On this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio (and many other fine affiliate stations), we talk to physicist, former Clinton Administration official and founding editor of ClimateProgress.org Joe Romm about Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's "immoral" attempt to undermine the U.S. in international climate talk negotiations as the big U.N. treaty summit is set for Paris later this year.

Romm, who served as Chief Science Adviser for last year's Emmy-award winning Years of Living Dangerously series on Showtime, also breaks a bit of news on The BradCast by confirming that there will be a season two for the groundbreaking environmental documentary series. He promises that "it will be on a cable network that has a far greater reach" than Showtime, though he can't let us know which one yet.

PLUS: Rand Paul jumps into the 2016 GOP Presidential circus; Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich does the right thing (sort of) in vetoing a new GOP voter-suppression scheme in the state; Jeb Bush appears to have committed a felony in Florida; California's Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom does the right thing before everybody else (again) in announcing support for full legalization of marijuana in the Golden State; and much more, including Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Most of the attention that will be paid today to this interview by NBC's Savannah Guthrie will, no doubt, focus on Sen. Rand Paul's dismissive and somewhat condescending treatment of the female Today anchor. It does echo, after all, a similarly condescending and arrogant tone he struck last February during an interview with CNBC's Kelly Evans when he, literally, "shushed" her and told her to "calm down a bit", as she asked him uncomfortable questions.

But what caught my eyes and ears in this latest video (posted below) was something else entirely. And it's something which reflects far more poorly on Guthrie and the corporate media in general than it does on the junior Senator from Kentucky and now 2016 Republican Presidential candidate.

While it's true Paul appears to have trouble dealing respectfully with female interviewers and is now wildly reversing many of his previously strongly held foreign policy positions in hopes of wooing GOP voters, it's the mindset behind Guthrie's opening question which disturbs me far more. And it's one that we've seen before in the supposedly "mainstream" media...

After another (too-long) fund drive break at Pacifica Radio's KPFK, we were finally back today with a live and fresh BradCast!

And, if you've been following The BRAD BLOG lately, you'll know that I think so much of what's going on, in the media, in Congress, and just about everywhere else of late, is just insanely dumb.

So, on those topics today, I was delighted to be joined by our friend Eric Boehlert of Media Matters to discuss the media hypocrisy over Hillary Clinton's email "scandal" (while ignoring other, almost identical matters that actually are or were scandals) and the massive lies of Bill O'Reilly that somehow nobody seems to care about.

I also had a few words to say about the GOP's latest, embarrassing Iran idiocy, and their, um, unconvential methods of governing for the next two years, as well as the media's failure to say the words "global warming" and/or "climate change".

Yes, all of that and much more in a very lively hour! And Desi Doyen even joins us at the end for an uplifting Green News Report (sort of).

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Lots of deserved criticism of late for Arkansas' freshman U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Neocon Tea Party) for the ridiculously condescending (and, ironically, Constitutionally inaccurate) letter he authored to Iran in hopes of undermining sensitive negotiations concerning their nuclear program.

But while Cotton richly deserves all the criticism he is now roundly receiving, even from some in his own party, let's please not forget about the other 46 U.S. Senators, all Republican, who also signed onto that letter.

This was not a hundreds-of-pages-long bill or something. It was five simple paragraphs long and each Senator appears to have signed onto it by hand. They have no excuse.

You've probably heard about it, but may not have actually read it in full. Until I did, I figured it was likely another bit of obnoxiousness from the GOP, akin to inviting Netanhayu to speak to Congress without White House approval, but the outrage around it was largely a partisan attack from Democrats against Republicans who'd written the letter for the usual, silly partisan reasons.

But it's way worse than that. It's unprecedentedly obnoxious, embarrassing and just childishly condescending. And it doesn't take any particular allegiance to the Democratic Party or the White House to see that. It just jumps off the page.

Again, it's just five grafs long and rather astonishing. Read it, if you haven't. It's posted in full below or read the PDF. And remember: 47, theoretically grown-up U.S. Senators actually signed onto this thing. On purpose. Including the entire GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate, none of whom had the adult sense to stop them!...

[Remarks prepared for event with comedian Lee Camp, Charlottesville, Va., February 21, 2015, event postponed by snow storm. When it's rescheduled I'll say something completely unrelated. - DS]

This is the serious part of tonight's event, except that Lee often deals with very serious topics. So what I mean is: this is the unfunny part of tonight's event, except that I'm going to talk about the United States government. One of my favorite things that Mark Twain didn't really say but definitely should have said was "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." He left out the possibility of imbeciles who are putting us on.

On Thursday, Comcast Internet was not working at my house, just as Comcast's hired Congress members were introducing a bill to create a closed Internet with fast lanes for the corporate crap we didn't need the Internet for. And a good Internet media outlet called TheRealNews.com wanted to do a video interview with me, which I didn't want to do in Java Java because I try not to be quite that rude. So I sat out on the Downtown Mall and did the interview. It was about 12 degrees out, and I think you can see me shaking. And what did they want to talk about? War? Peace? The climate?

They wanted to talk about Jeb Bush. Clearly he is an imbecile who is putting us on. He'd been talking on foreign policy, and of course he agreed with Obama on most everything but claimed not to. On NSA spying, for example, he disagreed basically with the fact that there has been public criticism of Obama's abuses. How he would eliminate criticism he didn't say. He didn't bring up Ukraine or Afghanistan or drone wars, because what would he disagree with? He did bring up the Korean War in order to claim it was a success and not the stupid pointless draw that everyone called it for decades, but of course the innovator in popularizing that ridiculous claim was ... President Obama...

Some pretty epic trolling tonight from Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz at Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

Read it at your own peril. These selected quotes oughta be enough to make your head explode all by themselves, however...

• "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many."

• "Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change."

• "Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing."

• "Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror."

• "This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies."

• "President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists' takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch."

• "Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War. Defeating them will require a strategy---not a fantasy."

Epic Trolling Accomplished.

As Iraq seems to finally (and predictably) be imploding this week, longtime Republican apologists in this country are returning from their wingnut ghettos to mainstream spotlights once again to pretend this isn't the result of their unprecedented disaster of a criminal foreign policy.

Naturally, even eleven years later, they are still lying to themselves and everyone else about the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, including: The reasons we attacked the country, who did and didn't support the war of choice and why, and what role the entire clusterfuck of a disastrous pointless mess has played in our continuing American history.

Among the best and briefest responses to the newly invigorated round of Bush-era apologia disguised as (naturally, misleading and/or fact-free) Obama-era 'told-ya-so-isms', comes from Kurt Eichenwald on Twitter...

Following yesterday's high-level talks between Sec. of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif --- the first such direct meeting in 34 years --- President Obama spoke on the phone this afternoon with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Again, the first time anything like that has happened since 1979.

USA Today notes that "Obama said he and Rouhani discussed the standoff over Iran's nuclear program and agreed to direct their teams to negotiate an agreement in which Iran would forswear the ability to develop nuclear weapons."

For his part, according to the same report, the Iranian President took to Twitter to confirm the conversation with Obama:

This is all exceptionally good news, particularly coming on the heels of yesterday's separate, but related-ish good news about an agreement for a binding resolution in the UN Security Council for the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons --- something else that many said could never happen without war, but that now seems to be happening instead of war. [Update 5:35pm PT: The UN Security Council just unanimously approved the resolution to begin destroying Syria's chemical weapons beginning next week.]

Peace seems to be breaking out all over. For a change. At least for the moment...

As our government was making a fraudulent case to attack Iraq in 2002-2003, the MSNBC television network was doing everything it could to help, including booting Phil Donahue and Jeff Cohen off the air.

The Donahue Show was deemed likely to be insufficiently war-boosting and was thus removed 10 years ago next week --- and 10 days after the largest antiwar (or anything else) demonstrations in the history of the world --- as a preemptive strike against the voices of honest peaceful people.

From there, MSNBC proceeded to support the war with mild critiques around the edges, and to white-out the idea of impeachment or accountability.

But now MSNBC has seen its way clear to airing a documentary about the fraudulent case it assisted in, a documentary titled Hubris. This short film (which aired between 9 and 10 p.m. ET Monday night, but with roughly half of those minutes occupied by commercials --- watch the entire documentary now online here) pointed out the role of the New York Times in defrauding the public, but not MSNBC's role.

Yet, my primary response to that is joy rather than disgust. It is now cool to acknowledge war lies. Truth-tellers, including truth-tellers rarely presented with a corporate microphone, made that happen...

In the twisted Rightwing world of CNN's Erin Burnett, one "tempers" ones views by favoring war over diplomacy. It's the world upside down. But it's prime-time anchor Burnett's world, so, unfortunately, it must be ours as well.

"In Washington, there's no ruling party," progressive activist and congressional expert Howie Klein of "Down With Tyranny" told me during my interview with him on the Mike Malloy Show just prior to Thanksgiving. We were discussing issues surrounding the increasingly conservative bent of the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House.

"The ruling clique in Washington is what's called 'the conservative consensus'," he continued. "And 'the conservative consensus' is the Republicans, not just in Congress, but the Republicans who stay there forever --- in think tanks, and in the media, and in the consultant world, the pundit world. So them --- and the Democrats who are also part of that world --- that's 'the conservative consensus'. It's everybody but the progressives."

That "conservative consensus" is on display every night on CNN, courtesy of Burnett and her insipid Out Front program. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more blatant example of the "conservative consensus" in the media than her comments that I happened to catch last week while on the road.

Here's Burnett during a discussion on her show last Monday (1/7/2013, the full video is here) about the various concerns --- pretend or otherwise --- about President Obama's nomination of former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as the next Secretary of Defense. Her guests were former George W. Bush Speechwriter and Senior Adviser David "Axis of Evil" Frum and former Pentagon Press Secretary for Barack Obama, Doug Wilson. [Emphasis added.]

What she did right there, with that almost off-handed, almost imperceptible throw-away line --- "to be fair, he has tempered his point of view" --- is simply incredible to me, and a perfect example of the "conservative consensus" that Klein was talking about.

Since when did shifting one's position towards a possibility of war, rather than diplomatic solutions, become a "tempered" point of view in this country? That nobody on the show even blinked an eye about it is even more astounding.

For the record, no matter the way he is being slimed by the "conservative consensus" at CNN and elsewhere on this and other matters, Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient during his time as an infantry squad leader in the Vietnam War, is anything but a pacifist or a so-called left-wing peacenik when it comes to these matters...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Iran war talk jacks up US gas prices... while Republicans cheer; VA Supreme Court smacks down climate change denier witch hunt; Meet the 'new normal' for tornado season; PLUS: 2 years after disaster: BP settles with Gulf coast plaintiffs...and gets off pretty easy, so far... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Conservative economist slams deniers: Conservative economist Nordhaus slams skeptics: 'Cost of delay is $4 trillion'; MIT: making solar power competitive with coal; This Week gets it wrong on gas prices; Limbaugh attacks help put Chevy Volt workers out of a job; CO uranium mine poisons creek; A big fracking bubble: the scam behind the gas boom; Arctic ice melt changing climate system; Japan leaders feared "devil's chain reaction" ... PLUS: Science: Ocean acidifying so fast it threatens humanity’s food supply ... and much, MUCH more! ...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Gas prices hit record high on Iran-Israel tension; Shell one step closer to Arctic drilling; Update on 'DenialGate' - the fallout continues for the rightwing Heartland Institute; PLUS: Rick Santorum goes biblical on climate science ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Settlement talks pick up ahead of BP Oil Spill trial; WI: New mining bill proven to mislead the public; Record flooding in Chile dislodges landmines; EPA: Low doses of Dioxin risky but most people safe; Dow agrees to clean dioxin-tainted properties; Chromium-6 in CA wells more than 1,000x above goal; Land-based pathogens discovered in marine mammals; Fracking industry buys Congress ... PLUS: Climate Forecast: 70% of U.S. Could face risk of water shortages by 2050 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[Now UPDATED with tonight's nightmarish audio archives below! Enjoy!!!]

Mike has the night off! So we're back! Guest hosting the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show on Friday the 13th! It's a Nightmare on Malloy Street!...

We'll be BradCasting all the horror LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! Me! With three hours over our public airwaves to talk about Iowa, New Hampshire & South Carolina voting nightmares! The nightmare that is Election 2012! And other related and unrelated nightmares!
• GRAEME ZIELINSKI, Spokesman from the Wisconsin state Democratic Party, with some late breaking news on the "Recall Scott Walker" effort in the Badger State!
• PLUS! The fraud that is James O'Keefe; the "cold" War against Iran; the failure that is the NY Times; the GOP wants more corporate money in campaigns; and all the nightmares on your minds, via your calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate KPTR 1450 in Palm Springs or at WhiteRose Society or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Tonight's show was a NIGHTMARE! Don't believe me? You can now listen to the full show, sans commercials, in the archives posted below. (You can also read the nightmarish chat room archives below too!) Be afraid...Be very afraid!...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: We're back! With oil & gas earthquakes in Ohio; Federal court blocks EPA's new air pollution standards; Big Oil cage match: BP sues Halliburton; PLUS: Saddle up --- what's in store for green news in 2012, insane presidential race notwithstanding ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 12 simple steps for going green in '12; Iran could disrupt but not halt oil traffic in strait; Oil giant Chesapeake behind fracking 'land grab'; "People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food"; Whistleblower: Keystone XL a potential “disaster”; US shale gas reserves wildly overestimated; 'Pay-As-You-Go Solar' for India ... PLUS: Yes, you can have 24-hour solar energy, even after the sun goes down ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The words, "hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry," appear in this short, but powerful documentary posted on October 10, long prior to last night's shocking scenes from Occupy Oakland.

The video contrasts the positions of our political elites in response to democratic uprisings in other countries against our government's response to the genuine democratic uprising we are now beginning to finally see in the U.S.A...