According to my guest on today's BradCast, last minute GOP maneuvering on the U.S. Senate versions of the tax bill, in hopes of buying off holdouts within their own caucus, definitively proves that so-called 'trickle-down' economic theory doesn't actually work --- and that Republicans know it. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up on today's show, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calls for long-serving Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan to resign in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations by a series of women, and long-serving Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas announces he will not run for re-election, after admitting to sexual misconduct with a series of women.

Those are just two of a flood of powerful men in politics, entertainment and journalism to be called out of late. However, how many women are still facing sexual assault and harassment from men who aren't as high-profile and, therefore, not being exposed by the mainstream media? And, how many others, even powerful ones like President Donald Trump and, perhaps, Alabama's Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore --- whose poll numbers are back up over Democrat Doug Jones in advance of the Dec. 12th U.S. Senate special election, even after multiple allegations of sexual assault with under-aged girls --- still get away without any accountability at all? We discuss.

Then, while Republicans claim their massive $1.5 trillion tax cut scheme for corporations and the wealthy (and tax increases for most everyone else) will magically pay for itself, history and all independent analysis suggest otherwise. So does evidence from large corporations, most of which indicates that companies have no plans to use their expected windfall profits from tax cuts to increase employment or raise worker wages.

With that in mind, in order to get the massive tax measure passed at all, some Republicans in the U.S. Senate are demanding a 'trigger' in the legislation that would automatically kick in to reverse some of the tax cuts if the GOP and Trump Administration's rosy scenarios that tax cuts pay for themselves do not actually come to pass.

We're joined today by financial journalist DAVID DAYEN who explains why such a trigger is the GOP's worst idea yet for their already terrible scheme. "You could let monkeys bang on typewriters for several millennia and not come up with an idea as profoundly stupid," he reports at The Nation this week.

The result, he tells me, would be that taxes would potentially be automatically increased and/or spending reduced, at the worse possible moment for doing so. "Austerity in the midst of an economic slowdown is economic suicide. It would intentionally destabilize the economy if it slowed down. It would turn recessions into depression," he warns. "I cannot stress enough how stupid this idea is."

He also notes how opposition to such a trigger from so-called "conservatives"-- other members of the Senate, as well as right-wing advocacy groups like the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the US Chamber of Commerce --- "gives the game away" that 'trickle-down', and this bill as a whole, are all "all a scam"...and Republicans know it.

Please tune in for another very insightful conversation with Dayen, revealing just how hypocritical, dangerous and misleading the entire scam is, how much it will cost the American people in real terms, whether the GOP and Trump will be able to get it passed at all, and how the American electorate are likely to react if so, in 2018 and beyond.

Finally, a quick reminder that Open Enrollment for the Affordable Care Act ('ObamaCare') at Healthcare.gov is still under way until December 15th in most states and, while sign-up numbers have been very high so far this year, they are very low as a percentage compared to last year, since Trump has cut the period for enrollment in half from previous years.

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On today's BradCast: A rather extraordinary power battle, turf war, legal dispute is now being played out for control of the independent federal agency formed to protect consumers from fraud and deceptive practices by Wall Street banks and other large corporations following the 2008 global banking crisis and financial meltdown. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On Friday, Richard Cordray, the Obama-appointed Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) resigned to, likely, run for Governor of Ohio. As he did, he named his Chief of Staff Leandra English, as the new Deputy Directory, which means that, according to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that created the CFPB, English becomes Acting Director of the Bureau.

Nonetheless, hours later on Friday, Donald Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney, his own chief of the White House Office of Management and Budget --- and a long time foe of the CFPB, which he has described as a "sick, sad joke" --- as the new Acting Director of the important consumer agency. The White House claims the authority of a 1998 law, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, allows the President to make the appointment. A strict reading of the rule of law seems to suggest otherwise. But, today, we now have two different "Acting Directors" of the same federal agency.

We're joined on today's show by Georgetown University law professor and former CFPB advisor ADAM LEVITIN --- who warned about this potential showdown well before it came to pass --- to explain which law takes precedent, why Trump is so desperate to name Mulvaney as Acting Director rather than simply appoint a permanent chief at the CFPB, whether English's federal lawsuit filed on Sunday will prevail, and how the Trump/Mulvaney scheme represents several extraordinary conflicts of interest and a plan for a full regulatory capture of the (theoretically) independent executive agency.

Levitin describes this power battle as unprecedented in the U.S.. "The closest thing I can think of is Bush v. Gore," he tells me. "For two different people claiming a federal office, I can't think of any situation like this in modern times. This seems like it's something out of Game of Thrones, where there are multiple contenders for the same throne."

In other unprecedented Trump Era news today: A hugely profitable media outlet named Meredith Corporation purchased Time Inc. (including TIME magazine, and others) over the weekend, with the help of $650 million from the far-right Koch Brothers; The US Senate is making a desperate run this week for massive tax cuts for hugely profitable corporations (like Meredith and Koch Industries), at the expensive of low- and middle-class Americans who will end up with increased taxes and cuts to social services like health care; And, finally, Trump, during a solemn ceremony for native American Navajo code talkers, used an offensive racial slur in describing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as "Pocahontas". It didn't go over well...

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On today's BradCast: If you're still clinging to the idea that elections don't really matter and the incredibly lazy assertion that "there's no difference between the two major parties", today's show may help you reassess those ill-considered, self-defeating, knee-jerk notions. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First up, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, explains why he believes it would be better to have an accused child molester, Alabama's Republican U.S. Senate nominee, Roy Moore, in the U.S. Senate, than to see the Democratic candidate Doug Jones elected on December 12. His argument today that Moore "totally denies" the charges of sexual improprieties with teenagers as young as 14 (sourced to more than 30 people) is part of his Administration's desperate attempt to pass their massive tax cuts for the rich, at all costs, through a very slim GOP majority in the U.S. Senate. That majority would get slimmer still if Jones is elected. So bring on the pedophiles!

We're joined today by SETH HANLON, President Obama's former Special Assistant for Economic and Tax Policy, to explain how the GOP's proposed tax scheme is being rushed through the Senate during the holidays, in hopes that voters don't notice that it will actually raise taxes for some 82 million middle-income Americans, while keeping permanent tax cuts in place for the wealthy. And, as bad as that sounds, other provisions are even worse and will result in an increase of $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit, the loss of health care coverage for some 13 million Americans, and an immediate $25 billion cut to Medicare, among other nightmares.

"The number one thing" that people need to known about this bill, Hanlon tells me, "is that this thing is happening now. This bill could be law by the end of next week. It might take longer than that, but they are trying to jam it through the Senate, which is the key to all this, next week. There are reasons why they are doing that so fast. Sunlight's the best disinfectant and they do not want people to scrutinize this bill to find out what's in it, to understand the ramifications. So they are trying to get it through as fast as they possibly can."

"If you want to see what's really happening with this bill, you look at what's permanent in it. A lot of it is just temporary, but there's really only three parts that are permanent. Number 1 is a massive tax cut for corporations. Number 2 is a hidden tax increase on basically every single American household. Number 3 is an attack on the Affordable Care Act. They're repealing a key part of Obamacare, the ACA, and it's been estimated to result in 13 million without health insurance, and premiums increasing for people who buy them through marketplaces by 10 percent."

"This is a permanent tax cut for corporations, paid for with a permanent tax increase on individuals and by fewer people having health care," Hanlon, now a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, explains. He also speaks to whether the ACA provision is included only as a bargaining chip, whether the Obama Administration used similar tactics to get legislation through Congress, and whether there is any evidence that tax cuts of this sort "pay for themselves", as Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (pictured above with his new wife and new money) and his Economic Policy Adviser Gary Cohn, among others, have asserted in the desperate effort to pass what would be the only major legislation to be adopted under Trump during his first year of office.

But, if all of that doesn't underscore the difference between Republicans, who support the scheme, and Democrats who virulently oppose it, Trump's Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, announced today that the FCC's 3 to 2 Republican majority will vote next month to kill landmark Net Neutrality protections instituted during the Obama Administration. We explain what that means, and how it is likely to result in higher prices for customers and content providers (like BradBlog.com and The BradCast) and slower Internet speeds for sites and consumers who don't pay up tolls to Internet provider behemoths like AT&T and Comcast for access to the "fast lane" on the information super-highway. It will be, as one of the two Democratic commissioners on the FCC said in a statement today, a "green light to our nation's largest broadband providers to engage in anti-consumer practices, including blocking, slowing down traffic, and paid prioritization of online applications and services."

Also today, Trump's DHS announced their intention to deport tens of thousands of Haitians who came to the U.S. legally after the devastating 2010 earthquake (along with their U.S. born citizen children?), and an Obama appointed federal judge has permanently blocked the Trump DoJ's attempt to unlawfully withhold federal funding to so-called "sanctuary cities".

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with very cool news for electric vehicle fans and some encouraging news for breathers and voters alike in Virginia (which, once again, underscores that, yes, elections matter and yes, there is a difference between the two major parties, whether you like it or not.) And we've also got some good news for endangered elephants, but some bad news for endangered lions in today's report...

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On today's BradCast: It's astonishing how many GOP policies, practices and nominees must be pushed through by force, scheming, lying and the breaking of norms and traditions. If any of the stuff they are pushing was actually popular and sought by voters, it doesn't seem like the strong-arm tactics would be necessary. But... [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories covered on today's show:

• Nebraska law disallows state officials from considering Thursday's massive Keystone Pipeline tarsands oil spill in South Dakota in their upcoming decision on permits to build the even larger and more dangerous KeystoneXL Pipeline expansion in Nebraska;
• Things are getting ugly in the U.S. Senate Finance Committee as the GOP attempts to ram through massive, unpopular tax cuts for the rich before the Thanksgiving break;
• Even Fox "News" now finds Alabama's GOP U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore to be in trouble with voters before the December 12 special election, following growing allegations of sexual assault on minors;
• The U.S. Senate Judiciary Chair does away with 100-year old "blue slip" tradition in order to ram through more of Trump's lifetime appointments to the federal bench;
• Those appointees, a new analysis finds, are almost exclusively white and male;
• They're also "not qualified", dishonest and racist, as investigative journalists have recently discovered;
• So are Trump's appointees to other areas of the federal government, more of whom were forced to resign in disgrace this week;
• In other "Filling the Swamp" news, Trump continues to spin the revolving door with Big Pharma exec nominated to head Health and Human Services (HHS), a Big Coal exec gets rammed through the Senate to head the office of Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), but one wildly inappropriate appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may actually get blocked...by Senate Republicans! What are the odds? Well, we'll believe it when --- and if --- we actually see it...

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On today's BradCast, we head back to Georgia on today's show, to cover the recall effort that is now under way against the state's top election official. But first... [Audio link to show follow below.]

We've got a lot of breaking news as we go to air, including a new spill of some 210,00 gallons of dirty tar sands oil in South Dakota on the Keystone Pipeline. Details were scarce as we went to air, and that number is based on pipeline owner TransCanada's own estimate, but the new spill is likely to affect Nebraska's upcoming decision on the proposed route for TransCanada's controversial KeystoneXL pipeline, which was previously rejected by President Obama, but later approved by President Trump.

The Republican tax cut plan narrowly passed today in the U.S. House on a nearly-party line vote. The scheme, according to non-partisan analysts, would add $1.5 trillion to the national deficit and cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, while actually resulting in a tax increase for many low- and middle-income Americans. Passage of the unpopular measure is still far from certain, meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate.

Also today, a mistrial was declared in the federal bribery trial against New Jersey's Democratic US Senator Bob Menendez, after the jury was found to be hopelessly deadlocked, with 10 jurors insisting on full acquittal on all charges and two favoring conviction.

The situation for Senate Republicans has not improved following allegations of sexual assault on several teenagers by Roy Moore, Alabama's GOP nominee for next month's US Senate Special Election. An internal GOP poll, according to Politico, finds Moore's numbers tanking against Democratic challenger Doug Jones since the charges came to light. Moore had been up by 16 points in the poll last month. He is now said to be trailing Jones by 12!

And, next door in Georgia, following a massive, covered-up security breach on the state's election server last year, a US House Special Election with questionable results earlier this year in GA's 6th Congressional District, a multi-partisan lawsuit filed to challenge those results and force the state to move away from its wildly-hackable, 100% unverifiable, 15-year old Diebold touch-screen voting systems, and recent blockbuster news revealing that the election server in question was "wiped clean" in the middle of the lawsuit (which the Republican state AG's office now refuses to defend), an official recall petition effort is now underway to demand the removal from office of GA's Republican Sec. of State Brian Kemp.

We're joined today by JOHN ZIEGLER, chair of A Voice for All Georgia, the organization heading up a herculean effort to gather the more than 778,000 signatures of registered GA voters that are required to trigger a recall election (which, he tells me, would be run on the very same 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems at the heart of this entire mess!)

Ziegler explains why his group has launched the effort, the obstacles created by the state for successfully obtaining what would be the first recall anywhere in the country of a sitting Sec. of State, and how folks both inside and out of Georgia can help with what HuffPo recently described as "The Biggest Story Nobody's Talking About".

"Kemp and other individuals associated with him have mislabeled our group," Ziegler tells me. "A Voice For All Georgia is a non-partisan group. We have Democrats, we have Republicans, we have Constitutionalists, we have Tea Party members, we have independents. The thing I found very refreshing is that we all share the same common goal, we want to have a secure vote, and we want to have a fair vote, and we want to make sure that all votes count.

"Whether it's gender, ethnicity, religion, values, or beliefs, we all have different opinions, but we've all united together to believe that there should be [a] secure vote, which, in our opinion is to have paper ballots and to have it hand-counted," he says.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a very busy Green News Report, and an update on Thursday's Keystone Pipeline oil spill...

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On today's BradCast, more good news for Dems, more bad news for Republicans, and more disturbing news for all Americans --- and the world. [Audio link to show follows below.]

We start today with the encouraging news for Democrats, as a 26-year old lesbian candidate for state Senate in deep "red" Oklahoma has unseated yet another Republican in a special election this week. It's the third time a state Senate seat has been flipped by Dems in OK since a 24-year old woman became the youngest chair of a state Democratic Party last year.

Speaking of trouble for Republicans, we've also got the latest on the Roy Moore mess in Alabama, as President Trump, also accused of sexual assault by multiple women before his own election last year, has frustrated fellow Republicans by failing to speak out in the matter, following bombshell allegations that Moore assaulted a number of teenagers, as young as 14 years old, while serving as a 32-year old prosecutor. But Moore and his supporters are fighting back today, as is his wildly embarassing attorney. A robocall falsely claiming to be from a reporter at the Washington Post (which originally broke the initial allegations against Moore last week) has reportedly been circulating in Alabama, in advance of the December 12 election, claiming to be offering money in exchange for new allegations against the far Rightwing GOP nominee for US Senate. And, far Rightwing radio propagandist Rush Limbaugh has come up with a very novel defense for the accused GOP child molester at the same time.

Also today, more news on the mass shooting at and near an elementary school in Northern California that killed 5 and wounded 10 others on Tuesday. Many new questions have surfaced about why the shooter, a local man with a criminal record and anger management issues, was able to purchase and then retain semi-automatic weapons even after recent encounters with police including domestic violence complaints and being charged with stabbing a neighbor. But, at least the mass killer wasn't Muslim, so NRA-bribed Republicans can begin ignoring yet another domestic mass shooting immediately.

Then, as concerns continue to grow worldwide over Donald Trump's saber rattling with North Korea and his access to nuclear weapons, the U.S. Senate held a hearing this week to discuss Presidential authority to wage war and launch nuclear weapons without anyone having the ability to prevent him from doing so, if he chooses.

Longtime nuclear weapons policy analyst STEPHEN SCHWARTZ of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies joins us to discuss what, if anything, was accomplished at the Senate hearing, the first on the topic since 1976, and what, if anything, can (or should) be done to restore a more sane use-of-nukes policy in the only nuclear-armed nation in the world which rests sole decision-making power on whether to use such weapons with one single person. That person, currently being Donald J. Trump, has raised many worries from Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike. Whether they're willing or able to do anything about it, however, is a different matter, as we also discuss today.

"The reality of the situation is that you're putting enormous power in the hands of one person," Schwartz, tells me, detailing how, short of "mass insubordination" by military leadership, even they would be unable to prevent such an event if Trump ordered it. And, he explains, even objections on legal or Constitutional grounds by military leadership might be insufficient to prevent disaster in the "at most 15 minutes, perhaps, as little as five or ten" during which a President would have to make a decision about how to respond in the event of an apparent incoming attack.

You'll want to tune in for this conversation, if only to hear the explanation of how the nuclear "football", at all times within reach of any American President since the Cold War, actually works. Schwartz, the former longtime Executive Director and Publisher of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (keepers of the infamous "Doomsday Clock") also suggests several ways in which we could improve (or, help Trump-proof) the current dangerous system to help avoid "what could be a life-ending, a world-ending decision"...

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On today's BradCast: Have you ever considered running for office? If so, and if you're a progressive, you probably couldn't come up with a better year to it than in the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections! And my guest on today's show says he'd love to help you do it! [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today: It was another day in America, so another mass shooting. We cover today's breaking news out of Northern California where 4 were killed and 10 shot by a gunman who was eventually shot by police in a very rural and economically depressed part of the state. The shooter reportedly fired, sometimes randomly, at some seven different scenes and targeted an elementary school before he was finally taken down. While still officially unidentified as of airtime, the gunman is said to have had a history of domestic violence and neighbors who complained that he was threatening and had recently been heard firing off large magazines of gunfire in recent days. Despite his record, however, he was somehow able to legally obtain the semi-automatic rifle and two hand guns found with him after he was killed.

Republican elected officials who represent the area offered "prayers", as usual, in the wake of this latest shooting. Democratic Gubernatorial hopefuls in the state vowed to take action to help curb American's continuing gun epidemic.

In not-unrelated news, it happens to be "National Run for Office Day", as declared by a host of progressive organizations. To help celebrate, we're joined today by ROSS MORALES ROCKETTO, co-founder of Run for Something, a national progressive organization dedicated to helping first- and second-time progressive grassroots candidates --- particularly millennials, women and people of color --- step up and run for state and local offices.

The group, "born of the tears of the 2016 election", hopes to run more than 1,000 candidates across the country next year, for everything from state representative to city council to local library boards and Boards of Education. They also saw at least 32 of their endorsed candidates win races in last week's 2017 off-year elections, including a number of stunning underdog Democratic victories by first time candidates against long-entrenched Republican office holders.

Rocketto explains how and why he formed the group along with a former Hillary Clinton Campaign staffer; how they determine which candidates to endorse and help; what is needed to run and win a successful grassroots progressive campaign; and how you --- yes, YOU! --- may wish to consider visiting their webpage and getting started to run for something yourself in 2018!

"What we're really trying to do is recruit and support the next generation of progressive Democrats running down-ticket," he tells me. "We think that 2018, for example, is going to be the year of the down-ballot candidates. We know that only 5% of state legislators across the country are millennial, and the millennial generation is going to be the largest voting bloc in the next set of presidential elections. That's what we're setting out to do specifically in 2018."

"We've been hearing from people all across the country that in this particular moment, they want to make a difference in their communities. And, honestly, one of the best ways and the most effective ways to make a difference in your community is to run for office locally," Rocketto says. "The things that impacts people's lives the most on a day-to -day basis tend to be at that local level. And that's what's been so powerful about the stories that we hear from our candidates that are running."

He goes on to cite stories of some of them, like 22-year old Heather Ward in Pennsylvania, who ran and won last week for school board "in a district that is largely Republican" to become the youngest ever to serve on the board, and transgender candidate Danica Roem who unseated a virulent homophobe in Virginia's House of Delegates. We also discuss other progressive groups similarly working to recruit grassroots candidates, like Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution, which supported a 30-year old Marine vet Lee Carter, who unseated the GOP House Majority Whip in Virginia while running as a Democratic Socialist.

Also on today's program: Late updates on Alabama's disastrous GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, Roy Moore following new allegations yesterday of a violent sexual assault against a minor; Several hearings held today in the U.S. House and Senate; and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report...

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On today's BradCast, we were live today on our flagship station in Los Angeles, after the latest round of fund drives at KPFK/Pacific Radio, and had lots to discuss with callers in the wake of the Roy Moore mess and new developments and allegations. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Another accuser stepped forward on Monday, charging that Alabama's Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Special Election, sexually assaulted her when she was a minor, while he was serving as District Attorney in the state. And, even prior to today's new allegations, the news for the GOP Senate was becoming increasingly grim by the hour following the Washington Post's explosive exposé of charges by four different women against Moore published late last week.

A new poll shows Moore's Democratic opponent, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, is now up over the controversial GOP candidate by 4 points, just weeks before the December 12th election, in the wake of the initial allegations that Moore sexually pursued four teenagers, one as young as 14 years old, in the late 70s and 80s.

Three Republican U.S. Senators rescinded their endorsements for Moore over the weekend and, on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on him to step aside --- without using the "if true" qualification he'd used previously --- saying that he now believed the women who had accused Moore. McConnel also added he is now seeking a write-in candidate willing to run, since it's too late to remove Moore from the ballot. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) head of the Senate Republicans' campaign committee, called on the Senate to expel the controversial far Rightwing "conservative" "Christian" if he wins. But some Republicans are now calling on Alabama's Governor and legislature to cancel the Special Election to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions all together. (Good luck in federal court if they decide to take such an unprecedented move to cancel an election, because it looks like they may lose.)

And, of course, all of that was before yet another woman stepped forward on Monday to say that she was "attacked" by Moore as "a child". The new accuser says she feared Moore was going to rape her when she was 16 and she had to physically fight him off in his car, after she'd received a ride home from Moore, a regular patron at the restaurant where she worked as a waitress while he was a prosecutor in his 30s.

Meanwhile, Moore and his wife both claim the charges against him are all part of a "witch hunt" by media, the Republican establishment and the Democratic party and have said they plan to sue the Washington Post which reported the initial allegations last week.

We cover all of those late details, and then open the phone lines to callers today, to ring in on all of the above and much more!...

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On today's BradCast, our fight against fake news --- and helping the electorate to understand which news is real and which news is fake --- continues! [Audio link to today's real show is posted below.]

Alabama's Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore continues to deny Thursday's explosive and detailed investigative report from the Washington Post, charging that when the controversial far rightwing religious zealot was a 32-year old Assistant District Attorney he sexually molested a 14-year old girl. She, like three other teens he also is said to have pursued around the same time, have all gone on record, by name, with their claims.

Despite those blockbuster charges detailed by some 30 sources in WaPo's coverage, and (somewhat cowardly) calls from Republican U.S. Senators for Moore to drop out of the upcoming U.S. Senate Special Election against Democratic candidate and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones on December 12, most GOP officials in the state of Alabama still appear, embarrassingly enough, to support Moore. Some refuse to believe the allegations at all and others don't seem to care, even if the charges are true and amount to a sex crime against a minor. One statewide elected official (AL State Auditor Jim Ziegler) went so far as to cite the bible in support of the alleged pedophilia, and another elected official (AL State Rep. Ed Henry) actually called (twice) for charges to be brought against the victims themselves.

Nonetheless, despite ongoing "conventional wisdom" that a Democrat couldn't possibly win an Alabama U.S. Senate seat, new polling taken the day the story broke shows the race between Moore and Jones is now in a dead heat. And that's data from before, as the pollster notes, the news about Moore "had a chance to fully sink in."

Then, Donald Trump's so-called "Election Integrity" Commission headed up by top GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and KS Sec. of State Kris Kobach continues to face huge problems. After eight lawsuits have previously been filed against the sham commission, on Thursday, a ninth was filed. That one by one of the Democratic Commissioners on the panel itself!

Finally today, a number of totally fake news stories (about Tuesday's election and Hillary Clinton among other things) became popular via social media this week. We debunk several of them with the help of the Associated Press fact-checkers, included several items of fake news about the American economy and trade with Japan that the President of the United States himself spread during his ongoing Asian tour.

Enjoy! (And my huge thanks to those of you who stop by our donation page to help us continue to do our work over your public airwaves every day! Please consider helping us to continue to do so, if you haven't already!)

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On today's BradCast: It's kind of remarkable, but things continue to get even worse for Republicans this week. Worse even than the thumping they from Democrats at the polls on Tuesday. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

A bombshell investigative Washington Post report today details allegations of inappropriate sexual contact by Roy Moore, the controversial far-right, homophobic, anti-Muslim, religious zealot and twice removed AL Supreme Court Justice, who is also currently the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Special Election in December. Moore is accused of inappropriate conduct with several teenage girls, one as young as 14, while serving as an Assistant District Attorney in his 30s. The charges have led to GOP Senators calling on him to immediately drop out of the race, even though the deadline for doing so before the December 12 election to fill the seat left vacant by Attorney General Jeff Sessions appears to have passed.

Moore and his campaign vehemently deny the reporting as "fake news" by "the National Democrat Party" and Washington Post, though the now 53-year old woman at the center of the report has nothing to do with Democrats and voted for Republicans in the last three Presidential elections (including for Donald Trump). She, like the other women in the story, who do not know each other, reportedly had to be convinced to tell their stories to the paper.

We're joined today by The Nation's JOHN NICHOLS, progressive journalist and author of Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse, to discuss that stunning breaking news as well as the remarkable Democratic victories in Tuesday's elections up and down the ballot in VA, NJ and many other states. Nichols, a long time progressive champion, offers insight into the quickly escalating "chaos" for Congressional Republicans and the ongoing divides among progressives --- even in the wake of Tuesday's victories --- between grassroots activists and more establishment Democrats.

On the breaking Moore news, Nichols offers wryly: "Who would've thought, in what wild imagination might would you have possibly thought that a xenophobic, racist, lawless, just brutal character, by any measure, would turn out to be a bad guy? The story, if it is true --- and let us be fair, let's be more fair than Roy Moore would be --- if it is true, this is really scary, ugly, awful stuff." He adds: "I'm not sure that Roy Moore will stand down. Remember Roy Moore has made his career by not following the rules, not accepting political logic or reason, and also by absolutely denying that which appears in the media. He makes Trump look like a cautious, responsible believer in mainstream media."

As to electoral politics, Nichols agrees with my assertion "one hundred percent" that the Democratic Party establishment continue to underestimate their chances in "red" states and jurisdictions. He cites, for example, the lack of support previously given to Moore's Democratic opponent, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, "an exemplary candidate for this position, with some unique abilities to pull together the traditional Democratic coalition in Alabama" where, he argues, "you can build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, urban-rural coalition."

Nichols goes on to describe the "amazing day for the Democrats" on Tuesday, while noting that "a heck of a lot of it was dumb luck," given the mood of the country toward Donald Trump. He argues Dems might have done even better had they "put a candidate on the ballot in every district, and [found] ways to get resources and support to that candidate, because you have the potential, in a wave election, of winning in places you could never win." He cites a number of progressive and minority candidates, some "abandoned by Dems", who ending up winning nonetheless. "What we want to take away from Tuesday night is that where Democrats thought outside the box --- where they pushed harder, did more interesting things --- they won!"

In the bargain, he adds, for Republicans in Congress, the result is now utter "chaos" and he believes the current tax cut proposals by the GOP may never even get passed at all, at least not as current proposed.

Also today on today's show: As expected, still more top GOPers in the U.S. House announce they will not run again in 2018 following Tuesday's thumping; Outgoing Senator and Trump adversary Bob Corker (R-TN) announces long-overdue hearings in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (which he chairs) on Presidential authority to declare war and deploy nuclear weapons; And Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report' on, among other things, U.S. isolation on the world stage regarding climate change and some late breaking newly bad news for Puerto Rico, nearly two months after Hurricane Maria made landfall to devastate the island...

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On today's BradCast: Who ordered the state of Georgia's election server to be completely destroyed amidst a federal lawsuit filed in July? And working to mitigate the "clear and present danger" President Donald J. Trump poses to the nation and the world. [Audio link follows below.]

First up today, a number of follow-up details, for now, on the story we reported yesterday in depth about the state election server computer that was mysteriously "wiped clean" in Georgia, just after a lawsuit was filed questioning whether results were electronically manipulated in some fashion during last year's Presidential election and this year's U.S. House Special Election in the state's 6th Congressional District.

Both contests were run on Georgia's easily-hacked, 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen systems and computer tabulators, and programmed by Kennesaw State University's Center for Elections. As AP reported on Thursday, the Center, after 15 years handling all programming for the state's elections, has now completely deleted the server that had been used for programming, including its two back-up servers. Questions remain as to whether the FBI might have an "image" copy of that server, officials are calling for a criminal investigation, and nobody yet knows who ordered the computer hard drives to be completely wiped and "degaussed three times".

We also share a terrific related listener email, and detail some of the terrible reporting on this matter by at least one corporate outlet (which we were able to get them to, at least partially, correct last night.) But, we hope to have much more on this story on our next BradCast.

Then, among the other stories covered on today's program...

• The American Legion is calling on Trump to protect veterans by vetoing legislation passed this week that will prevent Americans from being able to file class-action lawsuits against big banks and other corporate institutions for fraudulent and deceptive practices;
• A Military Times poll finds Trump is very unpopular among military officers, though somewhat more popular among enlisted troops;
• Defense Sec. James Mattis is wildly popular among everybody in the military, though he may be less so, of late, with the Commander-in-Chief. Mattis has been speaking with troops in South Korea and calling for diplomatic solutions in the very dangerous, potentially-nuclear standoff between Trump and North Korea;
• Democrats in the U.S. Senate introduce legislation to keep Trump from launching a pre-emptive strike, "nuclear or conventional", with North Korea, in hopes of forcing him to follow the Constitution as per the founders, who specifically granted Congress the exclusive right and duty of declaring war against another nation;
• Trump responds to the $10 million NeedToImpeach.com campaign launched by Tom Steyer, by describing the California activist billionaire as "wacky" and "totally unhinged" in response to the campaign's ad describing the President as "a clear and present danger";
• And, speaking of "wacky" and "unhinged", Roy Moore --- the twice-disgraced, far-right Republican former Alabama Supreme Court Justice who Trump is supporting in Alabama's U.S. Senate special election coming up in December --- explains why he believes the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage is "even worse" than the Court's infamous 1857 Dredd Scott opinion which essentially legalized slavery across the U.S. and helped lead the country into the Civil War...

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Among the demonstrably real, not fake, news stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to show posted below]...

• A brief word about the mercilessly toxic and sad "debate" Donald Trump injected into the American body politic this week to divert from his failure to recognize U.S. special forces killed by ISIS during a still-mysterious ambush in Niger, the shameful lie told by his Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, in service of Trump's failure, and the White House doubling down on that lie despite video evidence to the contrary;
• Speaking of wishing reality away, the EPA removes more facts about climate change from its website, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt charges peer-reviewed climate science is biased due to grants from the EPA (and hints at a purge of scientists), while his highly-paid corporate cronies are appointed to top agency posts and begin their work in defiance of the U.S. Senate (and the Rule of Law);
• A federal judge rules the guilty verdict against federal criminal and former Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio will not be vacated despite Trump's Presidential pardon and a plea from his Dept. of Justice to ignore the Rule of Law;
• More apparent violations of the Rule of Law and lies about the income of Alabama's GOP U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore (twice removed as state Supreme Court Justice for defying federal court orders) are unearthed in advance of the state's Special Election in December;
• And, so-called "conservatives" in the U.S. Senate pass a budget resolution to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion dollars, while cutting nearly $500 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, in order to fund massive tax cuts for rich people...

Also today, a brief plea to stop by BradBlog.com/Donate to help Desi and me continue to bring you independent news from the Land of Reality (and the Rule of Law) over your public airwaves as long as we can! My continuing thanks to those who have already done so! To everyone else: Now is great time to help us out! (Pretty please?)

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On today's BradCast: More corruption by top Trump Administration (and other) officials than we can barely squeeze into a single show. And most of it largely revealed over just the past week or so! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

As we go to air, staunch anti-choice "conservative" Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) announces he will resign from the U.S. House following the revelation of text messages with his mistress in which he is said to have advised her to have an abortion. Murphy, the only clinical psychiatrist serving in Congress, is the author of the GOP's mental health care reform legislation passed last year, supposedly in response to a number of mass shootings. Mental health reform is still the GOP's only legislative answer to our gun epidemic and public health crisis in the U.S.

However, today the NRA gave permission to Republicans to "politicize" Sunday's massacre in Las Vegas by calling on the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to review its regulations regarding "bump stock" devices that can turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. The shooter in Vegas who shot nearly 600 people, killing 58 of them in a matter of minutes from his 32nd floor hotel room, reportedly used a number of those devices to carry out his bloodbath. It should be noted (as we do), that such a change in regulation would still not necessarily require the NRA-owned Republican members of Congress to vote on any new gun safety legislation.

Then, we're joined by BRENDAN FISCHER of the Campaign Legal Center to discuss a tidal wave of corruption issues recently revealed about top Trump Administration officials. Among those issues: Jared Kushner is fined again for filing late financial disclosure forms, after revising them dozens of times, while giving different numbers on his forms than his own wife, Ivanka Trump, did regarding joint assets. (She was also forced to amend her own forms several times); Kushner and Ivanka and half a dozen other top Admin officials used private email addresses (and lied to Congress about them) for public business in the White House. Lock them up!); The heads of the EPA (Pruitt), Interior (Zinke) and Treasury (Mnuchin) all have issues regarding tens of thousands of dollars of tax-payer funded travel on private and military chartered jets, after Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was finally forced to resign for spending nearly $1 million on same last week; and the Secret Service now claims they kept no visitor logs at Mar-a-Lago during Trump's many weekends there over the past eight months.

Fischer explains why all of those issues of "trickle down corruption" actually matter --- even in the Trump Era beset by otherwise distracting daily crises. He also discusses Republican U.S. Senate nominee and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore's failure to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of both own income and liabilities on his U.S. Senate ethics filings and why the partisan gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford, as heard earlier this week at the U.S. Supreme Court (much more on this from yesterday's show), is so important to overcoming all of the nightmares discussed on today's show.

"It's really like drinking from a fire-hose when it come to trying to track some of these ethics violations," Fischer, Associate Counsel at CLC, tells me. "And this comes from the top. This comes from President Trump entirely disregarding ethics laws, rules and norms that past Presidents have followed voluntarily. This entire disregard for the laws that are on the books --- that are designed to guarantee that public officials are working for the public rather than private interests --- has permeated the entire administration and is now trickling its way down to down-ballot races, like this Senate race in Alabama."

Plus: Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with updates on Puerto Rico's ongoing Hurricane Maria disaster, as well as the billions of tax-payer dollars spent due to global warming and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

And, finally today, a bit of breaking news on Trump's reported plans to try and "decertify" the 2015 anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, despite his own Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon all recently agreeing that Iran is in compliance with the hard-won 7-nation treaty...

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The intemperate remarks that President Donald J. Trump directed at protesting African-American athletes during an Alabama campaign rally, along with remarks he subsequently posted on Twitter, were wrong on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Our oft-dissembling President claimed to be offended by the sight of African-American athletes who take a knee in order to protest the fact that black Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from police use of force. The timing of their peaceful assertion that "black lives matter" --- "during the playing of our national anthem" --- is inappropriate, according to Trump. It "disrespects the flag." Trump later tweeted: "Courageous Patriots have fought and died for our great American Flag."

That's utter nonsense...

On today's BradCast, we open the phone to callers to discuss another very busy news week, though most want to talk about election integrity. That's good. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories we cover before we get to listener calls: The Trump Administration is blocking members of Congress --- both Democratic and Republican --- from taking military flights down to Puerto Rico, for some reason, where the disaster for 3.5 million U.S. citizens following Hurricane Maria is said to be quickly deteriorating. Meanwhile, Trump continues to sing his own praises for his handling of the disaster, while using his Twitter account to tweet about the NFL instead of offering help or support for the storm victims.

Then, the state of Wisconsin finally decertifies its terrible, two-decade old Optech Eagle paper ballot tabulators which will only read marks in pencil (not pen). That, despite many WI municipalities which used those same machines to both tally and then 'recount' the 2016 Presidential election, rather than ever count ballots by hand. Those machines may well be replaced by 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems. Also, though the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security informed the state late last week that Russia attempted to hack their voting system last year, it turns out DHS now admits has no such evidence.

Here in California, where DHS told the state the same thing last week (and apparently got it wrong there as well), Democrats in the state assembly recently passed a bill, AB-840, that will make stealing elections easier, by removing nearly half of the ballots cast from the state's 1% post-election hand 'audit'. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is now deciding whether to sign the bill, which election integrity advocates and voting system experts are begging him to veto instead, describing AB-840 as a "roadmap to fraud". You can contact the Governor with your opinion on whether he should sign or veto right here.

Callers ring in on all of that today, and challenge me on a point or two regarding voting and election fraud, before Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, on the rapidly devolving humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, and even some good news about coal for the Pacific Northwest (and for all of us, in truth)...

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