On today's BradCast: We dispatch with the dark, ugly post-impeachment bitterness of our completely unfit and totally guilty President as quickly as possible at the top of today's show, along with a word or two about Mitt Romney's commendable, historic courage. Then it's on to looking forward to how Americans must remove this dangerous man from office, even as we all must surmount seemingly impossible odds with our nation's terrible, dangerous, nontransparent voting systems in 2020. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On that score, first up, CBS-2 in Los Angeles ran an investigative report this week, featuring yours truly, on the County's new, unverifiable, $300,000,000 touchscreen voting system. We share the report from CBS-LA's David Goldstein in full, along with some additional thoughts, including the eerie similarities between comments in the CBS report from L.A. County's Registrar Dean Logan, who developed the new VSAP ("Voting Solutions for All People") system, on his strong confidence in the first-time use of this new system before the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, and those from an interview with the Iowa Democratic Party Chair Tom Price on the night before the Iowa Caucuses about his own confidence in the party's new, secretly-developed smartphone app that failed so disastrously the next day.

Then, speaking of Iowa, several reports on Thursday confirm that there was an apparent effort by Trump supporting trolls to jam the phone lines used as the backup for precinct officials to phone in caucus results when the IDP's smartphone app had failed. That element of the story is eerily similar to the 2002 GOP phone-jamming scandal during a U.S. Senate election in New Hampshire that year. Four Republican operatives hired by the party were convicted in a criminal scheme and the party had to pay NH Dems $125,000 in damages afterward. How does that tie to what happened in Iowa? We hope to report more on that on tomorrow's BradCast. But for now, we hope it serves as a reminder that Russia is not the only threat to the integrity of U.S. elections. Not by a long shot.

Today we've got more new, and still-partial (97%), results out of Iowa, showing Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie, with Buttigieg barely leading in state delegates at the moment (3 out of several thousand divvied up between candidates) and Sanders winning in the raw vote counts in both the first and final rounds of voting on Caucus night. Controversy around the reported numbers, as chaotic and error-ridden as it has been, is actually a good thing, as we explain, given that publicly-witnessed, precinct-based counts (with hand-marked paper ballots to boot) are available from all 1,765 caucus sites. That means, when incorrect numbers have been posted to date, the public has been able to scrutinize and force corrections to those numbers, as has been the case in several instances across the state.

It should also be noted that, despite claims from supporters of some candidates, there is no evidence so far to suggest that any of the errors in reporting were meant to help or harm any particular candidate. As the NYTimes reports tonight, "Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small."

We go over some of those claims as well today. While some are viewing all of this as chaos and failure, we see it as a victory for PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF ELECTION RESULTS. Public oversight is generally missing in jurisdictions where computers tally votes (which is to say, in all 50 states) leaving the public often entirely unable to verify results of their own elections. Similar errors occur in virtually every election, but due to the nature of secret counting in most locations, the public rarely learns about or notices them and erroneous results are rarely corrected. That, of course, was what we shamefully saw (or, rather, didn't) in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania after the stunning reported end to the 2016 Presidential election.

Now, ironically enough, a furious National Democratic Pary chair is demanding a recanvass of results in Iowa. But where were those same Dems after 2016 when they decided to not challenge or scrutinize any of the dubious numbers from the most surprising Presidential election results in U.S. history?

Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with more debunkery of Trump's lies about energy at this week's SOTU, some bad news about January's record heat, and some very good news about the scheduled ban on gasoline-powered cars in Great Britain!...

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A few days ago, I ran the :30 second preview for this report from David Goldstein of CBS-2 Los Angeles on the new,100% unverifiable touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems being deployed to all polling places in Los Angeles County (the nation's most populous) for the first time in the critical 2020 elections. I am seen in the preview responding bluntly to how much confidence voters should have in this new system, as paired with the response to the same question from Goldstein by L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan.

We now have Goldstein's full video report and it's posted below.

The first countywide use of the $300,000,000 system, ten years in development, will be for the upcoming Super Tuesday primary on March 3rd in California. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just ask Iowa.

But, beyond that, I've spent a great deal of time in recent weeks, months (and, yes, years) specifically detailing what could go wrong, from the fact that...

• these systems were recently "conditionally certified", by CA Sec. of State Alex Padilla, despite warnings from experts after they were found to have failed failing to meet more than 40 California Voting Systems Standards;
• that the computer-marked paper ballots it creates can be changed by the system without voters knowledge after they are supposedly verified by voters and then run back through the same printer path that printed them in the first place;
• that a recent study found that 93% of voters do not notice when a BMD system has flipped one of their votes;
• that Los Angeles County is being sued by Beverly Hills because the system only displays four candidates in any given race at a time, which means that voters could hit the NEXT button to go to the next race, without ever seeing all of the voters in the contest (something that is also not a problem when using a more reasonable, sensible, much less expensive hand-marked paper ballot system);
• that this system could result in voters not being able to vote at all, if there is a power or internet outage or ransomware attack;
• and that even if voters succeed overcoming all of these obstacles and manage to correctly verify the computer hasn't changed their vote, there is till no way for anybody to know after an election, whether any vote has been printed accurately as per any voter's intent!

That's just some of the concerns about these systems --- and they are true for the new system being deployed in L.A. called VSAP for "Voting Solutions for All People", as well as for other similar systems being deployed for the first time this year in critical battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and elsewhere, for some insane reason.

Anyway, while I'll have more to say about this on today's BradCast later tonight, I'm happy that at least a few corporate media outlets are waking up to these concerns. Too few, if you ask me. Perhaps more will do so after what's happened in Iowa. But, for now, here's the full report now from CBS-2 Los Angeles' David Goldstein, as aired Tuesday evening on the 11 o'clock news.

WATCH...

It's special coverage of three different historic events --- all at once, somehow --- on today's BradCast. It wasn't easy, but it was a very lively show in dark times nonetheless! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

We're joined today by old friends who, unlike the corporate media pundits and professional political operatives and academic geniuses, have been right over and over and over, for years, about pretty much everything. For some reason today, that is very comforting. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON and TOM SULLIVAN, both of whom can be found each day writing at Digby's Hullabaloo, work through all of today's nightmares with us. Parton, an award-winning opinion journalist can also be found as a regular contributor to Salon. Sullivan, a North Carolina writer and resident is also a grassroots organizer in the state, whose "For the Win" training guide for countywide Get Out the Vote operations should be required reading for every so-called "professional" Democratic party strategist in the nation.

First up on today program, it's the ugly, bitter State of the Union address, filled with demostrable lies and cheap, offensive TV game show stunts, as delivered by Donald Trump on Tuesday night, and literally shredded thereafter by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Next, it's the shameful historic acquittal by cowed Republicans in the U.S. Senate, just before airtime on Wednesday, of the proven-guilty President on both of his Articles of Impeachment, and some Senators from both side of the aisle who deserve notice for their votes.

Finally, it's the continuing fallout from the disastrous use of untested, secretly-developed, non-transparent technology --- despite warnings from experts (and, yes, us) --- in Iowa's Democratic Caucuses on Monday, where we still only have partial results reported by the Iowa Democratic Party as of today. We discuss that disaster and who may be the winners and losers from Monday's contest, along with all of the other disasters and what they should mean for the candidates, the 2020 nominating cycle and the critical, last chance general election now on America's horizon...

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On Monday night, the Democratic Iowa Caucuses melted down. Actually, they didn't melt down. They worked as well as expected. It was the reporting of the results from the caucuses that melted down, almost entirely due to a smartphone app that either didn't work as planned --- or because untrained precinct captains had trouble using it for its intended purpose: to send local, transparent, fully publicly overseen caucus site results to the the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters for release to the media. Of course, as we have warned for more than 15 years, it is always a terrible idea to use new, untested, secretly-developed, nontransparent, unnecessary computer technology for mission critical, cannot-fail elections.

On today's BradCast [Audio link posted below], we explain both the Iowa caucus process (which, itself, is actually among the most transparent --- if most complex --- of all the Presidential nominating contests); the known history of this app that failed so spectacularly after warnings by cybersecurity professionals (and by us on this program previously) against its use were ignored; how the app was supposed to work; and the problems from the 2016 caucuses (and even 2012 Republican Caucus in Iowa) that it was meant to solve.

(Relatedly, we also share a :30 second preview clip, featuring me, from CBS-2 Los Angeles, for an investigative report on Los Angeles County's new, untested, 100% unverifiable, $300,000,000 touchscreen voting systems that are being deployed for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary election here for the first time in the nation's most populous county, despite warnings from cybersecurity and, yes, us. That story, and the warnings I offer in the preview --- and, hopefully, in the full story set to air on CBS-LA this evening --- have suddenly become even more wildly relevant over the past 12 hours or so than they were previously.)

If you take nothing else from all of this, please let it be that even if tech like this works perfectly (it never does), if the public cannot know that it did, confidence in democracy itself is deeply endangered. Though we've been issuing that warning for years, it is more true today than ever, especially after years of tossing additional computer "solutions" at our elections, no matter how dangerous it will be once again in 2020. As one longtime Election Integrity advocate emailed me today, somewhat sarcastically: "Who would have ever thought that using computers for election administration could cause problems? Aren't they supposed to make processes go more easily, more smoothly, faster, more accurate? What a stunner that everything descended into chaos when Iowa Democrats changed from their manual counting/reporting methods to move into the 21st century with computers!"

Before we get to our guest today then, with whom we also discuss all of this, perhaps I can summarize the lessons learned for the moment from Iowa as...A) the madness of using untested, secretly-developed, nontransparent new tech in mission critical elections; B) the importance of publicly overseen results tabulated by humans at the polling place (which Iowa has, despite the app meltdown, so the correct results will EVENTUALLY be known!) and; C) the absurdly complex procedures of the Iowa Caucus itself (on the Dem side --- the GOP side is far simpler) is a nice example of the complications and dangers in store for those who persist in calling for a Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system. Given the complicated way the Iowa Democratic caucuses work (realignment of votes through several rounds of voting/counting after some candidates do not meet the viability threshold, etc.), it is very similar to RCV or Instant Runnoff Voting (IRV).

If you think the raw numbers, once they fully come out from Iowa, are impossible to understand and add up, just wait until RCV takes hold. As I almost always note on this topic: If you think we have enough trouble as is, transparently adding 1 + 1 + 1 in our elections in a way that can be publicly overseen and understood, just wait until we add the complicated, computer- and central-tabulation required algebra of Ranked Choice Voting to the matter!

Halfway through today's show, the Iowa Democratic Party finally released results from Monday night....well, just 62% of them, incredibly enough. They show Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie, followed by Elizabeth Warren and then Joe Biden, with Amy Klobuchar not too far behind. But, again, those are only partial numbers, so we don't need to spend too much time on them for now.

We're joined today by the great JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation, just back from Iowa, for an explanation --- and a rant or two --- about all of the above and whether Democratic supporters of several different candidates should be furious...or just breathe...as all of this is ultimately sorted out. There is a lot to discuss with John, who explains why he believes "caucuses suck" and the "scorching, huge damage" this all will have done to the Democratic Party and democracy itself. We agree on some points and disagree on others. But there is just far too much to detail here. So I suggest you just buckle up and tune in today!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us to let it go, with our latest Green News Report...

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On today's BradCast: Following Friday's shameful vote in the U.S. Senate, where just two Republican Senators were able to muster up the courage to vote against completely blocking all witnesses and documents in the Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, we now have just one firewall left against our slide into full authoritarianism: This November's election. [Audio link to show follows below.]

If a President can't be indicted, as the Dept. of Justice falsely claims, and a Republican Senate is more than happy to blatantly rig an impeachment "trial" against a Republican President, the only American firewall left against the collapse of representative democracy as we've known it in this nation is your vote --- and those of every eligible citizen you know --- cast this year and counted as intended. That, as we have warned for many years, is now more difficult than ever in many jurisdictions. Nonetheless, that fight begins tonight in Iowa. (We'll have full coverage of Iowa results on Tuesday's BradCast.)

On today's program, related to all of the above, and before we open up the phones to callers on all of it...

• We are "flying blind" as we head into the Iowa Caucuses after the weekend cancellation of the final "gold standard" Des Moines Register poll, due to a procedural error. Though Bernie Sanders, according to other last-minute polling, is believed to be the front-runner on the Democratic side as caucusing begins. That said, the Iowa Caucuses are complicated and notoriously difficult to predict, for some of the reasons we explain on today's program;

• Millions of Vote-by-Mail ballots are, as of today, according to a media statement from the California Sec. of State, now on their way to Golden State voters for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, when more than a dozen states will be voting in their 2020 primaries all at once. We, again today, endeavor to explain the complicated procedures that are (sadly) necessary in the Golden State to make sure you are able to vote in the party primary of your choosing, as well as the steps you need to take to make sure you do so on a hand-marked paper ballot in order to maximize the odds of your vote actually being counted as cast.

  To avoid having to cast a 100% unverifiable touchscreen vote if you live in Los Angeles County (where that will be forced upon you at our new "voting centers") or anywhere else where touchscreens are your only choice at the polling place, PLEASE contact your County and ask for a hand-marked paper Vote-by-Mail ballot. Then, PLEASE deliver it IN PERSON to your polling place or County headquarters on Election Day or as close to it as possible. (Check your local jurisdiction to make certain they will accept hand-delivered vote-by-mail ballots!) To check your voter status --- how and if you are registered, and whether you are signed up for Vote-by-Mail --- please see the CA Sec. of State website's Voter Status page here. To request a Vote-by-Mail ballot in L.A. or request a specific party's primary ballot, go to LAVote.net;

• Everyone must be on board and educated about all of this, this year. With the stakes we are now facing, there is ZERO room for error. Please share good information far and wide, and help your friends and neighbors to register, to vote, and to help spread the word to others about how to do the same thing;

• Yet another reason for voting on hand-marked paper: I am terrified, for good reason, about the possibility of a ransomware attack that could prevent voters in jurisdictions that now (foolishly and dangerously) rely on computers at the polls for voters to be able to vote at all. One of the latest such attacks/reminders is currently crippling services in Tillamook County, Oregon, where all County computer servers were shut down as of last week due to such an attack. Tillamook is just the latest of dozens of jurisdictions --- states, counties, large and small metropolitan areas --- to be hit by ransomware attacks over the past year. If one occurs on or before Election Day in a county (like L.A.) that now relies on computer pollbooks and voting systems, we will have a disaster on our hands in the upcoming elections;

• Of course, such a disaster is exactly what Donald Trump is hoping for, given his unpopularity and his repeated attempts to rig both the 2016 and now 2020 elections in his favor through any means necessary. He is now being aided in that effort not only by Republicans in the Senate, but by the Dept. of Justice itself, which is unlawfully withholding documents that prove, yet again, that Trump directed Administration officials to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine in a pressure campaign to force them to help him cheat in the 2020 election;

• All of this, as investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald warned in a chilling Twitter thread on Friday after the vote to block all witnesses and documents in Trump's Impeachment Trial, is why "we are in an extremely terrifying moment in American history." Eichenwald cautions that, because Presidential "emergency powers" have never been defined ("because no one ever imagined a situation like this"), Trump could even attempt to cancel this year's election if he wanted and, like Hitler, could even imprison political opponents such as Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders "if he further advances his argument that he [has] absolute unquestionable control of government."

Far fetched? Please tune in to today's show and then let us know, as callers did in the second half of today's program...

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On today's BradCast: The President's defense team wrapped up their Opening (and, they hope, Closing) Argument in the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, even as we are now less than one week away from the official start of the 2020 Election season with worries about the integrity of the Iowa Caucuses, set for Monday night, February 3rd, now looming. [Audio link to show follows below.]

We break away momentarily, for the first half of today's program, from our ongoing coverage of the Impeachment Trial to cover some issues of concern for some, regarding the Iowa Caucuses and an arguably more troubling development regarding an election that is now underway in Washington state. First to Iowa, where Bernie Sanders is now said to have taken a slight lead, according to most of the recent polling in the Hawkeye State, over his nearest competitors, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. At the same time, a number of listeners have written to express concerns about a smartphone app developed by the state Democratic Party to help report results quickly to Party headquarters on Caucus night.

We discuss the way Democrats caucus in Iowa, what this app --- developed by the state Party in secret --- is supposedly designed to do to assist in the otherwise-open Democratic caucus process, and the worries that some have about the possibility of this new app being hacked to report inaccurate caucus results on Monday night. (Misreporting of Caucus night results has caused problems in the past, at least for Republicans.)

Of far greater concern, however, is an election underway right now in the Seattle area where more than a million voters are eligible to cast their vote via the Internet for the first time on either a computer or smart phone. The first-of-its-kind online election will fill a vacancy on the board of the obscure King Conservation District, responsible for managing natural resources in King County, Washington. The online voting is being carried out in partnership between the County's Board of Elections and a nonprofit named Tusk Philanthropies, headed up by a venture capitalist and Democratic political strategist by the name of Bradley Tusk.

The landmark pilot election comes despite a years-long, nearly-unanimous consensus from cybsersecurity experts (we've interviewed tons of them over the years on The BradCast) that the Internet is nowhere near secure enough for public elections. It also comes in the wake of last Summer's bipartisan U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report finding all 50 states were targeted by Russia during the 2016 election, and the panel's recommendation that "States should resist pushes for online voting".

While she has no oversight of this particular election, Washington's top election official, Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican, opposes the King County effort and hopes to roll back the use of electronic ballots in the state, charging (correctly!) that the Internet is "too risky for voting". Nonetheless, Tusk, King County Elections Director Julie Wise, and a Seattle company named Democracy Live are barreling ahead with this disturbing experiment that is set to further poison the all-too-quickly disappearing idea of publicly overseeable elections in the U.S.

You have been warned. Again.

Then, its back to impeachment today, at the end of Tuesday's brief, two-hour wrap up of the President's case in the Senate. Trump's attorneys argued largely that the President did nothing wrong, and even if he did, it's not impeachable, because the dispute boils down to little more than a "policy disagreement" between Democrats and the White House. Impeachment over such matters, Trump's bombastic TV/radio lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone argued, sets a dangerous precedent by lowering the bar on future Presidential impeachments.

But the biggest looming question over the U.S. Senate at the moment is whether four or more Republican Senators will agree to call for witnesses when they vote again on the matter later in the week, following two days of written questions for the attorneys on both side. The issue that has turned the Republicans' previous plans for a quick acquittal on its head is the reported bombshell claims by Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton, in the manuscript of his still-unpublished new book, that Trump did exactly what he is being accused of in the first of the two Articles of Impeachment. That Article charges Abuse of Power by Trump for withholding nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine in order to force them to help Trump in his reelection bid by announcing an investigation of Joe Biden and other Democrats.

Bolton's explosive disclosure, first reported on Sunday night by the New York Times, has reverberated ever since, with Trump's former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, asserting on Monday night that he believes Bolton and agrees he should be called in as a witness for the trial against his old boss. The shake-up also comes as a new national poll out on Tuesday afternoon from Quinnipiac finds that registered voters by an astounding margin of 75 to 20 percent, agree that witnesses should be allowed to testify. The tally includes nearly half of Republicans and an astonishing 75 percent of Independent voters. According to the new survey, more than half of those polled believe Trump "is not telling the truth about his actions involving Ukraine"; should "provide more details" about it; has "abused his power" in the matter; has "obstructed Congress" in the bargain; and that the "withholding of U.S. aid to Ukraine was not justified". All of which has left Republicans reeling in a panic to find the votes needed to block witnesses in the trial. But they're still trying, and will likely have until Friday to pull it off.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, filled with several ongoing plagues, catastrophes and warnings of nearly biblical proportion...

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"They wanted substantive change and were willing to burn it all down to get it." These words, from a neighbor in the rural north country of New York, describe the thinking of some who voted for Donald Trump. Some of these same voters had supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary (more on that below).

Four years later, some have suggested we should shy away from Sanders, on the grounds that he cannot beat Trump. Election statistics, however, as well as current polling, reveal that he would, in fact, be a viable candidate. This is not the same thing as saying he will win. But, based on actual existing hard numbers that we can examine, he is certainly not "unelectable" as some critics have charged.

Bernie Sanders, having run for President in 2016, is the only Democratic candidate with a recent track record in presidential politics that can be used as a yardstick, unlike several of the other current front-runners such as Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg. So, let's look at what the raw numbers tell us about Sanders' electability against Trump, bearing in mind that this all could change when full-throated attacks are unleashed against him, as they inevitably will be against whoever wins the Democratic nomination...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GNR Special Coverage: Climate change pervades the final Democratic presidential primary debate before 2020 voting begins... 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): 2019 was the second-hottest year ever, closing out the warmest decade; Germany to drop coal, nuclear power in landmark energy deal; Dead birds washing up by the thousands send a warning about climate change; Florida plans to buy, protect Everglades land targeted for oil drilling; Racist housing policies in US linked to deadly heatwave exposure; World’s biggest long-term risks are environmental, WEF Says... PLUS: Oil's slick rebranding is more like disinformation... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Once again, our plans for Special Coverage of the latest Democratic Presidential Debate is somewhat truncated today to make room for our Special Coverage of impeachment and the new, wildly disturbing evidence released on Tuesday night to go with it. [Audio link to show follows summary below.]

We're joined today by guests HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and fellow longtime progressive blogger "DRIFTGLASS" (otherwise known as @Mr_Electrico on Twitter, or "Bill" to a few friends), co-host of the Professional Left Podcast, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.

We start with coverage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to finally transmit the two Articles of Impeachment against Donald John Trump, as approved by the House last year, over to the Senate for just the third Presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. With the articles, on Wednesday, she also announced the selection of seven House members who will serve as prosecutors (known as House Managers) for the trial. They include House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of NY, Sylvia Garcia of TX, Val Demings of FL, Jason Crow of CO and Zoe Lofgren of CA.

Moreover, we discuss the troubling new documentary evidence released late on Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee from the phone of Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. That material, among other things, reveals a bizarre and creepy 2019 text message thread between Parnas and Republican Connecticut Congressional candidate and Trump superfan, Robert H. Hyde, detailing what appears to be Hyde's surveillance of movements of then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The texts suggest the now-ousted Yovanovitch, who was eventually recalled for her own safety on the next available flight out of the country, may have been targeted, given the content of the conversation, including remarks such as "They are willing to help if we/you would like a price." Ambassador Yovanovitch, an anti-corruption warrior, was described by Trump in his phone conversation with Ukraine's President as "bad news", claiming "she's going to go through some things."

As if all of that is not enough for one show, we then move on to coverage and analysis of Tuesday night's debate in Des Moines, Iowa, the final Democratic Presidential debate before voting begins in earnest for the 2020 nominating cycle with the Iowa Caucuses on February 3rd. Digby and Driftglass offer insight on all of the candidates who qualified for the debate --- Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer --- and a number of topics discussed on Tuesday night, including the bubbling feud between Sanders and Warren, the many and shifting Democratic positions on the Military/Industrial Complex and our forever wars in the Middle East.

We also discuss the failures of the debate moderators from CNN and the Des Moines Register, the problem with culling down the field to just 6 candidates before a single vote has even been cast, and whether Tuesday's debate has shifted the fortunes of any of the front-runners before voting finally gets under way next month....

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The final 2020 Democratic Presidential debate of 2019 was held Thursday night in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, just one day after the U.S. House approved two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump. On today's BradCast, we have lively, smart (and, yes, occasionally snarky) special coverage of both, with returning champion guests DAVID FARIS, Associate Professor of political science at Chicago's Roosevelt University, The Week contributor, and author of It's Time to Fight Dirty; and HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, Salon columnist and award-winning opinion and analysis journalist from Digby's Hullabaloo.

As per DNC requirements for participation at the Thursday night's debate, co-sponsored by PBS Newshour and Politico, the included candidates were former Vice President Joe Biden; South Bend, IN, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; MN Sen. Amy Klobuchar; VT Sen. Bernie Sanders; Billionaire businessman Tom Steyer; MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

With ballots for early primary states going out to voters any day now, we should also note that NOT featured on Thursday's debate stage, though very likely featured along with the above candidates on 2020 Democratic primary ballots very soon, are: CO Sen. Michael Bennet; Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg; NJ Sen. Cory Booker; former HUD Secretary Julián Castro; former MD Rep. John Delaney; HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; former MA Gov. Deval Patrick; and author Marianne Williamson.

We cover a lot of ground on today's special coverage program, beginning with the latest in the post-impeachment showdown between House Democrats and Senate Republicans and how the ongoing fight over sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate before a trial is likely to play out; what to make of Gabbard's "present" vote on those Articles; how the PBS/Politico debate format worked out on Thursday night; who should have been included but wasn't; why Warren has recently lost some of her momentum despite her many proposals and popular plan to tax millionaires (while also landing the line of the night!); why Buttigieg has picked up so much steam in Iowa; why Biden remains the national front runner, according to polling, over all of these months and despite his flaws; how Sanders hit on some key points Thursday night that nobody else did; how our Climate Crisis finally played a prominent role in the Thursday night forum; why Yang and Steyer are there at all (and whether that's a good thing or bad); and whether Klobuchar can somehow emerge as the Democratic centrists' option to take on Donald Trump.

Of course, those are just a few of the topics covered, along with a host of clips from the debate and no shortage of both snarky and insightful commentary along the way!

Also, please note: Desi and I will be taking a bit of a break to recharge batteries and spend some long-overdue family time over the upcoming holidays. Nicole Sandler will be filling in for us, along with a mix of a few days of various encore BradCasts until we're back in 2020. My thanks to all of you who helped us get through this very difficult year in one way or another. From your notes of support and well wishes, to your news tips, to your generous support via BradBlog.com/Donate to help us keep doing what we try to do five days a week over your public airwaves without corporate or political support, helping us to remain 100% listener-supporter radio! Thank you for all of that, and we'll see you --- for better or worse --- in the new election year!...

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There were a number of bullets dodged in the past few days, literal and otherwise, and some that, tragically, were not. We cover them on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Most of Florida appears to have dodged a bullet --- though Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina aren't in the clear yet --- after the deadly and incredibly slow-moving Hurricane Dorian, once a Category 5, heads to the north, grazing the coast of the Sunshine State after catastrophically devastating several large islands in The Bahamas. We're joined today by Atlanta-based, 30-year Weather Channel meteorologist GUY WALTON, who now tracks extreme weather and our worsening climate crisis at his website, GuyOnClimate.com. He offers insight into what has made Dorian such an unusual, deadly, and wildly unpredictable storm.

"Steering currents are being affected by climate change and, as more warmth gets put into the atmosphere, the weaker those steering currents are going to be," Walton, who has written a children's book on the climate crisis, tells me in explaining the "$250 billion question" about "where the storm is going to be going." He says the weakened steering currents are what allow storms like Harvey in Houston two years ago and now Dorian to basically stand in place. "Dorian stalled over the Bahamas, and in this case, that was extremely bad for The Bahamas but good for Florida. It's very unusual to have a system just stall like that."

"We're getting more Category 4s and 5s forming in the Atlantic basin, and they're forming quite rapidly. Dorian formed near Puerto Rico and it did give them some tropical storm force winds, but it was only a Cat 1 at the time, and it really didn't take it more than about 24 hours to become a Cat 5," he observes, citing the increased effect of climate change on these storms. "We've had four out of the last five years seeing Cat 5s. We've had Dorian, Michael, Maria, Irma, and Matthew. And two of the storms --- Michael and Maria --- hit the United States as 5s."

A number of Texas residents were much less lucky than Floridians over the Labor Day holiday weekend, as actual bullets were flying yet again in the Lone Star state in yet another mass shooting by another young American white man. This one in the West Texas towns of Odessa and Midland resulted in 7 killed, more than 20 injured, a cowardly, sputtering President of the United States who clearly hasn't a clue what to do about it, and a cowardly Texas Governor who, after recently loosening gun restrictions in Texas to allow weapons of mass destruction in public schools and churches, suggests he might finally be willing to take action that might actually help protect Texans for a change by curbing the scourge of gun massacres in the state since he's taken office. We wouldn't hold our breath for that action, however. Texas Governor Greg Abbot, like Donald Trump, is a Republican who lives in fear of the terrorist-enabling NRA and places his own political career over the actual lives of the people he is sworn to protect and serve.

Democratic voters in the 2020 caucus states of Iowa and Nevada, meanwhile, may have dodged figurative bullets thanks to a few experts who managed to hack a recent closed telephone conference call by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee as they were considering approval of plans by those two states to add unsecure remote telephone voting options to next February's caucuses there. The new plans were being prepared in answer to the DNC's mandate enacted after the contentious 2016 primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in hopes of encouraging states to hold more inclusive primary elections rather than caucuses. If state parties chose to hold caucuses, however, the DNC is requiring them to add some form of remote voting option for those unable to attend hours-long, in-person caucuses. The remote voting plans in Iowa and Nevada, however, now appear all but dead, at least for 2020.

And, as we were just finishing up today's show, some more good news for Democrats --- and for all voters who believe in fair elections --- as North Carolina's State Superior Court issued a 357-page [PDF] ruling finding the state's GOP-gerrymandered legislative districts are unconstitutional and ordering new maps to be drawn before the 2020 elections in the closely divided battleground state. (Much more on that last story, undoubtedly, on tomorrow's BradCast!)

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On today's BradCast: Are Democrats finally beginning to reconsider their incredibly ill-considered mandate to require remote voting for their 2020 Presidential caucuses via phone or Internet voting schemes? Our guest today says they may just be doing so! If so, that would be very good news and not a moment too soon! [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, speaking of "ill-considered", in an echo of his earlier posturing against North Korea, Donald Trump issued new militaristic threats and slapped new sanctions on Iran, including against its Supreme Leader, President, Foreign Minister and even the Islamic Nation's lead nuclear negotiator. The result is what Iranian officials describe as the "permanent closure" of diplomacy between the two countries. The new sanctions also resulted in the Iranian President mocking the measures as "outrageous and idiotic", "hilarious", "stupid and ugly", while charging the White House is suffering from a "mental illness".

Trump's new punitive measures come in response to Iran shooting down a U.S. drone, which they say entered its air space last week. The U.S. denies the charge, insisting that its spy plane was in international airspace over the Straight of Hormuz. And all of it comes in the wake of Trump pulling the U.S. unilaterally out of the 2015 treaty between seven world powers that prevented Iran from enriching enough uranium to create a nuclear weapon.

But now, as the Administration penalizes Iranian leaders --- who, by all accounts, have fully complied with the strict terms of the landmark accord struck under Barack Obama's Administration --- Trump and his team can't seem to understand why Iran is not interested in negotiating with them. They have, however, threatened Iran if they renege on the terms of the deal that Trump pulled out of, as Iran has now announced they intend to do. Of course, the possibility of, once again, touching off WWIII comes with Trump's threat today of "great and overwhelming force" and "obliteration" of Iran, just days after he reportedly cancelled a planned attack against them at the last minute last week.

All of which underscores the necessity of removing this dangerous menace from the White House, whether by impeachment or at the ballot box next year. Not that viewers of Fox "News", of course, have any idea of the facts behind these latest incidents, which all stem from Trump pulling out of the very good landmark agreement with Iran. In fact, even one of Fox' most beloved former reporters, "Campaign Carl" Cameron has now come out against the fake news channel's "partisan misinformation" in a video promoting his new news venture, Front Page Live, launched with progressives such as Joe Romm of Climate Progress.

As to removing the buffoonish, inept, unfit, dishonest Trump at the ballot box, that may not be as simple as it should be for Democrats, given both the proliferation of rightwing misinformation at Fox and other rightwing fake news outlets (such as the NY Post which removed its story on well-known magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll's new allegations that Trump raped her in a department store dressing some years ago) and the extraordinary vulnerability of our nation's voting, registration, and tabulation systems. To that end, 2020 Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren introduced a plan for election reform today which calls for, among other things, a mandate to replace the nation's easily-manipulated, oft-failed computerized voting systems with ones that allow every American to cast their vote by the safest, most verifiable method possible: HAND-MARKED paper ballots. Her measure is not unlike some of the provisions in HR-1 as passed by Democrats in the House and the PAVE Act, introduced in upper chamber by Sen. Ron Wyden, where it remains, along with all such election security bills, blocked by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

But, where Democrats --- some of them anyway --- are coming around to the understanding that every voter in America must be allowed to cast their vote on a hand-marked paper ballot, the Democratic National Committee seems less than clear on the need for verifiable, publicly-overseeable election results. To that end, as we warned on the program some months ago, the DNC, following the 2016 election disaster, issued a mandate for all state Dem parties which choose to hold Presidential caucuses in 2020, rather than statewide primaries, to include some form of "remote voting" for party members who cannot attend in person.

That Democratic Party mandate, as our guest today Voting Booth's STEVEN ROSENFELD reported when we spoke with him back in March, has resulted in party officials in early caucus states such as Iowa and Nevada, scrambling to find private vendors willing to provide "remote voting" services that employee phone or Internet voting schemes. Today, Rosenfeld reports on what we'll call a moderately encouraging follow-up, finding that DNC officials may now be reconsidering that, frankly, insane mandate for unverifiable off-site voting systems.

"The thing about caucuses --- these are not government-run elections," Rosenfeld explains. "So this is really, really critical, because this means that all of the cybersecurity efforts --- of which there have been tremendous efforts made since 2016 to deal with trying to tighten systems --- those have all been in government election systems. These [caucuses] are private elections. So what the state parties will do in the caucus states is they have to rent a voting system. These do not have to be certified voting systems." That, of course, is an invitation to even less secure systems than those which already plague American elections, not to mention that cybersecurity experts consider Internet Voting schemes to be the most vulnerable of all such systems.

"So they're talking to different vendors who run these different systems. It's either going to be like using a telephone, to punch a button in to choose a candidate, or using an app, or using some kind of webpage." Rosenfeld, whose recent reporting on this includes discussion with the co-chair of the DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee, says DNC officials plan to review state party plans this week, but may, in fact, not approve those plans after all.

Rosenfeld envisions a situation where, "in the first [Iowa] and third [Nevada] contests, the Democrats have a complete mess and Trump runs with it and yells and screams about 'stolen elections' all the way into the fall. The whole thing is just madness on top of madness."

Let's hope wiser heads prevail at the DNC, though I'm not holding my breath.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with Vice President Mike Pence's embarrassing weekend appearance on CNN, in which he was unwilling to acknowledge his own administration's scientific warnings about the national security threat posed by our worsening climate emergency. Also on today's GNR, the Trump USDA is burying scientific reports on climate change, a deadly heat wave and acute water shortages are ravaging India, and --- with some good news --- G.E. has announced plans to shut down a natural gas power plant in California twenty years earlier than planned because renewable energy options are now both cheaper and cleaner!...

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A 22nd entrant into the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination contest today offers an excuse to survey the landscape a bit, for a change, on today's BradCast as both the race and the planet continue to heat up. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Among the related stories we cover today regarding Dems fighting to shape their party's identity in hopes of both saving the climate and winning enough votes --- in the right places --- to prevail in next year's Presidential election against race-baiting criminal and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump...

• Temperatures soared into the mid to upper 80's over the weekend at the edge of the Arctic Circle --- 20 to 30 degrees higher than normal --- while the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii measured 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time in human history. The two data points are related, as CO2 is the main man-made greenhouse gas driver of global warming, and as 19 of the hottest 20 years on record have all occurred since 2000. With CO2 levels having risen 50 percent since the Industrial Revolution and scientists concluding that unmitigated climate disaster is imminent unless immediate and drastic cuts to greenhouse emissions are made, what are the Democratic Presidential candidates prepared to do about it?;

• At an event at Howard University sponsored by the Sunrise Movement to rally for the Green New Deal on Monday, Presidential candidate Joe Biden --- who was not at the event --- was booed by progressive attendees on several occasions following a recent Reuters report in which a campaign advisor suggested the former Veep is seeking a "middle ground" on climate change. Activist attendees at the rally, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who introduced the Green New Deal earlier this year, and Vermont Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, all suggested there is no "middle ground" when it comes to the climate crisis humanity faces. They, and others, such as Washington state Governor and Presidential hopeful Jay Inslee --- who has made climate change the centerpiece of his campaign --- call for a large-scale national mobilization to defeat climate change and grow millions of well-paying jobs in the bargain. We share some clips from both AOC and Sanders at the event;

• For his part, hours earlier at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Biden declared the Reuters report "dead wrong", citing his record, going back to 1986, as a champion for climate legislation. The current front-runner (according to recent polls) also promised a major speech later this month to outline his environmental priorities, which, thanks to efforts by progressives and their support for the popular goals of the Green New Deal, are likely to be more aggressive than they might have been before the pushback to his campaign's positioning as a "moderate" who is best suited to win over Trump voters among a very crowded Democratic field;

• And, speaking of "centrist" candidates hoping to win over GOP voters, Montana's Governor Steve Bullock officially entered the Presidential race today, touting his record as a Democrat who has won three statewide elections in a so-called "red state" where Trump is said to have defeated Hillary Clinton by 20 points in 2016 --- the same day, and on the same ballot, when Bullock won his second term as Governor. Bullock has, in fact, championed a number of progressive policies in the state --- including the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA, support for marriage equality, protection of LGBTQ rights and has vetoed NRA-support gun bills. He has also been a champion for keeping corporate money out of politics in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's horrific 2009 Citizens United ruling. His climate policies, however, have been less than stellar, to say the least, as the chief executive of one of the nation's top fossil-fuel producing states. He is just one of at least four Presidential candidates, or would-be candidates, who many Democrats would prefer to see running for the Senate to help flip it "blue" in 2020;

• But can any Democrat --- even those running as so-called "centrists" --- actually change the minds of previous Trump voters? Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas argues it can't be done and is a waste of time and resources for Democrats who, he writes, must focus instead on winning "young voters, voters of color, and women," given that "No one will be changing their mind in the next year and a half." He offers some statistics to support his point, though I am not (yet) entirely persuaded by them;

• Progressive Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, explained her reasons today for declining an invitation from Fox 'News' to appear on one of their town halls. Though Sanders and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar have already done one --- and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand are scheduled to do one soon --- the Massachusetts Senator makes the case today that Fox is a "hate-for-profit racket" and she's unwilling to add to those profits with an appearance there. She does, however, welcome them to ask her questions at many of the other town halls she has participated in all over the country during her Presidential campaign since January, including many of them in GOP-dominated states "including WV, OH, GA, UT, TN, TX, CO, MS & AL". But, while Warren's stand on principle deserves much respect, is it a strategic mistake to miss the opportunity to reach out to many voters who might otherwise hear little more than Fox' fake news and GOP propaganda? We discuss and welcome your thoughts as well. (Email me or leave them in comments below. Keep 'em short and sweet and I may share them on air later this week);

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Trump's trade war with China hits the U.S. natural gas industry, as the Administration frosts the Arctic Council, as Houston floods again following the nation's wettest year on record, and as the UK, Ireland and Scotland stand up to declare a "climate emergency" and present their own versions of AOC and Markey's Green New Deal revolution...

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Follow @GreenNewsReport...

(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate action is now a major plank for Beto and Booker in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary; New poll shows climate change is a top issue for voters; Jakarta and Washington D.C. grapple with rising seas; PLUS: New York State bans offshore drilling and plastic bags... 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): A remarkable political moment for climate change; Interior Dept. loosens regulations for offshore drilling dating from Deepwater Horizon spill; NASA research shows humans have been influencing drought for more than a century; Senators question whether Interior watchdog, solicitor nominees can handle mounting scandals; Aquaculture company pays fine over escaped Atlantic salmon; FWS proposes downlisting beetle in win for oil industry... PLUS: High levels of toxic PFAS chemicals pollute breast milk around world... and much, MUCH more! ...

Among the many truthful stories covered on today's jam-packed BradCast filled with Trump lies and much more...[Audio link to show is posted below]...

• How the Administration covered up Trump's recent lies about new North Korean sanctions;

• How Trump's lies about the still-secret Mueller Report have been aided by Trump's Attorney General and how Mueller's team is reportedly none too happy about it;

• How Trump is undermining military readiness and hurricane recovery for Marines and their families with lies about a "national emergency" at the southern border and how the Marine Corps' top General is pushing back;

• How Trump lied about a new health care plan to replace Obamacare and how Congressional Republicans have forced him to back down;

• How Trump lied about closing the border with Mexico this week and how economic reality forced him to back down;

• Then, two North Carolina special elections for the U.S. House are coming up --- the first, in NC-03, to replace the late Republican Rep. Walter Jones (who voted against Trump more than for him), the second, in NC-09, a do-over election from the November 2018 contest which was never certified, thanks to a GOP absentee ballot fraud scheme paid for by the GOP candidate. But before we can get to either of those races, the federal indictment of North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes, a longtime state power-broker and former GOP Congressman, was unsealed this week. The criminal charges against Hayes include counts of fraud, bribery, campaign finance violations and lying to the FBI. And another Republican Congressman from the state and member of House GOP leadership, Rep. Mark Walker (NC-06), is also finding himself entangles in the criminal scandal and named in the indictment as "Public Official A";

• All of that today is before Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with yet another deadly chemical fire in Houston, yet another court loss for ExxonMobil, yet another way that Trump is making both climate change and immigration even worse, and yet another mendacious Trump lie about wind energy that even a top Republican is calling him out over...Oh, and Burger King's "Impossible" dream...

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