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Latest Featured Reports | Friday, October 11, 2024
Milton's Mess, FL's U.S. House Liars, Trump's Made-in-China Bibles: 'BradCast' 10/10/24
Also: OK's sleazy, shameful, MAGA Superintendent of Public Schools...
'Green News Report' 10/10/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Hurricane Milton slices through Florida; FEMA grapples with Republican disinfo, funding shortages; PLUS: Biden EPA issues landmark rule to replace every lead pipe in America...
Previous GNRs: 10/8/24 - 10/3/24 - Archives...
Whistleblower Org Readies to Support Election Officials, Poll Workers: 'BradCast' 10/9/24
Guest: Dana Gold of GAP's 'Democracy Protection Initiative'; Also: States work to support voters after Helene; GOPers file suits before election to challenge it after...
'Becoming the Norm': Florida Braces for 'Devastating to Catastrophic' Milton: 'BradCast' 10/8/24
Guest: Meteorologist Guy Walton; Also: NC GOP lawmakers made Helene far worse...
'Green News Report' 10/8/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Just after Hurricane Helene, Florida braces for powerful Hurricane Milton; Trump lies about federal response to Helene; PLUS: New study finds hurricanes have hidden death tolls...
Previous GNRs: 10/3/24 - 10/1/24 - Archives...
Sunday 'Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up' Toons
THIS WEEK: Shady J.D. ... Easy Decisions ... The X Factor ... Storm Warning ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's best toons!...
Time Running Out For
All the Trump Rackets: 'BradCast' 10/3/24
'Pro-choice' Melania wants $250k from CNN; $100k 'Trump Watch' invites influence peddlers; Damning new 1/6 details; MAGA county clerk gets 9 years for CO vote system tampering...
'Green News Report' 10/3/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
After another climate disaster, climate change finally front and center at VP Debate; PLUS: Ongoing climate disaster Helene, now second deadliest hurricane in modern U.S. history...
Previous GNRs: 10/1/24 - 9/26/24 - Archives...
Vance Sane-Washes Trump, Self in Polite, Lie-Filled VP Debate: 'BradCast' 10/2/24
Special coverage with Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'...
How You Can Help Protect Democracy This Year: 'BradCast' 10/1/24
Guest: Emily Levy of Scrutineers.org; Also: Iran/Israel escalation; Dockworkers strike shuts down ports; Search, recovery, climate denier lies, continue after Helene...
'Green News Report' 10/1/24
'GNR' Special Coverage: Climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene unleashes widespread death and destruction, as storm victims face daunting challenge of recovery...
The Predictable Horrors of Helene: 'BradCast' 9/30/24
Climate change strikes again, killing more than a hundred in 5 states, millions without power, concerns about their ability to vote; Also: Callers ring in before VP Debate...
Springfield Haitians Sue Trump, Vance, Musk, et al over Defamation, Death Threats
Add'l defendants include Trump, Jr., OH A.G. Yost, OH U.S. Sen. candidate Moreno, LA Rep. Higgins...
Sunday 'Protection Racket' Toons
THIS WEEK: Creepers, Cowards and Conmen! (And they're all the same guy!)... In our latest collection of the week's creepiest toons...
'Green News Report' 9/26/24
Helene guns for Florida; Global warming doubled odds of EU's catastrophic floods; PLUS: Biden promotes climate action, issues warning, at final U.N. address...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
(All times listed as PACIFIC TIME unless noted)
Media Appearance Archives...
'Special Coverage' Archives
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Some of the reasons are as bad as you might guess; Also: Another failed assassination attempt; More threats and false claims by the former Prez...
By Brad Friedman on 9/16/2024 6:19pm PT  

I think we've got a humdinger for ya on today's BradCast. At least if you, like me, are still scratching your head every day as to why --- after all these years and all we now know about the disgraced former President and cognitively declining convicted criminal, and after last week's crushing debate defeat --- about a half of the nation's voters are still supporting this guy. Yes, his supporters are even out here in theoretically "liberal" Southern California, as our callers demonstrate today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, we catch up a bit on some of the weekend's news, including the little that is currently known about the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump at one of his golf courses on Sunday; the many lies Trump told about immigration, the economy and wildfires during an appearance out here in Los Angeles on Friday (when he threatened to let the state burn to the ground if California Gov. Gavin Newsom --- who he called "Newscum" --- refused to do Trump's bidding if he becomes President again); and as Trump ignored and exacerbated the number of bomb and terror threats now being made against the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

After nearly a full week of Trump (and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance) making false claims that Haitian immigrants in the town are "illegally" there --- (They aren't. Both President Biden and then President Trump granted them the right to be there under a 1952 law) --- and that they are eating the dog and cat pets of other residents, Trump continues to double-down and make things even more perilous for the folks of Springfield, both old and new.

The Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazis have now descended on the town. The state's Republican Governor Mike DeWine has decried the rhetoric and false claims by Trump and Vance as "disgusting". The woman who made the initial Facebook claim, highlighted by Vance, about a neighbor's cat disappearing has admitted she had no first-hand knowledge and says she regrets her post. And the city has had to shut down or lock down city hall, elementary schools, college campuses and hospital facilities over the past week, thanks to Trump supporters threatening political violence.

Despite all of that, Trump had the temerity on Sunday night to blame the "rhetoric" of Biden and Harris for a mentally unstable guy's failed attempt to shoot the former President at one of his Florida golf courses. While both Biden and Harris immediately condemned the thwarted attack, noting "there is no place for political violence in America", Trump charged that it was the President and Vice President's words that that has put HIM In danger. He went so far as to tell Fox "News" that it was "their rhetoric [that is] causing me to be shot at," in the same breath that he charged they "are destroying the country --- from both the inside and out."

So, with all that we know about this guy, how can it be that he is still largely neck and neck with Kamala Harris in pre-election polling just 50 days out from this year's critical election?!

I thought I'd open the phones today specifically to Trump supporters (and, yes, we have them here in Southern California) to answer that question, by inviting them to let us know why they are still on board with him. They don't get a free pass. I challenge them a bit, but let them explain themselves in the bargain.

And, yup, if we can believe the very first caller, "Luther," who says he is from Arkansas, it is for at least one of the very worst reasons you can possibly imagine. You'll decide if he's for real or not. He was rather convincing. But the callers that followed didn't necessarily have much better reasons for their support of this guy.

Anyway, you'll be the judge. And I welcome your comments in response. Give it a listen. I think you'll "enjoy" today's program...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Steve Herman, Voice of America's former WH Bureau Chief, now Chief Nat'l Correspondent, on pulling back 'The White House Curtain'; Also: Wildfires explode in CA; Israeli war cabinet falls apart...
By Brad Friedman on 6/17/2024 6:36pm PT  

Hey, we beat COVID again over the weekend! So, we're back on today's BradCast and with a fearless in-studio guest for that matter! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Very quickly, at top of show, an update on our seemingly never-ending personal COVID nightmares. (Yup, I got it again last week, but kicked it by showtime today! And I ain't the only one.); A bit of breaking news on a spate of wildfires breaking out around Southern (and Northern) California; And some news on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime coalition "unity" cabinet falling apart, even as the military seems to turn on the PM, who has reportedly undermined ceasefire and hostage release negotiations "due to political considerations" and his need to stay in power to avoid pending criminal charges.

THEN, we are joined in-studio by veteran journalist STEVE HERMAN of the non-profit, non-partisan, independent, government-funded media outlet known as Voice of America. After spending nearly three decades as an overseas bureau chief for VOA, mostly in Asia, Herman moved back stateside to become White House Bureau Chief during the four years of the Trump Administration and first eight months of Biden's. Now, he has a brand new book detailing insider observations and lessons from those years, titled Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist's Story of Covering the President --- and Why It Matters.

While I just got over my latest bout with COVID this past weekend, I was somewhat concerned that Herman might not want to join me in person in a small radio studio for an hour. Then I remembered that he was among the very first civilians to enter the Fukushima Nuclear Plant after its 2011 meltdown and would later go on to serve in the cramped, poorly ventilated basement confines with the White House Press Corps during Trump's mishandling of the worse pandemic in 100 years. So, yeah, he doesn't seem easily shaken.

Among the many topics of my discussion with Herman today, based on details, stories and history lessons from his fascinating new book...

  • Details on working as a radio pool reporter during critical historic events during the Trump presidency.
  • That time Donald Trump tested positive for COVID, didn't tell the public (or the press corps working in close quarters with him) for four days, became gravely ill, and the White House lied about all of it.
  • Which was more unnerving? Walking into the nuclear plant at Fukushima just after a meltdown, or showing up each day in the White House during the worst of COVID, with a President who routinely violated WH safety protocols himself?
  • How --- and why --- the Trump Administration tried to capture VOA as a propaganda tool (the agency is prohibited, by law, from engaging in such practices and must remain independent), and how Herman was specifically targeted with a "dossier" compiled by Trump's henchmen at VOA's parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
  • Herman discusses that time he was banned from Mike Pence's Air Force Two after revealing that the Vice President was told in advance of his maskless visit to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota that masking was mandatory under the legendary health facilities house rules.
  • The need for skepticism of government officials by journalists, and how should be the role of WH correspondents to not only report what officials say, but to report on when and how they are not telling the truth to the American public.
  • The differences in the pressures facing journalists at commercial news outlets reporting on the White House, versus that of non-commercial new organizations like VOA.

To give you a quick taste of the conversation today: On the Trump Administration's failed effort to capture Voice of America as a MAGA outlet, Herman tells me "...he was just looking for a head on a pike...And I would have been a good head on a pike. There was a perception that Voice of America was not stepping in line with the Trump Administration. That I and others were guilty of anti-Trump bias, allegedly. And anytime anyone has said that, whether they think I'm anti-Trump or anti-Biden or anti-whoever, go look at the stories we write, and show me where the bias is."

Of course, having the President of the United States himself furious at Voice of America for not being a propaganda outlet, kinda proves the point that, as Herman explains in his fascinating book, VOA, for some eight decades now has not served as a mouthpiece for any particular Presidential Administration. It has proven itself over and again to be a service that its stake holders --- the people of the U.S. whose Government funds it, even as VOA is barred from broadcasting here --- should be proud of. It has long served as a trusted source of news to uncountable millions across the globe in dozens of countries and languages where the service has played a critical role in countering disinformation --- either foreign or domestic --- since the outlets founding in 1942...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Also: Latest in Israel's war on Gaza; Latest in Trump's NY criminal trial...
By Brad Friedman on 5/6/2024 6:52pm PT  

We've got a lot of news from around the globe and right here at home on today's BradCast. Some of it is even not terrible! But, yeah, much of it is. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

  • It will be eight years next month since the 2016 BREXIT referendum in Great Britain offered a foreboding omen in advance of that year's Presidential election here in the U.S. We'll hope this past weekend's election results for mayoral races in London and elsewhere in Britain --- where the Conservative Party suffered crushing defeats against the Labour Party --- offer a much brighter omen for the UK's national elections later this year and the 2024 Presidential election here in the U.S. in November.
  • On the other hand, hopefully it is not Panama's weekend elections offering us an omen instead. A last-minute replacement for the country's former, popular, charismatic but criminal President --- who is barred from the ballot as he seeks sanctuary in the Nicaraguan Embassy after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering --- defeated three other rivals to win the Presidency on Sunday.
  • In other foreign affairs, we've got a lot of news out of Israel today. Over the weekend, the government of rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shut down the local operations of Qatar-based news agency Al-Jazeera in a crackdown being decried by world journalism organizations as an attack on press freedoms. Hamas announced on Monday that it had accepted a cease-fire proposal forwarded via the Egyptian-Qatari based negotiations with Israel, but Israel --- which says it is studying the proposal --- appeared to be rejecting it as they began striking targets in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. That, as the Biden Administration has been warning Israel of threatened changes in U.S. support if a ground invasion in southern Gaza does not include measures to insure the safety of hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees. And all of that follows on what Axios reported last week as a hold placed by the Administration on a shipment of U.S.-made ammo earmarked for Israel, which may now be caught up in President Biden's push for more guarantees about its use by Israel.
  • But I thought the disgraced former President told us that the U.S. Justice Department has been weaponized by Democrats to go after Republicans?! If so, they've got a funny way of showing it. Last year, the DoJ indicted New Jersey's sitting Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (and his wife) on bribery and corruption charges. On Friday, the DoJ indicted Texas' Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar (and his wife) on bribery and corruption charges. Its almost as if Trump was lying about the justice system being "weaponized" by Democrats to go after him and Republicans.
  • Speaking of our corrupt, lying, former President. Donald Trump was slapped with another fine on Monday for violating the court's gag-order against attacking jurors and witnesses. That brings the total number of contempt violations during his 2016 election interference case to 10. New York Superior Court Justice Juan Merchan once again warned that a jail sentence may be imposed after any more violations. As to the actual trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment made to a porn star to help him win in 2016, the Trump Organization's former Controller and its Accounts Payable Supervisor testified for the Prosecution on Monday about how Trump, while serving in the White House, signed checks from his personal account, fraudulently logged as legal expenses, to reimburse his former attorney Michael Cohen for the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.
  • Record flooding from climate change-fueled downpours in a wealthy section of Brazil is being described as among the worst disasters in its history, leading to chaos, the shutdown of highways and airports, hospitals without power, widespread looting, helicopter rooftop rescues, 20,000 left homeless and, so far, at least 83 deaths. "This was the third record flood in the same region of the country in less than a year," lamented Brazil's President, decrying his nation's lack of preparedness for the worst effects of climate change and for the "historic debt" that wealthy nations who caused this problem through the unfettered emission of climate warming greenhouse gasses owe to poorer countries who emitted little of it, but are now suffering the worst of the global consequences nonetheless.
  • Brazil's weekend disaster reportedly evoked scenes from post-Katrina New Orleans and post-Harvey Houston here in the U.S. But, over the same weekend, new scenes from Houston itself evoked the same thing, following days of downpours that pummeled the region and left residents stranded on rooftops requiring hundreds of rescues. Again. Some 23 inches of rain fell in Harris County over the past week, as floodwaters are finally beginning to recede in the nation's third-largest county today. Flood insurance has become all but unaffordable for many residents after years of ever-worsening storms as our global climate crisis continues to tighten its deadly grip. A disaster declaration was issued by the state's Governor in 91 counties impacted by the latest round of extreme weather in Texas.
  • Finally, with increased heat and moisture in the air, traditionally mosquito-free Los Angeles County is mosquito-free no more. County officials are now unleashing tens of thousands of irradiated male mosquitos (which don't bite), as part of a pilot program to target the female population (which do) for a particularly aggressive strain of bugs that have grown more aggressive in recent years, and are now said to be a vector for a number of deadly diseases. All thanks to climate change. Happy Spring!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Attorney Ernest A. Canning on that and this week's 'Insurrectionist Disqualification' hearing at SCOTUS; Also: Relentless rain continues drench SoCal; Trump's rigged NV GOP Primary/Caucuses...
By Brad Friedman on 2/6/2024 6:38pm PT  

Today on The BradCast: Bad news from the DC Court of Appeals for the disgraced former President, though things could get much worse this week depending on how things go at SCOTUS on Thursday. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

  • The unrelenting downpour in Southern California continues for a third straight day, as Los Angeles alone reports more than 300 mudslides since the atmospheric river began pouring in on Sunday, resulting in continuing flash flooding and evacuations throughout the region. Thankfully, there have been no deaths or major catastrophes yet reported, though three were killed in Northern California where strong winds toppled trees as the storm blew ashore on Sunday. It's not yet over, but we're told the sun may finally reappear again in SoCal, at least for a time, on Wednesday.
  • Today was the last day to vote in Nevada's all vote-by-mail 2024 Presidential primaries, though few may have bothered. On the Democratic side, President Biden faces little or no competition. On the Republican side, Donald Trump helped rigged the state in his favor with the help of NV state party officials. He's not on the NV Primary ballot, since he objected to the all-mail process created by the state. He demanded caucuses instead. So Nikki Haley will be on the primary ballot, but Trump won't. While Haley won't be participating in the Thursday caucuses, but Trump will. Republican Delegates, however, will only be awarded to the winner of the rigged GOP Caucuses.
  • Welp, it took nearly a month, but a three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals finally released their long-awaited ruling on whether Presidents have immunity against any and all criminal charges for crimes they carry out while serving as President. That is what the four-time indicted former President is arguing. And, to the shock of pretty much nobody, the court ruled in a unanimous, very thorough 57-page decision [PDF] today, that, nope, a President may not avoid criminal consequences for, by way of an example Donald Trump's attorney defended in court last month, ordering Seal Team 6 to murder a political rival. While the ruling was not surprising, it was successful for Trump, at least in part, by delaying his previously scheduled March 4th federal trial on four felony counts [PDF] related to his many attempts to steal the 2020 election. The D.C. panel struck down every single argument made by Trump and ordered the case to be returned to the trial court unless the defendant appeals the ruling to SCOTUS by Monday. Of course he will. The only question for the moment is: will there be enough votes at the corrupted rightwing SCOTUS to bother even hearing this dumb case.
  • Then, we're joined by BRAD BLOG's longtime legal contributor ERNEST A. CANNING to discuss both today's Immunity ruling and the arguably far more consequential matter that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. The Supremes will hear oral argument for and against the case for disqualifying Donald J. Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause". The specific case, Trump v. Anderson, is named for the 91-year old Republican, Norma Anderson, who is one of six Republican and independent voters that sued under 14.3 in the state of Colorado to bar Trump from the state's Presidential ballot. They were successful. The CO Supreme Court barred Trump in a very well argued (and very conservative) ruling [PDF] late last year, pending a decision from SCOTUS. In the month since the Justices agreed to hear the case, as Canning writes this week, no fewer than 50 amici (friend of the court) briefs have been filed both for and against the Constitution's post-Civil War ban on insurrectionists serving in public office.

    Canning cites several key points offered in the various briefs from a host of scholars and experts, and we preview the questions likely to be up for debate during this Thursday's landmark hearing. The eventual opinion issued by SCOTUS could determine whether Trump is barred from the Presidential ballot in all 50 states. And what might happen then?

    Canning argues that if you follow conservative "textualist" and "originalist" doctrine, "what the intent was, what the actual language was" by the framers of the 14th Amendment, "there's no way you can come to a decision other than the fact that Donald Trump is disqualified within the meaning of the statute."

    That largely matches conventional wisdom suggesting the Constitutional case for banning Trump from office is pretty rock solid legally. Nonetheless, most of those media pundits and legal experts also tend to argue that the former President's friends and appointees on the High Court are likely to conjure up some sort of jiggery-pokery and pure applesauce to allow him to remain on the ballot this year anyway. "That could very well happen here," Canning tells me, before adding: "But I wouldn't bet the farm either direction."

  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with more on the climate change-related causes of California's historic downpour, Chile's deadly heat and wildfires, and Spain's persistent drought. She also reports on how Europe has avoided Vladimir Putin's energy blackmail, and how Republicans plan to turn back the clock on the Biden Administration's landmark climate achievements if they succeed in winning back the White House in November...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Election technology expert Kevin Skoglund on why ES&S Ballot Marking Devices printed out the OPPOSITE of some voters' votes...
By Brad Friedman on 12/4/2023 6:09pm PT  

After a number of headlines on today's BradCast --- a lot of stuff happened since we last spoke last week --- we're on to our main story today. And it's a doozy.

Last month, during off-year elections in several states, touchscreen voting systems in Northampton County, Pennsylvania made by ES&S, the nation's largest voting system vendor, were discovered to be printing out the opposite of what voters had selected on their screens in two different statewide contests.

The so-called touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) used in Northampton, a suburban swing-county just outside of Philly in the critical battleground state, are supposed to print a ballot summary card, in human-readable language, based on selection made on the touchscreens, allowing voters to confirm their choices before those cards are then tabulated by an optical-scan computer. Similar systems are (shamefully) still used by about a fifth of the nation's voters on Election Day across the county, including in every precinct in the critical battleground state of Georgia and here in the nation's most populace County in Los Angeles.

But last month, on November 7th, there were two statewide retention elections for Judges, one Democratic and one Republican. If voters selected either YES or NO for both judges, everything printed out on the ballot cards as expected. But if they selected YES in one race and NO for the other, the system would flip their votes on the summary print-out. But here's the catch. It only flipped the votes on the human-readable portion of the ballot. The barcodes also printed on the ballot summary --- which humans cannot read --- as used for tabulation, recorded the votes correctly as cast.

As you can imagine, all of this resulted in chaos on Election Day. Some voters --- once precincts even noticed the problem --- began voting on hand-marked Emergency Paper Ballots instead. In PA, however, there are only about 20 such emergency ballots available at each precinct. They ran out very quickly.

After explanations by election officials and employees at ES&S (which did the programming of the computers for the election) on Election Day, a County judge ordered voters to begin using the touchscreen systems again. Some officials tried to ease voters worries by telling them they would just FLIP the votes after polls closed! In other precincts, voters were reportedly instructed to simply vote the opposite of what they actually wanted in those two contests.

This is the same County where, back in 2019, the first time these ES&S ExpressVoteXL systems were first deployed, the systems recorded zero votes for some races in certain precincts. One of those races, believe it or not, was for the County Judge who, this year, gave the okay to start using the misprogrammed systems again. He didn't receive zero votes in those precincts in 2019. In fact, he won the race for County Judge, as a post-election investigation would reveal.

So, what actually happened on November 7th last month? Longtime election technologist KEVIN SKOGLUND of Pennsylvania's nonpartisan Citizens for Better Elections, investigated to find out. He recently published a detailed report breaking down exactly what wrong. He was able to confirm that while the printed, human-readable text appeared to flip the votes in those two races, the human-unreadable barcode version of the ballot correctly reflected the intent of voters. In short, the votes were right, but the labels next to the two contests in question had been reversed.

As he explains on today's program, this is a programming error that, frankly, should never have been able to happen. Election Officials have long told skeptics of unverifiable touchscreen BMD systems that there was nothing to worry about, because the systems printed out a paper record of voters votes that they could approve before casting, and that the computer-printed barcodes or QRCodes would always match that human-readable text. In Northampton County last month, clearly they did not.

Skoglund also discusses the terrifying danger posed by a programming error like this --- whether it actually happens or voters simply claim that it did --- to next year's Presidential election in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and elsewhere where voters at the polls are forced to use the same or similar touchscreen systems to cast their ballots.

Describing BMDs like those used in Northampton as "a $9,000 pencil," Skoglund warns today that "events like this shake people's trust, with good reason."

"One of the core cybersecurity concerns is resilience," he tells me. "You want to have systems that can recover from problems. One of the reasons that we like hand-marked paper ballots is not just that the voter marks their ballot and verifies it all at the same time --- so there's not this extra step of checking if the machines works --- one of the other properties of them is their resilience. Because even if the power goes out, even if the machines all stop working, as long as you have a pen, you can mark the ovals on your ballot. But with these [BMD] machines, your 'pen' may just stop working. And you have to have a backup plan if that happens."

Clearly in Northampton, PA last month, there was no real backup plan. If something like this happens next year --- either real or manufactured by nefarious voters --- in even one precinct in PA or any of the other swing-states where similar systems are insanely still used by millions of voters, I shudder to think of what may happen next in this nation.

Incredibly enough, even after the failures in 2019 and 2023, Northampton plans to use the same systems again next year. We discuss that and much more related to all of this on today's show, before we receive phone calls near the end of the program from a few other election experts --- Susan Greenhalgh of FreeSpeechForPeople.org and Dr. Philip Stark, UC-Berkeley election expert and inventor of the post-election Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) protocol. Both have long warned of exactly this kind of election nightmare and have long urged all election officials to move to reliable, verifiable, hand-marked paper ballots for all voters, other than for disabled voters who may choose to vote with an assistive technology.

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Also: Biden to join autoworker picket line in Detroit; Trump to meet NON-union workers in suburbs; Callers ring in with union myths, realities...
By Brad Friedman on 9/25/2023 5:54pm PT  

It's a very exciting time for organized labor in these United States, as discussed on today's BradCast, after decades of corporate measures that have succeeded in vastly shrinking union membership and power across the country, along with the power of the American middle class itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Late on Sunday, out here in Hollywood, striking film and television scribes from the Writer's Guild of America (WGA), finally came to terms on a new contract with major studio executives to share some of the bounty of record profits the writers have helped those giant corporations make. The tentative deal is described by the writer's union negotiators as "exceptional," including "meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership."

Pending likely final approval by members this week, only some film and TV production will be able to begin rolling again --- for example, late-night and daytime shows without actors --- as the more than 100,000 actors of SAG-AFTRA still remain on strike, hoping to see similar financial benefits and protections for their members as achieved by the WGA after nearly 150 days on the picket lines.

In related news, President Biden will be meeting with striking union members from the United Autoworkers on the picket line this week in Detroit, in what is apparently (shamefully?) an historic first for an American President. That will happen on Tuesday, the day before Donald Trump is set to meet with non-union workers at a plant outside of Detroit, in a ruby red suburb this week. (Good luck noticing that part of the story as corporate media outlets seem to be working overtime to "both sides" the two very different appearances.)

At the same time, the Biden-Harris campaign has released a video featuring GOP Presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and a Fox "News" anchor singing Biden's support for union workers.

We've had a very busy news weekend beyond the good news for organized labor and collective bargaining. But I wanted to move that good labor news up to the top today, and take some calls from listeners on it. Some of those callers seemed to have some misconceptions about unions which other callers, happily, were able to rebut in what I believe was an obscenely reasonable conversation for talk radio. My apologies in advance.

We'll try to get to some of the other ongoing stories --- the indictment of Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (NJ); the House GOP's pathetic plan to shut the federal government down as of this weekend, and more --- in the days ahead. Today, however, seemed a good day to focus momentarily on some good news about organized labor, the struggling middle class, and a newly revitalized stand against major corporations, making records profits, fighting like hell to prevent their workers from sharing in the gains those very workers helped them achieve.

I hope you'll tune in!...

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Guest: Dr. Daniel Swain of UCLA and Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research; Also: 850 still missing on Maui; Trump cancels 'exoneration' news conference, chickens out of debate, negotiates surrender in GA...
By Brad Friedman on 8/21/2023 6:06pm PT  

Welp, as discussed on today's BradCast we, personally, managed to dodge the worst of the weekend's Hurricane Hilary (downgraded to Post-Tropical Cyclone shortly after landfall) by dint of a complete coincidence. Thanks to many for the well-wishes. Tune in for more details on that today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But much of the U.S. Southwest was not as lucky over the past 24 to 48 hours, with parts of California seeing a year's worth of rain, in some cases, in just over a day. Our coverage begins with a focus on our hometown of Los Angeles, which saw the center of the storm pass over downtown at 7pm on Sunday. The desert areas, for example, Palm Springs, fared far worse. And now many in Nevada are facing the storm, which could continue to drop massive amounts of precip as far as southeastern Oregon and west-central Idaho.

Tropical storms are wildly unusual for the state of California. The last time one one made direct landfall in the Golden State was 1939, prior to the modern National Weather Service warning system and naming convention for tropical storms and hurricanes. All of which begs the question today: Was this storm --- which we tried to light a siren about on our final show last week, when few seemed to be noticing it --- a fluke? Or is it emblematic of our climate changed future?

We've got just the person to ask about that today. We are delighted to be joined by climate scientist DR. DANIEL SWAIN, of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He also serves as a Research Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and at The Nature Conservancy of California.

"This is definitely a historical event that we saw unfold this past weekend in Southern California," he tells me. The worst of it, debris flows, flash flooding, was "mostly in the places that we thought they would be most likely. Largely, this played out pretty close to forecast. This is something that was pretty well predicted."

The question of whether Hilary was a fluke or our future is a complicated one, with a multilayered answer that Swain explains with a great deal of clarity. At least with as much as can be had given what he describes as a huge lack of research of the phenomenon of West Coast tropical storms. Most such storms that form in the Eastern Pacific head out to sea toward Hawaii. But not Hilary. Why did that happen this time exactly? And can we expect more of them?

"We're all living in the context of a changed climate," Swain says as we discuss the now 4 or 5 (depending on how you count them) storms brewing in the Atlantic --- "a conga line of potential hurricanes" --- during what could end up being a very busy peak of the storm season on that side of the country. "We've never had the combination of record warm oceans plus a very strong developing El Nino event in recorded history."

On whether scientists have been low-balling the effects of climate change for years, Swain concedes: "I think we did historically underestimate how much that [warming] was going to disrupt ecosystems, ecologies and human systems --- cities, populations all around the world."

"We are starting to see the limits of our adaptability already. And it's only going to get harder with additional warming," he asserts. "The fact that the water vapor-holding capacity of the atmosphere is exponential with warming, means that the next degree of warming is going to bring about bigger changes than the last degree."

Please tune in for a very enlightening conversation about all of this.

Then, we close today first with a grim update from Maui, where the County's Mayor has announced the official death toll from their recent wildfires (fueled in part by the gusting winds of a different Pacific cyclone) now stands at 114, with some 850 people still unaccounted for.

And finally, a mercifully short update on the various weekend travails of our disgraced, four-time indicted former President and GOP front-runner for their 2024 Presidential nomination. Donald Trump cancelled his promised Monday morning press conference when he vowed last week to present an "Irrefutable REPORT" on "Election Fraud" in Georgia in 2020, which would be "CONCLUSIVE" and offer "complete EXONERATION" following his criminal indictment on RICO charges [PDF] last week. Apparently, there is no such report. He also announced over the weekend that he was chickening out from participation in this week's GOP Presidential Primary debate in Milwaukee, and most others to follow. And, on Monday afternoon, his attorneys negotiated a $200,000 bond for his release after his surrender this week in Fulton County, GA, where he is accused of 13 criminal felony counts related to his attempted theft of the 2020 election in the Peach State...

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Also: Blue Alaska?; And labor unions rising...
By Brad Friedman on 4/11/2023 7:09pm PT  

On today's BradCast: It's almost as if Republicans want to become a failed, extinct political party. But we're gonna have to overcome a lot of authoritarian desperation first, I'm afraid. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered toward that end on today's program...

  • The 25-year old shooter who killed five and injured eight others at the Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky on Monday legally purchased his high-powered AR-15 assault-style rifle just one week before the massacre. Among the injured was a local rookie police officer, now said to be in critical but stable condition after being shot in the head. He had finished training just 10 days earlier. Among the dead was a longtime personal friend of the state's Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. The man was also said to have been a close friend of Florida's Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott. Had Scott and his party not worked so long and hard to block popular legislation that might have helped prevent the shooting --- such as restoration of the federal assault weapons ban that Republicans allowed to expire in 2004 --- his friend might still be alive. Well done, Rick! Monday's preventable tragedy was the 146th mass shooting of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archives.
  • Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones was reinstated to his old seat just one business day after state Republican lawmakers expelled the young black Nashville legislator for taking part in a peaceful protest at the state capital calling for gun safety legislation following the mass shooting that killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school two weeks ago in Nashville. As part of what may be one of the greatest GOP political blunders in recent memory, support for Jones, Rep. Justin Pearson (another expelled black legislator likely to be reseated this week as well), and the state Democratic Party have all sky-rocketed both in the state and nationally.
  • The unspeakably ill-considered politicking by TN Republicans wasn't their only embarrassing failure revealed on Monday. A three-judge state court panel also put the temporary kibosh on state GOP lawmakers attempt to cut the size of the Nashville Metropolitan Council from 40 members to 20 before this year's August elections. That would be the same Council that unanimously selected Jones, by a vote of 36 to 0 on Monday, to temporarily fill the seat left vacant when Jones was expelled by Republicans last week.
  • In response to all of this, Jones has begun calling for the resignation of Republican state House Speaker Cameron Sexton who, as reporters have discovered, does not even live in the District he is supposed to represent in the wildly gerrymandered (75 to 24) state House. He represents the city of Crossville, but he and his family live in Nashville. He could (but won't be) expelled for that violation of the state Constitution. But his ability to run for reelection next year may now be challenged in court.
  • The bad politics of the Republican Party --- who oppose reproductive freedoms, gun safety legislation, health care reform, labor unions and other wildly popular issues --- was similarly on display in several elections last week, most notably the takeover of a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. The candidate elected by 11 points to restore a progressive majority to the high court, in the normally closely divided Badger State, ran largely on the issue of protecting the right to abortion. But on the other side of the continent, in what was once deep "red" Alaska, 6 of the 7 seats on the 11-member Anchorage Assembly on the ballot last Tuesday were won by Democrats by larger than expected margins. Could Alaska be on its way toward turning "blue" in upcoming years? There are several early signs offering reason to believe the last "red" state on the West Coast could actually flip in the years ahead, especially as the unpopular GOP becomes even more desperate to hold onto power.
  • We've also got a bunch of encouraging labor news today, including several stories we had hoped to cover until being preempted by news of Donald Trump's New York indictment mid-show two weeks ago. Among those stories was the signing by Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer of a landmark bill repealing the state's anti-union, anti-labor, so-called "Right to Work" law. It was the first time in 60 years that such a law has been overturned by a state. And it was all thanks to state voters who, in 2018, adopted a Constitutional ballot measure requiring an independent state redistricting commission. With that, the state's fairer maps resulted in a Democratic trifecta last November, with the party winning majorities in both chambers of the state legislature while Whitmer held the Governorship. It's amazing how well democracy works for working people when it isn't corrupted.
  • Also a couple of weeks ago, Chipotle was forced to agree to pay former employees some $240,000 in Maine as part of a settlement agreement after the company was found to have violated federal labor laws by illegally closing a store in Augusta, Maine after workers there filed a National Labor Relations Board petition to vote for unionization.
  • Over the weekend, the union representing some 30,000 Los Angeles school custodians, cafeteria works, bus drivers and other student services staff voted overwhelmingly to approve a new contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District following a year of negotiation and, finally, a three-day strike last month. The new contract for workers at the nation's second largest school district includes, among other things, a 30% pay raise for workers and fully paid health care benefits expanded to teacher's assistants and after-school program employees. The workers, represented by SEIU Local 99, were supported during the brief walkout by the L.A. United Teachers union.
  • A New York region hotel union has reached an agreement with hotel owners outside of New York City to raise wages by $7.50 an hour, said to be the largest increase in the union's 100-year history. 7,000 members of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council will enjoy the new benefits, but so will workers at non-union hotels elsewhere in the country, where owners are beginning to realize they need to raise their own rates and benefits for workers as well, if they wish to keep them.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, to call both the balls and strikes of the latest noteworthy environmental news...

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...He also lied about it while running for U.S. Senate; Also: Other Trump liars and losers keep lying and losing; Biden support rising; More...
By Brad Friedman on 2/23/2023 6:50pm PT  

Today on The BradCast: It's truly remarkable that the former President's Republican supporters keep lying on his behalf, despite losing elections and more in the bargain. They continue to pay an extraordinary price, even as they continue to lie and lose in the process. They'll figure this out eventually, right? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the stories covered on today's program (after a thought or two on this weekend's coast-to-coast climate chaos, including an incredibly rare blizzard warning here in Los Angeles!)...

  • New polling finds Joe Biden's approval ratings have been quietly, but steadily rising over the past several months. Donald Trump's are hitting new lows among his own party faithful.
  • Arizona's former Republican Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, knew there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential election, but he kept that finding a secret while lying about it during his unsuccessful run for the 2022 GOP U.S. Senate nomination. According to documents released by Kris Mayes, Arizona's new Democratic A.G., even after the failed Cyber Ninjas "audit" of the 2020 Presidential election confirmed Biden's victory over Trump in the state, Brnovich directed "all hands" in the A.G.'s office to investigate claims of election fraud. Some 10,000 taxpayer-funded hours were spent with no evidence of a stolen election to show for it. But, while the state probe was all but completed by March of 2022, Brnovich pulled a "Bill Barr" by releasing a memo falsely claiming the office had found "serious vulnerabilities", even after his own investigators specifically refuted the assertions in the memo. He ignored them.

    The actual findings of the expensive state investigation, though completed, were never released before he was replaced by Mayes in January. Despite his hard work at lying for Trump, he lost the U.S. Senate primary anyway to Blake Masters, who lied even harder for the disgraced former President. Masters then went on to lose the general election to Democrat Mark Kelly.

    As the Washington Post's exclusive notes, Brnovich and Masters were hardly the only ones who lied about 2020 fraud in AZ before then going on to lose their elections last year. GOP Sec. of State candidate Mark Finchem lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes. Finchem, previously a state Rep, repeatedly claimed a "source" had told him that 30,000 votes were stuffed into ballot boxes before admitting privately to Brnovich's investigators "he did not have any evidence of fraud and that he did not wish to take up our time." It's one thing to lie to GOP voters. They have come to expect that by now. But its unlawful to lie to state law enforcement officials, as Finchem and other officials who also clammed up before actual investigators, clearly knew.

  • AZ's GOP candidate for Governor, Kari Lake, also lied about 2020 fraud before going on to lose her 2022 race to Democrat Katie Hobbs. And Lake is still lying and losing in her challenge to last year's election. First, she lost in court in December when a state judge dismissed her demand for a new election finding "no basis justified settings aside the election results." She lost again last week at the appeals court which determined "Lake's only purported evidence...was, quite simply, sheer speculation." After her second loss, loser Lake tweeted out, along with a fundraising link: "BREAKING: I told you we would take this case all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, and that’s exactly what we are going to do. Buckle up, America!" (Please hold your laughter until the end.)
  • Despite all of the lies and losses, the Republican National Committee is now planning to increase their lies based on false 2020 election fraud claims in advance of 2024. Why not? It's worked so well until now! In the meantime, it was reported on Wednesday that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury investigating the January 6 insurrection and related matters. And today, a federal court judge said Trump himself can now be deposed in lawsuits filed by former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page who charge he unlawfully targeted them for retribution during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
  • And then there is long time liar and loser Steve Bannon, one of Trump's several criminal 2016 campaign managers, who later went on to be fired as a White House political advisor. Bannon was recently sentenced to four months in prison for Contempt of Congress after refusing to testify in response to a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. Still out of prison pending appeal, Bannon's legal problems have only gotten much worse since his conviction. New York state has indicted him for money laundering, scheming to defraud, and conspiracy. And today we learned that last week his own lawyers sued him for failure to pay nearly half a million dollars in legal fees! (Okay, now you can go ahead and laugh.)
  • Then there's longtime GOP political operative Jesse Benton, who has worked for Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Trump and many others over the years. He was pardoned by Trump after being found guilty of bribing an official for an endorsement of Ron Paul during the 2012 GOP Iowa Caucus. Last week, Benton was sentenced to 18 months in prison for an entirely separate felony related to accepting $100,000 from a Russian national who wanted a photo with Trump during the 2016 election.
  • Finally today, we move on to our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen, as Republicans continue to pretend to be concerned about the toxic chemical train derailment in Ohio several weeks ago. It's all quite pathetically amusing to watch, as Trump turned the poisoned rural town of East Palestine into a 2024 campaign stop this week and Fox "News" boneheads like Brian Kilmeade actually begin to demand regulations of the rail industry! Not unlike the regulations that the Obama Administration had put in place years ago, before the Trump Administration subsequently rolled them all back.

Liars and losers gonna keep lying and losing...

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But DeSantis' totalitarian new law has even darker echoes...
UPDATE 3/16/23: 11th Circuit panel unanimously denied FL request to stay the preliminary injunction...
By Ernest A. Canning on 2/1/2023 9:56am PT  

Late last year, by of way a blistering 139-page order [PDF], Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker agreed that a provision of Florida's totalitarian "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" pertaining to university professors and students should be blocked.

The acronym in the title of the bill --- also referred to, without apparent irony, as the Individual Freedom Act (IFA) --- stands for "Wrong to our Kids and Employees". But, turning to Judge Walker's decision in Pernell v. Fl. Bd. of Governors, it may be useful to understand the intended usage of the word "woke" in Act's title. As defined by Merriam-Webster, it means to be "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."

In pressing for passage and in signing this Act, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a current front-runner for the 2024 GOP Presidential nomination, vowed "to fight the woke" in our schools, businesses and government agencies. He and other Republican thought police have perniciously conflated the mere mention of historical truths about societal facts and issues relating to race or social justice with "indoctrination".

Last year, Judge Walker's order in response to the Stop W.O.K.E., aka Individual Freedom Act (IFA), hauntingly cited George Orwell's 1984...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 1/10/2023 10:54am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: California slammed by another round of extreme downpours; Australia hit by unprecedented floods as hundreds airlifted to safety; PLUS: Natural-gas fired kitchen stoves are a significant cause of childhood asthma... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Last 8 Years Were the Hottest on Record; EPA moves to toughen standards for deadly soot pollution; Battle lines drawn around EPA soot proposal; EPA, pipeline operator reach deal to clean up Kansas Keystone Pipeline spill; Building Steam in Lithium Valley; Cold-weather blackouts challenge conventional wisdom on fossil fuel grid reliability...PLUS: Climate change makes heat waves, storms and droughts worse, climate report confirms... and much, MUCH more! ...

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By Brad Friedman on 12/21/2022 4:05pm PT  


Overlooking turbulent waters as a storm rolls in at one of Donald Trump's sleazy tax avoidance "nature reserve" schemes in Southern California. | PHOTO: DESI DOYEN

As of today, The BradCast and Green News Report will be on holiday hiatus until after the New Year's holiday. PDiddie will likely run some holiday toons here throughout (scroll down for them!), but otherwise we'll be trying to catch up with some family duties and attempting to recharge a bit at the end of another grueling year in the radio and blogging mines.

Our huge thanks to all of you who have supported us over the past year, especially those who have left something in our TIP JAR keep heads above water enough to keep going as long as we can! (Or just try that nifty quick tool on the top-right up there!) We couldn't do any of this without your support!

As we head into our TWENTIETH(!) year of trouble-making, muck-raking, blogging and broadcasting next year here at The BRAD BLOG, we send our best wishes to all for a peaceful holiday season. Please stay warm and healthy throughout! And to all, a good night!

-- Brad, Desi, Ernie, PDiddie and everyone else here at BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters...

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Guest: FSFP's Susan Greenhalgh on new letter to Special Counsel Jack Smith; Also: Trump's new, digital trading card scam!...
By Brad Friedman on 12/15/2022 6:29pm PT  

While Special Counsel Jack Smith is said to be investigating the Trump-incited January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the his fake electors plot to try and steal the 2020 election, among other things, there is a still-ongoing, post-2020, multi-state plot, coordinated by Trump's top MAGA lieutenants that the Feds don't yet seem to be probing. Our guest on today's BradCast is trying to change that. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

For the better part of this past year, we've have been closely reporting on the bizarre plot uncovered by frequent guest and longtime election integrity expert Marilyn Marks during the lawsuit filed by her group, Coalition for Good Governance, seeking to replace Georgia's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems with hand-marked paper ballots.

Marks recorded a phone call she received last year from an Atlanta businessman who, essentially, confessed to a scheme that has since been revealed to have been overseen and paid for by disgraced Trump attorney Sidney Powell. It involved the Board of Elections and local Republican Party officials in right-leaning Coffee County, Georgia allowing a team of computer wonks to make copies of the County's proprietary voting and tabulation software, including the sensitive Election Management System, manufactured by Dominion.

Thanks to GA's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, every county in the state is forced to use the same vulnerable, unverifiable voting systems. Making copies of those systems in one County essentially offers a blueprint for how to disrupt elections in various ways in every County in the state. Moreover, those systems are also used in jurisdictions in at least a dozen other states. Cybersecurity experts have described the Coffee County breach as extremely worrisome.

Nonetheless, until the scheme was exposed by Marks, Raffensperger's office appears to have been covering the entire thing up. And, even after it was exposed, his office --- including one of Raff's top lieutenants, Gabe Sterling --- continued to deny any of it had happened.

"Even recently, there was people saying, 'We went to Coffee County and we imaged everything,'" Sterling declared at an election forum at the Carter Center in Atlanta last April, before falsely adding: "There's no evidence of that. It didn't happen." But it absolutely did happen, as security camera video from the Coffee County Board of Elections offices, also obtained via Marks' lawsuit, subsequently made abundantly clear. The plot even involved a number of well-known MAGA Mobsters, such as Doug Logan, CEO of the Cyber Ninjas outfit that later carried out the phony post-2020 "audit" in Arizona last year.

Voting system software breaches similar to the one in Coffee County were also carried out and reportedly overseen by Powell, in several others states, including Nevada, Michigan and Colorado. As the Washington Post confirmed again this week, the stolen software "was then uploaded to a website, from where it was downloaded by election deniers across the country."

Despite all of this disturbing evidence, federal authorities do not appear to have even begun to probe these coordinated plots which, as our guest today confirms, can really be considered a crime still in progress, since the copied software can be used to undermine upcoming elections, for example, in 2024.

We're joined today by SUSAN GREENHALGH, Senior Advisor on Election Security at the non-profit good government group, Free Speech for People, to discuss the 14-page letter [PDF] that she and more than a dozen of the nation's top cybersecurity and voting system experts sent this week to Special Counsel Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, as well as the Directors of both the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), seeking a federal probe of the coordinated, ongoing plot.

"Now that they have the software," Greenhalgh explains today, "they have all the elements of the voting system, from the poll pads to the election management system which aggregates and reports totals, and everything in between. They can create their own election system and probe it to find out how it's vulnerable, and also develop ways that they can exploit those vulnerabilities. They can decompile the software to study the source code and understand how they might create malware that could get in and wreak havoc with the way the votes are counted."

Remember, these software breaches happened in most cases with the cooperation of insiders, local election officials who have direct access to these systems. Greenhalgh notes that "malware can be designed to be undetectable in many ways. So if you wanted, you could use it to disrupt an election so that people can't vote, or you could do it in ways to disrupt and manipulate or tamper with an election that is not visible to outsiders. Or you could just use the software to create disinformation campaigns and say 'I can show you how this election system was compromised and why it counts incorrectly'," even when it hasn't.

"We don't even have to imagine that because that's already been done," she continues. "That was by Matt DiPerno, the guy who ran against [Democrat] Dana Nessel for the Attorney General position in Michigan. He's also quite a famous election denier. He had a copy of voting system software that was obtained extra-legally in Michigan and put it on machines and put up videos that said, 'This is how we can manipulate these systems.'"

Greenhalgh details other ways in which these breaches are so troubling to the experts signed on to FSFP's letter; explains whether there is any evidence that the breaches were used to exploit systems in 2022; responds to remarks from the GA Sec. of State's office attempted to conflate real, longtime election security and voting systems experts with the MAGA conspiracy theorists and election liars; discusses how the Coffee County breach appears to have been covered-up by Raffensperger and other Georgia officials; and details why the lack of a federal investigation continues to threaten future elections, including the Presidential contest in 2024.

"The chance of manipulating elections going forward is very real," she warns.

Also today...since we could use some dumb news to offset that very disturbing story, 2024 Presidential candidate Donald Trump is now in the business of ripping off his supporters with hilarious, $99 digital trading cards in which he is illustrated as a super hero! Get yours today! Before they run out!

And finally...we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, including troubling news from NOAA on the worsening effects of climate change in the Arctic; the existential threat to the world's forests of rapidly expanding oil and gas exploitation; and the EU's decision this week to institute the world's first carbon import tariff...

It's another busy day on The BradCast! Enjoy!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

(P.S. We're off tomorrow for more dental adventures, but will be back next week to cover the House January 6 Committee's finale and more before our holiday break!)

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 12/15/2022 10:29am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change is profoundly disrupting the Arctic, new report from NOAA finds; Rapid oil and gas expansion poses an existential threat to the world's forests; PLUS: European Union agrees to enact world's first carbon import tariff... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Arctic blast takes aim at U.S. for Christmas, New Years; Internal documents reveal Big Oil's plan for profiting amid climate pressures; Musk pumps climate cenial on Twitter; What to expect from California's new rooftop-solar plan? More batteries; Clouds: One of climate change's great mysteries is finally being solved; U.S. carbon farming takes root; Drought emergency declared for all of Southern California; Florida lawmakers force homeowners to buy insurance... PLUS: Children of India's burning coalfields dream of a fire-free future... and much, MUCH more! ...

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Guest: Dr. Allison Gill of 'Mueller, She Wrote'; Also: Pelosi leaves Dem leadership; GOP secures House majority; Bass wins L.A. Mayor...
By Brad Friedman on 11/17/2022 6:10pm PT  

There are just too many crimes. Next time we'll need to plan a longer BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're not yet beyond the 2022 elections. Votes are still being tallied and races still being called. Only last night, media outlets finally were able to project the GOP would win back a majority in the U.S. House next year, if barely, and that progressive Rep. Karen Bass would be the winner of the Los Angeles Mayoral race over billion real estate developer Rick Caruso. Of course, the fallout from the election will continue for a while. Today, two-time Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi --- love her or hate her, one of the most effective Speaker's in history --- announced that, while she plans to remain in Congress, she will not seek a leadership role next session. The first women to hold that job said during floor remarks today, that she is passing the torch to a new generation.

Most notably, however --- at least when it comes to accountability for the most corrupt man likely to ever hold public office in this nation, much less as President of the United States --- actual 2022 midterm voting continues as well, in the December 6th U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia.

That means the Dept. of Justice guidelines barring overt action in politically-related cases during the 60-day window prior to elections is likely still in effect. But even after the GA runoff on December 6th, as our friend Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel recently explained, "Merrick Garland hasn't done the specific thing you want because DoJ has been busy doing things they have to do first." In other words, before federal indictments can be brought against Donald Trump, as many (yours truly included) are eager to see, there remains a lot of legal work that must be done in order to ensure that any such indictments result in actual convictions.

Our guest today is DR. ALLISON GILL of the notorious "Mueller, She Wrote" Twitter account and podcast, which tracks the many (seemingly endless) criminal and civil cases and investigations under way against the disgraced former President about as closely as anyone in the country. She agrees that patience remains a virtue in these cases. Depending on the case, as she explains today, we are looking at a matter of weeks to a matter of months before indictments can be brought against Trump. Though she does believe they are coming and that his announcement this week that he is running again in 2024 provides no protection against prosecution in any of these cases.

As we begin to move beyond the midterms, today seemed a good day to touch base with Gill to help us try and reset where things are regarding to the many ongoing criminal and civil probes, indictments and lawsuits still bearing down on Trump. To be honest, we've lost track of some of them in recent weeks as we'd moved largely full time to 2022 election coverage.

Those pending cases include (but are not limited to):

  • The New York state criminal tax fraud trial currently underway against the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg, as brought by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg;
  • Bragg's New York state criminal investigation into bank, tax and insurance fraud by Trump himself, as seemingly abandoned earlier this year, but which could be revived following the trial against his company;
  • The $250 million New York state civil lawsuit for bank, tax and insurance fraud against Trump, his company, and his three oldest kids, Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka, filed by NY A.G. Letitia James, which Gill sees as extraordinarily damaging to Trump;
  • The Georgia Special Grand Jury probe, as brought by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, of the Trump-led criminal conspiracy to convince state officials to steal the 2020 Presidential election on his behalf;
  • The Dept. of Justice's federal probe of thousands of pages of classified documents stolen from the White House by Trump upon leaving office, in apparent violation of the Espionage Act, Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice;
  • The DoJ's federal probe of the Trump-incited January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and his other many failed attempts to steal the 2020 Presidential election, including via a fake electors plot.

Add to those, Trump's failure to show up for his deposition this week in response to a lawful subpoena.from the the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. (Trump's former advisor Steve Bannon was recently sentenced to two months in prison for Contempt of Congress for failing to answer similar subpoenas from the Committee.)

"Don't forget," Gill adds today, "his Save America PAC is under federal criminal investigation. His Truth Social [companies] are under FINRA, FEC, and federal criminal investigation. He is facing a lot --- a lot --- of legal problems. We've got the E. Jean Carroll case, the Mary Trump case, the Hillary sanctions, the Michigan sanctions. He's in a lot of trouble from a lot of things. We're going to just have to see who drops the hammer first."

"If we just look at the Watergate timeline," she posits, regarding the sprawling January 6 investigation, "we won't see indictments until April 2023. And this is far more complex [than Watergate]. So it's going to be interesting to see how the timing plays out. Or whether maybe Garland says, 'Hey, Fani Willis, you take the fraudulent electors stuff, I'll take the documents stuff.'" That, she explains, would have the advantage of potentially convicting Trump under state law for which he can't be pardoned by a future President (or even by a Georgia Governor, since they are not granted state pardon power.)

Gill does believe --- in fact, she is "very, very certain" --- that Trump will be indicted in at least one of the federal cases we discuss today. Tune in to find out which one!

Finally today, Desi Doyen's got our latest Green News Report, as the COP27 U.N. climate conference in Egypt nears crunch time this weekend; Trump offers well-worn climate lies at his 2024 announcement; and some good energy related news to close out today's program...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!

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