreach also seems to be having the effect of coalesce the Opposition in a number of ways...
That is not an exhaustive list. For example, the free press, where we still have one, also play a key role in all of the above. In helping to let you know what is actually happening, public perception and opinion can change. From a wildly disinformed electorate last November to, perhaps, a more accurately informed populace as we all move forward and take action on those things, with at least some of the urgency that this historic moment demands
An Opposition is emerging. How effective and sustained it will be remains to be seen. But, I believe the outlines are finally beginning to coalesce. At least, I hope that is the case.
Today, we report some of the stories, connect some of the dots, and share some of the signs of that emerging Opposition, through a number of breaking news items over the past 24 hours or so...
All of these stories, as terrible as they are, actually include positive indications of an overdue Opposition finally beginning to assemble.
And, before we go, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on how Trump's dumb tariff threats on imports from Canada imports are spiking energy prices; how the Administration is literally deleting "climate change" across the entire federal government; how Trump's deranged California water stunt has dumped billions of gallons of water, much of it into the oceans and none of it to Southern California (where our reservoirs are already full!)...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Donald Trump's on-again, off-again tariff threats spike global energy prices; Administration deletes climate change and environmental justice across the government; Study finds microplastics in human brains; PLUS: Trump dumped billions of gallons of much-needed reservoir water in California... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How climate change could upend the American Dream; Tribes push to control reservation water as Wyoming seeks to send it outside; In wind for Trump, Shell walks away from major New Jersey offshore wind farm; State Farm seeks an emergency insurance rate increase after LA wildfires; PLUS: Rats! More rodents are infesting cities as scientists blame warmer temperatures... and much, MUCH more! ...
With apologies to Rick Wilson, whose weekend social media quip I've stolen for the headline of today's BradCast, I'd say both things are true. We are both overwhelmed and under attack. In a way that the United States has never been under attack before. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]
The "attack", of course, is coming from inside the house. In this case, from inside Donald Trump's White House. Or, at least from his extra-Constitutional White House henchmen: Elon Musk and his band of personal employees, none of who have been elected to anything or approved by the U.S. Senate or anything else. And yet, this band of miscreants that call themselves the "Dept. of Government Efficiency" or DOGE, some just literally out of high school, are unlawfully taking over the command and control functions of independent federal agencies in the Executive Branch, including the one that at Treasury that controls the nation's actual checkbook and its payments of more than $6 trillion each year. That system includes checks to federal workers, Social Security and Medicare payments, tax refunds, foreign aid and much much more.
They are doing all of this, apparently, with the lawless President's blessing. It is a Trump-approved attack on the rule of law, our Constitutional order, and, of course (the enemy of all MAGA!) the "Administrative State".
Doing my best today to overcome some local transmitter issues here in L.A. and technical issues inside our flagship local KPFK studios during our live show, I tried to put into stark perspective what appears to be unfolding --- what we know and what we don't, some of the heroes standing up in opposition --- over the past 72 or so unprecedented hours since we last spoke.
Here are just some of the media reports I was culling from. You'll have to tune in to hear how all the pieces fit together, what they portend moving forward, and for a quick listener call or two at the end...
As noted, that's just a bit of today's source material. And a bit of what has happened over these past 72 hours. Tune in for much more today and, no doubt, on tomorrow's program, as Trump's attack on our Constitutional democracy, with the help of co-President and heavy Elon Musk, continues...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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It's one disaster after another on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Last night, 67 people were killed when an Army Helicopter crashed into an American Airlines jet from Wichita, Kansas as it was coming in for a routine landing at Reagan National Airport in D.C. Everyone in both aircrafts is presumed dead.
Today, even as dozens of bodies were still unrecovered from the icy Potomac River, and before virtually anything was known about the cause of last night's deadly disaster, the President of the United States presented a sick, disgraceful, lie-filled, misinformation-fest, disguised as a White House press briefing. He blamed "diversity" hiring by his two Democratic predecessors for the disaster, while admitting he had no evidence to support his claim, other than his "common sense" and "high level genius." I've got a thing or two to say about all of that on today's program.
While I wouldn't normally have drawn such an inference this soon after such a national tragedy or in just week two of any Presidency, given Donald Trump's appalling comments today, I felt it necessarily to detail that, in his very first week on the job, Trump fired the leadership of the FAA and TSA, as well as the entire membership of an air security and safety commission. He named no acting Director in the meantime at FAA, which had been in the middle of a hiring wave for air traffic controllers --- until Trump ordered a hiring freeze on his second day in office last week. Early reports from the FAA found that the air traffic control tower last night at Reagan National appeared to have been short staffed.
We'll wait for the NTSB's investigation (much less for the recovery of all the bodies) to be complete. But if there is any President to be blamed for what happened last night, the first major air crash in 16 years, it would seem be the "high level genius" currently in office, who thought it appropriate to use racist, sexist, ableist slurs to avoid accountability for his own pathetic, irresponsible actions in the first week of his second shamefully embarrassing Presidency.
THEN... We're joined by JACQUELINE SIMON, Policy Director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation's largest federal workers union. She's here to discuss the Trump Administration's scammy email sent to some two million federal workers this week --- clearly written by co-President Elon Musk --- offering what many in the media incorrectly described as "buyout" offers this week.
In fact, it's a trap. The emails from the federal Office of Personnel Management --- portending to offer seven months of severance in exchange for workers at scores of federal agencies responding with "RESIGN" in the subject field of an email before February 6 --- were little more than "a barely veiled threat" to federal workers, charges Simon. Sign it now or be fired later. Moreover, she notes, "there's no guarantee whatsoever that anyone would ever see any of that money, because Congress would have to approve it. They don't have the money."
The scheme, Simon tells me, also ignores the legally required process for contract buyouts and severance pay for federal workers, as written into law. But, she observes, "they aren't really worrying the rules. They're not really worrying about the law. And if they are challenged, and if they do have to pay judgments, it's going to be the American people that pay. It's not coming out of Elon Musk's pocket. It's not coming out of Trump's pocket. It's coming out of your pocket and mine."
AFGE and several other public service unions also filed a legal complaint this week against a separate, if related scheme launched by Trump with an Executive Order signed last week. It would, if allowed by the courts, make it easier for him to fire career federal workers without cause which, Simon confirms, he has already begun doing unlawfully anyway.
FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, with news on new data suggesting that a Southern California Edison high-voltage wire may have sparked the deadly Eaton Fire on January 7th in Altadena, California; the Senate confirmations of Trump's unqualified picks to head the EPA and Dept. of Transportation; Ireland is slammed by the strongest storm in its recorded history; and other troubling news for our climate changed world...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New data suggests utility company grid equipment sparked deadly Eaton Fire in Altadena, CA; Senate confirms Trump's pick, Lee Zeldin, to head EPA; Ireland hit with strongest storm on record; PLUS: Study confirms warming Pacific Ocean is changing marine life migration patterns... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Lutnick says he won't dismantle NOAA as called for in Project 2025; A.I. "DeepSeek" earthquake upends power forecasts; Trump EPA fires science advisers; Clean energy firms remain upbeat; Amid freeze fracas, uncertainty lives on for environmental programs... PLUS: Texas City approves new site for fracking near daycare and schools... and much, MUCH more! ...
On the day that vaccine science denier RFK, Jr. testified before Congress to become the nation's next Sec. of Health and Human Services, it seems only appropriate on today's BradCast to discuss the Trump Administration's War on Science. [Audio link to full shows follows this summary.]
But, before we get there, a few news items of note --- some of them, actually very good news, believe it or not!...
THEN... We are honored to be joined on the show again today, for a wide-ranging discussion, by one of the nation's most esteemed and indefatigable climate scientists and authors, DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science; Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media; and Vice Provost of Climate Science, Action, and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
In this month's issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Mann joins with renowned virologist Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine, to break down what they describe as "A triple threat to humanity". Namely, climate change, newly emerging pandemics and "perhaps the most insidious component of all: a well-organized, financed, politically motivated, and steadily globalizing campaign of disinformation and attacks against mainstream science that makes it extremely difficult to mount an effective global response to the climate and pandemic threats." The pair have a forthcoming book on related issues, titled Science under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World.
We discuss that War on Science today, who's funding it and how it endangers life on Earth. There is "an agenda here to create doubt, to discredit experts," Mann tells me. "Because in a world of relativism, where anybody's facts are as good as anyone else's, it's very favorable for bad actors like fossil fuel interests, the Koch brothers, petrostates like Russia and Saudi Arabia, with whom we are now aligned when it comes to our own policies under the new Trump Administration.
"Calling science into doubt, discrediting scientists and experts, is part of their agenda," Mann explains. "Creating confusion, doubt, conflict, chaos favors their agenda. Rational decision-making doesn't."
We also discuss a whole bunch of climate-related politics of the day and even some climate science, including...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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Today on The BradCast: Let the Constitutional Crises begin! As the Trump Administration attempts to Cancel Culture pretty much everything with a memo that orders nearly half of the total, already appropriated federal budget immediately (and unconstitutionally) put on ice! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
We might have seen it coming, as several of our other stories today might have augured. Among them...
As the non-profit news site NOTUS explained, "the list of programs that could be touched by the order is vast: Medicaid, disaster relief, farm aid, student loan programs, Head Start, highway funds, nutrition assistance, rent assistance and dozens of other programs." Some 70 million low-income Americans alone, who are enrolled in Medicaid, could lose their access to health care. These are all funds already allocated by Congress and approved by previous Presidents including, in some cases, Trump himself.
The impoundment of the funds --- said to amount to "more than $3 trillion," according to the memo, which is nearly half of the entire federal budget for fiscal year 2024 --- appears to be in strict violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress after Richard Nixon held back Congressionally-appropriated funding that he didn't like. According to the Constitution anyway (quaint!) Congress, not the President, controls the purse strings of the U.S. budget.
As you may recall, attempting to withhold Congressionally-approved funding to Ukraine during his first term, unless they agreed to announce a fake investigation of the Biden Family, is what led to Trump's first impeachment. Ever since, Republicans have devised an argument that the Impoundment Control Act is actually unconstitutional. This is clearly their first volley in getting a ruling on that from their corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.
Late on Tuesday, as Trump's deliberate chaos reigned shortly before the 5pm deadline to freeze the spending, a federal judge placed an administrative stay on the order, pending further arguments on Monday morning. She also made clear that the National Council of Nonprofits, the plaintiffs which sued earlier in the day, alleging the freeze would cause their members irreparable harm, must show evidence to support that argument on Monday or the judge would have no choice but to end her administrative stay and deny the requested temporary restraining order. And then... ???
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Donald Trump weaponizes disaster, calls for dismantling FEMA; First rain in months helps douse Los Angeles Fires; PLUS: New York City's congestion pricing is working, with fewer crashes and pedestrian injuries... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s scorched earth executive orders for the environment; Ocean warming accelerating rapidly, new study warns; Stanford sea turtle study uncovers new effects of global warming in the Pacific Ocean; Trump looks to seize control of California water; Notorious WV chemical plant polluting water with toxic PFAS, lawsuit claims; Storm Eowyn brings hurricane-level destruction to Ireland... PLUS: How Big Insurance’s investment in fossil fuels came back to bite it... and much, MUCH more! ...
Well, he did vow retribution against his "enemies". Today on The BradCast, we cover, among other things, Donald Trump's unlawful "Friday Night Massacre" of independent Inspectors General at Executive Branch agencies, his "Monday Massacre" of dozens of prosecutors this afternoon at the Dept. of Justice, and as much of note that happened in between that we find time for, along with speaking to callers on the back end. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Among the many stories covered today...
We've got a whole bunch of related news and background in between and amongst all of those stories, before callers weigh in today on all of the above and more...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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This week we are celebrating our 21st Anniversary here at The BRAD BLOG, which kinda blows my mind. At this age, I guess, I can finally have a drink to celebrate. Or, at this point in our continuing saga, just a drink to get through the next four years... or weeks...