On today's BradCast, we open the phone lines to callers, mainly on the Donald Trump v. Kim Jong Un madness that may get us all killed. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

As you'll recall, in an unprecedented speech by a U.S. President, Trump called Kim "Rocket Man" and threatened to "totally destroy North Korea" at the United Nations General Assembly.

That, as reported today, was apparently a surprise even to Trump's top officials, who are said to have "warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Korea’s leader at the United Nations." In turn, North Korea said they are considering a test of a hydrogen bomb above and the Pacific, and Kim issued an unprecedented first-person response, describing Trump as a "mentally deranged dotard". Trump answered back via Twitter (naturally), calling Kim a "madman". But the school yard bully act by both is far more complicated, nuanced and, yes, dangerous, as revealed in part by the full statement from Kim, which we share today.

Then, Sen. John McCain now says he's a "no" on the last-gasp desperate efforts by Senate Republicans to gut the Affordable Care Act with the wildly unpopular Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment, that would take hundreds of billions away from federal health care, and result in loss of coverage for at least 21 million Americans. Does McCain's announcement finally signal the end for the GOP's zombie-like attempt to '"repeal and replace" ObamaCare? Don't count your chickens just yet.

Also today: breaking news on the Guajataca Dam in Puerto Rico that is now reportedly failing following Hurricane Maria, and threatening tens of thousands already struggling without power in the wake of the record storm; and a 30-year old reminder from then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, of all people, that, yes, the nations of the world can come together to save the planet in the fight against deadly emissions.

Callers ring in today on all of that and more (and even on NASA's totally "fake" moon landing!) in a very lively, and occasionally chilling, BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, the "fun" from this week's United Nations General Assembly continues today, with the leaders of both Iran and North Korea pushing back against incendiary comments by the U.S. President. And the "fun" in the U.S. Senate continues as well, as the GOP frantically attempts (again) to repeal 'ObamaCare' at the very last minute. [Audio link to show follows below...]

First up, in response to Donald Trump's threat earlier in the week at the U.N. to "completely destroy" his country, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called Trump "deranged" and said he would "pay dearly" for those threats and, undoubtedly, for new financial sanctions Trump announced today via executive order. (We also discuss questions about Trump's claims regarding China with those new sanctions.)

For his part, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lashed back at Trump's characterization of Iran as a "murderous regime" and a "corrupt dictatorship", calling the remarks "ignorant, absurd and hateful" and coming from "rogue newcomers to the world of politics." And, at the same time, Trump surprised his own top cabinet officials this week by claiming he'd made a "decision" regarding the anti-nuclear arms agreement struck in 2015 with Iran (and China, Russia, France, UK and Germany), even as the US, the other nations in the deal, and the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) all agreed that Iran had fully upheld its side of the bargain to date.

If Trump is seen as willing to break that multilateral international deal --- on the heels of withdrawing from the landmark global Paris Climate Agreement --- should any nation in the world, much less North Korea, even consider making a deal with the U.S. and Donald Trump? We discuss.

Then, Republicans in the U.S. Senate are frantically hoping to pass a bill to finally repeal the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare") before the end of next week, when Senate rules will make it much harder, if not impossible, to do so. The latest attempt, the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill, would take billions of dollars from so-called "blue states" that expanded Medicaid and radically increased the number of insured citizens under ObamaCare, and give those dollars to "red states" instead --- before tossing Medicaid recipients in all states over a cliff in 2027.

Financial journalist and author DAVID DAYEN of The Nation and The Intercept (and everywhere else) joins us today to detail what he describes as the "shocking dishonesty" of the particularly hypocritical sales pitch Republican sponsors of the legislation are deploying in hopes of boondoggling lawmakers and the public in a desperate bid to justify passage of the unpopular scheme. We also discuss/debate why the Senate GOP is so eager to pass legislation that will result in the loss of health care for millions, including many of their own voters, and whether Republicans in the U.S. House will be willing to go along with it.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report' following the record Hurricane Maria's devastating landfall on Puerto Rico, the latest catastrophic earthquake in Mexico, and more fallout from world leaders following Trump's address at the U.N...

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We shine a spotlight on a whole lot of hypocrisy --- both corporate and political --- on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first, we begin with the seeming unending string of natural disasters slamming North America of late. After a quick riposte from French President Emmanuel Macron in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's failure at the U.N. General Assembly to mention "climate change" or his withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement on Tuesday --- even as yet another Category 5 hurricane was about to slam the U.S. --- we cover the latest on several ongoing disasters. In Mexico, hundreds are dead and as many as a thousand still unaccounted for following Tuesday's catastrophic earthquake. And, in Puerto Rico, the power is out across the entire island after the record winds and rain of Hurricane Maria slammed ashore early on Wednesday, putting some 3.5 million U.S. citizens in dire danger.

Then, amidst all of that, Republicans continue their last ditch frantic attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare before a deadline will make it much more difficult to do so at the end of the month. That, despite the Affordable Care Act's continuing success in helping to provide medical care to tens of millions of Americans, and the fact that the latest GOP repeal scheme will seriously hurt those in both 'red' and 'blue' states with enormous cuts to health care funding and the gutting of many long-sought protections offered by the Affordable Care Act.

Most galling, perhaps, is the hypocrisy of Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (pictured above), one of the new bill's lead sponsors and a doctor himself. Cassidy had publicly promised, during the last round of GOP attempts to gut ObamaCare, that he would vote against any scheme that did not pass what he dubbed at the time as "The Jimmy Kimmel Test". That was a reference to the touching story regarding the late night comedian's son who was born with congenital heart disease during the previous attempts by Republicans to kill the ACA earlier this year.

On Tuesday night, at the top of his show, Kimmel offered a sharp and very well-informed response to Cassidy's hypocrisy. We share that accurate response on today's show.

Finally, speaking of remarkable hypocrisy, we're joined by investigative journalist RACHEL LEVEN of The Center for Public Integrity to discuss her new exposé this week, with Jamie Smith Hopkins, documenting dozens of major U.S. corporations --- from Google to eBay to Walmart to Coca-Cola to General Electric and more --- who publicly declared their "opposition" to Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, even while those very same companies invested millions of dollars in a Republican political group leading the fight to kill the Obama plan meant to meet the emissions reduction standards under the landmark global pact...

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Today on The BradCast, its yet another day with an impossibly huge number of important breaking news stories to cover. But we try. Along with some conversation about a potential ray of sunlight for Democrats. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, the President of the United States threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea and called its leader names from the dias, during his first address to a U.N. General Assembly today. Donald Trump went on to call Iran a "rogue nation", describing the deal struck between between Iran and six other nations (U.S., Russia, China, France, Germany and UK) to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, "an embarrassment" and "the worst" agreement the U.S. has ever made.

Allies and adversaries alike pushed back at the U.S. President. * North Korea dismissed "impotent threats by international shouting magnate Donald Trump...as the twitchings of a Dog licking its flea-riddled scrotum"; Iran's President charged the U.S. would "pay a high price" if it withdraws from the nuclear pact by losing both "trust and credibility" with the rest of the world; and France's Emmanuel Macron chided Trump for failing to mention climate change (speaking of hard-fought agreements that Trump hopes to abandon) during his address, and said that if the U.S. renounced the nuclear deal with Iran, which the French President described as "essential for peace", it would be a "grave error".

Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats and health care advocates are sounding the alarm about the latest frantic Republican attempt in the U.S. Senate to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act before the option to do so with only 50 votes is over at the end of this month. The latest Senate GOP scheme is a bill that would end ObamaCare's premium subsidies and expansion of Medicaid by handing limited block grants to states who, they say, should decide how health care money is best spent. Despite that, one Republican Senator is attempting to add an amendment to the measure that would bar all states from using those federal grants for a single-payer type system, if they so choose.

All of that, just after Vermont's independent Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a "Medicare-for-All" bill last week with the support of 16 Senate Democrats. We're joined today by TPM's Editor-at-Large JOHN JUDIS to discuss the politics behind Sanders' plan, whether its aspirational goals outweigh its "political dangers", and if it might serve to help the Democratic Party overcome the "thinktank incrementalism" in which, Judis charges, the party has long been mired.

"Health care is something that really should not be in the hands of private corporations that deal with health care in order to make a profit for their stockholders [and] raise the incomes of their executives," Judis argues. "And I think a lot of Americans are coming to feel that way. And, in fact, I think we've felt this way since 1948. It's a longstanding issue in America."

While detailing political perils that Dems will face in pressing the measure and noting that he doesn't believe that support of Medicare-for-All should necessarily be a "litmus test" for every Democrat running for office, Judis explains why "a vision, a horizon to look beyond" is very important to the Democratic Party which, he says, has "been bereft of a kind of visionary component" for many decades. It is the "responsibility of a party to put forward what people might want and not just what you could achieve in Congress over the next month, or year, or two years."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as Hurricane Maria devastates the Caribbean in Irma's path, Trump continues to deny the link between climate and extreme weather, his Administration prepares to shrink a number of national monuments, and as the UN celebrates 30 years since the wildly successful Montreal Protocol pact began curbing global CFC emissions that had been destroying Earth's ozone layer. Also, late news on the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck central Mexico today, collapsing buildings and, so far, killing at least than 120 people...

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* CORRECTION: Oh, noes! Even I got punked this time on today's show by fake news! That quote above from the "DPRK News Service", as good and North Korean sounding as it may be, is actually from a parody account! Though, as Washington Post has reported, it's a very persuasive one that larger news outlets than me have taken as real in the past! So, I guess I'll take some solace from that. Sorry for the error!

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On today's BradCast, we finally catch up on a whole bunch of stories previously postponed "due to weather", and a bunch of new stories today, on North Korea, London terror attacks and our President's disturbing response to both. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Among the many stories covered on today program:

• First, some good news (before everything else goes to hell), a federal court blocks Attorney General Jeff Sessions' attempt to withhold DoJ funding from so-called "sanctuary cities";
• North Korea's latest missile test bodes ominously, but there is a potential way to avoid war, if officials are smart enough to use it;
• Another terror attack in London today and, as Scotland Yard and Prime Minister Theresa May described it, Trump's very "unhelpful" response to it;
• Speaking of terror, Donald Trump is very quick to comment on alleged Muslim terror attacks, but both he (and the corporate media) are very good at ignoring and/or downplaying domestic acts of terror by white people with guns, including a deadly high school shooting this week in suburban Washington and one of the worst mass murders in a decade this week in suburban Texas.
• The growing cost to the U.S. economy of Harvey, Irma and other increasingly intense storms (another may hit the U.S. in the coming week) --- and the ever-increasing costs of ignoring climate change altogether;
• More on the massive Equifax hack;
• Hundreds of thousands of voter files left unprotected online (again), this time in Alaska;
• The election office in Ohio largest county, with voted ballots inside, was discovered completely unlocked and vacant, just days before a municipal election;
• Both bad and good news out of the California state legislature, including the success of a Dem-supported bill (AB 840) that will make election fraud easier to carry out by keeping nearly 40% of the state's ballots from being subject to any post-election hand "audits" (if you're in the state, feel free to contact Gov. Jerry Brown to ask him to veto it!) and the passage of a different bill that Donald Trump won't like at all;

And, finally today, a few pieces of listener mail, also both good and bad, at the end of another insane week in these United States...

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On today's BradCast: The Art of the Scammer; the Equifax outrage, and Dems work to win back the populist Left. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Donald Trump is working very hard to have it both ways since reversing Barack Obama's Executive Order last week on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA). The program had served to protect some 800,000 children of undocumented immigrants, brought here through no fault of their own, from deportation. On Wednesday night, following dinner with the President, Democratic Congressional leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi announced they had struck an agreement with Trump to pass DACA legislatively, in exchange for more border security, as long as it didn't include Trump's long-promised border wall with Mexico.

Trump has been flip-flopping and flop-flipping on that reported deal ever since, pretending that his wall is already being built, and trying to otherwise appease his angry(ish) base at the same time he's apparently trying to close a deal with both Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress.

Then, we're joined by blogger GAIUS PUBLIUS to discuss his coverage of last week's massive Equifax data breach, including what you can and should do to protect yourself in its wake, and whether the massive credit monitoring firm will face any accountability at all for what they did to help cause --- and cover up --- the hack which reportedly exposed the personal information of some 143 million Americans.

We also discuss Sen. Bernie Sanders' single-payer "Medicare-for-All" health care bill, introduced in the U.S. Senate this week, with the co-sponsorship of some 16 Senate Democrats, many of whom are thought to be 2020 Presidential contenders. What does the sudden popularity of "Medicare-for-All" in both the U.S. Senate and House signal for Democrats? And will their tepid steps towards economic populism help turn the tide for them at the national level in 2018 and 2020?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, on the long tail of catastrophic devastation left behind by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey. And, as if all of that isn't enough, also today: Yet another hurricane comes ashore in Mexico (their second in the past week), and North Korea launches another ballistic missile over Japan...

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On today's BradCast, the corporate media fall for it again. They always do. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past several days, following Donald Trump's agreement last week with the Democratic Congressional leadership to extend the nation's debt ceiling (to pay our bills!) and continuing funding the government for another three months, the corporate media have been falling over themselves to declare "Trump the Independent" (AP)! A President who is "upending 150 years of two-party rule" (NYTimes) and out-Bull Moosing even Theodore Roosevelt as a "populist dealmaker able to cut through the mores of Washington to get things done" (WaPo), as he finally carves out a "bi-partisan path" forward!

We open the phone lines today to tons of callers to see if they're buying that ridiculous narrative from an easily-played corporate media any more than I am.

Also today, as we try to begin catching up with some important news that has otherwise gotten washed away in recent days by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, the Virginia Board of Elections has finally decertified the easily-manipulated, oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems used in some 22 voting jurisdictions in the state. The race is now on, in advance of their gubernatorial election this November, to replace them with verifiable paper ballots systems.

Then, after more calls on that as well, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with the continuing aftermath of the devastating and deadly Irma disaster, and a few folks who are pushing back against climate change denialism from several different surprising places...

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On today's BradCast: Climate mayhem unleashed in the Atlantic; Legal push-back against Trump's latest anti-immigrant policy; and much more. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On the heels of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, one of the most ferocious Category 5 storms ever tracked in the Atlantic, is wreaking catastrophic devastation to Caribbean island nations as it remains on target to slam south Florida (including Trump's Mar-a-Lago) over the weekend, before creating a "buzz saw" up Florida's East Coast and into Georgia and the Carolinas. All signs suggest this is going to be exceedingly bad for the continental U.S. as well, particularly where developers successfully lobbied to ensure new construction along coastal Florida only needed to be able to withstand Category 3 hurricanes. Desi Doyen joins us for details on the reported damage and what officials and experts fear is still to come.

Then, we're joined by MAYRA JOACHIN, staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, to discuss the lawsuits filed by her organization and 15 state Attorneys General against Donald Trump's reversal of Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Joachin details the lawsuits' allegations that the Trump Administration is in violation of federal law for overturning, without a compelling governmental reason, the previous Administration's program that protected nearly one million children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

"The Administrative Procedure Act prohibits any reversals of longstanding policies on which individuals have relied. DACA is a program that almost 800,000 individuals have benefited from. This program has enabled them to secure a job, to advance their educational goals, to obtain access to items such as a home, or to purchase a car, that they wouldn't have been able to attain without the DACA program," she explains. "This program has been in existence for now five years, and it was in place for about seven months since the Trump Administration took office. And throughout this time frame, individuals have constantly relied on a promise that they would be able to obtain temporary deferred action because of the DACA program. And the reversal of this policy without any adequate reason for doing so is a violation of federal law."

An immigrant herself from Central America, Joachin also speaks to how the new Trump policy has shaken the immigrant community. "There's fear. Fear in the fact that these individuals who will start phasing out of the DACA program can be picked up by immigration agencies and placed into removal procedures," she tells me. "These are individuals --- many of them for decades in the United States and who call the United States their home --- there's a fear as to what can happen to their relatives. Fear as to what will happen to their employment opportunities --- will they be able to secure a job? --- even though many of these individuals have worked hard for years, they've pursued advanced educational degrees, and are now facing the reality that, as of March 6th, many of them will no longer be able to be employed under federal regulations."

Joachin, whose work at NILC focuses on health insurance coverage for immigrants, also discusses how, even though federal law has not (yet) changed regarding the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), many in immigrant community are now afraid to exercise their rights when it comes to health care coverage, given the Trump Administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric. But, she also says she sees "a small glimmer of hope". You'll have to tune in to find out why.

Among the other stories also covered on today's very busy show: Right behind Irma is Hurricane Jose, now a Category 3 storm, and taking a similar same path toward some of the same Caribbean islands just ravaged by Irma; The U.S. West is being ravaged by heat and wildfires; Post-Harvey Houston is being ravaged by massive benzene releases by fossil fuel companies; A lawsuit has been filed against Texas by first responders after the state withheld information on dangerous chemicals stored at a facility that blew up during Harvey's worst flooding; And, as if all of that is not enough, breaking news at the end of today's show on the social security numbers and other personal information of some 143 million Americans (about half the country!) reportedly breached and stolen from the credit monitoring firm Equifax....

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On today's BradCast: As bad it's all been, it's about to get much worse, as the devastation from Harvey continues and as Congress returns to session following the Labor Day holiday. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up today: What we know and don't (and why we don't) about the explosions at a swamped chemical plant north of Houston; Russia warns the U.S. that further sanctions against North Korea would be "dangerous"; U.S. continues diplomatic tit-for-tat with Russia by ordering several more diplomatic facilities closed, and; Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now reportedly working with NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in their criminal probes of Team Trump in what could serve as an end run around Donald Trump's pardon power of his associates at the federal level, and even a hedge against the possibility of the President removing the Special Counsel from his post in some way.

Then, as horrible as August has been on so many levels, TPM Congressional reporter ALICE OLLSTEIN joins us for some breaking news, and to explain why September could be even worse as Congress reconvenes next week following Summer recess, with "a nightmarishly short calendar during which they must pass a host of bills" to, among other things, approve a budget to keep the government from shutting down and avoid a federal default by raising the debt ceiling.

That, along with the need to fund disaster relief for Harvey, reauthorize children's healthcare and the national flood insurance programs by the end of the month, amid ongoing feuds between Trump and GOP Congressional leadership while the President threatens to shutdown the government if Congress fails to fund his border wall, almost assure what Ollstein characterizes as "The September From Hell".

Even if we had a "Congress who generally got along, and generally got along with the President," Ollstein tells me, "it would have been so hard to pass all of these bills that are coming up. But we don't have that. We have a President who is attacking members of his own party --- leaders in his own party --- and the opposing party. We have a lot of bad blood."

Add to it all the Trump/GOP hopes of passing huge tax cuts ("an even heavier lift than health care reform," she says) and today's late breaking news from Ollstein, fresh off a call with the Health and Human Services Dept. announcing the Administration plans to slash the Affordable Care Act's advertising budget by 90% in advance of this year's truncated Open Enrollment period, and it all amounts to not only a September from Hell, but likely a rest-of-the-year from same.

Enjoy the upcoming holiday weekend if possible, but buckle up thereafter, as Ollstein warns: "We thought it couldn't get any crazier than August, but get ready."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with more coverage of the ongoing devastation from Harvey, before we finish up with some actually very good news concerning nuclear power, solar power, and the nation's largest utility company...

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On today's BradCast: The President is an extraordinarily accomplished liar, and real journalist should unambiguously report as much. And, oh, yeah, he doesn't give an actual damn about coal miners or their families, either. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, following Donald Trump's wildly unhinged and indescribably embarassing campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, a few words on the unapologetic liar who has become President of the United States, and the responsibility that journalists have --- not just "commentators", but actual, hard news journalists --- to call him out as such.

Then, the UN calls out the United States with an "early warning" regarding the rise of racist demonstrations and the failure of "high-level politicians" --- wonder who they're referring to? --- "to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech". And, a science envoy at the U.S. State Department publicly resigns following Trump's response to Charlottesville and the Administrations' ongoing War on Science.

Then, speaking of that "war", we're joined by West Virginia's own Bob Kincaid of the Coal River Mountain Watch, in response to the Interior Department's halt of a study by the National Academies of Sciences regarding the dangers of Mountain Top Removal coal mining to residents of West Virginia and Kentucky's Appalachian communities. Kincaid, co-founder of the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Campaign (click the link to watch their :30 second video, and get more info about contacting your members of Congress!) is furious over what he describes as an attempt by the Administration and the coal industry to keep the well-established science linking Mountain Top Removal to cancer, death and birth defects from becoming widely known.

"It's not really mountain top removal," Kincaid tells me, explaining the process that is killing not only coal miners and their families, but their jobs as well. "It's mountain removal. You take vast amounts of...high explosives...and then you set it off. Huge clouds of dust then boil off the strip mine site and roll down into the hollers and into the valleys, and onto the places where people live, who then breathe it. Nothing in the human body can stop the dust. Because it's so fine, it's so tiny."

He goes on to explain how this has now been done "to over 500 mountains. They've buried over 2,500 miles of streams. That causes poisons to run into the water, etc., etc., etc. Over 2 dozens reports have shown that there are vastly elevated rates of cancer, birth defects, genitourinary diseases, pulmonary diseases, heart diseases, in areas where this dust falls."

And, he says, even though it was the state of West Virginia which requested the National Academies' study in the first place, the state's two U.S. Senators (Republican Shelly Moore-Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin), not to mention its Repub-turned-Dem-turned-Repub coal billionaire Governor Jim Justice, have been "as silent as a graven image," after the Interior Department halted this study of those "over 2 dozen" studies late last week. "It's sort of like 'Home on the Range', where never is heard a discouraging word, and the coal dust isn't toxic all day."

"You wind up getting this downright un-American suppression of science," tells me. "I'm not kidding. This isn't American! We used to follow science. It's not always been this way. This suppression is the kind of stuff they do in North Korea or the old Soviet Union."

Finally today, breaking news on yet another federal court ruling (it's either the 6th or the 8th, I can't even remember anymore!) finding the Texas GOP's Photo ID voting restriction intentionally discriminates against minority voters, and an all-electric Tesla SUV(!) smokes a half-million dollar Lamborghini in a record-setting drag race...

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On today's BradCast: Digging deeper and/or trying to catch up with the runaway news on North Korea, Charlottesville and Trump's continuing threats to radically undermine the Affordable Care Act. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the (many) stories covered on today's show:

• A faint glimmer of hope for peace --- or at least diplomacy --- breaks out in the U.S./North Korea nuclear standoff, as all sides (including South Korea) suggest options that could help to avert disaster;
• Trump digs himself deeper by using a somewhat insane press conference on Tuesday at Trump Tower to equate the "alt-left" (his words) with White Nationalists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville over the weekend, even while claiming (over and over again) that his previously criticized remarks were only due to the fact that he insists on getting his facts straight before speaking. "Unlike you," he said to the assembled press, over and over, without irony, "before I make a statement, I like to know the facts." (Insert your own joke here);
• New reporting reveals an FBI and DHS intelligence report warned the Trump Administration in May about the threat of violent Rightwing domestic terrorism far out-pacing that of Islamic (or any other form of) terrorism in the U.S., at the same time the Administration was deciding to block a previously announced grant to a group that helps people escape the grip of White Nationalist groups. (Following up our conversation on yesterday's show with former neo-Nazi Tony McAleer of Life After Hate, the group whose grant was withdrawn);
• More CEO's remove themselves and their companies from the President's Manufacturing Council in protest of his response to the tragic violence in Charlottesville over the weekend. (By the end of the show today, the number went from four to six);
• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issues a report [PDF] today finding that Trump's threats of withholding funding to insurance companies meant to cover costs for low-income consumers under the Affordable Care Act ('ObamaCare'), could spike all individual premium rates by 20 percent in 2018, force companies to stop selling insurance at all in certain regions, and raise the federal deficit by nearly $200 billion over the next decade.

All of that (and more) may explain why Trump's approval ratings hit new, all-time lows this week. Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast, the Trump Administration continues to destabilize both the Korean Peninsula and the U.S. health care insurance markets. [Audio link to show follows below.]

President Trump continued to increase his threatening rhetoric against North Korea (and to play the victim himself, as is his wont) on Friday, even as experts on the region see little new in the North's own bluster and saber-rattling. Instead, they worry that the Trump Administration's own unpredictable rhetoric and instability could lead to a misunderstanding or miscommunication that could, itself, result in military action by either side, the results of which could be catastrophic.

Still, there remain diplomatic ways out, via Russia and China, from the seemingly deadly collision course, so long as those options are not closed off by Trump. There are even direct, ongoing back-channel communications between representatives of both the US and NK, as reported on our previous show and confirmed today by the Associated Press.

Then, on the heels of the recently failed Republican attempt in Congress to repeal and/or replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA or 'ObamaCare'), new polling finds the public strongly prefers that Congress and the President move on to other issues, shore up funding for the ObamaCare exchanges where needed, and will otherwise hold both Republicans and the Administration responsible for further problems with U.S. health care coverage.

Nonetheless, the Trump Administration continues to take deliberate measures to undermine the landmark federal health care law, even as those actions have resulted in double-digit increases in premiums rates for 2018 across the country --- including for non-ObamaCare customers --- according to insurers. To date, the Administration has sabotaged the ACA by cutting the length of the open enrollment period in half, has cancelled advertising to let the public know about it, has used those resources instead on propaganda to attack the federal law, has ended some $20 million in contracts for in-person sign-up assistance in 18 under-served cities, and has threatened to end Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) payments to insurers for low-income individuals which, according to my guest today, could "send the market into a tailspin" if the President makes good on those threats.

Today, we are joined by Congressional reporter ALICE OLLSTEIN of Talking Points Memo to discuss her new exclusive revealing yet another way in which the Administration appears to be radically undermining the continuing success of the ACA, this time in the vastly under-served Latino community.

In this case, Ollstein explains, "It's more about what they are not doing." She explains that, at this time last year, and in previous years in advance of the annual open enrollment period beginning in November, hundreds of health care advocacy groups "were really revving up with tons of outside groups, and corporations, and religious organizations, health organizations, to get the word out and work with the government to promote information about open enrollment."

This year, however, after speaking with dozens of such groups, she says "every single one said" they have heard nothing from the government. "And I found a very stark pattern, particularly with the groups that focused on Latino enrollment," she tells me. "Latinos have the highest rate of un-insurance out of any racial demographic. They also disproportionately live in states like Texas and Florida that did not expand Medicaid. Those partnerships for outreach, leading up to open enrollment, are so far not happening this year."

The results, she reports, could be disastrous not only for the Latino Community, but for the health care market itself around the country. We also discuss what Trump and both Congressional Republicans and Democrats are considering for their various next steps regarding federal health care law.

[Update 8/14/2017: Ollstein follows up her exclusive with another, finding that it's not only Latino groups which had previously partnered with the government, but are now being ignored by the White House in the lead up to the open enrollment period.]

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report before late-breaking news on Trump's announcement that he is now also considering military action against Venezuela...

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On today's BradCast, there's at least one place in the country where time seems to have stopped and Donald Trump remains wildly popular. But that place isn't Washington D.C. right now. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Some Republicans in the U.S. Senate are finally beginning to separate themselves from the historically unpopular President Trump and his similarly unpopular agenda. They've even taken steps to try and keep Trump from removing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and hiring someone willing to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the August Senate recess and thereafter.

With Trump's approval ratings plummeting, even in Rightwing polls that Trump used to favorably cite (as recently as June), GOPers like Arizona's Senator Jeff Flake, whose own approval rating is now even lower than Trump's, are now hoping to distance themselves from the President, in Flake's case, even after recently voting with him to take health care away from tens of million of Americans.

But not everyone is cutting ties with Trump. In fact, West Virginia's wealthiest man --- and, not coincidentally, its newly-elected Governor and longtime coal baron --- Jim Justice, changed his party affiliation this week from Democratic to Republican. And he announced it at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Thursday night.

We're joined today by 9th generation West Virginian BOB KINCAID, host of Head-On Radio and President of Coal River Mountain Watch, to explain Justice's flip and why so many in the state still believe in Trump.

"Jim Justice earned his money the old fashioned way --- he inherited it," quips the always-colorful Kincaid, noting many more of the Governor's very Trump-like characteristics. Kincaid warned Democrats long ago about Justice, whose flip, he tells me, is "almost a killing stroke for the now-moribund West Virgina Democratic Party."

"Trump's approval ratings may be in the toilet in the rest of the country, but they're not in the toilet here --- this is still the Trumpiest place in the world."

We also discuss the surprising votes by both of WV's U.S. Senators (Republican Shelly Moore-Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin) during the Senate's recent attempt to repeal ObamaCare. ("Joe Manchin getting something right can be filed under 'even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then,'" the progressive Kincaid says. As to unseating him next year in a primary, he handicaps the odds, and details what would occur if it did, beginning with the phrase: "If pigs grew wings, and sheep were perched in trees, and leprechauns rode across the open plain on three-legged unicorns, and a progressive actually beat Joe Manchin in the primary...")

Tune in for the always-delightful visit from our old friend and longtime Coal Country hero on all of that, and more, including an update from the front lines now that the pretend "War on Coal" is finally over and, as Trump will tell you lie to you, tens of thousands of coal jobs have finally returned!

Lastly today, Desi Doyen joins us for a shocking amount of encouraging news in our 799th(!) Green News Report, including several setbacks for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and a major oil company CEO who's now buying an electric car as he sees the world moving to renewable energy and the end quickly nearing for Big Oil...

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On today's BradCast: How hackers in Las Vegas over the weekend confirmed what we've been yelling and screaming about for nearly 15 years. Namely, every single computer voting, tabulation and registration system used in the U.S. is absurdly vulnerable to manipulation that would likely go undetected unless hand-marked paper ballots exist and are actually counted, by hand, by human beings. [Audio link to full show posted below at end of article.]

At the annual hackers convention in Vegas known as DefCon, thirty voting system computers (both voting machines and electronic pollbooks) were made available to attendees to crack at will! And, boy howdy, did they! Every single system was reportedly compromised in some fashion by the end of the weekend --- several of them fell within just minutes of opening DefCon's so-called "Voting Machine Hacking Village".

We're joined today for some of the amazing details on what happened in Vegas (in hopes that it doesn't just stay there!) by DR. DAVID JEFFERSON, a longtime computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Chair of the Board of Directors at VerifiedVoting.org. Jefferson, who has a been a pioneer in the field of voting system security for some 20 years, serving as an advisor to five successive Secretaries of State in California (both Republican and Democratic) also presented at the wildly popular DefCon "Voting Village".

"It was a wild time, I have to tell ya. This hacking village was set up --- really, in just six weeks it came together --- and in that short a time, they managed to gather all these voting machines," he says. It was quite a contrast from the "cloak and dagger" days when folks like us had to obtain voting machines from secret sources to share with independent investigators in order to have any kind of independent analysis of system vulnerabilities.

"That room was just crowded from morning to night," Jefferson says, describing the room at DefCon. "And the amazing thing is that all of those successful hacks, these were by people who, most of them, had never seen a voting machine before, and certainly not the system sitting in front of them, and they had not met each other before. They didn't come with a full set of tools that were tailored toward attacking these machines. They just started with a piece of hardware in front of them and their own laptops and ingenuity, attacking the various systems. And it was amazing how quickly they did it!"

Jefferson tells me, after all of these years, he is now seeing a major difference among the public, as well as election and elected officials (a number of whom were also in attendance), regarding the decades-long concerns by experts about electronic voting, tabulation and registration systems.

"I am seeing a kind of sea change here. For the first time, I am sensing that election officials, and the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI, and the intelligence community, and Congress, and the press, are suddenly, after the 2016 election experience, receptive to our message that these systems are extremely vulnerable and it's a serious national security issue. As you know, in a democracy, the legitimacy of government depends on free and fair and secure elections. And people are beginning to realize that we haven't had those for a long time."

He explains how hacking methods attributed by many to Russians following the 2016 elections "are the same methods that anyone on Earth could use --- insiders, criminal syndicates, nation-states other than Russia, as well, or our own political partisans. The fear, of course, is that these hacking attempts will be totally undetectable. But even if they are detectable, it's difficult often to determine who did it, whether it's an insider, or a domestic partisan, or some foreign organization."

He also confirms what I've been trying to point out since the 2016 election, that despite officials continuously claiming that no voting results were changed by anyone, be it Russia or anybody else, "they cannot know that. They simply can't know. Certainly in those states where there are no paper ballots, such as in Georgia, for example, it's impossible for them to know. And even in states where there are, if they don't go back and either recount the paper ballots, or at least recount a random sample of them, no, they can't know either."

"Election officials have fooled themselves into believing the claims of their [private voting machine] vendors that the systems are secure from all kinds of attack. And it's just never been true," Jefferson argues.

But will the weekend's short order hacks of every voting system presented at DefCon actually help the U.S. to finally move toward systems that are overseeable by the public? And what does that mean, exactly? Is replacing old computer election systems --- many of which still run on no-longer-supported software like Windows 2000 --- with new ones the answer? Are paper ballots, which voting systems experts call for, enough? Particularly given that we saw, after the 2016 election, how it's nearly impossible, even for a Presidential candidate, to see those ballots publicly hand-counted ("Democracy's Gold Standard") in order to confirm results?

"We have to change the way we think about securing elections. Instead of trying to harden the voting systems themselves against all forms of attack --- I think that is going to be a hopeless task for as far into the future as computer scientists can see. Instead of hardening those systems themselves, we need to design systems so that after the election is over we can verify that the results were correct. And then if they're not, we have to be able to change the results accordingly. So the emphasis is on detection and correction, not prevention."

I hash all of that out and much more with my friend Dr. Jefferson today, who also details DefCon's plans to make the "Voting Village" a permanent fixture of its annual convention, which just spectacularly wrapped up its 25th year.

Also on today's show: Trump fires his incoming White House Communications Director Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci before he even officially begins in his new role, and the mop-up from last week's health care repeal disaster for Republicans in the Senate continues, as the White House demands the U.S. Senate vote on nothing else until they can vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite a new poll finding Americans want Congress to move on, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders vowing to introduce a single-payer healthcare bill in the U.S. Senate...

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On today's BradCast, an insane week in D.C. ends with a dramatic flourish (or two). [Audio link to show follows below.]

Unprecedented chaos besetting U.S. Senate Republicans over the past week, amidst their 7-year quest to kill the Affordable Care Act, came to a suspenseful and dramatic close late on Thursday night and early Friday morning --- as the ailing Sen. John McCain joined Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to defeat the last of the GOP proposals drafted in haste in hopes of repealing ObamaCare. At least for now. If there's one thing you can count on, Republicans will continue to treat their voters like suckers and morons.

And, an insane, profanity-filled tirade of a phone call to a reporter by Donald Trump's new White House Communications Director results not in the firing of Anthony Scaramucci, but with the firing of Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

In the meantime, while Democrats, to their credit, were successful in their efforts to save health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans, their efforts to prevent the use of vaping devices, which might otherwise help save the lives of half a million Americans each year, suffers a setback as the FDA delays restrictions on e-cigarettes and yet another new scientific study finds vaping is one of the most effective ways to help smokers quit.

Finally, speaking of science deniers, our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen details U.S. Coast Guard plans to prepare for six feet of sea level rise and the GOP chair of the U.S. House Science Committee argues that climate change will actually be "beneficial". But, never fear, we've got quite a bit of good news in today's GNR as well!...

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