No. The headline wasn't a typo. We seem to have reached the end of a few lines today. I’m NICOLE SANDLER, guest hosting the BradCast one more time in this really miserable year.

The first line ending is the year 2020. I know it officially ends tomorrow night, but today is the last new, live show of the year. I know I speak for Brad and Desi when I say 'good riddance' to what was probably the worst year of our lives.

We may be reaching the end of the line in this 244-year-old Democratic Republic. We are witnessing the unraveling of the shaky foundation of this nation as the madman whose power ends in three weeks is getting more desperate and reckless by the day.

We're at the end of the line for the 116th Congress. It moves into the history archives on Saturday; the 117th Congress will be sworn in on Sunday.

Donald Trump seems to be embracing a scorched earth policy, deciding to burn the whole place down if his minions won’t break every rule, law and norm to overturn our Democratic election and install him as Supreme Leader. The reason there's still news breaking and the Senate is in session right now is all due to Trump's destructive and dangerous behavior. And no one in the Republican Party is willing to stand up to him to protect our delicate Democracy over his authoritarian ambitions.

The past four years have been a blur of gaslighting and lies. One of the more reprehensible falsehoods they've pushed is the idea that --- led by Jared Kushner --- they've negotiated Middle East Peace! What was fostered during this time was an unholy alliance between the right wing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (who is under indictment on a number of counts of corruption and worse) with the American dictator-wannabe Trump.

When the Trump Administration announced the first of their so-called peace agreements --- this one between Israel and the United Arab Emirates --- my first thought was, "when were Israel and the UAE at war?" (They weren't.)

Over the next few months, they rolled out a few more of these deals...with Bahrain, Sudan and finally, just a few weeks ago, they announced a fourth one... saying "President Donald Trump has brokered a peace agreement between Morocco and Israel."

This one might have been the most offensive of the four, as the so-called deal legitimizes the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara.

Some years back, I learned about Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace bloc, led by activist Uri Avnery. I had the honor of interviewing him a few times over the years. His is a fascinating story. Well into his 90s, Avnery passed away a few years ago. But Gush Shalom continues its advocacy for peace and a two-state solution.

After the so-called peace deal between Morocco and Israel was announced, I received an email from ADAM KELLER, a co-founder with Avnery of Gush Shalom, strongly condemning the deal.

So I reached out to Mr. Keller to get the side of the Israel story that the corporate mainstream media doesn’t report.

Mr. Keller has a thick accent, but I took great care to edit the interview to make it as easy to understand as possible. I hope you’ll give it a listen. Their position is not an isolated one. As I told him, just as I have nothing but contempt for the administration currently in power over here, I know that there are many Israelis equally horrified by the Netanyahu regime.

It's now also apparently the end of the line for Netanyahu's government! We taped that interview two weeks ago. I got another email from Adam on 12/26 that reads...

Misery loves company, I suppose.

And we’re at the end of the 2020 line too, thankfully. I made a concerted decision not to produce a Year in Review show this year because, well, 2020. Enough said.

But I always look forward to Dave Barry's year-end missive. One of the few good things about living in South Florida is that Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen and Leonard Pitts are columnists based at the Miami Herald.

Dave Barry's 2020 Year in Review is too long for me to read in its entirety. But I ended the show with a reading of one pitch-perfect section, the part he calls MARPRIL. Just think back to March and April and you’ll understand...

And I've now reached the end of this post. Thanks to Brad and Desi for trusting me with their show, and thanks to you, Brad’s readers and listeners, for welcoming me into your ears.

Here's wishing us all a return to decency, normalcy and democracy in 2021. Happy New Year!...

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Article Categories: Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Israel, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell, BradCast, Jared Kushner, Election 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Tommy Tuberville, Josh Hawley

After the House passed the CASH Act on Monday, which would give $2000 to individuals instead of the $600 in the Covid-19 relief bill just signed by Trump, and then successfully overrode his veto of the must-pass, annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the action turned to the Senate. I'm NICOLE SANDLER, back today guest hosting the BradCast, making sure we don't fall behind on the end of the year plethora of news, which we knew would be somewhat chaotic due to the madness of Lame Duck Donald (or is that Lame Donald Duck?)

When we last got together, yesterday, the House was still voting on overriding Trump's NDAA veto, and they did so in a big way. The final vote was 322-87. Many of the 87 "No" votes weren't Republicans afraid of crossing dear leader, but progressives balking at another $740 billion windfall for the military industrial complex. Today, the action moved to the Senate, where Majority Leader 'Moscow' Mitch McConnell did exactly what he's best at: blocking the Democrats' call for an up or down vote on the CASH Act.

Senators Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and Chris Murphy all spoke passionately about the need to help out Americans suffering through the worst crisis in our lifetimes. McConnell just grunted out his objection to their motions. The bottom line? McConnell blocked Schumer's request to approved the $2000 checks by unanimous consent. The Senate then adjourned until 3pm tomorrow, making me shake my head in disbelief. He said there would be a quorum call at 5p Eastern Time followed by a vote on overriding the NDAA. Then we learned that McConnell decided to combine Trump's demand for repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with legislation to increase the stimulus checks to $2000, effectively poisoning the pill to make it unpassable in the Senate.

This still doesn't address Bernie Sanders' threat to keep the Senate in DC through the holiday weekend if McConnell doesn't agree to a vote on the CASH Act bill passed by the House Monday night. So, I'll be back on Wednesday, hopefully with some answers.

One thing this whole episode has reinforced is the fact that the Democratic Party, as an institution, is just not very good at being an effective opponent of the Republicans. I believe there are many contributing factors, including the generational disconnect of Democratic Congressional leadership. But I've also harbored ill will toward the DNC for a long time due to what I view as their inept management of everything they do.

So one night last week as I was suffering though another bout of insomnia, I happened upon a Twitter thread by DAVID ATKINS. He's a writer (Washington Monthly, The American Prospect among others), and a progressive activist who is also a Democratic Party Regional Director and recently became an elected member of the DNC. The thread was about what he's learned about the DNC's dysfunction since he's been on the inside. It was quite dispiriting, but fascinating. So I invited him on for a conversation about what it would take to turn this party around.

This interview originally aired on my program, The Nicole Sandler Show, last week. Afterwards, a listener sent me this photo of a letter written by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1928, detailing his own issues with the DNC and his suggestions about how to run the Party. They sound a lot like what David Atkins was saying when we spoke! FDR knew what he was talking about. He was elected President four years later.

The more things change, the more they stay the same apparently...

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Article Categories: DNC, U.S. Senate, Dept. of Defense, Democrats, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell, Military Industrial Complex, BradCast, FDR, DCCC, Coronavirus/COVID-19

We made it to the final week of 2020! That's quite an accomplishment, given what transpired this year. Brad & Desi are taking a much-needed year-end break, so it's NICOLE SANDLER guest hosting The BradCast, for the next few days. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

It used to be that this time of year, especially the week between Christmas and New Years, was what was known as a "slow news" time. We haven't even had a slow news day in the past four years, so why break with tradition now? Since we haven't been here with new programs since December 23, I began today's show with a recap of what happened since.

Donald Trump had been missing in action since the November 3 election in terms of working on the pressing issues of the day --- a COVID relief bill and the year-end funding bill for the U.S. Government. Together they make up the Consolidation Appropriations Act of 2020 (CAA). And then there was the matter of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that had been passed but Trump hadn't yet signed.

When Brad last spoke with you, he reported that Congress, on Monday, passed a $900 billion coronavirus relief package along with the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded through September of 2021, by huge veto-proof margins in both houses. And on Tuesday, Trump awakened from his stupor to call the bill "a disgrace" --- despite it including much of what he himself had asked for --- and demand the payments to individuals be $2000 rather than the $600 his administration had proposed! He had other demands but, as usual, he was confused, conflating things in the COVID relief bill with provisions from his own budget that were contained in the omnibus portion of the bill. But I digress. He threatened to veto the bill or worse, do nothing. In that case, it would just die, with Congress unable to override a pocket veto before the new Congress is seated on January 3, and the entire process to pass the bill must begin again.

On Wednesday, Trump vetoed the NDAA, ostensibly for two reasons: it would require the military to rename bases that were named after figures from the Confederacy and because it doesn't include a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which shields internet companies from liability for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties.

And then he boarded Air Force One, to spend the holidays at his Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago.

To reiterate: while most of the country is suffering, waiting for help to make it through the worst crisis in our lifetimes, Trump was sitting on relief checks, unemployment benefits, an eviction moratorium and rental aid from his Mar-a-lago resort in Palm Beach. At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence is on a skiing vacation in Vail, Colorado, and Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin took a private jet down to his vacation home in a Mexican resort near Cabo.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day came and went, as did the Saturday midnight deadline when pandemic relief programs lapsed, throwing more than 12 million Americans who relied on them for unemployment insurance and more into an even worse situation than they had been in already.

Trump finally gave in and signed the CAA on Sunday evening, but additional damage had already been done. As for the master negotiator, he's more like an impetuous child who threw a temper tantrum and then got tired of being locked in his room so he gave up, and got nothing out of it.

That brings us to today. The House is back in session to vote on two items --- a bill changing the dollar amount of the individual checks to be sent out from $600 to $2000 and to override Trump's NDAA veto. As I am posting today's show, the vote on the $2000 checks has now passed with the 2/3 required under the procedures that were used for consideration, 275-134.

The House then voted by an even bigger margin to override Trump's NDAA veto. That vote was 322-87! Tomorrow, the Senate returns to vote on these two bills. The question is whether Mitch McConnell will bring the issue of the larger direct COVID relief payments to the floor.

Senator Bernie Sanders issued a statement demanding a vote: "The House has passed a $2,000 direct payment for working people. It is time for the Senate to act. This week on the Senate floor Mitch McConnell wants to vote to override Trump's veto of the $740 billion defense funding bill and then head home for the New Year. I'm going to object until we get a vote on legislation to provide a $2,000 direct payment to the working class. Let me be clear: If Senator McConnell doesn't agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year's Eve. Let's do our job."

Now that a Democrat will be in power in the White House in a few short weeks, the Republicans in Congress are once again singing their austerity tune. Many are objecting to a $2000 payment saying "we can't afford it" or some similar nonsense. So I'm joined by economist, professor, a leading proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, and author of The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy STEPHANIE KELTON, who explains that not only can we afford to help people suffering through this crisis, we must!...

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Article Categories: Democrats, Republicans, Economy, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell, BradCast, Mike Pence, Steve Mnuchin, Coronavirus/COVID-19

On today's special BradCast, turn down the lights, stoke up the fireplace, and return with us to yesteryear!

And not just yesteryear before 2020, but way before 2020! ... All the way back to the 1930s and 40s for some classic moments taken from some of our very earliest BradCasts from the golden days of radio!

Yes, we re-open the dusty BradCast vaults once again this year for the return of our Very Special BradCast Holiday Special, featuring three timeless short radio plays from back in the day when our program was still sponsored by the Ford Motor Company of Dearborn, Michigan and introduced each night by Henry Ford himself!

Please enjoy the world-renowned "BradCast Radio Theatre Players," including a very young Brad Friedman, Desi Doyen and the late great actor/playwright Paul Byrne!

We promise fun for the whole family! A merry Christmas to all! And to all a good night! (Except for Communists!)

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, KPFK, Coal, Canada, Solar energy, BradCast

Our long national nightmare may be over in about 28 days...but it ain't over yet. Not by a long shot. And, as detailed on today's BradCast, it's becoming more unnerving by the second, with Donald Trump's mental health seemingly devolving rapidly with each and every one. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Curiously, corporate media are sounding more and more like The BradCast with each passing day. Among the stories underscoring that point as Trump's days in the White House continue to wane (whether he is able to admit that out-loud or not)...

• CNN's Stephen Collinson on Trump's "30-day reign of destruction on the way out of office";

• "Trump turns on everyone," reports Jonathan Swan at Axios. "Everyone" now appears to include "Vice President Pence, chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell." (With a hat-tip to Lincoln Project, for their video getting inside Trump's head regarding Pence);

• Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports anxiety is rising at DoD, with one officer telling her "We don't know what he might do" in these final days. They were particularly alarmed after talk from disgraced and pardoned former National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn's call for Trump to invoke Martial Law and order the military to "re-run" the election in some states that Trump lost. The military, according to Starr, wants nothing to do with any of it. We hope her reporting is accurate;

• Amid all of this, Trump unleashed another wave of Presidential pardons for his friends and the friends of his friends on Tuesday night. This time for 4 war criminals charged with murder for carrying out a massacre of Iraqi civilians while employees for Blackwater, the mercenary company owned by Eric Prince (brother of Trump's Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos); 3 corrupt, felonious Republican former Congressmembers (including the first two members of Congress to endorse him, Chris Collins of NY and Duncan Hunter, Jr. of CA); and 2 Campaign staffers who plead guilty to felonies tied to the Robert Mueller Special Counsel probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election. (And, after getting off air tonight, Trump has issued still more pardons for still more of his friends, including for his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former campaign advisor Roger Stone, and for Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared, all convicted of multiple felonies);

• But wait, there's more. Much more! During an unhinged, pre-taped White House video posted to Twitter last night, Trump threatened to veto the $900 billion COVID relief bill attached to the government's must-pass annual spending bill to avoid shutting down again. The long-overdue emergency relief was finally passed by Congress after eight months of Trump refusing to participate in negotiations. He's now pretending to be upset that stimulus checks to be sent to many Americans will only be $600. Congressional Republicans and White House negotiators insisted it could be more no more than that. But Trump now suggests he may veto the measure unless payments are increased to $2000. Dems, who had been trying to increase the amount of payments for months immediately joined Trump's call. Congressional Republicans (and the two incumbent Republican Senators running in the January 5th runoffs) are apparently furious, confused, and not sure how to fulfill the demands of their Frankenstein's monster;

• And, just before airtime, Trump vetoed another long-negotiated must-pass bill, the $790 billion Military Authorization spending bill which was enacted last week by veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress;

• That's only a taste of what, according to the Washington Post today, has now "plunged" the GOP "into open warfare over President elect Joe Biden's election victory --- with President Trump taunting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and threatening primary challenges against other Republicans, House lawmakers egging on senators to contest the counting of electoral college votes next month, and senior GOP senators rebuffing that effort as a pointless political exercise";

• All of which, as the New York Times reports today, has resulted in Trump at the "most unleashed...and...most unpredictable point in his presidency," while he is desperately "focused on the one area in which he is powerless to get what he wants: a way to avoid leaving office as a loser";

With that nightmarish backdrop, our guest today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo joins us to explain why Trump's final days are "more frightening than Nixon's" as he "seems to be having a very public nervous breakdown."

"We knew he wasn't going to act like a normal President and be gracious and have Biden over coffee. I didn't expect that," she tells me. "But this? He's so incredibly afraid of being called a loser that he's turned himself into the greatest sore loser in world history!"

"He's clearly melting down," she adds. "As far as I am concerned, when you have a President who is melting down, who has this capacity to launch a nuclear war, we're in a very dangerous situation."

She also has a number of thoughts on where this all goes "beyond Trump," after the (theoretically) inevitable Inauguration of Joe Biden, if we manage to get there. "The rationalization of these people. The brain-poisoning...The absolutely servile Republican Party that has completely abdicated all responsibility," observes Parton. "He is the Republican party. They are part of it, if they choose to be. But there is no Republican Establishment. There's only him."

This, she cautions, is "Trump's last stand," before adding ominously: "At least, we think it is."

We've tried to touch base with Parton at many of the landmark moments throughout the nightmarish Trump Presidency (and candidacy --- she was also with us the day he descended the gilded escalator at Trump Tower to announce his run for office in 2015.) So, with all of this madness swirling and our long national nightmare before Christmas continuing, it seems like today was another perfect moment to check in with her for our last interview before standing down for the holidays. (Don't worry! Nicole Sandler will be in for us with fresh shows next week! So please stay tuned in!)

Finally, with the critical U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia now underway, and control of the U.S. Senate hanging in the balance --- (we also discuss with Parton what the January 5 Election Day in GA could mean for the January 6 affirmation of Biden's Electoral College win in Congress on January 6) --- we close with a new tune from Patty Austin with a very important message for our friends in the Peach State: "Georgia, You're Voting for Me Too!"...

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Article Categories: Iraq War, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Dept. of Defense, Democrats, Republicans, Duncan Hunter, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Richard Nixon, KPFK, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, BradCast, Blackwater/Xi/Academi, Mike Pence, Michael Flynn, Election 2020, George Papadopoulos, Chris Collins, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Lincoln Project

Well, the good news on today's BradCast, is that he won't be California's Secretary of State anymore. [Audio link to show follows below summary.]

Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced he is appointing his long time friend, CA Sec. of State Alex Padilla, to fill the seat being vacated in the U.S. Senate by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The ambitious Padilla has risen up through the ranks of CA politics, from the Los Angeles City Council to the State Senate to becoming a twice-elected SoS, and now to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. He will serve out the rest of Harris' term through 2022 as the state's first Latino Senator.

In his official announcement today, the Governor detailed a long list of accomplishments by Padilla during his career in the Golden State. In turn, we share a number of Padilla's disturbing failures both before and during his tenure as SoS, as we have covered at The BRAD BLOG over the years. In 2013, for example, while he was still a state Senator, we highlighted Padilla's dishonest and misleading campaign for a major election reform bill (SB 360) which ended the long-standing requirement for federal testing and approval of new voting systems in the state and transferred sole power for certification testing and approval of new systems to the SoS. As it happens, Padilla was the leading candidate for the office at the time and eventually became SoS in 2014.

In selling the measure to the public and the media --- it was eventually passed along partisan lines in the CA legislature and signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown --- Padilla claimed the bill was needed to allow counties in the state to create and own their own voting systems. "Allowing counties to develop, own and operate voting systems will increase voter confidence in the integrity of our elections," he told the public. The remarks echoed his early announcement of the bill [PDF] in which he deceptively explained that "A public voting system will be more transparent, instill public trust and be more accountable than our current systems."

At the time, Los Angeles County had been developing a new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system. It was finally implemented (disastrously) for the first time this year. What Padilla failed to make clear in his deceptive sale of SB 360 was that L.A. County had already owned its current voting system at the time, and didn't need the radical new measure to do so. While Padilla's office had initially asked for our input on SB 360, they stopped communicating with us entirely once we asked about his dishonest sales pitches.

Moreover, after 10 years in development, when L.A.'s new, $300+ million voting system was found to be in violation of more than 40 California Voting System Standards late last year, Padilla certified it for use anyway, rather than simply mandating verifiable hand-marked paper ballots for every voter in the nation's most-populous County. The first roll-out of L.A.'s Padilla-approved "Voting Solutions for all People" (VSAP) system was a disaster during this year's March 3rd Super Tuesday primaries. Problems cited by testers (but ignored by Padilla) contributed to long lines for voters that stretched, in some cases, until after midnight. The same failed systems were again re-certified for use in the general election, though they fared better overall with much less use after the Governor mandated absentee ballots to be sent to all registered voters in the state during the pandemic.

Those are just some of the concerns that Election Integrity advocates in the state have had about Padilla. But the good news is that he'll likely be a reliable Democratic place-holder vote in the U.S. Senate while, perhaps, a more competent Sec. of State can be named to replace him in the Golden State. We'll see.

Also today, Rita Hart, Iowa's Democratic former state Senator and 2020 U.S. House candidate in the state's 2nd Congressional District, filed an election challenge in the House under the Federal Contested Elections Act. Iowa certified Hart's Republican opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, as the winner of the open seat by just 6 votes out of nearly 400,000 cast in the November election. Hart's contest, however, notes that at least 22 legally cast votes for her were wrongly excluded from the final tally, including many which state election officials agree were lawfully cast but excluded from the count because they were discovered after the initial canvass. State law bars the inclusion of such ballots in the final tallies. She also argues that the state recount which narrowed the margin from 47 votes to 6 --- and included a number of major counting errors along the way --- was unconstitutionally conducted, as the 24 counties of the District used disparate counting methods. Some used machines, others hand-counted, others used a combination of both. She is seeking a full, uniform hand-count by the Government Accountability Office and hopes to eventually be seated by the Democratic-majority U.S. House Administration Committee under the Act. The investigation is likely to take months.

In other elections-related news today, rightwing propaganda outlet Newsmax joined fellow rightwing propaganda outlet Fox "News" on Monday by attempting to walk back their false assertions regarding the private elections vendors Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. The two competing vendors have been targeted with baseless, evidence-free claims by Team Trump attorneys and others from the MAGA Mob --- which have been shared and parroted by both outlets, as well as One America News (OAN). Last week, Smartmatic sent a legal threat, demanding retraction for the outlets' claims that Smartmatic was involved with Dominion in a worldwide conspiracy --- with Venezuela and its dead President Hugo Chavez, China, Cuba, the Clinton Foundation and George Soros, among others --- to flip the results of the election and steal it from Donald Trump in several swing-states. As we explained recently, the baseless allegations are taken, in part, from my own accurate investigative exclusives about the ownership of Dominion and Smartmatic from more than a decade ago.

In response to the possibility of facing a defamation lawsuit, over the weekend Fox "News" ran a bizarre, three-minute segment on shows hosted by rightwing conspiracists Lou Dobbs, Janine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, featuring a disembodied voice asking questions of Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology foundation. Perez, who has recently been a guest on our show, is seen denying largely all of the claims that the wingnut outlets have been making to advance Trump's false claims that he won the election.

On Monday, Newsmax joined Fox by running its own version of an attempted retraction, to "clarify" that, in fact, they have absolutely no evidence to support myriad claims the stations has aired regarding Smartmatic and Dominion during the weeks since Election Day. The "clarification" will supposedly run across all Newsmax shows, according to its CEO and longtime Trump supporter, Chris Ruddy. Given that Smartmatic has hired one of the nation's top defamation attorneys --- who won a case for $177 million in 2017 --- its little wonder that both outlets are now running very scared. We'll see if OAN buckles soon as well, in the face of someone attempting to hold them accountable for countless lies meant to undermine our democratic system in support of Trump's attempt to steal the election from Joe Biden and the American people.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our last Green News Report of 2020! As Biden-Harris round out their historic climate team nominations; long-overdue climate legislation is included along with Congress' long-overdue COVID emergency relief package; and as the Trump Administration triumphantly ends the tyranny of efficient showerheads....

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Fox 'News', California, AP, Voting System Certification, Iowa, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, NewsMax, U.S. House, Environment, U.S. Senate, Democrats, Los Angeles, Dominion Voting, EPA, KPFK, Donald Trump, BradCast, Gavin Newsom, Alex Padilla, Dept. of Interior, Kamala Harris, Election 2020, Smartmatic, VSAP, OANN, Rita Hart, Marianette Miller-Meeks

On today's BradCast: Donald Trump's days in the White House are ending, but his response to that reality (and the reality of the most devastating hack of the U.S. government ever) is becoming more manic and desperate by the day. But at least, after nine months, Republicans have seen fit to allow some much-needed, long-overdue financial relief for sick, dying and desperate Americans as both Trump and the GOP's failed response to the pandemic has killed more than 316,000 Americans and may finally be catching up to them politically.

There was reportedly shouting and chaos --- even more than usual --- at the White House over the weekend, as Trump and his clown car friends and attorneys met to propose last gasp efforts to somehow steal and/or undermine the 2020 election. Trump's disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn --- recently pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI --- is said to have called on the President to declare martial law to allow the military to re-run the Presidential election in swing-states that Trump lost; Team Trump attorney and professional conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell sought to be appointed as a Special Counsel to investigate 2020 "fraud"; and Team Trump's other corrupt, nut-ball attorney, Rudy Giuliani, reportedly wanted DHS to impound voting machines from battleground states for some reason. Trump's very Trumpy White House staff reportedly pushed back on all of those ideas, incredibly enough, and his outgoing Attorney General, Bill Barr, whose last day at DoJ is Wednesday, said in his final presser as AG on Monday that he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel and no legal grounds for the federal government to seize voting machines.

As that played out, over in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who had refused to even negotiate with Democrats on a new COVID relief bill for the past nine months following the passage of the initial $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March, finally relented to allow another round of relief --- albeit much smaller --- to be adopted by Congress. That, following more than 16 million infections, hundreds of thousands of deaths and an economy in tatters. The $900 billion package he finally agreed to includes one time $600 payments for many Americans and extends unemployment insurance which runs out entirely by the end of the year, as tens of millions of Americans are now out of work due to the Administration's wildly mishandled pandemic. The package also includes nutrition assistance for the hungry, another round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses, money for hospitals and vaccine distribution, and even rent assistance, for the first time, among other things.

It's not nearly enough, says our guest today. But it's something, and it includes "nothing objectionable," at least for the most part. We're joined today by The American Prospect's Executive Editor, investigative financial journalist and author DAVID DAYEN, for details on the measure which he has been covering in-depth for months in his daily, indispensable "UNSANITIZED" report. Dayen explains what's in the bill and what is not, and why that is, along with why it is that McConnell even allowed the measure to come up for a vote at all after months of refusing to do so.

He argues that It's all about the January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will determine control of Congress' upper chamber for the next two years. "Mitch McConnell's Senate majority was on the line if he didn't get something done," says Dayen. "If McConnell manages to win at least one of those races in Georgia, he's going to be in control again. Joe Biden will be President, and every dollar that Mitch McConnell agrees to put into the economy is a dollar that helps Joe Biden."

"The question of how 'Not Enough' this bill is entirely is predicated on how fast we can vaccinate people," Dayen explains. "If we can vaccinate everyone by April, then we're probably going to get a rickety but sufficient bridge." But, he adds, if Biden's incoming Surgeon General is right when he noted over the weekend that "we won't get widespread availability of the vaccine until early Fall, then we're in big, big trouble. Because there's no more must-pass bills. The government is now funded through September of next year." That, Dayen notes, means that there is little if any leverage for Democrats to force Republicans to act on behalf of the American people.

"Democrats had to take out grants for state and local government relief," to get this bill passed, he tells me. "So when we get into next year, cities and states that have had these tremendous budget shortfalls, they are the ones who have to figure out how to fill that shortfall when they have no help from the federal government coming. It's likely going to result in cuts to public safety, teachers, firefighters, and public employees and not filling your potholes --- all sort of things at the local level that are going to have to be foregone because there is no money available. Mitch McConnell knows this, [and] that it could have the effect of offsetting any kind of recovery efforts at the federal level. We saw that in 2009. That stunted the overall recovery of the economy, and we're walking into it again." And with McConnell's eyes on 2022, he's likely just fine with that.

All of this underscores the importance of those two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia in January, and that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ought to be reminding voters every day that if they want any real relief from the federal government for the economic disasters that are almost certain to worsen due to all of this, they must elect both of them to give Senate control to the Democrats under a Biden Administration.

Finally, we've been reporting over the past week on two voting machines companies who have been threatening defamation lawsuits against Rightwing media outlets and the Team Trump attorneys who have been offering false claims that the companies were somehow involved in stealing the election for Joe Biden by flipping votes cast for Donald Trump. Last week, Smartmatic, which has no voting systems in any of the swing-states where Trump is trying to reverse his losses to Biden, threatened rightwing propaganda channels Fox "News", Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN) with defamation suits. They were sent a letter to instruct them that they would be sued if they did not retract false claims about the company, including allegations (apparently bastardized from our original, accurate investigative reporting from 10 years ago) that Smartmatic was somehow working with Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez and George Soros, along with the company's competitor Dominion Voting Systems in an international conspiracy to steal the election for Biden.

A day or two after Smartmatic's letter, Dominion sent a similar defamation threat letter to Team Trump attorney Powell seeking a retraction for her outlandish, evidence-free claims about the company.

On Friday then, in a bizarre segment on Fox' Lou Dobbs Tonight' --- which looked and sounded a lot like a deposition led by a disembodied off-camera voice --- Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) institute (he most recently appeared on The BradCast just a few weeks ago) answered a whole bunch of questions basically disabusing the evidence-free claims about Smartmatic that have been forwarded for weeks on Dobbs' show and many others. Reportedly Jeanine Pirro's and Maria Bartiromo's Fox shows ran the exact same segment with Perez, using almost identical introductions. The segments then led straight to commercial without comment from the hosts.

Fox is clearly terrified, and should be. As the New York Times' Ben Smith reported over the weekend, Smartmatic has retained attorney "J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, for at least $177 million."

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Article Categories: Fox 'News', BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, National Security, NewsMax, Mainstream Media Failure, Accountability, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Economy, Dominion Voting, KPFK, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Russia, BradCast, Michael Flynn, Election 2020, William Barr, Smartmatic, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Sidney Powell, OANN

We're still in Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street mode on today's BradCast, with a reminder that there are still 33 long days before Inauguration Day. And even though Freddy Kruger (in Nightmare) and Jason (in Friday, which I manage to get mixed up on today's show, but you'll get the idea!) get killed in every movie, they always find a way to reappear once you think they are absolutely, positively dead. We've made it this far, let's not let our guard down until the credits have finished fully rolling! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

To that end, and beyond, we've got a number of stories worth your attention on today's show, including...

• The Democrats' majority in the new House of Representatives will be perilously thin --- just four votes --- when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3rd, warns Norm Ornstein at WaPo. That could very much come in to play when Biden's Electoral College victory is scheduled to be affirmed by Congress on January 6th, if all members are unable to be sworn in, in person, due to COVID. We discuss that short term concern as well as longer term ones for Dems in the House, where every single Dem vote will now likely be needed to pass absolutely anything --- especially once three members now tapped to serve in the Biden Administration vacate their seats and Dems are left with a slim one vote majority for a time. We discuss both those long and short ramifications today, as you need to know about both.

• But, before we even get to January 6th --- much less Inauguration Day on January 20th --- why did the Pentagon's Acting Defense Secretary, who was just appointed by Trump, call off all transition briefings with the Biden Transition Team last night? AXIOS reports Defense Department officials are "shocked" and the Biden team is very concerned. (Does Freddy still live?)

• We've got a bit of good news today, at least out of Georgia, where some rightwingers attempted to challenge the eligibility of some 50,000 registered voters who they claim have moved out of the formerly right-leaning Cobb County. They had hoped to keep them all from voting in the two, ongoing U.S. Senate runoff elections that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate on January 5th. The lame duck 3 to 1 GOP majority county Board of Elections heard the challenges today. Happily, the the Republicans members, who were all voted out and replaced by a Democratic majority on November 3rd, did the right thing. We explain.

• Meanwhile, a couple of days ago on the show, I was in the uncomfortable position of having to defend voting machine company Smartmatic, as part of a pretty epic rant, thanks to Team Trump and the MAGA Mob's bastardized use of some of my decade-old investigative reports at BRAD BLOG that were twisted and used to falsely attack the company for somehow working with Venezuela and its dead President Hugo Chavez to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The private voting system vendor is now threatening to sue rightwing propaganda outlets Fox "News", Newsmax and OANN for defamation if they do not retract what the company describes as defamatory claims about the company that had absolutely nothing to do with the 2020 election in ANY swing-state.

  But now, yet another voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems --- which actually DOES have contracts in a number of swing-states and has also been falsely targeted by the MAGA Mob for allegedly flipping votes from Trump to Biden --- is threatening to sue Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell for her false, outrageous, and arguably defamatory claims.

• Yet maybe --- just maybe --- something good can ultimately come from all of these nightmares. For that, ironically enough, we turn today to the rightwing propaganda outlet called The Epoch Times for evidence. A new article in the paper which is widely read, cited and shared by wingnuts, including the President of the United States, highlights a far-right attorney who has been involved in a number of the failed legal attempts to overthrow Biden's victory. He is now calling for a return to hand-marked and even hand-counted paper ballots!

  Decrying "the vulnerability of our digital footprint in elections," he argues: "We can keep the paper, and we can audit the paper, and we can do so with efficiency. But the primary aim should not be efficiency behind closed doors. It should be transparency and accuracy. Paper gives it to you." The article makes clear (if you read it, you can skip the middle section with a bunch of grievance nonsense regarding Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg --- told you it was a propaganda rag!) that he is calling for HAND-MARKED and HAND-COUNTED paper ballots!

  I have long argued that we'd likely never get rid of these god-forsaken computer voting and tabulation systems and restore public oversight to our elections until a high-profile Republican got thoroughly screwed by those systems or even feared that they got screwed by them. That's because it has largely been Republicans who have been defending their use for so many years. I guess I should have also noted that a Republican who pretended he was screwed by one of those systems might do the trick as well. Well, at this point, we'll take what we can get.

  Once the dust settles on 2020, let's hope there are enough Republicans who still have serious concerns about computer voting and tabulation that they are willing to work with other Election Integrity advocates, many of them from the Left, to end the obscene --- and often impossible to oversee --- computerized corporate control that has been allowed to takeover our public elections in the United States.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Biden focuses on jobs and climate in several recently reported key nominations to his Administration; Trump continues trashing the planet on his way out the door; and Washington state's Governor unveils an ambitious new clean energy jobs plan...

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Article Categories: Fox 'News', BRAD BLOG, Election Reform, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Paper Ballots Legislation, NewsMax, Accountability, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Voter Registration, Dept. of Defense, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, Democrats, Republicans, Joe Biden, Dominion Voting, KPFK, Donald Trump, Venezuela, BradCast, Election 2020, Smartmatic, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Sidney Powell, OANN

Today on The BradCast: His days left in office only seem like years, but for Donald Trump, they are quickly waning. Trumpism, however, among the completely captured and off-the-rails Republican Party, is doing anything but. Despite the very real danger that continues to pose to the nation --- measured by hundreds of thousands of lives lost when it comes to the worsening COVID crisis, and American democracy itself when it comes to the GOP's evidence-free claims of a "stolen" 2020 election --- the corporate media continue to downplay and "both sides" the root of the nation's massive problems, my guest argues today. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

But first up today, a few quick late breaking news items. Desi Doyen joins us for coverage of the massive snowstorm smashing records and wreaking havoc across a huge swath of the Northeast today, as well as two reported and very important climate-related Joe Biden cabinet nominations. The first is North Carolina's chief climate regulator Michael Regan, now reportedly tapped as the first African-American EPA Administrator. And the second is Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who would be the first native American Secretary of the Interior Department. Desi explains why the two landmark appointments appear to be very good news --- even if the latter cuts very close to the Democrats' dangerously thin majority in the new Congress.

Then, we're joined by longtime political media analyst and author ERIC BOEHLERT, publisher of Press Run, where he has been covering, of late, what he describes as the "media's defining failure of 2020". That includes its "bogus Both Sides narrative" on the Republican Party's utter failure to respond to the COVID crisis with a long-overdue emergency relief bill for struggling Americans and an economy on the brink of disaster, as well as madness displayed by the more than 100 Congressional GOPers who recently signed on to indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's failed SCOTUS attempt to throw out the votes of 20 million Americans in four states in order to steal the election for Donald Trump.

On those two issues of serious, existential denialism, as Boehlert detailed in a recent column, "the press has no idea how to cover it."

"In terms of election denialism, COVID fantasies, the Republican Party is a pro-pandemic party, the Republican Party is an anti-democratic party," he argues. He cites mainstream corporate media coverage which fails to clearly explain these points to the American people, as they refer instead to "Washington" being broken and "Congress" failing to do more. The result, he notes, can be found in a recent poll with a plurality of Americans blaming Nancy Pelosi for the failure to pass a new COVID relief bill, despite the Democrats passage of a $3 trillion bill in the House last Spring, and a Republican Senate led by Mitch McConnell who refused to even negotiate at all until very recently, much less allow it to come up for a vote.

"The corrupt, insane behavior, even if we just look at this election nonsense...Right after the election, I wrote about how Politico was saying, 'This is all just performance art. Republicans don't believe that Trump wants to steal the election, they're just letting him blow off some steam...everyone just calm down.' We've been told by the beltway press to calm down for four years, and the beltway press has been wrong every single time."

"CNN did a report saying, 'Republicans had no choice but to go along with Trump' as he tried to overturn election results 'because Trump controls the base,' says Boehlert. "It's all viewed as this game. No one was laughing last week when more than 100 members of Congress signed on to a lawsuit that wanted to throw out 20 million votes."

"Those 100-plus Republican members of Congress signing off on that obliterated, forever, this narrative that the press has held onto for four years that the Republican Party is privately very concerned about Trump," he argues. "They can't sleep at night because of his tweets, and gosh, they can't say it publicly. And when Trump leaves everything will be fine. Baloney! That is garbage. This is going to define the next four years. And how the press treats this radical, dangerous political party over the next four years is going to be a really big story."

He (and I) have much more to say on all of that, but before we finish up today, there is one more idea I wanted to get his thoughts on. Longtime conservative Republican strategist and John McCain's 2008 campaign manager Steve Schmidt this week announced he was joining the Democratic Party. Schmidt left the GOP some time ago, fed up with their increasing radicalism and Trump lunacy. He became an independent and helped to found The Lincoln Project which created killer videos attacking Trump and the GOP alike during the run-up to the November election (and beyond). But a number of Democrats and progressives have expressed concerns about longtime Republican "Never Trumpers" and their political influence on the party as they join forces with Democrats and what that might mean for the party's progressive future.

We share Schmidt's announcement on the show today, explaining some of the reasons for his decision to become a Democrat, and get Boehlert's take on whether this is a positive sign or troubling omen for the Democratic Party as the Biden Administration prepares to take office...

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Mainstream Media Failure, Accountability, U.S. House, Environment, U.S. Senate, Democrats, Republicans, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, EPA, KPFK, Rand Paul, Climate change, Extreme weather, BradCast, Native Americans, Dept. of Interior, Public lands, Election 2020, Deb Haaland, Steve Schmidt, David Bernhardt, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Ali Velshi, Michael Regan

So, yeah, I'm a bit grumpy on today's BradCast. When you listen, you'll get an idea why. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

For one, I'm actually forced to defend a voting machine company. That could be a first in my nearly two decades of investigative reporting on Election Integrity and the woeful private voting system vendors who have been allowed to take over our public elections with their crappy, over-priced, often-unverifiable, easily-manipulated hardware and software. In this case, however, the claims made against one such company --- based on a twisted, bastardized re-imagining of my otherwise accurate and independently verifiable deep-dive reporting from more than a decade ago --- by sore-loser Donald Trump's dishonest attorneys and media stooges, need to be pushed back against, lest they further Trump's goal of undermining the United States' Constitutional republican democracy entirely.

Lawsuits may be coming in this case, warns Smartmatic's CEO, after the firm has been falsely blamed for stealing the election for Joe Biden in states where they do not even do business. (Their only contract in the U.S. is here in Los Angeles County. But that hasn't stopped Team Trump and the MAGA Mob from conflating them with a completely separate company, a competitor named Dominion Voting Systems, which has also been falsely blamed for stealing the election in jurisdictions where they do no business either.)

The bullshit, evidence-free claims of fraud continue from the deranged President and his pathetic team of desperate sycophants nonetheless. The latest nonsense comes via a so-called "forensic audit" by a so-called "military intelligence" outfit named Allied Security Operations Groups (or ASOG) which clearly knows nothing about voting systems or even election law. At least if you believe actual independent voting system and cybersecurity experts who examined their absurd, evidence-free allegations of "ELECTION FRAUD!"

Republicans in Congress clearly do not believe such experts, as GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin held a ridiculous hearing on phony 2020 election fraud conspiracy claims in the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee today, no matter the lack of evidence for any such fraud. That, as more than 300,000 Americans --- more than the number of those killed during combat in all of World War II --- have now died from COVID-19 over the past nine months. Johnson and the rest of his caucus continue to largely ignore the deadly scourge while Americans are out of work by the tens of millions and about to be tossed from their homes amid the worst pandemic in a century. Both myself --- and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) --- have a word or two about all of that shamefulness as well today.

Meanwhile, actual voter fraud criminal Donald Trump, is coming under legal scrutiny again for the fact that he is unlawfully registered to vote in Florida at a non-legal voting domicile (Mar-a-Lago, a commercial club, as Trump agreed back in 1993 when the town of Palm Beach allowed him to convert the once-private residence into a business). He went on to unlawfully vote twice this past year --- one by mail and one in-person --- using that non-legal "residence" as his voting address. All three acts are felonies by the President of the United States under state law in Florida, though its corrupt Governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump sycophant himself, doesn't appear to give a damn. Laws --- including election laws --- apparently do not apply to Republicans, especially if they happen to be sore-loser Presidents offering bullshit claims about election fraud in hopes of bringing down American democracy. But, as the neighbors to Mar-a-Lago are now warning, Trump will not be welcome to take residence, lawfully or otherwise, after his Presidency mercifully ends in historic failure next month.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with the U.S. on the verge of breaking another record for billion-dollar climate-related disasters in a single year; insurance companies cancelling homeowner policies in California amid record wildfires; and as the U.N. warns yet again that the world must pick up the pace in order to slow the very worst effects of deadly global warming.

Other than that, everything is fantastic today!

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Article Categories: Fox 'News', Florida, California, BRAD BLOG, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, NewsMax, United Nations, Accountability, Environment, Voter Registration, Republicans, Michigan, State Department, Dominion Voting, KPFK, Donald Trump, Canada, Climate change, Extreme weather, Venezuela, BradCast, Ron Johnson, Mike Pompeo, Election 2020, Tom Carper, Smartmatic, Coronavirus/COVID-19, OANN

On today's BradCast: While the GOP's packed and stolen 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing last Friday in unanimously rejecting [PDF] indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's attempt to steal the 2020 election (and receive a Presidential Pardon for his thanks), there remains the question of accountability for those who signed on to the frivolous and arguably "seditious" attempt to undermine democracy. Especially from the 19 wingnut state Attorneys General who should both have known better and, according to our guest today, have a legal obligation to do so. In the meantime, SCOTUS made a couple of other rulings this week that have received far less notice, but that are also surprisingly good, given the Court's radical, far-right majority. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

But first up today, a few quick observations on the Republican Party that now seems to be eating itself alive in the wake of Trump's loss. On yesterday's BradCast we noted the weekend MAGA Mob rally in D.C., where angry brain-poisoned Trump supporters broke into chants of "Destroy the GOP!" before booing Georgia's incumbent Republican U.S. Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue who are facing tough runoffs against Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for contests that will determine control of the U.S. Senate on January 5.

Today, sore loser Donald Trump, who has been attacking Georgia's extremely Trumpy Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger for weeks in order to (absurdly) blame them, instead of himself, for losing the election in the state, upped the stakes considerably. He retweeted a message from a mentally unbalanced Georgia attorney and conspiracy theorist calling for Kemp and Raffensperger to be jailed. The post also includes Photoshopped graphics of Kemp and Raffensperger --- both of whom are Trump supporters that have faced death threats since Trump turned on them --- wearing masks with Chinese flags on them.

But, hey, at least Mitch McConnell finally recognized the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris today, after Monday's Electoral College vote confirmed their "landslide" victory. Also, one "courageous" and very rightwing House Republican, on Monday, decided he has finally had enough of his colleagues' attacks on democracy itself and has announced he is officially becoming an "independent"...now that he'll be leaving Congress at the end of the year anyway.

Then its on to a number of not horrible things done over the past several days by the U.S. Supreme Court, as we are delighted to be joined once again by one of our very favorite legal reporters, MARK JOSEPH STERN of Slate.

On Monday, SCOTUS rejected an appeal by the state of Indiana in a years-long case brought by a number of married lesbian couples regarding marriage rights. The couples all had children using artificial insemination, but Indiana law had forced the spouses of the women who gave birth to go through onerous, expensive adoption procedures in order to become a legal parent. There is no such requirement for men in opposite-sex marriages to do so in similar situations. Happily, the Court dismissed Indiana's challenge to lower courts which found the state's law unconstitutional, in what might have been the first chance to roll back marriage equality protections since Amy Coney Barrett was rammed onto the Court.

Also on Monday, SCOTUS put a merciful end, once and for all, to the voter suppression law written by disgraced former Kansas Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach requiring proof of citizenship papers when registering to vote in the state. The 2013 law would have disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal Kansas voters and was found unconstitutional by court after court. The SCOTUS decision to not hear the case finally makes Kobach's unnecessary law a dead letter, though Stern says he believes it's likely to pop up again in similar forms from other states, given the radical, anti-voter, anti-immigrant, anti-democracy fever running rampant right now in the GOP.

In addition to a eulogy, of sorts, for the pathetic "clownish" legacy of Kansas' failed former Sec. of State, failed gubernatorial candidate and failed Senatorial candidate, Kobach --- who is also now mixed up with an anti-immigrant "Build the Wall" group facing fraud charges with Steve Bannon --- Stern unloads with another eulogy for the legacy of another similarly disgraced rightwinger today, U.S. Attorney General and Trump fixer Bill Barr. Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr would be leaving DoJ just weeks before the one-term President leaves office, after Barr had the temerity to admit that there is no known evidence of mass voter fraud that stole the election for Biden.

Barr, Stern argues, is "more offensive, terrifying and obnoxious" than Trump himself, because he is "
a creature of the Republican Establishment, a creature of the conservative legal movement. Bill Barr is at the heart of it." He believes "Barr did immense damage to the rule of law" and "may have permanently hobbled the Justice Department's integrity and legitimacy." That's just part of Stern's invective for Barr, who he describes as "just an awful person, and I wish him nothing but bad luck for the rest of his life."

Finally, we dig into the mess surrounding the shameless attempt to win a Presidential Pardon by TX Attorney General Paxton, who, as he filed his suit last week, was also subpoenaed by the FBI in a bribery and abuse of power investigation by the FBI. His lawsuit [PDF] filed with SCOTUS on behalf of Texas, sought to nullify all of the votes --- some 20 million of them --- in four different states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia) in a fruitless attempt to steal the election for Trump. We've got lots to discuss on this today. The radical legal concept at the center of Paxton's case (and several others which similarly failed over the past month) would nullify all election laws, rules and regulations not expressly enacted by state legislatures and ONLY state legislatures. In addition to turning centuries of American democracy and voting rights on its head, this literal, radical, ill-considered, "textualist " or "originalist" reading of the Constitution's Elections Clause --- arguing that Governors, Secretaries of State and even state courts may have no say at all over election rules --- would have broad ramifications for all sorts of other laws. For example, as we discuss, if Governors may no longer veto State Legislatures regarding election laws, does that mean a President may not veto Congress on tax laws, given they are granted the power of taxation in the Constitution by a similarly literal reading?

While SCOTUS rejected Paxton's case on jurisdictional grounds Friday night, many of the failed cases brought by Team Trump hoping to overturn the election results over the past month similarly relied on that radical theory. They were tossed before that question could be answered by the courts, however. So, will Republicans continue to push for a SCOTUS opinion on this matter from the high court in the months and years ahead? Stern believes that, before Amy Coney Barrett was added to the Court, there were at least four Justices who had signaled willingness to support the radical theory.

Should Texas' election results also be thrown out under Paxton's theory, given that its Governor Greg Abbott, without legislative approval, limited mail-in dropboxes to just one per county for November? How about Alabama's results, where its Republican Sec. of State John Merrill decreed curbside voting to be unlawful in a case which was met with approval by SCOTUS earlier this year?

Also, what of the 18 state Attorneys General who signed on to Paxton's cuckoo complaint, who are members of the bar and officers of the court with a duty to not bringing frivolous, much less arguably "seditious" (as Pennsylvania's defendant AG described it) lawsuits. Should they be punished in some way? Can they be sanctioned for their actions? And, as one caller asked during yesterday's show, should all of these repeated attempts filed by Republicans in hopes of overturning a legitimate Presidential election be regarded as "treasonous"? (My answer yesterday was "no", but does Stern agree?)

All of that and much more on today's very lively --- and, hopefully, informative --- BradCast!...

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Article Categories: Election Reform, Indiana, Texas, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, Alabama, Rights And Freedoms, U.S. Constitution, Kansas, Accountability, Dept. of Justice, U.S. Senate, Voter Registration, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, Republicans, Marriage Equality, U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden, KPFK, Donald Trump, Kris Kobach, BradCast, Ken Paxton, Election 2020, Brian Kemp, John Merrill, Brad Raffensperger, William Barr

On today's BradCast, we won't be broken, even by more breaking news than we might have guessed. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

We knew we were starting with late breaking news today as California gave President-elect Joe Biden the requisite votes (270) needed to win the Electoral College just minutes before air time. But, because this is the Trump Era, that was quickly superseded by the breaking news just seconds before air time that Donald Trump's corrupt fixer and Attorney General Bill Barr is now out at the Dept. of Justice after recently conceding there was no massive fraud in the 2020 election that Trump decisively lost.

In other news covered on today's program on what developed into a surprisingly good news day by and large (at least by 2020 standards)...

• We begin with a fireside story for your holidays called "The President's New Suit". Spoiler alert: only his closest courtiers and sycophants (126 House members and, even more shamefully, 19 wingnut state Attorneys General) can see it. Even his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court saw nothing there on Friday and dismissed the last-ditch effort to disenfranchise millions of American voters in four swing-states that voted for Biden, as filed last week by the indicted Republican Texas Attorney General and Presidential Pardon Hustler Ken Paxton.

• As the nation crosses its latest undescribably grim milestone today of more than 300,000 deaths from COVID-19, Trump continued to spend his time over the weekend lying about about "fraud" in the election that he lost, rather than the lives needlessly lost under his failed pandemic management as the surging crisis continues to smash new records each day. But, on Monday, the first doses of the first approved vaccine for the disease began to be distributed and administered to health workers and elderly Americans in assisted living facilities. It will likely be Spring before much of the general public will have access.

• No matter his lies and failures, Team Trump's onerous attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin --- but only in its two most diverse, most Dem-leaning, most African-American counties --- continued over the weekend. Two different legal efforts in the Badger State, one in federal court and one in state court, fared no better than his 60 or so previous attempts to steal the election from Biden. Of the two latest cases, the last ones that we know of in WI, neither of which included evidence of fraud, one was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge in federal court on Saturday, and the other was tossed by a 4 to 3 vote of the rightwing Wisconsin state Supreme Court on Monday. A conservative Justice, once again, voted with the court's three liberals, and excoriated the Campaign's attempt to toss more than 200,000 lawfully cast votes in a strategy that one Justice said "smacks of racism". The ruling came just moments before Wisconsin cast its 10 Electoral College votes for Biden.

• Down in Georgia, where 16 Electoral College votes were cast for Biden today --- eventually giving him 306 votes, versus the 304 votes Trump ultimately received in 2016, when he called his victory over Hillary Clinton a "landslide" --- former Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cast her vote as a Democratic Elector and offered some comments on bringing the nation together under the new Democratic President-elect, which we share on today's show.

• Abrams optimistic remarks come in stark contrast, however, to the violence that erupted in D.C. over the weekend, as "Far Right Paramilitaries Allied With Outgoing President March Through City Vandalizing Black Churches". That would be the racist Proud Boys MAGA Mob which stole Black Lives Matter banners from historically black churches and burned them on Saturday, as dozens were arrested and several stabbed just hours after Trump's Marine One flyover of the latest Sore Loser Rally in the nation's capital. One upside to the racist, rightwing sore-loserism, as we share on today's program, the wingnut speaker who rallied the crowd to chants of "Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!" before calling for the defeat of incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in their January runoffs against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for partisan control of the U.S. Senate.

• And though we ran out of time for details, here's the story of the Michigan state capitol which had to be shut down today for security reasons during the casting of that state's 16 Electoral College votes for Biden, as a state GOP lawmaker appeared to threaten violence in Lansing this morning.

• Finally, in our remaining few minutes, we open up the phone lines to listeners, one of whom sees the continuing and futile Team Trump lawsuits as "treason", another who questions the safety of the COVID vaccine, and another who ends today's show with a rather appropriate song...

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Article Categories: California, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Wisconsin, Dept. of Justice, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, Democrats, Republicans, Michigan, U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden, Vote-by-Mail, KPFK, Donald Trump, BradCast, Kamala Harris, Election 2020, Stacey Abrams, William Barr, Coronavirus/COVID-19, Proud Boys

It's NICOLE SANDLER back, guest hosting today's BradCast.

When the show began, we still didn't know what the Supreme Court would do about the ridiculous lawsuit brought by Texas' indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton, challenging the Presidential election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Common sense told me that a legitimate court wouldn't even entertain the idea of a hearing. Texas has no standing to challenge the elections in four other states. The unknown factor was how the three justices appointed to the court by Trump would rule.

Thankfully, Texas lost. We got the news just as I was putting the show to bed, so was able to share the good news! It's over. On Monday, the Electoral College officially casts their votes. I still don't trust Trump, so I wouldn't be surprised by him trying some other nonsense. [Ed note from Brad: Wait for what will happen on January 6th when Congress is supposed to accept the results. It will be a very long day.]

I also worry about his cult of followers. They're nuts, as is he. Please be careful out there. Or don't go out there. With COVID raging, you're better off at home!

So, the Biden-Harris transition team, meanwhile, is busy assembling its cabinet. Of course, we're all Monday morning quarterbacks, and I certainly want as progressive an administration as possible. So today, I'm joined by JEFF HAUSER, co-founder and director of The Revolving Door Project, which "scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement"...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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Article Categories: Texas, U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, BradCast, Ken Paxton, Election 2020

On today's BradCast, some real facts on the real concerns about Dominion Voting Systems' unverifiable computerized voting machines in Georgia --- what we know (and don't) about what happened with them during the 2020 Presidential election in November; what concerns that voters of all parties should have about them before the two critical U.S. Senate runoffs in the Peach State in January which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate; and what all Americans can do about it. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

But, first up today, a few quick --- and somewhat related --- news items today. On Wednesday, the U.S. tallied a heartbreaking record 3,124 COVID deaths, making it the fourth most deadly day in U.S. history after the Galveston Storm of 1900, and the Civil War battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. Wednesday saw more Americans die from COVID than those killed on September 11, 2001, which had previously been the nation's fourth most deadly day. The next most deadly single days in the U.S. thereafter are now, in order, last Thursday, last Wednesday, last Friday, last Tuesday and Pearl Harbor.

At the same time this week, Donald Trump has been throwing crowded, indoor, holiday parties at the White House, lying to guests, without a mask, that his election was stolen, and the Texas lawsuit filed this week would prove it to his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court, somehow. It's as if the worst pandemic in more than a hundred years doesn't even exist because, after all, there's an election to be stolen and several centuries of American democracy to be undermined during the holidays.

As to that absurd Texas case filed by the criminally indicted Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, (which we explained in great detail on yesterday's BradCast), 18 GOP controlled states have now joined the Lone Star State in support of tossing out the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, despite any evidence of fraud in those states that could possible overturn Joe Biden's certified win in each of them. But, much less reported today, is the fact that more than 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have joined those four targeted states in opposing the corrupt Paxton's transparent effort to win a pardon from the corrupt Trump, before the FBI drops new federal charges for bribery and abuse of power on the Texas AG.

Yes, the Texas case is absurd and offers an unprecedented, radical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in hopes of stealing the election for Trump. As Pennsylvania's Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, has correctly argued, "The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process." But we also now have an unprecedented, radical bunch of Justices sitting on the bench at SCOTUS. Anyone who tells you they know how those Justices will rule on this case is simply making things up.

In the meantime, there remain very real concerns about Georgia's voting system, just not the phony ones that Team Trump and the MAGA Mob have decided to focus on (read: lie about.)

Today, for the first time since before the November 3rd election, we're joined by voting systems expert MARILYN MARKS, Executive Director of the nonpartisan, good government watchdog group, Coalition for Good Governance. As a plaintiff in the long-running federal lawsuit seeking to bar Dominion Voting Systems' new, unverifiable touchscreen systems from use in the state, Marks has been one of the longest and loudest critics of both the private Canadian-based voting system vendor and the state's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger who contracted them. (Her same federal suit already resulted in a federal judge, last year, banning the use of the state's 20-year old, unverifiable Diebold touchscreen systems.) Raffensperger defied both election integrity and cybersecurity experts by purchasing Dominion's unverifiable $100+ million systems instead of a hand-marked paper ballot system as recommended by the experts. And now, Team Trump is exploiting Raffensperger's ill-considered decision to make all sorts of unfounded claims about them.

That said, because these systems are unverifiable, it's next to impossible to know that they accurately recorded the intent of any of the voters who are forced to use them at polling places across the state --- something that Marks (and us) warned about long before Republicans decided to pretend they were concerned about "election integrity" and invented a ridiculous worldwide conspiracy led by Dominion to steal the election from Trump.

In addition to cribbing from and bastardizing some of The BRAD BLOG's decade-old, independently verifiable investigative reporting about Dominion to create their ridiculous conspiracy regarding Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez helping to steal the election from Trump, the same MAGA Mob has been stealing from and lying about Marks' long-running federal law suit to try and make their case in court.

"We have seen, in Sidney Powell's lawsuits, fabrication after fabrication," Marks tells me. "I sit there and read these documents, cringing at the lack of facts. They even take things from our documents, like experts' reports, then add craziness to them, literally change facts that were attested to by our experts and make them completely false."

In light of all of that, among the question Marks speaks to today: Is there any evidence that Dominion Voting Systems touchscreens or tabulators were, in fact, used to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Georgia? Her answer may surprise you! If you've listened to The BradCast while we've covered this issue with Marks and others for years, it may not surprise you.

We have covered Georgia on this program and at BradBlog.com so long and in so much detail for a reason. The state, she notes "has been the poster-child for all that is wrong with US elections. It's all concentrated here. And now it's the center of the universe."

Marks also speaks to whether Americans and residents of Georgia should have confidence in the reported results from the November election, and what if anything, can be done to ensure confidence in the results of the critical January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in the state.

For those with actual concerns about those runoff elections --- which doesn't actually seem to include many of the Republican sore losers complaining about the November results and an evidence-free "Dominion Conspiracy" --- Marks asks listeners to urgently, and politely, email both the Speaker of the GA House, David Ralston, and GA's Sec. of State Raffensperger to urge them to allow HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all voters at the polls in the upcoming runoffs. She argues that there is still time for that to happen in every county, even as Early Voting begins on Monday. "They can make a quick switch to hand-marked paper ballots. All they need are a few thousand black ballpoint pens. They just need to hear from the nation that this time we want a non-controversial election."

We also ask Marks (a now former Republican herself), whether or not there are at least a few Republicans who might end up finding legitimate interest in joining the fight for real Election Integrity after their current partisan interests in Trump's election eventually fade away. While a private company like Dominion should never have the type of control they now have over our public elections, neither should the much larger ES&S firm or the smaller Hart-Intercivic, just to mention the three largest corporations who have arguably been allowed to usurp our public elections with unsecure, poorly designed, easily manipulated, non-transparent, computerized voting and tabulation systems.

"I hope that maybe one piece of good is that the Republicans are now suddenly concerned about software, and they are concerned about transparency of other processes," she observers. "They're suddenly interested in election administration that before, they seemed to have assumed was just going to work for them. So, hopefully we will get better transparency out of this. But we're going to have to go through the crazy period first, I'm afraid."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, with mostly disturbing news, as usual, on the state of our climate and environment, but some really really encouraging news at the end, that we'll use to make ourselves feel much better on another insane day like today...

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Election Reform, West Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, New York, Wisconsin, Paper Ballots Legislation, Touch-Screen DREs/BMDs, Environment, Republicans, Michigan, U.S. Supreme Court, Dominion Voting, EPA, KPFK, Donald Trump, Climate change, BradCast, Ken Paxton, Arctic, Election 2020, Brad Raffensperger, Pollution, Coronavirus/COVID-19

"We will never surrender," Donald Trump told his brain-poisoned MAGA Mob over the weekend in Valdosta, Georgia after the American people decisively voted for him to lose the 2020 Election. "We will only win. We're gonna win. We always win. Somehow we find a way to win," he declared. Of course, a "win" for Trump, as we detail on today's BradCast, would require the nullification of tens of millions of lawful votes to undermine democracy and the will of the American people in order to steal the election. Trump is all in for that, as he made clear yet again today. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

In the meantime, the Trump Campaign lost yet again in court on Tuesday night, as the Nevada Supreme Court agreed with a lower state court that there was no evidence of fraud that could have possibly reversed his loss to Joe Biden in the state by more than 33,000 votes. Team Trump has now lost more than 50 such cases in both state and federal court since Election Day, in no small part because they've failed to present any of evidence of "massive fraud" in any court, despite the false claims made by Trump dozens of times a day since then.

But he continues to try and strong-arm whoever he can --- the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, the Republican Governor of Georgia, the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania House --- in hopes they will abet his unconstitutional coup. His latest "victory" in that Loser's Battle was a letter sent by about 70 members of the Pennsylvania legislature to the state's Congressional delegation to ask them to please disenfranchise every voter in the Keystone State by voting against accepting the state's 20 electors on January 6th. (Mark that day on your calendar, by the way. It's going to be a very long one. I explain why on today's show.) The Republican leader of the state Senate said she feared her house would be "bombed" if she had chosen not to sign the letter. (She didn't, but only because she wasn't given the chance.) Death threats come to all of those Republicans who do not cow to the MAGA Mob, no matter how Trumpy they may otherwise be, no matter how long they have already gamed the system to try and please him.

In Texas, the wildly corrupt, long-ago-indicted Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state's top "law enforcement" official, is already facing state charges for securities fraud felonies and, more recently, eight of his top, very rightwing staffers left the office and informed federal officials that Paxton has been violating the law by using his agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is reportedly investigating the charges of bribery and abuse of office. Paxton could probably really use a preemptive pardon and quickly from this outgoing President. This week, he came up with just the ticket that is very likely to win one for him!

Paxton filed a lawsuit on behalf of Texas directly with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to toss out the results of the elections in four states --- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia --- claiming changes to their voting laws due to the COVID pandemic violated the U.S. Constitution. Coincidentally, there are just enough electors in those states that if they weren't allowed to vote, or if they voted for Trump instead, he could "win" the second term that he clearly lost.

We explain the ostensible basis for Paxton's suit today, which relies on a radical reading of the U.S. Constitution to nullify any and all votes cast by voters based on laws or rules or regulations set by state Governors or Secretaries of State or Boards of Elections or even state courts, rather than state legislatures only. Paxton also tosses in some long-ago debunked fraud claims that even the Trump Campaign hasn't tried to argue in their own failed lawsuits (no, there were no "suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables" in Atlanta), and some bullshit "commonly accepted statistical tests," just for good measure, claiming, for instance, that the chances Joe Biden could win all four states against a titan of Great Americanism like Donald Trump "is less than one in a quadrillion" according to "expert analysis".

But, in the Trump Era, facts don't matter. Convincing, muscling, threatening, strong-arming Republican stooges into doing his bidding is all that matters, even if those stooges are on Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. All nine Justices unanimously rejected another challenge that sought to toss out only 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Hopefully they see through this similarly transparent attempt to steal the election and/or win Paxton a preemptive pardon for his federal crimes.

Of note, the Texas state Solicitor General, who would normally take the lead on big cases to be argued before SCOTUS, didn't sign Paxton's 154-page complaint [PDF]. Only he and his new chief deputy (the last one left due to concerns about bribes the AG has allegedly taken) and a private, outside attorney were willing to do so. That attorney is presumably being paid by the taxpayer dollars of Texans who already employ hundreds of capable attorneys in the AG's office who wanted nothing to do with this case, apparently.

Nonetheless, the terrified incumbent Republican U.S. Senators in Georgia --- both facing serious challenges from Democrats in two runoff elections on January 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate --- issued a statement of support for the Texas Attorney General's attempt to rob Georgia's own voters, even as their own state's Republican Attorney General described the TX complaint as "constitutionally, legally and factually wrong."

In other news today that doesn't concern pathetic simpering Republicans kowtowing to a desperate, wannabe strongman, the comptroller of New York State has announced plans to divest the state's enormous, $226 billion pension fund from the fossil fuel sector, sending shockwaves through Wall Street and a jolt of excitement through the climate movement. Desi Doyen joins us to explain why this is such a big deal.

Finally, we close with our latest Green News Report on the globe's hottest November since record keeping began; the Trump EPA's decision to help kill tens of thousands of more Americans each year on their way out the door; Denmark's decision to leave the rest of their fossil fuels in the ground, and much more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

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Article Categories: Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, New York, U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin, U.S. House, Environment, U.S. Senate, Republicans, Michigan, U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden, Nevada, EPA, KPFK, Donald Trump, Climate change, Extreme weather, BradCast, Ken Paxton, Election 2020, Denmark, Brian Kemp, Wall Street, Pollution