As we discuss on today's BradCast, our current days of political rage and divisiveness, now a very clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy itself, didn't come nowhere. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, first today, before we get to our burning country, a few news items on our burning globe. The U.N. warned on Friday that current pledges from the nations of the world to cut emissions will not be enough to stave off cataclysmic global warming by century's end. In California, meanwhile, we're seeing disaster play out already. The majestic, 3,000 year old giant trees of Sequoia National Park may not even make it through the weekend. The world's largest tree, a tourist favorite at the park known as General Sherman, and others like it are now literally being wrapped in tinfoil-like blankets as wildfires rage just about one mile from the historic and beloved grove as of airtime.

Of course, if we can't even get our own country to come together to fight against the clear and present existential threat of climate change, one wonders how hundreds of nations will be able to do so to save the planet. On the other hand, worsening political divisiveness --- and insanity --- in this country plays no small role in our failure to lead the world in that fight for humanity itself.

But how did the U.S. arrive at this harrowing political moment? One where more Republicans (75%) than Democrats (46%) believe democracy itself is under attack? Given that Republicans literally attacked the U.S. Capitol, the seat of American democracy, in a violent effort to prevent Congress from carrying out its most solemn, democratic Constitutional duty of certifying a Presidential election just months ago, there is no small irony in the new polling finding that it's those on the Right, even more than the Left, who have somehow been made to believe democracy is under attack.

Where would they get such a seemingly upside-down notion? "With every passing day, it looks less like we have one nation divided by differing political beliefs and more like we have two warring countries battling each other within shared borders," writes author David Rothkopf today in a lengthy, intriguing (and maddening) Twitter thread. "One side represents and seeks to preserve the United States. The other seeks to destroy it."

A fascinating, exhaustive, 6,000-word investigative essay published in this month's Mother Jones magazine on "The Real Source of America's Rising Rage", written by our guest today, longtime blogger KEVIN DRUM of Jabberwocking.com, looks at what the data reveal about the madness of this political moment and how and why we arrived at it.

"I started looking at when did this start? Because that's critical," Drum tells me on today's show. "When did people really start getting so angry? On a whole range of topics, the year 2000 --- give or take a few years --- kept coming up, over and over and over. And the most important way it came up, I thought, was if you take a look at trust in government. We all know that that's been going down --- people trust government less. But if you look at the data, it was pretty flat from about 1980 or so to 2000. And then, starting around 2000 or so, it started going down, down, down to only 20% who now say they have any trust in government, and it stayed there."

"What happened around the year 2000 that could have caused this?," he wondered, as he read through study after study. What happened since that time to cause such a sea change among Americans? Was it the rise and spread of conspiracy theories? Has social media or talk radio sent us over the edge? Or have things really gotten worse in America on the many grievances those on the Right often cite, such as crime, taxes, the economy, inequality, immigration or race?

After spending several years combing through data and theories, Drum finds, while some of those things certainly play a role, none of them are actually the poison that that has brought the nation to the seeming brink of political collapse. He explains how both data and history prove it, and how the real answer has been lying in plain sight for the past twenty years. It's the Fox 'News', stupid!

And, by the way, if Fox is the problem, what might be the solution? We discuss that a bit on today's enlightening program as well...

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On today's BradCast: Talk radio con-man Rush Limbaugh may now be dead, but his toxic legacy lives on in virtually every element of the nation's poisoned body politic. The consequences are all too apparent even today amid the deadly winter storm that has knocked out power across Texas and the avalanche of new voter suppression laws being pushed by Republicans following their loss of the White House in 2020. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

First up today, after three decades of brainwashing a generation of Americans by dominating the nation's public airwaves with far-right, racist, misogynistic, extremist propaganda and lies, Limbaugh is dead from lung cancer at the age of 70.  Using his considerable broadcasting skills to pump dishonest evil into the brains of gullible listeners, he endangered the nation and the planet itself by scamming an entire segment of the populace to the theoretical benefit of the Republican Party that he may have helped to ultimately destroy. I've got a few thoughts on that today.

Next, the influence of Limbaugh reverberates throughout the crisis facing millions of Texans  who are, right now, continuing to face freezing conditions without power (and water in some cases) for days, thanks to the 1999 deregulation of the power grid in Texas by GOP lawmakers who put corporate profit above the general welfare of their own residents. Rather than accept personal responsibility for their failures, Texas Republicans and the propagandists who support them on outlets like Fox "News", have been going full throttle over the past two days to somehow (falsely) blame the state's nascent wind energy industry for the widespread outages. That, even though wind supplies, at most, about 20 percent of the Lone Star State's energy needs, while thermal sources, like natural gas, coal and nuclear --- which all failed due to lack of winterization (thanks to lack of state regulation) --- were, by far, the biggest source of failure.

But don't tell that to Ditto-Heads like the now-former Mayor of Colorado City, TX, Tim Boyd, who railed at his own constituents seeking help without heat or water for days. "No one owes you or your [sic] family anything; nor is it the local governments [sic] responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice!,"  he raged on Facebook in response to members of the community wondering if warming shelters would be opened or how firefighters could respond with the town's water system shut down. "This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts," the Mayor said in words that would have been music to Limbaugh's deaf ears. "Bottom line, quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!"

Of course, even the state's Republican Governor Greg Abbott appeared to admit on Twitter on Monday that the problem was "natural gas and coal generators" that had been "frozen", before somehow going on to blame the non-existent Green New Deal for Texas' woes by the time he appeared on the show of Limbaugh's fellow propagandist Sean Hannity on Fox "News" Tuesday night.

So, how and when can these corrupt, corporate-socialists finally be voted out of office? It may not be easy given that, as NYU's Brennan Center for Justice recently reported [emphasis iin original]: "In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to roughly this time last year. Thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states on February 3, 2020)."

We're joined today by Mother Jones' senior reporter and voting rights journalist ARI BERMAN, author of the landmark 2016 book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, to discuss what he characterizes as "an avalanche of new laws" amounting to "the most concerted attempts to roll back voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965."

Berman explains the new flood of bills by GOP lawmakers to make voting more difficult --- for certain voters --- in battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and many others, where measures are being pushed to end no-excuse absentee voting and automatic voter registration, among other previously established rights. In Arizona, more than 40 such schemes have been proposed by Republicans, including one that Berman says would "allow the legislature to just nullify the will of the voters and appoint their own Presidential electors anytime they want. It basically would make the Presidential election completely irrelevant, in terms of what the voters actually voted for."

These efforts all come in the wake of Donald Trump's evidence-free claims of "massive voter fraud" in the 2020 election. In many instances, says Berman, GOP state legislators are even attempting to reverse expansions to the franchise that they themselves had recently adopted and boasted about at the time. "The Republican Party is now trying to weaponize those bogus fraud claims, to lay the groundwork for getting rid of the system that they wrote, instituted and took advantage of, until it didn't benefit them anymore," he tells me.

We also discuss how a number of these new restrictions may be unstoppable at the state level and would require Democratic efforts at the federal level --- such as H.R.1 (the "For the People Act") and H.R.4 (the "John Lewis Voting Rights Act") --- in order to prevent them from suppressing the vote in both 2022 and 2024. Of course, to pass those federal laws, Democrats in the U.S. Senate will almost certainly have to do away with the undemocratic filibuster, since Berman suggests it's inconceivable that 10 Senate Republicans would join the effort to ensure equal and fair voting rights to all Americans.

So, yes, we also discuss what might be needed to overcome Democratic objections to ending the "Jim Crow relic" filibuster by Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom have vowed to keep it in place. "This is a big fight brewing," Berman argues, along with a few suggestions as to how this could play out. "But right now we're seeing an existential threat to democracy and also a very real threat to the power of the Democratic Party.  At some point, they're going to have to choose."

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On today's BradCast, the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on world markets, we finally have a definitive "winner" of the Iowa Caucuses, and a raft of good news voting rights court rulings in several key battleground states! [Audio link to show follows below.]

We start with some "breaking news" today: Pete Buttigieg has won the Iowa Caucuses! Barely. And only as long as you consider the winner of the most delegates to be the "winner". Following both partial recanvassing and recounts requested by both the Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg campaigns in a number of precincts on the heels of the flawed reporting of Iowa Caucus results three weeks ago, the Iowa Democratic Party has finally concluded that Buttigieg won a literal fraction more of the State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs). Buttigieg took 562.954 to Sanders' 562.021.

While both candidates actually lost a small number of SDEs during the partial recounts, Buttigieg's margin of victory (0.003%) was increased to "a commanding 0.04% win" after the recounts. That translates into 14 national delegates for the former South Bend, Indiana Mayor to Sanders' 12 out of the Hawkeye State, where the Vermont Senator nonetheless won the never-really-in-question overall popular vote by several thousand more votes in both the initial and realignment rounds of voting at the state's February 3rd caucuses.

With that finally out of the way, we offer a quick update on the havoc the coronavirus --- and the Trump Administration's bungled response to it --- is causing for world markets, with the Dow plummeting for a 7th straight day on Friday, resulting in a 3,500 point drop over the past week. It was the worst week for Wall Street since the 2008 global financial crisis and the fastest loss of four months of gains for the S&P 500 since 1928. That, as the deadly virus continues to spread and fears mount that it will result in a global recession and full blown pandemic.

In the U.S. however, rightwingers like Rush Limbaugh are using our public airwaves to "inform" Americans that the virus "is the common cold" in one breath, and seemingly contradicting that by falsely describing it as "a ChiCom laboratory experiment...being weaponized" in the next. But, despite the fact that it could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. (the virus is currently 20 times more fatal than the flu, which killed approximately 34,000 Americans last season), Limbaugh is using our public airwaves to propagandize listeners that Bernie Sanders and the "Democrat Party...pose a much greater threat to this country than the coronavirus does."

So, yes, we continue to keep our eyes on the most important election in the nation's history in hopes of curbing at least some of this madness. To that end, as South Carolina prepares to vote on new, !00% unverifiable, germy touchscreen voting systems across the state in their Democratic primary on Saturday, and voters in many of the 14 state primaries ending on Super Tuesday three days later do the same, we focus on a number of recent encouraging court rulings that will help protect their right to cast a vote at all.

For that, we are blessed on today's BradCast with the long-overdue return of the great Slate legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN! And we've got a lot to catch up with him on, from just over the past few weeks, when it comes to both state and federal courts stepping in to do the right thing in protecting voter's rights --- at least for now.

• Recently, both a federal district court and a state Court of Appeals in North Carolina blocked the Tar Heel State GOP's new Photo ID voting restriction, finding it (once again) was designed to disproportionately target minorities for suppression.

• In Florida, a federal Court of Appeals has blocked the Republican state legislature and Governor's attempt to gut 2018's landmark state constitutional Amendment 4, granting the right to vote to former felons who have completed their sentences.

• In Missouri, the state's Supreme Court not only blocked a "Catch-22" Photo ID voting restriction that required those without very specific types of Photo IDs to actually commit a felony by lying on an affidavit form in order to legally cast a vote, the Court also carved out a right to vote for many trans and non-binary voters who, in MO, thanks to more bad laws, are literally barred from obtaining the requisite ID that would be needed for them to vote legally under the statute that the court has now struck down. (That, after more than a decade of GOP attempts in the Show-Me State to try and institute Photo ID voting restrictions, no matter who it would prevent from casting a legal vote.)

• In Arizona, with its own long history of racial discrimination, a federal Court of Appeals struck down two measures adopted by state Republicans, finding both of them to have been racially motivated attempts to suppress nonwhite voters. One had mandated that provisional ballots be discarded if they were cast in a different precinct from where the voters was supposed to be voting, the other outlawed the third-party collection of absentee ballots (which Fox "News" and, therefore, all Republicans falsely denigrated as "ballot harvesting" by "illegal immigrants".)

Many of these very good news court rulings, however, could still be reversed during additional appeals, thanks to the Republican court-packing in recent years, particularly if the stolen Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court decides to pick and choose which decisions they will and won't apply their so-called "Purcell Principle" to, with elections imminent in all of those states.

And, we also discuss a Trump judge's recent move to prevent voters from being able to sue for their rights at all under the Voting Rights Act. So, yes, MUCH to catch up on today with Stern, who explains all of these cases and where they go from here, in his usual, clear, informative and even amusing way!

Finally, a quick program announcement after a listener comment on voter registration concerns: We will be LIVE and taking your calls both Monday and Tuesday next week, opening up the phone lines to hear from voters and early voters about any problems they may have encountered, and to answer any questions listeners may have about voting and voting systems before the Super Tuesday election polls close next week! If you don't get The BradCast LIVE where you are, please remember to tune in to the live stream at KPFK.org on Monday and Tuesday next week at 3pm PT/6p ET and give us a shout!...

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On October 24, 1998, a group of activists from across the United States gathered in Washington DC to protest the Ken Starr investigation into Bill Clinton in the first rally ever organized on the Internet.

Darrell Hampton's umbrella group "We the People" was generally outraged at Starr's excesses; White House staffer Bob Weiner railed against Ken Starr for subpoenaing him for eating ice cream with a fellow Democrat; the fledgling group "Censure and MoveOn" (later to become MoveOn.org) was featured; and my "Truth in America Project" focused on the biased media promoting the investigation, media which had recently gained its dominance from the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

We all understood the long drawn out Grand Jury investigation of Bill Clinton had found no crimes, and so Starr et al manufactured a perjury trap to have an excuse to impeach the President. As I said on the Ellipse in front of the White House, "Is it okay for a big government attorney to work with a private civil lawyer to see if they can figure out a way to get a man to lie about his sex life so they can prosecute him for it?"

But what was just coming to light, and what has had a lasting damaging legacy, is the effect of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on our political landscape.

Brief history: When radio and television were first invented, broadcast pioneers and government officials recognized that radio had the potential to entertain and inform, but when used improperly, also to brainwash a population. So Congress passed the 1934 Communications Act, which limited any one owner in the United States to owning just 9 stations nationwide: 3 AM radio stations, 3 FM radio stations, 3 TV stations. The thinking was that by having multiple local owners, no one person could dominate the (publicly owned) airwaves with political rhetoric.

Ah, those were the days...

It's special coverage of three different historic events --- all at once, somehow --- on today's BradCast. It wasn't easy, but it was a very lively show in dark times nonetheless! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

We're joined today by old friends who, unlike the corporate media pundits and professional political operatives and academic geniuses, have been right over and over and over, for years, about pretty much everything. For some reason today, that is very comforting. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON and TOM SULLIVAN, both of whom can be found each day writing at Digby's Hullabaloo, work through all of today's nightmares with us. Parton, an award-winning opinion journalist can also be found as a regular contributor to Salon. Sullivan, a North Carolina writer and resident is also a grassroots organizer in the state, whose "For the Win" training guide for countywide Get Out the Vote operations should be required reading for every so-called "professional" Democratic party strategist in the nation.

First up on today program, it's the ugly, bitter State of the Union address, filled with demostrable lies and cheap, offensive TV game show stunts, as delivered by Donald Trump on Tuesday night, and literally shredded thereafter by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Next, it's the shameful historic acquittal by cowed Republicans in the U.S. Senate, just before airtime on Wednesday, of the proven-guilty President on both of his Articles of Impeachment, and some Senators from both side of the aisle who deserve notice for their votes.

Finally, it's the continuing fallout from the disastrous use of untested, secretly-developed, non-transparent technology --- despite warnings from experts (and, yes, us) --- in Iowa's Democratic Caucuses on Monday, where we still only have partial results reported by the Iowa Democratic Party as of today. We discuss that disaster and who may be the winners and losers from Monday's contest, along with all of the other disasters and what they should mean for the candidates, the 2020 nominating cycle and the critical, last chance general election now on America's horizon...

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Today's BradCast is guest hosted by me, Angie Coiro, host of In Deep with Angie Coiro.

The Toddler-in-Chief gives us all more fodder than we can stand for a news review: telling Vietnam vets they can’t tell the difference between napalm and Agent Orange; doubling down on pulling security clearances, because anyone dared challenge his authority to do so (those puny blowhards in the military and from the CIA!); and blaming everyone but himself for the skyrocketing price tag of his vanity parade. He showed us! He'll go to Paris and look at their parade, and buy himself some new fighter jets.

Then it's 'GAIUS PUBLIUS' - or rather, THOMAS NEUBURGER, who’s now publishing his commentaries under his real name. You may know his prolific work at Down with Tyranny. He's asked some provocative questions about unions vs. liberals, and how the Democrats fit into that picture. Just as we were speaking, word came down about Trump threatening to pull Bruce Ohr's security clearance. He had some choice words about that, too.

Finally: how arts groups and independent performers are navigating the dual challenge of diminishing funding and politically divided audiences. DAVID GANS is an itinerant independent musician; MEREDITH HAGEDORN founded the small, eclectic Dragon Theatre in a Silicon Valley suburb; and RONIT WIDMANN-LEVY is Director of Arts and Culture at the Oshman Family JCC , a multiple-venue events space. They all face different hurdles keeping their art vibrant.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Two days before Thanksgiving, the Federal Communications Commission announced [PDF] it will vote December 14 on a new Federal rule that may very easily take away our Freedom of Speech on the Internet.

That's not an exaggeration.

The three Republican presidential appointees on the FCC will pass a federal rule that could result in any content provider with a website or app --- from AirBnb to Zillow to The BRAD BLOG --- being forced to pay your Internet Service Provider big fees for the privilege of bringing their content onto your device or computer. If they don't pay up, their content slows down, and you can't get the content you want unless you wait. And wait. Research shows if you wait just ten seconds, many just give up. It's not so bad for content from well-funded players, but what happens when the guy who blogs about your local school board gets shut out? Chalk another one up for Big Media controlling what information we are allowed to see...

On today's BradCast, more good news for Dems, more bad news for Republicans, and more disturbing news for all Americans --- and the world. [Audio link to show follows below.]

We start today with the encouraging news for Democrats, as a 26-year old lesbian candidate for state Senate in deep "red" Oklahoma has unseated yet another Republican in a special election this week. It's the third time a state Senate seat has been flipped by Dems in OK since a 24-year old woman became the youngest chair of a state Democratic Party last year.

Speaking of trouble for Republicans, we've also got the latest on the Roy Moore mess in Alabama, as President Trump, also accused of sexual assault by multiple women before his own election last year, has frustrated fellow Republicans by failing to speak out in the matter, following bombshell allegations that Moore assaulted a number of teenagers, as young as 14 years old, while serving as a 32-year old prosecutor. But Moore and his supporters are fighting back today, as is his wildly embarassing attorney. A robocall falsely claiming to be from a reporter at the Washington Post (which originally broke the initial allegations against Moore last week) has reportedly been circulating in Alabama, in advance of the December 12 election, claiming to be offering money in exchange for new allegations against the far Rightwing GOP nominee for US Senate. And, far Rightwing radio propagandist Rush Limbaugh has come up with a very novel defense for the accused GOP child molester at the same time.

Also today, more news on the mass shooting at and near an elementary school in Northern California that killed 5 and wounded 10 others on Tuesday. Many new questions have surfaced about why the shooter, a local man with a criminal record and anger management issues, was able to purchase and then retain semi-automatic weapons even after recent encounters with police including domestic violence complaints and being charged with stabbing a neighbor. But, at least the mass killer wasn't Muslim, so NRA-bribed Republicans can begin ignoring yet another domestic mass shooting immediately.

Then, as concerns continue to grow worldwide over Donald Trump's saber rattling with North Korea and his access to nuclear weapons, the U.S. Senate held a hearing this week to discuss Presidential authority to wage war and launch nuclear weapons without anyone having the ability to prevent him from doing so, if he chooses.

Longtime nuclear weapons policy analyst STEPHEN SCHWARTZ of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies joins us to discuss what, if anything, was accomplished at the Senate hearing, the first on the topic since 1976, and what, if anything, can (or should) be done to restore a more sane use-of-nukes policy in the only nuclear-armed nation in the world which rests sole decision-making power on whether to use such weapons with one single person. That person, currently being Donald J. Trump, has raised many worries from Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike. Whether they're willing or able to do anything about it, however, is a different matter, as we also discuss today.

"The reality of the situation is that you're putting enormous power in the hands of one person," Schwartz, tells me, detailing how, short of "mass insubordination" by military leadership, even they would be unable to prevent such an event if Trump ordered it. And, he explains, even objections on legal or Constitutional grounds by military leadership might be insufficient to prevent disaster in the "at most 15 minutes, perhaps, as little as five or ten" during which a President would have to make a decision about how to respond in the event of an apparent incoming attack.

You'll want to tune in for this conversation, if only to hear the explanation of how the nuclear "football", at all times within reach of any American President since the Cold War, actually works. Schwartz, the former longtime Executive Director and Publisher of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (keepers of the infamous "Doomsday Clock") also suggests several ways in which we could improve (or, help Trump-proof) the current dangerous system to help avoid "what could be a life-ending, a world-ending decision"...

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On today's BradCast: How government subsidized lies and liars are killing the nation, the planet, and U.S. democracy. [Audio link to show follows below.]

With more than a thousand dead from monsoons in South Asia, two monster hurricanes in the Atlantic, one of them about to engulf Florida, a third one in the Gulf striking Mexico and Houston struggling to rebuild from unprecedented flooding after Harvey, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico late Thursday night, killing more than 60 and leading one wise Twitterer to observe: "All that's missing is the locusts."

On today's show (after once again marveling at Ronald Reagan's greatest, and most damaging, cons --- particularly pungent on a day like today), we check in with our friend NICOLE SANDLER, host of The Nicole Sandler Show, just north of Miami, as she and her family, unable to evacuate, are preparing to hunker down before Hurricane Irma rolls ashore and then up the entire length of the state.

Other radio hosts in the South Florida area, like con-man Rush Limbaugh, are apparently lucky and wealthy enough to be able to evacuate at the last moment before the record hurricane strikes, even after spending the week downplaying the threat of the Category 5 monster and the last several decades downplaying the threat of climate change by disinforming tens of millions of Americans about it over our tax-payer owned public airwaves.

Then, speaking of tax-payer funded disinformation, the head of Trump's so-called "Election Integrity" Commission, Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach, has built his career on lying to gullible Americans about voter fraud in hopes of disenfranchising as many of them (at least of a certain party) as he can get away with.

A new report finds his state has been discarding ballots at an alarming rate. But, at the same time, just days before the sham Commission he co-chairs is set to hold its second public meeting in New Hampshire, Kobach unleashes a whopper of a scam column at the wingnut "news" site Breitbart, citing new "evidence" proving that "voter fraud" by "illegal" out-of-state voters was responsible for the Republicans' narrowly lost U.S. Senate seat in NH last year, as well as Donald Trump's 2016 loss in the Granite State to Hillary Clinton.

As we detail on today's show, Kobach's deceptive "new" NH claims are easily dispelled nonsense. Getting the actual facts about it, however, to the dupes, pawns, suckers and chumps who actually trust the fake news they suck up from accomplished liars like Limbaugh and Kobach at places like Brietbart and Fox "News", is a different matter all together.

Finally, still on the topic of a thoroughly propagandized nation, we close with some listener response to a caller on a recent show about Trump overturning DACA...

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: Hurricane Matthew has already wrought death and destruction in the Caribbean, is already breaking records as it bears down on the U.S. Southeastern seaboard, and is "not your grandfather's weather" thanks to global warming, according to my guest, a 40-year veteran broadcast meteorologist. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

With states of emergency declared in Florida and several other states, and millions of Americans scrambling to get out of harms way, I'm joined today by longtime weather forecaster, Star-Tribune blogger and self-identified "Ronald Reagan conservative" Paul Douglas, to discuss the deadly and extraordinarily dangerous Hurricane Matthew as it aims for the East Coast of Florida. (That's not a Halloween decoration, it's an actual infrared satellite photo of the storm in the logo above, as the eye passed over Cuba earlier this week.)

Douglas explains what makes this currently Category 4/5 storm and its path so unusual and how it could actually end up hitting some of the same places twice if it stays on its currently projected bizarre U-turn trajectory.

"Matthew is going to grind up the coast. There's going to be a long stretch of coastline that's impacted by this storm surge. Because much of the circulation is going to remain out over water, it isn't going to fizzle like a normal hurricane," he tells me, adding that it "went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in 36 hours [because] water temperatures in the Caribbean are running several degrees above average. It's the old 'weather on steroids' analogy. We are super-sizing a lot of these storms."

Because of that, he says, the storm surge could be as much as 9 feet above normal tides. "This is what kills people. It's not the winds. It's not even as much the inland rain. It's the storm surge that can cut off escape routes." And, as to that currently projected U-turn for the storm after it's moved up the coast? "I don't want to overstate it, but this could be unprecedented in terms of the track, the intensity, the amount of real estate that's impacted by this storm surge, and the fact that it's taking this bizarre loop potentially."

I ask Douglas, who has just co-authored the new book Caring for Creation: The Evangelicals Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment with minister and coal miner's son Rev. Mitch Hescox (also a previous guest on The BradCast), to respond to Rush Limbaugh's latest hurricane conspiracy theory, which Douglas dispatches with actual facts and science, explaining: "The atmosphere doesn't care what you believe. The atmosphere responds to physics and chemistry. We've been fiddling with the chemistry of the atmosphere. We've been poking at the climate system with a long, sharp carbon-tipped spike, and then acting surprised when the weather bites back."

I also ask the self-described "Ronald Reagan-Teddy Roosevelt conservative who believes that conservatives should actually conserve," about why he believes corporate media fail to connect climate change dots and, at least so far, to raise the issue of global warming in Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. We discuss that, and much more. I'd suggest that this is another must-listen conversation, no matter what comes of Matthew in the next several days.

Also today (and not unrelated): Donald Trump, who has a record of politicizing election-year hurricanes, has named a Koch Industries climate denying lobbyist to head up his Energy Transition Team. And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on Matthew, the VP debate, the Paris Agreement, and Canada's surprising announcement of a national carbon tax...

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On today's BradCast, a very rocky start for Democrats in Philadelphia and bad news for Fox 'News' may be good news for the country. [Link to complete audio of show posted below.]

Before our coverage of today's remarkable news from the Democratic National Convention, some late (and overlooked) news on the mass shootings in Munich last week and in Fort Meyers, Florida on Sunday night. Also, record deadly heat continues to grip both the U.S. and the world, and new polling shows Donald Trump now taking a lead both nationally and in key battleground states after receiving a 'bump' from last week's GOP convention in Cleveland.

Then, with Dems gathering for their own convention in Philly this week, things were off to a very bumpy start on Day 1. The release of hacked emails written by DNC insiders (in which The BradCast makes a very brief cameo) have led to Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), a long time Hillary Clinton supporter, finally stepping down from her role as DNC Chair before the gathering was even gaveled to order. That followed booing for the controversial party chief by protesters at a breakfast meeting of the Florida delegation, as well as similar jeers for California Democrats and even for Bernie Sanders himself after an appearance asking his supporters to defeat Trump and elect Clinton.

Then, we're joined by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters on what history may well regard as the biggest news of the past chaotic week: the firing of Fox 'News' mastermind Roger Ailes on the heels of sexual harassment allegations, now said to be supported by some twenty-five other staffers in the company's internal investigation.

"I can't even calculate how much more powerful Roger Ailes is to the Republican Party than Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is to the Democratic Party," Boehlert notes early in our conversation, before we discuss what finally took down Ailes, what more is still to come, what happens next for the Rightwing propaganda outlet, and whether or not Fox' remarkable effect on the national electorate for the past twenty years can continue in Ailes' absence.

"That Islamophobia, that race-baiting, that ugly hate rhetoric, 'Democrats are traitors' --- that all came from Roger Ailes. That came from the top," Boehlert explains. "Certainly under Obama, you could make the argument [Ailes] was running the Republican Party. He was picking the candidates. He was picking the talking points. Fox News created the 'Tea Party' with non-stop coverage back in 2009."

"The Beltway press, for twenty years for the most part, has treated Roger Ailes as this brilliant genius," he tells me. "Never a hint that any of this was going on. The press has treated Ailes with kid gloves, considering the damage he's done to politics. ... I think people try to put Fox and the right-wing media into this box, 'Well, it doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect our politics, those people are crazy'. It permeates everything, and the Trump campaign is the best example of that. People are crying: 'Where did he come from?! Oh my gosh, how is this happening to America?!' It's been broadcast for twenty years."

Finally, just in case you hadn't heard, in what would normally be today's lead story, if these were normal times, Clinton has chosen Sen. Tim Kaine, a moderate and well-liked Democrat from Virginia, as her Vice Presidential running mate. Yes, all of that and much more on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, just as we warned you on the day he entered the race back in June of 2015 (when everyone else told you his candidacy was a joke), Donald Trump will now be the 2016 GOP nominee for President of these United States. No joke. And, yes, Bernie Sanders is still both running and winning against the front-runner on the Democratic side.

We cover the reported results from Indiana yesterday, including the GOP dead-enders Ted Cruz and John Kasich who have seen the writing on the wall and both finally dropped out of the race. We also cover the upset victory of Sanders over the corporate media's presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, how he is likely to have more such victories in the weeks ahead, and how the MSM does an amazing job of not noticing.

Then, we're joined by our old friend Heather Digby Parton of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo. She was with us this year for a ton of our debate coverage, but was also with me on the show last year on Day 1 of the Trump campaign. At the time she joined me in my belief that Trump was going to receive huge support among the thoroughly brainwashed and fact-addled Rightwingers that now make up the Republican Party following years of fact-free propaganda passed on to them by wingnut talk radio and corporate "news" outlets.

Now that we know Trump will, barring "an act of God", as Parton says, be the GOP nominee, it seemed a perfect time to talk about what it all means and how the mainstream corporate media was so wrong for so long about Trump (and even about Sanders). As Parton notes: "He is the sort of zenith...He is the id of that conservative 'essence' over the course of the last thirty years. And without the media having prepared people for believing that this was normal, that this represented America, I'm not sure [he would have done this well]."

"Let's not forget," she adds, "this was supposed to be the deepest bench, the most awesomely prepared group of Presidential candidates in American history...and it came down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Out of that entire group, that's what we were left with. And that is a legitimate reflection of the Republican Party."

But does Parton share my concern that Trump could do a helluva lot better in the general election than many gleeful Democrats currently believe? And will the Democratic electorate think twice about selecting Clinton as their nominee, now that Trump will almost certainly be the GOP's? For all of that, you'll have to tune in.

We close out the hour with a few more reminders of how the mainstream corporate media completely misinformed the American electorate about both Trump's rise and his likelihood of securing the Republican nomination. (They told you over and over he'd never win. We warned you over and over otherwise.) And then, finally, we end today's show with a fantastic story about some ballots and a boat and some folks in Rhode Island who helped make democracy possible for a few lucky voters last week...

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I realize it's strictly verboten in talk radio and, probably, against an FCC rule somewhere, but, today, we've got nothing but good news on The BradCast! Well, mostly. Well, at least compared to the bulk of what you'll hear from the corporate media and the bulk of the political campaigns they bother to report on where outrage earns listeners, viewers and readers. [Audio link to the full show is below.]

First up, a number of a relatively encouraging stories, including: Obama goes to Cuba as the first American President to visit the Cold War-ravaged island nation in more than 50 years; An update (with some good news and some bad) on the Illinois county where thousands of voters were turned away without voting last week due to ballot shortages (which we covered in detail on last Friday's show); A new poll finds Utah (Utah!) could go Democratic this year if Trump is the GOP nominee. (And guess which Democrat does best against him?); Bernie Sanders holds a huge event in Seattle in advance of several primaries and caucuses this week in western states, about which his campaign is reportedly very optimistic; and Rush Limbaugh freaks out and misinforms listeners because a new film documents how his business model is about freaking people out and misinforming listeners.

Then, I'm joined by the intolerably reasonable blogger Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, who argues that the electorate isn't nearly as "angry" as the corporate media continue to (mis)report them to be (speaking of "business models"), before he goes on to offer his (apparently controversial) list of the "Top Ten Things That Are Going Great in America".

Really? Many things are going great?! That's simply outrageous! Drum explains how such outrage --- even over legitimate concerns --- can sometimes keep very real problems (such as high lead levels in places around the country other than Flint, for example) from being reported, noticed and even fixed at all.

On the "outrage" from this year's voters, Drum explains: "Anybody who has been watching elections in the United States for awhile knows that we hear this every four years. Every four years the voters are 'angrier than they've ever been'. You think that Donald Trump's rallies have gotten a little bit violent? Been a few arrests? It's nothing compared to what was going on with George Wallace back in 1968."

"This year, you've got a guy, Donald Trump, who's feeding on it. It's really the candidates more than it is the people themselves. You've got a candidate who can really gin up the anger that's already out there, and make it seem worse than it's been before." Drum makes the case as to why it's not voter "anger" about politics and the economy that driving them to someone like Trump, as the media suggest, but something else very specific. But, you'll have to listen to find out what that is.

"I sort of blame talk radio --- present company excluded, of course --- but conservative talk radio and Fox News, for leading the way on this outrage politics," he says. "And, I think, as time goes by, a lot of other sources, including those of us on the left, see it happening on our side as well."

On the left?! That's infuriating! Please enjoy the show below. No outrage necessary...

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On today's BradCast, the GOP continues to unravel, in both its Presidential nomination process and its increasingly untenable stand against even holding a hearing for Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, and we speak to the filmmaker of a new documentary examining both the rise of the vast Rightwing media machine and how it has succeeded in tearing apart countless American families with its brilliant lies, conspiracies and rabid hostility.

First up, the quixotic search for a Donald Trump alternative continues for the GOP, as John Kasich's fanciful quest for the nomination after winning only the primary in his home state of Ohio continues. That, while Ted Cruz, the only mathematically viable (and, yet, hated) alternative for gaining enough delegates to actually win the nomination, welcomes a notoriously discredited, Islamaphobic conspiracy theorist into his campaign as a national security adviser. Some "alternative"!

And, as if that's all not embarrassing enough for Republicans, President Obama's nomination yesterday of the very moderate and well-respected D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court is already proving problematic for Senate Republicans who have vowed to not even hold hearings for any nominee made by this President. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who has repeatedly supported and promoted Garland in the past, including for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, had trouble facing even the usually friendly questioning of Fox "News" in light of his party's bizarrely ill-conceived campaign.

Then, speaking of Fox "News" and dysfunction, I'm joined by documentary filmmaker Jen Senko to discuss her new film, The Brainwashing of My Dad. The documentary details both the rise of the Rightwing media in the U.S. over the past several decades and her own father's disturbing transition from a peaceful, loving Democrat into a hostile, angry 'conservative' after becoming addicted and, yes, brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh, Fox "News" and the rest of the "vast Rightwing conspiracy" machine that has torn apart so many families like her own.

While the film's tagline is "The truth behind the right-wing media machine that changed a father...and divided the nation," an alternative version for so many who will recognize, within their own families, the story of what happened to Senko's father, might have been: "You are not alone!"

"When I started the Kickstarter campaign" for the film, she tells me, "people just started writing me every day, with these heartbreaking stories about so-and-so in their family wouldn't speak to them anymore, or they couldn't talk about anything without them getting angry. It was really shocking. That's when I realized what a phenomenon it was."

Senko explains how her suspicions about what was happening to her father over the years, thanks to Rush, Fox, the endless forwarded emails containing long-disproven conspiracies about the Clintons, Obama and the so-called "liberal media" constituted actual brainwashing, as described by a number of experts in the film.

We discuss not only the long rise of what Hillary Clinton accurately described, in 1998, as the "vast Rightwing conspiracy" machine, but Democrats' own culpability in the scheme, and how it has all culminated in the ascendancy of someone like Donald Trump as the GOP frontrunner for President of the United States in 2016. The non-RW media, Senko notes, "keep saying people are angry because of the way the system is going. No. They're angry because of Fox News and rightwing media --- that includes emails from think tanks and so forth --- [which] have told them lies."

Without giving away the ending to her film, I'll just note that it is both encouraging and underscores that, just perhaps, there is a way out of the ugly, angry mess that so many families --- not to mention the country itself --- now find themselves in after decades of being repeatedly battered by the Republicans' well-crafted political lie machine.

And speaking of encouraging news, we finish up today with a bit of exactly that on St. Patrick's Day, underscoring that, yes, progressive change may take a long time (a very long time, in this case), but it eventually comes and the struggle is always worth it...

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