Tom Ricks, author of the best-sellers Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 and The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, on the June 27, 2010 Meet the Press after arguing to Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) that leaving Afghanistan now would lead to an "endless war" ("I think if you want an endless war, Congresswoman, leave Afghanistan right now, and you'll find us having to go after al-Qaeda again and again there for decades."):

Um, yeah. Bingo. (On the "alternative fuels" part, not the 'can't leave now' part.)

[UPDATED with audio archives from tonight's show at bottom.]

I'll be filling in as Guest Host on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show LIVE all this week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Hope you'll join us for the mid-summer festivities by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

As usual, our LIVE chat room will be up and operating here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so I hope you'll join us for that as well! (The Chat Room will open below a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• GOV. DON SIEGELMAN, Former Governor Alabama, prosecuted for "bribery" and "honest-services fraud" by Karl Rove and the politicized Bush DoJ, on last week's U.S. Supreme Court rulings which vacated his absurd conviction, and remanded it back to the 11th Circuit Appellate Court, on where his case goes from here.
• MAC MCCLELLAND, Mother Jones' human rights reporter/blogger joins us LIVE from the Gulf where she's been covering the BP oil disaster, and the continuing efforts to keep media from covering the ongoing devastation.
• PLUS: Other stuff on my mind --- and on yours via your calls at 877-520-1150, your tweets to @TheBradBlog, and whatever else comes up between here and there...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Once again, three hours flew by! The audio archives follow below, along with the archives of the chat room if you'd like to listen and read along at the same time!...

It's slightly inside baseball, but the laugh should be worth the quick trip here. So, in short, if you're not familiar with the backstory: Conservative Libertarian-ish journalist/blogger Dave Weigel was recently forced to resign from his new job at the Washington Post covering the "conservative" movement, after rightwingers released stolen, off-the-record emails from a private listserv called "JournoList", set up many years ago by Washington Post journalist/blogger Ezra Klein for random discussion and kibutzing between center to center-left progressive and liberal journalists. The selectively quoted Weigel emails included some snarky (if pretty funny) comments about some of the wingnuts he is forced to cover on his beat.

In the ensuing brouhaha, and shameful response by WaPo, Klein decided to shut down JournoList entirely and delete its archives so they couldn't be further used to selectively "ACORN" other members of the list. (For the record, no, we've never been a member of that email list.)

Thereafter, Rightwing sleaze-monger, Republican operative, opportunist and conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 to anyone who anonymously gave him the entire JournoList archives.

So far, there have been no takers, but it looks like Breitbart may now owe our friend Skippy the Bush Kangaroo at least part of that $100k! Check out Skippy at what may perhaps be his absolute --- and most high-larious --- best...

While Skippy does a fine job of making Breitbart look like a jackass in the highly recommended link above, in truth Breitbart doesn't need much help. If you missed it the first time, don't miss this exclusive video interview with Breitbart that we ran a few months ago, during the height of exposing his ACORN "Pimp" Hoax scam. The video is reposted below for your convenience...

Taking a break this year from our annual re-publication of the Declaration of Independence, to offer instead some of our favorite Independence Day/Weekend tweets so far this year. For the record, you can follow The BRAD BLOG on Twitter right here: @TheBradBlog. Hope you all have a safe and happy 4th! --- Brad

From @WestWingReport:

From @JamisonFoser:

From @OTOOLEFAN:

From @OTOOLEFAN:

From @RepJackKimble:

Fox "News" Channel has been using this grossly distorted, incorrectly named and deceptively skewed chart on a number of its "news" shows of late...

But the chart is entirely, utterly, and reprehensibly misleading, as well as, yes, flat out wrong. In truth, here is an actual chart of U.S. job losses (and gains) since December of 2007:

But that's not all that's wrong with the chart at the top that the liars at Fox are using to deceive the chumps who watch (and believe in) the garbage they're being given under the knowingly false name of "News". Not by a long shot.

See Media Matters' for more eye-popping, visual, demonstrable, independently verifiable facts about this latest of utter lies from the shameless America-haters at Fox "News".

"...[W]ithout full transparency of results, this fraud would not have been uncovered." - Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos founder, 6/29/10

There's an interesting bit of news today --- ironically enough, from Daily Kos --- which underscores the importance of citizen access to, and transparency of, election data, at least if anyone ever hopes to be able to root out and/or discover fraud, be it in elections or virtually anything else.

I say "ironically enough," because Daily Kos --- including both its founder Markos Moulitsas and a number of its front-page writers --- have, for years at their site, poo-pooed concerns about election fraud and e-voting by disinforming their readers about the very serious concerns presented by the disastrous election system used in most of the U.S. By marginalizing such concerns as little more than "conspiracy theory," they have continued to ill-serve both their readers' and their own self-interest (that of electing Democrats to office) in the bargain.

More, in a moment, on today's news from Kos himself, accidentally underscoring the long disservice his site has offered to readers on the e-voting front. But first, a personal incident involving hamburgers yesterday also serves to underscore, yet again, a related issue, and why hand-marked paper ballots --- and actually bothering to count them --- is an absolute imperative for Election Integrity...

Near the end of an article today on an investigation now underway by South Carolina officials into how the unknown, unemployed Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alvin Greene was able to afford the state's $10,440 filing fee to get on the ballot in the first place, the Associated Press quickly summarizes the "multiple theories" forwarded to speculate on how it was that Greene could have garnered a 59 to 41% "victory" over former state legislator and Circuit Judge Vic Rawl in the recent Democratic U.S. primary:

I guess there were just no other possible "theories" for Greene's still inexplicable "victory". Nothing that AP could come up with --- nothing at all to inform readers about --- despite the recent, official, formal five-hour hearing, filled with evidence and actual experts, at that "protest lodged by Rawl."

So, it must have been the "e" at the end of Greene's name that made more than 100,000 South Carolinians vote for a man who never campaigned and who they never heard of. Yeah, that must have been it.

In related news, I've officially changed my name to Brad Friedmane and am hereby announcing my candidacy for President of the United States in 2012. I hope this notice serves to get me elected, as it's the only campaigning I will be doing between now and then. Should be more than enough though. Measuring the Oval Office for drapes even as we speak.

Last week, in a unanimous verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the use of "honest services fraud" by federal prosecutors in cases that do not include bribery or kickback as part of that charge. The specific case considered by the court was focused on the convictions of Enron's Jeffrey Skilling, who is likely to see part of his conviction overturned by the decision.

How will that SCOTUS ruling affect the appeals in the cases of Alabama's former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman and Mississippi's once-powerful Democratic attorney Paul Minor, both of whom were targeted with apparent political prosecution by Karl Rove and the Bush Administration's politicized US Attorneys?

Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane at RAW STORY take a look at the still-uncertain future in both of their cases...

UPDATE 6/29/10 SCOTUS vacates Siegelman conviction, remands case back to appellate court! Great news, if not yet a full victory. Details at RAW STORY...

UPDATE 7/5/10 Brad's exclusive interview discussing all of the above with Siegelman on the Mike Malloy Show...

The BRAD BLOG's previous, years-long coverage of the disturbing Siegelman and Minor cases can be perused here...

On Tuesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an OpEd by Cynthia Richards and Phillip Michaels of the non-partisan election integrity organization Missourians For Honest Elections.

We don't normally do this, but since the entirety of the piece was so tremendously good; and, since it's so rare to see such an on-target OpEd on this topic in any major corporate news outlet; and, since St. Louis is our old hometown; and, since we've met with the MoHonest folks on a number of very pleasant occasions; and, since St. Louis County, the largest in MO, still shamefully uses 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by the oft-failed ES&S outfit in no small part because of this blog and this blogger's father; and, since the City of St. Louis still shamefully uses 100% unverifiable DRE systems made by Diebold; and, since much of the rest of the important "swing state" still shamefully uses similarly 100% unverifiable voting systems; and, since both fake "voting rights advocate" (really, top GOP vote suppression scam artist) Thor Hearne, and Bush's horrific U.S. Election Assistance Commission chair (now, Internet Voting huckster) Paul DeGregorio both live there and don't give a damn that voters in the state use such oft-failed, easily-manipulated, fully-unverfiable voting systems; and, since more people are likely to read the full article here than at the the Post; rather than just linking to the editorial, or quoting a few grafs, we're gonna run it in full below.

Please read it, and consider writing similar for your major newspaper in your hometown (and then watch them not publish it)...

Me, wisecracking at the very end of our Thursday morning Green News Report: "...Follow us on 'the Twitters'."

Obama, not wisecracking during his Thursday afternoon joint presser with Medvedev: "...He visited the headquarter of Twitters".

Spooky! Am I amazingly prescient or what?! (Or is Obama just a misled listener of the Green News Report?)

For the record, our user name on Twitter (singular!): @TheBradBlog and/or @GreenNewsReport.

Good for him. Now, at some point, he needs to hold his own "news" channel accountable for all the damage they've done as well...

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters has some related thoughts on whether the BP disaster will turn out to be Fox's "tipping point".

Yesterday, both Greta Van Susteren on Fox "News" and Ed Schultz on MSNBC asked the very same viewer poll question during their shows:

"Should President Obama fire Gen. McChrystal?"
Results from viewers as of last night...

YES: 3% - NO: 97% Total Votes (via website): 7,410

YES: 94% - NO: 6% Total Votes (via text msg): "Over 22,000"

Two Americas.

Yesterday, the White House denied a claim made by Arizona's Republican Sen. Jon Kyl that he was told personally by President Obama that he would not work to secure the Mexican border unless it was part of comprehensive immigration legislation.

"The president didn't say that and Senator Kyl knows it," White House Communication Director Dan Pfeiffer told POLITICO yesterday in their story which includes video of Kyl's claims being made to supporters in Phoenix.

Today, Media Matters has a long list detailing Kyl's well-documented history of blatantly false claims.

But we had our own run in with Kyl --- and his proclivity to just pull stuff out of his hind-quarters when speaking to the press --- during the 2008 Democratic Convention, both outside, and then inside the Pepsi Center.

Remember this BRAD BLOG exclusive from August 28, 2008? When we seemed to be the only member of the media willing to press Kyl on his bullshit?...

Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems has quietly announced its second acquisition of a major U.S. voting machine company in as many months and, right out of the gate, they've lied about it. Not an auspicious beginning for the company which may now, virtually overnight, have become the dominant private e-voting machine company in this country.

In our recent breaking coverage detailing the SEC's fraud lawsuits filed against Diebold and a number of their top executives --- including their former Chief Financial Officer who, as we reported exclusively back in 2007, was the top earner from an apparent insider sell-off at the company just days before its stock would plummet from its all-time high on the announcement of spinning off their troubled election division to a "new" company renamed Premier --- we noted that Diebold/Premier's assets had recently been purchased by a small Canadian firm by the name of Dominion Voting. But Dominion hasn't stopped there.

Their purchase of Diebold/Premier's assets was actually made from ES&S, the world's largest voting machine company, who was forced to divest of the assets they'd purchased from Diebold (previously, the second largest voting machine company in the country) for $5 million last year, as part of an anti-trust suit settlement with the DoJ.

In our coverage, we noted the comment of Dominion CEO John Poulos who, in the company's press release [PDF] announcing the Diebold/Premier asset acquisition, stated ominously: "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which...will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

Indeed, the DoJ-scuttled ES&S merger with Diebold/Premier had been legally challenged since, among other reasons, the merger of the largest e-voting company with the country's second largest would have given a single company control of at least 70% of all votes cast in the nation.

What we had replaced for length, however, with the ellipses in Poulos' quote above, was this [emphasis added]: "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which will restore much-needed competition to the American voting systems market and will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

How much is Poulos actually interested in "restor[ing] much-needed competition" for "the American voting systems market"? Apparently not so much, as according to a company press release [PDF] quietly issued late in the afternoon on Friday, June 4th, Dominion has now also acquired what had previously been the third largest voting machine company in the U.S., Sequoia Voting Systems.

Not surprisingly, that late Friday announcement didn't say anything at all about "competition".

Worse, as The BRAD BLOG has confirmed, the new press release from Dominion simply lied about what the company has and hasn't purchased from Sequoia, a company which had lied themselves, for years, about the real ownership of its proprietary voting systems...

Tale of @TheBradBlog's tweets from this morning...

11:23am PT:

11:23am PT:

11:25am PT:

11:25am PT:

11:26am PT:

11:26am PT:

11:29am PT:

And now, some of the replies from the "conservatives" who quickly responded to the above --- kept below the fold since their responses are so very "conservative" and classy!...