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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Koch Brothers claim they are environmental stewards; New legislation to stop all fossil fuel extraction on federal public lands; More bad news for Volkswagen; PLUS: US State Department rejects TransCanada's request to hit 'pause' on the Keystone XL pipeline... 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): The harm Exxon Mobil has done; NASA found a way to track ocean currents from space. What they saw is troubling; Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica - that it's inherently unstable; 50 Years After Warning, No Debate in Paris on the Science; Fracking: EPA Finding of No 'Widespread, Systemic' Problems Under Fire; Is the USDA Silencing Scientists?... PLUS: Powerful 'Gene Drive' Can Quickly Change An Entire Species... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast... With Boehner out, Ryan in and "all family business settled" (for now) in the U.S. House, the GOP looks elsewhere for enemies.

They find a lot of them.

This week's CNBC GOP debate opened up a great opportunity for new attacks on a favorite old enemy: the so-called "liberal media"! (Yes, they are actually considering Wall Street's favorite wingnut cable channel for the investment class to be part of the "liberal media" now, rather than blaming themselves for the failures of their own Presidential candidates!) But they also find new enemies amongst fellow Republicans like RNC Chair Reince Preibus, who may quickly become the Rightwing's new "John Boehner".

Plus: The White House announces U.S. boots will now be on the ground in Syria --- but does Congress even care?; Is Jeb's campaign really dead? Or should the voters decide that rather than the media?; Hillary joins the growing calls for investigation of ExxonMobil; And, climate change actually finds its way into a Republican Presidential debate!...

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It was a 'Rocky Mountain Mess' to many, but we try to make sense of CNBC's GOP Presidential Debate in Boulder, CO last night on today's BradCast anyway!

My guests today are Heather Digby Parton --- Salon contributor, Hillman Foundation opinion journalism award winner, and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog and the Colorado Statesman's John Tomasic.

"Digby" has joined us for all of our post-debate coverage so far this year and offers smart insight yet again today. Tomasic shares his on-the-ground perspective after covering the goings on inside and outside of the Coors Event Center before, during and after yesterday's debate(s).

Was anything learned from either the 'Kiddie Table' or 'Main' debates? Is Jeb finally done for? Did Kasich's gambit work? Did Trump accidentally make sense again? Does Jindal have a magic wand he doesn't know about? Is Social Security really a scam?

Were the CNBC moderators as awful as the GOP would like us all to believe? Why was a Republican debate held in the liberal "Mecca" of Boulder in the first place? And why were the students at CU-Boulder kept from attending it?

We search for reasonable answers to all of those questions and more on today's BradCast! Wish us luck!...

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On today's BradCast (link to complete audio below), Republican and Democratic leadership strike a deal to avoid defaulting on U.S. loan payments and to keep the government open for two years. But at what cost?

Financial journalist David Dayen of Salon joins us to explain both the grand deal and its cost to both Republicans and Democrats (though, arguably, much more to Democrats.)

"In general what this whole thing does is prevent a bunch of hostage-taking," on the part of Republicans, Dayen explains. "I think that is the real problem that the House Freedom Caucus [formerly the 'Tea Party Caucus'] has with it." Other than that, as he breaks it down for us, Republicans and war hawks seem to get a much better deal out of the bargain.

Democrats, while getting some much needed relief to arbitrary spending caps on several social programs, ultimately pay a price for cuts to Medicare and Social Security in this agreement, says Dayen. While Republicans, on the other hand, receive a huge $32 billion "slush fund" above and beyond anything Democrats get, in order to pay for more militarism under the bogus guise of "Overseas Contingency Operations".

"When we have homeless people that need shelter or poor people that need food for the food stamp program, then the answer is 'We're broke! We cannot pay for that! We're selling out our children's future! There's no way we can scrounge up any more money out of the couch cushions!," Dayen explains on today's show. "But when this little kitty that Pentagon generals want to use to protect their favorite program or build more weapons of any kind --- that we have plenty of money for, and if you don't like it you hate the troops and you're un-American."

All of that and much more detail to help you understand what's really going on in this deal and on one crucial point concerning the nation's debt ceiling that Dayen describes as "a total failure...by the leadership of the Democratic Party."

Also today: Poll shakeups in the Presidential race(s); The dog who shot his owner; The major retailer that plans to close for "Black Friday"; And --- speaking of excrement "in the barn" in Washington D.C. --- Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with a new plan to literally put it all to good use and much more...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: One Republican senator breaks ranks to support Obama's Clean Power Plan; Illegal deforestation causing killer air pollution in Indonesia; Washington DC gets creative with the excrement flowing out of the nation's capitol; PLUS: Senator James Inhofe has a plan to derail international climate talks... 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): The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee; Coal company sues over 'destructive' EPA ozone standards; Rubbish haul found in stomach of dead whale; Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows; Study Faults E.P.A. for Toxic Wastewater Spill in Colorado Rockies; Monsanto Clears USDA Regulatory Hurdle for New GMO Corn; ExxonMobil Targets Journalists; Deadly Heat Is Forecast in Persian Gulf by 2100 ... PLUS: Interactive: Greenland Is Melting Away ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Calls grow in Congress for Dept. of Justice to investigate Exxon Mobil for obscuring evidence of climate change; Political change in Canada may mean beginning of the end for the dirty tar sands; 3 out of 4 Americans now accept climate science; Your sunscreen may be damaging coral reefs; PLUS: Surprise! September 2015 was the hottest September ever recorded... 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): Momentum - But Uncertainty - in Final Pre-Paris Climate Talks; Paris Climate Deal Unlikely To Need Senate Approval, Says US Envoy; With Abandoned Gas Wells, States Are Left With The Cleanup Bill; Why Aren't Presidential Candidates Talking about Food and Agriculture?; U.K., China Poised for Accord on $37.9 Billion Nuclear Plant; Three Key Trends in the EV Market; Interactive Map: U.S. cities we could lose to the sea; $20 Million Prize Aims To Get Contestants To Turn Carbon Pollution To Something Useful; Experts: U.S. Must Do More To Protect Energy Grid From Cyberattack... PLUS: Clean energy creates some jobs and destroys others. Here's what that tells us about politics... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we examine the huge news out of Canada last night as the Liberal Party and its leader Justin Trudeau swept into power and Stephen Harper's Conservative Party government was sent packing.

We speak about the big development with Canadian Alex Doukas of Oil Change International, who explains the election results first in broad terms, specifically for those of us in the U.S. who may not have even realized Canada was holding a major election this week!

Doukas describes the results as "a referendum on Stephen Harper's leadership" as much or more than a "vote of confidence" for the Liberal Party. "Canada's sliding back into recession now, in contrast to a lot of other G7 economies," he tells me. That's "partly a result of the knock-on effects of a low oil price, [and Harper's] nearly single-minded promotion of Canada's oil and gas industry at the expense of other sectors."

"Harper really bet the farm on oil and gas in his policy approach, and he lost that bet," he says. "And, unfortunately, that bad bet is now hurting Canadians."

We discuss what Trudeau's stunning win may mean for the future of energy and climate related issues in Canada, including the Keystone XL pipeline project, Canada's commitment to an international climate treaty, their reliance on a fossil fuel economy and their relationship with the U.S..

"Hopefully," he tells me, "with a new government in power, we'll start to see recognition of the value of economic diversification and a recognition that oil and gas is not the future for Canada, but that clean energy is really a huge opportunity for Canadians."

Doukas goes on to offer extraordinary clarity on all of the above and also offers a thought or two on the Conservative Party's newly implemented vote suppression techniques they seem to have picked up recently: "The Conservatives in Canada were learning lessons around voter disenfranchisement from GOP politicians south of the border. So, thanks for that." You're welcome, Canada!

Also today: More on KS Sec. of State Kris Kobach's outrageous voter suppression; Jim Webb drops out of the 2016 Democratic Presidential race; And much more sea change in today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen...

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On today's BradCast, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) joins me to explain the letter [PDF] he sent late last week, with Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), to Attorney General Loretta Lynch seeking an investigation and, if appropriate, prosecution of ExxonMobil.

In light of internal company documents recently unearthed and published by Inside Climate News and by the Los Angeles Times revealing that Exxon knew about the "potentially catastrophic" dangers of global warming as early as 1977 and their subsequent funding of the climate change denial industry in an attempt to obscure their own science, Lieu tells me he believes that a conspiracy case, akin to the one brought against Big Tobacco, would now be appropriate against the world's largest oil producer.

"In the case of [Big] tobacco," Lieu explains on today's program, "it's having knowledge that your product had a tendency to cause harm in people, and then denying that was the case, and affirmatively selling your product in the face of that knowledge."

He believes Exxon's actions are very similar and likely to trigger the broad "conspiracy statute" known as RICO, as successfully brought against the tobacco industry in the largest such prosecution ever.

"It wasn't just that Exxon remained silent and didn't share [what their scientists had confirmed]. They took affirmative steps to campaign against the science of climate change. They funded organizations that obscured the science behind climate change. Their top executives would make statements to say that climate change either isn't happening or 'these are just models that we don't know much about and things are very uncertain'," Lieu tells me. "And keep in mind, they internally took actions to take advantage of global warming," by changing their business strategy in the Arctic where drilling would become easier thanks to the melting caused by the use of their product.

"So this is beyond hypocrisy," he says. "An investigation is warranted into what Exxon knew, when they knew it, and what they said about it."

[My recent interview with Neela Banerjee, co-author of Inside Climate News' blockbuster investigative report, is posted here.]

Also on today's program: New polls are out in the wake of last week's Democratic debate in Las Vegas suggesting that things may be changing for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, though not necessarily as the corporate media had predicted; Alabama's Republican Governor attempts to roll back the closure of drivers license offices that threaten to further disenfranchise African-American voters in the state; And Jeb Bush throws his own brother under the bus on voting rights, in hopes of winning the 2016 Republican nomination...

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We were forced to reschedule our planned guest for today's BradCast at the last minute --- (you'll have to listen to the show to find out who it was to be, but I'm still very much looking forward to that conversation!) --- but that worked out just fine, as we had to much to cover on today's show as is!

Among the stories and issues we were, therefore, able to cover today...

• New insider whistleblower releases documents revealing the inner-workings of the United States' disastrous drone assassination program.
• Democratic debate suggests a new day for progressivism, if not for the still-failing corporate U.S. media.
• Finally, climate change takes the spotlight in a Presidential debate, as Rightwing deniers and fraudsters like Jeb and Rush freak out about it.

All of that a much (much) more on today's BradCast!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Green News Report Special Coverage: Finally --- Climate change takes the spotlight, at least for a few minutes, in a Presidential Debate.... All that special coverage 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): Mississippi River Basin Gets A Grade Of D; From March to a Movement: Climate Events Stretch From Sea to Rising Sea; Chesapeake Waters Warming, Study Says, Posing Challenges To Healing Bay; Alpha Natural Discloses Payments to Climate Change Skeptic Chris Horner; Lawsuit Alleges Illegal Water Use by Nestlé in Drought-Stricken Calif.; Massachusetts: With Expenses Rising, Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Will Close... PLUS: State, Feds Won't Pursue $92M More in '89 Exxon Valdez Spill... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast we dissect Tuesday night's pleasantly substantive (for the most part) Democratic Presidential Debate in Las Vegas.

Joining me on today's show are two of our favorite guests, both long time journalists/bloggers and both of whom have been pretty much right about pretty much everything for the past decade and more.

Heather Digby Parton --- Salon contributor, Hillman Foundation opinion journalism award winner, and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog --- joins us for the hour along with Eric Boehlert --- Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America and author of Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press.

Last night's debate drew in a record number of viewers and offered a striking contrast from the debates we've seen so far this year from Republicans. But, did it change either the trajectory or the conventional Beltway "wisdom" for any of the candidates? Has the Democratic Party finally broken away from the shackles of corporate wingnuttery?

Was Hillary Clinton able to overcome the absurd attacks over pretend scandals from corporate media and the GOP? Was Bernie Sanders able to demonstrate his viability as a general election candidate? And what of those other guys on stage with them --- and even one who was not on stage with them? Why did this debate draw even more viewers than the Clinton/Obama matchups in 2008? And was the DNC right in their decision to limit the number of debates for the Democratic candidates this cycle?

We discuss all of that and much more on today's BradCast, with really smart observations from two really smart journalists who are decidedly not "inside the Beltway" pundits...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Sen. Lindsey Graham wants federal aid for South Carolina flooding --- but voted against it for Hurricane Sandy; Environmental groups slam TPP agreement; New rules to protect farmworkers from pesticides; Fracking companies wasting taxpayers' money; PLUS: Obama creates two new marine sanctuaries in the U.S.... 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): D.C. Water begins harnessing electricity from every flush; GOP grills Energy secretary on oil exports; Why Europeans are better at forecasting storms than the US; Will VW now turn to EVs?; BP record settlement in Gulf oil spill made official, larger than thought; DuPont to pay $1.6m in Teflon water contamination suit; Monsanto mobilized academics to write articles supporting GMOs; PLUS: What will a global agreement on climate change look like? The U.N. just gave us a clue ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, idiocy in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House and --- much more importantly --- the future of cars and a clean, livable planet!

First up, as the death toll mounts in Guatemala and the waters continue to rise in South Carolina, all thanks to global warming, the state's U.S. Senator and woeful 2016 GOP Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham embarasses himself as he begs for federal relief from the government, while conveniently "forgetting" that he repeatedly voted against similar aid for other states after Hurricane Sandy.

Then, speaking of disasters and climate change, Steve LeVine, author of The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, joins us to discuss his recent article, "Volkswagen’s best shot at a comeback now has the automaker right where Elon Musk wants it."

LeVine explains how Volkswagen, whose recent emissions test cheating scandal will cost them billions in fines, may be able to help save themselves by helping to power the future of electric cars in a massive way. That future, LeVine tells me, is just about here. "In the coming 3-5 years," he says, we will be hitting "a critical mass."

"All of this has been triggered by [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk. Musk has put the fear into car makers --- they think that he could be a game changer, and they could be left out," LeVine explains. "You've got GM, Audi, Porsche, Jaguar, BMW, Nissan [and] a bunch of others car-makers, all planning to launch their own 200-mile, $35-40K [electric] cars" in the next several years. Even Apple is getting in the game. But, that new generation of clean cars needs to be powered, and VW could help their horrible damaged image by taking a leading role.

Finally, we go back to more idiocy in Congress to finish out today's show, as two incapable jackasses battle it out to win the GOP nomination in hopes of becoming the next Speaker of the U.S. House and, incidentally, third in the line of succession to become the President of the United States. And, speaking of which, is that the "death rattle" of the Jeb Bush campaign that we hear?...

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We start today's BradCast with the grim news of yet another mass shooting, this time in Oregon, and a massive storm bearing down on the U.S. East Coast.

As too-occasional BRAD BLOG contributor D.R. Tucker noted: "We have a superstorm on the East Coast brought to us by a problem right-wingers refuse to acknowledge, followed by another massive school shooting caused by a problem right-wingers refuse to do anything about."

But we can do something about it. We can vote those folks out of office. But, of course, only if we're allowed to vote.

Today we discuss two states, specifically (and a few more, generally) controlled by Republicans where they are making it much more difficult for many of their voters to vote. First, the state of Alabama has announced it will shut down 31 DMV offices, after the state's new Photo ID voting restriction just went into effect last year. You'll be shocked to learn that the closures disproportionately affect voters in the state's "Black Belt", including the closure of offices in "Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters."

Then, in Iowa, we look at the ongoing legal challenge to the more than 100,000 former felons who have fully completed their sentences, but are being kept from voting for life by one man: the state's Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, who, by executive order, has rolled back Iowa's previous policy that had automatically restored voting rights to former, non-violent felons.

ACLU Voting Rights attorney Julie Ebenstein, who spent years fighting similar voter suppression tactics by Republicans in Florida, joins us on today's program to discuss the latest legal battle(s) for the right to vote in the Hawkeye State (and elsewhere).

"It's shameful the way that we treat our fellow citizens because of a prior conviction, sometimes decades ago," Ebenstein tells me. "The confluence of over-criminalization, mass incarceration, and the ongoing collateral consequences of that --- which is disenfranchisement, sometimes for life --- is something that really rips at our democracy."

It is shameful. As Think Progress noted earlier this year, "in the 2008 election, 5.3 million Americans, or one in 40 adults, were unable to vote due to a felony conviction, according to the Sentencing Project." But, as bad as that is, it's even worse for African Americans. "Nationally, 2.2 million --- or one in every 13 --- black adults is disenfranchised."

And as bad as that is, Ebenstein explains, it's even worse in Florida which, she notes, "like Iowa, has a lifetime ban on voting for people who have committed a felony. And, as a result of that, there's over 1.5 million citizens in Florida who are disenfranchised. So that's about 10 per cent of the voting population --- 1 in 5 African-American men in Florida --- who remain disenfranchised."

Also today: Oklahoma halts all scheduled executions indefinitely following the state's latest death penalty disaster. And a quick look at Bernie Sanders' rather extraordinary fund-raising operation, built on small donations from the Internet, as the independent Vermont Senator almost outraised Hillary Clinton in the third quarter of 2015.

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First on today's BradCast: Why Rush Limbaugh believes NASA has faked their discovery of flowing liquid water on Mars. Then, why MSNBC completely ignored Bernie Sanders on last night's Rachel Maddow Show.

Then, onto our interview with Virginia Martin and Jason Nastke, the Democratic and Republican Election Commissioners (respectively) of Columbia County, NY, where they refuse to certify results until every hand-marked paper ballot is publicly counted by hand after each election.

The two Commissioners joined me to respond to a recent Brennan Center study [PDF] warning that the nation's voting computers and tabulators are aging and failing and should be replaced as soon as possible with new computer systems. I agree with the first part of their findings, not so much with the second part, both of which we discussed in a recent BradCast with Lawrence Norden, co-author of that well-reported study.

Martin and Nastke don't seem to agree either, finding that hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted by human beings, remain the best way to assure that every voter's intent is accurately and transparently tallied.

"In reality, computing is maybe 50 years old," the Republican Nastke tells me on today's program. "We use paper ballots and paper is hundreds, if not thousands of years old. Historical documents continue to exist to this day. So, what we know is that when a voter votes on a paper ballot that there is an absolute way for the voter's intent to be determined, and properly counted."

"When New York State and the federal government mandated that we use optical scans instead, I started looking at those systems, and my question was, how do I know that that result is the right result?," says the Democrat Martin. "I'm not going to be able to see how the voting machines added up the votes. So I'm not going to know and I'm going to have to certify these results and I feel very uncomfortable doing that. So how can I know that the machine results are correct? Well, we have the paper ballots, let's count them."

"It's not a Republican or a Democrat issue," Nastke insists. "The issue is one of what's right. And what is right is that every vote is counted." Martin adds: "The fact is that I and Jason are both very, very confident in the results that we certify. And I must say that I think the voters in our county are similarly confident. The candidates whose votes --- for or against --- we are counting, are similarly confident. If we've got a candidate that lost by a few votes, and they've been here and they've watched the process, they are very confident that they did truly lose."

"It works very well because it's so bipartisan. For every Democrat who is doing something, a Republican is watching like a hawk," she says. "And it's very, very accurate. People are thrilled to see how the process works, to understand how it works, and to actually be a part of it and see what the result is."

Martin recently responded in comments here at The BRAD BLOG following my interview with Norden. She expands on some of those thoughts today, as both Commissioners explain why they --- and their respective political parties in the county --- have been able to buck national trends to agree on hand-counting ballots, rather than using unverifiable computer systems.

I ask them, among many other questions, why other counties in New York state have yet to adopt their system?; Whether they have found errors from the optical-scan computers which initially tally ballots at each precinct (as required by the state) before the hand-count takes place?; Whether they believe humans or computers are able to count ballots more accurately? (Norden had asserted that computers were more accurate during our conversation last week); Why they don't hand-count at the precinct, rather than back at County headquarters?; Could their system work in a much larger county or is hand-counting only for small jurisdictions?; And what happens in those instances when party observers don't agree on voter intent or a voter has left their intent unclear?

We first reported on Columbia County turning to 100% hand-counts back in 2012, but this is the first time either Martin or Nastke has joined me on the show! So it's great to have them! Here's a recent article on Columbia "becoming known for hand-counting votes" from one of their local papers. Look close and you'll see some films and books I've contributed to sitting in front of Martin in the paper's photo!

Please listen to the full interview on today's show...

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