Before this disappears into the ether of the memory hole, since the the history books tend to be written by the "winners", here's what the actual, contemporaneous, independently verifiable evidence shows instead. These are not the "alternative facts", as Kellyanne Conway described what new Whitehouse Press Secretary Sean Spicer and his boss have been trying to sell, but what the demonstrable facts actually show.

The turnout for the Womens' March in D.C. alone on Saturday, dwarfed the attendance at Donald Trump's Inauguration the day before. The official estimate from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority finds Saturday was the second-busiest day ever for the D.C. Metro rail system, bested only by the first Inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009. Ridership for Trump's Inauguration was even lighter than the average workday in the nation's capital...

According to crowd scientists (yes, apparently there is such a thing), the Womens' March was about three times the size of Trump's Inauguration which was, in turn, also dwarfed by each of Obama's two Inaugurations, but particularly his first one. Based on analysis of photos and video taken at the National Mall and the surrounding areas, Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, "estimated that there were about 160,000 people in those areas in the hour leading up to Mr. Trump’s speech Friday. ... They estimated that at least 470,000 people were at the women’s march in Washington in the areas on and near the mall at about 2 p.m. Saturday."

That, in contradiction to the new Alt-Fact President, who insisted the crowd at his ceremony on Friday "looked like a million, a million and a half people," and that the area "all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed." Once again, actual evidence suggests that wasn't the case, by a long shot.

Here, for the record, is just some of the actual evidence --- high quality photos taken from the Washington Monument, at both Obama's 2009 Inauguration and Trump's 2017 ceremony, "captured 45 minutes before the respective oaths of office, show[ing] areas that were crowded with people at Mr. Obama’s inauguration that were clearly empty during Mr. Trump's"...

On today's BradCast, resignation and evidence of corruption continue to dog the wildly unpopular incoming Trump Administration just days before his Inauguration; And is Comcast/NBCUniversal doing the bidding of the Mormon Church in Utah? [Audio link to show follows below.]

As we barrel towards what is certain to be an incredibly bizarre (to say the least) Inauguration Day for the historically unpopular Donald Trump, the Obama Administration has reportedly transferred out another 10 Gitmo detainees to Oman. In the meantime, a senior Trump White House appointee (and former Fox "News" contributor) has already resigned after revelations of massive plagiarism, as new questions about financial improprieties continue to mount for a number of Trump cabinet nominees and for the Trump Campaign itself.

Then, we are joined by former GOP Presidential candidate and gay rights activist Fred Karger, to discuss his latest campaign against the Mormon Church, which he believes should lose their tax exempt status revoked by the IRS due to participation in a number of anti-gay political campaigns and other corruption. Karger is charging that Comcast/NBCUniversal has blocked the airing of his new TV ad for MormonTips.com, after the media behemoth had previously agreed to run the 30 second spots in the state of Utah.

"I know how the Mormon Church operates," Karger explains, describing his claim that the Church is behind Comcast nixing the spots. "They are all powerful, particularly in the state of Utah. It's a virtual theocracy. They exercise a tremendous amount of power."

"They don't like me," he notes. "I'm the guy that discovered their vast involvement in California's Prop 8 in 2008 to take away gay marriage. I got them investigated and prosecuted by [California's] ethics office because they only admitted to spending $2,078 on the campaign. Turns out it was hundreds of thousands of dollars they ended up reporting. Much more likely millions. So I've learned they are very dishonest, and they've have done things very secretively." He argues that they've used their muscle to convince Comcast (which, he says, "controls something like 90% of the [cable television] market in Utah") to kill the ads. "So they're using censorship to quash our free speech and I'm going to be fighting back against them."

Finally today: Is the Trump Administration planning to shut down the White House Press Room after taking office? Esquire reported over the weekend that the matter is under serious consideration and, in response, Trump's top officials are not denying it...though they do appear to be lying about their reasons for it...

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On today's BradCast, Desi and I are back from holiday break, and just in time for the start of the new Congress, where the GOP had hoped to break the U.S. House even further by gutting the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. [Audio link to show posted below.]

First: A huge thanks to Nicole Sandler and Angie Coiro for filling in for us while we were gone and allowing us some much-needed time off! Please support them, their work and all independent media, wherever you can find it! As today's show makes clear, it's more important now than ever!

The U.S. House watchdog office was formed by Democrats in 2008 after the massive Jack Abramoff influence-peddling and bribery scandals of the George W. Bush era. After voting last night --- with no advance notice or public debate --- to hobble the OCE, Republicans were forced to reverse their plans thanks to public outrage expressed through phone calls to Congress. Nonetheless, Donald Trump is being inappropriately credited by the corporate media for the reversal, despite the lack of evidence that he actually opposed the move or that his tweets were responsible for the GOP changing course.

The episode suggests that public opinion, outrage and shaming may still matter in these United States, even in the Age of Trump, and even if the corporate media fail to notice. But we'll see.

At the same time, as NBC News guts their own news reporting outlets, they've announced today they are hiring Fox "News" star Megyn Kelly for untold millions. And, in Wisconsin, the agency responsible for environmental protection has solved Climate Change...by simply changing their website to pretend it no longer exists.

But, hey, "It's a New Year and Time to Face Reality". All of that and more on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad again. We start by pick up where we left off yesterday, with another review of fake news - this time, contrasting it with lazy, bad, or mistaken news reports.

And - about that reported book contract a flamboyant neo-Nazi is crowing about: why it's way too early to say, "We're boycotting Simon & Schuster!"

Then Natalie Blake with the California National Party explains how a state can secede from the US (hint: more than one option here). This is NOT the same California independence group allied with Russia, although you'd never get that from most media.

And an excerpt from a live conversation with author and culture critic Jeff Chang. Kind of fun to hear the Executive Director of Stanford's Institute for Diversity in the Arts explain how diversity is problematic.

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On today's BradCast, yours truly, Angie Coiro, picks up the reins from Nicole Sandler, in our joint effort to keep Brad and Desi on vacation.

First up: a look at the Professor Watchlist and one of its targets: a Costa Mesa college professor afraid to leave her home. Then an Atlantic story on the economic revival of Elkhart Indiana, where even a vast upswing in manufacturing and employment leaves residents still in denial that Barack Obama has been good for the economy.

Author Meg Elison joins me to discuss her trek through the US class system and its mythology, and her novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, with its dystopian world of male dominance and destroyed class distinctions.

Finally, a contrast: how Carrie Fisher's openness about her bipolar diagnosis helped America, while Donald Trump's almost certain Narcissistic Personality Disorder might doom it.

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On today's BradCast: Enough playing defense. It's time for Democrats to go on the offense, in states all across the country, to expand the franchise, in numerous ways, rather than simply defending against increasing Republican efforts to restrict voting rights. And where they won't, it's time for progressives to hold them accountable for it. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Today I'm joined by Daniel Nichanian, election expert and post-doctoral fellow in political science at the University of Chicago to discuss his "Voting Rights Manifesto: A State-by-State Plan to Defend Democracy", as recently published in Vox.com's "Big Ideas" series.

Nichanian explains where and how Democrats can and must take action, right now, even during the Trump years, to expand voting rights and access to the polls. Yes, it can (and must) be done in states across the country where Democrats still have control of legislatures and governorships. In many cases, as he describes, Dems don't even need to control both.

No need to wait for and hope that Congressional Republicans to restore the Voting Rights Act, which they probably will never actually do. There are many ways for Democrats to expand voter registration (such as automatic universal registration and other reforms), expand the pool of those eligible to vote (restoring millions of felons' voting rights, for example), ways to make it easier to vote (early voting and easier access to absentee voting), and many other tools to take a proactive stand in the new year.

"The Democratic Party has not been at the forefront of the voting rights issue in the past two years," Nichanian observes. "The issue has really come to a head since the wave of Republican takeovers of state houses in 2010 and 2014, when the Republican Party really prioritized, in state after state, putting in place a very ambitious and consistent agenda of its own to curtail voting rights. The extent to which the Republican Party has prioritized this issue, it keeps taking Democrats by surprise." But, he explains, "when the Democratic Party has power, in many places, they really don't get their act together to think about what has to be done on this issue, and actually get it done."

We discuss how Democrats can do so. We also try and hold them accountable for not having done so to date in so many places where they should have by now --- even in places like New York and California. I'm hoping the conversation, and Nichanian's piece at Vox, might give us all something positive to work for in the new year, even at the same time as progressives build the resistance against the destructive, anti-democratic agenda of Donald Trump and the GOP.

Also on today's show: Fox "News" wingnuts continue their climate change hoax; Democrats in North Carolina end up playing Charlie Brown to the state Republicans' Lucy --- again. And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our year-end Green News Report as Obama, on his way out the door, bans off-shore oil drilling in large parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic, and not a moment too soon. The Arctic has turned freakishly warm over the past two months of what is likely to be the warmest year ever recorded on the planet (for the third year in a row). She also has some good news as the year wraps up, however: A new poll finds that Trump's voters actually support regulations on the burning of carbon that causes global warming and, something that even Trump can't change, solar power is now the world's cheapest form of energy. Take that, Big Oil, Big Coal and 2016!...

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by Angie Coiro, we discuss more echoes of the Third Reich, Fox, and Trump's amazement at what his new job entails.

Right up front it's a news roundup, including - believe it or not - some encouraging tales.

Then Angie’s guest is Oliver Willis, commentator and blogger from oliverwillis.com. He's covering multiple stories of Trump and the media, including a look at Megyn Kelly's effort to go legit.

Also today: psychologist Paul Marcille and historian Charles Postel put Election 2016 in new contexts. Postel says, calm down --- that old wisdom about democracies dying after about 200 years has no evidence to support it!

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On today's BradCast: Bad hombres! Nasty women! And SUSPENSE! Real coverage of the final Presidential Debate of 2016, some of which is almost guaranteed to piss off just about everybody in one way or another. You're welcome! [Audio link to show posted below.]

For our analysis of the final --- and, by our count, 25th! --- debate of the 2016 cycle, I'm joined once again by award-winning journalist Heather Digby Parton of Salon and the Hullabaloo blog, and by David Dayen, of Fiscal Times and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud.

As you probably expect, we spend some time focusing on Trump's dishonest claims that the election is being "rigged" and his refusal to promise a peaceful transfer of power. But we also discuss the, at times, disingenuous outrage about it all from the media as well as both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom seem to have developed more than a bit of convenient amnesia about recent elections, about the mechanics of our electoral system, and even very recent assertions about all of the above.

Yes, election fraud and election integrity are topics about which we have some familiarity around here. And, while nuance and complexity and facts may not play well in the corporate media or among angry partisans near the end of an insane election cycle, no small amount of each are called for today. We do our best.

"Digby" and Dayen also bring insight on a number of the other surprisingly substantive issues raised at the debate (as well as important issues that, once again, were not), many of which have been largely overlooked in the wake of Trump's latest embarrassing tantrum(s)...

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On today's BradCast, we await the (mercifully) final Presidential Debate of 2016 to get under way in Las Vegas, as Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to plummet --- even in some surprising states --- but the GOP nominee continues to say all is well ("peachy dory", in fact)...except that the election is being "rigged". [Audio link posted below.]

Among the many other related (and unrelated) stories covered on today's show...

• Some good news today for voters in Kansas and Florida and maybe in Georgia (where there has been huge turnout for Early Voting);

• Some disturbing and, so far, mysterious news about potential voter registration fraud in Indiana. (This is a good reminder to check your registration to make sure it's accurate!);

• Some listener response to the former New Hampshire GOP official who told me on The BradCast earlier this week that he doesn't believe "the party has been pushing" phony voter fraud myths. "Please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense," he said. (Elizabeth Warren doesn't agree with him either.);

• The amazing story of how a new "voter fraud" myth became "fact" this week amongst gullible Republicans, with the aid of rightwing;

• Another example of how theoretically non-rightwing corporate news outlets help spread the same mythical "voter fraud" bullshit;

• Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on a major new international global warming agreement and some harsh words for environmentalists from Hillary Clinton, as revealed by a new Wikileaks document;

• And a bit of amusing listener mail. #FreeDesi!

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On today's BradCast, a self-identified "establishment Republican" pushes back against Donald Trump's claims that the election will be "rigged", but goes on to deny that his own party has promoted the very "voter fraud" conspiracies that the Republican nominee is now exploiting. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

Trump has been increasingly strident of late in his rhetoric charging that the election is being "rigged" by "large scale voter fraud" and more. As he does so, his supporters are using more and more violent rhetoric to describe "bloodshed" and even assassination should their candidate fail to win on November 8th. As a disturbing Boston Globe report noted over the weekend, it has now fallen to establishment GOPers to try and calm the increasingly dangerous waters.

Former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen, a self-described 'Never Trumper' who characterizes the increasingly violent rhetoric from Trump supporters as 'very scary', joins us today to rebut Trump's charges about fraud and decry threats of violence by his followers. "He's doing terrible damage to the Republican brand," Cullen says. "Even after he's defeated, he's going to be causing trouble for our party for quite awhile, probably, in terms of how it's identified in the eyes of millions of Americans."

"On election night when Donald Trump is defeated, he's going to have a really important choice. Does he say responsible things that are aimed at accepting the outcome and telling his supporters that they should accept the outcome as well. Or, does he in fact pour gasoline on a fire, and continue the rhetoric that he's been using in the last ten days?"

But later, in the course of our conversation, it took a very bizarre turn. Cullen went on to reject the very premise of the idea that the Republican Party bears some responsibility for the effectiveness of Trump's claims, given the party has loudly forwarded false claims of massive Democratic 'voter fraud', for political gain, for more than a decade. He doesn't think that has happened.

"I don't think there's any argument that, certainly, some Republicans do believe that voter fraud takes place on significant scale enough to affect elections. I don't think the party has been pushing that line," Cullen tells me. As you'll hear, and as you might expect, that notion took me by complete surprise during the conversation. He compares "various conspiracy theories out there" with those from "the black helicopter crowd" and UFO spotters, but says "please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense."

I remain as gobsmacked here as anyone who has ever spent more than 15 minutes reading The BRAD BLOG or has even watched Fox "News" for about the same amount of time. While I expected to disagree on a few points (including computer tabulators vs. hand-counts in NH, which we discussed as well) and while Cullen was very nice and very generous with his time in joining us today, I'm still stunned that he is actually denying the very existence of the years-long, very well-funded effort by the very top echelon of the national GOP meant to deceive the public about "voter fraud". (See this Special Coverage page and this one for just a tiny taste of their efforts and our decade plus coverage of it. Listen to the conversation and its follow-up segment on today's show for much more.)

Also today: A bit of good news for voters, as a federal court has once again smacked down the state of Florida, this time for a GOP-enacted scheme that would have unnecessarily rejected thousands of absentee ballots; Ohio's Republican Sec. of State continues to fight a federal court order to restore more than a million illegally purged voters to the rolls; And we cover a fresh spate of violent and political terror attacks and plots by Trump-supporting Rightwing extremists against Muslims and others.

And, finally, a few thoughts on the curious case of the weekend firebombing of a Republican Party campaign office in NC...

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On today's BradCast, we peer into the rancid dark heart of the Republican Party meltdown and the trauma all Americans are being forced through to get there. [Audio link posted below.]

As detailed today, the ongoing meltdown began long before the campaign of Donald Trump, whose angry, dangerous, paranoid speech in West Palm Beach, FL on Thursday offered only a glimpse into the party's decades-long lurch towards the fact-free 'reality' they've worked to create for all of us. No longer tethered to facts or truth, but to a nominee who embodies and reflects the very xenophobic, nativist, racist, and misogynistic tactics employed for political gain over at least the last two Presidential Administrations, the beginning of a reckoning may finally be in sight.

Yet, even those GOPers who finally understand some of this --- and many in the corporate media who've enabled it for so long --- still fail to grasp the gravity of the moment, their own culpability, and the traumatic stress the nation faces in the bargain.

Nonetheless, our message today: We're going to be okay, there is a way out.

All of that and what you can do to help us get there --- as illustrated with the news of the day, a bit of listener mail and even some South Park(!) --- on today's BradCast...

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The insane 2016 Presidential campaign took a decidedly dark turn on Sunday night. We cover all of that darkness and more on today's BradCast. [Link to audio posted below.]

After a weekend of seeming implosion by the GOP nominee and the Republican Party on the heels of the release of a 2005 'hot mic' video tape in which Donald Trump is seen and heard lewdly boasting about sexually assaulting married women and others, he lashed out at Hillary and Bill Clinton on Sunday night, with a press conference (of sorts) featuring women allegedly assaulted by the former President during the 80s and 90s.

All of that and more came up during the 2nd Presidential Debate held on Sunday night at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm joined on today's show for coverage, analysis and insight on what is almost certainly one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. Presidential political history by former CNN journalist and communications strategist Jacki Schechner and progressive policy advocate Dave Johnson, Senior Fellow at People's Action (formerly: Campaign for America's Future.)

"I feel like there's this feeling of that old story of the frog that's getting warmer and warmer and warmer. Well, we're boiling. And everybody is suddenly noticing that the water's boiling right now," Johnson says in response to my question about how America and the Republican Party have arrived at this point (which I'm more than happy to blame, in no small part, on the corporate media and its decades long failure to report what has been going on in our politics over the last several Presidential Administrations as anything much more than both-sides-do-it politics-as-usual). "This has been coming for a long time. Donald Trump is the Republican Party right now. He's nothing more than the manifestation of something that's been building up and building up, and now we're at a reckoning point," he says.

Schechner notes: "While we think, in the moment, that, 'this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back', the camel gets up again on Monday morning and keeps on trotting. I don't know if it's because of the nature of where we are societally, or if it's just that we've gotten so disgusted with politics, that we're so deep in the mud we can't even see where the mud begins, but we're totally desensitized to where this has gone and where the Republican Party has taken us."

As we struggle to try and make sense of Sunday's debate, Trump's behavior, and where all of this can possibly go from here, Schechner observes: "Trump has been this person his whole life. The Republican Party broke him, they bought him. Clinton herself is a flawed candidate, [but] she's not a sociopath. The problem is that she has to figure out a way to combat him and not get down in the dirt with him, and at the same time mitigate the damage that exists, based on her own somewhat flawed political past."

Yeesh. Lots to talk about and lots to cover on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, coverage and analysis of this year's one and only (thank God!) Vice Presidential Debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia on Tuesday night between Hillary Clinton's centrist Democratic running mate Sen. Tim Kaine of VA and Donald Trump's religious right Republican running mate Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana. [Audio link is posted below.]

It was, in my opinion, as I noted on The Twitters last night, the worst Presidential or Vice Presidential debate in modern U.S. history, thanks in no small part to the disastrously horrible moderator, CBS News' Elaine Quijano. Her questions seem to come straight off of Fox "News" (where CBS News chief David Rhodes previously worked, coincidentally), failed to follow up any answers, failed to either keep decorum between the two candidates or at least get out of their way, and failed to raise real issues of note --- such as gun violence, race issues, health care, global warming, LGBT issues, campaign finance or voting rights, to name just a few --- effecting the actual everyday lives of Americans.

Mike Pence is a man who has argued smoking doesn't cause cancer, denies climate change, couldn't run for President himself in 2016 because he screwed up so badly on the anti-LGBT bill he signed in Indiana, in December of just last year tweeted "Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional" in response to Trump's call for same --- and, yet, Quijano couldn't muster up a single question on any of those incredibly disturbing things from Pence's career.

But it was also the remarkable avalanche of lies, as offered by the very impressive if astonishingly dishonest GOP Veep nominee, which made the evening simply jaw-dropping at times. Some of those lies were rebutted by a struggling, over-eager Kaine. Others have since been left to those in the media who care to sort such things out.

That's where we come in, I guess. I'm joined today to try and make sense of all of the above by Heather Digby Parton of Salon and the Hullabaloo blog, John Amato, founder of the Crooks and Liars blog and, of course, our own Desi Doyen.

Buckle up and tune in as we "whip out that Mexican thing again"...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Standing Rock Sioux Tribe takes a stand against massive new oil pipeline in North Dakota; California passes most sweeping climate change law yet; Evacuations in West Virginia after leak of deadly chlorine gas; PLUS: President Obama creates world's largest protected marine sanctuary... 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): Far-Reaching Tribal Solidarity Displayed At Pipeline Protest; Washington State Begins Killing Wolf Pack For Preying On Livestock; Enviros wage war with Interior over leasing's climate impact; Drought-Hardy Yards Could Ease Californian Heat Waves; Why It Matters: Climate Change; Colorado Anti-Fracking Activists Fall Short in Ballot Efforts; Wisconsin: High Rate Of Tumors Found In Fish; Minnesota: Researchers Warn On Mercury In St. Louis River Estuary Fish... PLUS: NASA: Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years'... and much, MUCH more! ...

Shockingly good news on today's BradCast, following today's remarkable announcement by the U.S. Dept. of Justice that they are working to end the federal government's "use of privately operated prisons".

After that, you may want to pop up some popcorn to best enjoy the rest of today's program. [Audio link to complete program is posted below.]

First up today, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issued a memo, as Washington Post reported, instructing federal officials "to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or 'substantially reduce' the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is 'reducing --- and ultimately ending --- our use of privately operated prisons.'

Wow. Her memo goes on to cite a recent DoJ Inspector General's report finding that privately run prisons do not provide same level of service, "do not save substantially on costs" and "do not maintain the same level of safety and security" as those run by the federal government's Bureau of Prisons.

I am joined by Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, for both an explanation and a bit of a victory lap after his organization and others have spent decades taking on the private, for-profit prison industry. Takei details what the announcement means, why it has finally come about now, and how the ACLU and others --- including investigative reporters, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and eventually the Hillary Clinton campaign --- have long argued precisely what the DoJ has admitted today.

"Handing control of prisons over to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse, neglect, and misconduct because their primary duty is to their shareholders. They have to deliver value to their shareholders by skimming a profit off of whatever payments the government gives them to run the system," Takei tells me.

"In the 1990s, when the Bureau of Prisons first started this experiment with private prisons, the argument was they could provide incarceration more cheaply and that the innovations of the free market would somehow make things better. In fact, it turned out to be far worse. Because the major way that you can make money off incarceration is by cutting expenses," he says. "Some of the biggest expenses are security staff, medical staff, and providing medical services. Anywhere that the company starts cutting back its expenditures, it ends up harming the people inside."

He goes on to offer some startling examples of both that and of some of the easily-disproven responses and claims of the for-profit, private prison industry lobby.

Next, we look at how the coming and/or current GOP Civil War is shaping up not as a battle of ideas for the party's future, but as a wingnut street-fight over whose false version of 'reality' will win out. It's getting quite ugly. But also, at least for those of us on the outside, kinda hilarious in several regards.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with "some news that blows" and, finally, we close with the NYC Parks Department hilariously short response to the growing erection of naked Donald Trump statues around the city. You're welcome.

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