I hope you'll tune in for my fascinating, informative conversation on today's BradCast with a man who spent years as a self-identified "Ultra-MAGA" --- he voted in both 2016 and 2020 for Trump and had more than a dozen Trump hats and shirts to prove it. He is now working to rebuild his life after finally escaping the "cult" to become what he describes as a "born-again human being". [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up, however, the latest news from the Israel-Hamas war and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza, including Biden's trip to Israel and his warning about mistakes made by the U.S. when reacting out of rage following 9/11. There is also encouraging news today that Israel and Egypt will allow some 20 truckloads of desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, following the bombing of a hospital on Tuesday which Israel claims to be the work of a terrorist group allied with Hamas. Both dispute the evidence presented by Israel, who they blame for the tragedy that took hundreds of civilian lives.

Also, in his remarks from Tel Aviv, the President announced the U.S. will be sending some $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza, which presumably he will discuss more in a prime-time Oval Office address now set for Thursday night. It's unclear whether that money is already available to the White House or whether Congress will be needed to allocate it. If so, it may take a while...

The House GOP failed yet again on Wednesday to elect a new Speaker after deposing their previous one two weeks ago. In this week's second try, Ohio Republican Jim Jordan received even more GOP votes against him than he did on the first ballot on Tuesday. The House remains all but shut down now until Republicans can agree on a new Speaker or until Democrats decide to save them again. That is apparently becoming more of a possibility with each passing hour as the mess continues and as a government shutdown looms on November 17.

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who have covered --- and have been warning about --- the Republican Party's long descent into madness and chaos over the years. It didn't begin with Trump by a long shot, but the manipulation by the narcissistic egomaniac and the rightwing media outlets which fostered it have left millions of otherwise well-meaning Americans in the MAGA lurch, as our guest today details.

RICH LOGIS was formerly a rightwing pundit and dyed-in-the-wool Trumper. He even wrote for the The Federalist Society. As he recently explained in Newsweek, he was a "four-time Donald Trump voter (twice in the primaries, and twice in the general elections)" and voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in both the primary and general election in 2018. "And I am here to tell you that I was wrong about all of it," he now concedes.

Today he joins us on the program to explain both how he was sucked into MAGA World before the 2016 election and what it finally took to shake him out of it in 2021, after years of damage that his obsession with Trump caused to both his family and friendships.

As a reformed "Ultra-MAGA," Logis tells me today that, as I was introducing my conversation with him, he was "thinking to myself, I cannot believe that I actually thought so much of that."

In short --- and none of this will do it justice, so please tune in to listen to our conversation --- his "skepticism of the two-party system" was the initial reason he was attracted to Trump. He notes that he says "none of this as a self defense," but being drawn in he allowed himself "to be influenced by many others, which is why that rabbit hole kept getting deeper and deeper for me as I stayed in MAGA."

He describes the "really toxic, perfect storm and amalgam of factors" that initially sucked him in. "It was a confluence of factors that all aligned themselves --- between Trump being brash, not giving a you-know-what, my dislike of the two-party system, those I was around who were influencing me --- and I came to conclude, and I know that it's going to really sound illogical, the more and more that I was around others who were in the MAGA world, in the rightwing world, the more I came to conclude that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton needed to be stopped. Because, if they won the election, they would never lose another election ever again. And anyone who was not a Democrat was going to be rendered irrelevant in their own country. If someone really believes that, as I genuinely believed that, that person will support anyone or anything."

Logis, as you'll hear, is anything but an uneducated rube. So how could he fall victim to what he now describes as "a cult"? He tells me that "when I woke up in the morning, I thought about MAGA. I went through my day thinking about MAGA. I went to bed thinking about MAGA. God knows I probably dreamt about MAGA. And then I got up the next day and did it all over again. It was all-consuming for me. And the more I was involved in the MAGA world, the more I came to see, and believe and conclude, that I and we in MAGA were on the correct side of history, and everybody else was on the wrong side of history."

In 2021, however, as DeSantis took a right turn regarding COVID, something began to give way for Logis, as you will hear him detail, along with how he was finally able to crawl his way out of the rabbit hole.

"One of the strategies I enacted, which is so simple," he explains, "I began to diversify my information sources. I lowered the defense mechanism of the black-and-white world of MAGA, which was that everything in the national press is out to get us. I started to realize, and very painfully, that so many of the rightwing mythologies that I believed, were actually the exact opposite. The Democrats were not coming for our guns. They were not trying to replace white people. They were not trying to render anyone who was a Republican or a conservative irrelevant in their own nation."

There is much more, of course, as discussed. But Logis has, since becoming a "born-again human being," formed Perfect Our Union, "an organization dedicated to healing political traumatization" and "building diverse, pro-democracy alliances" and writes for many outlets, including progressive ones like Daily Kos, where he is known as "@Leaving MAGA".

He offers advice today on how to approach your own friends and family members who may be similarly brainwashed by the MAGA cult, and explains that while he is now a registered independent, he plans to vote for Democrats for the foreseeable future because "MAGA must be electorally defeated."

"The Republican Party is a party in name only. They are a MAGA Party. That is a party that must be electorally mercy-killed so we can then enable responsible Republicans to think about how they're going to come back and rebuild that Republican Party."

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It was a lot of show on today's BradCast. But at least one of my seemingly ridiculous-at-the-time theories from way back at the beginning of this year has now been vindicated. Buckle up. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• The latest on the Israel-Hamas war, including rising death tolls, the retaliatory destruction of entire neighborhoods in Gaza, the potential for spread to other countries and more. We also observe some curiously repeated comments by President Biden in recent days. Whenever he cites his conversations with Israel's controversial, criminally-indicted, far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden takes pains to mention "rules of war" for some reason. (See his remarks on Tuesday and Wednesday.)

• In related news, it looks like it may take a while --- if ever --- for Republicans in the U.S. House to elect a new Speaker. (Since we got off air, the winner of yesterday's caucus vote, Steve Scalise, says he is dropping out of contention.) In the meantime, that means almost all business in Congress is ground to a halt. But, given the rising tenor of Republicans seemingly hoping to rope us into a war with Iran in the wake of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel, and the way both Republicans and Democrats tragically over-reacted following 9/11, perhaps there is an upside to a cooling off period in Congress right about now?

• In other news, the GOP push to impeach a newly-seated Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice may now be all but dead. The election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz gave liberals a 4 to 3 majority on the state's High Court for the first time in 15 years. And now a challenge to the Republicans' rigged Assembly and Senate districts is before the Justices. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to impeach Protasiewicz if she didn't recuse herself from the case (for no good reason). On Friday, she announced she wouldn't. But now not one but two former rightwing WI Supreme Court Justices have weighed in --- hilariously, at Vos' request --- to say impeachment is both uncalled for and a violation of the Badger State constitution.

• Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (NJ) and his wife have been slapped with yet another criminal felony charge. This time for unlawfully conspiring to act as an agent of Egypt, even while serving as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The pair were previously charged for accepting bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car. More than 30 of Menendez' Democratic colleagues in the Senate have called for him to resign. He has, so far, refused.

• Everyone's favorite, wildly corrupt Republican Congressman, grifter and pathological liar, Rep. George Santos (NY), was charged with an additional 10 federal felony charges this week for identify theft and credit card fraud after allegedly using donor's cards to steal tens of thousands of dollars from them. He previously faced 13 counts for, among other things, lying on financial disclosure forms about being a millionaire and receiving unemployment funds when he was actually employed.

  But it was last week's guilty plea by his former campaign treasurer that has now seemingly vindicated what I had described last January as my "ridiculous, couldn't-possibly-be-true George Santos theory" that I seemed to be the only one raising at the time. This was when Santos' life of lies had recently come to light following his 2022 election to Congress, and after he had amended some FEC paperwork from his campaign to claim that he had made a personal loan to it of some $500,000.

  There were plenty of reasons to doubt that claim --- when he lost his 2020 campaign his disclosures revealed that he made less than $50,000/year --- but most assumed the donation was real, at least, even if probably came from someone else. But who?

  My question was different. On several occasions, including with a campaign finance expert we had on the show in January, I kept wondering if the donation itself to Santos' campaign actually existed, if the FEC or anyone else had ever bothered to check his bank account to see if that money actually came in when he claimed it did, or whether the whole thing was just on paper.

  While it seemed crazy to some at the time (even to me!), guess what his Campaign Treasurer revealed when she pleaded guilty to a fraud conspiracy charge last week?...

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with some grim news for humanity (as usual); suspected sabotage of a natural gas pipeline off the coast of Finland; and the quiet launch of the European Union's first-in-the-world carbon border tax...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Crunch time for an agreement at the U.N. COP27 climate summit in Egypt; NASA projects sea levels will rise a foot by 2050; Trump repeats well-worn litany of climate lies in 2024 announcement; PLUS: Climate disinfo is surging again, deceiving the public about solutions... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Regulators clear path for largest dam demolition in history; The biggest wild card in the climate crisis: thawing permafrost; Guide to global emissions: what GHG and Scope 1, 2 and 3 mean; Deforestation brings bat-borne virus home to roost; Tribes in the Colorado River Basin are fighting for their water; California revises and tightens climate change strategy; Scientists discover more than 22,000 endangered manta rays off coast of Ecuador; Devastating floods in Nigeria were 80 times more likely because of climate crisis; Florida wildlife officials to feed manatees lettuce to slow starvation again this winter... PLUS: Unexpected polar bear population may offer some hope for the species.... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's Midterm Elections Day 2022 BradCast: Unspooling the media's midterm mess and the high price of failed computerized voting and tabulation systems in several states.

Among the many stories covered today as voters across the nation headed to the polls...

• What is the possible connection between today's otherwise much-needed downpours in both Northern and Southern California and potential partisan control of the U.S. House? We 'splain!

• Major corporate media outlets have done another irresponsible job in their coverage of this year's midterms, particularly in their bizarre Doomsday-for-Dems coverage in recent weeks. While Tuesday's elections certainly could prove to be a "red" wave for Republicans --- after all, conventional wisdom (which we've been advising you to ignore all year) would certainly predict as much --- a fair reading of both pre-election polling and other available early voting data, suggests Dem strength could be greater than most outlets have been reporting. Some are even ignoring their own polling numbers to report a coming apocalypse for Dems. (Also: Compare and contrast NYT's front pages from day before the midterms in 2018, when Dems picked up 41 seats in the House, with the day before this week's midterms.) Of course, the polls are tight enough that a minor polling error in either direction could lead to either a "red" or "blue" wave, or simply a maddeningly close contest all around. But the problem is, the doom and gloom reporting can either become a self-fulfilling prophecy by depressing Dem turnout or, more dangerously, yet another misleading basis for Republicans to falsely declare "FRAUD!" in the event that Dems do better than expected on Tuesday night. Either scenario suggests another mainstream corporate media failure in 2022. We 'splain that too.

• Donald Trump big footed Ohio's Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance at his rally on Monday night by announcing that he's got a big announcement coming next week. Reportedly, Republican officials had to beg Trump to not declare his candidacy to run again for President before today's midterms. He wanted to do it last night. Of course, facing as many legal perils all at once as he now is, I'd want to try and change the subject as quickly as possible too. It won't work.

• A tale of two voting system failures. In Mercer County, New Jersey today, hand-marked paper ballot optical scanners used across the county and made by Dominion failed to work. Luckily, they are one of only two counties in the state that offer voters hand-marked paper ballots. So, voters were instructed instead to place their ballots into the scanning system's locked box to be tabulated later at County headquarters. Voters did so. Voting continued. Life went on. Everything was fine. Meanwhile, at a bunch of polling sites in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona, the scanners, also made by Dominion, were failing as well. Instead of following the same procedure to vote and place their ballot in the box to be scanned later, the wingnuts went crazy. Howls of "FRAUD!" followed, with demands to recall the County's Republican election officials and for paper ballots to be used from now on! (Someone please let GA's lunkhead Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene know that Maricopa already uses paper ballots.) Sigh. This in a county where Reuters reported over the weekend that elections officials faced more than 100 threats in the lead up to today's elections, including calls to "kill them all" and worse. (The reason eventually discovered for the scanner failures in Maricopa was pretty mundane).

• Meanwhile, actual voter disenfranchisement took place for hours in Harris County (Houston), Texas, on Tuesday morning, thanks to the fact that, like much of the Lone Star state, they don't allow voters to use verifiable hand-mark paper ballots at the polls. Instead, after a poll worker quit before today's Election Day, touchscreen voting systems made by Hart Intercivic were not properly set up until four hours after polls opened in a heavily-Hispanic part of the heavily-Democratic County. An unknown number of voters were turned away, unable to vote. Marjorie Taylor Greene has yet to say a word about it.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the U.N.'s big COP27 climate conference kicks of in Egypt; a new report finds major glaciers will soon disappear entirely; and a late-season hurricane spins up and takes aims at Florida's east coast...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Pacific Northwest careens from deadly extreme heat to deadly extreme floods; Interior Department holds controversial oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico; Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Big Oil is illegally inflating gas prices; PLUS: President Biden promotes infrastructure deal and American-made electric vehicles... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Don't Look Up': A-list actors made the climate movie we deserve; The Pacific Northwest Is in the Midst of a 'Cascading Hazard'; Report warns Texas to take certain steps to avoid future winter power outages; Believe it or not, electric cars aren’t the best-selling electric vehicles. These are; Israel, Jordan and UAE to sign deal for huge solar farm; Biden Submits Treaty Fighting Climate Super-Pollutants For Senate OK; Energy-Efficient Isn’t Enough, So Homes Go 'Net Zero... PLUS: After record low, monarch butterflies return to California... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Biden previews massive infrastructure investment to address climate resilience and global competitiveness; Torrential rains, deadly floods sweep through Nashville; Death toll from TX storm is doubled; Biden Administration announces major expansion of offshore wind energy; PLUS: Stuck container ship in Suez Canal freed, thanks in part to global warming... 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): Japan’s Kyoto cherry blossoms peak on earliest date in 1,200 years, a sign of climate change; The Biden Administration Will Investigate Trump-Era Attacks On Science; Partisan divides deepen over 'just transition,' grid; WV governor's coal companies fail to comply with consent decree on pollution violations; Reclaiming Abandoned Mines: Coal Country’s Toxic Legacy Offers Assets; New Mexico Files Lawsuit To Block Holtec Nuclear Waste Facility... PLUS: Why a Big Mining Project Could Wipe Out Rural Villages in Indonesia... and much, MUCH more! ...

"As he exited his trailer," Ellie Hall reports at BuzzFeed, "British actor Benedict Cumberbatch had a suggestion for the photographers camped outside the BBC Sherlock set Saturday in Cardiff, Wales"...

Smartly done, old boy. Hope other celebs steal the idea.

"In my opinion, you don't need to hedge," Mark Rumold, attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told me.

"There's no question in my mind", he said, that the surveillance programs revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include both illegalities and unconstitutionalities. They "violate the First and Fourth Amendment of the Constitution" and even "the plain terms of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], the law on which the authority is purportedly based, and...other federal statutes."

Rumold was my guest this week on the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast where my hope was to strip away all of the nonsense "controversy" about Snowden and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in order to focus on the actual disclosures, what we know about them, what we don't, and what we know about the lies told by the Administration about them (especially those by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.)

Also, Rumold discussed the status of his EFF lawsuit attempting to force the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to release their 2011 finding on the illegalities/unconstitutionalities of one of the very few programs that they actually rejected.

If you are confused about any or all of that, today's show is a great primer on those key points and several more. The BRAD BLOG's legal analyst Ernie Canning described today's BradCast as "fascinating stuff." And though he may be somewhat biased, I --- who am completely objective on these things --- would tend to agree with him.

We also covered the breaking news out of Egypt, as President Mohammed Morsi was forced out of office in a military coup and Al Jazeera English was pulled off the air...live. We quickly discussed the outrageous secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), I had a few (more) very choice words for national embarrassment and professional hypocrite Justice Antonin Scalia, and Desi Doyen joined us, as usual, for the latest Green News Report and details on the next billion dollar natural disaster on its way...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

On Friday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos caught Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaking out of both sides of his mouth. (Not that it's all that hard to do.)

As TPM's Josh Marshall described the remarks --- tongue only somewhat in cheek --- "Romney Apologizes to Muslim Rioters".

Romney, over the course of his lengthy ABC interview, finally acknowledged that the statement issued by the Cairo Embassy condemning "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims --- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions" was made before the protests began.

However, the GOP candidate, who had shamelessly seized upon that statement to falsely accuse the Embassy and President Obama of having "sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks," evaded a direct answer to Stephanopoulos' direct question: "Where do they show sympathy for those who waged the attacks?"

Instead, Romney insisted it was "inappropriate" for the Cairo Embassy to leave the statement up on its website after its wall was breached. "The statement was reiterated after they had breached the sovereignty of the embassy," Romney proclaimed.

After its wall was breached, the Cairo Embassy tweeted: "This morning's condemnation (issued before protest began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy."

Without explaining why he felt it was inappropriate for the Embassy to retain its condemnation of the film's scurrilous slander of the prophet Muhammad while simultaneously condemning the "unjustified breach of the Embassy," Romney followed up with a criticism of the film that was virtually indistinguishable from that which had been initially issued by the Cairo Embassy...

Yesterday, Alabama's former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman returned to federal prison to complete his 6 and a half year sentence on a bribery conviction for a transaction which has never before been considered "bribery" in the history of this nation.

The prosecution was brought about during the Bush Administration by close friends of Karl Rove and presided over by a Judge who served as his client. Despite a plea from 133 former state Attorneys General, both Republican and Democratic, detailing the political nature of the prosecution and the dangerous precedent set by charging "bribery" against someone who never received a penny of person enrichment, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case earlier this year, and Siegelman was forced to return to prison yesterday, ironically enough, on September 11th.

I interviewed Siegelman just over one week ago, as he and his daughter Dana were about to head to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC to raise support for a petition campaign for a Presidential pardon. I aired the maddening interview today on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show.

Aside from the obvious horrific nature of this prosecution, it was instructive to hear, once again, about Siegelman's 2002 re-election which, he says, was stolen from him after he went to bed on Election Night having been named the winner, only to be awoken the next day and told that some 5,000 votes had been supposedly mis-allocated by the electronic tabulation system and re-allocated, in the middle of the night in one Republican county, without the public or media watching, from him to his opponent Bob Riley (whose campaign manager was both a close friend of Rove and the husband of the U.S. Attorney in Alabama.)

Siegelman was never allowed to count the paper ballots that were supposedly mistabulated by the electronic voting system. (Also, see my short video interview with Siegelman on this at the DNC in Denver in 2008, shortly after he was freed on bail during his appeal.)

After the interview with the former Governor, who was once believed to be Presidential timber before being taken down by Rove, I was joined live on the show by his daughter Dana. She updated us on her difficult day saying goodbye to her father yesterday when she and the rest of her family dropped him off at the federal facility in Oakdale, LA. She also discussed her pardon campaign at FreeDonSiegelman.org and her bizarre, chance meeting with Rove himself at last week's DNC, which she guest blogged about here at The BRAD BLOG earlier this week.

Today's BradCast also included coverage of the breaking events in the Middle East after attacks on two U.S. diplomatic missions and Mitt Romney's shameful missteps; the stunning new 9/11 revelations from Kurt Eichenwald on Monday night; and the latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen...

Download MP3 here or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

"It's disgraceful," Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney proclaimed, "that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."

Except, none of what Romney said was actually true.

While factual misrepresentation has proved to be a hallmark of the Romney/Ryan campaign (e.g. the lie that Obama stole $716 billion from Medicare to fund "Obamacare" or the bogus claim that the President's Ohio lawsuit, which sought to open Early Voting for all, was actually an effort to suppress the military vote), the effort to exploit a tragic assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his aides was seen by Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation as so despicable as to "disqualify" Romney as a candidate for our nation's highest office.

The statement which Romney seized upon was not made by the President or anyone on its staff, but from the Cairo Embassy. More importantly, Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast observed, the Cairo Embassy statement was issued before either it or the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was attacked.

For the same reasons expressed by General David Petraeus two years ago when he warned that a plan to commemorate 9/11 by burning Qurans would endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo had sought to prevent a violent reaction by condemning "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims --- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions."

Nonetheless, TPM's Benjy Sarlin notes that Romney shamelessly refused to back off his inaccurate critique of the President --- in the midst of a very live, ongoing crisis during which the whereabouts of a U.S. Ambassador remained unknown --- even when confronted by reporters about the chronology of events, because the Cairo Embassy apparently was not as swift as Romney felt they should have been in taking down their tweets in the wake of a violent assault on their Embassy and the one in Libya. Romney insisted the President was responsible for the Embassy's statement, which statement, the GOP Presidential candidate claimed, was "akin to [an] apology."

In truth, neither the President nor the Embassy "sympathized" with the attack or the attackers. To the contrary, the Cairo Embassy followed the attack with this tweet (emphasis added): "This morning's condemnation (issued before protest began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy."

But the incident has turned out to be rather revealing about the GOP nominee's readiness to serve as President of the United States...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The words, "hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry," appear in this short, but powerful documentary posted on October 10, long prior to last night's shocking scenes from Occupy Oakland.

The video contrasts the positions of our political elites in response to democratic uprisings in other countries against our government's response to the genuine democratic uprising we are now beginning to finally see in the U.S.A...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"The United States, so far, is essentially following the usual playbook...[for] when some favored dictator...is in danger of losing control. There’s a kind of a standard routine --- Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu...Suharto: keep supporting them as long as possible; then, when it becomes unsustainable --- typically, say, if the army shifts sides --- switch 180 degrees, claim to have been on the side of the people all along, erase the past, and then make whatever moves are possible to restore the old system under new names."-Noam Chomsky, 2/2/11

If we have learned anything from WikiLeaks, it's that we must consider the words emerging from the mouths of our political elites as the equivalent to a magician's sleight-of-hand.

During the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations, an astute observer could gain far greater insight on the direction of the new administration by ignoring the then President-elect's lofty rhetoric and focusing instead upon the fact that he chose the Wall Street-connected Larwrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, as opposed to Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, to serve as his chief financial advisers.

Today, Egypt remains in the midst of a genuine, yet to be completed, democratic revolution. So far, it has produced the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and a dissolution of Egypt's parliament. However, it has not, as yet, led to real "regime change". Mubarak's hand-picked cabinet remains. So does Vice President Omar Suleiman, whom a May 14, 2007 U.S. Diplomatic cable referred to as "Mubarak's consigliere," and whom Middle East expert Lisa Hajjar refers to as "Egypt's Torturer-in-Chief".

[Listen to Brad Friedman's interview with Hajjar in the first hour of the 2/10/11 Mike Malloy Show right here.]

Egypt and the world --- and, indeed, the several other Middle Eastern nation's now seeing similar popular uprisings --- would do well to ignore public remarks by the U.S. President and Secretary of State to the effect that they supported the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian demonstrators and an end to the Mubarak presidency. While their public condemnations of violence against the press and the Egyptian people were appropriate, their reported behind-the-scene effort to have Suleiman lead a "so-called" transitional government speaks volumes.

To understand not only the why of Egypt's democratic revolution --- and many other similar popular revolts now under way in that part of the world --- but also the U.S. response to it, one must understand both the history of an ostensibly benevolent but quietly brutal U.S.-led corporate Empire and the role played by the covert dimension of Empire, particularly as described in Part IV of The BRAD BLOG's five-part 2009 special series on "The History of CIA Torture."* Suleiman, it must be remembered, long served as the chief of Egypt's General Intelligence Service, where he served as the key point man for the U.S., in what what we've described as "surrogate torture" as well as extraordinary rendition...

[Now UPDATED with tonight's audio archives below. Enjoy!]

Our final night after a full week guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show and, as promised last Friday, we got rid of Mubarak before Mike got back! You're welcome, Egypt! And Mike!

As you may know, on last night's show we revealed the targeting by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's thugs on my non-profit organization VelvetRevolution.us and our StopTheChamber.com campaign, but also, as we learned during the show, the same thugs were also targeting me and my family personally!

After the show, The BRAD BLOG was knocked out and has been down ever since. Don't know if the two issues are related or not, but I posted a brief statement on it at MikeMalloy.com earlier today and spoke a lot more about it all in an interview article with Firedoglake's David Dayen.

As the blog is still down at this hour, we'll be holding our usual LIVE chat during the show at MikeMalloy.com (where I am posting this item tonight). We will not be deterred by thuggery of any type!

We're BradCasting LIVE again from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so please come on by and say hey while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Tonight, along with Egypt updates:

• MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel, who has been slogging through thousands of hacked emails since yesterday, helping to reveal the self-proclaimed "gangstas" at HBGary, Berico Technologies, Palantir Technologies and law firm Hunton & Willaims who were involved in the proposed disinfo campaigns to smear progressive organizations (and the family of yours truly) on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America.
• FRANK HEINDEL, the Republican South Carolina businessman who made it his business following last year's reported "victory" of the unknown Alvin Greene in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary on 100% unverifiable voting machines, to figure out what the hell is going on through public records requests revealing thousands of "lost" votes, extra votes and machine error after error.
• SUE WILSON, veteran journalist and documentarian of Broadcast Blues on how to call out the FCC and the corporate takeover of our airwaves, and how to restore the people's airwaves to the people who own them!
• PLUS: Plenty more, I'm guessing, including your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Incredibly, the BradBlog.com server admin got the site back up, literally, moments before air time tonight! And what followed was a rockin' show, at the end of a roller-coaster ride of a week. Hope you agree. The commercial-free audio archives are now posted below and I think/hope you'll enjoy them! (The chat room archives are also below.) Thanks to all for a great week, especially to Mike & Kathy who will return Monday! And there was much rejoicing!...

[Now UPDATED below with audio from tonight's show.]

We're back tonight guest host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show for the Progressively Cruising Malloys. (They picked a good week to get out of here!)

We're BradCasting LIVE again tonight, 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so please come on by and say hey while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Tonight (so far):

• LOTS OF BREAKING NEWS Including the latest in Egypt and this-just-in remarkable attack by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on progressive organizations such as VelvetRevolution.us [which was co-founded by The BRAD BLOG]
• TOM TOMORROW, One of our favorite independent cartoonists --- check him out at Salon here --- and author of the brand-new Too Much Crazy and his new childrens book The Very Silly Mayor.
• PLUS: Whatever else comes up in the "convoy" along the way, including your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Wow. Learned during the show that I (and my family) was personally targeted by the U.S. Chamber. That made an already wild show, even more insane. The commercial-free audio archives now follow below... (You can read the chat room archives below as well!)...