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Latest Featured Reports | Saturday, October 12, 2024
Milton's Mess, FL's U.S. House Liars, Trump's Made-in-China Bibles: 'BradCast' 10/10/24
Also: OK's sleazy, shameful, MAGA Superintendent of Public Schools...
'Green News Report' 10/10/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Hurricane Milton slices through Florida; FEMA grapples with Republican disinfo, funding shortages; PLUS: Biden EPA issues landmark rule to replace every lead pipe in America...
Previous GNRs: 10/8/24 - 10/3/24 - Archives...
Whistleblower Org Readies to Support Election Officials, Poll Workers: 'BradCast' 10/9/24
Guest: Dana Gold of GAP's 'Democracy Protection Initiative'; Also: States work to support voters after Helene; GOPers file suits before election to challenge it after...
'Becoming the Norm': Florida Braces for 'Devastating to Catastrophic' Milton: 'BradCast' 10/8/24
Guest: Meteorologist Guy Walton; Also: NC GOP lawmakers made Helene far worse...
'Green News Report' 10/8/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Just after Hurricane Helene, Florida braces for powerful Hurricane Milton; Trump lies about federal response to Helene; PLUS: New study finds hurricanes have hidden death tolls...
Previous GNRs: 10/3/24 - 10/1/24 - Archives...
Sunday 'Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up' Toons
THIS WEEK: Shady J.D. ... Easy Decisions ... The X Factor ... Storm Warning ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's best toons!...
Time Running Out For
All the Trump Rackets: 'BradCast' 10/3/24
'Pro-choice' Melania wants $250k from CNN; $100k 'Trump Watch' invites influence peddlers; Damning new 1/6 details; MAGA county clerk gets 9 years for CO vote system tampering...
'Green News Report' 10/3/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
After another climate disaster, climate change finally front and center at VP Debate; PLUS: Ongoing climate disaster Helene, now second deadliest hurricane in modern U.S. history...
Previous GNRs: 10/1/24 - 9/26/24 - Archives...
Vance Sane-Washes Trump, Self in Polite, Lie-Filled VP Debate: 'BradCast' 10/2/24
Special coverage with Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'...
How You Can Help Protect Democracy This Year: 'BradCast' 10/1/24
Guest: Emily Levy of Scrutineers.org; Also: Iran/Israel escalation; Dockworkers strike shuts down ports; Search, recovery, climate denier lies, continue after Helene...
'Green News Report' 10/1/24
'GNR' Special Coverage: Climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene unleashes widespread death and destruction, as storm victims face daunting challenge of recovery...
The Predictable Horrors of Helene: 'BradCast' 9/30/24
Climate change strikes again, killing more than a hundred in 5 states, millions without power, concerns about their ability to vote; Also: Callers ring in before VP Debate...
Springfield Haitians Sue Trump, Vance, Musk, et al over Defamation, Death Threats
Add'l defendants include Trump, Jr., OH A.G. Yost, OH U.S. Sen. candidate Moreno, LA Rep. Higgins...
Sunday 'Protection Racket' Toons
THIS WEEK: Creepers, Cowards and Conmen! (And they're all the same guy!)... In our latest collection of the week's creepiest toons...
'Green News Report' 9/26/24
Helene guns for Florida; Global warming doubled odds of EU's catastrophic floods; PLUS: Biden promotes climate action, issues warning, at final U.N. address...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

Heart-less abuse of our public airwaves for corporate profit...
By D.R. Tucker on 6/17/2015 8:52am PT  

Last week, The BRAD BLOG reported on an effort by notorious right-wing radio conglomerate Salem Media to bring Rush Limbaugh back onto the public airwaves in Boston, after Entercom-owned WRKO-AM decided to discontinue its decades-long relationship with the ratings-challenged reactionary.

As it turns out, it appears that it will be a different wingnut-friendly radio conglomerate --- iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel), which owns Premiere Networks, the entity that syndicates Limbaugh's loathe-a-thon --- which will return Rush to our public airwaves in a radio market whose listeners no longer wish to have anything to do with him...

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Rightwing radio conglomerate reportedly plans to bring lunatic fringe talker back to Boston, a market uninterested in his invective...
By D.R. Tucker on 6/10/2015 9:13am PT  

Back in 1989, a classmate of mine from a Christian family convinced me to listen to a nationally-syndicated radio program entitled "Talk Back with Bob Larson." The host was an Arizona-based radio evangelist whose shtick was to warn teenagers about the dangers of rock music and to perform exorcisms on-air. (I assume Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was a fan.) Larson's show was entertaining from my twelve-year-old perspective; he had a theatrical voice and was a gifted storyteller. However, I eventually grew tired of his repetitive shtick, and stopped listening to his show by early-1991.

"Talk Back with Bob Larson" was broadcast from 4:00pm to 6:00pm Eastern on 1260 WEZE-AM, a Christian radio station based out of Marina Bay in Quincy, Massachusetts. The station was quite popular among Christians in the Bay State; the line-up featured right-wing radio evangelists Charles Swindoll and John MacArthur, as well as the "Focus on the Family" program hosted by future GOP powerbroker James Dobson. WEZE-AM, as you might imagine, was beloved by those who hated the Bay State's Democratic (if not exactly progressive) political culture.

In the late-1990s, Salem Media, the ultra-conservative corporate parent of WEZE-AM, sold the station for $5 million to Radio Disney. (The right-wing Christian shows were moved to a less powerful AM signal.) Now, sadly, it appears that everything old is new again, as right-wing propaganda from supposedly Christian hosts is expected to return to this station, in an apparent desperate effort to ensure that aging agitator Rush Limbaugh still has a presence on Boston's airwaves after being rejected by another notorious Boston-based GOP grievance generator, WRKO-AM...

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By D.R. Tucker on 2/13/2015 7:35am PT  

Oh, so now they want civility?

Ben van Beurden, the head of Royal Dutch Shell, is apparently a little perturbed by those of us who have marched, called, written and worked for strong action to reduce the carbon pollution that is cooking our planet. Now he's asking for a time-out in the discussion over human-caused climate change, and wants (his version of) sane and reasoned voices --- i.e., the voices of his Big Oil brethren --- to weigh in.

The Guardian reports:

The head of Shell has launched a stinging attack on increasingly vocal critics who are calling for fossil fuels to be left in the ground, accusing them of peddling naive and impractical solutions to climate change.

Ben van Beurden urged fellow industry leaders meeting in London to be "more assertive" in debates over the future of energy. But Shell's chief executive admitted that the oil sector had its own credibility problem, enhanced by the fact that too many energy industrialists had been slow to acknowledge global warming.

Of course, van Beurden downplays what really happened...

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By D.R. Tucker on 2/11/2015 6:35am PT  

I hate having to agree with Fox Opinion Channel personality Megyn Kelly, but I can't dispute her point about the bizarre segment on the February 8 edition of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, in which Harris-Perry actually asked outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder to quack like a duck.

Granted, MSNBC's weekend programming hasn't been the same since Chris Hayes left Up in 2013 to host his weeknight broadcast All In, but this segment was just too daffy. Holder, who answered graciously nonetheless, seemed to know that something had gone off the rails; while responding to Harris-Perry, he seemed to be second-guessing his decision to participate in the interview.

Reportedly, there has been a lot of second-guessing at the network, and it's not hard to understand why. MSNBC has a credibility problem --- though its not about ducks or even Brian Williams --- but a segment on the February 9 edition of The Ed Show unintentionally highlighted its magnitude...

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Australian PM Tony Abbott hangs on; World may be less lucky...
By D.R. Tucker on 2/9/2015 12:16pm PT  

One never wants to see incompetence rewarded, but sadly, that's exactly what happened on Monday in Australia, as right-wing Prime Minister Tony Abbott survived an effort by members of his own party to oust him.

Abbott, who led the charge to end Australia's bold efforts to price carbon in 2014, had been beset by numerous controversies in recent months. As James West of Mother Jones reported last week:

Abbott's growing unpopularity has little to do with his climate policies. The public is angry about a badly executed austerity budget that will hit the poor the hardest. A string of broken election promises and tough cuts to education and health have left Australians feeling shortchanged. Then, there was the bizarre and anachronistic honoring of Britain's Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, as a "knight" of Australia --- a scandal now dubbed Abbott's "Knightmare" by the tabloids. Australians cringed at dishing out the award to a non-Australian who already possesses a comically long list of titles. Then a trigger: the spectacular defeat for Abbott's party in recent state elections, partly seen as a repudiation of Abbott himself.

"Tone-deaf Tony" has now stuck as a favorite media nickname, and pundits are describing his leadership as "terminal." Even in publications run by billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a traditional Abbott ally, front page headlines have been scathing.

Given Abbott's embarrassing record on climate change, however --- particularly as heat records have been repeatedly smashed in recent years Down Under --- environmentalists will be particularly disappointed that the Prime Minister, for now, has been able to hang on to power...

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By D.R. Tucker on 1/9/2015 6:45am PT  

"Honest statement," "Karl Rove" and "Fox News" are three phrases that usually do not belong in the same sentence (unless it's the one I'm writing now!), but George W. Bush's aide-de-camp actually told the truth on the January 6 edition of Fox's "America's Newsroom."

As The Hill reports [emphasis added]:

Karl Rove says Jeb Bush's support for Common Core education standards will be the biggest obstacle he faces as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination.

"Common Core is, I think, the biggest challenge he faces," Rove said Tuesday on the Fox News show "America's Newsroom." "The question is, how can he defend high academic standards, which he believes in, when it has been conflated with the Obama administration."

Rove, formerly the top adviser to Bush's brother, President George W. Bush, said Common Core was originally a Republican idea put forth by Bill Bennett, the secretary of Education under President Reagan who was later appointed to a post in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

But Rove said President Obama has since grasped onto it, making it toxic to Republican voters.

Now how about that! Common Core --- a national state standards initiative for k-12 education --- was a GOP concept until a Democrat found merit in the idea, at which point it became radical-left tyranny.

The same, of course, is now true for the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare"), a scheme first proposed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation before it was later embraced by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, before Obama embraced it, so Republicans decided to pretend it was a precursor to full apocalypse.

But I can think of yet another major policy initiative that Republicans used to love until Democrats said they thought it was a good idea, too...

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By D.R. Tucker on 8/6/2014 7:05am PT  

This week, MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, filling in for Rachel Maddow, discussed former President Ronald Reagan's stunning 1991 announcement that he supported the "Brady Bill" mandating a seven-day waiting period to purchase a handgun.

Reagan, who happened to be a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association (which virulently opposed the "Brady Bill"), nevertheless regarded the legislation as a common-sense effort to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

Marking the passing of Reagan's Press Secretary and the legislation's namesake James Brady, Kornacki observed that Reagan's support for the "Brady Bill" helped to ease the pathway towards its passage under President Bill Clinton in November 1993. However, after Congress passed a now-expired assault-weapons ban in August 1994, opponents of gun safety seized political power (beginning with the November 1994 midterm elections) and began to thwart any further efforts to decrease the carnage that turned children into corpses.

However, what Kornacki failed to mention was that the same Republican icon who boldly supported the "Brady Bill" also helped create, through one infamous Executive Order, the very circumstances that led to the demise of gun safety measures in the US --- as well as health and climate safety in the world...

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Defending climate-denying Sen. Marco Rubio...by blaming Al Gore...
By D.R. Tucker on 5/14/2014 12:35pm PT  

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough --- former Republican Congressman from Florida and, as of late, shameless advocate for the mendacious climate-change denying billionaire David H. Koch --- took to the airwaves this week to defend another mendacious figure, and another member of my former party: climate-denying extremist Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).

In doing so, Scarborough revealed an inconvenient truth about America's divided politics on climate...

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By D.R. Tucker on 4/30/2014 9:35am PT  

As a former Republican, I can't help noticing the dark irony in the abandonment of rogue Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy by Republican politicians and right-wing media figures on the heels of his incendiary comments last week about "the Negro."

Bigotry is never funny, as Los Angeles Clippers owner --- and (contrary to right-wing media misinformation) registered Republican --- Donald Sterling has proven. However, one can't help chuckling over the fact that right-wingers tried to wash their hands of Cliven the Cretinous just a few days after they celebrated a US Supreme Court ruling limiting affirmative-action efforts in higher education.

The two issues are connected, though not in the way one might think...

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By D.R. Tucker on 1/21/2014 6:05am PT  

"I wonder why other black Republicans delude themselves?"

That tweet, in response to my January 12 piece for The BRAD BLOG about my bizarre ride to the dark side of American right-wing politics, was the shortest reaction to my article, yet perhaps the most profound.

It was every bit as profound as a 2011 remark from one of the many progressive voices I was once taught to hate...

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By D.R. Tucker on 1/12/2014 2:48pm PT  

Ever wish you had the chance to give your younger self a nice, hard slap across the face?

There are times when I wonder just what the hell I was thinking when I became a Republican --- or whether I was even thinking at all. Next month will mark one of those times, as it will be the twentieth anniversary of a happy event that I turned into a miserable one --- by making a shortsighted decision with severe personal and political consequences...

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By D.R. Tucker on 9/28/2013 4:35pm PT  

September 29, 2003, is a day that will live in radio infamy.

It was a day when two delinquents got away with a crime against conscience --- aided and abetted by a culture of government dysfunction and radio-industry corruption.

It was a day when two words sent a city back three decades.

It was also a day when, for a brief moment, I found myself forced to choose between being a realist and being a Republican. I chose poorly...

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The curious blackout of the cable net's one-hour 'Politics of Power' special...
By D.R. Tucker on 8/29/2013 10:05am PT  

If you missed the MSNBC/Chris Hayes documentary The Politics of Power on August 16, you may never have the chance to see it again in its entirety.

Sure, you can watch the final fifty-nine seconds of the documentary on MSNBC.com, and a four-minute clip from the program, plus a few "web extras". But, for some reason, the rest of the special --- a rare hour-long cable news documentary on the climate crisis and its fossil fuel industry-funded deniers --- has yet to be posted online. Anywhere. At least anywhere that we were able to find.

The BRAD BLOG has made repeated inquires to MSNBC, as well as to Chris Hayes and whoever monitors All In's Twitter feed, as to why the documentary, which aired during Hayes' normal All in With Chris Hayes time slot, has not been made available in full online. That, despite the fact that Rachel Maddow's documentary, Hubris: Selling the Iraq War, was posted on MSNBC.com almost immediately after it first aired on February 18, 2013. As of this writing, we have yet to receive a response from MSNBC or Hayes or All In as to whether or when the doc might be made available online, or why it hasn't been so far.

Now, why would that be?...

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Op-ed by four former Republican EPA chiefs still won't be enough to break through modern GOP's climate of denial...
By D.R. Tucker on 8/4/2013 7:35pm PT  

There is no such thing as a Republican politician who reads the New York Times.

That's the obvious takeaway from the events of August 2, as the GOP-controlled House cast a symbolic vote against the concept of a carbon tax just hours after the Times published an op-ed written by Republican-appointed former EPA administrators William Ruckelshaus, Lee Thomas, William Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman calling for such a tax, and otherwise for the GOP to join President Obama in taking aggressive action to reduce carbon emissions before it's too late.

One wonders why Ruckelshaus (the very first head of the EPA, as appointed by leftist EPA creator President Richard Nixon), Thomas, Reilly and Whitman even bothered to write this op-ed. After all, they are calling upon Republicans to embrace policy.

Has it not been finally proven that the Republican Party --- the party I belonged to for fifteen years --- no longer cares about policy? And, to ask the even more obviously rhetorical question: do they not realize that in 2013, "Republican environmentalist" is as much of a logical falsehood as "clean coal"?...

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By D.R. Tucker on 7/3/2013 10:55am PT  

Back in 2004, I listened to Al Franken on Air America. For all of ten minutes.

Nine years ago, I was a Republican having second thoughts about giving George W. Bush a second term. Between the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the over-the-top demagoguery of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's marriage-equality ruling, I found the idea of voting for Bush again distasteful.

So I decided to give Franken, the franchise player of the then recently launched Air America radio network, a chance; maybe he could convince me to vote for John Kerry. However, after ten minutes of listening to Franken and co-host Katherine Lanpher, I decided that I wasn't really the target audience. I went back to listening to Rush Limbaugh, and --- God help me --- I ended up voting for Bush again.

Looking back, I realize that I was taught to hate Franken --- and anything that wasn't right-wing radio. It's a lesson I never should have learned...

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