On today’s BradCast: Another reminder that the nation’s elections officials remain woefully unprepared for and under-informed about threats to this year’s crucial mid-term elections, and clear examples of where our governmental institutions currently work to combat blatant corruption by top officials (Missouri) and where they don’t (D.C.).
First up, an election night cyberattack in Knox County, Tennessee’s local primaries on Tuesday should have officials there (and elsewhere) far more concerned than they appear to be. We discuss why this latest attack echoes similar incidents we’ve seen previously (including at the end of election night during the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio), why such attacks are likely to become more frequent, and how election and cyber-security officials continue to woefully underestimate and misunderstand the very real dangers to our elections when they (falsely) tell the public, as they are doing in Knox County this week, that their computerized voting, registration and tabulation systems are “never connected to the Internet, so can’t be hacked.” They are wrong.
Next, Missouri’s Republican governor Eric Greitens is now facing three different felony charges, two separate court trials, and the GOP-majority state legislature has now overwhelmingly decided to call a special session to consider impeachment. Greitens maintains his innocence in both a sexual blackmail scandal and campaign finance scandal. We explain why the extraordinary historical moment — despite the Show-Me State’s Governor refusal to resign, echoing Donald Trump in calling the well-documented evidence against him the result of a “witch hunt” by prosecutors (and his own party?) — is actually, at least so far, an example of how the system is supposed to work.
Contrast that to the quickly devolving mess in D.C. today, where Republicans in the House and Senate who ought to be demanding accountability from a corrupt President, are looking the other way and/or undermining prosecutors, and where prosecutors seem to (falsely) suggest they cannot indict a sitting President, no matter the evidence of serious crimes. That, even as whatever credibility this Administration may have once had, has now disintegrated so much amidst Trump’s latest flip-flops on a number of scandals, that even one top Fox “News” anchor unloaded on the President on Thursday, with an astonishing smack down of Trump lies, which ends: “I guess you’re too busy draining the swamp to ever stop and smell the stink you’re creating. That’s your stink. Mr. President, that’s your swamp.” When you’ve lost Neil Cavuto…
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us with an update on the evacuations, earthquakes and new eruptions near Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano and on the state’s recent deluge (50 inches in 24 hours!) of global warming-related rain. As well as another explosion, massive fire and evacuations — the third within the past month — at a fossil fuel-related processing plant, this time in Louisiana…
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Desi and I are standing down for a much-needed week off, but In Deep Radio’s Angie Coiro will be filling in for us on The BradCast next week! Be nice to her! And please click here to help us fill up our Prius tank! Thanks!
Dear Brad and Desi,
Back in the late 1960’s , the Johnson Administration was found to be giving multiple press
announcements , from a variety of government sources, about events happening in Vietnam , and the information from each varied, sometimes wildly;
the phenomena was called the ‘credibility gap’;
a rock FM station in L.A. called their news breaks
‘The Credibility Gap News’
thought THAT was weird, at the time…
Regards,
Phil R.
In search of the straight line (Ohiomandering).
Because it is well known Within These precincts that both Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen have spent over 10,000 hours each researching election Integrity/transparency, I hereby pronounce them election integrity and transparency experts as pronounced to Me by John Roberts Brakey.
also be it known that Stephen Miller was Jeff sessions communications director in Alabama and is now Chief advisor to Donald Trump is this a conflict of interest or what?