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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change denial zombies claim another victim --- GOP Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman; EPA confirms fracking contaminated WY drinking water; Our Canadian friends to the North go South on Kyoto; PLUS: UN climate talks end with a mixed bag ... 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): Shocker: Russian scientists find Arctic melt, methane release accelerating; State Dept: Congress cannot accelerate Keystone decision; Part of Japan's post-tsunami recovery fund goes to whaling industry; New concerns about Hanford Nuclear Waste Plant ... PLUS: VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on "A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future" ... and much, MUCH more! ...

According to the Initial Report from a landmark independent forensic audit of the Venango County, PA, touch-screen voting system --- the same system used in dozens of counties across the state and country --- someone used a computer that was not a part of county's election network to remotely access the central election tabulator computer, illegally, "on multiple occasions." Despite the disturbing report, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG and posted in full below, we may never get to learn who did it or why, if Venango's County Commissioners, a local judge, and the nation's largest e-voting company have their way. And that's not all we won't get to find out about.

The battle for election integrity continues in Venango, with the County Commissioners teaming up with e-voting vendor Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) on one side, and the county's renegade interim Republican-majority Board of Elections on the other. The Commissioners and ES&S have been working to spike the independent scientific forensic audit of the county's failed electronic voting machines that was commissioned by the interim Board of Elections. Making matters worse, the Board has now been removed from power by a county judge, a decision they are attempting to appeal as the three-person board and their supporters continue to fight the entrenched establishment for transparency and accountability in the rural Western Pennsylvania county.

The extraordinary battle began when the interim Board was appointed by a county judge to oversee elections in the Republican-leaning PA county last spring. Normally the County Commissioners serve as the Board of Elections. But when they themselves are up for election, as they were this year, the county court judge names a specially appointed Board to cover the election and serve until the end of the year, or until they are dismissed by the same court.

When the interim Board of Elections --- comprising two Republicans and one Democrat --- took power this year in Venango, they unanimously set about commissioning the landmark, independent forensic audit of the county's 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems, on the heels of sworn testimony from voters about several failed elections over recent years, beginning in 2008.

After months of legal wrangling, with County Commissioners in opposition, the special Election Board's independent study of the County's ES&S iVotronic voting system finally got under way in late September. At that time, a hard drive clone of the computer which runs the ES&S central tabulator system (known as the "Unity Election Reporting Manager") was created and given, along with other data, to two Carnegie Mellon computer science professors who had volunteered to carry out the analysis on behalf of the Board. The Board also announced that the November election this year would be carried out on an optically-scanned paper ballot system, also made by the county's vendor, ES&S, while the reported anomalies from their May 2011 primary election, run on the unverifiable touch-screen systems, were being examined by the scientists.

But now, as documents and letters obtained by The BRAD BLOG reveal, the voting machine company, Omaha-based ES&S, which had issued no objections prior to the start of the study, but changed its mind quickly after it began (as we detailed in an Exclusive report in late October) has now hardened their position, sending threatening legal letters to both the county and the two computer scientists. The e-voting firm has warned them they are likely to face a lawsuit if they do not agree to complete confidentiality and if results of their analysis are released publicly without their prior review and approval.

Shortly after ES&S' legal threats were issued last month, a county judge released the interim Board from their duties (a move now being appealed by the Board) and the County Commissioners, who had fought tooth and nail against the analysis even being undertaken in the first place, are now back at the helm. According to members of the interim Board, the County Commissioners seem likely to "white wash" and/or quash the entire analysis and a plan for continuing the investigation before it can be completed or even see the light of day.

The BRAD BLOG, however, has obtained a copy of the Initial Draft of one of the forensic studies by the Carnegie Mellon computer scientists. Findings from the report [linked in full below, along with ES&S' threat letters], include a number of disturbing, and so-far unexplained revelations that should raise alarm bells for voters in virtually every corner of the nation as we head into another Presidential election year.

Among those findings: details on unexplained, out-of-sequence activity log entries in the computer tabulation system, indications that the system was mounted several times with a "USB 'flash drive'" device, and, perhaps most troubling, evidence that the system was repeatedly accessed by an unidentified remote computer, for lengthy periods of time, on "multiple occasions."

The entire affair has left members of the interim Board --- which includes the Chair and Treasurer of the local Republican Party, as well as the former Chair of the Democratic Party --- hopping mad. They're asking questions about motivations of both the County Commissioners and ES&S and describing their actions as a "cover up," even as they take legal action to try and complete the work they had begun months ago, after first hearing sworn testimony from voters, describing major failures with e-voting machines at the polling place in recent elections...

CNN's reliable RWer-disguised-as-media-critic Howard Kurtz interviews the former George W. Bush Administration speech writer, David "Axis of Evil" Frum, on his recent, blistering New York magazine condemnation, "When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?" The lengthy, and rather courageous article, blames, in no small part, Fox "News" and talk radio for having destroyed his party through the creation of an entire "alternative knowledge system." (The piece is a must-read, btw, if you haven't.)

Good for him! (Frum, not Kurtz. The latter feigns skepticism throughout the interview in the face of Frum's statements of the obvious-to-all-but-those-who-have-reason-to-act-like-it-isn't)...

Golly. All those pinko, commie, terrorist-loving Leftists who have long been warning about the dangers of Big Government overreach and the dangerously increasing use of terror tools against U.S. citizens --- the same thing that "Tea Party" RWers pretended, only after Obama's election, to be concerned about --- were nothing but America-hating alarmists, weren't they?

From KTLA::

It's a shame the Predator B Drone didn't just unload some heat-seeking missiles on the three suspected cow rustlers, eh? Think of all the gas money they could have saved the Sheriff's office from having to drive in and arrest them in person.

What was it that you "Tea Partiers" were saying about Big Government and Big Brother again, even as you were then, and are still now, supporting the unfettered, unConstitutional use of terror tools in the "War on Terrorism U.S. Cow Rustlers"?

And what will you use an excuse to rationalize it all this time? Our comment section is open for your hypocritical justifications, as usual.

Congrats to all voters of Ohio for successfully pushing back against the GOP's efforts to keep you from voting in next year's Presidential election! It's another win for democracy, and another loss for the Buckeye State's Republican Gov. John Kasich (following on the recent landslide loss of his anti-union bill at the polls last month.)

Today, Secretary of State John Husted (R), officially certified that opponents of HB194 --- the anti-voting bill that would have shortened early voting hours and imposed other big government restrictions on the exercise of the franchise in Ohio --- were successful in their effort to place the law on the ballot for a voter referendum in 2012. Thus, the act, passed by the GOP legislature and signed by Kasich earlier this year, is officially suspended for now.

As we noted in September, after opponents of the bill had turned in more than 300,000 for certification to the Sec. of State, ThinkProgress' Tonya Somander summarized the bill's restrictions on voting this way:

According to Fair Elections Ohio's announcement of the official signature certifications this afternoon, opponents of the voter suppression law gathered "307,358 valid signatures, over 75,000 more than were needed."

"The voters are sending a message to the Ohio politicians and legislatures across the country, says FEO's Greg Moore, "voting rights restrictions will not be tolerated by the people."

The group's press release, issued this afternoon, follows in full below...

I don't have time today to thoroughly debunk all the reprehensible, anti-democratic, anti-American horseshit hurled by this FL State Rep. Dennis Baxley --- the original sponsor of Florida's new voter suppression laws, limiting early voting hours and imposing new big government regulations and huge fines against voter registration workers --- as seen in the following interview on Al Sharpton's Politics Nation show on MSNBC this week.

Fortunately, most readers of The BRAD BLOG will be able to smell the bullshit of the smirking, democracy-hating Baxley a mile away even without my point-by-point rebuttal. So I'll just run the video here for now without much comment, as it needs to be seen to be believed.

Near the front of the interview, Baxley admits that there's been no voter fraud problem in FL, and by the end he's charging (without a stitch of evidence, naturally) that the non-partisan League of Women Voters, who have been registering voters in the Sunshine State for some 72 years --- but who have now canceled their registration program for 2012 thanks to the onerous new GOP restrictions and fines on registration workers --- is actually a partisan Democratic organization! Who knew?

My loathing towards those who knowingly undermine American democracy is difficult to contain. So consider my restraint today an undeserved favor to you this afternoon, Mr. Baxley.

Oh, and for good measure, here's some info on some Florida school teachers recently arrested and/or charged for registering students to vote in apparent violation of Baxley's new anti-voting laws!

One thing I'm happy to see this year at least: MSNBC has been covering the GOP War on Voting --- at least the front-end war, the part in which Republicans are trying to keep millions of legal voters from being able to cast their legal vote at all --- very well this cycle, on many of their shows. Hopefully they'll soon begin covering concerns about the accuracy and transparency of the vote count itself, at least the vote counts of those who find themselves able to cast a vote in 2012, in any case.

If you'd like more details on the above...Earlier on the same show, Deirdre Macnab, President of the non-partisan LWV Florida, explained to Sharpton why they've been forced to stop their registration program in Florida after 72 years. As they note on their web page where the interview is posted...

That much shorter interview follows below...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Many of the individuals who were swept up by last week's LAPD raid on the Occupy LA encampment at Los Angeles City Hall were arrested even as they attempted to disperse in accordance with police directives, according to testimonials from some who were detained in the early morning hours of November 30th and held on misdemeanor charges for days after.

Their videotaped testimonials [some of which are posted below] both corroborate and reinforce the excessive force and post-arrest abuse charges detailed in our previous article on the Occupy LA raid, in which detainees charged that they were hand-cuffed behind their backs and left to languish inside L.A. County Sheriff's Department (LASD) buses for eight to nine hours without access to food, water, medicine, or toilets as they were left to urinate on themselves in their seats.

The details also suggest that these conditions were imposed upon innocent demonstrators who were the victims of indiscriminate, false arrests by law enforcement officials. Worse, one written account suggests the LAPD's misconduct included not only pillaging the encampment and police brutality, but even torture...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Triumph of propaganda over truth: D.C.'s King of the Deniers, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) takes a victory lap; Deadlock at Durban? Final days of the UN Climate Conference in S. Africa; 2011 breaks its own record for weather disasters; PLUS: GOP threatens to take another hostage to push the Keystone XL pipeline ... 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): Must-reads: "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change" and "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change Mitigation"; EPA finds natural gas 'fracking' contaminated WY drinking water; Coal company put 'profits over people' in mining disaster; $4 billion for energy efficiency retrofits; GOP Jon Hntsman flip-flop-flips on climate denial; 1st floating wind turbine deployed in Atlantic ... PLUS: See for yourself: Time history of atmospheric CO2 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show in L.A. today, I was joined by Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch, author of the new Occupy Wall Street e-book, October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge, to discuss where the media are succeeding and/or failing in coverage of OWS, following on his recent column, "What the media can learn from Occupy," examining similar (and taking his own paper to task in the bargain.)

I also update a few items since last week, including the atrocious treatment of peaceful demonstrators at Occupy LA, the LAPD's Officer Escamilla caught on video using a gun to try and target/threaten/intimidate journalist Spencer "OakFoSho" Mills, and the San Francisco police raid on Occupy SF last night, just after 1am, with about 5 minutes notice to those encamped there...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 28 mins]...

I was also delighted to join my Green News Report co-host Desi Doyen this morning on former Air America host Betsy Rosenberg's On The Green Front radio show. Rosenberg is a feisty and smart --- and very funny --- voice in green media, and we were delighted to make our first-ever live appearance on her show today! We talked about the RW Denialism Industry, the genesis of the Green News Report, the impending shutdown of Green960 in San Francisco (the only progressive AM station on the public airwaves!) and the over-all failure of the corporate media to cover perhaps the most important story of our lifetime.

Oh, and it starts off with a swell special message from the D.C. King of the Deniers, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)! Really!...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 17 mins]...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

"I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world," former British MP Tony Benn said when interviewed by Michael Moore in Sicko! --- "more revolutionary than socialist ideas…because...you have the power to use it to meet the needs of your community."

"If the poor in the U.S. and Britain turned out to vote for people who represent their interests," Ben continued, "it would be a real democratic revolution."

There is a fundamental difference between guarding against being co-opted by the corporate interests which presently control the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic Parties and refusing to vote altogether as an infantile form of protest...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: It's not easy being green!: Fox 'News' goes to war with Kermit T. Frog!; Crunch week at UN climate talks; Million-dollar fines for Massey Energy's WV coal mine disaster; PLUS: Protesting the World Bank's major coal projects ... 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): BP accuses Halliburton of destroying evidence in Gulf Oil Spill; $50 million Gulf restoration fund urged; More radioactive water leaks from Japan's Fukushima plant; Climate change already severely impacting agriculture; Humans responsible for 3/4 of climate change; GOP Fail: Military housing solar project a 'go' ... PLUS: The brutal logic of climate change. It ain't pretty ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Via Tanya Somanader at ThinkProgress...

Add Frank's to the stories of 96-year old Dorothy Cooper in TN who has voted in every election since woman were granted the right to vote, but who no longer may be able to cast her vote on Election Day next year, and 86-year old WWII veteran Darwin Sparks in the same state; along with hundreds of thousands of others who are likely to find themselves unable to cast their legal vote on Election Day next year thanks to new voter suppression laws implemented in about a dozen states by GOP legislatures and governor's since they took control in 2010.

In Wisconsin, where "an estimated 177,399 Wisconsin residents 65 and older do not have a driver’s license or state photo ID — 23 percent of that population," and where Frank may have to pay as much as $200 to cast her legal vote under the GOP's new anti-democratic and anti-Democratic polling place Photo ID restrictions, the non-partisan League of Women Voters has filed suit charging the law is in violation of the state's constitution, as The BRAD BLOG detailed in October. That case is still pending.

[UPDATE 12/16/11: Clear Channel may now be re-thinking their plans to dump Green960! Details now here...]

The only progressive AM radio talk station, Green960-KKGN, in one of the nation's most liberal cities, San Francisco, is being taken off the AM dial by radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications, Inc. --- a media conglomerate now owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, LLC --- at the beginning of the 2012 Presidential election year.

Adding insult to injury for progressives in the Bay Area, the 960 slot on the dial is being replaced by Clear Channel with the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News Radio's John Gibson and other radical Rightwing talkers, according to a press release [PDF] issued by the media giant last week, touting, in somewhat Orwellian terms, their "goal of expanding talk radio in San Francisco."

"We saw the opportunity to expand our footprint in this crucial arena as we head into an election year and a population increasingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism," says Clear Channel's San Francisco Director of Operations Don Parker in the release.

The expansion will amount to moving Green960's current schedule of progressive talk shows off the AM band, and on to FM's HD2 radio ghetto where it will become a largely automated "robo-station," according to several radio insiders familiar with the station and Clear Channel's plans for it. The station which was formerly Green960 will have the catchy new name "FM Progressive Talk 103.7-2" at its new home, if listeners can find it.

The new Rightwing format taking its place on 960 will be known as KNEW, which is currently at 910 on the AM dial featuring a number of Fox News Radio programs. The 910 position will then be filled with a new talk format being developed by Clear Channel called "San Francisco's Talk 910 KKSF," which will also include some Fox News Radio veterans.

One bright side for progressives in San Francisco, the popular Randi Rhodes, who is syndicated nationally by Premiere (Clear Channel's syndication arm) will continue in her current live Noon to 3p PT slot on the new KNEW-960. She'll also remain in the same live slot in the progressive line up on the HD2 band, though few are likely to hear her there, as very few Americans actually own an HD radio receiver.

Rhodes tells The BRAD BLOG there could be a potential upside to the format change which will leave her progressive voice, as well as Bill Press' in the pre-dawn hours, sprinkled in among the far Rightwingers.

"I never want to see Progressive voices lose ground, but hopefully we can build on the new HD channel," Rhodes told us via email on Friday. "It does look like the beginning of the end of 'conservative format purity' has started. That's a change in the industry that I've been fighting for for a long time and I'm happy to be part of it."...

We've long been warning --- beginning with Chicago's Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel's initial arrests of 175 peaceful Occupy demonstrators in late October, and again following the subsequent brutally violent crackdown by the Oakland PD on peaceful Occupiers there on the orders of Democratic Mayor Jean Quan --- of the growing likelihood of an "#OccupyDNC2012" at next year's convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, unless Dems wise up (and quickly) and figure out that it'll be far smarter to work with demonstrators on their legitimate grievances, rather than fool-heartedly try and crush the Occupations in hopes that they will simply go away.

Given that, shamefully, we've seen a series of (theoretically) left-leaning Mayors continuing the use of this ill-considered technique --- even upping the violent ante in many of the "crackdowns" since --- one must wonder if all of these Democrats have simply forgotten about 1968, are too young to know about what actually happened there, or simply don't give a damn for some unknown reason.

The BRAD BLOG's legal contributor Ernest Canning --- who was deployed to Vietnam at the time, so was unaware of what had actually happened outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968 in Grant Park (the very location where, ironically, Barack Obama would give his moving Presidential victory speech in 2008) until learning about it upon his return home the following year --- flagged these poignant reminders for us all...

Look familiar? Ignore those videos, and history, at your own peril, Democrats.

Oh, and look, the official website for the 2012 Democratic Convention offers this helpful advice at the very top of its home page!:

Do you suppose they really mean that? If so, do you suppose they'll still really mean that by the opening day of the DNC on September 3rd next year?

The corporate U.S. media, as well as the non-corporate U.S. media --- Right, non-Right, and Center --- have all wasted months of precious time filing millions upon millions of words in regard to the fake candidacy of Herman Cain, one which was never meant to lead, and wouldn't have ever led, to his Presidency in a million years. They've done that in lieu of reporting on things that actually matter in this county, at one of the most crucial moments in our nation's history.

His campaign matters as little today, now that he's "suspended" his fake candidacy as the weight of one too many sexual harassment and secret love affair charges has finally caught up with him, as it did on any of the other days prior, all of them wasted by our inglorious national media.

Here then, courtesy of Chris Cillizza at Washington Post, is the only thing you actually need to know about the entire shameful situation --- in one single quote from Steve Schmidt, the campaign manager for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 Presidential bid:

Bingo. We'll add only that the same questions apply to the media in this affair, as well. But perhaps they are now part and parcel of "the political process" Schmidt refers to. As shameful as Cain's fake candidacy may have been, as no more than a self-promotional publicity stunt aimed at increasing his worth on the GOP patsy-fueled Wingnut Welfare market (and, perhaps, to help him get a bit more tail to boot), the U.S. media have far outdone themselves on the shamefulness meter by going all in on this hoax for months, as they continue their seemingly endless quest to ill-serve this nation in the bargain.

(And that, we're proud to say, is more words about Herman Cain, in one single post, than this news site has bothered to waste on him during the totality of his entire ridiculous appearance in an entirely ridiculous Republican primary process during the entirety of one damned serious pre-election year.)