On today's BradCast: Will Hillary Clinton's apparent lead in national polling and turnout to date translate into a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate? Poll watchers and analysts, at least Democratic leaning ones, seem to think so. For now. But just barely. [Audio link for show posted below.]

More early voting numbers in several states continue to suggest a potentially banner year for Democrats. In addition to those new indicators today, Hillary Clinton's poll numbers continue to rise, even as Donald Trump argued over the weekend that all the polls are "phony", not to be believed, and are meant to do little more than suppress the vote. (Though someone may want to let his own campaign manager know about that.)

But, will the hints of success for the Clinton campaign translate into Democrats taking back control of the U.S. Senate? David Jarman, editor of Daily Kos Elections, joins me to explain what the polls currently suggest about the likelihood of a Senate majority for Dems, the races in 9 states that he believes will determine that balance and, specifically, the 3 states he believes will ultimately be the tipping points for control of the upper chamber of Congress over the next two years.

While Daily Kos is a website meant to support Democrats, Jarman explains the roll of the analysts at Daily Kos Elections: "We're sort of the quantitative side of Daily Kos, but we also do more qualitative analysis of where we feel the chances are in the Senate and the House, looking at it race by race, doing the sort of old-fashioned scouting approach of 'this is a toss-up, this is lean-Democratic', that kind of thing. We also compile a lot of the data that eludes other people, about where the ad dollars are going, what the topics of ads are, every poll, we collect those in our daily digest."

Jarman and I also discuss, among other things, how and if things like voter suppression are included in his predictions; how large a majority Democrats would need in order to be able to bypass some of the more conservative/corporatist members of its caucus; whether Democrats could also retake a majority in the U.S. House, and some serious havoc that may occur for House Speaker Ryan even in the likelihood that they don't; and, also, some of the gubernatorial races that may end up going "blue" this year as well.

Finally, Bernie Sanders responds to Wikileaks' release of emails from Clinton staffers painting him in a less than favorable light, and Donald Trump says that he has plans to rethink freedom of the press, as defined by the Constitution's First Amendment, should he become the next President.

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On today's BradCast, as a major, mysterious automated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took huge Internet sites like Twitter, Netflix and Amazon offline for hours today, Democrats and Republicans, including the President, continue to mislead the public about the vulnerability of our voting, tabulation and voter registration systems. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Just weeks ago, as you'll recall, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were warning of the vulnerability of U.S. election systems to intrusion, manipulation and attack from outsiders (and all but ignoring the more direct threat from election insiders). Now, as Donald Trump has ramped up his claims that the election is being "rigged", Democratic and Republican officials alike are claiming the opposite is true, that "there's no way to rig an election in a country this big". They are either misinformed or lying. Take your pick. Either way, they are misinforming the American people. I explain in detail on today's show.

Speaking of disrupting the election...

• "Unnamed intelligence officials" float yet another warning of how bad actors could cause havoc during the elections in November. (And recent evidence suggests that route would be quite easy.)
• A federal court ordered Ohio this week to allow millions of unlawfully purged voters to be allowed to cast a provisional ballot this November, after the state's Republican Sec. of State Jon Husted (who also claimed this week that the election can't be rigged) fought an earlier court order to restore those voters to the rolls;
• Republicans in Tarrant County, Texas may have violated a federal court order by targeting Democratic polling places with an "EMERGENCY VOTER FRAUD ALERT";
• The state of Utah (Utah!) has been moved into the toss-up category in the Presidential contest;
• Early voting numbers look promising for Democrats;
• Evidence that Donald Trump loved both Bill and Hillary Clinton very recently...at least until he ran for President, started losing "big league" and decided she was a "nasty woman";
• And, finally, the GOP Presidential nominee offered a little noticed admission during the final debate that Democrats have been right all along the necessity of regulations on businesses.

All of that and much more on today's BradCast, as our Shocktober Spooktacular continues...

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On today's BradCast: Bad hombres! Nasty women! And SUSPENSE! Real coverage of the final Presidential Debate of 2016, some of which is almost guaranteed to piss off just about everybody in one way or another. You're welcome! [Audio link to show posted below.]

For our analysis of the final --- and, by our count, 25th! --- debate of the 2016 cycle, I'm joined once again by award-winning journalist Heather Digby Parton of Salon and the Hullabaloo blog, and by David Dayen, of Fiscal Times and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud.

As you probably expect, we spend some time focusing on Trump's dishonest claims that the election is being "rigged" and his refusal to promise a peaceful transfer of power. But we also discuss the, at times, disingenuous outrage about it all from the media as well as both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom seem to have developed more than a bit of convenient amnesia about recent elections, about the mechanics of our electoral system, and even very recent assertions about all of the above.

Yes, election fraud and election integrity are topics about which we have some familiarity around here. And, while nuance and complexity and facts may not play well in the corporate media or among angry partisans near the end of an insane election cycle, no small amount of each are called for today. We do our best.

"Digby" and Dayen also bring insight on a number of the other surprisingly substantive issues raised at the debate (as well as important issues that, once again, were not), many of which have been largely overlooked in the wake of Trump's latest embarrassing tantrum(s)...

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On today's BradCast, we await the (mercifully) final Presidential Debate of 2016 to get under way in Las Vegas, as Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to plummet --- even in some surprising states --- but the GOP nominee continues to say all is well ("peachy dory", in fact)...except that the election is being "rigged". [Audio link posted below.]

Among the many other related (and unrelated) stories covered on today's show...

• Some good news today for voters in Kansas and Florida and maybe in Georgia (where there has been huge turnout for Early Voting);

• Some disturbing and, so far, mysterious news about potential voter registration fraud in Indiana. (This is a good reminder to check your registration to make sure it's accurate!);

• Some listener response to the former New Hampshire GOP official who told me on The BradCast earlier this week that he doesn't believe "the party has been pushing" phony voter fraud myths. "Please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense," he said. (Elizabeth Warren doesn't agree with him either.);

• The amazing story of how a new "voter fraud" myth became "fact" this week amongst gullible Republicans, with the aid of rightwing;

• Another example of how theoretically non-rightwing corporate news outlets help spread the same mythical "voter fraud" bullshit;

• Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on a major new international global warming agreement and some harsh words for environmentalists from Hillary Clinton, as revealed by a new Wikileaks document;

• And a bit of amusing listener mail. #FreeDesi!

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There's been a lot of talk of "rigged" elections this year, but not only from Donald Trump and his supporters. Democrats, until recently, have also been warning that our electoral system was under threat of manipulation by outsiders. But, today, the President offered a very different message to voters, arguing that "there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections."

Huh? Well, that's confusing. So, we try and get a bit closer to the facts on all sides of this issue on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show posted below.]

While Hillary Clinton appears to be opening up a substantive lead in a number of nationwide polls, Trump's rhetoric of a "rigged" election grows more desperate and incendiary each day. Oddly enough, however, his message does not appear to be winning over many converts. In fact, evidence suggests his own supporters are not growing less confident in the election, but his rhetoric may actually be improving confidence among Dems that votes will be counted as cast.

But, is that confidence warranted? Just weeks ago Democrats were warning us about the possibility of voting, tabulation and voter registration systems being hacked by foreign entities like Russia. But now, many Democrats and Republicans alike, including the President in the Rose Garden today, are making the case that our election systems are secure and cannot be hacked. So which is it?

I'm joined today, to try and figure it all out, by Pamela Smith, president of VerifiedVoting.org, a non-partisan organization which closely tracks voting and registration systems --- and their well-documented vulnerabilities to manipulation --- in all 50 states and at the federal level.

As longtime BRAD BLOG readers know well, yes, our voting and registration systems --- in every state --- remain vulnerable to error and tampering by outsiders and, more directly, election insiders. Because we use computer tabulation systems, it's often impossible (as with touch-screens) or unlikely (as with op-scans) to know that results accurately reflect voter intent. That alone remains a threat to confidence in our electoral system, no matter how confident many would like voters to be today.

"The challenge we have when we use electronic systems is that some problems that can be introduced into those systems are difficult or impossible to detect," says Smith. "Evidence-based elections is a really important standard for us to have nationwide. It builds confidence when jurisdictions can demonstrate that votes were counted correctly."

Smith and I discuss all of that, examine some of the most vulnerable areas (Hello, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada!), and talk about what, if anything, can be done to try and assure that votes will be counted as cast in Election 2016 for President, Congress, the U.S. Senate, state and local contests as well as ballot measures and everything else. Much more detail than I can effectively summarize here. So, please give it a listen for yourself.

Near the end, however, with voting already under way in many states and Election Day just three weeks from today, Smith adds this important thought: "The one way we know for sure that your vote won't count is to not show up. And, whether or not you have full confidence in the voting system you're going to use, you still need to make the effort to make your voice heard."

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Major new international agreement to phase out refrigerants (HFCs); First-ever international agreement to cut emissions from airplane travel; US emissions hit lowest level since 1991; September 2016 was the hottest September ever recorded; PLUS: Harsh words for climate activists in latest Clinton-Wikileaks revelations... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Judge Tosses Riot Charge Against Journalist Amy Goodman Covering Dakota Protest; Celebrities Rally Behind Filmmaker Arrested In Pipeline Protests; North Carolina: Damage from Hurricane Matthew estimated; Duke confirms coal ash spill at North Carolina plant due to Hurricane Matthew flooding; Greenland Is Melting; Exxon Now Seeks to Block New York Attorney General's Climate Probe; GAO: Other Cities Face Problems That Led To Flint Crisis; Little-Noticed Court Settlement Will Probably Save Millions Of Animals; Feds Plan To Seal Part Of Nuke Waste Repository... PLUS: Today's Climate Progress and Tomorrow's Climate Challenges... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, a self-identified "establishment Republican" pushes back against Donald Trump's claims that the election will be "rigged", but goes on to deny that his own party has promoted the very "voter fraud" conspiracies that the Republican nominee is now exploiting. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

Trump has been increasingly strident of late in his rhetoric charging that the election is being "rigged" by "large scale voter fraud" and more. As he does so, his supporters are using more and more violent rhetoric to describe "bloodshed" and even assassination should their candidate fail to win on November 8th. As a disturbing Boston Globe report noted over the weekend, it has now fallen to establishment GOPers to try and calm the increasingly dangerous waters.

Former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen, a self-described 'Never Trumper' who characterizes the increasingly violent rhetoric from Trump supporters as 'very scary', joins us today to rebut Trump's charges about fraud and decry threats of violence by his followers. "He's doing terrible damage to the Republican brand," Cullen says. "Even after he's defeated, he's going to be causing trouble for our party for quite awhile, probably, in terms of how it's identified in the eyes of millions of Americans."

"On election night when Donald Trump is defeated, he's going to have a really important choice. Does he say responsible things that are aimed at accepting the outcome and telling his supporters that they should accept the outcome as well. Or, does he in fact pour gasoline on a fire, and continue the rhetoric that he's been using in the last ten days?"

But later, in the course of our conversation, it took a very bizarre turn. Cullen went on to reject the very premise of the idea that the Republican Party bears some responsibility for the effectiveness of Trump's claims, given the party has loudly forwarded false claims of massive Democratic 'voter fraud', for political gain, for more than a decade. He doesn't think that has happened.

"I don't think there's any argument that, certainly, some Republicans do believe that voter fraud takes place on significant scale enough to affect elections. I don't think the party has been pushing that line," Cullen tells me. As you'll hear, and as you might expect, that notion took me by complete surprise during the conversation. He compares "various conspiracy theories out there" with those from "the black helicopter crowd" and UFO spotters, but says "please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense."

I remain as gobsmacked here as anyone who has ever spent more than 15 minutes reading The BRAD BLOG or has even watched Fox "News" for about the same amount of time. While I expected to disagree on a few points (including computer tabulators vs. hand-counts in NH, which we discussed as well) and while Cullen was very nice and very generous with his time in joining us today, I'm still stunned that he is actually denying the very existence of the years-long, very well-funded effort by the very top echelon of the national GOP meant to deceive the public about "voter fraud". (See this Special Coverage page and this one for just a tiny taste of their efforts and our decade plus coverage of it. Listen to the conversation and its follow-up segment on today's show for much more.)

Also today: A bit of good news for voters, as a federal court has once again smacked down the state of Florida, this time for a GOP-enacted scheme that would have unnecessarily rejected thousands of absentee ballots; Ohio's Republican Sec. of State continues to fight a federal court order to restore more than a million illegally purged voters to the rolls; And we cover a fresh spate of violent and political terror attacks and plots by Trump-supporting Rightwing extremists against Muslims and others.

And, finally, a few thoughts on the curious case of the weekend firebombing of a Republican Party campaign office in NC...

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Brad Friedman was no doubt correct when he described the insanity that passed for a Second "Presidential Debate" as "one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. Presidential history." That unfortunate event, however, led to a moment of extraordinary candor. Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt told NBC's Chuck Todd that Donald Trump's candidacy had "exposed the intellectual rot in the Republican Party."

Schmidt's point is well taken, but there are also systemic sources for our current political malaise. These center upon (1) a privately-owned media system that elevates its own commercial interests over the public interest,, and (2) the euphemistically self-described "non-partisan" Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) --- the undemocratic guardians of the status quo who, in conjunction with the two major political parties (which its commissioners represent) and the mainstream media, tirelessly strive to prevent Presidential debates from achieving their true function --- the facilitation of an informed electoral decision...

On today's BradCast, "this is not normal, this is not politics as usual", Michelle Obama declared. But, at least in Palm Beach County, FL, after last week's hurricane, the top election official says she's ready for whatever storm may be coming. [Audio to the complete show is linked below.]

I'm joined today by Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections, to discuss preparations for late voter registrations following Hurricane Matthew and what she suspects may be record turnout in Early and Election Day voting. She describes yesterday's court order to extend the registration period until October 18th as "a victory for all Floridians," and says that, despite the tight deadlines now before early voting begins on October 24th, her county is ready.

"We're a tough state, we're a tough county --- and we've been working overtime for a month to make sure we're ready for the big push. We opened our doors on the holiday on Monday. We were just slammed with lots of people all day. We opened early, we stayed late. All of our employees have been working overtime. We will get it done before early voting starts," she vows.

"Millennials now outnumber senior citizens and nearly half the voters under 30 are Latino or African-American," Bucher explains. "And, especially after the last debate, we saw a very large push of citizens out there. There are young people registering voters and bringing us stacks [of registrations] that are a foot deep. People are very anxious about this election. We have 880,000 voters and, let me tell you, I have never seen it so supercharged as I see it now. The last Presidential turnout was 70 percent. We're setting up for about 80-85 and maybe more."

Her county was, before she arrived eight years ago, made infamous for its Butterfly Ballot disaster during Florida's 2000 Presidential election debacle, one of the "original sins" leading us directly to the poisonous politics of the 2016 Presidential Election, as I detail once again on today's show. But Bucher says she ready, as we revisit more recent disasters in her county and state, such as Republican Governor Rick Scott's failed attempt to unlawfully purge thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls in 2012; the 6-hour long lines to vote that same year, after Scott cut the number of Early Voting days in half; and the paper ballot computer tabulators which incorrectly reported the results of three races in Palm Beach, declaring losing candidates to be "winners" back in 2010.

(Bucher tells me the software failures in those Sequoia tabulators have now been corrected in her county, but says she has many checks and balances in place, and is ready to go to court to get approval once again for hand-counting, if necessary, as she did in 2010 when she happened to notice the strange results. The state does not allow a hand-count of paper ballots without a court order. "It's unfortunate that it always takes court action with this Governor and this Secretary [of State] but if that's what works, then that's what we need to do," she tells me, going on to describe the recent conference call with the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security regarding concerns of hacks to voting and registration systems in the Sunshine State and elsewhere around the country.)

Meanwhile, in Georgia, as in Florida, voting rights groups filed suit to extend the voter registration deadline there as well, following mandatory evacuations over the final weekend of voter registration.

Also today, hear them roar: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) excoriates Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for a lack of accountability, despite the announcement of his resignation after admitting fraudulent practices at the nation's largest bank. Then, Michelle Obama delivers a blistering speech condemning sexual harassment in the wake of Hurricane Trump, as an avalanche of women come forward to detail disturbing allegations against the Republican Presidential nominee. We offer an extended excerpt from her remarks at a New Hampshire rally today.

Finally: Desi Doyen, who also has a thought or two on Michelle's remarks and the allegations against Trump, brings us the latest, very busy, Green News Report...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Al Gore and Hillary Clinton rally Millennial voters to #VoteClimate; Federal appeals court allows construction to resume at Dakota Access pipeline; North Carolina grapples with Hurricane Matthew's toxic aftermath; PLUS: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin calls for a day of prayer - for oil... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Record Warmth Helps Shrink U.S. Carbon Emissions; Elon Musk hits back at coal baron who called him a 'fraud' over green subsidies; Upward revision of global fossil fuel methane emissions based on isotope database; Efficiency saves developed countries $540 billion a year, IEA reports; New Jersey Transit, a Cautionary Tale of Neglect; Historic Climate Agreement Will Make Air Travel Carbon Neutral By 2020; Why the difference between taxing and trading carbon matters; The biggest climate change story in the world this week is quietly playing out in Rwanda; Solar Power Is About to Hit Texas Generators Where It Hurts Most... PLUS: A Trump presidency is a clean energy nightmare... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, WikiLeaks releases transcripts from Hillary Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street bankers (and more) as America's long national nightmare known as Election 2016 grinds towards the finish line. [Audio link to show posted below.]

But first, some encouraging breaking news at the top of the show: A federal judge today has ordered swing-state Florida's voter registration deadline to be extended by one week (until Oct 18th), after Republican Gov. Rick Scott refused to issue any extension, even as he ordered the evacuation of 1.5 million residents last week, over what had been planned as the big final weekend for voter registration drives, as Hurricane Matthew bore down on the Sunshine State. (We discussed why that was a huge problem on yesterday's BradCast with FL election expert Daniel Smith.) Also, as we went to air today, embattled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf finally announced he was stepping down.

Then...WikiLeaks has been releasing thousands of hacked, private emails to and from Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. Included among them are partial transcripts of Clinton's paid speeches given to groups like Goldman Sachs and other bankers and Wall Streeters before she became a candidate. One of those transcripts was cited by Donald Trump during the 2nd Presidential debate. But did he tell the truth about it? Did she? She has refused to release the speeches during both the primary with Bernie Sanders and the general campaign with Trump. So, would they have helped or hurt her had she done so? They do reveal her, after all, lauding single payer health care and opposing both the TPP and KeystoneXL long before she did so publicly. But what else do tell us that we hadn't known previously?

Does anything in the transcripts released to date live up to the 'outrage' that corporate media and Clinton opponents have suggested? David Atkins of the generally-Clinton-supporting Washington Monthly described the hacked and leaked partial transcripts over the weekend as "problematic" and joins me today to explain why he thinks so.

Also today: Trump misinforms his own supporters about the date of the election (it's November 8th, not 28th) and GOP Veep nominee Mike Pence does something not horrible for a brief moment and we laud him for it, even though he can't help but lie to his supporters about "voter fraud" at the same time.

Finally, has Election 2016 hit 'rock bottom' yet? Evidence suggests we may not yet even be close...

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On today's BradCast, Al Gore returns to the scene of the 2000 crime in Florida, and so do we, as the fight to vote in the Sunshine State starts all over again. Because of course it does. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Hillary Clinton appears to have opened up a strong lead in national polls following the release of Donald Trump's 2005 'hot mic' tape lewdly boasting about sexually assaulting women. But the Presidential Debate on Sunday may have staunched some of the bleeding for now, as RNC Chair Reince Priebus announces they are standing by their man. Either way, if Trump is to win the White House, he must first take the state of Florida, where his ally, Republican Governor Rick Scott ordered the evacuation of millions last Thursday before Hurricane Matthew tore up the state's east coast.

In the bargain, voter registration drives were canceled on what had been set as the final weekend before the state's deadline to register. Scott --- with a very long and very unfriendly history towards voters --- refused to extend that deadline. Democrats sued [PDF], and a federal judge, who described the state's "irrational" reasons for not extending as "poppycock", has pushed today's deadline to Wednesday, pending a hearing scheduled for tomorrow when he may take further measures.

Election expert Dr. Daniel A. Smith, PhD, President and founder of ElectionSmith, Inc and University of Florida Research Foundation Professor of Political Science joins us to explain why extending the state's "arbitrary deadline" is so important, and to detail some of the empirical numbers and many concerns facing voters and would-be voters in the Sunshine State. For example, in 2012, as he notes, during roughly the same period in which this year's storm sent Floridians scrambling for safety, more than 116,000 new (and disproportionately Democratic-leaning) voters signed up to vote. That, even as many are just now returning home and dealing with flooding and other more pressing concerns in the aftermath of the Matthew.

"We looked at the last five or six days of voter registration prior to that cutoff [in 2012] and the numbers actually jumped out at me. On the last day of voter registration back in 2012 there were at least 64,000 people who registered to vote. On the last day!," he says. President Obama ending up winning Florida that year by just 73,000 votes.

And what of those who did manage to register and get their form into a mailbox mail before evacuating? "Who knows what happened to that mailbox?," Smith observes. Those forms "might not even be processed at all, because it's lost. We don't know. These individuals will have no recourse if they finally get back online and see that they're not registered, if that registration application doesn't get to the Supervisor's office."

We cover quite a bit in the conversation, including Gov. Scott's sorry history of taking extraordinary measures to make both voting and registration more difficult in Florida (remember those ridiculous 6-hour lines for Early Voting in 2012?), the fact that just 117 new voter registration forms have been turned in by the state GOP in the past month, as well as Smith's take on voter fraud and the likelihood of inappropriately purged voting rolls in Florida and other states around the nation. "When we talk about voter fraud in this country, it's really not at the retail level of individuals coming into the polls and falsifying their identity and voting twice or maybe three times. That rarely, if ever happens," he says. "Where we actually do have some concerns is that on the wholesale level, in which it's usually someone in a Supervisor's office, a clerk, or someone is --- it can be malicious, it can be just accidental - cleaning the records in a way that is not permissible under federal law . We certainly had that in 2012, when it was the directive of the [Florida] Sec. of State's office to the Supervisors of Elections. First, some 180,000 individuals who they suspected as being 'non-citizens', and then ultimately 2,625 individuals who they flagged as being potential non-citizens. Most of those were actually citizens."

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the environmental issues raised (barely) during Sunday's Presidential Debate and a fact-check on the energy-related remarks by the two candidates at the bizarre, town-hall face-off in St. Louis.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change shows up at the 2nd Presidential Debate --- but not for long; PLUS: Global warming-fueled Hurricane Matthew leaves death and destruction in its wake... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): VIDEO: Environmental Disaster Feared From NC Floods; Coke and Pepsi Give Millions to Public Health, Then Lobby Against It; World needs $90tn infrastructure overhaul to avoid climate disaster, study finds; World moves to offset airplane emissions in landmark deal; Climate Change Blamed for Half of Increased Forest Fire Danger; Federal Court Denies Tribe's Request to Halt Dakota Access Pipeline; SF Bay Ecosystem Collapsing As Rivers Diverted, Scientists Report... PLUS: Convicted coal baron: ‘I am an American political prisoner’... and much, MUCH more! ...

The insane 2016 Presidential campaign took a decidedly dark turn on Sunday night. We cover all of that darkness and more on today's BradCast. [Link to audio posted below.]

After a weekend of seeming implosion by the GOP nominee and the Republican Party on the heels of the release of a 2005 'hot mic' video tape in which Donald Trump is seen and heard lewdly boasting about sexually assaulting married women and others, he lashed out at Hillary and Bill Clinton on Sunday night, with a press conference (of sorts) featuring women allegedly assaulted by the former President during the 80s and 90s.

All of that and more came up during the 2nd Presidential Debate held on Sunday night at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm joined on today's show for coverage, analysis and insight on what is almost certainly one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. Presidential political history by former CNN journalist and communications strategist Jacki Schechner and progressive policy advocate Dave Johnson, Senior Fellow at People's Action (formerly: Campaign for America's Future.)

"I feel like there's this feeling of that old story of the frog that's getting warmer and warmer and warmer. Well, we're boiling. And everybody is suddenly noticing that the water's boiling right now," Johnson says in response to my question about how America and the Republican Party have arrived at this point (which I'm more than happy to blame, in no small part, on the corporate media and its decades long failure to report what has been going on in our politics over the last several Presidential Administrations as anything much more than both-sides-do-it politics-as-usual). "This has been coming for a long time. Donald Trump is the Republican Party right now. He's nothing more than the manifestation of something that's been building up and building up, and now we're at a reckoning point," he says.

Schechner notes: "While we think, in the moment, that, 'this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back', the camel gets up again on Monday morning and keeps on trotting. I don't know if it's because of the nature of where we are societally, or if it's just that we've gotten so disgusted with politics, that we're so deep in the mud we can't even see where the mud begins, but we're totally desensitized to where this has gone and where the Republican Party has taken us."

As we struggle to try and make sense of Sunday's debate, Trump's behavior, and where all of this can possibly go from here, Schechner observes: "Trump has been this person his whole life. The Republican Party broke him, they bought him. Clinton herself is a flawed candidate, [but] she's not a sociopath. The problem is that she has to figure out a way to combat him and not get down in the dirt with him, and at the same time mitigate the damage that exists, based on her own somewhat flawed political past."

Yeesh. Lots to talk about and lots to cover on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, with just one month to go before Election Day, the fight to vote continues in key swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, where millions have been displaced due to Hurricane Matthew on the final weekend before the voter registration deadline.

As the deadly storm sweeps up the Florida coast, knocking out power and leading to evacuations across the state, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) refuses to extend the state's voter registration deadline, despite major registration drives planned for this weekend forced to be cancelled due to the state emergency and (perhaps because of) the fact that 50,000 voter registered during the same last minute time-frame in 2012. (Meanwhile, in GOP-leaning South Carolina, Republican Gov. Nikki Hailey has extended the deadline in her state.)

In Wisconsin, voter suppression continues as the state's lie to a federal court about the availability of Photo IDs at DMVs continues to disenfranchise 90-year old women and many others, and, thanks to a new law by state Republicans, thousands of absentee ballots are now at risk of being tossed altogether in the Badger State.

In Ohio, absentee ballots and provisionals are being tossed out for technical reasons in urban areas but not rural areas, and a federal appeals court has, once again, declined to take action. All of that while Trump and Republicans continue to lie about non-citizens voting and as the U.S. Dept. of Justice, for the first time in 50 years, will be unable to deploy hundreds of polling place monitors in states with a history of racial discrimination, thanks to the 2013 gutting of the federal Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Finally, in 2008, young Jewish voters worked to turn out their elderly Jewish grandparents for Barack Obama in Florida. In 2016, as a new video illustrates, the tables have somewhat turned...

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