So, yeah, I'm a bit grumpy on today's BradCast. When you listen, you'll get an idea why. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

For one, I'm actually forced to defend a voting machine company. That could be a first in my nearly two decades of investigative reporting on Election Integrity and the woeful private voting system vendors who have been allowed to take over our public elections with their crappy, over-priced, often-unverifiable, easily-manipulated hardware and software. In this case, however, the claims made against one such company --- based on a twisted, bastardized re-imagining of my otherwise accurate and independently verifiable deep-dive reporting from more than a decade ago --- by sore-loser Donald Trump's dishonest attorneys and media stooges, need to be pushed back against, lest they further Trump's goal of undermining the United States' Constitutional republican democracy entirely.

Lawsuits may be coming in this case, warns Smartmatic's CEO, after the firm has been falsely blamed for stealing the election for Joe Biden in states where they do not even do business. (Their only contract in the U.S. is here in Los Angeles County. But that hasn't stopped Team Trump and the MAGA Mob from conflating them with a completely separate company, a competitor named Dominion Voting Systems, which has also been falsely blamed for stealing the election in jurisdictions where they do no business either.)

The bullshit, evidence-free claims of fraud continue from the deranged President and his pathetic team of desperate sycophants nonetheless. The latest nonsense comes via a so-called "forensic audit" by a so-called "military intelligence" outfit named Allied Security Operations Groups (or ASOG) which clearly knows nothing about voting systems or even election law. At least if you believe actual independent voting system and cybersecurity experts who examined their absurd, evidence-free allegations of "ELECTION FRAUD!"

Republicans in Congress clearly do not believe such experts, as GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin held a ridiculous hearing on phony 2020 election fraud conspiracy claims in the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee today, no matter the lack of evidence for any such fraud. That, as more than 300,000 Americans --- more than the number of those killed during combat in all of World War II --- have now died from COVID-19 over the past nine months. Johnson and the rest of his caucus continue to largely ignore the deadly scourge while Americans are out of work by the tens of millions and about to be tossed from their homes amid the worst pandemic in a century. Both myself --- and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) --- have a word or two about all of that shamefulness as well today.

Meanwhile, actual voter fraud criminal Donald Trump, is coming under legal scrutiny again for the fact that he is unlawfully registered to vote in Florida at a non-legal voting domicile (Mar-a-Lago, a commercial club, as Trump agreed back in 1993 when the town of Palm Beach allowed him to convert the once-private residence into a business). He went on to unlawfully vote twice this past year --- one by mail and one in-person --- using that non-legal "residence" as his voting address. All three acts are felonies by the President of the United States under state law in Florida, though its corrupt Governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump sycophant himself, doesn't appear to give a damn. Laws --- including election laws --- apparently do not apply to Republicans, especially if they happen to be sore-loser Presidents offering bullshit claims about election fraud in hopes of bringing down American democracy. But, as the neighbors to Mar-a-Lago are now warning, Trump will not be welcome to take residence, lawfully or otherwise, after his Presidency mercifully ends in historic failure next month.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with the U.S. on the verge of breaking another record for billion-dollar climate-related disasters in a single year; insurance companies cancelling homeowner policies in California amid record wildfires; and as the U.N. warns yet again that the world must pick up the pace in order to slow the very worst effects of deadly global warming.

Other than that, everything is fantastic today!

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The madness continues on today's BradCast. But, midway through the show, SCOTUS put the unanimous brakes on the MAGA Mob's latest greatest hope to overturn the 2020 election, while top Republicans increase their eliminationist rhetoric to foment violence and Trump prepares to hand out pardons like Christmas candy.

A new survey out this week from Gallup finds a huge drop in the self-identified mental health of Americans. Not surprising. Perhaps also not surprising is that, among demographic groups which saw double-digit drops from their previous self-ratings of "excellent" mental health, Republicans and independents were near the top, while Democrats were among those groups identified with the smallest change in their own mental health ratings from previous surveys.

Not sure what that may mean exactly, but somehow it seems relevant today as the Republican Party appears to be mentally crumbling before our eyes as it begins to sink in for them that they've been lied to about Trump having "won" the 2020 election. Or even that they would somehow be able to come up with evidence --- any evidence --- that proves in court that Joe Biden and the Democrats and dead Hugo Chavez somehow stole it from Trump.

Last week, Trump Campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney, Joe diGenova, called for a former top DHS official, Chris Krebs, to be "taken out at dawn and shot" because he dared believe the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." DiGenova and the Trump Campaign and Newsmax TV, the wingnut outlet which aired the Team Trump call to execute a former government official, all now face a serious lawsuit from Krebs.

Over at the old school wingnut outlet, Fox "News", formerly sane business anchor turned racist wingnut drama queen Lou Dobbs broke into a frothy rage while interviewing top White House advisor Stephen Miller because Trump and his party, as Dobbs sees it, aren't fighting hard enough to overthrow the election while "the Republican Party...is watching its blood drain into the streets because they're gutless."

And out in Arizona, where the very Trumpy Republican Governor Doug Ducey has been forced to repel entreaties by the President of the United State to stage a coup and declare the loser President to be the "winner" of the state's electoral votes, the state GOP, chaired by a loon named Kelli Ward, is asking Twitter followers to give their lives (literally) for Donald Trump. The AZ GOP even went so far as to follow up that request with a second tweet that includes a clip of "Rambo" holding an arrow to someone's head, while uttering: "This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something." That, in a state where a gun massacre was carried out in 2011 at a Democratic event that killed six and almost fatally wounded then Rep. Gabby Giffords whose husband, Mark Kelly, just unseated the state's Republican U.S. Senator on November 3rd.

All of that madness came before the U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously rejected the only case to come before the Court to challenge the 2020 Presidential election results. (The Trump Campaign has promised to go to SCOTUS themselves, but hasn't.) The rejected case was filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and several Pennsylvania state lawmakers challenging the new absentee ballot law that they passed (and voted for) last year as a violation of the state Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court already strongly rejected the challenge, and this afternoon, mid-show, SCOTUS refused to hear the attempted federal appeal.

But, if some 50 (and counting) failed, evidence-free court cases from Team Trump haven't yet done the trick, and they are unable to spark the violent new civil war they are clearly hoping for, Donald Trump is still busy preparing to give away pardons "like Christmas gifts" to his aides, friends, family and even himself while he still has the chance. As of today, such a pardon appears to have helped the admitted felon and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn off the hook after he twice pleaded to lying to the FBI (while also admitting that he was an undeclared paid agent of Turkey.) So, in lieu of a violent upheaval --- or maybe along with it --- why not issue Presidential Pardons to all of your corrupt friends, family and business associates on the way out the door? Even before they've been charged with any crime? That appears to be coming very soon at this point.

To discuss the awesome, virtually unchallengeable Constitutional power of the Presidential Pardon, we are joined today again by former Asst. U.S. Attorney RANDALL D. ELIASON of George Washington University Law School. Several weeks ago, Eliason wrote an excellent primer on the scope and recent history (and abuse) of the Pardon power and the PardonPalooza that both he (and I) expect to see in the coming days.

Eliason challenges some of the common wisdom concerning Presidential Pardons (for example, whether it's true that someone who is pardoned loses their 5th Amendment right to refuse to testify about the criminal matter to Congress and law enforcement officials and whether or not a Pardon is actually an acknowledgement of "guilt"); whether Pardons may be legally challenged as corrupt or unlawfully self-dealing and, if so, how exactly; whether a President is Constitutionally allowed to pardon himself; and whether this one is likely to do so (answer in short: of course he is!)

As the news that U.S. Circuit Court Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the Michael Flynn case as "moot" just before airtime today, and the news that SCOTUS unanimously declined to take up the challenge to Pennsylvania's electors came during our discussion, we also get Eliason's reaction to both of those breaking matters.

Yes, it's another chocked-full-o-information BradCast, appropriately seasoned, we hope, with just enough snark along the way to help keep you both informed and sane! Good luck!...

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On today's BradCast we try to catch you up with at least five days of important news from over the long holiday weekend. That's damned near impossible in the Trump Era, unfortunately. But we did get about half way there, with the most important parts of Trump's continuing attempt to steal the 2020 election (yes, that's still ongoing!) before turning to some excellent listener calls...

Among the stories we did catch up on, and were able to offer some important context for...

• If someone could wrap Joe Biden in bubble wrap and place him in an hermetically sealed room for the next 50 days, it would be greatly appreciated.

• Los Angeles County has now implemented among the most severe COVID-19 restrictions in the nation amid a recent spike in cases and hospitalizations that threatens to soon overwhelm our health care system here. That said, California and L.A. have among the lowest per capita rates of infections, hospitalizations and death in the nation, but the rates have doubled in recent weeks. So, if we need to take these emergency measures, we only hope that places where it's really bad --- for example, in the Midwest and Texas --- take action now to save lives. Election Day is past and so its no longer necessary for GOP leaders in those states to pretend everything about the coronavirus is a hoax in order to try and re-elect Donald Trump;

• Arizona certifies its election results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by more than 10,000 votes, in a state that hasn't gone "blue" in decades. The certification also clears the way for Democratic Senator-elect Mark Kelly to be seated in the U.S. Senate this week, following his defeat of Republican incumbent Sen. Martha McSally in what was a Special Election for the Senate on November 3rd. McSally has now lost two Senate seats to Democrats in a row. And the loony state GOP Chairwoman and failed Congressional candidate Kelli Ward is continuing to challenge the 2020 results --- even as the state's very Trumpy Republican Governor and Attorney General stand by them;

• Wisconsin certifies its elections results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by just over 20,000 votes in a state that Trump is said to have defeated Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. The certification follows a partial "recount" in the state, paid for by the Trump Campaign at a cost of $3 million. The second count in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, where Trump sought to the re-tally, ended up netting an additional 87 votes overall for Biden. (Another artful deal by the world's greatest businessman);

• Over the weekend Trump lost resoundingly in two different cases, one in federal court and one in state court, in Pennsylvania. One loss came from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where three Republican-appointed federal judges upbraided the Trump Campaign's case, with the Trump-appointed Judge writing the scathing opinion to include: "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. ... Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections." The state case did not go any better for Team Trump, with a unanimous verdict by the state Supreme Court finding that the GOP legislators' attempt to toss out the election based on claims that the state's new absentee ballot law violates Pennsylvania's Constitution was filed much too late. The same law was in effect during the state primary earlier this year, and the legislators had no complaint about it. NEITHER OF THE TWO CASES, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER FAILED CASES FROM TEAM TRUMP ALLEGED FRAUD. Claims about "massive fraud" are only made by Trump and Giuliani and friends on Twitter and Fox "News". Courts require actual evidence and apparently, Trump has none to offer;

• We then open phones to callers with some questions about all of this stuff, including the one Trump Card that the President still hopes to play at the GOP's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. There, Trump hopes for an opinion that only state legislatures may make any laws or rules or regulations concerning the "times, places and manner of holding elections", as referenced in the U.S. Constitution. With such an opinion from a majority of Justices, if they can get it, Team Trump believes they can toss out election results this year, and have GOP state legislatures award electors to Trump instead of Biden, the popular winner. It's a radical, extremist (and arguably ridiculous) "originalist" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, but Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have already indicated they buy it, Alito and Thomas are likely to go along with it, and the matter would potentially be left to Trump's most recent appoint, Amy Coney Barrett, to decide.

Many are turning away to other matters now that they believe the monster has been vanquished once and for all. We've seen enough monster movies to know that it's a terrible idea to walk away after you think the monster is dead, even while they are lying there with an axe in their apparently lifeless hand...

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Join us on today's BradCast for a deep dive down into the twisted rabbit hole of Team Trump's recently manufactured claims that Canadian election vendor Dominion Voting Systems and its Venezuelan-tied competitor Smartmatic secretly joined forces as part of an enormous international conspiracy (also involving the late Hugo Chavez) to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump on behalf of Joe Biden and the Democrats. We happen to know a bit about these claims, as they are directly based on one (or more) of my own exclusive investigate reports from a decade ago. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG is actually responsible for the original kernel of truth that has become the pretend conspiracy now being used as the basis for Trump's attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 election. These are the claims now being shared by Trump's attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, not to mention by Trump himself.

The initial story is based on a deeply reported, well-evidenced and independently verifiable 2010 investigative exclusive of mine (also republished by HuffPo) that Republicans, over the past week or so, have been citing as the basis for their so-far evidence-free claims that Democrats teamed up with Dominion, Smartmatic --- and also China and Cuba somehow --- to commit "nationwide voter fraud" via computers (computers don't commit voter fraud, voters do) to flip the results of the election. They claim this proves that Donald Trump actually won the election in a landslide --- though, as even Tucker Carlson of Fox "News" found out, they have no actual evidence to back any of it up.

We share their actual claims, the original basis for them (which they have absurdly bastardized to the point that it is barely recognizable) and how others in the party, like Arizona State GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, have run with the ball to misrepresent facts and manufacture claims in her scary scary new video titled "DOMINION EXPOSED! This Video Should Terrify Every Single American".

We explain what all of these folks got right (almost nothing) and wrong (pretty much all of it...though Chavez is tied in to the story --- or was before he died seven years ago), and what the top two real takeaways should be for both parties and all American voters now that the GOP has finally decided to become concerned --- or, at least, pretend to be --- about the dangers of electronic voting and tabulation systems:

1. Simply because a computerized voting and tabulation system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation does not mean that any particular election run on it has been defrauded or manipulated, and;
2. Even if an election is 100% secure and accurate, if it can't be known by the public to have been 100% secure and accurate, it is every bit as much of a threat to confidence in our democratic system as it would be if the election had actually been stolen on such a system.

The past few days should give you plenty of evidence for that, at least!

There are too many details beyond that to include in a summary, so I hope you'll just buckle up and tune in for the full rollicking story today on this one!

But, one other point worth noting here. While we've been reporting on all of these facts --- with independently verifiable evidence --- for nearly two decades now, it is for the above reasons that we have been inviting Republicans of late to put their money where there mouths are. If they are actually concerned about easily manipulated elections by Dominion (or any other computer vote system vendor), then join us in demanding the use of only hand-marked paper ballots for Georgia's upcoming critical U.S. Senate runoffs in January (which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate). Those ballots should then be publicly hand-counted on Election Night. It's just two races with two candidates each, so it's very easy to count publicly in a single night, and it would result in Dominion being tossed out of elections entirely in the state of Georgia! How about it Repubs? You in? I'll even drive out to Phoenix to make a new video about it with Kelli Ward if she joins the call. Why wouldn't she?

Then, we're joined today by George Washington University Law School professor and Washington Post contributor RANDALL D. ELIASON, for his explanation as to why he believes it is appropriate to bring public pressure against high-profile law firms representing Trump in his evidence-free "voter fraud" cases, but not against attorneys and firms who choose to represent other despicable individuals like terrorists, child molesters and the KKK. That, after top national law firms recently withdrew from Trump's fraudulent "fraud" cases following public opprobrium encouraged by the anti-Trump Republicans of the Lincoln Project. (Also, here's that recent piece I mentioned from Eliason on Trump's upcoming PardonPalooza!)

Also today: The latest news from Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan in Trump's attempted coup; the one Republican Senator who is finally calling it out; and the news that Florida's Republican Senator Rick Scott and Donald Trump Jr., have now both tested positive for the coronavirus...

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On today's BradCast: Even though creepy liars like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz "guaranteed" we'd no longer be talking about "COVID! COVID! COVID!" after Election Day, it turns out they were wrong. Who could have predicted it? And what else are we still talking about after the election? The election! Because Trump is continuing his desperate efforts to try and steal it from the voters and Joe Biden, the candidate they elected. But it would be a mistake to ignore what Trump is trying to do. We think. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's show, we begin with the pandemic...

• U.S. hits a grim official milestone, with quarter of a million now dead from COVID-19, most of them unnecessarily so, thanks to our deranged President, experts now predict we may see 400,000 fatalities by February. The President of the United States remains in his bunker and has offered no comment;

• The CDC implores Americans to limit travel and gatherings over next week's Thanksgiving holiday;

• As the pandemic surges out of control in all 50 states, those with denialist leaders who failed to implement serious restrictions are now the ones with the highest per-capita infection, hospitalization and death rates. So, yeah, the highest rates are, by far, in "red" states by and large, while "blue" states, like California and New York have among the lowest rates. (Note to Republicans: Election Day is over. You don't have to lie about COVID anymore to try and help Trump get re-elected. You can now start protecting the lives of your fucking constituents like you should have done months ago.)

Then it's on to the, yes, still-uncertified election...

• While the bulk of the GOP remains in as much denial about the Presidential election as they are about the coronavirus, and the pathetic Trump Administration continues to delay important transition work to a Biden Administration, a few cracks in the wall are beginning to form, even visible from the wingnut couch on Fox & Friends crew and even by Mitch McConnell;

• But the two Wayne County, Michigan wingnuts --- who held out for three hours with phony claims about "voter fraud" in Detroit before agreeing to certify the County's results --- are also having trouble letting go. They want yet another do-over vote to rescind the certification following a call from Trump. The state says that won't happen. But state certification is still to come next Monday and the state Board of Canvassers is constructed the same way the Wayne County Board is: a four-person Board with two Ds and two Rs. So anything could happen by the time they are set to vote to certify results in the state next week, where, by all available evidence, Biden trounced Trump by nearly 160,000 votes;

• Michigan is not the only state where some GOP dead-enders are hoping to somehow block certification of the November 3rd election. Similar (if likely similarly futile) efforts are afoot in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada;

• Failure, however is not a roadblock for Trump, a man for whom the idea of simply doing the right thing has never occurred. On Thursday, he invited the Republican legislative leaders of the gerrymandered Michigan state House and Senate to the White House for a meeting on Friday, where it's expected he will try to convince them to convene a vote of the state legislature to override the popular democratic will of the voters and award the state's elector to The Loser instead;

• And for those who say The Loser's scheme could never EVER actually happen, I tend to agree with you (Desi may not). But I would also urge you, by all means, to NOT read this article today by Democratic strategist Chris Marshall headlined: "Are you sure Trump's plan to steal the election has failed? You shouldn't be".

Finally, for some less terrifying news, ironically enough...

• Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the UK accelerates its phase out of gas cars to 2030; Major U.S. automakers are revealed to have known about the dangers of global warming 50 years ago and lied about it; Trump's Interior Dept. reverses a conservation project that Trump bragged about on the campaign trail; and a major city moves to phase out all fossil fuels in all new buildings...

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On today's BradCast: Dozens of top, bi-partisan experts in government, national security and media predicted this moment last Summer, as they gamed out the various scenarios that might occur after Election Day. At the same time today, it's wildly amusing to watch Republicans continue to pick up on so many of our reports on election integrity at The BRAD BLOG over the years and suddenly pretend to be concerned about it, after years of scoffing at such "libtard, sore loser conspiracy theories" regarding the dangers of computerized vote tallies and private voting system vendors in control of our public elections. [Audio link to today's show is posted below summary.]

First up, the experts who predicted this moment. Most of the scenarios that the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) gamed out, they feared, would result in at least some level of violence and a potential Constitutional crisis. Donald Trump is largely proceeding as they'd predicted. But the co-founder of TIP, which organized the exercises to examine what Trump might do in the wake of a Joe Biden victory, tells me today that while "it's like poison into the veins of the body politic...they're not going to be able to get away with actually stealing the election."

Dr. NILS GILMAN is an historian, Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute and TIP co-founder and joins me again on today's show. Earlier this year, in table-top exercises he helped to organize, the TIP group gamed out the various ways that Election 2020 might play out [PDF]. When we spoke with Gilman in August he cautioned that "all signs appeared to be flashing red," as the experts found that all potential scenarios other than a "Biden landslide" could result in "both street-level violence and political impasse".

So, with Trump's continuing unwillingness to concede the election two weeks later; his false claims of massive "voter fraud" in at least half a dozen states failing to include any actual evidence; at least two dozen lawsuits challenging the election being tossed out of court or withdrawn by plaintiffs; along with the Administration's refusal to work with the Biden Transition team, it seemed a good time to check back in with Gilman to see if the current scenario was predicted and, if so, how experts believed it would play out from here.

"We looked at four different scenarios" last summer, Gilman explains. But now, he says, "the world we ended up in was somewhere between the 'Biden landslide' and the 'Biden clear-but-close-victory'. So you see the moves that Trump is trying to do that we anticipated when we ran these exercises last Summer. They are very similar to the ones we saw. He's trying to convince people that there was cheating going on in the election, that there was electoral fraud. He's trying to get state legislatures to potentially consider throwing out the results of the popular vote and instead putting in place a slate of Republican electors even though the people voted for Democratic electors."

"I don't think any of that is going to end up working," says Gilman. "We're not quite in 'Biden landslide' territory, but we're not in a close election either. That's why I don't think Trump is going to be able to pull off what he was probably scheming to do."

While he says "there's a lot of crazy stuff happening in the fever swamps" and, indeed, there was some violence after Trump supporters and counter-protesters clashed over the weekend, Gilman believes that the conditions that would lead to worst of the scenarios examined have yet to materialize. And that's a very good thing. So far. He explains why that is and what is, so far, missing from one of those worst case scenarios examined by his project.

Also today, Republicans --- yes, even Sean Hannity! --- is suddenly very troubled by secret software made by private voting system vendors like Dominion Voting, a company that we've been reporting on (along with all of the other equally shitty vendors) for years. In the past, the folks at Fox "News" like Hannity and now dead Breitbart "News" founder Andrew Breitbart, scoffed at our reporting. Breitbart took particular glee in attacking me personally over my reporting on the now defunct Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. (It seems unlikely that Breitbart "News", with their "reporting" on Dominion today, even realize that the company now owns many of Diebold's assets!)

But, over the past week or two, our traffic here has gone through the roof as the Rightwingers have suddenly become concerned about these issues for some odd reason, after years of dismissing them. Thanks, Rightwingers! (Yes, for example, if you are hearing misleading murmurs from the fever swamps --- including from Hannity and Trump himself --- tying Dominion to Venezuela in order to claim the company secretly stole the election for Biden, it's due to this exclusive BRAD BLOG story that we broke more then 10 year ago! Glad ya'll have finally decided to notice and become alarmed about our reporting! Just wait until you hear what George W. Bush did in Iraq!)

Then, we open up the phone lines to answer some more questions about all of this, including one caller who wonders what's up with what she's been seeing all over YouTube about Venezuela and Dominion?! And another who picked up on part of my conversation with Gilman about whether the Biden Administration intends to hold the criminal Trumpers accountable or whether, like the Obama Administration with the Bushies, they will make the mistake of "looking forward, not back."

"People have to look close at what created the mess we're in now," says our wise caller Kelwin. "Trump is a bed sore on a sick, cancer-ridden political body of the United States. And getting rid of Trump is going to be like fixing a bed sore on a dying body. I like to say that charging and going after these people, that IS looking forward. It's looking at stopping the pattern."

All of that and much much more on today's BradCast!...

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The unfortunately necessary debunkery of Donald Trump and his GOP's various embarrassingly desperate efforts to steal the election from Joe Biden continues on today's BradCast, even as the U.S. Secretary of State manages to shock with an extraordinarily offense comment and Republicans are now turning on their own in Georgia to appease the soon-to-be-former President. [Audio link to show is posted below this summary.]

Among the too-many stories covered on today's show...

• Even Fox 'News' is beginning to refuse to air the White House's "voter fraud" BS. It's not the first time Fox has refused to play along with GOP "voter fraud" lies since Election Day;

• Mitch McConnell supports Trump's right to legal challenges in the election (and so do we, as we explain);

• Sec. of State Mike Pompeo makes a wildly unfunny, dangerous and un-American "joke" from the lectern at the Dept. of State about a "smooth transition to a second Trump Administration";

• Corporate media continue to do a rather competent job of quickly debunking the endless and so-far evidence-free claims being made by duped Trump supporters and shameless Trump attorneys in court regarding "voter fraud". CNN's Donie O'Sullivan deserves special credit for one of his reports taking on Trump supporters directly at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Pennsylvania, with facts to debunk their false conspiracies regarding "Trump ballots being burned in bags" (they weren't), vote totals being inflated overnight for Joe Biden (they weren't), and much more;

• Separately, CNN also debunks Trump's latest Twitter tantrums regarding his evidence-free claims of fraud in Pennsylvania (no, GOP observers were NOT prevented from watching the ballot count), Nevada (no, 3,000 voters did NOT vote unlawfully from other states), Georgia (no, Trump did not "win on Election Night") and Wisconsin (no, Trump's campaign is not "looking very good" in the state they appear to have lost by more than 20,000 votes);

• Team Trump files yet another embarrassingly lame lawsuit in Arizona, falsely charging that 180 voters (out of 155,860) who cast Election Day ballots in Maricopa County (Phoenix) improperly had their ballots rejected as overvotes;

• Democrat Cal Cunningham concedes his U.S. Senate race in North Carolina to the very unpopular incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, in a race that Democrats should have won (and that his progressive primary opponent Erica Smith --- featured as a guest on our show earlier this year --- arguably might have);

• Short of an unlikely shocker in the still-uncalled Alaska U.S. Senate race, the last chance for Democrats to take back majority control of the U.S. Senate will now be in Georgia's two U.S. Senate runoff elections on January 5th. They will have to win both of them. And now, both of the state's Republican U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler (who is running against Rev. Raphael Warnock) and David Perdue (who is running against Jon Ossoff) are sucking up to their demented sore loser President by turning on GA's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, hilariously "citing no evidence" in calling for his resignation.

  Longtime listeners of The BradCast will recognize Raffensperger as the corrupt dope who purchased the state's new, wildly-expensive, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Rube Goldberg voting systems made by Dominion Voting and forced on every county in the state for first time use this year. That, instead of a cheaper, verifiable, hand-marked paper ballot system urged by cybersecurity and voting systems experts alike.

  Republicans have been falsely accusing Dominion in recent days of being controlled by Democrats and responsible for "stealing" the election from Trump in Michigan and Georgia. While there is no evidence to support their claim, I have invited those Republicans worried about Dominion to join me in my call for getting the company out of Georgia's critical U.S. Senate runoffs altogether by turning to all hand-marked paper ballots to be publicly hand-counted in both races. The statewide election will feature just two races, with only two candidates in each, so hand-counting them on Election Night would be very simple and completely transparent.

  While my invitation to Republicans has become quite popular on Twitter, so far they have failed to join the effort to prevent the "Software from hell!" that folks like Eric Trump are pretending to be the cause for his father's humiliating re-election loss. Sad!

  While Raffensperger says he will not resign, a comment from former Republican Sec. of State turned illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp, along with an article from the far-right Federalist, suggests that state Republicans may try and move to ban mail-in voting altogether for the runoffs, despite the spiking deadly pandemic and the requisite reliance on unverifiable Dominion voting systems at the polling place, in hopes of returning to their years-long glory days of GOP voter suppression in the Peach State;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report filled with (almost all) actually good news for a change, in the wake of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' apparent election victory last week...

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Well, it took long enough --- much longer than media usually wait --- but by Saturday morning, they finally recognized the obvious by calling Pennsylvania, and thus the Presidential election, for Joe Biden. The Right --- from the religious wacko Right to the non-religious wacko Right --- are in the midst of some pretty serious denial about it all, as we share at the top of today's BradCast, along with a few quick headlines, some serious debunkery, an invitation to Republicans to join the election integrity movement, and a bunch of gleeful calls from listeners. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

Among the quick headlines today: yet another rally on Wall Street in the wake of Biden's election; good news about a possible COVID vaccine (which Trump had nothing to do with!); Trump fires his Defense Secretary; more top Trump Administration officials test positive for the virus; and Biden's reported plans to issue a quick series of Executive Orders after being sworn in on January 20th to reverse some of the most egregious offenses of the Trump Era.

Then, we pick up today, somewhat, where we left off last week, debunking a number of the many absurd, evidence-free allegations of "voter fraud" being propagated by the deniers and conspiracy theorists on the Right --- from "SharpieGate" to false claims of "dead people" voting in Michigan to false claims (debunked by Fox "News"!) that Republicans were prevented from watching ballot tabulation --- as well as a look at one of the few legitimate concerns that have come to light since last Tuesday's Election Night. Namely, a concern about misreported vote tallies in Antrim County, Michigan, a small, heavily GOP-leaning area in the northern part of the state. According to the Democratic Sec. of State, the problem was due to a failure by Republican county officials to install a late update to their Election Management System software which is used to upload county results to the state at the end of the night. The problem resulted in Joe Biden momentarily appearing to have defeated Donald Trump by a landslide in the County. The error was quickly discovered, corrected and the posted results were properly reversed to reflect Trump's victory there.

But the incident (as well as the apparent losses of both MI and Georgia for the Republicans) has helped fuel a push from the Right toward demonizing Canadian-based Dominion Voting System --- the private voting system vendor in Antrim and other MI counties. While the Trumpers are falsely attacking the company as a tool of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton (even though Republican lobbyists work for the firm which has donated to Republicans), we're happy to join the critique in as much as no private company should have so much control over what are supposed to be our public elections. A call for an independent investigation and a hand-count of the county's paper ballots would be perfectly appropriate there.

Dominion is also the company which runs Georgia's elections, with a new $100+ million contract to supply 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems for in-person voting at the polls across the entire state and scanners for the state's hand-marked paper absentee ballots --- scanners which were found to have skipped counting many votes during the state's June primary.

While Biden appears to have won the state of Georgia by some 12,000 votes as of airtime (and, in Michigan, by about 150,000 votes), I invited Republicans via Twitter over the weekend (in a short threat that has gone mildly viral) to get rid of Dominion's influence over elections all together by joining me in demanding hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted, for the state's critical upcoming U.S. Senate runoff elections. Those two runoff elections will determine which party controls the upper chamber of Congress for first two years of the Biden presidency.

If the GOPers --- including folks like Eric Trump --- are serious about their concerns that "software from hell!" as Eric called it, made by Dominion somehow stole the election for Biden, they will join those of us in the fight for real Election Integrity in that call. So far, they haven't. But we can still hope.

Finally today, we open the phones for listeners to ring in following this weekend's huge news --- to gloat, to express their joy, their concerns, and much more --- as we begin to see a glimmer of light at the end of our long, if still-ongoing, national nightmare...

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On today's BradCast: SLAP-SLAP! Wake up, people! Joe Biden is the next President of the United States! [Audio link to today's show follows below.]

But first, in not wholly unrelated news: Ya know that widespread systemic election fraud that Donald Trump has been lying about by falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the election from him by "casting votes after Election Day"? They aren't. But, as it turns out, we now have hard evidence that the Trump Campaign and Republican Party actually are doing exactly that! Or, at least trying to do so in Pennsylvania. We've got both the audio and email evidence to prove it today, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Beyond that: Hey, Media! Hey, Democrats! Wake up! Yes, Joe Biden should have already been declared the winner of Tuesday election!!! By the standards the corporate media usually apply to such things, the state of Pennsylvania should already have been called by the media, as of Friday morning, for Biden (if not sooner), based on the unofficial vote counts there, where the former Veep has now surpassed Trump and continues to increase his totals over the soon-to-be-former President at this point. Biden continues to do so today at a similar rate to that which we've seen in the Keystone State since the day after Election Day.

With Pennsylvania's 20 electors, that means --- very conservatively speaking, even without the other currently uncalled states where Biden is also leading, including Nevada, Arizona and Georgia (where Biden also overtook Trump in the vote count on Friday morning) --- the former Vice President now has 273 electoral college votes under his belt. Only 270 are needed to win the Presidency.

In any other Presidential election in any other year, all of the media would already have banner graphics up describing Joe Biden as the "PRESIDENT-ELECT" and characterizing him as the 46th President of the United States! We know why Fox "News" is not doing so (thanks to CNN's Brian Stelter), and while there may be (weak, pathetic) reasons for the media to pull their punches (because they are cowards who kowtow to fear of Republicans), what is the Democratic Party's excuse at the point?!

Hell, Donald Trump and the Minority Leader of the U.S. House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, have already declared that Trump "won", even though he absolutely hasn't! Meanwhile, all available evidence shows beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Biden actually has won. Dems should be dancing in the streets at this point, but they aren't. Lord knows, had the tables been turned, they would have conceded as of Friday morning.

(Note: As an election integrity advocate, I have historically objected to the media or any candidate declaring victory --- or even conceding a loss --- before all votes are counted and, where possible, votes counts are verified as accurate. But, the cowardly double-standard being displayed by the media in this case and the political malpractice being exercised by Dems right now is a separate matter.)

So, what's actually going on here and why? Well, for answers on that we turn first to a few words of wisdom from Josh Marshall at TPM and, for many more such words, to our guest today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, who --- at least since the day Trump descended that escalator at Trump Tower to call Mexicans rapists and announce his candidacy for President --- we have been checking in with at landmark moments during his Presidency. Today, as Trump should be declared a loser by everyone, is certainly such a moment.

Is it still PTSD from 2016 that is keeping Democrats in their stupor today? Is it because Trump has some completely unknown, but super-genius scheme to overturn the Electoral College somehow? Or is it because, no matter the results of the Presidential race, Dems appear to have under-performed expectations when it comes to both U.S. Senate and House races this year?

Beyond all of that, we also discuss with Digby what all Democrats should be spending their time working on and discussing right now, including how Dems and Joe Biden will have to figure out how to govern even if they are unable to win a still-possible longshot bid to pick up enough Senate seats to win back a majority there. And how best to begin processing whatever lessons, so far, can be gleaned from what happened on Tuesday and from the last four years of the Trump Era.

Lots to talk about today! But, hey people! You WON! Start acting like it! Cause you know Republicans certainly would be in the exact same scenario and, in fact, they LOST, but are still acting like they won anyway! Snap out of it, people!!!

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On the day after what was a harrowing and very very late Election Night for many Democrats, it is now fairly clear, as of today's BradCast, that --- barring some sort of tabulation surprise or failure (they do happen) --- Joe Biden is set to win at least 270 electoral college votes to become the nation's next President. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

This will likely happen even if Biden doesn't end up winning Pennsylvania (or even Georgia or North Carolina) with the many still-untabulated, largely Democratic votes left to count in the state. In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, election officials were barred by gerrymandered, GOP-controlled state legislatures from counting any mail-in ballots until Election Day, so unofficial results on Election Night were much slower coming in. (In Pennsylvania, as we explained with a PA election official last week, it is even worse, because officials in the state are barred from even pre-processing mail-in ballots by opening, verifying them, etc., before Election Day.)

Nonetheless, faced with his likely crushing defeat at the ballot box, Donald Trump did what he does, and precisely what we warned you, very specifically in recent weeks, that he would do. He attempted to gaslight the American people via his Twitter account and a 2:30am "news conference" with supporters at the White House, where he tried to super-spread the lie that counting legally cast ballots after Election Day was somehow "a fraud on our nation" and a "sad" attempt by Democrats to "STEAL the election" from him. After falsely declaring victory, he vowed that "we are going to the Supreme Court" to, presumably, try to stop the counting of votes, though it remains unclear whether he has any cause of action whatsoever to try and do that.

Trump's late-night lie and threat fest did not go over well. Even Republicans of all stripes condemned the remarks --- from Chris Wallace of Fox "News" to Trump's debate prep ally Chris Christie to the RNC's top election attorney Ben Ginsberg --- all of whom declared Trump's announced plans to stop the counting of lawfully cast votes to be shameful, anti-democratic and counter-productive to his case, not to mention an embarrassment to the nation. We share a number of those responses on today's show.

In short, Trump's desperate scheme is unlikely to work, barring evidence of some sort of actual fraud or mistabulation. Before media outlets called both Wisconsin and Michigan for Biden today, Team Trump vowed to seek a "recount" in Wisconsin, and announced plans to file suit in those states and Pennsylvania in hopes of stopping perfectly legal on-going vote tallies. In an effort to recreate the magic of 2000's infamous "Brooks Brothers Riot" in Florida, Trump supporters in Detroit on Wednesday attempted, unsuccessfully, to storm the counting room.

That is by way of contrast with Biden's own late-night statement to supporters on Tuesday night, noting that "it's not my place or Donald Trump's place to declare the winner of this election. It's the voters' place," and that "every vote must be counted." He vowed that "nobody is going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever."

We shall see. But it is looking very good for Democrats today, at least on the Presidential level as of air time today. As to their hopes of winning back a much-needed majority in the U.S. Senate, that hope appears dim at this hour, if still a long-shot possibility. Combined with the reported loss, so far, of five Democratic seats in the U.S. House and the results on several ballot initiatives across the nation, it was certainly a confusing verdict from the American people --- presuming the reported, unverified and unofficial results to date prove to be accurate.

What to make of all of this? We are joined today by our old friend and Wisconsin favorite son, progressive journalist JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation and Madison's Capitol Times. As usual, Nichols has helpful insight into all of this, both for progressives and establishment Democrats, as well as a unique perspective from a state which barely went to Donald Trump in 2016 for the first time in decades, and which now appears to have flipped back to Democrats by a similarly small margin. His body of knowledge also comes from a longtime progressive state that took a very similar right turn over the past couple of decades as the nation now appears to have taken, with the rise (and fall) of former Gov. Scott Walker.

"I like the fact that the people [Trump] attacked the most, the people he threatened to send federal forces in to squash their protests and minimize their outcry --- they pushed back against him," Nichols says, noting his optimism after last night. "I see something very positive in that. I would even dare say there was something delicious, or at least appealing in the poetic justice of it." On the other hand, he tells me, noting the "blunt reality" of the situation, "Democrats shouldn't be overly enthusiastic about a situation where, it appears, the prospect they have taken the Presidency without a Senate. Because, I've argued throughout this year, that if Joe Biden is elected President with Mitch McConnell still in charge of the Senate, Joe Biden begins his Presidency as a lame-duck."

Finally, we share an audio clip of our nominee today for the hands-down most optimistic take on whatever the hell happened yesterday, from a noted Presidential historian...

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As new coronavirus infections spike to an all-time daily record in the U.S. on Thursday (and again today), with cases now on the rise in nearly 75% of the nation and hospitalizations increasing again in 38 states, our infected President, Donald Trump, and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, faced off in Nashville, TN for the (mercifully) final debate of the 2020 season.

We've got full special coverage on today's BradCast with a very smart panel, including RICHARD "R.J." ESKOW of The Zero Hour; HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullaballoo; and, of course, our very own Desi Doyen.

It's a rather lively hour today as we try to make sense of our collective Nightmare Before Halloween, which continued to play out on Thursday night at Belmont University, even while deftly moderated (with a helpful mute button) by NBC's Kristen Welker. As CNN's great fact-checker Daniel Dale explained on Twitter last night: "Biden was again imperfect from a fact check perspective. He made at least a few false, misleading, or lacking-in-context claims. Trump was, as usual, a serial liar," adding: "From a lying perspective, Trump is even worse tonight than in the first debate."

For our part, along with a bit of fact-checking, among the many issues we cover on today's program...

• Eskow offers insight --- as a former health insurance industry executive and Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign writer --- on the facts about both Biden and Trump's plans for healthcare coverage amid the worsening pandemic and a threat by the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act just days after the election. ("He keeps saying that 'my plan is that I'm going to have a plan.'");
• Parton, no stranger to deep dives into wingnut rabbit holes, helpfully decodes Trump's ginned-up Fox "News"-fueled "scandals" regarding Biden's family. ("This is about harassing Biden once he's elected. This isn't really about the election. Trump doesn't know that.")
• And Desi helps us make sense of Biden's newsworthy dose of reality offered near the end of the debate that, yes, we will have to transition away from oil and other fossil fuels, toward renewable, job-creating, emissions-free alternatives in the very near future...if we hope to survive on this planet.

You may also wish to buckle up for a bit of a scary ending today, as all three offer their thoughts to voters who may be under the impression that Biden has this wrapped up, and as Desi sagely warns: "The margin of victory [for Biden] must be greater than the margin of theft, suppression, and litigation." And that's not even the scary part!

Anyway, that's a tiny sample of today's offerings, during which you'll laugh, cry, and maybe even go to bed with nightmares. You're welcome! Please enjoy today's special coverage on The BradCast!...

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Before we get to our otherwise previously-scheduled Special Coverage of Wednesday night's Vice Presidential debate, we open today's BradCast with the news that Twitter has suspended TheBradBlog's account for posting a 100% accurate tweet regarding Georgia's new touchscreen voting systems. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

I laid out the entire, maddening story regarding the tweet in question in a BRAD BLOG item today, since I can't post at all right now on Twitter, while they review my "appeal" to their finding that a two week old, demonstrably accurate tweet is in violation of the service's "rules against posting misleading information about voting." As you can imagine, my tweet is well supported, as its based on email from the GA Sec. of State's office sent to all 159 counties regarding an error discovered in the state's new touchscreen voting systems used by every voter at every polling place in the state. The email I cite is from the SoS and was published in a federal court filing (also linked with the tweet!) as part of a long-running lawsuit challenging the use of those machines, which we've reported on here for years now. The lawsuit seeks hand-marked paper ballots for voters at the polling place instead. The full story of what happened with Twitter, including screenshots and links to the federal filing and SoS email is posted here.

Then its on to last night's refreshingly dull and normal(ish) Vice Presidential Debate from Salt Lake City, Utah between Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic Veep nominee Sen. Kamala Harris. We're joined today for analysis and commentary by award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, along with author and political scientist DAVID FARIS of Roosevelt University and The Week.

While the debate may have been dull --- save for the fly --- there was much revealed (and much evaded) and much to discuss about it in today's very lively show, including, near the end, whether there will be any more debates at all this year.

I'd say more about today's fun (and, at times, funny) show, but I've got to get back to fighting with Twitter now, apparently. Since I'm not allowed to post there for the time being --- unless I delete a completely accurate and newsworthy tweet --- please feel free to share today's show over there yourself! Thanks!

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On today's BradCast: We've got good news for voters from a bunch of courts today --- including in both battleground and "red" states --- when it comes to the absentee mail-in voting that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are working so hard to block. But we've also got some very disturbing news out of the state of Georgia in a story that nobody other than us seems to be covering for reasons we can't quite explain. Especially since it now involves installing all brand-new, untested, and uncertified software --- at the very last minute, just days before Early Voting is to start --- on every touchscreen voting system used across the state. [Audio link to full show follows below summary]

But first, the good court rulings coming out of several states so far this week...

• A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court judge's six-day extension beyond Election Day for the receipt of incoming absentee ballots postmarked by November 3rd in the critical battleground state of WISCONSIN. The unanimous ruling comes from a panel of three Republican-appointed judges, including one nominated by Trump, in a state which he is said to have barely flipped to "red" in 2016, for the first time in decades, by just over 20,000 votes out of millions cast. Republicans could appeal to the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court. That's just one of the reasons they are trying to pack the Court with Trump's nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, in record time before the election;

• Similarly good news out of Mike Pence's home state of INDIANA, where a federal judge rejected a deadline of noon of Election Day for absentee ballots to be received. The ruling will allow ballots postmarked by November 3rd to be counted if they arrive by November 13. The judge says the extra days do not benefit any particular party or candidate and "should in fact help assuage" concerns about the legitimacy of election results in the Hoosier State;

• In the state of MONTANA, a federal judge blocked an effort by the Trump Campaign and other GOP groups to prevent counties from automatically sending absentee ballots to all active registered voters as they did during this year's June primary elections. That, after the plaintiffs were unable to "point to a single instance of voter fraud in Montana in any election during the last 20 years," according to the judge who described concerns about widespread fraud as "a fiction". While the state went to Trump by some 20 points in 2016, its Democratic Governor Steve Bullock won re-election on the same statewide ballot that year, and is now running for the U.S. Senate to unseat incumbent Republican Steve Daines;

• In ALABAMA, a federal judge ruled that the state may not block counties from offering curbside voting and that witness signature requirements and Photo ID requirements for absentee voters during the COVID-19 pandemic are unconstitutional for certain voters. Their Republican wingnut Sec. of State John Merrill says he will appeal all the way to the stolen Supreme Court if necessary;

• And in the closely divided battleground of NORTH CAROLINA, a proposed settlement between the state and plaintiffs will allow for absentee ballots to be "cured" by voters if they lack proper signatures; voters will be able to use secured drop-boxes for mail-in votes; and for ballots postmarked by Election Day may be received until November 12. But this week, a letter has been sent by the Trump Campaign to Republican officials on County Boards of Elections instructing them to ignore guidance from the State Board of Elections! The NC SBE has had to send a letter in response to those same officials, warning them that they are required to follow state guidance and that guidance from "a political party or other source should not be considered or followed." The extraordinary situation has led one international expert on election security from Duke University to (accurately) opine: "It comes down to the fact that this President is not actually trying to win this election "“ this President is trying to not have to concede this election. That's what going on." That expert is right on the money.

Then, to the extraordinarily disturbing story out of GEORGIA, which our guest today, MARILYN MARKS of the Coalition of Good Governance, describes as "scandalous". As we reported during Monday's show, last Friday, the Secretary of State's office quietly sent a notice to elections officials in all 159 counties telling them to immediately stop their pre-election "Logic and Accuracy" testing of the new, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems that all voters are currently forced to use at the polling place. The reason, as the office explained, was due to "an error in the November database which will require every county to get a new database for the November 3, 2020 election."

That startling news late on Friday night resulted in an emergency filing by the Coalition with U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who has been overseeing their long-running lawsuit to block the use of unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in favor of verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at the polls. On Monday, Totenberg called an emergency hearing for all parties to the suit, during which the Secretary of State's office and the state's new private vote system vendor and ballot programmer, Dominion Voting, claimed that new databases (which contain the programming for all contests in each county) were not actually needed to correct an error that prevented some U.S. Senate candidates from appearing on the touchscreen in certain cases. In fact, what they planned to do instead was to change the code used on the voting machine software itself, and install new software onto all 34,000 touchscreens in the state. All of this, just days before Early Voting is to begin, and now just over one month before Election Day.

As Marks notes, the new software to be installed on every voting machine in Georgia has not been certified for use --- or even tested --- by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) as required by state law. But this story is even more scandalous in several ways that we discuss on today's program, after another emergency hearing was called by the judge today, following another emergency filing from the Coalition on Wednesday night regarding an apparent change of plans by the Secretary of State.

"It's outrageous. They're wiping all of the software," Marks tells me, and installing "new software that's just been written, has not been tested, and has not been certified by the Elections Assistance Commission. As far as we know, it has not even been submitted for approval. This is federal certification, and Georgia, like most states, is not supposed to be using systems not certified by the federal government."

"They've written this over a weekend, and have not thoroughly tested it. There's been no user testing. The number of things that can go wrong will take up more time than your show permits," she says. "They might as well have gone out and said, 'we're going to buy the Lucy and Ethel software, and put it in.'"

While that is troubling enough, Marks also notes that the programming is not even being done by public state officials, but by private contractors at the Canadian-based firm from whom GA purchased the systems for more than $100 million for first time use this year. "This election has been completely outsourced to Dominion Voting Systems. They are a third party profit-making corporation and, essentially, Georgia has just said, 'Take it and do with it as you will, Dominion!'"

Marks says it is all "outrageous and preposterous," telling me, "Like you, I am shocked that the national media has not picked up on this more, because we're talking about the votes of 7 million voters here."

"I thought that I was beyond having anything that could shock me anymore," she continues. "But I have to say, my jaw is still on the floor from this week. And the fact that the media is not covering it, I don't understand. I can only surmise that they are still in disbelief. Maybe the facts just aren't fully out yet. That's the only thing I can come up with. This is scandalous. "

Please tune in for the full story --- there is much more to it. But, suffice to say for now, it IS a scandal that WE have been covering this story and this lawsuit for at least three years, while the mainstream corporate media seems to be ignoring it almost entirely, even with the possibility that the Peach State could flip from red to blue this year in the Presidential race for the first time in decades, and that there is not one, but two U.S. Senate seats on the ballot there this November, both of which are currently held by Republicans and believed to be endangered by Democratic challengers.

Finally, we close today with our latest Green News Report, with special coverage of the surprise --- and surprisingly substantive --- discussion of climate change in this week's otherwise off-the-rails Presidential Debate in Cleveland, OH...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GNR Special Coverage --- A surprise, substantive discussion about climate change at the first 2020 Presidential Debate in Cleveland, Ohio... 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): How Biden's $1.7 trillion climate plan would change America after Trump's Big Oil presidency; New Study Shows a Vicious Circle of Climate Change Building on Thickening Layers of Warm Ocean Water; Great breakthrough for solar panel recycling; Trump Moves to Expand Rare Earths Mining, Citing China; Big Coal CEO, who fought against black lung benefits, files for black lung benefits; Colorado regulators approve drilling buffers, other new restrictions on oil and gas development... PLUS: Priced Out: Both parties used to love the carbon tax. So why are they giving up on it?... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: What else? Special coverage of what we'll call the Presidential "debate" in Cleveland, OH on Wednesday night between Donald Trump and Joe Biden as nominally "moderated" by Chris Wallace of Fox "News". [Audio link to show follows below.]

It was, perhaps, best described by CNN's Dana Bash as "a shitshow", though her colleague Jake Tapper didn't do bad either in his description of "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow saw it as a "monstrous cavalcade of increasingly wild and obscene lies" and an "unintelligible display of logorrhea," mostly from the unhinged, unbalanced, unfit, wholly unqualified President of the United States. Stephen Colbert also did a helluva job in his own description of the train wreck as well on CBS' Late Show, though you'll have to tune in for that one.

To be fair, Trump 2000 Campaign Manager Bill Stepien called Trump's effort "the greatest debate performance in presidential history," and Fox "News" observed on their chyron: "BIDEN STUMBLES HIS WAY THROUGH FIRST DEBATE". So there's that.

We're joined today to try and make sense of whatever you may want to call Wednesday's embarrassing spectacle, by two of our favorite post-debate sense-makers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and ERIC BOEHLERT of Press Run, who argues in his column today that, unless the Presidential Debate Commission changes the format to, at a minimum, allow Trump's mic to be cut off (which, it looks like, they may), the next two Presidential debates should be called off entirely. Parton, who also wrote about Trump's "massive failure" today, agrees. But I don't, and we debate (ya know, an actual debate) as to why.

We also discuss and/or debate whether Biden should or shouldn't disclose his position on doing away with the Senate filibuster in order to expand the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court and much much more, including Trump's failure to condemn white supremacy, his deadly criminal failure to contain the coronavirus, his very serious threat to American democracy itself, and whether either of the two candidates accomplished what they needed to.

As Parton sums up whatever went down in Cleveland on Wednesday night: "We had one mainstream, normal politician and an alien from outer space, debating on the same stage. And that didn't work out really well." She observes that all of this is "bad for the country" and goes on to cite Trump's "extra-Constitutional, extra-judicial" threat to "steal" the November election as "one of the most dangerous things any President has tried to do."

Says Boehlert about Trump performance: "He was dramatically different last night than he was in 2016. And he was awful in 2016," before going on to describe the reason as "creeping authoritarianism" in which "Trump is building a bonfire every day, every hour."

If you loved the first 2020 Presidential Debate, you may or may not love our show today. If you were as troubled by what you saw as we were, then you may take some comfort --- and even get a few much-needed laughs --- out of our special coverage today...

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