On today's BradCast, guested hosted by me, Angie Coiro, Donald Trump lies at CPAC and Sean Spicer excludes journos from hearing White House news --- just another day with the Trump administration. [Audio link posted below.]

Guest Scott Dworkin of The Democratic Coalition Against Trump tackles the massive tangle that is the Trump family's business relationship with Russia. He saves the best for last: why he thinks the FBI's James Comey will ultimately weigh in on the side of justice.

Then, sociology professor Jonathan Martin makes the case that yes, we should look at a third-party break with Democrats.

Gender Spectrum's Joel Baum joins us to talk about supporting transgender children and teens under an administration that works to take their rights away --- and what parents, teachers, and other loving adults can do.

Then, what went down as journalists from established news organs first had to sign up for a White House press gathering, then one by one got turned away. And, finally, a spotlight on Steve Bannon's appearance at CPAC, and his alleged script for "The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile." (Not. Kidding.)

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by moi, Angie Coiro, we dive down the rabbit hole into the alternate reality that is CPAC.

My guest is Peter Montgomery, Senior Fellow at Right Wing Watch. Going beyond the highlights, he checks out some of the lower-profile breakout sessions. And he proves he's got the "FAKE NEWS!" shout down hard.

A review of the news includes the bizarre taped exchange between a terrorism expert and a guy in White House obsessed with Twitter - no, not him. Another one.

The Anne Frank Center has pretty much had it with Trump and his surrogates giving lip service to uprooting antisemitism - and their executive director isn't hiding it.

Finally, how today's activists hitting the streets can learn from the pros: veterans of MLK marches and voter suppression court battles share their street-tested wisdom.

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by Angie Coiro, the impossible challenge of wrangling all the lies and all the damage inflicted on the country in the first three days of an impossible President.

Even as the show was in production, Trump and the GOP continued to stomp all over the little hope that remained for a decent American life in a clean, free, educated country. Among the litany: the return of the "global gag rule" (don't dare acknowledge that abortion exists!), Jeff Sessions won't recuse himself from investigating Trump's finances, because what are friends for?; the White House comments line is eliminated, and Spanish disappears from the White House website.

Follow me as I dissect Chuck Todd and Kelly Ann Conway's amazing "alternative facts" face-off --- a search that yields both classic rhetorical fallacies and the language of domestic abuse.

My first guest, Amisha Upadhyaya, wants to harvest the energy of the weekend's worldwide marches into doable activism for individuals. Thus, the birth of Still We Rise, coming soon to a town near you.

Finally, high school teacher Andrew Simmons joins me to explain how turning his class into a full-immersion Oceania --- with himself as Big Brother --- gives his students a real understanding of Orwell's 1984. Because if not now, when?...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: Once again, as we go to air today, breaking news, this time concerning Fox "News", where its founder, CEO and evil rightwing propaganda mastermind Roger Ailes is officially pushed out after 20 years, on the heels of sexual harassment allegations from at least two Fox stars, and as many as 20 women over all. [Audio link to full show posted below.]

Then, as the GOP continues to step on itself all week during its national nominating convention in Cleveland, second place 2016 GOP Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is booed off stage, during his primetime speaking slot, for failing to endorse Donald Trump. As it turns out, the Trump camp knew that Cruz wouldn't endorse days ago, but gave him the high-profile time slot at the convention anyway. All of which served to obscure the official acceptance speech of Vice Presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana. Idiocy or genius?

We discuss all of that and much more related on today's show with longtime Republican consultant and 2012 GOP Presidential candidate (the first openly gay one from either major party) Fred Karger, who tells me from Cleveland that he was one of the folks on the floor booing last night --- though not necessarily for the same reason as others. "Any chance I get to boo Ted Cruz, I will do it," he explains.

Karger, who says he's attending his 11th RNC, after having served as a senior campaign adviser to Presidents Ford and Reagan, discusses his broken party and what he believes broke it. He tells me he won't be supporting Trump this year --- (tune in to find out who he will support) --- but warns of the likelihood of a "Trump victory."

"He's a master promoter and look what he's done in 13 months," he says. "He's not only the nominee, but he's taken over the Republican Party. And he's neck-and-neck with Hillary." Yup. And, as Karger notes, the Republican delegates in Cleveland have actually warmed up to Trump over the past several days, despite the apparent chaos to those of us non-wingnuts watching from afar.

Finally, if you're not concerned enough yet, the Republican nominee has not only sown chaos at his own convention but, now, also amongst U.S. allies around the world, with remarkably cavalier comments to the New York Times about the future of NATO and other foreign policy issues under a Trump Presidency.

All of that and more (including more breaking news mid-show, as the NBA exercises it's free market rights to pull their 2017 all-star game from Charlotte, NC, in response to that state GOP's anti-LGBT law) on today's BradCast...

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Today on The BradCast, the Republican Party remains a mess, some Democrats remain in denial, Cleveland remains a tinder box in advance of next week's RNC convention, and if only the concerns about electoral fraud and the need for citizen oversight were taken as seriously in this country as they are in other nations.

While the Democratic platform becomes vastly more progressive this, thanks to the leverage retained by Bernie Sanders and his supporters, the GOP platform stays dumb or dumber. Speaking of dumb, clueless rightwingers (from Bill O'Reilly to Donald Trump to a Canadian singer at the MLB All-Star Game) still don't understand, or want to understand, what 'Black Lives Matter' means. And speaking of jackassery, the Republican National Convention is set to take place next week amidst angst over the party's presumptive nominee and the possibility of protests and racial tensions, even while state law will allow the open carry of loaded guns on the street outside of the convention center. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, as some Democrats laugh among themselves about who the GOP is likely to nominate for President, several major new polls find Hillary Clinton plummeting against Donald Trump both nationally and in several of the most key swing-states (including OH, PA and FL.)

But with so much talk of electoral fraud during this year's Presidential Primary cycle, some may be pleased to know that a court has finally ordered a new Presidential Election! In Austria! That, not due to fraud necessarily, but to the mere possibility of it. Attorney Ernest A. Canning, long time legal contributor at The BRAD BLOG, joins us to explain what happened, how the nation's Constitutional Court ruling will benefit a far-right candidate, but is a victory for the Election Integrity movement nonetheless, and to discuss why concerns of election security and oversight aren't taken as seriously in the U.S. as they seem to be elsewhere.

"People have a tendency to be blind to this issue so long as their side wins. And that's not what election integrity is supposed to be all about," Canning explains. "The Austria constitution has a constitutional requirement for complete transparency of the count. If it was applied in the United States, most of our elections would have to be re-done. As far as the Austria Constitutional Court was concerned, it's irrelevant whether or not there was actual manipulation [of vote counting]. The fact is, if you had enough ballots that could have been manipulated because it wasn't a completely transparent count, then they're going to set it aside. The mere possibility that the count could have been manipulated is enough in Austria to overturn the results."

Imagine that.

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On today's BradCast, everything you may have missed from over the Independence Day holiday weekend, a bunch of stories breaking today, and a disturbing reminder that Election Day, most likely between two extraordinarily disliked Presidential candidates, is much sooner than you (or we!) might have thought. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Among the many stories covered on today's show...

• FBI Director James Comey says the Bureau will not recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton concerning her use of a private email server while Secretary of State;
• More negative fallout for the successful supporters of Brexit in the UK;
• More deadly terror attacks in the Middle East, in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia;
• President Obama and Hillary Clinton finally campaign together, as polls continue to suggest a tightening race with Donald Trump;
• Progressive champion and CNN commentator Van Jones argues, during a DFA conference call, that a Trump Presidency is the "likely" outcome of the election, due to the current "complacency and smugness of the Left". (If nothing else, PLEASE listen to this part of today's program!)
• A federal judge nixes Mississippi's anti-LGBT bill at the last possible moment before it was to go into effect;
• As Democrats in the U.S. House fight to get any vote on federal gun legislation, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signs a number of gun safety bills (and vetoes others) that would, among many other things, ban the ownership of high-capacity magazines larger than 10 rounds in the Golden State.

Everything you may have missed but need to know, in 58 minutes or less! You're welcome! (And thanks to Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio for filling in for us on Friday!)

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As some progressive Democrats freak out about Hillary Clinton's chances against Donald Trump, we're joined on today's BradCast by historian, author and broadcaster Jon Wiener to discuss his recent article detailing why he believes both math and history suggest Trump will be simply unable to win the Presidency this November. [Audio link at end of article.]

Wiener is a longtime friend and colleague at KPFK/Pacifica Radio here in Los Angeles, where he hosts the 4 O'Clock Report (airing right after The BradCast) on Wednesdays. His piece at The Nation, where he is Contributing Editor and host of the Start Making Sense podcast, is headlined "Relax, Donald Trump Can't Win". But is he right about that?

"My goal was to take a step back, to try to get a sense of the realities of things separate from our passions and our fears," he tells me, while explaining his case and the critical electoral math that undergirds it. Essentially, he argues, Trump must find millions of more Republican votes than Mitt Romney was able to scrape up in 2012. "It's very much of an uphill climb for [Trump] to find another 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 million people," particularly with the broad baggage that he has already accrued during the primary.

"There are very few people who switch from one party to another between elections," the UC Irvine history professor and author of How We Forgot the Cold War and Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files (and many others) explains. "Trump does claim that he's brought millions and millions of people into the primaries. But the people who looked at this closely discovered that Trump's voters in the primaries were Republican voters in the last general election. They're already committed Republicans. These are not new, first-time, never-before, non-voters --- these are Republicans. These aren't going to increase the Republican total. They've already been counted as Republicans in past elections."

So, even presuming his math is correct, what of a number of critical points that his analysis seems to simply overlook, such as voter suppression, other forms of election fraud, more "scandal" (phony or otherwise) for the presumptive Democratic nominee, and the possibility of Trump becoming a more disciplined candidate? Not to mention so many of the recent failures of pundits, pollsters and political scientists --- on which his case rests --- on everything from the GOP primary election itself to the recent right-wing populist victory in the UK's Brexit referendum?

Tune in for Jon's responses to my skeptical questions on all of the above in our lively conversation today.

Also on today's program: The U.S. Dept. of Defense announces an end to the ban on transgender service members; Trump's African-American support is amazing; Ohio's GOP Gov. John Kasich vetoes a 'poll tax' bill passed by his own party; Canada's Parliament goes gaga for Obama; And Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report...

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Following the massacre at the LGBT nightclub in Orlando in which more than 100 were shot and 49 killed, the media (including us!) have been reporting the incident as 'the worst mass shooting in U.S. history'. But was it really?

On today's BradCast [audio link to show posted below], I'm joined by Ariela J. Gross, professor of law and history at USC, co-author of several history text books, and the author of What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America to discuss a number of U.S. mass killings from early in the 20th Century that were, arguably, far 'worse', in that the death toll was much higher.

Several of them, including those in East St. Louis, IL and Tulsa, OK, have been largely obscured by history as "race riots" instead of the mass killings they actually were. Some historians, she explains, now use the term "'massacre' because 'race riot' makes it sounds as though there were something two-sided" about these wholesale slaughters of African-Americans. "Some historians refer to them as 'racial cleansing', not unlike the ethnic cleansing that we saw in parts of Eastern Europe in the late 20th Century," Gross tells me.

The exact number of deaths in those horrific incidents (not to mention similar slaughters of Native Americans) are still unknown, but are believed to be in the hundreds in a number of cases. Gross notes, however, that had the killers at the time "had access to military-grade weapons the way [the Orlando shooter] did, we'd be talking about thousands of people dead." She also details how "racial terror has gone hand-in-hand with our gun culture" or the years.

Also today: Surprise! Attempts to pass gun safety legislation in the U.S. Senate fail again; The latest FEC filings are in, and the Trump Campaign appears to be in big big trouble, at least if fundraising, staffing and cash on hand mean anything to his particular candidacy and what it may mean for the RNC as a whole; And new polls find Hillary Clinton still ahead of Trump, though not by as much as might think, particularly given the presumptive GOP nominee's disastrous past couple of weeks.

And finally on today's BradCast, Desi Doyen joins us amidst the horrible heat wave here in Southern California, for the 700th(!) episode of our Green News Report!...

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On today's BradCast the fights over bullets and ballots both continue following the massacre in Orlando over the weekend and the official end of primary voting following Tuesday's Democratic Primary in Washington D.C. [Audio link for show posted below.]

First up today, the Democratic response to the horrific mass shooting in Orlando seems to be to revise legislative initiatives repeatedly rejected by the NRA and GOP in years past. Both President Obama and Hillary Clinton call for measures to keep suspected terrorists from easily buying semi-automatic weapons of mass destruction, and Dems in the U.S. Senate stage a 'filibuster' in hopes of forcing Republicans to allow votes on some of the most low-hanging-fruit gun safety legislation.

In the meantime, some Republicans, at least on Fox "News" (believe it or not), are finally calling for the enactment of some common sense measures, and even Donald Trump is set to meet with the terrorist-enabling NRA concerning their years long fight to assure that those who the U.S. Government will not allow to board an airplane can still easily purchase all of the assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines they may want.

Then, voting in the 2016 Presidential Primary season mercifully came to end with yesterday's Democratic Primary in Washington D.C. where Clinton reportedly defeated Bernie Sanders by more than 50 points before the pair held a two-hour long private meeting about the future of the party, after the close of polls. But the attempt to oversee the tallying, particularly here in California, where hundreds of thousands of Vote-by-Mail and Provisional ballots remain to be tallied, continues.

With a warning from the "U.N." that Donald Trump may be just months away from acquiring nuclear weapons, we open the phone lines to listeners on all of the above, before finally finishing up with our latest Green News Report. Listen up, spread the word and keep up the good fight!

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Over the weekend, we saw the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando.

Today on The BradCast, we discuss what happened, the reactions to it from President Obama and many others, including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (who lied about the tragedy to say that the alleged killer was a Muslim born overseas. He wasn't. He was born in New York. Like Trump.)

But, while we cover what we know about the tragedy, and the many reactions to it from a number of communities, we also discuss how it might never have happened in the first place had the terrorist-enabling National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Republican Party they support, not fought so hard to ensure that those suspected of involvement with extremist organizations still be allowed to easily and legally purchase all of the semi-automatic, military-style assault weapons and large capacity magazines they might need, in order to carry out the type of mass shooting we saw, yet again, over the weekend in Orlando.

More than 100 were shot at the Pulse nightclub alone, in the nation's worst-ever mass shooting. It was able to happen, thanks in no small part, to the millions of dollars spent over many years by the NRA and the GOP officials who have repeatedly voted to allow even those on the so-called "Terror Watch List" to easily buy weapons meant for nothing more than mass murder --- just as al-Qaeda and other extremist groups have long, publicly instructed their followers.

In the meantime, the NRA-owned GOP officials, including Trump, who proudly stand with the terrorist-supporting NRA, offer nothing more than lies and "thoughts and prayers" in response, as the gun violence epidemic and body count continues to grow in the face of inaction by lawmakers in these locked and loaded United States of America.

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We're happy to keep informing the electorate, one important fact, data-point and reality-based story at a time, so that we might all be better prepared to do our job as voters. That, even as one young woman heard on today's show charges, correctly, that so much of what is going in our country of late "reflects back on our nation and makes us look ridiculous."

With all of that in mind, among the many reality-based stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link for the full show posted below.]...

• Thanks to some excellent reporting by the LA Times, tens of thousands of CA voters who might not have been able to cast a ballot in the party primary of their choosing on June 7th, will now be able to do so;
• Donald Trump is endorsed by the terrorist-supporting NRA, lies about Hillary Clinton, and vows no more "gun-free zones" (even though his own major properties are "gun-free zones");
• Republican voters, party leaders and major funders continue to coalesce behind the presumptive GOP nominee;
• Clinton continues to struggle in still more state and national polls against Trump, even as Sanders continues to outperform her against Trump in the same polls;
• Revisiting some of Clinton's reasons from 2008 for staying in the race against then-Senator Obama, long after it was clear she was unlikely to win the Presidential nomination;
• Oklahoma's GOP governor vetoes a bill that would have criminalized abortions, even as her Republican state legislature passes an "emergency" anti-LGBT bathroom bill;
• A brilliant Connecticut woman smacks down anti-LGBT laws and hate, after she is harassed in a public restroom for being transgender (which she isn't);
• And, our latest Green News Report with a startling number of victories this week for environmental champions...

Enjoy!...

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