On today's BradCast, we begin with the sad breaking news about Jimmy Carter's illness and a few thoughts on the ailing former President. Then, it's onto a bit of fact-checking on "ObamaCare" and on Jeb's silly, fact-free foreign policy propaganda speech last night at the Reagan Library.

Next, Wisconsin's own John Nichols of The Nation joins us to explain new revelations about an old criminal investigation of Wisconsin Governor and 2016 GOP candidate Scott Walker and his remarkable ability to blatantly lie about that and so much more.

"Scott Walker is, frankly, better than just about anybody in American politics at gaming the media," Nichols, who has covered him for years in the Badger State, tells me. "At counting on the media to take his absolute denial and give it the same treatment as the accusations, the charges, rather than getting to the bottom of it to actually figure out whether something is there."

He explains that Walker is clever enough to realize that lying works with today's Rightwing electorate, who get their news from very selective sources that rarely bother to fact-check. "He is, in fact, the embodiment of where our politics is going," Nichols warns, citing a description of Walker as "more Nixonian than Nixon."

Then, Nichols, a long time supporter of Bernie Sanders, addresses the recent controversy concerning Black Lives Matter protesters confronting the Vermont Senator and quickly rising 2016 Dem candidate to suggest that, as he explains in detail at The Nation today, such protests have, in fact, made Presidents such as FDR and Kennedy much greater than they might have been otherwise. He argues that the BLM protests have already had a similar effect on Sanders' campaign.

"What we should understand is that pressure from activists often makes politicians into what we like about them, what we respect about them," he says. "What it means is that pressure from activists forces politicians --- and Presidents even --- to step up, to do what they should do, do what will make them more universal in their appeal."

Finally, some very good polling news for Sanders in New Hampshire and more embarrassing polling news for Bush, Walker and the rest of the Republican Party...

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Initially utilized by William Shakespeare in Hamlet, the phrase "to be hoisted by his own petard" now refers to someone who is hurt or destroyed by their own plot or device. That phrase may well come into play by July 18, 2016 when the Republican Party gathers in Cleveland for its national convention --- precisely because of the undemocratic nature of the GOP's own primary rules.

The Democratic Party will, for the most part, select pledged delegates to its national convention on a proportional basis, based on primary and caucus results in each state. Additionaly, the Democratic Party employs an undemocratic feature in the form of "superdelegates", consisting of Democratic governors, members of Congress, members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other party leaders, including current and former Democratic Presidents.

Like the Democrats, the Republicans also utilize "superdelegates" who are able to play a role in final selection of the party's Presidential nominee. Beyond that, however, the process the Republican Party uses to select its rank and file delegates to their national nominating convention is notably different. Only 16 states, which hold primaries or caucuses prior to March 14, 2016, will select delegates on a proportional basis. All other pledged delegates to the 2016 RNC will be selected based on a winner-take-all system from each state's primary or caucus system.

Where some, like the right-wing National Review, suggest that the crowded field of GOP presidential candidates could produce the first brokered Republican convention since 1976, recent polls suggest a greater likelihood that the GOP will nominate as its standard bearer the candidate least likely to succeed in the general election.

A recently released Quinnipiac University poll, reports that, "with 20 percent of Republican voters, Donald Trump is the clear leader in the crowded Republican presidential primary field." At the same time, interestingly enough, he also "tops the 'no way' list as 30 percent of Republican voters say they would definitely not support him," according to the Quinnipiac poll. Trump has "the worst favorability rating of any Republican or Democrat, a negative 27-59 percent among all voters." The poll also finds that whether matched up against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, Trump would lose the general election by a wide margin.

It really doesn't matter that, nationally, 80% of Republicans may prefer another GOP candidate. In winner-take-all states, like Florida, where Trump leads his closest rival, the state's former two-term Governor Jeb Bush, 26% to 20%, Trump does not have to secure a majority of Republican votes. He need only secure enough votes to defeat whoever comes in second to gain the entire list of Sunshine State delegates to the convention. Accomplish that feat in enough crowded primary states, and Trump becomes the next GOP nominee for President of the United States.

Thus, there's a distinct prospect that the GOP may be hoisted by its own, undemocratic winner-take-all primary petard.

CORRECTION: Originally, we erroneously reported that pledged delegates to the RNC would be selected on a proportional basis in only 4 states. The correct number is actually 16. The article above has been modified to reflect those accurate numbers.

While we have, for more than a decade, covered the extreme vulnerabilities of voting machines and electronic tabulators and broken numerous exclusive stories about it on both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast, my guest on today's show offers a number of additional ways --- some of which had largely never even occurred --- by which bad actors could disrupt U.S. elections.

Michael Gregg, IT security expert and COO of the private, Houston-based computer security firm, Superior Solutions wrote about some of those concerns recently at Huffington Post. He joins me today to discuss several of the ways that U.S. democracy could be disrupted by political hacktivists, election insiders or even foreign entities and how we might not ever even know about it if they did --- thanks to the type of electronic voting systems we now use in all 50 states and the different ways in which the public is now being blocked from overseeing our own elections and election results.

"Attackers could potentially get in and do these things and it would be very hard to prove. The scary part is, by the time any of this is worked out, the election is over with, so it's too late," he tells me. I ask him how elected officials in his home state of Texas --- much of which forces voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems --- react when he points out these concerns. "We've brought that up multiple times, but that seems to be the powers that be, how they want to do things."

Gregg, who I've never spoken to previously, concludes, as I have, that paper ballots (hand-marked and hand-counted, in my case) are the most secure way to run elections. "I agree with you 100%," he says. "If you have a paper-based system, it's very very hard to attack, it's very much easier to be able to detect those types of things."

As to Internet Voting, well, you'll want to tune in for this computer security professional's opinion on whether or not the Internet can ever be secure enough to use for the most important aspect of our representative democracy.

Also today: New York Times digs deeper still on their inaccurate Hillary Clinton reporting (as we covered in great detail on yesterday's show); Incurious global warming trolls fall, once again, for the old "Earth is cooling" scam; The racist Charleston, SC church shooter pleads "not guilty"; And Shell Oil evades activists to try and begin drilling in the Arctic...

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Today on The BradCast...

• Medicare turns 50! That's right, the original "socialized medicine" that, Republicans told us, would be the end of freedom (sound familiar?) is just 15 years away from being eligible for Medicare! We revisit Ronald Reagan's completely wrong 1961 warnings about one of the nation's most successful and beloved social programs.

• Trump beats everyone! Except for Democrats. He loses to all of them, but the polls continue to show The Donald beating all of his GOP competitors by a long shot. And now, he's even beating former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and current Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in Florida!

• Then, the misinformation from the "paper of record" continues! Eric Boehlert of Media Matters joins us to discuss the latest New York Times "journalistic" fiasco. After getting it completely wrong on the Iraq War and then getting it completely wrong on James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's ACORN "Pimp Hoax", they've moved on to reporting a completely false story about a "criminal probe" of Hillary Clinton. And then, to make matters worse, they screwed up their "apology".

As Boehlert tells me on today's show, these screw ups always seem to redound to the benefit of Republicans. "Who is the target always? Is it ever Jeb Bush? Is it ever the RNC? Is it ever the NRA? No. It's always progressives, it's always Demcorats, it's always the Clintons, it's always Obama, it's always a low-income advocacy group. Where are these colossal screw-ups when the New York Times digs in deep and screws up about a rightwing Republican organization? It doesn't happen. Because they know you cannot make mistakes when you go after the NRA. You cannot make mistakes when you go after the Republican front-runner."

"There's a pattern here," Boehlert argues. "Do you think the New York Times would've thrown up a half-hearted reported piece suggesting Jeb Bush was under criminal indictment, and then find out 90 minutes later none of it was right? And they never called the Bush campaign? And they never called anyone else? To me it's inconceivable. But if it's the Clintons, 'throw it up there, see what happens, we're gonna get huge traffic.'"

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the tragic story of the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe and about record wildfires in the U.S. west (and around the world)...

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Before things get really dirty today on today's BradCast, breaking news on Planned Parenthood getting hacked and what that should mean for your electoral system; a U.S. Senator reports that Obama plans to reject the Keystone XL pipeline; NSA plans to finally destroy American phone records (thanks to Edward Snowden); and approval ratings fall off a cliff for the Republican Party --- especially by Republicans!

Then, though you may need a shower afterward (I do!), the latest Trump mess on allegations of 'rape' by his former wife Ivana and the amazing response to those claims by Trump's long-time attorney --- who needs to be fired...immediately.

Yes, this is the man who is now the front-runner for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2016. Moreover, the first official Presidential debate is scheduled on Fox "News" for a week from Thursday. So, I guess it's time to start covering the man as we'd cover any other legitimate candidate, much less the front-runner, right?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report to make everything better again --- except for that stuff about the imminent destruction of the human race...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hillary Clinton pledges to go big --- very big --- on solar; Jeb Bush calls for eliminating all energy subsidies; PLUS: New study suggests worst case sea level rise may happen much sooner than previously thought... 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): Thousands of salmon die in hotter-than-usual Northwest rivers; Offshore Wind in the Atlantic Would Provide Twice the Number of Jobs, Energy as Offshore Drilling; Alaska's terrifying wildfire season and what it says about climate change; Only 30,000 Chevy Bolts A Year Because….?; More And Bigger Drilling-Linked Earthquakes Rattle Oklahoma; Louisianans Blind to Mercury Contamination in Water, Fish Due to Budget Cuts... PLUS: Enbridge Anniversary: Profiles From the Frontlines of an Oil Spill... and much, MUCH more! ...

Before we get to Hillary Clinton and the awful truth about her climate plan and climate change itself on today's BradCast, Bernie Sanders is now leading all the major Republicans in national polling now.

That's right, in head-to-head national match-ups between the independent U.S. Senator from Vermont and Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or even Donald Trump, Sanders wins the Presidency --- if the election was held today, and those who wanted to vote got to vote (and got to have their votes counted as intended) --- according to a new CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll.

Nonetheless, the corporate media still loves to ignore Sanders. Though, thanks in part to the #BlackLivesMatter protesters that interrupted him during a progressive forum last week (the intra-progressive controversy we've been covering over the past week), he was finally allowed to appear on Meet the Press over the weekend.

Also, over the weekend, Trump continued to widen his lead against the rest of the Republican field and Hillary Clinton offered a tepid plan on how she would begin to deal with climate change.

We speak on today's show to David Roberts, the great environmental journalist from Vox.com (formerly of Grist.org), about Clinton's plan and the awful truth about both her plan and everyone else's.

"It's so polarized between the parties that Hillary can say anything she wants," Roberts tells me about her plan to add half a billion solar panels to the nation's grid by 2021. "But, as long as the House is in Republican hands they are foursquare against any of this --- any clean energy, any efficiency, anything that restrains fossil fuel in any way...If we're being honest with ourselves, what she's capable of doing is what the Presidency can do without legislative help."

Roberts is not optimistic about where the planet is headed, and holds scientists partially responsible for not being straight with the public about how bad things really are. He says "it's still physically possible" to save ourselves from where we're headed, "but it would mean the entire world shifting, basically, to a war footing in the next five years, and remaining on war footing for the next century. It's possible, but do you see anything around you that indicates that's going to happen? We're not doing it. So I think that it's worth at least saying, hey guys, we're headed for the shit. At this point, we're probably going to get mired in some really terrible stuff."

Despite those thoughts, it's actually an enlightening and entertaining discussion with Roberts! Finally, to close things out today (and cheer you up even more!), the U.S. House passes a bill to make it illegal for states and local governments to require consumer labeling of GMOs --- because, ya know, Republicans "hate" Big Government and are all for "local control" of issues.

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Over the weekend, #BlackLivesMatter protesters disrupted a political forum featuring Democratic Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley at the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, AZ.

The leader of that lively and lengthy (and, apparently, controversial) protest, Tia Oso, National Coordinator of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) joins us on today's BradCast to explain why she did it and to discuss the reactions from O'Malley, Sanders and the progressives who support them.

"We talk a lot. There are a lot of town halls. We have NAACP and Urban League at the national level having these conversations all the time. Reports are issued. And the fact that it takes almost a spectacle of black suffering for people to even have their hearts moved is heartbreaking to me," Oso tells me.

Also on today's program: Hate crimes charges filed against the Charleston AME Church shooter (though not terrorism charges); Hillary Clinton may be in trouble against Republicans in three key swing states; the Pope's popularity is faltering in the U.S. (largely among Rightwingers, for some reason); and why it's a problem when candidates, like Hillary, get so much of their campaign money from the wealthy donor class...

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As Demos' Sean McElwee tweeted when posting this chart along with a link to his new article on Hillary Clinton's wealthy contributors, "Donors don't want what average Americans want"...

And that is why you can't have nice things.

A busy week kicked off today on The BradCast! Scott Walker makes his 2016 run for the GOP nomination official; Hillary Clinton takes shots at both him and Jeb Bush in a major economic speech; And the long-awaited NAACP/ACLU/DOJ trial begins in North Carolina against "the most extreme anti-voter bill passed by any state since the Jim Crow Era".

But after those updates, we dig into debunking a new global warming denier scam that began making the rounds over the weekend, concerning a "mini ice age" that wingnuts are now certain will happen instead of the planet continuing to warm at record rates just as scientists have long predicted.

The nonsense begin in the Rightwing denialist media, but has since been making its way into the theoretically legit media as well.

Physicist and former Clinton Administration Dept. of Energy official Joe Romm joins me to help with the debunkery and warns that, unfortunately, "there's no escape from the catastrophic consequences of human-caused global warming by hoping the sun does something. The only hope is that humans do something, which is to slash carbon pollution, and have a global treaty negotiated in Paris in December and take action like the United States is doing through the President's EPA Clean Power Plan, replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy that lasts forever."

The new study being cited by deniers "doesn't mean anything about the long-predicted global warming trend," he tells me. "Anybody who cites this study to suggest that global warming science isn't real, or somehow we're going to avoid catastrophic warming this century, literally has never talked to a climate scientist," Romm says, describing the newest "'Jiggery-pokery' from the climate science deniers."

We also discuss a new email charging Exxon knew about CO2 and climate change since the early 80s, but spent millions in the decades since to fund the denier movement instead of taking action. And I also get Romm's thoughts on a newly unearthed 1969 Nixon Administration memo warning about CO2, global warming and sea level rise.

Finally: Since Walker is announcing his 2016 run for President today, it seems a good time to revisit the audio of that prank 2011 phone call to him from "David Koch" during the height of Walker's union-busting campaign. The call was a hoax, but Walker had no idea. We play some clips from the call to help you remember it all, along with a bit of my 2011 interview with then Buffalo Beast editor Ian Murphy, the man who played "David Koch" during the prank call. (If you're interested, you can hear my complete 2011 interview with Murphy, while guest hosting The Mike Malloy Show on April Fools day that year, right back here.)

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"In an age of universal deceit," George Orwell once wrote, "telling the truth is a revolutionary act." That act is now drawing crowds in the thousands --- far larger than any other candidate, Democratic or Republican, in the race for their respective party's 2016 nomination for President of the United States.

The phenomenon known as "Bernie-mentum" could be just the beginning. Bernie Sanders, who is more the focal point of a democratic revolutionary movement than the leader of a presidential campaign, appears to be tapping into what historian Howard Zinn described in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress as "an aroused citizenry."

We are seeing the power of social media and the exponential growth of the Sanders revolution grow to challenge what Noam Chomsky describes as the "democracy deficit" --- the significant gap between the policy positions of the electorate and their "representatives", occasioned by the manner in which "elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population…freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people." Even now, long before the first debate, Hillary's advisers informed The New York Times that they fear Sanders "could move past her in Iowa polls by fall and even defeat her there."

Hillary and, later, Republicans will rely on huge sums to pay for slick political ads. Yet, Sanders is banking on his hope that no amount of ad money can be effective against an "informed" and aroused working and middle class electorate --- one that includes the 63% who did not vote in the last election.

Every new Sanders event not only serves to convince those in attendance to vote for Sanders. They add thousands of new activists to the burgeoning movement. Whether that will be enough to translate into electoral victories remains to be seen. But, as Sanders argues near the end of this video created by his grassroots supporters: "When millions of people stand up and fight, they win." #FeelTheBern ...

On today's BradCast, guest hosted by me, Nicole Sandler of radioornot.com...

Last week we saw two major news dumps! The first was Tuesday night at 9pm (!), the time the State Department thought was optimal for them to release the first batch of Hillary Clinton emails from her private mail server. Jason Leopold, "FOIA Terrorist" from Vice News, filed the FOIA requests that led to this release. He spent the Fourth of July weekend reading the damned things so we wouldn't have to, and he joined in for the last few minutes of the show.

The other big dump came Thursday night, on the eve of the Independence Day holiday, as the U.S. DoJ and five Gulf states announced a deal with BP representing a final settlement on the world's largest offshore oil spill in history in 2010. Oil industry expert/journalist Antonia Juhasz, who covered the deal at Rolling Stone, arguing that, though it's the largest such settlement in history, BP still "got off cheaply", gives us all the details.

Also, if you ever wondered why Brad uses the theme song he does, I've got the "exclusive" on that. Plus, South Carolina legislator really embarrasses himself over marriage equality, and we're happy to help him...

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It's our last BradCast before the long holiday weekend, so, after an amazingly encouraging week or two of news, we head into the July 4th weekend today with a whole bunch of stories that we've been trying to clear off our desk for the past week or two, along with a bunch of breaking news as well today.

From Trump and Bernie-mentum to Jim Webb entering the 2016 race to the dead-enders in Kentucky still fighting the Supreme Court ruling on marriage to more green news than we can even fit into a single Green News Report with Desi Doyen.

Oh, and real-life killer robots on the rise --- no, it's not product placement for the new Terminator movie, but it sure sounds like it --- before we finally end today's show with an encouraging bang (courtesy of our friend D.R. Tucker at Washington Monthly)!

Please enjoy and have a happy (and safe) 4th of July!...

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In a blistering confrontation with then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan during a 2003 Congressional Hearing (see video below) --- five years before the 2008 meltdown of Wall Street --- then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) revealed why he may be better positioned now to square off against right-wing economics than Hillary Clinton who, twenty years ago, served as a member of the Wal-Mart Board of Directors.

(The Arkansas-based company was a principal beneficiary of President Bill Clinton's decision to ram NAFTA through on the fast track. And, even now, though Hillary has been critical of a number of the company's practices, influential members of the Walton family, the mega-billionaire owners of the retail giant, have been very supportive of the Clintons.)

During that 2003 hearing, as revealed by this must-see video compiled by Sanders supporters, the Congressman arguably demolished not only Greenspan, but the fundamentalist market-based economics that remain the centerpiece of today's Republican Party and at the center of the dispute over new international trade agreements, such as the TPP.

After chastising the Fed Chairman for being out of touch with the needs of ordinary Americans --- "You don't know what's going on in the real world!" --- Sanders unleashed this...

In "Bernie Sanders Versus the 'Democracy Deficit'" we argued that the independent senator from Vermont's principal opponent in the upcoming election was not Hillary Clinton but the media and PR industries which have created what Noam Chomsky describes as a "democracy deficit" --- the significant gap between the policy positions held by the electorate and those of their "representatives". Chomsky argues that is occasioned by the manner in which "elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population…freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people."

Sanders, who, even before any actual debates, is beginning to show strength in a number of different polls, demonstrated how he believes that gap can be bridged. He explained to Seth Meyers and his audience, during an appearance on Late Night earlier this month, why his self-description as a "Democratic Socialist" is an asset, rather than a liability...