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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Even prior to last Friday's announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics trumpeting the higher-than-expected 295,000 jobs added in February, helping to drop the unemployment rate to 5.5%, the GOP lie that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare") was a "job-killer" was already quite apparent.

Why are elected officials not held accountable when they are so demonstrably wrong? Or, worse, why are they treated by the media as if they are serious people, when clearly they are not?

On March 17, 2010, just five days before Obama signed the ACA into law, as Forbes' Dan Diamond reminded us last week, even before the huge new job numbers came in, House Speaker John Boehner reiterated what pretty much every Republican opponent of Obamacare had been reciting for months by that time...

The courageous 'Tea Party' leader and former County Sheriff who hid behind the women on the 'front lines of freedom' at the Bundy Ranch last year, is now asking the public to pay for much needed health care for both himself and his wife. Via TPM...

Well, huh. If only the tens of millions of Americans who were unable to receive health care prior to enactment of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), had just made a public name for themselves and then created GoFundMe sites to convince others to give them money to help pay for their care.

Others paying money to help their fellow countrymen receive health care. Now where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah. Too bad Mack appears to have been too much of a dumbass to sign up for Obamacare following his heart attack in January and prior to the close of this year's open enrollment period. We suspect he would have received great care at an affordable rate.

In case you don't recognize the name, Mack is the guy who, during the wingnut uprising in support of scofflaw Nevada rancher/bigot Cliven Bundy last year, discussed the Tea Partiers' courageous plan to use their wives as human shields. "We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front," Mack told Fox "News". "If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers."

Here's hoping both he and his wife receive the important medical care they deserve, even if other people are paying for it --- just as they would have, without begging, had Mack bothered to sign himself and his wife up for that federal tyranny known as Obamacare.

Recently, the Republicans were "outraged" by this not funny, undignified Presidential video released by BuzzFeed to help encourage Americans to sign up for health care insurance...

By way of reminder for you liberal, Obama-loving leftists out there, this is what an hilarious and dignified Presidential video looks like...

In his defense, by the time of that knee-slapping video in 2004, only about 1,300 U.S. troops had been killed by the joke. Eventually, some 4,500 of our troops would be killed by it.

If that's not hilarious and dignified, I don't know what is.

"Honest statement," "Karl Rove" and "Fox News" are three phrases that usually do not belong in the same sentence (unless it's the one I'm writing now!), but George W. Bush's aide-de-camp actually told the truth on the January 6 edition of Fox's "America's Newsroom."

As The Hill reports [emphasis added]:

Now how about that! Common Core --- a national state standards initiative for k-12 education --- was a GOP concept until a Democrat found merit in the idea, at which point it became radical-left tyranny.

The same, of course, is now true for the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare"), a scheme first proposed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation before it was later embraced by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, before Obama embraced it, so Republicans decided to pretend it was a precursor to full apocalypse.

But I can think of yet another major policy initiative that Republicans used to love until Democrats said they thought it was a good idea, too...

One of America's dumbest governors (Maine's Paul LePage) and one of its most dishonest, corrupt obnoxious (New Jersey's Chris Christie), both received a fairly stinging rebuke from a judge in Maine today, who thoroughly rejected the idiotic and dangerous attempts to quarantine medical aid worker and badass Kaci Hickox, after she recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.

"The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola," Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere, the chief judge for the Maine District Courts said in his ruling, according to AP. "The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational."

Before rejecting LePage's legal attempt to restrict her movements, LaVerdiere "thanked Hickox for her service in Africa and acknowledged the gravity of restricting someone's constitutional rights without solid science to back it up."

Hickox, who does not have Ebola, has never had Ebola, is not infectious with Ebola and is symptom-free of Ebola, "said she is following the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation of daily monitoring for fever and other signs of the disease," since returning home from her important work in West Africa.

She had been ordered quarantined by Christie in NJ upon her return, before being allowed to travel home to Maine earlier this week, where LePage has also been attempting to restrict her movements --- because both Governors are cowardly and dangerous imbeciles.

One more interesting point here...

When will this 'tyranny' end?! Out today from the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation:

Speaking of folks who think they are running for President, 2012 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan is now on a book tour in Florida getting to know the voters there and how much they enjoy the repeated budgets he's written and passed in the U.S. House that would slash trillions from social safety net programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Here's Ryan's thoughtful response, as seen in video captured today by the progressive advocacy group Americans United for Change, to one voter in Pensacola, who wanted to ask the GOP Congressman and 2016 hopeful about those cuts...

Helluva guy.

With each passing day it becomes more and more clear --- as if it wasn't from the get-go, when Republicans initially began objecting to Obama's advocacy for a Republican-created health insurance reform plan --- that the GOP's objections to "ObamaCare" have nothing to do with the plan itself and everything to do with the fact that they didn't pass it.

No matter that we'd prefer to see a single-payer plan, where every American enjoys a right to receive good health care, the Affordable Care Act's success in seeing millions of previously-uninsured Americans become insured is no longer debatable by serious people.

And now we begin seeing the upside for corporations like private hospitals as well...

Sounds terrible. No wonder Republicans are "furious" about it.

Missouri's Democratic Governor Jay Nixon had an opportunity to encourage people to quit smoking. He didn't take it. In fact, he actually made the choice to help encourage people to continue smoking, despite the fact the deadly habit kills nearly half a million people in the U.S. alone each year.

On Monday, the Governor vetoed Senate Bill 841. While the legislation would have restricted the sale of nicotine vaping products such as e-cigarettes to minors, and required sellers to receive a license from the state, it also exempted the non-lethal devices and products --- which are quickly becoming very popular as a method to quit smoking --- from existing laws and taxes levied against harmful tobacco products.

"This bill appears to be nothing more than a thinly disguised and cynical attempt to exempt e-cigarettes from taxes and regulations protecting public health," Nixon said in his veto message.

This sort of dangerous short-sightedness, unfortunately, is not unusual for Democrats, of late. It also flies in the face of both science and common sense...

It was a very independent and very activist-y BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio this week, on a whole bunch of levels.

First up: Christina Tobin, Founder & Chair of The Free & Equal Elections Foundation --- and co-moderator, with Larry King, of the 2012 Presidential Debate where all of the major candidates were invited (as opposed to to just two of them). We discussed her group and their upcoming United We Stand Fest at UCLA on May 10th, which is set to feature a ton of very cool politicians (of all parties), journalist, musicians...and me.

Next: Why Tuesday's landmark decision in a federal court in Wisconsin, striking down that state's GOP polling place Photo ID restriction law is so important to the entire nation, and why Scott Walker and a whole bunch of Republicans across the country aren't gonna like it at all.

Then: Dr. Margaret Flowers of PopularResistance.org --- a pediatrician who left her private practice in 2007 to become a full time activist and advocate for single payer health care --- tells my why, despite what I see as Obamacare's very clear success, I'm completely wrong about it, why it's a "scam" and why she's a "conscientious objector" to the Affordable Care Act.

Followed by: A few brief remarks about the crushing loss this week --- for the entire nation --- of our friend Tim Carpenter, the indefatigable and relentless co-founder of Progressive Democrats of America.

Finally: As always, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report and a preview of more fossil fuel disasters to be covered tomorrow...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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I discussed some of these points on Wednesday's BradCast, but wanted to quickly highlight each of them a bit here, since these important data points are easy to lose track of in the blizzard of news noise of late.

There remain some (many?) Democrats who are still running scared as they head into the 2014 mid-terms, cowering with fear about Rightwing attacks on "Obamacare". Evidence continues to demonstrate that those Dems should be running on what is clearly the tremendous success of the law, as written and intended (even as the Affordable Care Act itself has always been a flawed law.)

If there's any question about the success of the law on its most basic terms, as far as what it was meant to accomplish (help more Americans have access to health care), here is a very quick round-up of the law's most noteworthy milestones from just the past week, along with some rather remarkable polling numbers --- from three different surveys --- that buttress the nation's increasing approval for both the effects of the law and the Democrats who brung it to 'em...

Given that every Sunday network news show decided to completely ignore it, I thought it my duty to read the entirety of the leaked findings from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA Torture and Detention on the air during this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio.

You're welcome, war criminals!

Also on this week's show, the continually growing evidence of the success of "Obamacare" (and a caller who self-identifies as "full on Left. I'm not even liberal, I'm further Left than that", who takes me to task for citing the facts) --- and why it's time for Dems to grow a pair and start running to not just retain the Senate but also take the U.S. House.

A word or two on home-grown Rightwing extremist terrorism and the fecklessness of the Dept. of Homeland Security which, thanks to bullying from Republicanists and Fox "News", cowered from and retracted their report on same back in 2009 despite the mounting death toll ever since.

Also, a bunch of good callers and more that you'll just have to tune in to hear about, including a visit by Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report and some other stuff. Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Thanks, Obama. Looks like he's killing yet another "business" with his so-called "health care reform".

We all (well, those who don't watch Fox "News" exclusively, anyway) remember the shamefully long lines of Americans showing up at free health clinics, whenever and wherever they were set up around the country, trying to get much-needed health care in the days before the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or "Obamacare") became the law of the land.

Now that the ACA is underway and millions of Americans who could not get health care before are able to receive it, the days of the free clinic in the USA may be coming to an end.

That's what's happening to the 9th Street Mission Clinic in Mena, Arkansas, in any case, where the Director of that charitable outlet has announced that, thanks to "Obamacare", the number of clients at the once bustling clinic have dwindled to almost nothing.

"Because people are qualifying for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, our free medical clinic will not be needed anymore," the clinic's Director, Stacey Bowser RN, told The Mena Star. "We've gone from seeing around 300 people a month on a regular basis, but as people were enrolling in Obamacare, the numbers we were seeing have dropped. We were down to 80 people that came through the medical clinic in February, all the way down to three people at the medical clinic in March. Our services won't be needed anymore, and this will conclude our mission."

The paper reports that "the free medical clinic at 9th Street Ministries was started to reach out to those who could not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, and did not have any other health insurance policy."

"There was such a need for many years that we would have people coming through the medical clinic from the time the doors opened early in the morning all the way until 4:00 in the afternoon," Bowser said about the clinic where a crew of 25 to 30 volunteers was said to always been on hand to meet the needs of those without health care in rural Polk County.

"This complete dropoff of numbers of people coming to the clinic is a result of all those who have successfully enrolled in an insurance policy now," she said.

After being open since 1998, the clinic's final day of operation will be April 24th. "Obamacare" is clearly destroying America as we know it.

[Hat-tip Daily Kos via TPM.]

There are a number of reasons why it's difficult to stomach the claim that New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie is concerned about "public health". His newest proposal for a pricey new excise tax on e-cigs is just one of them.

In 2010, Christie slashed $7.5 million --- virtually all of the state's investment --- in smoking prevention and cessation support from the state's "Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program". As a result, the American Lung Association (ALA) now ranks NJ as 50th in the nation on this issue, recently noting, they are "the only state in the country to provide no state funding" for such programs.

Christie's gutting of the state's once-robust program has resulted in an "F" grade from the ALA on both "Tobacco Prevention" and "Cessation Coverage", leading them to write: "This lack of funding to help tobacco users quit is a stark contradiction with New Jersey's high tax rate of $2.70 per pack generating over $700 million each year in revenues."

Thus, it's all the more absurd to hear the "fiscally conservative" Christie administration now calling for a massive new "sin tax" on e-cigarettes, which are known to be a far safer alternative to smoking, since "vaping" includes none of the deadly toxins, such as tar and carbon monoxide, found in combustible tobacco.

But "conservative" hypocrisy aside, what makes Christie's new tax and spend plan even more absurd is that his state Treasurer is now claiming their "main concern is public health."

Really? The NJ Star-Ledger editorial board --- which endorsed Christie's re-election last year (though they came to regret it after Christie's "BridgeGate" scandal emerged) --- ain't buying it...