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Latest Featured Reports | Monday, March 18, 2024
Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
Guest: Labor journo Steven Greenhouse; Also: Putin's 'election'; Trump can't find $450M...
Sunday 'Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya' Toons
FEATURING: Moses Mike...Trump II Terror...TikTok Truth...and more in our latest collection of the week's most secular toons!...
Schumer Steps Up; Trump Associates Paid Biden 'Bribe' Liar $600k: 'BradCast' 3/14/24
Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continues; Repubs' Project 2025 would ban Paris Climate Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for the salmon...
Previous GNRs: 3/12/24 - 3/7/24 - Archives...
After Accountability for Fraud, What's Next for the Corrupt NRA and Gun Safety Reforms?: 'BradCast' 3/13/24
Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
How to Media Better and Other Smart Ideas:
'BradCast' 3/12/24
Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
'Green News Report' 3/12/24
Biden touts climate jobs boom at SOTU; Feb. obliterated global temp and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'...
Biden's Bold SOTU, Britt's SOTU Border Lies: 'BradCast' 3/11/24
Listeners ring in on that, Brad's hack of Daylight Saving Time and more...
The GOP's Exploitation of Laken Riley
CANNING: Suddenly they care about gun violence?...
Sunday 'Strongman' Toons
FEATURING: Sleepy Joe...Cognitive tests...The People's Court...and more in our latest collection of the week's most powerful toons!...
Echoes of Hitler's 'Final Solution' in Trump's Call to 'Finish the Problem' in Gaza
CANNING: 'In normal times, Hitler comparisons might seem over the top. These are not normal times'...
SCOTUS 14.3 Ruling a 'Sham' Says Group That First Raised Issue: 'BradCast' 3/7/24
Guest: Ron Fein of FSFP; Also: Sweden in NATO; Biden aid to Gaza; 'No Labels'; More...
'Green News Report' 3/7/24
2024 nominees set, climate stakes couldn't be higher; Broken utility pole caused TX fires?; Coastal U.S. cities sinking; PLUS: N. Atlantic keeps breaking heat records...
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...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
(All times listed as PACIFIC TIME unless noted)
Media Appearance Archives...
'Special Coverage' Archives
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...


Also: Callers ring in on that polling freaking out Democrats...
By Brad Friedman on 11/13/2023 6:13pm PT  

With Democrats still wetting themselves over last week's NYT/Siena polling showing Donald Trump beating President Biden a year from now in five of six swing-states, we finally carved out some time on today's BradCast to dig into the matter.

After a few news headlines, it's on to "that polling" that has freaked out so many regarding Biden's odds next year. It has spawned a thousand explanations. But mine, in short, is not unlike Margaret Sullivan's at The Guardian, where she argues that the bottom line is --- whether the polling is accurate or not --- the media are failing to accurately inform the American people. Not about the "horse race", but about Biden's accomplishments in office and the unprecedented dangers of Trump's vow to move the U.S. to become an authoritarian regime if he is allowed back in office.

President Obama's 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina argues today in Politico there is "no need to panic" over the polling numbers, based on his experience presiding over similarly grim numbers for the incumbent Prez back in 2011, when data guru Nate Silver suggested Obama was "toast" a year out from the election (which he ended up winning); New York Times Magazine gave him just a 17% chance of prevailing (apparently he beat those odds); polling by Politico showed Obama tied with Mitt Romney in 10 battleground states (Obama would go on to win 9 of them); and a December 2011 Gallup poll showed Obama losing to Romney across 12 battlegrounds states (he ended up winning 11 of them.)

In short, polling this far out doesn't mean much. But there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned. And plenty of reasons to spend time not on the horse race, but on the FACTS that Americans apparently aren't receiving from their mainstream media outlets. The FACTS of Joe Biden's extraordinary accomplishments in his first term, rivaling LBJ or FDR, and the chilling FACTS of what Donald Trump himself has vowed to do if he is re-elected, rivaling Hitler and Mussolini. (And, no, that is not hyperbole.)

As we discuss today, here is a new poll from Navigator Research revealing how wildly popular Biden's accomplishments are, whether the American people realize he has implemented them or not. And here is a list of 27 "insane things" Trump has promised, in his own words, to do if he wins a second term. And that list was created in September. He has doubled and tripled down on many of them since then.

After discussing much of the above, we open up our phone lines to listeners today, to get their explanations for all of this. Many of whom seem to get it, but a few, sadly, clearly do not. They are still buying the lies being spun by Trump, Republicans and Fox "News", because real news outlets are doing such a lousy job of telling the real story. The actual FACTS.

Reminder to our friends in the corporate mainstream media: Reporting independently verifiable FACTS, no matter how good or bad they may make any particular candidate look, is not a partisan act. It's your Constitutionally mandated and protected job.

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'ProLeft Podcast'...
By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2023 5:37pm PT  

The remaining 2024 GOP also-rans gathered for another embarrassing "Presidential Primary Debate" on Wednesday night in Miami, The front-runner rallied instead with thousands of supporters about 30 minutes north of the venue. For some reason, we cover all of it and more on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

So much for those "culture wars". Let's have some real ones! Just in case you fell for the GOP's Trump-fueled hoax that the party has somehow become anti-war or something, Wednesday night's forum, sponsored and very poorly moderated by NBC News and the far-right Salem Radio Network, dispelled that old myth pretty quickly. The five candidates still in the running other than Donald Trump, called for wars in pretty much every corner of the globe, from Israel to Iran to China to Mexico to our own southern border. (Though some pulled their punches when it came to actually defending democracy from imperialistic autocracy in Ukraine.)

For the record, the participants on Wednesday were FL Gov. Ron DeSantis, former SC Gov. and Trump's U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former NJ Gov. Chris Christie, SC U.S. Senator Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy, who the NYT's David French aptly characterized as "a right-wing Twitter thread come to life."

As right-wing Twitter threads do, Ramaswamy worked hard to dominate the night with all sorts of obnoxious stuff and nonsense, no matter how off-topic, resulting in him being described as "scum" by the deceptively not-insane Haley. Though it was difficult to dispute his declaration that Republicans have "become a party of losers" following Democrats' abortion rights-fueled victories across the country in Tuesday's off-year elections --- and similar wins in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

We're joined once again for our (perhaps futile) attempt to make sense of it all in today's Special Coverage by award-winning Salon columnist and Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON and "DRIFTGLASS" of the Professional Left Podcast from "Flyover Country, Illinois".

We discuss not only the return of full-throated, chest-thumping GOP war-mongering, in a debate that was arguably as much about the Republican Party as anything else, but a whole bunch of other stuff, including the GOP's "culture war" now in tatters, and NBC's Fox "News"-like failure to spend much time, if any, on the biggest elephant not in the room. (You know, the one that is seriously threatening the very survival of our Constitutional republic and even survival on the planet itself if he is returned to the Presidency next year.)

"It was a tough night for pundits," quips Driftglass today. "You gotta feel sorry for the people whose job it is to spin this as bad news for Joe Biden." But, he also observes: "Donald Trump wasn't there, but he was there. He was the specter hanging over everything. The specter hanging over all of us." NBC, he notes, had a responsibility to "expose how much the Republican Party itself has become a reflection of Donald Trump and MAGA. And they didn't do it at all. They didn't bring up guns. They didn't bring up democracy, the election lies. They didn't bring up any of the things that are really animating our politics."

We also spend some time today on Tuesday's pretty remarkable Democratic election victories amid the ongoing panic by too many Dems freaking out this week following recent polling showing Trump defeating Biden a year from now in five of six critical battleground states.

While Parton dismissed the usual "panic artists" making hay of polling a full year out from the election, she concedes, "it's going to be close" next year. She then adds, ominously: "It really is keeping me up at night thinking about these tens of millions of my fellow Americans who still like this guy, Donald Trump. We've got a bigger problem, I think, culturally. Something really, really toxic is going on in our body politic. I don't think it's going to go away when he does."

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With smart special guests Heather Digby Parton of Salon and 'Driftglass' of 'The Pro Left Podcast'...
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2023 5:20pm PT  

Woah, Nelly! Today's BradCast may arguably be both the dumbest and most fun ever! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The subject material --- Wednesday night's ridiculous GOP 2024 "Presidential Primary Debate" (if it's even worth calling it that) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library out here in Simi Valley, California --- is what makes it dumb.

It featured seven "candidates" --- former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, supposed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum --- but not the much-indicted guy who Republicans apparently intend, for now, to actually nominate for the job next year.

Our excellent special coverage panelists --- award-winning blogger and columnist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and "DRIFTGLASS" of the Professional Left Podcast from "Flyover Country, Illinois" --- are what make it fun.

Hear Digby discuss the GOP's "Bizarro World alternet universe" and the "big orange elephant in the room"! Hear Driftglass explain the "Doomsday machine with no off switch" and "the smelly wet sock of the mainstream media"! Also, Doug Burgum!

To paraphrase Haley last night, hearing us today may help you "feel a little bit dumber." I'd tell you more, but that would ruin all the fun...and most of the dumbness! Enjoy!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Also: Biden to join autoworker picket line in Detroit; Trump to meet NON-union workers in suburbs; Callers ring in with union myths, realities...
By Brad Friedman on 9/25/2023 5:54pm PT  

It's a very exciting time for organized labor in these United States, as discussed on today's BradCast, after decades of corporate measures that have succeeded in vastly shrinking union membership and power across the country, along with the power of the American middle class itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Late on Sunday, out here in Hollywood, striking film and television scribes from the Writer's Guild of America (WGA), finally came to terms on a new contract with major studio executives to share some of the bounty of record profits the writers have helped those giant corporations make. The tentative deal is described by the writer's union negotiators as "exceptional," including "meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership."

Pending likely final approval by members this week, only some film and TV production will be able to begin rolling again --- for example, late-night and daytime shows without actors --- as the more than 100,000 actors of SAG-AFTRA still remain on strike, hoping to see similar financial benefits and protections for their members as achieved by the WGA after nearly 150 days on the picket lines.

In related news, President Biden will be meeting with striking union members from the United Autoworkers on the picket line this week in Detroit, in what is apparently (shamefully?) an historic first for an American President. That will happen on Tuesday, the day before Donald Trump is set to meet with non-union workers at a plant outside of Detroit, in a ruby red suburb this week. (Good luck noticing that part of the story as corporate media outlets seem to be working overtime to "both sides" the two very different appearances.)

At the same time, the Biden-Harris campaign has released a video featuring GOP Presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and a Fox "News" anchor singing Biden's support for union workers.

We've had a very busy news weekend beyond the good news for organized labor and collective bargaining. But I wanted to move that good labor news up to the top today, and take some calls from listeners on it. Some of those callers seemed to have some misconceptions about unions which other callers, happily, were able to rebut in what I believe was an obscenely reasonable conversation for talk radio. My apologies in advance.

We'll try to get to some of the other ongoing stories --- the indictment of Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (NJ); the House GOP's pathetic plan to shut the federal government down as of this weekend, and more --- in the days ahead. Today, however, seemed a good day to focus momentarily on some good news about organized labor, the struggling middle class, and a newly revitalized stand against major corporations, making records profits, fighting like hell to prevent their workers from sharing in the gains those very workers helped them achieve.

I hope you'll tune in!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!

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Special Coverage with Salon's Heather Digby Parton, Pro Left Podcast's 'Driftglass'; Also: Willis requests Trump RICO trial begin this October!...
By Brad Friedman on 8/24/2023 6:32pm PT  

On today's BradCast, it's special coverage of the first GOP Presidential Primary debate of the 2024 campaign. It featured eight candidates, none of which were named Trump, But he was there anyway. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The raucus two-hour debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was sponsored by Fox "News" and held before a rowdy audience of booing and cheering Republicans who, at times, resembled a pro wrestling crowd --- or a lynch mob --- more than supporters of an American political party.

The actual participants on the stage were (in order of polling popularity before the debate): Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; 38-year old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who, if you hadn't heard of him before last night, you probably have now); Former Vice President Mike Pence; Former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley; Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott; Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson; North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (who, if you hadn't heard of him before last night, you may still have no idea who he is today.)

We're joined today by some favorite BradCast special coverage guests to try and make sense of it all. (Which was no easy feat, frankly!) HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is a longtime, award-winning columnist at Salon and founder of Digby's Hullabaloo blog; "DRIFTGLASS" is otherwise known as both @Mr_Electrico on the site formerly known as Twitter and occasional as just "Bill" back at home in "Flyover Country, Illinois" where he produces the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

Among the questions asked, answered and/or discussed today...

  • Who and what is Vivek Ramaswamy? And why was he both the target and obnoxious star of the evening?
  • What did all those red ties worn by everyone but Christie, Hutchinson and Haley actually mean?
  • What happened to Great White (Non-Trump) Hope DeSantis? Why was he largely ignored? And why was he screaming?
  • Holy crap! Was that a question about Climate Change on a Fox 'News' sponsored debate?!
  • Has Pence been underestimated after so many years in Trump's shadow?
  • Did Haley help or hurt herself in calling for a "new generation" of GOP leaders (while clearly being part of the old generation of GOP leaders)?
  • Wait, they all think Pence did the right thing on January 6, 2021, but almost all of them would support Trump next year even if convicted on felony crimes?
  • Have Christie and Pence figured out how to use the Constitution as a weapon against Trump?
  • Remember when even Republican debates included actual policy issues?
  • Who on that stage would be more likely than Trump to defeat Joe Biden next year?
  • If Trump is somehow removed from contention, who becomes the party's front-runner?
  • Was Trump right or wrong to stay out of the debate?

All of that and many more questions asked, answered, discussed or dodged on today's special edition of The BradCast, as Trump heads to a jail in Atlanta to be booked on his fourth criminal indictment of the year and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asks the Court [PDF] to begin his racketeering trial just two months from now in October(!) and as the once Grand Ole Party continues its long, dangerous descent into madness.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: The judge quickly approved Willis' request for an October 23 trial, but only for Trump attorney Ken Chesebro (alleged architect of the fake electors scheme), who invoked Georgia's speedy trial law. The other defendants do not yet have a trial date. So The Cheese stands alone...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

PROGRAMMING NOTE: The BradCast and Green News Report are standing down until after the Labor Day Holiday! See you in September!...

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Also: Prighozan 'dead'; Milwaukee schools closed due to heat wave; All-male SC Supreme Court allows abortion ban; Randy Rainbow returns!...
By Brad Friedman on 8/23/2023 6:27pm PT  

Today's BradCast might be best summarized by matching up the mugshots and court appearances this week (most of them just today!) of Republican attorneys who are being held accountable for felony crimes, most related to election fraud. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

From left to right of the rogues gallery pictured above...

  • Ohio attorney and Trump donor James Saunders was found guilty on Tuesday of two counts of election fraud for having voted twice, once in Ohio and once in Florida, in both the 2020 and 2022 general elections. The judge immediately sent him to jail after the verdict, even before his sentencing next week. Saunders apparently committed the same crimes in 2014 and 2016, but the statute of limitations had already run before Cuyahoga County prosecutors nabbed him.
  • Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's trial on 20 impeachment charges in the state Senate is scheduled to begin on September 5. The photo above (second from left) is his mugshot from 2015 when he was charged with state felony Securities Fraud which he has yet to be tried for. TX voters elected him twice since then, nonetheless. As to the charges for which he has now been impeached, Texas House impeachment managers this week released new details about Paxton's abuse of office as the state's top law enforcement official, which include abuse of office to help his friend and donor Nate Paul, his use of a fake Uber account, burner phones and secret personal emails accounts used, in part, to facilitate his secret visits with his mistress who Paul's firm hired in order to make it easier for Paxton to visit her in Austin. All of that, even as Paul was secretly paying to renovate Paxton's home in McKinney. Paxton, who led the failed U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit attempting to toss out every vote cast in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, in the 2020 Presidential election, is also under federal investigation for many of the crimes he has been impeached for in the Lone Star State where he is now serving his third term as A.G.
  • A whole passel of Donald Trump co-defendants --- many of them also Republican attorneys --- were in the news today, as many surrendered to felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia, after being charged in the state racketeering conspiracy indictment along with Trump for their efforts to steal the 2020 election in the Peach State. Seen in mugshots above (slots 3 through 6) are Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman (booked yesterday), Ken Chesebro, and Sidney Powell. Also surrendering today in Atlanta was Misty Hampton, the Republican Election Director of Coffee County, GA who invited Powell, and a bunch of other MAGA folks in to the Elections Office in the rural, Republican-leaning GA county to make unlawful copies of the state's sensitive voting system software. Also in related news today were Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump DoJ attorney Jeffrey Clark. Both are co-defendants in the RICO case, currently seeking to move their trials to federal court. Both had moved in federal court to postpone or cancel their surrenders in Fulton County. Both motions were rejected by the federal court today just before airtime after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made clear that they had both been given more than enough time before this Friday's deadline to turn themselves in.

In other, occasionally related news on today's program...

  • Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary Wagner military battalion and leader of a short-lived coup against his former close ally, Vladimir Putin, earlier this year, reportedly died along with 9 others in a private jet that crashed shortly after takeoff approximately 60 miles north of Moscow on Wednesday. The plane was video-taped falling out of the sky after something appears to have caused an explosion after the jet had reached cruising altitude.
  • Milwaukee Public Schools were closed today in Wisconsin due to a dangerous heat wave. The closure comes on the same day that eight GOP candidates --- none named Trump --- are to appear in Milwaukee this evening for the party's first Presidential Primary debate of the 2024 season. Pretty much all of these candidates, many of whom pretended to be furious about school closures due to COVID, are also climate crisis deniers. Nonetheless, they are unlikely to raise the issue of our climate emergency at tonight's debate, despite the school closures today due to climate change in the very city in which they will be debating tonight.
  • The newly all-male state Supreme Court in South Carolina reversed the Court's own ruling from earlier this year today, regarding the state Legislature's near total abortion ban, even though the majority opinion concedes the new law infringes "a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy." The 5 men now serving as Justices --- following the lone female Justice's mandatory retirement earlier this year --- just don't care, apparently. Unlike the now-retired female Justice who wrote the majority opinion blocking the new law earlier this year, the dudes now sitting on the state's High Court believe those state Constitutional interests of women do not outweigh "the interest of the unborn child to live."

And finally...

  • Trump says he will go in for booking at the Fulton County jail on Thursday evening, during TV's prime-time, of course. As he is set to be arraigned for his fourth criminal indictment of the year (his second one for attempting to steal the 2020 election), musical satirist Randy Rainbow returns with an all new, hilarious tune to mark the occasion and close today's program...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!

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Guest: Maui radio veteran Shaggy Jenkins; Also: Record U.S. storm damage; Tim Scott's climate change lies; Listener mail and more...
By Brad Friedman on 8/10/2023 6:34pm PT  

The death toll stood at 36 as we went to air on today's BradCast, with nearly 300 structures confirmed as destroyed. But officials have since bumped up the confirmed death toll to 53, with more than 1,000 homes and buildings destroyed in the town of Lahaina and surrounding areas on Hawaii's island of Maui. According to our guest today, who has been on the ground there since the blazes were first sparked on Tuesday, those numbers could still get far worse as he describes what has happened in his community as if "Hell opened its mouth."

You have likely heard, by now, that devastating wildfires were whipped up this week in Hawaii, amid near hurricane force wind gusts from the northern edge of Hurricane Dora, passing about 500 miles to the south. The high winds made it impossible for firefighting helicopters to snuff out the blazes in their early hours on Tuesday. Those fires then grew out of control amid dry and windy conditions over the next two days.

Officials are still battling to contain the fires as search and rescue efforts are ramping up, even as they attempt to find shelter for displaced residents and tourists in the once tropical paradise.

We're joined today by radio veteran SHAGGY JENKINS from Maui, where he formerly served as the longtime Program Director at our affiliate station there, KAKU 88.5FM. Jenkins now serves as Operations Manager for a group of Hawaii stations and has been putting in a ton of overnight on-air hours along with his regularly scheduled morning show, to try and help keep the community informed over our public airwaves during the ongoing emergency.

In addition to the firestorms that seemingly sprang up from nowhere and have leveled much of the historic, 1700s-era town of Lahaina --- once the Hawaiian kingdom's capitol city --- on the western side of Maui, Jenkins explains that fires are also raging somewhat to the east and on the Big Island as well.

"Although Lahaina made a lot of national headlines, parts of the neighborhoods upcountry, far away from Lahaina, have also had devastation. We've had complete neighborhoods and subdivisions wiped out for local families," he tells me, describing scenes that look more like bombed out cities of post-WWII Europe or in Ukraine today. "It's on a scale that we've never seen. It's just exhausting to look at, because it's still happening. I don't know how to describe Lahaina other than it's like Hell opened its mouth."

I hope you'll tune in for this must-listen conversation, particularly if you both want to know what appears to have happened and how you can help.

"It's all gone," laments Jenkins, as he becomes swept up in emotion describing the fate of Lahaina, "one of the most historic cities in the entire state."

"It's kind of hard to put into scale how much history, and how much of our old families that were born here and raised for generations, have lost everything. Some of the places that have been devastated --- they're the postcard images that you send everybody when you come to a vacation here. And they're all gone."

"The families that lived in those areas ... they're gone ... I'm sorry ... It's hard," he tells me as he chokes up, "...because we on the island, we're very close, as far as the local population. We know everybody."

Jenkins details how environmental conditions have changed in recent years as our climate crisis has taken a toll in drying out the once idyllic tropical paradise, and as "Big Ag" sugar operations up and left behind unrestored swaths of land.

"It is appreciably different" in recent years, he explains. "Part of the reason for that, not too long ago, we shut down the sugar industry here. The center body of the island is mostly ag land. And when the sugar industry left, a lot of that land went barren waiting for different owners. As all of these changes have happened, it's dried out the island. For the past five years, we have seen more and more brown than we usually do. Those conditions --- those dry, big, open-area fields --- were some of the reasons that the fires here spread so much. And since the sugar industry ended, we have had a step up in our wildfires."

One of the biggest ways we can help, Jenkins says, is to not come to Maui right now. While the island thrives on the tourism industry, now is not the time, as empty hotel rooms are being used to help house those who have lost everything. "We do not have the water, we do not have the power, we do not have the space," he asserts, noting that he is not "anti-tourist", but "every single resort that we have that has an empty room, we are trying to put in a local displaced family."

"The way that you can help us, the best way, is to stay away, and let us have the time to find and bury our dead, to fix our broken infrastructure. And, sadly, to start the very dangerous and long, arduous process of rebuilding one of the most historic cities in the state."

Jenkins does point those who would like to offer help to visit MauiFoodBank.org/Donate. As noted, I hope you will tune in for today's conversation with Shaggy.

Meanwhile, in other, very much related, news today...

  • Reinsurance giant Swiss Re Group released a report asserting that severe thunderstorms during the first half of this year in the U.S. have resulted in unprecedented levels of damage, including some $34 billion in insured losses. That number accounted for 70% of the $50 billion in global catastrophic damage from similar storms over the same period.
  • All of this, even as 2024 Republican (Vice-)Presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Tim Scott of climate change-threatened South Carolina took to Fox "News" on Wednesday with faux outrage claiming that the idea that we are facing a "climate emergency is ridiculous"(!) Of far greater import, he asserted, is that "we have a border emergency that is an existential threat right now." Desi Doyen has a few choice words for the embarrassing Senator, who apparently hasn't noticed the actual existential threat of climate change, right now, which has, over the same 24-hour period during which Scott was blathering his dangerous, wingnut, fossil-fueled disinformation on Fox, taken the lives of at least 53 of Scott's fellow American citizens in Hawaii. That, just days after hundreds have died from prolonged extreme heat in places like Arizona.
  • More on all of this follows in Desi's latest Green News Report today, before we then close out the week with some listener mail on "autocracy v. fascism" and some anecdotal evidence that support for our disgraced, so-far thrice-indicted former President may finally be flagging among some his supporters...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 8/10/2023 9:49am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Devastation on Maui after deadly wildfire outbreak; Record ocean heat wreaking havoc on marine life; U.S. hit with record number of mega-disasters in 2023; PLUS: President Biden permanently protects Grand Canyon's lands from uranium mining... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Scientists look beyond climate change and El Nino for other factors that heat up Earth; Making sense of Biden's "emergency" statement on climate change; Volunteers head off plastic waste crisis by removing tons of rubbish from Hungarian river; DeSantis' Florida approves climate science denial videos in schools... PLUS: First scorched, then soaked: weather whiplash confounds farmers; Millions struggle to pay AC bills... and much, MUCH more! ...

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Guests: Salon's Heather Digby Parton, Pro Left Podcast's 'Driftglass'...
By Brad Friedman on 4/29/2021 5:46pm PT  

Last month on The BradCast, after Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan with emergency COVID relief and stimulus for the poor and middle class, we suggested that passage of that bill would likely be seen in history as the beginning of the end of the Reagan Era. Now, it appears, we're hardly the only ones. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Since that wildly popular landmark measure was adopted (without a single Republican vote), Biden has proposed a $2.25 trillion infrastructure package called the American Jobs Plan. And, on Wednesday night, he officially introduced his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan proposal for perhaps the nation's largest-ever investment in human infrastructure, including free access to pre-school, two years of community college, subsidies for child care, paid family leave, expanded health care subsidies and child tax credits and much more.

With Reaganesque optimism during his first address to a joint session of Congress, citing a statistic published in a report by one of our guests earlier this year (Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies) finding that just 650 billionaires in America saw their own net worth increase by a trillion dollars as 20 million Americans lost jobs during the pandemic, the President pounded what could become a final nail in the Reagan Era coffin, declaring: "My fellow Americans, trickle down economics has never worked and it's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out."

We're joined today, on Biden's 100th day as President, by HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and by 'DRIFTGLASS' of the The Professional Left Podcast, for analysis of his stunningly-well received remarks (even by Republicans) on Wednesday night and his pitch for an extraordinarily bold and long-overdue government investment in the American people.

Says Digby, on how we arrived at this moment: "We've just been reminded that we need government, because look what happened. We had this pandemic and having the freak show that had been sort of entertaining like a horror show for the last four years, it suddenly became pretty clear what the problem was with that. Because when you really need government, it wasn't there. They were completely out to lunch. For a lot of people in this country, they're out their floundering under this trickle-down, rugged individualism. This is what it's like when you're left completely on your own."

Says Driftglass, mocking GOP rhetoric of the past forty years: "If you're not rich, it's your own fault, and the only thing standing in the way of being the best you is this evil government. [But] suddenly, a whole bunch of people absolutely have to have assistance from the government or their going to die, or go broke, or they're going to go out of business.  And the only thing Republicans had to offer was a sneer...So, there's this literally once-in-a-hundred years crisis, where the actual effect of good government is so visible, right now, that you can now make the case credibly that there are other large problems that we have ignored and disinvested in for decades that we need to fix."

Even for longtime, cynical, old-school progressive bloggers like us --- none of whom had supported Biden during last year's primaries --- we are all pleasantly taken aback at his remarkably ambitious plans and expansive proposed agenda. We discuss, dissect and debate all of that, how it should or shouldn't be "paid for", and whether any of it can possibly be adopted into law with the exceedingly narrow majorities Democrats currently hold in Congress on today's special coverage edition of The BradCast...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Political scientist, author David Faris of Roosevelt University...
By Brad Friedman on 8/18/2017 6:03pm PT  

On today's BradCast, another tumultuous week, another White House firing, another major election system breach and another look at how it all could end. [Audio link follows below.]

White House Chief Strategist --- and once and future head of the far-right fake 'news' outlet Breitbart --- is fired after yet another tumultuous week of self-inflicted wounds by Donald Trump.

Also today, 11 years after The BRAD BLOG first reported exclusively on a massive breach of personal voting records for some 1.5 million Chicago voters, the private company contracted to run the city's voter registration system did it again. ES&S, the largest electronic voting system vendor in the nation, was discovered to have been storing 1.8 million voter registration records on an unprotected web server this week, exposing citizens to data theft and the city's administrative voting system passwords. All underscoring, yet again, the continuing failures and dangers of having privatized our public electoral system, as we've been trying to highlight for nearly 15 years now.

Then, with the President's approval rating at an historic low and support for his impeachment climbing, concerns about his fitness for office continue to mount in the wake of his equivalence between neo-Nazis and those who protest them, following the murder of a counter-protester in Charlottesville. New articles of impeachment are filed in the U.S. House, more Presidential advisory councils are disbanding, with CEOs and other business leaders (even James Murdoch of Fox "News"!) quickly distancing themselves from Trump, even some top Republicans who previously supported him are now finally suggesting he may be unfit for office.

So, how might this all end? We're joined today by columnist, author and political scientist DAVID FARIS of Roosevelt University to discuss that, Bannon, and his new piece at The Week on the Constitutional ambiguities of the 25th Amendment. Can it and should it be invoked to remove Trump from office? And how the hell does it even work?

Faris argues "we cannot take three-and-a-half more years of this nonstop hell without experiencing a collective nervous breakdown," describes the firing of Bannon as "a great victory for The Resistance", and offers his thoughts on whether the latest shake-up at the continuously chaotic White House is ultimately good for the nation. Then, he compares the difficulties of the impeachment process versus those in invoking the never-before-used Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to remove a President who is judged to be unfit for office. Faris also handicaps the odds --- and advantages to both the GOP Congress and Vice-President --- of either option actually being triggered.

Finally, as if things aren't troubling enough, we're joined by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report, as National Monuments are on the Administration's chopping block, Trump revokes Obama's Executive Order protecting the nation's infrastructure, and the U.S. looks forward to its first total eclipse of the sun in nearly 100 years...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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