w/ Brad & Desi
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  w/ Brad & Desi
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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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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
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MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
As we note on more than one occasion on today's BradCast, buckle up! [Audio link to show is at bottom of article.]
Just days before the Presidential election, Democrats are in court in 6 different states attempting to preemptively block alleged "voter intimidation" schemes by Trump and the GOP, and today a federal judge slapped a restraining order on the Trump campaign and his operatives, to try and prevent it. (The order is now posted here [PDF].)
Meanwhile, the GOP nominee is just a narrow polling error away from defeating Hillary Clinton, according to the experts at FiveThirtyEight, who now find Trump's chance of winning the Presidency to be about 1 in 3. So every vote will count --- at least if it's counted correctly.
Longtime non-partisan election integrity expert Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org joins us to explain her startling new discovery of functionality built into computer vote tabulators --- both touch-screen and paper-ballot systems in use in 99% of the nation's jurisdictions --- that, she says, would allow some votes to be weighted more than others in a way that would be nearly impossible to detect.
Harris details what she describes as "Fraction Magic" (see a real-time video demonstration here) and how that functionality, and its use by election insiders (or even outside hackers --- as the U.S. Government continues to warn about), could determine the results of elections on Tuesday, from the Presidential level on down to local races and ballot initiatives.
This ability to fractionalize votes (for example, the functionality allows certain types of voters to have their votes weighted as 1.2 votes, while other votes are counted as just .8 of a vote, so the final results will still tally up to the correct number of votes cast), was originally discovered in the GEMS tabulation system, used with Diebold/Premier voting systems and, Harris explains, systems made by almost all of the other private vendors used across the country. "It's now been confirmed in Hart Intercivic, in 2006. In Dominion. They've admitted it. And ES&S, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, has also got it in there. ES&S counts about 60 percent of the votes in the U.S. So it is actually pretty pervasive."
"We are putting our whole system at risk," warns Harris, about both "Fraction Magic" and the use of voting and tabulation systems that are difficult, if not impossible, for the public to oversee. "Sooner or later, if we keep running these mystery elections, there's going to be something that is actually destabilizing, kind of a perfect storm. This is predictable. Sooner or later, when you keep running elections that are not accountable to the public, that are not something we can verify with actual evidence --- i.e. ballots and ballot images --- there's going to be a meltdown that's destabilizing. This is actually rather dangerous."
Like you didn't think you had enough to worry about between now and Election Day?
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the last Green News Report before Election Day, and we round up a few other last minute voting concerns in swing-states North Carolina and Ohio...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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On today's BradCast: Rightwing extremist groups are reportedly plotting to wreak potential havoc on Election Day, as Donald Trump's candidacy has helped to mainstream previously fringe organizations. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
Despite Trump's repeated claims that millions of 'dead people' are voting, the evidence --- reported many years ago by The BRAD BLOG and more recently even by a mainstream corporate news outlet investigation in Wisconsin --- continues to show otherwise.
But while the threat of zombie voters has long been wildly overstated by Republicans, rightwing extremist groups --- neo-nazis, the KKK, militia organizations and others --- are claiming they have plans to mobilize a "show of force" at polling places across the country next Tuesday. That, as another black church in Mississippi is set on fire this week with the words "Vote Trump" spray painted onto it.
So, do these radical groups pose a real threat for chaos and disenfranchisement on Election Day? Or are they just latching on to Trump's racist coat tails in hopes of intimidating American voters? Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups, joins us to answer those questions and much more related to this extraordinary election and the not-coincidental emergence and rise of the so-called "Alt-Right".
Potok, who tells me he believes "there's a real possibility of sporadic violence" next week, says "the Radical Right in America today has a hero, in the [Republican] nominee for President of the United States. They see Donald Trump as the best thing, politically, that they've seen in a half-century or more, going back to at least George Wallace and probably further. They're thrilled. They are very energized."
He tells me that in his 25 years on this beat, he has never seen the radical right play such a key role in an American Presidential election, and explains that the term "Alt-Right" is little more than "a re-branding of white supremacy for the digital age."
"Trump," he explains "has taken the lid off Pandora's Box in a very real and substantial way." But will the threat that they pose to the nation be worse if Trump wins or if he loses? Tune in for that and much more (including --- make sure you are sitting down for it --- my defense, of sorts, of the late, rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart! Yes, there's another example of how insane this election year has become.)
Also on today's BradCast: In North Carolina, a federal judge finds the state's statute allowing challenges to the voter rolls to be "insane", and the state's incumbent U.S. Senator who is locked in a close re-election battle, apologizes for disturbing comments about 'targeting' Hillary Clinton, but vows to keep anybody from being seated on the U.S. Supreme Court for the next four years if she wins.
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Obama suggests re-routing the controversial Dakota Access pipeline; Some major --- and some tricky --- environment-related ballot measures; China's top climate official warns Trump about climate science denial; PLUS: Corporate media covered Clinton emails 25 times more than climate change... 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): World On Track For 3C Of Warming Under Current Pledges, Warns UNEP; Oil prices slide 3 percent on record U.S. crude stock build; Global carbon intensity falls, on declining coal use; Oil patch states may have seen the last boom; Is Coal’s Political Heft Plunging? One State May Be Canary in Mine; Hurricane Matthew Took A Big Bite Out Of Southeastern States' Beaches... PLUS: Bad News for Honey as U.S. Seeks Handle on Glyphosate Residues in Food... and much, MUCH more! ...
Irrespective of whether a citizen favors or opposes adult recreational marijuana consumption, a "yes" vote on California's Proposition 64, the Marijuana Legalization Initiative, is a no-brainer.
The measure would legalize possession and use for adults 21 and older, create a new Bureau of Marijuana Control charged with the regulation and licensing of non-medical marijuana businesses, permit cities and counties to require licenses and restrict the locations of marijuana businesses, and provide for taxation on both cultivation and sales. As is the case with alcohol, there is nothing in the measure that would prevent criminal penalties for driving under the influence.
Setting aside the well-documented history of complicity in the global drug trade both by U.S. covert agencies and by the global banking industry, the plain and simple fact is that prohibition, whether applied to alcohol or to other "narcotics" has, at best, repeatedly proven to be an inordinately expensive abject failure that is destructive of the lives of those who partake of the forbidden fruit and, all too often, has a devastating impact upon their families and finances...
On today's BradCast, after a few words on some important California ballot propositions (on a statewide plastic bag ban, and a dangerous tax on safe e-cigarette and vaping devices) that we didn't get to discuss on yesterday's show, I make a startling admission! [Audio link to show is posted below.]
My admission: As much as I cover the elections, especially the Presidential election, while I know who I won't vote for, and who I probably would vote for if I lived in a swing-state, I have no clue who I should actually cast my vote for in the Presidential race this year here in California! I don't endorse candidates (and, both the FCC and Pacifica Radio wouldn't allow it anyway), but that doesn't mean listeners can't! So, today we open the phone lines for advice from callers, with the question: "Who should I vote for and why?"
You'll be shocked to learn that listeners have a few thoughts for me on that. Tons of callers ring in, with some good advice, some really bad advice, and a very lively and hopefully helpful hour of The BradCast ensues in the bargain. (You may --- or may not --- be amazed at some of the reasons a few listeners offer to convince me that I should vote for Trump.) Please feel free to ring in with your own answers to that question in comments below, if you're inclined.
Finally today: Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, and a sad follow-up to it with news of more tragic fossil fuel deaths in both the U.S. and China this week...
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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On today's BradCast, it looks like "Giant Meteor" could win after all! With one week to go, the race could be back up in the air, as polls tighten, Democrats sue Republicans in federal court, and we take a look at some key statewide ballot measures in California and elsewhere. [Audio link for show is posted below.]
The reverberations from FBI Director James Comey's unprecedented and (so far) evidence-free announcement last week concerning a potential new aspect of the agency's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails continues to rock the 2016 Presidential Election, just one week before Election Day. Polling is moving back in Donald Trump's direction and we discuss other concerns that are not reflecting by polling numbers. Oh, and it turns out there is "voter fraud" at the polls, at least in Iowa, and you'll never guess who the alleged perp was caught voting twice for! (Sound familiar? Seems to happen a lot this time of year.)
Then, attorney and Vietnam veteran Ernest A. Canning, long time BRAD BLOG legal analyst now back from his Primary advisory role with Veterans for Bernie, joins us to discuss a number of California ballot initiatives he's been writing about here, as well as the several lawsuits filed by Democrats over the weekend charging "voter intimidation" by the Trump campaign and state GOP operations in Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, in violation of both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
All of that follows on a decades-long consent decree barring the Republican National Committee from certain racially targeted "poll watching" and "ballot security" activities. That is a restriction they agreed to after getting caught using race-based intimidation tactics at polling places in the early 1980s, when one of the named defendants, Roger Stone --- a long time advisor to Trump and GOP dirty trickster going back to the Nixon era --- actually worked on the "ballot security" operation that got the RNC in trouble in the first place back in NJ in 1981.
Then, Canning details a number of state initiatives on the California state ballot next week --- and some well-funded lies about them --- which could have a major effect on prescription drug prices, legalized marijuana (and ending the disastrous "War on Drugs"), the death penalty (two different, competing measures), Citizens United and much more...even porn is on the CA ballot this year!
Speaking about one of the initiatives, Prop 61, which he wrote about over the weekend, and which the pharmaceutical industry is spending tens of millions to defeat by falsely claiming that it will harm veterans, Canning explains: "This proposition, more than any other, shows you the problem with money in our political system. They put these [false] ads on --- and naturally, the TV station should say, 'We should fact-check that. That's not true.' But they're not going to do that because that would be like biting the hand that feeds them. These ads have become a major source of revenue for our commercial media" which, he ads, are "the ultimate beneficiaries of Citizens United, which is perhaps one of the reasons why they don't ask questions in the debates about repealing Citizens United!"
(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive Colonial Pipeline explosion in Alabama injures at least seven workers; Unarmed Dakota Access Pipeline protesters maced and arrested, while armed occupiers in Oregon go free; 300 million kids breathe dangerously polluted air, according to UNICEF; PLUS: It's official: largest earthquake on record in Kansas was caused by fracking industry injection well... 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): Exxon Concedes It May Need to Declare Lower Value for Oil in Ground; In rare move, China criticizes Trump plan to exit climate change pact; Coal doesn't help the poor; it makes them poorer; Climate Change Is Already Forcing Americans to Move; Rio's famous beaches take battering as scientists issue climate change warning... PLUS: Elon Musk Unveiled a Solar Roof and Didn’t Address Any Pressing Questions... and much, MUCH more! ...