Happy Thanksgiving!
From all of us here at The BRAD BLOG.
Because it could be worse.
[Hat-tip for the photo to @shannynmoore and @markjholmes]
Sunday 'WWJD?' Toons
U.S. Middle Eastern 'War Crimes' Then and Now: 'BradCast' 4/16/26
'Green News Report' 4/16/26|
  w/ Brad & Desi
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Trump's USDA Takes Chainsaw to U.S. Forest Service: 'BradCast' 4/15/26
Midterm Elections Reality Check:
'Green News Report' 4/14/26
Another Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Weekend: 'BradCast' 4/13/26
Sunday 'Mission Accomp...' Toons
MAGA Buckles: 'BradCast' 4/9/26
'Green News Report' 4/9/26|
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
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VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
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'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
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VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
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| MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
Happy Thanksgiving!
From all of us here at The BRAD BLOG.
Because it could be worse.
[Hat-tip for the photo to @shannynmoore and @markjholmes]
Another big show tonight as I guest-host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show this week. (Note: We're off tomorrow, but back on Friday!)
We'll be BradCasting again LIVE tonight from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! The LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show as ever, so come on by while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)
So far scheduled for tonight's show...
The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.
Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...
POST-SHOW UPDATE: Commercial free audio archives are below (and the chat room archive is below them.) Lots of interest stuff tonight, some great calls, and plenty to be thankful for...somehow...including my thanks to Mike and Kathy for allowing me to fill in. My favorite call tonight: Curtis in the third hour. Mike is back tomorrow with a Thanksgiving "Best Of" and then I'll be back again Friday night! See ya then! Happy holidays and enjoy the archives until then...
Texas puts the hammer down. Tom DeLay found guilty on all counts. Breaking from Austin Statesman...
Prosecutors earlier said they believe the DeLay case is the first such criminal charge ever filed over Texas' century-old prohibition on corporate contributions in state political races.
Delay, a Republican who was nicknamed "The Hammer" because of his heavy-handed style, was accused of conspiring to funnel $190,000 of corporate money through the Republican National Committee, which sent $190,000 in campaign donations to seven GOP candidates for the Texas House.
State law prohibits corporations from giving donations to candidates directly or indirectly.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the board accepted a report by the Minnesota Secretary of State that found Democrat Mark Dayton leading Republican Tom Emmer by just 8,770 votes. Because the difference is less than one-half of one percentage point, it automatically triggers a recount.
The recount is slated to begin Monday in each of the state's 87 counties and should be finished by Dec. 7. Then the canvassing board will review any challenged ballots and certify a winner on Dec. 14.
Good for Minnesota! Great to see that somebody in this nation still believes in actually counting ballots in a democracy!
Short of counting them publicly, by hand, at the polling place, on election night, in front of everyone, including video cameras, with results posted at the precinct before ballots are moved anywhere, MN has previously shown itself to have one of the best, most transparent sets of procedures in the country for publicly hand counting all of their paper ballots (all of their ballots are paper ballots, thankfully.)
They do all of the above in close races which trigger hand counts. By necessity, they happen at central locations instead of at the precincts, obviously, so questions of chain of custody can still arise to introduce doubt into the process. From what I can tell, however, as based on the superb Franken/Coleman '08 U.S. Senate hand count, their chain of custody procedures are also very good and so the entire process is about as open and transparent as could be asked for in such a case.
For that, the state also owes no small debt of gratitude to Sec. of State Mark Ritchie for his expert, transparent, non-partisan work in overseeing such counts --- at least if the last big one was any indication --- in such a way that when they're over, the winner and their supporters know they've really won, and the loser and all but their most dishonestly misinformed supporters know they've lost. That's what democracy is supposed to be about it. In Minnesota, happily, it still is.
I hope you'll join me as I guest-host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show again for a few days this week. I'll be on duty tonight (Tuesday), as well as Wednesday & Friday.
We'll be BradCasting LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) as usual. Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! The LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show as ever, so come on by while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)
So far scheduled for tonight's show...
The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.
Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...
POST-SHOW UPDATE: Fighting with a cold all night, I think we still had a helluva good show! But you'll tell me. The commercial-free --- and yes, UNCENSORED! Hear what got dumped from the air! --- audio archives are now posted below. See if you can spot the wingnut troll before I did in the final hour!
(And the chat room archive is below as well, if you like.) See ya tomorrow night!...
From the New York Times today:
American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago...
...
Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.
This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth "” which means companies have been able to make more with less "” as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.
Mission Accomplished.
P.S. Let's be sure to give those corporations more tax cuts so they can keep making record profits and still not hire anybody, so we can keep growing our deficit! Right, Tea Baggers?
P.P.S. You Tea Baggers do know by now that you've been scammed all along, right?
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 29 coal miners still trapped in NZ; Summit to save the wild tiger; Inching forward in the UN international climate negotiations ...PLUS: Getting ready for Thanksgiving with relatives who are climate change skeptics? There's an app for that ... 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): New BP report looks behind-the-scenes in BP oil spill efforts; CA Governor declares emergency over water contamination; Study warns FDA over risks of genetically engineered salmon; Economic data shows EPA regulations consistently cost less than predictions; Nissan Leaf to get 99 mpg ... PLUS: If the GOP really cared about grandchildren: debunking the myth that clean energy incentives are "job killers" ....
I'll be guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show a few days this week as I do my best at the moment to fight off a stomach virus now turned into a head cold. My plan: to be fit as a fiddle by Tuesday at 9p ET/6p PT! What could possibly go wrong?
Just wanted to give a heads up, as I know everyone's scrambling in various directions as the holiday approaches. Among my guests scheduled this week: Outgoing OH Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner will join me on Tuesday's night's show to discuss the outlook for OH in 2012 as the state will once again have a Republican Governor and Sec. of State at the helm during the Presidential Election. Will it be another 2004? We'll find out. I'll also be joined by British author/journalist/historian Andy Worthington to discuss Gitmo (remember that?) and trials for "terrorists"; author/activist David Swanson on his provocative new best-selling book War is a Lie; other very exciting guests who I'm still in the process of booking; the latest details on the ongoing U.S. Senate contest in Alaska; and much more along the way.
We'll have open chat threads posted here at The BRAD BLOG each night during the show, along with links to listen live on the Internets if you're not lucky enough to have the Malloy Show carried live on the public's airwaves in your home town (or don't have Sirius/XM).
Got it? Good! Don't miss one thrilling episode or u will be patted-down enhancedly! Really, it's just for your own good...
-- By David Swanson, Special to The BRAD BLOG
[Ed Note: I'll be guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show several days this week. David Swanson will be one of my guests to discuss his new book. UPDATE: That interview with Swason, a somewhat contentious one at times, is now posted here. - BF]
I didn't write this new book, "War Is A Lie" in order to knock George W. Bush's offensive plagiarized package of lies and open criminality off the top of the book charts, but it certainly would have been worth the effort.
"War Is A Lie" was to be published on Monday, but on Sunday night word was spreading. At 3 p.m. ET the book ranked #1,845 on Amazon.com while Bush's was #1. By 4 p.m. "War Is A Lie" was #1,088; and at 5:30 p.m. #696; at 7:10 p.m. #460; at 8:10 p.m. #226, and at 9:10 p.m. #130. If people kept buying books all night, and certainly if they did so on Monday, Bush was going to be uncrowned. Check where things stand now.
The throne room that Bush made of the oval office may someday be brought back within a representative republic as well.
I've blogged about this today over at Tom Dispatch. Or, rather, I've blogged about the prospects for war and peace in the coming year with the newly elected (or not, who knows?) Congress.
It's going to be fun watching Republican committee chairs subpoena the president and people who obey him, while President Obama has adopted the Bush-Cheney position that Congress has no power over the rest of the government...
Yet in deferring to an Alaska state court for a final decision, U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline said he would grant a temporary injunction to halt official certification of the Nov. 2 election "“ an action Miller is seeking "“ so long as Miller takes his case to the state court by Monday. Miller told The Associated Press late Friday that he intended to do so.
Beistline's unusual action was intended to "ensure that these serious state law issues are resolved prior to certification of the election," the ruling said.
See HuffPo for more details on the ruling. Miller's campaign has issued a brief statement here.
And see The BRAD BLOG's detailed analysis from Wednesday explaining why, in our opinion, Miller would be wise to call for a full, transparent hand-count and reconciliation of all ballots cast in Alaska's U.S. Senate election.
Earlier this week AP called the election in favor of incumbent Republican write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski. But, as we described, there are a number of reasons --- including Alaska's recent history of impossible election results as reported by their flawed, oft-failed, easily-manipulated and non-transparent Diebold optical-scan system --- which suggest that Miller would be performing a service to the voters of Alaska and the rest of the country if he used his standing to insist on a full, public hand-count. By the way, Democratic candidate Scott McAdams would be performing a similar service if he used his standing to join Miller in that pursuit...
"Our campaign had an undeniable, unmistakable message," he told his supporters during his victory speech on Election Night, "and that message could be summed up in three words, three words which were on every one of our 4 billion highway signs: 'stop voter fraud.'"
"And now that clear message becomes transformed into a clear mandate," Kansas' Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach (R) told his fans that night, promising "significant reforms" to the state's election system. Answered with cheers in the Topeka ballroom Kobach promised: "We are gonna have Photo ID at the polls."
As he stated himself, Kobach's campaign was almost entirely built on the promise of putting a stop to the state's out-of-control (and also, non-existent, but ssshhh, don't tell anybody) "voter fraud" epidemic. But now that the election's over, he's having trouble identifying any actual instances of the horrible scourge he helped trick Republican voters into believing actually existed.
Talking Points Memo, who has done a bang-up job of keeping tabs on Kobach's duplicity over the past year, caught up with the SoS-elect yesterday after he spoke on a "civil rights" panel at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention and asked him how the hunt is going.
He, um, had trouble actually citing any evidence of voter fraud since, as of now, he "hadn't heard of any." "There have been a few cases where I've heard allegations of voter fraud," he says, "but we're just a few weeks out from the election."
No doubt, the evidence will come rolling in soon. The only question is will it come in before or after Kobach and his anti-democracy GOP cronies enact disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place, as promised, despite the fact that such laws have been shown time and again to keep millions of legal minority, elderly, and student (read: Democratic-leaning) voters from being able to cast their ballots.
Here's TPM's short video interview with Kobach in which --- just in case you hadn't any doubt about the bankruptcy of his claims --- he also alludes to the long-discredited Rightwing scam-artist/"voter fraud" fraudster John Fund, whose book on "voter fraud" has, itself, been debunked as a fraud over and again...
We played a few clips from this during Thursday's Green News Report, but if you didn't hear it, or even if you did, the full remarks from Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) are worth watching and worth the awarding of The BRAD BLOG's very rarely bestowed "Intellectually Honest Conservative Award."
Inglis, was ousted by a "Tea Party" candidate during the GOP primary this year --- despite his 93% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union --- so he is now the outgoing Republican U.S. Congressman representing South Carolina's 4th Congressional District. He is, for the moment, the ranking minority member of the U.S. House Energy and Environment Subcommittee and will likely be replaced in the new Congress with either Texas' Rep. Joe Barton (who apologized to BP) or Illinois' Rep. John Shimkus (who believes global warming doesn't exist, because God doesn't mention it specifically in the bible --- seriously.) In short, Inglis is one of the last sane Republican elected officials in the U.S. Congress.
So here he is Wednesday morning, taking a remarkable parting shot at his fellow Republicans on the committee, all climate change denialists, along with the industry that fuels their cynical anti-science disinformation, the technological ground (and money) being lost to China in the bargain, all while celebrating, at least, that these hearings are "on the record...because I want our grandchildren to read what you said and what I said."
His fist-in-a-velvet-glove comments are not to be missed, such as these near the ends of his remarks:
So, we have some real choices ahead of us. But I hope in the future, as we have these hearings, that we realize it's all on the record. And our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are gonna get to see.
Think Progress offers more context for Inglis' remarks and his career. The text transcript of his comments follow below...
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: BP made 'poor decisions' in the Gulf, says the National Obvious Commission; GM is back, baby!; Lame ducks and Lame Dems: No food safety bill for you, but BPA stays in your food supply...PLUS: A Republican blasts --- blasts --- Republican climate change deniers ... 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): Tea Party: Smart development is really a global conspiracy; EPA: Major US cities violate lead standards; UN, World Bank say act now on climate change or pay much more later; Illinois Spending $2M to Ship Asian Carp Back to China; Climate Change Set to Cause Migrant Surge; Exxon to Pay $25 Million to Settle Brooklyn Spill Suit; Four Ways to Harvest Solar Energy from Roads ... PLUS: Which has a bigger footprint, a coal plant or a solar farm?...
- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG
After a week of hand-counting paper write-in ballots in Alaska's three-way U.S. Senate race between incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (who ran as an independent write-in candidate), Republican candidate Joe Miller and Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, the Associate Press called the race this afternoon for Murkowski.
Trailing by some 10,000 votes behind Murkowski, however, and with several lawsuits concerning the tabulation of ballots still pending, Miller is suggesting it's likely that his campaign will call for a "hand count" of all of the ballots cast in the race, not just those in contention during the counting of write-in ballots over the last week.
Given Alaska's years-long record of often-inexplicable election results, going back at least as far as the 2004 Presidential Election (and the first election as Senator for Murkowski who had previously been named by her father to replace him in the U.S. Senate when he became Governor in 2002); the repeated failure and insecurity of the state's Diebold election system; and the AK Division of Elections' truly remarkable history of blocking citizen oversight of election results --- much of which has been documented at The BRAD BLOG since late 2005 --- a thorough reconciliation of results by the Miller team would be both appropriate and helpful for all future elections in the state (and even for other states, where similar nearly-impossible-to-oversee optical-scan ballot systems are similarly used.)
We have no particular dog in this race, as our coverage of issues of Election Integrity is, as always, non-partisan. Our only concern is for the voters, that they get to vote if they wish, that their votes are counted accurately if they do, and that the counts are performed transparently so that all citizens can know that the results are, indeed, accurate.
To that end, though we haven't consulted directly with any of the campaigns in the Alaska race, we have been following the tabulation closely since Election Day two weeks ago, and have been speaking with a number of sources in the state who have, we're told, been sharing various thoughts we've offered with both the McAdams and Miller campaigns. The advise we've offered --- as we would to anyone who asked, including Murkowski's campaign --- appears to have been taken to heart by the Miller team, at least if one of their lawsuits, and a number of their public statements given over the last week are any indication.
As mentioned, Alaska's history of election results that seem to defy mathematical explanation, along with (understating the problem here) less than transparent processes and a failure to make recommended changes to their election system and procedures, leads to a case where a full, manual, reconciliation of all ballots cast and counted --- as called for by the Miller camp, or any other --- would provide a valuable service to the state and all of its voters...
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The so-called "Climategate" scandal, one year later; Cholera epidemic spreading in Haiti; Jan.-Sept. 2010 still hottest ever; Oil spill response plans for Arctic drilling "thoroughly inadequate"; Looking ahead to the lame duck session, and a Republican majority in Congress; PLUS: Here comes the son...Rand Paul on which throats are worth stomping... 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): Even some reusable bags carry environmental risk; U.N. climate talks seek limited deal as costs soar; Was a Houston energy trader a one-woman Enron?; Bye bye Bluefin tuna: Study reveals decade of mismanagement, overfishing; Fast food wrappers and popcorn bags leach fire-fighting chemical into food; Aging gas, hazmat pipelines threaten communities; Russia's Gazprom to drill off Cuba's coast; Nestle prompts MI move to put water under state protection ...PLUS: 9 things you can learn shadowing a home-energy inspector ...